Mortal Rites

by Melissa McShane

  Sienne looked back across the field. Through the fading fog, she saw dozens, perhaps hundreds of undead collapsed and leaking black mist. “What do we do?”

  Murtaviti’s seizures were diminishing, but the black mist continued to pour into him. “Wait for him to wake up,” Alaric said, “and find out what his necromantic ritual did.”

  “Should we…you know…” Sienne faltered.

  “We don’t kill helpless men,” Alaric said, “even if they are evil necromancers. We’re not executioners. He has to face trial.” He crouched beside Murtaviti and shook the man’s shoulder. He got no response.

  “He is absorbing the dark energy of all those undead creatures,” Perrin said. “That can mean nothing good. Perhaps killing him is not—”

  Murtaviti blinked, startling Sienne. He weakly shifted his arms and legs. Alaric stepped back. “Master Murtaviti,” he said, “it’s over. Your undead army is gone. You have no more allies. You can come back to Fioretti with us under your own power, or under duress. Which will it be?”

  Murtaviti struggled to his feet. The last traces of oily black mist seeped up his face and into his nose and mouth. He turned away from Alaric as if he hadn’t heard him and flexed his arms, one at a time, testing their movement the way a fighter might before a battle. “Marvelous,” he said. “I have never felt so free.”

  “You’re not free, Master Murtaviti, you’re going back to Fioretti to make restitution for what you’ve done.” Alaric glanced around at the dozens of fallen bodies. “It’s going to take a long time to bury all of these.”

  Murtaviti stood with his back to Alaric and let out a deep sigh. “That will certainly be a problem,” he said, turning and taking a few steps to stand in front of Alaric. His eyes glowed, points of startling yellow light in his sallow face. He grabbed Alaric’s collar and lifted him off his feet. With no apparent exertion, he hurled Alaric away to land sprawling in a pile of motionless undead.

  11

  Sienne hissed in surprise and took a couple of involuntary steps back. Dianthe cried out and ran to Alaric’s side. Murtaviti flexed his arm again, a look of wonder on his ordinary face. “Such strength,” he said. “I never expected that.”

  Perrin grabbed Sienne’s arm. “We have to leave here. Now.”

  “But he—”

  “No talking. Run!”

  Sienne dropped her spellbook to hang in its harness and ran. Perrin had sounded adamant, but worse, he’d sounded scared. They ran past where Alaric had just gotten to his feet and picked up his sword. “What are you doing?” he exclaimed. “We have to fight him!”

  “There is no fighting what he has become,” Perrin said over his shoulder, not stopping to argue. “We have to get out of here before he comes to himself and destroys us.”

  “Alaric, now!” Sienne said.

  Alaric cast a look over his shoulder at Murtaviti, who was rapt in contemplation of his ordinary-looking hands. He sheathed his sword and ran after them, followed by Dianthe and Kalanath.

  Running was complicated by the dozens of bodies fallen around them, blocking a clear path. Sienne avoided them not just because she was squeamish of touching them, but because the one time she trod on one in her way, it shifted uncomfortably and nearly sent her to the ground. She lagged behind until Alaric swept her up unceremoniously over his shoulder and pelted away with her. From that position, Murtaviti was a rapidly receding black blotch against the sunny yellow field. With the dead bodies lying everywhere, it looked like the aftermath of a battle with only one survivor who stood proudly victorious while his enemies fled. And they were fleeing, no question about that.

  Whatever Murtaviti had done had reached all the way into the village. A few undead lay in the streets, not as many as were in the fields. Sienne was sure his ritual had destroyed every undead in the vicinity. Destroyed them, and gathered their dark energy into himself. It had given him the supernatural strength to throw Alaric bodily through the air. Perrin seemed to know what was going on, but they were all running too quickly for conversation. Sienne clutched Alaric’s shoulder to keep her balance and prayed Murtaviti wouldn’t follow them.

  They were all the way to the main road before Dianthe staggered and gasped, “I can’t run any longer.”

