Necromancer Falling: Book Two of The Mukhtaar Chronicles (70 page)

This couldn’t be real. How could there be a world without Kaitlyn in it?

Maybe it didn’t have to be like that.

“Maybe I could—”

“Don’t say it,” Mujahid said. “Don’t even
think
it.”

“We raise penitents for
their
sake, boy, not our own,” Nuuan said.

Nicolas’s head felt heavy, and he squatted on the ground, resting his head in his hands. “How did you know what I was going to say?”

“You think there’s a necromancer alive who hasn’t thought about raising a loved one to ease their grief?” Nuuan asked.

“But she needs purification too, doesn’t she?” Nicolas asked. “I’m sure it won’t be long!”

Nuuan and Mujahid shared a look, and some silent communication passed between them.

Nuuan squatted next to him.

“There’s nothing I can say that will make you feel better about this,” Nuuan said. “So I’m not going to try. I know you loved her. But don’t let your grief paralyze you. There’s a Nicolas that doesn’t drown when he’s bound in chains and dumped in a lake. A Nicolas who brings down a tyrant when Mukhtaar Lords have failed to do so for decades. That’s the Nicolas we need here now. As cruel as I know this sounds, your grief must wait. Hell isn’t a place one should tarry.”

As if punctuating his sentence, the massive winged creatures roared once more.

“Hell,” Nicolas said. Didn’t they understand? Hell might be a
place
to them. But it was a gaping wound in his soul that would follow him wherever he went now.

Everything—Nuuan, Mujahid, the path, the winged creatures—took on a surreal quality. It wasn’t that they’d become less real; the path was solid under his boots, and the oppressive heat had him sweating like a summer day in Zilker Park. It just didn’t matter.

He was detached from it.

Separate from.

Nicolas stood. “Yeah, I’ve seen a statuette like the one you mentioned.”

“It’s made from a substance called
hellstone
,” Mujahid said. “From this very plane.”

“And you think Hasat’Tan is involved?”

“No,” Nuuan said. “But whoever is responsible knows there way around down here. And they’re getting more powerful every day. We need you to ascend to give the rest of us a fighting chance.”

“And how the hell am I supposed to do that?” The only thing Nicolas knew about ascending was you either succeeded or died trying. No one failed and lived.

“That’s not something we can simply
tell
you,” Mujahid said. “I can take you to the threshold of the Rite of Ascension, but it’s for
you
to discover
how
to ascend.”

A figure emerged from the sulfurous mists, in the direction of the winged creatures. A tall, thin woman, dressed all in white, from the look of it. But she was too far away to see any details, other than her long, straight white hair.

Nicolas shifted his weight, and one of the stones beneath his foot howled.

“And will somebody tell me what in the name of Zubuxo’s shadowy anus I’m stepping on?” Nicolas said.

Nuuan grinned. “Maybe he
does
have it in him.”

“Compressed soul,” Mujahid said. “Hasat’Tan has a singularly cruel sense of retribution.”

The woman drew closer much more quickly than Nicolas was expecting. She wasn’t wearing white at all. It was her skin, brilliant white, like the white-washed walls of the imperial palace in Dar Rodon. But her eyes were solid black…all
three
of them. Her legs, purely human above the knee, became less and less human the lower they went, ultimately ending in hooves.

“Your
welcome
is wearing thin,” the woman said. Her voice was hypnotic. “My father told you to leave. Why do you linger?”

“Lilith,” Nuuan said. “I’d say it was a pleasure…if it were a pleasure.”

Lilith continued, one slow, silent step at a time, placing one hoof directly in front of the other as if she were walking a catwalk. For whatever reason, the
compressed soul
cobblestones didn’t react to her.

“Your father will have what he requires,” Mujahid said.

Lilith glanced at Nicolas and smiled.

It wasn’t the smile of a person who was content, or happy to make an acquaintance. It was the smile of a person who’d been savagely hurt and saw their vengeance within reach. Her solid black eyes made it impossible to judge her real intent. It was one of the most chilling things Nicolas had ever seen.

“Who is
this
?” Lilith asked. She changed direction slightly until she was walking straight at Nicolas.

As she stepped forward, Lilith struck an invisible barrier and hissed as her skin sizzled.

“What is this?” she said.

Green light, dim, but growing in intensity, spread out along the ground from where she’d collided with the barrier, until it formed a circle around Mujahid and Nuuan, twenty feet in diameter.

“How
dare
you erect a ward in my father’s domain?”

“The deal is done,” Nuuan said. “Once every Erindorian decade, a Mukhtaar Lord will escort your father into the seventh plane. There he will be permitted to remain a single Erindorian day.”

“Then take your charge and leave before I have his soul extracted and compressed.”

An oval, the height of a man, opened within the green circle. Nicolas had felt no power released.

Mujahid placed a hand on Nicolas’s shoulder and guided him toward the newly formed portal.

“I’ll attend to the bargain,” Nuuan said. “If I’m right, we should know the moment Nicolas succeeds.”

Nuuan stepped out of the circle and followed Lilith back toward the winged creatures.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Nicolas said.

Mujahid faced Nicolas, both hands planted on Nicolas’s shoulders.

“We can’t stop fighting now,” Mujahid said. “Please, make Kaitlyn’s death mean something.”

Nicolas had no intention of stopping now. He stepped through the portal, and hell vanished behind him.

The room they stepped into was cavernous. Polished black marble walls towered above a dais that supported a gem-encrusted shrine at its center. The dais—also carved from black marble—was at least eighty feet square, surrounded on three sides by stone walls, upon which hung portraits of men Nicolas couldn’t identify. Four twisting, obsidian columns—they reminded Nicolas of Bernini’s Baldachin, which surrounded the main altar at Saint Peter’s Basilica—each held a torch of flameless golden light at the platform’s corners. Multicolored wisps rose from the central shrine through an opening in the second floor, which was ringed by golden bars that caught the flameless light and cast a warm glow across the black marble. Two winding black staircases, one on each side of the dais, rose to the second level and met at a podium, upon which rested an open book, three feet long by four feet wide.

