Death of a Darklord

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  The last thing she gathered was her grief. She found the raw, screaming pain in her heart, her head, her body. She wrapped her loneliness in her hands and mixed it well with the pain. She sent it all into the dead body. She could not give it life. She did not know how, but she could give it pain, rage, sorrow.

  The body bucked under her hands, flopping wildly. Elaine fell back to the floor. The body sat up, golden eyes wide and staring.

  Silvanus stood, holding his arms out to her. “Averil, Averil.” He enfolded her against his chest, hugging her. She was stiff and unresponsive in his arms.

  He drew back from her. “Averil, can you speak?”

  She opened her mouth wide, wider. The sound that came out was a shriek, wordless, mindless—pain given voice. One scream followed another as fast as she could draw breath.

  Silvanus shook her, but she did not see him, did not hear him. “Averil, Averil!” He slapped her. The screams continued. He slapped her hard enough to rock her back against the bed. She screamed lying on the bed, hands curled into fists, body tightened as if with pain.

  “What have you done?” Silvanus asked. “What is this?”

  “You said to fill her up. I did.”

  “With what!”

  “Pain.”

  Silvanus dropped to his knees by the bed and the screaming thing that wasn’t quite his daughter. “Kill it.”

  Randwulf said, “What did you say?”

  Silvanus screamed, “Kill it, kill it! Oh, gods, kill it!”

  Randwulf stood, hands at his side. He had to scream to be heard over wordless shrieks. “No.”

  Fredric turned from the door, sword point collapsing to the floor. “Silvanus, no.”

  “Look at it. This is not Averil. This is not human. Kill it, please.”

  Fredric stood over the bed. Elaine stared from one to the other. She hadn’t meant to do anything wrong. She hadn’t known what else to do. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  The men ignored her. For them the room held only their family. Elaine was not a part of that.

  “Fredric,” Silvanus reached up and clutched the big warrior’s hand. He stood, using Fredric’s arm to steady himself. “We will do it together,” Silvanus said. His grip on the warrior’s wrist tightened. Elaine could see the fingers whiten.

  Fredric raised the sword up, with Silvanus’s hand on one arm, Randwulf’s lighter touch on the other. Tears ran down the young man’s face. There were no tears for Silvanus or Fredric.

  Elaine crawled backward out of the way. She huddled on the floor, helpless. The only help she could give had been worse than no help at all.

  The sword flashed downward, straight through the heart, pinning the fragile body to the bed. The body lay still, blood pumping out of the wound in a thick fountain. It was heart blood, black and rich. If Elaine could have given the body true life, Averil would have lived.

  The three men stood over the corpse. Their hands had fallen from the sword hilt. The sword stood upward like an exclamation point, a silver stake through her heart.

  Silvanus was the first to turn away. He spoke to the shocked crowd that stood in the doorway. “You may have the body in a few moments. First we need some privacy.”

  The sheriff himself closed the door without a word.

  Silvanus looked down at Elaine. She was huddled on the floor, unsure what to do or where to go. Running away had seemed like cowardice. Staring up into his eyes, she wished she had run.

  “Now, Elaine Clairn, we will see to your other healing. Let us find out what other differences there are between your healing and mine.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Fredric, show me your arms where Elaine healed you.”

  Fredric unfastened his sleeves and rolled them up without a word. His face was still blank with shock.

  “As I feared,” Silvanus said.

  Elaine stood, slowly.

  Fredric’s face was no longer blank. A dawning horror painted his features. She stared down at his bare skin. The bite wounds were gone, the skin smooth, but it was no longer perfect. Something that looked like heavy green scales was growing over his flesh.

  Elaine reached out to touch it. No one stopped her. The scales were slick, almost sharp on the ends. They covered the entire area she had healed on his arm.

  Randwulf struggled to unlace his own sleeves. His skin was smooth, unblemished. His sigh of relief was loud in the silence.

  “Let me see your neck,” Silvanus said.

  Randwulf’s eyes widened. He turned, hands tight at his sides, as if he wanted to reach up and touch his neck, but was afraid to.

