Necromancer’s Sorrow: (Series Finale)

by Pablo Andrés Wunderlich Padilla

  A couple of months of training in Omen was all a young man needed to enroll in the military to serve at a watch post or as a street guard. If the soldier wanted to join those who guarded the palace, his training was more rigorous, involving many more years, but it did not mean that a murderer could not infiltrate the system and pass as an Imperial Guard.

  Leandro devoted many days to studying how to prevent any future breaches and how to manage to eliminate those who had already made their way in. The Imperial Army was large with three thousand soldiers active day after day plus the reserve. They were stationed in Omen but had recently been mobilized to Háztatlon after Mórgomiel’s recent attack.

  Now the city was under martial law as a result of the assassination attempt he had suffered. The man who had tried to kill him had been taken out efficiently, but he was not the only one who had made his way in. There were more; he was certain of this.

  Leandro coughed painfully. The dagger had gone through the muscles of his left side, piercing a lung and missing his heart by a hair’s breadth.

  “Sign here and here, Regent,” Macadamio said to the king’s substitute seated on the throne. “With this, you guarantee that every soldier of the Imperial Army will be interviewed. If the identity of the soldier is verified, he’ll be given a blessed bronze coin. The cost of this will be ten thousand crowns.” He added uneasily, “Enough money to buy another palace.”

  “Money means nothing when there are secret agents here who could kill even the king’s butler,” Leandro said. “Do you want to be found dead one morning? Of course, the public must know nothing of the price we’re paying. The moment there’s mention of infiltrators and security breaches inside the palace, there’ll be more panic than there already is in the city because of Mórgomiel’s attack and that’s something we can’t allow. These are times of solidarity, times for gathering together trustworthy people and excluding those who are not.”

  “And who, Regent, will be responsible for asking about the bronze coins? Is one bronze coin really enough to verify people’s identity?”

  “For goodness’ sake!” Leandro yelled. “I know it’s not a perfect method, but it’ll help us identify most of the ones who’ve been verified!”

  Macadamio bowed his head and went out quickly to get the documents validated so that the process of vetting all the soldiers could begin. Leandro knew they would not catch all the spies. Some of them, though very few, would manage to slip through.

  “There might not even be time for it,” Leandro said. “Maybe,” he added in a whisper. “Mórgomiel will come back tomorrow on a whim to punish us and turn the city to dust.”

  Leandro hated being the Regent. Seated in that chair, he spent morning and afternoon signing documents, granting permits, and suffering the pains of kingship.

  “Karolina Deathslayer!” the herald announced at the door of the king’s hall. “Nickolathius Deathslayer! Gabriel Deathslayer! Bromelia of the Eastern Ewer!”

  Leandro stood up with difficulty. “Let them in,” he said with a smile. He went down a couple of steps to reach the floor and walk on the red carpet. His family visited him twice a day. Ever since someone had tried to kill him, Karolina had spent more and more time with her husband. She thought because of that, she might be carrying a third child which was terrifying, but at the same time, a blessing. She hoped it would be a girl.

  “My dears,” Leandro said, hugging his family. He shivered with pain as he felt his chest wound. The torn muscles were barely healing.

  Sometimes, the regent thought. Violence only strengthens the union between you and your loved ones. I’ve never felt so close to my family as I do today. Maybe it’s because the God of Light has granted me eleventh life. I really have lived through enough horrors.

  ***

  During the process of vetting the soldiers, verifying their identity, training them, and providing each one with a bronze coin, he had found two infiltrators among three thousand soldiers. Whether or not they were assassins hired by Mórgomiel remained to be seen.

  One of them admitted, weeping, that he had killed a sentry soldier to take his job with the sole aim of feeding himself and providing for his family. The other was an apathetic individual who refused to admit anything and the truths they bore remained hidden, even after an abominable session of torture.

  Both assassins were duly locked away in the deep dungeons of the palace until Leandro decided what to do with them. He would ask the Baron, who would certainly know how to extract the truth from them, even if his methods were unconventional.

  The next step was to find the other agents, although this process would be carried out in secret and in silence by missions patrolling the city perimeter. Each patrol captain would be trained to uncover any infiltrator in his platoon when they were a good distance away and exposed to the elements. If a soldier had not spent enough time in the army as an infiltrator would, the captain would soon notice. The process would take weeks, but he would fulfill its aim of uncovering the secret agents in the Imperial Army.

  Leandro was walking through the palace during the evening on his way to the meeting with the Interworld Committee.

  “Don’t go so fast,” came a voice behind him.

  Leandro turned swiftly, unsheathing his short sword as he did so. He shivered as he felt the muscles in his chest tense, but he needed to be ready for anything these days. In front of him was a youth of no more than eighteen. Leandro knew him by his smile, the color of his hair, his size, and his thin build.

  “Cail, what are you doing around here?”

  “The Baron wants to see you right away,” Cail said with a smile. “Before you know what begins.”

  “Where is the Baron?” Leandro asked.

  “That’s a good question. Nobody knows. But they do.”

  Before Leandro could say or do anything, he was blinded by a sack over his head. The light vanished and the shadows took over. The general was breathing fast and nervously. He could do nothing; he was at the mercy of the two giants who were carrying him like a piece of furniture.

