by Stanzin
CHAPTER 21
The Necromancer's Weapon
‘Susannah can’t come – she’s got to help her father at the tree,’ Mango said.
‘That’s too bad,’ Zach said. ‘Man, this is depressing… we ought to be celebrating your knighting, instead we’re going to a funeral.’
It was Monday afternoon, and they’d gathered outside the Cavern after finishing the first day of the last week of Preparatory (magical heavy lifting – raise a pair of five litre water jugs into the air, without spilling the water inside; it was ridiculously difficult).
‘I still can’t believe it,’ Mango said sadly.
‘That was really nice, though, what you did for the man yesterday,’ Zach said warmly.
‘What did you do?’ Gregory asked.
‘You saw her, right? On the stage?’
‘Yes, but I couldn’t hear anything from the sides. Lousy acoustics.’
‘It wasn’t all that,’ Mango said.
‘You saw her bow her head for a whole minute, right?’ Zach said.
‘I thought she’d started praying.’
‘Not quite – she told the whole Odeum that a nice young man had died, and that everyone ought to observe a minute of silence for him. So everyone did.’
‘No kidding!’ Gregory said.
‘None. It was… sappy and dreadful and sweet – I thought I was going to cry… ow!’
Mango punched him. She turned to Gregory ‘I am so happy I didn’t ask for a stupid boon yesterday… the other awardees barely got a mention in the papers this morning.’
‘Clever of you,’ Gregory smirked. ‘What are they saying?’
‘Well, saving those like Janvi, who just want to string you up, they’re saying that you’re naïve… and barmy. They say your heart’s in the right place, but you’re going about it wrong,’ Zach said.
‘Universal magical access?’
‘Uh… no. That’s not what you said you wanted remember. You said it was about making Domremy strong again.’
‘Let me guess. They’re saying that universal magical access isn’t the best way to go about it.’
‘More or less,’ Zach said.
‘Then lets not tell anyone that universal magical access is what it’s always been about, eh?’
‘Let’s not,’ Zach said with a grin, then turned sombre. ‘We should get moving… let’s head for the camp.’
A short carpet ride later, Mango received a very warm welcome from Chief Merlot, a wiry young girl, and a middle-aged woman.
‘Magus Mango… this is Aizawl’s sister, and that’s his mother – they wanted to meet you.’
The older woman said nothing; her face was drawn and strained, but she pulled Mango into a long and shuddering embrace. Finally, she kissed Mango’s forehead, and the wiry young girl stepped forward; she held a basket.
‘Auzi’s pyro-box… it’s got all the tools he’d use in his shows – I want you to have it.’
‘Thank you,’ Mango said, taking it. ‘He was a wonderful firedancer.’
‘Come, I’ll tell you about him on the way to the Resting Place.’
A procession had begun to wind its way out of the camp; Aizawl, the firedancer, and Rennick, the puppeteer, were being carried up in two ornately decorated bamboo cradles, each carried by four men. Mango walked beside the firedancer’s cradle, and Zach beside the puppeteers’, where he was speaking to Radnich, of all people.
Gregory found Vincent at the front of the procession.
‘Did you learn anything from the stuff I pulled off Remy’s index?’ Gregory asked.
Vincent nodded grimly. ‘It’s worse than I ever imagined. We’ll speak of it after the funeral.’
The gypsy looked exhausted. His eyes were glazed over and they had deep and dark circles under them. Vincent caught Gregory staring, and smiled.
‘I went over Remy’s records at some speed,’ Vincent explained, ‘helped along by a few charms and potions… but even so, learning so much in so little time can take a lot out of a man… your Index was an invaluable help, so thank you.’
The procession struck up a melancholy chant as they began to climb a hill. It was short, and they sang the same quadruplet over and over.
‘What are they singing?’ Gregory asked Vincent.
‘It’s Romani, and simple. It translates thusly: ‘The petals of our lives have travelled the same breeze; depart now, mature flower, for the Source; we’ll shade the world with the colours that we’ve kept of you; take our shades so you may enrich the Mother.’
