Halcyon Rising_Shadow of Life

by Stone Thomas

  Cindra grabbed my arm. “Don’t do this. You need allies, and this might ruin your chance at that.”

  “I’ll find allies another time,” I said. “I won’t risk losing you.”

  I pushed my way through the crowd, holding my weapon tight against my body so that the spear’s tip was inside the women’s cloak I wore. That left the long metal pole visible near my feet, but that alone wouldn’t necessarily look like a weapon. The elves I brushed past seemed more concerned that a human was in their city, distracted by my soft peach complexion. My luscious black hair. The undeniable humanness of being two feet taller than them.

  I added myself to the end of the procession, waiting my turn to take a fairyfly from a long table full of them. Fairyflies weren’t cuddly, loveable bugs. They didn’t speak, and their pastimes included stalking yours truly, and drinking the blood of newborn babies. Still, that didn’t give people a right to rip their bodies apart, especially not in the name of some useless tradition.

  A few other elves lined up behind me and we marched toward the stage. Finally, I took a glass bottle of my own.

  A small green insectoid woman banged her four fists against the bottle. Her long, thin legs kicked and she yelled, a muffled sound that was barely audible through the thick glass. Her eyes were tangerine, and when her wings slowed I could see they were purple with emerald splotches. It hadn’t occurred to me that fairyflies could look different from one another. Until now, I had only seen wings with a crisscrossed red-gold-green pattern, and eyes that were deep dark blue.

  I glanced at the person behind me. Her fairyfly had green eyes. The one ahead of me, silver.

  So I wasn’t being visited by fairyflies everywhere I went, it was a very specific fairyfly that followed me. The one I had personally freed not too long ago. She had developed some kind of attachment to me, and hunted me down across the known world.

  Someone cleared their throat and I looked up. I had shuffled along as far as I could go. Here was the body of Kingling Mourn.

  I opened the glass jar and reached inside, curling my fingers around the fairyfly. Her arms and wings folded against her body. She hissed, bearing her three teeth — two long incisors on top, and another on the bottom.

  I released the insect woman as quickly as possible, hoping she wouldn’t bite me. The gathered masses gasped as the fairyfly zoomed into the sky. A pair of elf guards had eyed me suspiciously during my walk to that point, and now they stepped toward me.

  “What you’re doing to these poor creatures,” I said. “It’s wrong. How much death does one event call for?”

  People were getting scandalized. Good. The guards came closer. Cindra still stood at the edge of the crowd, where she and Zid could make a quick escape.

  “Your kingling wouldn’t want this,” I said. “To risk speaking ill of the dead, I hear he was braver and kinder than anyone is willing to admit. Certainly more than his old lady over here.” The queenette clenched her jaw and squeezed harder on the glass bottle in her lap.

  “He may even have been — I’m just going to say it — an honorable genius.”

  One of the guards grabbed me by the cloak while the other kicked the back of my knee, forcing my legs to give out. My weapon hit the floor and rolled away, adding some shock value to the whole scene. The broad smile on my face must really have confused them. The crowd was visibly upset. I felt bad for busting up this guy’s wake, but at least I saved that innocent little bug lady in the process.

  “Prison farms?” one guard asked as the two dragged me toward the back of the stage.

  “Nah,” the other one said. “Just toss him out the trees. He won’t be much for climbing up again after that.”

  +39

  “Wait!” a man yelled from the back of the crowd. He pushed his way forward, an old elf with raggedy gray hair. “He’s a head priest!”

  It was the temple custodian I had met earlier. The guards rolled their eyes and dragged me against the stage’s back wall, gripping my arms tightly so I wouldn’t run off and cause another disturbance.

  “What lack of decorum,” the queenette said, rising from her ornate chair and walking across the stage in a slow, labored gait. “Enough with the procession. I will conduct the final popping so this spectacle will cease.”

