Ashes And Grave

by Aiden Bates

  The first two of them took over four hours. At each one, he buried a small bone from his bag, along with a number of other foul-smelling mage tools of some kind, and then sat on top of them for an hour muttering to himself as he did some kind of additional work “in the etheric plane that stands between the world of the living and the world of the dead.”

  I wouldn’t need to sleep for at least another full day. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t be exhausted by boredom.

  “Just ahead,” I muttered as we approached the third of eight points. At the rate we were going, it would be midday tomorrow before we finished. “Is it possible to do this any faster?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Of course. Let me simply alter the rules of magic, life, death, and the universe. I do not know why I didn’t think of it earlier. Silly me.”

  “I don’t need your attitude,” I pointed out. “I’m just not sure this is going to be fast enough to do any good. If that thing comes back—”

  He turned on me, his face that infuriatingly expressionless mask he’d put on as we left and worn ever since. “Imagine if I used the sixteen or so hours this will require to do properly to discover the root of the problem instead, and resolve it permanently. This, by the way, will all have to be done again in seven days. And, I’m afraid I just won’t have time to learn the layout as thoroughly as you clearly have, so be assured that I will require your assistance.”

  “That assumes you’ll be here more than a week,” I shot back as he turned to stalk off toward the third point in his star.

  “At this rate,” he breathed, “I will be here for months.”

  I caught up to him. “Then maybe you should have told me it would take sixteen hours and have to be redone every seven days.”

  He gave a bitter chuckle. “Funny how those ears can hear a pin drop next door but can’t hear a person speaking directly at your face. I told you, it is an impractical use of time. You did not listen. Now here we are, and here we will be until about two o’clock in the afternoon tomorrow. Perhaps later, if I am allowed to stop to piss or have a meal.”

  “No one is forcing you to do this,” I grumbled.

  He stopped again, and put a hand to his forehead. He muttered something in a language I didn’t understand. The hairs on the back of my neck rose. I listened for the sound of magic. “Hey, whatever you’re doing, stop it right fucking now.”

  The necromancer took his hand from his forehead and stared at me, confused and maybe even a bit disgusted. “Stop what?”

  “Whatever magic you were just starting,” I said. “We haven’t reached the spot yet.”

  “Magic,” he repeated. “You think, just now, that I was doing some kind of magic?”

  My cheeks warmed. “Just keep quiet until we get this done.”

  “We?” he laughed, turning away slowly. “Do you hear this? ‘We’ he says. I am not sure I can do this for an entire night, much less a week.”

  The way he turned his head to look at something, it felt a lot like he was talking to a spot, rather than just to the world in general. “Who are you—”

  “First,” he said, whirling to thrust a finger up in front of my face, “‘we’ are not doing anything. I am. I am the one putting the kind of effort you cannot comprehend into ensuring that at least for a little while, your people will not be at risk. I am doing this because although it is a monumentally difficult task for which I will receive, I expect, no appreciation which is not monetary—and, it will be monetary, do not forget—it is also not the absolute worst waste of time I could engage in, if it takes longer than I am expecting to get rid of your problem.”

  I held my tongue instead of saying what I thought of that, or biting the finger off.

  “Second,” he went on, “I was not making magic, you ignorant American, I was remarking in my own tongue, Hungarian, that I have never been so disrespected, so disgusted with a person, or so willing to cut off my own ears so that I do not have to hear a person speak, ever in my life. The only magic in it, is the reminder to myself that I have a bigger goal in life than to do this job, and that I have ancestors whom I wish to honor by doing the right thing by applying these gifts which I have been given in service to people—even if those people do not appreciate it or deserve it in the least.”

  I started to speak, but he jerked his finger up. “Ah, be careful what you say. I am not obligated to help you, only bound by my own sense of right and wrong. And as I am sure you already imagine, it is not as rigid a code as one might think, given the circumstances.”

