by Deck Davis
“Dip it in the goodlight,” he said. “We need to cover every inch of him.”
He really did mean every inch. It wasn’t a pleasant job, and Morrigan couldn’t seem to look at them. The boy didn’t flinch, and seemed as unfazed by death as Jakub was, even without academy training.
In little over an hour, just as daylight faded outside the cave, their job was complete, and Kortho was doused in goodlight.
Jakub sat back. He felt the relief at the added time he’d bought for his mentor. Now he needed to find the inquisitor, who would be arriving in the Killeshi lands soon.
First, there was something else he had to do while he still had the chance. He desperately wanted to sleep for a while, even just twenty minutes, but time was against him.
“Finished?” said Morrigan.
“Yes. You can look now. Why do you find it so distasteful?” he asked.
“What you call necromancy, I call a lack of respect for death.”
“Morrigan, you’re a centuries-old spirit living in a woman’s body. You’re going so far out on a limb here that you’re falling off the tree. Stop being such a hypocrite.”
“I had no say in being taken from the burial grounds. I was laid to rest after death and my ashes places in a burial tree. Do you think the Death Bringers consulted with me before placing me in this body?”
“You’re still a Killeshi, so you’re part of it.”
“And you’re a necromancer, and it seems a man banished from your academy was implicit in murdering two of my hawks, and my groff. Does that mean you share the blame too?”
“We don’t have time for this. I need to leave for a while.”
“Where are we going?”
“Not we – me. I have to go alone, and I have to do it now.”
“I know these lands better than you.”
Jakub pressed the tattoo on his thumb and let his map spread in the air in front of him, allowing both Morrigan and the boy to see it.
CHAPTER 40
“This is where we are now,” he said, pointing at the map. “North, here, is the hamlet inside the hill.”
“I know of it,” said Morrigan.
“Do you know who lived there?”
“Not Killeshi, that I know for sure. They are the only settlers the Killeshi have suffered to stay in their lands. Aside from your Queen’s outpost, of course.”
She said the word ‘Queen’s’ with vehemence. It was strange that she’d still feel that instinctual Killeshi dislike for the Red Eye Queendom. You can banish the woman from the Killeshi, but you can’t banish the Killeshi from the woman, he thought.
“I need to go there. They have the body of a solider, and I need to see it. If I wait until I’ve found the inquisitor, it’ll be too late.”
“Every second you delay it is a second taken from your friend’s life.”
“Duty over self, duty over love, duty over all. That’s what they had us say morning, noon and night at the academy. I have to do this.”
“It involves more necromancy, I presume.”
“Always. I am a necromancer, after all. I have to go there alone, so if you could stay here with the boy and watch over Kortho…”
She stood up and crossed her arms. “No. I’ve helped you enough, necromancer, and through that Bert and my hawks have died, and my hut is no longer safe for me. This is where we go separate ways. I’ve had enough of people for the next dozen years.”
“I thought you might say that, Morrigan. What if I said there was a way I could help you?”
“What could you possibly give me? You necromancers…all you bring is destruction. Look at Reggie, look at the way he quivers at the loss of his brother and sister. A hawk shouldn’t be reduced to this, yet after knowing you for just a day…”
“What if I can rid you of Chancel and Zelox?” he said.
Morrigan furrowed her brow. Jakub seized on her hesitation.
“The potion you drink to quiet them. It’s hard to find the ingredients, isn’t it? If you ever run out, they’ll wrestle you for control of the girl, and you’re scared of them reaching the surface.”
“I’m scared of nothing.”
“You can’t fool me. I can rid you of them.”
“How?” she said.
“There’s a necromancer spell for expelling spirits from a body. I’m not strong enough yet, but with the right use of my skills and enough experience, I should earn it, given time. Help me for a little longer, and when I have it, I’ll use it on you.”
“How can I trust you to keep your word?”
“Trust is a rich word for a spirit who has taken over a woman’s body. I know what you told me about Yutulia and how wicked she was, but all the same, you lied to me. Trust works both ways, and I’ve trusted you a lot.”
“That trust kept you alive, and besides, you had no choice. You were in a foreign land without your master to hold your hand.”
“That didn’t make it any less of a leap of faith. I’ll help you, Morrigan, if you help me.”
She thought about this for a second, before nodding. “I’ll stay with the boy, then. What is your plan?”
This was yet another leap, but Jakub had to take it. With the Killeshi aware of him being in their lands, and a banished necromancer hunting him, he had to take whatever plan his exhausted brain could conjure.
“The necromancer and his bound are still hunting for me. Or at least, I hope they are. He’ll probably have sent more men out in other directions, so the hamlet will be low in numbers. I need to go there and find the body of a soldier they took from the outpost, and learn something from it.”
“You’ll never sneak in. I might not have known you long, necromancer, but stealth isn’t your forte.”
“Can you stop calling me ‘necromancer’ all the time?” he said. “After the night in the tent, I think we can use first names now, even if you lied to me about yours.”
“Fine, Jakub. The point stands; you can’t get in undetected.”
