Jorm

by Alan Bayman

  I visited him once a week. He would give me these training sessions and I would go home and practice them. I started feeling the difference after the first week; I stood taller and stumbled less often.

  The midwinter festivals came, and with it drinking, merriment, and a plethora of injuries that came from such activities. I was tempted to replace lost limbs and other parts with reanimated substitutes, but I was weary word getting back to the necromancers. What would happen if a member of the White Council came on board of a ship where some of the impoverished sailors sported zombified body parts?

  At night I wandered through the poorer parts of town, and even risked some of the higher income areas, foolish as it was. Every year the alchemists put on displays for the festivities, and most of the city crowded over to their Guild House to watch. I skirted the edge, catching glimpses of dancing lights and flying illusions, but mostly watching people. Warm dressed families hoisting their young ones onto their shoulders to catch a better view. Young lovers sharing laughter and kisses. Street performers twirling staffs with ends aflame. Pickpockets casually strutting about, looking for an easy mark. Vendors with racks of hot sizzling meat and vegetables that they would sell on thin sticks at exorbitant prices. Hucksters and bards, dancers and whores, the merry and the drunk all mingled together in a riot of cooked food, ale, music, and flashing lights.

  Later at night, the crowds would thin as the night grew frosty, and the nearby taverns would fill. Most of the families would head home, leaving a younger, rowdier crowd. Most of ladies that walked alone now were the kind that would trade their company for a bit of coin. They did not stay alone for long.

  It was a night like one of these that I met my wife Shailyn. Near the entrance of one of these crowded inns our eyes met. I offered her coin so that she would be mine for the evening, but I was hers from then on. We danced, we drank, and when the hour grew late, bought a room and threw ourselves at each other. And the next day we did it all over again. I blew over a year’s worth of savings for that winter festival with her, and it was worth every copper.

  I spent several nights this way, lost in memory on the richer side of town. Surprisingly, I was not found out. Fortune favors the fools, I suppose. I did cross paths with other undead, being used as beasts of burden or dressed as manservants and following around wealthy patrons. They all had this lost, hopeless look about them, as though they were silently screaming. As much as I wanted to help them, I feared they might give me away, so I avoided them.

  It was on the last night of my foolish wanderings when I was avoiding an enslaved zombie by ducking down an alleyway, that I encountered her.

  I spotted her crumpled form between two midden heaps. She looked like nothing more than a mass of hair, clothing, and blood. I saw the Miasma whirling around her and knew she had very little time to live.

  I hurried over, bringing out a healing elixir from my bag, and brought it to what was left of her lips.

  It kept her alive, but only just.

  It was one of the better elixirs I had. I used another, and that helped as well, but still she was dying.

  Again, I was reckless. I could have easily been caught. I didn’t know this woman, nor what befell her. Every logical thought in my mind was telling me to stop wasting expensive potions on a stranger and walk away.

  I carried her home. I kept to the shadows, running as fast as I could without jostling her too badly. When her life started to fade I would stop and feed her another elixir.

  By the time I made it back, I had run out of the better potions and was using the cheap ones at an alarming rate. I set her carefully down on the operating table and with a small blade quickly stripped her of her clothing.

  She was an unconscious mess. Her eyes were missing. Her back and pelvis was shattered. Most of her ribs were cracked but thankfully not broken. Her jaw snapped in two places and had multiple cuts and human bite marks. She had been violated sexually.

  I started with the vital stuff. The potions had obviously repaired most of her internal organs, but the shattered back was affecting her heart. Opening her back up I quickly pulled out the broken pieces grabbed some spine from someone who had died the day before and molded a replacement. I had to replace several ribs as well just to be on the safe side. But it was having trouble taking, and her heart was giving out again. All the while I did this I could hear Adan snoring through his bedroom door.

  I fed her another elixir while fishing for a vial of liquid Miasma. The only kind I had in my bag was the distilled stuff, and I was certain that if I left her, even for a moment, she would die. So, I loaded up the distilled Miasma into a syringe and injected it into the undead spine to fuse it.

  To say it worked is an understatement. Not only did it fuse perfectly, the distilled Miasma went through the undead flesh and started healing the surrounding tissue. Within seconds her heart rhythm became steady, and the mush of the ambient Miasma began to drift away.

  I used the same method for repairing her pelvis and eyes. Part of her face and nose had been bitten away, and I repaired this with unliving tissue as well. As soon as I had, and idea occurred to me, and I injected more distilled Miasma into her now unliving nose. It restored the rest of her body.

  She was still unconscious. I did not know if she would ever wake. Trauma could put the mind in a deep slumber from which one may never return.

  While she was sleeping, and on the table, I went over every inch of her, checking for hidden injuries or scars. I was determined that if she woke up her body would be in as good or better condition than before she was harmed. There was a deep scar on her left ankle. I cleared the scar tissue away and healed it properly. Her nose was a little odd shaped for her face, so a changed it slightly to make it more symmetrical and give her a comelier look.

  A few other minor details I fixed, like a broken finger that had been set poorly, probably in infancy. After that I wrapped her in a blanket and set her in the makeshift bed in my lab that I never used.

