by Ash Stinson
Raettonus regarded Daeblau coolly. “I’ll bear all that in mind,” he said. “So, Captain—who’re you here giving your prayers to tonight?”
“Oh, a few gods,” said Daeblau, turning away. “I prayed to Kurok for the warrior’s strength, and to Virkki for a warrior’s courage, and to Cykkus for a warrior’s death. The same prayers I always do before it’s my turn to take the walls.”
“You pray every day, then? How quaint.”
“Every day. Not every day in here though,” Daeblau said. “Today I came here to pray at Shimae’s shrine—the love goddess. Do you know her?”
“I know her fine,” replied Raettonus, a bit shortly.
Daeblau smiled a little. “What I said before about prayers applies to all the gods except her. To Shimae, a man must come to pray before her shrine, and he must do it as an individual, Magician, because praying for love can only turn out well.”
“So, you’re here this morning praying to find love?”
“No, I’m not. Rather, I’ve become smitten, and I’m here to pray that the young man I’ve fallen in love with will return my affections,” Daeblau said. “Though, praying to find love is not a bad idea. Perhaps you ought to try it, Magician? You could stand to smile a little more and scowl a little less, I think.”
“I smile perfectly often as it is, thank you,” Raettonus answered curtly. “Besides, I’ve found that, in one way or another, love always turns to bile in your throat. The best you can hope for is that you die before the person you love. It’s a race to the grave, because reaching the grave before they do—or before they stop loving you, or before they start hating you—is the only good outcome to ever be had.”
The centaurian soldier smiled, but it was a forced expression without any warmth to it. “Is that a fact, Magician?” he said. “You speak in the way that only a man who’s never loved can.”
“I speak as only a man who has outlived love can,” Raettonus answered. Through the window he could see the sky was turning pink. Somewhere out of sight, sparrows were waking and beginning to chirp their birdsong into the valleys around the citadel. “I would suggest suicide, by the way. If you find out the boy loves you, I mean. I would suggest that you kiss him and then immediately go drive a sword through your belly, or wherever it is a centaur might drive a sword to end himself. That way you die with happiness in your mouth instead of bile.”
“I’ll take it under consideration,” said Daeblau, forcing all the emotion out of his voice. He glanced up at the window. “It looks like dawn is upon us. By your leave, Magician, I must go take my watch.”
“Yes, I imagine you must,” Raettonus replied. Daeblau nodded to him curtly and started past him. Raettonus turned and watched the centaur disappear out the doors. It wasn’t long after that the shrine began to fill with other worshippers, and Raettonus took his leave as well.
* * *
Raettonus’ lessons with the boys were very lax that day. By afternoon, he found himself dozing off every now and then. Maeleht would wake him, and he’d start lecturing again, only to nod off once more. “Raettonus,” said Maeleht, shaking him awake the fourth time this had happened. “You promised to tell us about necromancy today.”
“Right, right,” Raettonus said with a yawn. “Fine. Fine, give me a second.”
He hunched over, yawning again, and rubbed at his eyes. Straightening back up, he began, “Bear in mind that I will not be teaching you how to do any of this for a very long time. It’s a very difficult craft, and I don’t think either of you is ready to learn it. You may never learn it, even if I teach you.”
“Where did you learn it?” asked Dohrleht.
“I learned it from my master when I was a boy,” Raettonus said. “It took me many years to be able to do it even passing well.”
From her seat on the other side of the room, Ebha asked, “You can make the dead live again?”
Raettonus was surprised to hear her speak; it was the first time she had said anything at all in his presence. “No,” he told her plainly. “If I could make the dead live again, do you think I’d be here tutoring two cripples?”
“I’m not a cripple,” Maeleht objected.
“No, I’d be the God King of this whole realm, and probably every other realm I wanted to barge into,” Raettonus said. He turned back to the centaurs. “There are two sorts of necromancy. There are the quicker animations, which involve putting your own energy into a corpse to move it; and then there are the slower resurrections, where you attach a ghost to a corpse, allowing the ghost to inhabit the body. The former is easier, but more tiring, while the latter is difficult, but doesn’t wear you down after the fact.”
