Dirge for a Necromancer Read online

  He stood with a grunt and rubbed at his stomach as he shuffled over to his desk. His torn black tunic had been unceremoniously flung across a stack of books. He picked it up and slipped it over his head, ignoring the smell of death that clung to its fibers. He had dropped his belt and rapier carelessly on the floor on his way to bed the night before, and it took him a moment to locate them. Buckling his belt around his middle, Raettonus glanced out the window. The sun was full up; he had slept well past noon. It was going to set him back on his journey some, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

  A worn leather bag lay against his bookshelf. He picked it up and began to fill it with jars and little velvet satchels of herbs. Slinging it over his shoulder, he took one last look around to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything before he left his tiny hovel of a home.

  Ti Tunfa was a small town that sat in the weedy plains of central Zylekkha. It was a neat, tidy place with cobblestone streets and square, whitewashed buildings with peaked roofs of crumbly red tile. Raettonus thought of it as being a very sterile place. There was little color in it and, though he’d lived there many years, he’d never seen the streets busy.

  Today was no exception. His boots pattered softly against the stones underfoot as he walked into the almost completely empty street. In this part of town, the buildings were cracked, decaying things that cried out for new coats of paint to hide the chips and mold dotting their exteriors. He didn’t bother to lock his door. No one would bother a broken shack at this edge of Ti Tunfa.

  “Hey, Raet!” called Brecan from down the street. Raettonus scowled and turned toward his voice. “I was wondering when you were gonna wake up! I was gonna wake you, but then I thought you might be angry, so I let you sleep instead.”

  Brecan was the first friend Raettonus had made in this alien land. The only friend, in fact—though “friend” was more of Brecan’s word than his. They had met when Raettonus had first entered Zylekkha. Brecan had attacked him.

  He was a unicorn, Brecan. That was what he said, at least, but in truth he was more like some strange perversion of a unicorn. He had the face and arched neck of a desert horse, true, but his mouth opened wider, and it was full of sharp fangs. His horn was short and slender and looked like blue-tinted glass, and he had a bristly mane of off-white hair that stood up along his neck. His forelegs were slim, also like those of a horse, save that his light-colored hooves were cloven and sharp. There was a gentle slope to his back—which, along with his large, leathery wings, had made him hard for Raettonus to ride at first—and his hindquarters were those of a white lion with a long, thin tail with a brick red arrow at its end.

  Raettonus slapped Brecan sharply on the nose. “You should’ve woken me,” he said. “I wanted to get an early start before it got hot out.”

  “Ow,” said Brecan, his tail drooping. “But, Raet, you always yell at me when I wake you…”

  “That’s other days. Today I wanted to get an early start before it got hot out.”

  “I’m sorry, Raet,” Brecan said, lowering his head. “I didn’t mean to let you down. I was just helping Rhodes get—”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” said Raettonus, smacking the unicorn again. “Let’s get going.”

  Brecan closed his mouth and nodded eagerly. He moved his long, white wings forward so Raettonus could mount him. “When we get to Kaebha Citadel, I get to stay with you, right?” he asked, craning his neck around to look at Raettonus with his pale blue eyes. “You’re not going to send me away, are you? I get lonely here by myself.”

  Raettonus pulled up his riding boots. “You’re not by yourself here,” he said nonchalantly. “There’s Rhodes.”

  The unicorn considered that for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, there’s Rhodes. But that’s only sometimes, and it’s not the same.”

  He shrugged. “If the general will let you stay, you can stay,” he said. “I don’t care either way, honestly.”

  That seemed to strike Brecan. He flattened his ears. “You don’t care?” he asked in a small voice.

  “Not even slightly,” Raettonus said, grabbing a hold of his mane. “Can we get going?”

  “Y-yeah,” said Brecan, spreading his wings. “Sure, Raet.”

  He took a few running steps and then leapt into the air. The unicorn and his rider spiraled up, away from Ti Tunfa. Raettonus watched the little city sink away beneath them, the little white and red buildings falling farther and farther away as the pair rose into the clear blue sky. Raettonus could still remember the first time he had seen Ti Tunfa, approaching it on Brecan’s back. Scared half to death, he had gripped the unicorn tightly as the city had appeared on the horizon like a row of little dollhouses coming closer and closer.

