The Morality of A Necromancer Read online

  “I kept it away from the horses, my lords. I wouldn’t let it hurt them.”

  “Good lad.”

  “Help me with Doriel; he’s more injured than he’ll let on,” Seweryn said.

  “Really, don’t make a fuss,” he said, rocking and holding his left arm to his chest.

  Kian hurried to the other side of Doriel and put his arm around his waist. He was amazed at the weight of the dwarf who began wheezing.

  Doriel collapsed on the wet ground near the fire.

  Seweryn ripped open the sleeve on the injured arm. Pustules sparkled with dried crystals, glittering like granite. Seweryn pressed his fingers against the inner wrist, the flesh didn’t move with the pressure. “Oh Goddesses, no pulse. Do you feel that at all?”

  “No.”

  “Try to move your fingers.”

  “Gods, I can’t. I’ve petrified.”

  “I’ll have to amputate.”

  Doriel closed his eyes and stroked his long beard. “It’s good it’s my left hand. I’ll lose my battle ax, but not my sword hand.” He opened his eyes again. “Do it with my ax.”

  Listening to the men’s’ argument, Kian fought the urge to vomit.

  Seweryn dug in his saddlebag for a bottle which he handed to Doriel who gulped the contents quickly and set it on the ground.

  With the sudden urge to know what mysteries Seweryn knew, Kian pressed Doriel’s arm. The flesh was hard as stone. The petrification ran from Doriel’s fingertips to halfway to Doriel’s elbow. “Isn’t there another way?”

  “Not in this swamp. Take the fist, Kian. Hold it tight.”

  Kian grabbed the petrified hand. Seweryn marked a line with ink in the still movable flesh. Doriel whispered a prayer to a mountain god, each word slurring a bit more than the last.

  Seweryn drew Doriel’s ax into the air and brought it down against the arm on the mark which he made. Doriel screamed. The scream echoed off the water again and again. The horses nickered, unhappy with the sound. Blood spurted upwards.

  Seweryn packed the wound with an iron-colored powder.

  Kian wanted to cry. Doriel took his stone arm from him, looked at it and tossed it off the hillock and into the mud. “Elfkin magic won’t ever kill a dwarf.”

  “Why in the lowest Realm did you take the risk?” Seweryn asked.

  “I didn’t think the flame would swallow me like that.”

  “What can I do for you?” Kian asked.

  “Pshaw,” Doriel said. “You’re a mother hen just like Seweryn. Just need a stout ale to make me right.”

  “The best I can do is a Daosithian wine,” Seweryn said.

  “That’ll do.”

  Looking at the first discarded bottle sitting in the wet ground, Kian noticed a small amount on the bottom. How sweet the wine would be. He only wanted the dregs. No, I don’t! He screamed in his head. I want to go home. I want to hear my mother sing and one of Pa’s stories. No wine. No blood. I must be Kian again.

  *

  Roark slipped towards the small stone house built on the dry hillock. It was quiet except for the light movements inside. Even in the dim of the swamp, herbs grew in the windowsills. With his back against the wall, he used a mirror to see inside. Daena was sitting at a table, eating what looked to be porridge and reading a scroll. She looked to be a Daosith woman of four decades, her long black locks were set in a thick braid, except for the scowl on her face. According to Alana, she was twice that age. Who knew what else they would find inside? Roark wished he could talk to her. He wished to know what she knew. And he knew this would be denied. He crept towards the rear of the cottage to the fire wall where Kajsa and Eohan waited.

  “Sometimes the Guild should be seen,” Kajsa said. “Eohan. Go in through the windows in the back. I want her to feel surrounded. Roark, on me.”

  Kajsa climbed the hillock and examined the front door. “Don’t see a trap but that didn’t mean one doesn’t exist.”

  She pushed it open and jumped back. The hinges whined. A moment later, a flash of fire scattered over the front stone stoop. It hissed as it landed on the wet, muddy ground. Kajsa leapt over the fire and rolled into the door. Roark jumped in behind her.

  “How dare you!” A woman’s voice yelled. Daena scrambled towards her pantry and grabbed a large crock. She threw it towards Kajsa who knocked it out of the air. The crock fell to the ground and shattered.

