by Martin Frowd
“Now we must walk, young one, for we have many miles to go,” Glaraz declared, taking a firm hold of Zarynn’s hand in his gloved one. “Much ground still to cover, if we are to reach succour by the downing of the sun.”
“You talk funny,” Zarynn dared to observe, as they descended from the hilltop where they had spent the night and began to make their way along the rough path that snaked between the hills. By the position of the sun in the sky, Zarynn knew they were heading roughly westward – toward the distant coast, which made sense to Zarynn if they truly were to sail away on a ship, cross the sea and leave the lands of the People far behind. The initial shock was wearing off, as Zarynn accepted that the strange outlander had had ample opportunities by now to kill him and had done no such thing, and Zarynn dared to begin to believe that perhaps there was some sort of hope for his future.
“I? I speak more tongues than you have ever heard of,” the necromancer snorted. “It is your primitive tongue that is the funny one. All your words sound far too similar. But when we reach my ship, your teaching can truly begin. A civilised tongue is the first thing you must learn, so that you can learn to master your Gift. As we cross the sea, we shall begin your teaching of the Maragashic tongue – the tongue of the land where we are going, young Zarynn. For when we reach the School at last, I will not be the only one of your teachers, and some of the other masters have no word of your people’s tongue.”
“Does that mean they’re not as smart as you?” Zarynn dared again, once he had fully understood what the necromancer was saying, trying to get the measure of the man to whom he now owed his life. His only reply was a snort.
The necromancer and Zarynn walked in silence through the morning, their only accompaniment the trills of distant hookbeaks and the buzzing of insects, as the sun moved toward its noontime peak. By the time midday came, Zarynn was flagging in the heat, but Glaraz showed no sign of planning to stop.
“It’s too hot,” Zarynn finally broke the silence. “When are we stopping?”
“Did I not say that we would not stop again until sundown?” Glaraz retorted. “You do not hunger, do you? Nor do you thirst?”
Zarynn thought about it, and realised he was not in fact hungry or thirsty. Whatever was in the rations the necromancer had given him at breakfast had clearly been more filling than he expected. But Zarynn was tiring after walking all morning under the sun, without recourse to the shade of the yurts of his clan. Glaraz, however, was clearly not at all affected by the sun’s heat.
“It’s too hot,” Zarynn repeated plaintively. “Can’t we find shade? Just for a little while?”
“We are not yet safe,” Glaraz admonished him. “Your people perhaps still follow us, yes? Recapture would be bad, yes? We will not be safe until we take to the sky and leave these hills far behind.”
“You have magic,” Zarynn objected. “Can’t you point your finger and say funny words and make shade, and make it so the hunters don’t see us?”
“The magic art is not so simple,” Glaraz snorted, shaking his head. “The words of magic – what you call funny words, young one – are a true language, as true as yours or mine. The Tongue Arcane, it is called. There is, of course, no word for arcane in your language, for the Druids do not want your people to even know that arcane magic – magic that does not flow from their God, Kelnaaros Demon King – exists at all. Those who wield it, without their sanction, are called cursed, or abomination.
“But power comes from your Gifts – or from mine – and the Tongue Arcane is a tool to focus that power. It has ever been so, since the world was young. Since the time of the dragons, who were the first speakers of the Tongue Arcane, and the first wielders of magic. Without power, there is nothing to focus. Words alone have no power. Power alone has no focus. Making shade is not part of my Gift. Nor is hiding us.”
Hearing the finality in the necromancer’s tone, Zarynn accepted defeat and trudged on, though the fierce midday heat continued to sap his strength. The dirt path undulated between steep, forbidding hilltops of the bare black rock that gave the Hills of Dusk their name, and Glaraz kept them to the low-lying path and off the hillsides. With no obvious landmarks, only the position of the sun in the sky above gave any useful indication of how long they had been going. Zarynn realised after a while that the necromancer was trying to keep them from being seen from a distance, if anyone were to pass by, but in so doing he also limited how far they could see.