  “When you dropped off my books at the citadel, did they let you inside?” Raettonus asked as they glided over the plains.

  “Huh? Oh, no,” said Brecan. “I didn’t think to ask. A couple centaurs came out and took them from me, and the general thanked me. I didn’t ask to go inside. Why?”

  “Nothing. I was just wondering how many men were there,” Raettonus answered, turning his attention downward. He could see the patchwork fields of the farmlands off in the distance. To the east of the farms and soft, weeded hills, he could see the icy wastelands called Noa Kurok, which stretched on clear to the ocean. The Dragon’s Teeth Mountains rose up before them to the south—a jagged, purple blemish against the blue horizon.

  “It’s right beside the ocean,” Brecan said. “Well, no—I don’t mean right beside, because it’s up on a cliff, carved into a mountain. But the ocean’s down beneath it. You can see it from the citadel.”

  Raettonus rolled his eyes. “Oh, the ocean. How nice,” he said. “Yes, I’m sure I’ll be very glad that we’re right beside the ocean when the waves crashing on the cliff are keeping me awake. Or maybe when a storm kicks up and batters the citadel for a few days.”

  Brecan lowered his head and mumbled, “Well, I thought it was pretty…”

  With a heavy sigh, Raettonus leaned back. Miles below them he could see workers moving through the fields, looking so much like ants. This is how God must view us, he thought, not for the first time. To Him we must all be little specks moving about so far below Him that He can’t tell one from another. That’s why He doesn’t care.

  “I should’ve stayed in Ti Tunfa,” he said. “This is stupid. God knows how long I’m going to be stuck down there now.”

  “But, Raet, it’ll be fun,” said Brecan. “You’ll have something to do! You need something to do, Raet. When you don’t have anything to do, all you do is sleep and drink and play chess, and you yell a lot. You’ve got a short temper when you’re bored, Raet.”

  “I’ve got a short temper all the time.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” the unicorn allowed. “But it’s even shorter when you’re bored. Besides, it’s only going to be a few years. Ten at most. Ten years isn’t anything, is it, Raet?”

  Raettonus sighed again. “No,” he admitted. “Ten years isn’t anything at all. I can put up with some centaur’s snot-nosed whelps for ten years. I’ve put up with you for several times as long, after all.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Brecan cheerfully. Raettonus scowled, irritated that he hadn’t understood the dig.

  A gryphon cried somewhere in the distance, and Raettonus turned his face in that direction, toward the blood-colored burn that was the Koa Kurok desert. The beast’s sad call echoed over the empty landscape, and Raettonus found himself thinking of Slade’s coat of arms—a gryphon rampant over a field of red checkered with black. Close on the heels of that thought came the memory that had been with him as he had awoken. He needed only to close his eyes to see it all over again, and he did. Slade’s room, with the drapes blowing wildly, the rain coming down outside in hard sheets, the shutters clacking against stone, sounding like a heart beating out of control, the blood soaking into the sheets…

  When all was said and done, the blood had soaked all the w
ay through and had begun to fall onto the stone beneath the bed in great, coalescing drops by the time he’d finally gone to clean it.

  “Please don’t hate me,” Slade had said to him, taking his hand. “Please don’t hate me for this.”

  Raettonus couldn’t hate him. Not him. No matter what.

  Slowly, he opened his eyes and wondered why it had to always be that memory. There were other things he might have thought about; there were better times with Slade. Slade had taught him how to ride, and how to hold a sword, and how to read. There had been good days, back then. Why did it always have to be that memory that was so ingrained in his mind that he only needed to close his eyes and he was there in that cold room, reeking of blood?

  All at once, he noticed that they were rather closer to the mountains. Brecan was singing a song about a maiden who had killed herself and her lover who, seeing this, had flung himself into the ocean. Raettonus pinched one of Brecan’s ears and the unicorn yelped. “Stop singing that,” he said, narrowing his eyes.

