“What was I thinking? I don’t know magic. It
isn’t like she has a scent for me to follow! She might not even be
here! She could be anywhere in the north!” She crawled down into
the pit that had been excavated by the latest set of portal blasts.
“Ether! Ether, if you can hear me at all, answer me!”
Her sharp ears twitched and pivoted, scouring
her surroundings every bit as much as her eyes did. The wind
wailed, the fire crackled, and her own heart pounded in her ears.
Stones clattered under her feet… and also elsewhere, farther into
the damaged halls.
Ivy couldn’t explain it, but she knew
instantly there was a will behind it. She scampered down to the
source of the sound and held the torch low. It wasn’t a needle in a
haystack. It was infinitely worse. If Ether was here, she could be
anything. Any animal, a flicker of smoldering flame, a pool of
water, even the air itself.
“Where are you, Ether?” Ivy said, squinting
at the stone.
Finally she saw it, a curve of stone that had
certainly been a finger. And here was a hollow that might have been
the back of a knee. Ether had been stone, and what remained of her
was here.
Ivy turned and dropped the bundle of firewood
onto the stone and pulled a cask of lamp oil from her belt, dumping
it over the wood. When the cask was empty she touched the torch to
the wood.
“Come on… Come on, Ether…” Ivy said, watching
anxiously as the wood took to light.
Several minutes passed with agonizing
slowness, then finally stones began to smolder and spark, both
those below the wood and beside it. One by one they peeled away and
swirled into the flames. Each one caused the flames to swell and
intensify. Then, almost imperceptibly, a voice crackled from the
flames.
“Back away…”
Ivy obeyed, and not a moment too soon. The
flames grew orders of magnitude more intense, the wood reducing to
ashes in moments. The fire gathered, flicking together into Ether’s
form and then shifting to flesh, blood, and cloth. She stumbled
forward, Ivy catching her.
“Turiel… she…”
“Myranda went after her. She’s probably at
the front right now, or will be soon.”
“We need to join her,” Ether said, trying to
stand. “She needs our help.”
“You’re not in any position to help anyone,
Ether,” Ivy said.
The malthrope held her tight and helped her
stand up straight. Ether shook her head and clenched her teeth,
furious at her own weakness.
“Thank you, Ivy,” she said, stepping
unsteadily from her support but gripping her arm tight for
balance.
Ivy looked Ether in the eye, genuine
confusion in her expression.
“Wow… you
really
aren’t yourself right
now.”
“I’ve not been myself for some time. My mind…
I don’t think my former self exists anymore. These feelings…” Ether
returned Ivy’s gaze. “You… you’ve played your music and helped
others before. You’ve put bow to string in order to heal and
energize Myranda and the others. It has never been of any use to
me.”
“Uh-huh,” Ivy said, uncertain of what Ether
was working at.
“I’ve always affirmed that I have no
emotions, no need for them. You’ve constantly affirmed the
opposite, claiming I have emotions, but that I know only anger and
hate. … My mind… my mind is awash with this
poison
you call
emotion… But… but perhaps in that I can find some of the strength
you’ve found. Perhaps…”
Ivy’s eyes opened and she clutched her hands
together, practically vibrating with excitement. “You want me to
play for you!?”
“It
may
have some value,” Ether
said.
“Come on! Come on, come on!” Ivy said,
clutching her hand and tugging her forward. “It works better when
there’re other people to join in the fun, and I think the people of
Kenvard need a pick-me-up! I know I’ve got a spare fiddle I can
use.”
#
“Here… oh, my dear Mott. Right here… can’t
you
feel
it?” Turiel said, stroking her fingers through the
tufts of hair running like a mane down the massive creature’s
back.
The pair had been flying through the clouds
for a few hours. The time had given Turiel a chance to heal herself
and her pet, though at the cost of a small share of the power she’d
gathered in Kenvard. Flying through the freezing clouds, they’d
been pelted with ice and covered with frost. Turiel seemed, as with
all matters of the body, to shrug it off as, at worst, a mild
annoyance. They had been navigating based wholly on the lure of
restless spirits and generations of death that traced a line from
west to east.
