by J. B. Markes
I was grateful that Regina hadn’t showed up—one less person to explain myself to. Most people gave little thought to the expelled apprentice in their midst. Master Virgil gave me a surprised look that told me he, too, expected me to be miles away by now, but he was too busy with the other masters to grant more than a passing curiosity. That would soon change.
The ceremony began. The conjuror Master Rupert was in charge of the proceedings. I felt a brief stab of guilt, having always admired the man from afar, but there was no turning back now. Immediately after his commencement speech, Master Rupert called for Master Orden to approach the dais. I looked to Ruby, who remained close to the central proceedings in case there were any unforeseen interruptions. When I raised my plain wooden staff slightly, she nodded in support.
“Masters of the Academy Magus,” Master Orden began. “It is with humble heart that I accept this most serious of responsibilities. The title of Archseer is not a position, a job, or even an honor; it is a sacred calling.”
I had already positioned myself in the middle of Vesper’s Path, which led directly north through the Tower of Seeing. I raised my staff and brought it down with force. When it struck the cobble, Gustobald’s illusion faded, revealing to all the twisted weapon of the necromancer—the deathknell staff. Its bells chimed loudly in the silent courtyard as I raised it again and again, smashing it into the city street.
The effect was immediate. Everyone knew the girl who had formerly befriended the necromancer. Here she was, standing tall and sure, carrying a forbidden weapon, making a mockery of their hallowed traditions. All eyes on me, my fragile resolve slowed my hand, but when Ruby stepped forward my confidence renewed. “What’s the meaning of this?” she shouted. “How dare you?” Again I struck the cobble, and again.
The fog came next. Behind me Vesper’s Path darkened, the front moving swiftly to consume the courtyard. The sun dimmed in the mist, and one by one the masters left their chairs. No one dared approach, unsure of my intentions. When Master Warren shouted a spell to disarm me, I clutched my staff and held my breath. As predicted, his spell failed.
“Stop this madness at once, or be struck down!” Ruby’s voice was subdued by the fog, but her tone was enough to turn heads. I pounded the staff faster now, raising it higher with each strike. Ruby let loose a minor force bolt which fizzled away, and I knew no one could harm me now. “Take her down!” Ruby shouted, wasting no time in unleashing a narrow jet of flame that never reached me.
The Sentinels followed suit as the bystanding wizards scattered. Balls of fire and lightning; curses and charms; magic of banishing and befuddlement; spells well beyond my ability to cast or even identify, all focused on the foolish, misguided little girl in their midst. The entire force of the Academy Magus was upon me, their spells crashing together—sizzling, popping, wailing. I couldn’t see past the cascade of pyrotechnics lighting up the fog, but I never felt so much as the tingle of a resisted spell. I felt nothing. The magic simply canceled before it reached me, the same way it had with Seeker Arland, the same way it had in the arena days before. It had finally happened; I was simply no longer compatible with magic—a walking dead zone.
Ruby called the cease-fire and the swirling fog settled once more. The Sentinels were guarded, the masters dumbfounded. Most lowered their wands, searching for any explanation to fit the bizarre circumstances. No apprentice—indeed, few masters—could create an anti-magic barrier with sufficient energy to withstand such an onslaught. Only Master Virgil seemed unsurprised.
“What are you waiting for?” Orden shouted. “Kill the witch! Kill the necromancer!”
How quickly a wizard turns into a witch. I took a deep breath and shook the staff in the air rhythmically. The chimes emboldened me, and I began to chant in a poor imitation of Gustobald’s black speech; the masters wouldn’t know the difference anyway. I flourished the staff in a wide circle before bringing it to rest at my side. Master Rupert called out first, thrusting his stubby finger through the air just above my head. The necromancer’s spell was complete.
“It’s him!” Ruby called. “It’s Master Bartleby!”
I allowed myself a glance over my shoulder to inspect the scene. Bartleby crept slowly along Vesper’s Path, his steps fluid. It was something out of a nightmare. He was still decked in the Archseer’s robes, which flowed gently behind him as he glided through the fog. “Master Bartleby!” a voice rang out, followed by several others.
“That is not Bevlin Bartleby!” Master Orden shouted. “It is a revenant—a necromancer’s trick! Abomination!”
“Murder!” Bartleby howled, raising his hand accusingly, and Orden shook his head and cast a minor divination. He was trying to read our minds, but coming up blank. He was bolstering his will against what was surely a well-crafted illusion. “Murder!” Bartleby repeated. “Murder! Murder!”
“No,” Orden said, stepping back and tripping on his own dress robes. He fell to his knees shaking his head. “No!”
“Confess!” I called as Bartleby passed, on his way to the central dais, all the while continuing his rant. “Confess or be forever damned!”
“Murder!” Bartleby was close now—perhaps less than twenty feet away—reaching out to his victim with welcoming arms.
Orden collapsed face down as the Sentinels rushed to shield his body. “Mercy, Bevlin,” the old man begged. “Mercy! I acted in haste. Forgive me!” Bartleby paused just out of arm’s reach.
