Mortal Rites

by Melissa McShane

  “Listen,” Dianthe said. “Someone’s speaking.”

  Sienne listened. The cadence was familiar, though she couldn’t make out words—hard, sharp syllables that burned—

  “Everybody down!” she exclaimed, grabbing Perrin’s hand and forcing him down with her. As she did so, the door burst open. The hard-edged sound of an evocation filled the night, and several bolts of magical energy shot through the doorway, just inches from Alaric’s head.

  The instant they were past, Alaric rose from his crouch and flew through the door, bowling over the man standing in the doorway. The stranger’s spellbook flew out of his hands to land with a crack on the tile floor. Sienne dove for it. It was larger and thicker than hers and felt uncomfortably alive, like it was waiting for its moment to writhe out of her hands and slither away.

  “Ivar Scholten?” Alaric said, then grunted as a ceramic vase came flying at him and struck him a glancing blow on the shoulder. “Damn it, we’re not the enemy, stop fighting us!”

  Scholten twisted in Alaric’s hands, bucking and kicking until Dianthe laid the edge of her sword against his throat. Then he went so still he might have been catatonic. “Thanks,” Alaric said. “Master Scholten, we’re here because your friend Pauro Murtaviti has become a lich and is on his way here to kill you.”

  Scholten blinked blue eyes only a few shades darker than Alaric’s and moistened his lips with his tongue. “Pauro? A lich?”

  “If I let you up, will you stop fighting?” Alaric said.

  Scholten nodded. “She’s got my spellbook, anyway.” His Sorjic accent was thicker than Alaric’s, but still perfectly intelligible. Alaric released him and gave him a hand up. “Who are you people?”

  “It’s a long story. May we come in?” Dianthe said, sheathing her blade.

  “It looks like you already are,” Scholten said, amusement touching his face briefly. Based on what they knew of Murtaviti’s blight, he had to be in his late fifties, but looked a good ten years younger, his blond hair untouched by silver and only the faintest of crow’s feet beside his eyes. He shut the door behind them and held out his hand for his spellbook. Sienne hesitated, then shook her head, and his amusement deepened. “Sensible girl. Very well. This way. We might as well be comfortable.”

  Scholten’s home was very modern, the floors tiled in an intricate mosaic pattern in brown and warm gold, the walls painted a light cream rather than whitewashed. The room he led them to was sunken a few inches and filled with chairs padded with brightly embroidered cushions. Two lamps lit by magic hung low over the room, casting a cool glow over the furnishings. Scholten sank into a chair that, by its position, was his accustomed seat and gestured to the others. “Sit, please. You’ll forgive me if I don’t offer you anything, but I’m not in the habit of accommodating invaders.”

  “We’re not—” Sienne began hotly, but Alaric put a quelling hand on her arm.

  “We were hired by Bernea Murtaviti to find her husband, who had apparently gone missing on the road between Tagliaveno and Fioretti,” he said. “We’d come looking for Murtaviti with questions about necromancy, and his relationship with Penthea Lepporo—I assume you know her?”

  Scholten shrugged. “I wrote to her a few times. I met her through my acquaintance with Pauro and…I suppose there’s no point in pretending I’m not a necromancer, and Pauro is a member of my blight? At any rate, Penthea’s position in the blight predates mine. But go on.”

  “We chose to hunt down Murtaviti so we could ask him our questions. But when we encountered him, he was in the last stages of a ritual that transformed him into a lich.”

  Scholten laughed, a mirthless sound. “Damn him. I wanted to be first. So he succeeded, did he? You don’t know how he did it, do you?”

  “We’re not necromancers,” Alaric said. “We returned to Fioretti to find a way to destroy Murtaviti, and found Drusilla Tallavena. She told us about the reliquary, that destroying it would defeat the lich.”

  “Is Dru still alive? She hasn’t written in years. I believed one of her experiments had killed her.”

  “No, Murtaviti did. He seems to be intent on killing all the remaining members of his blight, to prevent you from achieving the same state and becoming rivals.”

