Mortal Rites

by Melissa McShane

  “But—how do I know you won’t just take the money and not go?”

  Alaric smiled. “You don’t know our reputation, or you wouldn’t think that. Ask around, if it makes you more comfortable. Talk to Captain Denys Renaldi, he’ll vouch for us. But it’s fifty lari or we don’t make the trip.”

  Bernea made one last attempt. “You won’t get your answers if you don’t bring back Pauro.”

  “You may not get Pauro if we don’t go.”

  Bernea sagged. “All right. Tomorrow morning.”

  The others rose. “Don’t worry, Mistress Murtaviti,” Dianthe said. “We’ll find him.”

  “For fifty lari, I hope so,” Bernea said, somewhat bitterly.

  Bernea escorted them to the door and shut it sharply behind them. “We could have pushed harder,” Sienne said.

  “She will not tell more,” Kalanath said. “It is in her eyes. She is determined.”

  “That was my impression too,” Alaric said.

  “So why the fifty lari up front?” Dianthe said. “You know we usually work for half now, half at delivery.”

  “To see how desperate she really was,” Alaric said. “She’s not worried about her husband being in trouble. She’s afraid he might be trouble. She lied when she said Master Murtaviti was only interested in theory, and she lied when she said she didn’t know anything about necromancy. Something else is going on here, and I want to know what.”

  “So we’re heading east tomorrow,” Sienne said. “On the trail of someone who might be a practicing necromancer, and is almost certainly in trouble or causing it.”

  “That sums it up nicely,” Alaric said.

  “I shall petition for several scrying blessings tomorrow,” Perrin said. “We will need to keep a careful eye on Master Murtaviti, in case he takes to the road again.”

  “I’ll check the market one last time,” Sienne said. “If I can find someone selling ferry—”

  “You still wouldn’t be able to get us there any quicker,” Dianthe said. “Don’t you have to know the location you’re going to?”

  “If Perrin can use the scrying blessing to show me the location, I can jaunt there and get to know it well enough for ferry. It probably won’t matter. Nobody’s had ferry the last two weeks I’ve been looking.”

  “Don’t worry too much about it,” Alaric said. “Let’s get packed and warn Master Tersus we’ll be gone for a while.”

  He headed off down the street, and Sienne hurried to take her usual place behind him. Much as she liked her horse, now that she knew ferry and its more powerful cousin transport were possible, she couldn’t help feeling reluctant to take the overland journey. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could reach their destination in hours rather than days? Less time, fewer supplies needed, and no sleeping on the ground. Of course, that meant no early morning watch, seeing the sun rise, and cooking breakfast for her friends, but those were small sacrifices compared with the comfort of her nice, soft bed. Maybe someday, she thought, and trotted along after Alaric.

  7

  A warm wind blew Sienne’s hair around her face, bringing with it the scent of green grass and pine trees. The road unrolled before and behind her and her friends, curving gently to follow the contours of the forest. Sienne guided Spark away from the verge again, sighing inwardly. The horse, normally well-behaved, kept trying to nibble the soft grass that grew by the side of the road. “You’re not hungry,” she told the animal. “You’ve eaten a good meal and now you’re just being greedy.”

  Spark tossed her head in a gesture that clearly meant “I am too noble to argue with you.” Sienne laughed and stroked her mane.

  “That’s right, keep up the good spirits,” Dianthe said. She squinted at the sun in the clear sky and groaned. “I have not had enough coffee for this.”

  “You’ve said that every morning for the last three days,” Alaric said. “I don’t think there’s enough coffee in the world to wake you thoroughly while we’re on the road.”

  “I can quit any time I want.”

  “Sure you can,” the others chorused.

  Dianthe scowled. “Well, I can.”

  “Today is a shorter travel day,” Alaric said. “There’s an outpost a few miles down the road that we should reach by late afternoon, and we’ll stop there for the night.”

  “And at noon I will perform another scrying,” Perrin said. “We draw ever nearer, and yet…I confess something about this disturbs me. I realize these maps are not as accurate as we might like, but our target appears to be moving.”

