Necromancer: Book Ten Of The Spellmonger Series Read online

  Necromancer

  By Terry Mancour

  Book Ten Of The Spellmonger Series

  Copyright © 2017

  All Rights Reserved

  The Spellmonger Series

  Spellmonger

  Warmage

  Magelord

  Knights Magi

  Journeymage

  High Mage

  Enchanter

  Court Wizard

  Shadowmage

  Necromancer

  The Road To Sevendor (anthology)

  The Spellmonger’s Wedding

  The Spellmonger’s Honeymoon

  The Spellmonger’s Yule

  The Spellmonger Cadet Series (YA):

  Hawkmaiden

  Hawklady

  Sky Rider (2018)

  Dedication

  To the two friends who helped

  Nurture and develop this series the most:

  Emily Burch Harris,

  My long-suffering Editor

  And

  Lance Sawyers,

  My amazing Art Director

  You wouldn’t have the work in your hand without their

  constant and inspirational support.

  Prologue

  I watched my son’s face contort into an expression of fascinated terror as he ran for his life. His face was red and flushed, and his eyes had the wild look of one desperately dodging a predator as he searched for the danger he knew lurked nearby. A moment later a blood-curdling, ear-splitting scream from his sister informed him of where his predator was hiding.

  Desperate, he rolled across the floor and under the trestle table, just as his foe appeared.

  “WHERE IS THAT TASTY LITTLE BOY?” a great voice boomed, making him shiver in terror. “WHERE IS MY BREAKFAST?”

  Minalyan clapped his hands over his mouth to keep from screaming in horror. When the huge figure finally crept into the room, one could see why the lad was terrified: the great beard and hair of the creature was a chaotic sight, standing up and out like so many spikes. The eyes between were wide and scary, and the mouth that called for the unlikely meal was smeared with the residue of his previous victims . . . raspberry tarts.

  “Here I am!” Minalyan finally announced, rolling out from under the trestle and leaping atop a stool with surprising alacrity. He brandished a three-day old long baguette in his hands like a greatsword and challenged the monster. “You will not eat me!”

  “I will eat every tasty morsel!” the Flour Monster roared, as he charged. Minalyan didn’t hesitate – with a mighty swing of his stale weapon he leapt across the kitchen and delivered a fury of blows that defeated the beast and broke the batard into two, sending it flying across the kitchen as the Flour Monster howled and growled at the heat of the combat. Almina stood in the doorway, eyes wide and hands over her mouth as she watched her big brother duel with the giant ogre who periodically snuck into their home after work and terrorized them.

  As valiant as Minalyan’s attack was, no one defeats the Flour Monster. I’d learned that a lifetime ago.

  He picked up the little boy and swung him into the air, ripping up his tunic and burying his bushy, floury beard into his tender belly and began chomping. Minalyan erupted into a squirmy, giggly scream that was only slightly less nerve-slicing than his sister’s, until he begged for the Flour Monster to relent and release him.

  “Run along now,” my father said with an exhausted sigh, as he gave each of them a raspberry tart from the shop and sent them outside to play in the yard. “That is so much fun,” he admitted, out of breath from the infant-eating effort as he sat on the stool Min vacated. “But I don’t remember being this tired when I ate you and your sisters for breakfast.”

  “We were easier to catch,” I assured him with a smile. “And twenty-odd years ago, children were slower and more docile.”

  We both chuckled at that – my father had been enjoying his grandchildren immensely, both my two and the brood that Urah and Borsa brought with them when my family came to Sevendor. While two of the other sisters and their husbands were preparing to return to Talry-on-Burine in Varune with my father, Urah’s and Borsa’s husbands had elected to stay in their brother’s barony and run the prosperous bakery here.

  My father was surrounded by his grandchildren – and then some. Four of his girls and his son had spent the last year or so keeping him in a state of paternal bliss as he got to know them all. The entire family had taken residence in the Baker’s Hall – an elaborate home I’d had constructed for the purpose – within the outer bailey of the castle.

