by Nat Russo
- Coteon of the Steppes, “Coteonic Commentaries on the Origines Multiversi” (circa 520 RL)
The smell of burning wood and charred bodies permeated the cave where Mujahid materialized.
I’m too late.
Shouting and screaming reverberated off the small cave’s walls.
Mujahid ran to the cave entrance, where he peered around a large boulder toward the city, several hundred yards away.
Rotham-on-Orm, the capital city of the Kingdom of Tildem, was ablaze and covered by a noxious black cloud, lit from within by orange tongues of fire dozens of feet in the air.
The city wall, repaired after the Battle of Rotham, had collapsed into a pile of rubble on the north side of the city. But something was odd about the lay of the bricks. They poked outward as if the wall had been demolished from the inside.
The landscape was a vision of chaos. People joined together in small groups and ran north, while others shouted for friends and loved ones. Others still ran screaming from the city. Two injured men, covered in blood from head to waist, ran for the wall. But they weren’t fast enough. A blur of motion approached from behind, and when it reached the injured men, their bodies exploded in a fog of red mist.
Mujahid had no idea what could have caused it. He had sensed no power or other arcane force at work. He considered using the mindless hellwraith within to open another portal. That would allow him to get closer without the risk of his approach being seen. But he thought better of it. Every time he used the hellwraith, it weakened to the point of being useless. It could sometimes take days to gather its strength.
A wagon emerged from the city through what was left of the northern gate, its driver whipping two adda who were already in a frenzy. As the wagon passed through the gate, a plume of smoke and flame shot up from the wagon’s rear, which exploded in shards of wood.
A loud boom left Mujahid feeling as if someone had punched him in the chest. People who had slowed their escape picked up pace and started running.
The wagon driver leaped down from what was left of the front of the wagon and ran north, leaving the adda hitched to the burning wreck.
Mujahid ran, intent on freeing the terrified animals before the fire incinerated them, but someone got there first. The man’s face was hidden behind long, unkempt hair and an equally long beard. But there was no mistaking his regal bearing, or the haste with which nearby soldiers obeyed his commands.
Donal Tanmor, the King of Tildem, along with two of his soldiers, had the adda unhitched by the time Mujahid arrived. When Donal saw Mujahid, he looked around in confusion for a moment. But then he smiled.
A fake smile. Mujahid had spent enough time around powerful men to recognize one.
Something is wrong here.
“I’m afraid there’s no time for pleasantries, Lord Mukhtaar,” Donal said. “We’d do well to make haste away from here. I’ve ordered General Garon to establish a rally point on that ridge.”
Mujahid glanced in the direction Donal was pointing. People and soldiers gathered around a small tent on a rise above the city.
“Then we’ll talk as we walk,” Mujahid said. “What of the coven?”
Mujahid had instructed Donal to rebuild the necromantic coven in Rotham after the battle with Kagan’s forces several months earlier. Though the king was sovereign in Tildem, Mujahid and Nuuan were absolute rulers of Clan Mukhtaar. And Donal was a necromancer under their charge.
“Five priests came to me after the barrier came down, but no more,” Donal said. “They’ve joined their brethren in the city.”
“You didn’t take them with you?”
That fake smile again.
“Ten priests in all of Tildem and you risk them like this?” Mujahid asked. “Was I mistaken when I placed you in charge of the coven?”
“With respect, Lord Mujahid, there are greater concerns.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree.”
This wasn’t like Donal, but Mujahid couldn’t blame the man for taking risks. His country was in a shambles. First Kagan, and now this.
Still. Something was off about the man. Mujahid was certain of it.
“The stories they’re telling at the Pinnacle about this invasion sound like the feverish dreams of a mad man,” Mujahid said. “I hardly know what to ask first.”
“I’ll make it easy for you,” Donal said. “James’s Landing is no more.”
“I knew of King’s Bay, but not James’s Landing. This is worse than I feared.”
“No,” Donal said. “It’s far worse than your worst fears, Lord Mukhtaar. James’s Landing was destroyed without a single soldier setting foot upon the shore, by ships that belched fire.”
“Surely you don’t believe—”
“I don’t. I’m not a superstitious man. But whatever weapon they’re using…how do you defend a city against something you cannot see or touch?”
“How did they slip past the Religarian scout ships? They would have had to navigate the southern coast of Religar to strike at Tildem.”
“I don’t know,” Donal said. “But I can tell you what I saw with my own eyes here in Rotham. This foe, whoever they are, simply appeared outside the southern wall without warning. One moment the field outside the southern gate was empty of all but merchant traffic. The next, an army several hundred strong destroyed the wall and marched into the city. Had I not watched it happen, I wouldn’t have believed the reports.”
Mujahid pondered it all as they climbed the hill to the rally point.
While it wasn’t impossible to teleport people from one place to another—he’d traveled here himself by way of a portal—there was no way a fleet of ships could have been transported in the same manner. Not even by translocation orb, for that matter. Objects of power were rare, and they took great sacrifice to create in the first place. Kagan had transported siege weapons for the Battle of Rotham, but that was using a complex pattern of life magic that only Kagan understood. It wasn’t until long after the battle Mujahid learned the sacrifice required by life magic was the lives of unborn children.
