Cathexis: Necromancer's Dagger (38 page)

“Oh good, now I don’t have to worry about
soldiers catching me, I just have natural drop-offs and murdering
mutated souldead to contend with,” G’Taklar exclaimed
sarcastically.

“
It could be worse,”
Jatar said.

“Oh, how?”

“
I’m not sure, ‘Tak, but I’ll keep
thinking about it,”
Jatar answered.

“That’s what I thought. G’lan I’m thirsty!”
G’Taklar exclaimed.

“
You said that already.”

“I know, but I’m still thirsty.”

“
Do you think it’s going to get better if
you keep asking?”

“You know the old
saying
if you don’t ask you’ll...
whaaaaa
!”

G’Taklar had not been careful and he had
stepped forward without first feeling carefully for the
floor
when there was none. He reached wildly
in the air for something to grab, but to no avail. With arms
flailing he fell only to land hard on his back, sliding down a very
steep decline. He continued to scream, “Yaaaaa.”

“
Shut up! Get your feet around in front
of you, otherwise plan on landing on your head,”
Jatar shouted
mentally.

G’Taklar shut up like a clam snapping closed
and worked on getting his sliding body under control. He was about
half way around to getting his feet out in front of him when his
body went completely airborne. He screamed again, but his bellow
was abruptly cut off as his body struck freezing water. He plunged
down into the depths and lost his sense of direction, so in the
pitch
dark,
he didn’t know which
way to swim to reach the surface and panic set in immediately.

Jatar’s calm thoughts pierced his
consciousness,
“Drop the chain or you’ll sink!”

G’Taklar quickly released the heavy
object.

“
Now relax and hold your breath, you’ll
start to rise toward the surface, come on relax! I know your breath
is running out, but you must wait. As long as you relax and hold
your breath you'll rise toward the surface. Wait for it, all humans
float! All humans float!”
he promised.

With Jatar’s voice to help, G’Taklar finally
got control of his mind and relaxed while holding his breath. His
lungs began to burn with the buildup of carbon dioxide, but now
that he wasn’t struggling he felt a sensation of rising. He swam in
the direction he was naturally moving, and after three strokes,
G'Taklar felt his head break the surface.

He immediately gasped in some
much-needed
air. He
tread
water and enjoyed the simple sensation of
breathing. After a
moment,
G’Taklar had recovered enough to communicate with Jatar. “I’m glad
you were here, I didn’t know all humans float.”

“
Well, truth is, most of them float,”
Jatar replied.

“But, you said they all did, I could have
been sinking!”

“
Yes, but given your naked state and body
shape, I figured the odds were better that you were a floater than
that you would choose to swim in the right direction,”
Jatar
explained calmly.

“You lied to me!” And the fear and fatigue
the cold young man felt led quickly to anger.

“
I saved your life,”
Jatar
replied.

“Why didn’t you just say that most people
float?”

“
Would you have held your breath and
remained calm knowing that only most people float?”
Jatar asked
him in return.

“Absolutely not,” G’Taklar barked.

“
You just answered your question. Look at
the bright side, you got what you wanted, a drink!”
Jatar
exclaimed, trying to lighten G’Taklar’s mood.

Fuming with anger G’Taklar said, “I don’t
want your help anymore!”

Jatar’s imprint was instantly cut off by the
power of the host’s mind willing it to happen.

Unaware of what his thoughts had just done,
and still fuming, the young man chose a direction and began
swimming in the dark.

It was midnight in the
capital
city of Tarnelin. The Darknull was late
in returning to the necromancer which made CAracusS pace furiously
up and down the balcony just outside the Ardellen apartments.

Major Von Dracek was sitting at a table
behind him writing a message. When the major finished he said,
“There, this should take care of the Lindankar heir if he and his
mother turn up at the Kirnath School. I’ve given Raven instructions
to kill him and if possible, Lady Ardellen as well.
Of course,
that could ruin the spy’s cover, but
it would be worth it,” Von Dracek said. He tied the message to the
scaly blue leg of another stirglik messenger; this one’s
destination was a small village near the Kirnath School.

