The Drowning City: The Necromancer Chronicles Book One

by Amanda Downum

  Magic dizzied her—for an instant she was quicksilver speed, elusive and untouchable. Then a gust of wind sharp as a blade sliced her cheek, and another tore her sleeve and the flesh beneath. The air thickened in her lungs and her throat tightened when she tried to draw breath. Her magic broke against his and rolled away as the pressure in her chest grew. Drowning on dry land. Her knees shook, but the vise around her throat wouldn’t let her fall. The night splintered into shards of black and red.

  Then the grip vanished and she collapsed, knees cracking the stone hard enough to make her sob as air rushed into her aching lungs.

  Imran stumbled and fell as well, groping toward his back. As Zhirin’s vision cleared, she saw Xinai’s knife hilt standing out of his shoulder. She and the mercenary stared at each other while Imran swore and bled on the stones.

  Then he began to scream.

  Isyllt stared at Asheris with otherwise eyes. Now that she knew how to look, she could see the truth. Such a simple disguise, but effective. Few would think to look for demons in the Emperor’s palace.

  “They bound you.” The words left on a wondering breath. “They bound you in flesh and stone.”

  Asheris nodded. “And they bound me well. I will do as I’m bid. I cannot free myself, and I must kill anyone who tries to free me. And even if I were rid of the stone, the chains of flesh cannot be broken—I am anathema now, demon. My own kind will never take me back.”

  “There must be a way—”

  He spread his arms, gave her a mocking bow. “Lady, you’re welcome to try, since I must kill you anyway. I won’t be as easy to stop as an animated corpse.” His smile fell away. “I’m sorry. This is not my will.”

  She barely called her shields in time to stop the wall of flame that crashed over her. Heat and chill shattered each other. She flung witchlights in his face, but he batted them away like gnats. He was stronger than any other demon she’d fought; he was stronger than her. They might duel for a time, but eventually he’d wear her down.

  She sent a ghost shrieking toward him—it couldn’t harm him, but he flinched. She closed the distance between them in three strides, slammed her shoulder into his chest. His flesh might not age or die, but it still functioned; the air left his lungs in a grunt and he stumbled back. Isyllt kept close, ripping his coat as she clawed for the collar.

  It was ensorcelled, of course. Layers of spells wound the thick work-hardened wire, shielding and strengthening and reinforcing.

  She expected him to throw her off, braced against the blow, but he only wrapped his arms around her, gentle as an embrace. Why fight, when he could burn her to ash?

  Letting her ring hold the shields, she concentrated on the spells on the collar. It was cunningly wrought—a pity she couldn’t show it to the Arcanost. Three different mages had layered the wards, each style reinforcing the others’ weaknesses. She found a loose end and tugged, but the spell only unraveled a little before catching in another knot. It would have been a lovely puzzle if the air in her lungs weren’t already painfully hot. Sweat dripped from her face, slicked her hands and blurred her eyes. Asheris murmured something in her ear, but she couldn’t hear the throb of her pulse.

  Abandoning finesse, she called the cold. Too soon since she’d last done it; a shudder racked her. Her bones ached, and the force of it scraped her veins like glass splinters. But it answered. Death, decay, the hungry cold that waited for the end of everything, spiraling through her like a maelstrom. She tightened numbing fingers in the collar’s loops and whorls.

  Asheris shuddered now and caught her shoulders. His magic rose to answer hers: a sandstorm, a whirlwind, smokeless flame. Two faces hung before her—the man’s, and a fire-crowned eagle. She closed her eyes before it dizzied her.

  Her spells were failing. The heat bit deeper; her hair was burning. But the spells on the collar died too, slowly corroding beneath the entropy in her hands. Asheris caught her left wrist, gave a raptor’s shriek of rage and pain. She smelled her skin crisping, but she was already numb.

  “Stop,” Asheris gasped. “Please.”

  He was more powerful than she, but not more powerful than the force she called. Storms stilled, flame smothered, and in the end even stars chilled and died. She could stop his undying heart.

  But she’d die first. Ice within, fire without, more than her fragile flesh could withstand. If she left herself open to the abyss too long, it would claim her.