  They went down, then up, then along several damp corridors that smelled of forgotten things. Splashes in the water awoke the horrors in him. Where on earth were they? Moments later, stone slid on stone, voices sounded, flashes of amber light appeared here and there, and then he was sitting at a round table. The sack covering his head was pulled away and he was able to see once again. Opposite him was another empty chair.

  Nervously, he examined his surroundings. The silence was terrifying. Footsteps. Someone was coming from the shadows. At first, he could only see a pair of hands as the person did not wish to come out and show his face. Leandro noticed that this person was very well dressed with a purple and blue uniform, a cinch with a sheathed sword, and—

  Leandro looked down at his own clothing. It was the same. The shiver that ran down his spine became stronger when the person showed his face and sat down at the table. It was himself! An identical replica of Leandro Deathslayer!

  He broke into a cold sweat. He wept, feeling utterly defeated. His wife… His sons… No, it was impossible!

  His weeping became a source of intense energy. His mind worked at great speed as he planned his escape. He clenched his jaw and leaped to his feet, drawing his sword in the blink of an eye. He shouted a war cry, ready to kill. But his heroic act died when a dark presence made the hairs at the back of his head stand on end.

  “The shadow is all around you, Leandro. Fighting it is useless.”

  He noticed that it was not his replica that had spoken. That omnipresent voice had come from the shadows!

  He sat down again in a panic. “I thought I was coming to a meeting with the Faceless Baron,” he said. He did not put his sword away but kept it on his lap in case he had to lash out at somebody.

  “Let’s say the Baron’s a coward and he’s run away,” the shadow said. “I’m the new Baron. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  The laughter of that presence was metallic. Its voice was evil,
a hiss that did not belong to any living creature. It must be an evil spirit or a demon! It had managed to infiltrate the Dungeon of Thieves and replace the Baron with its presence!

  “That’s the look I like to see,” the shadow went on. “I am a vorwraith, one of a hundred chieftains of Mórgomiel, Lord of the Shadows. I was once human and I was a member of the Brotherhood of the Crows. But the God of Chaos has granted me the wonderful opportunity of serving him as a spirit with elevated powers. You and I were enemies, and we have tried to hunt you down many times, General. But now, my material state has improved greatly and I can manipulate the Black Arts.”

  Leandro pointed at the man sitting opposite him. “Who’s he?”

  “Him? He’s you! In fact, he’s a chimera, the product of torture and many evil spells to mold his flesh. You and your colleagues think that the attempt on your life was useless when, in fact, it was a complete success. We didn’t foresee Balthazar’s appearance, but even he has been neutralized.”

  “Balthazar? What has he got to do with all this?”

  “Ah! You don’t know yet! I’ll tell you. The great shaman is being consumed by the evil soul of Malakai the Dark Sorcerer, Mórgomiel’s right hand. As we speak, he’s rotting away in the Interim. Soon he’ll become a demon and a very powerful ally. I don’t expect you to know what the Interim means, little human. I don’t expect you to understand much of what I’ve told you. But it’s enough to see the awe in your face.

  “And now as to what concerns you. When the assassin who’d been smuggled in stabbed you… Tell me, what happened to the bloodied dagger? What happened to you for days on end while you were unconscious? Who was in charge of healing you?”

  Those questions stunned Leandro. The wraith was right. The bloodied dagger was never retrieved. There was no doubt that it had his blood on it, and that it might have been used for some evil spell. During the days of intensive treatment, several healers had made ointments and other potions to heal him while others had sutured the wound with dried catgut but none of them, not one, had been familiar.

  “That look again,” the shadow said. “Defeat begins when you admit that your enemy is so much cleverer than you and you realize, for the first time, how many gaps there are in your armor. The soldiers, healers, butlers, waiters, guards, princess’s ladies-in-waiting, and workers are all services whose personnel are poorly regulated, where anyone with a pair of hands and the brain of a fly could join in. The process of vetting the soldiers is a very clever idea. When you began it and caught a couple of our people, that’s when we knew the moment had arrived to step in. Now, you’re here. Welcome to the sinister plan.”

  Leandro felt that his shoulders sagging and that he was losing energy. He was deeply worried. In earlier times, he had faced Némaldon and its evil armies, the sáffurtans and other sorcerers of ill repute. But he had never had to confront such cunning malice that was capable of studying every single one of his defects and skilled enough to exploit every one of his weaknesses. He felt stupid and incapable. For many years, the Mandrake Empire had operated by contracting the citizens as workers so that they could do all the palace chores but there had never been any need to vet the workers, as there was now.

  It was very simple. The enemy had studied them and made use of their weak spots and now they were winning. If you can’t destroy the enemy from the outside, do it from within, he thought. That’s how the enemy has defeated us.

  “And now what?” he asked resignedly. “Are you going to kill me? Lock me up? What?”

  “First of all, your replacement will take over your post. He’s a Leandro who is identical to you. His other parts are identical as well,” the shadow added in a tone that suggested that the impostor intended to take advantage of his wife.