Jakub patted his inventory bag. “I won’t need to sneak in - I’ll walk in. Just stay here and keep Kortho safe. When I get back we’ll have to find the inquisitor, and then we can finally bring Kortho back.”
Wherever you are in the Greylands, thought Jakub, looking at his mentor’s body, just hold on. I’ll never give up until you’re back with us.
CHAPTER 41 – The Inquisitor
Just four miles east, a man rode a black stallion through the Killeshi lands. Two satchels were slung over the beast’s body. One had enough provisions to last him three days in this wilderness, though he hoped to the seven hells he wouldn’t need to be here this long. The place smelled like shit, and the sooner he was back in civilized Red Eye lands, the better.
In the other satchel he had his inquisitor tools; instruments of metal and mana wrought by artificers practiced in making devices that could make people speak about things they might have been reluctant to share.
Now, he just had to get to the outpost where the necromancers would be waiting. That would be a problem, too. He knew Kortho had been assigned to recover the traitor’s body, and Kortho was a stubborn son of a bitch.
“We won’t resurrect him until we get to the academy,” the lizard would no doubt say.
Well, they’d see about that.
He urged his stallion forward with a gentle word, which was hard for the inquisitor because gentle words were foreign to him.
He knew that he had a heart some might call black, but he consoled himself with the idea that he did his moral duty by serving the queendom, and that service negated the bile he carried inside; bile that had bubbled since the Baelin had murdered his brother, sister, and nephew.
The inquisitor saw movement ahead of him. Four figures running through the wild undergrowth.
“Trying to sneak up on me?”
He took an implement from his satchel of tools. He raised it and pointed in front of him. A wash of light spread from the stick, casting waves over the darkening landscape and ill
uminating the approaching people.
“I can see you,” he said, then muttered under his breath, “Damn Killeshi.”
The figures carried on toward him, scattering away from the light and back into the shadows like cockroaches.
“I’m here on the Queen’s business,” he said. “You ignorant beasts still have to recognize her authority, don’t you? Our arcane boundaries protect you from the Baelin, you ungrateful bastards. I am an inquisitor for Queen Patience, and you will let me pass through your lands.”
This didn’t stop them as he thought it would. Worse, he’d lost sight of two of them.
He cast waves of light to his left and right, and then the stick snapped, empty of mana.
“Damn artificed piece of shit,” he said, flinging it.
The sooner he left this place, the better. Meet with Kortho and whichever novice he’d brought with him, use his authority to commandeer the traitor’s body, and then get back home. He’d worked five assignments in a row, and he was due his rest.
Before then, there were just the skulking four Killeshi to deal with, and he would do that, even if they had avoided his casted light by peeling from shadow to shadow.
He wasn’t worried. Why should an inquisitor be scared, even here?
But the sudden stop of his stallion did worry him.
Crashing off the beast and hitting the ground scared him.
Seeing the arrow wedged deep in the horse’s neck downright terrified him.
“Damn this place.”
He drew his sword and looked around, ready to kill the Killeshis and advance to the outpost.
This won’t take long.
The thought was barely finished in his head when a knife slipped into his waist, and pain seared through him as the blade plunged in and out, tearing holes in his side.
Another blade punctured his neck, and yet another stabbed deep into his thigh.
Blood gurgled in his throat as he collapsed to the ground, and the inquisitor looked up to see one of his attackers.
You ungrateful bastards.
That was the last thought the inquisitor had before the knives tore into him, and his life leaked away.
CHAPTER 42
Jakub felt strangely worried when he left the cave and set out into the Killeshi lands alone. At least Morrigan knew which paths to take so they could get about undetected. All he had to rely on was his map, and that didn’t match the experience of a hunter of these lands. He had to do this alone, though. It was the only way to get into the hamlet.
To keep his senses alert, he clasped his bracelet of rest around his wrist. Coupled with his boots of focus, this cast new light into his mind, blasting at the cobwebs of tiredness. He travelled with heightened senses, aware of every noise.
When he finally came within half a mile of the hamlet in the hill, he stopped.
He took his vagrant blade from his inventory bag and held it by the hilt. It took five seconds for something to happen, at which point his clothes began to transform.
His black overcoat shrunk until it was a tattered old jacket. His trousers ripped, and stains seeped into them. He felt something on his face, and when he touched his cheeks he felt the wisps of a beard.
It wasn’t just his appearance that changed, though.
“Hells, I stink.”
The smell was riper than a pile of ox dung. In his necromancer guise, after days in the Killeshi lands without washing, he doubted he smelled like perfume, but this was something else. He stank so much it was a health hazard.
He wished he still had the jade mirror to look at himself, to see his transformation into a vagrant, but the ruining of his clothes was enough evidence.
He held the sword in front of him, marveling at the magic wrought in it. It was such a strange effect to cast on a weapon. The work of enchanters and artificers was tough, expensive, and took great skill. Who on earth had paid enough gold to commission a blade like this?
It didn’t matter now, because it would do what he needed it to. He toyed with it for a while, slipping from vagrant to necromancer and back to vagrant. Satisfied with how it worked, a transformed Jakub walked toward the hamlet.
