Necromancer’s Sorrow: (Series Finale)

by Pablo Andrés Wunderlich Padilla

“Yes, your ladyship. I am the chosen one,” said the guide that had brought them here.

  “But you were speaking of him in the third person.”

  “We do not like to talk about the ‘I’ in Yúmbala, the new empire of the Dakatak. Thus, we have named our new home. We like to talk about ourselves in the third person to stay humble. Only Queen Gochuka Inquik-cha Macha-chak-na-ma can talk about herself in the first person.” The insect bowed his head reverently. The Knight still could not get over the fact that those jaws that appeared capable of breaking stone could also emit sounds.

  “It is because of this, dear Queen Meromérila, liberator of the Dakatak, that we have been preparing for the catastrophic event that is on its way. We have been paying attention to the great aberrations of the universe. I am ready. I have given birth to more than a hundred thousand eggs in a few months.”

  Meromérila shed a tear, grateful both for the offer and for what it implied. “Soon, then, you will die,” said the Queen of Gardak.

  “It is inevitable. But a new queen has been born and is being tended to by my children. Soon, a new generation of Dakatak will emerge with the strengths and weaknesses the new queen will bring with her. Yúmbala will soon know its new queen. She will grow and increase the numbers of the colony and replace all those children of mine who will die in the great battle that is approaching.

  “We will send a hundred thousand Dakatak to the battlefield, my dear Meromérila. They will join you in what you call the Fields of Flora. We understand the details of the trap you are setting for this impostor and we will respect those limits. When the battle begins, you will see my children emerging from the earth to give you support. On the other hand, you will not see them on the surface. Do not let that discourage you.

  “Enough has been said about war and battles, Meromérila and Lord Knight. We must sit down to eat and drink. This is the first and last time that I will have the honor of having guests in my domain and it is all thanks to you. You are the first guests to set foot in Yúmbala. We are honored. Allow me to share with you as my guests, without formality, and forgetting about the miseries of the universe during my final dinner. Let us drink as friends. Besides, I want to hear the adventures of the deep being who lives within the metal lord who hosts a soul that has seen and lived numerous lives in one.”

  Mérdmerén did not know if he should take off his helmet and introduce himself as the King of Mandrake, which undoubtedly would make the queen of the insects rejoice. But of course, it was the Metallic Knight, an ancient and powerful god, who was far more relevant than the mere king of a fleeting nation. He decided to stay within his armor and allow the queen of the insects to study him in depth.

  The Metallic Knight and Meromérila took their seats in front of the queen. Several workers brought food plated on slabs of stone. On this occasion, it was not the fungus in its raw state, as the insects themselves ate it, but roasted in the deep ovens of the underground castle. This gave it an aroma of grilled cheese. They ate and drank and the Yúmbala Empire, for the first time, entertained its guests.

  Chapter XLVI — The Mind’s Eye

  They traveled at night in small canoes, rowing as hard as they could. The storm was threatening to drag them down to the bottom of the sea.

  “Keep rowing! We’re nearly there!” cried the leader of the small group that had come for Leandro’s and Lombardo’s families. There were too many people in the canoe and it seemed to be on the verge of sinking. By a miracle—or perhaps witchcraft—none entered the canoe, although the side of the vessel seemed to be going below the water.

  Lombardo was frantic, watching to make sure no-one fell into the sea. The children tumbled from one side to the other and his pregnant wife seemed undecided whether to hold on to her swollen belly or the sides of the boat.

  “Wave! Hold on tight!” Nikos and Gabriel held on to their mother, their eyes wide as they cried silently. Panic took hold of all of them, including the oarsmen who were trying to reach the Muengüen Islands and Maggrath.

  “One more push and we’ll be there!”

  The canoe touched the shore. Several individuals were waiting for them on the beach, running towards them with thick blankets to keep them warm. No sooner did they land than the canoe broke apart when a gust of wind hurled it against the reef. All Lombardo could think of was what would have become of them if this had happened a moment before. Something told him it would not have happened after all and he felt that this involved some kind of witchcraft.

  “Follow me!” shouted the leader of the expedition. Lombardo was the last one in the line, checking that none of the travelers had been left behind. He turned to look back, watching the storm battering the sea.

  The walk became everlasting beneath the ferocious blast of the elements. He was hugging his wife, who was not complaining though he knew that walking in her state amid such an aggressive storm could not be at all comfortable. The geography here was impressive. He had been to one of those islands on their honeymoon. That had been in an area which was more developed for tourism and everything had been softened by the hand of man. But in this region, everything was wild and aggressive with mountains of towering rock that seemed to emerge from nowhere. The forest too was thick and complex. At night, he was not aware of any detail, but he knew that by day he would find himself amid dense vegetation and rich, diverse wildlife.

  They went along a couple of tunnels excavated into the rocky mountains and at last, the deluge and its accompanying misery stopped buffeting them. They were panting as their guides led them as fast as they could to their destination.

