by A J Dalton
NECROMANCER’S GAMBIT
BOOK ONE OF THE FLESH AND BONE TRILOGY
CHAPTER 1: Dearly Beloved
The corpse opened its eyes. It lay on the wooden table staring blankly at the rafters of the thatched roof above it. It didn’t understand what it saw. It was hardly aware of itself.
Where?
Autonomic responses began to kick in and it blinked. Its dead eyes did not require moistening, of course, but it couldn’t know that yet.
What?
Its chest rose as it tried to draw breath. Air whistled past the ragged edges of the gaping wound in its front, one of its lungs having been punctured by the spear that had ended its life. A moan rattled from its throat.
Who?
With the scientific detachment characteristic of all necromancers, Mordius stood watching the animee struggle. Beyond making sure that the flows of his magic remained smooth and constant and so did not burn out the synapses in the animee’s brain prematurely, there wasn’t much more he could do. He would simply have to wait to see if the mercenaries had managed to get the body off the battlefield and to his home fast enough to avoid the dead brain decomposing too far. It was always the soft tissue that went first – the brain, the lungs, the eyes, the palate... If a necromancer couldn’t get to a body within the first few hours, it would only be able to follow the most basic of instructions and carry out the most mechanical of tasks, like fetching and carrying.
Mordius had spent everything he had on hiring the mercenaries to procure the fresh body of a hero. It had also taken all his magical reserves to raise one so newly deceased. This moment was the culmination of a lifetime of dedication to his old master, Dualor, and the necromatic art. It had to work or all of his years of hard, and sometimes painful, study would have been for nothing!
He offered up a silent prayer as he continued to watch the undead hero. Suddenly, the soldier sat up and looked straight at him with a glassy eye. Startled that the animee was able to co-ordinate its movements so easily, Mordius took an involuntary step backwards. He chastised himself, knowing it was important that he stand his ground from the beginning so that the animee would not think to challenge the mastery of the necromancer. Maybe he should have strapped the thing down before reviving it, but the thought had not occurred to him earlier.
The animee moved its jaw uselessly, not even managing to vocalise a gasp. It looked at Mordius in mute appeal. The animee clearly retained instinct and intellect along with a command of its body! Excited but wary, Mordius slowly approached and used a rag to plug the ugly hole that had been left when he’d removed the offending, fatal spear.
The animee’s chest cavity slowly filled and he found his voice. There was only a trace of the unsteady timbre that characterised animees raised quickly enough after death so that they could still speak.
‘Who?’ it rasped
‘I am Mordius,’ the necromancer enunciated carefully. It would need time to relearn the processing of even simple information and conversation.
‘Noo! Who I?’
‘Oh, I see. You are a soldier.’ That was normally as much character or identity information an animee needed or could handle.
‘Sol-dier. Name!’ The animee swung its legs round so that they hung off the table.
Mordius shuffled back another half step and licked suddenly dry lips. ‘You are... are Saltar,’ he conjured.
The animee pushed itself off the table and tottered slightly. It caught itself with a hand on the table and planted its feet wider apart. Even so, it couldn’t stop its body from swaying. It looked Mordius in the eye again and the necromancer held his breath. The face of an animee could rarely be read.
‘No memory. Where am I? What am I?’
Mordius steeled himself. The thing was developing an awareness and sense of self frighteningly quickly. ‘You are in my home. You are safe. Safe, do you understand that?’
‘Yes. I don’t know how I do. Tell me.’
Mordius resisted the urge to wipe the sweat beading on his brow. He cleared his throat and said in a relatively steady voice, ‘I will tell you the truth. I have to. Otherwise, when stray memories from your life return, you will know I lied and turn on me.’
‘I understand truth.’
Mordius took a deep breath. ‘You were found on a battlefield.’
‘I understand.’
‘There were slain bodies all around you. You were clearly a great warrior, a King’s hero. But you were dead when found. I had you brought back and I raised you.’
‘I was dead.’
‘Yes, Saltar.’
‘Magic!’ the animee spat. ‘I am dead! This is wrong!’ and he lurched at Mordius.
The necromancer leapt back and put the large table between them. The animee’s movements were slow and uncoordinated. But how long would they remain so? Mordius spoke faster.
‘Yes, Saltar, it is my magic that keeps you alive. Do you really want me to remove it? Do you want to fall back into rot and decay? Food for the maggots? I have given you new life!’
‘You have trapped my spirit in this dead body. I cannot pass onto… onto… curse you! I cannot remember where the dead go. This is evil. Release me!’ and he clearly tried to roar his rage although his vocal chords would not let him.
‘There is hope,’ Mordius said gently, placatingly.
‘What?’ and the animee stilled.
‘It is only my magic that sustains you now. If I die, you are ended. If you come to an end, I will be diminished. In many ways, I have given you something of myself. But there is hope if you give me something in return.’
