Cathexis: Necromancer's Dagger (22 page)

The man set his glass down carefully on the
table and then a twitching began in the corner of his mouth, which
soon developed into a grin, which almost instantly turned into
laughter. He slapped the table and then pointed at the staring Lord
Armal as if he was the funniest thing he had ever seen.
At first,
Lord Armal was insulted, but then
he realized that his colleague had just played a horrendous joke on
him, and the continuing laughter was infectious, so he began to
laugh as well.

Finally,
their fit of laughter ran down and Lord Armal spoke.

“You really had me going, I thought a
monster had possessed you, or maybe one of those necromancers had
brain-altered you or something. I can’t believe I bought that line
about you taking over Pruta with our armies! I think Lord Rinholt
would have turned into a vorghoul if he had heard your joke.”

“Perhaps we should share this bottle with
the good ruler of Pruta? Why don’t you write Lord Rinholt a note
and I’ll have a servant deliver it. When he gets here I’ll set him
up for a good laugh,” the nobleman promised.

Lord Armal grinned wolfishly as he replied,
“That stuffy old bird needs a good joke played on him; all right,
we’ll do it!” He lifted a piece of paper from the stack on the
table, thought for a moment and then wrote a quick note to the
other ruler.

His friend across the table was still
smiling from his fit of laughter as he picked up the knife again
and asked in a pleasant voice, “Bread?”

“Why, thank you,” Lord Armal replied, “it
does go well with the wine.”

After cutting him a piece, he scooped a dab
of butter onto the dagger and inquired, “Butter?”

“Most definitely!” Lord Armal exclaimed with
gusto and leaned forward to proffer his piece of bread.

Reaching up almost casually the man
accelerated the butter coated knife and jammed it to the hilt in
the ruler’s left eye, and then asked calmly, “Knife? Oh, sorry, I
see you already have one.”

Lord Armal’s head hit the table with a dull
thud which upset his glass; the spilled red wine ran across the
table to mix with the red blood that ran from beneath the dead
ruler’s head.

The other man rescued the note that Armal
had written before the blood or wine could reach it, and then he
picked up his glass of wine, took a sip and spoke to the dead
body.

“Actually, I meant every word I said about
declaring war on Pruta; I was laughing because I know something
funny about Jatar that you don’t.” He leaned down to the dead
body’s upturned ear and whispered, “Jatar isn’t Jatar, but don’t
tell anyone, promise?” He sat back in his chair, took another sip
of wine and had a quiet laugh at his joke. “I happen to be sure
that Jatar will be delighted in helping me destroy Pruta, right
after we finish taking control of your country.
After all,
they seem to need a new leader, their
old one is kind of down and out; there must be something going
around, Lords are dropping like flies.

The new rays of sunlight that angled down
through the forest leaves pierced the thin swirling mists that
still lingered after the twilight’s departure. Drake squatted by
the fire while heating water in a small pot to make tea. Gustin and
Hetark sat nearby on a rough log oiling and cleaning their weapons
while Elizabeth stood a few paces away looking off into the still
forest; she turned and came back to the
campfire
.

“Tea, milady?” asked Drake holding up the
steaming pot to show his modest accomplishment.

“Yes please Drake, that would be very
welcome on this unseasonably chilly morning.” She took the cup from
the young knight and sat down on the log by the other two knights
and said, “Well I have some good news for us this morning; the
Tchulians have given up and are headed back toward the city.”

“I don’t mean to presume, milady, but was it
a good idea to tax your powers so soon after your wounding?” asked
the concerned Hetark.

“Though considerably weaker than I am
normally
, I have not yet come
dangerously close to my absolute limits. Besides, it doesn’t take
much power to do a check of our nearby surroundings,” she
explained.

“Did you account for them all?” asked
Gustin, and everyone there knew that he meant Von Dracek.

“Yes, I had to look a bit further, but I
located a shielded person traveling on horseback along the road.
The other ten were closer, but headed away from our position on
foot; one of them had a mind shield, so it was probably that
corporal.”

