Rise of the Necromancer

by Deck Davis

  Inventory:

  Pouch of Dried Mixed Beans

  [A cloth pouch filled with kidney, black, and fava beans. Full of protein and ready to eat.]

  Pouch of Dried Seeds

  [A cloth pouch of assorted seeds.]

  Water Stone

  [An artificed, pyramid-shaped stone that vibrates when near a water source]

  Jars of water x2

  Empty Glass jars x6

  Scabbard [Empty]

  Coins

  20 Gold

  15 Silver

  56 Bronze

  It wasn’t just a good loot haul; it could save his life. The beans would keep him going for three, maybe four days if he rationed them, and owning two full jars of water made him feel like a king.

  The water stone was interesting; where Gunar had relied on carting a wagon filled with water supplies, these people used an artificed stone to find water. He was looking forward to trying it out since anything that was artificed by magic enthralled him.

  It was dark now, and the desert was louder than ever with the calls of the carrion and prey birds and the occasional high-pitched squeals of unseen insects, all competing with winds that started as breezes and seemed to gorge on something just as the bear had done, growing stronger and stronger until they were screaming around outside the wagon.

  One side effect of studying necromancy was that he was perfectly comfortable in the presence of a corpse, and it was only when he almost stumbled over an arm that Jakub remembered he hadn’t gotten rid of the man yet.

  He’d already taken everything useful, but he made one last check of the man’s clothes. As he moved the man’s sleeve to check if he wore and trinkets, he saw a mark on his forearm. Ink under the skin, like Jakub’s glyphlines, but there was nothing magic about these markings.

  He was a slaver. No doubting it now. The markings were ones that prisoners got in some of the queen’s larger internment camps, where they were branded so they could never hide what they’d done. This man was a murderer and a slaver.

  After rolling the corpse out of the wagon, dumping him, then riding a further five miles to put distance between him and it in case carnivores smelled the meat, Jakub decided to rest for the night.

  He found the canvas shutter rolled up and fastened above the oval doorway. He untied a couple of well-made knots and let it unfurl, and he spent the night in a real shelter.

  It was strangely cozy in there. It took him back to his days as a kid, to the first seven years of his life spent in tents, wrapped up in furs and sleeping side-to-side and top-to-tail with the other camp children who he didn’t share blood with but were his brothers and sisters nonetheless.

  This was a surprise. Those memories had always been tainted by the cannibalism that came later, when his mum and dad became Imbibists and ate the flesh of the dead hoping to digest their magic.

  He’d never missed that time once the academy rescued him. He’d done his best to never think about all those years, or of the people he spent them with.

  But now, wrapped in a dead man’s clothes, sleeping on the floor of a wagon in one of the remotest places in the queendom while the desert winds tapped at the canvas and tried to find a way in, Jakub thought back to those night in tents with his pretend brothers and sisters. And for the first time in a long time, he missed them.

  The next morning he felt more refreshed than he had in a long time. He had a belly full of beans and water, and when he took a piss it came out vaguely normal-looking. He was looking forward to the days he didn’t have to check the color of his urine.

  His renewed body eased the throbbing in his skull, and he felt like his brain had been in the grip of a strong hand all this time and now the grip had eased, and he could think properly.

  With food and water taken care of for a while, maybe it was time to start thinking of long-term plans. It felt like evolution; he wasn’t just a scavenger of the desert anymore, living one sun cycle to the next. He could plan a way to get off this land of rock and ruin.

  Two things seemed obvious; some of the traders had survived, and they were with the rest of the oil-whip woman’s crew. Given her disposition toward Jakub, he doubted they were spending their nights on duck-feather pillows and eating grapes.

  Oil whips and two-and-twos and arm markings. These people were slavers. They had to be. They’d been in Toil when the dust storms converged, and they’d gathered whichever poor bastards had crawled out of the wreckage.

  Now that he had a wagon, Jakub could start his journey out of Toil. It had taken him and Gunar’s caravan the best part of a month to reach Equipoint Rock, but Jakub was alone, so he could go faster. Assuming the horses didn’t die, maybe two weeks. If he did that, he was leaving the caravaners behind with the slavers.

  Did he have it in him to do that, knowing the stories he’d heard of the cruel men and women who traded in human flesh?

  Some of the slaves would be shipped across the sea and sold to the Baelin Empire, enemies of the queendom. They’d be tortured, flayed, stripped of not just their skin but everything else, down to their nerves, thoughts, humanity.

  The old would be sold to the processing plants in the deep, deep, deep south, where it was said smoke rose to the heavens, and giant presses made from metal rose up and down all day long, creating a paste from human flesh and bone that was then sold to dark artificers who would use it in creation of diabolical items.

  The children would be sold here, there, everywhere. Mostly for breeding, sometimes for other things. Things Jakub didn’t even want to think about.

  As much as he wanted to see the emerald green grass of the real queendom lands so much that it was an ache in his chest, he couldn’t. He couldn’t go until he knew for sure.

  If slavers held Gunar or other survivors, he had to help them.

