by Jack Heckel
“Of course he didn’t,” Aldric spit. “But I know his game. He created this problem on purpose. He thinks he’ll be able to come in here and charge me double-rate for an emergency job, and his stone contractor will be in on it with him, because inevitably they’re going to need to open up the walls. I wasn’t born yesterday . . .”
“I didn’t think liches were born at all,” I said aloud before I could stop myself.
“What?” he barked, seeming to suddenly remember that I was there. “Of course liches are born . . .” He paused and thought about it for a second. “Well, technically we aren’t born . . .” he corrected, then stopped again and threw up his hands. “It’s complicated.”
“I think I understand,” I said, because I had taken three semesters of necromancy before switching majors. “A lich is typically a mage that decides to become immortal by embracing the dark powers of necromancy and converting himself into the undead. This means that while the lich itself is not born, but rather made through dark and demoniac rituals, the man that becomes the lich is born like any other man.”
Aldric gave a gasp of disbelief and his entire manner changed. “You have it exactly,” he said with some excitement. “Do you know how many times I’ve tried to explain that to other captives?”
“Laymen,” I said in disgust. “I did study necromancy, although obviously I never went as far as you did with the subject.”
“Be thankful,” he said with a tired sigh. “Being a lich isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. First you research for years trying to uncover the secret to eternal life only to discover that you have to kill your body and trap your own soul to accomplish it, which is a bit of downer, I can tell you. And don’t get me started on the up-front costs.”
He gestured at his glowing crown. “There’s the phylactery you need to make to confine your soul. That’s not cheap. You also have to find someplace to set up shop, and it can’t be an ordinary graveyard or a haunted mansion. No, you’re expected to maintain a certain ‘lifestyle.’” His gloved hands made eloquent little air quotes as he said this. “Add it all up and you barely manage to make enough to build even a modest treasure horde.”
I didn’t think it was the right time to point out that he was sitting in front of several kings’ ransoms worth of loot. Then again, I thought as another drop of water landed on the bridge of my nose, I don’t know how much this plumbing rework is going to cost him. This is a pretty bad leak.
“Whine, whine, whine . . .” came a voice like deep thunder that echoed about the chamber.
The semi-lich turned to me, his eyes blazing like deathly blue flames in the shadows. I tried to put my hands up in a gesture of bafflement, remembered I was chained, and beseeched, “I swear that was not me, O Great Semi-lich Aldric. I would never try to minimize the pain of your eternal existence.”
“I know it wasn’t you,” he moaned. “It’s . . . it’s . . .”
“The greatest and most powerful—” the rumbling voice began.
“Silence!” Aldric commanded. I felt a rush of mystical power come with the command. I expected to suddenly lose the ability to speak or to hear, but I didn’t. I realized that he had cast the spell on the area behind the throne where the piles of treasure lay.
“Who was that?”
“No one important,” he said, and then turned his head and shouted back over his shoulder toward the treasure pile, “Not the least bit important!” He turned back, but he was clearly shaken. He put a gloved hand to his head and gave a groan. “You don’t know what it’s like, Avery. To live forever with that voice. It’s enough to drive me even madder than I already am.”
After saying this he seemed to forget I was there, and sat mumbling curses under his breath. I used the time to look at my companions. There was another possibility to mind—to consume my own reality—but I was hesitant to implement it since it would require me to die.
I was still pondering this unhappy option when Aldric sat up and said brightly, “Let’s talk about something more cheerful, like how I’m going to torment you and your companions for the next several months or maybe even years.”
“Or you could tell me, one student of necromancy to another, what a semi-lich is?”
“Behold,” he said ominously.
He turned sideways so that he was facing to the right and leaned forward out of the shadows. His face was little more than a bleached skull with purple flickering shadows flowing over it. In the socket where his eye should have been, burned a ghastly blue flame. He then very deliberately removed the glove from his left hand, and showed that it also was nothing but bones knitted together by those strange purple shadows.
