Dead But Once

by Auston Habershaw

  For all his anger at her, Myreon felt confident her plan had worked. Tyvian would have to declare, and once he did, he wouldn’t turn his back on these people. She felt more buoyant than she had in months; she actually had some good news for her apprentices, for her people. Their “king” was going to help them, whether he wanted to or not. His ring would see to it.

  But then the wand led her to Traitor’s Square, and there Myreon’s cautious optimism died.

  All along the top of the hedges of Dovechurch were planted dozens of pikes. Mounted on these pikes were human heads.

  And her wand had led her here. To Bree.

  “No . . .” Myreon dropped the wand and hurried across the square, forgetting all pretense at stealth—there was no one around, anyway. “No!”

  The crows perched atop the grisly trophies took flight as Myreon came close, squinting through the dark of the moonless night. After an afternoon of being picked at by ravens, the heads were difficult to recognize.

  But she did recognize them. Most of them.

  They were her students. All of her students. Including Bree.

  Hanging from each pike was a small placard with a single word written in white paint:

  TREASON

  Tears poured down Myreon’s face. She hugged herself against the evening chill and tried not to sob audibly. All her lessons, all her training—it had meant nothing. It had saved no one. They were all dead, and she was the cause.

  Argus Androlli stepped from the shadows. “You have been making a lot of work for me lately.”

  Myreon reinforced her wards by instinct, expecting a black bag over her head from behind or a blast of sorcerous energy taking her off guard, but nothing came. The Mage Defender simply stood in the center of the street, hands clasped around his staff, his chiseled face grim. “I’m alone. For now.”

  Myreon eyed the shadows anyway. “What do you want, Argus?”

  “You know, I wanted to believe you had nothing to do with all of this. I wanted to believe it was a rogue cell of some sort, acting independently. But here you are.” Androlli shook his head. “Disgusting.”

  Myreon snuffled her tears away. “You’re talking about disgusting? Some of these were children, Argus. You beheaded children.”

  “Spare me.” Androlli sighed, pacing around Myreon at a safe distance, his posture loose—he was ready to cast at any moment, ready to react to her every attack. “You know the laws as well as I do. The Defenders have the duty to arrest in Eretheria, but trial and punishment are settled by the local authorities, not Saldor. And when Banric Sahand is the one handing out the punishments . . .”

  “Sahand?”

  Androlli nodded. “Since your little stunt at the execution, it seems as though Sahand has moved into Ayventry as a kind of regent.” Androlli scowled. “Do you know how I felt having to debrief that beast? Having to shake his damned hand and promise him justice? That’s another thing I blame you for.”

  Myreon tried to calm herself, but her heart was racing. They were dead. Bree and the rest of them—all dead. And while the rebellion, the uprising Myreon knew they’d all hoped for, was happening, it was not as she imagined it. And now Sahand was at the center of it. Gods knew what horrible thing he’d fashion from all of this. This isn’t what I wanted, she thought.

  “If you give us the names and locations of all the other cells and other conspirators, I’ve managed to secure authorization to bring you back to Saldor for trial,” Androlli said. “This is a better fate than you deserve, but it is in the service of the Balance. You might recall what that involves.”

  Others? Myreon watched him cautiously. “If I refuse?”

  “Sahand has offered to assist in the investigation.” Androlli shrugged. “Frankly, I need the manpower. Your little friends will find themselves squeezed like grapes in a press. I envision a witch hunt—even more heads on pikes, some justly, some not. You could prevent all that here and now. Give them up, and this city is spared a lot of pain.”

  “They taught other people,” Myreon breathed. She smiled faintly. Of course. Of course they had! For every spell she taught them, each of her apprentices might have taught two, three, four other people the same little tricks, the same little spells.

  Androlli continued to circle her. “I beg your pardon?”

  Myreon took a deep breath. “Only blood can wash away the sins of man.”

  Androlli’s dark eyebrows shot up. “Quoting the Book of Hann at me? Ironic.”