  Not wanting to waste the morning time when the sun was weak, he spent a few hours foraging for cacti. He used the water stone, walking in circles around his wagon and hoping to feel the stone vibrate and indicate water, but it didn’t. By the time his skin started to get hot he’d gathered some cactus fruits and flowers, and nothing more.

  Back in the wagon, he cast his map out so the spindles of light spread over the wagon floor. There was a dot to show his position, and then way, way across the sand plains were three dots to show Ben, Sam, and his inventory bag. He wanted to get back to them because not only did he want his inventory back, but his reanimated friends were useful. In different ways, they’d both saved his life.

  But there was a problem. A big, bear-shaped problem.

  The wagon was no protection from that thing; bears could run faster than a horse, and the canvas wouldn’t withstand even the softest swipe from its claws. Heading back to Ben and Sam meant heading back to its hunting grounds.

  The safest, sanest choice would be to avoid it, but Jakub wasn’t allowed the luxury of safe and sane. He needed to find the rest of the woman’s group so he could see if any of the caravaners were alive and enslaved, and the only way to find something in Sun Toil was to have a marker.

  Right now, there was a chance that whatever tracks the woman’s wagon had made in the sand and dirt to find Jakub at the dune, might still be there. Doubtful, but a chance, and his only one. Otherwise, he could search for days and hear not even a whisper.

  It was the only way. Head back to the dune, look for wagon tracks that survived the wind, trace them back to the slavers. All the while, avoid rampaging bears.

  CHAPTER 26

  York, the hunter – Hips Maguire – Gunar Helketoil

  “You sure this is where you want me to leave ya?” said the driver.

  He let go of the horse’s reins, but his hands stayed in position as though he was pretending to be a crab. The man had done his job so long it had changed his body. Hells, he even smelled like his horses, but that might have been because he rarely bathed.

  York hopped off the cart. He opened his burlap sack and gave the driver four gold. The driver’s eyes widened so much
his eyeballs were ready to pop out.

  “It’s only a bronze to take ya here,” said the driver, “And a gold for one of my horses,” he said.

  He’d brought three horses instead of two, at York’s request, and the third was going to be York’s only companion for his trip through Toil. He was a muscly beast with skin so grey he was almost silver, and a thick, black Mohawk of hair running from his head to his torso. His name was Kolja, which York knew was a Killeshi word for journeys long, and it seemed fitting.

  York gave him the agreed price and another gold besides. Since the driver was too astonished to pick them up, he placed them on the seat next to him. “That’s a gold for you and one each for your grandkids. Maybe you can take a few months off and spend some time with them.”

  “I ain’t took a day off since my plums dropped. Need to think of the future.”

  York stopped himself just short of laughing. The man was even older than York, and he considered himself just a few steps short of the grave.

  “The future will come and pass before you know it, and the time for seeing them will be gone. They’ll be doing their own thing. Come on, now. The whole journey here you talked about nothing but them. So stop talking and go see them.”

  The driver tapped his forehead and gave a salute. “Right y’ar. Sure I can’t tempt you to come back with me? There’s a tavern you’d like, a hunter like you. The barman has a boar’s head on the wall bigger than a frigging dragon skull.”

  “I’d love to. But I’ve got things to do.”

  The driver leaned closer and whispered as though half the queen’s spies were listening. “You ain’t one of those…cultists, are ya? The ones who walk into the desert buck naked. They say they go there to die, and then they’re reborn.”

  “The only thing you need to fear in Toil is the heat. And the bears, but I’m not worried about that,” said York, swinging his burlap so the driver could see it.

  “What ya got in there that’s any good against a bear?”

  “Two bolt wands artificed so hot they’d cook a pig to a scratching half a mile away.”

  “Bolt wands?” asked the driver, with the suspicious edge to his voice that most people had when they were unfamiliar with magic.

  “It’s artificed. The mana charge is in the wand, not me. Anyone could you use it. You, my friend, could use it.”

  “Heh. When Bessie and Doggart start slacking, shoot a little fire and fury at their feet.” He leaned forward and stroked his horses after saying this, as if he needed to reassure them that he was joking. “What else ya got? Cuz the way I see it, you miss your shot with your little fire toy, and you’ve got a ton of bear pounding at ya.”

  “Traps, snares, ointments, armor, a crossbow. And if all that fails…”

  “You’re as fucked as a salt-priest’s wife on her wedding night,” said the driver and laughed, slapping his knees with his crab hands. “What about the sheath? Ain’t seen you pull nothing from it. Not all the time you were with me. Left your sword at home?”

  York shook his head sadly. “No,” he said, feeling the emptiness open inside him. “She’s gone.”

  “Where’s it gone?”

  “A bear took it from me.”

  Mirth sprang in the corner of the driver’s eyes, using his crow’s feet wrinkles as channels to flow through. “A bear took your blade?”

  “This is no ordinary bear. He’s a clever bastard. And magnificent.”

  “Gonna kill him? Know a few fellas who’d pay a salary for a bearskin. ‘Specially a desert bear.”

  York shook his head. “No, I won’t skin him. He’s no ordinary bear, I told you. He doesn’t deserve it. Death? Maybe. Death’s a fair price because it’s the order of things. But to strip its skin in death? Separate it from its fur and let some rich old bastard put it down on his parlor floor and trample all over it while he shows off to his guests after dinner? Let them get drunk and dance over it and spill wine on it? Not a chance. We’re equals. He took Mauve, I took his claw.”

