Necromancer: Book Ten Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

  “I’ll let Anguin know,” Hance agreed. “He’s got more wit than either of his parents, and he’s as likable as his father. He’ll understand.”

  “I hope so,” I agreed. “I’m running out of dukes to piss off.”

  The news of Rardine and Anguin’s engagement spread across the kingdom in hours. Tyndal and Rondal apparently paid for Mirror messages to be sent out to all the prominent houses of high nobility, as well as subsidizing a massive effort to frame their marriage in just the right way.

  Silver flowed freely into the purses of minstrels and jongleurs across the city to compose favorable poems about the Orphan Duke’s heroic rescue of the beautiful Princess Rardine from the clutches of the Evil Necromancer. With, I might add, the help of his wizard friend, the Spellmonger. I don’t think I’d ever been in a heroic song before.

  The Alshari party ended up making a five-day celebration of the announcement, moving into one of Rardine’s townhouses she was only vaguely aware that she owned, and proceeding to drown out the toneless preaching of morality in Castabriel’s streets with their romantic, dashing antics.

  My lads figured prominently in that – once the Cats of Enultramar joined them, they had a general holiday. I heard that Atopol and Gatina got into a thieves’ duel – where they dared each other to steal increasingly valuable items and place them in equally unlikely spots to prove their abilities. I’m sure it was something impressive to witness . . . if there were any witnesses.

  I was glad they were having a good time. It was looking increasingly likely that they would be re-deployed, before long.

  When I returned to Sevendor, it was to a pile of dispatches from Astyral, chronicling the advance of various units from the Penumbra toward the eastlands. Sometimes they advanced and halted, other times they turned and attacked a rival compound, but the gurvani were on the move.

  I helped Astyral and Azar coordinate a response, with the latter using the steady retreat of the Tudrymen across the river to the east bank. I was gratified to hear that the residents weren’t protesting too much at the orders. There was a sense of acceptance that Tudry was done for.

  They’d had plenty of time to get used to the idea that their town was in decline, the inevitable target of attack. Prosperity would not return to Tudry until the threat of the gurvani were gone. With the prospect of a new life and better times in mage-protected Vanador, they were sullenly packing up everything they possibly could and driving their wagons away from tired old Tudry while they still could. They recalled what an army of goblins did to the town and countryside. They wanted no part of a renewed offensive.

  Nor was that the only disturbing news. Mavone, embedded with a company of Alshari Commandos ahead of Salgo’s winter expedition, probed the frontier between the Westlands baronies and the stark wastes of the Alshari midlands. What he’d found was troubling.

  Remember the atrocities the gurvani performed in the Wilderlands? We don’t have that, here. Two villages we came across were just empty. There was sign of a struggle. Blood. But no bodies.

  Are they just hunting, now?

  Not hunting, he warned. Recruiting. The places are thick with necromantic residue, he said, disgusted. I’m guessing that they were turned. We’ve encountered undead here and there the entire route. Mostly in ones or twos.

  Scouts, perhaps, or sentries, I offered.

  That’s what we think, too. There must have been two hundred people in those two villages. Now they aren’t here to protect. It’s spooky, Min.

  Keep your eyes out, and let me know as soon as you see anything else noteworthy, I ordered. Korbal wouldn’t have gone to the effort to soften up that region if he wasn’t planning on capitalizing on it.

  Want to hear something worse? The third village we passed was intact, he reported. The people were all there. But they’d mistakenly tried to help a couple of the undead from the next village over. They realized their mistake too soon . . . but even after they buried the bodies, there were problems. People started to get sick, he said, with a dull mental voice.

  What kind of sick? I asked, my blood freezing in my veins.

  The kind that starts with one person, and quickly spreads to the entire village, he said. It’s some sort of plague.

  What are the symptoms?

  We didn’t stick around long enough to get an account – believe me, those poor bastards looked half-dead themselves. They had lost one man in twenty, at that point, and the rest weren’t long behind them. But they’d been exposed three days before, if that helps.