  The impostor saluted Leandro with a mischievous smile and said, “It will be a pleasure to take your place as general of the armed forces of the most powerful army in the world, and as the husband of that tasty wife of yours.”

  He’ll never fool Karolina, was the only thing Leandro could think. That’s right, isn’t it? Karolina’s too smart to be fooled just like that, isn’t she? He’s going to fool Karolina! he thought in sudden panic.

  He felt defiant, then was overcome by deep sadness and an inescapable unease, sensing that everlasting darkness might come to rule over himself and the rest of the world. Suppose his replica wanted to fuck his wife? And suppose his wife came to love this impostor more than him?

  His anger began to mount but he kept it under control; anger would get him nowhere. What he had to do was alert the Committee somehow, let them know that agents had wormed their way into the palace, and that, very soon, the Committee itself would fall victim in the same way. How the hell could he do this while he was trapped in this place?

  “We’ll lock you up in a cell a long way from any redemption and leave you to rot. There’s no need to kill you and give you the privilege of getting what you want. Death is simple, swift, and final, and we don’t want to grant you this boon. We want you to suffer the effects of Mórgomiel’s tremendous conquest when his legions advance and conquer the universe. It’s going to happen soon, very soon. The little dragon and his rider have made the God of Chaos angry, there’s no doubt about that. They’ve got him spitting mad and that’s something that never means good news for our enemies.

  “You’ll pay for the sins of that dragon, you son of a bitch! Take the prisoner to his cell. Make sure it’s one of the smallest ones, where he won’t be able to lie down and he’ll be forced to sit in his shit to find any comfort. Goodbye, Leandro Deathslayer. It looks as if the dead are the ones who’ve killed you. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  ***

  Leandro was dragged out by four soldiers and taken to the dungeons. He kicked, wept, and howled inconsolably. There was nobody who could help him. Now, more than ever, he carried the image of his twin sons in his mind and the precious face of his beloved. How he longed to kiss her, to be with her, and tell her sweet nothings to make her smile.

  Her laughter. That was the only thing he needed. The laughter of his beloved and his sons. If he could manage to remember those sounds it did not matter if they locked him away in hell itself, did it? Because those things would help him keep up the hope that he would hear them again.

  He was shoved roughly into a cell where there was hardly room for him to kneel. He could not sit down unless he rolled himself into a ball. He had no choice but to huddle. The gate was shut and the bars turned him into a miserable prisoner. The lock screeched and the guards went away leaving him alone in the dark.

  “Nooo!”

  ***

  Leandro was walking with long strides, his brow creased and his fists clenched. He was late for the Interworld Committee where he was to appear before the new members as the regent. One of them had ridden from Kathanas and the other from a region near the Lithium Caves.

  As he came through the double door where the Council of the Kings had normally met in the past, every face turned to look at him except the monolith, who made no visible motion.

  Leandro came in with complete confidence and took his seat at the head of the oval table as regent. He did not smile, but feigned concern and affliction.

  “As Regent for the Sovereign Mérdmerén of the Kings, also known as Lion Fist and now as Dragonrider, I would like to welcome our new members. The Interworld Committee is delighted by your presence and that of your armies, particularly in these times of harsh conditions, war and death.”

  Behind Leandro stood the king’s guard including Greyson and seven other massive men. The guardian was keeping a suspicious eye on everyone, even his colleagues. The rumor that the Baron had fled the city had gone from mouth to mouth and there had been several murders after the event, not more than a day and night ago. The well-known thieves had joined forces to check identities while the intruders had been summarily dispatched. But not only were there illegal intruders, but there were also the possessed, the ones to be feared most so that any thief of the Dunge
on might turn out to be an informant or a traitor.

  When the Baron had fled, his instructions had been clear: prevent the Empire from falling, prevent the assassination of the other national leaders, and prevent the armies from being destroyed. Greyson and his closest colleagues, whose identity had been verified, had promised to do everything they could to stop the Empire from falling, but many knew it would be very difficult, particularly when the Dungeon of Thieves had fragmented after the infiltration of the demon. The Empire had been caught with its defenses down and ready for the taking. Without the king, without the Faceless Baron, it was an easy target.

  “Welcome to the new members. Please introduce yourselves,” Leandro said. He sat down. As he did so, the rest of the Committee did the same. They included Düll Donn from Doolm-Ondor, Empress Sokomonoko, Haziiz Farçia, Othus the Benevolent, and two others. Mérdmerén and Meromérila were absent.

  “My name is Lohrén of the House of Nina, the Princess of Yore. I am an elf from Allündel and have come with the legions of our world to provide support to your army for the great battle that is coming,” the elf said in reasonably fluent Mandrakian. He had learned fast, particularly as he was spending day and night with humans, sharing languages and other things. Lohrén had sympathized with the Kathanians. In the opinion of the other elves, the general had crossed the line and there was no way back for him. According to them, he was doomed to suffer a long life watching humans come and go since their lives were like a flash in comparison to the long life of the elves.

  Leandro spread his arms wide. “Welcome, Lohrén, to the Interworld Committee made up of the most brilliant minds and the leaders of those nations which are supporting us in this tremendous effort. I am grateful that you have come and brought the legions with you.”