“So we may be able to identify this wizard if we can compare his aura to the magical signature he leaves behind?” Elias asked.
“Just so,” Ogden replied. “It’s not always that easy, though. For one, it’s an imperfect science, and secondly, clever wizards are often able to mask their aura or alter it.”
“And with this particular arcanist, you were unable to even sense his presence,” Elias observed.
Ogden stiffened. “If he did completely control the assassins, however, it would have required a tremendous amount of power. He wouldn’t be able to utterly hide his tracks. There must be some clue, no matter how small, that the enemy was among us.”
“And I have no doubt you’ll find it,” said Bryn as they approached an intersection, “but five’s a crowd and I doubt you’ll need the extra hand.” She clapped Elias and Lar on the shoulders. “I’ll let you brave menfolk handle this one. I’ll see what I can stir up elsewhere. Those assassins came from somewhere, and it wasn’t the front gate.” She offered Elias a wink and veered off down the other corridor.
“I’ll go with her,” Lar said without missing a beat. “She may need someone to watch her back.” Without awaiting a reply he scurried down the hall after Bryn.
“Speaking of, check in on Danica,” Elias called after him.
The three men made their way through the palace proper, the guard barracks, and into the dungeon where they set about their grim task.
†
Phinneas rifled through the dead man’s tunic before peeling the half that remained back from the blackened flesh.
Elias watched from what he deemed a safe distance, while Ogden busied himself with casting a cantrip. The scent of scorched flesh and the cloying reek of decay filled the small, dim subterranean chamber and made him feel like he was trapped in a barrow or a charnel house. Elias shivered despite himself and swallowed the gorge in the back of his throat.
Half of the northman’s naked chest, where Elias’s conjured flame consumed him, had been transformed into a craggy landscape as pitted and rugged as the cliffs Peidra sat atop, while on the other half, angry blotches of lividity strained against the bloated skin.
Cutting a man down in the heat of battle was one thing, but looking upon ones handiwork later was quite a different matter Elias realized as he swallowed another mouthful of bile. At once he became incalculably weary, both bodily and of the entire enterprise. He knew in that moment why his father had developed his aversion to the sword.
As expected, the pockets were empty of even the smallest of trifles. These men had carried their weapons and nothing more.
Phinneas examined the cadaver’s chest and nodded to himself. He produced a pair of scissors from a small black satchel and cut open the remaining pant leg and examined the flesh there as well. “Come now, Elias,” he said, “I need your strength. Help me turn him over.” The doctor felt Elias’s stare and looked up. The lad’s face had taken on a greenish pallor. “It’s not all that bad, son. It’s just an empty husk now. One gets used to it.” Phinneas rifled through his bag and retrieved a shallow vial. “Here, spread some of this paste under your nose. It will help with the smell.”
Elias did as instructed, not trusting himself to speak. Holding his breath, he took the corpse by its armpit and thigh and helped Phinneas turn it. Elias found the sight easier to stomach from the back-side, although congealed blood had pooled under the skin there as well in a ragged pattern of bruises. As soon as he completed the ghastly task he took an involuntary step back.
Phinneas bent to continue his examination. He brushed aside the corpse’s nappy yellow hair with the blade of his scissors. Elias heard him gasp, followed by an excited whisper.
“Look,” the doctor said, “I’ve found something.”
Elias took a cautious step forward and followed Phinneas’s gaze to the base of the cadaver’s neck. At first he didn’t see anything, so he drew closer and after a moment he made out a faint sigil drawn in thin white lines. “I can hardly see it. Is it a burn?”
“Not a burn,” Phinneas replied. “Scar tissue. If blood hadn’t pooled under the skin from the wound Lar inflicted I likely would have missed it.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“Haven’t the foggiest clue, but I can tell you what it isn’t: Ittamarian.”
Elias peered at the sigil, committing it to memory. A central line, about half as long as his palm, ran vertical and was intersected by two lines, which ran horizontal, the top one half again as long as the other. The longer of the horizontal lines was capped with small circles at either end, while the antapex was capped with a large half-circle. “How was it drawn?” Elias asked.