  I took the location of the villages and promised to pass them along to Terleman. If Korbal and the Nemovorti were using disease as a weapon, we might be in for more trouble than I thought. There is more than one way to wage warfare, I reflected, and Korbal had hit upon our inherent weakness: our biology.

  Plague was a horrid thing. It could come in many forms, and its spread could belie every effort to contain and treat it. There had been two outbreaks in the eighteen months I’d been in Farise, as the crews of ships from far-flung corners of the Shallow Sea brought their pestilence to port. The usual remedy was to quarantine the ship, tow it out to the center of the harbor, and set it afire with the dying crew inside. It was a severe measure, but about the only way to keep such disease at bay.

  That worked for a busy urban port, but what could you do when the infected could stumble to the next village in search of aid, and spread the disease to everyone there? With a three-day incubation period, that could be devastating.

  That was not an army we could defeat. If the contagion spread from the sparsely-peopled west to the populous regions, that could imperil millions. Korbal’s job would be done for him without one dragon taking flight.

  I spent the next several days conferring with Master Icorod, Pentandra, and other wise folk to discuss the matter, which became even more urgent when Mavone discovered two more infected villages. He took what steps he could and retreated to a tiny hamlet with his men on the Alshari side of the border to await Count Salgo’s larger force, but he was feeling pressured by the taint of disease.

  Worse, the undead that sometimes arose from those devastated villages were carrying the stain. Mavone wasn’t certain whether it was a side-effect of the disease, or if it was the result of some force utilizing the corpses for their own purposes, but he didn’t linger to find out. The prospect of his men contracting the blight was too much.

  I could appreciate that. On that horrible march through the jungles and mountains of the Farisian peninsula disease was a constant threat. Mostly from cholera and other common ailments, but there were some exotic diseases that struck many a man down on that journey. I knew well what illness could do to a military unit in the field.

  Master Icorod agreed to send a few of his students to investigate – he was even more worried than I was, thanks to the undead component of the illness. It was rare, he pointed out, for a disease to create its own mobile vectors to spread it. I think the old geezer was impressed.

  It was difficult to work on such a somber subject while the rest of the domain was preparing for the Magic Fair. There was a building excitement as the harvest began – the annual event had proven to be a huge blessing to the economy of Sevendor, and with the way east shortened by the Elf’s Gap, attendance was expected to be grand, this year.

  I hated not participating in the preparations, beyond my contribution to the Spellmonger’s Trial, but in truth Banamor and his staff had things well in hand, even without Gareth’s experienced hand at the tiller. Though he still cursed the day Gareth left, the Lord Mayor of Sevendor managed to prepare the town and fairgrounds without serious difficulty. Indeed, the entire community did what they could to ensure the place gleamed for the event. The only person who seemed at all sulky was Dara, and we were all growing used to that.

  But my primary concern was the matter of the Curia Rard scheduled for Huin’s Day. While I wasn’t a count, and wasn’t particularly affected by the reorganization of the realm, as a member
of the Royal Court I was obligated to be there and help assist Rard in advancing his policies.

  I was considering just what to wear and who to take when Lilastien appeared in my workshop to answer at least one of the questions.

  “I’ve got someone who wants to talk to you,” she said, gently, as she stepped out of the shadows. Alya was behind her.

  “Minalan?” she asked, in a nervous, hesitant voice. But it was Alya’s voice. Alya’s voice with Alya’s mind behind it. I could tell at once.

  Before she could say another word, I swept her into an all-encompassing embrace. She’d said my name. Nothing else mattered.

  I was home, again.

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Field Trip

  Alya was back. Somewhat.

  She recognized me, there was no doubt. She knew who I was, and that I was her husband, but she had a hard time understanding just what that meant. She knew she was a mother of children, but had little concept of what children were.

  But she knew she was afraid, as her mind came slowly back to her. She knew she was confused and she knew she was damaged. When she had an emotional outburst, and demanded to see me, Lilastien acquiesced.