  “If you choose to believe so. The answer, Androlli, is no.” With that pronouncement, Myreon tapped her staff to the ground and an eruption of Fey energy shot upward—a geyser of crimson brymmfire. It rebounded off Androlli’s and Myreon’s wards, but it was enough to scorch the ground and fill the air with smoke. Myreon channeled the Ether next, melding with the shadows and slipping through the darkness like an eel. By the time Androlli had gathered up enough Dweomeric energy to blow away the smoke and pierce the darkness, she was running down an alley.

  He wasn’t some apprentice, though, and he wasn’t far behind. A sun-bright beam of light poured from the sky and illuminated her, melting her Etheric shadow-shield like ice in a skillet. A lode-bolt followed, rebounding off her wards, but knocking her back a few steps. Myreon responded with a stream of fire that blazed down the alley toward where Androlli stood.

  He caught it and shaped it into a ball of flame and threw it back. But Myreon was already gone, having feyleapt to the roof of a guild hall. Androlli feyleapt after her. “I BIND YOU!”

  Myreon felt the Compulsion come over her, but she pushed back, drawing the Fey from the bottomless reservoir of her anger. When Androlli landed on the roof, she struck it with her staff, causing an explosion of heavy tiles at his feet. Androlli fell backward and toppled off the roof.

  At the same time, though, firepike bolts incinerated Myreon’s sorcerous guards. Two full squads were in position, one trying to cut off her escape, the other climbing up the side of the guild hall with easy, loping motions—lightfoot charms.

  Myreon dropped off the other side of the building. Defenders were there, too. They fired a full volley of firepikes right into her, and it was all she could do to raise a Dweomeric shield strong enough to resist being incinerated.

  As if anticipating her defenses, though, a thunder-orb fell at her feet, and the explosion made the world seem to hold still for a second. Everything was weirdly quiet, the street and the sky spinning. I’m . . . flying through . . . the air . . . Her thoughts seemed hazy, indistinct.

  She hit the cobblestones with a thunderclap impact that brought her back to reality. Her ears still rung, but she was back. She tried to stand.

  Defenders stood over her.

  Myreon tried to roll away, but one of them stomped on her stomach until she threw up. “Don’t you move, rat! You wiggle a whisker and I’ll gut you, so help me Hann!”

  Myreon tried to breathe, tried to speak a spell, but couldn’t manage it.

  She wasn’t sure it mattered.

  Another two Defenders caught up with them. One of them flipped her over and put a knee in the small of her back. The other squatted in front of her and, grabbing Myreon by the hair, bashed her head into the ground a few times. “Where are your Krothing spells now, huh, witch? No more curses for you, eh?”

  The venom in his voice—these were men who hated her. Hated what she was and who she fought for. Men who had dragged Bree to the block—just a girl—and watched as she died. The horror came flooding back—it was almost too much to contemplate. And I used to be one of them. I used to be like Androlli. I was once the monster.

  Myreon spat blood at them.

  “Ah!” The squatting one tried to jump back, but fell over instead. “Ah! The arse-face bitch spat blood on me boots!”

  The first Defender kicked Myreon in the nose. The world spun and flashed white. “Gimme the ‘locks!”

  They hoisted her up and pinned her to the wall while one of them worked her hands into casterlocks. She let it
happen—any struggle would only earn her more injuries. She wanted to scream, but held her silence.

  Of course Androlli set a trap for me. Stupid. So stupid.

  The mirror-man with his forearm pressed into her throat hissed in her ear. “I lost some good friends at the House of Eddon, you bloodthirsty bitch. You think petrification is all you got to face, eh?”

  They threw her to the ground and loomed over her, setting aside their weapons. One of them cracked his knuckles, grinning. “Magus Androlli said we only needed to bring you in alive. He didn’t say nothing about you being in one piece.”

  “You hear that?” one of them yelled over Myreon’s head, as though she were deaf. “Here comes your beating, witch!”

  He wasn’t lying. The beating came. Or, more accurately, the stomping, as they mostly just used their feet. Boots came down again and again—and once, the butt of a firepike. She lost track of time; the world spun and faded away.