‘That’s beautiful.’
‘It’s ancient – the chant predates the tribes. Some say it’s four thousand years old.’
‘Is it?’
‘Who knows?’
‘I didn’t know gypsies were religious.’
‘They are not. Their traditions were set in stone long before the Shamanic texts were ever written. ‘
Something of the procession’s solemnity settled into everybody as they went down the other side of the hill and conversation faded away, but for the chant.
Gregory had carefully avoided looking at the paper in the morning… there would be plenty of time to deal with the fallout of his boon. Seriously though, what had he been thinking?
If I remember right, said a part of his mind, there wasn’t much thinking going on yesterday. The pretty queen was all – ‘save my country, Hero’. And you were all – ‘Okay’.
Gregory had to admit this was true. He wondered if he could just go up to the Queen and tell her he’d changed his mind. Every part of him shrank from the thought – he’d look like a gigantic idiot… a coward… and he didn’t think he could bear the full weight of the Queen’s disappointed look. It would be spectacularly un-Heroic. And if he backed out now, they might never ask him to do anything ever again – the mere idea was awful beyond words.
Muchness… he had begun to quite like the word.
No, what he really wanted was a private word with Mango. Was she connected to Domremy like he was?
‘You may tell no one…no one, Magus Gregory, about this gift. We call it the Communion,’ the Queen had impressed upon him last night. ‘You will not hint, allude, suggest, breathe or even talk in your sleep that you have it. It is secret. No book explains it, only a few legends speak of it… and that’s where everyone must believe it remains.’
‘I swear,’ Gregory had said at once.
‘Good. You may, however, speak to Magus Mango. She too is receiving Communion. Later, when there is time, the King and I will explain its function to you. Now, you will swear a magically binding oath, such that if you ever attempt to tell the secret of the Communion to someone who does not already know about it, the gift will leave you, and you will forget you ever had it.’
The oath had been sealed, not in a rune, but in a glyph, an ancient and potent magical command that no one now knew how to read, only how to use.
He had not been able to get Mango alone though, so discussions would have to happen later. Still, the questions rattled about in his head: what did it even mean to be connected to the spirit of a nation? What in the world was a spirit of the nation? He could sense Domremy all around him now, a vast field of thaumic potential entangled with his own. It was just… there. If he pushed at it with his own thauma, it felt a little more substantial than air. What did it do?
Almost as if Domremy had heard Gregory, his mana felt something resonate through that vast thauma. He stopped.
‘What’s the matter?’ Vincent asked.
‘I’m not sure…argh!’ Some strange force ripped through Gregory’s mana, disorienting him.
‘Whoa there, boy! What’s the matter?’ Vincent barked.
‘Something… something’s happening,’ Gregory growled out.
‘Wha-’
The explosion cracked through the air – the whole procession gasped and screamed.
‘The camp!’ cried out a few voices.
Gregory’s gaze found Vincent’s, and found his fear mirror
ed there. He mouthed - ‘Remy.’
Vincent grabbed Gregory’s hand. ‘Come.’
The two broke from the procession and sprinted downhill; others joined them. Gregory heard Mango and Zach shout his name… heard Vincent whistle… the narrow carpet scooped the two of them up into the air. They crested the hill beyond which the camp lay, and Gregory’s stomach plummeted.
The explosion, whatever it had been, had annihilated the camp, radiating out from the centre.
‘Is that where you kept him?’ Gregory asked.
‘Yes,’ Vincent said, his voice harder than ice.
‘He killed himself?’
Vincent didn’t answer, but sped over the ruins. They heard a pained cry… Gregory couldn’t see where it had come from.
‘Garamond! Where are you?’
A brutal coughing cut another half-cry off.
