The Death of the Necromancer

by Martha Wells

  "And if he gets his hands on the sphere Madeline has now, he will also have your power?"

  "Well, yes, but not as I am now, you know. It will be as I was then, when I made the sphere. Before I had all my little difficulties, you know."

  Nicholas was almost too distracted to notice that this was the first time Arisilde had ever referred, even obliquely, to his opium addiction. He said, "As you were then, at the height of your power?"

  "Well, yes."

  "But how can he possibly retrieve the skull from the palace? It’s protected by the wards. Except. . . ."

  "Yes?"

  Nicholas shook his head, frustrated. "Macob was apparently a genius at creating new spells. With all these dead fay around—"

  Arisilde was nodding. "Yes, I wouldn’t put it past him to have thought of some way around the wards."

  For a moment it was tempting to concentrate on finding the others and escaping, leaving Fallier and Giarde to deal with Macob. But that was a fool’s choice; if Macob returned himself to life, he would not suffer anyone to live who had interfered with him. And I’ll be damned if I let him use Edouard’s work to do it. Nicholas swore under his breath. "Whatever he means to do I have to stop him." He had the germ of an idea but he wasn’t sure if it was even remotely possible. He dug the corpse ring out of his pocket. "Just how subtle is this spell, Ari? Could it fool Macob?"

  Ari studied the ring, eyes narrowed. "It might. It’s a very good spell, meant to fool a strong sorcerer. And if Macob was distracted, perhaps by working other difficult spells. . . ."

  Their eyes met. Arisilde’s gaze was worried. He said, "You would have to be careful."

  "Careful? You mean suicidally rash, don’t you?" Nicholas asked, smiling lightly. "Will you be all right if I leave you here? There are ghouls and the revenants you told me about. Can you defend yourself?"

  "Oh, I’ll be fine." Arisilde gestured reassuringly, as if Nicholas was leaving him in a cafe on the Boulevard of Flowers and there might be some difficulty in securing a cab. "Do go on. I’ll follow as soon as I can."

  Nicholas eased out of the crevice and stood cautiously, keeping one eye on the fay. It was on the far side of the pit still, reeling drunkenly and snarling at shadows, well past taking notice of him.

  "Nicholas," Arisilde said urgently. "Take care. He is a powerful sorcerer, but you know, I do think you’re much better at scheming things than he is."

  Nicholas had no time to sort that statement out. He nodded to Arisilde and started to climb the wall.

  Nicholas had considered the possibility that the ghouls would still be waiting for him up in the tunnel, he just had no notion of what to do about it. With the giant fay still stalking distractedly around, it was impossible to search the pit for another exit.

  He made it through the fissure into the other section of the pit and back to the ledge at the base of the slope. The crack at the top of it was visible as a darker patch in the rough stone above and there didn’t seem to be any ghouls actually peering down at him from it. He started to climb.

  His shoulders were aching by the time he reached the top and his fingers bleeding through what was left of his gloves. It was too dark in this tunnel to tell if there were ghouls lying in wait or not but he couldn’t hear anything moving around. He dragged himself up over the lip of the crevice and collapsed onto the floor of the tunnel, breathing hard. If the ghouls came now, there wouldn’t even be a struggle. It was a moment before Nicholas could roll over and get to his feet.

  He had to cross the crevice again to get out of the tunnel, but after a little fumbling around in the dark he found the far side had a large enough lip that he could edge along it with only the minor danger of pitching head first back down into the pit. That accomplished, he felt along the wall until the relatively brighter light of the ghost-lichen in the main cave became visible through the tunnel entrance. There he paused, concealing himself in a fold of the wall and trying to get his bearings.

  He was on the wrong side of the cave for the catacomb entirely, he realized. The mold-covered walls of the nearest crypts blocked his view of the rest of the cave, but he could tell by the light reflecting off the roof overhead that more torches had been lit, probably around the central crypt. Macob must be preparing himself to act. I need a view of what’s happening over there.

