by Stefon Mears
Truly, a masterwork of some ancient, arcane smith. Perhaps even Dunaian.
Oh, when the blade at last found itself in Vastig’s hands. Then, then would both blade and wielder meet their equal.
Vastig could almost see his enemies falling before him, one by one by one. Names he’d not spoken in decades trembled near his lips to be bellowed as he struck...
Soon.
Night was falling, even if Zatafa’s blessing kept it looking like day to Cavan’s eyes. The foul, half-dead air grew chill.
No buzz of insects. No padding feet of forest creatures. The ground around here was so dead that not even undead grasses remained. Just that oddly smooth clay that seemed to muffle even their footsteps.
The only sounds Cavan heard were those made by himself and his friends, as they made their cautious way forward.
His stomach growled a small complaint. The lunch they’d shared while riding — strips of beef and cheese, along with a pungent, sour-sweet blue fruit called dalas — had been hours ago.
Not that Cavan’s mouth could consider the possibility of food. Not here, rounding the end of that grove of those disturbing and hopefully dead trees.
Past the grove lay a ruin. The frame of gray stone walls remained, indicating a pentagonal shape to the building that once stood there, though none of those fallen walls stood even as high as Cavan’s collar now.
The building had once been the size of an inn, by Cavan’s estimate. With the remains of a smaller, wooden outbuilding now a crumbled wreck to one side.
“It was a monastery,” Ehren said, his voice reverent.
“How can you tell?” Cavan asked.
“The shape, for one,” Ehren said. “Five-sided building, consistent with the Order of Blessed Light. Note the small stars engraved along the bottom edge of the stonework. Another indicator.”
“The star followers?” Reesa asked, using the common name for the Order of Blessed Light. “Those stories were real?”
“What stories?” Cavan asked, while Amra huffed out an impatient breath.
“Stories they told us as children. Scary, harvest festival stuff. Seems that—”
“Excuse me,” Amra said, with far more patience than she would have shown for Cavan, or anyone else for that matter. “But do any of those stories involve a necromancer?”
“No,” Reesa said slowly, frowning. “Not the ones I heard.”
“Then they’ll keep.”
“Roof’s gone,” Qalas said, gesturing to the ground with his halberd. “Completely. The remains of that wooden outbuilding are still here, but the roof of the main building is gone. So are any shutters they had.”
“Just like the undergrowth,” Cavan said.
“Hold here,” Amra said. In three swift movements across fallen chunks of monastery she stood atop the nearest section of wall, her sword still naked in her hands.
“I see a likely entrance,” she said, then jumped back down to the ground with the grace and silence of a forest cat. “Toward the back of the stone floor. Wooden trap door, likely a staircase leading down to the old cellar, and whatever else is down there now.”
“Trap being the operative word,” Cavan said, and Amra nodded.
“Why?” Reesa asked.
“One,” Cavan said, “it’s too easy and too obvious an entrance. Two, it’s the only wood left in that building. We could check it out, but even getting close is likely to trigger the trap.”
“So do we hit it now or later?” Qalas asked, which got him a look of disbelief from Amra.
“What?” he asked. “You want to leave it here for future travelers to trip?”
“Later,” Cavan said. “If we survive this, we’ll clear the trap by daylight. If not,” — Cavan looked around — “one more hazard won’t make a difference in this place.”
Qalas frowned, but nodded.
Amra turned an expectant look on Cavan. He smirked and sheathed his sword.
“Get ready,” Cavan said, rubbing his hands together. “This is going to go one of two ways. If the necromancer wants us to come in and fight on his terms, I’ll find the real entrance no problem. If the necromancer wants to keep us out, just trying to find the entrance by magic will get some kind of guards after us.”
“Can’t we find it without magic then?” Reesa asked.
“That’s the problem when dealing with magic,” Qalas said while Amra just shook her head. “If you know how close someone has to be to find your secret entrance without magical aid, then you just set your enchanted safeguards a little bit farther out.”
“At least wizards hardly ever bother with non-magical approaches,” Amra said, and it was Qalas’ turn to nod.
“Couldn’t Zatafa—” Reesa began, but Ehren interrupted her. Gently.
“Alas,” he said, though his lips still held a small smile, “even Zatafa is not all powerful. Which is really as it ought to be. If the gods did not leave us space to deal with our own problems—”
“Ehren,” Amra said, fluttering her eyelashes, “is this the right time for a lecture?”
“It’s hardly a lecture.”
Cavan cleared his throat.
Qalas snorted and said to Reesa, “In case you’re wondering, yes. They’re always like this.”
Reesa’s frown looked more puzzled than disapproving. And her eyes darted back and forth, as though Amra, Ehren and Qalas weren’t casually positioning themselves to watch every direction while Cavan prepared to cast a spell.
Cavan ushered his friends back a few steps, then turned to begin what he needed to do.
Cavan had kept his wizard eyes open most of the day, and truth was, that had given him a small headache. He could ignore it, set it aside, without too much trouble. But for what he was about to do, he needed to acknowledge his current state.
