by Alan Bayman
“What about Shan-lo,” I whispered.
“Shan-lo will be fine. She is not on the island, and she is a girl. Now keep quiet, he has very good hearing.”
We waited for a while, listening to the crackle of the fire and the occasional sound of something large moving outside. There was a sudden cracking sound, and the women’s voice cried out. I turned to go towards the door, but Elgin grabbed me by the shoulder. I looked at him and he shook his head. I was about to shake off his hold and head towards the door when the woman called out,
“Elgin, dear, will you fetch me my bottle of tincture by the blue bookend? Jorm, please wait a moment longer. I have plenty of books on my shelves, you are welcome to read any of them.”
Elgin went over and picked up a bottle from a shelf with and amethyst rock propping up a row of books. I caught a glimpse of the label just for a moment, but with my memory that was all I needed. It said “sapiem” in Old Uben.
Sapiem is a topographical healing balm. It is usually used on welts and other injuries where the skin is not broken. It is not a particularly fast healing balm, as it is one of the weakest of magic healing serums. However, it does provide the benefit of covering up injuries, if one wanted to hide them.
I began wondering how often she had to feed her jealous guardian, and how many bottles of sapiem she had to go through every month to pretend nothing was wrong.
Or perhaps it was a pact. Witches, I was told, used the most primitive and primal of magics, but there was nothing stopping them from being a warlock as well. Warlocks worked through deals and contracts with magical beings, demons, and gods. A risky business, to be sure, and the warlock almost always loses out in the bargain, but it was a quick path to power.
Or, perhaps in this case, it’s for security. We are awfully close to the city, and the White Council took a hard view on witchcraft. Maybe this was the price she paid for living this close to civilization.
When Elgin and his mother returned, Elgin’s head hung low in submission. In contrast his mother stood tall and was glaring fiercely at nothing in particular until her eyes found mine. Then her rage melted into her previous calm cheer, and I felt a sudden sharp pain in my chest, followed by a brief thunder in my head, like my ears popping.
“Are you all right,” she asked, hurrying over. I had grabbed on to the edge of the table to keep myself from falling over.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think my heart beat for a moment.”
“That shouldn’t happen,” she said, easing me over to sit on the corner of her bed. “Your heart chakra should be empty.”
“My what?”
“Your heart chakra,” she said, holding one hand over my heart. “There are seven chakras that bind your soul to your body. That is, when you are alive. When you become a zombie, the only one left working is the seventh,” She moved her hand to the top of my head. “If you are lucky, powerful, or remain a zombie for a very long time, you can reawaken the sixth,” she moved her hand over my forehead. Her skin was both warm and cool at the same time to touch. Curious.
“What would it mean if my fourth chakra,” I gestured toward the center of my chest, “was not empty?”
She stepped away.
“I don’t know.” She thought for a moment, then told Elgin to go fetch the cauldron that she had left outside.
“Different types of undead have different types of connections to the world. Wraiths only have the sixth chakra connection,” she touched her forehead, “and can grow the fifth and fourth,” she touched her throat and heart, “but never the seventh. Same with banshees, but they start with the fifth. Vampires start with the most; fourth, sixth, seventh, second,” she tapped her heart, forehead, crown, belly with each number, almost making a dance of it.
“They are the only ones I know of who can regain them all. Litches maybe, but they must literally take their heart chakra out and bind it to something outside themselves. So, while they technically have all their chakras filled, one of them is always missing.”
“Tell me more about these chakras.”
She smiled at me.
“I’ll lend you a book on them.”
Elgin had come in and placed the caldron, washed and half full of fresh water over the fire. She picked a few herbs hanging from the ceiling and tossed them in.
“I never got your name,” I said.
She whipped her head around, a mischievous smile on her face.
“I never gave it.” Her smile turned into a smirk.
Was she flirting with me?
“Alula. Call me Alula.”
Alula, meaning a lover’s wisdom, in Old Uben. Interesting.
14.
The sun had set. Shan-lo had been invited inside. She sat on a thick pile of skins by the fire, chewing lazily on a piece of dried meat. Alula had cleared away and wiped down the stone table top, and then arranged for different piles of incense, one on each corner of the table. In the center of the table she placed a wooden bowl, filled with water. Elgin had me cut some strands of my hair and place them in the bowl. Then as she lit the incense one by one, she began chanting softly. Her voice was beautiful, hypnotic. I still could not comprehend the words, but it had familiar vowels and tonal inflections. It sounded like something between a command and a prayer.
I felt something change within the table and an enchantment begin to form within the bowl. To my mind’s eye it appeared as blueish, like a hazy cloud with shapes moving within it. As the shapes grew clearer I began to see them within the reflection of the water.
They were my memories.
As I watched them in the reflection they began to wash through me. Pain ripped through my chest as my heart began to beat.
I wish I could just skip this part and move on to the results. I wish I could put into the words how profoundly the revelations moved me. But I am no poet. I am a linguist and a scrivener. Since dying, I became and alchemist, necromancer, surgeon, and many other things, but still, the words of this moment still fail me, leaving only broken quills and clenched fists in my recollections.