  “I thought you said that was an illusion, created by the imprecision of the maps,” Sienne said.

  “That is what I believed yesterday, yes. But I have looked again at the pattern formed by three scrying attempts, and there is more…‘intent’, I believe is the correct word. Deliberate movement. I have an idea I intend to attempt when we stop at noon that may confirm my hypothesis.”

  “And the problem is, if he’s moving, he’s not moving west?” Alaric asked.

  “That is it exactly. Then we must ask ourselves where else he might go.”

  “Something to worry about when we’ve confirmed it,” Alaric said, “but you’re right, it’s concerning.”

  “There are too many possibilities,” Dianthe said. “He may have been kidnapped. He may have had to detour when his caravan left the road for some reason. He may have fallen in love with someone and decided to abandon his wife. What are we going to do if we find him and he doesn’t want to come home?”

  “Return to tell Bernea Murtaviti the truth,” Alaric said. “We aren’t contracted to haul him bodily back to Fioretti.”

  “That would be just as sad as if we found him dead,” Sienne said. “Maybe more so, depending on how Mistress Murtaviti thinks.”

  “But how likely is it that he fell in love on the road? You said Mistress Murtaviti fears he is the trouble. What trouble can a necromancer cause?” Kalanath said.

  They all fell silent. Sienne couldn’t help imagining all the ways a necromancer could cause trouble and guessed her companions were thinking along the same lines. She nudged Spark away from the verge again. “I think we should pick up the pace. Maybe that will stop Spark from snacking, if we’re going fast enough.”

  “And it will get us to our rendezvous sooner,” Dianthe said. “I’m trying not to think of hordes of ghouls descending upon us.”

  “You had to say it, didn’t you,” Sienne said.

  “How is a ghoul killed?” Kalanath said. “Do they look human?”

  “I’ve never seen one,” Alaric said.

  “I have,” Perrin said. “They look much as they did in life, but their skin is pasty and dull and their eyes are white, as if filmed over. They cannot walk a straight line because they have trouble controlling their limbs—they move much like puppets in the hands of an inexpert master. In that they differ from undead still commanded by the necromancer who raised them, who except for their appearance move as easily as any living person.”

  “That makes me shiver,” Sienne said. “Can you really call it killing, if they’re already dead?”

  “My mentor called it destroying them,” Perrin said. “And it is quite difficult. They can continue moving, and attacking, having taken blows that would fell a living man. I was told certain kinds of magic, such as force, have little effect because ghouls do not depend on a working nervous system to function—they are fueled by some form of dark energy no one fully understands. There are only two ways to destroy a ghoul. One is to batter it until it stops moving, which, as I said, is difficult. The other is divine intervention. There are blessings that invoke the powers of an avatar to interrupt the flow of dark energy and return the corpse to its inert state. I have seen it done once. It was…remarkable.”

  Sienne wanted to ask Perrin about his teacher, but Kalanath said, “You do not have such a blessing, do you?”

  “Thank Averran, no. I do not think we will encounter ghouls today.” Perrin smiled. “Or we will,
and Averran believes we can defeat them without his intervention.”

  “Let’s hope not,” Alaric said. “I’m not interested in discovering how much damage it takes to drop a ghoul.”

  At noon, they stopped for bread and cheese, and Perrin dismounted and took the map from his pack. “This may work, or it may not,” he said, weighting down the corners of the map with stones, “but I think it is worth trying. First, the usual scrying.”

  Sienne and the others watched as the now-familiar blue flame flickered across the map, ending with a sharp fiery needle that marked a spot near the other blue spots already there. They did seem to be marking a line heading east from the highway, but it was so short a line it might be an illusion. Sienne followed the line’s progression, extending it along its logical course. There was a ruined city in that direction, but nothing else for miles until you reached the distant Bramantus Mountains, and beyond that, the desert and Omeira.

  Perrin traced the same imaginary line with his finger. “I really do feel our quarry is moving. Slowly, only a few miles a day, but definitely moving.”

  “Which means we’ll have to leave the highway soon,” Alaric said. “Damn it.”