  Holding a silk rope, Kajsa snapped her arms wide as she leapt at Daena. They tumbled towards the floor. Daena screamed. Keeping her muscles tight, Kajsa rolled to her feet and dragging Daena to her knees. She pulled the rope taut, but not tight enough to strangle. Still, the woman’s fingers pressed against the rope out of instinct, scratching her own throat.

  Eohan clambered through the back windows. He looked most impressive with his claymore drawn, though it was impractical for indoor use. The boys advanced upon the necromancer though Kajsa has her well in hand.

  Roark realized, This is no opponent. She’s just a woman hiding in a swamp.

  “Stop fighting, I don’t want to hurt you,” Kajsa said. “We want to return the ruby to your cousin, so she might rule in wisdom.”

  “She sent the Guild?”

  “She posted for a reward for the ruby’s return, and your cousin pays well enough for my apprentices and me to be interested,” Kajsa said.

  Daena hung her head. “It doesn’t work. It’s nothing to her—or you.”

  “Can you pay what she does?”

  Daena opened her mouth.

  “What do I care if it works? All I care about is the bag of gold I’ll receive once I return the bounty.”

  “And what do I receive?”

  “We’ll leave you in peace with a bit of advice. I’d not return to court if I were you. Two runaway slaves were first suspected of your cousin’s death and killed in your place, but I questioned the Empress about the stone. She may suspect.”

  Roark stopped listening to Kajsa and read the scroll on the table. It was only a friendly missive to a swamp hag, inviting her to dinner. His stomach plummeted. He hoped Seweryn was right and the Swamp Hags which attacked were only shades of the original.

  I thought I was just killing the Empress and her consort, but regicides hurt so many more. As long as I’m part of the Guild, I can never be clean. In his mind, he recited: The Guild keeps the Realms safe for free and peaceful trade. The Guild keeps the Realms safe for free and peaceful trade. The Guild keeps the Realms safe for free and peaceful trade.

  *

  Chapter 17

  Guild House of Olentir in the Realm of Fairdhel

  Eohan did not like how Kian stared at the House Master or possibly the ruby as the old man carefully removed the quartz from the setting. Corwin measured the stone and examined it for flaws. He dug through a bin of unpolished rubies until he found a large, clean piece of rough, close to an inch long and wide.

  Eohan reached for his brother as he stepped closer. The House Master did not even bother to look up as he polished the gemstone with a rough awl. Slivers of red stone slid on a piece of felt. Rubies, even slivers of rubies, would buy so many things. Eohan learned to master his greed by one of Alana’s not-so-gentle lessons. He never wanted Kian to be disarmed, knocked from his horse and left for several hours alone in a dark wood to think about what he had done. He did not doubt any lesson from Corwin would be much worse.

  “It’s very much what Lord Seweryn did with the bodies, isn’t it?” Kian asked.

  “Indeed, lad, it is.” In a soft voice, he began to explain how he was grinding the shape close into that of the finished stone. He stopped and carefully examined the gem. “I must identify any flaws, and remove them, except this one, which matches the one in the Empress’s ruby.”

  Roark looked at Eohan. “Who in lowest Realm is this?”

  “Kian doesn’t annoy me nearly as much as you two do,” Corwin said and pressed the gem into a grinding wheel until a flat surface appeared. “This is the face of the stone, and I’ll use
this flat to orient the rest of it as I grind in the facets. Fetch that pot of wax for me.”

  Kian ran to get it and brought it back.

  Eohan shrugged at Roark. And met his eyes. He hoped Roark would read his mind. Probably best Kian doesn’t know the House Master as we know him.

  Roark nodded.

  Corwin attached the flat of the preformed gem to a flat-faced brass dop stick with a big dollop of black wax. “First, I grind the lower portion which is called a cullet into shape …” He rechecked the Empress’s stone until the shape matched. He removed the stone from the first dop, carefully attached it to another dop, and ground the crown of the gem into shape.

  After Corwin had cut and polished all the facets, he removed the sparkling gem from the dop. He softened the wax over a candle and removed most of the wax. He dropped the gem into a jar of whiskey.