  He worked his way around the edge of the cave back toward the catacomb entrance, climbing over the tumbled remains of broken statues. Reaching the other side, he found a low crypt near the wall where he could get a vantage point. He jumped until he caught hold of the stone coping along the roof and hauled himself up. From there he could see the central crypt.

  Torchlight lit the miniature battlement and the delicate turrets, threw oddly shaped shadows on the great cracked dome. The dais was empty except for an odd pattern of shadow. No, not shadow, Nicholas thought. He felt through his pockets until he found his small spyglass. Looking through it, he could see Octave’s servant standing near the doorway into the crypt and on the dais itself. . . . There were dark markings on the light-colored stone, perhaps of soot. Most of the pattern was lost in shadow but he could see enough to know that Macob was preparing for the working of a spell.

  Displaced pebbles struck rock behind him and Nicholas twisted around, violently startled. There was a dark form on the ledge above just below the walkway, but it was gesturing agitatedly at him. "Madeline," he breathed. He didn’t know whether to be relieved that she was all right or angry that she hadn’t gotten herself out of here yet. He stood and made his way to the edge of the roof.

  Madeline jumped and he steadied her as she landed, pulling them both down into a crouch. Their embrace was cut short when something hard and metallic thumped Nicholas in the ribs. He held her at arm’s length and saw she had the sphere in a makeshift sling around her neck.

  "We’ve been looking for you," she said breathlessly.

  "We?"

  Madeline glanced down at the sphere and shook her head in distraction. "I mean, I’ve been looking for you. I found Ronsarde and Halle and led them out."

  "Good. What are you doing back here?"

  "I came to look for you, what do you think? We have to get out of here now. Fallier is going to collapse the cave."

  Nicholas shook his head impatiently. "That won’t work. Macob knows we sent Crack for help, he knows what Fallier will do. He probably wants them to destroy this place. Then everyone will assume that he’s dead and he will be free to do whatever he wants."

  "Nicholas, we have to leave now," Madeline persisted.

  "I found Arisilde." He told her about the pit and the corpse ring. "He’s said that Macob can bring himself back to life. With the sphere Macob already has, he could be more powerful than ever before."

  "Dammit, Nicholas." Madeline swept her hair back angrily. Her face was badly bruised, he could tell that even in this light. She let out her breath in resignation. "And Macob will just come after us again, won’t he? We know too much about him."

  "He won’t take all this interference kindly, no."

  "I saw him, when I found Ronsarde and Halle and we were escaping," she said, sounding as if the memory wasn’t pleasant. "No, he’s not going to give up on us. Well then, just what are we supposed to do?"

  "I have a plan." This was true. "I just don’t know whether it will actually work or not." This, unfortunately, was also true.

  "What is it?"

  "Arisilde said you should be able to control the sphere if you try. He said if you give it the direction, it would do the rest. I need you to make it hide you with an illusion, one so strong Macob can’t see through it or even know that it’s there."

  "But—"

  "No, listen to the rest. Get inside that large crypt, where Macob has his body. Put the corpse ring on it, but not on a finger, on a rib." He only hoped Arisilde was right and that Macob would fail to detect his own spell until it was too late. "Then when he reinhabits his body—"

  "The spell on the ring will take effect
and he’ll be a living corpse, like Arisilde was." She nodded impatiently. "And it will be inside him so a surgeon would have to remove it. But Nicholas, any sorcerer can see through an illusion. Even a layman can see through one if they know it’s there, and Macob is going to be on the lookout for something like that."

  "I know. I’ll distract him."

  "How? By getting yourself killed?"

  "There are some things up in the catacomb I can use to make a very suitable distraction."

  "That paraffin that was leaking down the wall?"

  "Yes." It was hard to read her expression in the dim light, but she didn’t sound very happy. "Can you make the sphere hide you with an illusion?"

  "I know the spell. Madele taught it to me years ago. If the sphere works like Arisilde says. . . ." She looked away. "I think so." She let out her breath. "But I don’t like it."

  "It’s only the once," Nicholas said, and felt like a traitor. How many days ago had he said he would never ask her to use her magic if she didn’t want?

