Necromancer Read online

  “Then die with these other fools.” He vanished into the swirling smoke.

  Let him run. I preferred working alone, anyway. I got to my feet but remained crouched, peering in every direction.

  A gust of wind thinned the smoke. It brought clarity of vision, but not of sanity. Sweat poured off me. People ran from the spreading fire and down the street. Others stopped to help fallen family or to retrieve valuables from their homes. Many more lay dead or fighting. Like a puppeteer, inky tendrils of smoke maintained a grip on them.

  I heard breaking glass and a woman’s scream. She climbed out of a second-floor window onto a ledge and clung to the frame. Her nightgown and long, blonde hair billowed in the breeze. Fire raged on her roof, and a hand pawed at her from the darkness inside the room. A telltale wisp of smoke threaded its way through her open front door and up the stairs.

  “My husband’s gone mad. Please help.”

  So young. She wore the bronze ring of a newlywed. I hurried below her and held up my arms. The smoke probed insistently at my lips and nostrils. I shook my head against it.

  “Jump.”

  She hesitated, whimpering. A hand snatched her leg. She kicked it away and scrambled further along the narrow ledge. The wooden casement began to tear from the wall.

  “Now!”

  She glanced at me then the ground below, but only clung tighter. A man appeared at the window, his teeth bared. Four scratches on his cheek oozed red. White drool speckled his trimmed beard. He clawed at her. She scrunched her eyes shut and wailed.

  With a crack, the casement tore free, and she plummeted into my arms. We tumbled to the ground and the smoke surrounded us like a pack of wild animals.

  I rolled to my feet, helped her up, and dragged her down the street, holding my breath as long as I could. She coughed and choked, resisting my pull. Murder flared in her eyes. I slapped her.

  “Trust me. Hold your breath and stay with me.” I yanked her forward.

  I shouldn’t have spoken. Smoke surged down my throat and I gagged.

  Rage ignited inside me. I wanted to tear out her rabid eyes. My arm squeezed hers until she cried out, and I knew that I could break it with a twist, could snap her entire frail body. My gaze fixed on her pale, sweat-soaked throat. It invited me to choke the life from her, watch her struggle and finally go limp. My pulse quickened. Anger flooded my veins. Then my hands were around her throat, squeezing, crushing. She coughed and drooled thick, white saliva. Her blue eyes locked with mine but she put up no resistance. A smile twitched on her lips as my thumbs dug deeper. Ah, the sweet moment of superiority. How would it feel to kill? Delicious. It washed the tight pain from my head.

  Something flickered deep within me. This was wrong.

  I heaved and retched, blowing the noxious smoke from my throat, reaching and reaching until my lungs seared. Blessed clarity at last. Hastily, I molded a Cleansing Shield from my store of magic. It spread through my body, into hers and chilled the air around us. Our breath froze. The inky smoke fell as dust, and I sucked in the refreshing, frigid air. My hands fell away and the woman stumbled, coughing.

  I was spent, with nothing to show for it but saving one solitary life. What else could I have done, damn it? I kicked a smoldering timber down the street. The smoke edged its way back toward us.

  “Do as I tell you this time.” I grabbed her wrist and half ran, half stumbled across the uneven cobbles, away from the raging inferno and heat, away from the madness. She didn’t fight me.

  We turned the corner into Lampwick Street, dodging two kalag-drawn fire carts and a torrent of Black and Reds and street workers. A growing swell of onlookers headed toward the fire. Damn the herd mentality. I had brought us halfway to Broad Street before the woman finally collapsed, panting and gasping.

  “No more,” she said. In the light of a street lantern, her gaze took in my robe. “You’re a necromancer?”

  I simply nodded while sucking in deep breaths.

  She crawled away. “You’ve brought the curse of death to our homes.”

  She spat on my sweat- and smoke-stained robe, then leaped up and fled.

  Thanks. Thanks for saving my life, nice mister necromancer. Thanks for holding back the flood of undead threatening to take back the city. You’re welcome, lady.

