Son of a Liche

by J. Zachary Pike

  It took a certain sort.

  When need arose, however, the priesthood of Mordo Ogg did have one supreme duty: to make sure the dead stayed that way.

  Ignatius knelt prostrate before the statue, arms outstretched, until his searching fingers found the two buttons located in the skeleton’s feet. Pressing both of them opened a small alcove in the god of death’s throne. With considerable effort, the old man drew out a suit of ancient chainmail, a cudgel with a head of black iron, and a dark helmet with its faceplate fashioned into the likeness of a skull.

  He could barely lift the cudgel. His head wobbled under the weight of the helmet, and he struggled to move with the armor on. Still, ritual demanded that he wear the uniform when the time came to take up arms. He glared up at the blackening sky.

  “Soon,” he rasped.

  “Very soon.” Jynn shielded his eyes in the noonday sun, staring at the distant profile of Mount Wynspar. “Probably tonight, if not before.”

  “Bones!” Gorm’s curse was loud enough to startle the Shadowkin behind him. Several Goblins instinctively fell to the ground before an all clear was sounded. The Dwarf gave an apologetic wave as the Shadowkin resumed preparing the heroes’ mounts.

  The Elven steeds had been startled when Gorm and Heraldin showed up with a pack of Orcs to retrieve them from the fields north of Dunhelm; they’d been downright terrified as they were ushered back through the magical portal to the northern coast. The horses were none too happy with the second waygate journey either, despite their clear relief at returning to the central Freedlands. Now they stamped and snorted as Goblins and Kobolds fastened nets filled with stones, small logs, and bundles of exotic ingredients to their saddles.

  “How can you even tell when the undead will strike at this distance?” Heraldin squinted as he stared. “You can’t see Andarun from this side of the mountain.”

  “Look at them storm clouds,” said Gorm, pointing to the ominous cyclone developing in the dark skies above the southern slope of the mountain. “Spiraling, too. Clouds like that only arrive about the time a really big fight’s about to start.”

  “I thought the sky looked portentous today,” said Kaitha.

  “You can tell what’s happening by the weather?” asked Heraldin.

  “Oh yeah,” said Laruna. “You always check the clouds before a big job.”

  “It’s the influence of low magic,” said Jynn. “When enough fates intersect at a given point in time and space, it can warp the weave enough to distort weather patterns.”

  “Why did ye think all the bard’s tales have thunderstorms at the big, climactic fight?” Gorm asked.

  Heraldin shrugged. “I suppose I thought it was creative license.”

  “You thought the bards were all ending their stories in similar fashion for creativity’s sake?” said Burt.

  “You give the people what they want,” said Heraldin. “The ballads all end with the heroes overcoming evil as well. That’s not terribly original either.”

  “Then let us hope against novelty,” said a portly Goblin shaman walking up from the horses. Hibbirp was commissioned by Asherzu to lead the Shadowkin on their mission.

  “Aye, that’s a good word,” said the Dwarf. “Everything ready?”

  The shaman assured them that the horses were loaded and asked that the adventurers prepare to ride shortly. Gorm agreed, but held the others back for a moment.

  “This is it,” he told them, standing in a tight circle. “We’re a day’s ride from Andarun, and we’ve half a day to make it. If this plan don’t work—”

  “It’ll be like all of the others?” said Heraldin.

  “If it don’t work,” Gorm repeated loudly. “I just want ye to know it’s been an honor. And I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  “I’d change the parts where the plans didn’t work,” said Heraldin.

  “I’d make the bard a mute,” said Laruna.

  Gaist nodded.

  “I wouldn’t be risking my whiskers to save Johan. Or the Heroes’ Guild, or Goldson and Baggs,” said Burt. “I’d avoid propping up the whole corrupt system.”

  “We’re saving the good folk of the city,” said Jynn. “Johan and his ilk are just collateral beneficiaries.”

  “Yeah, I know,” grumbled Burt. “But I’d still find a way we could kick the king in his big, shiny teeth.”

  “I guess there’s a lot we’d change.” Kaitha smiled. “But we’re here anyway.”