  Scholten’s pale Ansorjan face went still. “Ah. Poor Dru. It’s probably for the best; she never did have the necessary ruthlessness for a necromancer. And you hurried here out of the goodness of your hearts to warn me? I’m touched.”

  “Spare me,” Alaric said. “We’re here because you and we share a common enemy. We want your help to destroy Murtaviti. You’ll save your life and we’ll defeat a deadly evil. That’s all.”

  “Why do you need my help? Liches are immune to most wizardry. I can’t force-bolt him into submission, for example.”

  “Even one more wizard can make a difference. And I’m sure you have necromancy at your disposal you could turn on Murtaviti.”

  “We just need to get his reliquary away from him and destroy it,” Dianthe said. “That means keeping him preoccupied rather than trying to kill him.”

  “It sounds like an excellent plan,” Scholten said. “With one problem. I still intend to complete my research and become a lich myself. I’m as much your enemy as Pauro is. How do I know you won’t just kill me as soon as Pauro is defeated? Assuming we can even do such a thing.”

  “How do we know you won’t turn on us instead of fighting Murtaviti?” Alaric said. “We both have to exercise a little trust if we’re going to defeat the lich.” He leaned forward for emphasis. “You don’t have many choices. You can agree to help us fight Murtaviti, and save your own life. Or you can turn us down and wait for Murtaviti to arrive, bringing your death.”

  Scholten leaned forward to match Alaric’s pose. “It’s true I can’t defeat a lich on my own,” he said. “All right. Give me back my spellbook, and you have a deal. I won’t turn on you, and you won’t kill me.”

  “That’s not good enough,” Sienne said.

  “Sienne,” Alaric said, in a tone that meant We don’t have a choice.

  “I know, but I’m not stupid. I don’t think we should provide him with temptation to betray us by leaving him spells he could turn on us.”

  A slow smile spread across Scholten’s narrow face. With his pointed chin and fair coloring, he looked like a mink—a self-satisfied, supremely confident mink. “You’re right, you’re not stupid,” he said. “But you need my magic if you intend to defeat Pauro. What assurances would you accept that I won’t turn on you?”

  “No assurances,” Sienne said. “I’m just going to take some of your spells.”

  The smile vanished. “I won’t allow that.”

  “Not permanently. I don’t steal. But I’ll hang onto them until this is over, and I’ll give them back when I’m satisfied you’re not a threat to us.”

  “You’ll leave me with no way to defend myself against you. You call that fair?”

  “Unlike you, we have a reputation for honesty,” Alaric said. “We’ve sworn we won’t attack you, and we’ll hold to that.”

  Ivar swore a long string of blistering oaths. He rose from his chair. “I suppose we have a deal,” he said, extending his hand to Alaric. Alaric considered it for a moment, then took it briefly. “When can we expect my old friend Pauro?”

  “I have one scrying blessing left,” Perrin said. “I will attempt to ascertain his location, if you have a map of the vicinity.”

  “I do,” Scholten said. He glared at Sienne. “I have exact knowledge of every spell in that book. Do not think to cheat me.”

  Sienne glared back. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Scholten left the room. Dianthe let out her breath in a great huff. “I was afraid we might have to kill him right here.”

  “I’m hoping—and I realize I tarnish my soul in saying this—I’m hoping he has some necromantic secrets he can turn on Murtaviti,” Alaric said. “Sienne—”

  “I’m already looking,” Sienne said, leafing
through the spellbook. “He has some terrible spells. Statue, that turns a person to stone. Change, which lets you turn something into anything else. You could turn a man into a frog—it only lasts a short while, but it’s a true transformation. Oh!” She slammed the book shut in surprise. “He has charms. That’s forbidden!”

  “I doubt a practicing necromancer cares much about the laws of wizardry,” Perrin said.

  “Well, I definitely can’t let him keep those.” Sienne worked the latch of his spellbook and began removing spells. “I wish we had time for me to copy some of these. He has ferry!”

  “I suppose I can’t stop you copying them out,” Scholten said as he re-entered the room, a rolled-up paper in his hand. “Though it’s dishonorable.”

