A ghost of a smile flitted across Argadon’s face—a slow, lazy, sinister smile.
“Not just kill, no. You’ll have to murder with your own hands, slowly tormenting your victims, delighting in their terror; drinking their lives like wine and breathing in their deaths like smoke.”
I contemplated it. Killing people? I didn’t want that at all. The demon’s smile became even more insidious.
“And you’ll have to start with those closest to you. Like this insolent woman...”
I looked at Martha and felt a shiver down my spine at the thought that I had to kill her. She was my nanny, my second mother, who loved me enough to give her life for mine. My answer to the demon was something one shouldn’t repeat in polite society. It could make flowers wither in shame, yet Argadon only laughed—he was a demon, after all. He wagged his finger at Martha.
“You humans...you’ve ruined such a demon with your love and devotion!”
Martha snorted a laugh and folded her arms.
“Don’t be so jealous, ye scaly beast.”
Argadon chuckled. However, I had no time for their arguments. “Could you teach me anything?”
The walls shook at the demon’s laughter. “Only in exchange for your soul, son!”
I didn’t want to trade my soul away. I had learned about my power and gotten a look at my father; now I just needed to release him, which is exactly what I did by spilling my blood in the pentagram and chanting a spell.
That was the first meeting between a loving father and devoted son in all its glory.
***
Years slowly passed, and I was ten, then twelve. I became a better fencer than Henry and won eight duels out of ten. Sometimes, Henry, Tom, and Rick all banded together to take me on. I loved that; it was a challenge both for me and them.
Martha marveled at my necromantic prowess. She realized very well that I could easily raise all the dead bodies in the neighborhood and put them down without breaking a sweat. Controlling any undead or summoning any demon, whether a war demon or run-of-the-mill succubus, came naturally to me. I felt all-powerful. And one day, it almost killed me.
I got a new teacher out of that.
***
Rene Ghirr urged his horse on until it dropped dead. Then he waited an hour, and the animal recovered. The zombie was starting to smell, but the advantages were obvious: an undead horse was not as fast as a live one, but it never tired and could gallop even with broken legs.
Unfortunately, its rider wasn’t tireless himself. By the third day in the saddle, the necromancer was indistinguishable from the corpses he could raise. To put it simply, a once good-looking, forty-year-old man looked very much like a vampire—pale, red-eyed, with sullen cheeks, complete with unkempt hair and a black cape. Black was practical, after all—you’d have to launder a white one every day, while black would serve until it turned grey.
Rene, as you’ve already guessed, was a necromancer—a proper, powerful one, and also a scientist. Well, actually, he was a scientist first. He even taught art history at the Royal College of Heraldry.
As for necromancy, if you’re born with a gift for magic, you can’t just bury it—you can only nurture it. Or it will nurture itself, whether you like it or not. Fire outbreaks start happening around fire mages, rivers flood and rain falls wherever water mages live, and necromancers... If a necromancer doesn’t know about their gift, various forms of the undead will always gather within his reach.
Rene learned about his gift early—he was nine. Jok, his favorite dog, had just died, and the boy spent all evening crying, repeating the same phrase. “I don’t want Jok to die! I want him back!”
Rene learned to be careful what he wished for that very night when he found his dead dog, all smeared in graveyard dirt, right on top of his blanket. The boy’s scream woke his parents.
Marghit and Weiss Ghirr were wise people. They didn’t start shouting, “Demon!” “Unholy spawn!” “Dark Tempter!” or, to top it all, “Necromancer!” They just realized their child was...well, the very same one. Still, as educated people, they decided to figure it out by themselves.
They didn’t wish for little Rene to grow up confined to a convent, or even worse, to be burned at the stake, accused of any and all troubles, from a crow nestling on a roof to a poor turnip harvest in the neighboring village. Even in convents, necromancers were burned. Rene’s parents had different plans for their child.
Which is why Marghit spent the entire night by his bed, convincing him that nothing bad was going on. Yes, this is Jok. He was just tired and left you for dog heaven, my dear. But you called him from there, and now he’ll have to stay in a dead body, poor boy. You should just release him. You love him, don’t you? Then don’t make him suffer anymore.
