The Necromancer Series Box Set

by Deck Davis

  He made a similar promise to a wagon driver who he knew. The man had a lame leg, but he refused to either join the Church of the Brightlight as a worshipper or donate coin in order to get healed.

  “Get me out of the city and don’t breathe a word to anyone,” said Witas, “and I’ll heal your leg.”

  Smuggled under the canopy on his wagon, Witas took Ria to the academy, where his old classmates, now graduated novices, flocked around his wagon as it pulled into the grounds.

  “Get my brother,” he told them.

  Just an hour later, he, Ian, and Master Kortho were in a room on the necromancy wing, near the resurrection chambers.

  “I’m sorry, lad,” said Kortho. “You know the rules.”

  “Fuck the rules. Bring her back.”

  “She isn’t family,” said Ian. “Soul essence is so expensive, they’ll only let me bring family back.”

  “She isn’t family? She was going to be your sister-in-law in less in less than a month, you moron. Or don’t you remember the wedding invite you never replied to?”

  Kortho leaned forward. “Witas, do you know how much essence it takes to do this? To resurrect one person, we need the equivalent of a dozen lives’ worth of soul essence. That isn’t given lightly, with kingdom funds being as they are. It is a perk of necromancers that they are allowed-”

  “A perk? Saving her life is a perk?”

  “This isn’t saving her life; it is granting her a new one. She has had her time.”

  “Twenty-four years old, murdered in an alleyway. She had her time?”

  “None of us can measure death and calculate when he’ll come. Death is beyond reasoning. I’m sorry, Witas.”

  Witas looked at his brother. “Ian? Tell them you want to use your perk.”

  Ian said nothing for a few seconds.

  Witas knew then he’d never forgive his brother for that pause; it lasted only a moment, but there should have been no doubt. Witas wouldn’t have hesitated even a millisecond if everything was reversed.

  “Kortho, I’d like to use my resurrection,” said Ian.

  Kortho shook his head. “It isn’t yours to dish out like sweet treats, novice. The academy decides when your resurrection will be used, and guidelines are clear; only a necromancer or their immediate blood family can use it.”

  So that was the end. Witas pleaded, he grew angry, but nothing would change Kortho’s mind. Ria’s resurrection window closed, and Witas knew that she’d gone to the afterlife.

  And that was when he decided to join her.

  A rope, a rafter, a deep breath, and then a kick of a chair.

  With that, Witas was in the Greylands.

  He just had to wait out his time there and then pray that he went to the same of the Seven that Ria had gone to.

  When that happened, he’d see her again. Not just for a moment, but for immortality.

  He just had to wait.

  And then he woke up in the resurrection chambers of the academy.

  CHAPTER 41

  Witas paused for a second, pale-faced and tense. Water dripped from the sewer ceiling and snaked down his face, his jaw and onto his neck where the rope had scarred him, but he didn’t move.

  Jakub knew about the perk. He knew about essence and how precious it was, he knew academy rules around resurrection.

  But it was one thing knowing it as an objective truth, and another hearing his mentor put it into practice. Had Kortho really just let Ria die?

  Don’t be so damned stupid, he told himself.

  He’d made a mental error so jarring for a necromancer that he almost felt like he should be stripped of the title altogether.

  Kortho didn’t let her die; she was already dead. He just did his duty as the academy decreed it.

  He shared none of this with Witas. “Instructor Irvine arranged for you to be resurrected,” he said.

  Witas nodded. “He used his perk. That’s brotherly love for you.”

  “He could have saved that resurrection for himself. He must care about you.”

  “Look, I know most guys would thank the guy who saved their life. Without Ria, I didn’t have much to come back to. When I went to the church, Priest Mossaraya came to see me. He told me that coming back from death was unnatural and went against the teachings of Brightlight. They couldn’t keep me as a cleric anymore.”

  “One thing I don’t understand,” said Jakub. “Why’d you fall out with Ian? He came through for you. Sure, it took a while, but he made the right choice.”

  “And when people start acting with logic instead of emotion, the world will be a better place. I blamed him for bringing me back, because that meant I couldn’t join Ria.”

  “What did you do when the church told you to leave?”

  “You know much about clerics, Jakub?”

  “Only that most of them are healers.”

  “Clerics have always had a religious association. Look in books, and you’ll see drawings of them dressed in white looking holier than the divines themselves. But clericism isn’t about that; clericism at its base means calling power from things beyond our physical world. Whether that’s from the gods, or from something else. When the church gave me the shove and blocked my access to the entities they called their ‘deities’, I found other things to draw on.”

  “Demons from the Blacktyde.”

  Witas nodded. “Problem is, you can’t expect to draw healing energy from those bastards. It changed my spells completely.”

  “I can’t imagine there’s much call for a black cleric.”

  “I wasn’t interested in earning money that way,” said Witas. “I wanted to find the bastard who killed Ria. Captain Blackrum said if I used my gifts to help him on other stuff, he’d keep the investigation into Ria’s murder open, and give it resources. That was the deal – I helped him solve his cases and look good so he could get promoted, and he’d make sure Ria didn’t get forgotten.”