The animee stayed where he was. Mordius sighed with relief. He had him hooked. It was fortunate that this animee still had a mind to which he could appeal. No, not fortunate. He had deliberately sought him out, hadn’t he, this warrior who had performed the greatest of deeds and been less than an hour dead? And it had taken every last vestige of his power, power enough to raise a whole army of dusty, old bones if that had been his desire. But a mindless army was no good to him. He would need something altogether different if the Great Project was ever to have any hope of success. He needed “Saltar”, a thinking being with initiative, one who could talk and almost pass as alive. He was a much more powerful weapon. Or was he an ally really? Yes, Saltar was clearly too difficult to control for him to be classed as a simple tool or weapon. He had skills, knowledge and experience that could help in the discovery of treasures and secrets.
‘Tell me!’ Saltar wheezed.
Funny how Saltar was presuming to command where the necromancer was usually the master. ‘Have you heard of the Heart of Harpedon?’
‘No.’
‘All necromancers fight to hold sway over the dead. Each has their own reason, but most are driven by fear of their own mortality. There are many necromancers in this kingdom alone, however, so none of them can rule Death absolutely while the others survive. If one dies, the power of the others increases. If they are all murdered bar one, then that one will become immortal, you see.’
‘No. You must tell me of Harpedon!’ Saltar reminded him.
‘Yes, of course!’ Mordius said sharply, flustered by the interruption. ‘Well, basically, the great necromancer Harpedon outwitted all his adversaries and survived to become the last of the necromancers. He was Death’s only master until he was betrayed by his own followers. Quite simply, they stole his beating heart from him and destroyed his body. The Heart of Harpedon is rumoured to exist still, and would be a magical item of untold power in the hands of the right necromancer. If you serve me so that it can be retrieved, I will resurrect you to full life. Do yo
u understand what it is that I offer you?’
The animee’s eyes burned with cold hatred. ‘I am dead!’ he spat.
‘But you don’t have to be!’
The animee took heavy, staggering steps to get around the table and lay his hands on Mordius. The necromancer was caught flat-footed and his eyes widened in sudden panic. He fumbled with the flows of his magic, desperately trying to cut them off and halt the animee, but his mind was racing and his thoughts tumbled. To his considerable relief, the animee caught his hip clumsily on the corner of the kitchen table and was knocked off balance. The creature crashed into the nearby wall.
Mordius skipped back out of reach and took a steadying breath. ‘Think about the life you’re throwing away, Saltar! You can return to your wife and share her love once more. You can see your children again and hold them in your arms. You can watch over them as they grow, and be the proud father they so very much need.’
Saltar glared balefully at him, but the words had found their mark. ‘I-I have children?’
‘Of course!’ Mordius smoothly replied, smiling secretly to himself. He knew the dead craved the warmth of life. They yearned to feel again, to be the full, emotional beings their minds dimly remembered them once having been. And the memories and instincts in Saltar would be greater than in most because he was risen so soon after death.
‘Until then, Saltar, we can be friends united in a common cause.’
‘Friends!’ Saltar growled. ‘I think not.’
‘Ahh! But I will give you time to consider. I would tell you to sleep on it but you cannot actually sleep. An animee is, by definition, always animated. You will try to sleep and fail, I’m afraid.’
‘Is there nothing human left to me? What of eating and drinking?’ the animee asked incongruously.
‘You will not need to eat or drink, but you will be capable of it,’ Mordius said, relaxing slightly now that a degree of curiosity had asserted itself in Saltar and the soldier was no longer trying to kill him. Mordius decided to encourage the animee’s simple train of thought, even if only to allow himself further time to regain some calm. ‘Your body will not digest food though, so you may be forced to throw it back up to get rid of it. Drink is slightly different. That will go straight through you, but it will not come out as urine. If you drink red wine, you will piss red wine.’
‘So I will not get drunk?’
‘No. The alcohol will not pass into your blood. Your blood and the oxygen for your brain has been replaced by the flows of my magic. The alcohol cannot pass into my magic. However, if I get drunk, my grip on the magic may slip and you may find yourself experiencing some side-effects – loss of co-ordination, disorientation, and so on. Much like being drunk, I suppose. Never really thought of it like that before.’
‘But at least I will have the pleasure of a drink’s taste and texture?’
‘Probably. Don’t know really. I’ve never had an animee as fresh as you. I imagine you’ll get something out of it, albeit that the experience will be a bit duller than what you experienced when alive.’
Saltar stood staring blankly at the small necromancer. ‘It is late,’ he said.
Mordius blinked, thrown by the apparently random observation. It must be a misfire amongst the animee’s cerebral synapses. It was to be expected. Mordius smiled reassuringly.
‘Yes, I will be turning in for the night. You can make yourself comfortable in here for the night. There are some books there on the shelf if you like. You can read, can’t you?’
‘I-I don’t know.’
‘Good night, then. My chamber’s through here.’
Mordius turned hurriedly and fled through a door at the back of the room. The door was made of thick oak and seemed sturdily made. Saltar heard Mordius slide a heavy bolt across it once it was closed.
