The Road to Magic (Book 1 of the Way of the Demon Series) (18 page)

As he was walking through the garden he plucked a large juicy apple growing over the path and bit into it with pleasure. The apple was unusually succulent and tasty.

‘Now I know why you have barricaded yourselves in like this,’ Oleg said once he’d finished and was looking for a second helping.

‘And why is that?’ there was a note of wonder in the necromancer’s voice.

‘Well, so no thieves break in. This garden should be guarded even more rigorously than it is. I’ve never tasted such delicious apples in my life.’

‘Thank you!’ For some reason it was Leya who answered, not Viss. Pride could clearly be heard in her voice, but for some reason it was mingled with a fair amount of embarrassment. If Oleg had not been able to see her face, which remained a pale and dull, he would have said that the girl was quite embarrassed and blushing. The next instant Oleg remembered that it was no simple girl next to him but a lich and no matter how she felt, she would never be able to blush or sweat, and he cursed himself mentally for his carelessness.

‘Don’t be surprised. This garden is all Leya’s handiwork,’ Viss said without turning round. ‘Did the apple really taste good?’

‘Oh yeah! Try one yourself!’ said Oleg, and cut himself short. An awkward silence reigned. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I forgot that such things are rather difficult for you.’

‘Mmm. That’s putting it mildly,’ Tobi smirked mirthlessly.

‘Never mind, I’ll take it as a compliment to my craftsmanship,’ the necromancer remarked just as mirthlessly.

‘But how did you manage to plant all this here? And what for?’ Oleg reckoned it was better to change the subject and turned directly to the girl herself.

‘Well, I am a druid after all… or I was. When I was
returned
,’ Leya stressed that word, ‘There were only rocks and ruins here. Death was everywhere – in the ground, and on the ground. And in us, too,’ she added after a pause. ‘I couldn’t go on like that… So I decided to try to grow something alive. Just before
that
I’d written an essay on apple trees… So it came in handy.’ And she paused again. ‘If you like, you can gather some apples when you leave. I’ll be pleased if at least someone can eat them. They’ll only rot otherwise.’ The girl’s voice was laden with aged languor.

‘I’ll be sure to take some,’ Oleg didn’t know how he could help this beautiful young girl who had died long before he himself was born, so he simply repeated: ‘Your apples are really very tasty.’

And an uncomfortable silence reigned once more.

By that time they had reached the tower which had obviously once been the castle’s dungeon. The top had been destroyed, but the lower part was in good condition and was now covered in creeping plants.

‘Please come in,’ said Viss, opening the heavy door. ‘I expect you have a lot of questions. And I’m also curious to know how things are in the outside world. Therefore I’d like to invite you into my study first where we can talk in peace. Afterwards, I hope you won’t refuse to play something. Music is, alas, one of the very few pleasures still available to us.’

Without waiting for an answer, he headed towards the staircase. Oleg followed him.

The necromancer’s study was … interesting, and more-or-less how Oleg imagined the study of a medieval scholar. The desk was covered in various flasks, the walls lined with shelves loaded with heavy volumes. A skull perched on one of the shelves. It looked like a human skull except for the long, sharp fangs. A large, stuffed, lean dog covered in black scales could be seen in one corner.

Oleg looked at it more closely. For some reason this creation seemed familiar to him.

‘Do you find it interesting?’ Viss noticed his curiosity. ‘It’s one of the first models for the Guards. Not a particularly successful one, so that’s why it stayed here. I worked on it and finally it resulted in the Guards, who you so successfully intercepted. If you are interested, then later I can show you the blueprints of the spells for creation and transformation which I used when I was creating them. First of all a simple hound was taken as the base, to which various characteristics of the marsh basilisk were added and …’ Here he interrupted himself. ‘Forgive me, a teacher’s habit. I got carried away. It’s just that the Dark Hounds, as you call them, are one of my favourite masterpieces. It is probably the most successful experiment ever carried out at the confluence of necromancy, chimerology and the magic of life. I don’t expect we’ll be able to repeat anything like it since the union of light and dark magicians, so essential for creative activity, has become impossible since Oner perished and the Dark Citadel fell.’

