by A J Dalton
He was alive again! His body was racked as its learnt breathing behaviour kicked in. A woman gasped and a shadow fell across him.
‘You’re alive! Shakri be praised! Your body was so cold Saltar! I thought the mandrakes must have poisoned you. You saved us! How did you resist them for long enough to get us in here? Here, here’s a blanket.’
‘Th-thank you!’ he stuttered. ‘Kate! You are Kate!’ he said stupidly as she tucked the wool around him.
‘You’re in shock. Just rest. I’ll get you some hot stew that I made. Mordius is still unconscious but seems to be resting comfortably.’
He looked round the house and saw it was basically one big room full of clutter and magical paraphernalia. Mordius lay on a pallet by the fire of a stone hearth. Sweat beaded lightly on his forehead, but his features were still and relaxed.
‘Here!’ Kate said as she thrust a hot bowl of stew at him taken from a small cauldron on the fire. ‘You’ll feel better after this.’
He took the offered sustenance but didn’t put any to his mouth. ‘How long was I unconscious, Kate?’
She stilled. ‘Er… well, you were already cold when I woke up. I don’t know, an hour, two?’
‘What was it you called those plants? Mandrakes?’
‘Yes. I have heard tell of necromancers using them before. The mandrakes serve as a trap for the unwary and a more than adequate defence to a necromancer’s dwelling place. More than that, they allow a necromancer to increase his or her power.’
‘How so?’
‘I’m not clear on the details but it’s something about ensnaring souls. A mandrake’s victim, whether human or forest creature, will usually die quite quickly unless a necromancer keeps the victim permanently at the threshold to death. The torment must be terrible. The tortured spirits of most victims submit themselves to the will of the necromancer in return for the promise of eventual death. The poor wretches! You did kill them all, didn’t you? We will need to burn everything.’
‘You haven’t been back outside yet, then?’
Kate coloured slightly. ‘Well, I had to look to you and Mordius, and you were lying in front of the door… Oh, alright! I wasn’t in a hurry to go back outside and face those things on my own. How did you survive them?’
‘Held my breath as long as I could,’ Saltar said with a shrug. ‘But inhaled some of the spores near the end there. Barely got us all inside.’
‘Well, I am in your debt, Saltar,’ she said with an ambiguous smile.
He decided it was safest to behave as if he had only understood simple thanks from her, and nodded in acknowledgement. After all, she was a King’s Guardian and he was one of the undead – best to keep her at arm’s length. ‘There is one still alive,’ he said climbing to his feet and putting his hand to the door handle. ‘Coming?’
She swallowed hard but nodded, determination in her eyes.
***
They stepped outside and Kate immediately gagged as the reek of rotting flesh assailed them. Flies buzzed around the garden of corpses and mandrakes. They stepped around several bodies and reached the naked, young man who still lived and watched them approach. His face was a contorted mask but he did not cry out. The mandrake grew out of his chest and upper stomach. Where its roots penetrated his flesh, the skin was livid and ragged, although blood-free. Every drop was sucked away by the parasite.
Saltar crouched down next to the tragic youth’s head. ‘Can you speak?’
‘K-kill me!’ he pleaded.
‘We might be able to free you!’ Kate whispered without much belief.
‘No!’ he whimpered. ‘It’s wrapped around my heart. I can feel it.’
‘What’s your name? Do you have a family you would like us to tell?’ Kate asked gently, tears in the corners of her eyes.
The young man looked into the void of Saltar’s gaze. ‘Quickly! Every second is an agony. I can’t…’
His words were stopped by Saltar drawing the knife retrieved from close by deeply across his throat. He took a few seconds to die – which must have been whole lifetimes to him – but smiled before he did.
‘Shakri, preserve his spirit!’ Kate intoned. ‘If I’d had the courage to leave the house sooner…’
‘No!’ Saltar interrupted roughly. ‘That is a dark path. Go that way and the necromancer will have won in some measure. It was brave to enter these woods alone in the first place, Guardian. Even braver to face the necromancer and his minion alone. Yours is a dangerous calling, Guardian. To have undertaken it at all marks you as courageous. Yet, did you not know how formidable this necromancer was, for surely it required more than one of you?’
