XII
Something Sweeter Than
Unspoiled Wine
“One more task,” said the necromancer one autumn afternoon, “one more ritual, little Awa, and then you will be free to go, a necromancer in your own right. It’s enough to make me get out a handkerchief.”
“What?” Awa felt her breath dash away and hoped it came home soon; she had much more to ask on the matter.
“You don’t think I meant to keep you here forever, did you?” said the necromancer, and Awa realized she had thought exactly that. Considering any alternative might have given her hope, something she tried to weed out of her emotional garden lest it choke her seasonal apathy and perennial pragmatism.
“You’re going to let me go?” Awa marveled at the words even as she knew they had to be another of his games. “You would not let me go without a reason. I am too useful to you.”
“True enough!” He laughed, in better spirits than she had ever seen him. “The fact is, you can’t go where I’m bound, so there’s nothing for it. Getting there will require your aid, but once I’m gone you can do what you wish—stay up here for all I care, or see the world and all its wonders. I only ask that you stay alive so that we may converse again some sunny day, and I will be most displeased if I have to call you back from where the dead go. And don’t think a split skull will stop me, either —even if your body’s dashed I can summon your shade, put it in a bottle or something. So live, Awa, live!”
“Ah,” said Awa. “That’s it. You’re not really letting me go, you’re just going away for some reason, and someday you’ll come back and put me back under your thumb.”
“Must you always think the worst of me?” The necromancer scowled, clearly put out. “Here, I’ve got some presents for you.”
“Presents?” Awa took a step back. “I really don’t want—”
“Are you sure?” asked the necromancer, and Awa was no longer.
“What I meant,” she said carefully, “is that I don’t need—”
“Need’s a funny, fleeting thing,” he clucked, opening his bear and rooting around until he found a small chest. Setting it on the table, he gave her a strange smile and opened it up. Awa looked around to see where his concubine had slithered off to, suspecting a trick, but then he beckoned her around the table. “Put that hoof of yours on my chair.”
Awa obliged, and he took a thin, shimmering black rope from the box. He wrapped it twice around her ankle where goat fur met skin and tied it in a bow. Nothing happened. She looked up at him, and he grinned and nodded, pointing back down. Returning her gaze to her hoof, she stumbled backwards, nearly tipping his chair. Her hoof was gone and her old foot was in its place, the black twine bowed around her ankle.
“I don’t want this,” Awa said. “I liked it!”
“It’s still there,” the necromancer said huffily, hurt, or something like. “I just hid it so you won’t be burned at the stake by the first peasant you run across. The rest of the world isn’t so understanding of our talents.”
“Oh,” said Awa, and tapping her heel on the floor she felt her hoof clatter instead of a too-soft sole.
“You still see the string?”
“Yes,” said Awa. “Shouldn’t I?”
“It’s only visible to you, so you can take it off if you like, and even with it on you’re liable as not to leave cloven hoofprints, so be mindful of mud when you’re walking about muddy villages.” He rooted through the chest for something else as Awa held her foot up and tried to wiggle her illusory toes.
“What is it made of ?” she asked.
“A braid from my tutor’s beard,” said the necromancer, making Awa lose some of her excitement over the gift. “And here’s his skull.”
Awa looked up and saw him holding out a small, hexagonal piece of bone with a circle punched through its center. She took it and peered closely at the burnished band. “His skull?”
“The hardest part of it, expertly carved and crafted.” He tapped his head. “That beard string of his will work fine for a foot or a hand but isn’t good for much else, though I once tied it around an adder’s throat to make it look like a grass snake.”
“But this piece of skull?”
“A ring,” said the necromancer, and, taking it back from her, he slipped it onto one of his fingers. Nothing happened. “Well, look away!”
Awa glanced to the bear and back to her tutor. Omorose stood before her, alive and radiant and smiling from ear to ear. Awa looked away again. “Take it off. Not funny.”
