I love my King. I owe him much. But I do not trust him.
~from the journal of Wylandriah Witch-feather
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE BLACK OATH
Smythe was already dragging Ree to her knees when the King swept in, velvet robes shushing around his legs, blackwood crown gleaming on his brow. ‘My beastmage tells me you have proof Evanert is working against me.’
Ree and Smythe exchanged startled looks. Ree licked her lips, ‘I don’t know about that. But in our time, your Evanert is an immortal Lich, and … well, we’ve seen your grave.’
The King studied her with flinty eyes. Again, Ree was aware of the almost suffocating presence of his power. She pulled her mental guards in tightly around herself and was careful not to meet his eyes for longer than a few seconds.
‘You seemed familiar with my throne room. You know, then, that I intend to be entombed there, when my time comes.’ He threaded his fingers together.
Ree hesitated, then inclined her head.
‘Evanert outlives me,’ he mused, gazing above their heads and into the distance. He stopped and turned to Smythe. ‘And what of my legacy?’
‘Uh — sorry, sire?’ Smythe fidgeted with his glasses.
‘My legacy. The kingdom I left behind. What of it?’ His face went still. ‘What do they say of me?’
Ree pressed her lips together and clasped trembling hands behind her back. There was something tight in his voice that sounded all too ready to snap. She didn’t want to learn what that looked like in a King, or a necromancer of such obvious power.
Smythe wrung his hands. ‘Well, I’ve actually been working on that. You see, it’s very — it requires — well. Based on the age of the tomb and the relics left behind, I think I’ll be able to narrow it down —’
‘You don’t know. You truly don’t know.’ The King’s face went slack with shock. For a flicker of a moment, Ree could see past his regal demeanour to the man beneath — a man, like so many practitioners, who only wanted his name to be spoken in hushed tones long after his death.
‘That’s what power is all about,’ her father had told her once. His tone had been wistful. ‘Your deeds live on, the terrible awe of your creations holding sway in the nightmares of children for generations. We all of us want to be immortal, Ree — but the practitioners with true power, they can achieve it. A name that inspires fear, a legacy of darkness.’ He’d given her a look with shining eyes. ‘I want that for you, too.’
The King’s shoulders went back. His guards snapped back in; he looked again powerful, inscrutable. ‘So my greatest servant will live on while my name is forgotten. That, I cannot abide.’ His chin rose.
‘Have the Lich — Evanert. Have Evanert send us back.’ Ree managed to keep her voice level, although she couldn’t help the way her breath hitched. ‘We’ll go back, we’ll make them remember your name — I swear it.’ She watched the King for a reaction. His lip curled, but he said nothing. She pressed on, ‘My companion is a renowned historian in the world above. And I was born here. My father is on the council of the largest —’ and likely only ‘— necromancer community in the world. We can make sure your legacy lives on, if only you send us back.’
The King stroked his beard. A cool light grew in his eyes.
They needed to convince him. She elbowed Smythe.
‘Ow! Uh — well, most certainly! I was immediately intrigued by your tomb and would be honoured to be the one to ah, as it were, to resurrect your memory, if you’ll forgive the turn of phrase —’
‘No.’
‘I beg pardon, sire.’ Smythe quickly bowed his head. It was such a knee-jerk reaction of servility that once again, Ree wondered what his experience of royalty was.
The King clasped his hands. ‘It is not your words, spoken centuries too late, that will resurrect my memory. No — only deeds will do that.’ He levelled his gaze at Ree. ‘You say you were born in my tomb. You must know of the magic I speak of.’
Ree felt a chill finger run down her spine. Mutely, she shook her head, barely trusting herself to breathe.
Cobra-quick, the King grabbed her arm and yanked her close. He glared down at her, the icy blue of his eyes shifting like paint in water. ‘You know.’
Ree gasped as his grip started to burn cold. ‘I’m not a practitioner,’ she said through gritted teeth. She kept her eyes low before he could try to mind snare her. ‘I don’t know anything about your craft.’