“You look like every other lich I’ve seen.” I left off mentioning that all of those had been in textbooks.
“Ahhh,” he said with a skeletal smile, “but you haven’t seen the other side. Would you like to?”
I had to admit, despite the peril of our situation, I was immensely curious. I had always enjoyed necromancy as a subject, and if I ever managed to escape all this, I thought I might be able to include a chapter on the semi-lich in my dissertation, as a case study in subworld biodiversity. I nodded vigorously.
With a flourish he quickly spun to face toward the left, revealing his right side profile. The contrast was stunning. He had glossy black hair and smooth ghost-white skin. His eyes still danced with an unholy light, but the red lips and the hint of fangs left me no doubt.
“Seriously, you’re a vampire-lich?!” I sighed in admiration. “That is so cool! How did you do it?”
“You really want to know?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
Intellectual curiosity had gripped me with both hands. I could try and tell you that I was stalling him in order to gain time, but I really wanted to know how a half-vampire/half-lich came into being. I hadn’t even minded the last two drops of water, that’s how distracted I was.
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk about it,” he admitted, and sat again so that his vampire side was visible. “I was Aldric the High-wizard, master of everything magic and occult. This was before the Dark Lord, but as you probably know, the world had been falling into ruin for some time. My tower was in the Sea of Grass and I became convinced that a band of marauding gnolls were going to devour me.”
“Why gnolls?”
He shrugged. “It’s silly, but I’ve had nightmares about gnolls since I was a child. I think when I was young and heard stories about them, I confused them with knolls. I’d always imagined them as large rolling hills with eyes coming to eat me. Utterly terrifying.”
“That actually would be terrifying,” I agreed, and added a confession of my own. “For years I thought a gazebo was a type of dread monstrosity.”
“Completely understandable,” said Aldric. “The word sounds like one of those part-this and part-that creatures, like a merlion or a cockatrice . . .”
I nodded along and added, “Or a griffin or a hippogriff.”
He paused at this and asked, “What’s the difference between a griffin and a hippogriff anyway? Aren’t they both part eagle?”
“Yes,” I said slowly, trying to remember my basic magical zoology class, “but one is half-eagle and half-horse and the other is half-eagle and half-lion.”
“That’s odd don’t you think?” he asked after a moment’s pause. “Some wizard must have spent years making the griffin or the hippogriff, whichever came later, when there was a perfectly acceptable eagle chimera already at hand.”
Having known mages that had spent lifetimes perfecting magic considerably less notable I simply shrugged. “That’s the nature of magicians, I suppose. I’ve never known one to be satisfied with someone else’s magic, or at least who wasn’t certain that he could improve that magic if he only set his hand to the task.”
Aldric frowned. “As you will see,” he murmured, “your words could apply equally well to my own circumstance.”
He began pacing back and forth across the dais, shifting from showing me hi
s vampire side to his lich side and back again. “Back in my tower on the Sea of Grass, after long meditation on the subject, I came to the conclusion that the best way not to be killed by the forces of evil was to become an evil undead myself. I did my research and weighed my options. I wrote a long list of pros and cons. It was a difficult decision as I was not completely satisfied with the forms of undead that were available to me.”
He stopped pacing with his vampire side to me. “Initially vampires seemed to be an attractive option. They don’t look like a rotting corpse or smell bad or anything like that, and they seem to be the subject of a lot of romantic literature, so becoming one of those wouldn’t necessarily be fatal to my love life. As an added advantage, you can turn into a bat or wolf, which is pretty cool. On the other hand, I was concerned about their vulnerability to common everyday things like sunlight, running water, stakes, and whatnot. Then there’s the whole blood thing.” He turned to face me full-on, which I wish he hadn’t done because the effect was ghastly. “To be perfectly frank, Avery, that’s why I left you all alive. I do need fresh blood periodically. Sorry.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing, but I did feel that I had to get some resolution on the whole “killing us” thing soon. Another drop of water landed on my face. Or at least get him to move me out from under this damnable leak.
