The Royal Sorceress

by Christopher Nuttall

  He hesitated. “And remember to warn them to do the same to anyone who has been bitten,” he added. “There’s no cure for the necromantic plague.”

  “You’re taking a hell of a chance,” Davy observed, finally. “What if she’s lying and she just wants us to look in the wrong direction?”

  “Then the men on the barricades hold the Duke of India long enough for us to get reserves up to push him back.” Jack said, tightly. The rebellion had around forty thousand men now, mainly new recruits. It sounded like a large number, larger than the armies that had conquered India for the British Empire, but it was tiny compared to the scale of the problem. London was a vast city and holding a set of barricades around the entire edge of the metropolis would spread his men thin. “I don’t think we can afford to assume that she’s lying.”

  Lucy made a face, but said nothing. Jack didn’t know why she was acting oddly; she’d healed Lady Gwen, back when Jack had first tried to convince her that he was doing the right thing. The world had turned upside down since then – they’d won a city, but now they were on the verge of defeat. Jack rubbed the side of his head, cursing his tiredness. He needed rest, yet he had to go out with his men. They would need a magician or two to cover them if they did run into the undead...

  He strode back into the antechamber and found Gwen waiting for him. She looked tired, almost vulnerable, yet there was a determination in her eye that rivalled that of many an older and wiser man. Gwen wouldn’t give up, Jack realised; she would be true to herself even if the man she’d trusted as a tutor had betrayed his own ideals.

  “We’re going down to Soho,” he said. He held out a hand; Gwen, after a moment’s hesitation, took it. “If you’re right about what our old tutor is doing, we’ll meet him there.”

  Gwen looked...nervous. “He’s crafty,” she warned. “He knows more about our powers than we do.”

  “That’s fine,” Jack assured her, affecting a confidence he didn’t feel. Master Thomas was a formidable foe – and he had an entire army of the undead to support him. If nothing else, perhaps they could delay him long enough to evacuate the area. “I know a few tricks myself. Some of them will be new to our old friend.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  There was something in the air.

  Gwen could feel it, right on the edge of her awareness. Ahead of her, dawn was slowly glimmering into existence, casting an eerie light over London. Few would see London from a hundred yards in the air, even from an airship. A handful of smoke plumes rose into the sky, but London seemed almost to be dead. It wasn’t a thought that brought her much cheer.

  She turned her head and saw Jack looking at her. He looked just as concerned as her, yet…there was something else there. A hint of respect, even admiration, coming from a man who had turned the world upside down. Gwen had never been admired for herself before; she’d been admired for her beauty and for her family linage, but no one had ever admired Gwen for herself. She blushed, despite herself, feeling emotions she’d thought that she would never feel. Girls whispered about love when their parents weren’t listening, talking about feelings they had for men – men whom they would never be allowed to marry. Even Gwen had heard such talk among the maids…but she’d never thought that it would happen to her.

  Jack winked at her…and dipped suddenly, flying down between the buildings. Gwen followed him instinctively, realising that he was daring her to catch him. His prowess was remarkable, almost as if he had spent years flying under his own power, forcing Gwen to learn quickly to keep up with him. He had planned to speak to her alone, the last time she’d chased him; he could have outrun her with ease. The thought was not a pleasant one, but she told herself that she should be grateful. How would she have known who to contact when Master Thomas unleashed his secret weapon without that earlier meeting?

  The buildings spun past her with terrifying speed. Down below, men, women and children stared up at the two magicians, even as they scrambled to put some distance between themselves and the oncoming revenants. Gwen could sense them almost as soon as she remembered their existence, a lurking presence ahead of them, polluting the aether with their vile stench. Her head swam and she nearly dived into the street, before catching herself. It took all of her discipline to keep their whispers out of her mind.