  “We can leave the horses at the outpost,” Sienne said, “and we’re almost certainly faster on foot than he is.”

  “Yes, but I was hoping this would be easy.” Alaric sighed. “You said you had one more thing you wanted to try?”

  “Yes.” Perrin rolled up the map and stowed it away, then walked a few paces into the meadow that bounded one side of the road. Pines lined the other side, cool and shady and growing thickly right up to the road, but the meadow was empty of everything but long grasses and wildflowers, fragrant and warm. Perrin trod down a patch of long grasses and sat. “Stay back.”

  Sienne stroked Spark’s shoulder. The horse was nibbling grass from the verge again. Probably it tasted better than hay.

  Perrin crossed his legs and removed another scrying blessing from the riffle of papers, scribbling on it and then setting it in his lap. He rested his hands loosely on his knees and closed his eyes. “O good and crotchety Lord,” he said in a clear voice, “I wish to express my gratitude for your manifold blessings, and ask your divine favor to extend one of them slightly. I would like to see the face of the man whose name I have inscribed on this blessing. I—”

  He stopped, and tilted his head as if listening to something none of them could hear. “Yes, o Lord, he is missing. His wife—” He paused again, longer this time. “Forgive me, o most cantankerous one, but I do not understand. We are not in opposition to him; we seek only to restore him to his wife.”

  Perrin’s eyes flew open and stared, unblinking, at something in the middle distance. His breathing became labored, as if he were running instead of sitting. Sienne held still, afraid of distracting him if she moved. After nearly a minute, Perrin blinked, and relaxed. “That was unexpected,” he said.

  “Did you not see Master Murtaviti?” Dianthe asked.

  “Yes, I saw him. I expected the scrying to be visible to us all, but it seems Averran in his wisdom granted it only to my inner eye. He is a rather ordinary-looking fellow, which is irrelevant. I had hoped to make some determination as to his condition, whether he is under duress of some sort. But he looked perfectly placid. I could see little of his surroundings, but he was definitely surrounded by pine trees.”

  Alaric looked off to the east, toward the forest. “So he is moving east.”

  “Presumably.”

  “Damn it.” Alaric let out a deep breath and mounted his horse, the big gelding Paladin. Sienne still thought it was a little strange that Alaric, whose people could transform into horses or unicorns, was comfortable riding a horse. She’d have thought that would feel odd. But it didn’t seem to bother him.

  “I hope this man has the information we need,” Alaric grumbled. “He’s certainly putting us to enough trouble.”

  “It won’t take that much longer,” Dianthe said. “Another day, maybe two, and we’ll catch up to him.”

  “You’re so optimistic it’s sickening.”

  “Cheer up,” Sienne said. “At least we get one more night in real beds.”

  “Two optimists. Sisyletus spare me.” But Alaric was smiling.

  The day wore on toward evening as they headed south and east. It was one of those beautiful first summer days that made Sienne happy to be alive, riding along with friends. All their problems—Pauro Murtaviti’s disappearance, Dianthe’s wanted posters, the possibility of ghouls—faded into the distance, like nightmares that lose their power in the gleaming light of day.

  She watched Alaric’s back and felt a silly smile spread across her face. They weren’t sleeping together now—the outposts didn’t have bedrooms, just men’s and women’s dormitories, but even if that weren’t the case, how awkward to make Dianthe sleep elsewhere, or insist on an extra room for Alaric and Sienne to share. But when they got back to Fioretti…they would need to figure something out. Sienne still didn’t like the idea of having sex next door to Dianthe and her keen hearing. But she felt increasingly ready in a way she hadn’t four days ago.

  She smelled the outpost before she saw it, the delicious scent of roasted meat wafting toward them on stray breezes. She hadn’t realized she was hungry, but now she was ravenous. That bread and cheese hadn’t gone nearly far enough toward filling her.

  She sniffed the air again, and wrinkled her nose. Another odor, this one awful, cut across the delicious scents. “What is that?”

  Dianthe turned her head like a dog catching a scent. “It smells rotten, but only just. Like meat that’s gone off.”