“But you said you can’t make the dead live again,” said Dohrleht. “That sounds kind of like living.”
“Hardly,” responded Raettonus. “Their bodies continue to decay, unless a myriad of spells are applied to preserve them, and those sometimes don’t work. Unless you’re a very skilled necromancer, they won’t be able to speak, either, and their movements will be awkward and clumsy. Most importantly, only ghosts can be tied to bodies, which means that the person in question must be tortured enough to hang around after death, or else you have to grab hold of them immediately after they’ve died.”
“Grab hold?” asked Maeleht. “Grab hold of their ghost?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Raettonus said. “You reach out with your energy and grab hold of their ghost before it departs. It’s difficult then, because they fight. Souls don’t want to stay on this plane of existence. They’ll fight you until they’re bound to the body. Sometimes even then. Inexperienced necromancers get killed by ghosts and corpses all the time. It’s a dangerous art.”
“Have you ever been attacked by ghosts and corpses?” Maeleht asked him.
Raettonus nodded slowly. “When I was young and just learning, yes.”
“What was it like?” Dohrleht asked. “Is it hard to fight a corpse?”
“A corpse? No, not really. It’s easier than fighting a man, in fact,” Raettonus said. “It’s far more dangerous to fight ghosts. For the time that you’re holding them with your energy, you’re connected to them. For a moment, all their memories and their experiences become an extension of your own. You can feel the death they experienced if they want you to—and I’ve yet to meet one that didn’t want you to. All the while, they’re gnawing on your life force, wearing you down. Killing you. They don’t want to go to hell alone, and they don’t want to stay here.”
“How do you keep them from killing you?”
Raettonus shrugged and yawned again. “You just do what you’re doing quickly,” he said. “Or else you let go of them and hope they’ll let go of you, as well.”
“Raettonus?” asked Maeleht after a lengthy silence had passed over them. “When are you going to teach us to do magic? I’m tired of hearing about it. I want to do it.”
Raising an eyebrow, Raettonus crossed his hands over his lap. “You’re quite eager. You might not be able to do any magic, you realize,” he said.
“But I won’t know if you don’t ever teach me to try.”
For a moment, Raettonus gave him an appraising stare. Finally, he relented. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll teach you a little bit of pyromancy. Both of you—come over here, get in close. All right. Hold out your hands. No, just one hand, each of you.”
He began to instruct him, as his own master had instructed him so long ago. Of course, when Sir Slade had begun to teach him magic he had tried to teach him hydromancy, not pyromancy. Raettonus hadn’t been able to do it, but he had enjoyed the lesson immensely. He and Slade had sat in the grass on a hill beside a river at the edge of Slade’s land, on an overcast yet rainless morning.
“Look here,” Slade had said, pulling him close and opening one large, empty hand. “Watch this.”
And just like that, the air above Slade’s hand began to swirl gently, and a great sphere of clear, clean water appeared there even as young Raettonus watched with wide eyes.
He reached out and touched the orb with tiny, trembling fingers and found that it was just like sticking them into a glass of water. Slade smiled at him kindly. He twitched his fingers, and the water began to swirl and reshape itself into a rearing gryphon. “Just like your coat of arms,” Raettonus had said in breathless amazement.
Slade nodded. “Would you like to learn how to do this?” he had asked.
“Yes, master,” Raettonus had answered eagerly. “You can teach me?”
“Of course,” Slade said. But he hadn’t been able to teach him. Not hydromancy. Later along, he switched his lessons to pyromancy, and it went better. All the same, Raettonus had fond memories of that first hydromancy lesson. It was the moment he began to put away his fear and had started to love Sir Slade.
Raettonus’ pyromancy lesson to the young centaurs went much better. After a few hours, Dohrleht was able to make a very small flame for a second or two. Maeleht had more trouble and only managed to make a tiny spark before a coughing fit shook his thin chest and he doubled over, hacking and rasping. Raettonus waited patiently for the fit to pass. They had only just resumed their lesson when Maeleht suffered a fainting spell, even before he could try again. His eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp, and Ebha went to his side to attend to him.