“In any event,” he continued, “I couldn’t get over the fact that I would thirst for blood. I was always a touch squeamish when it came to blood and drinking it seemed out of the question.” He pivoted to display his lich side. “On the other hand, liches are the ultimate undead. They are surpassingly fearsome and have limitless power. They can drain a man’s life essence with but a touch and cast spells of such potency that entire kingdoms crumble before them.”
“Kingdoms?” I raised an eyebrow.
He shrugged. “I exaggerate. The point was, I could see myself being a lich. I just hated to lose the romance of the vampiric lifestyle.”
“So how’d you manage to make yourself both?” I asked.
“Pure accident. Imagine if you will the following scene. I am casting the unlife spell. The candles are flickering. The spirits of the dead are swirling all about. The time comes for the final proclamation, and at that crucial moment, I knew I had to be a li . . . mpire.” He sighed. “Anyway, I’m not sure it came out exactly like that. I might have said vampich.”
He sat down on the edge of his throne and, shrugging, gestured at his body. “The end result is what you see. A complete monstrosity.” He slumped sadly.
I rolled my eyes. “You should have taken better notes.”
“Avery!” Ariella said sharply, although a bit groggily, from my left. “Leave the poor semi-lich alone. He’s obviously been through a lot.”
“Lass, he’s gonna kill us,” Rook growled from my right. I glanced that way and the dwarf looked to be completely recovered. I got the sense looking at him that he’d been faking unconsciousness for some time. The others, as far as I could tell, were still out cold.
Seeing other people awake brought Aldric back to himself with a start. He sorted his face into a nasty sneer and turned so that his lich side was showing, and then thinking better of it he pivoted back to the vampire side. Once he was sure he was in a properly gruesome pose, he said, “Good, you are finally awake! Now I can begin the slow process of killing you all.”
Rook rattled his chains as though trying to break free.
“Don’t try to resist,” Aldric said with a cruel chuckle. “I have rendered you all completely helpless. Your arms and legs are bound. Your weapons and magical constructs have been seized. You are totally under my power. All that is left for you to do is wail and despair as I . . .”
Ariella was raising and waving a finger in question.
“What is it you want, my dear?” he said irritably. “Is the incredibly attractive vampiric side of me making you fall in love?”
“Two things,” she said, holding up a second finger. “First, why does your ceiling leak so much?” Aldric frowned and began muttering to himself again. “And second, how could you have seized my pouches? I had dozens of cloves of wild garlic in them!”
“Because you are a lady, and we vampires have a soft spot for the fairer sex, I will answer your questions before I destroy you.” He raised an eyebrow at her suggestively, but when she made no reaction he hurried on. “One of the advantages of being a half-vampire is that garlic doesn’t bother me. Shallots on the other hand . . .” He shuddered. “As for the ceiling.” He turned back to the lich side. “That is only a portion of the torment I intend to deliver to you as I slowly drain you of your sanity and life.” He laughed so hideously it made my skin crawl.
“Aldric,” I said plaintively. “I thought we’d made a real connection.”
“I am sorry, Avery, but this is what a semi-lich does,” he said, and at least he did sound genuinely sorry.
“You thought you could reason with a semi-lich?” Rook barked out. “Yer as daft as he is. There’s a reason they put the best treasures down here in the tomb. This guy’s bat-crazy!” Aldric glowered at him, but didn’t dispute it.
Around me I heard the stirrings from Luke and Seamus and Sam beginning to stir. Aldric paced in front of us, chuckling evilly and rubbing his hands. I had hoped that Ariella or Sam might be able to do something, but their hands were chained. They both needed to make complex gestures to complete their castings, and Sam needed his little pouch. It was up to me, but I was still having no luck summoning up any magical energy Whether Aldric had set magic protections on the room, or whether it was simply the natural consequence of his half-lich nature, there was no power for me to use.
