Mortal Rites

by Melissa McShane

  “I don’t believe people should take justice into their own hands.” The words left her mouth before she could stop them, and they made her feel smug and self-righteous and uncomfortable. After all, hadn’t Dianthe gone on the run for nine years because she’d killed an evil man in self-defense? Wasn’t that taking justice into her own hands?

  “Somebody has to enact justice, and it might as well be me as anyone else,” Scholten said. “And I don’t think you’re as upstanding as you claim. You’re a scrapper—haven’t you ever killed anyone?”

  A memory of an emerald falcon, of green light blasting from its beak to turn men to ash, stopped her tongue from a ready response. Finally, she said, “I’ve never felt I was entitled to kill. That’s the difference.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You asked what a lich can do. Aside from the immortality and near-invulnerability, there’s the physical changes. Great strength, enhanced senses, tremendous endurance. A lich no longer needs to breathe, so running for miles—which is, by the way, undoubtedly what Pauro has done to reach us—is no longer a difficulty.”

  “Master Murtaviti was surprised at the strength, like he hadn’t known it would happen.”

  “I’m not surprised. Pauro never did care much for the theory behind the research. He just wanted to find the right ritual. How did he make it happen, by the way?”

  Sienne laughed. “I’m not telling you that. Suppose it’s the last piece of the ritual you need?”

  “Ah, it was worth trying.” Scholten shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We probably weren’t pursuing the same line of research, anyway.”

  “So there’s more than one way to make a lich?”

  “Possibly. I suppose we’ll find out—or not, if you all kill me when this is over.”

  “We won’t do that.” She wasn’t sure if that was a lie or not.

  Scholten shrugged again. “If you say so.”

  Hoping to deflect the conversation, she said, “What about magic?”

  “What about it?”

  Surely revealing this didn’t matter, as Scholten would see it for himself when Murtaviti arrived. “Master Murtaviti was able to use magic. Spark, breeze, invisible fingers. But far more powerful than we’re capable of. Is that something all liches can do?”

  Scholten’s eyes widened. “I’ve not heard of this. Pauro’s no wizard. That should be impossible.”

  “I know. But it happened. We all saw it.”

  Scholten turned away, chewing on the tip of his forefinger. “I wonder…” he said.

  “What?”

  He twitched as if he’d forgotten she was there. “Nothing. I thought I had something, but it’s gone.”

  He was so obviously lying Sienne wanted to task him with it right then. But she was certain he wouldn’t tell her, no matter what she did short of torture, and she couldn’t torture him. “That’s too bad,” she said instead. “If it was something we could use to destroy Master Murtaviti—”

  “I’m sure it was nothing,” Scholten said quickly. “Probably Pauro figured out some way to tap the dark energy that fuels an undead creature and turn it into basic magic. I’ve never heard of anyone doing it, but in theory, it should be possible.”

  “So would that mean he could learn other magic?”

  “Unlikely. There aren’t many magics that come naturally, and without someone to show him the rest—”

  “That’s what I thought. And he can’t use wizardry.”

  “No. Not without a lot of training and a spellbook.” Scholten stood and stretched, rather theatrically. “I’m going to see how your companion across the hall is doing. I don’t want him rooting around in my clothespress.”

  “Perrin wouldn’t—” Sienne began hotly, then subsided when Scholten laughed his nasty, mocking laugh and left the room. Fuming, she turned back to watching the hills. What were they going to do with Scholten when this was over? She was determined not to dwell on the possibility that they might not succeed. They couldn’t just let him continue his research. Maybe they could destroy his books and other ritual paraphernalia? If he had a reliquary of his own, they could smash that. At the very least, they could set his work back by decades. She felt a tiny bit of guilt at plotting against Scholten, but not much. Even if she had to keep reminding herself that he was a necromancer, and guilty of who knew what kind of evil. He was actually pleasant to talk to, most of the time, and he’d been perfectly professional when they’d traded spells. But that was a façade, and she needed to remember that.

