“Name these things,” Chambry replied softly, “and we will find them for you.”
Yes, they would. She never doubted their devotion. She had traded enough magical knowledge—minor things really, but more than the Academy could have taught them—to secure their loyalty. They were like her.
She gave them the list. Most would have paused at such a list, but not her devotees, her—she trembled at the word—students. The gold would simply require theft. Then there was the plundering of graves, particular bones of certain kinds of people who had lived certain kinds of lives. The last ingredient was prima mater, made of mother’s milk, virgin’s seed, and the blood of lost maidenhood. These could not be found in the alchemical lab or in the graveyard, but she knew her students would come through for her.
Finally, there was the object that was to be made into the phylactery itself. The potion would be applied, and then it would be transformed by a dying life. Not just anything could become a phylactery. It had to be strong and naturally capable of holding magical energy. Certain kinds of gems, of certain sizes, could be used. The only possible stone readily available was the large, smoothly faceted citrine in the center of Aiella’s crown. Once anointed, the final act to prepare it for Seredith’s soul would require the taking of a life in its presence. That was her own problem. She would not ask her students to take a life.
When she finished instructing them, she rose. They all understood their tasks, and they each left, translocating back to the Academy. They would start their tasks the following morning. Chambry, however, did not depart. He lingered, as he usually did. He always wanted to speak with Seredith alone. He thought he was in love.
He stood at the opposite end of the circle of chairs. He’d grown tall, and she had to incline her head to meet his eyes.
“Why do you seek these things, ma’am?” he asked. He still called her that. And he always questioned her, unlike the others. She admired his thirst for learning.
“A phylactery,” she told him. She knew she could trust him most of all. “A man came to me and gave me knowledge of how to create one.”
He regarded her for a moment. “I’ve read of these,” he finally said. “It will keep you alive even if your body is destroyed.”
“Yes,” she stated. Her being—in the magical sense, the meaning of her self—would be tied to an object. As long as that object survived, she couldn’t truly be destroyed. The meaning of her being would live on, and her spirit would always re-form to find another vessel to wear.
“Then I would do this for you,” he replied. “With all my heart, I would do this for you.”
“I know,” she told him.
“I love you,” he confessed.
She didn’t react as she might have had she been a living girl. Mostly, she was curious as to why and how he could love a dead thing like her. She already knew the answer to that question. It was their shared obsession with magic.
But he looked at her with more than just shared interest. He didn’t care that she was dead. He stared at her with the lust and adoration of an eighteen-year-old boy. She did not begrudge him this desire. She understood biology well enough.
“Bring me what I ask for,” she said, “and I will teach you more magic.”
As he always did before they parted, he took her cold hands in his. He stared at her with such longing and leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead. But this time, he bent down and kissed her lips.
Had she been a living girl, this would have excited her. The intensity of his adoration would have melted her. But she was a cold and dead thing, and there was nothing in her that could melt. She stood there and accepted his kiss but did not return its passion.
“I cannot love you in this way,” she told him. She felt the memory of sadness, if not sadness itself. “I love only magic. My body dried up long ago.”
“I know,” he said. “I don’t care. I want to be with you, even if it means I can never have you.” He stopped, as if pondering this thought for a moment. “I want to be like you,” he told her. “Let my body die in its desire. Let me be with you for the magic alone, forever.”
She remembered Athaym’s offer. He asked her to make more revenants, an army of undead that could not fuel the gods, in exchange for service to him. No, not service. Apprenticeship. “In time, such might be possible,” she said. “But for now, gather for me what I require.”
“I will,” he promised.
It took a week for her students to gather the ingredients she needed. The gold was the simplest. The bones required some research and nighttime sneaking. Then there was the mother’s milk, virgin’s seed, and blood of lost maidenhood. She didn’t know which of her students had offered her maidenhood and to whom, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t to Chambry. She wondered for brief moment why that should matter. Perhaps not all vestiges of human conceit had died yet within her.
Chambry held out the large, faceted citrine from Aiella’s crown.
“How did you get this?” she asked. “This will be noticed.”
“They’ll think it was a thief,” he said. Then he smiled at his own words. “A common thief.”
Seredith pressed her lips together tightly. No matter. Her students had succeeded at their tasks, and now she would get to test this magic given to her by Athaym. In the back of her mind, a small voice said it would be better if the magic didn’t work, so she wouldn’t be tempted by his knowledge. The rush of excitement, so rarely felt, squelched the tiny thought.
The revenant wizard performed the rite, drawing in strands of probability through the bones and directing them into the gold. She dropped the gold into the shallow bowl of mother’s milk and then instructed Chambry to open the small vials of virgin’s seed and blood of lost maidenhood.
Seredith traced sigils over the mixture and uttered long, slow phrases in magic’s mercurial language. The milk bubbled frothy pink, and then the gold’s surface became smooth and highly reflective before it melted into the milk. The charged milk slowly vanished into the metal until all that remained was a large drop of golden fluid. Seredith carefully turned the bowl and poured the gold onto the citrine.