“Why?” Bartleby asked. “Why did you do it?”
“For honor,” Orden said, looking up from his prostration. “To preserve our way of life; necromancy is forbidden. Mercy, Bevlin, please!” The fog was lifting now, but Orden was lost in his own grief, ranting incoherently. Ruby took him by the arm and lifted him to his feet, securing him in mage-manacles in one deft motion.
“Lies,” Bartleby said. “You wanted to be Archmage. You wanted the power for yourself.”
“Only the power to protect our academy,” Orden replied, slowly returning to his senses after discovering he had been clapped in irons. “What is happening? What is this?”
“For you? It’s the end.” Bartleby removed his stately hat and let the sunlight wash over his features, features only slightly more gaunt than his twin brother’s had been in life. “My brother deserved better,” he said.
“Your brother was a traitor,” Orden spat. “He would have single-handedly brought this institution to ruin. You all know this.” He turned to the masters to plead his case, but they were too bewildered to speak. “Didn’t we speak of this?” he asked. “Didn’t we say that in a purer time someone would have taken action?”
“Not like this, Kildare,” Master Warren said, blinking away a tear. “Never like this.”
“What have you done?” Master Fridley asked. “What have you done to us? Murdered one of your own? You’ve endangered everything we’ve worked to achieve. You’ve endangered the academy itself!”
“Don’t you dare deny it now,” Orden said. “You wanted this. We all did!”
“Not all of us!” The crowd turned as one to see Gustobald Pitch on the approach.
“What the hell is going on today?” Master Roland called, speaking on behalf of the muddled expressions all around.
“Him!” Orden struggled furiously against his chains. “He’s behind all of this!”
The necromancer didn’t miss a beat. “Yes, many disagreed with his choices concerning the Academy Magus, but many more of us considered Bevlin Bartleby a dear friend. And that means having faith sometimes, even when we don’t agree.” Gustobald stopped at my side and gave me a subtle roll of his eyes.
“You’ll be sorry, Pitch,” Orden said. “You never should have got involved here.”
“On that, we can agree,” Gustobald whispered to himself, barely loud enough for me to hear.
“Be quiet, traitor,” Ruby said, wrenching his arm and putting her knife to his throat before dragging him from the dais. “You’ll be lucky if they don’t burn you alive.
”
And so, the headmaster of the divination school was escorted to the Hold, leaving the masters to stare down the resurrected necromancer and the false spirit of their former Archseer. Justice had been served, though we felt none the better for it.
“And that’s that,” Gustobald said proudly, pulling out his pipe and flicking a finger to light it. I let him have his victory smoke in peace, watching patiently as the masters gathered round. When the crowd size was to his liking, Gustobald took one last draw and exhaled satisfactorily. “I suppose you’re wondering how I managed to bring myself back to the world of the living?” he asked, but no one prodded him to continue. “Well, the best way to cheat death, I’ve found, is not to die in the first place. That’s my professional opinion, of course.”
“We saw you killed,” one of the sentinels called out.
“No. You saw someone who looked remarkably similar to me get killed,” Gustobald replied. “That was poor Mathis whom your Seeker turned to ash.”
“Mathis?”
“Mathis’s body anyway. Don’t worry. He had no need for it anymore. It was vacant at the time. As you recall, Miss Ives, I am wont to boast of the necromancer’s skill at flesh-shaping. No, my friends, Arland executed an automaton—a mindless corpse.”
“Unacceptable!” Master Warren said. “I am disgusted!”
“Don’t be too hard on him in this case,” Gustobald said. “Your Seeker was so eager to finish the deed that he didn’t have a chance to find out it wasn’t me. But enough. Lucky for all of us, the foremost necromancy expert of the Academy Magus was here to set things right.”
“You may be vindicated, Pitch,” Fridley said. “But you’re on thin ice.”
“Aren’t we all, in the end? Now, the guilty punished, the heroes recognized. It seems there is only one small matter left to attend to.” Gustobald fished inside his satchel and more than a few wizards took cautious steps in the opposite direction. When he jerked out a small scrap of paper, the crowd visibly relaxed. “There is the matter of my eviction. It says I’m to air my grievances with the Council of Masters. Is now a good time?”
Chapter 26
They rebuilt Gustobald’s cottage near the end of Maker’s Road, where the former Tower of Creation lay in ruin. Despite their continuing discomfort, the masters of the council couldn’t deny the necromancer’s key role in bringing the guilty to justice. I received little attention for my contributions, but, for the most part, I was just happy to have my friend back.
Gustobald’s new living quarters were much improved from the cramped hut he had previously used. It was twice the size, with lab facilities and extra rooms for storage, as well as an underground chamber to secure his new mushroom bed from further intrusion.
