by Deck Davis
‘Need a hand, sir?’ he’d said.
Kortho smiled. ‘I’ve got two already. It’s arms I need – longer ones. A liguana disability, I’m afraid. Grab this box, lad. Much appreciated.’
So he helped him with the box and carried it out of the academy and to the carriage outside. They talked on the way, and it was through this chat – a rare one between the necromancy master and student that wasn’t about raising things from the dead – that Kortho invited Jakub to spend summer solstice and the subsequent Christmas with him and his wife at their cottage in the Racken Hills.
The gesture touched Jakub more than he could put into words. Kortho didn’t have to do that, and Jakub wished he could find a way to thank him properly. Part of necromancy training involved the dulling of feelings, though, and Jakub had never been good with words anyway.
He’d always said that when he graduated and completed his first assignment, he’d sell any loot he found and buy Kortho and his wife, Wersini, a gift. He just didn’t know what.
Even if Kortho still went to great lengths to make sure their relationship in the academy was strictly student-master, Jakub would always feel warmly about the old liguana.
“Feeling better?” said Kortho.
Jakub nodded. His training had kicked in, and the hours he’d spent in the academy prodding cadavers came back to him, and he no longer felt his stomach clench when he looked at the heads on sticks.
Instead, a curiosity crept in. A morbid kind, obviously. There was no other kind of curiosity when it came to necromancers.
He focused on the head nearest to him, the female with curly hair. He accessed his skill list, and the tattoos on his left wrist glowed. Since graduating as a necromancer he’d finally been given his glyph tattoos, which meant he had access to skills of his own and not just the ones he ‘borrowed’ for his training.
More importantly, it meant he could level his skills and earn new ones. That was the part he most looked forward to.
All necromancers had three glyphlines, from which sprang a bunch of powers. The more a necromancer gained experienced, the more powers he had in each glyphline, and these powers differed from person to person depending on how they gained their experience and which glyphs they used more than others.
Some people believed that moral actions fed into the glyphlines and influenced which powers a necromancer gained, but that was a contentious point, and Jakub couldn’t find any necromancer who could say for sure.
Right now, the three glyphline shapes tattooed on Jakub’s wrist – a diamond, a triangle, and a hexagon, were empty save for a sliver of color in each one, like a tiny slice of pie. With each new skill he learned in each glyphline, his tattoos would color in further.
That was a long way away, though. For now, he sifted through the illusory text that the skill tattoo cast in the air in front of him – which only he could see – and accessed his Resurrection glyphline.
Glyphline 1: Resurrection
Skills:
Minor Creature Resurrection [1]
Last Rites [1]
Next, he opened his coat, pulled the collar of his shirt and took out his necklace. It was see-through, shaped like a pentagram, and the size of coin. Most of it was empty, save a slice of it that was ocean blue.
“Not much soul essence to work with,” said Kortho. “The academy keep a chastity belt around their purse, don’t they?”
“Quartermaster Tomkins said we’re having to tighten up. Baron Rustulpin is one of our biggest patrons, but he died without a will, and his family say he signed ‘do not resurrect’ papers. Until something gets agreed, the academy has to get its begging cup out.”
“Quartermaster Tomkins talks to novices too much.”
“He lost his son last year, and the resurrection failed. Guess I was his son’s age.”
Kortho looked sad. “I know, Jakub. I remember his resurrection ritual.”
“It was you? But how did it-”
“Even a master can fail sometimes. It took me weeks to build up the courage to look Tomkins in the eyes again.”
“I know you’ll have done your best.”
“You’re a good lad, Jakub, for all your faults. If we could sort out the nightmares…I know you try to keep them to yourself,” said Kortho. “There’s something we should talk about. Maybe on the way home, after this is done.”
Jakub was happy for the change in subject, and not only because he didn’t like to talk about his dreams. Something wasn’t right here.
It wasn’t just the fact that decapitated heads had been stuck on stakes outside a Queen Patience outpost. People of the empire might have liked to think of themselves as more civilized than the barbaric Killeshi or the dreaded Baelin empire, but pragmatism reigned when it was either that or pay with your life.
No, something about the scene was getting to him. It was something within himself, embodied in a chill that slivered through him and the way his mind kept wandering, kept making him look at the heads around them.
It was one head in particular that tugged on his instincts.
“There’s something about this one,” he said. “The woman with the curly hair.”
“Don’t get squeamish because it’s a Killeshi woman on the end of a spike,” said Kortho.
“She doesn’t look Killeshi to me,” said Jakub. “Does she look right to you?”
“Aside from the fact she is missing her body? She has the Killeshi branding. See on her neck? The red burn shaped like an eye?”
“That’s it!”
Jakub approached the head. His training had kicked in, leaving him with nothing but cold curiosity. It was just death and as a necromancer, death was his business. That meant in all its guises.
He touched her neck, above the part where it had been hacked from her body. Her skin was colder than the wind, and her wide eyes cast sympathy in him, before he forced it out. As well as horror, sympathy paid no part in the necromancer’s path either.