  “Only thing I’d change is we’d wrap this up faster,” snapped Gorm. “Let’s ride out! We ain’t got much time.”

  “We have minutes, not hours, Majesty,” said General Gurgen. The wind tousled her closely cropped hair as she looked over the ramparts. Grim ranks of corpses and specters stared back at her. “They could launch their assault any moment now.”

  Weaver Ortson shifted his gaze to the king with some effort. It took additional exertion to focus on Johan, and more effort to hold his flask, and still more to do it all while standing upright. All in all, the guildmaster was straining himself just to stay atop Malcolm’s Gate, a grand stone gatehouse separating the third tier from the second.

  “Excellent! Ha!” laughed Johan, the light gleaming off his grin. The champion-cum-king stood with one leg atop the ramparts, chest out, eyes forward, smile confident, cape and hair billowing majestically in the wind.

  The king’s eagerness stood in stark contrast to everyone else on the wall of the second tier. Most of the bannermen hunched over in nervous huddles, whispering to each other as the army of the dead approached from the southeast. Gurgen looked troubled as she stood and wavered on the edge of desperation. Ortson had opted to drink himself right over the boundary.

  “Here we are, staring death in the face!” said Johan. “There’s naught but a ragtag band of weary soldiers and a few bold heroes standing between the Freedlands and total annihilation.”

  “A very few bold heroes,” said General Gurgen, casting a dark glance at Ortson.

  “As many as we’d pay for!” Ortson slurred the retort.

  “It’s enough.” Johan’s smile was broad enough to nearly bisect his face, and he breathed the words with rapturous certainty.

  The king swept his gaze over the edge of the ramparts. Below him, the city streets were empty and deserted. Most of the lower tiers’ citizens had fled to cram the upper tiers, but the wretched faces of those unable or unwilling to evacuate peered from many windows. Soldiers lined the tops of the walls between the tiers, their company banners flapping in the ever-strengthening wind. The city was silent, save for the cries of frightened children and the distant, dissonant rumble of the dead marching.

  “People of the Freedlands!” Johan’s voice rang out over the whispering streets. Bannermen turned to look at him. Windows creaked open. Clusters of curious faces bloomed in the doorways, turned up toward Johan as flowers twist to face the sun. Behind Ortson, the bannermen and citizens occupying the upper tiers stared down at the king like spectators at the opera.

  “I know you are frightened,” boomed Johan. “I see the fear in your eyes. And I will not lie; the danger we face is great. But we, we are greater still, my friends. Ha! Did we not build this city atop dungeons full of foul creatures? Have we not tamed the Wild Lands and hauled treasure from every dungeon in the kingdom? Some fear the darkness, but we have made careers of driving it back! And while we have a lot of work to do, I know that you, my people, are up to the task!”

  The crowd burst into resonant cheers. Johan drew his enruned sword and held it high in the air, basking in the adoration of the masses.

  “The gods are with us! Tandos is with us!” Johan’s blade shone like a beacon, sending rays of golden light to pierce the gathering darkness.

  Weaver Ortson stared through a haze of liquor at the divine beams dancing around the king’s sword. They shone out into the darkness beyond the city, where another glow caught the guildmaster’s attention. He rubbed his eyes and checked again to make sure he was seeing things c
orrectly. “Uh, sire?” he said.

  Johan was caught up in ecstatic glory. The light gleamed off his polished armor, his raised blade, his perfect teeth. “And I, my good people! I am with you! I have already slain the foul Detarr Ur’Mayan once! It is no different this time!”

  “Sire!” hissed Ortson.

  A hint of a scowl crossed Johan’s face as he glanced back at the guildmaster. “What is it, Ortson?”

  Ortson pointed to the rising mass amid the undead. “There is, ah, at least one difference.”

  “Everything has changed!” Detarr Ur’Mayan had to shout to be heard over the moans of the dead army, the piping of his unholy Gnomish organ, and the ear-shattering roar of the earth behind him.

