The Necromancer Series Box Set

by Deck Davis

  But where was the academy now? Where was their help? The closest academy instructor was in the alleyway knocked out cold, which was the least he deserved after what he’d done.

  Screw their values.

  Jakub spoke the spellword of Reanimate and cast it over and over again. Three of the dead shoppers rose from the cobbles. One was a man with a hole where his stomach had been, his guts and entrails hanging out. A woman was missing an arm, while an older man had lost half his face in the blast.

  Jakub wasn’t done. He reanimated two more of them, commanding them to rise and become one of his puppets, tools of his shade.

  After this his essence gave out, his soul necklace empty.

  *Necromancy EXP Gained!*

  [IIIIIII ]

  Three of you go east, two go west. Block the guards; keep them busy.

  He felt a pang of guilt as he watched his reanimated dead stumble over the cobbles, nothing in their minds now but an utter obedience to his commands.

  By doing this, he knew he’d closed their resurrection windows. He’d taken away their chance of a true resurrection and doomed them to live their afterlives, brief as they might be, as his slaves.

  The academy would not have the spare essence to resurrect them, said Mancerno. You know that. And if they did, would they use it on them? On normal people, ones that have to importance to the academy or the Queendom?

  He knew Mancerno was right.

  “Does this mean they won’t go to the afterlives?”

  If you reanimate the newly-dead for just a few minutes and then release them, they will still find their afterlives. If you hold on to them for too long, you will deny them their passage. That is the cost of the Raiser.

  And that cost would seep into Jakub’s conscience. He knew that now, but there was no time to dwell on it.

  Trusting that his awakened dead would at least make the guards hesitate for a minute or two, he darted over to the mana box station. His boots crunched over broken glass, and the little of the structure that remained made a creaking sound, the beams and brickwork ready to topple.

  “Witas?” he said.

  The cleric didn’t answer, so Jakub began his search. The blight coursed through him stronger now, gurgling in his stomach, sending a thud through his temples.

  With every brick he moved, every beam of wood he lifted, the thud increased, but he pushed himself on, knowing the guards wouldn’t be distracted by his dead puppets for long.

  Finally, he found him.

  “Holy hells,” he said, and felt a new sickness wash through him.

  CHAPTER 71

  Witas’s left leg had been crushed by a chunk of stone. There was a wound on the back of his head, raw-looking and with blood mixing with the dust on his hair. His face was scorched; parts of it were black, other parts crimson.

  The worst of the horror was saved for his right arm; it was almost wholly torn off, hanging on by just a split of tendons and crushed bone.

  Looking at it, Jakub felt his stomach turn and his legs go light, the nausea sending a shiver through him.

  No time for that, he told himself.

  He put his fingers against Witas’s neck and then held his breath, hoping beyond everything that he felt something.

  Nothing. He was gone.

  But then he felt a thud. Slow, faint, but it was a pulse.

  Across the way, further west and east of the royal mile, the guards had stopped. They approached Jakub’s reanimated people. They were all armed, all in their leathers with the Queen’s emblem printed on them.

  Jakub saw one of them open his mouth and say something, but he couldn’t catch the words.

  Looking at the cobbles, he saw that there were still a few corpses laying there. He said his Soul Harvest spellword, draining the essence from the dead and letting it wash over to him, where it snaked into his necklace.

  Next, he cast Health Harvest and directed it at Witas, but he was so covered in wounds it was hard to know what to aim for. Even the healing mist itself seemed confused; it spread over his legs, then his arms, his chest, getting weaker each time.

  “This isn’t doing shit.”

  Health Harvest was magic, but it wasn’t a miracle, and especially not at a level [1].

  Maybe I should have chosen the Tapper shade after all, he thought.

  Nonsense, said Mancerno.

  “Do you have anything useful to say? Anything about being a Raiser I don’t know?”

  They are keeping the guards away from you; is that not enough?

  “Damn it. Come, Witas.”

  He cast Health Harvest again, this time pouring as much essence as he could and sending it over Witas until he was awash with the mist.

  Witas groaned. He moved, then screamed in pain when his limp right arm scratched along the ground.

  “Can you stand?”

  Witas coughed, spitting out blood.

  Moving wasn’t an option; the man was clinging to life by a torn thread.

  “This is going to hurt a hell of a lot,” said Jakub.

  He had no choice; he needed to move him, and there wasn’t a delicate way of doing it.

  He looked at one of his reanimated on the west of the Royal Mile.

  Come here, he commanded.

  It was the man with a torn stomach. He shuffled over to Jakub, every move of his legs jolting a sliver of intestines that were hanging out of him. When he got closer, Jakub could smell the iron of blood, the stomach-churning aroma of faeces.

  “Lift him up,” he said.

  The reanimated reached for Witas’s right arm. Jakub watched in horror as he tugged it, snapping the skin and muscle that was barely keeping it on his body.

  He pulled his arm off.

  Witas screamed so loud, so high, that it drilled into Jakub’s skull and made his temples feel like they were going to burst.

  “Oh fuck. Holy hells,” he said.

  He went dizzy then. In all his training, all the corpses he’d seen, he’d never been subjected to this level of mutilation.