And that state included a headache. Although some of that might have just been the effect of staring at death everywhere he looked.
Of course, that ride had been gentle, compared to what surrounded him now. This ruined monastery practically seethed with necromancy.
But Cavan could not seek any relief yet. Worse, he needed to get more precise about what he saw. Dig through all the ambient necromantic spellwork and find any active or readied spells.
He began by emphasizing his sight in the most basic way. A repetition and reinforcement of his usual detection methods.
He covered his eyes with his palms. Whispered.
“Neela asa. A ta asa neelasa.”
When Cavan opened his eyes, his stomach clenched, and he was glad he hadn’t eaten recently. So very much fell magic here. Steeped into the stones of the ruined monastery. Far too much for a single necromancer to have accomplished, unless he’d been ensconced here for centuries.
More than that, Cavan could tell not only that many of the lingering effects were not necromancy — at least some involved demons, and other dark magics — but he was certain that much of what he saw came from other, unknown evil wizards.
Cavan had spent the day learning the way this necromancer moved, magically speaking. And the metaphorical movements Cavan could see now, flowing out of the ground and around the very stones of the fallen monastery, suggested at least a dozen different spellcasters.
Good. That much was good, at least. Cavan could focus down on the one style and approach — the movement, as it were — he needed to follow.
“Can see why he chose this place,” Cavan muttered, though in the silence surrounding him his words were doubtless heard by all his companions. “Been a source of foul magics for a long, long time.”
Reesa started to say something, but the others hushed her.
Cavan swept his line of sight across the whole area surrounding the monastery, from where he stood to as far forward as he could see.
Too difficult to be sure. There had just been too much magic here for anything like the simple approach to help.
Then again, Cavan had determined one thing already. He’d cast a spell close to the monast
ery, and yet not gotten a response. That likely meant that the other spells he considered would not trigger a response either.
Which meant the necromancer did want them to enter his lair, where he would hold all the advantages.
Wonderful.
At least it was enough information for Cavan to proceed.
One deep breath would normally have been all Cavan needed to clear his thoughts and double his focus on what he was doing. In this place, however, he needed three breaths to get enough good air for the same effect.
But one thing Cavan had learned over the years was the art of improvisation. And so he turned the three breaths into a triple-breath, using the physicality of the movements to deepen his mind further than a good, single breath would have done on its own.
Mind games, true, but it seemed to Cavan sometimes that the deeper mysteries of magic all involved mind games that wizards played with themselves.
The spell Cavan cast then was one of his own invention. Stitched together through experience and innovation from bits of other spells.
From the enhancement of wizard sight, he pulled in aspects of increased sensitivity.
From the elements of basic warding, he pulled in aspects that detected magical threats, as well as things hidden through illusions.
From the elements of basic enchantment, he worked with the keys of magic tied to physical objects.
The next part of this spell, Cavan would have had trouble explaining to another wizard. The concept of spell structure and technique as the equivalent of movement. Cavan lacked the necromancer’s signature, which would have made this spell much easier, but by trusting his gut he could tweak his nouns to follow spells designed around the necromancer’s metaphorical way of moving.
And finally, he combined all these parts of spells together with something he’d worked out during his short-lived attempt at life as a thief. (Cavan had just never been able to bring himself to rob someone who didn’t really, really deserve it.) A means of finding entrances — as well as cubbies, alcoves, safes and the like — that were concealed by ordinary means.
Cavan pulled a stub of dirty, white candle from his spell pouch. No longer or broader than the first joint of his thumb, with a small, blackened wick, and tiny runes etched into the sides. From other pockets in that pouch, he pulled out the right combination of herbs and ground them into the wick with his fingers.
He breathed power across the wick as he whispered, “Ne maja haka asa, kol no ari tassa fela.”
To Cavan’s eyes, the wick flared to life. A small, white flame, that no one else would be able to see.
“Follow me,” Cavan said to the others without looking back, “and be ready.”
Cavan held the candle up ahead of himself, and the flame tipped to the right. Cavan turned with it and followed.
At first it looked to be leading Cavan to the right side of the ruined monastery, but no. The wick sputtered a moment, through reds and blues, before returning to white, and leaning farther to the right.
Just as Cavan had suspected. The crumbled remains of the outbuilding.
Sure enough, the candle flame led him there. It cycled through yellows and reds, and finally flashed black then white, over and over.
The yellows and reds, like most of those other colors, had only been signs of other, older, lingering magics. Things that a wizard of properly evil bent could probably tap into and resuscitate, a thought that made Cavan shudder involuntarily.
The black though, that was the color of necromancy to this spell. More evidence that the necromancer himself came and went through the entrance concealed here.
The white indicated that there was nothing here that could present an immediate danger. No trap waiting to drain the life of anyone without the proper passcode, for example.
Oh, there was a small ward. Cavan could see that without the candle. A simple thing, mostly intended to alert the necromancer if anyone entered. But nothing more dangerous was waiting here.