  “Let us hope this is far enough,” Perrin said, leaning over with his hands on his knees and sucking in air. Alaric set Sienne down and walked a few paces, breathing heavily. Kalanath leaned on his staff and closed his eyes. Sienne put a hand on Alaric’s arm. He looked at her and nodded reassurance. She hadn’t thought he was badly hurt, but it was a comfort nonetheless.

  “Explain to me,” he said, his voice low and menacing, “why we ran away from that little man I could have spitted with my sword without breaking a sweat.”

  “He was no man,” Perrin said, “not any longer. He was undead.”

  “How could he be undead? He was alive when we reached him,” Dianthe said.

  Perrin drew in one last breath and straightened. “Let us walk,” he said. “I wish to put as much distance between ourselves and that creature as possible. I have no idea where he will choose to go next, but it is likely our paths will coincide again, since his home is in Fioretti.”

  “We walk, and you talk,” Alaric said.

  “Very well,” Perrin said.

  The sun was close to setting, and they walked faster, not just because of the advancing darkness, but from an awareness of having left something terrible behind. “It is the goal of some necromancers,” Perrin said, “to gain an ultimate mastery over life and death. Some of them fear death, some crave immortality, but in every case they wish no longer to be subject to aging and mortality. Their every experiment is aimed at giving up life in such a way that their spirits are not bound to God’s eternal rest, but to a physical form. The resulting creature is called a lich.”

  “That doesn’t explain why we had to flee,” Alaric said.

  “Liches are far more powerful than any other kind of undead,” Perrin said. “They are phenomenally strong, as we saw. Their touch can paralyze. They can control the dead easily. And they are highly resistant to physical damage and immune to many spells. The only positive aspect I can see to this fiasco is that Master Murtaviti is not a wizard. My mentor faced a lich wizard once and barely escaped with his life. We were in no position to destroy our foe.”

  “So…he killed himself, but his spirit stayed here?” Sienne said.

  “That is the gist of it, yes. The practice is, of course, far more complicated. My mentor told me it can take decades for a necromancer to undergo all the preparation for the ritual.”

  “And we were just the lucky ones who happened to be there,” Alaric said.

  “Do you suppose Mistress Murtaviti knew?” Dianthe said. “It might account for her wariness.”

  “I doubt it. Why would she have sent people after her husband who would witness the ultimate proof that he’s an evil necromancer?” Alaric shook his head. “She knew something, but this wasn’t it.”

  “I do not see why she sends us at all,” Kalanath said, “if she knows her husband does something evil.”

  “Something we can ask her when we get back to Fioretti,” Alaric said.

  “Are we even going to bother?” Sienne said. “We found her husband, and he’s a…a lich, and isn’t going to return quietly. Frankly, we don’t want him to return at all. We can’t destroy him—”

  “We can, in theory,” Perrin said, “but we need more knowledge than we currently have. I know liches have been destroyed in the past, but I do not know how, nor do I know specifically what kind of attacks they are vulnerable to.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll find out,” Alaric said, “because I don’t intend to let Murtaviti roam free through the countryside. Sisyletus knows what kind of mayhem he has in mind.”

  “Maybe he’ll be content to return home and live a peaceful life,” Dianthe said. They all stared at her. “All right, it’s not likely, but if all they want is immortality, that doesn
’t necessarily mean he’s bent on world domination.”

  “The transformation from human to lich is a complete one,” Perrin said. “No matter the motives, the act of becoming a lich—the murders and obscenities one must perform to reach that point—transforms a man or woman into an evil creature, even if he or she never completes the ritual. He may not be, as you say, intent on world domination, but there is no question he will continue to perform evil acts on a grand or small scale.”

  “I feel we should be running,” Sienne said.

  “We can’t exhaust ourselves,” Alaric said. “It’s going to be a long night.”

  “Why is that?” Kalanath asked.

  “Because we’re going to ride through the night. We need to get back to Fioretti as soon as possible to figure out how to defeat him. So we’ll warn the outpost—damn it, I hope they listen. It sounds crazy. I saw him transform and even I think it’s crazy.”

