Necromancer's Gambit (The Flesh & Bone Trilogy Book 1)

by A J Dalton

  'Alright, alright! I'm tired and not a little nervous. After all, it's not every day of the week that I storm a royal palace. Now the moment's finally arrived, I can't help wondering how I ever thought I could single-handedly take on the entire might of a kingdom and challenge its seat of power. I must have been crazy!'

  'Crazy or not, we've got this far. Maybe a few of the gods have been looking out for us after all. I don't think it was ever really the intention to take on the whole of Accritania either. It was more about sneaking through enemy lines undetected and stealing the Heart like a thief in the night. We can still do it. Besides, you owe me this.'

  'But you're not just talking about the Heart anymore. You're talking about regicide. That's a completely different dice game and I'm not sure it's a game we can ever win.'

  Saltar was silent for a second. Then, 'We can do it if we get the Heart. Okay, we'll start with that. Agreed?'

  'Agreed,' the necromancer nodded reluctantly in the half-light.

  ***

  They crept from the Loyal Citizen and out into the plaza. There were lit torches to either side of the palace's raised portcullis but otherwise the building stood in darkness.

  'Should we ready the horse in case we have to make a quick escape?' Mordius whispered.

  'That evil-spirited mare is likely to kick up a ruckus if we disturb her beauty sleep. Let's leave it for now. Alright, you know the plan. Are you ready for this, Mordius?'

  'Y-yes,' the necromancer trembled, and then in a firmer voice, 'I'm ready. This is what my whole life has been leading up to; all the years of study with Dualor, all the training, all the dangers and risks, all the losses, raising you, this journey... all of it. It's all been about winning a free life for myself. That's all anyone wants. And that's what I believe everyone has a right to. But this is what it all comes down to. A single throw of the dice. Win or lose. It doesn't seem right that it's all we get, but if that's all we get then I'm going to give it my best shot. I just hope that the dice we have to play with aren't loaded against us. I just hope that Wim is running a fair game.

  'If this all goes wrong, Saltar, then I'm sorry I didn't get to fulfil the promise I made to you. I'm sorry I put you through the ordeal of a living death where you didn't even know who you were when alive. I'm sorry if you've ever felt I tricked you into helping me. I'm sorry that... well, I'm just sorry!'

  'That's a lot of sorrow, Mordius. Plenty of time for that if and when it does go wrong. I somehow get the feeling that just as your whole life has been leading up to this, so has my death. And all in all it hasn't been a bad death really. I got to meet you. And I met a tavern girl called Tula. Mistress Harcourt and Talon. And I met Jared and Jenny. They were nice people. But best of all, I got to meet Kate. It's all been worth it just for that. If I have to return to the realm of the dead, then it will be without regret. If you should survive, and I not, and if you should see Kate, then tell her that I... I wish I could have at least told her what I have just told you. No, that's not right...'

  'I'm sure she will understand,' Mordius said gently.

  'Good,' Saltar said in his unvarying, deadpan tone. 'So, we are ready then?'

  'Yes.'

  Saltar nodded and moved away into the darkness. Mordius watched him make his stiff-legged way across the square. The animee went straight up to the rocking guards on duty by the portcullis. They looked at him vacantly.

  'I am a danger to the palace,' he told them. 'You should try and catch me.'

  The brain-dead guards carried on rocking where they were. He was worried they could not understand him. He couldn't attack them because it was sure to make too much noise. And they would rise again and again. The guards on top of the walls would be sure to notice eventually. How else could he provoke these two witless corpses?

  His internal debate was suddenly ended by the nearest guard lurching towards him. The other began to tip forwards as well. Saltar turned tail and made for the nearest corner of the palace's wall. A glance over his shoulder showed him the guards were still after him in a tottering run. He turned the corner and lengthened his stride. He made the next corner just as they were coming round the first.

  He completed the circuit of the palace and met Mordius, who'd come forwards once the guards had left their posts, back at the entrance. The necromancer had already taken down one of the torches and led the way inside.

  'You're sure they won't think to come after us?' Mordius whispered.