“No?” He dropped the ring onto the table and reached back into the box. “You can look any way you like when it’s on, and more than that, it disguises the sound of your voice and even your smell—useful if dogs are after you. For you I’d recommend the visage of a burly Spaniard fellow, lessen your chance of trouble on the roads. Not much respect for women or Moors these days. Ah, here they are!”
He placed a familiar hawthorn box on the table. “Best way to start a fire in even the wettest weather, though you’ll need to get them out of the kindling quick once it’s lit—if they stay with the fuel they might hatch. Hardly a salamander left in all the world, so if you lose these don’t count on finding another. You recall how to ignite them?”
“I tell them the word for fire, like their mother would.” Awa opened the box and removed one of the half-dozen petrified eggs.
“You have to focus on one at a time, though, which is nice—keeps you from setting your bag on fire when you’ve got one in the tinder and the rest in their box and you speak those sacred syllables.” He took a dagger out of the chest, its handle an ibex horn and its sheath black leather. Glancing at Awa, he quickly put the weapon back in the chest and shut it. “You can have that after I’ve left. The bear will open right up for you once I’m gone.”
The necromancer turned to put the chest back in his ursine hidey hole and Awa surreptitiously made her way over to the cooking area. A quick perusal confirmed that all the iron tools were gone, including his cauldron.
“What are you doing?” He was right behind her.
“I was going to make some tea,” she said, careful not to look him in the eye. “Where are—”
“Stowed, in preparation of my departure,” said the necromancer. “Now piss off until tonight, I’ve got to prepare a few things.”
“Alright,” said Awa, gathering her new possessions. “Thank you, sir.”
“No,” he said, “thank you, little Awa.”
More convinced than ever that he meant her imminent mischief, Awa forced herself to wait quite a while before strolling down the glacier to where she had secreted one of the swords. It was gone. Worrying her lip, she tracked down the bandit chief and asked if he would spar with her.
“I would, but he had the mindless ones gather all the swords last night and cast them from the high cliff. Might we use the old sticks?”
“No.” Awa worried her lip more. “Have you seen Gisela? His whore?”
“Not today,” said the bandit chief. “And the mindless ones are off somewhere as well. Something must be brewing. I would be very careful, Awa.”
She nodded. “Getting rid of the iron might mean he’s vulnerable, or is going to be. He said he needed me for one last ritual tonight and then he would set me free.”
“That sounds suspicious.”
“I know it.”
“Be careful not to play into his hands. He is very clever.”
“I don’t have much choice.” Awa sighed. “We’ve all lived in his palm for a very long time, and I can’t refuse to help.”
“No.”
“What if he is, though?” It came out quickly, Awa giddy at the thought. “What if he really is leaving? What if he’s not so wicked but just mad? Mad and lonely? I know I—”
“He is not just mad, nor is he lonely. He is dangerous and cruel, a monster. You know this, and you know I cannot lie so you should feel assured by my assessment.”
“Yes, but if we believe the things we s
ay they are not lies even if they are untrue, yes? He gave me things,” said Awa. “Look at my foot, he made it—”
“Do you not remember what he did to that foot, Awa?” he said, and at the memory her sprouting hope withered. “Be wary of him, today more than you ever have before. Did you not tell me he was in a kind mood as he fed you your own flesh?”
“I’ll be careful,” said Awa, doubting she could be careful enough if he intended her harm.
She spent the rest of the afternoon playing with the birds she had brought back to life, the littlest of them a skeletal swallow that sported mouse bones she had gathered from raptor pellets instead of feathers. It jumped from rock to rock and landed on her finger, its delicate skull cocked at her as she walked it to the end of the cliff. One by one she had the vultures and other bird carcasses hop over the edge so they could have one last flight. Awa sadly watched them plummet down, wings vainly flapping, until they smashed apart far below. She thought she saw the cauldron shining at the base of the cliff but it might have simply been a bright piece of rock reflecting the setting sun. Finally she had her littlest bird leap over the side, but the mouse bones actually worked and it glided out, buoying itself in the stern winds, and to Awa’s delight it returned and landed on her shoulder.