  To my side sat a woman on a wooden throne, much like Queenette Glory’s but on a smaller scale. I hadn’t noticed her before, but now that I did I couldn’t look away. Her hair was short and swept to one side. Deep blue eyes looked out from a soft yellow face. Many of the elves here were like lemons or mustard, but her skin reminded me of Nola’s. Soft, radiant.

  She was dressed like a royal, her silk shirt adorned with jewels and gold trim. She was a beautiful woman in miniature, sitting on a throne that kept her feet from touching the floor.

  “You have an odd way of paying respects,” she said. I looked away, caught in the act of staring. There was no malice in her voice though, only amusement.

  “I was trying to get arrested,” I said. “Someone in your prison farm has information I need.”

  “Perhaps I can offer some help. I’m Tanny, with two N’s. I am the heir apparent.”

  “Arden,” I said. “Hochbright with three H’s. Why is everyone so obsessed with spelling?”

  “Formalities,” she said. “Elves were fond of using the old language for names, and visitors to the court have long since offered their name’s spelling convention as a show of good faith. I recognize that human names are meaningless. In honesty, so is Tanny. It’s only a nickname after all. We’re a people of tradition though, so spell we must.”

  I nodded. “Despite making an ass out of myself, I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “They aren’t my parents,” she said, “if that’s what you mean. An heir to the throne is chosen by oracles, not blood. Another relic of tradition.”

  The old queenette loomed over her husband’s body, perching on a stool so that she could gaze down at the casket from above. She sat there a long time in silence, covered from head to toe in fur-trimmed black clothing and large jewels. The crown on her head was tucked firmly behind her long pointy ears.

  She clutched a fairyfly in her hand the way a bride holds a bouquet. The insect captive hissed and bared its teeth, but it lacked the mobility to lean forward and bite the queenette’s fingers.

  “You said you could help?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Tanny said. “By way of advice. Steer clear of the prison farms. In all my time as heir apparent, I haven’t known a single person to serve their sentence in full.”

  “What does—” The elf guards holding me back tightened their grip. I lowered my voice. “What does that mean?”

  “They all die,” she said. “The prison farms are a death sentence.”

  Queenette Glory, wet-faced and closed-mouthed, held the fairyfly out with one hand, then used the other to pop its wings from its back.

  The insect howled in pain, then cried a single tear of her own. It fell like a diamond, full of sharp edges that caught the light at strange angles as it fell onto the kingling’s body. She watched him for a moment, then gasped.

  The kingling sat up straight.

  Tanny jumped from her seat, alarm on her face. The people in the crowd simply cheered. This is what they had hoped for with every wake, and today they finally got it. The guards’ grip on my arms loosened.

  I scanned the crowd, but they were becoming unruly. The queenette hugged her husband’s stiff body. His eyes were glassy and his skin sagged. His mouth still hung open, dumb and dry.

  “Delicious,” Savange said. A shape like an old woman stepped out of the shadows behind the throne. Savange stalked her shaded shape closer to the royal pair.

  “You know something,” I whispered. “Tell me.”

  “But then you’ll stop the show,” she said.

  “Tanny,” I said. “What do you know about zombies?”

  She frowned. “We train for skills that prolong the moment of death to allow loved ones mor
e time together, or for the extraction of information from the recently deceased. The necromancy you describe, the raising of cadavers as mindless wanderers, is illegal.”

  “Good to know,” I said, “but totally irrelevant. Illegal or not, it’s happening. Your kingling is proof. Now tell me how it works.”

  The guards had dropped my arms by then and walked closer to their resurrected kingling.

  “A necromancer would use his skills to control the dead, and to channel his power through them. He’d turn cadavers into puppets and cast his own spells through their hands. He wouldn’t maintain more than one or two though, not without a tremendous amount of power. Or…”

  “Or what?”

  “Or a book of the dead,” she said. “But those are—”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Illegal. Damn you Mayor Ingriss! Aren’t rural out-of-the-way towns like Valleyvale supposed to burn books? Not hoard all the evil ones?”