  Jack landed on a rooftop and peered towards Soho, his face grim and bitter. He could sense them too, Gwen realised; if he’d doubted her, he no longer believed – or hoped – that she had been lying. She landed next to him and caught her breath. Flying was truly the greatest of all the talents – and Jack had pushed her into developing it far further than she had believed possible. She was suddenly very aware of his presence as he caught her arm and pulled her back from the rooftop edge. His touch felt wonderful against her skin and she blushed, again. There was no time to explore her new feelings, or worry about introducing him to Lady Mary…

  She laughed, despite herself. The odds of surviving the dawn – let alone the rest of the day – were not high. And she was worrying about introducing Jack to her mother? He might not share her feelings, or he might not want to spend time with her afterwards, or…there were too many possibilities. She tried to lock her feelings away inside her mind and concentrate on the growing presence. They weren’t far from the growing horde.

  “I can feel them,” Jack said. His face was twisted in disgust. “I never…I have never sensed anything like them before, not ever.”

  “I know,” Gwen said. There was nothing else to say. She would have given anything to have been wrong, even though Jack and Lucy and the rest of his band would have denounced her as a lying aristocrat. There were shouts and screams in the distance, growing louder. Soho might be largely isolated from the rest of London and left to rot, but there were hundreds of ramshackle buildings surrounding the area. The revenants would make quick work of the sleepers before they awoke, she suspected. Even if the alarm was raised, few would know how to fight the undead. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too,” Jack admitted. He reached out for her and pulled her into an embrace. Somehow – and Gwen was never sure how – their lips met. The kiss seemed to last for hours. “I wish…”

  Jack let go of her and stepped back towards the edge. “Come with me or stay here,” he said, slowly. “I have to speak to my men.”

  He jumped into the air and lowered himself towards the ground. A barricade was being built at the end of the street, composed of wooden furniture, blocks of stone and everything else that could be rounded up on short notice. The rebels looked disorganised, but their commanders seemed to know what they were doing and there was no disagreement. They could all smell the growing stench from Soho. It was utterly wrong, the stench of the grave yet animated by a hideous power. The law was right, Gwen decided; necromancy was utterly beyond redemption.

  Jack turned to her as the rebels picked up their weapons and prepared for their stand. “I’m going to start burning them as soon as they come into view,” he said. “I suggest you do the same. That should force Master Thomas to show himself – or let us burn his army to ashes before they can grow out of control.”

  Gwen nodded, tightly. The last time she had faced Master Thomas, she had barely escaped with her life – and she suspected that she’d been allowed to escape. Master Thomas had had plans for his successor, plans that required her to be alive. But this time…whatever else happened, the government would want no witnesses alive who could swear to the origin of the necromantic plague.

  The breeze shifted and the stench grew stronger. A moment later, the first of the revenants stumbled into view. It had been a child before it had been bitten and forced to rise from the dead, still wearing the rags of a street urchin. Gwen, who had discovered that most street urchins were lucky to have any kind of roof over their heads, wasn’t too surprised. They’d probably colonised the outer edges of Soho and become the first victims when the revenants started their shambling expansion. She drew in a breath as the second revenant appeared, followed rapidly by
dozens more. Eerie inhuman eyes – some dangling from eyestalks – fixed on the barricades. No, she realised, it was an illusion. The revenants didn’t seem to be looking at the living defenders, but they could still sense them. It was indisputable that they had some way of navigating the living world. Maybe they could smell the living. Gwen was uneasily aware that she hadn’t had a bath for nearly two full days.

  She jumped as the dogs started to bark, the sound blurring together into a single deafening howl of grief. Some of them struggled to pull free of their handlers, trying to flee the undead horde advancing towards them. Others whined and tried to burrow into the mass of humans, seeking safety among their masters. Their growing panic was contagious; Jack barked orders, moving from place to place to reassure his followers. Gwen was mildly impressed, even though she didn’t blame the rebels for being on the verge of panic. Revenants didn’t just kill their victims; they brought a fate worse than death. There were churchmen who claimed that to be bitten by a revenant was to lose one’s soul.