  Dad spent most of the day at the bakery, as he had since long before I was born, but when he was ready to turn the day’s bake over to his apprentices, he brought home a basket of whatever goodies he’d made that day and – on certain occasions – would slick up his hair with flour and water to create the role that had terrified and delighted us since we were tots.

  “You’ve got a brave one, there,” he nodded admiringly to my son chasing his little sister into the yard. “I’ve been whacked by more stale bread this year than in the twenty before. He doesn’t shy away from being scared, like Almina,” he observed.

  “She enjoys being scared too much to attack – she’s three,” I reminded him.

  “Reminds me of Borsa, at her age,” he recalled fondly. “Always a squealer, that one. But that boy of yours is braver than them all,” he said, referring to my three nephews who’d arrived with the rest of my family. All good, strong boys . . . but with more sense than boldness. Minalyan, on the other hand, was fearless. He must get it from his mother.

  “He’d better be,” I sighed. “He’ll have to defend this place, when I’m gone. Timidity is not oft a characteristic of a magelord. It’s like he wants to fight the world. He’s gotten worse about it since . . . since his mother went away,” I said, trying to say the words casually. “He’ll approach a stray dog, bold as brass, and demand it identify itself.”

  “When is he going to get to see her again?” my father asked, hesitantly. It was a touchy subject, and he knew it. For months I’d been obsessed with discovering some way, either mundane or arcane, to restore my wife Alya’s mind to her after it had been shattered during the Wizard War at Greenflower.

  She was fine, physically – on that the brightest medical and magical minds of the kingdom could agree. But her psyche had sustained a powerful shock by a witchstone she’d destroyed. Since that fateful night, she’d been in the care of the priestesses of Trygg at the Holy Hill abbey. I visited every fortnight, sometimes more.

  But there had been scant improvement for months, until I’d discovered that the legendary Sorceress of Sartha Wood was, in fact, a slightly-batty Alka Alon rebel imprisoned with her staff in a small compound in the middle of the upper Riverlands – one who was trained in ancient human medicine and advanced Alka Alon magic. Lilastien, as she was properly known, had taken over Alya’s care at Yule and she’d shown some immediate improvement. But there were limits to what even the Sorceress could accomplish.

  “Soon, I hope,” I answered, non-committally. “She’s getting a little better every day.”

  It wasn’t a lie. She was. But “better” is a relative term, judged by condition. On any given day she wasn’t as bad as the previous day – therefore she was “better”. It wasn’t a lie.

  But the truth was Alya wasn’t going to get much better on her own. That, at least, Lilastien the Sorceress had been able to tell me. In fact, the only treatment she even suspected might help was locked away deep in a cavern under a ruined city inhabited by humanity’s deadliest foes. The only way it could be of help was to recover an ancient spirit from ins
ide a rock and somehow bring it back to Sevendor, where it might be able to glue Alya’s fractured mind back together.

  Maybe. Possibly. If I could figure out and overcome more obstacles and barriers than any mage had before. If I could manage an enchantment that no one had any idea how to cast, much less cast properly. If I could manage all that and do so without getting myself killed, Alya might, possibly, with the help of the gods and more fortune than I was ever due, recognize her children again. Maybe.

  “So, you’ve decided to go after it, then?” he asked, softly, knowing my thoughts without me speaking. Dad is quite intuitive, for a baker.

  “I don’t see that I have much choice,” I said, resigned. “The Handmaiden is the only thing I’ve even heard about that might work.”

  “It seems a hard thing, depending upon an old legend for hope,” he offered.

  “I wish this was an old legend,” I snorted. “Most old legends have a grain of truth to them. This is just a half-remembered encounter from the mind of a half-crazy old Alka Alon lady from centuries ago. And it’s the best course I have left.”

  “Minalan, you said that Handmaiden was in a cave, deep under a city that you’ve already seen ruined once,” he reminded me. “On an island in the middle of a lake in mountains higher than these, guarded by dragons and covered with goblins.”