***
Mordius leaned with his back against the door, his heart thumping loudly. It was all he could do to keep his legs under him. He wiped a trembling hand across his brow. Of course, he’d created numerous animees in the past, but he’d never faced anything like Saltar before. It was unnerving how alive the thing actually seemed. Mordius was terrified he would have no control whatsoever over the unpredictable creature, despite the years of hard-won knowledge and experience.
As a young apprentice, he’d almost broken his back farming his master’s small patch of unforgiving land and getting their produce to market. His eyesight was no longer what it once was either, since the routine chores of looking after the two of them had taken all the hours of natural light available and he’d only had the hours of darkness during which to pore over ancient almanacs by flickering candlelight and to practise necromatic arts at his master’s instruction.
Where some might have thrived on the hard, physical labour of living off the land, the young Mordius had only managed to win strained tendons, torn ligaments and pulled muscles for himself. His diminutive frame simply seemed incapable of putting on any muscle or bulk, even during the seasons when meat was in ready supply. He had a constant pain between his shoulder blades as if he’d been impaled on a knife. He’d wondered if he’d ever be able to lie flat again without discomfort. Breathing was always difficult and it meant his sleep suffered too. The dark rings round his eyes were all but permanent and made him look like one of the corpses on which he experimented.
The long nights of study had given him a squint in his right eye and he now found he saw best if he looked at things slightly askance, like a bird that turns its head side on before it can judge if the movement it has glimpsed from the corner of its eye is panicked prey or prowling predator. Yes, he could have avoided the deterioration of his eyesight by significantly reducing the hours spent on deciphering the spidery handwriting of long lost scholars and mystics, but the truth was that the work of a necromancer was most safely conducted under cover of darkness, when a majority of travellers and neighbours were likely abed.
Every necromancer went to extreme lengths to keep their activity hidden from prying eyes, since even the suspicion of a magician in the area was bound to lead to a local witch-hunt. Every community had those who were recently bereaved, religious fanatics or in the service of the intolerant Crown. Of course, Dualor had made sure to choose a cottage in an out of the way place for himself and Mordius, but their work still required them to be within reach of a regular supply of new corpses. Besides, whether they lived far afield or not, the gods were not about to let a pair of necromancers remain undisturbed for long, and frequently the feet of locals were guided past the cottage door, even though the dwelling was well off the beaten path.
Darkness, then, was the only friend and ally a necromancer had. However, there had been another reason why the young Mordius had striven so hard to increase his knowledge and perfect his skills. There was another reason why he had driven himself to the point of collapse every night, when he would experience headaches, double vision and dizziness; and that reason had been that time was running out. Dualor was dying. The dear, old man who had saved Mordius from the tyranny of his father was finally reaching his end. His master had lived more years than was natural for any mortal but, powerful as he was, he could not hold death back forever.
Dualor had explained that it was his rapidly advancing age that had been one of the principle reasons for his deciding to take on the young and gratefully eager Mordius as an apprentice. The old necromancer had known that his health and powers would inevitably begin to wane and that he would be unlikely to be able to complete the Great Project alone, the project to find the Heart of Harpedon and truly conquer death.
As Dualor had deteriorated, it had increasingly begun to look like Mordius would have to take the project forward on his own. If the worst were to happen to his master, then securing the Heart would allow Mordius to restore him to full life. Then, Mordius would not have to be alone.
Yet Mordius still hadn’t fully mastered the necromatic arts. And without the necessary power to raise an animee like Saltar, all would be lost, as he woul
dn’t have much chance of surviving long enough in the outside world to secure the Heart.
When Dualor had started to become unsteady on his feet and had taken to retiring to his bed even while the sun was still above the horizon, Mordius had worked in a near frenzy to learn more and more difficult rituals and incantations. But Dualor was no longer there to guide him when he didn’t understand something.
Mordius sighed and blinked back the tears as he remembered that terrible morning a few weeks ago when he had opened the shutters and found his master dead on his mean pallet. Mordius had spent the whole day cradling the silvered head in his lap. The only person he’d ever loved was gone, before he’d had a chance to say goodbye, before he’d had the chance to say just how grateful he was, before… before everything that was to come, everything that would be only because of Dualor’s kindness.
In a moment of denial, Mordius had considered raising Dualor back from the dead there and then. Surely they could continue in the same way as they had before! They could complete the Great Project together and then everything would be alright. They would never have to worry about being discovered by death again. If only the Great Project didn’t require so much power! If Mordius were to raise his master, then he would have nothing left for the hero that the Great Project required.
The Great Project was the only meaning left to Mordius. Dualor had effectively bequeathed the project to him – it was at once something by which Mordius could remember his master, and something by which his master lived on. It was the embodiment of his living and dying wish. It was now of all-consuming importance. It would be the saving of both Mordius and his master.
When the hero’s body had finally been delivered to him by the mercenaries, Mordius had been terrified he did not have the skill or strength to raise him. But he hadn’t dared to fail. It was the first step on the journey towards fully resurrecting his master, so that Dualor would live as warm flesh and blood rather than ever having to cling onto the half-existence of being an animee.
***
