by Nat Russo
“How is that possible,” Nicolas asked.
“What is the First Law of Necromancy?”
“Death is an extension of Life.”
“Correct,” Lamil said. “Now tell me, where in the First Law does it refer to sentient life?”
“If what you’re saying is true, then—”
“Tell me where in the First Law it refers to sentient life?”
Nicolas blinked as the implication of what he had learned settled in. “Nowhere, Siek.”
“Correct.” Lamil looked Nicolas up and down with both eyes. “The Second Law of Necromancy teaches us that death surrounds everything. Repeat. What is the Second Law of Necromancy?”
Nicolas repeated the words.
“This flower once possessed life, and as such left a small footprint on this world as it passed through death’s door.”
Nicolas remembered something. “I’ve seen cichlos necromancers take sibor…rums…to the priest at the orb of power. The orb recharged them.”
“Siborum. And you are partially correct. You assume the Orb of Zubuxo filled the siborum with energy. But you overlook something.”
Nicolas replayed the orb ritual from this morning in his mind. “The temple priest.”
Lamil nodded.
“He’s the man behind the curtain, isn’t he? He takes the siborum behind the orb and puts a flower in it while the ritual is going on?”
“Flowers,” Lamil said. “Vegetables. Any object that once possessed non-sentient life is a candidate. The remains of a small creature could be used, but…that is distasteful. In practice, a functional siborum is filled with vegetation. This one was merely for demonstration.”
“Why can’t we just carry some with us, in our robes or something, or focus on the weeds growing all over? Why the fancy ball?”
Lamil harrumphed. “You’ve seen the physical reality so you discount the mystical.”
“What do you mean?”
“The footprint of non-sentient life clings tenuously to the fabric of this plane. The ritual imbues the siborum with a protective ward that contains the fragile life force indefinitely. Outside of a siborum the life force simply disperses into the world around us. Death surrounds everything.”
“Death surrounds everything. I understand. I think I’d like to learn this ritual, Siek.”
Something subtle changed in Lamil’s eyes, and Nicolas realized the siek was smiling.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Nicolas had become adept at drawing power from the smallest plants and leaves, and the siek remarked about how fast he was learning. But whatever force had pulled him here was still a mystery.
His friendship with Toridyn was a welcome surprise. He found a kindred spirit in the friendly cichlos, and found him to be the only other person he could relate to.
During a recent summoning he saw cichlos traveling between two worlds, using an orb of power. The orb looked a lot like the Orb of Zubuxo, and he couldn’t help wondering if an orb was the way home. If it worked for the cichlos, why not him?
The siek said his knowledge of necromancy was growing at an astonishing rate. Small failures no longer frustrated him because he knew each success would lead to a way home.
Again, Lamil summoned Nicolas to the training dome before his usual meditation hour, and again those fingers of energy entered his mind.
“Another day passes, and your ignorance remains,” Lamil said.
“Yes it does, Siek. Maybe I’ll get some wisdom today. You never know.”
He had come to understand that Lamil wasn’t berating him…Lamil was grading him, as any teacher would grade a student, and it was a simple pass-fail system.
“Your wisdom grows every day. You simply have a long path ahead of you.” Lamil looked away and mumbled, “Not too long, I hope.”
“Why the rush?”
Lamil flinched. “You heard me?”
“You’re standing right next to me. You feelin’ ok?”
Lamil harrumphed and straightened his shoulders. “We are often wise in some ways and ignorant in others. That is at the core of what it means to be a…person.”
If Nicolas didn’t know any better, he would say the siek was about to call him a cichlos.
“You have mastered the first symbol of power,” Lamil said. “You are quite adept at raising the dead now. It is time to focus on the second symbol of power.”
“The arrow.”
“The guide. Interesting that you see it as a weapon.”
“Any tool can be a weapon. I once saw my dad scare off a grizzly bear with a plumb bob. It’s not about what it is. It’s how you use it.”
Lamil took a siborum out of his robes and called one of the other students over. “Hide it somewhere in the dome, then have the formations dismissed.”
“Yes, Siek,” the student said and hurried off.
“When you were dying in the lake,” Lamil said, “you channeled power into the guide symbol and cast it outward. You acted correctly. But I’m not sure you understand the implications of your success.”
“It knew what I needed and it led me there.”
“It knew no such thing.”
“Say what?”
“The guide symbol serves two purposes and two purposes only. The first you discovered accidentally—it will guide you to the nearest source of power beyond your reach. Necromancers without siborum use this technique to travel over land. It allows you to move from one source of power to another.”
“So in the lake, it was telling me where I’d find power.”
“Correct,” Lamil said. He retrieved another siborum from his robes and handed it to Nicolas. “Use the same process you used in the lake. I want you to locate the nearest source of energy.”
Nicolas focused his necropotency and the arrow grew large in the corner of his eye, like a spec that he could never quite look at. It turned, and he felt drawn toward the opposite side of the dome. Not a physical tugging, but a mental certainty that he should go in that direction. He started walking and Siek Lamil followed.