  Dawn came. Adan was out somewhere. I kept the house closed. I spent the morning watching her while tinkering with a few experiments.

  As noon approached she started to stir. I set my tools down and kneeled by her side. After a moment of disorientation, she looked at me and started.

  “Be at peace,” I said. “You are at a healing house. My name is Jorm.”

  “What happened to me,” she asked. Her blue eyes gazed into mine. I don’t know if they were her eyes original color, but they suited her well.

  “You were attacked during the festival. The damage was extensive. I brought you to this healing house, near the dockside, and mended you.”

  She nodded slowly, her face creased in drowsy puzzlement.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “That is not surprising. The mind can blank to protect itself from terrible things. It will come back in time, but I warn you, the memories will not be pleasant,” I paused. “You may wish to consult a priest of Sol. With the right donations they could help your mind recover. If you tell them your story they might even do it for free,” I smiled.

  She smiled faintly in return, still looking tired and a little puzzled.

  “Why am I naked?” Her question made me curious. Not that she asked it (that was understandable) but the way she said it. She was not at all alarmed that she was naked on a cot surrounded by alchemist equipment and rat cages. She was only curious. I had said that I was a healer, but I was not dressed as one, this room looked nothing like a healer’s house.

  “I can give you some of my spare clothes to wear,” I said, watching her closely. “I can also get you something to eat, if you are hungry. What is your name?”

  “Tina,” she said, after thinking for a moment. I surmised that I may not have healed her all the way and that she may be suffering from a concussion. If it was true, it was miraculous that she ever woke up.

  Also, Tina. Short for Beltina, meaning “the flower of Kaos,” in Old Amben. Kaos is name of the Goddess of Chaos. One
of the Big Three, or the original gods that created everything. It was likely to me that her parents or grandparents were missionaries, as Kaos is not a popular goddess around here.

  “Alright Tina,” I said, “and what do you do? Are you betrothed? Married? What of your family?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said. She was a terrible liar.

  I nodded and got up to grab her something to eat from Adan’s room. But when I went into the main room, Adan was there, putting a splint on a hung-over fisherman’s ankle. His scowl ran deeper than usual, so I helped him finish up. Once the fisherman left, he glared at me and said, “I went to go and get you and heard a lady’s voice inside.” I opened my mouth to reply but he cut me off.

  “I don’t care what you do on your own time. But you’re my partner, so if you knock her up, you do the honorable thing, ya’hear?”

  I sometimes do not react well to surprises. This was one of those times. I just stared at him. His glare deepened.

  “Do you understand?” he growled.

  “Yes,” I said. Still at a loss for words.

  He nodded and was about to turn away when he suddenly rounded on me and said, “And don’t you be raising no kids around here either. This is healing house, not a hearth and home. Blood and death and dying is no place for a child.”

  “Yes,” I repeated, still reeling.

  When I returned to the room, Tina was dressed in my clothes. She had used a comb I left out to brush her hair. It was thick, curly, and a rustic blond in color. With her deep blue eyes and newly formed face it gave her a striking beauty, like in a painting of Elves or celestial beings. Her expression was cautious and apprehensive.

  “Food,” I said, holding out a haunch of dried fish and half a loaf of bread.

  She took it and began to eat. I watched her, wondering what to say. I did not know what to do with her. Normally, at this point some sort of payment would take place and then the patient would be sent on its way. But this was not a patient, or at least not a regular one. I had rescued her. I remembered something a sailor once told me while I was sewing up the arm of his friend whom he had fished out of the bay.

  When you choose to save someone’s life, it becomes your responsibility.

  “What do you plan to do now,” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said after a moment.

  We sat together in silence, me watching her eat. When she finished, I offered her a skin of watered wine to wash it down.

  “You can stay here for a time. Get your bearings. I’ll get you some better clothes, and you can pay me back by doing some of the work here so I can focus more on my research.”

  She nodded. “What do you do for research?”

  I smiled. “You will see.”

  Actually, she wouldn’t. I planned on doing most of my research when was asleep, away, or too busy to watch.

  Tina, it turned out, made an excellent maid. I did not have her clean up the gore in the operating room, but instead had her clean the lab and Adan’s room. After her first day cleaning Adan’s room and having his sheets washed, Adan immediately stopped objecting to her presence.

  She was timid and frightened of loud noises, which was to be expected under the circumstances. The first few nights I heard her crying softly and offered her a sedative to help her sleep. She agreed to it, but the first night she only pretended to take it and spent most of the night pretending to sleep while watching me. I spent the night refining my manipulation of Miasma while balancing a cup of water on my head.

  From then on, she would always ask for a sedative. I told her I would only give it once in a while, as the formula was expensive. While true, I also did not want her too dependent on the sedative. I had seen how Miasma has a stronger hold on those has who habitually imbue alcohol and other painkillers.

  Sometimes during the day, Tina would talk to the patients as they came in. We found her to be a lot more socially adept than both of us. She would carry on light conversations, putting patients at ease and at the same time gaining more information about their injuries or other maladies they might have. We decided that she was better suited out front, fetching water or fresh sutures, or otherwise talking to the patients. She would turn away during the procedures or leave if things were too gristly in general, but overall, we found people were easier to deal with when she was there.