  Footsteps in the doorway startled her out of her reverie. “I wanted to check on you,” Alaric said. “Where’s Scholten?”

  “He went to talk to Perrin. I think he knows something about why Master Murtaviti can use magic, but he pretended not to.”

  “Is it something we need to coerce out of him?” Alaric sat in the chair Scholten had vacated, undisturbed by the necromantic sigils burned into the floor around it.

  “I…don’t think so. Not now, anyway. If it was something we could use to defeat the lich, I think he would have said.”

  “Perrin says we have another fifteen minutes, give or take.” Alaric took her hand and caressed the back of it with his thumb. “Not enough time to do anything big.”

  Sienne scooted her footstool closer to Alaric’s chair and leaned against his knee. “This is enough for me.”

  He stroked her hair, and she closed her eyes and leaned into his touch. “I can’t wait for this to be over,” he murmured. “I want to take you in my arms and kiss you, somewhere we won’t be disturbed.”

  “I want that too.” She looked up at him and smiled. “And I want to go dancing with you.”

  “I told you, I look like a performing bear when I dance.”

  “Maybe, but you’re my performing bear, and even if all you do is stand there while I twirl around you, I’ll be happy.”

  Alaric laughed. “All right. Just remember, it was your idea.” He squeezed her hand once and rose. “We’re all set downstairs and waiting for your signal, or Perrin’s. You know what to do if someone else raises the alarm?”

  “Burn the lich. Keep his attention on us.”

  “Right.” He leaned far down to kiss her. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Alaric left the room, and Sienne returned to watching. She did love him, and it was wonderful. She wished she dared daydream about what they might do when this was all over and they were somewhere they wouldn’t be disturbed, but she needed to be alert. She closed her spellbook and practiced opening it to the spells she wanted, break, burn, slick. She wasn’t sure about the last one, but she’d found in the nearly a year she’d been a scrapper that sometimes the solution was something unexpected.

  The shadows of clouds sailed across the sloping hills, patches of darkness against the paler ground. Though the moon was past full, it was still bright enough that she hadn’t needed cat’s eye to let her see clearly. It was a clever spell, not like sharpen, which enhanced vision in darkness but made the eye highly sensitive to light. Cat’s eye extended the eye’s visual range, making nighttime nearly as clear as noon without sacrificing clear vision in ordinary light. She’d thought about casting it anyway, but she’d already used some of her reserves on burning Scholten’s undead minions, and she was certain she would want every scrap of magical power at her disposal for use against Murtaviti.

  Something moved in the fields beyond the wall. She leaned forward to look past the rail of the balcony. Whatever it was moved slowly, but steadily, parallel to the wall. An undead. In the daytime, Scholten could stand here and watch his undead meander through the fields like drunken ants following a sugar trail. The idea made her skin crawl.

  She opened the spellbook to burn and sat back. How did Scholten control his undead minions, anyway? Something she could have asked him, if she’d thought of it. Another undead came into sight, heading the other way. No sign of anyone else.

  “Here he comes,” Perrin called out, and a thrill of fear and exc
itement shot through her. “One very bright spark, approaching from the east.”

  That meant the front of the house. “How close is he?”

  “He is at the limit of my vision, but he comes quickly. I think—there, the undead are converging on him.”

  Sienne hurried to join Perrin at the bedroom window. Scholten stood at the other bedroom window, pressed against the side so he couldn’t be seen. The rising wind blew with a high, thin whistle across the gaping hole where she’d shattered the glass. She didn’t know if it was her imagination that the wind carried with it the smell of rotting, undead flesh. Surely they were too far away for that?

  Scholten let out a grunt, like someone had punched him in the stomach. “What’s wrong?” Sienne asked.

  “Pauro is trying to break my control over my undead,” Scholten whispered. His voice sounded taut, as if it were coming through clenched teeth. “I will not permit it.”

  “He can do that? Did you know this?”

  Scholten nodded. His eyes were closed and his face drawn in the expression of someone intent on a difficult puzzle.

