Necromancer Falling: Book Two of The Mukhtaar Chronicles

by Nat Russo

  “This isn’t for you.” Morrigan took a long drink.

  “Oh great,” Aelron said. “A drunk physician is just what I need.”

  “You’re in good hands, Elrob. Don’t worry.”

  “It’s Aelron! How many times do I have to—ow!”

  Searing hot pain shot up Aelron’s right side.

  “For Arin’s sake, woman, getting stabbed didn’t hurt that much!”

  “Stay still, you big baby. This is going to really hurt, if you keep squirming.”

  “Do you know what you’re doing, or are you guessing?”

  “I’ve hunted and cleaned boar that didn’t squeal as much as you.”

  Morrigan poked the needle through his skin again and Aelron winced.

  By the time she finished, Aelron was pretty sure he’d rather bleed to death next time. His side was stiff, and every minor twist and turn made him fear he’d rip the stitches out. And the last thing he wanted was her coming at him with a needle again.

  The fetid stench from whatever was behind that door wasn’t helping his mood either.

  Morrigan stood and opened the door.

  “You going to tell me what’s in the other room?” Aelron asked.

  Morrigan handed him the bottle. “You’re going to need this.”

  There was a swig or two left, so Aelron downed it. The spirits warmed his throat and lightened his mood a little.

  Morrigan peeked through the door, then looked down at the floor.

  “It began with small raid groups,” Morrigan said. “Three or four would appear out of thin air, rob a caravan, then disappear. But not just any caravan. Military caravans.”

  Aelron thought back to the wagon he’d hidden in, and the strange soldiers that vanished right in front of him. Morrigan was telling the truth so far.

  “The Sodality is in danger,” Morrigan said. “Kagan’s barrier did something. With the birth rate as low as it has been, we need everyone who is capable of surviving the training.”

  Aelron folded his arms and stifled a wince from the tightness of his stitches.

  “It’s why I’ve been tracking you,” Morrigan said. “That’s how the Sodality works. Someone like me finds someone like you. You run for your life because you think you’ve stepped into a nightmare. I catch you. You refuse to listen, and I pretend you’re not wasting my time for an hour or two. Eventually, your better judgment forces you to hear me out. But we don’t have two hours.”

  “You don’t see me running, do you?”

  “You don’t see the irony in that question?”

  Morrigan squatted beside him until they were face to face. She had the same fierce expression as before.

  “The Turian Exports Company is a cover for the Sodality,” Morrigan said. She paused, as if expecting a response. When no response came, she continued. “And judging from that stupid look on your face, you have no idea what in the six hells I’m talking about.”

  Aelron remained silent. He wouldn’t allow awkwardness to force him into talking. That’s how people said things they’d later regret.

  Morrigan pursed her lips and nodded as if he’d passed some sort of test. She stood.

  “The Sodality is an ancient order of Zubuxo,” Morrigan said.

  “You’re no priest,” Aelron said.

  “And you’re not listening. I never said I was a priest. Priests bring people back from the dead. What we do is…For the love of Arin, didn’t your mother tell you tales to frighten you into obedience? The Tale of the Cloaked Demon? The Hellwraith and the Adda? Piercing the Veil?”

  “My mother died when I was little.”

  Morrigan stammered. “Apologies.”

  Aelron shook his head. “That was a long time ago. But what do you mean someone like you? What, exactly, am I like?”

  “I know a kindred spirit when I see one. I know the craft when I see it, regardless of how poorly it’s been passed on. And I know you’re long lived.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “That’s the only reason you still draw breath. That Council magus in Blackwood was my mark. My sacred duty. I wanted him alive…for a time. But because of what you did, I couldn’t purge him properly.”

  “If you were there, you’d recall he killed himself.”

  “I assume you stole Arinwool from the rangers?”

  Aelron’s face went cold. Just how much did she know?

  “Why were you after the magus?” Aelron asked.

  Morrigan stared at him. “Not every human who walks this world has a human soul.”

