The Death of the Necromancer

by Martha Wells

  From here he could pick out occasional words but nothing to make sense of this. He heard another man’s voice with a more educated accent, saying something about medical attention. Ronsarde boosted himself up the last few steps and grabbed Reynard’s arm for support. "That’s Halle," he whispered, his tone incredulous. "What the—"

  "Doctor Halle?" Nicholas asked, managing to keep his voice low, though what he wanted to do was rage.

  "Yes, certainly."

  Dammit, dammit. Nicholas gestured for the others to stay back and crept up to the door again. He flattened himself back against the wall and managed a quick glance through the grill. Madeline was in her dowdy nurse persona and carrying a doctor’s bag, but the light in her eyes was dangerous and entirely her own. She’s distracted and slipping out of character— I’ll have to speak to her about that, he thought. And a few other things. He recognized the man with her as Doctor Halle and his mouth set in a grim line. The nerve of the woman.

  All three of the guards were facing away now, arguing with Halle. And Nicholas’s irritation with Madeline’s precipitous behavior didn’t change the fact that they would never have a better chance to get past this door. He stepped back down to the others and said softly, "Yes, it’s them. Now let’s go, just as we planned."

  They scrambled quietly to get into position, Crack and Ronsarde moving to the step just below the landing, Nicholas and Reynard behind them and ducking down so they wouldn’t be seen. At Nicholas’s signal, Crack banged on the door suddenly, shouting, "Open up, it’s right behind us!" With Ronsarde moaning in pain, he stuck one of the keys in the lock and jiggled it, as if in his panic he couldn’t make it turn.

  There was shouting from the other side of the door, then the lock clicked and one of the guards jerked it open. Ronsarde pitched forward to collapse at the man’s feet, immobilizing him and keeping the door from being slammed shut. Crack lurched forward, apparently stumbling over his wounded companion, then he knocked the startled guard flat. Nicholas and Reynard pushed forward before the other two men could react, Reynard catching the rifle barrel just as it was lowering to cover them and slamming the wielder back against the wall. Nicholas looked frantically for the third man and saw Madeline had him by the collar with a pistol shoved under his ear.

  Nicholas stepped back, letting Reynard tell their prisoners to lay down on the dirty floor. When Crack removed the constable from Madeline’s grasp, Nicholas said, "Well, this is a surprise."

  "We found you," Madeline said, sounding quite pleased with herself.

  Nicholas stared at her, not sure if he couldn’t answer because he was seething with rage or because he was merely exhausted. He glanced at Doctor Halle, who was trying to examine Ronsarde’s injuries despite the Inspector’s attempts to fend him off. "It’s moderately helpful. Now there are six of us stuck in here."

  Madeline’s brows lowered dangerously. She opened the medical bag, burrowed in it, and produced a small paper-wrapped packet. "Did you think we would come in here with no notion of how to get out again?"

  Reynard was tying up one of the warders with the man’s own belt. He glanced up and laughed shortly. "We did."

  Nicholas glared at Reynard, then said, "What’s that?"

  "Blasting powder. Cusard’s special mix."

  Nicholas gasped in relief. "Brilliant!" He snatched the packet from her.

  "You’re welcome," Madeline said with acerbity.

  Then Nicholas saw what else was in the bag. "You brought one of the spheres? I told you to take them to—"

  "I was," Madeline interrupted. "I thought it would be useful against all this sorcery—"

  "Useful? How?"

  Madeline lowered her voice to a hiss. "It’s been doing things."

  "Things?"

  "Magical things. You saw those stone gargoyles that were chasing people all over the plaza?" At his nod she explained, "It turned one back to stone."

  He took her arm and drew her out the door and down a few steps, out of earshot of the guards. He kept one hand on his pistol, mindful that they weren’t alone in these corridors. "Just like that? You didn’t do anything to it?"

  "Just like that." Madeline gestured in exasperation. "Nicholas, this device is as far beyond me as the role of Elenge would be for my dresser. I don’t know what it did, but it did it, of its own will, with no help from me."

