“That’s sick!” said Axe Girl. She tilted her head and squinted. “But it is pointing to the North Portal.”
“Exactly,” said Trophimus. “It will do the navigating for us.”
“A proper estate,” said Dekan. “With a walled rose garden.”
Axe Girl let out a long sigh that made her broad shoulders slump. “When are we setting off?”
Chapter 9: Seeing Dead People
“Torstag?” hissed Ingar, just audible over the slobbering groans of what had to be at least a dozen zombies.
A weight lifted from Torstag’s shoulders. “Yes?” began Torstag, then broke off to cough. The stench of embalming fluid always got to the back of his throat. Somehow, an hour of meditation made him even more aware of the feeling.
Potestas 8 of 4. Meditation doubles the maximum attainable Potestas.
It was a month since the magical girl and this was the first time Ingar had spoken to him. “Go on,” he hissed.
The weather had broken, ushering in the Winter. Now two dozen acolytes huddled together behind the chalk line at one end of the Practice Vault. Ingar and Torstag had the rope while Acolyte Hohen chanted a prayer to the Ineffable Resurrectionist and paced across the floor through the mob of zombies, which recoiled as he approached, then closed in once he had passed. The glare of the everlights cast multiple shadows, so Hohen was like a fat spider waddling out to battle.
Hohen made it to the middle of the floor. The dozen or so zombies—ethically sourced from legal executions, according to the Brothers, and thoroughly defanged—growled wetly as they shambled around him. They waved the stubs of their arms, but stayed well out of reach, like night things recoiling from a campfire in the midst of the Desert of Lenses.
Now where did I get that from? Torstag had never heard of the Desert of Lenses, let alone sat around a campfire with bearded warriors, boasting of past exploits and debating philosophy.
Ingar nudged him. “I’ve secured Stalk!”
“Great,” said Torstag.
“I’m on Open Lock, now,” hissed Ingar. “The girl’s plan…”
The weight returned. “No,” whispered Torstag. “I’m sorry…”
“Well fuck you too—”
The zombies emitted burbling roars.
Hohen had lost concentration. “Get me up!” he screamed. “Get me up.”
Ingar and Torstag hauled on the rope, hank after hank. The pulleys squealed and Hohen—not a light young man—rose kicking above the slimy-fleshed mob. He’d hang there until one of the instructors went down to clear the way.
The zombies started trying to chew on his toes.
Hohen screamed and danced in the air. “I can’t breathe! Get me down!”
“Imagine if there had been no safety rope,” said Brother Neutrality. “If the zombies had teeth and hands.”
The Acolytes exchanged glances.
“Acolyte Torstag,” said the Brother. “Go and retrieve your classmate. Let’s see if your performance improves under pressure.”
“What?” blurted Torstag. “Without a safety rope?”
“Without a safety rope,” confirmed the Brother. “Or are you feeling…impure?”
“No Brother,” said Torstag.
Brother Neutrality gave him a look that set his most recent welts throbbing.
“I mean, yes Brother, right away, Brother.”
He hurried down the steps and crossed the line of Blessed Salt.
The dozen zombies swung away from Hohen’s feet and shambled toward Torstag.
“Get me down get me down!” yelled Hohen.
Unlock Necromancy?
His Tempter treated him to memories of graveyards and organ jars. “Hell no!” growled Torstag and started his chant: “Ineffable Resurrectionist, who is mighty in Your Essence of Not Thereness…”
Unlock Necromancy?
I already have four vocations. Shut up!
Up close, you could see that they had once been people. They were technically mummified zombies; they’d been allowed to decompose enough that the Soul had departed, leaving only the Shade. Only then had the Cortège morticians halted the process of decomposition. This rendered the skin a uniform wet leather, so that the puffy and bloated faces still looked human.
Here and there you could see how they’d died—noose tracks on a throat, a face missing a jawbone from a rising sword cut.
How did I know that?
