So, the very first innkeeper was all smiles when Carlie mentioned her sister. He directed her toward the count’s castle, where her cousin welcomed her, while inwardly cursing her up hill and down dale. But she couldn’t really turn the girl away, could she?
So she let her stay with them, wrote a letter to her uncle...and then I came back to Torrin.
I think that was the moment when I fell for Carlie. My love, the spring of my life...
I had never felt so happy as I did that month. We laughed with each other, and she laughed like nobody else could; we danced under the moon; we rode together, and everyone around was happy for us, Martha especially. As for Rene...
One day, he asked me to speak to him one-on-one.
“Alex, I love you like a son. So, you and Carlie...”
I nodded. What was there to hide?
“I love her.”
“She’s human.”
“So am I.”
“Not really. You’re a necromancer and a half-demon. How old are you now?”
“Less than twenty years. What about it?”
“You’ll stay a young boy for the next fifteen, maybe twenty years, and you’ll live a lot longer than that. Alex, Carlie’s human.”
“Maybe she’s inherited a gift of some kind? At least something?”
“Nothing. Sometimes, the gift is sleeping inside you, like it was with your mother, and it can be awakened. But there’s no spark of magic inside Carlie. You’ll be a hundred years old and still young, and she’ll be a crone.”
“I have enough power to prolong her life and grant her youth.”
“Those are our rituals. But you’ll have to pay for her years of life with yours. Are you prepared to do that?”
I nodded. That didn’t sound so bad. A hundred and fifty years with Carlie seemed a better option than three hundred without her.
“Will she agree to that?”
“No idea. I haven’t told her about all of that yet.”
“What have you told her, then?”
“That I love her, and she loves me... You won’t stand in our way, will you?”
“You’re such an idiot, son. That’s how it’s done: I ask you for the hand of your niece in marriage. And you need a bottle of wine, too, to get drunk with your future relative.”
I snorted. I didn’t have a bottle with me, but grabbing one from a cupboard wasn’t that hard. That day, Rene and I got hammered, and in a couple of days, I finally got up the nerve to talk to Carlie.
I remember that day so vividly. Clear blue skies above us, a meadow overgrown with mountain poppies, a red-haired girl amidst the flowers, wind playing with our hair, her dress, the poppies all around us, and a wreath in her hands, all scarlet, like heart’s blood.
I stared at this and couldn’t say a word. It was Carlie who spoke first. She told me everything and even kissed me. That was my first real kiss, and that was where she truly became my wife, body and soul.
With her, everything was genuine. Before her, my heart had been cold and dispassionate. With the witch, it had been simple lust, but with Carlie, I felt like my heart got replaced with the scarlet flower she had in her hair. Funny thing, but when I kissed her, I never changed into my demon form. Why was that?
Rene laid it all out for me. It was pretty simple. I was too afraid to hurt my beloved, therefore, I had to stay in control—always. Apparently, love could perform miracles.
I was never angry at Carlie. With her, I was truly happy. We gave our vows to each other right there and then. We couldn’t marry, however—not without Uncle’s approval, or the marriage would be illegitimate.
Carlie didn’t care about its legitimacy, however. Visit the capital and meet my uncle? No problem! No big deal, we’ll hold the wedding there. We didn’t have a temple in Torrin, anyway. Finding a thrall or a servant who could tolerate a bunch of necromancers living next door wasn’t easy.
That was a truly magical time. Such happy, genuine moments, sharp and bright, like a blade’s edge. Each of them remains forever close to my heart. I would have left Carlie in Torrin, but she wanted to go with me, and I could never refuse her anything.
She told me a wife was to follow her husband, and I took her to the capital.
I really shouldn’t have done that.
***
Uncle welcomed us cordially and even smiled at Carlie. He took his sweet time letting go of her hand while kissing it, the letch. Old in the tooth, but still a skirt-chaser.
That was when I first thought that if he ever touched Carlie, I would tear out his throat and let him die in agony. Good riddance. But when I announced that Carlie was to be my wife, Uncle agreed straight away. Abigail, however...
Auntie winced as if I had shown her a viper, a dead and desiccated one to boot. Still, in a second, she smiled sweetly and offered to let Carlie live under her care for a month before the wedding, to keep up appearances and such.
Carlie agreed immediately. It was as if fog came over my senses. I still blame myself, and I’ll blame myself until I die.
Carlie, my mountain flower...
Just a month, a short month—what could happen in that time? Yes, I could be poisoned or assassinated, but who would try and harm Carlie...right?
Yet my aunt turned out to be more cunning that I had anticipated. The rat...
The days passed slowly, and Carlie and I met every day—and night. And then, out of the blue, another highwayman turned up. I had a feeling that they bred those bastards in Riolon or Tevarr and then released them in our lands to rob and kill our people.
His name was Black Jack. For some reason, those rabble always chose the most colorful monikers. Did they want everyone to fear them? Ridiculous. Who would care enough about them to get scared? Just kill them and call it a day. Anyway, that parasite had started to rob people right next to my lands. Guess who the person was the powers that be sent to subdue the rascal? That’s right, me.