  Sienne let out an exasperated breath. “Why didn’t you mention this when we were making plans?”

  “I didn’t think…Pauro would know to do it. He understands so little…of what it means to be…a lich. I didn’t think…it would be a problem.”

  “The undead are no longer moving,” Perrin said. “Everything is still.”

  “He is…powerful,” Scholten said, “but I…will…not…” His face was red with strain. Then he drew in a sharp breath, and sagged, putting one hand on the wall for support.

  “They are moving again,” Perrin said, “westward toward the house.”

  “He was too strong,” Scholten said, sounding afraid for the first time. “How can he be so strong?”

  “Can you try again?” Sienne suggested. “When he’s not expecting it, maybe?”

  Scholten nodded. “While he is preoccupied, maybe. If your companions can attack him…” He didn’t need to say that with Scholten’s host of undead on Murtaviti’s side, the companions would have to fight through an army to reach Murtaviti. Of course, he also didn’t know the real plan, which Sienne wasn’t going to tell him.

  She watched the road to the east, straining for a sight of movement. “There are many of the undead,” Perrin said. “They are like fireflies drawn to a lantern. Master Murtaviti has slowed, presumably to allow them to gather to him.”

  “I’ll go tell the others,” Sienne said, and hurried into the hall and down the south staircase. They’d blocked the north stairs to force anyone who got that far into a bottleneck of their own choosing. It was important that she be the one to speak to the others, to keep Scholten from asking awkward questions about where Dianthe was, if he noticed. That was unlikely, but they weren’t taking chances with the necromancer wizard.

  Alaric and Kalanath stood in the open doorway to the sunken sitting room, at the end of the hall leading from the front doors. Kalanath leaned on his staff with his eyes closed, apparently meditating. Alaric looked up as she approached. “Something wrong?”

  “Master Murtaviti took control of the undead. They’re his minions now.”

  Alaric nodded. “It makes no difference to the plan. They can still only get inside one way, and we’re ready for them. But the point isn’t to defeat the undead.”

  “I know. Do you really think Master Murtaviti will try to enter the house?”

  “He wants Scholten dead. I’m guessing he wants him dead at his own hand. We’re going to let him believe we want to protect Scholten, and give Dianthe time to act. Go on back upstairs. We’ll hear it when the fighting begins.”

  Sienne nodded and ran for the stairs. When she returned to the bedroom, Perrin and Scholten both stood to either side of one window. “They are near the gate,” Perrin said. Sienne listened. Distantly, she heard a shuffling, rustling sound that carried far in the still night air. The gate was closed, not to prevent Murtaviti from entering—with his strength, it was a trivial barrier—but to deceive him into thinking Scholten was unaware of his approach and force him to expend resources. Scholten had been unspecific as to how far those resources might go, and Sienne thought they’d run up against the limits of his knowledge. It didn’t matter. The important thing was to make Murtaviti believe they wanted him stopped.

  An undead woman shambled into the light burning at the gate posts, then a man, and suddenly there were dozens of them, all moving forward and intent on the gate. They ran up against the gate and scrabbled at it, trying to get past. Sienne realized she was gripping her spellbook too tightly and forced her hands to relax. Beside her, Scholten had his book open. She didn’t know what spell he’d chosen.

  Even from the second floor, Sienne couldn’t see past the gate, but something was pounding on it—no, not pounding, but slamming into it, making it bounce on its hinges and bowing the bar outward. The sound was inexorable, a constant rhythmic thudding that made Sienne want to scream with frustration and rush out to let him in, anything to get the anticipation over with.

  A splintering, cracking sound heralded the bar’s breaking, and the iron gate swung open, letting in the first undead. Sienne wondered if Murtaviti was one of them, or if he would hang back, wanting to let the undead do the dirty work. Either he was the kind of man who’d think it hilarious to have Scholten killed by his own undead, or Alaric was right, and he’d want to do it himself, but in any case, he needed to come closer so she could target him.

