by Paul Barrett
The ritual to return the Master revealed itself, an incantation so easy a child could do it: a handful of herbs, a few runes and glyphs drawn in blood, and a human sacrifice.
You will be all you desire before the night is old. Read further.
BLINK, PLEASE! Erick’s mind shouted even as his hand turned the page.
Your pet cannot help you.
Erick screamed again, pushing with all his will to break through the barrier imposed by the voice.
Blink watched, aware that this room oozed with evil, as Erick stared at the book with frightening intensity and his lips moved in feverish silence. A spiteful force radiated from the tome, and Blink’s head spun at the Elonsha pouring through the chamber. His master could be reading nothing benevolent within the grimoire’s pages.
Even worse, Erick’s thoughts were unreachable. When Blink tried to link with his master, he encountered something he had never experienced. In his mind’s eye, he saw a wall of black stone, unfathomably large. Spikes dripping with green ichor protruded from its ebony surface. Terrified those barbs would impale him, Blink withdrew and watched, frightened to touch Erick lest he damage him.
His paralysis broke when Erick’s voice slipped through the barricade. It was barely a murmur--blink please--but it set Blink in action. He launched himself into the air, grabbed Erick by the shoulders, and pulled him from the room, back into the sunlit laboratory.
When Blink released him, Erick whirled around with clenched hands. Blink withdrew a few feet.
“How dare you, you little bastard!” Rage suffused Erick’s round face, eyes wide and cheeks flush. He advanced, raising his fists.
“Erick, stop!” Blink screamed verbally and mentally, his barbed tail poised to strike, ready to render his master unconscious.
Erick froze. The sound and thought of his familiar smashed through the black cloud created by the book’s enchantment. He swayed, fists unclenching as he lowered his arms to steady himself against a table. Darkness drifted away, and he stood in the dim confines of the laboratory, Blink hovering with tail up. The wind from his familiar’s wings blew across his face, drying the sweat that had formed.
Erick slid to the floor and looked at Blink through the black specks that danced before his eyes. “I’m so sorry.” He sucked in a deep breath. “We need to burn that book.”
Blink didn’t hesitate. Destroying the written word went against everything Erick had been taught, but they both knew some words shouldn’t be kept. Blink grabbed the lantern in the entryway and flew above the book.
It whispered to him, offering him the power to be his creature and rule others, but such words held no influence. His love for Erick defeated any such promises. Blink dropped the lantern. The lamp’s fragile glass shield shattered, spreading flame and oil onto the thin, dry pages. The book caught immediately; the fire leapt high, singeing Blink before he could fly away.
“Thank you,” Erick choked out, his back to the room and eyes squeezed tight. Tears ran as he listened to the book’s dying screams, mixed with threats of his destruction for defying the Master of Shadows’ wishes.
You will burn, the book promised. All you know will be as smoke.
Soon nothing remained of the book but ashes, which drifted in the air and floated to the floor. “Close the door,” Erick said in a thin voice. “We’ll clean it up later.”
“What happened?” Blink asked as he pushed the stone wall shut. “I lost you.”
Erick shuffled toward the staircase leading into the manor. “The book tried to trap me and make me do its will.”
“What did it want?”
Erick stopped at the foot of the stairs and collapsed on the bottom step. “The book was a copy of Teloc Sapah, the Dark Words. It details the direst rituals available to Necromancers: Lich creation, Spectre summoning, all the rites that require human sacrifice. The Inconnu wrote all the copies, and each book contains Elonsha directly from their blood. The books are so dangerous that Necromancers destroy any they find on sight. If the book is opened, the released Elonsha can force a Necromancer to do the bidding of its author. You saved us both, as well as the people in Draymed. Thank you.”
“Of course,” Blink said in a soft voice.
While Erick waited for his strength to return, Blink closed the outer doors, plunging the room into dimness. The smell of burnt paper filled the lab. Erick stood and mounted the stairs, his pace ponderous as his thoughts. Questions without answers racked his brain.