  'No chance,' Saltar confirmed. 'They're too far gone. I doubt they've got enough grey matter intact between them to generate a thought. Once I moved beyond their sight, they probably couldn't even hold onto the suggestion that they should be pursuing me. I'd be amazed if they even made it back to their posts.'

  'Won't someone notice if they're not there?' Mordius asked worriedly.

  'There's not much we can do about that. Come on, let's get out of sight of the entrance.'

  'It's a good job I brought the torch. It's pitch black in here.'

  They moved down a wide, central corridor. There were tapestries on the wall, but they were moth-eaten and bedraggled, clearly not having been cleaned or aired in years. There were drifts of dust and dirt along the edges of the corridor, but the centre of the corridor was clear. Similarly, there were cobwebs where the walls met the ceiling, but not in the middle of the corridor. Despite the mildewed air and the obvious signs of neglect, it seemed that the main passage was still used by the denizens of the palace.

  'We should remove our boots,' Saltar whispered.

  'I suppose,' his companion conceded. 'Though the light of the torch is as likely to alert someone as the sound of our footsteps.'

  'Not if they're asleep it's not, stupid! Get those boots off.'

  Mordius muttered to himself, but did as his animee bid him.

  'And do it quietly!'

  Mordius bit his tongue. When he'd removed his boots, the necromancer tiptoed ahead with the torch held high in one hand and his boots held by his side in the other. They came to a crossroads, a narrower corridor leading off to left and right. They hesitated.

  'The palace is probably laid out geometrically around the throne room,' Saltar said in a low voice. 'It's going to be straight on down this main corridor.'

  'But I'm not sure that's where the Heart will be. Won't they keep that in a treasury somewhere?'

  'It could take all night to find such a room, always assuming it even exists. We should make for the obvious places of importance in the palace first. Perhaps there will be a royal treasury off the throne room. Let's go! Come on! Enough debating backwards and forwards.'

  Mordius allowed himself to be ushered onwards and within a few minutes they found the way blocked by a pair of giant, golden doors. Set into the bright metal was the design of a mighty, winged dragon fighting a many-headed hydra. The dragon was the royal insignia of Accritania, and the hydra was presumably meant to represent the kingdom's many enemies.

  'It's beautiful, isn't it?' Mordius murmured in the stillness of the corridor, his breath misting the gold as if to add smoke to the flames issuing from the mouth of the flying, fabulous beast. 'The dragon is a beast of three elements, you see – earth, air and fire – whereas the hydra is only two – earth and water. By rights, the dragon should win.'

  'And yet Accritania has all but lost the war. It's just a picture, Mordius. What are we waiting here for? Someone to announce our names and titles before we enter the throne room?'

  'You're right. We should be about our business. It's just that the image reminded me that there's something unnatural about Accritania's decline. There's something not right about it.'

  Saltar didn't know where this conversation was going, and found the delay it represented aggravating. He realised that he'd keyed himself up so that he was ready for just about any sort of confrontation. Now, he yearned for some sort of action, the opportunity to unleash himself against the enemy, to test himself against an opposing force, to find meaning in his existence by way of what
his will and body could do and affect. It was the eternal essence of the soldier, one whose meaning only existed through eternal combat. He put his hand against the hydra and began to push. 'The hydra is undying Mordius. It rises again and again to grow new heads. It cannot lose.'

  'Perhaps,' Mordius mused. 'It is undying, as if it had the Heart we seek. Is this some message to us that we will not find the Heart here, that it is Accritania's enemy that harbours it instead?'

  The door was open now, with only darkness beyond. Saltar ignored Mordius and slipped inside. Mordius followed him cautiously, pulling the torch in last of all. He shielded the flames with his body since the enormous room they were now in was completely moonlit; and the torch would only serve to deepen the shadows and darkness beyond its immediate sphere. As it was, the lunar light limned everything in the room in silver and made even the raised details of the large tapestries easy to pick out.

