Son of a Liche

by J. Zachary Pike

  “Sir, the Crown of Iron Thorns,” the Head of Marketing said helpfully.

  “What? Oh. Right.” Detarr lifted the iron crown from his skull and tucked it within the recesses of his robes. Instantly, the focus group slumped in their seats, and Tyren’s strange sensation drained away. “Now then,” Detarr continued. “What do you make of all of these scary names and such?”

  Despite the removal of the crown, however, none of the undead seemed inclined to speak. They cowered in their chairs, trembling.

  “Come on, then,” said the liche. “Isn’t that what we’re here for? To discuss our feelings and such? How are you doing since your recent transition? Anybody? Nobody feels anything? Not a twinge of emotion?”

  Eventually, Neddard Biggins raised a shaking claw. “Well, Your Majesticalness, I’ve been hungry mostly,” he offered.

  “Hungry,” said the liche flatly.

  “Well, since you asked, yeah,” said Ned. “I think it’s on account of my eternal curse to crave the flesh of the living.”

  “Oh yes, I feel the same,” said Rudge. Spencer and his shadowy wife nodded as well.

  The violet flames around the liche’s head glowed brighter, and a sudden chill fell over the room. “I see. That’s the general consensus, then? Our big insight? We wish there was more to eat?”

  “I must admit, it’d be nice if there were more brains available,” said Ted the zombie.

  “Well, we can all agree there,” hissed Detarr. The liche whirled on the Head of Marketing. “And you’ve spent how much time and energy to arrive at this particular bit of perspective?”

  “Er, we’ve had… uh… other valuable insights, Sir,” the Head of Marketing said, backing away like a cornered animal. “Why… why, Sir Tyren had just been saying that he believes a call to action would have helped our last campaign.”

  “Is that so?” said the liche, turning his gaze on Tyren.

  “Uh, yes.” Tyren was suddenly grateful for his decades of experience bluffing to those in authority. “I mean, the flyer didn’t ask me to do anything. It just told me I was going to die and suffer for all eternity. And honestly, so far being undead isn’t that bad.”

  A murmuring rose up among the gathered corpses. “It’s not that bad?” said Detarr.

  “Not as bad as they made it sound, anyway,” said Tyren with a shrug. “I mean, it was a shock when it happened, and I’m still getting used to things. But my old knee injury doesn’t hurt anymore, and it’s the first time in ages I’ve woken up without a hangover. Plus, now what do I have to be scared of or worry about? The worst is already behind me, I suppose.”

  “The worst is behind you,” said Detarr slowly.

  “What does that even mean?” hissed the Head of Marketing at Tyren.

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve always thought. Undeath only seems horrible until you’ve tried it,” said the liche. “I think you may be on to something here, Tyren.”

  “I love it!” said the Head of Marketing.

  “Me too!” said Rudge.

  “Death is in your past, disease and injury are mere memories,” Detarr said with rising excitement. “You never age, never hunger, and never die.”

  “Um, I do hunger quite a lot, if you’ll recall,” Neddard ventured.

  But the idea had passed the flashpoint, and now Detarr’s skeletal face was alight—even more so than usual. “You bend no knee to kings, pay no taxes, and live by no laws. All fears are behind you. You are as gods.”

  “What, even Rudge?” said Ted.

  “This changes everything,” Detarr said, excitement welling up from his infernal depths. “What if the living saw undeath as a transformation rather than an end? A boon rather than a blight! Would they join our cause?”

  “It’s certainly got novelty!” said the Head of Marketing.

  “This could be the most innovative thing in necromancy in ages!” said the liche. “We could change the paradigm of necromancy on Arth.”

  The Head of Marketing nodded. “And I love the idea, but—”

  “But?” said Detarr sharply. “Am I to assume you don’t know how to make this work?”

  “Oh, no, I definitely can see how—”

  “Good,” said Detarr. “I have high expectations for you and Sir Ur’Thos here. Make sure to keep him involved.”

  The floating skull glared at Tyren with its lone eye so fiercely that its pile of notes burst into flame. “Oh no, sir. I won’t let this one out of my sight.”

