The Heart of a Necromancer

by Eddie Patin

  Jason stared back at the young woman and found himself unable to respond. He looked at the others. Riley and Gliath seemed apathetic and the woman named Lillian had turned back to her reading. Lillian looked as white and disturbed as if she'd seen a ghost.

  "Okay," he said.

  Morgana turned and quickly departed up the stone stairs, pulling up the robes in front of her to keep from tripping.

  The dining hall was silent for a moment.

  "Big house," Riley finally said, walking over to the long table. There was room for at least a dozen people. He unstrapped his two rifles and laid them on the table then sat down in a finely crafted wooden armchair. He kicked his boots up and crossed his ankles. "I guess we'll be sleeping in one of the rooms upstairs. I reckon there's a lot of 'em."

  Gliath spoke up, which surprised Jason. "I believe you made a good tactical decision, Jason Leaper 934, calling for that human's release." It was so strange. In his 'pretender form', Gliath was like an Indian Brave, and even spoke like one. Jason was always so surprised whenever Gliath spoke up after a long silence. It was easy to forget that he was there.

  Cowboys and Indians, Jason thought, looking between Riley and Gliath with a smile.

  "Why do you say that, Gliath?" Jason asked.

  The leopardwere smoothly moved toward the table and took a seat beside Riley.

  "Because Morgana Soloster has many secrets behind her eyes."

  That drew a flickering gaze from Lillian at the other end of the table, who seemed almost afraid of the three of them. She was like a cold mouse, tight and high-strung in her prim medieval dress. After meeting Jason's eyes for just an instant, Lillian pursed her lips and went back to her book, turning a page.

  Jason walked over as well, scanning the vast interior of the vaulted space. The dining hall was pretty big. Those Solosters sure must have loved eating or entertaining. Maybe as rulers of the village—however involved that was—they needed to conduct meetings here. Who knows?

  Looking at the walls, Jason found a large family portrait painted in oils. The father and mother were obvious in the center of the painting. There were also three younger men standing around the parents, as well as Morgana, who looked like a teenager in the portrait. Jason thought back to Estren's speech. What was the patriarch's name? Lionel? No—that was the founder of the town. Roland. The older man, Roland Soloster, looked regal as hell with slick, dark hair and a greying moustache and goatee. He sat with a beautiful sword with a guard and pommel that looked like red gold and a hilt wrapped in deep black leather, hanging in a scabbard from a thick leather belt. His wife—Morgana's mother—sat in a moderately-fashionable dress and looked very fit and formal, her hands in her lap and her steel-grey hair put up in a braid with its length hanging down behind her. Her face, hair, and eyes reminded Jason of Morgana. The most prominent young male stood tall and straight wearing a silvery chain mail armored vest over a black ensemble of cloth and leather. The oldest brother's hair was long and black, and he wore a similarly-dark short-trimmed beard. There was a shining, gold chain necklace around his neck with a bright blue stone in a pendant at its center. Another brother stood tall and broad next in line with a bushy brown beard and fierce green eyes. The third brother—seemingly the youngest—was lean and clean-shaven with pale eyes, a thin face, and short, black hair. Morgana herself appeared to be about seventeen or eighteen in the portrait, demure in a modest green dress. Her dark brown hair was long and straight, and her face was beautiful. She was smiling.

  "That's the whole family," Lillian said suddenly, her voice high and smiling. "Without me, of course. Also without Roland's parents."

  Jason realized that he'd been staring at the painting for a long time. He looked down and saw Lillian watching him. She smiled in the strangest manner. Her mouth was cheerful, but her eyes were unmoved.

  "Which one was your husband?" Jason asked, moving to a chair and taking a seat. He plunked his AK-47 down onto the table and pulled out his OCS.

  "Oh, you mean Owen?" she asked with another smile. Jason realized what was odd about her. She was only smiling with her mouth—not with her eyes. "Poor, miserable Owen," Lillian said, shaking her head and her blonde curls. "What a terrible decision he made. I suppose he's living a good life somewhere warmer far away."

