by Deck Davis
A woman saw it, and she screamed, drawing the attention of the dozens of shoppers around her.
At that second, Witas had reached the mana box, and he put the key against the receptable and twisted it. When he did, the box exploded.
A boom rang out over the Royal Mile, and a stream of fire and shrapnel burst from the box, sending Witas people flying back.
69
It was pandemonium. Some men shouted, others drew hidden blades and looked around for their enemy.
Women shoved their husbands away from them and dropped whatever they were carrying. Like their partners they also drew daggers, and some even had palm-sized blaster staffs.
Children cowered in shop doorways, others lay on the ground, staying still as if the blast could still touch them.
Screams, wails, a chorus of groans. Shrapnel and brick had hit those near the mana box station, while the people furthest back, although unhurt, had felt their bodies flush with adrenaline and sending them into fight or flight.
The cobblestones were covered in shards of metal, in crumbled brickwork, layers of dust. Shoppers fled from the area. One man tripped over Trout’s body and hit the cobbles, smashing his nose, and then the passers-by trampled over him as they fled too, and the man cried out as boots and heels smashed over him.
As Jakub looked for Witas, he saw movement to his right.
“No you don’t,” he said.
He stuck his foot out, catching Henwright as he tried to flee. The instructor tried to push himself up, but Jakub kicked him in the ribs, digging his boot deep.
“Move again and it’ll be the sword next.”
It had only been seconds, but he could barely process anything. He felt like he had been caught in the blast, like he’d been hit and it had scrambled his head.
First the boy had tried to steal the case, without realising it was open.
Next, Witas had tried to open the box; Jakub had seen him put the necromancer’s key against it.
So, was it trapped? Was it rigged to explode no matter who opened it? Or did you need to do something else as well as using the key, and Witas’s failure to do that had triggered a trap?
He wasn’t going to get close to answer there, kneeling at the edge of the alley with his sword pressed into his old instructor’s back. Even if he had the answer, it wouldn’t reverse time.
He needed to make sure Witas was okay. He was right next to it when it blew.
The Royal Mile shoppers who could still move had fled from the blast area now. The only ones left behind were the wounded; those caught in the explosion and who’d taken shrapnel to their faces, chest, legs.
Then there were the ones hurt by the panic itself, the people who had tripped and then been trampled on. Finally, there was Trout, his naked body covered in dust now.
There was no sign of Witas.
Jakub heard shouts and the sound of boots from his left and right.
“Last chance to run, Jakub,” said Henwright. “Yes; I heard about you and your new friend. They are putting posters of you up in taverns and shops, you know. I told the guardship artists what you looked like and helped them draw your likeness. As a concerned citizen, it was my duty.”
“That’d be convenient for you, wouldn’t it? If I get caught, nobody’s going to know what you tried to do. Or what you have done. I wasn’t the first you set up, was I?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mason D’Angelt said the warlocks were ambushed. Someone knew where the warlocks were going, and they must have been fed that information from the academy. You knew they were going to take Abbie.”
“You can sit here all day with your sword in my back, young one. Or…you can leave before the guards reach us.”
There were two sets of them; six coming from the west of the Royal Mile, eight from the east. Those were just the first to respond, too. With the explosion and the screams, every guard in Dispolis was going to make their way to this side of the city.
Henwright had a point; it was leave now, or give up. Let them catch him.
No doubt they’d try and pin this on him, too. After all, they already thought he and Witas had slaughtered ten of their guards.
“Damn it, Witas. Where are you?”
Without Witas, his story was weak. He was a guy expelled from the academy – why should anyone believe him about all of this?
He needed Witas to talk to Irvine, and he needed evidence, which had been Trout.
Problem was, Trout was in the middle of royal mile now, covered in stone and dust, with two more dead people on top of him.
And the guards were pounding own the cobbles, getting closer.
Jakub made a split-second decision. “Henwright. Look at me.”
The instructor turned his head, and Jakub smashed the hilt of his sword into his nose as hard as he could, knocking him out.
70
Jakub ran out into the Royal Mile. Debris was scattered everywhere, and people lay dead or injured on the cobbles. Dust mixed with blood, while cries from the wounded competed against the pounding of the guards boots as they hurried toward the blast zone.
The mana box station itself was destroyed; the boxes were buried, and the structure had been torn apart.
Jakub needed time to search for Witas. He had to stop the guards.
He looked at the corpses around him, and he thought about his shade.
Was this what a Raiser did? He couldn’t help thinking that this was a twisted use of necromancy, one that went against all the values the academy had instilled in him.
But where was the academy now? Where was their help? The closest academy instructor was in the alleyway knocked out cold, which was the least he deserved after what he’d done.
Screw their values.
Jakub spoke the spellword of Reanimate and cast it over and over again. Three of the dead shoppers rose from the cobbles. One was a man with a hole where his stomach had been, his guts and entrails hanging out. A woman was missing an arm, while an older man had lost half his face in the blast.