As the mismatched duo strode on along the seemingly endless, ever-twisting path, Zarynn became gradually aware that something had changed. Even as the necromancer Glaraz stopped abruptly, pulling him likewise to a halt, Zarynn realised that the distant hookbeaks had ceased their trilling, and the buzz of the insects was more muted than before.
“Graa’orth’ghri. Graa’orth’ghri.” Glaraz intoned swiftly in his harsh, foreign accent, the words making no sense to Zarynn. But as the necromancer spoke them a second time, Zarynn stiffened for a moment as a strange tingle spread through his body, from his bones outward, and was gone.
Long-limbed, dark-clad shapes unfolded on the hilltops above, to both sides of the ribbonlike path; men rising smoothly to their feet from the prone positions which had shielded them from being spotted from below. Abruptly the pair were surrounded by a ring of hard-faced tribesmen on the heights above them, levelling spears at them. At a single barked command from one of their number, all the ambushers drew back their throwing arms and hurled their spears as one. Zarynn instinctively closed his eyes and sent out a silent prayer to the Protector, fully expecting to die as the volley of spears hit home.
Instead of the flint-edged, bloody, agonising end that Zarynn feared, he felt only a soft pattering against his skin, like the gentle rains that occasionally fell on the plains, although he remained dry. Seconds later, the air was split by the cursing of many enraged men. Zarynn opened his eyes to see a pile of spears lying on the dirt path around him and the necromancer Glaraz, and the hunters on the hilltops above gesticulating and swearing vilely, as the necromancer stood calmly, likewise unharmed.
“Wh-why aren’t we dead?” Zarynn could not help but ask, even as the hunters above reached behind them and raised a second spear each.
“It is the graa’orth’ghri, young one,” the necromancer replied in his odd accent. “Earthbone ward, you would say. It does not last long, no more than a few hours, but it is a strong magic. While it lasts, no mundane weapon can break our skin.”
The hunters on the hilltops flung their second volley of spears, though this time their timing was more ragged. Once again Zarynn felt the light pattering as if of rain, but this time Zarynn forced himself to keep his eyes open, and his jaw dropped despite himself as he saw the spears hurtle full-force toward him and Glaraz, not slowing as they came, but glancing harmlessly off the pair of them with no more force than raindrops. This second volley joined the first set of spears on the ground. A few sank their flint heads into the dirt and quivered as they came to a stop, embedded in the ground. Most clattered flat to the dirt.
“Is it my turn now?” Glaraz questioned the hunters above, more than a trace of contempt clear in his voice. Without waiting for any response from the tribesmen, the black-robed necromancer raised both hands, fingers splayed wide and pointing outward and upward, and uttered more strange words.
“Buvishim’te’calba!”
As Zarynn watched, bolts of a deep but shimmering greyness, the colour of the rare storm clouds occasionally seen above the plains, appeared to leap from Glaraz’s fingers, splitting and forking to strike each of the hunters surrounding the pair on the hilltops above. The effect was instant and all-encompassing. Some of the men were hit in the face or the chest, some merely in an arm or shoulder, but all cried out in agonising pain and crashed to the ground, rolling downhill toward the path below, as the strange deep grey magic tore into them. Zarynn gaped as the necromancer’s power blasted their attackers. In an instant it was done, and most of the hunters who had ambushed them lay
dead around them. A few, those who had taken the blasts to their shoulders or arms, still lived, with no visible wounds or shed blood but writhing and moaning in pain, evidently too weak to continue fighting.
“Y-you killed them!” Zarynn managed to find his voice, still gaping
“They would have killed us,” Glaraz shrugged. “When the choice is to kill or to die, the choice is obvious. I choose to live.” The necromancer’s gaze passed over the dead and wounded. He nodded as he selected one of the wounded men in particular, and began striding toward his chosen target, catching Zarynn’s wrist in a gloved hand as he passed to pull Zarynn in his wake. With a few quick strides, the black-robed outlander reached the hunter he sought. His black-booted foot came down on the injured hunter’s throat, pressing the man down as he began to try to scramble to his feet.
“I will have answers now,” the necromancer said softly to his victim. “How did you primitives set this ambush? Those I left behind could not have covered so much ground so swiftly. Word was sent ahead of us, yes? Carried how? More ambushers wait ahead, yes? How many wait yet for us, and where?”