‘There!’ Gregory said – he’d seen the man, up in the broken branches of the tree. For a second, he wondered what had made the man flee up the tree – a spectre? The carpet drew up, and Gregory saw the man hadn’t climbed the tree… he’d been thrown into it… impaled onto a wooden limb.
‘Clown…’ Garamond wheezed.
‘Quiet,’ Vincent ordered. ‘Help is on its way.’
‘… the prisoner…’
‘I figured. Killed himself before we could get him to talk. It’s a blessing the camp emptied out for the funeral… but how did he do it?’
‘… no!’ Garamond said vehemently. ‘… not dead… saw him run.’
‘Remy’s alive?’ Gregory exclaimed. ‘How the hell could he have survived that blast?’
But Garamond wasn’t finished. ‘Vincent… the Tree… can’t let him…’
Vincent must have understood, because he went white. ‘Say no more.’
Broken wood strewn around the camp pulled themselves into a pile close to the tree… seconds later, they caught ablaze. Other carpets were cresting the hill now… the fire was to mark Garamond’s position, Gregory realised.
‘You’ll be fine-’
‘…it’s been an hour…GO!’ Garamond roared, and Vincent sped off.
‘Greg!’ Mango and Zach were on one of the carpets. Gregory was about to shout to them, when he realised Vincent was flying directly at them.
‘You’re friends of Gregory?’ Vincent barked.
‘Yes. What happen-’ Zach began.
Vincent cut him off, and flicked Zach a coin. ‘Get to his Uncle. Give him that token. Tell him to come to the Blood Bureau, and to bring an army.’
‘His uncle? What is-’
‘Zach, do it,’ Gregory said. ‘It’s serious. I’ll explain later.’
‘Okay, but-’
Gregory didn’t catch what Zach said – Vincent was already speeding towards the city. Vincent must have cast the invisibility spell – Gregory saw his fingers become translucent, then fade entirely: the effect was much more disconcerting in the day, especially when he could see the lake and land streak by below him.
‘That man – Garamond – he said it’s been an hour… but we only heard the blast five minutes ago. What did he mean?’ Gregory asked.
‘We poisoned Remy with a fast acting toxin to dissuade him from running off… but we also gave him an antidote which keeps the toxin dormant in his blood. The antidote wears off every three hours, and must be taken again, or the poison will kill him in minutes – we’re the only ones who have the antidote, which was last applied an hour ago – Remy has about two hours before the toxin kills him.’
Gregory shuddered – it sounded mercilessly gruesome, despite what he had seen in Remy’s basement.
‘Why do you think Remy’s going to the Blood Bureau?’ Gregory asked the seemingly empty air next to him. The lake sped by underneath him, and the Spire loomed extraordinarily quickly – he was flying faster than he knew carpets could fly.
Vincent’s disembodied voice was empty, cold. ‘Your instinct was right – we found plans for the Blood Tree, the whole design process in the records you got off Remy’s Index. I finished going through them all only last night.’
‘What did you learn?’
‘Remember how I said the Blood Tree was a weapon? I figured so because of all the ways its information could be used. But I was wrong… in part.’
‘It’s not a weapon?’ Gregory said.
‘It is… You said the rune-linked Indexed, the refugees in Helika … their blood and mana sustains the tree, directs a portion of their magic to it… changes in their blood and health affect changes in their blood records in the Tree.’
‘But we already knew that.’
‘According to your Index, that’s not all it can do… it’s complex, but it boils down to this… within certain limitations… the Tree itself can affect change upon those linked to it.’
Vincent turned his fear-filled eyes to Gregory. ‘Do you see?’
It took a moment, and then icy understanding coursed through Gregory’s veins.
‘You’re saying… that if Remy could curse the Tree somehow, then everybody linked to it would be…’
‘We’re here.’
The Tree, which Gregory had always thought beautiful, seemed almost sinister now. Gregory opened his mouth to warn Vincent about the barrier, but they flew right up to the trunk without a problem: had Remy disabled the barrier for some reason?
There were few people about; it was Sunday.