“A pox on that man,” Drake muttered and
Gustin smiled. Then Drake spoke dryly, “So they have given up the
pursuit. I’m not sure if I know how to travel without someone
trying to kill me every league or so.”

Gustin answered him in an amused voice, “I
could fill in for them, if that would make you feel better, Drake.”
Gustin fingered the dagger he had just cleaned suggestively.

“Perhaps you could fill in, they WERE kind
of inept,” responded Drake.

“Ha… ha,” Gustin said in a pretend
laugh.

Hetark sheathed his clean sword with a
thoughtful look on his face, and then leaned forward and put his
forearms on his knees with his hands clasped between as he said,
“Milady, I know this is a painful subject, but I feel we need to
ask more questions about what happened to your husband. We need to
learn everything about our enemies if we’re to be any help in
unraveling this twisted plot. I’ve learned one thing for sure
during these last two days, there are many things that I have taken
for myth or old wives’ tales that are actually real. Is it too soon
to ask you questions?” he asked and the concern for her grief was
evident
on
his serious face. “If
so I can wait,” he added.

“No Hetark, I have sworn to avenge my
husband and place my son on his rightful throne, so if I am to
expect your help it’s only right that you know everything that I
can teach you. Ask your questions and I will answer them as
honestly as I can,” Elizabeth assured the knights.

“Could you explain again how it is possible
for a person to take over another person’s body?” he asked,
obviously having difficulty with the idea of magic.

“It has to do with cathexis metal
artifacts,” she said, and then considered for a moment before
saying, “Long ago a blacksmith discovered a single strange rock in
an ancient crater. It was made of solid
metal,
not of this earth. We don’t know how, but he used
this metal to make various objects. It wasn’t until much later that
people discovered that these objects had a unique property; they
stored the memories of a person.
In
fact,
cathexis metal stored them so thoroughly that it made
a duplicate of the person’s memories and personality, pretty much
everything non-tangible about a person.”

“You mean the person’s mind was put in the
metal?” asked Drake, scrunching his face up in a frown.

“No, it made a duplicate; we call it an
imprint, but it didn’t affect the original at all. They discovered
this by accident when an imprint “talked” to a different person who
picked up the same object later.”

“How did it talk without a mouth?” Gustin
asked.

“The imprint speaks within your mind; it’s
similar to your own thoughts, but distinctly someone else. I know
that sounds confusing, but it’s something that you have to
experience to understand completely,” she explained. “Your mind
fills in the ‘voice’ for you, in fact, it even sounds like the
person, if you knew them well, but
it’s
not really words
you hear.”

“Do people get to talk to themselves when
they have made an imprint?” Hetark inquired.

“No, something about your memory meeting
itself doesn’t work; you just meld back together again. In a way
you’re talking to yourself every time you think, it’s more of the
same thing.”

“So,” Drake said, “the blacksmith made a
bundle selling these things, right?”

“No, the way the story is told at first the
cathexis metal didn’t show anything special other than being as
shiny as good silver, but much harder. After a few months he had
sold most of the objects he had made, but it wasn’t until a few
years later that the unique properties of the metal were
discovered. You see it takes a while for the imprint to be created;
the metal has to be touching the person for quite a long time. It
takes at least a few years before the imprint will happen. Once
they found out what had happened everyone tried to get the
blacksmith to make more, or tell someone else how to do it, but he
had used all the metal he had found and he told them so. It’s said
that they killed the poor man trying to force him to tell them the
correct alloy mixture for cathexis metal.”

“How many of these things did he make?”
Gustin wanted to know.

“Nineteen is the number that has been
accepted by most scholars, but there may have been more that were
just lost or hidden before anyone tried to account for them all,”
she answered.

“So people can talk to these imprints. What
happens after the person dies?” Hetark asked.