  It took an effort to calm myself, and even then it was mostly superficial. What I wanted was to choke him, shake him, tell him that he had no right to come to this place and speak to me like that. Not after what had been done to my people, and certainly not after what had happened to Pendrig.

  Instead, after I managed to keep my dragon from coming out to light him on fire, which it badly seemed to want to do, clawing at my insides to get at him, I squared my shoulders and set my jaw, and ate crow. “I won’t bother you further. Let’s keep going. Like you say, it’s going to take a long time.”

  He lowered his finger finally, and shook his head, rolling his eyes as he turned away and kept walking. Periodically, I could almost swear that I heard him speaking under his breath, but felt no magic in it. If anything, it almost seemed like he was arguing with himself.

  If any magic was going to drive a person crazy, I didn’t doubt it would be necromancy.

  To my surprise, it wasn’t me that rekindled the conversation. I had committed to keeping my mouth shut, and assumed I wouldn’t hear a word from him while we did this either. I certainly didn’t expect the softness in his voice when he eventually finished burying the articles and looked up at me. “I think that I would like you to know that I do understand the history between the cabals and Emberwood. I know it must be a painful part of your history, and one which you must feel you are forgetting or ignoring in bringing me here.”

  I shifted from one foot to the other, looking past my first instinct. If he was here and helping, instead of being the person responsible—which I hadn’t entirely ruled out—then maybe he meant what he said. “It’s uncomfortable,” I admitted. “Especially for that mage to be one of you.”

  He raised an eyebrow, amused or offended, or both. “A Hungarian?”

  “A necromancer,” I said reluctantly.

  His eyes narrowed. “You have something against my kind of mage specifically? I wouldn’t have guessed.”

  The way he said it, I almost didn’t catch the sarcasm. “Right, I’m sure I’m the first ignorant non-mage to have a problem with the idea of someone being able to rip a soul out of another person and stick it in a jar to make their lives literally a living hell.”

  At that, Mikhail stood, a dark look coming over his face. “That,” he said, almost a hiss, “is the foulest, darkest kind of magic. It is forbidden for good reasons, and carries a sentence for which death would be a kinder mercy. There is no necromancer alive who would do such a thing.”

  And yet, one had. I bit my tongue, though. Maybe Mikhail was not one of the evil fucks willing to do that sort of thing, but it didn’t change the fact that he was fundamentally capable of it. Maybe if someone hurt him just the right way, or he just got bored with life, or… fuck, I don’t know, read the wrong propaganda manifesto, that might change. The point was that it could change, and that if it did, it wasn’t beyond him.

  “Maybe not,” I agreed. “It’s still wrong that it’s even possible.”

  “I cannot help what is and is not possible,” he said wearily, and squatted back down to pat the loose earth where he’d buried his trinkets, then laid out a small blanket over it to sit, as he had before. “Dragons can raze whole cities. You do not hear me disparaging your people because you wield destructive power. And you have, do not forget. Neither of our peoples is innocent of sin.”

  He closed his eyes, and folded his fingers into some complicated configuration, settling in for what woul
d be a long silence as he did whatever it was he had to do to make the magic work.

  I sighed, and paced quietly some distance away, leaving him to his work. Once in a while I checked my phone for the time, and then checked to see if he was somehow done faster than before. For an hour at least, we seemed to be more or less on schedule.

  When Mikhail did this, he became almost supernaturally still. I occupied my attention listening to his heart, which slowed to the point that I at times wondered if it had stopped, only to hear the next beat. It was disconcerting, to think that what he was doing, at its essence, was leaving his body to travel into the world of the dead.

  Upsetting as the power they wielded was, there was a certain curiosity in me that I couldn’t quite ignore completely. Necromancers were the only beings in the world, except some of the fae, who could walk freely into and out of the underworld. They knew what lay on the other side of life. None of them talked about it, to my knowledge, which was apparently limited, except insofar as it affected the world of the living. I found myself wondering what he had seen, what he was seeing now, as he did this work on our behalf.