  The guards are coming¸ said Mancerno.

  That sparked energy into him. Get caught, and there was nothing he could do. They’d take Jakub away to the cells beneath Dispolis, and Witas would wind up on a gurney in the guardship basement.

  Forcing back his revulsion, he picked up Witas’s arm and put it in his inventory bag.

  He used the last of his essence to fire Health Harvest at Witas’s shoulder, where blood spurted where his arm had once been. The mists closed the wound a little; not completely, but enough to slow the blood from a spurt to a dribble.

  Help me carry him.

  Together, he and his reanimated dragged Witas across the Royal Mile and to the alleyway.

  The guards sprinted toward them now.

  “Fucking zombies!” shouted one, cutting down one of Jakub’s reanimated women.

  He and the reanimated reached the alleyway, where Henwright was stirring.

  Jakub grabbed him by the hair, pulling it so hard that Henwright cried out. “How much can the suitcase hold?” he said.

  Henwright blinked, his eyes dazed. “Jakub, I-”

  Jakub pulled his hair harder. He felt strands tear from his scalp. “How much can it hold?”

  “It is artificed; it will hold as much as you need.”

  Jakub could have commanded his reanimated man using his mind, but he spoke so that Henwright would hear. “If he moves, kill him,” he said.

  Flushed with adrenaline, he dashed out into the Royal Mile and shifted rocks and bodies to the side until he found the suitcase.

  Next, he opened it and then found Trout’s body, and he put him inside. With that done, with the guards even closer, the went back into the alleyway and dropped the case.

  Jakub faced his reanimated. Put Witas in the suitcase, he commanded.

  As the man carried out his wishes, Jakub had a second to consider what to do with Henwright.

  Should he kill him? Would that be enough vengeance for what he
’d done?

  It might make Jakub feel better, but it wouldn’t help. They still needed something to take back to the academy. Not only did he have to clear his and Witas’s names for the dead guards, but there was the problem of the bastards who had killed Trout in the first place.

  He didn’t like it, but it looked like Henwright was going to have to live another day. He had to face up to what he’d done.

  The reanimated man had put Witas in the suitcase now. Jakub nodded at Henwright. “Get in,” he told him.

  “What?”

  “Get in the case, or you die now. That’s your choice.”

  “Guards!” shouted Henwright.

  Jakub punched him in the nose, and he heard something crunch.

  “Get in the fucking case, or I’ll gut you before the guards get here.”

  Henwright crawled to the suitcase, blood dripping from his nose, spit bubbling on his lips, and he climbed into the case.

  Jakub closed it shut. Then, as the first of the guards neared him, he picked up the case.

  Artificery was truly a wonderful thing; even with two grown men and a boy inside, even with the blight weakening him, it felt light.

  He took off down the alleyway, forcing himself to sprint through his sickness.

  CHAPTER 72

  He ran in a daze, sticking to the side streets and alleyways, sprinting even when his calves burned and his lungs tightened. He listened for voices and for boots, and when he heard them, he went the opposite direction.

  By the time he reached a deserted side street, he was ready to drop. He put the suitcase on the ground and sat beside it, pressed against the back wall of a building. Water dripped from a gutter above him. Rather than move, Jakub let the water fall onto his hair and run down his face, mixing with his sweat.

  Days earlier, he’d arrived in Dispolis with no fanfare. He was just one of the crowd, one of the thousands of people who walked the streets of the city, with nothing special about him to call attention on himself.

  Now, the guardship were looking for him, and he had his friend and a traitorous academy instructor inside an artificed suitcase. He’d contracted the blight, and he’d found out his mentor had died.

  He’d never felt so ill, so alone, so lost.

  Where now? Where could he go?

  Witas was the priority. He had to hope that his Health Harvest had patched him up enough to keep him alive. Even if it had, he didn’t have long.

  The image of the reanimated man accidentally tearing off Witas’s arm replayed in his mind.

  No. Don’t think about it.

  He imagined a metal door shutting in his mind, blocking off all his fears, his sickness, an ever-growing sense of helplessness.

  As it slammed shut, he’d never been more thankful for the lessons Irvine had given him in mental training.

  He had to get to him and make him listen, and now he had Henwright as proof of what was happening.

  But first, there was Witas. Okay. Who can fix him up?

  There was the mender that Witas had mentioned, but he plied his trade from the Royal Mile, as did all the other menders. Going back to the Mile wasn’t an option.

  Healers at the academy could fix Witas up, but there was no way Jakub could get him there in time.

  So where could he go?

  Where would Witas suggest, if he could say?

  Well, he was a black cleric. But once, he’d been a normal cleric; one who called on the divine and used their powers to heal.

  The Church of the Brightlight. That was where Witas had once used his gifts. After they had dismissed Witas, they would have brought in a new cleric, and that was where Jakub had to go.

  He retreated into his own head, into his mind palace where he dredged up the remnants of the story Witas had told him.

  The Church of the Brightlight, in the Mussand district.

  Jakub stood up, looked around to try and get his bearings, and then he set out, hoping he was going in the right direction.