Torstag wondered what state the body of his former self was in, whether it had wounds, or whether he had died peacefully. He certainly had had some adventurous past lives, judging from the skills his Tempter was dredging up.
He had a fleeting vision of a much older woman, crinkle-framed eyes as bright as any girl’s, cheeks coloured, lips parted…
“Torstag!” yelled Ingar from behind him. “Look out!”
Torstag came back to the here and now. He’d stopped chanting.
The zombie of a kindly-looking man of middle years rocked closer, moving with surprising speed even as he leaked embalming fluid from what remained of his upper arms.
Unlock Warrior, Brawling, Body Slam or Companion, Formal Dancing?
Oiled bodies flashed across his memory, and pretty girls in flouncy dresses and sand and cheering crowds and cheerful music, bright chandeliers and—
—he tasted tea.
Something cold and soggy bumped his chest.
Torstag yelped and stumbled back. “In Your Holy Absence, Your Divine Strength is Truly Manifest…”
The Acolytes all started talking. Then the zombie groaned through toothless lips and shambled after him.
Torstag forced himself to close his eyes. He chanted harder. “Both Inactive and Active and at once All Potent…”
“Get me down get me down!” squealed Hohen.
Torstag visualised the Ineffable Resurrectionist, an absence of a presence, and drew the not-here into his not-hereness and chanted the prayer to the Unknowable Not-God—he didn’t really understand the theology, but it had worked before.
Zombies hemmed him in. Slobber sprayed his face. The chemical smell became unbearable. His gorge rose. It became hard to breathe.
You are ritually impure. Supernatural Cleric Feats unavailable.
“What? How?”
Ingar bellowed, “Torstag! Fuck!”
Unlock Necromancy, Repel Shade?
“You win!” gasped Torstag.
Once again, he had the sensation of being out of time, riffling pages and inhaling knowledge like the scent of a musty book.
Necromancy unlocked at Level 0. 1 Feat required to advance to Level 1.
Select a Proficiency
There seemed to be several ways of doing Necromancy, some much slower than others. Torstag selected the speediest.
Necromancy Proficiency, Cantrip unlocked.
You are Empathic so Necromancy Feats start at 2 Grasp.
Necromancy, Repel Shade unlocked at 2/6 Grasp.
You may have 4 Vocations. Cleric vocation Abandoned. Supernatural Cleric feat lost. Meditation retained as a Skill.
Eight years of study gone just like that.
A zombie roared into his face, spattering him with embalming fluid.
Challenge = 2 (Zombies) +2 (Dozen) = 4
Enough! Begone!
Using Necromancy, Repel Shade 2/6 cost 3 Potestas, 5 of 4 Potestas remaining.
Form 2.
Performing Necromancy at Level 2.
Words that were not words came to him. The vault became ever so slightly fuzzier. The shadows seemed to want to rise up from the packed earth floor. There were also too many shadows.
Result = 2 (Performance) -1 (Luck) -4 (Challenge) = -3.
Effect = Failure.
The zombies pressed, their slimy cold tangible through his robes.
The blood rushed in Torstag’s ears. Panic clutched his vitals.
He shouted in his mind, BEGONE, REALLY I MEAN IT.
New Form 5. Cost 1 Potestas. 4 of 4 Potestas remaining.
Performing Necromancy at level 4.
Using Repel Shade 2/6 cost 1 Potestas, 3 of 4 remaining.
Result = 5 (Performance) + 1 (Luck) -4 (Zombies) = 2.
Effect = Tentative Practical Response.
Repel Shade advances to 3/6 Grasp.
The pressure ceased. He opened his eyes and felt dizzy. The stench no longer seemed quite so bad. The zombies shambled backwards, leaving the floor clear except for the ghosts, of course.
The other acolytes cheered until Brother Neutrality silenced them.
“Um…Thus Your Divine Manifest Potency is Vindicated,” completed Torstag, as loudly as he could. Then he sang, “As per the Book of Obedience. “
The acolytes echoed him.
Wait a moment. Ghosts?