The jewel absorbed the fluid. The gold disappeared into the facets of the gem, and when she was done, the stone looked like it always had, with perhaps a slight hint of metallic luster. The citrine had been beautiful before—now it was breathtaking in the way it caught light and cast it back out.
Seredith rendered the final magical signs over the stone and felt her soul link to it. It wasn’t done, however. It couldn’t house and protect her essence until it was transformed by a dying soul passing through it on its way to oblivion. For that, she would need to take a life.
So close to her goal, she reflected on Marta’s efforts to extend her own life by stealing the bodies of her daughters. Seredith no longer despised sorcery for what it did to people, despite the fact it had been Marta who had caused Seredith’s undeath. The revenant’s distaste for the dark arts had by now shifted into something different. It wasn’t the power that corrupted that she detested. It was the people who would seek power through such a cheap, easy thing.
Sorcery was the path of mediocrity.
Clouds shielded the world from dawn’s light, and a dull grayness settled over the freshly fallen snow in the queen’s private garden courtyard. Seredith wore white robes that blended into the snow, with a deep cowl that hid her face from the casual passerby. She stood silently beneath the silver-barked, leafless birches. It was too early for spring’s buds, but late enough in winter that the snow dropped in large cottony clumps that formed wet crusts around the trees’ branches.
Seredith couldn’t feel it, but she could see the air was too warm for snow. The castle stone kept the cold from the prior night so those snowflakes that survived the fall from icy clouds through spring’s first breath didn’t quite melt.
The queen stood at the far end of the garden, lost in her own thoughts amid the snowflakes. Her crown sat atop her white-haired head, mak
ing her look regal even with the empty gem socket in its central arch. Rulership and sickness had aged her beyond her sixty years. It was whispered that she would not last the year. Nevertheless, Aiella was strong enough to stand, walk, and retreat from the demands of her court advisors and faculty at the Academy. She came here regularly, and Seredith had watched her before from her tower windows.
“I see you there, Seredith,” the queen said. She clung to her wizard’s staff for support, though her arms trembled. Seredith wondered if she was capable of casting anything but the simplest of spells.
Seredith shuffled forward. She couldn’t feel the cold, but it did make moving more difficult, especially since she didn’t have body heat that could keep her flesh supple against the air.
“That’s far enough, revenant,” Aiella said coolly. “Why are you here?”
“I’ve come to return something to you,” Seredith said. She continued to shuffle forward.
The queen gripped her staff and held it forward, standing without its aid. Apparently she was strong enough. “Stop,” she said again. “I tolerate your presence, but I will not suffer disobedience.”
Seredith stopped. She held out her hand and opened it, revealing the golden-hued citrine. “This is yours, my queen.”
Aiella sucked in a quick breath at the sight of the jewel. “Where did you get this?” she asked suspiciously.
“A thief in the night,” Seredith answered simply.
Aiella stepped forward and held out her hand. “Give it to me,” she demanded.
Seredith reached out and dropped the gem in the queen’s palm. Aiella removed her crown and rested the gem in the empty socket. She spoke two words of magic, and the socket’s prongs moved and fastened around the bright gold jewel. She settled the crown back on her head.
The revenant stared at her for a moment. All she needed to do now was kill the queen. Aiella’s soul was close to death anyway, and it just needed to be free of her body and rush through the gem, and the spell to seal the phylactery would be complete. A spell, a quick spell was all she needed. She would raise her wand, and the queen would not be able to defend herself.
But Seredith couldn’t do it. She was not so far gone that she would murder the queen, not when there was another way. Aiella had no love for Seredith, but she honored Duke Montevin’s pledge to her and left her in peace. Seredith knew after she died it would be another matter, but the queen deserved the dignity of living out her final days without having her suspicions of the revenant justified. Besides, the queen’s days were numbered. She would succumb to this sickness soon, and when she did her soul would pass through the gem. There was nothing that said the death had to be a murder.
Seredith gave the slightest of bows and then translocated back to her tower chambers.
Three days later, a wolven’s roar disturbed her study and made her lift her head from her books. She rose and walked to the window to discover what the commotion was below. She saw guards scurrying, and then the sight in the garden made her freeze.
Captain Kaern knelt on the ground in wolven form, cradling the queen’s body in his furry arms. He howled again, and then he stopped and grew silent. He looked up and locked eyes with Seredith, even though he was far below.
A dark red stain spread over the front of the queen’s robe. Her attendants swept the garden, wands out and casting detection spells to find any evidence of magical foul play. They homed in on a nearby corner of the square area. One of them flicked his wrist, and gossamer dust flew from the tip of his wand. It floated and coalesced into an outline of a hole in space.
Seredith straightened and stood back from the window, noting Kaern hadn’t stopped watching her.
She knew what the shape of that magical residue meant. Someone had just translocated away.
Chambry. What have you done? There was no rush. Was that a twinge of caring she felt?
She touched her garnet and an instant later stood in the secret cave.
