Chains of a Dark Goddess (18 page)

“Larekal was right.”

“You have a magic stone! And you look healthier.”

“I do, and I am restored.”

“Is your benefactor coming with us?”

“No, she’s dead.”

Larekal came to him. “Master, the town is awake. They will discover us soon. Men are probably on the way already. We need to go.”

“Retrieve a priestess from the convent and tie the body to one of our mounts.”

“Which priestess, master?”

“It doesn’t matter. Probably best not to choose one you fancy the look of.”

“I don’t fancy corpses at all, master.”

“That’s good, Larekal, for soon you will see many of them.”

Chapter 26

To get as far away from the Chapel of Blessed Night as possible, they rode throughout the day and night, stopping only when they must. On the next dawn, with his knights and their mounts utterly spent, Breskaro called a halt to their mad ride through the countryside. As soon as camp was made, Breskaro grabbed his pack and hefted the putrid-smelling body of the dead priestess over his shoulder.

“Master?” Esha asked. “Do you need my help? Do you want me to keep watch?”

“Go to sleep.” He pointed to a dense stand of firs ringed by holly bushes. “I’ll be right over there. If anyone comes upon us, I’ll hear them.”

Breskaro hid himself among the trees and brush. He dumped the body and from his pack he took out the Akythiri Mechanism. He turned it over several times, examining it closely. He shrugged.

“Harmulkot. Come out and play.”

Her ghost billowed out from the qavra. She stood in a deep shadow. 

“I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with this. How do I activate it? What commands do I use?”

“The commands are through thought alone. Words and gestures are unnecessary. It is unlike sorcery.”

“So what do I do?”

“First, I advise you to cast the
spell of silence
.”

Breskaro cast the spell. “Now what?”

“You must bond with it. Remove your mask, your armor, your shirt. Good. Now place the device on the back of your neck. Rotate it to the other side. Hold it there tightly with both hands. I recommend that you kneel.”

Breskaro knelt down, clutching the Akythiri Mechanism to the back of his neck. Harmulkot drifted over and leaned down over him. She whispered words in a language no longer spoken on Kaiwen.

The machine began to hum and vibrate.

“You will feel pain. Quite a lot of it. It is part of the process. Remain calm. Keep your chin up.”

He raised his head. “Why do I need to—”

The machine sprang to life. Two metal bolts shot into Breskaro’s neck, to either side of his spine. He cried out but the sound was muffled by the spell to nothing more than a whisper.

“Now let go of the device and extend your arms out to either side. Chin up.”

Shaking, Breskaro extended his arms.

The Akythiri Mechanism split open like a clamshell. The bronze outer shell uncoiled and wrapped around Breskaro’s neck like a choker. Copper wires ringed with a substance like spider silk flailed about, pricking the skin of his shoulders, neck, and chest. Breskaro screamed again as the wires dug under his skin and snaked along until they found the desired nerve clusters. The longest wires thrashed all the way down his arms and rooted themselves into his palms and fingertips. The thickest wires ran up his neck and down his spinal column. The smallest wires weaved a web across his skull, forehead, and face.

Breskaro’s eyes rolled back. He began to sag.

“Stay up!” Harmulkot admonished.

Thinking of Orisala, he recovered, just enough. The wires settled into place and the Akythiri Mechanism sent a charge down them. Breskaro sputtered curses, fell to the ground, and writhed in a fit. After a few minutes, the charge tapered off to a minimal current. On the back of the choker hummed, almost inaudibly, a metal block featuring the replacement piece Nalsyrra had brought them.

Breskaro struggled up to his hands and knees. Blood-specked tears spilled from his eyes. A trickle of blood ran from his nose. He vomited and collapsed. Harmulkot’s ghost knelt beside him.

“Not bad. You fared as well as I did.”

“Could have warned me, damn it.”

She shrugged. “Knowing would not have made a difference. It had to be done.”

He examined his arms and hands, felt along his chest. He couldn’t see the wires but he could feel them. “What happens if I get cut and the wires are broken?”

“The wires can repair themselves. That does take energy from the device, though. Once too much energy is consumed, the part you replaced will burn out again.”

“This stinging sensation...”

“It will stop in a few hours. Can you feel the presence of the device in your mind?”

Breskaro closed his eyes. “Like a whisper in some alien language.”

“Excellent. That means it is working. You must learn to embrace this
whisper
as you call it. That is your interface with the device. You instruct the alien presence as to what you wish done and it will seek to do it through you. At first you will experience a delay between instructing the device and having it do as you request. 

“Once the mechanism activates, the device can work its powers over a short distance of no more than twenty paces. The more you ask of it, the closer you should be to your target. Distance requires more energy.”

“Why can’t I use it to heal Orisala now?”

Harmulkot smiled. “The ancient sorcerer Akythiri, who was racially an ancestor of the batrakosians, altered the device with my help … and the sacrifice of not a few souls. The original purpose of the device was to heal injuries, not animate corpses. To heal again, the default settings of the device must be restored.”

Breskaro stood and staggered toward the corpse of the priestess. “How many corpses can I animate?”

“The device burned out on me after I had animated well over a hundred thousand. You can animate one at a time. Once animated, they will live, so to speak, until destroyed.”

“How does that work? It doesn’t bring souls back to their bodies, like with me, right?”

“You are correct. The soul is gone but there is memory in the muscles and brain. The machine rebuilds enough of the mind and memory of the departed soul that the somewhat-healed body can function. 

“You can, with effort, bring more of this soul-memory back, creating a smarter undead being. This takes far more energy, such as that required to animate fifty or so normal corpses. You will want some of these, though, for they will be good at leading the others. They will seem almost like the people they were before. 

