by Deck Davis
As soon as this was over, when he was sure that the curse was truly gone and he didn’t need anything from him anymore, Hackett was going to die.
CHAPTER 27
“Don’t worry about the sludge; that’s just the spill-over of two streets’ worth of human shit,” said Witas.
With access to the Rats’ Palace only available to people with permits, Jakub and Witas had ignored the two gated entrances to the Dispolis underworld and instead had found a way in that Witas assured him was secret.
The only problem was, there was an actual working sewer under Dispolis, and the Rats’ Palace intersected it. The only way to sneak in was to climb through a crap-crusted manhole.
Witas took the ladder first, descending into the darkness until he called out to Jakub and his voice sounded miles away. “Come on; it’s lovely down here.”
Jakub joined him until he was standing below the streets of Dispolis. Even though he knew he’d just descended into a sewer, he couldn’t believe what he saw.
“Rats’ Palace? Sewers? Are those names ironic, or something?”
“Dispolis wasn’t chosen as the capital city because it happened to be close to the Queen’s castle, no matter what the books say. This isn’t a chicken and egg scenario; do any real research, and you’ll see that Dispolis was here first, and they chose to build the castle near it.”
It was less a sewer and more a forgotten city, one buried under the capital city itself. The lack of daylight gave it the feeling of a mausoleum, but there were stone walls and stone buildings down there, each carved with care and attention. There were archways, rock statues, vaulted ceilings.
“They say there’s a tunnel that leads to Queen Patience’s castle. Four in fact, all of them secret. Venture too far into the Rats’ Palace and it becomes a labyrinth. There’s only one map, and it’s in the castle. Even with a map, though, take one or two turns without checking your place, and you’d be lost down here.”
“I bet. The question I have is, who the hell would want to come down here if they didn’t have reason to?”
“Curiosity, stupidity, drunkenness. They say a little girl found an unsealed entry way, and being a scamp, she climbed in. Guess her bones will be around here somewhere.”
“Right…good thing we’ve just come down an unofficial entryway without a map,” said Jakub.
“Good thing we aren’t all complete fucking idiots who have to rely on scraps of paper made by other people who, by the way, could easily lie and make a false map. They say there was a guy who used to do that; sell his own unofficial maps which got people lost. Then he’d follow them down and murder them here. They called him Big Hands.”
“Because he used to strangle them?”
“Actually, he used a knife. His hands were really, really, tiny, like a doll’s. The name was a joke.”
“Let’s get to the damn artifice gum makers, find out if they know anything, then get out of here.”
“The good thing about business like that,” said Witas, “Is that they have two fronts. One is up above us on the Royal Mile, where they sell artificed gum to anyone. Then, you have their business down here, where they make the stuff. The thing about the gum is, you use it to seal stuff so secret that you don’t trust the regular post. And if you’re someone who lives out of sight of the eye of the law, you don’t wanna be seen buying vats of gum intended to seal suspicious mail.”
“So, outlaws come down here?”
“Not just them; a lot of noblemen send their servants down here to buy gum so their wives don’t know that they’re sending love letters to their mistresses, or conspiring against Lord Bastard-Face or Baron Pale-Arse.”
“You’re telling me there’s a system to find our way through?”
“Just follow the red dragon.”
CHAPTER 28 – Studs Godwin
Studs Godwin and Ella-Faye Harlahan were half a mile deep into the Rats’ Palace. Studs back was wet from where ceiling dew had dripped down on him, hitting him on the back on the neck and snaking under his boiled leathers, rolling down his spine.
When drips hit Ella, they bounced away, repelled by the magic of her necro robes.
“It stinks down here,” he said. “I don’t know how you put up with the smell of the bodies.”
“You get used to it. I’m sure you must smell worse things than rot; I’ve seen what people do when you torture them.”
“I rub a salve on my nose. Mint scented. Makes my eyes water, but keeps the aromas away.”
Ella was painting a little shape of a red dragon on the wall. Studs watched her work, staring at the way she bit her lip as she concentrated, and how her tongue poked out a little.
He gazed at her hair, at the way it trailed down past her chin, her neck, over her breasts.
I was an inquisitor in the queen’s army, and I’m scared to say anything to her, he thought.
She was just such an angel; sure, her hair might have been pond-water brown, but he loved it. She might have had a dent in her jaw, but he loved that dent. Truth was, he didn’t know what the hell a necro like her was doing with him and Hackett.
Well, he did, but he still didn’t quite believe it.
Hackett had a point to prove about the academy and the way the system treated magic users, while Studs needed gold, and what better a reason could a man have? He was a trained torturer, so there was no sense letting his skills go to shit.
But Ella? If she was to be believed, her reasons were something else, something worse. Ella had a disease of the mind, something in her skull that made her enjoy this.
That was what Hackett believed, anyway. Studs didn’t know, and every time he tried to speak to Ella about anything other than their work, she brushed him off.
“Finished,” said Ella.
“That the last one?”
“There’s going to be chaos down here, Studs my sweet torturer. When are the novice and his cleric friend coming?”