  Myreon woke up in total darkness. She thought for a moment maybe she was blind, her eyesight taken by one too many blows to the head. When she felt around, though, she found it wasn’t the case. She wasn’t in the alley anymore. She heard water dripping from somewhere close by—the flat spack of moisture against stone. Beneath her were old bricks covered in moss. The air was stale.

  The sewers.

  She tried to rise, but she was too hurt and the ceiling too low. Trembling, coughing, she rolled onto all fours and crawled in no particular direction. Around her she felt the sticky, sucking sensation of sewer demons looking to feed. She flinched and knocked them away. How had she gotten here? Was this some kind of cruel joke on the part of the Defenders? “Hello?” she croaked. “Hello?”

  She heard a man scream in a way that almost made her water her own breeches. It wasn’t a mere scream of pain. Somebody had just died, and terribly. Myreon went perfectly still, a million terrible childhood stories raging through her head of things that lived in the dark and creatures that fed on the souls of the living.

  A sickly, thin yellow light shot up—a tongue of flame three feet tall. It spouted from a bloody crack in a severed human head, its eyes white and its face covered in blood. It was the face of one of the Defenders who had beaten her.

  Myreon shrieked and recoiled, but there was nowhere to go. The light that poured from the man’s head was enough to illuminate her surroundings. It was an older part of the sewers—one she didn’t recognize. Here the natural caves had reasserted their dominance over the constructions of mortal man—bricks and mortar lay in damp, uneven piles. Moss and mushrooms grew in abundance, and the walls were slick with moisture. The chamber itself was large—perhaps fifty paces long—and there were placed here a great many slablike tables and mossy wooden benches, all in various stages of rot and decay.

  On the tables were bodies or parts of bodies. In the yellow light, the blood looked black. It seemed to coat everything. Myreon screamed again, scrambling backward toward the isolated corner where she had awoken. It was then she realized something: the casterlocks had been removed.

  “Be not afraid.” A voice—a thin, raspy voice, cruel and hard—spoke from the shadows. “You are safe, friend Myreon.”

  She knew that voice, though she had never heard it in the flesh before.

  Myreon could not speak. Her mouth hung open, gasping for air or words or some kind of sense. It could find none. She hoped this was some kind of nightmare.

  The speaker stepped into the light, however, and she knew everything that was happening was very real.

  He was scarecrow thin and flagpole tall, his eyes milky white to match his pale flesh, his wisps of white hair. His robe was stained stiff with blood. When he chuckled, his crumbling, rotten teeth were on clear display. “I wouldst think the architect of Count Andluss’s murder might have firmer sinew in her belly. Are you a rat, Myreon the Gray Lady, or are you a woman?”

  Myreon found her voice, though it sounded very much closer to a rat’s than a woman’s. “What do you want from me? Why do you talk like that?”

  “I speak in the manner of the ancients, as is fitting for a sorcerer. I keep to the old ways, and the old ways keep.” The necromancer gestured for Myreon to emerge from her hiding place. “As for you, I wish only your friendship. Come.”

  Myreon slowly crawled out of the crevice and into the chamber. On the stone slab closest to her, the headless body of the Defender was laid out, his armor set aside and his body split down the center—gutted like a fish. Myreon’s gorge rose and she fell to her knees, vomiting.

  The necromancer stood over her, looking down—though Myreon could not say how he saw anything. The man looked blind. “This Defender, over whom you weep, did beat and scorn you, and would have slain you without remorse. And yet you spill bile for him. Why?”

  “What . . . what did you do to him?”

  “Speak you of the mindfire?” The necromancer motioned toward the pyre of yellow fire pouring from the crack in the dead man’s skull. “The Warlock Kings of old did light their cities with the thoughts and dreams of criminals. A head taken alive from a man’s still-living body, its passions and terrors swollen to their zenith, and then lit aflame with sorcerous power. It shall burn for months, consuming his soul in bright fire. So was Ghola, city of Rhadnost the Undying, lit in the darkest winters, a jewel of the world now lost.”

  Myreon somehow felt even worse, now that she knew. “That sorcery is . . . it’s forbidden. Has been for ages. It’s horrible.”