Now, just as the clouds were thinning, that
line was beneath them. Mott circled down toward the rust-brown line
of churned-up earth that marked the bloodiest nearby stretch of the
front. Mott, as a creature crafted from mad whims and in defiance
of nature, was fairly ungainly in the air. At no point was this
more apparent than when he tried to land. His long tail dangled
down behind him, dragging along the ground until his upper body
came slapping down onto his coiled legs and his head flopped to the
ground. The impact produced an unpleasant, fleshy sound, suggesting
it had done a fair amount of damage, but through great effort Mott
had spared Turiel any serious distress.
The necromancer climbed down and drove her
staff into the earth, dropping to her knees to scoop up soil. Her
eyes were wide and her grin wider, like she was looking over a
banquet table heaped with delicacies after a long, hungry day. The
reddish-brown soil ran between her fingers.
“I can feel it. I can feel the blood that has
been spilled here, Mott,” Turiel said, her voice hushed.
“Wonderful… Glorious… The war… do you see? Do you see the
brilliance of the D’Karon? This battlefront was like an altar, and
every man and woman killed during the war was like a sacrifice to
their greatness. And that power. That glorious power is here. Don’t
doubt it represents a piddling amount for them… but for me it is so
much. Enough to bring them back, and with enough to spare to show
them how effective, how powerful I can truly be.”
Mott stood, curling his tail around to adjust
his jaw, which had been somewhat dislocated by the rough landing.
He chattered something, eyes peering to the west.
Turiel glanced in his direction, then to
where the beast was looking. There was motion just visible on the
dim horizon. Troops from both sides were not more than a few
minutes away, and they were moving in her direction. She gathered
her staff and used it to climb back to her feet.
“Yes, yes, Mott,” she said, dusting off her
hands. “The soldiers will come. Of course they will come. It
doesn’t matter. … Well naturally there are a lot of them. That is
why I remade the nearmen in Kenvard, but of course the adversaries
had to destroy them. Honestly, they call themselves heroes, but
they seem so eager to destroy things. … It won’t take but a few
minutes, Mott. I can feel the power flowing into me. The spirits
here aren’t as lively. They died with the hot blood of war in their
veins. Most went to rest content in the knowledge they died for
what they believed in. Not much strength to acquire from a spirit
at peace. But there are
so many
of them. Sipping from a
thousand glasses will slake your thirst just as surely as a tall,
cool goblet all your own. … I’ve
told
you. Just a few
minutes. … Well if you aren’t sure you can hold them off, then I’ll
just give you some help!”
Again Turiel drove the tip of her staff into
the soil. She rubbed her hands together eagerly and then cupped
them around the gem as if warming them. The glow from within
intensified.
“Mmm… It seems those from both sides make it
a habit to collect their dead. A pity,” she grinned. “But in one
hundred years of war, a few bodies are bound to be overlooked… And
sometimes a battlefield grave is better than none at all…”
Her ever-present filaments of magic uncoiled
and threaded their way into the soil, spreading out and blackening
the ground for dozens of paces in all directions. Here and there
they looped upward, then drove themselves down. In those places,
the earth began to quake. It split and spread, shapes churning it
up from beneath. Then came the troops. Some wore shreds of blue
armor, others battered remnants of red. Most were little more than
skeletons, and many of them were incomplete. They were warriors
from both sides, lost to the generations of war and forgotten, some
for over a century.
All told fifty or so skeletal troops emerged,
with another clawing to the surface every few moments. Her black
ribbons and threads wound across their bodies, holding loose bones
in place and weaving into replacements for things missing or too
badly damaged to do their job. When each was free of the ground and
standing on its feet, the revenant would then march before her and
stand at attention.
“There,” Turiel said, opening her eyes to the
resurrected troops. “An adequate force, don’t you think?”
Mott looked at her doubtfully, then chittered
and glanced to the west. There were easily a hundred Northern
soldiers, and likely twice as many Tresson soldiers.