  “Now you’re the one telling tales.”

  “You’ll have a different opinion when you glimpse beyond the veil. Demons don’t always have wings. Forget about the magus for now. I’ll teach you the rest later. What’s important, is this.”

  She pulled a long black feather from her cloak.

  “This is where the Barathosian’s power comes from,” Morrigan said. “This is how they travel.”

  He took the feather from her and examined it. Twelve inches long. White quill with two black stripes. Tapered vane, also black. Narrow leading edge on one side of the vane and a wide trailing edge on the other—a flight feather. Ordinary in every possible way. He handed it back.

  “It’s just a feather,” Aelron said.

  “It’s much more. And I have proof. If you’ve seen them, you know the hats they wear, right?”

  Aelron nodded.

  “Have you ever seen a Barathosian without one?” Morrigan asked.

  “They’ve never invited me to dinner, but I assume they take them off eventually.”

  “I fought them outside of Tur. It’s no small thing when I tell you it was a challenge. But what’s important is what happens when they’re not wearing this feather. For weeks I watched them appear and disappear, often wearing different clothing, even different hats. But always the same black feather. Yesterday, there was another attack. Several appeared in this safe house. But they were scouts, not fighters. I concealed myself. One of them started shouting numbers, always decreasing. Sixty. Then Thirty. Then fifteen, and so on. Just before he reached zero, I knocked the feather from one of their hats. The man who owned it screamed horrifically. The others tried to retrieve it for him, but when the counting man reached zero, they all vanished. All except the one without the feather.”

  Aelron stood. “The man with the missing feather is in that room, isn’t he?”

  Morrigan pursed her lips for a moment. “Most of him.”

  “Show me.”

  Morrigan stepped through the doorway.

  Aelron followed her into a room that was darker than the last and smelled like death itself. A single window, high in the opposite wall, cast a beam of yellow light on the center of the room at a steep angle. Particles of dust drifted through the light. He suppressed another sneeze.

  But it wasn’t the darkness, the solitary beam of light, or the motes of dust that concerned him. What concerned him was the man on the floor at the other end of that beam of light. Or rather, what was left of him.

  Half of a man’s torso lay on the floor. A shell of flesh with internal organs hanging precariously from fascia. The remains of a stomach hung twisted within entrails that wrapped the fleshy mass, binding it together like a macabre sack. A sack resting in a pool of rotten food, feces, and urine.

  Aelron suppressed a gag. “Gods.”

  “When the others disappeared,” Morrigan said, “that one ended up exactly like you see him. Their powers of transport must have something to do with the feather.”

  Another bell tolled, this time louder than the first.

  “Barathosians?”

  Morrigan nodded. “A second bell means an attack is imminent.”

  “Then we need to get to the wall.”

  Aelron turned toward the door behind him, but Morrigan was already standing there, blocking his exit. She’d somehow covered fifteen paces without him seeing her move.

  And she wasn’t out of breath.


  “First,” Morrigan said, “I need something from you.” She took slow steps toward him. “No one who hears the story I told you leaves this building unless they’re with the Sodality.”

  Aelron glanced at the door.

  “There’s power in you,” Morrigan said. “Your friends and family might not see it, but I do. Just like you’ll see it in others someday. I’m not making a threat, Aelron. I’m making an offer.”

  Aelron had suspected it would come to this at some point, with all that talk of training and tracking. Strange as it was, the notion appealed to him. He’d spent decades of his life with a group of people who didn’t want him around. What would it have been like to spend decades with people who did?

  He always wondered why he’d stopped aging. And there was no reason he shouldn’t have been able to moor with an adda-ki. Maybe Morrigan had the answers he sought.

  But there was another reason to consider her offer; the pull of the phantom coin had diminished since he’d met her.

  “Suppose I’m interested,” Aelron said. “We hardly have time for some elaborate initiation ritual.”

  “Do you want me to complete the training the rangers started? Do you want to become a member of the Sodality? A warrior of Zubuxo?”