Maeleht came to after a minute or so, but he was made to rest in the corner for the remainder of the lesson—a fact he didn’t seem pleased about. They worked until sun down, but Dohrleht couldn’t manage to make a sustainable flame. “Don’t worry about it,” Raettonus told him. “It’s plenty pathetic now, but we’ll work on it tomorrow.”
“How long will it take until I can make an actual fireball?” asked the centaur.
Raettonus brushed off the question with a shrug and turned to Maeleht. “Whatever your father believes, magic is no less strenuous than sword fighting,” he said. “You don’t seem like you’re strong enough for magic.”
“N-no,” said Maeleht. “I am. I’m strong enough.” He was seized by another coughing fit, and he doubled over.
“It’s going to kill you,” said Raettonus. He spoke the words with no emotion, just a pure statement of fact. “I had my doubts when I first saw you, but now I’m certain this is not a good idea for you.”
“I want to do magic,” said Maeleht, struggling to get to his feet. Ebha tried to hold him back, but he swatted her across the jaw and she withdrew quickly. “I need to learn to do magic. I need to be useful.” The boy was beginning to cry and tremble. “I can’t lift a sword and I can’t run. If I can’t do magic, that means I’m going to be a disappointment to my father until the day I die. I’d rather die trying not to disgrace him.”
“If you don’t care whether it kills you that’s your business,” Raettonus said, starting for the door. “I’m just informing you that it probably will. I’m not your mother. If you’re in here tomorrow, I’ll go on teaching you. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“You’ll keep teaching me?” said Maeleht. He threw his arms around Raettonus and hugged him tightly. “Thank you. You don’t know what it means to me.”
“I don’t care what it means to you,” said Raettonus, pushing the child away. He started once more toward the door. “If you’re here, I’ll teach you. If you’re not, I don’t care about that either.”
With that, he left his students and went out into the hall. He thought of going down to visit Deggho, but quickly decided against it. Instead, he went to the courtyard to see if he could find Brecan. Alas, the unicorn was absent, and night was falling fast on the mountain. With a resigned sigh, Raettonus left the yard and made his way to his quarters, hoping his dinner had already been brought up.
He entered his dark quarters and lit a fire in the brazier. Turning, he discovered a plate of food on his desk and, beside it, the carved gryphon and the phoenix, now joined by a white unicorn with its head lowered. Raettonus bit his lower lip and took a seat at the desk. The unicorn was familiar to him, but it took him a moment to place why. After some thought, he realized that it was the heraldry of Sir Rhodes’ house—a white unicorn on a field of gray and blue. “Christ,” muttered Raettonus, knocking down the unicorn with one finger. “Is he planning to flood me in little stone animals from all the banners I’ve ever seen?” He blinked and turned his gaze toward the phoenix. “Huh. Red…”
He narrowed his eyes at the little garnet figurine. He pressed his thin lips hard together so that they grew even thinner. The little, glossy, carved eyes of the phoenix stared back at him blankly.
After a time, he recovered himself. “Silly little thing,” he muttered, returning to his dinner.
Still, as he ate, his gaze would sometimes stray from the plate, and he’d find himself chewing slowly and lethargically as he stared at the figurine, thoughts rolling sluggishly over in his head.
* * *
When Raettonus went to sleep it was very reluctantly, hours later. On the desk, the stone figures taunted him, so he snuffed out the fire in the brazier. The darkness didn’t help much; he could still feel them there. The gryphon, he felt, was watching him accusingly. The unicorn was pleading. The phoenix was…hateful. Hateful was the only word for it.
He slept, finally. His dream was very familiar to him. It was less a dream and more a memory, and he had dreamed it more times than he could count. He was in Slade’s room, on his bed, his head pressed close against his master’s chest. Raettonus’ hands and stomach were covered in blood, and it was soaking through the mattress all around him. By the window, the drapes flapped, and outside the rain fell. Raettonus’ face was wet from tears, but he wasn’t crying—for now. If he looked up and saw Slade’s face, he’d certainly start crying once again. He was so afraid and uncertain. He tried wrapping his arms around his master’s still form, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t comforting. Slowly, he withdrew his hands and gripped himself instead. As he closed his eyes a sob wracked Raettonus’ chest.