‘I see,’ Oleg said thoughtfully. ‘Listen, would you please explain something to me? I was told about you as though you were some dreadful legend, powerful dark magicians raised from the dead and gathering your forces to take revenge on your murderer’s descendants. Your abode arouses dread, everyone shakes at the mere mention of the liches of Oner, and some of my companions – who are far from cowards – were prepared to face almost certain death in ambushes set for us along the Orvalenian High Road rather than proceed through the Black Marshes. And why? All I see is a man who comes nowhere near the mark of a really powerful and fearsome lich – yourself. And even you are more like a teacher whose class has suffered a calamity at the hands of fate and who is doing all he can to save them. The others are more like normal students, young and kind-hearted, not at all like those monsters the legends talk of! And really you look too alive, somehow. I’m not talking about external appearances, though there is that, too. You can laugh and be happy. Leya has cultivated a splendid garden and got embarrassed when I complimented her on her skill. You are obviously saddened by the current state of affairs, and you are carrying out some kind of scientific research’ – Oleg nodded towards the desk cluttered with instruments – ‘And what’s more, it doesn’t look as if you’re inventing some sort of murderous shit. In short, you don’t live up to the image they have of you in Fenrian and I would like to know the reason for that.’

‘The reason? Why, I can tell you that. It’s simply that up till now you have heard history from the mouths of the descendants of those who condemned us to this existence. But there is of course another side to the coin. Our side. Listen to how it looked for us, the Union of Free Magicians of Oner, as we called ourselves in those days.

***

‘The Orchisites attacked out of the blue. The Forest Guard, protected by amulets and thus undetectable by magical means, stealthily slaughtered the watchmen stationed around the city. By morning the army of His Highness Villam the Second Kreghist was at the walls of Oner. The municipal guards barely had time to close the gates and citizens who hadn’t managed to get inside the city fell into the hands of the ambushers. The soldiers fell on them with unbelievable ferocity. Neither women nor children were spared. We watched, helpless, while their swords rose and fell, their lances thrust in and out. Few had the courage or ability to fight back. In the end, nearly all were slaughtered, save those held for torture. ‘Three of the magicians and two druids were immediately sacrificed along with Tarid, one of the city’s best healers. They were lucky. The screams of the other captives coming from a small hillock clearly visible from the city walls could be heard for all the three days of the siege. Villam’s henchmen were experienced and did their best to carry out the command of their leader: “Whatever you do, take your time. Make sure those pagans feel the full force of the Light-Bearer’s wrath.” They treated the women they captured particularly horrendously. The magicians were powerless, they couldn’t even remove their suffering for them as the victims had to put those same amulets on before they were tortured.

‘Then the rest of their army came--wave after wave of infantry and heavy cavalry, followed by the great, rumbling catapults and trebuchets. They came marching in strict order, so many shining coats of mail, so many glittering helmets, so many waving banners and fluttering mantles. All followed by the grim magicians—so grim, so determined. A great host against our pitiful few, now without the massacred citizens, or the sacrificed magicians. All the while tortured screams rent the air.

‘Then the storming began. Right from the outset it was clear that the city was doomed. There were not many warriors among the magicians in Oner at the time, only three in fact. Two Light ones – Teodulf Flaming Guard and Vittor Blade of Light – and one dark one, a retired warrior necromancer dabbling in research in the field of chimerology who had come to Oner with his students for a seminar– Viss, Knight of Despair. Moreover, initially it was only the necromancer and some of his older students who were able to do any vaguely serious damage to the enemy. Teodulf’s fireballs and Vittor’s bolts of lightning didn’t bring any kind of harm down on the Orchisites, protected as they were from the direct use of force. But on the other hand the zombies raised by Viss obediently ripped the king’s soldiers and the priestly guards to shreds, paying no heed to the amulets. However, the light magicians soon adapted to this unusual situation and set about throwing rocks and opening up the earth under the feet of the attackers thereby evening out the score somewhat.