The arrow led him to a small supply room and began to turn faster on his periphery. Subtle movements of his head or body would cause the arrow to spin toward a single point. As he uncovered the hidden siborum, the arrow shrank down to its place.
“Master this and you will rarely be without power,” Lamil said.
“You said something about a second purpose.”
Lamil retrieved the gold necklace that was hanging down into his shirt and handed it to Nicolas.
“This is my sister Tamil’s. Cast the guide into this necklace.”
Nicolas formed a mental image of pushing the symbol into the necklace. When he released the energy…nothing happened.
“I don’t understand,” Nicolas said. He could feel his frustration rising again.
“The necromantic symbols are allies, not enemies. You need not command the symbol to do that which it already wishes to do.”
Mujahid had told him the same thing.
“I know,” Nicolas said. “I have to show the symbol what to do.”
There could be only one reason the siek would hand him a necklace and ask him to cast the arrow on it, but he wasn’t sure how to visualize that. How could he depict something acting like a cosmic hound dog?
Toby! Toby’s a beagle!
He created an image of Toby getting a scent from his favorite toy—the gatorpickle. Toby nosed his way around every nook and cranny, just like he nosed around the ankles of Nicolas’s pants after a long school day. When Toby took his last sniff, Nicolas imagined him morphing into the arrow, and then imagined the gatorpickle morphing into the necklace.
The arrow leaped into his mind’s eye and guided him out of the training dome.
Nicolas chuckled. It wasn’t the complexity of the tasks that kept throwing him for a loop. It was the simplicity. He needed to stop over-thinking everything.
It took a few minutes for them to cross the expansive floor of the temple dome, but soon the
y emerged into the central hub. This was the first time he’d seen the city proper since they brought him here as a prisoner.
The arrow led him into a throng of cichlos. They deferred to him, nodding and backing away as he walked through the crowd. He couldn’t help feeling self-conscious about it.
“Why are they bowing to me like that?”
Lamil regarded the people. “You wear the clothes of the priestly caste. All other castes are beneath ours. It would be dishonorable for them to show you any disrespect, regardless of your…species.”
Nicolas huffed and shook his head.
“You disapprove,” Lamil said.
“Damn straight,” Nicolas said.
“Disapproval takes one of two forms,” Lamil said. “Either a person understands what they see and therefore has good reason to disapprove, or they are ignorant of what they see and disapprove out of that lack of understanding. Tell me what you find distasteful.”
Nicolas faced Lamil. “What’s not distasteful about it? We sit in our spacious temple next to an all-you-can-eat buffet and do nothing but train all day, while these people are out here…how can you consider this just?”
“Justice is ever at the forefront of a necromancer’s mind, and rightly so. Your wisdom grows, but your ignorance is formidable. It is born of years perceiving only the surface of matters and not being critical of what lies beneath.”
“That wasn’t critical enough for you?”
“I speak not of being prone to finding fault. In that sense, yes, you are critical. I speak of a sense of discriminating judgment that will allow you to see beyond appearances to the truth of the matter. Very few things are ever what they appear to be.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Look around you and tell me what you see.”
“We have a power they don’t have or understand, and they fear it. They live to serve us and we live to rule.”
“I must reconsider my estimation of you, for you are blind as well as ignorant.”
It had been a while since he’d let the siek get the better of him, but something about this society was touching on issues at his core that he didn’t understand. All he knew was that it wasn’t right, and he wasn’t doing a good job of explaining himself.
“Perhaps you will be better served by a description of what I see?” Lamil’s eyes moved in independent directions, as if taking in the entire central hub at once. “I see a city of love and light.”
“You’re two sandwiches short of a picnic now.”
“You mistake gratitude for fear. They regard us with love for the service we render to society.”
“We can do things other people only dream about.”
“You have experienced the namocea many times,” Lamil said, using the Cichlossean word for the moment when a necromancer lives their penitent’s life. “These people fear the namocea more than any power we wield. Voluntarily living the life of an evil person, experiencing the torment and suffering they cause, not to mention living through the consequences, is seen as one of the greatest acts of love a person can perform. They honor and respect us. But they do not serve us, Nicolas. How many servants have you seen in the temple that were not priests?”
On reflection, Nicolas had never seen a person in the temple that wasn’t a priest. Was it possible he’d missed something? Something huge?
“It is we who serve them,” Lamil said. “You know of our pods and the hunting schedule we keep. Yet you’ve never questioned the amount of fish we caught. Look carefully at the columns of energy in this dome and tell me what you see.”
Nicolas examined the structures with the refrigerator-sized cutouts as they walked through the dome. He was about to dismiss the siek’s question when he realized something. The shopkeepers wore midnight-blue cowls. Only one caste wore midnight blue in Aquonome—priests. The shopkeepers were priests, and they were distributing food amongst the cichlos, taking nothing in return.
Just like dad at the soup kitchen.
“I can feel sight returning to your eyes,” Lamil said.
“Only priests are divided into hunting pods.”
“Correct,” Lamil said. “It is our duty to take care of these people in life as well as death. The Third Law of Necromancy demands this.”