  More bodies forced their way through the gap. They walked slowly, all taking different directions, but with intent, not the random, stumbling gait of the revenant. When they fetched up against each other, they stopped momentarily, each groping the other’s face and shoulders like a blind man trying to recognize a friend.

  “That’s…a lot of undead,” she said. “Did you really need that many?”

  “It’s not about need,” Scholten said, and didn’t elaborate.

  Sienne didn’t recognize Murtaviti at first. Then she saw the balding head of the man striding along near the rear of the…pack? Swarm? Alone among the crowd, he walked purposefully, without the hesitance the others displayed. His destroyed eye was a blotch of black against his undead-pale skin. She stepped back so she wasn’t as obvious a target. Scholten raised his spellbook. “Wait,” Sienne said. “Let them get closer.”

  “I know. I don’t need your advice, girl.”

  Sienne fumed, but said nothing. The horde shambled forward, ten feet, twenty. They were picking up speed, turning toward the manor as if pulled there by invisible strings. Sienne heard once again the low O sound, a deep humming that made the air vibrate and the hairs on the back of her hands stand on end. This time, she could identify it: the undead were moaning, one low note as perfectly pitched as if they’d been trained to do it. It was beautiful, and haunting, the voices of the dead keening as if they’d lost something they could never find. It filled her with rage that Murtaviti and Scholten and their kind had wrenched these souls from their eternal rest and trapped them in undead bodies, unable to be free.

  She was so angry she almost didn’t notice when Scholten began reading the hard-edged syllables of an evocation. Quickly she began speaking her own evocation, the sounds burning her mouth like acid. The power built within her, a terrible pressure demanding to be free. As she neared the end of the spell, Scholten spat out the last syllables of his.

  A barrier of fire ten feet high and fifty feet long sprang from the ground between Murtaviti and the manor, catching eight undead in its path. They thrashed just as if they were living, but soundlessly, falling forward out of the fire and lying still on the ground beyond it. Three more undead could not stop in time and walked into the fire. The others pulled up short. Murtaviti stopped, and Sienne let the spell burn explode from her and blast him full in the chest.

  19

  Fire engulfed the lich, and he took an involuntary step back as if she’d punched him. Sienne began casting the spell ag
ain, reading as fast as she dared. Murtaviti’s head came up, and he scanned the face of the manor until his gaze lit on the broken windows of the upper story. He was close enough Sienne could see him smile.

  Perrin shoved her out of the way, interrupting her spell. “What—” she blurted out, but Perrin shouted an invocation, and pearly light flared around his forearm, radiating out into a shield just in time to deflect the fire that splashed across the windows.

  “My apologies,” Perrin said, half-turned to ensure the shield fully covered both windows. “He is faster than you are.”

  Sienne stood beside him and looked out. Murtaviti was just getting up from where he’d rolled on the ground to extinguish the fire. The undead shambled along the barrier of fire in both directions, some of them accidentally getting too close and catching their ragged clothes on fire. They didn’t stop to put the fires out, and one or two dropped, burning, to lie twitching as their fellows walked past or even over them. Murtaviti snapped his fingers, and more fire exploded around the window, but Sienne felt no heat thanks to the shield.

  “Be ready to move,” she told Perrin. “Not another barrier of fire,” she said to Scholten, who’d begun reading off another evocation.

  Scholten shook his head and continued reading. Sienne began burn a second time, letting it fly just moments after Scholten’s casting was complete. Another barrier of fire rose up, this one encircling and completely concealing Murtaviti. Sienne’s burn struck it and spread across its surface, blue fire mingling with red to make violet where the spells collided. “I said—”

  “It will keep him preoccupied while the others deal with my poor servants,” Scholten said, unmoved by Sienne’s anger.

  She couldn’t tell him the true reason for her anger. He believed they intended to batter Murtaviti into submission. “This way, he can’t betray us,” had been Alaric’s argument for not letting him in on the real plan.

  “That was a waste of a spell,” she said instead.