Vessel, Book I: The Advent
Page 16
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Dahrkren had been told where people went after they died.
He had spent hours, days and nights at a time, shut away in his tent, drinking and drugging himself into darkness. At first, he'd stuck with what he knew. He had cut his skin and read meaning in the colors of the scratches. He'd huffed snake venom, cracked bones, and examined the innards of chickens and toads.
It wasn't until he strayed into questionably illegal territory that he found results. He began to dig around, somewhat literally, into the dead themselves. He lay with them for hours, matching his pulse to where he had once been able to feel theirs, listening for answers.
What he discovered, or what the voice of death led him to believe, was that the afterlife was more miserable than he could imagine. He was told it was a place of eternal waste, suffering, and powerlessness. Death itself, as Dahrkren had seen so many times, was sweet and gentle. It gave a person power and invincibility―but only fleetingly. The actual force of death could never hang onto a person. It could not rescue anyone from the unending sorrow of the afterlife.
Or could it?
On that day, when Zabur met death, and all of Nifushunm faced it, Dahrkren was already sure of the answer. Death had shown him the way. He need only heed its orders and live forever. And here was his chance.
But convincing the king of Amphet of his sincerity was no cake walk. The man, you'll recall, had just seen his own daughter dashed to death against the ground, and he sincerely believed Dahrkren to be among those responsible. It took a lot of pleading indeed, a lot of powerful descriptions, to stop the king from blazing his hot trail of revenge right there.
Dahrkren had to think quickly. There was no way to convince the delusional king that Zabur's death had been an accident, so he proposed that an anonymous faction of diviners had committed this atrocity. He apologized shamelessly for their actions and professed a grand hatred for them. But most importantly, he promised that he could restore Zabur to life to make amends. He claimed that within a matter of days, if he could take Zabur's body across the river and into his own necromancer's tent, that she would walk out again, alive.
It's no surprise that this offer was met by more hostility, nor that Amphet's king was further infuriated by the very suggestion. But the air was uneasy, strangely sour as Dahrkren spoke, and the rioting did not immediately continue.
By then, the great necromancer had been thrown into the center of attention, freed from the crowd's grasp. He stepped, mostly unharrassed, to where Zabur's black horse lay. Once more, everything quieted, and everyone, including both kings, watched him carefully.
With quaking hands, Dahrkren pulled something from a bag at his side, something small and yellow. Holding it cupped and concealed in both hands, he paced the length of the horse and then stopped to kneel by its head. Its eyes were wide and rolled back, sunken into its hollow face, empty of all life. Dahrkren closed the eyes carefully and ran a hand down the bridge of its velvety black nose, over its nostrils and lips. He did not look up to watch for anyone's reactions. As far as he was concerned, he was alone, and the silence of the mob affirmed that feeling.
Dahrkren again took the yellow object in both hands. His whispered, unheard chants stopped abruptly when he twisted the thing between his fists, snapping it―whatever it was―in half. With urgency, he opened the horse's mouth and pushed the broken object down its throat.
No one moved. For well over a minute, Dahrkren continued to kneel, staring fixedly for signs of life from the horse, watching with fear. Fear for his own life if nothing happened, and fear for what it would mean if the animal awakened from death
His eyes didn't waver even as people started to shout again, calling him a fool, eager to get on with razing Nifushunm. But even these outbursts were half-hearted. The air was still heavy and acrid; to make noise in it felt deadly wrong. A few more moments passed. And then came the sound.
It was a low sound, not a whisper or a groan, but something deeper, an older sound.
It was the sound of the horse exhaling.
The animal breathed in with a grunt, and Dahrkren, his trace of a smile weighed down by a heavy terror, hurried to move out of its way. The horse twisted its head off the ground with a miraculously unbroken neck. It squealed and groaned, pulling its rear legs away from the slabs of the fallen column. These legs, which had moments ago been crushed and broken, now moved freely, filling out to their normal shape before every eye within view.
As the horse heaved itself to its feet, it hacked something up into the dirt. Dahrkren looked to the earth, seeing what he expected: small yellow tufts, damp and bright. Feathers from the broken and dying bird he had shoved down the horse's throat.
No one else noticed the feathers. Everyone except Dahrkren was surely watching Zabur's horse as it lunged in circles, snorting and striding, acting very much alive.