  The next morning, I loitered in Maramir Plaza. Solas had risen over the harbor, washing the city in a harsh orange light. People glanced warily at the wisps of gray smoke spiraling into the cloudless sky. Fire was a constant worry in the cramped streets of Malkandrah. The late-season air remained chill, and I devoured my second, piping-hot sabata.

  Maramir formed the largest open space east of the river. Here, Rat and Gold Canals intersected, chock-full of barges shipping slag from the mines, and Canal Street met Broad Street, the city’s major artery.

  The pungent aromas of spicy stew, cheeses, and street-weed masked the stagnant canal stench. Ranting orators clustered on the steps of the plaza’s namesake, the statue of Maramir. He held a dramatic pose, warhammer raised aloft, and his stone face frozen mid battle cry. I chuckled. It tickled me that one of the city’s most revered heroes stood speckled in bird shit.

  The Guild lurked in the northeast corner of the plaza, an ostentatious, five-story building fronted by statues of Iathic demigods. Such a pompous institution. I was proud of my profession, just not the Guild that managed it.

  Of dozens of guilds throughout the city, only two others were more populous—the Longshoremen and the Mercantile—though mine was certainly the least liked. I watched the crowds give the Guild building a wide berth, many muttering prayers and averting their eyes as they passed. They treated me the same way. My shoulders drooped. I loved the city and its people. If only they would reciprocate. They wouldn’t as long as the Guild operated by fear and awe.

  I strode inside, and paused to allow my eyes to adjust to the dim interior, and my lungs to the musty air. Citizens crept through the hall, reluctantly seeking the Guild’s advice. For all that they hated us they still wanted our help. They bumped into each other, craning their necks to peer at the spirit paintings adorning the ceiling.

  At the rear of the cavernous hall, I marched into a shadowy passage shaped liked a fanged maw, and framed by a pair of rearing dracoliches. This place was one farcical thing after another, designed top to bottom to intimidate. Dust tickled my nose. I coughed, my throat still sore from last night.

  The Prime Guildmaster kept me waiting in a stuffy, poorly lit antechamber. It reminded me of times I had spent on cold stone benches outside the masters’ offices, awaiting my punishment for disrupting a class. The door to his study lay open a crack.

  “Don’t presume to lecture me, Imarian,” the Guildmaster croaked from inside the room. “Three times the Council has rejected my polite requests for membership.”

  The Guildmaster hawked and coughed, making me cringe. He sounded like a wight. I had no idea whom this Imarian was.

  “Give them time, Fortak,” Imarian said. “They haven’t forgiven the Guild for driving the Elik Magi away—”

  “They can’t hold me responsible for that. I allied with you so that you could bring reason.”

  Interesting. I leaned forward. The mysterious Magi had vanished a hundred solars ago.

  “They remain confident that the Elik Magi will one day return,” Imarian said. “I’m sorry, but you have only my vote and three others on the Council.”

  “I…the Guild is the only source of magic in the city now,” the Guildmaster yelled. He coughed and wheezed. “Hold up your end of the bargain, Imarian. I must get on the Council before the Crown Prince’s silly coronation. That’s vital to our main plan.”

  I blew out my held breath. What were they up to? I’d always thought the Guildmaster was part of the High Council. I chuckled quietly. I didn’t blame them for not wanting the old fool.

  The door opened wide. I sat up straight. A tall, middle-aged man with an expensive-looking cane strode out. Emerald streaks in his immaculately c
ombed hair marked him as aristocracy. He glanced at me as he would a servant, and hurried by without a word.

  My thoughts raced. I could see the Prime Guildmaster needing a Duke for that boring political stuff, but clearly they were plotting something else. Did the other masters know? The coronation was, what, a sixday from now?

  The Guildmaster exited his study. With a scowl, he swept down the hallway in the opposite direction. What was I, just part of the furniture?

  “Hurry along, boy,” he said.

  I fell in behind him, breathing a heady mix of musk, rot, and stale wine in his wake. The silver runes on his robe writhed into one symbol after another.

  “I have a busy morning. What is it you want?” He set an incredible pace for his advanced age.

  “To report on last night’s events,” I said.