To sum, for that is all I can do, I was a scrivener for The White Council. Books on all sorts of magic, but particularly necromancy, where mine to copy or translate.
I was fit for the job because of my high intelligence, steadiness of hand, and complete lack of talent in magic. Old wizards trusted me to make copies or translations of their tomes, confident that whatever knowledge I acquired could never be used.
I was useful but not unique. That was my mistake, to arrogantly assume my value was greater than the convenience of my masters.
I spent my time and much of my arguably lavish wages in some of the city’s finest inns and brothels. My family had succumbed to plague when I was young. I had no interest in marriage, until I met Shailyn. Shailyn Hibrone.
A young Lady, second daughter to Lord Hibrone, Master of Ships to the White council. Shailyn had been seduced by one of the sons of The White Council. After some time as his mistress the son grew tired of her, and left her heartbroken, penniless, and denounced as a whore.
I met her in an expensive brothel. She was in high demand, being new. She was always trying to give everyone what they wanted from her, love, attention, a shoulder to cry on. I think it was how she hid from the pain of everything that had happened to her; hiding from her loss of family and subsequent humiliations by burying herself in the needs of others.
Everyone took, and no one gave anything, save money. Until me.
I took her drinking, dancing, to plays and street performances. I never asked for her body after our first meeting. I only touched her at her invitation. She asked if it bothered me that she was a whore, and I said something half poetic about seeing her heart and not caring about anything else. She wanted out of it anyway, and I wanted to help her.
We moved in together. My neighbors were scandalized. The brothel she quit was outraged. But we did not care. We were married a week later.
There was six months. Half a year of bliss
. The brothel lodged a complaint that I ignored. I was supposed to gain the approval from the Council before I married, this I ignored as well. I was confident that my job was too important for me to face any lasting punishment for such a minor disobedience.
But I was wrong. The Councilman’s son did not like seeing his ex-lover so happily in the arms of another. He had been looking forward to seeing her in the brothel on occasion. He barged into our home, drunk, demanding her services and declaring our marriage void. When she refused he slapped her so hard, she fell. Her head struck the corner of my writing desk.
He was a nervous man, who had a habit of laughing when under duress. That’s why I found him laughing hysterically as he stood over my wife’s crumpled body, with a pool of blood forming beneath her head. That’s why I immediately grabbed my letter opener and stabbed him in the chest.
You can’t kill a necromancer’s son and expect him to stay dead. In his testimony to his own murder he said that my wife and I invited him over and I attacked them both. I was not allowed to speak. My sentence was that my life and unlife was to be given over to the victim’s father to use as he saw fit.
My last living memory was laying naked on a rune etched table, with candles, incense, and runes all around me. Standing at my head was the Councilman’s son.
“This is going to hurt a lot,” he said, “and it’s going to go on hurting, forever.”
My last thoughts were of my wife and Jorm. Jorm, you see, is not my name. It is the name we had decided for our child, if it was to be a boy.
15.
I came back to my senses and found myself leaning against the table. My fingers had dug into its wooden underside, leaving indentations. My heartbeat, fading away once again to stillness, though it wasn’t as painful this time.
My face was wet, and when I brought my hand up to touch it, my hand came back as a black smudge. I had been crying liquid Miasma.
Alula and Elgin stood across from me. Alula looked wide eyed, while Elgin slightly curious.
“We only caught glimpses,” Alula breathed. She almost danced with curiosity. “What did you see?”
I looked back at my hand. The black ichor lilted towards me as I inhaled to speak.
“I know who I am.” There was a pause as they waited for me to speak, but I did not know what to say.
“And who are you?” Elgin said.
“I am Jorm. I was once someone else. A scrivener, among other things. But now I am Jorm.”
“Well, Jorm, I didn’t know you were so well connected.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw the man with you, near the end, when you were tied to that table.”
My head jerked toward Elgin.
“You know that man,” I said sharply. Alula, startled, took a step back.
“I recognize him from the statues in the city,” Elgin replied, “He is Marcus Du’Loc. He’s on the White Council.”
I stared at him. Awkwardly, he continued.
“He uh, is really old now. Really really old. But he’s a necromancer, so, probably doesn’t matter much. The statues of him are from when he was young, though. And they look just like him. Same clothing even.”
I slowly started to smile. The fire raged inside me, but I kept my distance, though I was close enough to sense its heat.
He was still alive. Or maybe undead. He had taken everything from me, and now, if I planned carefully, I could return the favor.
Night fell. Shan-lo slept curled up in a pile of furs by the fire. Alula in her bed. Elgin and I talked quietly until dawn.
He told me his mother was willing to teach me about magic, or anything, really, but in return she wanted me to share my knowledge and help them free the dead.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Zombies are nothing but property in the city. We have thoughts, just as regular people do, and our feelings are subdued, but they are there. We deserve our freedom.”
“Most zombies are mindless,” I said.