With the first rays of the sun, Weiss headed to the bookstore, where—he knew for a fact—they sold books on magic under the counter. That is where he bought his son Rene’s first necromancy textbook, “Notes of a Practicing Necromancer Alfred Lucius. My First Steps, Mistakes, and Improvements”. Rene learned that book by heart, cover to cover.
Jok spent the day in the boy’s room. After nightfall, Rene put him back in his grave—and somehow, without realizing it, released his soul. Who says animals don’t have souls? Rene could have sworn that upon flying away, Jok’s soul gave him a cheerful yap, and he almost felt a cold nose poke into his palm. Don’t be sad for me, boy. One day, we’ll run on a green lawn together, just you wait.
Rene started to learn necromancy in earnest. He did it in secret, of course—his official field of study was art history, like his father’s. After Rene turned twenty, Weiss Ghirr died, and his son inherited his position at the Royal College of Heraldry. Soon, however, he realized that it wasn’t enough. Not enough money, not enough options, and not nearly enough ways to use his gift for necromancy, or he risked accidentally releasing magical energy. Rene didn’t waste too much time thinking. Putting on a mask and a hooded cape, he knocked on the door of an amulet shop, offering his help to those on the other side of the law. He performed various services: he could summon a ghost, raise the deceased, call a demon, find out if a person was alive or dead, cast or dispel a hex—it’s hard to list everything. The only thing he had never done was use his gift for murder, but simply having that gift was enough for him to be treated like a criminal.
Rene was thirty-five when Marghit, his mother, passed away, leaving him all alone in the world. He still had a house and money in his pocket, though. Rene didn’t want to marry, reasonably suspecting that his potential wife might disapprove of his...hobby. And by then, necromancy was being punished with death by burning. He wanted to live more than to marry, and women of easy virtues from bawdy houses were enough to satisfy his base urges.
Rene got caught when he fell for the young Cassandra Likeworth. She was a niece of Hermann Likeworth, one of the theology professors, a stern and religious man who was Rene’s constant objector during his classes. Something that the necromancer considered normal and even a prerequisite for new students—such as being absent-minded, being easily distracted, having failing attendance, and forgetting homework—in Hermann’s eyes was akin to a crime. Waving his arms around, he listed the transgressions of his victims in front of the whole college and sent them to the stables to be punished and straightened up. The students nicknamed him Praying Mantis. As for his daughters, Hermann kept them in a convent and planned on making them nuns.
Rene knew all that very well, as he did about Hermann’s views on religion, on necromancers, and not to mention, on women.
Cassandra was the daughter of his recently deceased older brother. Unlike Hermann, Alexius Likeworth had appreciated the finer aspects of life, like good wine, rich fabrics, and beautiful women. He had lived life to the fullest and hadn’t denied his daughter anything. Until she was seventeen, Cassandra had been treated like a princess. And then, Alexius had a heart attack, and for five years, she became her father’s caretaker. Over this time, the family lost some of its mo
ney, but not too much. Cassandra still had enough for a dowry. Yet she had refused to get married or to stop looking after her father—she loved him too much for that. And after his death, all of his fortune went to his brother, as their father had stipulated. Cassandra only got a dowry to be given to her upon marriage.
Hermann didn’t really forbid his niece to marry or force her to become a nun. He knew that it was too late for that, and it would be against the wishes of his brother, too. But he wanted to find her a husband who conformed to his ideas of what a good man should be: a pious boy from a respected church-going family. That wasn’t what Cassandra had in mind. Over the years of her father’s illness, she had gotten used to full autonomy, not to mention her father had viewed religion pretty much the same way as he had earthworms. I walk, they crawl; we don’t interfere with each other, but there’s no point in crossing paths. What for? What would a human discuss with a worm?
During the years of Alexander Radenor’s rule, such treatment of the Church had been common and even encouraged. It was Rudolph, Tempter take him, who had started to slowly oppress everyone who was indifferent toward religion.