Kate nodded. ‘I am travelling for Accritania. I have been afforded the hospitality of several local farms and villages. All spoke of the Weeping Woods as being haunted, of people entering and never coming out again. As a King’s Guardian, it is my duty to see to the care and safety of both the living and the dead of Dur Memnos. I had to enter the woods to ascertain the nature of the threat.’
‘Of course,’ Saltar agreed, now satisfied that the horror of the place and its victims was not infecting her with a paralysing melancholia. ‘I shall burn the bodies.’
‘Saltar, let me. It is one of my tasks as a Guardian, and I would like to do this for the young man, since I could do nothing for him while he lived. You might check on Mordius. And eat some stew! You don’t look much better than the bodies out here!’
Saltar attempted to smile, but only achieved a rictus grin. He would have to practise that. He went back into the house, picked up the bowl he had put aside before and crossed straight to Mordius. He wafted the food under the necromancer’s nose and slapped him none too softly on the cheek.
‘Come on, wake up! If I am reanimated and fairly uninhibited, then you must be pretty much okay too. Come on!’
Mordius opened bleary eyes and groaned. ‘Saltar, for crying out loud! Can’t you see I’m ill? That food smells good.’
‘You’re malingering, Mordius! I don’t have any patience for it. I didn’t think it was possible, but I have an even lower opinion of necromancers now that I have seen this place with its mandrakes. Is there nothing to which your kind would not stoop?’
Mordius watched the bowl of food floating tantalisingly in front of him. ‘Mandrakes, you say?’ He began to reach for the bowl.
‘Six of them!’ Saltar said jerkily, and the bowl moved just beyond Mordius’s reach. ‘I had not reckoned your kind to be so foul and loathsome.’
The bowl moved back in his direction and he swallowed saliva. ‘Listen, Saltar, we necromancers are not a kind. Each of us is different. For instance, some worship Lacrimos and some pay him lip-service. Some, like me, only deal with the dead, whereas the necromancer of this place sought to trap the living as well and use them for his own purposes. Saltar, you have seen my home and know something of me – I am not one who would torture and murder the innocent living. Now give me something to eat!’
Mordius made a snatch for the bowl, but Saltar whisked it away. ‘Now is not the time to be thinking of food! I thought you said necromancers had similar amounts of power.’
‘I did, but each uses their power in different ways depending upon the type of knowledge they have gained and the type of knowledge they are prepared to use. Also, it is important to remember that there are ways for a necromancer to increase their power. For example, mandrakes can furnish a necromancer with enslaved spirits and the possibility of a gateway.’
‘What?’
Mordius folded his arms and stared pointedly at the congealing bowl of stew. Saltar relented and passed it to him. Between mouthfuls, Mordius said, ‘When someone is held at the point between life and death, their spirit is easily separated from their living body for a period of time. The necromancer can usually command such spirits, for example to lure other unwary victims. I suspect that light we saw in the woods before was one such spirit. Could do with some salt. Is there any more?’ He held out his empty bowl expectantly.
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Saltar folded his arms. ‘What about this gateway?’
‘As I understand it, when a body hangs between life and death, it is a gateway between the two realms. The gateway is closed while the body’s spirit still remains in place, but once the spirit has been separated from its body the gateway is open. Something from the nether realms can come through and take possession of the body.’
Saltar gave Mordius another ladle of stew from the cauldron. ‘When you say something can come through, give me a for instance.’
‘Well, a dead spirit or a demon, I suppose. A necromancer would need to be careful not to bring something through he or she could not control. Demons are notoriously tricky, unpredictable and violent. It requires the combined strength of a goodly number of enslaved spirits to dislodge a demon from its host body.’
