Necromancer Awakening (29 page)

The crackling noise stopped, and two of the guards who had been waving ran over to him. One of them knelt beside him and examined his hands. He uttered something unintelligible and waved to the other guard.

Nicolas started shivering, and he didn’t know whether he was going to throw up or pass out.

The sound of marching returned and the crowd parted. The albino had returned. The pink-eyed bastard had probably come to gloat. He didn’t enter the cube, though. He just stood there, staring at Nicolas like a scientist at a lab experiment.

A slow trickle of energy entered his well of power as the albino drew closer, and a patrol of undead cichlos took up position in front of his cell.

A beautiful song filled the cube, giving him a sense of calm that banished the pain. His anger and frustration drained away. Webbed hands brushed hair out of his eyes, and he stopped shaking.

The pain had subsided but it hung at the edge of his consciousness like the memory of a bad injury.

As Nicolas watched, the crowd parted again and another cowled cichlos, orange-skinned with black stripes and splotches, knelt beside him. Nicolas felt his well of power fill.

The guard that had been singing bowed his head and backed away. The orange cichlos examined the injured hands and sang.

The mental goose bumps returned. Intense pain shot through his chest and down his arms to his fingertips. For a moment he thought he was having a heart attack. Then he felt his rib snap back into place, and a tingling sensation, as if the bones were stitching themselves back together. The skin on his mutilated hands began to stretch and pull until they covered the burned flesh, hiding the injury as if it never happened.

Within a few moments his hands and rib were whole again. The orange cichlos stepped toward the albino, who was standing outside the entrance of the cube, and Nicolas’s well of power drained.

Nicolas couldn’t see the orange cichlos’s face, but the albino bowed his head and looked down at the floor. After a few uncomfortable moments, the orange cichlos left and the green barrier returned. The crowd bowed as he passed.

The albino looked at Nicolas through the barrier with both of his enormous, articulated eyes. They moved up and down in their giant orbs, as if examining every inch. He closed one hand into a fist. With his other hand he pointed at Nicolas’s face and said something in the cichlos language. When Nicolas didn’t answer, the albino repeated himself and made the gesture again, more forceful this time.

The only thing Nicolas could think of was to step away from the barrier. The green barrier faded from existence and the albino smiled and entered the cell.

As the albino stepped closer, Nicolas’s energy well filled. Somehow the cichlos were a source of power. No, that wasn’t it exactly. His well only filled when he got close to the cichlos wearing blue cowls.

A section of flooring tore away, the way one large bubble becomes two without breaking. It rose a few feet into the air and hovered, morphing into something that resembled a bench. When the morphing stopped, the bench legs grew down into the barrier floor and formed a seamless connection.

The albino sat on one end of the bench and gestured to a place next to him.

Nicolas saw little choice but to sit. He had no desire for another confrontation.

The cichlos struck his own chest twice and uttered a noise that sounded like
jurn
. Again the cichlos struck his chest twice and said “jurn”.

Nicolas struck his chest twice and said “Nicolas.”

Jurn looked him up and down again. Then he pointed to Nicolas and said “Nee-kluss.”

Nicolas nodded and repeated “Nicolas.” Then he pointed at the albino and said “Jurn”.

Jurn made a sound similar to
harrumph
and sat straighter on the bench. He said a word that Nicolas couldn’t understand and the undead guards broke apart, one bone at a time, until they were nothing more than a pile of skinny fish bones on the floor. He turned back to Nicolas and said something that sounded like
sabnamo
.

Nicolas had no idea what to do. He pointed at the bones and repeated “sabnamo”.

Jurn made another
harrumph
sound and the goose bumps returned. Nicolas waited for an unseen hand to strike him, but no strike came.

Jurn said “sabnamo,” and an undead guard rose from the pile of bones and entered the cell.

Nicolas didn’t understand what Jurn was trying to do or say, so he repeated the word. “Sabnamo.”

Jurn growled. “Sab Nee-kluss. Namo!”

“Look, I don’t know what the hell a
sabnamo
is. I’m not trying to piss you off, I just—”

Jurn roared. He raised his right hand, and the hair on the back of Nicolas’s neck stood on end. A ball of crackling blue energy surrounded Jurn’s fist.

Nicolas was at his mercy. Worse, he didn’t think mercy was Jurn’s strong suit.

Jurn smacked his chest twice again and yelled “Sabnamo!” Another undead guard rose and entered the cell.

And then Nicolas understood.

When Jurn first saw him it was with Cisic. Jurn must be testing him to see if he was a necromancer.

Nicolas sat back on the bench, rubbing his sore jaw, and turned his mind inward. He drew power into his well and created a pathway to the skull symbol. He extended his hand toward the pile of bones on the floor. He didn’t know whether pointing would do anything, but somehow it felt right and helped him focus. With an act of will, he cast the power into the bones.

Images came and went and the undead guard rose from the ground. Its bones aligned perfectly, and Nicolas could feel the rage radiating off the skinless beast like heat from a stove. He subdued the guard without difficulty and the necromantic link wove itself into his mind like a thread.

Jurn leapt from the bench. One of his eyes examined the guard Nicolas had raised, while the other looked Nicolas up and down.

Nicolas pointed at his undead penitent and said “Sabnamo?”

Jurn
harrumphed
once more. He waved his hand and the undead cichlos fell to the ground in a pile.

Nicolas felt as if a piece of himself had been torn away.

“How did you do that?” Nicolas said.

Tendrils of energy entered his mind. It was an odd sensation, like someone was tickling his memories. After a few moments they withdrew.

Jurn snorted. He yanked Nicolas off the bench and pushed him out of the cell.

The undead guard rose behind him and followed him out, bony feet clicking on the surface of the barrier floor.