  "But it’s never done anything before," Nicholas protested. He was unaccustomed to feeling foolish and he didn’t like it much. He took the sphere out of the bag and examined it as best he could in the bad light. It looked no different than it ever had, a device of nested gears and wheels that apparently had no purpose, something that might be a child’s toy.

  "It was sitting on a shelf at Coldcourt. Maybe it never felt the need to do anything before."

  That was true. Nicholas gave it back to her and ran a hand through his hair, trying to think how to handle this development. Edouard, Edouard, couldn’t you have stuck with natural philosophy. "We don’t have time to deal with it now, we’ve got to get out of here."

  "How?" Reynard asked, coming down the stairs to them. He had the constable’s rifle and Nicholas was relieved that they were a little better armed now. "Are you thinking of blasting open that blocked passage up to the mortuary? The whole place will know where we are and they’ll be waiting for us at the other end."

  "I know, that’s why we’re going out through the sewer. Once in it, we can take any direction, leave it at almost any street. They won’t have any hope of anticipating our direction."

  "Yes, perfect." Ronsarde seconded the motion. For one of the foremost representatives of law and order in the country, he seemed to be entering into law-breaking with real enthusiasm.

  "We’re going to leave those men tied up?" Halle said, as they followed Nicholas down the stairs. "With that thing roaming these corridors?"

  "We left it trapped on the other side of an iron door, it will have to find a way past that first," Nicholas said. "Besides, it won’t go up to the ground floor while we’re still down here—it wants us. Crack, pull that door to and lock it."

  Nicholas led them back to the wall that adjoined the sewer. It was near the point where the corridor dead-ended into the catacombs, which meant they would be trapped down here if anything came in after them. I hope that is actually the sewer behind this, he thought, sitting on his heels to carefully unwrap the package and lay out the contents on the stone flags. If it wasn’t, he was going to cause an awful commotion for nothing. He noted Reynard and Crack were taking the weapons to guard the open end of the corridor. That would buy them a few moments if they were discovered, but much depended on Nicholas getting this right the first time.

  The blasting powder itself was contained within a small glass vial, carefully stoppered with a cork. Most of the package contained the accoutrements for it, including a long coiled fuse and small chisel to set the charge within a wall. Madeline knelt beside him, saying quietly, "Cusard tried to tell me how to do it myself if I had to, but I’m just as glad I don’t."

  "Watch carefully, in case you ever have to again." Nicholas squinted up at the wall in the bad light, trying to judge the best point to set the charge. He had chosen a spot between two heavy support pillars, hoping they would hold up the ceiling if he made a mistake. He only wanted to make a small hole, just large enough for a human body to pass through easily.

  "If you need assistance, do say so," Ronsarde said.

  Nicholas glanced back and saw that Halle had retrieved his medical bag from Madeline and was redoing their makeshift bandage of Ronsarde’s head injury. That was good; if they were going into the sewer, the less odor of blood about them the better. The sewers had been their enemy’s territory up until now; for that reason Nicholas hoped what they were doing would be unexpected.

  Madeline watched as he chiseled out a hole in the damp pitted surface of the wall. "Are you going to shout at me later for allying myself with Halle?" She sounded more abstractly curious than apprehensive at the
prospect.

  Nicholas glanced back at the Inspector and the doctor again. They were just out of earshot and deep in their own conversation. He said, "I suppose I could, for all the good it would do, since you would simply stand there and nod, going over the soliloquy from Camielle in your head. Of course, I’d be a hypocritical bastard, since all this came about because in a moment of weakness I decided to rescue Inspector Ronsarde." Nicholas finished the hole, then reached for the glass vial. "Stop breathing for the next few moments, please."

  Madeline held her breath while he measured out a small quantity of the powder onto a piece of the packing paper and carefully slid it down into the spot prepared for it in the wall. When he nodded that it was all right, she said, "A moment of weakness?"

  Nicholas picked up the fuse. "Yes. We’ll see how weak if I end up having to break all of us out of here again, this time from the cellblocks after our trials."

