by Deck Davis
The Three squabbled between each other now, floating straight at one another and becoming a swirl of gas, in what he supposed was their way of fighting.
This was a problem every necromancer faced; the Three, when they had been alive, had corrupted themselves. They had each died and then been resurrected not once, or even twice, but three times.
Even a master could only bring someone back once, so to do more was an utter corruption, and it upset the balance of death.
Somehow, the Three had avoided the Greylands and even the seven afterlives, and instead lived here, in their hall of necromancy. The only way they could keep their forms was for each of them to persuade a newly-ranked journeyman to choose their shade of necromancy,
When they did, whatever spells the necromancer cast in future would fuel the member of the Three they had aligned with, and would help them exist for longer in the halls.
Some people dithered over their decision. Others made it on the spot. Jakub had thought about his over and over, and he’d been sure of what to choose.
Six hours later into his hike along the halls, he was tired, his calves burned, his stomach knot had tightened more. And he was growing unsure about his choice.
Maybe it was the fatigue talking, maybe it was all the trouble outside, but he didn’t feel as certain. He kept turning everything that had happened in Dispolis over in his head, and he felt something nagging at him.
The end of the hall, with its giant arched windows, was just an hours’ walk away now.
He faced the Three. “I need each of you to state your cases. Tell me why I should choose your shade,” he said.
“Oh, hark at him – we need to state our cases do we?”
“I suppose he has a right to ask…”
“I suppose you should remember who we are, who we were…”
They each started talking at once until Jakub couldn’t hear anything but a rush of noise.
“Let each other talk. I don’t just want to hear what powers you offer me; I want to know about you. Tell me why I should support you. No insults, no lies, no attempts to trick me. Tell me something decent about you.”
Crotalus seethed now, flashes of yellow, snaps of blue all around his black form. “Have you ever heard a novice talk with such insolence?”
“A journeyman, actually,” said Jakub.
“Until you choose your shade, sweet thing,” said Nelania, “You are still a novice. Of course, I can offer not just the spells of my shade, but I can promise swifter advancement after that. You will be master in just-”
“I said no bullshit, remember?” said Jakub.
You can’t trust either of the others¸ said a voice. Only, this was in his mind. It was a male voice, deep and booming.
“Are you kidding me, Mancerno? You’re really going to try and beguile me?” he said.
Mancerno sunk to the ground, his red form hovering an inch above the ceramic floor.
“You wicked, wicked man,” said Nelania.
“You tried to beguile the boy?” said Crotalus.
Jakub was getting sick of their voices. Kortho had prepared him for how they’d act, but it was maddening.
“Enough. I’m trying to treat you with the respect you deserve as masters, but you need to show the same to me. You can hardly expect me to choose a shade through insults, lies, or trickery. I have about an hour to walk before I can choose, and you need to help me by being honest.”
It still felt strange to speak to them like this; they were the creators of necromancy, they were centuries, maybe even millennia, old.
He had to stay firm. Kortho had explained it to them; they had created necromancy through their search for immortality, but the immortality they found wasn’t the one they sought. Time had a way of wearing down the mind like a carpenter sanding a piece of timber.
“Unless you want to spend a month listening to the witter on, be firm with them,” Kortho had said.
So now, Jakub faced the three mists of ancient power and crossed his arms.
“Nelania, you can go first,” he told her.
CHAPTER 44
Nelania changed shape now so that her green mist formed a grin, spreading out and seeming to mock the others.
“The Tapper shade, lovely one, is a kind of necromancy you will be somewhat used to. It is a beautiful shade, I promise; what could be more pleasant than tapping the energies of death and pain, and converting them to ones that can heal? You want to do good; I can see it in you. This is your shade, lovely one.”
Crotalus gave a rumbling sound, almost like a growl. “And when the lad is attacked? What, he should heal his enemies to death?”
“If the Tapper chooses the right pain, the right death, he can inscribe its effects on his weapons, too.”
“Like artificery?” asked Jakub.
“In a manner.”
Jakub liked the Tapper shade; from what he’d read, it offered a range of offensive and healing spells, but with the balance heavily on the healing.
“Crotalus? Your shade is the Death Draw, right?”
“Indeed. All well and good drawing from pain and death to heal cuts,” said Crotalus. “If you want to be a nursemaid, then that’s the shade for you. But surely a necromancer, such a powerful form of mage, should aim higher? Why not use the power of death to make your enemies cower?”
“Death Draw lets me drain from death and pain like Tapper, but I can use it in aggressive spells, right?” said Jakub. “I can cause necrosis, rot, turn organs black, that kind of thing?”
Mancerno, who had settled in a red mist near the floor, spoke up. “Not to mention that drawing on death to use it offensively makes you ill. I’m no fan of Nelania, but I’ll give her this; at least using death for the good doesn’t make you sick. Go down Crotalus’ path, and you’ll feel every death you drain from. Imagine what kind of pain and sickness you’ll be putting yourself through?”
It was a good point; Jakub had read about some of the famous Death Draw necromancers, and how they experienced the pain of each death they drew from. It gave them destructive power, but over the years it wreaked havoc on their minds and bodies.
