by Deck Davis
He’d been lucky to leave the Greylands the first time and the second, and now he was thinking of going back.
Witas crossed his arms. “The woman’s got a name, and I know people in Dispolis who are good at finding them.”
“So what, we’re gonna take her body out of the sewers and drag her around Dispolis? Play a game of ‘guess the name of the corpse’?” said Jakub.
“If you want to wow me with your necromancer bag of tricks, be my guest.”
“I can go to the Greylands and try and find her,” said Jakub.
“The Greylands…I should have known. Well, what are you waiting for?”
“I’m waiting for my rationality to kick in and tell me what a stupid idea this is.”
Witas put his hand around his ear. “I don’t hear anything.”
“That side of me is pretty quiet sometimes. I just don’t know if I feel like risking it. Then again, if I thought this would end with her, I’d gladly call this thing finished, go find a bar and drink enough whiskey until I get to that point where I convince myself I’m a good dancer. But it was a man in the Last Rites, so we know she wasn’t working alone. There’s one of them still out there, and maybe more.”
“Then what’s the hold up?”
“Not even a necromancer messes around in the Greylands. The first time I went, I had Irvine and Lolo with me.”
“Well my brother’s probably in his room rearranging his shoes in color order, but I’ll hold your hand.”
“No, I have to do it alone. I took a guy with me once, and if you asked him now, I’d bet I’m not on his Solstice card list,” said Jakub.
He held his new soul necklace in one hand, and with the other he touched his Summon Bound glyphline tattoo.
When he spoke the spellword, a circle of light appeared on the ground by his feet. It swirled round like a whirlpool, grey and dizzying and with a depth to it, a passageway to the land between life and death.
This was a spell he used to summon his bound animal, Ludwig, from the Greylands.
This time, instead of waiting for Ludwig to appear, Jakub stepped into the portal and let it suck him into its swirls, carrying him down into the land beyond.
35
He found himself standing on land the color of cooked flesh, with rivers and streams and brooks of blue essence cutting through it. Most of the activity in the Greylands was in the sky, where it stretched for miles. Portal opened in it, some like watercolours dripping down a canvas, others like mirrors.
People fell from the portals and floated down through the Greylands. Every kind of animal or race fell through at some point, and now Jakub saw a dog, a goblins, and then an elephant.
“The Greylands are a part of everything’s death, not just people,” Irvine had told him when he came here to bind Ludwig.
And with that memory he was reminded about what else waited in the Greylands; the creatures that had resisted leaving here, and so had become corrupted.
Kortho’s lessons repeated in his head; “The corrupted ones will stay on the horizon; the oldest of them are too malformed to move except through riding thoughts. Don’t look at them, and you’ll be fine.”
It wasn’t just the arachnids, though. There were other permanent residents of the Greylands who wanted the same thing; to take pieces of his mind for their own.
That was why this stop would be as short as he could make it.
“Jakub!” shouted a voice.
He heard paws pounding over the ground. Ludwig was running toward him, his eyes lit, tail swishing.
Unlike Jakub, Ludwig was a resident of the Greylands and as so could look at the eight-legged monstrosities in the distance. Not only that, but Jakub’s necromancy protected his hound from turning into one of them.
Their bond brought them close together in different ways; it let Ludwig stay in the Greylands instead of going to an afterlife, and he sometimes got to visit the land of the living when Jakub summoned him.
Jakub got a friend in return. When Kortho saved him from his family he had nobody. When he had nightmares that Irvine thought were dangerous enough that he needed to be isolated from the other students, he was alone.
But as soon as he was bound to Ludwig, he had a friend whenever he wanted one. A friend who was always insanely happy to see him.
“Ludwig! Come on, boy!” he said, kneeling to be level with his hound.
Ludwig was real down here and so his footsteps made a noise, his breath smelled doggy, and when he rushed at Jakub…his bulk sent him flying.
It happened this time; Ludwig jumped at him, caught his paws on his shoulders, and the both of them fell over.
Lud covered his face in licks, and his tongue was drier than a rock.
“You’re down here? Again?” said Ludwig. “I just got your summons, and I was about to come through the portal. Couldn’t you wait to see me?”
Jakub could already feel the giant arachnids gathering in the distance. That was how it worked; once one of them realized a mortal was here, the rest would notice.
Then they’d do things to get your attention, to try and lock stares with you.
Right now, Jakub saw movement in his peripheral vision; one of the arachnids was flailing its legs in the air.
Don’t look he told himself.
Ludwig sniffed him. “You smell different, Jakub.”
“You spend a few hours knee-deep in shit, and we’ll see how you smell.”
“No, I don’t like this. There’s something strange.”
“I’m fine, Lud.”
“We need to get you to a doctor.”
“What? Lud, look at me; I’m fine. I need you to do something for me,” he told Ludwig.
“Anything.”
“There’s a woman down here. She only just died, and she’s a necromancer, so she’ll know her way around.”
“Is she a…girlfriend?”
“Hardly – she summoned a bunch of rats to kill me, and her friends don’t have the best intentions either. I need to find out why, and who the rest of them are.”
