Dirge for a Necromancer (7 page)

“I can tell you,” Raettonus said, “you certainly are a goblin.”

“Yes, but how can I trust you?” said Deggho slowly. “You might just be a figment of my overactive imagination, inventing someone for me to talk to. I mean, I’ve had stranger fantasies than meeting and painting immortal magicians. I had one just the other day that I was visited by a sphinx with fire for eyes. Oh, that scared me something awful, too, before I realized I was just imagining it all. Maybe I’m imagining you too. There’s no way for me to know. I mean, think about it—when you dream, and you realize it’s a dream, do you ever turn to the nearest person and tell them so? If you do, they just tell you it’s not a dream, and that everything is fine. And then you wake up and… Well, you wake up. It was a dream, after all. You could be one of those people from a dream, assuring me I’m awake when I’m really asleep.”

It wasn’t often Raettonus had met someone who was more pitiful than himself. He really enjoyed watching Deggho flounder about as the darkness took his sanity.

Deggho continued to ramble on as he painted, exposing his fears and wonderings—only about half of which Raettonus actually listened to. Eventually the conversation turned lighter, and they shared jokes and second-hand anecdotes, and Deggho told Raettonus a little about goblin society.

“Centaurs are so high-strung,” Deggho said. “Goblins are much more lax. Kariss spend most of our time playing games of chance with bones or whittling tools and weapons. I was never very good at those things though, so I spent a lot of my time wrangling mounts.”

“Mounts? Like what kind?” asked Raettonus. “Dragons?”

“Gods, no! A dragon would snap your head off in a second,” Deggho said, eyes going wide momentarily. “No, I just wrangled ‘gryphs and unicorns. It’s not so hard—you just have to get a thick leather strap through their mouth so they have trouble biting you. Then you get a choke chain on them, and at that point they’ll usually give up the fight and let you ride them.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then usually at that point, we’d stick them with spears,” Deggho said. “They taste all right, but dragon’s better. That’s why we try to get them to let us ride them to the hunt. It’s easier to take down a dragon if you have a few riders in the air, throwing spears down.”

“Did you ever kill a dragon?” Raettonus asked with a yawn. It was getting very late.

“No,” Deggho said, shaking his head. “I was never a hunter. I just wrangled the mounts. How about you? Have you?”

“Have I what? Have I killed any dragons?”

Deggho nodded.

“No,” said Raettonus. “Wait, no. Yes, I suppose I have killed one. A frost dragon, actually.”

“R-really?” asked the goblin, wide-eyed. “That’s quite impressive.”

Raettonus shrugged. “It wasn’t really anything at all,” he said. “I killed it with pyromancy. It never really had a chance to fight back. Say, earlier, you mentioned that saying Kimohr Raulinn’s name draws his attention.”

Deggho winced at the name. “Yes, that’s right,” he said. He glanced around and ducked his head slightly, as though he expected the roof might suddenly collapse on top of them at any second. “We call him the Moon Son instead, actually…”

“Does one need to say his name to attract his attention?” asked Raettonus. “That is to say, is talking about him the only thing that gets his attention?”

“Well, no,” Deggho replied. “There’s really no telling whether or not you’ll attract his attention. But saying his name aloud is taking a chance you don’t really need to. That’s why it’s bad luck.”

“I see.”

After a couple more hours, Raettonus excused himself from the goblin’s company and started toward his own quarters. The corridors were dark and full of silence as he made his way through the Kaebha Citadel. He could hear hoof beats on stone somewhere far away and the distant ticking of a clock, but they served only to make the immediate area feel all the deader.

Yawning, he pushed open the door to his room. It was dark and chilly as he crossed to the brazier. With a flick of his hand he lit a fire within it before going to his bookshelf. It was late, but he still thought he had enough energy to get some reading done.