  Jack lifted one hand, almost casually, and a burst of flame flared into life. It roared out towards the advancing horde, which marched right into the fire without hesitating. Their undead skin blackened and then caught alight, sending the lead revenants to the knees as their legs collapsed. They kept trying to crawl forward until the fire destroyed their ability to move at all. Gwen pinched her nose – the stench was growing worse by the second – and created her own wall of flames. The revenants simply kept coming, even as they burned to ashes. She allowed herself a moment to believe that they could stop the horde, but it was self-delusion. The shambling creatures kept pushing forwards, the lead ones shielding their followers from the worst of the fire. They’d made a terrible mistake, she realised suddenly; the burning creatures would spread the fire to the barricade. The fire would rapidly spread out of control.

  “Tricky,” Jack agreed. He narrowed his eyes and concentrated. A wave of magic scythed forward, pushing the revenants back as if they were caught up in a gust of wind. The flames raged onwards, destroying hundreds of undead bodies, but there were always more behind the burning corpses. Gwen added her magic to Jack’s, yet it wasn’t enough to hold them back forever. And some of the burning undead – having been thrown against the buildings – had set fire to the surrounding street. The barricade might become useless even before the revenants reached their prey.

  Gwen scowled and picked up a small cobblestone. Infusing it with magic, she hurled it into the mass of revenants. It exploded, blowing dozens of them into dead shreds of flesh. Jack laughed and copied her tactic, hurling dozens of stones of his own with terrific force. Not all of them had been infused with unstable magic, but it hardly mattered. Breaking the bones of revenants would make it much harder for them to shamble forward – and yet still they kept coming. A flaming monster crashed against the barricade and clutched onto the wooden structure with an inhumanly strong grip. It was rapidly dispatched by one of Jack’s men, but the damage had already been done. The flames that had been consuming the revenant had spread to the barricade. It was coming apart right in front of the defenders.

  “Fall back,” Jack ordered. Gwen hadn’t heard the instructions he’d given to his subordinates, but it was clear that he’d expected to lose the barricade. “Swordsmen forward; cripple the bastards. Everyone else to the next barricade!”

  The swordsmen moved forward, carrying swords that would have been the envy of a Roman legion – and completely outmatched against a modern army with rifles and cannon. They were hellishly brave, Gwen realised, as they started to slash out at the oncoming revenants, cutting off their heads and arms in smooth motions. Physical wounds didn’t bother the undead – if they felt pain, no one had ever proved it – but they could be crippled, forced to slow down or even stop. The swordsmen were quicker than their foes; they leapt in, slashed out and then leapt back before the moaning creatures could grab them with their rotting hands. Some of the swordsmen weren’t quick enough; Gwen saw a man caught by one of the revenants, his throat bitten by the monster and his living blood spilling over the cobblestones. He fell, his wound already taking on the chilling dead greyness of the undead. Gwen summoned her power and incinerated his body. There was nothing else she could do for him.

  Another swordsmen fell to the ground, where he was swarmed by three revenants. He’d concentrated on dealing with those facing him and ignored the one crawling forward towards him, using its hands to pull itself across the cobblestones. It had been so badly wounded that, as a man, he would have had no hope of survival, but the dark power animating its rotting flesh hadn’t cared, as long as there was a chance of biting into human flesh. Jack yanked the swordsman out with his magic, but it was already too late. The revenants had killed him – and damaged his body so badly that there was a good chance he wouldn’t reanimate as one of the revenants. Jack incinerated him anyway, just to be sure.

  The heat from the fires was growing stronger. Gwen watched as slums burst into flames, fires that posed a danger to the living and undead alike. They’d been emptied long ago, she told herself, and hoped that she was right. Anyone trapped inside would burn to death a long time before they could be rescued. The fires might well start destroying the barricades, unless it could be brought under control. But instead, Jack seemed to be using his powers to pick up blazing pieces of wood and throwing them into Soho. Gwen was puzzled at first, and then she realised that Jack intended to incinerate the entire district. If there were other revenants hidden within the abandoned buildings, they’d be destroyed before Master Thomas or a necromancer could reanimate them.