  CHAPTER 73

  He’d heard that you could tell a lot about a religion from the place its followers built to worship in. When he got to the Church of the Brightlight what he found was a humble structure in Dispolis’s Mussand district, standing at the end of a row of houses that were a far cry from the grander homes of the cities richer citizens.

  The smell of fish was carried by wind that blew from the docks a few thousand metres west. From the church itself, the sound of a lute danced from a window that was open just a crack, the tune lively and one that Jakub recognised; though when he’d last heard it, it was in a tavern, and the bard had put lyrics to it that would have made any respectable church-goer blush.

  As light as the artificed case was, his arm burned by the time he dragged it up the steps and to the church doorway, which was no larger nor more refined than the doors on the houses along the row.

  If the building said anything about its religion, it was that the church didn’t put itself above the people who came here.

  He set the case down and rubbed his bicep. He’d had to switch which arm he carried it with few times on the way here, and he’d had to stop every so often to listen out, to scope the way ahead and make sure there were no guards.

  Now, he knocked on the church door, desperate to get off the street, wondering how the hell he was going to explain this.

  A voice answered his knocking. “Service is cancelled. Go watch the parade.”

  What had Witas said the priest was called?

  “Priest Mossaraya?” said Jakub.

  A lock clicked and the door opened. Priest Mossaraya was a short man, and his cassock looked small on his bulging frame. It was wrinkled and full of stains; food, dirt, even oil. Mossaraya’s hands matched it; he had calluses and cuts, and Jakub smelled turpentine on him.

  Judging by the state of the church, he guessed the priest had to do most of the maintenance on it himself.

  “I haven’t seen you in our services before,” said Mossaraya.

  “I’m not here for that.”

  “The soup kitchen opens at five,” said Mossaraya, and gave him a smile. “Come back then, eh, and we’ll get some meat on your bones. You look like hell.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “I told you; services are cancelled today. When the Queen’s uncle has his parades, nobody bothers attending, so I don’t bother preparing anything. Nothing worse than preaching to an empty room.”

  “I don’t need food, I don’t need service. I just have to talk to you.”

  Mossaraya eyed him strangely now. “Are you in trouble? You know that the church can’t deny entry to the guardship, yes?”

  Wow, had the priest figured him out that quickly?

  It made sense, he guessed. Priest Mossaraya must have had hundreds of people give confessions to him over the years, and it stood to reason he’d learn what someone who was in trouble looked like.

  “Okay, yeah. I’m in a mess. Just let me in, and I can explain-”

  “I’ve gotten in a lot of difficulties over things like this. I know the guards are heavy handed with you urchins. I know that a lad has got to eat; I don’t hold judgment on what you do for food. But I was warned by Captain Blackrum that if they caught me sheltering one of you just a single more time…”

  “I’m not an urchin, okay? I’m in…well, a damn sight more trouble than that. Let me in and I’ll explain.”

  Mossaraya shook his head. “Sorry, boy, I mean that, but I can’t.”

  As he went to shut the door, Jakub caught it. “Witas told me your name,” he said.

  Mossaraya sucked in his cheeks. He frowned, and then stepped aside. “Come in. and hurry up. Tongues wag around here.”

  Looking left to right at the neighbourhood outside, Mossaraya let Jakub go past him and then closed the door.

  CHAPTER 74

  Jakub had taken only a few steps inside the church, and as soon as he heard the door shut and knew he was finally off the streets, it all hit him.

  He
nwright, the explosion, the guards, Witas. He’d held it back as long as he could, but it was like instructor Irvine had always said; you can close a mental door for a while, you can shut your troubles out, but they don’t disappear. You have to face them eventually, and the longer you wait, the stronger they’ll be.

  That was why the academy encouraged recruits to train, to run, to have duels in the sword yards. Anything to get their fear, anger, frustration out before it bottled up and got ready to burst.

  Jakub had waited too long, and now he found himself sitting on the floor of the church, tears building in his eyes and fighting to come out, as much as he didn’t want them to.

  “Hey, hey, lad,” said Mossaraya. He said this in the same way Kortho would have; a dep voice, yet with kindness in it. He put his arm on Jakub’s back.

  “I’m fine,” said Jakub.

  “I let you in for one reason. You said that Witas told you my name. Well, I’m going to tell you something else. Stay away from that man. I know what they call him, because I’m the one who gave him that name.”

  “He used to be the cleric here, didn’t he?”

  “A long time ago.”

  “He said you helped him. He’d been expelled from the academy, and-”

  “That’s water that has long left this stream. No point looking for it, best to focus on what’s trickling by now. A young lad like you, you have no business with him.”

  “He told me about everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “About Ria, and how she died.”

  Mossaraya let out a long, trailing breath. “Every man who descended from grace has a hand that pushed him.”

  “Witas needs your help,” said Jakub.

  “Witas knows better than to ask me.”

  “He didn’t ask; the little I know of him, I guess he’d be too prideful. So, I brought him here.”

  Mossaraya looked around. “You’re not making sense.”

  “Just promise me you won’t…do anything. You won’t go running out of the door, or anything.”

  “This is the Church of the Brightlight and I am its priest; there’s nothing outside of these doors that I need.”