15 Zombies, retreating. 19 ghosts, haunting.
“Uh?”
But it was true.
Torstag counted nineteen ghosts dotted the floor of the Practice Vault. They were all robed as acolytes. Some were trying to repel zombies he couldn’t see. Some just drifted around aimlessly. Yet more stood mutely amongst his living peers.
“I said, thanks, Torstag,” stammered Hohen. Evidently, they’d managed to get him down.
“Any time,” said Torstag. He frowned. “What’s that thing?”
“What’s what?”
“Oh nothing, my eyes are tired.”
But his inner eye showed him a silken thread connecting Hohen’s sternum to that of one of the ghosts, a similarly plump specimen who scurried up and down the vault as if something had gone very badly wrong.
Now Torstag knew what to look for, more silken threads linked some of the shades—for that’s what he’d been taught ghosts were; not souls, but their left-behind shadows—to the living, including to Brother Neutrality, whose shade counterpart squatted on the floor rocking backwards and forward, endlessly soiling himself.
Torstag frowned. Was that how he wanted to be? Drawn back time after time to spend each incarnation rotting in this non-place?
The ghost of Brother Neutrality’s avatar stared back at him with hollow eyes. The lips moved.
Torstag turned away.
Hohen’s avatar leaned in and spoke earnestly, silently. Torstag could almost hear the words. Cold…so cold…
Unlock Necromancer, Channel Shade?
No!
You are Empathic.
Test of Will 2, failed.
You have issue Horror of the Despairing Dead at 1/6 Hardening.
Wrestling with Horror of the Despairing Dead 1/6, cost 2 Potestas, 1 Remaining.
Potestas loss overcomes Will 2.
You have Hindrance, “Disquieted”.
Torstag shut his eyes against the dead and blundered toward the chalk safety line.
Ingar took his arm. “Are you all right, Torstag?”
Torstag opened his eyes. “Just a bit of a shock.”
“Good,” said Ingar. He turned away.
Slobbering snarls rose up behind them.
“Come on, the zombies are recovering.”
Brother Neutrality stepped out of the way as they crossed the line of salt. “You were distracted, Acolyte,” he said, and Torstag remembered the way he had plied the rod. “Were you speaking to your Tempter?”
“Oh no, Brother Neutrality,” said Torstag. “I was caught up in religious ecstasy.”
“Indeed.” Brother Neutrality’s eyes became unfocussed and he mumbled a prayer.
Cleric. Level 6.
A cold hand seemed to clutch his heart. If “Performing at Level 4” lent such insight from his Tempter, what could the monk discover about him?
How do you hide in plain sight?
Unlock Shade Cloak?
His Tempter seemed to want him to wrap one of the shades around himself. He shuddered but there was no choice.
Unlocking second feat, Necromancer, Shade Cloak at 2/6 Grasp.
Using Shade Cloak 2/6, cost 1 Potestas. 0 Potestas remaining.
Test of Will 2. Hindrance “Disquieted” shaken off.
One of the ghostly acolytes drifted over to envelope him in coldness. Not just coldness, memories of feelings. Boredom. Sadness. A melancholy lust for another acolyte. Fear. Despair. More boredom, and the shadow memory of just standing there at letting the zombies crush him to death.
Result = 4 (Performance) +1 (Luck) -0 (Ghost) = 5.
Effect = Several minutes concealment.
Shade Cloak advances to 3/6 Grasp.
The hairs on the back of Torstag’s neck bristled. He shuddered and tensed in expectation of his Tempter once again offering him Channel Shade.
You…
No! Really. NO!
…may only unlock up to 2 feats per Vocation at any one time.
Well he’d found one way to get his Tempter to stop pestering him: always have two Necromancer Feats on the go.
“Hmmm,” said Brother Neutrality. “It seems you are progressing well toward Monkhood after all.”
“Th…thank you, Brother Neutrality,” stammered Torstag.
“No safety rope for you from now on. And you are almost ready for skeletons.”