That time round, I got a squad of a whopping one hundred guardsmen and two hundred infantry, all thanks to Abigail. I had expected them to be mostly assassins, but none of them tried to kill me.
Was that strange? Not really. The foot soldiers used to be peasants. If you yelled at them louder than usual, they’d run away as fast as they could, dropping their spears. As for the guardsmen, they had never been of any use, the snotty courtiers. Sending me with that army against a bandit gang was a death sentence. Unfortunately, I realized it far too late, but at that point, I didn’t really care. All I wanted was to crush the scum and get back to the palace as soon as possible. Carlie loved its splendor and luxury, all the glitter and shine. And when she becomes queen, the crown will suit her so well...
***
Once again, I found myself in the field. I wasn’t especially afraid for Carlie; Tommy and Rene would look after her. I was, however, afraid for my own skin, but as it turned out, I didn’t have to be.
Over two weeks, there were zero assassination attempts. Auntie had obviously gotten rusty. Or was it her daughter’s death? I should have started killing much earlier, then.
Finding Black Jack wasn’t hard. A word here, a coin there, and there he was, in my plain sight, as well as his camp. Just one strike, and he would be gone. I didn’t want to strike, though. I wanted to be happy together with Carlie. And neither Uncle and my revenge, nor the idiot I had to put down fit that picture.
Jack got lucky, seriously lucky. What could be simpler, really? Go to the nearest graveyard, raise a score of corpses, channel some of my power, and send them to find my prey. They’d tear their victims to pieces easily enough. Even I could do that.
Yet I had no inclination of doing that. Not all those in love are idiots, but that’s who I was—a lovesick moron. And I did probably the most stupid thing I have ever done in my life. I went to Jack all by myself, completely alone. Henry would have probably whipped me for my foolishness.
I spied on their camp for a few days, while my people were waiting for me three days’ travel from the s
pot. Jack had a good thing going on in the forest, and finding him would be difficult for anyone except a necromancer. I summoned a ghost, had a talk with him, and sent him to scout out the area, getting a detailed map of the woods out of it. I didn’t like those woods, however, and the woods didn’t like those such as myself.
Jack started each day with a run, a workout, and some swordplay, trying to keep in shape. On the fourth day, I called out to him quietly.
“Hello, Jack.”
The bandit stared at me, dumbfounded, while I looked back, calm and grinning.
“Don’t freak out on me.”
“Who are you?”
“Alex. So are you the infamous Black Jack? Not sure I believe that.”
Jack frowned.
“Well...”
“Why are you called Black? Are you too lazy to wash yourself?”
He clearly hadn’t expected me to taunt him, so all he could do was continue staring at me in shock. I followed suit, then smirked.
“Do you want to die? Right now?”
Evidently, he didn’t. And for some reason, I didn’t want to kill him, either. Maybe because he had only robbed my uncle; his victims had been court officials, royal messengers, and tax collectors. He had barely touched merchants, which was rather odd for a bandit.
As it turned out, he wasn’t a bandit at all. They say, life often repeats itself, which was the case there as well. Jack was the middle son in his family. His inheritance hadn’t been big, but it was enough to feed him until his death. It came from a small estate, famous in the entire kingdom for its honey production due to having honeysweet heather. An old recipe allowed them to turn that plant into both honey and mead, both absolutely delicious. The brewers had kept their secret fiercely, but they had told it to Jack. Why not, really? He had been family, married to a brewer’s daughter as of two years ago. And everything would have been swell, if not for one thing...
The poor guy had gotten a bad neighbor. A few months ago, when, by sheer chance, he had been away—his wife had had a difficult pregnancy and he had wanted to find her a good healer. Upon his return, he found only smoldering ruins.
His neighbor had decided that he deserved the honey business more than some puny baron, and attacked his estate. Some had been killed, some taken... Jack, of course, had rushed to the capital to meet with the king. I had been in Torrin at that time. His Majesty had dismissed Jack, calling him a slanderer, as the attacker was the queen’s relative, even if a distant one.
Jack had gone on a drinking spree, getting hammered for a week, then left the capital, empty-handed. He had planned on killing the neighbor and hadn’t cared a bit about what would happen to him next.
He never made it home. He had stumbled upon a bandit gang, and the rest was history. After cutting down the bandit leader, he had taken the gang under his wing. A robbery, then another one...
I understood Jack and where he was coming from. He was overwhelmed with pain and hate. If anything like that happened to me, I wouldn’t give a hoot about the fate of the kingdom. But I didn’t want him to continue robbing. There was already more than enough chaos in the kingdom. Plus, I needed people I could trust.
And I asked him something he had never expected. “Did your wife get a proper burial? Is her soul free?”
“Y-yes.”
“What about the soul of your child?”
Jack’s look became haunted, and I gave him a knowing nod.
“If you’d like, we could visit the graveyard. I’ll check.”
He believed me. Back then, I wasn’t entirely sure, but I had inherited that ability from the demon. They can be demonically persuasive if they want something!
“Who are you to check that?”
“Alex.”