Using his thumb, he rubbed the Killeshi branding on her neck, and some of it wiped away.
“That’s not a branding,” said Jakub. “Someone painted it on her?”
Kortho looked grim now. “I should have seen it. This is no Killeshi. She’s a Queen’s soldier.”
Kortho walked along a line of spikes and heads, rubbing at their brandings one by one. Jakub did the same on the row to the left. Out of the dozen decapitated heads, only four had true brandings.
Kortho walked back to him. Ever the symbol of necromancer calm, the slight heaviness of his tread was the only indication that he was alarmed. Jakub envied his mentor’s cool, because the realization of the situation was sparking panic in him as much as he tried to bury it with his training.
“Assume every soldier is dead until we see otherwise,” said Kortho. He drew his sword, which was twice the length of his reptilian arms, made from black metal, and had a jagged blade.
Jakub pulled his own weapon from the sheath on his belt wrapped around his overcoat. His weapon was a novice’s, and so was a simple iron sword barely sharper than a butter knife. With academy finances in the dire state they were, novice graduates of any kind – be it necromancer, summoner, illusionist, barbarian – were expected to loot better equipment as they went about their missions.
Holding his sword, he headed toward the outpost entrance thirty feet ahead of them.
Kortho grabbed his shoulder, digging his claws into his overcoat. “Wait,” he said.
“There might be wounded soldiers inside, or…”
“The attackers took the time to arrange this display. Would you mess around with that if people were still alive? Their skin is cold, their blood has long clotted, and the resurrection window is closing.”
“You want to bring one of them back?”
“Look, lad! Use your brain. They don’t have bodies! What else can we use?”
“Another test? Now of all times?”
“The times we are under most pressure are the best times to learn. There i
s a simple answer, Jakub.”
He knew his mentor was right, and when he remembered his training and pushed his worry to the back of his mind and forced his pulse to slow, the answer swam to the surface.
With that in mind, he looked at the woman again, now without her counterfeit Killeshi branding, and he held in his thoughts the spell he had originally intended to cast. It was the right spell for what they needed, but the reasons had changed in mere minutes.
He held his soul necklace to his lips and breathed in, imbibing the essence.
Next, focused on the woman, he cast Last Rites, and he blew the essence at her.
She didn’t reanimate. The soul essence he’d sent her way wasn’t enough to do that, and he hadn’t even levelled up his Resurrection glyphline high enough to resurrect a whole person anyway.
Not only that, but the words ‘whole person’ was quite a drawback to this woman’s resurrection, too, given that her body was located elsewhere. A body had to be somewhat intact for a person to come back from the dead.
Instead the soul essence, which was probably from a low-level critter like a badger or fox, was enough to power his Last Rites spell, and through this Jakub and Kortho watched as a stream of light spilled from the woman’s eyes, and it formed a rectangle in front of them.
In this rectangle of light, they watched the last few minutes of her life.
CHAPTER 3
The rectangle of light showed a scene of flickering color; it was the world as the woman had seen it, filtered through her eyes.
She was sitting around a wooden table in the outpost. It looked to be a mess room, because other soldiers were sitting near her. Some were eating, others were drinking from beer flagons and playing cards.
A man approached the woman and sat close to her. He glanced around the room as if he was making sure the other soldiers weren’t watching, and then he leaned close to her.
His lips moved as he whispered something, but Jakub’s Resurrection glyphline was a novice’s, and his Last Rites spell was of poor quality. It came with just images, no sound, and they couldn’t hear what the soldier was whispering to the woman.
They did, however, see the look in his eyes when he finished. There was a look of warmth. Perhaps love, even. What this meant Jakub could only guess.
“Surely the soldiers weren’t allowed to sleep with each other,” he said.
“Hush.”
“There’s nothing to hear!”
“Your jabbering is distracting.”
Affair or not, the pair’s conversation was lost to Jakub and Kortho. It didn’t make a difference, though. Seconds later, glass sprayed across the woman’s vision.
The soldiers around her leapt to their feet. Plates of food clattered to the floor, flagons of beer were dropped on the table. Swords were drawn, and one soldier, a towering goblin male with scratched leather armor, pointed to his right.
The woman turned her head, and the rectangle of images changed view to the window on the right-side of the room, where a person was climbing through.
Jakub only had time to see his pale face before a blinding flash of light filled the room. With that, his Last Rites spell faded, and illusory words filled the air in front of him.
*Necromancy Experience Gained!*
[IIIII ]
The bar showed his progress toward his next rank in necromancy, which for Jakub was novice 2, and that progress was one of the points of undertaking his first field assignment.
It wasn’t just a means of the academy evaluating him for future roles – it was a chance to put his necromancy spells to the test and learn in a real environment. In that way, the small progress of his experience meter was great. He’d earned more experience than he expected from using Last Rites.
Then again, experience came faster when you were the lowest rank on the academy ladder. As he rose up it, it would take a lot more than basic necromancy to get him stronger.
