Dirge for a Necromancer (16 page)

The dragon folded his enormous wings tight against his body. He was a fierce-looking creature with a lengthy neck, a long body, and a powerful tail. His scales were wide and flat and bright red in color, and he had a short snout filled with fangs and horns that stuck straight up out of his skull. Raettonus stood completely in his shadow as Slade hesitated farther up the path. Nekkdan lowered his head and turned one eye toward Raettonus to see him better. “I saw the crack in that fort,” said the dragon. His voice was like stone sliding against stone. “It’s fallen to the Tahlehsons, hasn’t it?”

“It has,” said Raettonus. “A half-werewolf general named Diahsis has taken control there. Is that the sort of things Guardians are concerned with?”

“No. No, it doesn’t matter much to Lord Kurok,” admitted Nekkdan. “I was only curious. I’ve seen a few forts here in the mountains taken over. However, there are still others that have endured or even pushed back Tahlehsohr’s invasion force.”

“Do you know if they went north?” asked Raettonus. “The bulk of their army? Did they march on Bribarrah? Or on Sae Noklu?”

“Some of them went north,” said Nekkdan, wrapping his long tail around his legs. “I couldn’t say where they went though. I saw the ships go north, however. Around a hundred of them, I believe, but I wasn’t counting. Are you concerned?”

Raettonus shrugged. “It’s not my kingdom,” he said evenly. “But I left a portion of my belongings in Ti Tunfa, and I’m wondering if there might be fighting there. It’d be inconvenient for Ti Tunfa to be razed and all my stuff along with it.”

“It’s too bad you’re not from Zylekkha originally,” Nekkdan said. “With that detached attitude of yours, I’m sure Lord Kurok would have thought you the perfect Guardian. Maybe you could’ve been Guardian of the Fire Pillar instead of Bidan.”

“That was the Wolf Guardian, wasn’t it?” asked Raettonus, raising an eyebrow. “I met him before, in the wastelands. He was a colossal prick.”

Nekkdan nodded. “He was a bit abrasive,” said the dragon. “His corruption was, in retrospect, not unexpected. Still, it was a tragic thing to see a Guardian fall so far as he did.” He looked at Sir Slade, watching them from afar. “Who is this with you? He’s not very sociable.”

“He’s intimidated, I think,” said Raettonus, resting his hands on his waist. He called out to Slade. “Master, it’s all right—come a little closer.” To Nekkdan he added, “He doesn’t speak any Zylekkhan, I’m afraid.”

“Ah. Yes, I was thinking he didn’t look Zylekkhan either, but you handed-type creatures are much the same to me from one to another—elves, humans, werewolves. Not that I see enough of any of those to bother trying to keep them sorted out, anyway.”

Slade approached them cautiously. “He’s so enormous,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think it was possible for a living creature to be this big.”

As he came closer, Nekkdan tensed and drew back slightly. “Something wrong?” asked Raettonus looking up at the Guardian.

“He’s not right,” said Nekkdan, half spreading his wings and taking a step backwards. “Kurok guard me—he’s all covered in death.”

Slade paused. “He seems startled,” he said, looking to Raettonus. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Gods above,” said Nekkdan. “He’s…he’s all wrong. Living things shouldn’t…they just shouldn’t…”

“God, man, what is it?” asked Raettonus. “He’s perfectly fine.”

The dragon turned one great, yellow eye on Raettonus. “He’s not fine,” hissed Nekkdan. “You can’t smell that? He smells of Hell. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t…” Nekkdan turned and, spreading his wings, dove off the cliff. “I have to check the gate. This isn’t right!”

“What’s wrong?” asked Slade, as the dragon wheeled and flew away. “Where’s he going?”

Raettonus watched the dragon disappear behind another mountain. “Oh, he just had some other duties to take care of,” he lied. “We caught him at a bad time. Maybe another day.”

* * *

It was late at night when Slade parted from Raettonus. After he had gone, Raettonus’ room seemed colder and emptier than it ever had before. He snuffed out his fire and, in the dark, lay down on his bed with his knees pulled up to his chest. For a while, he stared at the wall where he knew the burned tapestry was, though he couldn’t see it. When he did close his eyes, he was almost instantly in a dream.