Jakub wasn’t done. He reanimated two more of them, commanding them to rise and become one of his puppets, tools of his shade.
After this his essence gave out, his soul necklace empty.
*Necromancy EXP Gained!*
[IIIIIII ]
Three of you go east, two go west. Block the guards; keep them busy.
He felt a pang of guilt as he watched his reanimated dead stumble over the cobbles, nothing in their minds now but an utter obedience to his commands.
By doing this, he knew he’d closed their resurrection windows. He’d taken away their chance of a true resurrection and doomed them to live their afterlives, brief as they might be, as his slaves.
The academy would not have the spare essence to resurrect them, said Mancerno. You know that. And if they did, would they use it on them? On normal people, ones that have to importance to the academy or the Queendom?
He knew Mancerno was right.
“Does this mean they won’t go to the afterlives?”
If you reanimate the newly-dead for just a few minutes and then release them, they will still find their afterlives. If you hold on to them for too long, you will deny them their passage. That is the cost of the Raiser.
And that cost would seep into Jakub’s conscience. He knew that now, but there was no time to dwell on it.
Trusting that his awakened dead would at least make the guards hesitate for a minute or two, he darted over to the mana box station. His boots crunched over broken glass, and the little of the structure that remained made a creaking sound, the beams and brickwork ready to topple.
“Witas?” he said.
The cleric didn’t answer, so Jakub began his search. The blight coursed through him stronger now, gurgling in his stomach, sending a thud through his temples.
With every brick he moved, every beam of wood he lifted, the thud increased, but he pushed himself on, knowing the guards wouldn’t be dist
racted by his dead puppets for long.
Finally, he found him.
“Holy hells,” he said, and felt a new sickness wash through him.
71
Witas’s left leg had been crushed by a chunk of stone. There was a wound on the back of his head, raw-looking and with blood mixing with the dust on his hair. His face was scorched; parts of it were black, other parts crimson.
The worst of the horror was saved for his right arm; it was almost wholly torn off, hanging on by just a split of tendons and crushed bone.
Looking at it, Jakub felt his stomach turn and his legs go light, the nausea sending a shiver through him.
No time for that, he told himself.
He put his fingers against Witas’s neck and then held his breath, hoping beyond everything that he felt something.
Nothing. He was gone.
But then he felt a thud. Slow, faint, but it was a pulse.
Across the way, further west and east of the royal mile, the guards had stopped. They approached Jakub’s reanimated people. They were all armed, all in their leathers with the Queen’s emblem printed on them.
Jakub saw one of them open his mouth and say something, but he couldn’t catch the words.
Looking at the cobbles, he saw that there were still a few corpses laying there. He said his Soul Harvest spellword, draining the essence from the dead and letting it wash over to him, where it snaked into his necklace.
Next, he cast Health Harvest and directed it at Witas, but he was so covered in wounds it was hard to know what to aim for. Even the healing mist itself seemed confused; it spread over his legs, then his arms, his chest, getting weaker each time.
“This isn’t doing shit.”
Health Harvest was magic, but it wasn’t a miracle, and especially not at a level [1].
Maybe I should have chosen the Tapper shade after all, he thought.
Nonsense, said Mancerno.
“Do you have anything useful to say? Anything about being a Raiser I don’t know?”
They are keeping the guards away from you; is that not enough?
“Damn it. Come, Witas.”
He cast Health Harvest again, this time pouring as much essence as he could and sending it over Witas until he was awash with the mist.
Witas groaned. He moved, then screamed in pain when his limp right arm scratched along the ground.
“Can you stand?”
Witas coughed, spitting out blood.
Moving wasn’t an option; the man was clinging to life by a torn thread.
“This is going to hurt a hell of a lot,” said Jakub.
He had no choice; he needed to move him, and there wasn’t a delicate way of doing it.
He looked at one of his reanimated on the west of the Royal Mile.
Come here, he commanded.
It was the man with a torn stomach. He shuffled over to Jakub, every move of his legs jolting a sliver of intestines that were hanging out of him. When he got closer, Jakub could smell the iron of blood, the stomach-churning aroma of faeces.
“Lift him up,” he said.
The reanimated reached for Witas’s right arm. Jakub watched in horror as he tugged it, snapping the skin and muscle that was barely keeping it on his body.
He pulled his arm off.
Witas screamed so loud, so high, that it drilled into Jakub’s skull and made his temples feel like they were going to burst.
“Oh fuck. Holy hells,” he said.
He went dizzy then. In all his training, all the corpses he’d seen, he’d never been subjected to this level of mutilation.
The guards are coming¸ said Mancerno.
That sparked energy into him. Get caught, and there was nothing he could do. They’d take Jakub away to the cells beneath Dispolis, and Witas would wind up on a gurney in the guardship basement.
Forcing back his revulsion, he picked up Witas’s arm and put it in his inventory bag.
He used the last of his essence to fire Health Harvest at Witas’s shoulder, where blood spurted where his arm had once been. The mists closed the wound a little; not completely, but enough to slow the blood from a spurt to a dribble.
