‘I deserve better,’ the damned trigger phrase for the levitation ring. And no doubt Tien thought she was the better Shalayn deserved.
Tien must have assumed that once I was gone, Shalayn really would be able to walk out the front door unhindered. She must have misjudged the wizard’s security, must not have known what we’d face. The fact the little wizard hadn’t intentionally killed Shalayn changed nothing.
She would feel my pain before she died.
I was going to return to Taramlae. I was going to make Tien pay for what she took from me. No one manipulated me. But I wasn’t going back unprepared. I wasn’t going back with a sharpened stick, decaying pyjamas, and a filthy bed sheet.
I wasn’t going back alone.
I went in search of Henka, the young necromancer. Over the next week I managed to steal proper clothes, rugged hemp pants, a thick cotton shirt, and a pair of boots some farmer left unattended when he wandered into a stream to wash the muck from his body. Travelling from community to community, I asked about grave robbing, and people and animals going missing. When questioned, I claimed I was on Guild business and, for the most part, that quashed any further probing. I might not look like a wizard, but my black skin stood me out as someone clearly different, and that was enough.
Rumours led me further south and dragged me east, and I followed like a hound on a scent. When I first spotted a wolf dogging my trail, loping along, parallel to the path I followed, I wondered if I was going to have trouble with a pack. The beast looked desperately malnourished, its fur tattered. Wolves might avoid people, but desperation and hunger would drive any carnivore to pursue new prey. The beast reminded me of those mangy animals I used to see stalking the treeline around my old mud hut. Then the wind changed and I caught the unmistakable scent of death. Two more dead wolves joined the first, forming what I hoped was an honour guard rather than a pincer movement. They herded me south to an abandoned barn. The farmhouse looked to have burned down in the last year. I stopped just beyond the barn door and the wolves melted into the trees. Startling a necromancer seemed like a bad idea, so I called her name. Sure enough, the bear came out first. The beast looked somewhat worse for wear. Much of its hide had sloughed away exposing the rotting meat beneath. Sheets of tangled fur hung from its flanks, dragging in the dirt. Carrion insects, worms and grubs and maggots, writhed in the empty sockets of its eyes.
“Henka, it’s me,” I called out. “The man who spared you!”
The rest of the wolf pack exited next, a half dozen cadaverous beasts in varying states of damage and decay. They prowled circles around me but kept their distance. If Henka decided she wasn’t feeling grateful, that I was more trouble than I was worth, this lot would have no trouble reducing me to an easily animated corpse.
The necromancer came last, sliding out of the barn, carefully closing the door behind her. It seemed an odd thing to do for someone who lived with a bunch of dead pets enslaved by her magic. Like it was the ghost of some long-gone life.
Henka was stunning. She’d cleaned herself up and showed none of the tangled, wild mess she’d been on our first meeting. Here, in the daylight, I could truly appreciate her beauty. Her skin remained the porcelain white I remembered. The dead don’t tan, I supposed. Long, black, and gleaming in the sun, her hair hung like a curtain of ebony silk. Her eyes, however, gave me pause. While it had been night when last we met, I would have sworn they were dark brown. Now, they were ice blue.
Lifting a hand in greeting, I said “I’m glad you’re still…around.”
She smiled, a shy quirk of full lips. Her mouth looked different too, wider, more expressive. Though that might have been my imagination. Weeks alone on the road left everything looking good. Her clothes, too, had changed. She wore an expensive black dress. Low cut and revealing, it clung to her every curve. I couldn’t imagine where she acquired it, out here on the frontier.
“I knew you’d return.” She drank me with those blue eyes, taking in every detail, examining me from head to toe.
She’d changed somehow. Not just her appearance, but something else was different, too. She possessed a confidence, a presence I didn’t remember. Had my earlier encounter with her done that? Was it something else?
I swallowed, suddenly feeling off-balance. She’s dead, I reminded myself. But she looked very much alive. There was something here, something in her appearance, in what she was, that moved me in a way Shalayn’s earthier, more wholesome beauty, had not.
Pale hair, pale eyes. I realized I associated those characteristics with northerners, with wizards. I may have first awoken in the far north, but an island, far to the south, called my name.
I caught myself staring at Henka. She reminded me of someone I couldn’t remember, but those ice eyes were wrong.
She waved a hand at her wolves. “Shoo.”
They wandered off, tatty ears perking as they followed something I could neither hear, nor see.
“Do they still hunt?” I asked.
“They’re still wolves,” she said. “As I am still a woman.” She watched her pets snuffle about in the grass. “Do you like my eyes?”
“Very striking.”
“But you liked them better dark?”
I shrugged, unwilling to lie.
“I’ll change them,” she said.
How would she manage that? Could she work some kind of necromantic magic to alter her appearance?
“I’d like that,” I said.
“Hmm.” A small smile.
Her hand, which had been damaged last time we met, was whole and perfect.
“You seem to be doing much better,” I said, nodding at the hand.
She glanced at it.
“I’d expected there to be a scar or something,” I added. “Or stitches like…” I couldn’t think of a polite way mention the crudely stapled wound between her breasts.