“Not so, in the city. Non-sentient zombies are cheaper to make, but less useful, so the White Council only makes them to plow the fields. Almost any city zombie you meet has a mind of its own.”
“How do you plan on freeing them?”
Elgin shrugged. “No idea. But we must try. If we don’t, who else will?”
“I will think on it,” I said starting forward. A plan was forming in the back of my head, but it was still in pieces. I needed more information. And contacts. This could get political. And bloody, if it went wrong, which plans always do.
“Do you know how to fight?” I asked.
“A little, why?”
“I need to learn. It’s not something anyone would expect of me.”
“Then I suggest you have her help you,” he gestured over to Shan-lo. “If she can’t teach you, she’ll know someone who can. So, you’ll help us?”
“To rescue enslaved zombies? Not without a good plan. That’s what you were trying to do in the city when you were captured, wasn’t it?”
He went still for a moment, then nodded guiltily.
“Let me work some things out,” I said. “If I come up with a way of freeing some who have a decent chance of working, I’ll let you know.”
I already knew that I had to create some sort of information network to find out more about Marcus Du’Loc. He probably had business in the zombie slave trade anyway.
On that thought, I wondered why I should stop at zombie slaves. Why not free regular slaves as well?
Prioritize. First Marcus, then zombies, then slaves. Or something like that. I doubted that it would go that way, but it was a good first step.
I learned more about Elgin and his mother. Elgin was just under two hundred years old. When he died he came back as a zombie. Neither he nor his mother knew why, but she readily accepted him.
A few years later she died of old age, to be reborn to a family nearby that she had made plans with. She repeated this process every fifty years or so, dying of old age, being reborn nearby, to have Elgin come and fetch her when her memories started coming back. It is apparently a common practice among witches.
Dawn came with the sound of heavy footfalls outside and Alula rushing out to greet her guardian. There was a deep voice, deeper than any I had imagined, speaking in a language I had never heard. Then there was silence, for a long time. Eventually the footfalls left with a surprisingly quiet splash into the water, and Alula returned. She looked haggard, bruised, and angry, with her hair mussed and her blouse torn.
“We’d better go now,” Elgin said quietly. I turned to speak to Alula as she bustled about the room while trying to hide her torn clothing, but Elgin stepped between us, shaking his head silently.
I let him lead us outside and into the boat, Shan-lo was looking back and forth between us curiously but said nothing. After we were far enough away that we had passed through the last of wards, I spoke.
“What was that all about?”
“None of your business,” he snapped.
“It is my business. If your mother is enslaved to a demon, then I need to know.”
He glared at me for a moment, then sighed.
“It’s not a demon. It’s her lover. And, it’s complicated.”
“Doesn’t look complicated to me. How long do you think she’s got before he kills her?”
“He WON’T kill her,” Elgin’s fists were clenched. There was a redness tinging the corners of his eyes. I wondered if that was what I looked like when the rage and hunger overtook me.
He looked down suddenly and shook his head. I saw the redness fade, mostly.
“He won’t kill her because he can’t. He’s bound to protecting her.” He paused, lost in thought. Then said, “I will tell you, because you need to trust us if we’re ever going to rescue our brethren in the city. And maybe this is a problem you can help us solve, eventually.
“She met him three years ago. He was one of the human tribesmen in the swamp to the East. He had been ba
nished from his tribe because he was crippled. She found him on a raft, waiting to die. She took pity on him and brought him in, fed him, took care of him.
“Mother is not good at medicine, but she is good at transmutations. As they became lovers she offered to change his body into something new. He agreed, but insisted it be something he could protect her with. She changed him into a Gargoyle.
“Everything was fine for a few months until he caught my mother flirting with a trade merchant,” Elgin grimaced. “He tore the merchants head off.
“Ever since then he’s been viciously territorial toward any male that comes to the house. Mother is no longer allowed to leave. They fight a lot, but they are bound together through magic; one cannot hurt the other without hurting themselves.”
“Why doesn’t she break the binding,” I asked.
He shrugged. “She blames herself for him being the way he is. Says she shouldn’t have flirted with the merchant. Tells me about his troubled soul.”
“Is she right?”
“What?”
“Is it her fault?”
“No. I don’t know.” He sighed. “She’s not good at being with one man. Never has been. She even had a reputation for it. I had always hoped she would find just one person to be with, but I didn’t want it to be anything like this. This, this is wearing her down. It’s breaking her.”
I looked at him for a while. Still rowing, he grew uncomfortable under my gaze.
“How long have you been self-aware as a zombie,” I asked.
He didn’t answer me for so long I had given up and thought he wasn’t going to when he said, “Ten years.”
“And you had seen about a dozen summers before you died?”
“Thirteen.”
I nodded. We rode in silence for a time. After a while I spoke.
“There are those in the city who believe a woman’s place is under the heavy hand of a man. The unrulier she is, the heaver the hand must be. I’m not a lot older than you, but I have read a great deal. I have seen nothing good come from this.” I turned to look Elgin in the eyes and said, “mark my words. He will kill her, even at the cost of his own life, if we do not stop him.”