‘Release her!’ The air shivered as Smythe gathered power. Ree barely had time to think ‘idiot!’ before Wylandriah leapt at him in a flash of light and claws, bowling him over in the form of a big cat.
‘You’re a liar,’ said the King. He shoved her aside, sending her crashing into the wall. His shadow twitched and jumped as his lip curled in disgust. ‘And you will do as I say or you will serve me from the afterlife. I am the King.’
Not mine, Ree thought. Never mine. But her arm was pitted and wrinkled a horrible blue-black and the pain of it was still shuddering through her body, and Smythe was talking very quickly while Wylandriah pressed enormous paws down on his shoulders, and everything about this was wrong. They shouldn’t be here, at this time, with these people. They should be heading back to town with Larry in tow, with Usther waiting to scold them for being both careless and boring.
‘Tell me.’ The King’s voice was dangerously soft. Behind her, Smythe cried out as Wylandriah dug curved claws into his flesh.
‘There are rituals,’ said Ree. Her eyes flicked from Smythe to the King. ‘Human sacrifice. To bring back what was.’
‘And you’ve seen the ritual I left, then. The tablet carved into my tomb.’
She’d been there when Emberlon found it. They’d been cataloguing the Old King’s Tomb, trying to get everything archived and budgeted for when the trader caravans passed by. There were so many things Tombtown needed to trade for — so many things necromancers had no ability to grow or craft, and could not be salvaged from the dead. She remembered the gleam of polished gold as Emberlon prised the tablet from the wall and held it up to the light.
‘We can never tell anyone about this, Ree. Do you understand?’ He’d wrapped it in rags and slid it into his pack. ‘Some things are better left unknown.’
Ree stared at the King’s feet. ‘I’ve seen it.’
‘I am a generous King.’ He lifted his hand; Wylandriah sprang from Smythe to back up against the wall as a woman once more. The King started to pace, staring down at Ree. ‘If you swear the Black Oath that my ritual will be done, I will order my most powerful servant to send you back.’
‘I’m sorry, but — what is this ritual?’ Smythe got to his feet, wincing as he did. Red bloomed at his shoulders, speckling his linen shirt. Ree’s lungs seized, but they must have been shallow wounds as his arms hung naturally at his sides.
Ree remembered the words carved carefully in Old Antherian. A city for a city … She said nothing, and the King did not answer Smythe, only staring hard at Ree.
She didn’t want to make this oath. Didn’t want anything to do with the King or the Lich or any of these terrible rituals, but it seemed she had little choice, when ranged against her was an entire civilisation of necromancers and not a friend to be found among them.
The Black Oath was a ritual so binding that none in Tombtown would agree to it. The council had banned its use. To break a Black Oath was to die — die, and your soul be bound as a greywraith, that most desirable and most rare of minions. It was said to be a pain more excruciating than any found in life, and after seeing the souls Smythe had summoned back into their bodies, she believed it.
Ree had avoided necromancy her whole life because she didn’t want to end up like the Lich or any of the older practitioners — didn’t want to become little better than a minion herself. As far as she knew, there was no way to break a Black Oath, but then she wasn’t very knowledgeable in the Craft. If she went to Emberlon, or her father, or even Usther — there had to be some way of breaking
the Oath.
‘I’ll swear it,’ she said, and saying the words felt like a great loss. ‘I’ll swear it if you send us back.’
The King nodded his head toward Smythe. ‘And him as well.’
Smythe’s eyes flicked between Ree and the King, round with worry. ‘Swear what? What’s the ritual? Ree?’
Ree met his eyes. He must feel even more helpless than she did right now. Did it make him angry or afraid? Did it make him want to curl up in a ball, as she did? ‘Smythe, I can’t — I can’t explain right now. But it means we’ll get to go home.’ She couldn’t bear to ask him outright if he trusted her — not when she knew that trust would be so badly misplaced. But he must have, because he inclined his head to her. ‘I’ll swear.’
The King drew a goblet from within the folds of his robes — an artefact of scratched and blackened steel. He gestured with one hand toward Ree — she held out her arm. After a moment’s hesitation, Smythe scrambled up beside her to do the same.