Ludwig’s tail dropped. “You’re in danger?”
“I don’t have time to explain it all now, Lud. I just need you to find this woman. She had dark brown hair, and like I said, she’s a necromancer too. She shouldn’t be hard for you to track.”
“The Greylands is a big place.”
He showed her the woman’s soul necklace. “Take a sniff of this. Is that enough?”
Ludwig nodded. As he did, a different look spread on his face, as though a sour taste had flooded his tongue.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” said Ludwig. “I wasn’t supposed to say yet; I promised. But now that you’re down here…”
This was weird – Ludwig had never kept a secret from him before. Ludwig was his bound animal and he only answered to Jakub, so who could have made him promise not to tell him something?
“What is it?”
“There’s someone down here. I wasn’t supposed to tell you because then you’d have come here, and it’s dangerous. I guess now you’re here, there’s no point hiding it.”
“There’s someone down here?”
Ludwig paced nervously. “Should I have said anything?”
Jakub felt cold now. The only reason a person would come to Greylands is if they were a necromancer, or if they were dead.
“Did someone die? Who, Lud?”
“Cross the essence stream north. They’re not far away. I’ll leave you two alone and go and look for this woman.”
36
Ludwig sniffed the air and the tore off eastward, leaving Jakub alone with his questions.
Someone he knew was down here?
Who was it? Who had died?
He almost didn’t want to find out, as if staying here would mean he never knew, and therefore it never happened.
Come on; you’re being stupid.
He knew what Irvine, Kortho, Henwright, Lolo would all say; they’d repeat a quote for the Necromancia,
one of the earliest texts on necromancy.
‘When a necromancer fears death for himself or his loved ones, he is a necromancer no more.’
And so, Jakub followed Ludwig’s directions, walking north by an essence stream until it came time to cross it, and then he found the narrowest part and leapt over it, crossing from one fleshy landmass to another.
Then, he saw him. A figure in the distance, sitting by a rock of bone.
No.
He stopped, rigid, unable to force himself to take another step.
“Kortho?” he said.
His mentor was sitting beside a bleached bone. It looked like a rock from far away, but a nobble at the top of its showed that it had once joined onto something, and had been part of a skeleton.
Instead of his necromancy robe, Kortho was wearing pyjamas. They were made from cotton and had blue stripes. Jakub had never seen his mentor looking so casual, much less in pyjamas.
Jakub ran over to him. “Kortho!”
Kortho turned his way. “Ah, damn. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted the hound. You shouldn’t be down here, Jakub. I told Ludwig to keep it from you because I knew you’d come looking.”
A flood of thoughts hit Jakub, so many that it was hard to grasp just one.
“What…how? What happened?”
“A heart attack,” said Kortho, pinching his pyjama top, “Hence the clothes. That’s what I think, anyway. I think I was next to Winifred, listening to her read to me. That was something we did – took it in turns to read to each other. While I was listening to her voice, my heart decided it had had enough.”
“You’re dead?”
“Well observed. I always said you’d make a fine necromancer.”
“If I tell Irvine to send someone to collect your body from your house, we’ll have time to take your body to the resurrection chamber and he can-”
Kortho gave him a tender smile. “You’re not thinking clearly. You’re letting death cloud your thoughts.”
All these years, even when Jakub had gone through a phase of being a teenage arsehole, Kortho had always been patient with him, always willing to talk through his transgressions or errors.
And he saw his mistake now.
“You’ve already been resurrected once, so you can’t come back again.”
“One of the Seven awaits me now, lad. I hope it’s the Upperlon; me and Winnie always said we’d try for that afterlife and meet each other there. Course, I know that you can’t choose.”
Jakub ran his hand through his hair. He was sweating but cold at the same time. His throat was dry enough that even breathing normally was difficult.
It had all come down to this. Everything he’d been through to save Kortho, and death had played a joke.
Back in his first assignment, Jakub had a banished necromancer at his mercy. This was a man named Ryden Renault; dangerous, deadly, and a real bastard.
He should have taken Ryden to the academy to face up to what he’d done. The problem was, Kortho had been killed by a mother blight wyrm.
Jakub had broken academy code and let Ryden go in exchange for Kortho’s resurrection.
Jakub had ended his assignment tired, injured, and weighed down by the knowledge of his failure, but that had been okay because he knew Kortho was alive.
All of that…for him to die of a heart attack?
It was a truth about death they should have taught in the academy, but Jakub suspected everyone but the necromancers themselves understood it. For all their study of it, they neglected one thing; death didn’t give a shit.
Go through hell to bring your mentor back to life?
Death didn’t care.
A healer spends hours and pours out all the mana in their body to save a life?
Death looked on that with a sneer.
Whatever you’d been through, whatever your plans, it meant nothing to the spectre that waited at the end.
Tears welled in his eyes. “This is it, isn’t it? There’s no resurrection window for you, so you’ll go to your afterlife soon.”
“I can feel it already, Jakub. I feel lighter than I ever have.”
“What about Winifred?”