  “Well, I don’t see any sign of him.” Gorm nursed a tankard as he watched the patrons mill about the tavern. The men and women in the room were dressed in extravagant bursts of bright silks and moved with the stiff precision characteristic of aristocrats and peacocks. It was the sort of establishment where a few dark figures skulking in the shadows in the back corner were sure to attract unwanted attention. “Ye sure this is the right place? Seems a bit posh for this business.”

  “Oh, this is the place,” said Burt. The Kobold reclined in a leather purse set on the bench between Kaitha and Gorm, sipping from a tiny tankard. “Baedrun’s Dream wants to be a gilded lily, but it’s a copper-covered daisy at best. Maybe there’s a couple of baronets in the crowd, but for the most part these are all children of merchants and tradesmen. Jalana brought me here once on an official visit to Parald, and she swore we’d never return.”

  “It just seems like a place where a group of mercenaries and a Shadowkin might not be welcome,” said Laruna.

  “Would you relax?” Burt snorted. “I’m in an Elf’s purse! Nobody’s going to check my papers.” He gave Kaitha’s arm a hearty pat for emphasis.

  “Hand,” said Kaitha, without looking up from her apple-rose water.

  “Touchy,” grumbled Burt, withdrawing the offending paw.

  “Just the opposite,” said the Elf.

  Gorm was inclined to agree with Burt; the ranger was on edge. He attributed her short temper to her mostly-successful efforts to swear off drinking. The Elf took a glass of wine at one or two rare moments of relaxation, but for the better part of a year now she hadn’t ordered anything stronger than water filled with diced fruits and flower petals. That kind of long-term sobriety might account for a lot of strange behavior.

  At least, Gorm hoped it did, because Kaitha had a lot to account for as of late.

  He shook off his concerns and turned back to the conversation at hand.

  “Look, there’s an undead army to the south. Vetchell’s a pile of rubble by now,” Burt growled at the mages. “Word of the threat has already made it to Parald, and yet this lot is still here trying to maneuver into favorable marriages. If they can ignore an army of the dead, they won’t be bothered by a few rough-looking folk in the corner. As long as you keep your head down, stay quiet, and play commoner to a bunch of wannabe nobles, you’ll be fine.”

  “So long as your contact shows up soon,” Jynn told the Kobold. “We’ve lost two days waiting around Parald as is. In another two this city will be crawling with refugees.”

  “Reconnaissance takes time, especially when you have to go through back channels to get to your source. But look. They’re here.” Burt nodded to the front door, where a gaggle of Elves in elaborate silks created a stir amongst the aspiring nobles.

  “If your contact is the one in the violet gown,” said Heraldin, “I’ll volunteer to ply her for information.”

  “Don’t be a skubber,” Burt snapped. “Look at her purse.”

  Gorm squinted at the violet-clad Elf’s drake-skin purse. A tiny canine face peeked over the handbag’s golden rim. The Kobold’s gnarled features were dusted with white and rose-colored makeup, and the uneven tufts of fur sprouting from his malformed head had been sculpted into colorful curls with a variety of greases and dyes.

  “That’s the strangest-looking purse Kobold I’ve ever seen,” said Laruna.

  “Yeah, yeah. Ain’t he a diamond in the rough?” Burt’s sneer was one that only a Kobold could achieve, a grimace impossible to perform with
symmetrical features or eyeballs that pointed in the same direction. “Anyway, he’s giving me the signal. Let’s head out back.”

  “What signal?” Gorm asked. “He’s just sittin’ there.”

  “Right, acting like he doesn’t see me. That’s the signal,” said Burt, settling into Kaitha’s purse. He gave the Elf’s sleeve a couple of quick tugs. “Let’s go, ranger. You should know all about making tracks.”

  “He’s just going to ignore you?” asked Laruna.

  “Seems to be a lot of that going around,” hissed the Kobold. “Let’s move it!”

  “But what kind of signal is that?” The solamancer reluctantly stood with the other heroes.

  “Anything else’d be suspicious,” Burt said, glaring back at the other Kobold once more. “Come on. You guys are taking forever.”

  “An eternity, really,” muttered King Handor. “A small, agonizing eternity.”