He pulled a book with a red and silver cover from the shelf and tucked it under his arm. With another yawn, he strode to his desk. He was starting to rethink the reading as he pulled out his chair and laid the book down. As he opened it, the cover brushed the little obsidian gryphon sitting on his desk, knocking it over. With a grumble, Raettonus reached toward it, knocking down a second statuette he hadn’t noticed. Startled, he looked at the little carving, done out of red stone, and found it was a phoenix with its wings spread wide. It was much the same as the gryphon in that it was smoothly and expertly worked.

Violently, Raettonus stood and drew his sword. He tapped at the wall with it, and the symbols he had carved appeared glowing in the stone, though he could’ve sworn that the glow was dimmer than it had been.

Someone was trying to undo his spell.

He sunk back into his chair, laying his rapier across his lap, and turned his gaze on the carved phoenix. It appeared to have been carved of opaque garnet. Looking upon it, Raettonus began to feel odd, as though there was something half-remembered lurking in his skull that was connected to the figurine. He brushed his fingers across its chest, feeling the texture of the feathers carved into it, before taking it up in his hand. Leaning back in his chair, Raettonus closed his eyes and tried to recall what the figure meant to him. An image came to mind, like a piece of a memory, though not quite, where he was just a kid being pulled down a hallway. It was a nightmare he used to have, he remembered with a start. He hadn’t thought of it in centuries, and couldn’t think what it had to do with the phoenix.

Raettonus opened his eyes and set the carved stone figure back down on the desk beside the gryphon. He no longer felt much like reading, but the prospect of sleep made him uncertain. The runes were still there in his walls, protecting him from interference, but they were being worn away, and he wasn’t sure whether they’d hold out for another month or another hour. He didn’t have the power to recast the spell—not yet—and even if he did, anyone who could break it once could certainly break it twice.

“This is silly,” Raettonus said aloud, laying his sword on the desk and standing. “What should I fear? More tiny sculptures of mythical beasts? More vague threats about burying me beside Master Slade?” He sat on the edge of his bed and kicked off his boots. “Master Slade wasn’t even buried.”

He stripped off his tunic and lay on top of his blanket for a while, staring at the ceiling. He thought of the masked elf in his lavish temple for quite a time. He thought, as well, of the phoenix statue and the images it had brought to mind. There was no doubt in him that the masked man had put the phoenix in his room; it was too reminiscent of the gryphon for it to be otherwise. Even though his mind was busy, at length his eyelids grew heavy, and he slipped into a troubled sleep.

* * *

He was having a nightmare. It was the same nightmare that had plagued him throughout his childhood and early adulthood, but it was so much longer and more vivid now.

It began with Raettonus sitting on the floor of a tiny stone room with a small window covered by a grate of iron bars. He sat with his back against one of the walls, his knees pulled up to his chest, looking through the window at the overcast sky. It was beginning to rain outside.

In the dream, he was only a child—a tiny, starving child, shivering with cold. The room was bare and filthy and suffocatingly small, with only that single, small window that was high up on the wall where he couldn’t reach it. Opposite the window was a thick door of wood so dark it was almost black, banded with iron, too heavy for Raettonus’ frail body to move alone, and locked from the other side to boot.

Terror clawed at his chest as he heard a key turning in the lock. He pressed himself against the wall, trembling as the door swung inward. A tall, stony-faced man with blond hair and severe brown eyes entered the room. There was disgust written on his features as he looked at Raettonus. For a moment he regarded him in silence, then, in much the same manner one might address a particularly ill-behaved dog, he said, “Boy—come over here.”

Unsteadily, Raettonus got to his feet. It was hard for him to walk—he felt as though his legs were bare sticks and all his organs had turned inside out. As best he could manage, however, he made his way to the blond man’s side, watching his feet the whole way because he couldn’t stand to look at the man’s openly hateful glare. “Yes, my Lord?” he found himself asking in a tiny, subdued voice when he reached the man. He kept his eyes on the blond man’s boots and the dirty stone blocks beneath them.

“Look up when you speak,” said the man sharply, and he smacked Raettonus across the face. Raettonus winced, but didn’t cry out, and turned his face upward to look at the man. The man’s lip twisted slightly, as if it was all he could do to remain stoic. “You’ll be leaving here today.”