  So she did know he was a ranger.

  Aelron stared at her. His brain was telling him to say no. He’d traveled here with a brother he’d just met to fight a war against an enemy he didn’t know. Nicolas and Kaitlyn were coming to rely upon him, to some degree. They were going to need his skills and expertise, even if they didn’t know it yet.

  But his heart had different ideas. There’d been a connection with Morrigan. What kind, he couldn’t say, but it was there all the same. She had answers to questions he’d been asking for more than twenty years. She made him believe that all the things he hated about himself had some greater meaning. Some greater purpose.

  “I can’t say I understand why,” Aelron said. “Not completely, anyway. But yes. I do. I want to join your order. I want to know why I don’t age. I want to learn about this veil of yours.”

  “Then consider the elaborate initiation ritual concluded.”

  “You have a spare one of those cloaks around here?”

  Morrigan huffed. “This is a sacred garment, forged from the veil at the headwaters of the Great Orm River. Zubuxo himself imbued it on the night of the new moons—a night that comes but once every five years.”

  “Yeah. One of those.”

  “Regarding your wall comment earlier,” Morrigan said, ignoring him. “We don’t want to be anywhere near the wall when this attack starts. I saw what they did in Tur. We wait for them to get inside the city, then we attack.”

  “What can we do that the Caspardis militia cannot?”

  Morrigan smirked and jogged toward the door. “Time for your first lesson.”

  He followed her into the street. “And how many lessons are there?”

  “As many as it takes.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  In the year 1077 BCE, Imran Mukhtaar stepped over the threshold, becoming Imran Lord Mukhtaar. Though lord Mukhtaar entered the Rite of Ascension with his brother Kyran, Kyran was never seen again. The loss of his brother led Lord Mukhtaar to forbid future generations from allowing more than one family member to attempt ascension.

  - Coteon of the Steppes, “The Mukhtaar Chronicles: Coteonic Commentaries” (circa 680 BCE)

  If Lord Imran’s restriction was meant to be perpetual, he did a poor job of promulgating it. There have been numerous occurrences, centuries before our birth, of sons ascending while the father yet reigned. I will have to make some explicit comment about this in the Chronicles. It wouldn’t do to let this stand as an impediment to ascension for the worthy.

  - Mujahid Mukhtaar, Private Commentaries, 15 CE

  Nicolas materialized, and the low hum of the Orb of Arin greeted him. The multi-hued swirls of divine power on its surface emitted an iridescent vapor, obscuring the turquoise sky through the window behind it.

  The sanctuary.

  Nicolas was thankful the translocation orb had taken him to the heart of the Pinnacle. The Pinnacle was a city-sized structure, built atop an island in the Sea of Arin. The last thing he needed was to have to scour the place for Tithian.

  He needed one of those protoforge fragments immediately. Caspardis was in trouble, and he couldn’t leave Kaitlyn and the gang there for too long.

  Toby pulled at the leash and bayed. But when Nicolas faced the direction Toby was pulling, he saw nothing.

  Nicolas rubbed at his right eye. For a moment, he thought he’d seen a shadow jumping up from a dark corner. And he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.

  But no one was there.

  Toby calmed as a Pinnacle guard opened the sanctuary door and entered.

  “Archmage,” the guard said.

  “The Prime Warlock,” Nicolas said. “Where is he?”

  “I saw him last in the Great Hall, but that was hours ago.”

  “Find him. I don’t care if it takes the entire Pinnacle Guard. Find him and tell him to come to my chambers without delay.”

  “Archmage.” The guard saluted and ran down the great spiral stairs.

  Nicolas’s head throbbed.

  What I’d give for a couple of smart phones right now.

  He walked down the twisted spiral stairs, in the general direction of his chambers. As he rounded the center column—a twenty feet diameter of sandstone—he noticed all of the sconces were in their place. For him, mere days had passed since he’d crept up this very passage on the way to confront his birth father, Kagan. The sandstone walls looked much the same, but the sconces that once lay in pieces on the floor now hung in pristine condition.