  “We can only do our best,” Dianthe said. “Whether they believe us or not is up to them.”

  Alaric swore. “I wasn’t thinking. Sienne, jaunt back to the outpost and warn them. And get the horses ready.”

  “Good idea,” Sienne said, pulling out her spellbook.

  Minutes later she trotted up the short path to the front door of the outpost and flung it open. The front room was full of diners, about half of whom looked up when she entered. Under their scrutiny, her first impulse, to wave her arms and shout a warning, died aborning. Instead, she sought out the outpost’s keeper, whom she found in the kitchen. “You need to clear the outpost. Get everyone out and on the road.”

  “What was that?”

  Sienne bit back impatience. “There is a great danger coming this way, not something you can fight. An undead monster with the strength of ten men.”

  The keeper blinked at her. “Another undead monster? Miss, that’s not something to joke about.”

  “Master keeper, I’m serious. My companions and I barely escaped with our lives. This is the creature who created that revenant—remember the revenant?”

  He scowled. “I don’t need you to remind me of it, miss.”

  “Well, its master is on its way down the road, and if it decides to attack this place, no one here is safe. Please. Help me warn the others.”

  “I can’t go out there and tell those scrappers there’s an undead monster coming our way that none of them can fight. They won’t believe it. And even if they do believe it, every one of them thinks he’s immortal and will want to fight it anyway.”

  “We—” He was right. She knew enough scrappers by now to be fully aware of their attitude toward danger, which was that it made life exciting. “We have to warn them, anyway. It’s the right thing to do.”

  She left the keeper to make the announcement and ran for the stables, where she rousted the stable mistress and got the hands working on saddling and bridling their five horses. Spark picked up on her agitation; the little mare danced in her stall, shifting restlessly until Sienne got the saddle firmly cinched up. Sienne petted her mane and laid her cheek against Spark’s hairy one. “I hope you’re ready for a long ride,” she whispered, and thanked any avatar who might be listening for the bright, full moon rising over the stables.

  Alaric and the others still hadn’t appeared when Sienne’s preparations were complete. She tried not to imagine Murtaviti sneaking up on them, overtaking them and killing them all. Finally she put lead lines on the horses and mounted up. She could meet them halfway and it would give her something to do that wasn’t biting her nails to the elbow.

  Silvery-blue light painted the landscape and turned the narrow road through the forest into a ribbon of light. The pines leaned in on both sides, dark and menacing where just hours before they’d been a pleasant part of the journey. The wind had picked up and was making strange noises in the tops of the trees, gasps and whistles and howls that sounded as if a horde of ghouls were clambering through the branches. Sienne tried to stay focused on the road ahead, and on Spark’s ears, flicking calmly every now and then. Spark was a smart horse; if there was danger, she wouldn’t be so calm.

  It was too dark to read her pocket watch, so she didn’t know how long it took before movement in the distance set her heart pounding. In the next moment, she recognized Alaric’s bulk and hopped down to go to meet her friends. Alaric put his arm around her and hugged her. “Very smart,” he said. “I thought we might be walking forever.”

  “Somebody has to know ferry, somewhere in the city,” she groused, and he laughed and kissed her.

  “Mount up,” he said, “and let’s ride.”

  It was amazing how much less scary the road was when she had her friends surrounding her. They trotted single-file along the wooded trail, then spread out when they reached the highway, settling into a rapid gait that wasn’t too fast for the horses to maintain. Sienne rode along following giant Paladin, whose tawny hindquarters were yellow in the moonlight. She tried not to think about what would happen when they had to stop. If Murtaviti could travel faster than they…

  “I don’t like that we don’t know Master Murtaviti’s plan,” she said. “We can only expect the worst for so long.”

  “It could be anything,” Dianthe replied.

  “I hope it is not another try to kill the king and take over,” Kalanath said. “I do not wish to meet the king again.”

  “Tomorrow, there is something I might try,” Perrin said. “It is rather dangerous, but not nearly so much as continuing on blind.”

  “A blessing you might ask Averran for?” Alaric said.