The King’s eyes glowed with a banked blue fire. An icy breeze stirred in the room, tugging at robes and biting into skin. ‘This is a promise older than any craft. To keep it is salvation; to break it is damnation. Do you comprehend?’
‘I do,’ said Ree. His magic bit down; the first binding. She shuddered at the feel of it sinking into her flesh.
Smythe looked at Ree. ‘I do.’
‘Then this you must swear, on blood and death and soul: that you will undertake the Great Resurrection and thereby restore my legacy. Do you swear?’
‘I swear.’
‘I swear.’
Another bite, this time deeper. It was a magic more invasive than any she had come across, coarse under her skin. Instinctively, she began to panic.
The King lashed out twice with sharp fingernails, gouging a red line in Ree’s and Smythe’s bare arms. He caught the blood in the goblet, which immediately lit with black fire as the temperature in the room dropped to frosty levels. His eyes met Ree’s. ‘And so let it be done.’
The fire extinguished, and with it went the King’s magic. The ritual was done, the spell wrought. Ree staggered slightly at the sudden release of pressure. Her arm burned; when she looked at the cut, still seeping blood, it was no longer a stripe of red but a harsh script. And so let it be done, it read.
Unless directly endangering the town, few necromantic practices are prohibited or even discouraged by the council. A notable exception is the Black Oath.
Necromancy is not inherently cruel, but the Oath is another matter entirely.
~from A History of Tombtown by Emberlon the Disloyal
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHIMARVIDIUM
Wylandriah shunted them back out into the Lich’s library. ‘Evanert is ready for you. He will attempt to duplicate the spell that sent you here.’
Ree didn’t like the sound of ‘attempt’, but she kept her thoughts to herself. She would find some way to deal with the Lich if she had to.
‘Well, I’m jolly ready to go back,’ said Smythe. ‘Not that you haven’t been good hosts — although really you’ve been quite terrible, now that I think about it.’ He paused. ‘You know, with the making us swear some kind of blood oath, and locking us in prison, and binding us with guts and all that.’
Wylandriah gave him a sharp look. ‘Be glad that Lizeria was not left to have her way with you.’
‘I suppose apart from all that it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant trip.’
Bookshelves just as towering and full as they were in Ree’s time lined the walls, but they were more vibrant now — time had not yet faded and worn them. Evanert, who would become the Lich, whirled to face them as they entered, his robes billowing around his legs. Sitting in a leather chair with a book in his lap, the man who would become Larry looked up, thoroughly unfazed.
‘Yes, yes into the cage with them. The keys are on that table, beastmage.’ Evanert urged them toward a large, wide-meshed iron cage that stood to one side. Ree took it at first to be rusty, then realised it was merely covered in red-brown stains.
How reassuring.
‘There’s surely no need for a cage,’ said Smythe. ‘We’re quite — we won’t try any — I mean to say, that we have no reason not to cooperate. We want to go home after all.’
‘Do not presume to interfere with my process,’ said Evanert in his repulsive whine. His magic cracked like a whip at his words; Ree hissed at the spike of it. ‘I am attempting magic that has been nothing more than speculation for centuries and I will not be interrupted by layman antics.’
Wylandriah waited beside the open cage, her hard expression making it clear that they would receive no help from this quarter.
Smythe moved first. ‘Well, I suppose as long as we can watch, you know, it’s not such an imposition.’
Ree bit her lip. It went against her nature to willingly submit to a cage. How could she have any control in a situation, any power for herself, if she could not flee? But Smythe was already hanging on the bars and speculating excitedly, ‘Does it require summoning to work? Because the Fell Queen theorised that spirits exist outside of time —’
Ree followed him in; Wylandriah turned the key in the lock with a click and secreted the key away in the folds of her red robes.
‘— Or maybe not out of time but certainly parallel to theorised timelines. And, of course, time travel in folklore usually involves meeting with a spirit or spirit-like figure —’
Evanert spun. ‘Will he never cease his inane chatter? Lazerin, deal with it, would you?’