  The liche drove the Dark Spire of Nephan into the ground. Then, with Detarr’s magic flowing through it, the shard of rune-encrusted stone slowly pulled itself out of the dirt, and behind the liche, the artifact’s giant twin did the same. The land trembled and groaned as a tower of stone began to rip itself from the earth.

  “There’s never been an invasion like this!” Detarr gestured out to the gruesome crowd as the Gnomish organ’s music swelled to a climax. “Every necromancer or liche before me believed that power lay within dominating the dead. But what you’ve all shown me is that dead people are people too, and the power lies in you!”

  The liche’s officials nodded and clapped, standing in a wide semicircle that gave Detarr plenty of room to manipulate the Dark Spire. The undead gathered behind them broke into a cacophony of groans and shrieks that could be taken as the loose equivalent of cheering. Despite himself, Tyren Ur’Thos was compelled to join in the applause. His hands moved of their own accord, his head bobbing up and down like a marionette’s.

  “Thank you,” yelled the liche. “Thank you for making all this possible. And listen, we’re going with a more traditional image for this invasion—”

  “All terror, all the time!” interjected the Head of Marketing.

  “Yes, thank you,” Detarr said without gratitude. “But there are reasons to avoid an extended siege here, and I remain confident that you all have the power to triumph! I’d like to extend my most sincere thanks to Knight-Commander Ur’Thos for making this possible.”

  The liche turned his cruel, skeletal grin on Tyren, and the knight-commander’s right hand raised itself.

  “After all, he’s the one who found the Dark Spire of Nephan!” said Detarr, thrusting the Wyrmwood Staff toward the sky. The Dark Spire of Nephan finally loosed itself from the loam and rose into the air. Behind the liche, the shard’s giant simulacrum freed itself from the earth with a final rumble and heaved skyward.

  The undead cheered and waved their appendages at the airborne monolith, carved from the deepest strata of the fields outside of Andarun. Loose stones and sprays of dirt cascaded from it as it hovered in the night sky, a jagged scar in the canopy of emerging stars.

  “It does have a certain il’ne se la, doesn’t it?” Detarr remarked to his assembled generals. He gestured at the smaller spire with the Wyrmwood Staff, and both stones swiveled upward in unison. More earth shifted and fell as the spires aligned themselves horizontally.

  “It’s stupendous! Amazing! Earth shattering! Literally!” bubbled the Head of Marketing. “People are going to be talking about this for the rest of their lives! And long afterward, I suppose.”

  “Magnificent.” Lady Carabae’s jaw hung open, her long fangs shining in the glow of passing specters.

  “But what does it actually do?” asked Genevieve. The banshee flew up for a better view.

  “What does it do?” said the Head of Marketing, bobbing in an agitated hop after the banshee. “This is the Dark Spire of Nephan! The flying fortress of the Dark Lord of Nagarok! The soaring citadel of the bloody-handed necromancer!”

  Genevieve squinted her blank eyes at the spire, which was now parallel to the muddy plain. “So, does it shoot a death beam or something?” she asked.

  The Head of Marketing rolled its eye. “Sure. Fine. Probably.” It tried to share a knowing look with Tyren.

  The black crown compelled the knight-commander to give a curt nod.

  “There’s no death beam.” Detarr stood perpendicular to the smaller of the spires, clasping the base of the Wyrmwood Staff so the tip pointed down at the artifact.

  Genevieve looked disappointed. “Does it amplify magic?” She asked.

  “Or empower the dead?” suggested Lady Carabae.

  “It’s really not that kind of artifact.” Satisfied with the alignment of the staff, the liche swiveled his arms to bring the staff behind his head—almost as though wielding a club to smash a tiny trespasser.

  “But what does it do?” insisted the banshee.

  “It’s thousands of tons of flying stone,” snapped Detarr. “Try to have some imagination.”

  The undead wizard swung his staff in a wide arc, bringing its head within a hair of striking the ground. There was a flash of light and a loud crack as the head of the staff collided with the enruned shard of stone, and the smaller Dark Spire flew through the air like an arrow.