  “And you think the guys coming after me…did they kill Ria?”

  “You can’t tie a neat little bow around life, Jakub. The guy who murdered Ria could be dead, could be in jail for something else, could be living five hundred miles away. Or…the bastard could still be in Dispolis. I’ll find him one day, even if I have to die and then crawl through the Seven afterlives before I can rip his heart out.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Jakub could see why Witas had been annoyed with Instructor Irvine. Resurrection was one thing, but forced resurrection?

  That kind of thing was why ‘do not resurrect’ notes were signed, and it was one of the only situations where you could be mad at the person who saved you and not sound like an ass.

  If only Witas knew what a privilege it was, though. It used to be, you had to earn master status before you earned ‘the perk’, before you were granted the resurrection of a family member on their passing.

  They’d relaxed that to include anyone over the journeyman rank, but everyone knew it was still bullshit; academy finances hadn’t improved at all, yet the number of people training for necromancy was dropping, since they were more lucrative magical disciplines that didn’t involve seeing corpses all the time.

  The academy had promised the perk on reaching journeyman status, but when it came to it, they were like weapon insurers; they’d do anything to avoid paying out.

  ‘Are you sure he’s your father? He doesn’t look related to you.’

  ‘Sorry, we found a ‘Do Not Resurrect’ note on his body. What? Your father was paralysed and couldn’t write? Well, we found the note, so…’

  As a necromancer, he should have been angry at someone who willingly gave away their life, but he couldn’t bring himself to be. Who was he to judge?

  The only person who could judge Witas was himself.

  “You haven’t said much,” said Witas. “You’re gonna give me the same lecture Ian did, aren’t you?”

  “I’m a novice necromancy banished from the academy, and I’m at least thirty years younger than you. I’m
hardly in a position to climb on a pulpit.”

  “When he brought me back, Ian gave me an hour long talk about the miracle of life, the sanctity of it. Sanctity? Ha. The only thing sanctimonious was him. Lecturing me, thinking he knew me.”

  “Witas, life and death are issues with so complex that it’d be ridiculous for me to lecture you,” said Jakub. “Kinda like me trying to lecture you on the nature of the cosmos. Everyone makes their own path and pay for their own choices.”

  “Pretty level-headed. When I was your age, I was drunk half the time, whoring around the other.”

  “I didn’t make it up. Kortho taught me that saying. I think he did, anyway.”

  “I never told anyone that, you know,” said Witas. “I didn’t even give Ian the full story. After he resurrected me, he wouldn’t forgive me for ending it, and I wouldn’t forgive him for bringing me back. I’m surprised he sent you to me.”

  “He must have had his reasons.”

  “Maybe. If he has, he keeps them in his head. Thanks for listening, anyway,” said Witas. “We better get out of here. The smell is starting to turn my stomach.”

  “One last thing before we do.”

  It was something he’d been waiting for. A tremor of excitement had been building in him since he’d realised how close he was to levelling up, but there had been so much to do.

  He wouldn’t go any further without finishing it, though. It was too good an opportunity.

  He stood by the pool of water again. He shivered when he looked at it, and felt like he could taste it again.

  “It’s not the time for another swim. We still don’t know what damage the last one did to you,” said Witas.

  Jakub spoke the spellword of Resurrect Minor Creature and kept his focus on the waters.

  Essence left his soul necklace and cast wide over the surface, before sinking deeper.

  “Let’s hope there’s one more. I just need one…”

  The water churned from motion underneath.

  “Is that you?” said Witas.

  Jakub nodded, and he held his breath, waiting to see what would swim up from the waters.

  Before he saw it, text cast into being just inches away, floating level with his eyeline.

  *Necromancy EXP Gained!*

  [IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII]

  *Level Up!*

  New Rank: Journeyman [1]

  He wasn’t a novice anymore. After years of studying, after using his necromancy in the field, he wasn’t the lowest rung on the ladder anymore.

  His heart beat so fast he felt light headed.

  Me? A journeyman?

  It was inevitable that he’d get there if he used his skills, but at the same time it’d seemed unobtainable.

  I wonder what spells come with it.

  Before he could cast away the text and see what being a journeyman meant, before he could see what he’d resurrected from the pool of water, the room warped around him.

  The walls shrunk and then new ones grew in their place, the ceiling stretched out and cracked, and the sewer smells disappeared.

  Jakub found himself somewhere else; a place he’d heard of before.

  CHAPTER 43

  He was in a large hall with a vaulted ceiling so high up that he could barely see it. Similarly, the room was long enough that the windows at the end of it were just specks, and travelling across it looked like a full day’s journey.

  The room was bright, with rays of white light casting through the glass ceiling and through the windows on either side of him. There was nothing beyond the windows, though; no scenery, no landscapes, just pure, white light.

  It was Necromancia Hall; said to be the place where necromancy was born, and a place now gone from the physical world, having been damaged beyond repair in a war.

  Was he really here? Kortho and Irvine had both taught the students about this place, but advancing beyond journeyman had just seemed so far away.

  Now that he was here, he couldn’t wait to see what it meant to him. To his powers.