  “Indeed, sire,” whispered Weaver Ortson. The Grandmaster of the Heroes’ Guild slumped in his chair, wearing the morose expression he always bore in the brief interlude between getting up and the day’s first cocktail.

  “Look at all of these people,” Handor murmured under his breath. “Diplomats, finance ministers, accountants; every one of them is as dull as porridge in a gray bowl. And even they’re bored to tears.”

  “The least they could do is serve wine,” said Ortson.

  “I suspect that would distract us from their meeting,” said Handor.

  “Exactly, sire.” Ortson managed something approaching a smile.

  Below them, a nervous Dwarf stood in front of a large graph, stammering about the financial distress of the Old Dwarven Kingdoms. The chart itself was a square of oak boards with a grid of holes. The Dwarves had set pegs in the grid and strung crimson twine between them, creating a red line that plotted the Kingdoms’ finances. The whole graph was shaped like a mountain, but most of the Dwarf’s talking points focused on the treacherous cliff near the end.

  Handor sighed. The economic woes of the Old Dwarven Kingdoms were well-documented, beginning at the turn of the century when Imperial alchemists discovered a way to transform lead into gold. Within a few years, the Empire’s economy was so flooded with gold that the value of gold coins plummeted across Arth. The Agekeepers said a grocer couldn’t carry enough coin to buy a chicken.

  The Imperial alchemists were summarily executed, and the Freedlands and Ruskan barred trade with the Empire for a decade. Shortly thereafter, Handor’s grandfather, King Oven the Wise, invented the giltin and separated the value of the Freedlands’ currency from the scarcity of gold. Ruskan followed suit with its own currency, and the Empire began to issue coins made from lead coated in silver.

  But the Dwarves loved gold to a fault, and for ages the Old Dwarven Kingdoms had built their nation on mining and exporting precious metals. They kept an iron grip on the gold standard for over half a century too long, hoping that the markets would correct themselves and gold would come roaring back.

  Yet when markets do correct themselves, the issue they most often correct is false hope. The Dwarves saw their currency drop to a fraction of its former value.

  A collapsing currency is an enormous problem for a nation with more bottomless chasms than arable farmland. The rising price of imported food forced the Dwarves in the mountainous Old Kingdoms to spend away their coffers just to keep their people from starving, and the Kingdoms were now utterly destitute.

  “And so, as you can see, another generous infusion of aid from the Freedlands’ should allow us to remain solvent until the current economic difficulties have passed,” the presenting Dwarf droned on.

  Handor started to sigh again, but he felt eyes on him. He turned to see King Forder Hvarthson, the King of Khadan’Alt, watching. All the Fathers, Ancestors, and kings of the other clanhomes in the Old Dwarven Kingdoms were pledged to Khadan’Alt, making Forder the most powerful Dwarf in the world. Handor nodded to the Dwarven king and made the pretense of giving the speaker his attention.

  A few agonizing minutes later, a page rushed to Handor’s rescue. “Your Majesty,” he whispered breathlessly. “Sir Johan has an urgent message. He requests a word with you at once.”

  “Praise Tandos,” muttered Handor. He made his excuses to Ortson, nodded to King Forder and his attending Ancestors, and slipped out of the ballroom.

  Johan waited in a nearby hall, clad in a full suit of elaborate plate mail that dwarfed the ceremonial suits of armor lining the wall.

  “Johan,” said Handor. “I’ll never understand how you can wear that armor everywhere.”

  “Your Majesty,” said Tandos’ Champion with a small bow. “It is the fashion among professional heroes.”

  “You’re retired,” the king shot back. “And it’s the most ridiculous fashion I’ve ever heard of to walk around girded for war every day.”

  “One must always be prepared.”

  “One must always be exhausted and chafing as well,” said the king, leaning against the wall next to Johan. “Gods, that looks heavy. The pauldrons are bigger than your head.”

  Johan shrugged, causing the aforementioned pauldrons to eclipse his face. “They work miracles with enchantments these days, Your Majesty. They’ve woven enough sorcery into the steel that I don’t notice the weight. And speaking of miracles, have you managed to save the Old Dwarven Kingdoms once again?”