“Third law?”
“Too much, too soon.”
Nicolas looked down, uncertain of what to say.
“There are many things you do not understand,” Lamil said. “We shall remedy that. Back to the task at hand.”
Nicolas concentrated on the arrow. When they reached the far wall, he stopped and gazed through the barrier. If a fish swam close to the city he could see it, but beyond that it was dark as a barrel of crude oil.
“I don’t understand,” Nicolas said. “It’s leading me through the barrier.”
“Release your control over the guide.”
The arrow vanished from his mind’s eye.
“There is a part of cichlos life you have not experienced yet,” Lamil said. “My sister died many years ago—may the water return her to us someday.”
“But—”
“She, too, was of the priestly caste, and this necklace was one of her favorite possessions. Had we continued, the guide would have led you to a burial cave. There you would have found Tamil’s final resting place.”
“The arrow sniffs out bodies?”
Lamil gave him a disapproving look. “Guide. And partially correct, however crude. Had I given you the High Priest’s scythe instead of this necklace you would have been led to his chambers. And that would have been an unpleasant surprise for both of you.”
“So it can find the living as well as the dead?”
“The Third Law will give you clarity. For now, remember that all life is energy. We are, all of us, beings of a dual nature—material, and energy. When a person cares about an object, or even another person, they impart a certain amount of their life force—their energy—into that object. The guide leads you to the strongest source of their energy. For a person who is alive, this means locating that person. For a person who has died, however, this means locating the site of their burial.”
Nicolas nodded, though he was confused.
“How can—”
The entire dome heaved, pushing Nicolas upward, and screams erupted all around him.
His momentum wanted to propel him towards the ceiling, but he was stuck to the floor. He watched in horror as the dome’s massive roof rippled in a gigantic wave. It was like those news reports he’d seen of bridges waving about during a hurricane. The ripple groaned like bending metal, and he feared the entire barrier would tear itself apart. When he remembered how far underwater they were he panicked.
Necropotency burst from his mind and wrapped him and the siek in a sphere of energy. Nicolas stared at it, wide-eyed. It resembled a liquid bubble, oozing from his hand and surrounding them.
Lamil’s giant eyes grew larger when he saw the shield. “Stay calm. The quake will pass and Aquonome will release you. Dismiss this…barrier.”
Nicolas had no idea how he’d created the shield to begin with. He could release his hold on it if he tried. It was the mental equivalent of exhaling. The ball of energy vanished, and he tried to step closer to Lamil. A small section of the floor had reached up and entwined itself around his body like a snake, holding him in place. It did the same to the siek.
He was confused until he looked around the dome. Everyone stood still as if nothing was happening. Barrier energy wrapped around objects that would have become projectiles, binding them to whatever surface they rested on. The city was in the middle of a massive earthquake but nothing moved. Even the screaming stopped.
Everything returned to normal after the first violent heave, though the quake continued. He could hear it like the claps of a thunderstorm.
“How is this possible?” he shouted over the intense rumbling of the quake.
“It is an art unlike necromancy,” Lamil said. “It will end soon, and all will be wel
l.”
When the rumbling stopped, the floor of the city retracted, allowing everyone to continue about their business.
“Erindor mourns for my people,” Lamil said. “The cichlos are not accustomed to the strange movements of this place. Like you, we are from another world. When the first quake hit…the losses were catastrophic. Some of our walls failed because we had not conjured them in a way that would make them flexible.”
“You can breathe under water, though, can’t you?”
“When such a mass of water converges into a small place, the problem is not one’s breath. People were thrown violently into one another. Loose tools or other objects killed many others. Come. Let us begin the journey back to the temple complex.”
Now was his chance to ask about the orb in his dreams. He followed Lamil.
“During the namocea, I’ve seen cichlos use an orb to travel between your home world and Erindor.”
Lamil’s expression changed, but it was unlike any expression Nicolas had seen. Both of the wise man’s eyes rotated straight out to the sides, then down to the ground.
“Do not cast the net of hope into a lifeless sea. What you experienced in the namocea is no longer possible.”
“But they used an orb of power, just like the Orb of Zubuxo—”
“It was not the Orb of Zubuxo. It was the Orb of Arin.” Lamil’s large eyes focused back on Nicolas. “And it has been hidden from us for decades.”
An awkward silence persisted for the next few minutes as they entered the massive temple. Nicolas tried to distract himself by staring at the beautiful artwork on the dome and floor. He’d touched on a sore spot with the siek, but he had to know more about this Orb of Arin. That iridescent sphere in his visions was the only solid clue he’d discovered.
“How’d it happen?” Nicolas said.
“This is a subject that brings us—that brings me much pain. I have not seen my mate or spawn in….”
The awkwardness returned. Nicolas had never seen the siek this emotional before.
“Forgive me, Siek. But you know I can’t let this go. If the orb isn’t the solution, fine. But I deserve the opportunity to figure that out for myself. What was it you said? Something about discriminating judgment and seeing beneath the surface of things?”