Most of those who chose the Death Draw shade looked like they were a hundred years old by the time they were in their fifties.
Jakub planned to settle down someday, maybe even get married, so he wasn’t ready to give up his somewhat middling looks.
“What about yours, Mancerno?” he said.
“Mine is simple,” said the red fog. “It is real necromancy.”
“Pah,” said Crotalus.
“I listened patiently to your speeches, let me have mine,” said Mancerno.
“Not if you’re disparaging ours,” answered Nelania.
The Three broke into their quarrels again, and Jakub waited for it to end. When it didn’t, he lost his patience.
“Enough! Mancerno, tell me about your shade.”
“Tappers and Death Drawers might use death, like a writer might use ink. But the Raiser walks alongside death as all true necromancers should.”
“Your shade is all about raising things from the dead, right? It’s centered around the resurrection glyphline.”
“The glyphline I created, yes. Nelania created Soul Harvest, and Crotalus created the Death Draw shade, and you can see how it has affected his mind. I believe your academy no longer teaches it, do they? Instead, they use another of my creations; Summon Bound.”
“A travesty,” said Crotalus.
“So Raiser will help me raise the dead better.”
“It means you will not be limited to raising things in their resurrection window; you can draw on the long-deceased souls.”
“Yes,” said Nelania, “But since they have already gone to the afterlives, they will be utterly mindless. What use are a bunch of moronic skeletons pulled from the earth?”
Jakub sensed another descent into fighting and name-calling, so he turned away from them and started to walk down the halls again, toward the end where the alta
r waited, and he’d be able to choose his shade.
“Leave me now,” he said. “I need to think about it alone, and I’ll make my decision.”
CHAPTER 45 – Lloyd Blackrum
Lloyd Blackrum had been captain of the Dispolis guardship for fifteen years. He’d spent his first years weeding the corruption from it; getting rid of the guards who took illicit coin from nobles, criminals, and smugglers. Gutting the guardship of its low-life guards who accepted gold to give insider information or turn a blind eye to crime.
After that he put his own men in place; ones with loyalty only to him, ones who’d walk through the Blacktyde for him if he asked them to.
“Welcome to the guardship,” he’d tell each recruit. “The Queen pays your wages, and she pays well. If I ever see coins passing your palm, you’re out.”
He’d studied the latest research in detection, in the psychology of the criminal, and in the alchemical sciences too; the sciences that hypothesized that with every crime, a criminal would leave something of himself behind such as hair, blood, spit, and some of the more debase fluids in the human body.
Under his captaincy the resolution rate for murders in Dispolis went from 10 percent to 70; a remarkable feat.
Did they give him credit for it? Did they hell.
He knew what people said; ‘It’s the necros and the Black Cleric; they use their magic to do it. Captain Blackrum doesn’t lift a finger.’
Doesn’t lift a finger? If only they knew. If only they could see his house. Where once it had been a family home, now it was almost a tomb. In the bedroom where his son had once slept, the walls were covered in witness statements, wanted posters, clues, ideas.
Now, when he went home, he didn’t snuggle in front of a roaring hearth with his wife; he read about the latest grisly murder, and he tried to get inside the mind of the man who had done it.
Part of him loved the Black Cleric, and part of him hated the man. He was the source of Lloyd’s success, and he was a corruption, at the same time.
Lloyd had wanted to dispense with his services for so long, but he couldn’t.
“You can’t stop using him,” Sergeant Kelp, one of his most trusted men, had said.
“He’s a drunk and he’s dangerous. That’s enough of a justification.”
“There’s a problem, Lloyd. Your reputations are intertwined. Stop using him all of a sudden, and people will wonder why. If you can’t give them a reason, they’ll assume the worst.”
“And what’s the worst?”
“For a man like you? It’s assuming that you’ve started taking open-palm handouts. That you’re letting murders go unsolved by giving the cleric the shove,” said Kelp.
“And then all this would be for nothing. My career, everything.”
He needed something cast iron; evidence he could use to dispense with the cleric without tarnishing his own name and losing everything he had accomplished.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in.”
A guard entered. He was seventeen years old, a boy who had been dismissed from the Queen’s army because of his poor eyesight. Lloyd had given him a job straight away; you could never underestimate the loyalty you got from a man you gave a chance to.
Besides; he quite liked the boy. He reminded him of himself at his age – young, eager to serve, desperate to prove himself.
“Captain,” said Heath, and then gave a salute.
“How many times, Heath? Saluting is for the Queen’s grunts, not the guardship.”
“Sir.”
“What is it? News from the cleric? Has he taken one look at the pickpocket – both halves of him – and uttered a sacred spellword and solved our case in one swoop?”
“Well no…but it is about the cleric, sir. We had a visitor. A man who used to work for the inquisitors.”
Lloyd sat up rigid. “The Queen sent one of her rats?”
“No, he used to work for the inquisitors. He came in and gave a statement about the pickpocket; he says he saw something.”
Lloyd couldn’t get the word inquisitor out of his mind. As part of his endless research, he’d managed to get permission to spend a week with an inquisitor to witness their interrogation techniques.