“Fell magic,” Ogden said from over Elias’s shoulder. Elias started, having forgotten the old wizard was there. He retreated and drew in a couple of steadying breaths. Ogden peered at the corpse with unfocused eyes and when he spoke his words were drawn out, as if he was in a trance. “There is a field of negative energy around the corpses the color of a cold hearth. The concentration is highest around the back of the neck on the spine. It is the mark of the wizard who bound these men to his will.”
“Bryn was right.” Elias drew closer despite himself, curiosity trumping disgust. “These men’s wills were not their own.”
“You try, Elias,” Ogden said. “Activate your wizard’s sight. Let your mind empty and your eyes unfocus. Concentrate on your breath.”
Elias began to protest, but Ogden’s words seemed familiar to him somehow, as if someone had once said something similar to him long ago. A tickle ran up his spine. He found himself following Ogden’s instruction and the room grew dimmer yet. Shadows thickened in rings before his eyes and then rippled outward. Motes of indigo light danced before his unblinking eyes only to melt away. Elias felt that he viewed the world through a gauze veil that made the air seem thicker but everything else insubstantial.
A nimbus of sooty light, like a luminescent smoke, crawled over the bodies of the dead men, leaking from the base of their skulls. The smoke whispered a sibilant string of fricatives as it circled them. A pang of guilt tore through Elias, and as rapidly as he entered the shadowy world that bordered his own he was ripped from it.
Blame not yourself, for it was you who freed them, whispered a disembodied voice.
Elias shuddered and he blinked away the vision, and he wondered if the entire experience was conjured from his imagination. “Did you hear that?”
Phinneas looked to Ogden, who shook his head. “Hear what?”
“Never mind,” said Elias. “Let’s get the blazes out of here.”
Ogden placed a hand on Elias’s shoulder as they walked away. “Don’t get frustrated. It’ll come in time. Come, we’ll finish your lesson upstairs.”
“Lesson? Now?” Elias managed.
“Yes, now,” said Phinneas around a smile. “When did you think we’d get down to business? Being a Marshal isn’t all fun and games, don’t you know.”
Elias thought the good doctor seemed enormously pleased with himself. He sighed, but made no reply. He had a feeling it was going to be a long night.
Chapter 20
Behind Closed Doors
Danica stumbled through dark wastes. Obsidian rock alternately smooth as river stone and jagged as shattered glass sprouted amidst serpentine gray mists that wound around her legs, through her hair, and down her lungs like something alive. Something pursued her beyond the scope of her senses. She couldn’t see it as she looked over her shoulder or hear its step or smell its fetid breath, but she felt it drawing near, inexorable and relentless.
She dragged herself over the crest of a stone hill, which led to a steep decline that was more cliff than hill. Under normal circumstances she would never brave such a dramatic descent, but she knew the thing that pursued her could already taste her fear. The black teeth of the rock drank her blood as she slid down the slope, scoring the tender flesh of her thighs and buttocks. Her hands became bloody masses as razor rock ribboned her
skin.
She stumbled onward on legs that throbbed with such insistence that she felt as if her heart had been relocated to her limbs. Somehow she managed to throw one foot in front of the other in exquisite agony for eternity after eternity, until even the secret of her name eluded her.
Then, out of the dead landscape, a hole erupted in the stone desert like the gaping, dagger-toothed maw of a leviathan. She peered cautiously into its depths and saw a worked staircase winding down into the womb of the earth. She glanced in all directions and her heart sank. The desert of stone stretched on without end. There was nowhere else to go, nowhere to hide. She stepped down into the darkness.
Her progress was difficult, for the steps were easily four times the size of any she had ever tread before, as if designed for a race of beings exceptionally long of limb. With icy clarity she became aware that she might very well be the first human to descend this staircase into the deep. She could only pray that whatever lay below was less dreadful than what stalked her above.