“L-leaving?” Raettonus asked, breathless with panic. He was being sent out into the world, all alone. He was going to die, all alone. “P-please, Father, I—”

“The Gryphon Sorcerer agreed to take you,” continued the man. “He’s waiting for you downstairs. Let’s go, boy.”

He reached out, and Raettonus shrunk away from his hand, shivering furiously. “N-no,” he protested weakly. “I—I don’t want to go.”

The man scowled and grabbed Raettonus’ wrist so tightly the boy couldn’t help but give a shriek. “You’re going with the sorcerer, you awful little changeling,” he growled through clenched teeth. “I will not have you here, dishonoring our blood.” With his free hand, he swatted Raettonus a few times across the back of his head, and neck, and ears before dragging him out the door.

They were suddenly in a hallway. Raettonus begged not to be made to leave. He said he was sorry and promised he wouldn’t ever be any trouble again. The blond man wasn’t listening to him though. He dragged Raettonus, crying and pleading, through the hall, past white and red banners which were all partially burned. They were nearing an iron-banded door at the end of the hall. Raettonus didn’t know what was beyond the door, but even looking at it filled him with dread. He flailed and protested and cried and tried to wrench out of the man’s grasp, but he could not get free. The door grew closer…

Raettonus awoke suddenly to find the fire in his brazier had burned itself out, leaving his room dark and chill. His blankets were damp with sweat, and he cast them aside. He was trying to remember the dream—the man’s face, what he had said—but as he lay thinking about it, it all began to fade away. After a moment or two, all he could remember was something about a changeling and the burned banners in the hall. They’d been white—he could recall that much—with something red on them. What was it?

He closed his eyes and tried hard to remember, but he couldn’t. Everything was gone—the red pattern on the banners, the man’s face, the words that had passed between them. He couldn’t recall any of it. With a sigh, Raettonus turned onto his side and curled his legs up toward his chest, not feeling so much like sleeping anymore. He found himself wishing they hadn’t found a different room for Brecan, so at least he might have someone to talk to. Though, God knows, Brecan was always the absolute bottom of his list when it came to talking.

In Ti Tunfa, when he found his sleep poor, he could always seek out a tavern where he might get a few drinks and mayhap play a few rounds of chess with a drunken elf or two. Taverns never closed in Ti Tunfa.

What was he to do here? Wander the soldier’s barracks, looking for drinking buddies? No, with the Spartan philosophies of Zylekkhans, if he wandered soldiers’ rooms in the middle of the night, he was far more likely to stumble on things that would give him nightmares rather than soothe them.

Raettonus rubbed at his eyes and sat up. He couldn’t go back to sleep; he had to do something. He stood and pulled on his tunic. Dimly, he could make out the jagged outlines of the little figurines on the desk, and a shiver went through him. That’s just because of the cold, he told himself. Except he couldn’t feel the cold.

Chapter Four

Before he arrived at the door to Kaebha Citadel’s shrine, Raettonus didn’t really know where he was going. He had only been walking the lonely hallways, hand on his rapier, head lost in all kinds of thoughts. The doors to the shrine were slightly ajar, and through the crack he could see candlelight flickering within it. He paused outside the door, not sure if he wanted to go in. In the end however, he entered quietly. He certainly couldn’t go back to sleep, and where else was he to pass the hours until daytime?

Despite the candles, the interior of the shrine was still quite dim. Raettonus moved through the gloom uncertainly, pausing to look at the statues of the major gods as he passed them. He stopped at the statue of Cykkus—a suit of armor with wings, though the candles in his helm that served for eyes had been extinguished. For a moment, he simply stared at the statue, taking everything about it in and feeling the hate boil up in his stomach. “You know what?” he said to the statue, leaning in close and peering up into its empty helm. “I hope you’re miserable as hell too.”

He heard someone stir behind him, followed by soft hoof-falls. “Well, Magician,” came Daeblau’s familiar voice from behind him. “I wouldn’t expect to find you here.”