He dismissed the text with a blink and then looked at his mentor. “They were attacked,” Jakub said.
Kortho nodded. “I couldn’t see who by. I would like to see the Rites again, but we can’t spare the soul essence.”
Jakub held his soul necklace and saw that he had only the traces of soul essence left in it. Just like with his weapons and armor, academy funds meant they could send him on his first mission with only a trace of the blue energy. He was expected to fill his soul necklace himself by harvesting soul essence from any dead people and creatures he came across in his journey.
He looked at the woman again, staring at her eyes and then her ears. What words had the other soldier whispered into them, and what future plans had been cut short?
It didn’t matter now. She was gone; she had died in duty. Even in death, though, she could still serve the empire. Not through resurrection, but something else.
Holding his necklace in his left hand, he looked at her lifeless eyes and he uttered the word of Essence Grab.
“Haverium.”
He waited for the blue light to drift from her and into his necklace, but nothing happened.
Kortho shook his head. “They’ve been dead too long for us to harvest from them. We better take a look inside the outpost.”
CHAPTER 4
The inside of the outpost was a bloodbath. The walls, which had been painted in the Queen’s colors of yellow and blue, were splattered with crimson, as were the tables and the large tapestry on one wall that displayed the Queen’s sigil.
Bodies lay strewn all around. Their lack of heads prevented personal identification, but their armor left no doubt that they were soldiers of the Red Eye Queendom.
Jakub wanted to feel nothing about the death of his countrymen, since that was what his training demanded. As a novice, it was still hard to do.
“Dead, all of them,” said Kortho. “This wasn’t a bunch of fishwives, either; they only send the most hardened soldier up here.”
“Was it the Killeshi?” said Jakub.
“The tribes in this area might love to fight, but they don’t sacrifice themselves for fights they cannot win. Even fifty Killeshi couldn’t storm this outpost.”
“But the decapitation…we know that’s what they do.”
“It isn’t exactly a secret custom. Whoever did this would know the Killeshis’ practices too. Check the other rooms for survivors, but keep your sword ready. ”
Kortho went out of the main lobby and right, towards another room. Jakub saw a table through the open doorway and recognized it as the large table from the woman’s Last Rites projection.
Jakub headed left, holding his sword tight in his right hand and keeping his senses on alert. He came to a kitchen and then a larder, but there was no sign of anyone. He went back into the lobby and then up a flight of stairs, where he came to a dorm room full of beds. It, too, was empty.
“Jakub!” shouted Kortho from the ground floor.
Jakub joined his mentor in the mess hall, which had borne the brunt of the attack. There was barely a hint of stone not covered in blood. Kortho was standing over a body.
This man wore armor of the Queen’s army like the rest, and he was dead like the rest. There was a difference, however.
“He still has his head,” said Jakub.
“Well observed.”
Kortho touched the man’s neck. He wasn’t checking for a pulse; instead, he whispered something, and yellow light teased over his claws and then onto the man’s skin.
“His skin is warmer than the rest of them,” said Kortho. “The attackers must have presumed him dead, but he took a while to bleed out.”
“Then why leave his head intact?”
Kortho shrugged. “Perhaps he was hiding, and he came out when he judged it safe only to find the attackers still here. Maybe they had to leave before they could behead him.”
“I don’t think they decapitated the soldiers to make it look like the Killeshi did it.”
“Then why paint the Killeshi marks on their necks?” said Kortho.
&nb
sp; “There’s another reason you might decapitate someone – if you didn’t want them to be resurrected.”
“That would only make sense if they knew the queen had sent necromancer’s here.”
“We need to find his body. The traitor.”
“We’ve looked everywhere, Jakub. There’s something to what you said; they must have known necromancers were coming, and they knew why we were coming, too. The traitor’s body is gone.”
Jakub paced around as the consequences hit him. “If we don’t get his body back, he’ll have been dead too long to resurrect him, and we’ll never know what he told the Baelin. You know what they say about people who fail their first assignment. An alchemist novice got kicked out of the academy for it last year.”
Kortho put a claw on his shoulder. “You’re hurtling into the future, Jakub. Captain Laggard was given orders to douse the body in goodlight, and you understand what that means?”
“So we have a longer window to resurrect him in. You can’t resurrect a person without the body.”
“The questions most prominent for us are these; who took him, why, and where did they take him?”
Jakub faced his mentor as an insight came to him. “There’s something about all the bodies. Can you believe that a bunch of Queen’s soldiers would all die without killing at least one of their attackers?”
“Five men attacking from the shadows can overpower a dozen blinded by the light.”
“Even so, the guys they sent here are the real deal; you said that yourself. There’s no way they wouldn’t have killed at least one or two of whoever did this. When I look around, all I see are soldier corpses, nobody else.”
“The attackers took away their dead. That seals it for good; they knew necromancers were coming, and they didn’t want us to be able to resurrect one of their fallen.”
“The body is gone, we don’t know who did this, and we don’t know where they went. If we don’t recover the body soon then the chance is lost, and I’ll have failed, and…”