He found himself by the familiar pool beside Kimohr Raulinn’s temple in Kyshem’mur. Raettonus looked into the water at his own reflection for what seemed to him to be a long while, studying his own face. Sometimes he found his own face familiar, but most times, it was like looking at a stranger even though it never changed. Those cold, sorrowful red eyes, those thin, cruel lips that could only smirk or frown but never smile, those high cheekbones with the flesh stretched tight across them, which looked like the cheekbones of a skeleton. He looked at his face—the face of a twenty-six-year-old. Always twenty-six…

Raettonus couldn’t help but wonder what he might’ve looked like at thirty, or thirty-five, or fifty. He wondered whether his face would’ve looked more familiar to him if he could see it as the face of an old man.

With a resigned sigh, he turned away from the water and made his way up the steps to the shrine. His footsteps sounded out faintly in the long, extravagantly decorated hall as he made his way toward Kimohr Raulinn’s throne room, wondering what the god could possibly want from him now. However, when he reached the throne room he found it vacant. With a scowl, he struck down a hallway and began to wander aimlessly through the rest of the temple, peering into doorways and checking whatever rooms he found.

It was by luck that he came upon Kimohr Raulinn’s chamber—a large room, garishly decorated with painted marble statues and bright silk hangings. A large, canopied bed occupied the far end of the room, among whose twisted blue sheets Kimohr Raulinn lay panting with his eyes closed. There was a stench of sickness in the room, overpowering the smell of perfumes which had been sprayed to try and hide it. Raettonus made his way toward Kimohr Raulinn’s bed.

Hearing him, Kimohr Raulinn opened his eyes. “You couldn’t imagine how glad I am to see you, Raettonus,” he said. “I’m in very, very bad shape.”

As the magician drew close, he saw that the bed sheets were stained dark. He sat carefully on the bed and pulled back the covers from Kimohr Raulinn’s frail body. A cascade of black ichor covered his stomach so that it was hard to see where it was coming from. “I don’t have the strength to access my powers,” said Kimohr Raulinn. “However, if you’re visiting me, here in this kind of dream, all you need to do is wake up and you’ll be here. Then you can treat my wounds.”

“Every other time I woke up, I woke up in the citadel,” said Raettonus, raising one thin eyebrow.

“Only because I used my powers to keep you out of my temple,” Kimohr Raulinn said. “Not this time, though. Please, Raettonus—I’m in a lot of pain. I could die.”

“You said you’ve already died. Does it still scare you?”

“But I could really die,” Kimohr Raulinn said, clutching Raettonus’ arm weakly. “I’ve been wounded by Death himself, and the wounds are festering. Please save me.” He looked up at Raettonus with fevered yellow eyes. “I’m begging you, Raettonus—you like being begged, don’t you? And remember, I am one of the few people who sincerely like you.”

Raettonus let out a little sigh. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll treat you.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Kimohr Raulinn, closing his eyes. “I’d kiss you, but I don’t quite have the strength. Give it a while though.”

“How do I wake up?”

“How?” repeated Kimohr Raulinn. “Why, Magician—you’ve done it a hundred thousand times before. You ought to know by now.”

“Already I’m regretting saving you,” remarked Raettonus. He took a deep breath and concentrated on waking up. Suddenly, he found himself lying in the bed beside Kimohr Raulinn, and everything around him became far more solid and—counterintuitively—less vivid.

He sat up quickly and turned to Kimohr Raulinn, who was still asleep. This time when he pulled back the bed sheets he found that though the god’s wounds were festering, they were not as bad as they had been in the dream. They were clearly bite marks of some kind, which had become deeply infected. The flesh surrounding the injuries was veined with dark blue, like some strange bruise, and a steady trickle of black blood was dripping out of each bite. Raettonus gingerly touched one of the wounds, eliciting a resisting groan from Kimohr Raulinn. The blood was cold to the touch, but the flesh around it was burning hot.

It had been some time since Raettonus had tried to heal anyone without the use of herbs. He had learned magical healing, certainly, but it had been a long time since he’d actually put any of what he’d learned in that field into practice. What he needed for the process was easy enough to gather. He found a carved jade bowl and filled it with water from the reflective pool outside, before tearing the sleeve off one of Kimohr Raulinn’s robes to use as a washcloth. That was all he required.

The wound bleeding the most was on Kimohr Raulinn’s inner thigh, so Raettonus started there first. Raettonus dipped his improvised washcloth into the bowl of water and began to clean the injury. The flesh was severely mangled, and a chunk of it seemed to have been torn off. Once the area was sufficiently wet, Raettonus laid the cloth into the bowl and held up his hand. A flame sprang to life in the air above his fingertips. “Healing flame; not destroying flame,” Raettonus muttered to himself. “Remember, this is a healing flame, not a destroying flame.”