As for Cassandra, she was the same as her father. She didn’t care about the Bright Saint, and it never occurred to her to wake up in the wee hours to get to morning prayers. Pray? Why would she? If the Saint was good, he should already know she had never harmed anyone. If he was not, no point in praying, really.
She never said that out loud to her uncle, of course. She was smart enough to realize what kind of person her guardian was and to pretend to be a humble and god-fearing young woman. She covered her all too vibrant hair with a scarf, ordered simple clothes of dark colors, and passionately recited the Testament of the Bright Saint, all the while silently making fun of her uncle.
What were her reasons? She couldn’t fight him anyway. If she ever tried to rebel, her uncle could beat her, lock her up, declare her to be mad, or confine her in a convent, as he did with his own daughters. Rudolph’s justice gave him all the cards. All she could do was feign obedience and wait in the wings—find a man to marry and get rid of her detestable relative.
But what person would she choose? That was the first question. The second was finding the right man, since her uncle associated such exclusively with the same creatures as himself, all crusty and obsessed with their faith. Cassandra couldn’t bring herself to call them people. They seemed inhuman, with empty eyes, the Testament of the Bright Saint on their minds, and a prayer on the tips of their tongues. For some, this might have been normal, but for her, it was pure poison.
Cassandra was offered the choice of two widowers, one a father of eight, the other of five, and a young man her age, who was especially pious, and, as a result of that, afraid to even talk to girls. She suspected that if she were to marry that boy, she’d remain a virgin forever. He probably had no idea that babies weren’t brought by a stork. Moreover, he was half a head shorter than her, possessed the narrow shoulders of a man who had never in his life done any physical labor and had disgusting white plaque on his lips. The girl always wanted to spit at the sight of him. If he were her brother, she’d pity him, but as a prospective husband, he made her nauseous. She wasn’t desperate enough to resign herself to that marriage.
She had to act so cold and stiff that the poor guy first started to stutter in her presence and then just disappeared for good, informing Hermann that his niece was as hard as granite and adamant in her faith.
Widowers weren’t especially attractive either. The father of eight children, on top of his piety, turned out to be exceptionally lustful and went out of his way to grope the poor girl or squeeze her leg under the table. Cassandra tried to imagine living with that letch and shivered in fear. She imagined constantly giving birth without any pause. Cheating? That would actually be better, yet his faith would never allow him to—he’d rather drive his woman to an early grave! It’s like he would burst if he had to abstain for a few weeks! Not to mention his eight children.
With that groom, Cassandra was even more swift and picked a strong laxative and a sharp pin as her weapons of choice. She secretly added the laxative to his cup and pricked him with the pin each time the man tried to feel her up under the table. After six or eight holes in his hand, he started to forgo such attempts at “courtship.” And the laxative, which lasted three or four days each time, finally drove him away from visiting Hermann Likeworth. He did want to marry, but a kitten, not a wildcat. If he had already gotten the laxative, what guarantees did he have that it wouldn’t be followed by poison at some point?
With the third candidate, she didn’t have to work hard. After noticing no spark of intelligence, but only the light of faith in his eyes, Cassandra started to bring up the subject of wanting to take the veil and serve the Bright Saint—right after her uncle left them alone with each other. In a couple of moons, the man realized there was nothing to be gained there and left her alone.
Uncle was forced to find the picky girl new suitors. He really did want the best for her—which is to say, a husband who was a dead ringer for Hermann himself: a god-loving, level-headed man. That was the opposite of what Cassandra wished. She’d rather break her head against the pavement than slowly die while crushing the last vestiges of intelligence, fun, sincerity, and spirit inside herself. So she became even more devout. Her uncle had no idea that his niece, who was praying five times a day and visiting church three times, was actually using that time to walk around the city making eyes at passers-by, trying to find herself a man.
She met Rene by pure luck. Cassandra was coming from the daily prayer, and Rene, after having one too many the previous night while celebrating a plum order of the Thieves Guild, had spent the night with a lady of the evening, and having paid for her services, was walking home.