  The last of the ward-spells dissolved, leaving nothing but gold beneath her frozen fingers. Gasping, she broke the channel. The pain of it made her scream and she might have fallen, but her hands were locked stiff around Asheris’s throat. He cried out too and stumbled, and they both fell to their knees.

  “Please,” he whispered, “please—”

  She had exhausted her magic. His fire would burn her, and she had nothing left to stop it. But she wasn’t dead yet, and gold was soft.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered back, raw and ragged. Then she kneed him in the groin as hard as she could.

  He groaned and tried to curl around the pain, but she forced him back, driving her knees into his stomach and tugging at the collar. Blood slicked her hands, hers and Asheris’s, as wire bit their flesh. Her vision washed dull and spotted as she began to feel the pain, but she held on, shaking like a terrier with a rat in its jaws. Metal twisted, bent, broke. Strand after strand. She sobbed with the pain, tears and sweat and blood from a bitten lip splashing Asheris’s face.

  Snarling, he pushed her off and backhanded her across the face, sending her sprawling on the stones. She choked on her own tears and curled into a pain-riddled ball. She couldn’t stand, could only lie shuddering and wait for the death stroke.

  But Asheris didn’t spring for her, only rose to his knees, trembling like a blown horse. One hand clutched his throat as he choked and gagged. She might have crushed his larynx. As blood filled her mouth and her cheek began to throb, she couldn’t quite care.

  Then she felt the pain in her hands, and something else. Gold twisted around her claw-hooked fingers, gleaming beneath the blood. And in the palm of her ruined left hand lay a blazing diamond.

  She forced herself to her knees, peeling the wire out of her hands; blood welled in the cuts, dripped to the ground. She and Asheris stared at each other through witchlight and shadows.

  “Destroy the stone,” he gasped. “Imran wears its twin—part of me is still bound in them. I can’t do it, please—”

  The pain on his face made her look away, pain and desperate hope. She couldn’t stand to hear him plead again. But she had no way to even chip such a stone, let alone shatter it…

  She turned, clumsy, and stared at the orange light glowing from the mountain’s cauldron. Diamonds were forged in the earth’s fire. That would be enough to melt it.

  She stumbled to her feet, knees buckling. Her arms were nothing but pain from fingertip to shoulder, and her face was already swelling from the blow. But she could still walk.

  The stones shuddered beneath her feet. Beneath the keen of the wind she heard shouts and sounds of battle. The Dai Tranh must have broken the wards. They needed to be away from the mountain as fast as they could.

  So she, like a fool, was climbing up it. It made her laugh, till her hand cramped around the stone and she whimpered instead.

  The lake of fire was higher than it had been, great bubbles of flame bursting on its surface. The stench of sulfur and burnt rock choked her. She crouched on her knees at the lip of the crater, afraid to stand against the wind.

  She spared a heartbeat to stare at the ruined collar. Still beautiful, rubies like drops of blood amid the mangled gold, the diamond rich and flawless. He was a demon and she meant to free him. She’d never be able to stop him again if he turned on her.

  Only a heartbeat’s hesitation and she flung the stone away, into the cauldron. She didn’t see it land, but flames belched high and bright. And from the landing below came a fierce raptor’s cry.

  She turned, scramb
led down the stone till she reached the steps. And stopped as Asheris rose in front of her on four burning wings. His eagle’s head turned, watched her from one blazing eye. Even Assari friezes couldn’t capture the beauty of the jinn.

  He alit on the step below her and the light died, leaving only the man. His clothes were torn and filthy, skin lusterless beneath blood and sweat, but his throat had healed.

  “Lady, it is done.” He offered her a hand and she took it, but when their fingers touched he flinched away. He stared at her right hand, her beringed hand, and for an instant she wondered if he would send her into the volcano as well, to free the bound ghosts.

  Instead he turned her hand over, frowning at the blood, at the fingers hooked with pain. Then he caught her left, baring the blackened, blistered mark his hand had burned into her wrist.

  “I’m sorry. I wish I could heal you—”

  She smiled crookedly. “But that’s not what either of us is made for, is it? Perhaps you could help me off this mountain instead.”