  "How did it happen?" Jason asked. He unlocked the screen of his OCS and fiddled around with the coordinates as they talked. He set a bookmark for the dining hall. "Uh ... him making a deal with the necromancer, I mean. From what Estren said, it seems like Owen would have needed to set it up beforehand."

  Lillian closed her book and sighed. She ran long, slender fingers through her hair and briefly gazed up the stairs as if to see whether or not Morgana was there. The light filtering through the cracks between the boards that covered the windows made the entire room feel creepy. It was a big, empty house and the air was full of a strange energy that Jason couldn't quite place.

  "I don't know when Owen began meeting the necromancer," she said, folding her hands together over her book, "so I don't know how often they got together before his betrayal, or how they managed to plan everything. Owen was very intelligent, but I always had a strange feeling about him."

  "Well, ya married him," Riley said suddenly, smirking when Jason met his gaze.

  Lillian scoffed. "I did, yes. But I had no idea the depths of depravity he would sink to! I mean—he sold out our people, but also his own family. Me, even! I still can't believe it!" She paused and seemed ready to cry for a moment, then it went away. "Did you hear the story of when he took riders out to destroy the necromancer?"

  "Estren said that he met with the necromancer instead," Jason said. "He gave him his soldiers then struck a deal for his personal safety and riches. And after, the necromancer attacked the town and killed Roland."

  "That is correct," Lillian said. "Jason, is it?"

  "Yes."

  She stood and picked up her book. "Jason, I must see to Morgana. She has no doubt been through a lot. We'll both return in a short while. Please mind the candle if you leave."

  "Okay."

  With that, Lillian clutched her book to her chest and rushed up the stairs. Near the top, she cast a worried glance down at the three of them just for an instant, then disappeared.

  Since they'd set foot in New Bozeman, Jason had felt a strong sense that there was a lot more going on than meets the eye. Those gold-masked soldiers were imposing and creepy. Estren was some kind of freak, and those weird, blue-robed women behind him? Were they some sort of bizarre, drugged-out harem? The people here were all fucked up and Lillian was hiding something too.

  The only person who didn't seem batshit—just as Royce had told them before—was Morgana. She just gave off a serious pissed-off vibe. She'd also been hanging almost naked from a cross in the middle of town for twenty-four hours or more.

  Jason looked across the table at Riley.

  Riley scratched his beard. "Weird shet, planeswalking, man," the soldier said. "I get that this is your first time mingling with 'the people' of a world on a bounty, dude, but..."

  "Don't get involved," Jason finished. That's what Riley was getting at.

  "Yeah."

  "So, what now?"

  Riley shrugged and laced his fingers behind his short, dark hair. "Now, we wait. If the gargoyles come out after dark, we'll head out and look around and see what we can see. If we find some, we'll get to work. Maybe we can figure out a good spot to set up positions after tonight based on whatever patterns we notice."

  "We need thirty golem hearts, right?"

  "Yep," Riley replied. "Or more. We can zap as many of those frukers as we want."

  "The more the merrier."

  The soldier smirked. "That's a weird expression, but I get what you mean. Yeah. Also, the more hearts, the more gold."

  Jason looked at his watch. It was the middle of the afternoon but he figured that if it was almost winter back home, and spring here, then time wasn't necessarily consistent. Time sure wasn'
t consistent between Earth and the Wilderlands.

  It kind of felt like afternoon here. There probably weren't any clocks around.

  Jason settled in and started reading through other bookmarks and examining u936's seemingly-infinite droves of data.

  After an hour or so, Morgana returned downstairs, dressed plainly in crude, functional clothing that was obviously hand-made. Her style of dress reminded Jason of the movies Braveheart or maybe Robin Hood. He couldn't imagine wearing such clothes. Hell—under his Merc armor, he was wearing a t-shirt and some polyester gym shorts. He also had long underwear and stuff in his backpack in case he needed something heavier.

  Morgana looked 100% better, though—that was for sure. She'd brushed her hair and cleaned up, and—other than a black eye and some red scrapes on her face—she looked pretty content.