“I wouldn’t expect to find me here either,” Raettonus answered. “Just thought I’d drop by, air my grievances with your gods. You know, normal stuff to do at five in the morning.”

Daeblau smiled. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a religious man, Magician,” he said. “Certainly I didn’t think our gods would hold any importance for you.”

“I have a bone to pick with this one,” Raettonus said, nodding toward the statue.

“Black-winged Cykkus?”

“Yeah, sure,” Raettonus said. “Whatever you call it—Death. Death is the same in all worlds, and I’ve got a bone to pick with him. I don’t see any depictions of my world’s Death around here, so this is the one I’m gonna tell off. If it offends you… Well, you can apologize to it afterwards, or you can make a sacrifice to appease it, or however it is you Zylxians make your insane gods happy.”

“We don’t make them happy, Magician,” Daeblau said, looking toward the statue. “We just try to stay out of their way, and then whatever happens, happens.”

“So,” Raettonus said, “you just try not to draw their attention, huh? It’s bad luck?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say it’s bad luck exactly,” said the centaur. “Just that—well, you seem an educated man, Magician. Certainly you’ve read the stories? Mortals who find themselves the object of gods’ attentions don’t tend to come out of everything on top.”

“That’s if you believe the stories,” Raettonus said dismissively.

Daeblau gave a chuckle. “How could you not?” he asked. “Kurok turned the whole eastern half of Zylekkha into a wasteland. His Guardians roam the kingdom; it’s not hard to track them down. Hell, I’ve seen the Dragon Guardian, Nekkdan, five times since I’ve been stationed in this fort. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for doubt, Magician Raettonus. Not unless you try very, very hard.”

Raettonus scoffed lightly and turned his pale red gaze back on the statue. “If you don’t want their attention, it sure is a funny direction to go—what with all the prayers and such.”

The Captain of the Garrison ran a hand through his hair and laughed softly. “You might think that, yes,” he said. “But the key is, in Zylxian prayers you don’t pray as an individual. You say, for instance, ‘Kurok, I am a warrior and I serve the Royal Zylekkhan Army and yourself. Protect me and my brothers.’ So you pray as a warrior—part of a whole, but not anything worth notice. Or you say, ‘Syrinna Teba, there are sick people in this world who would benefit from your healing touch,’ or maybe, ‘Virkki, we’re going into a war and would like your blessing so that we may die for our brothers.’ You never pray that ‘I want’ anything. That way you don’t draw their attention.”

“Is that so?” Raettonus asked. He pondered that for a moment. “How about Kimohr Raulinn?”

“The chaos god?”

“No, Kimohr Raulinn the gardener. Yes, the chaos god—who else would I mean?” snapped Raettonus. He let out a sigh and looked around. “I notice there are statues of all the other major gods here, but not him.”

“Kimohr Raulinn is a traitor to Kurok,” said Daeblau, as though it should be obvious. “Statues of Kimohr Raulinn are not kept in the holy kingdoms. I hear they worship him in Kyshem’mur, but it’s common knowledge that the Kyshem people are idiots who live in a horrible country. They’re mostly elves, on top of it all. It’s no wonder their kingdom falls to pieces every few months.”

“I heard it was bad luck to say his name aloud,” Raettonus said.

“I’ve never heard that before,” answered Daeblau, looking amused. “Did you hear it from an elf in Ti Tunfa? They’re silly, superstitious things, elves are. They have all kinds of beliefs about things like that. No mirrors can be brought into a temple, say the elves, and always sleep with your head facing east, toward the Noa Lokul, and if a vampire attacks you, you should scatter sand because he’ll need to count it.” His smile widened. “That last one is why the great King Daebrish drove them into the Koa Kurok, you know. ‘Sand paralyzes vampires?’ said Daebrish. ‘Well, then, we’ll give them so much sand that they’ll never bother anyone again.’ He was a good man. I’m a distant descendant of his, you know. I don’t expect you to understand the complex naming traditions of centaurian society, Magician, but the ‘dae’ in my name comes from my father’s side, which could be traced back to Daebrish.”