‘I see! That’s why the necromancer wanted so many mandrakes. He was preparing to bring something through that required a veritable army of spirits to control it. Could Lacrimos himself be summoned this way?’
Mordius paled. ‘No one would attempt such a thing! Unleashing the god in this realm would be insanity. Nothing could control him. He would seek to destroy all life. And that would not be the worst of it. Our souls would become the eternal play things of his legions of demons. It does not bear thinking about. You’ve quite put me off my food now.’
‘You’ve managed two bowls from the pot nonetheless. That’s good. If Kate asks, tell her I had a bowlful. I think she was getting worried I didn’t like the smell of her cooking.’
Mordius looked around nervously. ‘She’s still here?’
‘Yes, burning the bodies outside. Can’t you smell it? My sense are dulled of course, but they say it smells like pig bacon. By the way, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kate joins us on our trip to Accritania.’
Mordius looked both queasy and alarmed. ‘Are you crazy?! She’s a Guardian. It’ll be impossible to keep what you and I are from her. She’ll want to kill us.’
‘It’ll be safer for all of us to travel as a group. Besides, Accritania can’t be more than a week away. We’ll talk about the weather and healthy things like that. Now,’ Saltar said as he took a flaming brand from the hearth, ‘I’m going to burn this place down to the ground. You can stay in bed if you like, or get up and joined the land of the living!’
Mordius yelped and leapt from the blankets in a remarkably lively fashion. ‘Wait! There are books here I have to save. All this knowledge! How did he control the bear without speaking to it? I could learn so much!’
But Saltar wasn’t listening. He was sickened to his very soul, if he still had a soul. Sickened, anyway. When Mordius had spoken of a gateway allowing a dead spirit to take full possession of a living body, selfish hope had surged within Saltar. But then he realised it was a black temptation that demanded the murder of others. He wanted to restore life, not take or strip it away. Better than any possibility for exploring the temptation further be destroyed utterly.
***
CHAPTER SIX: For he was a good man
The old priest had proven more succulent than Brax had expected. The flesh had been firm and surprisingly plentiful. He pondered the power of the priests of Shakri as he sucked on the marrow of a thighbone he had brought with him. Clearly, the goddess did not think enough of her priests to intervene on their behalf, but she allowed them enough power to prove troublesome.
Who would have thought the old man to be so quick and spry? Who would have thought the priest of such an ailing temple to be strong enough to kill one of his wardens?
‘May I help you?’ he had asked mildly as they smashed their way into the holy house.
‘Where h-is the Guardian?’ Brax had demanded.
‘I’m sorry, what did you say? I didn’t catch it. But I’m happy to help in any way that I can,’ the priest smiled benignly.
‘The Guardian!’ Brax bellowed in his face. ‘Tell h-us!’
‘Hus? Pleased to meet you, Hus.’
‘Gah! Do not laugh h-at me, h-old man! You h-are in my way!’ and Brax lashed out with one of his rock-like fists.
Brax blinked. He had expected to see the priest’s body fly across the room and break against the far wall. Yet the priest still stood smiling a few steps away. Had he simply ducked the blow?
The other warden who had managed to push his way into the low-ceilinged house through the narrow entrance reached for the servant of Shakri. Murmuring, the priest placed a flat hand on the warden’s chest. The warden gasped and arched his back in pain, causing his head to strike the ceiling and bring down pieces of plaster. His torso stretched and began to swell. Strange lumps moved under his skin and began to protrude in places. His neck bulged to twice its normal diameter and made his head look too small for its rapidly expanding body. Muscles grew and pulled the skin that covered them taut. Then the skin began to rip and the warden fell thrashing to the floor.
‘What have you done?’ Brax roared. ‘You h-attack a King’s Warden! This h-is treason! You will die for this, priest!’
‘Nope! It’s no good. I still can’t understand you. Strange, a priest of Shakri innately understands all that Shakri has created. You cannot be of her making, then. You are an unholy abomination, Warden!’