  “Lord Prime.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Address me as ‘Lord Prime.’” He grunted a sigh. “Leave the report with my clerk.”

  “This is important enough that I tell you in person.”

  We emerged onto a balcony that circled the base of the dome, high above the Guild common area. He marched to the stone rail, turned, and looked at me for the first time. As apprentices we had speculated that he was several centuries old, and every time I saw his pasty, shriveled skin, I believed that. He had a commanding presence at six feet tall, but he had barely an inch over me. I resisted the urge to slouch against the rail and kept my back straight.

  “Hallum already related the disaster.” He dabbed at his weeping eyes with a crusty handkerchief.

  “Then I’m glad you understand the portent of—”

  “You were only supposed to dispatch a pair of rogue wights.”

  “There were four.”

  He blinked. “In any case, how did you end up burning down a city block? Hallum told me you refused to heed his advice.”

  That much had burned? I shuffled to my other foot.

  “Something else was wrong. He didn’t want to stay and find out—”

  “Because he knows how to follow orders, something you’ve never mastered, have you, boy? You were supposed to destroy the wights, that is all.” His sunken, bloodshot eyes bored into me.

  I looked away. “We did, but some other entity was there. This was no common fire. Did he tell you he fled like a girl? I would never run.”

  I’d escorted the woman to safety.

  “‘My Lord Prime,’” he shouted. “You must refer to me as such.”

  A dozen conversations in the common area below us fell silent. The dome echoed his words as if teaching me a lesson. I glanced over the rail and curious faces looked up at me.

  “I’m sorry.” I wasn’t. Goading him was far too much fun.

  The Guildmaster coughed violently. It sounded like damp fever. I half expected his lungs to plop onto the floor. He made a final hawking sound and then stared at me, brow furrowed deep.

  “You have such little respect for authority,” he said in a normal voice. “You were an excellent apprentice, one of our finest, but I never understood why you stubbornly refused to do as you were told. The Guild has many fine traditions and protocols.”

  I glanced at my feet, feigning deference to hide the rolling of my eyes.

  “How do you expect the citizens to respect us if we can’t even complete a simple task? We mustn’t appear weak. They must fear us, stand in awe of us. The more they cower from stories of creatures and restless spirits in the night, the more they need us and what our great tradition represents.”

  I met his gaze. A fine speech. I’d heard it before, but it shouldn’t be about fear. Stodgy rules and procedures got in the way of us genuinely helping people, working alongside them. That’s why they hated us.

  “My Lord Prime.” I knew better than to push my luck. “Please believe me. The cause of that fire wasn’t alchemy as Hallum said. Something awful set that street alight, and I’m certain it was responsible for driving the wights aboveground too. I recommend we dispatch a team of Shadow Probers, and I volunteer. I want to find the source of that magic.”

  “No. You will not get involved.” He sighed. “I have something else planned for you. You will learn that disobeying carries consequences.”

  I opened my mouth but he made a shushing sound. Then he leaned over the balustrade, pointed to someone in the crowd, and beckoned them with a skeletal-like finger. Master Begara hurried across the floor and passed beneath us.

  I shuffled and chewed my lip. There was nothing I could say. It wasn’t fair. No matter what I did, he’d never promote me to Master.

  I looked out across the dome, reading the faded words of the Guild charter painted around its interior. While I waited, I reread the words opposite: Bring no harm to the living.

  Footsteps echoed along the hallway, one heavy and one light, hurrying to keep up. I turned and peered into the darkness.

  “You need to learn responsibility,” the Guildmaster muttered. “So I’m going to give you some.”

  My head snapped back to meet his gaze. Was that the beginning of a smirk on his thin, cracked lips?

  Master Begara stepped into the flickering lantern light, accompanied by a girl. I blinked twice. She was a tiny chit, barely five feet tall, maybe fifteen solars old. Mousy hair draped over her shoulders and the raised collar of a pale blue shirt. Her skirt was clean, well made and reached fashionably to her ankles.

  Begara dipped his head to the Guildmaster. “Good morning, Fortak.”

