Necromancer: Book Ten Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

  “You have defiled my home and slain my beloved, Minalan the Spellmonger! There is no word for the levels of suffering you will endure for that!” He paused only long enough to blast Rondal, who was among the first to recover, before he closed his eyes for a moment.

  “You like this sport?” he continued, as he parried a blow from Tyndal – at regular speed. His blast had disrupted many of our warmagic spells. He turned to sweep Mavone off his feet, before he could attack.

  “I am fond of sport,” he said, with a malevolent leer. “I shall give you your full measure, if you wish. Cut me, cleave me, do your worst – and I will have a new body by daybreak!” he sneered, lashing at Sandoval as he tried to rise. “You call me the Necromancer – do you not think I have earned that title? Death and life are waking and sleeping to me. Slay me once and I will return to haunt you a thousand times, in a hundred different bodies!”

  As he spoke four Nemovorti materialized from the Waypoint, black-robed over their armor, each carrying a fearsome weapon. I pushed myself quickly to my feet, pulling Blizzard in front of me while I called Twilight to my hand by its nugget of knot coral. My friends spread out, wary of the new threat.

  “Aw, did someone mess up your bed?” I taunted, trying to draw his attention to me – away from my comrades. They had their hands full, as the Nemovorti moved to reinforce their dark master.

  “I’ve been intrigued by your race since I awoke,” Korbal said in a self-indulgent voice, as he continued to fight. “Your unexpected appearance, your novelty, your intelligence, the ease with which we can slip into your bodies . . . it was all quite fascinating.

  “I know very little about the history of your race, why you came here and from whence . . . but I look forward to understanding everything . . . from the ashes of your civilization, whilst I stir them with the blackened bones of your people!” he finished with a shout, and aimed a necromantic blast from the vicinity of Sheruel’s motionless nose at me.

  I raised Blizzard and Twilight in a cross, activating my most powerful defensive spells. While they worked, they only mitigated the blast. If it hadn’t been for my anti-magic dragonhide breastplate, he might have cut me in two.

  “We’re a bit tougher than you might think,” I coughed, as the Nemovorti behind him began closing with their master. “And we’re full of surprises!”

  I sent a blast back – not the Expiry, that took too much concentration, but a nasty gout of blue fire popped out. I didn’t think it would hurt him – his defenses were clearly too strong for that – but I hoped it would distract him. Because the moment I cast it into his ruined face I dove to my left and rolled.

  There was no more time for witty banter, after that – we were all fighting for our lives in a mad melee of magic and steel. Two more Nemovorti sprang through the Ways, weapons in hand – where one immediately got brained by Sire Cei’s warhammer. It was well-struck, but the reinforcements didn’t bode well.

  Thankfully, we were not fighting alone. While I engaged a foul-smelling yellow-eyed undead bastard with a greatsword, something streaked by me so fast I couldn’t see it – right through the Nemovort’s head.

  I thought it was a spell, at first, until I heard Lilastien cheering on the ridge. I spared a moment to glance around, and saw the Thoughtful Knife impale one of our foes through the chest before slicing the head off the next with the edge of its wing. Dara must have left the thing up there, before she took off.

  Dara made her presence known a moment later when a sky bolt blossomed from the face of the Nemovort keeping Mavone from stabbing Korbal in the back. The sound of wings filled the air as Fanciful sailed nimbly overhead before diving and striking at Korbal, himself. She was a comparatively small bird, for a giant hawk, but she was all fearsome face and feathers as her steel-clad talons tore his shoulder open through his mail.

  “What is that?” he screamed, blasting above him blindly with Sheruel The Staff as his left shoulder sagged. Dara was long gone, of course – hawks are fast – but the distraction was enough so that Tyndal rolled past the Nemovort he fought and tackled Korbal at the knees. A fraction of a moment later Rondal threw himself at his shoulder, on the opposite side. Neither one was sufficient to knock Korbal down on their own, but together they bowled him over.