Another drop of water fell right on the bridge of my nose. I couldn’t even stop that—how could I take down a semi-lich? It was hopeless. I would either have to drain the life of one of my companions or myself. I slumped in my chains and muttered, “All I needed was Justice Cleaver. That’s all.”
Suddenly Aldric was in my face, his undead eyes blazing like never before. “Did you say you came here for Justice Cleaver?” he asked. “To be clear, if you got Justice Cleaver, you would take him away from me . . . from here?” His hands, both skeletal and vampiric, were shaking with excitement.
“Yes,” I said irritably. “Our plan was to take it with us and use it to destroy the Dark Queen.”
Aldric fell to his knees and raised his hands to the sky. “I knew there must be at least one of the gods dedicated to looking out for the hybrid undead. This is wonderful news.”
He stood and with a snap of his skeletal fingers our manacles fell away. “Sorry about all this. We’ve just had a misunderstanding. No hard feelings. Look, all your things are—” he snapped again and our equipment appeared on the ground in front of us “—right there. Please let me get you what you’ve come here for.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. Everyone else seemed to be in shock as well. We got our gear back on while he crashed through the treasure area behind the throne, muttering about all the clutter and throwing aside bits of magical armor and great piles of coins and gems.
“Here it is!” he screeched, and came scampering back carrying a double-bladed battle-axe wrapped in leather. He thrust it at me. “It’s all yours.”
“Wait a minute.” Rook stepped in between me and Aldric. “Why do you want to get rid of that thing so badly?”
“I just like to be helpful,” he said in a disastrous attempt at an innocence. “You know, helpful is my middle name.”
“What happened to ‘draining us of sanity and life’ is just what a lich does?” Ariella asked suspiciously.
He looked around at the doubt in our faces and his shoulders slumped in defeat. “Okay, can I be perfectly honest with you?” We all nodded. “I’ve been a semi-lich for a long time. I’ve had a lot of powerful magic items come through the tomb. Never have I had a problem with any of them until this Justice Cleaver came along.”
“Is it c-cursed?” Sam aske
d, and everyone, including me, took a step back.
“No . . .” Aldric began, and then stopped. “Not really. He just won’t shut up. If I didn’t cast a silence spell on him every day, he would happily talk about how great he is and how he’s being wasted in here and so on without end. It’s been driving me mad for months.”
“Months?” Sam asked. “But I thought Justice Cleaver had been down here for eons.”
“News to me,” Aldric said. “If it were true I really would be mad.” He gave a hysterical little giggle after this that made everyone genuinely uncomfortable.
I was getting nervous about the direction this conversation was taking. To end the debate I stepped forward and took the battle-axe from him. It felt heavier than I thought it should. “Whether the battle-axe is cursed or not,” I said, “it is what we need to complete our quest, and I thank you, Aldric.”
“No, thank you.” He reached out with his lich hand to shake.
As we grasped hands, I felt the icy sting of death. My arm went numb.
“Ooops! Sorry about that,” he said and quickly let go.
Aldric apologized repeatedly and profusely. And then when we’d gotten all of our things back on and together he gave a little bounce on his feet that didn’t seem in keeping with his lich persona and said eagerly, “Well, I know you must be anxious to go and destroy that awful Dark Queen.” He gestured and part of a wall slid back to reveal a stair going up. “Let me show you the way out. Your friends are waiting.”
“Friends?” I suddenly remembered the Hooded Riders and took a step away from the stair.
“Out you go!” he commanded, and a rush of powerful magic came on us and we found ourselves on the stair, and then up the stair, and then into the open air. There was the noise of a stone being rolled into place and when I turned all that remained was the featureless mound.
“What just happened?” asked Sam.
“I don’t know, laddie,” Rook said.
Over the dwarf’s shoulder I saw two figures in dark cloaks rise from the ground and rush toward us.
“The riders!” I managed to shout.