Do you think he summoned the vampire? Blink asked, tuning in on Erick’s thoughts as he followed him up the stairs.
“No,” Erick responded wearily. “Vampire creation doesn’t require human sacrifice. I’m certain now he was the vampire. Whatever he tried to conjure turned against him or went wrong, and it cursed him somehow.”
“That’s one good thing,” Blink said. “If he was the vampire, at least that means the Inconnu haven’t returned.”
Erick stopped at the top of the stairs as a chill ran over him. “The book wanted me to summon Eligos. What if it did the same thing to father?”
Erick did little the rest of the day, and the quana remained unmade. His encounter with the ancient tome and the implications surrounding its discovery were too oppressive for him even to consider performing a Ritual, and he had no blood for it anyway. He spent time in the garden culling herbs but stopped when he realized he’d harvested several unusable plants.
The day dragged by. Questions circled in Erick’s mind until they lost meaning or reason. Beneath it all churned growing anger at his father, who dared not only to keep an illicit and dangerous book but also to tamper with forces so abhorrent that his kindred Necromancers decreed them anathema.
He tried to sort out his feelings as he bathed and prepared for bed. He stared at himself in the mirror and ran his hand over the red welts, crisscrossed with thick black thread, left by the vampire--his father. They were his forever, a lifelong reminder of how close he had come to being damned, with no chance to appeal to Alakanath, no possibility of redemption.
He didn’t bother to bandage them again.
New fury raged in him as he considered the betrayal of his trust. Fathers cared. Fathers were kind and helpful. They weren’t liars and murderers and sneaks. The most confusing thing was that his father appeared to be all of these things.
As he crawled into bed, grief and shame replaced the anger, and he wept. He should have noticed a change in his father, no matter how subtle. He should have found the secret door and burned the tome sooner. Guilt pounded against him until fatigue overtook him and he drifted into a disjointed dream, full of scattered images and muted sound.
Faces came at him, swirling in from all angles. Elissia and Corby stood on one side, staring at him. Beatru and Commander Brannon stood on the other, their eyes filled with tears. Men in dark clothing, faces hidden by black cloth, searched for him, ready to kill him on sight.
A smoky cloud passed his vision, and he saw other faces. A brown-haired man with a bland countenance glared at him with undisguised hatred. Corby stood beside a dark-haired boy, unknown to Erick, but with a familiar face. Behind them, a fleet of ships sailed on calm water, Erick standing at the bow.
These images flew through Erick’s sleeping mind in rapid order, connected by no string of reason. The ships disappeared as a flat-topped mountain-–bigger than the whole world, it seemed—rose up and crushed them. At the foot of the mountain, armies of undead clashed, Erick commanding one, a figure in black leading the other. Erick found himself high off the ground. He leaped, and pain shot through his legs.
A symbol appeared before him, etched in thick lines. Even in a dream, he knew he should recognize it, but its significance eluded him. Eight circles in a line, pierced by a dull gray arrow. He stood under the symbol. Although it floated in the air with no solidity, it crushed upon him like a bag of stones. He tried to flee, but the symbol followed him, ever above him.
His flight found him standing before his manor. The weig
ht disappeared as the symbols scattered, blown away like smoke. A presence on his chest revealed the same symbol resting below his neck, a golden amulet held by a thick leather cord. A thin glow suffused the gold, and the warmth of the talisman against his skin no longer crushed but comforted Erick. As he reached to touch the medallion, a flicker of orange caught his attention. He looked up to see his home engulfed in flame; stricken with terror, his dream self screamed.
Erick, wake up! Blink screeched in his mind. There are armed intruders in the manor.
8
The Eligoi existed solely for the chance to sacrifice themselves for the greater glory of the Inconnu. They gave all to join, forsaking family, friends, and any life they had known. They trained without ceasing and killed without remorse. It is said they drank the blood of babies to give them strength and harden their hearts, but that is only rumor and, as the order dissolved shortly after the death of Eligos, impossible to confirm.