Chambry was there, but a second later the queen’s two attendants, one male and one female, appeared before she had a chance to speak with him. They had traced the translocation spell and followed its trail back here. Seredith had to give them credit. They were obviously skilled in their magic.
They saw her and Chambry.
“Traitors!” the man shouted. He flicked his wand, and a flash of light hit Chambry. Seredith recognized the spell as a stun and knew that no permanent damage would come to her student. They intended to capture him.
With her, however, they did not hold back. It was obvious they shared the same opinion of the revenant as the rest of the Academy collegiate and only waited for an excuse to be rid of her. The woman uttered a few words, and with a gesture, a small flaming sphere shot forth.
Seredith knew that if she didn’t act quickly, the sphere would explode and engulf her in flame. Although she was impervious to many mundane deaths, she had no desire to try her fate against an inferno. She pointed her wand and caught the fire in her focus. With a twist of her wrist, the right word, and the release of a prepared counterspell, the flame dissipated into an impotent sprinkling of dust.
The revenant wizard invoked another spell—she was glad she had so many prepared for curiosity’s sake, for she had not thought to plan for a duel—and a shell of glimmering water appeared around her. The two attendant wizards assaulted her, but the water absorbed their attacks and captured the magical energy of their spells.
She pointed her wand at the man. The watery sphere focused into a bolt, enhanced with the charge of their captured death magic, and shot forward. He tried to deflect it with a counter spell, but he was too slow. She doubted he understood her magic well enough anyway, even if he had been fast enough. He flew back against the stone wall of the cave, bones crunching loudly against the rock. He crumbled to the floor, dead eyes wide open in surprise.
The woman jumped forward and grabbed Chambry, and then translocated away with Seredith’s student.
Seredith could have followed them. She knew how to trace translocation spells. That would have been folly, however. She surmised that the female wizard had retreated to the Academy, and if she followed she would be surrounded by more of the collegiate.
Seredith looked down at the spot on the floor where Chambry had lain. He had dropped a bloodied dagger when he had been stunned by their initial spell.
Chambry! she thought again. You should not have killed her. I would have brought you into my world, but now you risk everything.
She translocated back to her tower and activated her wards. She was not so unprepared that she did not have measures in place for the inevitable day they would try to oust her. Fog, alarm wards, and walls of ice filled the halls leading to her chambers.
This was her home. She would not relinquish it to them.
The assault began shortly after dawn. Wizards surrounded her tower and struck at the defenses in the halls. The ice walls melted, and wards screeched their warning. Magical wind swept the fog away, and then they were inside, coming for her.
They think I killed the queen, she realized, or had Chambry do it for me. Her circle was discovered. She had already learned in the night through her scrying crystal that her other students were captured too, charged with grave robbing for rites of forbidden thaumaturgy. She would rescue them once she secured her home. She didn’t have to retreat… her magic was better than theirs. She kept a mental note of how many spells she had left imprinted in her soul’s sphere of probability, and when those started to run low, she would retreat and charge more spells. There was no danger of that happening soon, although she would have liked more time to prepare rites for combat than some of the frivolous experiments she had planned. Nevertheless, she held the wizards at bay, erecting new barriers and defenses.
On the fourth day, Captain Kaern’s guards broke through.
The wizards of the Academy confounded her spells, for they gathered in groups to deconstruct her wards. She felt a moment of satisfaction at the realization that it
took so many to tear down her defenses.
If only I had more time to prepare, she thought. It was a recurring theme in her mind, that she might have spent less time in books, while trusting in the outside world to leave her alone while she pursued her passion.
I must ensure I have the freedom to do so in the future.
Well, that was the future. All she had at the moment was the now, and in the now, Captain Kaern and three of his guardsmen approached her down the hall. They fired their rifles.
Bullets tore through her flesh, knocking her back, yet she didn’t feel pain. She levitated from the floor, raising her wand.
Captain Kaern shifted into human form and pointed a double-barreled shotgun at her.
He’s so close, she thought. Will this hurt?
No.
She heard the loud blast and felt the tugging sensation as buckshot tore skin and desiccated organs away from her bones. Then she was on her back on the ground. Her robe had frayed into threads, almost as shredded as her flesh.
She sat up and looked momentarily at her naked ribs. She pushed herself to her feet. Even her arms now had bones exposed from the gunshot wounds.
But she still held her wand.
Gracefully, as if it were nothing more distressing than lighting evening reading candles, she waved her wand like a conductor and directed magical energy towards the gunmen.
Fire condensed and billowed down the hall. They retreated when they saw it rush towards them. Kaern escaped, stepping out of the way through an adjacent door. His other men were not so lucky, and they fell to the ground as charred skeletons.
What does that smell like? she wondered. She realized she hadn’t smelled anything for twenty years.
They retreated, both guards and wizards, needing to regroup.
She walked back to her central chamber. She had no more spells of warding. If only they knew she was spent, they might not have retreated. But they knew neither her strengths nor her limits.
When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 113