‘The other magicians in the city belonged to strictly peaceful orders--Druids, healers, animal lords, and weather makers among the light magicians, and spiritualists, chimerologists and black sorcerers on the dark side. It goes without saying that they all took part in the battle, but you couldn’t really compare their power to that of the warrior magicians.

‘On the morning of the third day of the siege, despite all the efforts of the magicians and citizens, the armies of Fenrian breached the walls and entered Oner. As they came pouring through a violent battle was joined; twice our forces fighting like demons, threw them back. But nothing could stop them. While we made them pay for every foot of our ground that they gained, more and more of our defenders fell. Under the protection of a small section of the garrison, the women and children, along with the magicians, barricaded themselves into the citadel where the magicians began preparing a stable portal to Valensia. The menfolk, along with most of what was left of the garrison, kept up the battle in the city to slow down the oncoming army and win enough time to create the portal and transfer the people.

‘They had almost succeeded. Using blood magic (Teodulf, Vittor and Sadir, an elderly Seli spiritualist willing sacrificed themselves) enabled them to fill an ancient accumulator with energy, enough to open the portal, but just at that moment Kreghist’s armies broke through the defences and came up to the walls. Viss and his students headed to the walls to bolster what was left of the garrison. The light healer Goran joined them with his young daughter Leya. She had recently finished the third course at the Faculty of Druids with flying colours and to celebrate her father had taken her with him to the seminar. A highly experienced healer can be very handy when there are wounded and Leya came, too; she categorically refused to be parted from her father and there was no time to convince her to change her mind.

‘With the support of the necromancer and his students, the remaining garrison had sufficient strength to keep the army at a respectful distance. Kreghist’s engineers gathered their siege catapults and began to fire from afar, wary of coming too close to the tower.

‘At last the magicians managed to open a portal in the upper room of the magical tower where the accumulator was, and the light magicians transported through it to Valensia to keep the exit channel open. The dark magicians stayed in the tower, sustaining the entry point; to suddenly burst in on Valensia without being accompanied by light magicians was too risky for them despite the truce. At first the flow through the portal was fragile, but then it became an ever-increasing human current. However, that didn’t last long.

‘By that time the besiegers had managed to drag a huge trebuchet onto the square near the gates and the first shot they fired from it had catastrophic consequences.

‘The projectile flew over the wall and struck the very roof of the magical tower with incredible force. Smashing it, the heavy boulder tumbled down breaking the crossbeams and maiming people. As it fell, it caught the ancient accumulator, shattering it with one blow and releasing all the energy locked within it. The magical tower of the Oner citadel blazed brighter than the sun for a second, and then disappeared in an explosion of incredible force. With it perished everyone who had not managed to get through to the portal – dark magicians, women and most of the children. Only the light magicians and about five hundred children aged between five and twelve, who had managed to cross through the portal before the explosion were saved.

‘… And so we were left on our own,’ the necromancer continued his tale. ‘At the moment when about half the city’s population perished, there was a colossal expulsion of necro-emanation which I partly managed to store. I decided then to use it to
raise
all those who had died in the city as zombies and unleash them against the king’s army to at least partially avenge the children’s murder. But things turned out differently. After the magical tower exploded, we all fell into despair. We were filled with pain and hatred towards the aggressors. And then Goran suggested a plan. You have probably heard the legend of the fall of the state of Reir. The Elves drowned it as a punishment for the rape of one of their own at the hands of the crown prince of Reir. The broad outline of that ritual is known to many magicians as it is described in one of the Elfish books that has come down to us. But the page with the concluding section of the ritual is missing, so no human had ever dared to perform it. But we dared to! One way or another, none of us was planning to hand ourselves over to the Orchisites alive - we had seen only too well how magicians died on the altar of the Light-Bearer. Incidentally, we never would have survived long enough to complete the spell. The accumulator no longer existed and we were forced to sacrifice each other during the ritual in order to charge the spell with enough energy.