“Yes, Brother Neutrality,” said Torstag, feeling sick. “Thank you, Brother Neutrality.”
I’m buggered, he thought as he tramped down the cliff steps, passing through the ghosts of all the young men who had fallen or jumped into the abyss over the centuries.
There was, of course, a ghost in his bed.
Wrestling with Horror of the Despairing Dead 1/6, cost 4 Potestas, -2 Remaining.
Potestas loss overcomes Will 2. You have Hindrance, “Disquieted”.
Potestas below 0. You have Hindrance “Upset”.
Torstag sat on the dormitory’s cold stone floor and wept until one of the Supervisors yelled at him to get into bed.
Chapter 10: A Lady Spelunker
The sea breeze plastered Millicent’s heavy tweed skirt to her legs, making her fight to get close to the cliff edge. A seagull zoomed over her head, screeched loud enough to make her flinch.
She ducked, cursed, then pushed down her hat and surveyed the curve of the cliffs.
The sun was low somewhere behind grey clouds that blurred into the ocean to hide the horizon. Even so, visibility was good as far as the other end of the bay where she could make out the shard of rock—the “stack”—with the ruined tower on it. A wave splashed white at its base. A scattering of puffins fluttered and dived manically, as if flustered by the approach of dusk.
“No dragons,” declared Millicent. She glanced around, but of course nobody was here to notice her talking to herself like the madwoman she probably was. “Mad and unlikeable,” she declared, “and so, magnificently…” She raised her arms to the sky, “alone!”
Unlock Goeticist, Cantrips, Manifest?
“Silence!” Millicent checked her pocket watch. “I don’t have time for you.” She had perhaps half an hour before she needed to turn back for the entry portal. Even with her new-fangled “flashlight” it would not do to be blundering around here after dark…wherever here was.
Millicent raised her field glasses and dialled up the magnification. The ruin on the stack was round like the stub of a factory chimney, but made of unmortared slabs of stone. If the chart was correct, then those walls enclosed the next portal.
Mind you, she reflected, the chart also said Here be Dragons.
The stack hadn’t quite detached itself from the cliffs. A natural arch remained. Millicent carefully traced the precarious path across the top. It dipped steeply from the clifftop, then rose equally steeply to where the ruins crowded onto the summit of the stone pillar.
Something big and black fluttered through her field of view. She looked for it over the top of the spyglass, but it was gone.
Perhaps a cormorant?
With a sigh, Millicent closed the glasses. She would need to return much earlier in the day to investigate further. If the Lady Spelunkers were going to use this portal, contractors would be required; men with cast-iron beams and ch
ain railings. To justify that expenditure required that somebody verify that the tower portal opened onto a Realm within the Pale.
Of course, Millicent hadn’t really verified the island she’d just tramped across. There were simply no natives to ask, and no real architecture to inspect for clues. However, the tower could have been a broch, and the landscape seemed vaguely familiar, so perhaps it was one of the northern Farm Isles? In any case, no natives meant no hazards, so…
Millicent frowned.
When had she become quite so blasé?
Probably, when she had set off from her lodgings in the dead of night.
“There’s no reason why a woman in middle years cannot have an adventure,” she declared.
Besides, discovering a new route like this was such a coupé! The Society of Lady Spelunkers would surely award her the Pathfinder of the Year Cup. In that context, secrecy made sense, didn’t it?
Millicent fished the canary out of her shoulder bag and wound it up. It tweeted and flapped its tin wings, proof that factory-made goods worked here. Even if this were an unexplored Realm, it was still within the Pale, so that was fine, wasn’t it?
Was it?
She would ponder that on her way back to the first portal.
Out to sea, a whale breeched and blew with a hollow snort. Oily black skin passed above the dark water like the great rubber-tired wheel of a traction engine.
One of her dream memories came to her; standing legs braced on the back of a whale as it wove between floating ice rafts.
Unlock Virago, Command Beast?
The Jungle Tomb of the Ice Queen (The Flying Tooth Garden Book 1) Page 6