  We embraced for some time, her slender body small in my arms, yet containing my entire universe. I could tell she was scared and anxious. I made soothing sounds and petted her hair, choking back tears as her familiar scent was in my nostrils again.

  “I’m . . . getting better,” she said, after we broke apart. “I’m not better, yet,” she continued, looking at me with pleading eyes.

  “I know,” I nodded. “But things are looking much, much brighter, now.”

  “I want . . . I want to . . . I don’t know what I want,” she said.

  “How much do you remember?” I asked, earning a frown from Lilastien.

  “Some,” she admitted, sitting down on a stool. “Not much that I can make sense of.”

  “She’s still adjusting,” Lilastien explained. “She’s starting to put things together. Not always correctly, but she’s getting there. I was thinking some familiar surroundings would help knit her memories back together. Why don’t you show her around?” she recommended.

  “Well, this is where we live, sort of,” I said, beginning a tour of my tower and the castle that re-introduced many things from Alya’s past to her. Some she clung to desperately, when she recognized them. Others, things I figured would make her react, proved impotent to her memory.

  I found it interesting which things she found to recall, and how important they were. A particular threadbare tapestry in the Great Hall I’d always seen as unremarkable, for instance, caused Alya to ponder it eagerly for ten minutes. She was untouched by the chapel where she’d attended services every month, but when she saw the crack in the big stone high table she traced with her fingers over and over the great fissure Sire Cei had accidentally put in it.

  While she enthusiastically darted from one thing to the other, a number of people in the castle realized that their Baroness had returned . . . and was acting thoroughly odd.

  “She’s still recovering,” I quietly instructed Sister Bemia, who’d rushed into the keep the moment she’d heard. “Keep your distance, let her experience things on her own,” I urged.

  “Too much information can be problematic,” Lilastien agreed. “If she takes on too much, she becomes overwhelmed and withdraws. Let her learn at her own pace – re-learn. The memories she makes today the Handmaiden will mend into her consciousness when she sleeps. Or at least that’s my theory,” she added.

  “She looks so healthy!” Bemia said, sounding surprised.

  “I feed my patients well,” Lilastien said, the least bit offended. “She’s been looked after with especial care.”

  “When will she be . . . normal?” Lady Estret said, clearly trying not to insult me.

  “She’ll be done when she’s done,” I shrugged. “We’re taking it slow.”

  “This place is so nice!” Ayla declared, as she wandered the Great Hall, looking past the magelights toward the banners hung from the high ceiling. “It’s cozy.”

  “That’s a new perspective,” Bemia observed. “She always thought the place draughty.”

  “I like it here,” Alya declared. “This is where I live.”

  “Well . . . you used to, dear,” Lady Estret said, gently. “You and the Baron live in Spellmonger’s Hall, now. In the courtyard.”

  “I do?” she asked, as if this was a stunning development. “Is it nice?”

  “It’s cozy,” Lilastien said, repeating the word she’d used a moment before. “You’ll like it. You decorated it,” she encouraged.

  “Are you certain this is a wise notion, my lady?” Estret inquired, skeptically. “She seems so . . . childlike.”

  “She is, in a way,” the Sorceress of Sartha Wood agreed. “But not entirely. She’s a grown woman trying to learn how to be a grown woman again. With only partial glimpses from the past to guide her into what that means.”

  “Which means you aren’t done representing her at the Town Council meetings, Estret,” Bemia grunted. “Sorry.”

  “One can always hope,” the Riverlord smiled. “I’d pledge to attend them until I died, if it meant we got Lady Alya back.” She was completely sincere, too. Estret and Alya were fast friends, closer than her sister Ela, and I knew she missed her terribly.

  I continued to follow Alya as she raced around the place, squealing in delight as she encountered things she remembered. It was a lot like watching Almina, when she was in a toddler’s fury to touch everything all at once. She even giggled the same way.