‘Remy wouldn’t have reached yet, and he doesn’t know we know what the Tree can actually do… so that’s something. Still, have you any idea where the Tree’s command arrays are?’
The term was familiar; Gregory’s brain dug it out after a second: a conversation with Susannah…
‘Down there,’ Gregory said, pointing at the Tree’s roots, and Vincent took the carpet into a near vertical dive.
It looked like a sleek filing system: instead of parchment in cubbyholes, there were rectangular cards of runewood, all carved with intricate runeflows, stacked in neat columns of different heights, into slots in the runewood trunk. There were hundreds of them.
Vincent jumped off the carpet and began drawing out and examining the card one at a time: to Gregory, the cards looked like they were dancing in and out of the slots all on their own. They were the only two people down here.
After a minute of the gypsy’s furious search, Gregory finally asked: ‘What are you looking for? Why do you think Remy’s coming here?’
Vincent answered without pausing in his search: ‘The Blood Tree has a very specific hidden purpose – to control… affect… and if necessary, kill those rune-linked to it. There is no way Domremy’s own Runemasters would have missed such a function, or, knowing it was possible, allowed it to be written into the Tree’s runeflows. They aren’t stupid… if the public even guessed that the tree could be so used … why, the Tree might never have been built at all.
‘There’s only one way Remy could have hidden the Tree’s function of murder – in a removable command array – runeflows on these removable cards. There are two possibilities: either he’s gone to fetch the card that gives him power to affect those runelinked to the Tree… or…’
‘Or he could have already put it in here when no one was looking,’ said Gregory. ‘… but you still haven’t said: why? Why would Remy want to kill a bunch of refugees?’
Vincent scoffed. ‘Remy’s a mere minion. His true master on the other hand…’
‘Is this the man from Brightapple again?’
‘I think so,’ said Vincent quietly, ‘though this unlike any plot I’ve ever seen him play.’
‘Then why do you think…’
‘There are magics in this world… old powers… that can be harness only by sacrifice,’ Vincent whispered. ‘Almost every murder I think he committed… there was an element of sacrifice… of death harnessed – like you saw at Remy’s. And like Remy’s, for the most part, I thought it was about absorbing the strength of the defeated.
‘But not at Brightapple… I
examined the ritual he performed there, and it wasn’t about absorbing the strength of the dead. It was…how do I put this? It was as if he were hoarding strength… not within himself, but to some external vessel… I remember thinking, at the time, that such a thing wasn’t possible… Augusta Lovelace hadn’t made her discoveries in thaumic storage at the time… I remember being afraid of the potential he sought to unleash.
‘If my suspicions are right… then at the moment of killing, the thaumic potential of all those refugees will be siphoned off to some unknown vessel. And I know this much: we probably won’t like the purpose to which that potential will be directed.
‘Remy is dying… escape from us means his death… and if he’s ready to die regardless… then he’d want to make sure his last hours were useful to his master – and the only goal that I can imagine him wanting to accomplish – it has something to do with the refugees in Helika.’
Gregory’s blood became colder with every sentence from the gypsy’s lips. What was it, this terrible vessel? Did Vincent really not know, or was he lying again? And what crazy sacrifice needed fifteen thousand lives to be kept at the ready? Who was Remy working for?
‘It could be,’ Vincent went on, ‘that I mistook Remy’s intent. He might not come here at all. Perhaps there is no murder to commit tonight… a skilled healer might be able to come up with an antidote in time, and he may know where one is. But we should nevertheless be prepared…’
Vincent trailed off.
‘How did Remy escape?’
‘I don’t know. I would guess a timed explosive that he somehow slipped past us… though I don’t miss such things, ever.’
‘Why’d you tell Zach to get Uncle Quincy? You’ve been hidden so long… Uncle Quincy will have many questions.’
‘There was a very specific message in the coin I gave your friend – Quincy is one of the few people in the world who could even read it… and it will let him know to not ask questions, but to hurry here, discretely, with many fighters he can bring. If he asks you anything, tell him you’re not allowed to explain… and that you really don’t know much. He doesn’t even need to know about me.’