  *

  Waching Kajsa and Seweryn ride toward the docks, Roark hoped the trickery would work. That he wasn’t sending his friends to their deaths. He hoped the Empress would like the ruby.

  Now he was injured, what would happen to Doriel if Kajsa fell? His wife was dead; he had no House of his own.

  “Doriel will be fine. Plenty of Guildmembers have amputations,” Corwin said, coming up the stairs behind Roark. “I’ve been watching your mind, and I’d remind you the future demands we hold back technology. Remember the schism when you doubt the wisdom.”

  “But Lord Corwin, if you read my journal or Alana’s, you’d see what the species are doing to each other and themselves. If you ever left your Guild House, if you saw the bodies of children at the arena …” Roark’s voice got caught as he choked with emotion.

  “My patience with your and Alana’s nonsense grows thin.”

  Roark decided to try another tact. “My lord, you want to rule this Guild House with wisdom. You claim you plan to study the gem …”

  “Careful how your tongue waggles,” Corwin said. “I could throw you from this tower, and only Alana would care. Come, if you are truly to be a journeyman of the Guild, it’s time to show you something.”

  Corwin cast a light sphere and placed it above his head. Roark followed the House Master to the rear of his chamber coated in darkness. He could hear the swishing of the linen against the stone floor and see the outline of the silvery hair and robes move through a doorway, but he couldn’t see the floor beneath his feet. The air felt cooler with each step. Roark ran his hand against the stone wall and felt for the stone stairs as he slowly and silently moved through a corridor that was previously unknown to him.

  Darkness washed over him, and he felt his knees weaken.

  “Alana thinks I am foolish to only want the nobility as the elfkin representatives within the Guild,” Corwin said getting further in front of him. “But I will show you what I have seen, and perhaps you will understand why I am against anyone who has greed and ambition in their hearts.”

  “But Eohan …” Roark stopped the words on his tongue. He knew Eohan was ambitious.

  “Good, you’re learning. I’ve taken no pleasure in trying to force some sense into that soft brain of yours. I have told Alana many times that she is too gentle with her apprentices.”

  “Yes, House Master.” Roark felt for another step, still unsure of Corwin’s goals for this tete-a-tete.

  “Alana is correct. Eohan is a steadfast friend to you, but he sees himself reaching a station above which he was born,” Corwin said. “If you ignore what is in front of your eyes, you will fall.”

  “Yes, House Master, but Kian moderates that.” It was the best thing Roark could think to say in the moment which was truth and protective of his friends’ characters.

  “Correct. Eohan’s drive to be a good brother -- and a good man -- is greater than his greed.”

  “Why don’t you want him in the Guild?”

  “If I didn’t want him in the Guild, he would be dead.” Corwin spoke with such simplicity and straightforwardness, Roark saw the truth in the words.

  At the bottom of the stairs, the light sphere rose to the ceiling illuminating a cavernous chamber filled dozens of wheeled carts and carriages bursting with circuity, and metal bits lay unused and covered in dust. Paint peeled off metal exposing rust. “Are these vehicles, House Master?”

  “These used to be the engines of the Realms that polluted the water and air. But that is not what I wanted to show you.”

  They went deeper into the graveyard and through a gated archway. Corwin cast another light globe which went towards the ceiling illuminating a large black tube which seemed to swallow the light around it. Below it lay a few bodies, untouched by time.

  Roark took a step back. Corwin gestured him to follow.

  “We no longer know it’s true name. This is the weapon that caused the last schism,” Corwin said. “Guild scholars know it is powered by the Realm’s gravitational pull. The last Monarch gave it to the Guild for safekeeping and as a symbol of trust and unity. She feared letting it the fall into the wrong hands. All intelligent societies keep making the same mistakes, including ours. Until society stops grasping for power, wealth, even for personal gain, the Guild must hold technology back. Even history cannot tell us which of the Monarch’s children was to be the most just leader before the schism. Only that one compensated scientists to build weapons that shattered our Realms.”

  “My travels taught me that humans, dwarves, and gnomes all had such weapons,” Roark said. “All intelligent species claim to cause the schism.”