  His staff was knocked wide, and I hit him with the Expiry, again, lancing his already-wounded shoulder with desiccating heat and painful disruption. Korbal howled in agony as Tyndal kicked his giant staff out of his hand . . . and into range of Sire Cei’s warhammer.

  I could tell what was going to happen even as it unfolded, but I was powerless to stop it. With the most sublime expression of serendipitous satisfaction, Sire Cei of Sevendor gave a mighty, wordless shout and threw every bit of emotional energy he had into splitting Sheruel into a thousand pieces.

  The resulting shock made the destruction of Dunselen’s witchstone at Greenflower look like a holiday cantrip. An unremitting wave of arcane power exploded from the great irionite sphere, shattering every spell in play. All of us were tossed into the air by the force of the blow, tossed back and into the ground, hard.

  It wasn’t the explosion that was problematic – it was the pure thaumaturgic wave that shocked every cell in my body. Once again, my dragonhide breastplate likely preserved my life . . . that and the Handmaiden.

  I don’t know exactly what she did, but she somehow contained a portion of the blast – or at least mitigated it. Perhaps she absorbed it, or deflected it – I don’t know, and I don’t really even have a working theory.

  But she protected me. Despite all reason, I awoke, before anyone else. The Handmaiden had changed me in some way, made me a little better, perhaps, and that allowed me to weather the arcane tempest better than my comrades.

  When I opened my eyes, the Magolith hovered protectively over me, pulsing like it was purring. My entire brain was on fire with the residue of the blast, and it was a struggle to force myself even to my elbows to peer around at the battlefield.

  All were prone and unmoving, their bodies flung haphazardly around the place. A few trembled, quivered, moaned or moved in small ways that told me the blast might not have proven fatal, in itself. But the Nemovort warrior I’d been fighting had fared worse. His body was not merely crumpled, but his flesh was blasted into a powder by the blast.

  “That’s what happens, when you replace a perfectly good biological central nervous system with a magically-dependent necromantic architecture!” I sneered, weakly, as I summoned the strength to pull myself to my hands and knees.

  Blizzard was broken, the enchantments overloaded and the shaft of the weirwood staff shattered in three places. I didn’t see Twilight anywhere. I groaned as I pulled myself entirely to my feet, my every nerve complaining bitterly. My head swam, and I stumbled just trying to get both feet under me.

  I blinked through painful eyes as I looked around. The mists were swirling, unconcerned with the battle that had raged here just minutes before. The redoubt was silent, with only the distant cries of wyverns in the distance.

  Korbal was still laying in the center, where he’d fallen. He wasn’t breathing.

  But then I realized he was undead – he only breathed when he needed to speak.

  Nearby was the sphere of irionite encasing Sheruel, the pale green amber still locked behind bands of metal that fastened it to the staff. There was a faint shimmer around the thing, and I was disappointed that I didn’t find a rotted head in a pile of green gravel.

  But there was a jagged crack along the left face of the sphere, and around the crack the irionite had darkened until it was almost black.

  I glanced from the staff to Korbal, his great body lying there, vulnerable. His shoulder was laid open by the hawk, his side was chewed up by the Expiry, and his face and arms had been battered, sliced, and bashed, leaving his pale skin stained with the black ichor that served as his blood.

  “You . . . arrogant . . . bastard,” I breathed, forcing myself to say it aloud though my chest ached with e
very breath – I must have broken a rib. Every word hurt, but some things needed to be said.

  I didn’t have my staff. I didn’t have my sword. None of the warwands I had was going to be sufficient.

  I almost burst out laughing – here were both of my enemies laying at my mercy, and I didn’t have so much as a rock to beat them with.

  Not a rock, I realized. A Magolith.

  The sphere still floated serenely nearby, pulsing and glowing. I reached out to it – literally. My mind was still far too turmoiled to manage an arcane link without physical contact. My fingers closed on it again, and I felt the Handmaiden go to work on me.

  A few moments of her pinching, shearing, snipping, and repairing, I felt much better. And I felt I had a better understanding, or at least a stronger rapport, with the mighty paraclete.

  We had an understanding. Though our acquaintance was short, I felt as if she was starting to react to me a little.