Even Deblin Bartleby seemed impressed by the new arrangement, and the speed with which it was erected. Luckily, the masters hadn’t pressed the issue of his involvement with the Black Hand, mostly out of respect for his murdered brother. In the good inspector’s absence, the laws of the outside world held less sway over the magic school. Having retrieved the family portrait he had so dearly sought, the brother Bartleby stopped by briefly on his way out of the town, not wanting to linger lest the Sentinels change their minds and throw him back in the Hold. Ruby might not have been able to get him out so easily a second time.
Once the activity died down, and Gustobald and I were nestled quietly in his new study, I was searching for words that would accurately convey my feelings of loss at having to leave as well. My current strategy was to avoid having the discussion altogether.
“About Mathis,” I said as the necromancer rifled through the small boxes atop the mantle. “Why didn’t you tell me your plan from the beginning? You left me to think you were dead.”
“Didn’t you get my message?” he asked. “The mushroom?”
“I admit that I considered it, especially after your deathknell staff disappeared. I also thought that you would have mentioned your plan, if you had one.”
“Caller’s staff,” he corrected. “In any case, I do apologize if I caused undue grief. I suspected you already had your fill of repurposing dead bodies.”
“You’ve got that right, at least.”
“Poor Mathis was a difficult one to lease. I’ll tell you all about it someday when you’re bored enough.”
“It’s always ‘poor Mathis’ with you,” I replied. “Sometimes I think you forget that he’s the one who poured the poison.”
“Not at all,” he said, finding the pouch of herb he had been searching for and leaving the fireplace. “But there are crimes of the greedy and there are crimes of the desperate, Miss Ives—the powerful and the powerless, if you will. The uneducated and downtrodden might be forgiven their temporary lapses in judgment. But men like Kildare Orden and Seeker Arland, men with means and opportunity; these are the true dangers of our world. The ones we can unconditionally call the guilty—the evil.”
“I don’t see it that way at all,” I said. “Justice should be proportionate to the act itself. There are no extenuating circumstances.”
“You’re young yet,” was his short reply. “If justice was left to the young, we’d all be in the Hold, and we might be better off for it.” I was still pondering this very thing when the necromancer plopped down in the sitting chair across from me, offering his pipe.
“I think I’m fine,” I said, raising a hand in polite refusal.
“You might like it, if you try,” he said.
“You just want company because it gives you more of a reason to.”
“There you are mistaken, girl. Who needs a reason? Got a light?”
I flicked my finger, but the cantrip failed. I shook my head. “What’s happening to me, Gustobald?”
“You’re dying,” he said.
“One second at a time,” I replied. He gave a deep sigh at hearing his own words. “How long do I have?”
“Months, most likely. Maybe less. Your magic will come back before it’s all over, of course.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“That’s always been the case with wild magic.”
Wild magic? I had never met a wild mage before, but there were ample warnings against them scattered throughout academy texts. They were powerful wielders of magic; indeed, some said the magic wielded them. Wild magic was aptly named. It was reportedly so uncontrollable that its users had laid waste to entire regions by complete accident. They were rogue wizards, often mentioned in the same breath as necromancers and alienists.
“They didn’t tell you,” he said, noting my frustration. “No, I suppose they wouldn’t. They hate wild mages almost as much as necromancers. Didn’t you wonder why you could walk through the Sentinel’s volleys unscathed? I thought that was part of your designs when you set your plan to us.”
“I knew my condition,” I said. “I just wasn’t sure why it was happening.”
“Blood and bones, girl! You must be mad! To face down the academy wizards armed with only your ignorance?” Gustobald let loose a deep roar that quickly turned into a smoke-laden cough. It was the first time I had ever heard him laugh.
Under the circumstances, I didn’t see the humor. “You do remember it’s the same condition that’s killing me?”
“Lighten up, girl. What’s death to a necromancer?”
“I’m not a necromancer,” I said.
“Well,” he said, with a pregnant pause, “we can fix that.”
“Yeah.” Another time I might have laughed at the jest, but my heart wasn’t in it. Gustobald just stared, silently puffing away. “You’re serious.” I won’t deny that I’d thought about it. Since the day we had first met, or perhaps before, it had been brewing just beneath the surface, where all fragile dreams linger during waking hours. “You’re not allowed to take an apprentice. The academy would never allow it.”
“They won’t allow a master necromancer to step foot on academy grounds, either. Why do you think I wear expert robes? But anyway, who said anything about a
n apprenticeship? I have extra room now and could use an extra hand. Can I help it if you pick up a thing or two while you’re here?”
“Is it possible?” I didn’t want to ask, but it seemed my heart would burst with or without an answer. “Can I prevent my own death?
His face grew darker as his smile diminished. “Death is unavoidable, child,” he said. “But there are—alternatives.”
“I accept,” I said, a bit too eagerly for my own dignity’s sake. “When can we start?”
“Very good,” he said, placing his pipe on the table and stretching. “In that case, your first duty is to find the frypan. We’re making pancakes.”
THE END
Also by J. B. Markes
For Queen or Country Series
For Queen or Country
Godless
The Bear of Alon