The weather was far from fine. The wind had brought clouds over from the sea, and rain was streaming down in torrents. Rene had to wait it out in a bakery, and after a couple of minutes, Cassandra ran in as well. She shook off the water, pulled off her drenched cape—and the necromancer froze. Cassandra wasn’t a classic beauty. Her hair was bright red, her green eyes were slanted inwards, her pale skin was covered with a smattering of freckles around the nose, and her features were irregular: a large mouth, always laughing, and high sharp cheekbones. But did it really matter?
His heart skipped a beat and then started to thump so hard he could barely breathe, and something whispered to him from the deepest recesses of his soul, If you let her go, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life!
Rene made his choice. Maybe he wasn’t looking his best after the previous night, but that was beside the point. He had to know who that gorgeous girl was and where she was from. Everything else could be smoothed over later.
That said, he didn’t exactly scare Cassandra—she had seen her own father in much less presentable shape after some merry parties. If anything, Rene’s appearance proved that, while well off, he was no stranger to life’s pleasures. And considering Cassandra’s history with her uncle, that was a huge point in his favor. Age? Well, Rene was almost forty, and Cassandra, twenty-four. She had missed her window to marry before her father’s fall to sickness, and after moving in with her uncle, it was far too late. He always snatched the opportunity to remind her she was an old maid and would be lucky to find a man who would be interested in her. He was wrong. She did find such a man.
After talking for a bit—the rain lasted for almost half an hour—Rene and Cassandra were both surprised that they had never met before. They had lots of common interests and were delighted to find out they were kindred spirits. As a necromancer, Rene didn’t really have a lot of respect for traditions, convention, or morality, not to mention religion. What else could he do—go burn himself at the stake? Yeah, right, already running at top speed to the nearest temple.
Cassandra, as a woman whose worldview was deeply influenced by her late father—and herself—had gotten used to freedom, and blossomed after finding respect and understan
ding in Rene. The necromancer started to frequent the temple, visiting the daytime service whenever his classes let him. Cassandra was already going there thrice a day. Rene waited for her there and escorted her home. They talked, joked, laughed...
Two moons after their first meeting, Rene realized she was the woman he wanted to spend his life with. Cassandra had made that decision much earlier, which is why her answer to his proposal was immediate. The only obstacle in their path was the respected and righteous Hermann Likeworth. He and Rene had always been at each other’s throats, and the latter’s petition to marry Hermann’s niece was met with a flat refusal. The girl was locked in her room. Well, that was predictable.
After taking his leave and giving his future relative a mouthful, Rene turned to his Plan B. The necromancer wasn’t any good at picking locks or kidnapping fair ladies. However, that description nicely fit the profile of his friends at the Thieves Guild, who often employed his services. Rene had never informed the law about his clients or the source of his fee, which earned him the favor of the guild. Cassandra was rescued from the house faster than her uncle could say a prayer. The rest was history. A servant of the Bright Saint performed a marriage ceremony between a consenting adult woman fully aware of her actions and an adult necromancer who was also in his right mind—although the groom never confessed to his profession.
When the uncle turned up in the morning, he was presented a marriage certificate and a bloodied bedsheet, signifying that the marriage had been consummated. The honorable Likeworth didn’t like that one bit, but he was backed into a corner. The legal age for a woman was twenty-two years old, and Cassandra was even older—any hope to marry her off faded away with each day. Thus, the uncle spat at his niece’s doorstep and went home.
The newlyweds lived happily for two years, until a lilac chickenpox epidemic broke out in the city. The name was funny; the disease was decidedly not. It spread as if on wings. The infection was transmitted by direct contact, by flea bite—it was enough to simply touch a cloth used to wipe off a patient’s sweat to get sick. The chickenpox wiped out whole towns. During the day, everything was fine. By the evening, their temperatures went up, and the infected spent two days with a fever. On the third day, a lilac rash covered their skin, and on the next, it turned into small, but terribly painful blisters, which gradually grew in size. After two more days, they turned into full-on wounds, and two or three days after that, they killed the patient. Some died earlier, some later, but the outcome was inevitable. The disease couldn’t be treated.
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