Dirge for a Necromancer (14 page)

Raettonus pursed his lips and stood, slinging the dead sparrows over one of his shoulders. Brushing the dust off the back of his tunic, he said, “Fine. Lead the way, sir.”

The soldier nodded and took him down the stairs a couple flights to Diahsis’ floor. A number of tapestries had been hung on the walls, along with paintings Raettonus recognized as Deggho’s handiwork. The soldier led Raettonus to the general’s room, which was large and spacious with cushioned chairs and proper windows overlooking the ocean. Diahsis was lounging on a divan beneath a window as Raettonus entered. Dismissing the soldier, the general motioned for Raettonus to take a seat, which he did.

“It’s come to my attention,” said Diahsis, smoothing out the wrinkles in his lavish clothes, “that the goblin I executed was a friend of yours. You have my apologies.”

“That’s not necessary,” said Raettonus. “We weren’t friends.”

“He had a lot of paintings of you,” said Diahsis. He gave the birds slung over Raettonus’ shoulder a look of distaste as they leaked blood onto the divan Raettonus had seated himself on, but didn’t comment on them. “Surely he thought you were friends?”

“I don’t see that it matters what he thought—you killed him,” Raettonus said dryly. “He’s dead now, so let’s not discuss it, hm?”

“If you’d rather we didn’t talk about him, I won’t press the subject,” said Diahsis. He smiled again. “You know, Magician, I’ve been thinking quite a bit…”

“What about?” asked Raettonus, though he certainly knew.

“About you, Magician,” said Diahsis. “Why didn’t you defend the citadel if you were in General Tykkleht’s employ here? You’re certainly capable of it, if the stories are true. Has everything I’ve been told about you been a lie?”

“That’s not what I was employed for. I had no reason to defend it,” Raettonus said. “This is not my fortress, and it wasn’t my fight.”

“Awfully selfish of you.”

“That’s the wrong word. You want ‘self-interested,’” Raettonus said. “I acted out of self-interest.”

“Ah. My mistake,” said Diahsis, nodding. “This is not my first language, forgive me.” He cleared his throat and crossed his legs. “So, then, it was…self-interest that made you watch as we stormed the walls?”

“I have no personal stake in who controls this fort,” Raettonus said as he shrugged his shoulders. “Like I told you before, I’m only here to teach Dohrleht and Maeleht.”

“I wonder—what would it cost to get you to join our cause?” asked Diahsis.

“This isn’t my war,” Raettonus said. “I don’t plan to take part.”

“What price will make it your war?”

“None,” Raettonus answered.

“None? Magician, you disappoint me,” said Diahsis. “I was under the impression you’d do anything if the price was right for you. If it’s a matter of you not believing I have the gold to back it up—”

“I don’t doubt you do,” said Raettonus. “Unfortunately, there’s only so much gold one can have before it’s no longer of interest. I’ve reached that threshold. No amount of gold can pay the cost, since being a soldier is of no interest to me. It’d be unwelcome tedium.”

“Something else, then,” said Diahsis. “Land? A title? A woman? A man? Just say the word and it’s yours. Hell, all of them, if you want. I can deliver.”

“I’m not interested in any of those things,” Raettonus said evenly.

“You could have your own army, serving beneath you.”

“I don’t want my own army.”

“How about your own kingdom, then?” Diahsis offered. “Once Zylekkha belongs to King Saemohr, he’ll need to install a puppet government here to run it. You could be Zylekkha’s new king.”

“King Puppet? I think I’ll pass,” said Raettonus, arching one eyebrow. “Besides, you seem to believe very badly that you need my help to conquer Zylekkha. You do, as a matter of fact, because even if you’ve got a big army at your back, so do the Zylekkhans. And they know the lay of the land. See, if I wanted Zylekkha, I wouldn’t need your army to get it. I could take it all on my own. But I don’t want it. You can have it.”

“Help us get it,” said Diahsis, leaning forward. “Please, Magician. I can get you anything your heart desires, if you’ll only help us take Zylekkha.”

Raettonus smirked. “Are you begging, General?” he asked.

The general straightened up, smoothing his wolf skin cape. “I would never beg,” he said sternly.