  “I’d trade honestly with you,” Sienne said, stung into a feeling of guilt that she’d considered just taking the ones she wanted. “Our books hardly overlap at all.”

  “You should consider the charms. Don’t tell me a scrapper wouldn’t have a use for daze, facing a horde of wisps or whatever monsters you happen to encounter often.”

  “It’s forbidden.”

  Scholten smiled. “Only if they catch you. Clever girl like you—”

  “The map, if you please,” Perrin said, extending a hand. Scholten slapped the rolled-up map into it. Perrin unrolled it and held it up to the light. “This will do.”

  Sienne continued working. Scholten had so many spells she didn’t know! And not all of them were nasty. Fury, the version of force that produced multiple bolts, and shout, the more potent version of scream, to pick two at random. “Will shout work on a lich?” she asked.

  Scholten walked away from the low table where Perrin had spread the map to stand beside her. “To a degree. It does not incapacitate the way it would when cast on a living person, or an animal.”

  “And this one, miasma? I’m guessing not.”

  “Liches can’t be poisoned, no. Though anything holy might as well be poison to them. They have to stay away from consecrated ground.”

  “So…how can they raise the dead if they can’t enter a cemetery? That’s consecrated ground.”

  “It’s difficult, but it can be managed.” Scholten drew up a chair and sat beside her. “May I see your spellbook?”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “I think any one of your companions could take it away from me if I chose not to return it, possibly by way of removing my hands. I’d simply like to know if you have anything worth trading for. If Pauro leaves us time.”

  Sienne laughed. “We stormed into your house, stole your spellbook, effectively made you a hostage, and you’re willing to do something as civilized as trade spells?”

  Scholten shrugged. “Why not? I am a wizard as well as a necromancer. Improving my spellbook—I don’t have to tell you what it’s like to crave knowledge.”

  Sienne glanced over at the table where the others were gathered. Perrin had his riffle of blessings, sadly depleted, in one hand and a stick of pastel color in the other. “All right.” She handed over her spellbook, feeling a terrible misgiving that she was making a mistake. But he was helpless, and it wasn’t as if he could cast spells from her book…

  Scholten paged through it mostly in silence, occasionally saying, “Huh,” and once, “That’s interesting.” It made Sienne feel self-conscious, as if he were judging her for the contents of her spellbook. “I misjudged you,” Scholten finally said, with the spellbook open to the last page, displaying the spell convey. “You’ve amassed quite the portfolio despite your youth. Why the early emphasis on confusions? I presume you follow the common wisdom, and add spells in the order you gain them.”

  “I…the school I went to encouraged me to focus on them,” Sienne said, wary of giving too much information about herself. “I like transforms better.”

  “I’m fond of summonings, myself. It’s been my bad luck that I rarely come in the way of confusions.” Scholten flipped back through the book. “I wouldn’t mind trading for mirror, though it’s a pity you don’t have vanish. I always wanted invisibility. So many practical applications.”

  “I agree,” Sienne said. “And I’ve been looking for ferry for weeks with no luck.”

  “We have him,” Perrin said, making both of them look up. “He is traveling almost as fleetly as if on horseback, though of course it is impossible for him to ride. I estimate we have perhaps an hour and a half before he is upon us.”

  “Time enough to make some preparations,” Alaric said. “We can fortify this place so we choose the ground we fight on.”

  “More than enough time for us to scribe new spells,” Sienne said. “Ferry will give us an out if we have to make a quick escape.”

  “And I will attempt to pray for more blessings,” Perrin said. “It is either very late or very early for me to do so, but I believe Averran may take pity on me, given the circumstances in which we find ourselves.”

  “Then let’s get started,” Alaric said.