The man on the chair didn’t lower his book but did raise his eyebrows. ‘Must I?’
Judging by Smythe’s sharp intake of breath, he had also noticed that Larry had been well-named. But Ree had no attention to spare for this particular subject. Wylandriah studied her, a question held in her eyes.
She was the closest thing Ree had right now to an ally. She didn’t trust Evanert an inch: he seemed to hold no respect for the King, and might attempt to undermine his plans. ‘Why —’ the word came out hoarse. She cleared her throat. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
Wylandriah turned her head again in that sharp, bird-like way. ‘It is no stranger than how you look at me,’ she said softly. ‘You say you come from a time that has forgotten our King’s name. Yet you spoke mine almost with reverence.’
‘Therianthropy is a dead magic in my time.’
Her eyebrows lowered minutely. ‘But not to you?’
It seemed impossible that she was having this conversation right now. Emotion threatened to choke her as she agreed, ‘But not to me.’ She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice as she added, ‘I only wish it was something I could learn from a book.’
Wylandriah’s eyes widened. Her face grew open, vulnerable with something that was either hope or pain. ‘Maybe you could. If —’ she hesitated. Her voice was thick with an emotion Ree couldn’t name. ‘If I were to write such a book, I would title it in the glyphs of my mastered shapes, given to me by the masters who taught me.’ She rolled up her sleeve, baring an arm covered in almost rune-like animal tattoos. They looked almost familiar.
If Wylandiah wrote a book in the past as a result of this conversation, would Ree return to a future with that book? She had no notion of the workings of time, had never had cause to consider it.
But if she did, and Ree did … then Ree could learn directly from Wylandriah. She could become the first therianthrope of a new era. It could really, truly happen.
‘I hope you do,’ said Ree.
‘I hope so, too.’
‘Beastmage! Are you quite finished with the subjects?’
Wylandriah faced Evanert in a swirl of robes.
‘I am finished.’ Her hands clenched at her sides.
Ree scrambled to pull herself back into the moment. They might need to escape. The cages were locked, and Wylandriah held the key.
She leaned forward, sweeping the therianthrope with her eyes. She could see the slight bulge in
the shapeshifter’s pocket where the key resided. If she was careful …
‘Do you require anything more of me?’ Wylandriah’s sudden words made Ree pull back, fearful of eyes moving to meet her. But Evanert didn’t turn from the desk where he was sorting through vials of bubbling liquids.
Ree fit her hands through the wide struts of the cage. Her jaw ached from clenching as she slid her fingers into the beastmage's pocket.
‘Need anything from you?’ Evanert sneered the words and Ree froze, all too aware of her vulnerable position. ‘Why should I need anything from you?’
‘The King has advised me to assist you in any way you might need.’ Wylandriah’s words were stiffly formal. Her tone was cold, with none of the emotion or the flicker of vulnerability she had shown to Ree only a moment before.
Ree’s fingertip hooked on a metal ring; she eased her hand free, praying to Morrin the Undying and any god who might be listening that the keys would not jingle. As soon as her hand was back in the cage, she clenched the keys tight and thrust them into the folds of her robes.
She glanced at Smythe, who was staring at her with undisguised shock. At her glare, he promptly closed his mouth.
Evanert gave a nasal bark of a laugh. ‘Ha! I have no need of you and could have no need of you. If it’s all the same to our gracious ruler, I’d rather you went and hunted mice or whatever it is he keeps you for.’
Wylandriah nodded curtly. ‘As you wish.’ She headed for the exit.
‘Leave the keys.’
Ree’s lungs seized. Her eyes fixed on Wylandriah as the therianthrope put her hand into her pocket, paused, and turned to look right at Ree. For one frozen moment, they studied each other, brown eyes to amber. Please, Morrin. By all the undying souls, please …
Wylandriah’s eyes narrowed. ‘I shall.’ She inclined her head ever so slightly, and strode from the room with red robes swirling about her feet.
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