  “King Forder knows my terms,” sighed Handor. “This whole meeting is just the first step of his clumsy counter. What’s the sense in opening with a presentation that says the Dwarves have no money? He may as well deliver an hour-long speech to tell me that the sky is blue.”

  “Ha!” laughed Johan. “That would be more interesting than the Dwarves’ finances.”

  Handor nodded. “What would impress me is if he could make a case for the Freedlands sending him more gold. We’ve been bailing out that foundering ship for over a decade. It’s time for the Dwarves to change boats or sink for good. Plenty of clanhomes have sworn fealty to Andarun. If he wants the benefits of being in the Freedlands, he can do the same.”

  Johan’s perennial grin widened a bit. “Well said, sire.”

  “If only we could say as much in those stuffy dinners,” said Handor. “This one’s so dull that even Marja made some excuse, and you know what it takes to keep her away from a banquet.”

  “Ha ha! Indeed, sire.”

  “She would have come if she’d known you’d be making an appearance,” the king smirked.

  It was no secret that Marja would have preferred to marry Johan two decades ago, after the paladin rescued her from the tower of Detarr Ur’Mayan. It was also no secret that Handor would have preferred she marry Johan as well. They each had their own way of coping with a loveless marriage; Marja took comfort in eating mountains of tea cakes and other sweets, while Handor turned his attentions to governing and the occasional chambermaid.

  “I did not know I’d be coming myself, sire,” said Johan, his tone more serious. “But I’m compelled to intrude by important news.”

  “Well, I didn’t think you came just to save me from that presentation,” said Handor. “Is this about the trouble in Knifevale, the dragon stirring again, or the liche near Vetchell?”

  “Vetchell, I’m afraid,” said Johan. “We just received word that the city has fallen to the undead.”

  “And the city was evacuated in time?” Handor smiled once the paladin nodded. “Good. And how are the markets reacting?”

  “Up two percent, sire.”

  “Excellent!” said Handor. “Send my condolences and an offer of help to King Klenn. A vague offer. And have the generals ready the bannermen. I want the army ready to defend the Freedlands if Klenn can’t stop this from spreading to our territory.”

  “I’ll have them marching east within the week,” said Johan. “Shall I notify Mr. Ortson that the Heroes’ Guild may have a new quest coming?”

  The king shook his head. “Let’s meet with our associates this evening a
nd discuss the guild’s involvement with Weaver then. We need a cohesive plan to stop the undead.”

  “And, if I may presume, the optimal time and place to do so?” said Johan, grinning broadly.

  “Of course,” said Handor. “In times like this, when most men see challenges, great men see opportunities.”

  Chapter 8

  “If your friend doesn’t wanna miss his chance, he’d better get out here soon,” grumbled Gorm.

  “Oh, simmer down,” said Burt. “I’m sure he’s just seein’ to business.”

  “I assumed we were the business he planned to see to,” Jynn said.

  Gorm snorted and looked around the yard. To the east, Parald was lit by manifold torches, lanterns, and braziers, and the city glimmered like an inverted chandelier set upon the grassy plain. It might have been a pretty sight at another time, but for now the city’s warm glow was just a reminder how cold and damp it was behind the stables of Baedrun’s Dream.

  “Hey, I know we’re tossing him some coin, but trips to taverns are busy for a handbag performer,” Burt told him. “He’s still got a day job to keep.”

  “Of a sort,” said Heraldin. Laruna snickered.

  “Yeah, go on and laugh. If I thought it was a respectable career, I wouldn’t have left it.” Burt looked back at the inn, and Gorm thought he saw a hint of wistfulness in the Kobold’s eye. “But ‘bagging is hard work. You’ve got to be ready to perform at any moment, always ready to babble like a pup or do a happy dance or look cute while you eat somethin’. And gods forbid your lady sees something cuter while she’s out and about, ‘cause if she does you’ll be on the street the next day.”

  The Kobold shook his head and scratched his ear sheepishly, remembering himself. “So yeah, give the guy some slack. He’s got a lot to do in there.”

  “So, would you say he’s working like a dog?” quipped Heraldin.

  “Not if I was tall and pink and liked breathin’,” Burt growled, rolling up the sleeve of his tiny tunic.

  “Someone’s coming,” said Kaitha, perking up.