  “Mauve? That the name of ya sword? Not Lightbringer or Godkiller or Tummyscratcher? A man don’t usually name his sword like that.”

  “That was her name, and she’s gone.”

  “Mauve,” said the driver, laughing. “Fuckin’ Mauve. What a name for a blade.”

  He opened his mouth wide and brayed like a horse, he found it so funny, and York saw that the tips of his teeth near his gum were stained black from tobacco and his gums were swollen like a mule’s. He slapped his knee with his crabby hands.

  As York watched his hilarity, his own anger flowed in hot currents, more and more joining the stream of fury the longer he watched this man laugh at Mauve. Before he knew it, he was moving.

  A blink later, and the driver was on the floor, no longer braying but with his mouth agape, and York was standing over him and his knuckles stung.

  Now he felt shame, a shame that cast him back to two times of his life; a longer span, decades ago, and a short conversation with Patton just days earlier. “You’re still headsick,” he’d said.

  Was he right? Was York a headsick old man coming out here to die?

  He offered his hand to the driver but the man refused it and he scurried a few inches back by moving on his ass and elbows, dragging himself through the dust that stained his trousers white.

  “You’re a crazy fucker,” he said. “Knew it when you asked to come to Toil, but coin’s coin. And then you drag me off ma damn wagon and slap my chops, and you had this look in your eyes, you god-damned insane son of a bitch.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s been a hard few weeks. Here,” said York, and fished another gold coin from his burlap and flipped it to the driver, who let it fall at his feet and instead climbed up to his wagon, picked up the reins and shook them.

  “Hep!” he shouted, and the horses began to run, and soon the driver and horses were a cloud of dust on the horizon, heading into the past.

  He wondered what the driver’s greeting would be when he got home. How many eyes would eagerly watch his horse turn down the road and clomp home? Would a house door open and kids run out and would a woman would wait in the doorway, buzzing with excitement?

  It made York think of his wife and wonder what she was doing now. Word was that she’d gone to Brownbark, and she was overseeing a forest regeneration operation. Good on her. They might have split up, but he still wished her well.

  Maybe that was why Patton had gotten so mad. York had driven his wife away, but Patton had lost his. His son was right; they weren’t the same.

  His real loss was Maeve. His little shard of sunlight. A blade that had been with him since he first sprouted hairs on his pits, given to him by his pa. Maeve had been with him since he could barely lift a bow to graze a buck, up until he was the best hunter in the east of the queendom, all the way up to his ill-fated journey into Toil.

  York would have said his headsickness started there. A quack told him it had its roots way, way before. Probably in what happened to his ma back when he was a bairn. But no, York knew that Toil was the sunlight that made his headsickness grow. And now he was back again.

  He hitched the burlap on his shoulder and set forth, walking just a few hundred meters until he officially crossed back into Sun Toil for the first time in decades.

  Hips tiptoed over and around the mess of men and blankets, careful not to wake his men. It reminded him of his dancing days a little; pirouette here, twist there.

  Truth be told he thought it was a bad idea, sleeping out in the open in a place like this. It was cold as shit at night, and in the morning you woke with yellow rays of heat on your face, like the sun was pissing on you to say hello. But his men had insisted and Hips always listened to his men, but he’d made a compromise; they could sleep in their bags instead of the awful tents he’d bought for them, but they had to fashion a canvas roof using material from one of the wagons. The wind still got in, but at least they were protected from the sun.

  “I don’t want you guys getting
a sunburn,” he’d told them all.

  “Aw, come on, Hips. We want to see the stars.”

  “Then see ‘em. I’m not saying put a canvas roof over the whole gods-damned desert. Just make sure you don’t wake up to a face full of sun, that’s all.”

  He reached a blanket at the end of the row and he crouched down and all he could see was a mess of ginger hair, the man inside was wrapped up so tight. He was a bulky man who quivered with every breath, and those breaths sounded like a pig napping after a full meal.

  “Jim,” he whispered.

  No answer.

  He shook the shape.

  “Jim,” he said again.

  Jim slept on, oblivious.

  Hips leaned close to him, so close his lips almost touched his ear. “Jim, I’m docking your pay. You only get half this trip,” he whispered.

  Jim bolted upright, struggling against the blanket he’d wrapped so tight around him it was like a burial shroud, and when he got his hands free he rubbed his eyes and then his hair, which stayed back once he swept it because it was so packed with grease.

  “Hips? What’s the time? Shit, the stars are still out. You don’t need to be waking me when the sky’s twinkling.”

  “Never mind the stars, they’re like a Dispolis street troupe; they’ll be there every night, same time same place. Miss a performance, catch the next one. You seen Marleya?”

  “She went out lookin’ for the mancer.”

  “I know that, you big, ginger bear. I’m the one who sent her. She not been back?”

  “Don’t imagine she’d come back without seeing you, Hips.”

  “Damn. Get some sleep, we’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

  “You’re the one who woke me, jackass.”