“But they are not sentient or creative. They cannot solve problems well. They are merely shadows of the people they once were. Think of a soldier fighting for his life in pitched battle. He is struck upon the head and dazed. He hardly knows where he is or what he is doing. But he hears orders and obeys. He fights hard for his life. But to think … he does not have the capacity for that.

“The corpses you wish to animate need muscles to move, eyes to see if you wish for them to be useful. The fresher the corpse, the better.”

“Feeding?”

“They need none.”

“Control?”

“You control them, and only you. Though you may delegate others for them to follow. Be careful in how you command them. They are literal and will continue their last order until given a new one. Distance does not matter. The animated corpses are linked to you and will hear you from twenty paces or two hundred leagues. Any order you give them mentally or verbally, they will execute.”

Breskaro stood over the body of the priestess. “I’m ready.”

“Hold your hands toward the body and mentally communicate with the presence in the back of your mind. All you need to convey is your desire for this corpse to come to life.”

Breskaro held out his hands. Beneath his bronze mask, his brow furrowed. The wires beneath his skin grew warm. Concentric rings of energy formed around his hands and radiated toward the corpse, widening as they went. The muscles of the priestess twitched. The eyes opened and flicked around wildly. The priestess sat up. Her lifeless eyes locked onto him. 

“Stand,” he commanded.

The priestess did so, her joints creaking. Fluid spilled from her mouth.

“That brings back a bad memory.”

“What?” Harmulkot asked.

“Nothing. Can they talk?”

“Only the ones you put extra effort into.”

Breskaro ordered the corpse to pick up a rock and throw it at a tree, to jump, to bang her head against the ground, to stand on one leg. She did everything he commanded, slowly and in a strictly mechanical manner, lacking grace.

“It will not be much of an army, using corpses,” he said. “And I will need many fresh ones.”

“Warfare will continue to give you new corpses. The raised corpses will then strike fear into your enemy. Imagine facing your comrade in arms, only he is raised as a corpse.”

“What of the living Mûlkrans I will command? How will they take to fighting alongside corpses?”

“Unless they have changed, my people are a stern lot. They will take it all in stride. What choice do they have anyway?”

“The corpse is slow and artless.”

“It is a basic undead. And this priestess was no athlete or warrior in life. The corpses’ skills are diminished from what they were in life. But while they may be weaker and slower, they are relentless. They feel no pain. They will fight on without a limb. They will not complain of fatigue. They will not stop if cold or wet or hot.”

“Do they have any weaknesses?”

“Avidan-style magic, such as that used by the Grand Order Priestesses of Seshalla through the matrixes given to them by the Matriarch.”

“
Damn it
! What use then? We will face priestesses in battle.”

“They can destroy a dozen corpses at a time, yes, but their matrixes cannot last for long. They cannot destroy an entire army with them.”

“Can I dispel the animation?”

“With a thought command.”

Breskaro deactivated the body and reanimated it for practice several times. Finally he gave the corpse orders, pointing in the direction of Issaly.

“Do you know where Issaly is?” The corpse nodded. “Walk that way and attack any soldier you meet along the way.”

Chapter 27

Frogs croaked and crickets chirped. The roar of the nearby river falls was a distant whisper. Breskaro crossed the moors, guided by the hazy light of the twin moons. A thick fog clung to the moor, matching the thick white braid of hair that hung down Breskaro’s back. His skin was ashen. His face beneath the bronze mask, gaunt. His expression endlessly morbid.

The slate-roofed towers and outer wall of Sir Dero Fortrenzi’s fortified manor rose into view. The watchtowers boasted two guards each, with crossbows and lantern spotlights, but the weather was perfect for concealment and there were no patrols out. After crawling and squirming for half a mile on his belly, as if he were a serpent, Breskaro reached the vine-covered north wall. He peeled himself from the mud and scanned in all directions, but he neither heard nor saw anyone. 

He cast the
spell of silence
and the
spell of personal obscuration
to make it difficult for anyone to notice him. He would’ve cast them sooner but for the energy it took to maintain them.

Scaling the vines like a spider ascending a web, he climbed over and dropped off the wall-walk into the shadows.

Two guards in chainmail approached. Breskaro dove behind a clump of thick shrubs. Once they moved out of earshot, he ran through a narrow passage between the guard barracks and an outhouse that stunk of drunken soldiers. The manor, built of red brick and cypress, sat in the midst of a courtyard garden encircled by a waist-high wall. Beds of bright flowers and mint wound between erotic statues. Purple vines curled up knobbed wooden stakes. Fountains bubbled water into miniature ponds.

The manor’s terraced roofs rose six levels and ended in a tall spire. Two guards staying on opposite sides from one another patrolled the balcony that circled the fourth floor. A third stood in front of the door leading to the room where Fortrenzi slept. 

Breskaro knew the place well. It had once belonged to Sir Kemerus, an old friend of Breskaro’s father.

The stationary guard turned his head and sneezed. Breskaro vaulted over the low perimeter wall and dove behind a statue. From there he could see the main entrance where two more guards stood. Breskaro sprinted into the open and using the
spell of prodigious leaping
, he leapt all the way up to the balcony. The first guard saw him land and stared incredulously. He died with that same gaze on his face as Breskaro’s sword slit his throat.

Breskaro rushed around the corner and ambushed the second guard from behind, killing him easily and quietly. He sprinted back toward the landing, but the third guard rounded the opposite corner and spotted him before he could get there. Breskaro drew a knife from his belt, twisted, and threw it. Before the third guard could call out, the knife struck him in the neck.