The Barathosians were masters of life magic, though.
No. This had to be something different. Something new. Something they hadn’t used—or didn’t possess—when last they visited the Three Kingdoms. Last time, it was like any other battle. They outnumbered the armies of the Three Kingdoms, but their weapons were no better.
Donal glanced down at his trousers and shoved his hand back into his pocket. There was a struggle on his face, as if he were trying to control a mighty penitent. When the struggle ended, his face grew calm.
A deafening boom rocked the north wall of Rotham. The northeast tower collapsed, bringing several archers down with it. When the dust settled, Mujahid saw a curious sight.
A dozen long metallic cylinders, with openings the diameter of a man’s head, rested on top of flat wagons. An animal twice the size of an adda pushed each of the wagons from behind. The creature had four long, curved horns extending outward and forward from the sides of its head. A device, or set of devices, connected the creature’s horns to a frame on back of the flat wagon.
The cylinder on the wagon closest to the fallen tower had smoke billowing out of it. Behind it stood a horned creature, but unlike the others, this one’s horns extended back away from its head. As it approached the rear of the wagon, however, the massive, pointed horns turned forward and slid into the strange frame.
A strong surge of necropotency came from within the city. People must be dying at a disturbing rate.
An undead soldier, carrying a blood-drenched sword, ran out from behind the wall and attacked a Barathosian in a wide-brimmed hat. As the fight dragged on, a woman in midnight-blue robes stepped out from behind some debris.
Mujahid ignited the symbol of ascension, flashing his eyes to catch the necromancer’s attention. She nodded and ran toward them.
“How many of you are left?” Mujahid asked.
The necromancer lowered her hood, revealing
long, straight blond hair.
“All of us, Lord Mukhtaar,” she said.
“Your name?”
“Jaelin, my lord.”
“Well, Magus Jaelin, it’s time we put a stop to this. Given the look of your penitent, it’s obvious you have battle experience.”
“Aye.”
“Then you’re in command of your brethren until I say otherwise.”
“I already command them, my lord. I’m the most powerful here, second only to you, of course.” Jaelin faced Donal. “I mean no offense, Majesty.”
“No offense was given or taken,” Donal said.
“We’ll start by retaking the northern gate,” Mujahid said. “We can use the gate’s tower as a fortified base from which to push farther into the city.”
“And the Barathosian weapons?” Donal asked.
“Magus Jaelin,” Mujahid said. “Order your brethren north toward the wall. Have them attack any Barathosian weapon installation they come across. Capture the weapon if possible, but don’t risk your lives to do so.”
Jaelin bowed at the waist and turned.
Mujahid thought better of it. “Wait. You’ll be seen.”
Jaelin faced him once more.
“Dismiss your penitent,” Mujahid said.
Her skeletal warrior dropped to the ground in a pile of bones. She must have summoned him from a grave. They’d have to return his remains to their resting place when this was over.
Mujahid ignited the symbol of ascension and threaded necropotency into the symbol of shadow—a spherical void hanging in the midst of his other symbols of power. The symbol was often used by priests to conceal particularly gruesome deaths from the eyes of bystanders. But enhanced by the symbol of ascension, the symbol could conceal the living.
Mujahid pushed the symbol forward, stretching it until it wrapped around Jaelin.
Pinpoints of blackness raced toward her from the surrounding shadows. Some shot out from under leaning rocks, while others emerged from darkened doorways and overgrown brush. The shadows themselves would cloak Jaelin.
When they converged on her, Donal gasped. “Where is she?”
Mujahid looked at Jaelin and smiled. He couldn’t see her face or even her outline, but she stood before him as an amorphous black fog visible only to him. Not even another necromancer would be able to detect her.
“She stands before us still, Majesty,” Mujahid said. “Jaelin, it’s important you make haste. Touch nothing except the ground you walk on and your own body. Speak to no one. Cast no magic. Do any of those things and the illusion will shatter. Now, find your brethren.”
Jaelin ran back into the city.
“You’ll have to teach me that trick,” Donal said.
“Survive a few dozen more Halls of Power and I’ll have no choice.”
Mujahid channeled necropotency into the skull symbol and cast it into a corpse wearing a wide-brimmed hat.
The images from the namocea—the process that forced a necromancer to relive the life of their penitent in the span of a moment—took hold of Mujahid and he rode the penitent’s time line for more than thirty years.
A moment later, when the namocea ended and Mujahid reawakened to the situation at Rotham, he ordered the penitent forward, into the city.
The horned creatures had disappeared along with the wagons they pushed, leaving nothing except impressions in the dirt.
Curious. They had been standing there a moment ago.
The necromantic link vanished. The undead soldier must have been discovered and killed as he entered the city.
A shame. Judging from the namocea, his penitent had been a good man.
The namocea.
Mujahid dug back into his memories of the man’s life for any information that could help.