  They stood still as they took in the room. It was longer than it was wide and the throne predictably stood at the far end on a raised platform. There were what appeared to be blankets and cushions piled up in the royal seat. The room was high and lined with a row of ancient, martial banners down each side. There was a large chandelier high above them, which winked and glinted in the moonlight coming from the glass dome of the ceiling. Night clouds drifted by and created a dark kaleidoscope of shifting shadows down in the room. Objects never seemed to be at rest the way the degree of shadow constantly changed.

  'Well?' Mordius asked timidly.

  'Aha!' boomed a voice triumphantly, and magical lights bloomed around the room. Mordius squinted against the blaze and raised an arm to shield his eyes, one of his hand-held boots kicking against his cheek. 'There you are at last!'

  'Saltar, who is it? I can't see properly.'

  'You don't want to. Just get behind me.'

  Mordius couldn't resist peeking out from behind Saltar's back. What he saw made him tremble and feel a spike of ice in his bowels. A pulsating, man-shaped creature filled the centre of the room, bulging so that blood vessels continually burst open across its skin. Its tongue constantly slavered around its lower face as it to sought to drink its own blood. It held a lethal looking pole arm, which it swished lazily through the air, and every now and then use to cut its forehead and start a fresh flow down its face and towards its mouth.

  There were obvious chunks missing from its arms and legs, where it had presumably gnawed on itself. Some of the wounds, though, were visibly knitting themselves back together as they watched. The creature was clearly the limitless hunger of a demon given human form.

  'You were expecting us?' Saltar asked lightly.

  'Oh, yes!' it sprayed bloodily. 'I was beginning to fear you wouldn't get this far. Then what would I have done for food?'

  'Yes, I can see that would be a concern. I take it, then, there is no need for us to introduce ourselves. Might we have the honour of your name?'

  'I think not! No demon would allow a game of manners to trick its name from it,' it lisped. Then it bellowed: 'Innius! Awake! Your guests are here.'

  They felt a watching presence fill the room suddenly.

  'He comes!' the demon smiled.

  Instantly, footsteps began to echo down the hall towards the throne room.

  With a quick presence of mind, Mordius turned and slammed a bar in place across the doors. Saltar moved out into the room to give himself space to meet the demon. He balanced his weight on the balls of his feet so that who would be ready to move in any direction quickly.

  A boot came flying from over Saltar's head and hit the demon in the chest. Without hesitation, the animee moved to attack, hoping the demon would be momentarily distracted by Mordius's thrown footwear. It was a mistake. With inhuman speed, the demon brought the pole arm up and forwards, thrusting it through Saltar's chest. The demon kept coming forwards, its strength and weight giving it the momentum to lift Saltar off his feet on the end of the long weapon. Saltar's arms and legs windmilled in the air, but he was helpless to do anything.

  With a roar, the demon slammed the weapon into the wall and left Saltar impaled there off the floor. Saltar stared down at the thick, bladed shaft protruding from his chest. Strangely, it had found the self same wound that had caused his death. There was no real pain, but in his memory he experienced an echo of the agony he'd suffered when alive. His limbs twitched in a parody of the death throes he's been through before. 'Get a grip on yourself!' he berated his corpse. 'There'll be plenty time for self-pity later, when you're properly dead.' He put his hands to the shaft in front of him, to see if he could pull it free, but the world tilted sideways, tipping him into the nether realm of Lacrimos.

  He was spread-eagled and chained to a large, black rock. The sky was blood red and the air was as thin and fetid as the dying breath of a plague victim. A grey, winged gargoyle capered around him and the rock, obviously pleased with itself. It giggled gleefully and then brought its face close to his, the yellow orbs of its eyes hypnotically large.

  'Can you feel the earth trembling at his approach? He comes!'

  First, he saw grit and small pebbles jumping clear of the ground, as if they were on the skin of a giant, beaten drum. Then he felt rhythmic tremors and vibrations through his feet and the rock to which he was manacled. Something gargantuan and awful was moving towards them.

  The footsteps stopped at the doors to the throne room and the bar holding the portal closed rattled. A sharp voice rang out: 'Siddorax, open this door at once!'