Raettonus did, in fact, understand centaurian naming traditions. He understood, most of all that the “dae” in Daebrish and Daeblau was there to mark it as a bastard’s name. He held his tongue on that point, and instead asked, “So, then, you don’t think saying his name would draw his attention toward you?”

“Well, Magician—no, quite frankly. I don’t think so,” Daeblau said. “The thing about Kimohr Raulinn is that he watches everyone. You can’t draw his attention by saying his name, because you already drew his attention by being alive. Now, prayers to Kimohr Raulinn…those are another matter.”

“Do tell.”

“It’s bad luck to ever pray to him,” said Daeblau. “Because, no matter how much you present a plea as part of a greater whole, he still treats it as an individual’s wish. I don’t like to admit it, but prayers to other gods, by and large, fall on deaf ears. Prayers to Kimohr Raulinn, on the other hand… Well. The difference between other gods and Kimohr Raulinn is that Kimohr Raulinn can be summoned.”

“Summoned, you say?” The magician raised one thin eyebrow and pursed his lips. “If he can be summoned, then he can be bound,” Raettonus said, leaning against the statue of Cykkus.

Daeblau winced, though whether it was at the idea or at his leaning against the statue, Raettonus couldn’t tell. “Perhaps he could be bound,” he said, furrowing his brow. “Though, even for as renowned a magician as yourself, I’m sure it’d be no easy task. He’s not just some powerful creature, Raettonus. He’s a god, with all the powers that entails. Besides, supposing one could bind him—what then? You might be strong enough to get a god like Kimohr Raulinn into your power—I don’t know—but, even though I have no doubts that you are a very wise and clever man, I don’t think you’d be smart enough to keep him that way. No, please don’t take offense. I don’t think any mortal could be clever enough to keep him in their power. There’s a reason we hold onto the old tales even if you believe they’re nothing more than that. They help to warn us that gods should not be messed with. Least of all that god.”

Raettonus regarded Daeblau coolly. “I’ll bear all that in mind,” he said. “So, Captain—who’re you here giving your prayers to tonight?”

“Oh, a few gods,” said Daeblau, turning away. “I prayed to Kurok for the warrior’s strength, and to Virkki for a warrior’s courage, and to Cykkus for a warrior’s death. The same prayers I always do before it’s my turn to take the walls.”

“You pray every day, then? How quaint.”

“Every day. Not every day in here though,” Daeblau said. “Today I came here to pray at Shimae’s shrine—the love goddess. Do you know her?”

“I know her fine,” replied Raettonus, a bit shortly.

Daeblau smiled a little. “What I said before about prayers applies to all the gods except her. To Shimae, a man must come to pray before her shrine, and he must do it as an individual, Magician, because praying for love can only turn out well.”

“So, you’re here this morning praying to find love?”

“No, I’m not. Rather, I’ve become smitten, and I’m here to pray that the young man I’ve fallen in love with will return my affections,” Daeblau said. “Though, praying to find love is not a bad idea. Perhaps you ought to try it, Magician? You could stand to smile a little more and scowl a little less, I think.”

“I smile perfectly often as it is, thank you,” Raettonus answered curtly. “Besides, I’ve found that, in one way or another, love always turns to bile in your throat. The best you can hope for is that you die before the person you love. It’s a race to the grave, because reaching the grave before they do—or before they stop loving you, or before they start hating you—is the only good outcome to ever be had.”

The centaurian soldier smiled, but it was a forced expression without any warmth to it. “Is that a fact, Magician?” he said. “You speak in the way that only a man who’s never loved can.”

“I speak as only a man who has outlived love can,” Raettonus answered. Through the window he could see the sky was turning pink. Somewhere out of sight, sparrows were waking and beginning to chirp their birdsong into the valleys around the citadel. “I would suggest suicide, by the way. If you find out the boy loves you, I mean. I would suggest that you kiss him and then immediately go drive a sword through your belly, or wherever it is a centaur might drive a sword to end himself. That way you die with happiness in your mouth instead of bile.”