-Timone Narvis, Scholar of Kal-Adar On the Inconnu and their Followers
Erick snapped awake in his room to the dim yellow light of the lantern on his oak nightstand and Blink missing from his roost. He closed his eyes and connected with Blink, who perched on the right newel post at the bottom of the stairway. Erick viewed the world in the bright hues of his familiar’s night vision, a world of sharpened edges and deeper shadows. A figure slipped inside the open front doors. The mystery being closed the door and joined two others already inside, so quietly that even Blink’s sensitive hearing picked up nothing. Black clothing cloaked their bodies and faces, exactly as Erick dreamed.
You need to hide, Blink told Erick.
What are you going to do? Erick rolled out of bed.
Hope they pass me by, and then try to poison them.
Erick wanted Blink to attack now, but it would put him at three against one. Nerve-racking as it was to Erick for Blink to wait, the familiar stood a better chance with surprise.
The trio communicated with hand gestures and flowed up the stairs without a glance at Blink, who sat immobile on the post.
Erick dropped the connection and tried to think of a hiding place; he dismissed under the bed or in the wardrobe as too obvious. He glanced at the window. If he could get to the priquana, he could rouse them and keep the intruders at bay while Blink sedated them with his envenomed tail.
Halfway to the window, a chill ran across his naked body. He reached to the floor, grabbed his brown breeches, and slipped them over his legs.
No sooner had he pulled the drawstring than the door swung open and two figures stole inside.
The intruders froze and stared at Erick across the moonlit room. They were little more than inky splotches, their eyes bare glints through black hoods.
They recovered quickly and spread to either side of the room. Erick backed toward the window. He would never be able to open it in time to flee. Hurry up, Blink.
The third figure stepped into the doorway. Each man drew a long knife. The slim blades gleamed.
Erick ran toward the nightstand, grabbed the lamp, and turned up the wick.
The figure in the doorway motioned with his hand. As the two men at his side moved to flank Erick, the man fell forward. His knife clattered across the floor. Blink hovered in the doorway, tail extended.
The others threw their daggers at Blink. Erick flung the lamp at the shadow to his left. A twinge of pain in Erick’s thigh told him Blink had been hit.
Erick’s target flung his arm up in a sweeping arc and deflected the lantern. It slammed against the wall and shattered. Oil splashed and caught fire.
Blink--knife protruding from his leg--closed the distance and lashed out with his tail. The barb sank into the assassin’s throat.
Erick turned as the last intruder drew another dagger and threw it. Erick flung himself forward across his bed, straightening his arms as he flew toward the man. The knife sailed overhead. His fists struck the invader’s stomach. Although not a hard hit, it pushed the man back and gave Blink the opportunity to strike.
But the attacker was prepared. He grabbed Blink’s tail and twisted. Blink hissed in irritation.
He wasn’t prepared when Blink pulled the knife out of his thigh and stabbed the man in the arm. This wrenched out the first sound any of the intruders had uttered--a shriek of agony. The scream was as short-lived as the man. He shuddered and fell to the floor. The growing firelight revealed a dull blue paste clinging to the blade. Erick shook with relief that the knife had struck Blink and not him; he lacked his familiar’s immunity to poison.
Fire engulfed half the room, latching on to the drapes and wooden floor. The stifling heat forced Erick to breathe in gasps, making his throat raw. Sparks danced through the room like deadly fireflies. As the flames reached him, the second assailant caught fire. The stench of burning hair and flesh filled the air.
Erick and Blink rushed toward the door. Pick him up, Erick thought as he jumped over the prone form lying in the doorway.
Why? Blink asked even as he lifted the dark figure by the arms.
He can tell us why they attacked. Erick raced downstairs while Blink flew, dragging the assailant behind him. When Erick hit the foyer, he sucked in deep breaths of the colder air. Tears filled his eyes from the pain.