  And I suddenly knew what I could do.

  Still holding the Magolith in my hands, I stumbled over to where Korbal was lying and stood over his head.

  “You like our bodies?” I asked, as I positioned the Magolith over his blank face. “Then enjoy this one forever, you son of a bitch!” I snarled, and turned the Handmaiden loose on him.

  She wasn’t a weapon. She didn’t kill him – she wasn’t a killer. She wasn’t a predator.

  She fixed things. Under my direction, she fixed Korbal, stitching his enneagram permanently into his rotting corpse. I did not understand the technical elements of what was going on, but she communicated enough to me.

  There would be no new body for him. He was condemned to this one, until it gave out. It would not be able to separate his spirit from his rotting corpse. I couldn’t take his life, I didn’t have the means. Even with the blast the necromantic power in Korbal was sustaining him. His body was toughened beyond easy injury, and I could not kill him.

  But his immortality was in abeyance, now. He was condemned to live in that gigantic, putrid, damaged wreck of a giant corpse. That was something.

  I managed one last effort, before I passed out. I called Pentandra, mind-to-mind – but only with the Handmaiden’s help.

  Come get us, I said, it’s finished.

  And collapsed.

  My dreams were scattered and scrambled, a torturous combination of memory and terror wrapped in a cloak of skewed perception. Pain and confusion, fear and anxiety hunted me as my mind drifted in unconsciousness.

  I don’t have a lot of memories of that period, nor do I wish to. I had seen too many horrors, encountered too much malevolence in a short period of time, and my subconscious, it seemed, had had entirely enough of it.

  I do recall that much of my dreams involved running away, being chased by things and people that wanted to do me harm . . . though the harm was never specified. Nor were my pursuers always my enemies.

  At various times my parents, Alya, Queen Grendine, and even Olmeg the Green were chasing me. But they were always transforming from one deceitful form to another. The phantasmal landscape conspired to assist them, too. Comfortable surroundings became nightmares of betrayal. Bucolic landscapes turned into desolate wastelands at the blink of an eye. The places my mind associated with safety and security seemed to be teeming with hidden dangers.

  For days, it turns out, I was a prisoner of my own dreams. I didn’t start to recover, I think, until I came upon a dreamlit bonfire, on a lonely stretch of country road. A monk stood nearby, warming his hands.

  “Minalan,” he greeted me, concerned, when he saw me. “Minalan, are you all right?”

  I had a sword in my hand – not a mageblade, just a regular sword, for some reason. I held it out.

  “Who are you?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Brother Hotfoot,” he reminded me, gently. “Otherwise known as Herus the Traveler. God of journeys?” He looked at my face searchingly. “And you are on one hell of a journey, my friend,” he sighed, sadly.

  “Who are you . . . really?” I asked, raising my blade.

  “A very, very patient divinity,” he groaned. “Minalan, it really is me – I’m trying to get you to wake up. You’ve been injured, and you’re unconscious. I was sent here to find you, again,” he explained, reasonably enough. “Find you and convince you to come back.”

  “Back where?” I asked, lowering my blade a bit. I had been tricked before, and I was just waiting for the pleasant-looking monk to transform into a giant cockroach, or something.

  “Back to the real, objective world. Where you are needed.”

  “The real world . . . hurts,” I said, wincing at some of my experiences, both real and imagined.

  “All worlds hurt,” he said, philosophically. “Pain is a condition of experience, regardless of the form you take. Have you not experienced pain, here?” he asked, gesturing to the empty landscape around us. “There is no more or less pain in the real world.”

  “But there are responsibilities,” I countered, feeling argumentative. “Here, all I have to do is try to stay alive.”

  “You are not making this any easier!” he groaned. “Minalan, of course there are responsibilities in the real world. That’s why we need you! Not because you’re a jolly fellow and a good traveling companion. There are things happening that need your attention.”

  “What if I don’t want to go back?” I offered, belligerently.

  “You would abandon your responsibilities, because you fear them?”