  "Just don’t get killed and make it for nothing," she said dryly. "Here, take the pistol. I won’t have a free hand for it."

  While she was digging the spare bullets out of her pockets, Nicholas considered telling her not to linger here if his trick didn’t work. He wanted her to run and not wait for Arisilde or himself. But he knew it would only be so much wasted breath since she would do whatever she liked, anyway. Annoyed at the truth of this realization, he said, "Let’s just get it over with, then."

  Madeline nodded, but as Nicholas started to stand, she grabbed a handful of his hair and kissed him. It was a hasty embrace and Nicholas lost his balance and sat down hard. Madeline let him go and crawled to the edge of the roof, swung over and dropped to the ground with agile ease. Nicholas whispered after her, "Don’t move until the distraction starts. And don’t be so damn sentimental."

  Madeline crouched behind a crypt, near the dais but out of sight of it. She leaned back against the mold- and filth-encrusted stone and pulled the sphere free of the sling. She held it in her lap and felt it hum gently. All right, here we go, she thought. She closed her eyes and began the spell of avoidance. She felt nothing. The incantation ran through her mind with no rush of power, no sense of gathering forces. It’s been too long, she thought, as she finished the spell and there was nothing in her head but her own thoughts. Too long for me. Madele had been right of course, when she had told her that if Madeline didn’t use her skills she would lose what little power she had. She opened her eyes and started to stand.

  She froze when dust moved on the floor around her, pushed outward as if by some unfelt breeze. Holy. . . . Spells of avoidance wouldn’t cause physical displacement. She concentrated, trying to get some hint as to what the sphere had done. For an instant she had it. She was surrounded by not just a spell of avoidance, but by obscura major and minor and various nothing-to-see-here charms, a complex mesh of them. Damn, I wish we had known to try this before. It would have come in handy. Madele would have loved this. . . .

  Standing in that maze of power, feeling it under her control even though it was only through the sphere, she understood suddenly that Madele must have cared about magic with the same intensity as she herself cared about acting. Madeline had always seen power as a means to an end and it had been an end she was not particularly interested in achieving; she had never thought of it as an art in itself.

  She stepped carefully out of the shelter of the crypt, moving to a better vantage-point. If she was lucky, Macob would never know what hit him.

  Nicholas found a place to climb back up to the walkway and from there found the entrance to the catacomb again. After searching through the layers of stinking debris, he dug out two wheels that he had noticed earlier, half-buried under rusted metal and rotten wood. He was in luck and they were mostly intact. While they wouldn’t support a wagon’s weight anymore, they would do well enough for what he had in mind.

  He filled the bottle he had used to hold the Parscian perfume oil with the paraffin leaking down the wall and then quickly lashed the two wheels together with a length of rusted chain. His outer coat was too sodden with sewer water to be of use, so he wound his jacket through the spokes of the wheel, along with some fragments of wood and rags from one of the open crypts. After the spare bullets Madeline had given him were inserted into it at intervals and it was soaked with more of the paraffin, it was ready.

  Nicholas dragged the wheel down the steps and back to the balcony. Crouching in the shelter of its broken balustrade, he checked the revolver one last time. He had saved back enough bullets to reload it once, but no more. The diversion needed to be as diverting as possible and if it didn’t work, he doubted there would be time for him to reload.

  He took a cautious look over the balustrade and saw there was more activity on the dais. The remaining ghouls were collected on the crypt roof, like a brooding flock of particularly ugly doves. Down on the dais were two men, the one he had fought with earlier and a slighter, blond man, who must be Octave’s second missing servant. The larger man was simply standing near the circle drawn on the stone like the will-less automaton he had become. The blond servant disappeared into one of the pockets of shadow near the wall of the central crypt, then limped back into the light, carrying what appeared to be an old metal urn. He climbed the steps of the dais and set it down just inside the boundary of the outer circle, then backed away.