The last time he’d been here and watched the hamlet from afar, he’d seen three men patrolling on top of the hill surrounding it, and a further two guarding the entrance.
Now he saw that there were no patrollers, and just a single man standing guard. This sent relief through him. He’d been right; some of the hamlet dwellers were still out looking for him.
“You!” shouted the guard.
Jakub stopped ten meters from the man. He had already tested the way the vagrant blade worked, and knew that if he released his grip from it for more than thirty seconds, the transformation would shift and his real appearance would show. This would be tricky.
He raised his hands in the air to show that he was not a threat, and he counted the seconds in his head, even as he spoke.
One, two, three…
“Who are you?” said the guard.
“A traveler. I’m here for work,” he said. His vagrant didn’t extend to just his clothes and smell; even his voice had changed to become deeper.
Four, five, six…
The guard looked suspicious. “How’d you find us?”
Seven, eight…
“Well?” said the guard. “How’d you find us?”
Jakub sought an answer for this in his mind palace, remembering what he’d seen and heard through Ludwig when he’d sent his hound into the hamlet. He remembered the teens talking to each other while they sat on their log by the fire, and he remembered the names they’d spoken about.
“I met Gregor when he was out near the borders. He and a few guys were camped out, said I could join them. They’d had a few beers by then. They said if I was ever by this way, I should try and find the hamlet because there was always work.”
“Gregor is out at the minute. He and some of the others have something to deal with. I can’t give you work; it’s above my station to do stuff like that.”
“You got a fire going in there?”
“In the Killeshi autumn? We always have a fire going.”
“Mind if I come in and warm up for a bit while we wait for Gregor to get back?” he said.
The guard paused in thought. Jakub gave a fake shudder, and rubbed his hands together. “Gonna be a bad winter if this autumn’s anything to go by.”
The guard stepped aside. “Fine, go on. Get in. The minute Gregor agrees to taking you on to work, wash yourself. No offence, but you smell like crap compacted in a cow’s arse.”
Despite never setting foot in the hamlet in the hill before, he knew it because he’d seen it through Ludwig’s eyes. He recognized the bonfire in the center that seemed like the hub of the settlement. That made sense, given that fires brought warmth, somewhere to cook, and somewhere to heat up water for washing. Which, no matter how bad his vagrant blade made him stink, he wasn’t going to do.
Numbers in the hamlet were low with the necromancer and his men away. Those who’d stayed behind – people too old to be searching through Killeshi lands, or those too young to pick up a sword yet – busied themselves.
Three men and a woman gathered over a pot of bubbling stew and cackled at each other’s jokes like witches around a cauldron, while the children were all on the far side of camp where the hill wall was highest, tucked into sleeping bags and whispering to each other, closing their eyes and pretending to be asleep whenever an adult walked by.
It was a nice place. He’d hadn’t imagined feeling that way, but there it was. It was warm, sheltered, and the people seemed to like each other. It was a rare thing to find in Killeshi lands.
He didn’t have time to enjoy it, though. He needed to find the body of the soldier.
“You’re getting dirtier and dirtier, you stragglers,” said a woman, approaching him. She was heavyset and had her shirt sleeves rolled up. Her fists were like hulks of ham, heavy enough to knock an average-sized guy like Jak
ub on his arse.
“’Scuse me?” he said.
“They let you in here to work?”
“That’s what I’m hoping. Gregor is out looking for some necromancer, and the guard at the entrance couldn’t say whether they’d take me on for labor or not.”
She crossed her arms. “How’d you know they’re looking for a necromancer?”
Shit. He’d given too much away. He had to think like the vagrant, and not like Jakub, the Queen’s academy necromancer.
“Heard one of the lads talking about it,” he said, gesturing to four teenage boys sitting by the bonfire and passing a glass bottle between them, taking sips in a ridiculously-poor attempt at stealth.
“Jules and Michael and his jug-eared friends. That one there? He’s my son, Rud. A group of stupid oafs if ever I saw one.”
“Nice lads,” said Jakub. “But anyway; food, fire, and honest work. That’s all I need.”
“Aye, lots of men say that. Give ‘em a second to get comfy by the fire, though, and any thought of work leave them like farts from their arse.”
“I don’t know what to say. Work’s all I want. The sooner I get the okay to stay, the better.”
She arched her eyebrow now. “Your accent is funny, you know. Mixed, somehow. Where ’ya from?”
Jakub didn’t know if he was imagining it, but he felt like he caught a few stares from others in the hamlet now. Shifty ones, stares given for a millisecond, as if to appraise him, and then averted. The big-handed woman didn’t take her glare off him, though.
So where was he from? Where would it make sense for a vagrant passing through Killeshi lands to be from?
He searched his mental palace for anything vaguely logical.
“Southend docks,” he said. “Came down with a caravan, looking to work in the sea air for a bit. A doc in Templeton said it’d help my chest. I get these wheezy fits, you see.”
Did that make sense? He hoped so. He didn’t want to know what this woman would do if she found him suspicious.
Faces looked his way now. First the boys near the fire, then the kids over on their sleeping bags, who were pointing at him and whispering to each other. Or was he imagining it?