  Silvanus brushed his hair out of the way, tucked the collar back, and hissed. There was something growing out of the top of his spine. It looked for all the world like a tiny human figure—perfect in every detail, but small enough to fit in Elaine’s palm. As they watched, it opened pin-sized eyes and looked at them.

  Elaine screamed, backing away.

  “What is it?” Randwulf asked, fear raw in his voice.

  “A growth,” Silvanus said. No one corrected him. No one wanted to say it out loud.

  Silvanus stared down at the stump of his arm. He untied the sleeve. “Help me,” he said. Fredric cut open the sleeve with his dagger. It was an arm just below the elbow, golden skinned and whole, but its end was black and wormlike. The underside of it was white as a fish’s belly, with huge suckers on it.

  “What’s on the back of my neck?” Randwulf asked. “Tell me.”

  There was a tiny wailing sound. A thin, high-pitched screaming. Randwulf turned this way and that, trying to see what was behind him. The growth’s miniature mouth was open and screaming.

  Randwulf started grabbing at it, tearing at it. A minute arm fell to the ground; blood sprayed in a threadlike stream. The arm crawled and flopped. Randwulf was staring at it, mouth wide, screaming silently.

  “Cut it off,” Silvanus’s voice brought them all back from the brink of utter madness. “Cut off the thing,” he said to Fredric, pointing to his malformed arm. The paladin slashed at the tentacle. Blood poured onto the floor, green and thick, not human at all.

  Randwulf dropped beside the blood, clawing and tearing at the thing on his neck. The tentacle flopped and slapped at Fredric.

  Elaine broke. She flung the door open and ran down the empty hallway. The sheriff waited at the bottom of the steps. He looked up. “Are they ready for us?”

  Elaine pushed past him and ran for the outer door. One thought ran through her head: Jonathan was right! Jonathan was right! She was corrupt. She was worse than corrupt.

  Elaine ran out into the street, ran into the winter cold and welcomed it. She didn’t know where she was going, just away. Away from that room and what she had done. The memory of how good it had felt to do all the healing. Even raising Averil to be a thing of pain had felt good. And some small part of her had wanted to touch the little figure, caress it, enjoy it. To touch the thing growing out of Silvanus’s body. She forced herself to be horrified, but in truth she was attracted to all of it. Some part of her would have enjoyed it all, if she had allowed it.

  It was that, that more than anything else that sent her running down the street. Part of her wanted to be back in that room playing with the things she had created.

  geRSaLIUS StOOD OVeR tHe gRaVe, fLaMe POURINg from his hands. They had dumped oil over the dirt so Gersalius’s fire would reach far into the melting ground. Beneath the blast of flame, the frozen earth had softened enough that Thordin and Konrad could begin to dig. Each time they reached frozen ground again, the mage sent more fire into the grave.

  Jonathan objected to this blatant use of magic, but he was out voted. And there was no time. It was early afternoon. Darkness would fall in a few hours.

  Gersalius lowered his hands. Flame licked up through the dirt here and there as the oil burned away. When the fire had died completely, Konrad leapt into the nearly empty grave. He plunged the shovel into the softened earth. The blade
grated on something more solid than soil.

  “I think we’ve struck coffin,” Konrad said. He dropped to hands and knees in the hole, scraping dirt away with his hands. Thordin lowered himself into the grave and began working at the other end. A coffin did appear, but it was rotted. The wood splintered at Konrad’s touch, flaking away in long strips. Thordin brushed the dirt away as carefully as he could. A narrow coffin was revealed.

  The foot of the box was completely crushed from rot and the weight of earth. Jonathan peered down into the grave. The sunlight beat down, making the snow sparkle and showed bones and the remains of a patterned dress.

  Thordin raised his hand, and Jonathan took it, helping the warrior out of the grave. There wasn’t enough room for both of them with the coffin to be opened.