The undead guards led him farther down the tube. He was tempted to draw more power, but that temptation died when another wall went up around his well.

He had no idea whether being a necromancer was a good or bad thing in this place. But he had a feeling he was going to find out the hard way.

The barrier tube spanned two hundred yards across and had a gentle curve to it, making it impossible to see all the way to the end. Judging by the direction they traveled relative to where Nicolas had entered the city, it looked like they were heading toward one of the large domes at the center.

Every time Nicolas slowed down a guard would shove him forward toward Jurn. There had to be a way out of this…something he could use to escape or overpower them. But where would he go if he
did
escape?

Multi-hued columns of barrier material jutted up from the floor and connected to the arched ceiling above them. Each column had a refrigerator-sized hole cut in one side, and two blue-cowled cichlos handed out trays of fish to a line of cichlos in front of them. It reminded Nicolas of a bodega or cafeteria—except the shopkeepers never took anything in return.

Could he escape through those columns? Maybe they led out into the lake. But how would he breathe? And could he even get there before Jurn killed him?

The guards led him toward an open room that projected away from the tube. It was one of those crashing bubbles he saw when he and Cisic were approaching the city.

They pushed him in and followed close behind. The bubble sealed and the city rushed by at a frightening rate, though he felt no acceleration.

The bubble raced toward one of the central domes along the outside of the tube, which Nicolas judged to be about a mile long.

All motion ceased. He heard a strange liquid noise, like a water balloon bursting. The front of the bubble opened, and the patrol led him out into the dome.

He glanced around, looking for another avenue of escape.

The center of the dome was dominated by three gigantic, spherical bubbles, each different in size. Did they work like these strange transport bubbles? Could he use one to reach the surface? Even if he could, he wasn’t sure how to reach them. They floated gracefully, one on top of the other, never coming into contact with anything else, and a barrier grew upwards from the floor in a large circle underneath them, creating a fence-like ring about waist high. Three grey-cowled cichlos reclined on chairs inside the ring, and they appeared to be sleeping.

A guard shoved him out of the central hub, and they crossed into a larger dome with opaque walls. While the hub had been bustling with activity, this one was nearly empty. The expanse of the place made Nicolas feel tiny by comparison. It must have been a thousand yards from end to end and more than one hundred yards tall.

A massive statue, standing as tall as the ceiling, stood at the other end of the dome. It was the figure of Death, in black, hooded robes, carrying a scythe with a blade that was half the length of the statue itself. A cichlos skull looked out from beneath the robe’s hood.

Jurn walked toward the statue, and the guards followed along behind, making sure Nicolas stayed with them.

The detail of the dome was amazing. Etched and embossed images decorated the wall, depicting scenes he didn’t understand. Some images showed a purple sky, with red-skinned cichlos performing a ritual around an altar. Others depicted great battles between armies of cichlos—one army with white skin, like Jurn, and the other army with a mixture of orange and black, like the one who healed him.

The floor had murals too, though they seemed more abstract—sparkling blotches of light in no particular order or shape.

There wasn’t a single source of light. Instead, the images on the dome walls and ceiling gave off light in all the colors they were painted in, if paint were the right word.

As they drew closer to the statue, Nicolas could see a large grey sphere hanging in midair. He knew what it was immediately.

An orb of power. It has to be.

They stopped when they reached the orb of power. The statue of Death towered above them, menacing in its visage, yet comforting in its familiarity.

A group of cichlos at the bottom of the statue all wore midnight blue cowls, similar to Jurn, and they were in the middle of a ritual. Another group of blue-cowled cichlos entered from an opening to the right of the statue. Jurn began to speak and gesture frantically, and this time Nicolas thought he heard a familiar word:
Zubuxo
.

Encouraged, Nicolas pointed at the enormous statue and said “Zubuxo.”

Jurn leapt toward Nicolas with a closed fist.

Nicolas tried to summon a penitent, determined to put a stop to this once and for all, but before he remembered the shield surrounding his well of power, the shout of a deep voice broke his concentration.

“Jurn,” the voice said. It came from behind Nicolas.

Jurn backed away as if his life depended on it. He bowed at the waist and spread his arms to the sides.

Unseen hands turned Nicolas around, gently, until he came face to face with a tall red-skinned cichlos, taller than most, dressed in ornate midnight-blue robes. The skin on his face sagged like an old man’s. Pearls stitched into the material reflected the light of the dome. More pearls covered the massive scythe the tall cichlos carried.

The old cichlos shouted and Jurn dropped to the floor, prostrating himself before the colossal statue. The orb of power hummed, and Jurn’s undead guard winked out of existence.

Jurn began to say something, but the old cichlos stopped him.

When the old one had finished speaking, one of the other cichlos ran to the opening behind the statue. He returned a minute later carrying a white cowl.

The old one said something to Jurn, and he stood back up. When he was on his feet, the cichlos holding the white cowl forced it into Jurn’s hands. Jurn stared at it as if he were looking at something hideous. Another cichlos stripped the blue cowl off Jurn’s shoulders and led him away.

“Zubuxo,” the old cichlos said. He reached out and nudged Nicolas, gently, into the circle of cichlos who had formed at the foot of the statue. The cichlos joined hands and began to sing.

A band of black energy formed among them, passing through each of them and creating an oily black circle of power that caused the hair on Nicolas’s arms to stand on end. The black energy created a wind that whipped their cowls around. When the wind reached a strength Nicolas thought might destroy the entire dome, arcs of black energy flowed out from the seven cichlos, forming a cone over the circle. A beam of oily, black power emanated down from the cone and struck the old cichlos in the head. His head jerked back, and he chanted words that were different from what the rest of the cichlos were chanting.