  “Ouch—sorry, Raet,” Brecan said quickly. “What song would you rather I sing?”

  “I’d rather you sing none at all.”

  They flew on in silence.

  * * *

  At night, the wolves came out and prowled the world. The Kingdom of Zylekkha had no shortage of wolves. They wandered the wastelands, scuffing the ice and the sand as they lurched over the rises and through the valleys. They roamed the forests and the cliffs and the plains land. Zylekkha was full of wolves, and the night belonged to them. The moon was full up by the time Brecan reached the mountains, and on his back Raettonus could hear the wolves howling.

  Even in daylight, the Dragon’s Teeth were a dreary, unwelcoming place full of sandy soil and sheer rock faces. The paths were uneven and narrow, and in places they crumbled away to nothing. The bridges, where they existed at all, were made of wood and rope; they were rotting, treacherous things that might break beneath one’s weight with little warning. The only trees that grew in the Dragon’s Teeth Mountains were thin, sparse things, and even those were not very common. There were a few nice places—scenic ponds and slow moving stretches of river that sat in some of the valleys where the grass grew green around them and some hardier trees managed to eke out a fair survival—but they were few and far between.

  That was in the daytime, but at night, everything about the Dragon’s Teeth was worse. When it was dark, goblins hunted. They knew the crumbling paths better than any traveler could ever hope to, and they could navigate even when there was no moon or stars to see by. When it was dark, faeries hunted. The light hurt their eyes, so they only crept out from the bowels of the rock at night, to seek flesh to sustain themselves for a while longer. The faeries were always hungry, and in what surface-dwellers perceived as complete darkness, they could see perfectly well. When it was dark, will-o-wisps hunted. They climbed from fissures and came from the world between worlds and led travelers off cliffs so they could gorge themselves on their broken remains. The lucky ones died when they fell. The unlucky ones were devoured alive as the fall left them broken and helpless when the will-o-wisp moved in.

  Tonight the moon was out—a large, red-orange half circle rising slowly through a purple sky, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of millions of stars. Beneath them, Raettonus could make out a few cliffs and crags and a broader stretch of road curving around the mountain by the moonlight. Beyond the mountaintops, the sea was just visible—a calm, dark mass which could be smelled and heard even from this height and this distance. He leaned against Brecan’s neck and yawned. “Can you go any faster?” he asked the unicorn. “They’re all like to be asleep at this rate. If we would’ve left on time…”

  “I’m sorry, Raet,” said Brecan. “But you get so angry when I wake you up, so I didn’t wake you up even though you told me we needed to leave earlier. And I would have woken you up, but I thought you’d be mad if I did.”

  He flew a little lower, so that they were no longer so far above the mountains. Instead, they were of a level with some of the higher peaks. Here and there Raettonus spotted the unnatural lines of buildings—temples and fortresses only. No one built houses in the Dragon’s Teeth. No one but goblins, and they lived in dragon- and wolf-skin huts. He spotted a temple atop a mountain, its lines stark in the moonlight, and knew it was the Hell’s Gate temple of Cykkus. It was said to sit atop the only bridge between the realm of Zylx and Hell itself. Raettonus watched it for a second, and then they were past it and it was rapidly fading into all the other shadows of the night.

  Fires burned inside some of the fortresses, but these were not the ones he was looking for. The Kaebha Citadel sat beside the sea. Brecan knew the way; he was an idiot, but he was an expert at navigating, whether he had ever been to the destination or not. Raettonus closed his eyes and turned his face toward the unicorn’s bristly mane. He wasn’t tired enough to sleep. Instead, he lost himself in his thoughts and toyed with the hilt of his rapier. The smell of sea salt was growing stronger and stronger, and the air was colder and colder, and the sound of waves crashing upon the jutting rocks was growing louder and louder. It seemed to take an eternity, but finally he could feel Brecan descending, and he dug his knees in and wrapped his arms around the unicorn’s neck so he wouldn’t fall off. Brecan’s hooves struck the ground hard, jarring Raettonus and causing the contents of his backpack to clink together. “Easy!” he hissed, opening his eyes.