  “I question my responsibilities,” I answered, carefully, “because it was not my choice to assume them. The Aronin compelled me to want to protect humanity,” I said, a trace of bitterness to my voice. “He charmed me into thinking I was some kind of godsdamned hero, destined to save humanity. That was a lie,” I said, angrily.

  “Was it?” Herus asked, sharply. “The Alka Alon are adept at magic, Minalan, but you aren’t who you are because they made you that way,” he reasoned. “Yes, the Aronin manipulated you. A little,” he emphasized. “But he only amplified the expression of your heroic impulses. They were already there. As was the inclination to sacrifice for the greater good,” he added.

  “But he took away my choice!” I snarled.

  “Was that such a novel experience?” he countered. “Were you given a choice when the gods – some of the gods, perhaps,” he amended, “gave you rajira? Were you given a choice when you were conscripted? Were you given a choice when you were born to a poor baker, and not a wealthy nobleman?”

  “Hey! Dad is a prosperous businessman!” I objected.

  “My point is that our lives are often punctuated with events that determine our fates that our entirely out of our control. You are no exception. And the fact is, you did have a choice, at each of those junctions. You could have run away, when you got your rajira, for instance, and become a footwizard – you would have made a great footwizard,” he added, fondly. “You could have deserted from the army and made your way to the east, and avoided Farise all together.

  “Instead, you made a choice to comply and cooperate with the uncontrolled decisions made about your life.

  “The Aronin’s spell was no different. Had you rebelled against his persuasion, you could have escaped from the entire affair when you went to Tudry to acquire mercenaries. Of course,” he added, “you would have borne the burden of your own guilt for the rest of your life, but I’m certain you would have found a way to rationalize your actions. The human mind has an infinite capacity for that,” he chuckled, wryly.

  I considered what he said. It had merit, of course – most reasonable propositions do. But I was still feeling betrayed by the Aronin’s hand on my mind.

  “I understand your point,” I sighed. “But he had no right to do that to me. Not without my permission.”

  “Did Duke Rard have the right to conscript you into the Magical Corps?” Herus demanded. “According to Duin’s Law, he did. By what laws are the Alka Alon bound?” he inquired.

  “The laws of decency?”
I snorted. “Inviting me into his home, and then tricking me into a war I didn’t want to fight?”

  “Why did you go to Amadia to begin with, Minalan?” he asked, patiently.

  “To gain the counsel of the Tree Folk about the goblins,” I answered, slowly.

  “Why was that?”

  “Because they were killing us? Attacking us? And I had a hunk of irionite I was afraid to use?”

  “So, you wanted the means to defend your people,” Herus agreed, reasonably. “And you wanted access to power, unfettered by the control of the Dead God. Did the Aronin not grant you both of those things?”

  “Well . . . yes . . .”

  “You’re a spellmonger,” he continued, still using a ridiculously reasonable tone, “did you often perform magic for free for your clients? Without the expectation of gain?”

  “Not if I wanted to eat and pay my rent. But the Aronin isn’t a village spellmonger,” I countered.

  “No, he’s the guardian of great and powerful weapons from an earlier age,” Herus confirmed. “He is the watcher of the molopor, and he was responsible for keeping his eye on the gurvani. His entire settlement was dedicated to that task,” he reminded me. “It was a charge his family accepted thousands of years ago. His judgment is all that stands between peace and chaos.

  “And this ballsy young wizard shows up,” he continued, “a scion from a brash and ephemeral race, complaining about the neighbors in the middle of a major crisis, and has the nerve to beg a boon while he’s trying to figure out the extent of the danger? Why would he not use that resource? Even sacrifice it, if need be, in order to secure his charge? To spare you some inconvenience and validate your cowardice? To salve your own guilt for sending good men to die in your name?

  “No, Minalan, while you may rail against the personal indignities of being manipulated, you are not so special as to earn dispensation from your own fortune,” he said, a little disgust creeping into his voice. “We all have a part to play, as this whole bloody mummer’s show plays out. Even me,” he said, chuckling humorlessly. “I’m the bloody messenger boy, and they have me playing confessor to the most powerful wizard on Callidore.”