“Too bad,” Raettonus said. “I’m partial to men of power groveling at my feet.”

“Would that be your price?” asked Diahsis as he furrowed his brow.

“Would you do it if it were?”

The Tahlehson general hesitated. “Of course,” he said finally.

“You lie,” Raettonus said. “And not very well.” He leaned back in his cushioned seat and looked out the window over Diahsis’ shoulder. Over the mountaintops he could see the ocean where it met the coastline and disappeared into the horizon. “I get the distinct impression you’ve got more of a stake in my joining you than just your duty.”

“How’s that?” asked Diahsis.

“You must believe that recruiting a famous magician such as myself to your cause will win you points with your king,” Raettonus said. “I think you’re hoping to be put in charge of Zylekkha if you manage to defeat it.”

Diahsis smiled, an expression that sat handsomely on his face. “Guilty,” he said. “Magician, understand—I am but a humble elf. We need to take our advantages where we can find them, because no one hands us anything in a place like Tahlehsohr. Do you think I got to be the sole elf in an army of hundreds of thousands—leading that army, no less—by merely being a good strategist? Hardly. I clawed my way to the top through blood and fire, and I have to keep clawing to stay on top. I intend to sit the throne of Zylekkha in the name of my king, even if it means I have to sit a throne of skulls first. Every misstep sets me back five steps, Raettonus. It’s a horrible struggle for an elf, trying to keep up with centaurs. I cannot be soft, as a general—not like your Tykkleht was.”

“He was not mine,” Raettonus said. “I am not Zylekkhan.”

“Forgive me. Not yours,” said Diahsis. “All the same, centaurian generals are permitted to be soft and occasionally lose battles once they’ve become generals. Do you know what would happen if I lost a battle? I’d be hanged. Just like that, everything I ever did would be forgotten, and I would be hanged. They probably wouldn’t even bother to build a gallows for me—just string me up from the nearest tree. I’m not as strong or fast as a centaur, so I have to be ten times as crafty and a thousand times more ruthless. But when I sit my own throne… Well. That’s not something I should speak of.”

“You sound very proud,” Raettonus noted.

“Proud?” said Diahsis. “Yes. You could say I’m proud. I’m proud of where I’ve gotten and the work I’ve put in to get there.”

“Too proud to beg?”

There was an urgent knock at the door behind them. Diahsis looked to the door with an annoyed expression. “Come in!”

A soldier entered, his equine lower body foamy with sweat. His face was pale and his pupils were enormous, lending his eyes and face a crazed look. “General,” he said breathlessly. “I went to bring the goblin’s body, as you ordered, to the Kariss—”

“Were you attacked?” asked Diahsis cutting him short. “I’ll send three dozen swords immediately to make them rue that action.”

“No, General, not attacked,” said the soldier, faltering. He wrung his hands, as though he weren’t sure what he should say. “In fact, we, um, we never even reached the Kariss.”

“Well, what then?” Diahsis asked, visibly agitated. “Why’d you come back? Could you not find them?”

“N-no, sir,” the soldier said. “I mean—well, no, we didn’t find them. But, I don’t mean to say we couldn’t. We—we had intelligence as to where they were camped, we just hadn’t made it there—”

“What happened?” asked Diahsis. “Spit it out, soldier!”

The soldier swallowed hard and opened his mouth before closing it uncertainly. He was trembling, and he looked as though he might faint at any moment. Finally, he seemed to gather up his thoughts—or maybe his courage—and he began to fumble about with the words.

“The—the goblin’s body… That is to say, the goblin, he… He came back to life, General.”

Chapter Ten

“Kurok protect us,” said Diahsis, when Deggho dek’Kariss was shown in. “I think I’m about to be ill.”

The goblin carried his severed head cradled in his arms. There was a stench about him too—the smell of organs beginning to break down mingled with stale blood. However, aside from those things, he seemed perfectly alive. He didn’t move with the shuffling, uncoordinated steps of the reanimated, Raettonus noted, and his facial expressions were just as vivid as they had been when he was alive. “It was awfully mean of you to kill me without even giving me a head’s up about it,” said Deggho sullenly.

“A head’s up, huh?” remarked Raettonus with a smirk.