  All she did at first was ask if they were hungry.

  Gliath, spoke up immediately, of course, and the other two acquiesced. It had been a pretty long day so far, after all. They started with the Market, then there was Jason 1241's suicide and going back to his world to put his body there, then after a short while of preparation, they came here. Jason couldn't remember if he'd even eaten anything at all!

  After some time, Morgana came out of the doorway across the main entrance—the one with the glow from inside—and Lillian helped her deliver five wooden plates of food to the table.

  Must be the kitchen, Jason thought.

  Jason eagerly took a plate of what looked like meaty mush, some cooked and chopped-up potatoes, and half of a cooked apple. He smelled the meat and it smelled pretty good, although a little strange, like sweet and sour sauce.

  "Thanks," he said, then looked up at Morgana. Her face was lovely in the candlelight. "What's this meat stuff?"

  "Pemmican," she replied. "It's bison meat and crushed-up wild cherries from the hills."

  Morgana gave them all eating knives. There were no forks or spoons. She gave them each a tankard of what tasted like a light pale ale.

  They ate. Jason was pleasantly surprised by the meat and cherries; he'd never had such a combination before. The bison meat was, of course, a lot like minotaur meat, which Jason had previously decided was like extremely lean and dense beef. The potatoes were simply cooked with salt, and the apple was nothing more than half of a wild apple, sliced and cooked with no seasoning or sauce.

  After eating several bites of dry potatoes, Jason took a deep draught of beer.

  "Where'd the beer come from?" he asked.

  "I made it," Morgana replied.

  "Really? You make beer?"

  "Of course," she replied. "Many women here make beer. Or, rather, they used to. Estren has most of the village shunning beer and wine now, but it's always been something that the women do to help their families with trading at the market."

  Interesting.

  "What do you call this kind of beer?" Jason asked.

  "Beer," Morgana replied. "What do you mean?"

  "Is it pale ale? There are different types of beer like ... IPA, red, porters, stouts, sours, there's ... uh ... Saison, bitters, brown ales, ooh—Barley wines..."

  Riley laughed.

  "It's just beer, Jason," she said. "Listen—I'm sorry about not having milk or butter. We lost our cow two weeks ago to the damned monsters."

  "It's fine," Jason said with a smile. "It's good. I like this bison and cherry stuff."

  "Normally we would have bread as well," she added. "I apologize, but our wheat fields have been difficult to harvest with the trogs roaming around during the day. The Chosen refuse to step out of the village walls to protect the people and their farms, so there is no bread."

  "Tell me about your brothers," Jason said, looking up at the portrait. He pointed with his eating knife at the one he knew was Owen. "That's Owen, right? Who are the others?"

  "Yes," Morgana replied with a quick glance to Lillian. The kinky-haired blonde woman was quietly eating without a word. She watched the conversation without expression from her blue eyes. "Owen is the one with the Soloster family pendant around his neck. He's got the long, black hair and the short beard. My brother with the big, brown beard is Damien, and the thinner one with the clean face is Edward. My father is Roland and my mother is Anabella."

  "Where are Damien, Edward, and your mother?"

  The young woman looked down at her plate. "Dead."

  Jason immediately felt bad. He stabbed a piece of potato and toyed with it with the small eating knife. "Sorry."

  Morgana glanced over to Lillian again, then spoke quietly. "I could not believe it myself, but by the account of the soldiers who returned and Lillian's own word of seeing Owen that night in their bedroom, I must accept that poor Owen betrayed my family." She looked up. "But Estren would have you believe that my brother's betrayal became the doom of this village, and that's not true. The Golden Lady's Communion—that damned cult—has destroyed my people and this town. After my father was killed, Damien took control. When Estren and his Chosen were strong enough, they turned the people against Damien and fucking killed him. They sacrificed my mother to their damned goddess, and imprisoned Edward and me for almost two years."

  "Two years...?!" Jason said.

  "Fruk..." Riley muttered, taking a bite of meat.

  "The only reason I'm not still rotting in the basement of the church is because of Lillian here, who convinced Estren to release me on house arrest."