  “Yes,” I nodded. “That is what I said.”

  He sighed expressively, and started to shake the dried flour from his beard. “But you’re going to go, anyway,” he concluded.

  “Yes. Yes, I am. Alone, if I have to.”

  “No, you won’t go alone,” he said, shaking his head and sending a shower of flour to the wooden floor. “You have too many friends who are too eager to help you. But be careful, Min,” he cautioned. “I know you’re a big, tough warmage and wizard and all, but . . .”

  “But walking into Olum Seheri like it’s a baronial fair and expecting to find what I need is suicidal, stupid, and hopelessly naïve?”

  “I knew you were a smart one,” he snorted.

  “I know the dangers, Dad. Or at least I suspect I do. And it’s far, far more dangerous than you think,” I informed him. “Olum Seheri isn’t just full of goblins, it’s full of undead. My apprentices made a full report, and the place is crawling with walking corpses. Led by Korbal the Necromancer.”

  “The ‘demon god of the Mindens’,” he chuckled, wryly. “Now that is an old legend.”

  “And one with more than a grain of truth to it,” I agreed. “He’s actually not a god at all, just a powerful Alka Alon necromancer who pissed off the Council, a thousand years ago or so. They imprisoned him in a tomb along with his followers. Unfortunately, he was awakened by yet more of his followers. Now they’re building an army, raising dragons, and generally threatening . . . well, everything.”

  My dad shook his head again. “I don’t know how you wizards do it,” he admitted. “I’ve watched you pursue your craft for years, one way or another. Warmagic, spellmongering, and now . . . all this,” he said, gesturing toward my barony at large. “It seems too much work. Compared to baking,” he added.

  I didn’t take offense – I am in a profession that prides itself on obscurity and obfuscation. And while the practice of magic, on its own, doesn’t mandate that sort of mysterious approach, the business of magic encourages it.

  “Honestly, the heart of a wizard’s work isn’t even about magic,” I decided. “It’s about getting things done. Either for a client or yourself. Mostly by convincing other people to do the hard parts for you.”

  “That’s what apprentices are for,” he nodded and smiled. Over the years Dad had trained at least eight or nine apprentices. Four of them had married my sisters.

  “Oh, they’re helpful,” I agreed, “but that’s not what I’m speaking of.

  “A wizard’s Talent provides access to power, but even with a witchstone that’s not usually enough to accomplish much. Oh, I do things with magic all the time – but being a wizard goes beyond mastering the arcane. It is far more about knowing when and how to use magic to change the universe. And when not to use magic, and use more subtle means instead.”

  “So what’s the point of studying so damn much magic?” he asked. It was a common complaint of his that I had Ruderal and Dara, my two apprentices, constantly reading and taking notes on seven centuries of accumulated knowledge and lore about our profession. Dad considered that excessive. But then most bakers weren’t even literate.

  “The magic opens the door,” I explained, struggling for a metaphor. “But it is your understanding of the universe that gives you the ambition to go through it. To be honest, most of my work these days involves wandering around, talking to people, listening to things, and quietly arranging for them to want to do what I want them to do. Sometimes by persuasion, sometimes by coercion, but one of the benefits of wisdom is understanding enough about the limitations of your own power that you can get other people to do the heavy lifting.”

  “Sounds more like a priest than a wizard.” Dad wasn’t unfamiliar with the priesthood. As a master baker, he was a high-ranking lay member of the Temple of Briga.

  “The two are not dissimilar,” I agreed. “The difference is that – ideally – a wizard is convincing other people to do things for the greater good. A priest does so for the glory or adoration of his divinity. The two are not always the same.”

  “So what was Dunselen doing for the greater good?” he asked, curious. It was an insightful question. Anyone who dismissed Dad’s wit because of his choice of profession was an idiot.