Pleased by the good omen, she walked back toward his hut cooing to the little bird. When she reached the door she looked at her tiny friend and saw what she was looking for, and with a quick peck on its skull she restored the creature’s soul to its bones. It jabbed her palm twice with its beak, leaving little rubies in the furrows of her hand, and then it flew up into the darkening night. A good omen.
Awa felt queasy as she shut the door behind her, the air thick with wormwood smoke. Through the haze she saw that he had drawn all over the black tabletop, diagrams she had never seen before etched into the stone and filled with oil rendered from the fat of men, judging by the rich smell she made out through the licorice-tinged miasma. He talked quickly, anxiously, having her grate mandrake root onto a circle he had carved at the foot of the table while he poured sheep’s milk into a bowl full of ground bone and rusty iron shavings.
“You said iron couldn’t be used in—” Awa began as she watched him work but he cut her off.
“I said iron dampens our ability to work our arts,” said the necromancer, stirring the bowl with a finger. “Try raising a skeleton the next time you’re holding a sword. Now, if it’s on your belt that’s something else … provided your belt’s not iron, of course. It’s all about binding, Awa, about trapping reality in a certain shape, which is the last thing we want sometimes and the first thing we need at others. We usually need reality to be malleable, mutable, open, not closed and set. Now drink this.”
“What?” Awa frowned at the bowl. Since moving back in with the necromancer she had been plagued with vivid, traumatizing nightmares, and if they did not involve Omorose they invariably featured her tutor torturing her. Several dreams had featured poison. “Why?”
“Because I am, for one final night, your master. Shall I make you?”
“No,” Awa said, and drank the mixture. She tasted other elements in the draught but there was nothing for it, and despite the rarity of luxurious, thick milk she gagged on her fear and the flakes of metal. He was going to murder her, she knew it, but why had he told her to live and—
“You’ll pass the iron soon enough, and then your abilities will return,” said the necromancer as he drew his fingers back inside his tunic and began pulling it over his head. “We all have a little in us, in our blood. It’s part of what makes blood such an essential element—it contains the mystical properties of incomprehensible life, yet it also carries cold, hard reality. Drink a little sometime and tell me I’m lying; you can tell by the taste. That’s why so few are disposed to working our wiles —too much iron, dampens them to the point that practicing witchcraft is impossible. That’s why you have to start young, to train yourself to fight against your very blood, to—What’s the matter?”
Awa had backed away as he stripped nude, the haze in the room making her dizzy, the milk curdling in her belly. She glanced into the fire to see if the pot hook was still there but he had removed that, too. He was moving toward her, his spindly nakedness disturbing in a way that no cadaver could match—they were supposed to look dead, after all.
“Don’t touch me,” she whispered. “Don’t you even—”
“Touch?” He blinked once and then laughed. “No, little Awa, no no. You won’t even have to touch me! My skin just needs to touch the stone, nothing more. I’m sorry to blather on, but I’m appreciating how much I never told you, how much you have to learn. Too late now, too late, too late. Now come over here and listen.”
He turned and clambered onto the table, and she saw that a wide flap of skin was missing from his mid-back down to his left buttock, the beet-red, rectangular wound only now scabbing over. Wincing as the granite met his exposed meat, he settled his puckered body down onto the oil-brimming channels like a starved hog in a nearly dried-out wallow. The smoke grew thicker and Awa realized he had blocked the chimney, her eyes stinging and her lungs burning. He gave a pleased sigh as he stretched out, his head turning to Awa.
“The iron’s taken effect by now.” His voice quavered the slightest bit, like an accomplished but nervous liar trying to fool his mother, and like an astute parent Awa picked up on the tremor though all other ears would have missed it. “You can’t do anything, so don’t try to be smart or it will end worse for you than it did for Omorose. Just do as I tell you and you’ll have your freedom.”
