Dirge for a Necromancer (27 page)

“I’m sorry that this happened,” Slade said to the armored figure looming above him. “I didn’t know…”

“I will not hold it against you then,” said Cykkus. He reached his hand down to Slade. “Your body will come with us as far as the gate. We need to move swiftly—every second we delay more and more souls escape out of Hell’s rent.”

Slade took him by the hand, and suddenly the glow of the necromancer’s blue eyes extinguished itself. Cykkus pulled the knight effortlessly onto the jaguar’s back to sit before him. With a snarl, the two-headed jaguar turned. Slade looked back toward Raettonus, and their eyes met for just a moment before Cykkus’ steed bounded away and disappeared into the army beyond. Raettonus stared after him, feeling as though he’d been hollowed out inside. Brecan came to stand beside him, nuzzled his ear softly, and said something in a comforting tone, but Raettonus didn’t hear the words. Around them the abassy were turning away, picking up their dead, and retreating silently. Horns were blowing inside the citadel and men were cheering. Raettonus could hear Diahsis’ voice speaking boisterously behind him, but there was no sense to be made of it.

There was no sense to be made of any of it.

* * *

Everyone was picking up the pieces. The dead had to be burned, and the injured had to be cared for. And, of course, the breaks in the wall had to be repaired. Diahsis had a feast called for to celebrate what he termed their victory against Hell itself. Raettonus didn’t think it much a victory however, and didn’t attend the feast.

Instead, he went up to the roof to stare out at the mountains. The blue pulse had died, which Raettonus guessed meant Cykkus had returned to Hell with Slade, and it had fixed his gate.

Down in the courtyard, a great pyre was burning all the centaurian dead. Sparks and ash drifted up into the night, as did the dirges being sung by their surviving comrades. Raettonus didn’t know how many had died. He didn’t care. All he knew was that not enough had.

If it were possible, he would’ve burned the whole world down—this and every world. He wanted them to feel the pain he felt. The bitter, festering loss. He’d burn them down to nothing, and maybe in the ashes he’d find something worth keeping…

Brecan came up to join him sometime just after the sun had set, but Raettonus sent him harshly away. The unicorn flattened his ears and his wings sagged. With a feeble, “Okay, Raet, but if you want to talk…” he had turned and left with his tail trailing behind him on the ground.

Alone, Raettonus watched as the moon rose in a dark sky, its orange face half hidden in shadows. Beneath him, the centaurs were singing songs both jubilant and sorrowful, but he was apart from their revelry and their mourning. Alone, he watched the moon and sat on the edge of a memory.

He had been fifteen years old, or near enough, and it had been a clear, unseasonably cold summer night. He had been riding along the riverbank with Slade, listening to his master tell him old folktales about the fair folk. As they made their way down the moonlit stretch of sand, Silvershield jerked beneath Raettonus and let out a surprised whinny. Boy and horse both tumbled onto the bank, crying out in pain.

“Raettonus,” said Slade, reigning up Steorra to a quick stop. “Are you all right?”

Raettonus scrambled to his feet. “Fine, Master,” he said. “I think Silvershield’s hurt though.”

“Let me see.” Slade dismounted and came to the floundering horse’s side, where he knelt. “Can you give me a little light?”

“Yes, Master,” said Raettonus with a nod. He cupped his palms before himself and invited a tiny fire to fill them. By the fire’s light, Raettonus saw the horse’s foreleg was all twisted and bloody.

“He must’ve stepped in a hole,” said Slade. “Poor creature. We should’ve ridden a little more carefully…”

“You can set it though, can’t you?” asked Raettonus. “You can set the bones and they’ll mend? Like that time I broke my arm and you set it and it healed just right?”

Slade shook his head. “I’m afraid not,” he said, standing. The horse was screeching and trying to get to its feet. The dark-haired man sighed and unsheathed his hunting knife. “Horses aren’t like people, Raettonus. There’s no way to get him off his leg for the time it’ll take to set, and if we could get him to stay off it he’d get sick.”

Raettonus looked up at his master and bit his lip. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I’m going to put him out of his misery,” said Slade, kneeling beside the injured horse. He placed his hand on Silvershield’s neck and whispered softly into his ear that it was going to be okay.