  All of that, though, came with a bitter taste that I also couldn’t ignore. Even as I found myself thinking about what Mikhail could do, what he’d seen, I found myself thinking about Pendrig. What he’d felt, what he’d been thinking. Whether his soul was at peace now, or… something else.

  He had trusted a necromancer.

  It was just past the hour mark when Mikhail stirred. Early, based on the other points in his diagram and how long they had taken. “You done already—”

  “Come,” he hissed, and waved me to him.

  Before I’d taken a step, my next breath came out as a cloud of steam. The temperature dropped. All around us, the sound of dew freezing to ice made the ground seem to be momentarily covered in chittering things. The wind picked up.

  I had shifted to my half form by the time I reached him, pulling my tearaway pants off as my scales ripped the shirt I wore. I tore it the rest of the way and tossed the cotton aside, then stood beside Mikhail and scanned the area visually for any sign of the spirit.

  “It is not yet manifested fully,” Mikhail muttered. He bent for his messenger bag and drew out a small pouch, then looked off toward town. “Keep your distance, but let me know when it is almost here, and where. Don’t let it get hold of you.”

  I growled confusion. “Do you want me here, or far away?”

  He glanced up at me. “What? No, not you. Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing. I have—”

  “A condition,” I rumbled. “You told me. I think it’s bullshit.”

  The grass stirred about six yards ahead of us. Mikhail muttered something unintelligible, either Hungarian like before, or something more magical. This time, his magic was ringing in my ears, quiet but persistent. “Put your back to mine,” he said. “If you see it…”

  “I’ll say so,” I growled.

  We turned slowly, both of us watching carefully. Mikhail’s body was tense as he pressed his back to mine.

  It didn’t take very long for the spirit to show itself. It started like it usually did—by throwing things. A branch cracked in a nearby tree, and a split second later a length of stripped wood came hurtling toward us like a spear.

  I raised my arms to ward it off. Mikhail spat a word I didn’t catch. Magic shocked the air, like a silent thunder that I could feel as it passed through me. The branch dropped to the ground, it’s trajectory dipping sharply as whatever power the poltergeist exerted over it apparently failed.

  “Behind me,” he snapped.

  It ran against every instinct to hide at all, much less behind a flimsy human with nothing but skin to keep his blood inside him, but he pulled at me and moved around to get in front.

  A second before the next crack of wood came, Mikhail turned toward it as if he expected it. He drew some fine powder from the pouch, rubbed it on his fingers, and when another branch came flying at us, he said the same word as before, snapping as he did. A puff of powder left his fingers, and then burst out in another wave of force.

  Again, the branch dropped.

  “Can’t you banish it like before?” I demanded. “It’ll buy us at least another eight hours.”

  “Better to go fishing,” he muttered.

  I scrunched my scaled brow. “Fishing?”

  He only nodded, and moved again to continue circling slowly, watching and waiting. “If it is frustrated enough,” he said, “it will manifest fully and attempt to possess one of us.”

  “That’s when my people normally die,” I pointed out. “If it gets me, I could easily rip you apart or burn you to vapor.”

  “It will not progress to that point,” he said, with more confidence than I thought was really warranted.

  Twice more, the spirit hurled things at us, before finally the temperature dropped again. This time, Mikhail dipped his fist into the pouch. When the first stirrings of loose grass, and leaves and mist began to drift, rising and rushing toward a spot, he pitched the fistful of powder into the wind. It joined the rest, forming a near-human silhouette about ten feet away from us.

  There was a flash of deep purple light. The spirit flinched, and gave a howl of what I thought was surprise, made up of air rushing over blades of grass. It was sharp and shrill enough that I jerked instinctively away from it, my hands going to my ears.

  Mikhail stalked toward it, with about as much caution as he might approach an unfamiliar dog. “Dicat nomini tuo, spiritus! Iubeo!”