“I know that—”
“...already. Yes. Alexander Leonard Radenor.”
***
In two days, we arrived at the graveyard where Jack’s wife was buried. Before leaving, he had given hell to his gang, while I simply abandoned my men. What was the worst thing that could happen? Let them sit in the village and stuff their faces, especially since I had paid the elder more than enough.
A simple grave, not especially well-kept...
“What was her name?”
“Isabel Norret.”
Without stopping to think, I stretched my hand out above the grave.
True, a woman had died there, and it was a bad death, in hate and agony. That was a haunted place. That was how graveyards could awaken—when the pain of those who lay in the consecrated soil became too much for the ground to bear. And if the thrall who had consecrated that land cared more about his belly than his debt, everything would happen even faster.
And the horror would start. Well, it would be a horror for humans. I didn’t really care.
“Isabel Norret, come forth.”
No use. The power was gone with the wind. Hmm, so what did Rene tell me about it?
“Is it really her here?”
After all, raising the dead was effortless for me. I could even handle the entire cemetery, and if she indeed was buried there, she would have answered my call. So, if she didn’t come and my power got lost in vain...
“Is that your wife’s grave, Jack?”
“Who else could be there?”
I shrugged. “Anybody. I bet you my blood that if she were here, she’d come.”
“So, if she didn’t come...”
“The living cannot answer my call. Only the dead.”
For a couple of minutes, Jack just stared at me, and then, it finally dawned upon him. He was beside himself with happiness.
“The living?”
He got it. Meanwhile, I was contemplating the grave.
“I don’t know whose remains are buried there, but they’re not Isabel’s.”
“So where is she? Oh crap—”
I barely managed to grab him by the hand. Jack was seriously going to find a way into his neighbor’s castle and look for his wife there. He needed to find out if she was alive.
I had to stop him and have a talk with him. It wasn’t easy, but eventually Jack succumbed to my persuasion and agreed to wait until the next night.
We paid a visit to the neighbor’s castle.
Finding Isabel wasn’t hard—her husband loved her to bits and wore a pendant with a lock of her hair around his neck. I even got the idea to ask Carlie for hers...but I had to focus on the task at hand and promptly forgot it.
In the evening, the castle was honored by a visit of none other than Alexander Leonard Radenor in all his glory. Uncle had given me two hundred good-for-nothings, so I made them look like an army, marching in rows and columns. And so they went, until finally arriving at the castle of Baron Pantine.
In due order, we knocked at the gate, informed the locals about our visit, and in five minutes, were welcomed with a grand cake; the baron clearly didn’t want for anything. Judging by his figure, he was swollen with hunger. Bloated, the poor guy!
He was a dapper little man with shifty eyes and short hands. He would never go into battle himself, but would be glad to send three armies after you—and then forget to pay them their due.
The baron bowed, and I told him that we had been sent to catch bandits and wouldn’t rest until we put them down for good. That earned us, including my squire, a hearty reception. And no, I don’t mean Tommy. Tommy had stayed in the capital, to look after Carlie. I couldn’t leave her all alone, could I? The person playing my squire was Jack. We had shaved off his hair and painted fancy tattoos on his cheek and nape. Nobody spared him even a look. He was sitting at the table and shifting his gaze from me to our gracious host, looking daggers at him. He would have probably killed him right there, but he restrained himself, remembering my promise about that night.
And I always kept my word.
***
That night, I summoned a ghost—an old specter haunting the castle, who knew it inside and out—a piece of cake for a necromancer, really.
A ghos
t can’t really move things or even give a good enough scare, but they are curious and chatty, and know everything that happens in their abode. Sometimes, ghosts don’t want to divulge information, but you can always get them to talk.
That one wasn’t any different. He used to be a servant and had been discovered with the baron’s wife in flagrante delicto. Enraged, the baron had cut him up a bit—well, sixty-two cuts, nothing, really! The servant died (obviously), the wife was sent to a convent, and the servant’s body was hung on the castle wall and then thrown in a ditch. As a result, we got a restless spirit who held no love for generations of his masters. All he could do was watch and listen, as he had never learned to manifest. Still, after meeting a necromancer, he finally got a chance for revenge. Especially since I vowed to release him afterward and promised him the best afterlife ever, considering his assistance in saving lives, a martyr’s death, and helping the Crown. Maybe even an immediate rebirth!
While I was doing all of this, Jack was standing close to me and simply watching. No cries about the Bright Saint and unholy business, he had other things in mind—like saving his wife.
And the ghost told us everything. Yes, there is a dungeon, and yes, there are prisoners inside. An underground passage leading outside? There was one, too, and it started right next to the prison. Are there any traps? Nope, no point in them, just a heavy door with two bolts. It’s well-hidden, but you can’t really hide things from a ghost, can you?
And thus we descended into the dungeon, with the servant still unreleased. There were almost no guards. One sentry collapsed, a knife in his throat, and the two jailers were hammered. I cut their throats myself and didn’t feel an ounce of guilt.
We found everyone, including Isabel. However...
Half-Demon's Revenge Page 21