CAracusS walked past the major without
commenting on the message, but he muttered foul things under his
breath. Though it was not really in his way CAracusS slapped at the
stirglik on its perch as he passed. The creature’s wings unfurled
for balance and it squeaked in a high pitch screeching voice.
CAracusS stormed off the balcony and into the room.

The necromancer went down to his new torture
chamber and had two guards bring a prisoner from the cells. He had
executed most of the captive servants and military staff earlier in
the day, but he had saved a few for emergencies.

CAracusS tortured the poor servant girl
quickly, for no purpose, except to soothe his nerves. Then he
placed his hand on her forehead and withdrew her life force, which
burned her brain out in the same instant. Satiated, the necromancer
left her corpse in the chamber, now a dead husk, and he retired to
his rooms in the upper palace.

G’Taklar was swimming along in the dark
while muttering, “You wanted a quest, you wanted excitement and
thrills…
well,
you got them! You
couldn’t just enjoy reading about it, no you had to go out and find
adventure. Yuck, what was that, probably a fish… a fish
underground? What if it’s some strange eel that eats flesh? What if
it’s a
guek
, or… or… a pack of
gueks
! They could strip the flesh
off a leg in a heartbeat. G’lan, get me out of here!”

He touched something with his foot again and
pulled his feet up to get away from the creature he was imagining
below. Holding his feet up and swimming with his arms was difficult
and he soon grew tired. He thrashed around a little more while
trying to stay afloat and keep his feet up, but lost the battle.
When his feet finally came down they found what he had touched on
the bottom. He sighed with relief and waded up and onto a stony
shore; he was bruised, scraped, cold, wet and completely alone in
the pitch dark.

He sat in total despair, and since no one
was around to see he tried crying for a short time, but his sobs
echoed off the walls eerily, so he stopped. Besides, he figured
that crying with no one around to give him sympathy was a waste of
time.

Again he spoke aloud just to have the
company of his own voice. “What am I going to do? The souldead are
going to suck my brains out.” The anger he had felt had faded, but
his fear was growing.
Finally,
he
gave in and spoke to his cousin’s spirit, “Jatar, why aren't you
speaking to me? I’m all alone here… with… with brain sucking
souldead! I’ve read about them, they can be horrible. I read that
Vorg made many grotesque mistakes before he created his vorghoul,
so you never know what you’re going to find… at least that’s what
my stories said. I don’t like the thought of crawling around in the
dark with
brain-sucking
monsters
lurking about, please, please speak to me!”

With G'Taklar's will to let him speak Jatar
was finally able to reply. His first thought to G'Taklar was,
“
So, you’re still alive.”

“What do you mean?” The puzzled young man
inquired.

“
In your
anger,
you cut off my connection. This isn’t
a game, G’Taklar. Death will come swiftly for you if you make a
mistake. You have the advantage of one thing right now, two minds
to handle problems, one of them more experienced. When you cut me
off you’re risking your life,”
Jatar said seriously.

“I’m sorry, Jatar, I won’t do it again.”

“
Good, I’m trying to do everything I can
to help you reach safety and get back to Tarnelin,”
he told him
reasonably.

“I know, I’m really sorry,” G’Taklar said
for the third time.

“
It’s all right, now quit apologizing and
tell me where we are,”
Jatar instructed.

“I swam until I found this
shore
, that’s all I have done,” he
explained.

“
Check around the wall, I hope there’s a
way out of here without swimming any further. Your body is too cold
to go back into that water for
a while
,”
Jatar decided.

Still shivering, G’Taklar started crawling
around the small shelf between the water and the cavern wall. “I
found a low opening, but I don’t like the thought of crawling
through.”

“
You might not have much choice, check
around further and see if there is another way to go,”
Jatar
told the cold young man.

“Nothing, this hole is the only choice, that
or the water,” G’Taklar explained after concluding his search.

“
I don’t think you’re up to another swim
in that cold water, not knowing how far, or if there even is
another place to get out.”