  “What—” said Genevieve, but even her supernatural voice was lost in the rushing wind as the giant spire launched as though fired from a great ballista. The pillar of earth soared over the army of the dead, over the clusters of buildings outside of Andarun, over the great stables and bazaars on the main road to the gates. The massive projectile sprayed loose rocks and soil as it spiraled along its deadly trajectory toward the Great South Gate of Andarun.

  “Get back!” shrieked Weaver Ortson, stumbling away from the onrushing stone projectile.

  “Bloody bones,” swore General Gurgen, a moment before the Great South Gate exploded in a spray of white dust and surprised bannermen. The Dark Spire barreled through Andarun’s outer wall and continued up the empty street, sending cobblestones and debris flying. A moment later, it crashed into Fafnir’s Gate, the great portcullis that could seal the gates of the second tier.

  Ortson felt the stone beneath him heave at the impact. The buildings on the tier below shuddered violently, breaking many of their windows. Screams rang out as Fafnir’s Gate began to buckle and topple, ripping a gash in the city’s second line of defense.

  General Gurgen barked orders. A flight of messenger sprites took to the air as the officers behind her relayed commands to their soldiers. Chaos broke out in the streets below. Bannermen and a handful of professional heroes rushed toward the breaches while terrified citizens and refugees abandoned their hiding places and fled madly toward the barricades blocking the gates to the upper tiers. Beyond them, skeletal warriors were already pushing through the wreckage of the main gate.

  “Ortson!” Johan’s eyes were fixed on a point in the distance, somewhere amid the sinister glow of the unliving throng beyond the shattered gates. “Are there any bards among the heroes you’ve managed to hire?”

  “Uh, yes, sire.” Ortson knew the answer, but he didn’t understand the question. “By necessity, you see. There’s always a bigger supply of bards than demand for them, so on a low-wage, high risk quest—”

  “Good.” Johan cut the guildmaster off without looking back. “Make sure they’re watching. I want to hear details in the ballads.”

  “Sire?” said Ortson.

  “Ha haaa!” With a trumpeting laugh, the paladin leapt off the ramparts of Malcolm’s Gate. The king’s crimson cape trailed him like a shooting star until he hit the cobbled streets with the stone-shattering impact of a meteor. With a flourish of his glowing sword, the king righted himself and cracked his neck.

  “For my kingdom! For my people! For all that I stand for!” the king shouted. He turned a pointed glance back to the guildmaster wobbling atop the ramparts. “Are you writing this down?”

  “U-uh, yes sire!” Ortson fumbled at his robes for a parchment and charcoal nib.

  “Ha haaa!” Johan launched into a subsonic charge that left no trace of him save a plume of dust leading toward the ruins of Fafnir
’s Gate. Moments later, a glowing path scythed through the undead pouring into the Great South Gate, a slash of light against the encroaching darkness.

  Ortson dabbed the sweat from his brow. “Remarkable,” he breathed.

  “Predictable,” Detarr told his generals. They watched the distant golden comet carve through a cluster of zombies and ghouls. “It’s the narrative, you see. He can’t resist the glory of a climactic duel.”

  Tyren could sense the power at the gates. The light it cast sent a searing sensation through his skeleton, and it brought with it memories of his death. He would have taken a step back had he been in command of what remained of his body. As it was, he mustered enough will to shift his eyes away from the horrible brightness burning a path through the streets outside of Andarun.

  “Shouldn’t we, uh, move out of his way, then?” asked the Head of Marketing, glancing back and forth between the liche and the obliterating light.

  “I imagine you should,” said Detarr, setting the Wyrmwood Staff before him. “We’re going to need some space.”

  It was enough of an order to compel Tyren. He struggled against his own body as he walked away from the liche, and was surprised to find that he had a small degree of control over his motion. It wasn’t enough to do as he wished, but he could pull or push on individual joints at certain moments. Tyren surmised that it was because the liche’s attention was on the approaching foe.

  The other generals stared at the knight-commander’s awkward, hobbled gait as he joined them a safe distance from Detarr. “Are you quite all right?” asked Lady Carabae, a smirk twisting her ruby lips.

  Tyren stared at her for as long as he could hold out before the will of the Crown of Iron Thorns forced him to nod.