  The girl remained a pace behind Begara, and her large eyes flicked between him and me. I scratched my nose. She rubbed her own and looked at me, puzzled.

  “Thank you,” the Guildmaster said, and the man left.

  I watched the girl’s face when the Guildmaster turned into the light. Her gaze swept across his haggard features and her expression demonstrated some of that awe that the old man had been prattling on about. Where was this going?

  “This is Ayla,” he said. “Your new apprentice.”

  Something caught in my throat and I coughed. This was a cruel joke. There hadn’t been a female in the Guild since my mother.

  “Give her preliminary training before she starts with the other apprentices next semester.”

  Kristach. The gnarly old goat.

  “I don’t need an apprentice. Er…Lord Prime. Besides, I’m not prepared—”

  “Really?” He smoothed his bushy eyebrows. “And I thought you were prepared for every situation. I thought you knew best. Knew better than your masters from what I’m told.”

  I opened my mouth, then snapped it shut, clenching my fists instead. I glared at the girl and she looked at me quizzically.

  “Show me,” he said. “Show me you have what it takes to be a master. Train your first apprentice.”

  “But she’s a girl. She’ll just get in the way, mess things up, faint and shriek. She’s—”

  “Your mother is turning in her crypt to hear you speak. You, of all people, cannot judge so.” He slapped his hand on the balustrade. “Train her. This is not the foolish democracy of Kyria. My word is law.”

  He whirled about, whipping the girl and me with his robe, and then stormed off.

  Lak and all his demons!

  I blew out the breath I’d been holding, scowled at the girl again, and hurried into the gloomy passage. The morning had been a total disaster and I needed fresh air. I descended the back staircase three steps at a time.

  “Wait,” she called.

  At the bottom, I increased my pace, huffing as I marched through the warren of back hallways until I emerged from the dracolich-guarded mouth into the public hall. People stared as I raced across the chamber. I stepped into the daylight and took a deep breath.

  The glare of Solas forced me to squint. While I’d been wasting time in the gloomy innards of the Guild, the day had improved. The sky was the rich shade of evergreen trees, speckled with tiny clouds high in the atmosphere. Gulls and blackwings circled above Maramir Plaza, dive-bombing for sc
raps and then sweeping up to perch on the crest of ramshackle tenement buildings. None occupied the steep gables and dome of the Guild. Even the birds avoided us.

  A twanging, clicking sound overhead heralded the approach of a sky carriage. Few people bothered to look up, but I stretched my neck to watch the egg-shaped gondola ride its cable down from the heights of Kand Hill, and then rumble away to the northwest.

  “You can’t lose me that easily,” Ayla said from behind me.

  Impressive, but I had no intention of babysitting a girl, even a clever one. I exited the plaza along Canal Street and headed toward one of my favorite lunch spots. I could ditch her there. Since my mother, no female had been approved for Guild membership. Why now? I rubbed my nose. The girl had shown no surprise upon hearing the Guildmaster’s instructions, which meant she’d known before I had. I kicked a dead rat into the canal. So who was she?

  “Why are you being so cruel? You don’t even know me.”

  I whipped around to find her right on my heels.

  “How old are you? Sixteen?”

  “Eighteen.” She stood straighter.

  I scrutinized her but she didn’t flinch.

  “What in the name of the Gods are you doing hanging around the Guild?”

  “I want to be a necromancer.” The tip of her tongue poked from the corner of her mouth. It wasn’t a childish gesture but an odd mannerism nonetheless.

  “Right. Do you even know what one is?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not a simpleton.”

  “It’s dirty and dangerous. Can’t you aspire to be something more normal, like…I don’t know, like—”

  “A whore?” Her thin eyebrows rose and she tried to stare me down. “You men are all the same. I want to be a necromancer. I can learn it just as well as any boy, as well as you. You’re not much older than I am.”

  “I was going to say seamstress or midwife. Whore is your word, not mine. Calm down.”

  People were looking. I felt stupid arguing with a girl and I wished she’d stop using the n-word. I glared at her but she wouldn’t back down.

  “You’ve got guts,” I said. “But you made a mistake. Your disguise has holes, my lady.”