by Deck Davis
“Nevertheless, my technique is no different, except in its effectiveness. Magic flows freely through the wires of agony; it is simply a matter of causing enough pain to draw the magic out completely. While hucksters travel town to town selling their magic trinkets and promising to piss out rainbows, none can offer the same as I; real tattoos of spellcasting, taken from those with real powers.”
“Why not start selling hunter’s eyeballs and sculptor’s fingers while you’re at it?”
“But any man with enough determination can learn the skills of a hunter,” he said. “Isn’t that right? Any person, no matter their background, can learn to sculpt. Magic offers no such promise, does it? No amount of ambition or practice will let a child use mana if they aren’t born with it. Does that seem fair? Tell me, in your academy library, is there a single book that speaks to this? A single scrap of paper where your instructors have researched the matter or why some are born with this talent, with the world open to them?”
“So that’s what this is about,” said Henwright. “Not money…that’s just a bullshit cover. You don’t really care about selling the glyphlines; you’re just having a tantrum because you weren’t born with the gift.”
“Gift. Such an apt choice. A gift is given, isn’t it? It isn’t earned.”
“I didn’t always need glasses, you know” said Henwright. “Too many hours reading by candlelight. My poor eyesight is a testament to my hard work. Look around. I live in an academy bedroom fifty feet away from a bunch of teenagers, and my only companion is a mouse. Tell me, do you think I was just given all the knowledge that I have?”
“I think what you have now could disappear so easily, Henwright.”
“No. This is over tonight. One more – that’s what you needed. A necromancer with the three glyphlines on his arm. He’s on his way to you, so for god’s sake, remove the damn curse.”
Henwright took off his glove and glanced at his fingers; long, wrinkled, capped by nails that never stayed short no matter how much he clipped them. While his skin usually had a pink flush, his right hand was oil-black.
It was a hand that had touched the Blacktydes, the Greylands’ uglier cousin, filled with a corruption that deadened everything it touched.
“It’s spreading to your wrist,” said the man.
“All the better that you’re going to remove it for me.”
“A smaller man than me would get offended by your tone. A man can divide his mind, you know. See the good, whilst doing the bad. Remember how I honored my word. For what it’s worth, Henwright, you are a good man.”
“I was. Before this.”
“When you wake tomorrow, the curse will have begun its retreat.”
The colors in the painting faded, returning back to the scene of the Disopolis alleyways. Henwright looked at the crowd and wished he could blend into them, to become part of the painting like his tormentor had, and just disappear into it.
The novice would be walking down a street like that soon. Perhaps the very same one. And like in the painting, the man would loom large, transforming the streets into a nightmare for him.
CHAPTER 10
After leaving the academy, Jakub reached what they called the Well of the Damned, which was really a giant sinkhole a few miles away from the academy itself.
Students used to say it led straight down into the Blacktyde, one of several places a person could go in the afterlife when after their time in the Greylands was up and their resurrection window was closed.
Jakub knew the Blacktyde was real, but he didn’t believe a sinkhole near the academy was an entrance to it. Even so, he was just about to throw a stone into it for luck – some students used coins but the academy’s policy of not being wasteful was written deep inside Jakub – when he heard horses.
Mason D’Angelt, the master warlock, led two warlock novices on horseback. Mason was built like a guy who’d lifted boulders for fun all his life. His cape was made of richer material than the robes that the academy issued its instructors, and it was fastened on his chest by a brooch, from which smoke drifted. That was probably an artificed effect; a lot of the older generation loved little fancies like that.
His hair was spiked up and it was as immaculately groomed as his beard, but he was losing his battle with age, evidenced by a bald patch on his crown.
Mason was a cult figure around the academy, and as much as Jakub wanted to pretend that seeing him was nothing special, nothing to get fussed about, he found he was standing up straighter.
Jakub only knew one of the novice warlocks riding with Mason; it was Bendie, a guy his age who’d always acted like he hated Jakub, presumably because of Jakub and Abbie’s relationship.
The other guy was called Norris something, but Jakub had only seen him when they passed each other in the academy corridors from time to time.
“Hey, you,” said Mason. “Big ears.”
“Big ears?” said Jakub.
“You’re a long way from classes, son.”
“I was expelled,” said Jakub.
Bendie laughed, then covered his mouth.
Glad to see you’ve taken academy teachings of respect on board, thought Jakub.
“I heard that three stick-up-their-arse necromancers had kicked someone out,” said Mason. “That was you? Where are you headed?”
“Dispolis for a start,” said Jakub.
“A big city. Easy to get lost in.”
“I’ve been before,” said Jakub. “How’s Abbie?”
“Abbie Marsh? You know her?”
“He stalked her,” said Bendie.
Jakub didn’t feel like relaying his entire relationship history to Mason, and especially not in front of novices Bendie and Norris.
“We were friends,” he said. “I heard she was killed in the field, and they had to take her to the resurrection chambers. What happened?”
“Sorry, novice. All instructors were sworn to silence on that one.”
Sworn to silence? That was a new one for Jakub; when recruits died in the field and were brought back, the academy usually used it as an opportunity to brag about what a miracle their necromancy department was, in an attempt to get more funding.