“Necromancy allows me to fix minor damage,” she said.
The bear shuffled in a circle and headed back into the barn. It walked into the closed door a few times before Henka told it to stop and wait.
“Can you use it to repair his eyes?” I asked.
“Her,” she said, shaking her head, not taking those startling blue eyes off me. “You were with a woman last time.”
Was her voice tense? “I was.”
“I followed you for a while. I watched. I thought maybe you liked her for her eyes.”
I did. Or I had. Somewhere, that started changing. My months starving in the floating castle changed me. Or maybe it was that shard of obsidian that retook its place in my heart. I was surprised that I was neither surprised nor bothered by the fact Henka had followed me.
“She was too…big…for you,” said Henka.
I let that go without comment. Compared to Shalayn, Henka was tiny.
“Why did you come back?” she asked.
“I promised I would.”
“You want to help me find my heart?”
“I do. And…I need your help.”
She moved closer, slow, gliding steps. Flawless grace. “With?”
I was surprised to discover she didn’t smell at all like a corpse.
“Wizards.” I hesitated, trying to decide how much to tell her. She seemed young, naive, but if she survived out here alone, she was far from stupid.
Remembering Shalayn’s reaction to the revelation, I decided to tell Henka the truth. “I am—or was—a demonologist. The wizards took my memories, broke them apart.”
She blinked in surprise, a slight smile gracing those lips. “Did they?”
Not at all the reaction I’d expected. She showed no shock, no fear or outrage at my confession.
“Yes. Some memories are hidden away, in wizard’s towers. Some might be more accessible. I want them back. I want to know everything about who I was. I want to know who I am.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Do you want to be the man you once were?”
What an odd question, so close to so many of my own thought
s. Being dead, I suppose she understood the desire to return to a life long lost.
“No,” I answered. “I don’t think so.” I couldn’t tell her how evil that man was, how willing to sacrifice souls.
“If I help, I’ll be with you?”
The question stunned me. I’d expected her to corner me on which we were doing first, her heart or my memories.
“Yes.”
She slid closer, looking up at me. My breath caught.
Reaching out she touched my hand. “And after?”
My thoughts were so scrambled by her proximity it took a moment to understand the question. “After I have my memories and you have your heart?”
She nodded.
“I think I will still need your help.”
“You will.” She took my hand in hers, raised it to her face. For a moment I thought she was going to bite me, but she held it there, lips brushing my fingers like feathers.
“Alive,” she said. “Warm.”
Opening my hand, she kissed the palm. Startled, I realized she too was warm.
“You were cold last time,” I said.
Henka smiled, a shy quirk of lips. “I’ve been taking better care of myself.” Releasing my hand, she did a twirl, showing off the dress and the body beneath. “There are spells for hiding what we are. I never bothered before. I had no reason. But after you… after… You cared. I knew you’d return.”
“All I did was offer some advice,” I said, uncomfortable.
“More than anyone else has done. Where are we going?”
I couldn’t tell her we were going to Taramlae to murder the wizard responsible for the death of the woman I loved. “I think I need more of my memories before I confront the necromancer who created you.” I hurried to explain. “Right now, I’m weak, powerless. The old me, he knew things.”
I waited for her to protest or complain, but she merely nodded.
“The next part of me is south of here,” I continued. “A long way south. We will have to venture into cities and towns. I need supplies. Food. Weapons. Armour.” I didn’t mention I had no idea how I’d possibly afford this. “Are you alright with this?”
Henka nodded again. “I’ll change my eyes. Make them the way you like.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
We travelled south together for weeks. Henka’s beasts did the hunting, and between the walking and the near-carnivorous diet, I put muscle on fast.
After the third time the blind bear blundered into a tree, she called it to her. Henka whispered songs to the decaying beast. The bear listened, rotten ears turned in her direction. Sad rumblings burbled from its massive chest. She stroked those torn ears, not caring that her delicate fingers came away matted in dank fur.
“Lie down now,” she told the bear. “Death can have you.” Seeing me watching, she said, “She earned her rest.”
That evening the wolves brought me three fat rabbits. After cleaning and gutting them, I impaled their naked carcasses on spits and roasted them over the fire, turning them often. Henka watched me eat, eyes intense, giggling when juices splashed down my chin and I yelped in pain at the heat.
“Do you want some?” I asked.
“No. I am dead.”
“Can you taste things? Can you feel?”
“Sometimes. Those spells which give the me semblance of life bring those things back for a while. They fade. Most of the time my senses are muted.” Rising, she moved closer, sat by my side. “I can feel some difference in temperature.” She took my hand. This time her skin was cold. “You are warm.” She sniffed my fingers again. “I can smell life. I smell death too.” She gestured at one of the rabbits, still spitted, I’d set beside the fire to cool. “I know its death. I can see its last moments. Were I to breathe deep, I could tell you what corpses were nearby.”
She inhaled, eyes closed, and I watched the interesting things it did to her chest.
“A baby goat died east of here,” she said. “Foxes took it from its mother. There isn’t much left of it now.”