  18

  Sienne tucked Scholten’s spell pages inside her vest and snugged them close against her body. It felt like wearing armor, which in a way, it was, given that the invulnerable paper would deflect most edged weapons. She only cared that it kept the spells where Scholten couldn’t get at them. All the charm spells, both force and fury, a handful of other spells that could not hurt Murtaviti but could do serious damage to her team. She worked her left arm, testing the small wound where she’d pierced the vein to produce ink to scribe ferry. If only they’d had time for more…she might not have wanted Scholten to have the ability to turn her companions into frogs, but if she could transform Murtaviti thus, even if just for a few minutes…!

  She settled herself and her book more comfortably on the footstool placed before the upstairs balcony that looked out over the dark meadows behind the manor. The sitting room was decorated in a rather feminine style that made Sienne wonder if there had ever been a woman in Scholten’s life. There was certainly no one else here now, not even servants, which made her wonder further whether Scholten used undead as kitchen help. Ugh.

  They couldn’t predict which way Murtaviti would come, whether he would approach from the front, which was the more direct path, or try to take them by surprise by circling around to the back, so she was set to watch the rear of the house, just in case. Perrin was on the other side of the house, similarly situated to watch the road leading to the gate. With the room darkened, she saw no movement as far as the wall encircling the estate and beyond, not even animals. What did the undead do to animals if they caught them? Probably nothing good. She hoped the horses would be safe in the stables behind the manor.

  She glanced at Scholten, who sat nearby in a chair in the center of a circle charred into the floorboards. They’d removed the carpet and rolled it up to lean against the wall in one corner so he could perform a ritual, and she’d watched him doing it in between casting break on the window in this room and the bedroom across the hall. She’d felt a furtive excitement in seeing it, as if her observation made her complicit. It had been unexpectedly simple: spark to draw the circle and angular runic characters around the circle, some herbs from the kitchen before it was barricaded, burned in a brass bowl he’d dumped a dried floral arrangement out of, and muttered words Sienne hadn’t been able to make out. Now Scholten had what he assured them was a protected area no undead could enter.

  Scholten looked up from his spellbook and caught her watching him. He said, “It’s difficult to believe an undead creature is on his way here, intent on killing us. Not with how peaceful the night is.”

  “He is. But I understand what you mean.” She turned back to surveying the moonlit landscape and heard Scholten flip the pages of his spellbook.

  “I wonder,” he said after a minute of silence in which Sienne tried to come up with something she could talk about with an evil necromancer, “that you’re a scrapper. Surely your skills are better suited to more regular employment?”

  “It’s what I love. I ne
ver wanted to teach, and working in any other field wouldn’t give me the variety of experience I have as a scrapper. Besides, the reason I have the skills I do is due to scrapping, so there’s that.”

  “I see.” Silence fell again. “And your friends?”

  “What about them?”

  “No one’s paying you to dispose of Pauro. I find that remarkable, given the mercenary lot scrappers generally are. What are you getting out of it?”

  Telling him about Alaric’s quest was out of the question. “We just feel responsible for preventing him killing anyone else.”

  “So altruistic of you.”

  Scholten’s laugh irritated Sienne. She clenched her teeth to hold back a sharp answer. She wouldn’t let him goad her. Instead, she said, “How much do you know about liches? How far has your research gone?”

  When he didn’t answer immediately, she looked at him and discovered he was examining her closely, his eyes narrowed and his lips pursed in thought. “Is this a ploy to determine whether I need killing?” he asked.

  “I just want to understand what they’re capable of. Master Murtaviti did things I thought were impossible, and if you know why, well, I want you to tell me.”

  “I don’t see the benefit to me in that.”

  Sienne smiled. “Aside from showing off your brilliance?”

  He returned her smile, somewhat grudgingly. “You have me there.” He looked off across the fields again. “Immortality is everything. You’re too young to understand what it’s like to feel the years slipping away from you, to see your body age and falter despite everything you can do for it. To be able to slip the bonds of death…it’s amazing more people don’t pursue it.”

  “I think the fact that you have to murder to get it dissuades most of us.”

  “But suppose the only ones you kill are themselves criminals? Men and women whose lives would be forfeit if their crimes were known? I’ve never killed anyone who didn’t deserve death. Doesn’t that make me an agent of good rather than evil?”