“I didn’t mean to make a pun,” said the goblin, pointing his head toward Raettonus. “Do you think I’m in the mood for joking, Raettonus? I’m holding my head. I’m holding my head and it’s not attached to anything.”

“Could you vivisect it?” Diahsis asked Raettonus, waving one hand vaguely in Deggho’s direction.

“Certainly, though I’m not sure what good it’d do.”

“I was beheaded and now you want to vivisect me?” asked Deggho, eyes widening. “Gods above, this really has been the worst sort of day! …er, two days, I guess. Or was it three? What day is it now?”

Raettonus stood up. “Come on, Deggho,” he said. “It may not hurt.”

“It is going to hurt though, isn’t it?” said the goblin with a sigh that came out of the neck hole his head once sat upon. He turned his eyes toward one of the paintings on the wall. “Hey—that’s mine! I did that! I did that in the hopes I wouldn’t be killed. I—oh… Oh, well…the best laid plans, and all that…”

Sullenly, the beheaded goblin followed Raettonus out of the room. The soldiers watched them with wide, fearful eyes as they passed, and Raettonus saw one fall to his equine knees and retch. The pair went downward to the seventh floor where Raettonus found a vacant kitchen with wide tables, sharp knives, and sinks with faucets that could be pumped for water. Raettonus set Deggho’s head down on a counter and helped his body up onto a table.

“So, what was Hell like?” asked Raettonus as he undressed the body.

“I don’t know,” said Deggho. “I…can’t remember. I’ve got a big, blank place in my memory between being beheaded and waking up out in the mountains with a bunch of soldiers. Oh, but there was sunlight! Out in the mountains, I mean, it was all sunny. I’d missed the sun. I’d missed it so much.”

“Does this hurt?” Raettonus asked him, pushing the tip of a knife slowly into his stomach.

“Hurt? No, not really,” said Deggho. “I…I feel the pressure, and I feel the cold of the steel, but…but there’s no pain.”

“None at all?”

“Not at all,” said Deggho. He frowned. “I’m…I’m really dead, aren’t I? It doesn’t feel like it but—but I am, aren’t I?”

“Your disembodied head is sitting on a counter watching your body get cut open on a table three feet away,” Raettonus told him dryly. “Of course you’re really dead.”

“I don’t want to be dead,” said the goblin quietly. Tears were beginning to well up in his eyes and slide down his sunken cheeks, onto the counter beneath him. “I never got to see my mother and father again. I never got to fall in love, or have kids, or…or a thousand things. I don’t want to be d-dead.”

Raettonus ran his knife down Deggho’s chest and stomach, all the way to his navel. Malnutrition had made Deggho’s body brittle, and it was no hard task for Raettonus to cut his ribs along the sternum. The goblin winced at the cracking sounds as the knife slid through his chest. “Do I really have to be in here while you do this?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Raettonus, pulling back Deggho’s ribs with more cracks and snaps. “Maybe if your head gets too far away from your body, you’ll stop possessing one of them.”

“Possessing my own body and head?” said Deggho. “I’m not one of your necromancy projects. I’m not possessing my own body.”

“Look, do you want to die again?” snapped Raettonus. “Shut up so I can work.”

Deggho bit his lower lip. “A-all right,” he whimpered. “Could you at least turn me so I’m not facing this? It’s…it’s really weird and I’m feeling uncomfortable.”

“No. Shut up.”

The goblin whimpered again slightly, but made no further protest as Raettonus finished opening his body cavities and pinning back the flesh and muscle. Small amounts of visceral fat clung to the shrunken organs within. Nothing moved. The heart and lungs did not pulse rhythmically; the stomach and intestines were empty, collapsed into themselves. Raettonus ran one of his fingers along Deggho’s bowel, prompting the goblin to yelp. “Don’t do that!” said Deggho. “That feels so—augh! Please, never do that again.”

Raettonus arched one eyebrow. When Deggho spoke, his organs continued to stay still. “Can you sigh for me?” asked Raettonus.

“Only if you promise not to touch any more of my organs.”

“I promise nothing. Sigh for me.”

“All right,” said Deggho, lowering his ragged ears. He heaved a heavy sigh, and Raettonus could hear the breath moving through his body, but his lungs stayed still.