  The spirit hissed, clawing at the air in his direction—but it didn’t stretch out as I’d seen before, didn’t hurl anything at him and certainly didn’t approach. As if it were pinned in place. Still, he was getting too close to it. If it caught him, injured or killed him, we were out a necromancer and fucked. “Mikhail, don’t—”

  He spared me half a second to wave a hand at me, urging me to shut up in clear enough sign language. He repeated his command to the spirit, and each time he did, it struggled harder, but seemed more exhausted afterward.

  Finally, its voice seemed to resolve into something nearly approximating words. It hissed, and growled, and clawed the air, but the wailing became a hum, and the hum took on form.

  It opened its grass and dust mouth, its head dipping.

  And then, with another burst of silent force, it shattered. In the wake of the wave, all that remained was a lingering, dwindling cry unmistakable as agony.

  “Shit!” Mikhail barked. He picked up something from the ground and chucked it at the falling remnants of the body the poltergeist had built for itself. “Son of a fucking bitch!”

  I relaxed, almost. I at least felt as though I could afford to get back into skin, and looked down to find my track pants. They were nowhere to be seen, probably picked up in the midst of the wind storm and carried who-knew-where. Somewhere in the woods.

  Mikhail stalked back toward me, furious.

  “You drove it off?” I asked. “Or… did you kill it?”

  “Neither,” he hissed. “It wasn’t me.”

  I blinked, and held a hand up as he started to walk past me—away from the work he’d been doing a moment before. “What do you mean? It spontaneously… dissolved, or something?”

  Mikhail’s jaw worked, and he rubbed his face, clearly exhausted by the effort he’d been exerting not just now, but for the last several hours. He let his hand drop, and shook his head. “It was not spontaneous,” he said quietly. “It… someone else recalled it. Maybe destroyed it, if they couldn’t. That is why it struggled so much. Two wills, pulling it in two directions. It was torn apart by the force.”

  “Two wills,” I echoed, fury beginning to renew itself in my chest and belly.

  “Yes,” he muttered. “It… it is the work of another necromancer. You are being targeted. By one of my people.”

  I fucking knew it.

  6

  Mikhail

  I had perhaps not been entirely literal with Nix when I told him
that he might push me so far that I would leave his people to the mercy of this problem. If my nagyima was alive to hear me say such things, or one of her lingering familiars were to go and tell her that I had said as much, she would rise up from the underworld to scold me soundly for turning my back on those who were in need of my help.

  She would remind me that to turn down the path of apathy and selfishness would lead to no good, as it once had for her other grandson.

  Nonetheless, the presence of another necromancer in the equation changed this situation drastically. For one thing, it meant that I was not facing merely a finite spiritual force which had only to be identified and extinguished. If someone in the world was targeting Emberwood Weyr, then they would not stop only because I managed to disperse some of their weapons.

  For a second, it became a matter of duty. Just as with any other member of a cabal who had risen to the third circle or higher, I was obligated to bring a rogue mage to justice if they employed their power to harm others.

  Furthermore, I was forbidden from requesting payment for this. Federal law prevented the cabals and individual mages from charging a fee to resolve cases involving attacks by another mage, to prevent racketeering. Which, in fairness, had been something of a problem before the Enlightenment.

  When we returned to the shack, I was exhausted. Whoever was on the other end of the poltergeist, holding its phantasmal leash, they had been remarkably strong. Not so strong that I did not think I would be able to handle it myself, but strong enough that I worried about allowing my strength to ebb from lack of sleep.

  Having the hulking mass of Nix follow me back to my quarters did not help me prepare to rest.

  “If this is one of your people,” he growled, his voice deeper and rockier in his half-form, which he maintained because he had no clothes to wear in his human form, “then all the cabals should be willing to assist.”

  “I agree with you,” I admitted. “However, this is not the way of things. I accepted the job. I will consult with my master, but he will tell me that I am competent to handle the matter.”