  “It would be my pleasure.”

  The ground shook again when they reached the landing and they stumbled.

  “This is bad, isn’t it?” Isyllt asked.

  Before he could answer, footsteps slapped against the path and Zhirin stumbled up the stairs. Witchlights flickered around her and she raised a hand in warding when she saw Asheris.

  “It’s all right,” Isyllt said. “We’re not killing each other anymore. What happened?”

  The girl gaped an instant longer, then shook her head. Blood ran from a cut on her cheek, spotting her shirt collar. “Imran is dead. He burned, and I don’t know how—”

  Asheris smiled, cold and cruel. “Backlash. A pity I wasn’t there to watch.”

  “But,” Zhirin went on, “Xinai got away. And I think they’ve broken too many wards.”

  His bloody humor fell away. “Yes. The mountain is waking.” He tilted his head, listening. “It’s been waiting such a long time.”

  “Can you stop it? Like you did at the warehouse?”

  He shook his head. “This fire is greater than I could ever quench or contain. All we can do is get away.”

  “But the Kurun Tam, the villages, the forest—”

  “Are all going to burn. I’m sorry. Imran would have done better to send me after the Dai Tranh while there was still hope of stopping this.”

  The mountain rumbled, a roar building beneath their feet.

  “We’re not going to make it down, are we?” Isyllt said. She didn’t feel like running anyway. It was hard enough staying conscious.

  “We wouldn’t, no.” Asheris slipped an arm around her waist. “But we’re not going down.” He held out his other hand to Zhirin. “Miss Laii?”

  Zhirin stared. “What—”

  “Come on,” Isyllt said as she began to understand. She grabbed his waist, abused fingers clutching a handful of silk. “Zhirin, please, let’s go.”

  The girl took his hand, let him pull her close.

  “Hold on,” he said. And uncased his wings.

  Zhirin shrieked, short and sharp, as they rose. Isyllt slipped, her hand nearly useless, but his grip tightened.

  “I won’t let you fall.”

  His wings blazed against the night. Isyllt felt their warmth, but it didn’t burn her. The mountain fell away in a dizzying spiral, a burning eye in the black stretch of forest; Symir glittered in the distance. They moved into the low clouds and her skin tingled as the damp touched her burns. For a moment there was nothing but wind and mist, the taste of rain and the delta spreading out beneath them. Zhirin made a soft sound of wonder and delight.

  Then the mountain exploded.

  Xinai fled before the mage stopped screaming, leaving the Laii girl to stare as he burned and writhed. She avoided stairs and sorcerers altogether, scrambling across the crags instead. The rough pitted stones scoured the skin from her hands but were easy enough to climb. Light leaked over the lip of the cauldron, sullen even to her colorless night-eyes. She could imagine the red glow easily.

  A touch of a charm lent her a burst of speed; she’d pay for it the next day, but now she needed the deer’s grace. Her mother’s presence surrounded her like a cloak of ice, chilling the sweat that ran down her back.

  She thought she heard a shout below as she reached the edge of the crater, but couldn’t tell who it came from. With any luck the mages would all kill one another.

  Crouching against the wind, she ran. The light was brighter now, and she kept her eyes averted. As she neared the northeastern side of the crater she heard Selei call her name.

  The old woman waited a few yards down the slope, a pair of Dai Tranh warriors keeping watch. The wind was gentler there, though it still whistled sharply over the rocks.

  “The mages are coming,” Xinai gasped, sinking to her knees in front of Selei. She let her night-eyes fade. “We need to hurry.”

  Selei nodded and turned to her guards. “Leave us. And hurry down—I don’t know how quickly the mountain will wake.”

  “What about you, Grandmother?”

  “I know what I’m doing. Don’t worry about me.”

  They nodded unhappily and started down, leaving behind a wooden box. Xinai could feel the magic humming inside it, hot and violent. The rubies, soon to be reunited with the mountain that charged them.

  “You’ll have to leave soon too,” Selei said. “But I wanted to see you again, before this ends.”