  I used Call to Arms to summon my spear back to my hands as Zid emerged from the stairwell. A contingent of guards pushed past her, but they came in a slow, shambling gait. Some were armed.

  “You’re right,” Tanny said. “We’re under attack. I can’t be here or I’m at risk. There is no heir to the throne after me.” She slipped away, deeper into the palace that sat behind the stage. She was regal, even in an emergency, taking purposeful strides toward the palace steps and holding her flowing black dress in pinched fingers at the hips to keep from stepping on the fabric.

  The crowd huddled tight, panicking as an army of undead elves encroached on all sides and corralled the small yellow people into the boardwalk courtyard’s center. Cindra was in that crowd. I couldn’t leave now, couldn’t beg for arrest and let the Mournglory guards handle their own. I was in too deep.

  Zid stood at the edge of it all, her sword hand shaking. “I’m sorry,” she yelled. “There are too many. I’m not an army.” She turned and ran from the second-floor pavilion, rushing toward the stairs that led down and away from the palace.

  Queenette Glory looked confused. Here was a woman with the reanimated corpse of her husband in her arms, but she didn’t look happy. She looked like someone holding a sweaty gym sock. The kingling’s body leaked some kind of long-congealed fluid and his eyes were milky white.

  Then he turned toward her, looked up at her tear-soaked face, and wrapped his hands around her yellow, wrinkly throat. Her eyes opened in shock as her own hands reached for his.

  Any minute now, he’d take her life, then launch a tangled black wad of stringy evil magic to resurrect the queenette. A pair of zombie monarchs to lead the city into Duul’s open arms.

  The zombie guards closed in, but didn’t lash out. Behind them, a dozen lumentors emerged, walking through the wooden walls that lined the courtyard. Of course. Today’s zombies are yesterday’s murder victims, which meant old rifts and lumentors lying in wait.

  There was something different about these ghosts though. Their bodies were comprised of white light, but they pulsed with red energy, then blue. They stepped into the sun without fear.

  Tendrils of red-then-blue magic, thin as a spider’s web, came from overhead. They connected with lumentors and zombies alike. It strengthened them, controlled them. I traced the trail of magic to a balcony above. Tucked behind a wooden column that formed the frame of the balcony’s arched doorway stood a man with a black silk robe. A red-then-blue light pulsed in his hands.

  I raced up the palace steps.

  The palace was an architectural wonder, a castle carved from a single piece of wood, inside a still-growing tree. A central stairway led up and further inside, the way Tanny had gone. On each side sat a smaller spiral stairwell toward the long balcony that stretched across the palace’s front wall.

  Tanny screamed.

  The elf princess raced back down the central staircase, a zombie chasing behind her. “There are more!” she yelled.

  “Tanny,” I said, “tell me you have a special class.”

  “I cast protective wards,” she said.

  “Start with yourself and go, protect your people.” She hid behind me while I stabbed forward, forcing her zombie pursuer to jump back. Four more raced down the front stairs. I held a Piercing Blow, charging up the power in my lance, but the zombies lacked the capacity for fear.

  When I looked over my shoulder, Tanny’s body was surrounded by a wispy blue fog. She was already fleeing the temple.

  I played it back in my mind. Start with yourself? Idiot. Start with me, Tanny, start with me!

  The light from my attack drew a few lumentors’ attention. They stepped out of the woodwork, passing through the walls with bodies made purely of energy. These souls needed bodies, but they swept past the zombies as if those bodies didn’t count.

  Well, if dead bodies meant nothing to them, it was time to play dead. I dug the pseudomortis potion from my pocket, popped it open, and poured it into my mouth.

  “Poured” is a generous description. The potion was a dense gray gunk with flecks of red, but it didn’t rush from the bottle like a normal liquid. It oozed and globbed, a thick paste that sludged onto my tongue, slow and putrid like an oatmeal of fetid decay.

  Before I could swallow the first mouthful of bottled death, the ice of a thousand snow cones coursed through my body. It was brain freeze, spleen freeze — even my uvula was cold. The lumentors were draining me for everything I was worth.