Cavan snorted. The only ward would be easy enough to defeat.
One of the problems of necromancy, after all. It was an … invasive art, and decayed the necromancer’s ability to cast spells that did not require a touch of death.
And from what Cavan had been riding through all day, he felt certain this necromancer was only capable of two kinds of wards: the most basic wards, and the most lethal.
These were the most basic.
Cavan extinguished his spell candle and reached out with a flare of power toward the weakest spot in the ward. It died without a struggle.
“We’re good,” Cavan said, putting away the candle and drawing his sword once more. Knowing exactly where the entrance was now, Cavan could see the pattern hidden within the ancient, rotted debris.
He tapped it. Amra nodded.
Holding her sword in one hand now, she reached with her other fingers for purchase and swung open the concealed trapdoor.
A series of solid, stone steps led the way down. That was the good news.
The bad news was that Cavan’s luck continued to follow its current trend — bad. He could hear a series of alarm gongs ringing somewhere down those stairs.
Amra shot a quick grin at Cavan.
“Didn’t think to check for nonmagical triggers, did you?”
Cavan shook his head.
“Of course,” Qalas groaned. “Of course this is the one wizard who uses nonmagical alerts.”
“Good,” Amra said, turning to the staircase. “Wouldn’t want this to be too easy.”
Frankly, Cavan wouldn’t have minded something easy, for a change. No point in expressing that, though. Amra wasn’t going to stop for wit.
She led the way down into the necromancer’s lair.
Vastig waited until he heard the sounds of battle before he left his hiding spot along the edge of the blood red neelach trees, near the ruined monastery and crept forward along the muted ground.
His first assessment of this group had been wrong. Exciting, in how infrequently that happened. Boring, in that it did not seem to make this group the more dangerous.
Back at the Forest of Risen Knights, Vastig had gathered that a group of three were escorting two wealthy humans, likely a young couple running away from their parents.
Instead, it was clear by now that four of these humans were accustomed to traveling together, although one of their number had only joined them relatively recently. The southerner with the halberd. He had not yet meshed as tightly as the priest, the relic-wielder, and the would-be wizard.
The would-be archer was the puzzle. Why would the others bring her along? She was unused to their life of travel, and from what Vastig had seen of her only fight, she had little to offer.
It was possible she’d hired the four of them as an escort, but that would not explain why she’d let them leave their travel route for a fool’s errand such as this one.
No, she was not their leader nor their employer.
Perhaps she was skilled at pleasure? Humans seemed to value that above…
No. That did not seem likely. None of them had smelled of recent sex before they’d entered the hidden stairway. If they’d brought her along for that purpose, surely one of them would have indulged last night.
Perhaps Vastig would ask her purpose of one of them, before delivering a final blow. The answer could prove useful, the next time Vastig hunted humans.
A moment of silence. Vastig paused perhaps three steps from the open hidden entrance.
No sound of rapid footfalls. No cries of panic. No wails for the dead. Nothing more than, perhaps, hushed conversation. In the silence of this place, Vastig’s ears could not discern the details.
Nevertheless. Likely then that the five humans had all survived their struggle against the first wave of grayed zombies called forth when they tripped the alarm gongs.
Vastig smiled. The nonmagical alarm had been his idea. It would call forth three waves of grayed zombies, with one wave of blackened zombies in between. The master had
approved of its deviousness.
The humans would have a rhythm down by then, from fighting the first two waves of grayed zombies. They’d be expecting that fire would quickly dispatch their foes.
Blackened zombies, of course, were immune to fire.
The final wave of grayed zombies would strike before the last blackened zombie fell.
Oh, for humans, the four primaries of this group seemed competent enough. Especially with that priest to aid them. And, of course, the relic.
The would-be archer might die somewhere in their struggle against the waves of zombies, but the others would survive.
Still, the fights would tax them. Soften them, before they reached the first real threat.
What would that be?
The master refused to waste his magic on more traps, no matter how Vastig pleaded their effectiveness. And it had been so long since any would-be hero had invaded that likely, the master would be worried.
The reeves, he would keep close to him, for his own safety.
No. The master would send Doris.
Perfect.
Doris might terrify them into fleeing, which would make them easy targets for Vastig’s arrows. Or else, they would fight her, and perhaps Vastig would find a key moment to finish off the relic-wielder, and then the others would fall easily.
Vastig could practically taste his vengeance, sweet and savory combined on his tongue.
He took his first silent steps down the hidden staircase. Slowly. Oh, so slowly.
9
Cavan’s only consolation was that he wasn’t the only one breathing hard. Qalas had one hand on his knee, though his other still held his halberd good and ready. Ehren leaned on his staff, and his nose flared wide and often as he tried to gain a reasonable amount of actual benefit from the half-dead air down here.
The priest still looked as though he’d just bathed and donned clothes fresh from the laundress, but at least he was showing some signs of effort.