Concentrating hard on the idea of healing flames, he touched the fire to Kimohr Raulinn’s thigh. Slowly, the fire began to change color from orange to a venomous black, and it grew hotter and hotter until it began to burn even Raettonus’ normally heat-resistant fingers. He closed his fist, snuffing out the flames with a puff of dark smoke, and examined his work. The flesh of Kimohr Raulinn’s thigh was pristine and unmarred once more, and when he touched it, it felt just as warm as healthy flesh ought to feel. He repeated the process on all of Kimohr Raulinn’s wounds, cleaning and wetting them before applying the magical flame. Each injury he healed made Raettonus feel more and more ragged. It was as if someone were drawing the blood out of his body pint by pint and making him run a mile in between. By the time he was finished, it was all Raettonus could do not to collapse right there in the elven god’s bed. Instead, he ran the flames over Kimohr Raulinn’s heart to make sure that he’d gotten all the infection.

His energy completely sapped, the magician laid the bowl in his lap and leaned against one of the bedposts, watching as Kimohr Raulinn continued to sleep. After a while spent watching him from the foot of the bed, Raettonus set the jade bowl, its water now filthy with god-blood, on the floor and crawled across the mattress, until his own head was beside Kimohr Raulinn’s. He’d never seen him without that wide-mouthed demon mask—even when they’d gone to bed together Kimohr Raulinn had not removed it. Raettonus wondered that he’d never felt curious about the god’s face behind the mask until now. Gingerly, he took the mask in his fingers and began to pull it up.

“Kurok?” muttered Kimohr Raulinn sleepily when Raettonus got the mask halfway up. “It’s so cold…” But he didn’t wake.

Raettonus finished pushing Kimohr Raulinn’s mask up, and turned him over to get a good look at his face. Aside from his lips and a mark beneath his left eye, Kimohr Raulinn’s features were ever shifting. His nose changed size and shape every time Raettonus took his focus away from it—freckles and moles appeared and disappeared, and his cheeks were high and prominent this moment, the next moment full and round. Beneath his left eye, just where the mask covered it when it was pulled down, three characters of Zykyna were written vertically. He knew the word they wrote was said, “vaen” but not what it might mean. Raettonus slid the god’s wooden mask back into place and, with a tired sigh, lay down on the other side of the bed and dozed off into a peaceful, dreamless sleep.

* * *

It wasn’t until much, much later that Kimohr Raulinn woke him. “Good morning, Magician,” said the god, laying his head on Raettonus’ chest. “Well, it’s afternoon now and morning’s long gone—but all the same, good morning.”

Raettonus groaned and turned over. “Leave me alone,” he mumbled groggily. “I’m tired…”

“I wanted to thank you for healing me last night,” Kimohr Raulinn said.

“Thank me by letting me sleep,” said Raettonus, covering his eyes with his arm.

“But I also wanted to chastise you for peeking under my mask while I was asleep,” Kimohr Raulinn said. Raettonus could feel his smirk. “That was very unkind of you. What were you looking for anyway?”

Raettonus dropped his arm to his side and looked at Kimohr Raulinn. “You knew I looked?” he asked. “Why didn’t you stop me at the time?”

“I wasn’t aware of it until I woke up,” Kimohr Raulinn said, sitting cross-legged atop the bed. He was wearing a black and white toga with Zykyna characters embroidered along its hem in gold thread. “You did a wonderful job, by the way. Every inch of my beautiful body is just as it should be. And my fever has gone!”

Raettonus sat up slowly. “Well, I’m glad you feel well, because I feel like shit now,” he said with a scowl.

“You shouldn’t frown like that, Raettonus, you’ll get wrinkles,” Kimohr Raulinn told him. He smiled and leaned close. “I really do want to thank you though. I’m being entirely sincere when I say that I’m grateful to you for coming here and helping me. That fever took all my strength, and in just a little while longer it would’ve taken my life as well.”

“Why do I feel I’ve just done a huge disservice to the world?” wondered Raettonus, cocking one eyebrow. “You told me only enchanted weapons kill gods, and that you don’t lie. What happened to that, hm?”

The god ignored him. “I tried to use the last of my energy to cry out in all directions,” Kimohr Raulinn said. For once, his expression was completely mirthless; even his gaze was somber. “I cried out to all the other gods, and to all the mortals I’ve contacted who could possibly do something to aid me. You were the only one who answered. I would be dead without you, Raettonus. I know you don’t hold any particular love for me, so it means a lot to me that you would help me anyway.”