Before Blink could land, Erick rasped, “Take him outside and meet me in the lab.” He couldn’t save the manor, but he wanted to rescue what he could of his books and equipment.
While Blink struggled toward the front door, Erick ran down the hallway, pushed open the cellar door, and bounded down the stairs into the lab.
Dizziness hit him as he reached the bottom. He put a hand against the wall to keep from falling and forced the vertigo away. Once he got outside, he could collapse, but he had to stay strong now.
He couldn’t save everything, so he had to rescue what could not be easily replaced. The tomes of Rituals were the most obvious. He grabbed a sack and tossed books into it, heedless of how they landed.
The sound of flames crackled through the door as Blink opened it and flew down the stairs, followed by a gust of hot air. After a glance at Erick, Blink found another sack and began stashing books.
His bag full, Erick ran to the outside doors and pushed them open. With a muscle-straining heave, he ran up the three stone steps and tossed the heavy sack into the yard.
The clouds glowed the color of weathered copper. Flames engulfed the manor’s upper floor. Hungry orange tongues tore at the wood like a dog with a bone. Sparks drifted high and landed on the herb garden; the heat turned the greenery to withered char.
An explosive pop sounded from above, followed by the crash of a collapsing roof section. Erick ran down the stairs as Blink came up with a filled sack.
“That’s all of them,” Blink said. “We should go.”
“Okay. I need one more thing.” He rushed into the lab and seized a large wooden box by its leather strap. He wanted to take so much more, but another loud crash and a wave of heat dissuaded him. With the exception of the box’s contents, nothing else in the lab warranted risking his life.
He ran back out to find Blink on the ground, panting heavily and holding a claw to his wounded leg. Erick knelt beside him. “We need to get away from the house. Can you fly?”
“Of course. It hit my leg, not my wing.”
“Then grab a sack.”
Blink stood and picked up one of the book-filled bags. Erick snagged the other and ran across the yard, passing their unconscious attacker where Blink had dropped him. Erick didn’t stop until he reached the other side of the gate.
He dropped the box and sack and collapsed. His vision dimmed, his ears rang. Blink flew back and returned moments later, dragging the black-clothed man. “I still think we should have let him burn,” Blink said, his voice muted by the bells in Erick’s head.
“You don’t look well,” the familiar continued. “Let me help you.”
Blink put his clawed hand on Erick’s shoulder, and a surge of energy went through Erick. The fai
ntness and ringing disappeared, and his vision cleared. He looked at Blink. The familiar’s grey sheen had lightened, and his pale blue eyes had lost some luster. He had given vital energy to Erick at his own expense.
“Thank you,” Erick said.
“My pleasure,” Blink answered, his words slow and slurred.
The sound of pigs squealing in terror reached Erick. The barn had caught fire in several places. Too late, he realized he could have saved them. In his selfish terror, he had forgotten about the animals.
You would have passed out before you got halfway to them, Blink thought as he flopped onto his back. Erick wasn’t convinced, despite the weakness that even now made his hands shake.
The lowing of the cows joined the pigs’ squeals and soon turned into painful bellows. Erick wanted to cover his ears but didn’t. He listened as the animals’ deaths accused him.
Townspeople hurried up the hill. A few of the villagers tried to question Erick. Mesmerized with shock and disbelief, he had no answers for them, so they soon gave up.
Hands landed on his shoulders and Erick tensed until he turned to find Elissia behind him, Corby beside her. Nobody spoke. Erick tried to take comfort in their presence but found none.
Erick watched, knees to chest and arms wrapped around his legs in helpless frustration, as the manor burned to the ground, his home reduced to scattered bonfires in less than an hour. Here and there, blackened boards pointed toward the clouds, edges and ends pulsing red as they released wisps of smoke into the air. His nose and lungs felt clogged with ash and his face sticky with tear-tracked soot. At some point, his stitched neck had torn and started bleeding. Trails of blood gone cold clung to him.