“Don’t kill him,” said Raettonus, putting his hand on Slade’s shoulder. “Please, Master…”

With a tired smile, Slade looked up at his ward. “Everything dies, Raettonus,” he said. “You don’t need to be sad about it or afraid of it. Death follows life like rainbows follow rain. This is the kinder way. Silvershield won’t be in pain anymore. Instead of his life petering out painfully, he can go quickly, without more hurt. I know he’s a good horse, and you’ll miss him, but this is the best way.”

Raettonus looked from Slade’s face to the blade of his knife and then to the horse. “Animals don’t go to heaven, do they?” he asked quietly. “You—you told me that, once, when I asked when I was little. You told me animals don’t have souls.”

“That’s right,” said Slade, turning his face away.

“So what happens to him when he dies? I’ll never see him again? Not even in heaven?”

“You’ll still have your memories of him,” Slade said. “I know it doesn’t seem like much, but it really is. Look, why don’t you take Steorra back to the castle? You don’t need to be here for this. I—Ride carefully.”

Raettonus nodded numbly and mounted his master’s horse. The destrier placidly obeyed as Raettonus steered him away, much less concerned by the other horse’s screams than Raettonus was.

It was a few hours before Slade returned. He’d cleaned his knife off carefully, but had neglected to notice some of the blood he’d gotten on his tunic. The sight of it—the knowledge of where it’d come from—made Raettonus queasy, but he said nothing.

It was around three years later that the plague hit Slade, and Raettonus found himself reliving that same conversation all over again.

Slade’s health had deteriorated so rapidly, and Raettonus had no idea how to help him. Only a couple days after the first symptoms appeared—fever, dizziness—Slade was bedridden and covered with festering black abscesses on his thighs and under his arms. His room stank of corruption every time Raettonus brought him food or water, and there was always sweat on Slade’s brow and pain in his eyes.

“Raettonus,” croaked Slade when he came to bring water. He grabbed Raettonus’ arm. “I need you to help me. I’m in so much pain.” The words were so hard for him to say, and they came out between labored breaths that rattled in his thinning chest like a dried bean in a tin.

“What do you need, Master?” asked Raettonus. “I’ve got water. Do you want me to go fetch something to help you sleep?”

Slade swallowed hard. “Please,” he said. “Kill me.”

The pitcher tumbled out of Raettonus’ fingers and shattered on the floor. He didn’t bother to pick it up. “W-what?” said Raettonus, his words trembling as they came off his tongue. “I think I misheard you.”

Slade’s blue eyes were foggy with pain as he gently pulled Raettonus close by the front of his tunic. “I want you to kill me,” he said, every word heavy with the effort of speaking. “This hurts—hurts so bad that I… I can’t make it, Raettonus. I can’t…”

“It’s going to pass, Master,” said Raettonus. Blood rushed in his ears; it sounded like thunder imitating a heartbeat. He was in a nightmare, he thought to himself, and when he awoke the conversation would vanish into the fog, forgotten. “You’re getting much better. Here—let me go get you some more water.”

“I’m dying, Raettonus,” said Slade. His voice rasped, and he half-coughed as he spoke. His skin was waxy and his cheeks hollow. He looked like he had already died. “It’s not going to go away. This pain… Even with hell awaiting me for it, I would kill myself to end this pain.”

“Master, you shouldn’t say things like that.”

“I don’t have the strength to do it myself or else I would,” said Slade. “Please, Rae—if you love me, kill me.”

Slade’s dagger was on the bedside table. Raettonus stared at it for a moment that stretched on and on. Its naked blade gleamed like quicksilver in the dim light. Outside the rain pounded, and a wind pressed gently against the shutters and batted back the thin drapes.

“You’ll get better, Master,” Raettonus insisted weakly. “You…you’re doing so much better.”

“Raettonus,” said Slade again. Raettonus winced to hear his name spoken in that cracking, pained voice. “I’m not getting better. I can feel death coming for me. It aches and it burns and—Mary, mother of God. Raettonus, I just want to die. Please—please.”

He couldn’t look at Slade’s pale, fevered face. It was too much for him to try to meet the man’s gaze. Instead, he stared and stared at the dagger on the bedside table. The gleaming blade of it, so full of menace. The seashell-shaped crossguard. The hilt made of ebony banded with pewter. He could hear Slade’s sad, labored breathing as he looked at the weapon. He could smell Slade’s fetid wounds eating away at his healthy flesh. He could feel the heat of the sickness in the air around him. The dagger sat on the table, promising both relief and horror.

“All right, Master,” said Raettonus quietly. He picked up the dagger gingerly, as if it were something delicate and temperamental.