He was peering intensely at a complicated looking runeflow Gregory couldn’t begin to read, and then he nodded.
‘This is it,’ Vincent said quietly.
‘The death runeflows?’ Gregory asked, heart in his mouth. The runeflows on the plank looked much simpler than the others Vincent had pulled out.
‘It allows for directing thaumic potential through the Tree’s rune-links, so yes. Any competent mage could write the runeflows necessary onto this… and channel magic through the Tree to the refugees.’
‘So if we take it away…’
‘The tree couldn’t be used as a weapon,’ Vincent said. ‘But there may be more.’ He went on pulling out the rune-planks and reading them.
‘Do you think Remy’s got someone helping him?’ Gregory asked.
‘No. We didn’t get to question him very long and Remy’s mind was well guarded. Still, we know he has no friends in Domremy who knew about his designs for the Tree… or his side project of necromancy.’
‘What about another tree? Have you heard of anyone else building a blood census?’
‘No… though that isn’t something we asked Remy,’ Vincent said. He paused for a second. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because, if I’d put all this effort into creating a weapon – I wouldn’t make just one,’ Gregory said grimly. ‘Whatever the Tree is for - it’s important – and not making back-up plans would be careless.’
‘Clever,’ Vincent said slowly. ‘I’ll look into that, once were done here… in fact, I think I can...’ Vincent pulled something out of his robes – Gregory’s Index. A few barked commands later the Index had the runeflows of every array there.
‘Genius,’ muttered Vincent. ‘Now lets see…’ He began flipping through the copied runeflows. Every minute or so, he’d exclaim, and remove another rune-card from the array.
‘That’s all of them,’ Vincent said a short while later.
Gregory’s relief surprised him. It had felt as if he had watched Vincent cut away diseased, gangrenous limb.
‘I have to go,’ Vincent said, hopping onto the carpet. ‘Remy could still be coming. I’ll have to go see if we’re adequately prepared to meet him. I’ll speak to Quincy when he arrives – he won’t know me. Head on up… I’ll let him know to expect you. I’ll brief you on how it turns out later.’ Gregory nodded and Vincent sped up the Tree’s trunk.
Gregory climbed the runewood stairs to the main trunk. Halfway up, the invisibility charm Vincent had cast on him dissipated. It was quiet – apparently no one had any reason to be at the Tree on a Sunday evening. The thought warmed him– whatever it was Remy wanted to do, Gregory doubted that he’d let a crowd get in his way. The memory of the blasted camp and the shrivelled victims at the cottage flitted across his thoughts, and he winced.
He was surer than ever Remy had some sort of back-up option. If Gregory had been in his shoes, he’d have kept a second command array for backup, just in case the main array were damaged somehow…
Gregory’s brain hiccoughed.
… A second array for removable rune-cards…
… Like the one Susannah had showed him in the Blood Tree’s control room…
Gregory looked up to where the Control Room was, and began to sprint up the Blood Tree’s spiralling stairs.
You’re overreacting, his brain told him. And you really need a carpet of your own.
Gregory ignored the voice in his head. He lungs and legs burned with the mad dash, but he could not stop… not if there was a slightest chance his sudden fear was justified. The silence heartened him though – everything probably was all right. There was no sign of anyone here. He’d just check to satisfy himself… to make sure.
Gasping raggedly for breath, and trying to do it as quietly as possible, he finally reached the landing outside the control room – which was empty and unlit. He saw no one there.
Gregory collapsed on to the floor, awash with sweat. His legs and lungs trembled, and he could have fallen asleep on that quiet landing. If fact, that was a really appealing idea. He’d just sit right there until Vincent or Uncle Quincy came to get him.
He hugged his knees and put his head down.
‘My legs are on fire,’ he muttered to himself.
‘Quite,’ said Remy.