But the strangest thing of all was an unsupported marble staircase that floated in mid air, ascending back from the podium, toward an elongated oval frame. The ornate golden frame was twice the height of a person, and rippling water formed a mirror-like surface from one side of the frame to the other.

Nicolas didn’t recognize the room, but he recognized the ambient scent of the place. He was certain they were somewhere in the Mukhtaar Estate.

“Do not deviate from the path I take,” Mujahid said. “This is the Room of Ascension. There is magic here even
I
do not understand.”

Mujahid led Nicolas onto the platform and stopped in front of the shrine. He glanced at Nicolas and gestured to remain silent.

“In the days of the prophet Habakku,” Mujahid said, “the god Zubuxo anointed the Mukhtaars to ascend above all other priests. Today we seek the anointing of the goddess Shealynd.”

“Why Shealynd?” Nicolas whispered.

“Never mind
why
—”

“Because your love for my daughter leads Mujahid to conclude I’d be open to the idea,” a woman said.

The cavernous room filled with the scent of fresh-cut roses.

The goddess Shealynd emerged from behind one of the pillars. Her brown hair curled down to her shoulders, and her piercing blue eyes glowed with an inner light, matching the hue of her dress.

“And he’s absolutely right,” she said.

Nicolas was gobsmacked. First, Mujahid reveals he’s Kaitlyn’s father, and now
the
goddess Shealynd
claims to be her
mother
?

As Shealynd approached, she transformed. Her sky blue dress turned crimson red, and her brown curls brightened until they matched. Gone was the inner glow to her eyes, but they remained piercing blue.

“Shealynd,” Nicolas said.

“Call me
Mordryn
in this form.”

Mordryn held out her palm, and a small box materialized in a flash of blue light. She opened the box and retrieved a narrow vial of viscous liquid that looked like olive oil.

The box vanished.

“Come,” she said, as she walked toward one of the great marble stairs.

“Tell me what you see, Mordryn,” Mujahid said. He and Nicolas followed her up the stairs.

“You asked me the same thing the day
you
stepped over the threshold.”

“And your words brought me comfort. I seek the same comfort now.”

When Mordryn reached the top of the platform, she turned.

“People call us
gods
,” Mordryn said. “Perhaps we are, relative to humankind. But we’re not omniscient. I said the words you needed to hear that day. Words that gave you the best chance of success. And I will do the same for Nicolas today.”

Mordryn placed her arm in Nicolas’s and guided him toward the floating stairs that ascended to the golden oval frame. She stopped at the foot of the stairs next to a short marble post, removed the stopper from the vial, then placed the stopper on the post.

“Though my anointing will allow you to survive the journey to the Plane of Magic, it will not guarantee your success. You will face many tests. Each one will require something different. Something only
you
possess.”

Nicolas closed his eyes.

Despair threatened to paralyze him as thoughts of Kaitlyn returned, but he couldn’t let it in. If he gave into it for even a minute, he’d be finished.

He took a deep breath and opened his eyes.

“But I don’t even know what to expect,” Nicolas said. “Not even a little. No one has told me
anything
about this. I knew more about the Halls of Power before the Awakening than I know about Ascension.”

“The best thing you can do to guarantee your success,” Mordryn said, “is to be
yourself
. Be true to who
you
are. Let nothing tempt you to be any different. It’s said that to ascend, one must embody the ideals of Mukhtaarian philosophy. You wouldn’t be standing here if you didn’t. All you have to do is be yourself.”

“How long will it take?” Nicolas asked.

“For us, perhaps days,” Mordryn said. “For you? Days. Years. Decades…there’s no way for me to know for certain. Like the namocea, though you may be gone for an age, you’ll remember who you are when you return.”

“
If
I return.”

“Don’t say that,” Mujahid said. “You
will
succeed. You
must
.”

Mordryn turned the bottle over onto her fingers, set the vial on a post, and massaged the liquid into her hands. She pressed her thumb against Nicolas’s forehead and drew a symbol, though he couldn’t see what it was.

A low, pulsating hum emanated from the top of the stairs. The rippling liquid in the oval frame vanished, leaving only a patch of
nothingness
. Above the frame, a golden plaque appeared. And on the plaque, the Mukhtaar symbol—a figure in a meditative pose, arms outstretched, with light radiating from its eyes—flared into existence.

“It’s time,” Mujahid said.

“Remember,” Mordryn said. “Be true to who you are.”

Nicolas climbed the marble steps. He let the tears well in his eyes as he embraced his pain. Gods knew, he’d had so much of it this past year. With every step he climbed, he absorbed more of it. Welcomed it. Basked in the torment. He couldn’t be true to who he was and push the pain away. He couldn’t be himself and deny how much he’d lost in such a short time.

Pain was part of what defined him now. Not the pain of the flogging posts that once made him pray for death. It was the pain of the soul…the kind that made him pray for oblivion. His suffering would make him strong.

The tears flowed freely as he climbed the final step and stared into the
nothingness
.

Kaitlyn’s face stared back at him, smiling. It was the way he’d always remember her. There’d never come a day he wouldn’t carry her with him. She was his
cet
. His inner peace. She was his strength.

And into the Rite of Ascension he’d carry her.

In the year 141 (BCE), Nicolas Murray stepped over the threshold…

A Humble Request

Life seems to get busier every year, and the thought that you’ve invested some time in my scribblings is a humbling one. Thank you, sincerely, for spending your invaluable time in the world of Erindor.