  Madeline’s expression was serious. "Do you think he’ll do that? Turn us in?"

  Nicholas let out his breath. It had been a long day for hard questions. "If you were him, you wouldn’t. If I was him, I might, in the right mood. I don’t know."

  Madeline drew breath to speak, then made a startled exclamation instead. She lifted the sphere from her lap, looking into it. "Something’s coming."

  Nicholas stared down at the sphere, frowning, then at the empty corridor stretching away in the half-light. "How do you know?"

  "It’s humming, it does that when it senses power. Touch it."

  Nicholas hesitated, then reached down and touched the metal of the sphere with a fingertip. It was oddly warm and Madeline was right, it was resonating slightly. "We have a problem," Nicholas said, pitching his voice louder to get the others’ attention.

  Crack said suddenly, "Wait, do you smell that? It’s here again."

  "Yes," Reynard said, shifting his hold on the rifle. "That’s it."

  In another moment Nicholas knew what they meant. A foul odor was drifting down the corridor, the same miasma that had hung over the area where they had found the mutilated warder. He turned back to the wall, attaching the fuse, making himself work carefully; there would be no time to try again.

  Madeline stood, still looking into the sphere, and moved up with Crack and Reynard. Reynard glanced at her and said, "My dear, really—"

  "Hush, I know what I’m doing," Madeline said, then added, "I haven’t the faintest idea of what I’m doing, but this thing seems to."

  Ronsarde struggled to his feet with Halle’s help, saying, "That is one of Edouard Viller’s famous, or infamous, magical spheres. I hadn’t thought to ever see one in use."

  "I rather hope we don’t have to see it now," Halle said. "Is there anything we can do to help?"

  "I’m almost finished." Nicholas unrolled the fuse then quickly packed up the remains of the materials, though he hoped they wouldn’t need them again. Halle came to help him and to put the package back into his medical bag. As Nicholas stood to tell the others he was ready, he heard it.

  A scratching, like heavy nails against rock, accompanied by a sibilant hiss, echoed down the corridor. Madeline and Reynard glanced at each other and Crack stood like a stone, pistol held ready, waiting for whatever was out there to charge.

  It can’t be very big, Nicholas thought, not and fit through these doors. It couldn’t be as powerful as the last Sending either, or they would all surely be dead by now. Maybe that had hurt their sorcerous opponent, to loose that great store of magical power and have it snuffed out by the Great Spell that protected Madele’s house. Whatever it was, they couldn’t see it yet, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t near. It had managed to kill at least several armed men so far. He unrolled the fuse, backing toward where the others were waiting, laying the cord out along the floor. This gave them about twenty feet of clearance. He wasn’t sure that would be enough, but moving any further up the corridor was out of the question. Nicholas said, "I’m ready to set off the charge. When it goes off, the creature may come at us."

  Leaning against the wall, Ronsarde said, "We’ve no choice."

  "I’m aware of that," Nicholas said, managing to keep his voice mild and reaching for the candle.

  Madeline shouted suddenly and Nicholas looked up to see the corridor ahead of them go dark, as if a wave of shadow was rolling down it. He lit the fuse and shouted, "Get down!"

  The blast was a shock, louder than Nicholas had expected. He fell against the wall, ducking his head as his back was peppered with fragments of rock. He looked up to find himself blinded by dust and smoke and said, "Everyone all right?"

  There were answering calls and some violent coughing.

  Nicholas groped along the floor until he found the candle, blown out by the force of the explosion, then got to his feet. He shook his head, which did absolutely nothing for the ringing in his ears, and stumbled back toward the wall. Between the dust hanging in the heavy air and the darkness it was impossible to see and he had to feel along the wall for the opening. He tripped on a chunk of blasted stone and almost fell through the hole. It was at waist height, larger than he had expected; the stone hadn’t been as thick as it had looked. Lucky I didn’t bring the ceiling down on top of us. "Here!" he shouted.

  As he got the candle lit again, the others managed to find him. They were all covered with brick dust, their faces smudged with smoke, and he supposed he looked as bad as they did.