  “What—” Her mouth opened, closed again. A queasy chill settled in her gut. “No. You can’t—”

  “It has to be done, and this is the price.” She shook her head. “I’m tired, Xinai. I’ve lost so many—my brothers and sisters, my childhood friends, even my children. I don’t want to end my days a dowager, a burden on the clan.”

  “You’re no burden! You lead the Dai Tranh.”

  “But not for much longer, I think. I may be a clever old witch, child, but even witches’ wits dull with age. I want to have a death that means something. That buys something.”

  “Why not a life that means something?”

  “I think I’ve had that.” She took Xinai’s hands in hers. “Don’t you?”

  Xinai nodded. Her eyes prickled, pressure building behind her nose. “What about Riuh? You’re all he has left.”

  “Look after him for me, then.”

  Selei’s face blurred as Xinai blinked angrily. She couldn’t talk her out of this. “I will,” she choked. “I promise.”

  “I wish you could have been mine by blood as you’ve been in my heart. But Cay Lin is lucky to have you.” She untied two charms from around her neck. “Give this to Riuh,” she said, tapping the larger. “This one is yours. There’ll be nothing left for the rites, but if you and he would sing for me when this is over…”

  “We will.”

  A tongue of flame uncoiled from the crater, washing the night carnelian and gold. The mountain was a hot pressure against all of Xinai’s senses, scraping her raw.

  “It’s time,” said Selei. She knelt and took up the box of rubies. “The wards are failing. You should go.”

  “I can’t let you go alone.”

  “This will be a bitter enough victory—don’t make us lose another warrior to it. Run, child.”

  Scrubbing her eyes, Xinai turned and started down the slope. Rocks slipped and scattered under her feet and tears blurred her already strained vision. She looked back once, saw the old woman picking her way carefully toward the top of the mountain, silhouetted against the cauldron’s glare.

  The first tremor threw her down and she slid cursing through rock and brush before catching herself. She kept her footing through the next, but the path was treacherous.

  She was scarcely a quarter down the slope when the night shattered into flame and ash.

  Chapter 20

  Zhirin was so busy staring at Mount Haroun that for an instant she didn’t understand where the roar was coming from. Then the sky blotted dark and Asheris twisted up and sidewa
ys, his impossible wings shredding the clouds. She screamed, gasped as his arm tightened around her ribs. She clutched at him as they spiraled farther away from the mountain, land and sky spinning around them.

  When they paused again she saw what had happened. The cauldron hadn’t erupted, but one of the hills flanking the mountain had burst open, spewing smoke and ash. The plume rose before them, past them, blotting out the stars. Sparks flashed in the column like blossoms on a tree. An instant later she cried out again as cinders and ash rained over them.

  Asheris cursed and turned, shielding them with one set of wings while the other beat frantically against the thickening air. Zhirin choked on the stench of sulfur and char; grit crunched between her teeth.

  Craning her head and shielding her eyes, she saw lava leaking from the shattered mountain, incarnadine blood pouring down the southwestern slope. Flames flared gold and vermilion around the flow. The forest was burning.

  The air cleared as they gained distance, though the smell was still thick. Asheris turned and they watched in horror and amazement as the mountain shuddered and split again. A new rift opened on Haroun’s main slope, spitting fire and rock. Lava spilled from the cleft, rushing down the hills.

  To her otherwise eyes, a many-headed serpent writhed free of shattered rock, hissing his hundred-tongued fury into the sky.

  Zhirin wasn’t sure how long they hung there, coughing on the acrid fumes, watching the mountain rip itself apart. Her lungs and throat burned and tears leaked down her face.

  “We need to land,” Asheris finally said, turning away from the devastation.

  The air was clearer to the east; the worst of the ashen cloud rolled west, toward the bay. Toward Symir. Useless to think about that now, she told herself. There was nothing she could do.

  Asheris’s wings stretched wide and they wheeled downward in a narrowing gyre. The river glittered beneath them. He was landing near the dam.

  He touched the ground as gracefully as any bird, but Zhirin stumbled as soon as he let her go. A rock bit her foot and she frowned—she’d lost a sandal somewhere in the sky. She took a step, then kicked off the other. When she turned, his wings had vanished.