  “Believe it or not, I think Dunselen was trying to figure out how the Snowstone spell worked. Which would have been for the greater good. His methods, on the other hand, were not particularly ethical.” I wasn’t even going to mention Isily’s role in his researches – or his ethical breeches. Dad knew enough of the story to not bring her up. He’d even met the two grandchildren Isily bore me, against my will, when Taren brought them briefly to Sevendor for examination. “Dunselen was a good mage, objectively speaking, but a very poor wizard.”

  “So what makes you a good wizard?”

  “I get other people to do stuff for me as much as possible,” I decided. “And I try not to lose sight of the important things. Like the greater good.”

  “Or providing a mother for your children,” he added, as he watched Almina chase her brother, now, as he chased a chicken through the yard.

  “Or defending the kingdom against goblin invasion, undead incursions, and the occasional dragon. Yes, there is a lot to it. Especially at my level. And to be honest, there are limits to what I can do. Magic might give me leverage, but it’s often as problematic as it is helpful. I think I probably accomplish as much by subtlety and a whispered word in the right ear as I do with incantations and irionite. But I must continue to study it,” I continued. “Indeed, I have an appointment with Kedaran the Black this afternoon. To study necromancy.”

  Dad shivered, involuntarily, and I couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t even seen a walking corpse before. I had. I didn’t have the heart to explain to him that the reality was far worse than his imaginings.

  “That’s the part of this profession I don’t like,” he admitted, through pursed lips. “The enchantments are helpful. The spells have turned this place into a going concern. But when you delve into such dark places, Min . . . I worry.”

  “You should,” I agreed, emphatically. “Necromancy is . . . it’s not something Imperial magic has encouraged a study of for a reason. Reanimation is creepy, and fraught with ethical dilemmas. It’s one step beyond human sacrifice, according to some scholars, and merely a natural extension of already-existing magical principles to their logical conclusion, according to another group. A smaller group,” I added. “And yes, everyone thinks they’re creepy.”

  “Well, you play around with dead people, folk are going to talk,” he observed.

  “It’s not something you can get away with in the village,” I agreed. “Ne
cromancy was all but forbidden by the Censorate. It was a moot point, for the most part, because without irionite, it took a necromancer three or four days to accumulate enough power to cast the spell. It only lasted a few hours, and the results were usually . . . disappointing. So very few went past basic theory. And those who did were subject to penalties.”

  “So why do it at all? Seems . . . creepy.”

  “Because Korbal is a necromancer, and he’s studied necromancy for longer than humanity has been on this world. Not only are he and his followers undead, the creatures he’s creating out of the corpses of slaves are far more sophisticated than anything human necromancers have ever produced. I need to know more about the practice, at least in theory, if I am going to be able to challenge him.”

  Dad winced – he’d never gotten over the idea of me risking my life, and I’m sure the idea of me fighting against some undead ghoul was abhorrent. “Son,” he said, which he almost never called me unless he was about to impart some profound piece of fatherly wisdom, “perhaps I’ve been too preoccupied by the possibility of my own death to see the subject as one for much study – except in how to avoid it. But it doesn’t exactly seem wholesome to be mucking around with such things.”

  “Wizards do a great many things that aren’t very wholesome,” I chuckled, thinking of some of my warmagic buddies. “Death magic is particularly slippery to consider, for a host of technical reasons beyond the mere moral issues. It’s a natural human fascination,” I pointed out. “You yourself admit to thinking about it. Too much,” I emphasized.

  “When a man has this many grandchildren, he knows his time among them is limited,” he sighed. “Don’t worry, I feel hale enough . . . for my age. But every winter is harder, and one more closer to the last one. Any father understands that,” he said, gently. “Nor is there shame or worry in it. But I wouldn’t mind not dying,” he added.

  “The quest for immortality has been constant among humanity,” I said, philosophically. “The Wenshari magi had an entire cult around it. Necromancy is a natural magical extension of that desire, with dreadfully disappointing results. No human spell has managed more than the simplest reanimation. Your soul doesn’t get popped back into your body. Your dead flesh is merely propelled by magic at the direction of another. Like I did with the water elemental in the pond, only with rotting human flesh instead of nice, clean water.”