So, for every instructor to be banned from talking about it meant that something unusual had happened.
“Dispolis will empty your purse quicker than a thirty-fingered pickpocket,” said Mason. “Need some loot to get you started?”
“Maybe; what do you need me to do?”
“A quarter of a mile north, a bunch of brigands have set up camp. They’ve been robbing folks on the Royal Road and Merchants Pass, always moving on before the guardsmen show. Now that they’ve camped in academy grounds, we’re within our rights to ask them to move. I intend to be quite forceful.”
“Yeah, we’re gonna kill them,” said the other warlock, a lanky boy with a shaved head.
“That was what I implied,” said Mason. “I try and teach you boys some subtlety, but your heads are too damn porous. What do you say, novice? It’s the least I can do if old Henwright and Irvine the tight-arse have screwed you over.”
Jakub did need the loot, and although any fight could be dangerous, it would surely be easier with a master warlock on his side. What was there to lose?
With no sure way of earning gold in the future, he’d have to take every chance he got.
“What’s the plan?” he said.
“The brigands are mean bastards if you listen to the stories,” said Mason, “Until they meet someone meaner. They’ve been known to move on when you wave your cock and they see yours is bigger. All we want to do is get them off academy boundaries. If we growl enough, we won’t have to dig any graves tonight.”
“And the loot you promised me? There won’t be any if we let them live.”
“If that happens I’ll give you something of my own.”
“Forget him, Mason,” said Bendie. “They banished him because he messed up his first assignment.”
“I heard he’s the
worst novice ever to graduate,” said Norris.
Jakub had expected rumors about his expulsion to spread, but not this quickly.
He wasn’t going to have a long career with the academy and he wasn’t going to earn prestige through his missions, but at the very least he wouldn’t leave behind a legacy of being the worst novice to graduate.
“Let’s go drive these bastards away,” he said.
“Try and keep up,” said Bendie.
The warlocks left on their horses, while Jakub walked behind. They kept to the Royal Road, a path that joined not just Dispolis and the academy together, but also connected every other fortress and city within five hundred miles. They followed this a few minutes before heading into shrubland that belonged to the academy by title, but was rarely used.
Being so close to the Royal Road yet with patches of overgrowth, hilly bobbles, and bushes, it was the perfect place for brigands to wait in ambush, ready to pounce of a road traveler.
Jakub caught up to Mason and the others, who’d stopped.
“It’s important the academy shows its balls when brigands wander into our boundaries,” said Mason.
What is it with this guy and cocks and balls?
“The academy has a list of suppliers bigger than Prince Hogarth’s brothel tab,” said Mason. “The alchemists need their frogs eggs and cinnamon and crap like that, and you necros need fresh corpses . If we let trades get ambushed by a bunch of dirty brigands while they’re travelling here, the academy will be less popular than a leper colony.”
It was a strange feeling for Jakub now; the academy had cast him away, but he still cared for it. It was the academy that had saved him from his cannibal family, after all.
Even so, he owed them nothing because they’d expelled him without a fair hearing.
“I’m helping for the loot. I couldn’t care less about their supplies.”
“That kind of mercenary attitude will serve you well in Dispolis,” said Mason.
“Mercenary? Don’t make me laugh,” said Bendie.
Jakub wanted to knock the smug little bastard from his horse, but he kept his cool.
They carried on a further over the shrubbery, going slower this time. Jakub kept a look out for signs of brigands, but he didn’t see any.
Mason stopped ahead of him, five hundred meters from the road where the bushes were so tall that they formed a natural wall, and a hill rose up twenty feet, towering above.
Jakub hurried to catch up with the three warlocks again, wondering if they’d found the remnants of a camp, and if it was abandoned and the brigands had moved on already.
That’d be annoying; he wouldn’t be able to show his skills to stop people like Bendie talking shit about him, and he wouldn’t be able to earn any loot.
As he had the thought, he noticed figures on the ground. He caught up to Mason and the others.
“Here are our bandits,” said Mason, nodding at the corpses on the ground.
There were five of them; three men and two women. They looked like they’d been torn apart.
“What happened?” said Bendie.
“Time for you to shine, necromancer. Find out what these poor bastards saw,” said Mason.
He must have been talking about Last Rites, a spell that would let Jakub see the last few minutes of a person’s life.
“They made me give back my soul necklace,” said Jakub. “I can’t cast anything.”
“Gods, it gets better and better,” said Bendie.
“Lad, if you don’t shut that bumhole on your face, I’ll have a mage seal it shut. Never talk shite about someone; you never know when you’ll need them,” said Mason.
“Do you want to try tracking whatever did this?” said Jakub.
“Better call in the hunters. They’ll-”
Mason didn’t have time to finish the sentence, before the ground began to move around them.
Mud burst up as if something was tearing out of the ground, but rather than something appearing from underneath it, the mud itself churned while it floated, rising up and splattering together mid-air.
Jakub felt tension coil inside him. He had an idea what this was.
Soon, the mud and rocks knitted together and took shape in six monstrous forms, humanoid in figure and gorilla-like in their bulk, except made from rock and dirt.