  “Should we bring the children in?” Sister Bemia asked. “They’re at Urah’s house, tonight. They would dearly love to see their mother,” she said, with deep longing in her voice.

  “No,” Lilastien said, shaking her head firmly. “She’s making progress. But it’s slow. We just re-introduced her to Minalan. I’m not certain how she’d react to the children. Or they to her. Let’s keep things at an adult level for now,” she suggested.

  “It might disturb the children,” Estret agreed, watching Alya over folded arms. She was picking through the big basket of stale trenchers by the pantry with fascination, digging her fingers into the crusts and exploring the texture and smell. I could see Estret’s point. It would be hard to explain to Almina why Mommy got to do things that got Almina in trouble, for instance.

  “I agree,” I sighed. We could wait a little longer. She was getting so much better that I was feeling unbelievably hopeful. “It would be too confusing. But she seems to be—”

  I stopped, as Sire Cei came through the great double doors together from the yard, hurrying off to some important piece of castle business. He didn’t notice Alya, at first, but her reaction to seeing him was decisive. She ran to embrace him at once.

  “Alya?” the big knight asked in surprise.

  “Cei!” she said, triumphantly, her face beaming in recognition and relief.

  “Trygg’s grace, that’s a sight to see!” Sister Bemia sniffled, using the sleeve of her habit to wipe her tears.

  “I’ve never been happier to regard my husband embracing another woman,” Estret smiled, happily. “I do not even mind that she recognized him before she did me.”

  “Don’t let it concern you, my dear,” Lilastien assured her. “There is no reason behind which parts of her memory – her entire personality – are restored and in what order. She could have had the same reaction over a man she met once, years ago. There are going to be difficulties in how she reintegrates all those elements.”

  “What kind of difficulties?” Sister Bemia frowned, as Alya ran her fingers through

  “Rough spots in her re-integration. She was scared of spoons for two days last week. Then she was fine. Things like that. But a field trip like this should be helpful in that process. Familiar things will help establish patterns in her mind, allow her to make connections.”

  “Field trip?” Estret asked, concerned. “
She’s not staying?”

  “Not yet,” Lilastien said, apologetically. “The Tower of Refuge is a much quieter place than this, and I can monitor her condition far better. But don’t fret. At her current rate of progress, I am quite hopeful that she will able to come home very soon.”

  “I can’t help but note how imprecise you are being,” I said, as Cei tried awkwardly to have a conversation with my wife.

  “Professional habit. I don’t know when she’ll come home. I’ll have to make a judgment call.”

  “How do you think she’d react to walking into town?” I asked, eagerly.

  “Only if I go with her. And if you could keep her from being mobbed by too many people,” she conceded. “She isn’t happy in crowds. But that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be exposed to them.”

  “I can cast an unnoticeability spell,” I decided. “If she gets overwhelmed, we’ll bring her right back to the Tower.”

  And that’s how I had the first date with my wife in a year. Obscured from easy notice and chaperoned by a Tera Alon.

  I had a wonderful time leading Alya on my arm, pointing out things old and new, and she had a wonderful time seeing them with her eyes, both old and new. She seemed excited and more comfortable than I expected, as we walked through the outer bailey and through the outer gate to Sevendor, proper.

  “It’s so pretty!” she cooed, gazing out over the many spires of the town as we mounted the rise near the pond. “It’s all pointy!”

  “Wizards like towers and spires,” I agreed. “It makes us feel lofty.”

  “This is a town of wizards?”

  “This is your town, Alya. Sevendor Town. And yes, it is full of wizards. More than any other town in the kingdom. Our symbol is the snowflake,” I said, pointing out one of the banners Banamor kept displayed around the town as a display of civic pride. “You remember snowflakes?”

  “Uh huh,” she agreed, absently. “What’s that?” she asked, excitedly, pointing toward the pond where the permanent water elemental was cavorting. It had been going strong for years, now, and the persistence of its enchantment had enabled it to develop a kind of personality during that time. Nothing elaborate, but it had grown quite reactive to the bathers and passers-by.