“Don’t you speak her name, you horrible thing,” Awa did not say, though she might have were his green eyes not so focused, so sharp. Instead she nodded her head softly. Had he let it go things might have turned out very differently.
“I’m serious, little Awa. Don’t think I can’t smell what you’re thinking. You can’t hurt me, you can only hurt yourself, and if you try I’ll make you suffer in ways you can’t imagine. You think it was bad that I let you rape your little friend’s bones before cluing you in to the way things work? You have no idea. I’ll play with her myself, and have your bandit friend do the same, and you’ll have to watch, you’ll have to watch your Omor—”
“Don’t speak her name! You horrible thing!” She was crying and her fists were balled. “I hate you!”
“So long as we understand each other, anything’s better than ambivalence,” said the necromancer. “Now do as I say, yes?”
Awa stared down at her seemingly matching feet for a long time, then wiped her stinging eyes and nodded.
“Right. All you do is take that sheet hanging over the bear’s arm and pull it up over me, all the way to my head, and then you let it lie atop me, and then you slowly pull it back down again. I can do what I need to do whether you oblige me or not, but my chances of a complete success are far stronger if the sheet covers me during the process. Understand so far?”
Awa numbly walked around the table to the bear and took the sheet draped over its forepaw. The linen was covered in lines and scribbles, much like the table. Drawn in blood, of course, but also fouler substances, gauging by the smell. Then she noticed the bear was dead, stone dead without even a fraction of its spirit, and she froze, her heart beating so hard she nearly threw up. If—
“The smoke can’t be helped but get on with it,” snapped the necromancer. “No excuses for dawdling, not now. Bring the sheet to my feet and wait until I start the invocations. Don’t cover my head until I’ve gone quiet, and then count my heartbeats. After exactly one hundred heartbeats slowly remove the sheet, and I’ll tell you what to do next.”
“Why?” said Awa, trying to make herself sound out of sorts and drugged from the smoke. That was easy enough. “What are you doing?”
“These aren’t exactly traveling clothes,” said the necromancer, pinching a wattle of loose skin under his chin and shaking it. “Have to trade in this old hide for something fresh, something new. The sheet and
the smoke help obscure the transformation—recall how with the ring and the rope the process did not take effect until you had looked away and then back? If you don’t do as you’re told I won’t be able to become as young as I’d prefer, and I’ll be very cross. That’s the worst you can do, but I would still not advise it. You have not seen me cross yet, Awa.”
Awa did not know if she believed him, but she focused on his words rather than letting her mind settle on what had flitted through it, like the little bonebird arcing over the abyss for an instant before sailing back to safety.
“Do not fail me, Awa,” the necromancer said quietly. “Please. I have been harsh, I know, but I think in time you might understand even if you cannot forgive. I love you, Awa, I love you and I only seek to keep you safe from a world that would bind you in chains, that would make you a slave to selfish children who spurn your kindness, who resent your mercy. I love you, and that is why I have been cruel. But no more—after tonight you will be a favored daughter instead of an abused pupil, a queen instead of a slave. Understand?”
How could she? No words he had spoken, no blows he had delivered, no dreams he had crushed stabbed her as viciously, broke her as thoroughly. She felt disemboweled, she felt on fire, she felt icy water fill her lungs. What could she say, what could she do? Her tears cut through the smoke, and she heard him begin the invocations. No gods or goddesses were mentioned, no prayers given, only commands, and Awa realized she had already drawn the sheet up to his neck.
Looking down at his face, weathered and leathery, Awa wondered what it would feel like to have those grubby, murmuring lips kiss her on the cheek or forehead, to have those emaciated arms hug her like her father must have, like her mother must have. Again she tried to remember her mother’s name, her father’s name, but they were gone forever. Names were powerful things, and her tutor had never given her his. Would he when the ritual was completed?
The Enterprise of Death Page 12