“Interesting,” said Raettonus. He spread his hand above the body, trying to suss out where Deggho’s soul was connected to it, but he couldn’t feel anything. It was like trying to find the soul of a living body; it was so well integrated with the physical form that it might as well have not existed at all. He placed his hand over Deggho’s heart.

“You’re not going to touch that, are you?” asked the goblin weakly. “I’d really rather you didn’t. Magician, can you hear me? Are you listening? I said I’d really rather you not touch my heart. Please, don’t touch that. I’m being quite serious.”

Ignoring him, Raettonus placed his hand on the quiet heart and Deggho yelped. Though he wasn’t nearly as skilled at necromancy as his master had been, Raettonus was beyond good enough at it that he could reanimate bodies using his own energy, if only for a short time. He wasn’t sure what to expect on Deggho’s body, but he tried it anyway, letting his magical energy flow through his hand into the heart. Beat, he thought, and the heart obeyed.

“Gods!” exclaimed Deggho as Raettonus pulled his hand away from the now beating heart. “St-stop it! That’s too weird. I don’t like it! Stop!”

Blood began to ooze from all the body’s broken blood vessels, black and thick. Raettonus watched the blood puddle around the goblin’s neck for a while before withdrawing his energy from the heart. “How are you alive?” he wondered quietly. “This doesn’t make sense. Clearly you’re dead. I can’t necromance the living, after all. Nothing in your body’s alive, individually, but for some reason… Not to mention your head not being attached to your body. I have a servant who is a walking corpse with his soul reattached, but this isn’t the same thing. I can’t find your soul.”

“I don’t have a soul?” asked Deggho, furrowing his brow. “Is that why I came back to life? Because I don’t have a soul? Am I like you?”

Raettonus glared at him. “Not what I meant,” he said. “I mean to say, your soul’s still part of your body, as though you hadn’t died to begin with.”

“Does that make me immortal?”

“It makes you more interesting,” said Raettonus. He put some of his magic into Deggho’s arm and lifted it.

“Stop that!” protested the goblin. He grabbed the possessed arm with his free one. “What’re you doing? This is—it’s creepy! Stop!”

“Fine.” Raettonus withdrew his energy and started away.

“Hey, wait!” said Deggho, hopping off the table and grabbing his head. He rushed after Raettonus. “You haven’t closed me up! My organs are cold and all exposed!”

“Close it up yourself,” Raettonus said.

“Wait! You cut me open,” said Deggho, following after him.

“So?”

“So, maybe you should close me up. I—I wouldn’t know how, anyway,” Deggho said. “I mean, you let me get killed, so the least you can do is sew me closed after you’ve opened me all up like this.”

Raettonus turned to look at him. “I didn’t let you get killed,” he said. “It just happened. But fine. I’ll close you up. Hop on the table. But you’re going to have to clean all your blood off it.”

“That was your fault,” said Deggho with a sigh.

“Yeah, well it was your blood,” Raettonus responded, taking the goblin’s head and setting it in a sink before helping his body get up on the table. He sewed him up, neat and tidy, then left him to clean up the mess.

Raettonus’ thoughts were racing as he made his way back to his room. He closed and barred his door and went to his bookshelf, gathering every book he had about necromancy, death, and healing. Laying them in a heap on his desk beside the three stone heraldry animals, he set about reading them, looking for anything that would shed some light on what had happened to Deggho dek’Kariss. He searched the texts until it was dark and he had to light his brazier to keep reading, checking them from cover to cover—annotations, footnotes, indexes. He found stories of powerful necromancers turning themselves into liches, but Deggho was not a powerful necromancer. He found stories of gods granting immortality to heroes, but Deggho was not a hero. Nowhere did he find any tales of ordinary men being killed by grievous bodily injuries, only to wake up after a day or so and continue to live while being dead. It was baffling to Raettonus to say the least; to say the most, it was frightening.

He pushed his chair violently away from the desk and hurled the book he had been reading into the wall. It hit the stone with a thud and fell into the brazier. For a while, he watched the fire lick at the leather of its cover, curling and charring it. The book had turned full into ash and embers before Raettonus turned his gaze away. With a sigh, Raettonus walked to his bed and threw himself facedown upon it. “I hate necromancy,” he muttered into his pillow.