  “Sorry,” Brecan said quickly.

  Raettonus straightened on the unicorn’s back. “I just about bit my tongue in two,” he complained. He glanced at the dark outline of the fortress looming over them from atop its mountain. “Is that it? You could’ve landed closer.”

  In the darkness, the Kaebha Citadel was a gloomy place. Its walls were built of enormous stone blocks, which had been cut from the mountain around it when they had leveled the peak to make a place for the fortress to sit. It had been an expensive undertaking by King Ryahnrish, who many considered Zylekkha’s most paranoid king—and in a kingdom like Zylekkha, that meant a lot. It had thousands of arrow slits in it to accommodate the enormous garrison it had housed in its stronger days. Now the number of defenders was far smaller, though no one was sure how many men there currently were. The battlements were lined with a cage of wicked iron spikes to prevent aerial attacks, and a number of middle-sized catapults were visible upon the roof. Centaurs in full plate armor patrolled the fortress with longswords and spears and bows slung across their backs, and several guards with halberds were positioned at each entrance. They watched Raettonus approach on Brecan’s back with subdued curiosity. As they drew near, one of the guards—whose armor was more ornamental than his companions’—nodded to Brecan and raised the visor on his helm. “Hello there,” he called, trotting forward. Where the plate mail didn’t cover him, Raettonus could see that his horse portion was chestnut in color. “I remember you from before. Brecan, was it?”

  “It was!” exclaimed Brecan happily. “Still is, in fact.”

  “I take it that this, then, is the magician General Tykkleht was expecting?” the guard asked, looking at Raettonus. “Good evening to you.”

  Raettonus dismounted. “Yes, yes,” he said. “My pleasure, or whatever you’re wanting to hear. Is the general up?”

  “I’m afraid not,” the guard said. “He left instructions for me to show you to your chambers, though. My name’s Daeblau. I’m the Captain of the Garrison.” He held out his hand, but Raettonus didn’t shake it.

  “All my books are there, I assume?”

  Daeblau nodded. “Yes, Magician,” he said. “We’ve arranged them for you and everything.”

  Raettonus scowled. “Wonderful. Now I’ll have to spend the rest of the night fixing what you bumbling idiots have messed up,” he said. “Lead the way, sir. Brecan, with me. You can ask the general tomorrow whether you can stay for the duration, I suppose.”

  The centaur turned and called to someone within the citadel in Kaerikyna—the hard-so
unding language of the centaurs—and, after a moment, the portcullis rose and the sturdy, iron-banded double doors swung open, moved by a pair of centaurs. Raettonus entered alongside Daeblau, Brecan taking up the rear. As they entered the wide hall, the guards behind them swung the doors closed again and lowered the portcullis. Most of the torches in the sconces on the walls weren’t lit, leaving the high-ceilinged hallway full of gloom and shadows. Squinting into the darkness, Raettonus could make out tapestries on the walls, but not what was upon them. Massive pillars made of gilded brick and decorated with red and purple hangings were set along each wall to hold up the heavy stone roof. The entry hall, however, was the only extravagantly decorated corridor they passed through. They walked a long way, past many smaller hallways that branched off the main, and passed simple staircases that ascended sharply and were soon lost in darkness. They walked up a broad stone staircase with wide, shallow steps—the kind of steps Raettonus was used to seeing in centaur-built habitations. The landing above was better lit, and here Raettonus could see painted shields hanging on the walls, which he paused to look at.

  “Who’s this, here?” he asked, pointing to one of the shields. It showed a centaur with dark red fur drawing back a bow with four arrows nocked. The artist had neglected to paint his eyes, it seemed. “Daebrish?”

  “Kaeriaht,” Daeblau told him.

  “Ah, right—the fire god,” Raettonus said, nodding. “I was used to seeing him depicted as made of fire.”

  “That’s the elves’ vision of him,” the centaur said. “If you’d please, Magician—there’s still quite a way to walk.”

  “Yes, all right,” Raettonus said, and they resumed their trek through the fortress.