  So Macob was making his preparations though there was no obvious sign of the necromancer’s presence. This would be easier if Arisilde was here, but there was no sign of him, either. Nicholas felt a pang of worry, wondering if the sorcerer had been struck ill again or attacked by something in the pit, but there was no time to look for him now.

  Staying in a crouch, he rolled his wheel down the walkway until he reached the point in the gallery where it curved around and the balustrade dropped away. From here it led straight along the wall to the top of the pile of rubble that had been the stairs leading down to the dais. He crouched, bracing the wheel against the last steady baluster, and fished in his pocket for his matchbox.

  Below on the dais, the torches flickered and almost died. The blond servant flinched and stared around but the other man didn’t react; he simply stood there, numb and motionless. When the torches surged back to life, Constant Macob was at the head of the dais.

  The shadows seemed to cling to the necromancer’s coat like a living cloak of darkness and his hat brim concealed his features. He took two carefully measured paces forward and stood before the circle. The blond man made a sudden run for the edge of the dais as if he meant to bolt for safety through the ruined crypts. Macob lifted a hand and three of the ghouls leapt off the roof of the crypt and bounded after him.

  They caught the fleeing man at the bottom of the dais steps and dragged him back up, struggling and shouting. Macob pointed at him without turning his head and the man’s cries choked off to silence. The ghouls dropped him and retreated back to the roof, leaving their captive to lie in an unmoving heap on the dais.

  This ceremony, whatever it was, was obviously going to require a sacrifice. I suppose it’s poetic justice, Nicholas thought, bracing his wheel in the middle of the walkway and squinting along its path. If the man had helped Macob trap his earlier victims, then he surely knew what was in store for himself. Nicholas jammed the perfume bottle containing the paraffin between one of the spokes and the chain and removed the stopper. Madeline must be moving around down there somewhere, but Macob hadn’t reacted to her presence. But to reach the inside of the main crypt she would have to cross the torchlit area between the entrance to it and the dais and no matter how powerful Arisilde’s sphere, this was her first time to do such a thing and she would need help.

  The other servant, who had remained as unmoved throughout all this as one of the statues, now stepped forward. He moved across the dais toward the edge of the circle and stooped to pick something up. Nicholas caught the gleam of light on edged metal and knew it was a k
nife. It must have been one of the objects the other servant had carried up in preparation for the spell. Nicely ironic touch, Nicholas thought, to force the man to lay out the preparations for his own murder. But he doubted Macob had even considered that aspect, or at least not consciously; the necromancer would maintain a facade of indifference over his enjoyment of his violence.

  Macob didn’t appear to be doing anything but the casting of a spell like this might not appear like much to a layman’s eyes. Most of the work would be taking place in Macob’s mind. The large servant had reached the other man and bent over him and Nicholas judged Madeline had had enough time to get into position.

  He stood and gave the wheel a push.

  The two wheels lashed together gave the contraption some stability and it rolled down the walkway without wobbling overmuch. Before it reached the slope and gained speed, Nicholas struck a match and tossed it into the paraffin trail left by the open bottle. The oil caught readily and the flames travelled swiftly along it to the source.

  The oily rags caught and the whole mass went up just as the wheel reached the part of the gallery where it sloped down to the wrecked stairs.

  The sound must have caught Macob’s attention. His head jerked toward the gallery. The ghouls ran along the roof of the crypt, leaping down from it, but the wheel bounced down the stairs and landed on the dais near the edge of the circle. It spun and fell on its side and the ghouls scattered back from the flames. Behind them, Nicholas thought he glimpsed a dark figure run across the lighted face of the crypt toward the door. Macob stood rigidly, fists clenched, glaring at the burning wheel and the shrieking ghouls. The servant who had been about to kill his comrade started back, shaking his head, looking around in bewilderment.

  Nicholas was already running back along to the nearest break in the balustrade. He scrambled down over the rock pile to the cave floor. He had thought about firing at the dais to increase the confusion but the last thing he needed to do at this point was accidentally shoot Madeline; she was going to have enough trouble when the flames reached the bullets embedded in the packing in the wheel.