“Please don’t hate me,” Slade said, taking Raettonus’ free hand. The flesh of his palm was cold and wet with perspiration. “Please don’t hate me for this.”

No matter how hard he tried afterward, Raettonus could never forget the way the dagger felt as he slid it between Slade’s ribs. He had killed many, many times after that, and it always brought back the memory unbidden—the resistance as the blade dug through the tissue, the smell of blood filling his nostrils, the look of pain on Slade’s face followed by tranquility.

He need only close his eyes, and he was once again in that moment. He couldn’t escape from that moment. Far and fast as he might run, that moment was always right behind him. It was inside him, dwelling in every fiber of him. That moment had wrapped itself, serpent-like, around his brainstem, and it refused to let go.

That hot, wet room that smelled of rot. That gleaming dagger pushed up to its ornate crossguard into Sir Slade’s ribcage. The hissing rattle that came up Slade’s throat as his lungs collapsed into themselves. The rain pouring down like little tiny hoofbeats against the castle’s stark stone walls.

Covered in the blood of the person he loved the most, Raettonus collapsed beside Sir Slade on the bed and wept until his eyes ached and his throat was raw and red.

Raettonus was snapped out of his memories suddenly as he became aware of someone standing near him.

He jerked his head toward the figure and found it to be Kimohr Raulinn. Shadows pooled in the eyeholes of the chaos god’s mask, obscuring his eyes. Through the wide-open grin of his wooden mask, Raettonus could see his lips outlined in the firelight. He wasn’t smiling.

“What do you want?” asked Raettonus, glaring at him.

“Nothing at all,” Kimohr Raulinn responded easily. He took a step toward Raettonus cautiously and looked out across the empty stone expanse around them, toward the faint, black outlines of the mountains. “I see Cykkus has fixed Hell’s gates. Pity.”

“You knew he would.”

Kimohr Raulinn shrugged slightly and leaned against one of the iron bars that caged the roof. “I had a feeling,” he said. “You’re only mortals, after all. Who could seriously expect you to best Death himself?”

A wind kicked up and flapped Kimohr Raulinn’s lavish white robes. The beads around his neck clacked against each other softly as they were rustled. “Why would you do it if you expected Cykkus would just fix it anyway?” asked Raettonus as dying sparks from the pyre below floated by on the wind.

The god chuckled softly. “It’s what I do,” he said. “All sources of chaos are only temporary. Entropy is the natural state of things, but if any one specific type of entropy were to become the rule—why, that’d just be a different sort of order, wouldn’t it? Everything I do is fleeting, my dear, sweet Raettonus. Nothing—nothing—in this world is permanent.”

They were silent. It felt to Raettonus as if Kimohr Raulinn was waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t really feel like talking. He stared down at his boots and picked at a tear in his hose. He had changed from those stained, white clothes into a clean, dark red tunic with Sir Slade’s gryphon embroidered over the heart in black thread. If the sight of that proud, rearing beast had made him sad before, now it crushed his heart in his chest and made his throat swell up.

Raettonus smoothed at the hem of his tunic and picked at a loose thread. All the while, he could feel Kimohr Raulinn’s gaze on the back of his neck, making the hairs there stand on end. “So,” Raettonus said, finally giving in. “Did you choose to put me through all this at random? Did I just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

Kimohr Raulinn straightened and walked toward him. He knelt beside Raettonus so that they were at eye-level. “No, it wasn’t random,” he said as Raettonus lifted his eyes. “It had to be you. You’ve lived such a long, bitter life that you had enough emotional turmoil to let me break Hell apart; that’s why it had to be you. Also, I don’t know of anyone else who could convince an entire army to fight a suicide battle on his behalf.” He smiled.

“I see,” said Raettonus. His voice was tight.

“You are something amazing, Raettonus,” purred Kimohr Raulinn. “I’ve watched you for such a long time, you know. When you first stepped foot in this dimension, I noticed you. You had so much…hm, let’s call it ‘promise.’ You were promising.”

“Promise,” repeated Raettonus, narrowing his eyes.

“Yes, promise,” cooed Kimohr Raulinn. “I could feel it inside you—all that chaos bottled up, just waiting to come out of you. Ah, but there are lots of people like that. People who hate the world and want to tear it apart. You only really caught my attention after that silly business in the Center of Souls. You lost your soul there, didn’t you? What was it for? I never could find out…”