  Then, finally, it happened. A wad of potion worked its way down my throat and hit my stomach. My body turned gray, with patches of cracked skin and blackened veins replacing my normal, peachy tone.

  The lumentors backed off. They regarded me curiously for a moment, then wandered back toward the courtyard. They thought I was dead!

  Unfortunately, so did the zombies. All five of them circled me, conjuring tangled balls of stringy necromancy magic in their palms. Zombies weren’t bored by the dead. Quite the opposite. They intended to place me under their control.

  +40

  Five zombified elves hurled black magic spells designed to take control of the undead. I raised one hand to block my ashen, zombie-esque face, as if that would do anything. The magic splatted against my body, sinking into my clothing and skin, filling me with nothingness.

  Or, rather, with nothing. The spells had no effect on a non-dead like me! The zombies, unable to feel confused by their failure, conjured another round of spells. Thin strands of magic, changing constantly from red to blue, gave away the location of the caster controlling them. I ran up the spiral staircase, following the cracking sound of freshly cast magic until I faced a black-robed wizard hiding just inside a balcony window.

  “So you’re the one whose… man, you’re ugly.”

  He was a beastkin. He had to be. His nose was a long bristly snout like a boar’s. His dark beard blended into the thick mat of brown hair that covered his neck and chest. He had the kind of tusks jutting from his mouth that prevented his lips from closing against each other, and a thick trail of drool hung from one side.

  “Ugly and glorious,” Savange said. Her shadow stood by his side, an elderly woman with a voice that spoke a raspy whisper in my ear. “Klimog the swinekin. His secrets are a deep trench through time, filled with blood and false intention. I’m tempted to stray, dear priest. Even a swarthling’s heart can flutter.”

  The man didn’t look up. In his hands sat a book bound in red leather with brilliant blue lettering on the cover. Its pages burned away as he read from it, small black flakes of parchment falling to the floor by his feet. It was the ghost book.

  I reached for it. “Look at me when I’m talking to— YOW!”

  My hand burned from the power emanating from the book’s scorched pages. The robed man just kept reading. His voice was a low mumble, his lips barely moving.

  In the courtyard below, elves cowered against each other. Lumentors probed the terrified elves, but they didn’t rush to sap their energy and climb inside their bodies. They acted like they had all the time in the world
, their spectral forms awash in the ghost book’s magic glow. They were shopping for bodies, and the only elves they completely ignored were the ones that looked undead already, like me.

  “I guess we’ll do this the hard way,” I said. “Aaaah!” I charged, knocking my shoulder into him and breaking his concentration. When he stopped mumbling words off the pages of that book, the pages stopped burning and the undead in the courtyard began to lose their glow.

  “You!” he yelled. “Kāya should have detained you until I had bodies for Duul’s lost army!”

  It was all starting to click. Duul’s attack on Mournglory required the ghost book, from Valleyvale, the city he stole for Kāya and the site of a shrine that would increase Duul’s power. Mournglory, the seat of life and death magic, was the home to Valona’s former temple — a bargaining chip that might force her to open a rift to blot out our sky and release hell’s spectral army for Klimog to lead. There was a link missing though. Somehow, that power over spirits must play a role in Kāya’s plan for Nola.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s in it for you?”

  “For me?” He asked. “A new world order. I have worshipped Duul for decades in secret, strengthening him with my prayers, feeding him my soul. He rewards his faithful. I will live forever!” He resumed his mumbled incantations, reigniting the ghost book’s pages.

  “That’s nonsense,” I said. “Hand over the book.”

  Klimog looked at me and smiled. At least, that’s what I assumed he was doing in his own tusky, drooly sort of way. He stopped reading from his book just long enough to lean forward and say in a low, growly voice, “Attack.”

  People screamed throughout the courtyard. The lumentors sank their glowing weapons into nearby elves while the zombies that flanked the crowd from all sides started swinging their bone daggers.

  “Give it!” I said, grasping the book tight.