“No, I agree, I don’t want to go in there
again.”

“
All right, you’ll have to crawl,”
Jatar decided.

“Great,” G’Taklar answered sarcastically. He
crouched down and entered the low tunnel. The ceiling kept getting
lower and lower until he had to crawl along on his belly for about
twenty feet.

“This is getting kind of tight in here,” he
complained to Jatar.

“
So far your only other choice is going
back to the lake,”
was the imprint’s answer.

“I know, and that’s what has kept me going
this far, but this ceiling had better not get any lower or it’s
going to be a long crawl
backward
,” G’Taklar noted.

A few feet farther the passage began to
widen out and eventually he could stand under a low ceiling.
G’Taklar started to walk forward when a strange low gravelly voice
spoke out of the dark ahead, “Good food!”

G’Taklar froze at the sound of the base
voice; it was powerful, deep and sounded like it rolled around in a
massive chest before booming out of some cavernous mouth.

Then, in
contrast,
a high pitched voice answered the other. “Possibly
Ebemoon
, but would you mind giving
me a chance to speak to him before you try to eat the poor
boy?”

Then the high pitched voice called to
G'Taklar from out of the dark passage ahead, “What’s your name,
young man?”

“
You better answer him, he already knows
you’re here,”
Jatar advised.

“I am G’Taklar Ardellen, a noble from fair
Tarnelin in Lindankar.” He tried to say it proudly, but his
youthful voice broke on the word, ‘fair’, so his desired effect was
ruined.

“G’Taklar of Lindankar and a noble… thank
G’lan, finally someone with more than a
fifty-word
vocabulary,” the higher pitched voice
exclaimed.

“Who are you?” G’Taklar asked somewhat
fearfully, he could not see anything in the absolute darkness.
G’Taklar remembered to ‘think’ his words to Jatar as he’d done
during the negotiations, this way the voice in the dark wouldn’t
hear his conversation with Jatar, “
That voice sounds cultured,
could this be another escaped prisoner?”

Jatar’s thoughts answered,
“I’m not quite
sure… something is odd here.”

The deep voice of Ebemoon spoke with more
animation, “Eat Food!”

“No!” the
high-pitched
voice hissed, “Just wait a moment, you
dullard!" He spoke up again to G'Taklar. "In answer to your
question, my name is
Halvisun
.”

“What do you want with me?” G’Taklar
asked.

“Brains!” Ebemoon bellowed.

From the irritation evident in his voice,
Halvisun
was obviously getting
peeved with Ebemoon. “Would you mind? The first chance in eons that
I get to speak with someone of intelligence and you want to ingest
the poor boy,”
Halvisun
squeaked
in exasperation.

G’Taklar thought frantically to Jatar
, “I
think Ebemoon is the brain eating souldead the guard spoke
about!
Should I run back down the passage?”

“
No, this Ebemoon would catch you when
the passage narrowed to a crawl. You should keep talking, it seems
that this Halvisun person has some control over Ebemoon… so try to
be friendly,”
Jatar suggested to his cousin.

G’Taklar spoke aloud again, “Halvisun, who
is that person with the deep voice?”

“That is Ebemoon, the
most stupid
creature to ever walk the face of
the earth and my everlasting companion, however, I don’t want to
talk about him, I want you to tell me about yourself. There’s not
much time left and I’m so starved for any news of the world.”

“Starved?" G'Taklar answered in a quavering
voice.

Halvisun chuckled, "Just an expression, I'm
not here to eat you, though I can't speak for Ebemoon."

"What do you mean about not much time?”
G'Taklar asked.

“I’d tell you to run, but though Ebemoon is
lacking in brain power his tracking instincts are spectacular.
He’ll just catch you anyway and I wouldn’t have this chance to talk
to you,” Halvisun explained with a sad note.

“
Jatar, what do I do? He’s as much
telling me that this Ebemoon will kill me!”

“
Stay calm, ’Tak, find out as much as you
can from Halvisun,”
Jatar suggested.