“Archie said they were going to see a corpse in the guardship, then they’d come down here to see Teller and Turlock.”
“The gum makers? What are they up to?” said harper.
“It has something to do with the letter, that’s all I know. I’ll get more out of them when they follow our new dragon trail and find out it isn’t going where they expected. You sure you can handle them?”
“They’ll be surprised and alone, so I wouldn’t worry. Besides, Hackett said he needed you; Henwright sent a new one.”
“Stay safe, girl,”
Ella punched him playfully on the shoulder. “I’m more worried about you, you lug. Come find me if you don’t wring enough magic from the new one Henwright sent before he snuffs it; I’ll come and resurrect him.”
“It’s a miracle!” said Studs, raising his hands up in a mock-preacher way. “Praise the Gods!”
Ella laughed, and it was a beautiful sound. “Idiot,” she said.
Studs left her and walked toward the laddered exit with a smile on his face. Sure, he had an afternoon of torture waiting for him, of flaying and cutting until all the magic was teased out of the new boy, but Ella was worried about him.
That was what she’d said; I’m more worried about you, you lug.
Studs felt so light he could almost float out of the sewer.
CHAPTER 29
“I thought you said it’d be a quarter of a mile? It feels like we’ve been walking for hours,” said Jakub.
Witas pointed at the red dragon painted on the wall. “I’ve followed the signs; you can see them as much as I can.”
“I know. Just, this place is a little dark. A little cramped.”
“A necromancer who doesn’t like the dark? I thought your kind spent their days in crypts?”
“You’d be surprised; you should see what your brother has done with the necromancy wing. It’s the brightest place in the academy.”
“Yeah, Ian always hated it when people called him gloomy. Come on, we’re nearly there. I can feel it.”
“W
hat’s with the dragons, anyway?”
“I told you; people conduct some shady shit down here, and shady though they may be, they still need customers. What good is a business if a customer gets lost and dies before they can even visit? Here’s a tip; if you see anyone up top with red paint on them, they’ve probably been drawing dragon markers. They show the way.”
Witas led him through the sewer, and Jakub couldn’t believe that this underground city had been forgotten. So much attention had gone into constructing the stone buildings, into carving the statues and the archways, that it seemed a crime to waste it.
Then, there was no light, it smelled like a dying rat, and every foot deeper they went into it made despair grow in him.
Maybe that, coupled with the fact people started using it to tunnel under business and noblemen’s houses and rob them, meant closing it off was a good decision.
Witas turned a corner. “Holy hells,” he said.
When Jakub rounded the corner too, the sentiment echoed in his head.
It was a dead end. A wide-open dead end, almost a cavern with a vaulted roof, but they were closed in.
In the centre was a wide pool of fetid green water, which flowed deeper into the sewers through a narrow tunnel that too small for a person to climb through.
Floating on top of the water were rat corpses. Not just ordinary rats; these were as big as dogs. They were freshly killed judging by their fur which, although sopping wet, hadn’t rotted.
“The water is full of blight,” said Witas. “So diseased even the rats can’t take it sometimes. Don’t go getting thirsty.”
Jakub grimaced at the idea of drinking from the water. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
They heard someone singing. It was a high voice singing a song in a language that Jakub had never heard.
A figure stepped out of the shadows in the north east corner. A woman wearing a robe, with long, dirty brown hair.
“Ressurano,” she said.
Witas stopped. “What?”
Jakub went rigid. “It’s a spellword. A resurrection glyphline. She’s a necromancer.”
“Well spotted, novice,” said the woman.
The rat corpses began to stir in the water. One rolled over, while another stretched its paws, cutting through the water with its claws. Soon the mass of them writhed in the pool, paddling toward the sides.
There must have been a dozen. As much as it sparked a glimmer of fear in Jakub, he was in awe of the spell. He could resurrect minor beasts too, but he was such a low-level on the necromancy ladder that bringing back a few rats would have depleted most of his essence.
This woman, to bring back so many so quickly…she must have been a master.
And he doubted the rats were a welcoming party for him and Witas.
CHAPTER 30
Witas opened his coat and reached inside but instead of drawing a weapon, he pulled a black book from his pocket. It was tattered, old, with the print of an upside-down triangle printed on it.
The upside-down triangle was a symbol of the Blacktyde; the book must have been black clericism.
The rats swarmed now, six rounding one edge of the pool, six on the other, scurrying to fence him and Witas in.
Even with her newly-resurrected army, the woman wasn’t done; the pool water stirred, and Jakub sensed more rats were coming.
“We need to go,” he said.
“We missed that chance,” said Witas.
The tunnelway behind them was blocked by four of the rats now.
He had to even it out. With no time to check how much essence he had, he focused on the pool of water and imagined the dead creatures in his depths.
He spoke the spellword of his resurrection glyphline and cast it at the pool.
His essence left him, and the water bubbled.
*Necromancy EXP Gained!*
[IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ]
Instead of another rat swimming to the top, Jakub saw the ridged snout of a gator; six feet long, scaled, its yellow teeth poking out from its mouth. It reminded him of the gators at the academy, but this was a sewer gator, one that lived in the depths of this stinking hell.