  The necromancer reached down with a scarecrow hand, pulled Myreon to her feet. “Horror? Horror? You speak without thought or wisdom, Magus. How is this more horrible than a milkmaid beheaded? Than a child doomed to starve for a lord’s vanity? Than a father murdered in his own bed for the greed of a landlord?”

  Myreon gasped. “How . . . how did you know about my father?”

  “Though blind, I see much.” The necromancer grinned his horrible, moldy grin. “The eyes of my servants are many places. Through them I am given unblinking sight, unending reach. No one, friend Myreon, evades the gaze of the dead.”

  Myreon straightened her clothing and tried to shake the vomit and scum off her cloak. “You saved me. How? Why?”

  “I have watched your apprentices since you began your tutelage. Moreoever, my esteemed colleagues and I have watched you closely for some years.” The necromancer turned and motioned for her to follow. Myreon did, but at a distance. All around her, the awful stench of decay stifled her breath and stung her eyes. She kept her gaze on the ground just behind the necromancer’s robe, knowing what she might see on the other tables—during her career as a Defender, she had taken down more than a few necromancers, and their lairs were always a den of nightmares. Her peripheral vision caught glimpses of human bodies in various states of dissection; bowls of blood and viscera, slowly congealing in the damp, foul air; bones cobbled together with sinew and silver pegs; piles of skulls, their teeth gleaming in the sickly mindfire-light. Myreon felt the bile rising again, but she fought it back. Get a hold of yourself, woman!

  “For too long have the good people of Eretheria been ruled by the vain and greedy,” the necromancer was saying. “You understand this better than most. You have journeyed far and wide in this city and in the provinces beyond—I have heard your tales through the ears of dead men; your legend has been spoken to me by the many tongues of the grave. You are the Dark Mage, the Gray Lady—champion of the poor, enemy of the nobility. I salute you.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.” This wasn’t a mere hedge wizard or dabbler—being able to use the eyes and ears of dead bodies as spies took real, formal sorcerous training. To her knowledge, there were only a handful of places such knowledge could even be taught: the Kalsaari Empire and the Eastern Archipelago—both half a world away—and the Sorcerous League. It was a secret society of disaffected wizards and sorcerers, opponents to the rigid order and regulation of the Defenders and the Arcanostrum they served. Up until a few years ago, Myreon had thought them a
myth. Now she knew different, but this would be only the third member she had met in person.

  The necromancer led them through a leaning arch into another chamber, this one larger still—a natural formation into which the light of early dawn poured through some tiny crack far above. The light reflected off dark, cold water and sparkled off quartz deposits scattered about the cave, making the walls seem alive with magic. “I am a creature of utmost gravity, friend Myreon. I sympathize with your cause—the peerage are a corrupt abomination and must be destroyed if any of us are to be free.”

  Myreon nodded slowly, trying to gauge the ley of the chamber—it was surprisingly balanced, given its location underground. Ideal sorcerous ritual space. “I don’t want violence. I’ve never wanted that.”

  “The virtuous are at the mercy of the wicked in all things. Think you that the violence has ended? No, no—it has only begun. You wouldst stand by idly as the slaughter of innocents continues?” The necromancer’s chuckle was dusty as old bones. “I think not. Not you.”

  Myreon frowned. She wanted to protest, but could not think of the words. All she could see was Bree’s head on a pole, one pretty eye pecked out, the other open, searching for her. Believing in her. Hoping she would be saved. The thought made Myreon feel sicker than any thousand dissected corpses, than any million gallons of blood. She had tried to hide, tried to protect them. She had been so careful.

  And it had all been for nothing.

  The necromancer’s blind eyes were turned toward her, his head cocked. He was . . . listening to her. To how she breathed, she realized. “It is the common thought that the art of necromancy is the province of a wicked heart. It is not true. Though I am cast out by the realms built by thy enemies and mine own—the Keeper of the so-called Balance and his wretched Defenders—I cannot watch the weak starve so that the mighty might feast. You have my deepest sympathies for the loss of your apprentices.”