She opened her eyes, caught me staring, and bit gently at her lower lip.
“I…” I what? I was sorry for staring? I was sorry she caught me?
I was neither of those.
“You can touch me, if you like,” she said.
“No.”
She sagged, staring at the ground between us.
I tried to explain. “You can’t feel much right now, can you?”
She shook her head.
“But you could before, when you were warm?”
She nodded.
“It would be wrong,” I said.
“Because I’m dead.”
For some reason, that didn’t bother me like it should. “Because it would be selfish, one-sided.”
“Selfish?” She looked up, met my gaze. “When I can feel?”
I nodded.
“The necromancy requires some blood.” She saw me glance at the rabbit. “Human blood.” She turned away, ashamed, shoulders hunched as she awaited my recriminations.
Knowing who I had once been, and the terrible things I’d done, what could I say? I’d bled people to feed demons. More recently, I sacrificed countless imprisoned souls in my attempts to return to Shalayn. Henka needed some blood to work at least some of her necromancy. In comparison, my crimes were a thousand times worse. How could I judge this woman?
Her desperate need. Her flawless body. My own needs roared at me not to ignore them. She wants you to touch her! Touch her! She’s beautiful!
I put a hand on her cold shoulder, turning her to face me. “Later,” I said, “if you still want that…”
She sighed and said, “It would be nice to be touched. When you feel right about it. When I’m not disgusting.”
“You’re not.”
She gave me a look of such heart-breaking desperate need, I leaned in and gave her a quick kiss on her cold cheek.
Henka sent the wolves out to patrol, keeping two back to guard her as I’d suggested all those months ago.
“When we reach civilization, you’ll have to let them go,” I said.
“I like letting them go. There’s nothing scary about death.”
Having an unknown number of souls trapped inside a diamond, I was less than sure.
“Life,” she said, “even unlife, that’s scary. I can’t die unless I have my heart. When you caught me, you threatened to break me apart. I’ve never been so scared. I’d have been there, forever. Weeds would grow over me. Carrion creatures would pick the flesh from my bones. And I’d still be there. The earth would eventually swallow me, and I’d still be there. Forever. Buried. Helpless. Alone.”
“I’m sorry.”
She looked away.
“I won’t let that happen,” I said.
“Promise?”
My broken promises haunted me. This one, I swore, I would keep. “I promise.” I had a thought. “When you have your heart, what will you do?”
“I don’t know. That depends.”
Rather than question further, I changed the subject. “I need to sleep.”
“I don’t. I’ll stand watch.”
I awoke the next morning to find her standing exactly as she had the previous night, staring at me.
After a breakfast of cold rabbit, we continued south.
When small farm communities became common Henka sang to her wolves, laying them to rest. I watched in silence, careful not to intrude.
While on the outskirts of civilization, the dirt roads looked to be at least occasionally maintained and were only washed out in some places. Most towns had an inn, and while the townspeople eyed me with distrust and thinly veiled loathing, they treated Henka well enough. We paid for rooms with money she’d collected over the years. At one town, I purchased a long knife. It felt better to walk armed, even if it wasn’t much of a weapon. I thought we were safe enough then.
I was wrong.
Henka’s silk dress spoke of wealth. Having spent months in the wizard’s tower and in
the floating castle, surrounded by that easy luxury, I didn’t see it.
One morning, half an hour from the town where we’d spent the previous evening, men awaited us on the road. They were a rough bunch, broken noses and missing teeth, and I recognized two. They’d been in the inn’s common room, drinking. I remembered the way they stared at Henka, eyes hungry. As they’d said nothing, made no attempt to bother us, I’d ignored them for the base peasants they were.
Chatting, Henka and I walked straight into their trap. Three men with drawn knives stepped out in front of us. When we retreated, two more exited the tress behind us with short hunting bows, arrows nocked and half-drawn.
I resisted the urge to reach for my own knife. Henka. I’d told her to send away her pets, and without them, I suspected she was helpless. What would these ruffians do to her? At some point they’d realize the truth. Would they break her apart then? I’d promised just a few nights ago I wouldn’t let that happen.
I had to protect her.
A number of stupid things I could say passed through my head: This doesn’t need to happen. It doesn’t have to be this way. No one has to get hurt. You can take the money and leave.
But this was going to happen. There was no other way things would be. Someone was definitely going to get hurt. There was no way they’d be happy with just the money. The money was the excuse; they were here for Henka.
“It’s alright,” said Henka, grinning at the men before us. She ran a finger between her breasts, drawing the fabric tight. “I don’t mind.”
“Throw your knife down,” said one of a men with thick hair and few teeth. “Toss it into the trees.”
I glanced at Henka and she nodded. Grinding my teeth, I threw away my knife.
The two men with bows relaxed their draw and moved closer.
“I’ll make you a deal,” purred Henka, cupping a breast and sliding a finger between her thighs. “If you don’t hurt him,” she nodded at me, “I won’t fight.”
Black Stone Heart (The Obsidian Path Book 1) Page 18