  Lillian spoke up. "And you wouldn't have ended up on that cross yesterday if you actually stayed under house arrest," she said. When everyone looked at her, Lillian produced a thin smile. "Morgana's been leading a 'resistance' to overthrow Estren and the Oracles, and her 'rebels' are almost all dead. I've been trying to convince her for a long time now to just stop fighting and at least pretend to get along. Maybe then, she'd be allowed to leave the house without getting in trouble and—"

  "That's bullshit, Lillian," Morgana snapped back, "and you know it." She sighed. "These people have been totally brainwashed by that fucker and his cultists. And look at them now. They're ruined. Starving. They're like shells of people. This village is almost completely dead. If the gargoyles don't wipe us out, Estren will eventually convince them all to lie down and die to wait for their damned Golden Lady to save them. Well, yeah—maybe my little rebellion is pointless, but at least I'm doing something. I'm not going to wait for a stupid, fake goddess to save us from the Darkness. I'm going to fight."

  "It's folly," Lillian sang. "I'm amazed that you made it off of that cross, dear sister. You should really stop while you still have your life."

  Jason looked over at Riley, who smirked back at him and ate a piece of apple. He knew that the soldier didn't give a shit.

  "Who are those weird blue-robed people behind Estren?" Jason asked.

  Morgana stabbed a piece of meat. "They're the Virgin Oracles. Supposedly, the Golden Lady talks to them—only women can hear her—and they whisper to Estren and guide him on what to do. That's why he calls himself a 'speaker'. He speaks for the Lady, and hears what she has to say from those creepy bitches."

  Bitches. So they were women.

  "What's the Chosen?"

  "Those are the soldiers with the gold masks. There are a lot of them—they're like Estren's own small army. They obey him without question."

  "Estren mentioned giving the ... um ... rebels to the Golden Lady on the next moon? Is that like sacrificing them? On the next full moon, maybe?"

  "That's what I figured," Riley said.

  "Yes," Morgana replied. "He sacrifices townsfolk up on those crosses every full moon—usually people he deems criminals. If he has no criminals to work with, he usually chooses one of the men of the village."

  "Damn," Jason said. "When's the next full moon?"

  "In two nights."

  They talked more until dinner was finished, then Morgana collected their plates and knives and brought them to the kitchen. Jason noticed that Gliath had picked out only the meat from his meal. The potatoes, ap
ples slices, and the cherry element of the Pemmican sat untouched on his plate. The leopardwere had to be hungry, still. She had Lillian offer them all more beer, but Jason watched the golden light of sunset streaming through the gaps in the boarded windows and decided that he shouldn't be inebriated while fighting monsters. Riley and Gliath similarly refused, likely for the same reason.

  As Morgana and Lillian were in the kitchen, Jason, Riley, and Gliath stood to get ready for battle. The Reality Rifters were prepared for the most part already—they'd stepped through the rift ready to fight. Jason double-checked all of his prepared magazines and how easily he could pull them from his pockets. He compulsively checked his home focus key around his neck, also feeling at the slick plastic of the focus key to Cloudworld. Organizing his focus key pouch, Jason made sure that all of them were easy to access and protected by their cloth wrappings. He scanned through the data about the world while waiting. Jason put on the thin gloves that went with his Merc armor.

  "Thirty hearts," Riley reiterated. "After tonight, we'll have an idea about how many we can expect to kill every outing, and how long we'll need to stay here."

  "What's the pay?" Jason asked.

  "Four ounces per heart."

  Later, they were all talking about farming and tools. Jason was very curious about the 'dark age' lifestyle Morgana was living and the differences between her daily life and his, although he tried to avoid telling her too much about his own time and world. He didn't want to freak her out.

  All five of them suddenly stopped whatever they were doing when they heard a woman scream. She screamed over and over again in stark terror from either outside or in a nearby house...

  "Holy shit, what's that?" Jason asked, eyeing his AK-47 where it sat on the table.

  "This is how it starts," Morgana replied. "It's how it always starts."