  When he circled the column once more, he emerged onto a landing formed by two hallways running opposite one another. Four guards in Pinnacle livery—billowing material with yellow and red stripes from shoulder to toe—stood at attention along the back wall of the landing, pikes in hand. They saluted as Nicolas looked up and down the hallways, trying to find a familiar door, scratch on the wall, or any other sign that would lead him in the right direction.

  Nicolas returned the salute.

  “Forgive the presumption, Archmage,” one of the guards said. “Frederick mentioned fetching the Prime Warlock to your chambers. You’ll find them that way, Excellency.”

  “Thank you,” Nicolas said. Word must be spreading about his dislike of being called Holy One. But Excellency was a new one.

  The corridor didn’t look familiar, but Nicolas tugged at the leash and led Toby onward.

  Again, the strong sensation of being watched returned, and he glanced up and down the hall.

  No one.

  As he approached a large window that looked out over a vineyard, he recognized the door to his chambers. It rested within an arch of sandstone, and bore two gold mosaics; one resembling the Orb of Arin, and the other in the image of Arin’s helm.

  Last time, he’d approached from the opposite end of the hall.

  No wonder I’m lost. This place is a labyrinth.

  Two guards on either side of the door saluted as Nicolas pushed it open.

  Nicolas glanced around the room—what he could see of it—before entering. He was a man without a home, and it never occurred to him until this moment. The thought of going back to his life in Austin seemed foolish. A naive longing, at best. Austin held nothing for him anymore. What was he going to do? Go to grad school? Get a job as a field archaeologist? Teach?

  He could no sooner put Erindor behind him then he could Kaitlyn.

  But as much as he felt a connection to Erindor—by birth, by duty, by divine calling—this wasn’t his home either. They said he was the master of this place. The Pinnacle. But he couldn’t even find his own room without directions from a guard whose armor looked like it was designed by Michelangelo.

  He wasn’t the master of this place. The Pinnacle was his master.
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br />   If that giant map on the wall was a map of the Pinnacle, it would be of some use!

  The back of his head throbbed, and he massaged it. But the sound of footsteps in the corridor—hurried, judging by how close together the footfalls were—made Nicolas step into his chambers.

  Toby spun around and whipped his tail back and forth as the footsteps stopped.

  “Archmage,” Tithian said.

  “Good,” Nicolas said. “The proto—”

  Nicolas thought better of it and stepped around Tithian to shut the chamber door.

  “The protoforge fragments,” Nicolas said. “I need one.”

  Tithian’s eyes grew wide, and he stammered. “I haven’t had a chance to test them yet.”

  Nicolas liked Tithian. The man was incredibly helpful. But how could he have dropped the ball like this?

  “This was the single most important priority here,” Nicolas said. “What could have possibly kept you from testing them? There’s a war starting out there!”

  Tithian made a placating gesture with his hand. “It still is. And I will begin my tests the moment they arrive. I assure you.”

  “But you said they were here, didn’t you?”

  Tithian shook his head. “My contacts in Tildem are bringing them here as we speak. But it’s a long journey. And I can’t translocate them for the reasons I’ve already mentioned.”

  How the hell could I have forgotten that?

  When Tithian had tried translocating to retrieve the fragments in the first place, something deflected him fifty leagues away—one hundred and seventy five miles.

  “These contacts,” Nicolas said. “Are they trustworthy?”

  Tithian looked away for a moment and raised an eyebrow.

  “That bad?”

  “They can be trusted to do what they’re paid to do,” Tithian said. “Believe me when I tell you there was no other way. These are the people you go to for a job like this. The Azure Dawn.”

  “The Azure Dawn? Sounds like a made-up terrorist group from an eighties action flick.”

  “The Azure Dawn can be a touchy subject at the Pinnacle. The governments of the Three Kingdoms look the other way in exchange for service, such as now.”