“There’s nothing sadder than a grown man crying,” said a smooth, familiar voice.
Raettonus felt his organs clench inside him and opened his eyes to find himself beside the reflective pool outside the temple on the bluff with the masked elf standing over him. Raettonus looked up at him slowly. The masked man only smiled back at him mildly, his eyes glowing in the moonlight like a cat’s. “I don’t have anything to say to you,” Raettonus mumbled. “Except stop putting those stupid statues in my room.”
“Oh, good,” said the elf. “So you did get my messages, then? I was worried. You’ve been hiding from me, Raettonus. That was some sort of spell you cast. Impressive, really. Bravo.”
“I know who you are,” said Raettonus. He stood up and was eye-level with the elf. “You’re Kimohr Raulinn.”
The corner of the elf’s mouth twitched upwards into a smirk. “It was the temple that gave it away, wasn’t it? Damn. I knew we should’ve met in a quaint little pastry shop instead of the temple,” he said. “But yes—Kimohr Raulinn the chaos god, son of the moon, at your service. I wondered when you didn’t know at first, but you were asleep so I didn’t hold it against you. No man’s brain works quite right when he is dreaming.”
“I want to know why you sent me that phoenix,” Raettonus demanded.
With a soft chuckle, Kimohr Raulinn sat down at the pool’s edge. Pulling his robes up to his knees, he submerged his bare feet in the water. “Sit with me a while. There’s no need to be confrontational,” he said. Reluctantly, Raettonus sat cross-legged beside him. “It was no easy task to find out what I should send to you. I mean, I knew about the heraldry animals from your world, and that you were very attached to the banner of your master, which had a gryphon on it. And I knew that Sir Rhodes had a unicorn on his, because when I looked in on him I saw it on his tunic, beneath his robe. I’m sure he misses being nobility, the way he still wears his coat of arms after all these years. Or maybe it’s his father he misses.”
Kimohr Raulinn turned his face upward, toward the partially clouded night sky. “But you—who were yo
u? Not a gryphon,” he said. “I had to look into your world to find out, and it was no easy task.”
“It was a red phoenix on a field of pure white,” Raettonus muttered. “That was my family’s coat of arms.”
“And a very fitting one it is,” Kimohr Raulinn said. “I didn’t see it on anything you owned. I had to look into your world. Quite a feat, that, since my power as a god does not extend beyond my realm. It was made even harder, because the world you think you came from is not, in fact, the world you did come from. They’re similar enough, I think, but different in key ways. It took me weeks to figure out which one you came from, because there were so many like your world. But I found it and, for a brief moment, I was able to see your family’s banner and the phoenix upon it, and I sent it to you. Did you like it, by the way? The statue? I made it all by myself. You can keep it, you know. Think of it as a token of my affection and esteem.”
“I don’t want your stupid token,” grumbled Raettonus. “I want to be left alone.”
“Oh, but my dear Raettonus,” said the elven god, fairly hissing the name out from between his teeth. Kimohr Raulinn kicked his feet slowly through the water. “I only want to help you. I have an amazing offer for you, sweet child.”
“I know how your ‘help’ turns out, Kimohr Raulinn, and I don’t want it.”
“You wound me, Magician,” Kimohr Raulinn said, placing one hand on his chest and feigning offense. “I only do what I can for anyone who needs me. It’s more than can be said of the other gods. They sit their lofty seats divorced from the creatures who toil and die on this mortal rock and pretend they’re better than them. I do my best to help. Certainly, helping does often benefit me, and may sometimes—only sometimes, Magician—have, shall we say, unforeseen consequences for those I’ve aided. All the same, I am only trying to put my godly gifts to good use. Anything else you might think is only Kurok and his band trying to paint me black for daring to associate with mortals.”