  The demon, who had begun to menace Mordius, hissed in frustration, unable to ignore an instruction from its master when its name was used. As the demon leapt for the door, the necromancer slipped past him and tried to drag the pole arm down out of the wall.

  'Come on!' Mordius squeaked in a cold sweat, the hair on his forehead suddenly damp. 'I can't move it, Saltar!'

  The door swung open and a tall, emaciated figure swept into the room. With his bald head and black robes, the death's head proclaimed himself a priest of Lacrimos. His rapacious gaze took in the scene at once. 'Siddorax, you cretin, you are to guard the throne at all costs! Kill him before he can take another step!'

  Mordius span and ran for the end of the room. At the same time, Saltar tried to drag himself down the length of the weapon, but the hand guard at the end of the blade section wouldn't fit through the hole in his chest. He cursed, not wanting to splinter more ribs and tear himself open on the guard. Instead, he pushed himself back to the wall, bent his knees and put his feet flat against the plaster. He put his hands around the shaft of the pole arm and began to pull up, straightening his legs as he did so. The blade cut up into his sternum and down into his lower back, but suddenly the weapon came free of the wall and he was spinning through the air. He clattered to the floor in front of the demon, and forced it to alter its path. Saltar twisted his torso so that the pole arm got caught up in the demon's legs and sent it sprawling. Mordius was almost at the throne.

  The demon reared up above Saltar, flexing its muscles until its joints popped and cracked.

  'I will tear you limb from limb!' its promised.

  Mordius hesitated and turned back towards the animee and demon. 'Siddorax!' he called in a quavering voice, 'you will not harm me or Saltar.'

  Siddorax paused uncertainly.

  'Siddorax, you will ignore all instructions unless they come from me. You are bound by my blood!' the priest commanded.

  'Thank you, master!' the demon crooned and reached for Saltar.

  'I will kill the King!' Mordius blurted desperately.

  Both the priest and demon hesitated. The priest's eyes narrowed shrewdly: 'You have no weapon, necromancer. Siddorax will be on you before you can utter another empty threat. When you meet holy Lacrimos, you might remember Innius to Him as His faithful servant. Really, I expected more of a challenge from the jealous and wretched sister of my holy master. I have not even had to get my hands dirty with you. It can only mean that the time of my lord is at hand and all others a
re insignificant before His majesty.'

  Frantic to stay the priest and demon for as long as possible – perhaps a second was all Saltar would need to regain his feet – Mordius rushed out with, 'I know where the Heart is if you do not. Your master would surely desire such information.'

  The priest shrugged in an off handed way, 'If my master does not already have that information, necromancer, he will have it from you once you are dead, whether you will it or not. Siddorax, now if you please, else we keep holy Lacrimos waiting too long and are rewarded with His displeasure rather than His favour!'

  Saltar suddenly surged to his feet and delivered a hammer-like blow to Siddorax's solar plexus. The demon staggered but kept his feet. Seeing a slight advantage, Saltar followed up with a hard chop to the neck and a full-blooded punch to the face. Siddorax gave ground and spat teeth and gore from his mouth. Then Saltar dimly registered surprise. The demon was laughing. Too late, the animee tried to move back out of the circle and range of the demonic guard's massive arms.

  He heard his jaw crack as he was back-handed and flung against the opposite wall of the throne room. He felt for his chin and found it dislocated. He crunched it back into place and pushed himself to his feet again.

  However, Siddorax was no longer paying him any mind. His hungry attention was now fixed on Mordius, who had frozen in horror as he watched his animee and the demon batter at each other.

  'No!' Saltar slurred, trying to wrest the demon's focus back to himself.

  Ignoring the animee, Siddorax moved towards Mordius, who finally remembered himself and put the throne between himself and the demon. So this is it then, the necromancer thought to himself, his fright and panic disappearing at last. Curious place to die. I feel sorry about letting Saltar down, but in a way he'll be free once I'm dead. Mordius ducked and moved to the left as Siddorax came round the other side of the throne.