  Madeline was holding someone’s handkerchief over her face, the sphere tucked securely under her arm. "It’s not humming as loudly now," she reported. "The explosion must have frightened that thing."

  "For the moment, at least," Nicholas agreed. The dust was settling, aided by the damp air from the sewer. He lifted the candle. Through the gaping rent in the wall he could see a wide tunnel with an arched roof, lined with uneven stone blocks. There were ledges along both sides and a stream of dark water running between. A stench rose off that water, striking him like a blow in the stomach. Ducking his head, he stepped through the hole.

  Crack scrambled through after him, saying tersely, "Ghouls."

  Nicholas tested his footing on the slimy stone. "I haven’t seen any."

  "Didn’t see any last time, either."

  There was a minor altercation occurring in the corridor, as Halle and Ronsarde tried to make Madeline go next and she protested, "No, I have the sphere, I should go last to cover our escape."

  "Gentlemen, it is useless to argue with her," Nicholas told them grimly. He helped Ronsarde step through, then moved back to give Halle room on the ledge.

  Reynard solved the Madeline problem by wrapping an arm around her waist and lifting her bodily through the gap, then stepping through after her. "If you’d seen what it did in the alley," she was saying, "you’d realize what I mean. It reacts to the presence of magic— Good God, what a stink."

  "Half the prison knows where we are now," Reynard reminded them. "Which way?"

  "Here," Nicholas said, moving forward to pick a path along the ledge. The sewer was running roughly eastward, toward the river. He hoped they didn’t have to go that far. They had only a short time before the constables followed the sound of the blast and swarmed down here after them. Two streets over would be as far as they could safely go. Fortunately it would be growing dark outside and with every other odd thing that had happened in this part of the city today, people climbing out of the sewer would not be that much to remark on.

  "The sphere is humming again," Madeline said, breathless at the stink and the effort of walking on the slick stone in her long skirts. "That creature didn’t stay frightened for long."

  Wonderful, Nicholas thought. Perhaps it will stop and eat more constables. He didn’t think that was likely; there was no question it was after them.

  They kept moving, muffled curses marking occasional stumbles. The sewer was a long tunnel, vanishing into darkness a few feet in front of their candle, dissolving into it behind them as they moved along. Vienne had literally miles of sewers, some new and eas
ily traversed by the sewermen in sluice carts or boats, others old and so choked by refuse as to be almost impassable even by water. They were lucky that this was one of the newly built tunnels.

  The filthy air was making it hard to breathe, but Nicholas noted the odor of rats was growing stronger, though the sewer seemed strangely empty of the rodents. The ledge grew narrow in places and Nicholas caught Madeline’s arm both to steady her and to reassure himself. Most of her attention was on the sphere.

  The sphere’s humming was getting louder; Nicholas could hear it now himself. Madeline was holding it nervously; she had taken off her gloves and her bare hands left traces of moisture on the stained metal surface. The rank, animal odor was more intense, combining with the effluvia of filth from the water below and making it difficult to draw a full breath. It was how intelligent the thing was that really mattered and how afraid it was of the sphere, Nicholas realized.

  "How much further?" Madeline said. Her voice was thick.

  "Just far enough," Nicholas told her. "It would be a shame after all this to come up within sight of the Prefecture or the prison gates."

  Madeline laughed, a short gasp that turned into a choking cough. And if we manage to escape everything else that’s after us, the stench may still kill us, Nicholas thought.

  "Nic," Reynard said suddenly. "There’s something behind us."

  "Keep moving," Nicholas said. Looking back, he caught a glimpse of a shadow shifting in the blackness, something that might be a trick of the light and his imagination. He knew it was all too real.

  They managed perhaps another fifty yards down the sewer, before Nicholas said, "We’ve come far enough." He had been counting paces and even given a generous margin of error, they should be at least two streets east of the prison by now. "Look for an outlet."

  "Thank God," Reynard muttered from behind him. "I thought we were going all the way to the river."

  "There’s a ladder up here," Halle said. Nicholas peered into the dimness ahead, then suddenly caught sight of it himself.