  “I sincerely hope that is not supper,” Perrin said, “or I will be forced to stage a revolt. Outposts may not provide more than one item on their menu, but surely that one thing ought to be edible.”

  Kalanath reined in his horse, somewhat awkwardly. “Look at that animal. It is not well.” He raised his staff and pointed.

  Sienne followed his gaze. A creature approached them from the south, moving slowly and in short, jerky steps. Its back was hunched high, and as she watched, it reared up on its hind legs and took a few staggering steps before falling back to all fours. “What is it?” she said.

  “A dog?” Dianthe suggested. “Though it would have to be a sodding enormous dog.”

  “A wounded deer, I think,” Perrin said.

  “It’s no deer,” Alaric said grimly. He drew his sword from where it was sheathed on his back and dismounted. “It’s a man.”

  “A man?” Sienne gasped. “But—we should help him!”

  “Stay back. I have a bad feeling about this.” Alaric moved forward a few cautious steps at a time, holding his sword at the ready. Dianthe and Kalanath slid down and followed him. Frustrated, Sienne pulled out her spellbook and opened it to force. Alaric’s hunches were usually accurate, and she wasn’t going to sit still and watch this strangely-behaving man attack her friends.

  The man—now that she knew what to look for, she could see the shape of his head and hands—stood upright again, weaving to keep his balance. He gripped his head with both hands and howled, an eerie, spine-chilling sound that made Sienne grip her spellbook more tightly. Then he rushed the three in the front, the howl growing in intensity until it shattered the stillness of the peaceful afternoon.

  Kalanath ran to meet it, bringing up his staff to take the man in the stomach. Sienne had seen this strategy before; Kalanath’s attack was less intrinsically lethal than Alaric’s or Dianthe’s, and when they were facing humans, he would strike first to give the opponent a chance to choose other targets. Usually this blow made the victim double over, knocking the wind out of him.

  The man didn’t pause in his charge, didn’t bend or release his breath in a single loud pah. Instead he moaned, “Death,” the word so garbled it was barely recognizable. He grabbed Kalanath’s staff in both hands and jerked it to one side, stepping around it and inside Kalanath’s guard.

  Kalanath took a st
ep back, but the man raised a hand and swiped at his face, making Kalanath cry out and bring his staff up sharply to drive the man away. Then Alaric and Dianthe were there, threatening the man from both sides. Alaric swung a heavy two-handed blow at the man, who staggered backward to avoid it and ran directly into Dianthe’s blade.

  The stink of rotting meat grew tenfold. Dianthe stepped back, withdrawing her sword from where it had pierced the man’s lower back, and waved her hand in front of her face to dispel the odor. Sienne’s stomach revolted, and she had to swallow hard to keep the bread and cheese from coming back up. Then she screamed, “Dianthe! Watch out!”

  Dianthe brought her sword up just in time to block the man’s next swing at her. Black fluid oozed from the wound in his back, which should have knocked him down. It hadn’t even slowed him. He clawed at Dianthe, forcing her back. “Kill,” he moaned, again almost unintelligibly.

  “Dianthe! Drop!” Sienne screamed, and read off the evocation force. As Dianthe hit the ground, the man flailed and nearly lost his balance, and a bolt of magical energy shot from Sienne to hit him squarely in the chest.

  “Not force!” Perrin shouted, maneuvering his horse to Sienne’s side. “It is undead! You need fire!”

  The man was still up, showing no signs that force had hurt him at all. Dianthe scrabbled crab-like away from the ghoul as Kalanath battered at him repeatedly with his staff. Sienne whipped the pages open to burn and began reading, nudging Spark to where she had a clear shot.

  Dianthe rolled out of the way, abandoning her sword. The ghoul followed her, drooling black fluid to match what flowed from the wound in its back. “Back,” Alaric shouted, and Kalanath stepped gracefully to one side as Alaric aimed a mighty thrust at the thing’s spine. His sword spitted the ghoul neatly, making it spasm and twitch. It flung itself forward, off the sword, fell to its hands and knees, then pushed itself upright again just as Sienne’s burn took it right between the eyes.