“Will you visit her for me?” said Kortho.
Gods, the tears were burning now. He fought to keep them back but it was impossible. “Of course I will. All the time. Only, there’s a problem.”
“I know that the academy expelled you,” said Kortho. “Ludwig told me.”
“It’s not that; shit has been piling on me lately.”
“Be blunt, lad.”
“Someone is trying to kill me, and Henwright set me up.”
Kortho stood up now. As he did, Jakub noticed that his feet and ankles were hazy in the same way that Ludwig’s form was up on the surface, before Jakub had levelled his Summon Bound spell.
It was starting already; Kortho’s essence was fading into the afterlife.
“I don’t have long,” said Kortho. “Tell me everything.”
Just then, footsteps pounded behind him. Jakub almost turned around to look, but he stopped himself at the last second. Who knew what was behind him, just waiting for him to carelessly turn around so they could steal his thoughts?
“Jakub,” said Ludwig.
Phew, it’s just Lud.
The hound joined them, and he laid by Kortho’s feet and was soon enjoying a head scratch. “No sign of the woman,” he said. “She came to the Greylands like you said, but she started moving straight away. A demon told me she went north, and imp said she went south.”
“Damn it. Time moves eight times faster down here, and she’s probably been here before. She must have guessed that I’d come here after her to question her.”
“Her?” said Kortho.
Jakub noticed with a chill that the haze had reached Kortho’s shins now.
Minutes, that was all he had. Minutes and then he’d never see his mentor again.
There wasn’t even a guarantee Jakub would see him again when he himself died – who knew what he’d do in his life? Who knew which afterlife his actions would take him to?
Images flashed through his mind.
Kortho taking his hand, dragging him away from his cannibal family.
Kortho arguing with the other instructors to let them give Jakub a place in the academy instead of sending him to a workshop.
Kortho inviting Jakub to stay with him and his wife in the holidays, instead of sleeping at the empty academy.
“Kortho,” he said. He knew his voice was wavering, and he knew it was shameful for a necromancer, but he couldn’t help it. “Kortho, I-”
Kortho put his claws on Jakub’s shoulder and stared at him with his slit eyes.
“Jakub, lad, you can either say goodbye, or you can tell me who this woman is, and what’s happening to you. We can either be sentimental, or you can get my help one last time. It’s up to you.”
So, Jakub told him everything.
37
“So, they tried to take Abbie, and then they came for you,” said Kortho. “And you’re sure about this letter?”
“The pickpocket stole it from me, and then he wound up cut in half. It has to be a set-up; I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“No? Well the universe has a funny way of throwing them at us. I have a hard time believing that Henwright would do this.”
“That’s exactly why I haven’t gone to the academy. Nobody would believe me.”
“I’d believe it,” said Ludwig. “In your inquiry, what you told me…they didn’t give you a chance.”
“Sometimes, Lud my friend,” said Kortho, “The academy must act to protect itself, rather than one student. That was why they threw up such opposition when I wanted Jakub to join, and I went against every credo of the academy to get him permitted. Irvine, though, has no such sentimentality, but nor would he move against students for his own gain.”
“And Henwright? Why did he give me the letter, if not to set me up?” said Jakub.
“Whoeve
r these people are, you’re following a trail of fire, and its likely to burn you when you get close. You should go, Jakub. Leave Dispolis and travel far away. I hear the far western isles are nice.”
“If we’re right that they’re targeting students, then I won’t be the last.”
“I should have known you wouldn’t think of yourself. If you had done that in the Killeshi lands, you wouldn’t have failed your assignment.”
“And you’d have died.”
“Well it seems when the afterlives want you, they will take you anyway,” said Kortho.
Jakub heard something strange in Kortho’s voice, and he thought it might be regret.
He hadn’t expected that; Kortho was a master necromancer, and he knew death intimately. He couldn’t believe that when it came to it, Kortho was like everyone else – scared of going, scared of all the things he’d leave undone.
Or was Jakub just projecting?
Maybe for Kortho it wasn’t fear for himself, but for Jakub and for Winifred.
Perhaps all the de-sensitization training in the world couldn’t rid a person of that most primal instinct when it came to death.
“You need Irvine and Lolo’s help on this, Jakub. The academy has to know,” said Kortho.
“They won’t believe me.”
“Then you’ll take them something they can’t deny. You say this woman killed herself, rather than talk to you?”
“She didn’t even flinch.”
“A person only does that when they value the thing they are protecting more than their own life. She is a necromancer, and she will know about the resurrection window, and about Last Rites. I’d imagine that now, wherever she is, she is making sure her window closes earlier than it should, so that you can’t take her corpse to the academy in time.”
“Do you know who she could be? She must have been a student, right?”
“I’ve taught many students over the years, Jakub. Our academy isn’t the only one to teach necromancy, either. But you said there were others?”
“When I cast Last Rites on the pickpocket,” said Jakub, “We saw a man. He knew I was going to use it, and he left a message. He sat there in front of the boy, and spoke to him, but he knew he was speaking to me, really. He expected me to watch the Last Rites.”