  “We’re going to have to fall back,” Jack said, catching her arm. “We can’t stand here.”

  Gwen looked around, puzzled – and then horrified. Most of the swordsmen had fallen or were in retreat, leaving the advancing waves of revenants unimpeded. Jack summoned fire again and blazed it across their legs, sending many of them tumbling down into the ashes, but there seemed to be no limit to their numbers. Gwen wondered if Master Thomas had visited a graveyard and reanimated every rotting corpse in their coffins. It sounded absurd, yet…she had no idea if it was even possible. The books she’d read had been long on warnings about the evils and dangers of necromancy, but there had been very little hard information. There was a slight shortage of necromancers willing to share their illicit knowledge with the Royal College, knowing that they would be executed after they had been drained of all of their dangerously-won insight.

  She nodded, allowing him to pull her into retreat. She tripped over something – a dead body – and hit the ground, just in time for one of the shambling monsters to reach for her. Absolute panic overcame her, only for a second, and flames blazed up all around her body, just before she hurled herself into the air. She had a nightmarish glimpse of a dead face as she rocketed into the sky, undead hands reaching for her. The flames seemed to be pushing her upwards; for the first time, she could look down on London as dawn rose over the city. She could hear the sound of battle all around the city, leaving her to wonder, once again, just how many revenants had been raised from the dead. And how many of those who had tried to stop them would have been bitten and turned into the undead themselves?

  She dropped down next to Jack, who looked over at her grimly. The force they’d had on the first barricade seemed to have been reduced sharply; it tore at her that she hadn’t even seen those men fall. Their bodies would have been destroyed by their fellows or started the process that led to their reanimation. She hoped it was the former; behind them, where she had launched herself into the air, the undead were crawling over the bodies of the recently living, heading towards the next barricade. Surely, she told herself, they had to run out of bodies sooner or later. How many had died in Soho?

  But the area had been contaminated by disease long before necromancy had been anything other than a legend, she reminded herself. There could be hundreds of thousands of bodies under the city, just waiting for their chance to reanimate and go forth to pr
ey on the living. They were the ultimate soldiers, in a sense; they not only felt no pain, but they were utterly expendable. Their lives – their undead lives – could be thrown away at will. She had a vision of shambling armies laying siege to castles, scrambling over their own fallen to finally climb over the walls and attack the living within.

  “It doesn’t sound good,” Jack admitted. Gwen realised that he’d been listening to some of the rebel Talkers. “They’ve broken through the entire first ring of barricades and they’re advancing on the second – some of them have even burst out of the sewers and attacked us from the rear. Master Thomas knows what he’s doing, all right.”

  Gwen nodded, wearily. She hadn’t had any proper sleep – and the effects of Master Thomas’s magic potion seemed to have faded away completely. Her body, she realised dully, was on the brink of shutting down. She accepted a mug of wine and several cakes gratefully, realising that the rebels were taking a few seconds to fortify themselves before the battle resumed. The shambling horde of the undead seemed to be pausing, almost. They almost seemed to be stumbling aimlessly, as if they’d lost the force that was guiding them. Gwen realised that Master Thomas had perhaps overreached himself. No wonder their tactics were so basic; the person directing them had to concentrate on several different fronts at once. She knew she was right. And yet…something wasn’t right.

  Sure, part of her mind muttered. You’re fighting beside rebels against the government to which you swore an oath, trying to stop undead monsters unleashed by a man who is sworn to prevent such monsters ever menacing England ever again…of course something isn’t right, idiot!

  Jack looked down at her, his face tired and streaked with sweat. Gwen reached out and took his hand in hers, grateful for the human contact. Jack smiled at her, despite his tiredness, and Gwen felt her heart flutter. Her heart was meant to pump blood around her body, all of the autonomy textbooks had stated. They had never mentioned the feelings of…desire, of love, of…everything. Her heart seemed to be pounding like a drum.