The jagged hole above shrank into a pinprick and then winked out leaving her enveloped in the oppressive weight of utter darkness, and still the stairs continued. For hours she threw herself down the inhuman steps, until the air became heavy and cloying. And then she could step no more and her quivering legs crumbled and she sank to a cold stair the size of a coffin.
Her breath labored in her lungs and the sickly sweet scent grew stronger. The thick air pressed around her and she found her control over her extremities waning. Her head swam, but she forced herself to remain conscious, for she realized that something loomed over her. She couldn’t see it in the utter absence of light, but she could feel the weight of soulless eyes upon her and smell its breath as sweet and repulsive as rotten apples.
“Don’t quit on me yet, love. If you die I can’t hurt you anymore.”
If possible, her terror magnified. The voice was that of a man. She had heard those words before, far away in a golden land of summer.
He pressed close, flattening her against the stone, and she could feel his engorged member pressing against her. A smooth, cool hand scooped the back of her neck. His mouth caressed her lips. He breathed in, inhaling something essential from within her. An emptiness blossomed in her chest.
“Now, in you, I can live again...”
Danica woke slowly. She knew she was in her bed at the palace, but she couldn’t move. Her eyes seemed to be open, for she could see the ceiling, but she couldn’t make them roll in their sockets, or move her limbs. She sensed a presence peering at her, but she could not find the voice to scream.
She focused on wriggling her fingers and toes. With a gasp she crashed from the twilight world between sleep and wakefulness. She sat up and scanned the room, heart in throat. She was alone.
With the dark and terrible visions of her dream already fading, Danica exhaled and chastised herself for her paranoia. Certainly no invisible stalker awaited her in her chambers. She threw back her sticky sheets and padded across the room to the small dining table and poured herself a glass of wine. She drank deeply.
The cool wind sliding through the open windows enveloped her, evaporating the beads of sweat that had collected on her skin. She shivered under the delicious sensation. Her nipples hardened. Actually, she mused, she felt quite exquisite; her nap had done much to restore her.
She poured another glass of wine, watered this time, and pondered what to do with herself when a knock came on the door. “Who is it?” she called out.
“It’s Lar,” a muffled voice said from the other side of the oak.
“Enter,” she said imperiously.
Lar opened the door ready to offer a greeting but choked on his words. Danica was clad only in a white shift that clung to the curves of her body, rendered transparent by her sweat.
“Don’t just stand there,” she said. “Come in.”
He obliged but couldn’t bring himself to meet her eye. “We’ve taken a break from our search, Bryn and me. I just wanted to stop by and see how tea went.”
“Afternoon tea around here seems to mean wine and snuff—and plenty of it. You’ve just caught me sleeping off the effects of my research.”
“So...uh, I see... I guess I’ll be leaving you in peace...”
“You are a strange fellow, Lar,” she said as she closed the distance between them. “I know you’ve always been sweet on me since we were children, yet here I am and you won’t even look at me. Odd, no?” Danica felt an animal hunger steal over her. A portion of her will resisted the uncharacteristic impulse, but, ultimately, the beast raging inside her won.
She sidled closer yet, until her slick breasts pressed against him. Lar looked down, ensorcelled by her whimsical green eyes. Her scent assailed his senses: musky and heady, but with an undercurrent of something else—something foul.
She pulled his face down to hers and took his bottom lip between hers, stroking it with her teeth and tongue. Her hands fondled the muscles of his chest and began unbuttoning his shirt. Her nails raked through the red-gold hair and pinched his nipples almost savagely. She tore open the remainder of his shirt and her hands reached down, fumbling with his trousers.
Lar lost himself in the thrills of her flesh, but a warning chimed deep in his mind. Reluctantly, he pulled himself away from her velvet tongue and silken hands. He held her at arms-length and peered at her. Something malevolent lurked in her green eyes, and he shivered despite himself, for the Danica before him was a stranger. “This isn’t right. Danica this isn’t you.”