The injured hunter – clearly in pain, though Zarynn could see no obvious wound upon the man – glared up at Glaraz, gritting his teeth against his agony. The necromancer pressed down slightly with his booted foot, causing the man to let out a strangled, choking wheeze.
“I will have answers,” Glaraz repeated insistently. The wounded hunter glared up at him and held his silence, only choking as the necromancer’s boot pressed again on his throat.
“If-if you kill him, he can’t talk,” Zarynn ventured.
“Death is no barrier to truth,” the necromancer smiled grimly. “Ghosts and spirits lie not, when one such as I commands them to speak.” He stared down at the choking man on the ground. “Last chance. Speak now, and you die cleanly. Refuse, and death will not be your end. I will call your spirit back and bind it to your corpse, and then you will speak.”
The hunter glared up at Glaraz, coughing and choking, and attempted to speak. The necromancer moved his foot to allow the man to form words.
“Druids ordered an ambush,” the man rasped weakly. “Carried on the wings of birds, the Druids’ will and words. When Druids order, the People obey. Many more hunters wait in the hills, outlander, and three Druids lead them. You will not survive. Kill me now, but my kin will avenge me, and the Druids will send your soul to Hell.”
“Yours first,” Glaraz snorted. “So. Three Druids await us. Brown or black? Masters, or merely Wanderers?”
The hunter’s only response was a brief rattle of breath as the air left his lungs and the last gleam of life faded from his eyes.
◆◆◆
The necromancer grimaced as the hunter expired on the ground before him. Wretched primitives. These are no real threat, but three Druids? Should have ended the one at the execution ground. He must have managed to send word ahead of us, even if he could not himself catch us. Sloppy. Overconfident.
“You will not escape me so cleanly,” Glaraz glared down at the corpse. “I must know what I face, brown or black.” The necromancer grimaced, partly in annoyance that the man had unobligingly died with the interrogation unfinished, and partly in irritation at the continued need to sully his tongue with the language of the eastern primitives.
“Druids wear brown,” his newest young charge, the boy Zarynn, objected. The necromancer bit back his irritation: it would never do to alienate the boy for whom he had undertaken this wretched trek into hostile territory.
“Many wear brown, it is true,” Glaraz acknowledged instead. “Perhaps, young Zarynn, you have only ever seen brown Druids? But black-clad Druids also exist, and they are often more perilous than the brown. Brown Druids can call the beasts and birds, and they can take on beast forms also. Black Druids, instead, weave darkness and shadow and hellfire. If three Druids lie in wait for us, I must know what I face.” The necromancer looked over the bodies, confirming that, as he had thought, the remaining primitives had expired during his attempt to interrogate one of their number. “Since these who ambushed us are dead, I must call this one back as a spirit. The dead cannot lie to me.”
Without waiting for a reply from the boy, Glaraz straightened up, clearing his mind to properly call upon his necromantic Gift. The necromancer focused his trained awareness on the traces of recent death that lingered still in this place, sifting one from the others, invoking his will that this particular slain hunter’s spirit should return to the body that housed it. Finally, he spoke the words in the Tongue Arcane that actualised his focused intent.
“Shuz’muar, hulvid! Shuz’muar, azh calach!”
The effect was immediate. A glimmer of red light flared in the staring eyes of the dead man, and his slack-jawed face contorted into a momentary soundless snarl. All as Glaraz had expected. The spirits of the recently slain dead never liked being forcibly called back from whatever afterlife had awaited them to re-inhabit their corpses, and especially if he who forced them back was also he who had slain them. But the necromancer’s call was too strong for a weak spirit such as this one to ignore or to resist, and the same expression of his Gift that pulled the spirit back to its dead body also compelled it to his service and bound it to answer his questions truthfully.
“Tell me, what dangers in these hills must I face,” Glaraz demanded of the reanimated dead body. “Druid Wanderers or Masters, black or brown, and where do they wait in ambush? Should I expect darkweaving and hellfire, or bear’s strength and wolf’s bite?”