  Konrad tried to raise the lid, but the wood shattered in his hands. He finally just started tearing great pieces up and handing them to Thordin, who placed the wood carefully on the ground. The body was mostly bones, with some hair attached to the skull. The dress had been some fine cloth. Fine cloth does not weather well in the damp and mildew of the grave. The cloth was thick with wet-looking mold.

  “Why would the undertaker’s wife not have risen from the grave?” Thordin asked.

  “Better, perhaps, to ask why the spell that raises the dead begins in her grave,” Gersalius said.

  “Do you know something, wizard?” Jonathan asked.

  Gersalius shrugged. “Only guesses, and I see from your face that you may have the same thoughts.”

  “We need to speak with the undertaker; that I know.” Jonathan stared down into the ruined grave. “Where is the sack I had you bring, Thordin?”

  “Here.” He raised a large burlap sack from the snowy ground.

  “Konrad, start handing up the bones.”

  “Jonathan, we’ve desecrated the grave enough.”

  “My theory was that someone was doing all this to make a better zombie. What if that were only part of the reason. What if Ashe wanted to raise his wife from the dead, not as a zombie, but as something more. Elaine told of very lifelike zombies. The townsfolk say that the people who died early are normal zombies, rotting corpses, but the later deaths are better preserved. Ashe is waiting until his spell is perfected; then he will raise his wife.”

  “But why take her body?” Konrad asked.

  “We will use it as a hostage,” Jonathan said.

  Gersalius smiled. “You can’t raise someone from the dead without a body to work on.”

  Jonathan nodded. “Exactly.”

  Konrad stared down at the skull with its scraggle of hair. “I can’t approve of Ashe’s methods, but I understand the desire. Beatrice’s death killed me, too.” He shook his head as if to clear away a bad dream.

  “But Elaine awaits you back at the inn,” Gersalius said.

  Konrad looked up, startled. Then a slow smile spread across his face. He nodded. “Yes.” In that one word, Jonathan heard an end to the long grieving. An end to bitterness.

  Konrad began to hand up the bones, freeing them from the molded cloth. Thordin placed them in the sack. The bones made a dry sound as they slithered against one another.

  Harkon Lukas sat just down the hill, listening. He had grown cold in the snow. The weak winter sunlight was not quite enough to warm him. They had discovered Ashe’s secret much faster than he had wanted them to. He had not counted on the magic-user. Ambrose had such a reputation for hating magic. It had surprised him.

  Harkon did not like being surprised. If they questioned Ashe, he might reveal that it was Harkon who had given him the idea for the poison and the spell, Harkon who had whispered in the undertaker’s ear that he might raise his wife back to life, Harkon who had broken his mind with talk of rotting corpses and his beloved wife as so much meat for the worms.

  He could not afford to have Ashe tell all. He was Harkon Lukas, a bard of some reputation, but not a known force of evil. To have the brotherhood know him for what he was would spoil everything.

  He could simply kill Ashe, but he wanted Konrad. Perhaps he could go offer his aid to the undertaker. Yes, that had possibilities. He could be Ashe’s ally, and in the process he could betray Ashe, steal Konrad’s body, and perhaps be a hero. He laughed silently, shoulders shaking with his inner mirth. Oh, that would be rich, indeed.

  He stood and walked quietly down the hillside. He didn’t have much time to work his plans. He needed Ashe alive for the trap and dead before he could spill the truth. Needed to appear as Ashe’s friend, and his enemy. A neat trick if he could pull it off. And, being Harkon Lukas, he was confident he could.

  eLaINe COLLaPSeD agaINSt a WaLL. SHe HaD fOUND her way back to the center of town. The fountain’s water bubbled and flowed where her magic had melted the ice. A woman dipped a bucket into the freestanding water. A small child, so bundled from the cold Elaine couldn’t tell what sex it was, clung to the woman’s skirts. She walked carefully across the icy pavement with the full bucket. It was pure water again, the poison burned away, thanks to Elaine’s magic.