“You really must learn to be more confident
in your capabilities, Mott. I made you, have some faith in me!”
He grumbled, then glanced to the sky.
Turiel craned her neck and followed his gaze.
Myn was emerging from the clouds. “Oh, very well then. If you are
that
concerned, I’ll conscript some sturdier soldiers.”
She peered to the south. They were less than
a mile from the nearest village, a settlement to the southwest
called Crestview. Even at this distance it was clear the place was
rather recently rebuilt, no doubt established as a way to hastily
gain a foothold during a peace no one expected to last. It was
barely across the border to Tressor, its northern wall perhaps half
a mile from the row of wooden stakes that divided the lands. A
cluster of Tresson soldiers had taken up positions just south of
that border. Likely the Tresson troops were there to protect it
from attack from the Alliance troops stationed a short distance
across the border, who were in turn only there to keep an eye on
the Tresson soldiers.
“There. Men…” Turiel said, addressing the
troops. She tipped her head in deference to one specific skeleton.
“And you, madam. To bolster our numbers, head to yonder village and
see if the people there wouldn’t mind terribly donating their
bodies and souls to my defense. Feel free to make the same request
of any soldiers who resist you. I promise their service to me will
be brief. Mott, you stay here and keep the dragon busy. Let Mommy
focus on her task.”
The army she raised set off, Mott curled his
body protectively around her, and Turiel opened her mind and soul
to the power around her. It was glorious, like being immersed in a
warm, nurturing bath. Thousands of lives over the years, each
leaving a piece of itself behind. The soil was rich with their
sacrifice. For one so tightly attuned to death, there was nothing
to do but allow the power to flow into her.
In a few seconds she could feel more strength
flood her soul than she’d managed to gather on her own in years.
The strength came at a price, of course. Each spirit added its
voice to her mind. As she steeped in the crackling, humming power
of the place, the final thoughts of each soldier and civilian who
had spilled his or her blood here rang out in her mind. For a
normal person, even another necromancer, it would have pushed a
steady mind to madness. But for Turiel, who had marched that road
for much of the last few centuries, it was no more bothersome than
the buzzing of flies. For the madwoman, an unholy chorus of screams
from beyond the grave is hardly a matter for concern.
It wasn’t until the ground shook and Mott
slithered forward to better guard Turiel that she finally opened
her eyes again to survey the situation. She turned to the north to
find Myranda standing, her staff ready. Myn was heaving exhausted
breaths. Both heroes wore looks of iron-hard determination tempered
with bone-deep fatigue.
“Turiel—” Myranda began.
“Really now, Myranda!” Turiel interrupted.
“You’ve argued your side, I’ve argued mine. We’ve found our
differences irreconcilable and come to blows. In the end, I have
emerged as strong and healthy as I’ve ever been, and you are at
death’s door. What more is to be gained from more tiresome words?
Perhaps you should ask yourself which one of us is truly mad.”
“There must be
some
scrap of reason
left in you! Some part of you that realizes what you are doing
must not be done!
”
“Well of
course
there is, dear. Even
as we speak I can hear the voice of reason in me, screaming to set
aside my task before further blood is pointlessly shed. But one
doesn’t last long as a necromancer without learning to ignore
errant voices in one’s head. I’m afraid all that remains is for one
of us to kill the other. And forgive me for saying, but I think I
have a greater capacity for such things than you.”
“You—”
“Uh-uh-uh! You’ve got three tasks, my dear.
You must stop me, you must stop Mott, and you must stop the troops
I’ve sent across the border. None of them can be achieved by
chitchat.” She grinned, raising her staff. “To arms!”
Like an executioner dropping an ax, she
brought the staff down, spreading her will through the
thread-riddled ground and launching a vicious blast of raw energy
at the same time. The attack was intended to end the battle before
it began, ensnaring Myranda in ebony bonds to keep her from
avoiding the attack.
Instead, Myranda swiped her own staff, an arc
of her own pure energy severing the creeping strands and dispersing
the bolt of magic.
In response, Turiel raised her eyebrow. This
might be more interesting than she’d anticipated.