The soldier—Ibashi—had grown up in a place overgrown with large, bending trees, similar to the palm trees of southern Religar. But there was too much vegetation. A memory of humid heat warmed him and made him want to open his robes to cool himself.
Flashes of a temple hidden in a jungle behind the gaping maw of a beast. Men razing his village and taking him from his family. Rigorous training as a soldier. An instantaneous journey across an endless sea. Two men in gray robes. One of those men dead because of the journey…voluntarily.
Fear. Uncertainty. Disbelief.
This wasn’t enough. Mujahid needed information. And so he’d try the unthinkable.
Can I summon him again?
Nicolas had told him he’d succeeded in summoning both the argram and the cichlos by focusing on need.
Well, Mujahid needed Ibashi. But he’d never heard of a priest summoning a specific person without that person’s corpse to receive the power. And judging by how faint the necromantic link had been when Ibashi died, he was too deep within the city to find.
Mujahid embraced the necropotency and allowed it to flow into the skull symbol. He focused on Ibashi; his life, his home, his fears, his aspirations. When he’d succeeded in blocking out everything except the need for Ibashi, he cast the symbol forward and waited for the namocea to take him.
Memories of a journey over land and a fierce battle ran through his mind. He focused on the battle, and when he saw the enemy, he sighed in disappointment. He had failed. He wasn’t Ibashi. He was a woman. Three argram, tarsal swords exposed and slicing through humans as they leapt from wagon to wagon, converged on her and killed her. Memories of a life lived eons ago, before recorded time.
When the images stopped and the binding was secure, he examined the skeleton of a frail old woman that stood before him. She had clawed her way up through layers of dirt, leaving a sizable hole behind her.
No, it wasn’t Ibashi, but Mujahid smiled anyway. The woman was so close to purification that he was certain he could release her on the spot.
But it was more than that.
A small part of Mujahid was happy to discover Nicolas could do something he couldn’t.
With enough preparation, and a little wisdom, that boy could ascend.
He expelled the thought from his mind as being too absurd to consider. Ascension required decades of experience as a necromancer. An intuitive knowledge of necropotency few priests possessed.
No, it was time to concentrate on the here and now.
“I release you from your penance, sister,” Mujahid said.
The skeletal woman transformed into pure light and disappeared.
“How do you stop an army when a single one of their soldiers can destroy a city wall with the strike of a flint?” Donal asked.
Mujahid had no idea. Now, more than ever, he wished Nuuan was here to help him sort through this mess.
Where in the seventh hell are you, Nuuan?
“Do you have a penitent?” Mujahid asked.
Donal shook his head. “I’ll summon one.”
“Save your strength. Raise one of those corpses by the wall instead. It will consume less power and take less of a toll on you. Let’s take back that gate.”
Donal nodded and within moments had raised a dead Tildem soldier.
Mujahid took his own advice and did the same.
“My lord!” Jaelin yelled. She was running toward him from the gate, about a hundred yards away. “It’s no use! The penitents can’t touch them!”
“What?” Mujahid ran forward to meet her. “What do you mean?”
She stopped in front of him and caught her breath.
“I made it deep into the city before breaking your illusion. But it was no use. Every time we attack the Barathosians, they either disappear or the penitent refuses to touch them.”
“That’s not possible,” Mujahid said. “Your penitent cannot refuse!”
He glanced toward the northern gate, where three Barathosian soldiers emerged, and ordered his penitent to attack.
It refused.
“Majesty,” Mujahid said. “Send your penitent!”
“I’ve tried! It won’t obey!”
Never in his considerable years h
ad Mujahid heard of such a thing.
“We can’t stay here,” Mujahid said. “Until I discover why this is happening, we have to assume they can use our power against us.”
This was troubling to a degree Mujahid was only now understanding. It brought everything he knew about the relationship between a priest and a penitent into question.
Mujahid glanced around, trying to feel the wind on his face. When he was satisfied it wasn’t blowing toward them from the city, he ignited the symbol of ascension and cast a cloud of disease toward the gate.
Power returned to his well as the three Barathosian soldiers choked to death.
“Now that I’ve seen some of their tactics,” Donal said, “I can defend Arin’s Watch.”
Mujahid gave him an incredulous stare. “Moments ago you were asking how anyone could defend against their weapons, and now you’re going to save a city?”
“I must try.”
“Arin’s Watch will fall, with or without you,” Mujahid said. “If you refuse to return to the Pinnacle with me, I urge you to press on to the Shandarian Union. I can be in Shandar in minutes. Within the hour I can alert the Union government. Perhaps they’ll…offer assistance.”
Mujahid didn’t know why he said that. He didn’t believe a word of it. And from Donal’s expression, neither did he. But what else could they do? Tildem’s army wasn’t capable of handling this threat. And from what Mujahid had seen of those metal cylinders, he doubted the combined might of the Shandarian Union and the Religarian Empire could turn the Barathosians back.
And now necromancy had failed.
A nearby explosion knocked Mujahid off his feet. When he realized there was no impending attack, he shook his head.