The air in the room grew cold with alarming rapidity, and Lar saw his breath cloud before him. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and every instinct in his body urged him to flee. Danica’s dark hair fanned out as if caught in a ghost wind. “Danica, you are like a sister to me…please…” Lar whispered into the frigid room. Danica cocked her head and her expression grew less stony and more...human. Her eyes clouded over.
Lar didn’t wait for more of a response but dashed from the room, slamming the oak door behind him.
†
“How can I be a wizard if I can’t even move a damned marble!”
Ogden looked up from the dusty tome he had been intent upon. “Try not to get discouraged. Doubt, anger, frustration—these emotions will only hold you back. You must focus your will, trust in your instincts, to make it real. Remember, it will take time to cultivate your ability. Repeat the process. See yourself—”
“Yes, yes, I know Ogden. Visualize myself descending a staircase, going deeper into myself to find my center,” Elias said with a sigh, but not unkindly. He stood from the stool he had been sitting on and knuckled the small of his back. “Phinneas taught Danica the same exercise.”
“Then you realize how much you sound like her,” said the doctor as he emerged from another room in Ogden’s suite with an armload of books.
Elias opened his mouth to make a retort and then realized that Phinneas had a point. Instead, he settled for saying, “Are the answers we’re looking for in there?”
“I hope so,” Phinneas said as he placed the books on Ogden’s desk. “The dark arts have always been forbidden to us, but we have learned how to protect ourselves from them. In learning how to defend against fell sorcery, one learns a little of its practice. These volumes on aegis magic may point us in the right direction at the least.”
“Yes, The Grimoire Noctum should suffice,” the wizard said. He muttered to himself as he flipped through the pages. “I know I’ve heard of something like this before. Ah, Here.” He lay the ponderous tome flat and with a tap of his finger indicated a sketch of supine figures with sigils drawn on their bodies. “Here Archis discusses thralls, a magic by which a wizard bends a man to his will and compels him to act in his service. Archis once encountered a group of thralls on a journey to Aradur. Look here.”
Ogden hunched over the tome and began to read a passage. “They fought like the dijin you hear tell of in the ancient tales of this land. They made nary a cry, oath, or c
ondemnation, nay, not a sound escaped their lips. Their eyes glistened black, but empty, dead, like the beady orbs of crow. They fought with utter disregard for themselves and with a brutal, vicious efficiency, yet they appeared to take no pleasure in it, or experience any emotion at all. They slew three of my Wardens, being the finest swords in Galacia.”
“Necromancy,” Phinneas said gravely.
Ogden leaned back. His mouth pressed into a thin line. “Without a doubt. He goes on to describe several symbols drawn on their bodies about the head and chest.”
Elias took the grimoire in hand and scrutinized the diagrams. “I thought necromancy had to do with raising the dead and making zombies.”
Ogden laughed. “That is the popular myth. Raising the dead, as far as my experience has indicated is impossible. Dead is dead. Animating corpses is one thing, but there is little point to it. Living people are much more effective combatants and servants. Although the walking dead are creepy, I’ll give you that. Necromancy has to do in part with the manipulation of the life force, but primarily in trafficking with spirits and other entities. That’s where the term is derived. These wizards were interacting with ghosts or with beings that had passed into the spirit world, so the fraternity of arcanists began referring to them as necromancers.”
“Have you ever practiced necromancy?” Elias asked.
“God no,” Ogden said as he closed the book. “It is, however, smart to know ones enemies, and of what they are capable.”
“It is good that you do,” Elias observed. “This passage suggests that the Ittamar were enchanted, spelled out of their wits. Bryn was right.”
“Very likely he was present in the great hall, masquerading as a courtier or servant,” Phinneas said. “We think he was close.”
“You do?” asked Elias.
“It is our best guess,” Ogden said. “I would wager that magic like this requires the wizard to have his thrall in relatively close proximity to dominate his will and issue silent commands. It takes formidable power to utterly control someone’s mind and command them like a puppet. We do not know a great deal about this type of magic, only tid bits like what I just showed you, but what accounts we do have suggest that it is no easy task. And a good thing too, otherwise there would be a great deal more thralls wandering about.”
Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 24