  They came out of the tunnel onto a wide plain surrounded by that mountain mass. The travelers were left breathless at the sight of such a large building in a place where you would think it was impossible to build a stone fortress. The castle was made of a strange kind of stone, much darker than the kind around them, and had been built so perfectly that it seemed to have strayed from between the pages of a fairy tale. On the outside was an intimidating façade with high, vertical walls that did not indicate any easy access for an intruder. It did not seem to have any defenses nor did it appear to need them. War machines would never besiege this place, given the proximity of the rocky mountains, and an army would never be able to form outside. The castle did not look as if it had been created for defense or attack. It looked colossal as though wise and with that, it bore the strength that knowledge confers.

  Unlike a castle with a drawbridge that comes down from the wall to let visitors reach the entrance through its guardian gate, there was only a monumental door that was the same color as the stone of the castle.

  The leader of the group grasped the handle of the door. Faithful to its origin and to a castle that held a school of magic, the handle shone faintly, and only then was he able to turn it to unlock the door.

  He pushed the door open to let them in. “We have our own security system,” he said with a smile.

  “My friends, welcome to Maggrath, school of magic and dwelling of the wise.” The speaker was an aging man with short grey hair and eyes the color of the bluest aquamarine. He was beardless and wore the bright blue toga of a mage with the title of Üdessa.

  “My name is Sendar,” said the old man with a smile. The castle had no courtyard or patio and when they entered, they walked straight into the entrance hall.

  “This is Uroquiel, one of our students. For months, he has dedicated himself to magic and to translating Elgahar’s essays and Rummbold Fagraz’s original texts into more than thirty languages. He’s a man of many talents and his progress in magic has made him one of our prodigies. He’s preparing for the war, as are the other apprentices here. We all know that Armageddon is about to strike us with all its force.

  “This is Ítalshin, the only Wild Woman to have joined the school despite our efforts to attract more Wild People who are already shamans by nature and know the gifts of Mother well.”

  Lombardo looked with interest at the guardians who had brought them
here. Uroquiel was missing an eye and in place of an empty socket, he had a large scar that covered the flesh and gave him the look of an implacable warrior. His hair was long and black as jet, his one eye emerald green, and his skin brown. He had a badly-trimmed beard and his clothes fitted him badly. Here, all of them except Sendar wore grey tunics. This was presumably because they were considered apprentices of magic while Sendar was the only Üdessa.

  “Lombardo! Karolina! Children! Nana!” came a booming voice in the hall. They turned to be confronted by a man with a long beard and dressed in a grey toga who was walking with a staff in his hand. The small eyes in that huge double-chinned face were unmistakable.

  The children ran to the old man. “Gáramond!” they cried. Lombardo noticed that the philosopher was limping more than usual. Something had happened to him. And that tired look… He seemed to have aged years in a matter of months.

  Lombardo had time to take a good look at Ítalshin, who did not look at all good in a grey toga. This Wild Woman, with her golden skin, coffee-colored eyes, and hair black as night, should have been wearing her wyvern armor. The bronze of her skin stood out. Her jaw was square, her eyes large, and her lips full. The toga fitted tightly on her thighs and buttocks, emphasizing the fact that her body was that of someone who has run all her life among mountains.

  “It was too much,” Gáramond the Philosopher was explaining. “When Leandro the Impostor imprisoned me, he tortured my mind.”

  It was Karolina who lowered her gaze, remembering her husband’s defeated look, something she had never seen in him before. It was true, his captors had broken him. Gáramond was old and weathering those cruelties was asking too much of him.

  Karolina hugged him. “You’ve come to a good place to retire, my friend.”

  “Not at all! Nobody’s going to retire this old man. I came with Jochopepa, the Gardakian who, if you remember, is a man of faith of the ancient Gardak. I am to help in our efforts to translate the languages. For the moment, we’ve decided to help Uroquiel translate the texts of Rummbold and Elgahar into other languages.” The philosopher turned to Ítalshin and Uroquiel and patted them on the back. They both turned to the philosopher with admiration in their eyes.

  There followed a moment’s silence. But Gáramond did not waste a single second more. Seeing the children staring at him, he turned to them.

  “Thought, my little friends,” he said enthusiastically, “is the most important faculty of any living being and if we can manage to control the mind and drive it to its maximum capacity, there are no limits.” He put his hands together and grimaced. Nikos and Gabriel laughed nervously.

  “It’s getting late,” Sendar said. “For our students, nighttime is for resting because they have to get up early to carry on with their studies. We’re getting ready for war and they need to get down to it. I’ll show you to your rooms. There’s a snack there for those who would like something to eat. I know Ajedrea will welcome a good dinner.” He was looking at her belly as he said this. “How long so far?” he asked her.

  She rubbed her belly. “Five moons. Time flies, doesn’t it?”

  “A great blessing,” Sendar assured her.

  “I’m starving,” said the Princess of Mandrake. “The little person in here needs plenty of food.”

  Sendar left each guest in their room. “Lombardo,” he called. The castle was vast with three levels, each one like the other two but with so many rooms, all of them simple, that there was space for a hundred people or more. Each level had spaces filled with desks where the pupils spent each day learning.

  Lombardo joined the mage in the corridor. “Thank you for everything, Sendar.”