“I’ll take it under consideration,” said Daeblau, forcing all the emotion out of his voice. He glanced up at the window. “It looks like dawn is upon us. By your leave, Magician, I must go take my watch.”

“Yes, I imagine you must,” Raettonus replied. Daeblau nodded to him curtly and started past him. Raettonus turned and watched the centaur disappear out the doors. It wasn’t long after that the shrine began to fill with other worshippers, and Raettonus took his leave as well.

* * *

Raettonus’ lessons with the boys were very lax that day. By afternoon, he found himself dozing off every now and then. Maeleht would wake him, and he’d start lecturing again, only to nod off once more. “Raettonus,” said Maeleht, shaking him awake the fourth time this had happened. “You promised to tell us about necromancy today.”

“Right, right,” Raettonus said with a yawn. “Fine. Fine, give me a second.”

He hunched over, yawning again, and rubbed at his eyes. Straightening back up, he began, “Bear in mind that I will not be teaching you how to do any of this for a very long time. It’s a very difficult craft, and I don’t think either of you is ready to learn it. You may never learn it, even if I teach you.”

“Where did you learn it?” asked Dohrleht.

“I learned it from my master when I was a boy,” Raettonus said. “It took me many years to be able to do it even passing well.”

From her seat on the other side of the room, Ebha asked, “You can make the dead live again?”

Raettonus was surprised to hear her speak; it was the first time she had said anything at all in his presence. “No,” he told her plainly. “If I could make the dead live again, do you think I’d be here tutoring two cripples?”

“I’m not a cripple,” Maeleht objected.

“No, I’d be the God King of this whole realm, and probably every other realm I wanted to barge into,” Raettonus said. He turned back to the centaurs. “There are two sorts of necromancy. There are the quicker animations, which involve putting your own energy into a corpse to move it; and then there are the slower resurrections, where you attach a ghost to a corpse, allowing the ghost to inhabit the body. The former is easier, but more tiring, while the latter is difficult, but doesn’t wear you down after the fact.”

“But you said you can’t make the dead live again,” said Dohrleht. “That sounds kind of like living.”

“Hardly,” responded Raettonus. “Their bodies continue to decay, unless a myriad of spells are applied to preserve them, and those sometimes don’t work. Unless you’re a very skilled necromancer, they won’t be able to speak, either, and their movements will be awkward and clumsy. Most importantly, only ghosts can be tied to bodies, which means that the person in question must be tortured enough to hang around after death, or else you have to grab hold of them immediately after they’ve died.”

“Grab hold?” asked Maeleht. “Grab hold of their ghost?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Raettonus said. “You reach out with your energy and grab hold of their ghost before it departs. It’s difficult then, because they fight. Souls don’t want to stay on this plane of existence. They’ll fight you until they’re bound to the body. Sometimes even then. Inexperienced necromancers get killed by ghosts and corpses all the time. It’s a dangerous art.”

“Have you ever been attacked by ghosts and corpses?” Maeleht asked him.

Raettonus nodded slowly. “When I was young and just learning, yes.”

“What was it like?” Dohrleht asked. “Is it hard to fight a corpse?”

“A corpse? No, not really. It’s easier than fighting a man, in fact,” Raettonus said. “It’s far more dangerous to fight ghosts. For the time that you’re holding them with your energy, you’re connected to them. For a moment, all their memories and their experiences become an extension of your own. You can feel the death they experienced if they want you to—and I’ve yet to meet one that didn’t want you to. All the while, they’re gnawing on your life force, wearing you down. Killing you. They don’t want to go to hell alone, and they don’t want to stay here.”

“How do you keep them from killing you?”

Raettonus shrugged and yawned again. “You just do what you’re doing quickly,” he said. “Or else you let go of them and hope they’ll let go of you, as well.”