  He heard movement behind him, and the smell of mana exploded into the room.

  He spun around to see the Three hovering there. They greeted him in turn.

  “Hello, young ‘un.”

  “He doesn’t look like much.”

  “Two months since our last visitor…and we get this?”

  The Three were gaseous forms; human-sized but with no bodies, and differentiated by their colors – red, black, and green.

  Red seemed to hang in the air like fog, still and thick. Black was like a cloud in a thunderstorm; energy crackling inside him. Green was always said to look mischievous, and Jakub could see why; she swirled one direction, then another, then up, then down, almost as if she couldn’t stop.

  It had seemed ludicrous to Jakub when he heard Irvine and Kortho talk about these misty forms with gender pronouns; two he’s and a she. He saw why now, though.

  Through Red’s stillness, Black’s crackle, Green’s swirls, sometimes glimmers of their old faces appeared inside the light. Only for a second, but enough that he glimpsed the humans they had once been.

  Green rushed at him, and Jakub stepped back. She stopped centimeters from his face, so close he thought he might inhale her with a breath.

  “A student,” she said. Her voice seemed to come from inches away yet removed at the same time, as if her words came from the walls and the ceiling. “This one looks fun.”

  Red made a growling sound. “Just a journeyman.”

  A flash of yellow sparked in black, and a faint rumbling sound came from him. “Speak our names, so you may learn your shade.”

  “No,” said Jakub. “You’re the one who tells lies, aren’t you? I know who you all are.”

  Green floated in front of his face gain. “He presumes to know us.”

  Were they serious? Every necromancer knew who they were. “Nelania, Crotalus, and Mancerno. The original three necromancers. They took the word necromancy from your names.”

  “So they’re teaching the academy kids how to read these days. How impressive,” said Black.

  “Nelania, you’re the one who lies. The thundercloud over here, Crotalus, insults everyone.” Then Jakub eyed the red mist. “Mancerno, you beguile them.”

  “There’s a difference between lying and beguiling?” asked Nelania, her ethereal voice coming from behind him, around him, above him in a sing-song way.

  Jakub nodded. “Lying involves tell a falsehood convincingly enough that the other person believes it. Beguiling removes the option of belief or disbelief and changes a person’s mind so there’s no choice but to accept a lie as the truth.”

  “Our graduates can quote from the dictionary. So impressive,” said Crotalus, as sparks flashed over his black form.

  “If it’s a choice between lies, trickery, and insults, I’d rather deal with you, Crotalus.”

  “Then you are choosing my shade?”

  “No…I just trust you more to get this started.”

  Jakub knew what he had to do then; Kortho had explained it all to them in a class about advancement.

  The key with the Three was to forget all notions of respect.

  “It might sound strange to hear me say that,” Kortho had said. “I know I always drum into you, respect, respect, respect. But the Three, though they are the original necromancers, are not like us. They perverted the art that they created. When you advance in rank, you will meet them. I urge you to show your spine when you see them.”

  So now, seeing lightening zap around Crotalus, hearing the tones of Nelania’s gentle humming spread around the room, seeing Mancerno hang there, blood red and quiet, Jakub knew what to do.

  He walked through them, feeling their vapors pass over his skin.

  “Such insolence!”

  “He walked right through me!”

  “It burns, it burns!”

  “Shut up; it doesn’t burn,” said Jakub.

  He ignored them and he walked through the hall. He knew that he ha
d to reach the end, a journey that was said to take seven hours to complete.

  He wondered about Witas, about everything going on in the sewers and Dispolis. It was selfish, but he felt better leaving it behind for a while.

  Despite a faint pain in his stomach, maybe from the dirty water he’d choked down, despite his skin stinging from the quick drenching and drying, he walked.

  Above everything he’d been through, this was a moment, one of many, that he’d dreamed about when he was studying. It was something every necromancer dreamed about.

  “When you reach journeyman rank,” Kortho had told them, “it will be time to choose your shade. This is a key moment in a necromancer’s life, and I advise you to learn about them now. Consider this question for at least part of every day from now until you start to work in the field and advance.”

  And so Jakub had. Every day, at some point, he’d remembered Kortho’s words.

  After Jakub had hiked across the hall for four hours, Crotalus floated by him, leaving a black trail. “So…what’s it gonna be?”

  “Didn’t the original scriptures say you were supposed to be unbiased?” asked Jakub.

  “Is it biased for me to say that objectively that the Death Draw shade offers more practicality for a necromancer?”

  Nelania laughed, and the sound floated around the room. “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “Will you guys just leave me alone? I need to think.”

  That wasn’t true; he’d make up his mind long ago. He was going to choose the Tapper shade, the same as Kortho.

  If he told them that now, though, Nelania would be happy, but the others would bug him for the next few hours.

  “What use is thinking without the facts? Allow me to explain the shade of the Tapper. Now, you might think that-”

  “I know all about the shades. The more you guys pester me, the less I can think. Leave me alone to make my decision.”

  “A decision? The novice thinks he can decide for himself, without the aid of centuries-old masters? The ones who created his very craft? Pathetic.”