  “Don’t worry. Maggrath needs warriors like you. Most of us are mages who depend on the Conjuring Arts. That means that we depend on the universal law of equivalent exchange which establishes that energy doesn’t come free of charge and that every spell has to be paid back with an equal amount of energy. When a mage uses too much energy, he exhausts himself and leaves himself defenseless. That’s why we need you. We can make you into a Fark-Amon.”

  “A Fark-Amon,” Lombardo repeated. “But they depend on a union among themselves to generate a magic tie that links them and makes them stronger. They were destroyed during the Battle of Háztatlon. I thought it was an abandoned discipline.”

  “Omen may have abandoned it, but we plan to become mage-warriors ourselves. Mages and warriors should always learn how to combine their power. We could create this link between us and increase your energy many times over. Are you with me?”

  “And what do I have to do?” Lombardo replies.

  “Present yourself tomorrow at dawn to the training field on the first level and we’ll start. You haven’t come to us by chance, Lombardo.”

  Sendar left Lombardo to digest his words. He had known a Fark-Amon. He had even been his friend. Gramal Gard had been his name, a great warrior he had seen die during the Battle of Háztatlon when he had been consumed by the walking corpses.

  ***

  Dawn was breaking, greeting the school of magic hard at work with every student performing his or her role in the training they had been assigned to according to their talent. Until now, there had only been two categories: you were either a mage or an assassin of assassins. The two categories together numbered not much over a hundred students, mages being the more numerous.

  Today, a new category was being announced: the Brutal Fark-Amon, legendary warriors who had been created by Flamonia in the Old World to defend their former king. In those days, the Fark-Amon were much more powerful and, using what little was known thanks to the scraps of knowledge the survivors had brought from Flamonia to the New World, the recipe for creating a Fark-Amon had been more or less recreated.

  The tasks of cleaning and kitchen work were carried out by the pupils themselves, who took turns to do the housework. Some cooked, others washed, and others cleaned. They all took turns every other day to not get bored with the same activity all the time. Here, self-sufficiency was the rule, a principle Sendar had learned in the Dungeon of Thieves. “It helps form responsible men and women,” the Baron would have said had he been there, for he had seen over the years that nobody wastes what he has created out of his own sweat.

  The castle was full of activity. At the moment, Sendar was the only mage capable of teaching the young students the way of the Conjuring Arts. With the obligatory readings of Rummbold Fagraz’s book and Elgahar’s essays, together with compulsory research to advance the science of magic, the pupils were kept busy day and night. As there were three levels, they were divided into a sub-specialty of magic every day, thus practicing each area without focusing exclusively on any single subject and in the process, losing sight of the fact that the Conjuring Arts is a science without boundaries and should never be boxed into any one single function.

  Some dedicated themselves to studying the properties of matter. In other words, they were trying to understand what it is made of and to decipher the code that permits its existence. This was a fruitful line of research and was even one of the steps Elgahar himself had considered most important in becoming a high-ranking mage. Without understanding the code of the construction of matter, you could not reconstruct it efficiently and, to be a good mage, you needed to understand that the construction and destruction of matter are essential in the creation of any spell.

  This was directly linked to the law of equal exchange. If a mage creates a spell that costs more than the energy within him, the spell will consume him. The energy within a caster is also called mana by some, lifeforce by others. In this way, a mage’s energy works like money, and each spell consumes a little of that economy. The more experienced mages do not possess more “money” or energy to generate spells, it is simply that they become more efficient and spend less per spell. Some mages learn to create specialized potions that aim to increase health and lifeforce as well, but the creation of these was beyond the scope of this training.

  On the second lev
el, the students devoted themselves to deciphering their partner’s mind. Here, most of them formed small groups of two or three. While some thought of a specific spell, the others sent the “fingers of their minds” toward the “mind’s eye” of their partner to read the code the other was creating. On deciphering the code of the current spell, the subject had to let his partner know, which inevitably ended in either fisticuffs or laughter. As the students advanced more and more, they developed new strategies for strengthening their minds and preventing interception.

  On the third level, they concentrated on practical spells. This was not often done inside the castle, unlike the theoretical part. When the time came to put their studies into practice, they had to do it outside. There were rocks, logs, and sometimes even dead animals on which to cast their spells to practice both the speed of their creation and the skills of working with or without a staff, depending on whether the student wished to use an external object in his magic. Every two days there was combat supervised by Sendar in which the mages threw lightning bolts of low-voltage energy which only tickled and occasionally caused slight burns that required homemade remedies. There had not been any deaths, either accidental or intentional, and that was how Sendar wanted things to continue.

  But today, a new category had been created: the Brutal Fark-Amon. Until now, these warriors had trained exclusively in Omen where the Council of Mages and the duke of the city had been in charge of training them until the Battle of Háztatlon. After that battle, the discipline was waiting to be revived. Would it ever be?

  Sendar was not sure how he would manage, but knowing the basic principles behind the working of the legendary warriors, he was sure it was a matter of generating a spell with one single property: creating links with their comrades and forming an interconnected network of minds that greatly increased their mental and physical power. In this case, what Sendar intended to do was to train Lombardo’s mind to enable him to create those links with the mages.