◆◆◆
Zarynn stared, shocked silent by the sight. For all that the outlander had spoken of calling the dead back to life – or if not life, at least its mockery – Zarynn was still stunned to see it actually done, and with just a handful of magic words. He gaped as the necromancer – Glaraz, he reminded himself once more – put his questions to the dead body with the red gleam in its eyes.
And the body answered.
“Three Druids, Wanderers all,” the dead man said, in a hollow tone entirely unlike the timbre of his voice in life. “Two brown and one black wait in the hills.”
As Zarynn watched, still dumbstruck by the sight and sound of a man he had seen die talking, Glaraz leaned over the reanimated corpse.
“And what of men and beasts?” the necromancer demanded. “These who lie here dead are not all of them, of that I am sure. How many, and where?”
The dead man’s eyes flickered red again, and his sepulchral voice sounded sullen, almost petulant, to Zarynn’s young ears, as if the recalled spirit had hoped the necromancer would forget to ask about foes other than Druids but could not refuse to answer a direct question.
“Thirteen score spears were sent forth. Lion-Druid and cats patrol the northern hills, Bear-Druid and his bears to the south. The third, black as night and most crafty, waits in the silent vale. A pack of doomwolves heed his word.”
“There is more,” Glaraz insisted. “Tell me all. I demand it!”
“Beware the eyes in the sky,” the dead man grated, drawing out each word as if it were forced from him. “Now let my spirit fly free.”
Zarynn watched as the outlander, Glaraz, glared down at the dead body.
“Silent vale? Tell me, where and what is this vale? I must know.”
“Into the sunset you must go,” the dead man answered with obvious reluctance, “to the place where none can utter a word. Your western magic will not avail you there, outlander, and you will die friendless and alone.” The spirit’s voice relished the prospect of that death.
“A null zone then, one of those from wars long since past?” the necromancer demanded. “How far from here does it lie?”
“Three leagues toward the setting sun and you will find it,” the reanimated corpse responded, with an ugly note of glee growing stronger in his voice. “And you will never leave it. Doomwolves will have your flesh, and the Dark King your soul.” The dead man gave a rattle deep in his throat, which Zarynn gradually realised was an attempt a
t laughter.
“Perhaps or perhaps not. But you will not see it,” the necromancer glared down at the dead man sprawled on the ground. “To Hell with you now, go to meet your demon masters. I do not think they will be happy with your failure. Shuz’muar, hau!”
Zarynn watched as the red light went out of the dead man’s eyes and the corpse went slack once again, as the necromancer’s words of command drove the spirit out of the body once more. Just how powerful was this outlander, if death itself was something he could so easily command? Could anyone, or anything, stand against the man? And what could he do, a mere boy, if the time came that the outlander no longer wanted to save him?
◆◆◆
Glaraz grimaced as he dismissed the tribesman’s spirit back to Hell and whatever reception awaited it there from its demonic masters. The primitive had been no match for his powers and had yielded information enough about what lay ahead that he could at least attempt to avoid the worst. A null zone three leagues (nine miles, he mentally translated) west of his current location, with a Black Druid and an entire pack of doomwolves, was not something to be lightly approached, and preferably thoroughly avoided. In any other setting, he would be entirely confident that his master necromancer’s capabilities would outweigh those of a mere Druid Wanderer, whether Black or Brown. But the null zone was too much of an equaliser, limiting him to those few expressions of his magic that he could wield silently. Druids, relying more on ritual gestures than mystical words to actualise their Gifts, were less hampered by such places. And the doomwolves would be hampered not at all. Thus, he knew, he must avoid this silent vale. And thus, he knew, the other two Druids, and the men and beasts at their command, would try their best to herd him into it, if they could not bring him down any other way.
Glaraz considered his options. Thirteen score of the primitives, probably chosen as much for the ritual significance of the number as any other reason. No real challenge while my earthbone wards last, or can be renewed, unless they get too close. Earthbone will be useless if they can to grapple and subdue us by weight of numbers. So, they must be kept at a distance. They will likely be spread out, however, patrolling these hills in small bands, so I cannot afford to spend my killing magics too swiftly.