Suddenly he felt a weight on his back. Flipping himself over, he found Kimohr Raulinn sitting on top of him, wearing a beautiful robe of crimson silk with billowing sleeves that covered his hands and an unusually high neckline. He looked paler than usual, and the smile on his lips was a tired one. “Did you know—I was dead once,” Kimohr Raulinn said, his voice a purr as he sat on Raettonus’ legs.

“You don’t say. Get off me,” Raettonus told him.

The god ignored him. “It was a long, long time ago,” he said, leaning forward so his chin rested on Raettonus’ chest. He winced slightly when he moved, but did his best to cover the pained expression. The magician sighed and let him lay there. “It was so long ago, in fact, that you’d think I’d forget it ever happened. Thousands of years ago, in fact. That’s a long time even to you, isn’t it? I was little more than a child back then, and it had been discovered that my godly domain would be chaos. I was shunned by the other gods. Even my own mother did not want me. You know what that feels like, don’t you? To have a parent cast you out into the pouring rain?”

Raettonus frowned. “How much do you know about me?” he wondered in a quiet voice.

“Only what you tell me,” Kimohr Raulinn replied, a smile in his yellow eyes. He kissed the tip of Raettonus’ nose. “I had a lover who I cared very much for, but when my domain was revealed, he turned his back on me. From that moment onward, I was to be evil. That is how they wanted me to be. That is what a chaos god meant to them—someone to hate. Evil. As if that word even means anything. I ran away from the Gods’ Spring, where they live. I ran away, through the forests, and over the plains and through the mountains. I kept right on running until I ran right off a cliff. It was raining and there was a storm and I drowned. The water came in my nose and my mouth and down my throat and into my lungs. And I drowned. You’ve seen drowned men, haven’t you?”

“Many times,” Raettonus said. There was a river which had run beside Sir Slade’s home, and drowned yeomen would wash up there sometimes. He had helped Slade bury them and had examined their bloated bellies and discolored flesh with horrified fascination. Sometimes when Sir Slade would take them in his arms to place them in the grave they would begin to twitch as if they were alive, and Raettonus would be startled, but Slade would take a deep breath and close his eyes and they’d stop twitching.

Of all the ways to die, Raettonus had always thought drowning was the worst.

“But drowning, dear Raettonus, cannot kill a god,” Kimohr Raulinn said. “Not for long. Enchanted weapons—only enchanted weapons can send us to Hell for good. Only the Fates could say how long I spent underwater, all filled up with brine, my eyes rolled back inside my head. When you die, you don’t dream; I found that out. The ocean carried me far away to Kyshem’mur, where I washed up on the beach. A young woman found me there and pressed the water out of my lungs. I still remember her face—soft, round cheeks with brown eyes and a mole right on the tip of her nose. She took me into her house, and she gave me new clothes and washed the salt from my hair. She fell in love with me, and I used her to forget about other gods for a while. We made love and I grew stronger—but barely. It then occurred to me that she was not hurt enough on the inside to give me proper strength. So I made her hurt. I did all that was in my power to cut her soul to pieces and then sew it up, just to dash it again. Oh, yes—I tore her apart from the inside out, and it gave me more than enough power. Even though I was now strong, I kept right on abusing her until she killed herself. I enjoyed having her wrapped around my finger. I used to be ashamed of that, but that was thousands of years ago. Shame dies.”

“What do you want from me this time?” asked Raettonus, glaring at him. “You here to try to trick me into bed with you again? Or did you just come to charm me with stories about how much of a monster you are?”

“Oh, Raettonus,” said Kimohr Raulinn lovingly. “I hope you never lose that fire of yours in your soul…or your absence of a soul, as it were. Ah, but the answer to your question is neither. Charming you with stories about how much of a monster I am is just an added bonus. It was a good story, wasn’t it? It really happened, you know. Gods don’t lie.”

“Like I’d believe that.”

“Okay, they do,” admitted Kimohr Raulinn. “But this god doesn’t.”

“Are you going to get off me any time soon?” Raettonus asked, scowling.