He’d never forget it. Even the flicker of the memory made his stomach churn.
“What was his name?”
“Studs…erm…”
“Attention to detail, lad. What have I drummed into your skull again and again? I want you to do well in the guardship, Heath, but you’ve got to work.”
Heath chewed his lip and a pained expression crossed his face, as though the mere act of thinking hurt his brain. “Godwin! Studs Godwin was his name.”
It didn’t take Lloyd long to pluck the name from his own memory. “Studs Godwin. We tried to recruit him when he left the inquisitors, didn’t we?”
“Before my time, sir.”
“What did he have to say?”
Heath looked tense now, as though he were bursting to let his excitement out.
“Spit it out, Heath. And relax a little; this isn’t a barracks.”
Heath approach the desk and leaned on it. “He says he saw the pickpocket and the Black Cleric walking together last night. The boy looked scared. He saw them walk down Old Rope street.”
“Old Rope? That leads toward the railway.”
“Yes, sir.”
Was this it? Lloyd could hardly believe it, but was this what he needed to not only stop using the cleric’s services without harming his own reputation, but to put the man in a cell of his own?
Then again, it would hardly look great for people to know that Lloyd had used a potential murderer to solve murders. And that he used this killer to solve one of his own crimes…
Then the idea hit him.
A bargain. If the Cleric wanted to avoid time in Old Spinners, the worst prison in the Dispolis jurisdiction, then maybe a deal could be made. One that involved the cleric admitting publicly that his own involvement in the homicide detection success rate was minute, and that the glory belong to Captain Lloyd Blackrum.
“What do you want us to do?” asked Heath.
“Bring the Cleric in. Do we know where he is?”
Heath smiled with pride. “I already asked your boys, sir. They saw him and another fella using one of the Rats’ Palace manholes.”
Your boys. The nickname made Lloyd want to laugh every time he heard it. Early on in his captaincy, he’d started paying the network of urchins and pickpockets in Dispolis to be his informants. He’d give them a list of people he was interested in, and they’d tell him what they knew.
It was funny the things that urchins could see; people hardly ever noticed they were there. They were so low on the ladder of society that people pretended not to notice them, or thought them so devoid of interest that they didn’t need to pay attention to them.
The dead pickpocket, though, was the only one who’d refused Lloyd’s offer. He told Lloyd that it was against his principles; society wouldn’t help him by giving him a job, but the same society slapped his hand when he stole to feed himself. So, he wouldn’t become an informant on principle.
As much as it annoyed Lloyd, he respected it.
He stood up. “I want ten guards to go into the Rats’ Palace. Tell them to use whichever entry point the cleric went down. Bring him in. Use force - use a lot of force - but for god’s sake, no accidents. I don’t want him dead.”
“Sir, most of the guards are on the streets for the parade the Queen’s uncle organized. If we take guards away and something happens…”
“Then he’ll shit a dozen bricks, and he’ll tell his niece to cut our funding. Still, the cleric is a dangerous man, and the streets will be safer without him.”
“Dangerous? He’s always helped us, sir. Is this about him, or is it about…”
“Heath, what did we discuss about loyalty?”
“The most important thing about loyalty is a closed mouth.”
“So c
lose yours, and only open it when you find ten guards and pull them off the streets. I’ll give you an order with my seal on it, in case they start giving you any shit.”
When Heath left the room, Lloyd got up and put on his coat. It was thick, and it had the emblem of the queen on his right breast, and his Queen’s pin on the other; this was a decoration she’d given him to commemorate solving his fiftieth murder case.
While Heath rounded up guards and sent them into the Rat’s Palace, Lloyd would go and see Dellis Logworth, the chief crime correspondent for the Dispolis Tribune.
It seemed like a good idea to him that when they arrested the Cleric and dragged him out of the sewer, one of the most connected reporters in Dispolis was there to see it.
CHAPTER 46
Jakub reached the end of the hall, where the altar waited. White light seeped through the giant arched windows were behind it, almost blinding, but when Jakub looked at them and realized he couldn’t see anything outside.
It made sense; the hall didn’t exist physically; it was a spiritual home for the Three, for the mages who had birthed necromancy so many centuries ago.
He sensed them waiting behind him now, eager for him to make his decision. They depended on novices choosing to adopt their shades; they existed on the essence they drew each time a necromancer of their shade used their spells.
Having finally met them, Jakub didn’t really want to ally with any, but there was no choice. This was it; he was a journeyman, about to take a leap in power.
“The question is, which to choose?” he said.
“Might I say…” said Crotalus.
“No, you may not. Leave me to think.”
This was the biggest decision a necromancer could make. He thought he’d made his mind up years ago, but all his recent troubles and his expulsion from the academy, had changed it.
“The Tapper is the most honorable shade a necromancer can choose.”
That was what Kortho would say, because it was the one he’d chosen. The Tapper could use death as a force for good; he could use it to heal wounds. In that way it was linked to his existing Health Harvest spell, except being a Tapper made spells like that so much more powerful.