The priest no longer smiled, his face transformed by a mix of horror and outrage. He pulled up his sleeves and took a purposeful step towards Brax.
He was actually daring to advance on him! Brax had never felt fear before so was not sure that that was what he felt right then. What he did know was that his sudden, strange loss of strength and ability to step away despite the volition to do so was the worst thing he had ever experienced in his life.
The priest reached forwards with his hand. It was nearly on him when the death throes of the warden on the floor sent a boot into the priest’s leg and toppled him to the floor. Brax lashed out with his own boot and caved in the priest’s head. He kept kicking until there was nothing but mush left on the floor. Even then, the Chief Warden’s heart would not slow and he dismembered the body with nothing but his hands, working himself up into a frenzied rage. He crunched limbs to splinters in his massive jaws, swallowing gobbets of flesh as he did.
The four wardens outside stopped trying to crowd in and retreated to the far side of the courtyard. They knew better than to attract their leader’s attention when the bloodlust was upon him. The weakest of them cowered and hid behind the others.
Brax looked down at the distended body of the dead warden. Despite his hunger, he had no desire to go near the bloated and tainted flesh. If returned to the palace, it could perhaps be reanimated, but the odds were small now that it had been marked by Shakri. A livid, red hand-shape stood out on the warden where the priest had bestowed a blessing for growth. Some blessing, Brax snorted to himself as he struggled to get his breathing under control.
He turned his back on it all and shouldered his way out of the house. He didn’t need the priest anyway, since the trail was relatively easy to follow: three men and three horses; two of the men being the same as those he had scented at the palace; one of the two having a slight fragrance of… the white sorceress! What interest did she have in that one? Brax knew that that man would be more worthy of pity than jealousy if he had attracted the attention of the white sorceress.
Bunching his legs under him, he sprang into a run after the Scourge. He leaned forwards into a half-stoop, and his hands occasionally touched the ground along with his feet. His pack loped after him, their tongues hanging out hungrily. Brax knew they would need to eat again soon. Otherwise, they could not trust themselves simply to follow this Scourge rather than overrun him and devour him.
The master had said Brax had to follow the Scourge, but surely there was no better hunter than Brax. Why should he follow this other? Did the Scourge already know where the necromancer was? If so, surely Brax could get him to tell him where the necromancer was. He would get the Scourge to tell him, then have the Scourge beg for his life and then have the Scourge apologise. Th
en Brax would eat his fill and stop the rumbling in his stomach for a while.
***
They had ridden down from Corinus just as the sun had begun to rise, when the outdwellers were scurrying for the sheltering darkness of the catacombs. The signs of fresh blood on the rocks suggested that they weren’t going to bed unfed.
The Scourge rode in front, leading Young Strap’s horse and its snoring rider, and Nostracles brought up the rear. The tall, gangly priest was young but taciturn. He had responded politely enough when addressed directly but had not initiated conversation. The Scourge liked him. Such a man would be confident in his own counsel, a useful addition to any group.
The priest had been understandably upset to leave his master and the temple in Corinus, but had clearly been preparing himself for the moment for some time. Simple tokens of affection were exchanged between master and student, tokens that were all the more moving for the amount of thought that must have gone into them if such simplicity were to be significant.
‘My son, I know you are ready since your gifts humble me.’
‘No, father. You have shown me the path, but I have not yet travelled it.’
‘Shakri has provided these good servants to conduct you safely as far as they may.’
‘I will attempt to be worthy of them, rendering what service I may unto them in return. Will I see you again, father?’
With tears in his eyes, the old priest put his hand to the other’s face. ‘Ah, Nostracles, you should know better than to ask such a question. If not in this life, then the next. All life is one. I fear you will never be rid of me.’
‘Then in some ways we are not parting at all.’
‘You see! You understood all along. Now, I have one more gift for you.’
The old priest placed a jade amulet around the young priest’s neck. It was in the shape of a lightning strike, which the Scourge knew was meant to represent the divine spark of life, supposedly Shakri’s ultimate gift.