  “Not exactly. A communion. I will attempt to open my mind to that of divinity and see the world as Averran sees it. Which is to say, seeing past, present, and future as one.”

  “That does sound dangerous,” Sienne said.

  “The danger is in losing myself temporarily. The avatars are not capable of gentleness when their worshippers approach them directly in this manner. It is not their fault, nor do they wish us harm, it is simply that they are so powerful they might hurt without intending to. But I have faith that my petition will be answered.”

  “We’ll stop at first light and get some sleep,” Alaric said. “There should be an outpost somewhere near at that point. Then at noon we can try this communion of yours.”

  “An excellent plan,” Perrin said.

  They rode for hours as the moon sailed across the sky, full and white and casting soft shadows at their feet. Owls and other nocturnal birds sang mournful songs that followed the team down the road. Sienne found herself nodding off and pinched her leg to stay awake. She had to pinch herself several times—that’s going to leave a mark—before the midnight blue sky lightened to gray, and the night birds stopped crying to one another and flew off toward the trees. Sienne listened to them go and felt sad to lose their companionship. Then she realized that was an addled thing to think, and pinched herself again.

  The outpost came into view before full sunrise, when the tips of the trees were gilded with light. Sienne gratefully slid off her horse and handed the reins to a stable hand, for once forgoing the duty of caring for Spark herself. She needed a few hours’ sleep, and then maybe a meal, though she was tired and anxious enough not to feel terribly hungry.

  She heard Alaric speaking to the outpost’s keeper, but in such low tones she couldn’t make out the details and, she realized, she was too tired to care. So she went with Dianthe into the women’s dormitory, found an empty bed, and collapsed into it. For once, she fell asleep faster than Dianthe.

  She woke later as if to some internal prompting, not sure how long she’d slept—there were no windows in the dormitory. Dianthe still slept in the next bed. Sienne decided not to wake her and went looking for food. Now that she was rested, she felt ravenous, and she smelled coffee and hot bread, which made her even hungrier.

  Alaric and Kalanath were seated at one of the tables, eating fried ham and some kind of puffy, twisted roll. “We’ll let the others sleep a little longer,” Alaric said
when she kissed him in greeting. “Depending on what Perrin’s communion tells us, we might only be sleeping four hours a night until we get back to Fioretti.”

  “I’m a little worried,” Sienne said, taking a seat and tearing a piece off the long roll. “He made it sound like nothing serious, but exposing your mind to deity sounds potentially very dangerous.”

  “He will not care,” Kalanath said. “He does not fear his avatar even though maybe he should.”

  “You think Averran is frightening?” Alaric said.

  Kalanath shrugged. “It is not my way to worship. We approach God without…it is when one comes between two others to communicate.”

  “Intermediary,” Sienne suggested.

  “That is it. I have seen Perrin speak to Averran, and I believe there is something there. But maybe it is not that man should speak so closely to God in any form.”

  Footsteps sounded behind them. “You need not fear for me,” Perrin said, pulling out a chair. “If God did not intend us to thus approach Her, She would not have taken the forms of Her avatars. Is there no coffee?”

  “I had to steal it from the kitchen,” Dianthe said, coming up behind Alaric with a steaming pot. “Should we really be so…I don’t know. So casual? If disaster may be following us?”

  “Five minutes to eat and drink coffee won’t make a difference, and we can’t go on without food and sleep forever,” Alaric pointed out. “But don’t dawdle.”

  Perrin poured himself a cup of coffee and downed it, heedless of how hot it was. “I am afraid,” he said, “with the prospect of communing with Averran before me, dawdling increases in its attraction.”

  They rode until noon, following the highway. The forest receded from view until it was no more than a smudge on the horizon. Vineyards flanked the road now, long rows of vines showing verdant green. Now and then side roads branched off, heading toward sprawling houses surrounded by outbuildings. They passed travelers going in both directions, none of whom acknowledged them. Sienne was used to this by now. Some scrappers were no better than bandits, and it was impossible to tell the difference until it was too late. It was safer for travelers to keep their heads down. But now, things were different.