Each was shaped differently and was a product of the earth it had come from; one had a nest of weeds on its back, while another was slightly reddened, maybe from the clay deposits that groundsman Nipper said were all around here.
None of them looked friendly.
CHAPTER 11
“Mud golems,” said Mason. “That means there’s a golemite summoner nearby. Bendie; summon your familiar. Until we find the bastard, we can kill the golems all we like but the summoner will just pull more out of his arse.”
It was a chance to prove himself. He wished he didn’t feel like he had to, but with Mason here, with Bendie watching, Jakub wanted to leave them with something to talk about, a lasting impression that wasn’t just ‘the guy who got expelled.’
Bendie rolled up his sleeves to show his warlock glyphline tattoos. Before he could say a spellword, his horse reared up and neighed in pain.
The novice warlock clung to the reins, but the horse drew its front legs up so high that he lost his grip and toppled off.
“Woah, woah,” shouted Norris, as his own horse stomped left and right, unsure whether to bolt or cower. While he looked around, gripping the reins of his animal, a bolt tore through his neck.
Bendie shouted. It wasn’t a word, just a noise; the sound of him losing his cool.
Mason leapt off his horse. “We have a sniper watching us too. Arses on the ground, lads.”
“We need cover,” said Jakub.
The ground shook as the golems advanced on them. Jakub heard a thwacking sound as a bolt smashed into the mud by his feet.
They were pinned down by the sniper, and they were outnumbered against the golems. Not only that, but Mason was right; golemite summoners could only conjure a certain number of creatures at once but when one died, they could summon another as long as they had enough mana and material.
It was six against three – eight if you counted the summoner and the sniper – and their enemy could re-generate their creatures at will.
Bendie tugged on Jakub’s sleeve.
“Bring Norris back. Bring him back, you piece of shit.”
Jakub ignored the insult; he knew Bendie wasn’t thinking logically.
“I’m a novice. I’m not strong enough to resurrect a person even if I had essence.”
Bendie pulled his sleeve harder. Jakub shoved him away but then Bendie was on him again. His eyes had a wildness in them, the sign of panic.
“Bring him back!” he said.
A person panicking in a fight was as dangerous as a man drowning in water. If their minds had snapped, they’d push you under the water to save themselves. Right now, Bendie was going to drag him into the flight path of a bolt.
“Novice Bendie, you need to calm yourself right fucking now,” said Mason.
“No! We’re going to die. We should run.”
Mason punched him in the face, and Bendie went limp and hit the ground.
Jakub crossed another item off his bucket list; see an instructor knock a novice out cold. Tick.
“He’s as much use to us like this as he was awake,” said Mason. “Drag him over to the horse. It’s dead already, so a few more bolts won’t hurt it. The shots are coming from the north, so lay him beside the horse and the bolts can’t reach him.”
Jakub was beginning to see why the other instructors resented Mason being employed even as a contractor; the man was wild.
Mason raised his arms in the air. The brooch on his cape glowed green, and Jakub guessed it was something similar to his own soul necklace.
Jade light spread from the brooch and to Mason’s fingers. The warlock cast the light out, then shouted a word Jakub had never heard before.
Spent mana cracked in the air, the sour smell pinching in his nostrils. The boom of the golems’ steps met with the swirling sound of the warlock’s light, and with a whoosh, the airborne haze took two solid forms.
The first form was a seven-foot-tall, pot-bellied demon with horns that flopped like a peacock’s feathers.
The second was a small, squat creature that was less a defined physical form and more like a splattering of flesh; it was misshaped, lob-sided, and had tentacles writhing from it like worms swimming in a puddle. Its lack of a face only added to its disgusting appearance and its three glowing red eyes blinked in odd intervals to complete the hideous picture.
“Meet Krenick and Gary,” said Mason.
These were Mason’s demons. As a warlock, he had demons bound to him in a similar way Jakub did with Ludwig, with two exceptions; Mason’s bound demons were real once he summoned them, and they were from the Blacktyde, rather than the Greylands.
Mason spoke to the larger, chubby-bellied one. “Krenick, see the novice over there by the horse? Protect him. There’s a bastard shooting bolts, so make sure he doesn’t get hit. If he wakes up, you have permission to knock him out. The boy is a liability.”
“Yeeees master. Right away. I am but a slave.”
“Cut the sarcastic shit, I don’t have time for it,” said Mason. Then, he spoke to his weirder, tentacled splodge of flesh. “Gary, I need you to help with our golem friends here.”
Gary? That thing is called Gary? thought Jakub.
Gary blinked his top eye, then his middle, then his bottom, and he slithered toward the golems, who were just ten feet away now. He made a squelching sound as he moved.
Mason drew his sword in such a refined way that it made a satisfying metal shring sound as it left the sheath. He held it aloft, and mana light danced over the metal and made him look every inch the hero.
Jakub drew his weapon in a much-less an impressive way, getting it stuck on his hilt, wrenching it free, then almost dropping it. His blade was black, blunt, and best used for slicing fruit, but it’d have to do until he looted something better.
“Do they teach necromancers how to fight?” said Mason. “I could use help with the golems.”