“Shit, it gets worse,” said Witas.
“Nope - that one’s mine,” said Jakub.
“You summoned that thing?”
“I resurrected it, not summoned. It was dead.”
“Way to go, necro. Now swing that damn sword at anything that moves.”
“It’s useless to fight, boys,” said the woman. “Can’t you count?”
Jakub didn’t need an academy education to know one woman and a dozen dog-sized rats outnumbered him, Witas, and his new gator. He just had to hope they could fight their way out.
CHAPTER 31
They were going to need every advantage they could get, and he didn’t have a lot of time to weigh things up.
First, he took his Dragon Ring from his inventory and put it on his left ring finger. There was a snap of mana, and he felt a ridge of hard scales grow over his skin, spreading over his arms, his chest, and his legs, but leaving his face untouched.
“You could have told me you had that,” said Witas.
“It only lasts a few minutes at a time, then it’ll take days to recharge.”
“That’s enough time. Stand in front of me and be my human shield. Keep the rats away for a minute.”
Across from them, the necromancer stood at the edge of the pool of water. She pointed at Witas.
“Kill the cleric,” she told her rats. “Let the boy live. I need him hurt, but alive.”
She’s saying that for effect, Jakub thought. Just because a person resurrected the rat, it didn’t give the rat the ability to understand speech. What resurrection did do was to establish a link between the necromancer and the thing they resurrected.
You didn’t need to tell your resurrected creature to do something; you just thought it.
Well, if she was going for dramatic effect, then he would too. Jakub spoke to his newly-resurrected gator. “Kill the necromancer,” he said. “I need her hurt, and dead.”
Witas flipped open his black cleric tome and thumbed through the pages, stopping at one.
Jakub didn’t have time to see what was on it, because the rats prowled forward now, their tails swishing, claws clattering on the stone.
One leapt at him. Jakub swung his sword and caught its underbelly, spreading a cut through its fur.
The rat cried out, and its brethren answered with squeals. This sparked urgency in them, and they darted forward.
Witas began to chant. “From darkness I call, a black barbed thrall…”
A rat leapt at Jakub. He had barely time to lift his sword, and he only stuck it with the hilt.
Another jumped at him, this one from his left. He raised his arm and felt its jaws clamp on his arm, closing on his scale armor. There was no pain, just pressure, but another rat ran at his feet and chomped on his left leg.
It knocked him off balance, and he hit the ground with a thud and felt air leave his lungs.
Damn, those things are big.
Two of the vermin climbed on him, scurrying to his face where the scales didn’t reach.
He punched one, but no sooner had he swept it off him than another crawled over him.
Before the rats could hurt him, a weighty tail swished out, and his gator tossed two rats off him and into the waters. Water splashed up and pattered onto his dragon scales.
“From the Blacktydes it comes, a wind of black light…” chanted Witas.
Jakub pushed himself to his feet. Across from him, the woman spoke the spellword of her resurrection glyphline, and the waters began to stir again.
How much essence does she have?
“Get her,” he thought, staring at his gator.
Witas slammed his book shut, and a gush of black mist flew from it, seeping out into the sewer. It looked like a coil of rope except made from light, and Jakub saw barbs wrapped in it.
The light spread left and right, teari
ng at the rats. When it hit them, its barbs eviscerated them, cutting through fur, splattering their blood.
Squeals of pain echoed, so high and so many that the sound sent a shudder through him.
Whatever Witas had conjured with his black clericism, it was keeping the rats busy. Now, he just needed to get to her; to stop the necromancer summoning more. Gods knew how many vermin in the waters.
Jakub ran around the side of the pool and toward the woman. His foot skidded over fresh rat blood, and the fall spread his legs apart. He fought to stay balanced but he’d been running too fast, and he lost himself.
He felt himself fall to his left, toward the waters, and he grasped out for something to hold onto, for anything, but there was nothing.
He landed in the pool with a splash, and then he sunk into it.
The cold water spread over his face. It gushed into his nose and mouth before he could hold his breath.
The taste sent nausea tremoring through him, the smell overpowered his senses.
He tried to swim up, but the dragon scale armor made him too heavy. His arms were sluggish, his legs like lead. Panic rose in him too strong and quick for him to fight it.
Need to surface…
The fetid water wound into his lungs, made him cough, and that made him swallow more, and he desperately waved his arms to try and swim. The threat of death sparked new strength in him, and he felt himself move up, up, almost reaching the surface.
And then something wrapped around his leg. Something coiled his ankle and held him back, dragged him down.
It was a rat tail, one of her newly summoned creatures. With every flap of his arms, it seemed another rat tail wrapped around him.
His lungs ached, the water burned his nostrils, the smell spread haze through his brain.
I’m going to die.
With his last blink of consciousness, he removed the ring, pulling it so forcefully that it fell to the bottom of the pool.
He reached for his sheath and drew his dagger, and he stabbed at where he thought the tails were.