  “Perhaps we all did.” With a deep sigh, Corwin leaned upon a thick wooden beam and held out the blood quartz which shimmered in the flickering light of the sphere. “If I take this quartz and try to use it, am I any better than the nobility which claimed this weapon -- and others like it -- were only used for good?”

  “But wisdom isn’t the same as political power.”

  “Greed is an insidious thing, and it is known to topple the wise. Did not the Empress, whom you murdered, allow her consort to take pleasure in slaves?”

  The young man pinched his eyes shut, stopping the words which formed in his heart.

  “Speak.”

  The young man feared Corwin would strike him or leave him in the darkness with the other corpses, but he had been ordered to speak. “But, my lord, if we fear everything, we can’t better society either. Alana says the post Schism ways are fading. Something will take its place whether the Guild wants it to or not.”

  Corwin sighed again. “If your life hadn’t been spared when my daughter fell, I might’ve loved you as Alana does.” He pressed a hand to Roark’s chest.

  Roark’s exact thoughts developed into words which bubbled up his throat and escaped his mouth. “House Master, the necromancers have apothecary knowledge the Guild doesn’t have. It wasn’t swords that killed Saray, but the wounds. I sat beside her deathbed and held her hand as she gasped her last breath. It bubbled and stank with infection.”

  The old man smiled. “This is why you have my leave to study necromancy. Edar Candlewick’s death won’t come from my hands but anticipate it if too many learn your secrets. I’ll expect reports every cycle of Dynion’s moon. Tell me not only of your successes, but your failures as well.”

  Corwin took Roark’s hand set the quartz inside. “Keep it hidden. It’s supposed to be in the Guild Vault.” He called back the light sphere and walked back towards the stairs. “I will write my congratulations to your parents. They shall be gladdened to know their son has become Lord Roark in the eyes of their ally.”

  *

  Chapter 18

  Province of Eryedeir in the Realm of Fairhdel

  Riding behind Eohan in the night, Kian couldn’t see anyone on the streets, though in the distance he caught a glimpse of the six white towers growing out of the granite cliffs above the sea. Several barges were moored at the docks. Below the towers, a small village surrounded by a stone wall, which looked as if it was carved out of the granite cliffs.

  The songs of nightbirds, the gr
uff voices of nightguards keeping the peace and shepherds caring for their flocks, echoed off the shoreline.

  As they passed the first village gate, the nightguard bowed at Roark. A young boy or girl, Kian couldn’t see clearly in the dim light, dashed out of the gatehouse to let the stablemaster know that Roark approached. “Her Highness and your great sister prepared a mighty feast for you, Master Roark. Your mother’s eyes shine bright with pride for you.”

  Kian wished his mother’s eyes still shined.

  Inside cottages and pubs, a few villagers shuffled about, but the streets were quiet other than the clops of Cloudy and Jaci’s hooves on the limestone street. Kian felt trepidation and joy as the Great House grew larger as the road spiraled up the hillside.

  Inside the walls, firelight danced along the path. Even in darkness, the garden was bright with color. Stablekeepers hurried to take the horses. As they dismounted. Alana ran out to greet them, her long silver hair caught by the wind. Though her braids blew around her, without armor and dirty traveling clothes, she looked less like a wild witch now, more like someone’s grandmother.

  She embraced all three boys. Kian glanced at the older boys. Eohan was blushing with embarrassment but looked pleased. Roark looked comfortable in his aunt’s embrace and accepted her kiss on his brow.

  “Though it pained me to stay out of the way, I knew you could accomplish this feat,” she said. Her voice held a mixture of pride and sadness. She turned to Eohan and Kian. “Welcome to Eryedeir. So Kian, what did you think of your first adventure?”

  “I’m not sure, Lady Alana.”

  “Well, my apartment has been made ready for your arrival. You’ll get cleaned up, then pay your respects to the Doyenne. In the morning, you can see your father.”

  Eohan smiled: “You found him?”

  Kian’s heart felt light and fluttery. “Pa’s here?”

  “Yes. And in Eyredeir, yes,” Alana answered both questions. “He has been watching the road for days, but the hour is late, and since you didn’t see him, we must assume he is asleep. Though I have much respect for your dear father, Roark’s mother is the Doyenne, and you must pay your respects to her.”