  Of course, the townsfolk were all contaminated. If they died, even of natural causes, they would still rise. There had to be an antidote. Gersalius would know. She leaned into the cold stones of the building and wondered what to do. She could not bear to see Jonathan’s face when he learned what she had done, what her so-called healing had done. It was too horrible, and the fact that she was fascinated by it made it worse. She knew that the little man on Randwulf’s neck would have branched off, become independent, and she would have kept it, like a pet or …

  She had wanted it. It had been her creation, and she had wanted to touch it, hold it. She had wanted to hold and caress everything she had made. Every horrible thing. That was a knowledge she hugged to herself, to be shared with no one.

  If she asked Gersalius about an antidote, he might read her mind. Would he see the horror in her? Would he read the sickness in her soul? She could not bear it, but neither could she leave the village to its fate.

  She hid her face in her hands, shivering in the dying light. Night was coming. If she just stayed out in the streets, the dead would kill her, and she would rise as one of them. Elaine raised her face to the sky, too confused to cry.

  A tall man with pale skin and black hair stopped in front of her. “Are you all right?” His voice was kind. She didn’t deserve kindness.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I am Ashe, the undertaker. You are Elaine Clairn, are you not?”

  She nodded.

  “You look cold.” He pulled his own cloak off and offered it to her. It smelled of herbs and medicines, and reminded her of Konrad. She took the cloak because she was cold and didn’t know what else to do.

  “I was told you have been searching for a particular body.” He touched her long yellow hair, gently. “One that has hair like this, but a man, your brother.”

  She stepped away from the wall. The cloak trailed into the snow to puddle around her. “Have you found Blaine’s body?”

  “Yes, if a body is found in the village, they bring it to me for tending. Would you like to give your last respects? I must burn all bodies before dusk.” He glanced up at the darkening sky. “Time is nearing.”

  “Take me to him,” she said.

  He placed an arm around her shoulders, one hand lifting the cloak’s edge. “Wouldn’t want you to trip on the ice.”

  It was more physical closeness than Elaine was comfortable with, but he was taking her to Blaine. For that, she could put up with a little familiarity.

  He hurried her through the darkening streets. The light was failing. A soft blue dusk wrapped the village. He fumbled a key out of his tunic pocket. “The dead will be out soon; we must be inside.”

  Elaine agreed. He pushed her through the door and locked it behind them. He leaned on the door with a sigh. “Safe, I think.”

  The room had a richly woven carpet from wall to wall. Brilliant reds, blues, yellows covered the floor in cheerful luxury. The wal
ls were a dark polished wood. Velvet-covered chairs and couches bordered the walls. Lamps gave a warm glow to everything. And in the center of the room on little cloth-draped stands, were coffins.

  Each coffin was a different color, a different wood: the near-black of cherry, the thick brown of oak, the paleness of pine. Some had golden handles, some were just painted in gilt. One was white with silver edging—dainty, a child’s coffin.

  “Don’t have much use for these now,” he said. “Just wrap the bodies in shrouds and burn them. Only just figured out that fire stops them rising.”

  He helped her off with the cloak and spread it carelessly on a pale wooden coffin. The cloth looked strangely at home on the wood. “Just upstairs, in my best laying-out room.” He took a lamp from a wall sconce and led the way up a broad set of carpeted stairs.

  Carved doors bordered the hallway. He stopped before the last door on the left. Again he unlocked the door. “I have found that a locked door can keep the dead in as well as out. I lock all the doors just in case.”

  Having been on the streets of Cortton after dark, Elaine couldn’t argue with the precaution.

  Ashe pushed the door inward, raising the lamp high. The pool of golden light fell outward, gleaming in a fall of yellow hair.

  Elaine stood breathlessly in the doorway. She could not see his face, but the hair alone was enough. Blaine lay on a cloth-draped table near the far wall. The last rays of sunlight cast only grayness against the windows.

  Her breath fogged in the room, and she shivered. It was as cold in this room as outside. The windows were raised to let in the winter night. Cold to preserve the body.

  She walked as if in a dream. Even though she had seen Blaine in the street, his death had somehow become unreal. Perhaps this sense of unreality was a kindness. It made the grief less raw. If it simply wasn’t real, it couldn’t hurt you.