“That’s what makes cathexis so valuable, the
person’s imprint isn't lost, you can always speak to an imprint
once it is in the metal.”

Drake leaned against a tree trunk a few feet
away. “What happens if another person imprints the same piece of
cathexis? Do the two imprints get mixed up, or does the new one
replace the original?”

“Both imprints are kept, and they are
completely separate. The newest imprint is usually the dominant
one
unless a prior one has an
incredibly strong aura in life, but that is rare,” the sorceress
answered.

“What do you mean by dominant?” Hetark
prompted.

“When you pick up an imprinted cathexis
artifact the dominant imprint can talk to you, and if you will it,
any other imprints can speak with you as well. It has something to
do with your spirit being the strongest influence on the metal,
normally,” she added after a pause.

Drake interjected a question, “You keep
making exceptions, what’s that all about?”

“Well, this isn’t well documented, but it
seems possible that an imprinted artifact with a strong aura
attached can overpower the real person’s weaker
aura
if there is a severe enough difference
between their aura strengths. The theory is contested by many
scholars, the only historical cases happened way in the past,” she
explained.

“You’re saying that we aren’t sure if it’s
possible for one of those things to take over any person’s body
that picks it up?” Gustin asked, not sounding too happy about the
thought of things taking over his body.

“No, an imprint lacks power over a person’s
body,” she corrected.

“Wait, but you said that the scholars
weren’t too sure about that,” Drake interjected.

“What I said was an artifact with a strong
aura attached might overcome a weaker one, but an imprint without
its aura has no power. You must separate the idea of the imprint of
a person's mind from the presence of a person's soul. A person can
imprint cathexis, but they do not leave any of their aura attached
to that imprint, however, when a person dies their aura is
released. Normally your soul departs, but not when you have
imprinted a cathexis object, the imprint attracts the departing
soul. The soul is attracted to the cathexis imprint and they join
within the cathexis object. Once united the imprint becomes the
real person without a body.”

“Excuse me, could you translate what you
just said into understandable language,” Gustin pleaded.

“When someone dies after a short time their
healthy spirit leaves the dead body and joins the 'River',
departing our world for the next. I know this because I have
witnessed it myself."

Drake interjected a question, "Why did you
say 'healthy'?"

"I have also seen the auras of the souldead
attempting to leave their dead body and join the river, but they
cannot, and in the end they just dissipate to nothing, that’s why
they are known as the souldead.”

“Why don’t the vorghoul’s spirits depart?”
Hetark wondered.

“When Vorg created the souldead he distorted
their auras to the point where they can no longer journey to the
next plane,” she answered.

“Vorg, don’t tell me that he was real too!”
Drake exclaimed.

“Of course, you don’t think that the
souldead just made
themselves
, do
you? The term vorghoul comes directly from the name of their
creator, Vorg the Desecrator, but don’t worry too much about him,
he lived more than three thousand years before you were born. His
body is dust by now,” Elizabeth counseled.

“All right, I understand that your spirit
leaves when your body dies, what was the rest of that you said
concerning the cathexis artifacts?” Hetark asked, trying to get
things back on track.

“Your aura leaving is the normal way of
things, except if you have a cathexis imprint of your personality;
it seems that the aura will seek out the imprint and attach itself
rather than seek the river to go on,” was Elizabeth’s
explanation.

“But that means that a person with a
cathexis imprint can never go on, how horrible!” Hetark said.

“That’s what was thought for many years, and
then they found that if the imprinted person wanted to be released
and the physical owner of the cathexis object willed it, the aura
left for the next plane, it was as simple as that,” she
explained.

“Well, I like that a bit more,” said
Hetark.

“Yes, but if the person with the aura
imprint wants to go and the owner doesn’t will it, they are
trapped. People have used this as a kind of
extortion
if the imprinted person helps them with skills
and knowledge that they possessed in life then after a specified
time they would release their aura. The flip side of that is if the
imprint doesn’t want to go, nothing we know can drive it out of the
artifact.”