  Later that week, I received word from Elgin that there had been a delay, and it would be some time before I could go out and seem him and his mother again. So instead, I went out to meet Shan-lo’s Shaman who had been so eager to meet me.

  In the morning Shan-Lo and I took a short boat ride from the city. The sun had just risen, and the thick morning fog was rapidly burning away. He was at the time the least muscular Orc I had ever met. He was short, with soft yellow skin and a protruding belly. He wore a leather jerkin covered with strips of leather from which hung pits of bone and beads, and leather pants adorned in the same fashion. He made a swishing, clinking sound when he moved.

  When I stepped ashore he bowed low, his yellow eyes wide in admiration.

  “I greet you, fellow Shaman,” he spoke in fluent Cyrian, put his hands together and nodded.

  “I greet you,” I responded by copying his gesture, as Shan-lo had instructed me on the way there.

  He grinned. Miasma seemed to ebb and flow around him with his breathing.

  “You wished to see me,” I said.

  “Yes, I wanted to see with my own eyes the dead human who could do so much necromancy. He does things that require lifetimes of practice in just a few months. Now I see why.”

  There was a pause, as though he was expecting me to say something.

  “…and?” I asked. He looked puzzled for a moment, then grinned.

  “I know what you are. But do not worry, your secret is safe with me. But I have many questions. For instance, how do you stay sane? It is okay if you wish to keep that a secret of course. But I was wondering if you could share other things as well, such as how do you produce so much Necrosis-ah, Shan-lo says you call it liquid Miasma-”

  “-Just a moment,” I interrupted. “You said you knew what I am. What do you think I am?”

  “You are Ha-Tu. You are a Zombie Lord.”

  I frowned in puzzlement. I had only vague references to the term. Most were stories of raging beasts that brought hordes of zombies to wipe out small villages. Then a memory came to me, which was odd because I thought I had recalled all my lost memories.

  It was a book on various undead creatures and how they were created. I’ll spare you from a direct quote because the description was very technical and painstakingly detailed. But in summary, it described making a Zombie Lord as a variant of creating a litch.

  To become a litch one takes out one’s own heart and channels it and all your remaining life force into a phylactery, while replacing the energy that keeps you alive with Miasma. The phylactery literally becomes your heart and soul, and your body-an undead vehicle for your consciousness. If the phylactery remains unharmed, you cannot be killed.

  There is a price, however. With your mind kept separate from what’s left your body and soul, your humanity declines. A litch is cold and calculating on a good day and utterly ruthless the rest of the time.

  Zombie lords were an attempt to keep a litches humanity while still granting undeath and near immortality. The soul and heart are channeled into a phylactery, but then the phylactery is placed where the heart was. In some cases, the heart isn’t removed at all; the soul is sealed in it and it becomes the phylactery. The result is a zombie-like litch that is fully in touch with its humanity.

  It also drives them completely insane.

  And I do mean completely. Dreamweavers describe their minds as “shattered fragments, scattered across the realms of thought; a dismemberment more complete than any curse or trauma.”

  All this went through my mind right after he spoke.

  “You lie,” I said. Pain pulsed though my chest. An overwhelming sense of rag
e and terror overcame me.

  “You lie!” I roared and threw myself at him. Memories came flooding through me. Not old ones but new, days and weeks ago. Times I had tricked myself into thinking I was studying, learning to fight, experimenting.

  I was eating people.

  Crawling through the shadows of the city at night. Howling at the gods for my loss of Shailyn. Tearing apart bums and street urchins that got in my way. Stalking young nobles that resembled the Councilors son, dragging them from brothels and feasting on them in alleyways. Dancing in seedy taverns, drunk on the vitality from consuming live flesh. Crying tears of liquid Miasma on the breasts of a terrified tavern wench.

  Suddenly, the thoughts of the Shaman broke into mine. I ceased paying attention to what I was doing since the memories were so overwhelming. We were locked in a duel, me with one of my hands holding him by his jerkin and repeatedly slamming him into the ground while black fire poured off him and onto me, shredding my skin and flesh, exposing bone.

  He had connected minds with me, like the young necromancer apprentice once had. But instead of trying to take over my mind, his voice came shrieking through, “I am not your enemy! Peace! Have mercy!”

  Startled as I was rearing up, I let go of him. He fell almost head first, collapsing onto the ground. The fires burning me instantly went out. Dimly I was aware of Shan-lo speaking frantically in Orc. The Shaman looked up at me, his face bloody but relieved, drew a ragged breath, and then his eyes rolled back in his head. He grew still, his breath faint.

  I was eating people.

  Emptiness consumed me. A heavy weight of self-loathing and despair drove me to my knees. All the color and life from the world bled away into a stark, oppressive silence within me.

  Something cool touched my cheek. A faint trace of the morning mist had brushed against me. The last of it. It caused me to turn my head and regard the nearby waters of the wetlands. The slow current was littered with leaves and tiny flowers. Without thinking I dove in head first.