Help me carry him.
Together, he and his reanimated dragged Witas across the Royal Mile and to the alleyway.
The guards sprinted toward them now.
“Fucking zombies!” shouted one, cutting down one of Jakub’s reanimated women.
He and the reanimated reached the alleyway, where Henwright was stirring.
Jakub grabbed him by the hair, pulling it so hard that Henwright cried out. “How much can the suitcase hold?” he said.
Henwright blinked, his eyes dazed. “Jakub, I-”
Jakub pulled his hair harder. He felt strands tear from his scalp. “How much can it hold?”
“It is artificed; it will hold as much as you need.”
Jakub could have commanded his reanimated man using his mind, but he spoke so that Henwright would hear. “If he moves, kill him,” he said.
Flushed with adrenaline, he dashed out into the Royal Mile and shifted rocks and bodies to the side until he found the suitcase.
Next, he opened it and then found Trout’s body, and he put him inside. With that done, with the guards even closer, the went back into the alleyway and dropped the case.
Jakub faced his reanimated. Put Witas in the suitcase, he commanded.
As the man carried out his wishes, Jakub had a second to consider what to do with Henwright.
Should he kill him? Would that be enough vengeance for what he’d done?
It might make Jakub feel better, but it wouldn’t help. They still needed something to take back to the academy. Not only did he have to clear his and Witas’s names for the dead guards, but there was the problem of the bastards who had killed Trout in the first place.
He didn’t like it, but it looked like Henwright was going to have to live another day. He had to face up to what he’d done.
The reanimated man had put Witas in the suitcase now. Jakub nodded at Henwright. “Get in,” he told him.
“What?”
“Get in the case, or you die now. That’s your choice.”
“Guards!” shouted Henwright.
Jakub punched him in the nose, and he heard something crunch.
“Get in the fucking case, or I’ll gut you before the guards get here.”
Henwright crawled to the suitcase, blood dripping from his nose, spit bubbling on his lips, and he climbed into the case.
Jakub closed it shut. Then, as the first of the guards neared him, he picked up the case.
Artificery was truly a wonderful thing; even with two grown men and a boy inside, even with the blight weakening him, it felt light.
He took off down the alleyway, forcing himself to sprint through his sickness.
72
He ran in a daze, sticking to the side streets and alleyways, sprinting even when his calves burned and his lungs tightened. He listened for voices and for boots, and when he heard them, he went the opposite direction.
By the time he reached a deserted side street, he was ready to drop. He put the suitcase on the ground and sat beside it, pressed against the back wall of a building. Water dripped from a gutter above him. Rather than move, Jakub let the water fall onto his hair and run down his face, mixing with his sweat.
Days earlier, he’d arrived in Dispolis with no fanfare. He was just one of the crowd, one of the thousands of people who walked the streets of the city, with nothing special about him to call attention on himself.
Now, the guardship were looking for him, and he had his friend and a traitorous academy instructor inside an artificed suitcase. He’d contracted the blight, and he’d found out his mentor had died.
He’d never felt so ill, so alone, so lost.
Where now? Where could he go?
Witas was the priority. He had to hope that his Health Harvest had patched him up enough to keep him alive. Even if it had, he didn’t have long.<
br />
The image of the reanimated man accidentally tearing off Witas’s arm replayed in his mind.
No. Don’t think about it.
He imagined a metal door shutting in his mind, blocking off all his fears, his sickness, an ever-growing sense of helplessness.
As it slammed shut, he’d never been more thankful for the lessons Irvine had given him in mental training.
He had to get to him and make him listen, and now he had Henwright as proof of what was happening.
But first, there was Witas. Okay. Who can fix him up?
There was the mender that Witas had mentioned, but he plied his trade from the Royal Mile, as did all the other menders. Going back to the Mile wasn’t an option.
Healers at the academy could fix Witas up, but there was no way Jakub could get him there in time.
So where could he go?
Where would Witas suggest, if he could say?
Well, he was a black cleric. But once, he’d been a normal cleric; one who called on the divine and used their powers to heal.
The Church of the Brightlight. That was where Witas had once used his gifts. After they had dismissed Witas, they would have brought in a new cleric, and that was where Jakub had to go.
He retreated into his own head, into his mind palace where he dredged up the remnants of the story Witas had told him.
The Church of the Brightlight, in the Mussand district.
Jakub stood up, looked around to try and get his bearings, and then he set out, hoping he was going in the right direction.
73
He’d heard that you could tell a lot about a religion from the place its followers built to worship in. When he got to the Church of the Brightlight what he found was a humble structure in Dispolis’s Mussand district, standing at the end of a row of houses that were a far cry from the grander homes of the cities richer citizens.
The smell of fish was carried by wind that blew from the docks a few thousand metres west. From the church itself, the sound of a lute danced from a window that was open just a crack, the tune lively and one that Jakub recognised; though when he’d last heard it, it was in a tavern, and the bard had put lyrics to it that would have made any respectable church-goer blush.
