Page 43 of Deadly Maiden (Dragons and Darkthings #1)

Wyntre

I awaken, sprawled on the floor just inside the fortress, with the silver door open behind me spilling in light. The front door? Yes.

I scramble onto hands and knees and sway a moment then climb upright using the wall. With my back plastered to it, I pause before hauling open the door a little further. Is it sunset or sunrise?

The sun position betrays itself.

Fucking sunrise. No, no, no.

I scowl at the sunrise, trying to wish it away.

My mouth tastes like vomit, and I remember why when I see what is out there in the area behind the gate. I get the undead to clean up, leaving the main gate open while I stagger off to find water. This is that day. The day I have to greet the sister again and speak to Andacc.

I wasted half a freaking day, and a night.

Having cleaned myself up and taken some essential time to get my own thoughts in order, to heal myself, as it were, I return to the open gate. I have the rucksacks ready to go. The weapons I want to carry are laid next to them. A few books are packed, because if this works out, I’m going to read what I can, learn some more necromancy on the journey.

It might all fall through.

Without going to the encampment, I don’t have any way to be sure if the sister is there, and I’m about to set out when she rides into view and halts before the edge of my rambling undead.

I withdraw them and go to her, with Asher and Anathema trailing me.

Sister Five looks identical in poise, clothing, smile, to how she was yesterday. Uncanny. Maybe I should take up religion to keep my skin smooth and my conscience clear of doubts.

What I recently did has aged me a hundred years. I don’t see how I can ever forgive myself.

On the other hand, when, not if, I see Rorsyd again, I will be confessing. I’m done with keeping secrets from him. I want his arms around me.

“Hello.” I greet her with a nod.

“Greetings, Wyntre.” She lowers her gown to the waist, baring herself. Across her palm is an etharum pen.

Hesitantly I take it from her, and she turns her back.

“Whatever you scribe on me will appear on the sister who stands before Andacc. We use a shorthand, normally, but you may write what you wish.”

I frown, stare at her bare skin. “Is there a limit?”

“Only the limit of my skin.”

“Huh.” I consider telling her they need larger sisters for more expansive messages. I need a stamp. I begin to write on her, find the tip of the pen leaves a mark on her back even when I use the slightest pressure. It seems pointless just to say hi, so I don’t.

I ask if he knows of Rorsyd’s fate. I tell him of my plan to march my undead to Hugent Bay to the west. That I need a ten-mile swathe of the land cleared of all Aos Sin soldiers, spies, enforcers, between Slaedorth and the bay, so as to keep the movement a secret. I need a small swift boat, manned with loyal sailors, waiting at Hugent Bay. I ask if he can do this now and if he knows of my seven-day deadline from the king.

He replies yes to all, and that I must give him a moment while he sends off his messenger birds.

I wait, staring about at my surroundings—though they remain a blur—and digging holes in the soil with my boot.

His reply emerges on her skin in the same red wheal as my words. Done. Give them half a day to do this. A man will come to Slaedorth as a guide. What else?

My heart thuds harder at my ribs. We are on our way. Yes, yes. This becomes more possible.

I tell him I need his rebellion to commence on the morning of the sixth day of the ultimatum—five days from now—and that I need men in Tensorga Harbor, before sunrise, to help me free the Usurper.

After a pause he replies. Thank you. I am most happy at this news. It shall be done.

He gives me an exact place on the harbor front where his men will wait, and code words to use when challenged: What a spectacular night.

I am temporarily amused. This business could end with us all dead.

What else? I squint to decipher those letters he scribed. He writes like a fairy drunk on fermented flowers.

What else? I’m lost for a few seconds. I cannot direct his attack. I am not a general. Invade the kingdom and the city. Be ready to raise up your king. Make sure your men can take me to where Rorsyd is kept.

I will , he writes. Rorsyd is in a cage above the harbor. Pinned by iron. My men will know.

I knew this, sort of. It’s a blow, but a small one, that I instantly suppress.

Is that it? I wrack my brain, searching for anything I missed. Whatever I need to say, this is it.

I slowly scrawl, good luck .

You too. See you in Tensorga.

“We are done,” I say to Sister Five.

She dresses, tidies her gown, and retrieves the pen.

“I have something to ask of you also.”

Her eyebrows rise an infinitesimal amount. “Yes?”

“I need your horse to ride to Hugent Bay. I can set her free there.” I don’t bother asking if it’s possible. If it is, it is.

“Of course. You may have Nessa. Tie her under the trees in the bay near the pink beach hut.”

Specific location. She knows the bay. I nod and take the reins.

“Is that all?”

“No.”

This last part might gain an objection. I tell her, and she only nods again. She stands rigidly still for a few minutes with her eyes shut then offers me the pen so I can say the same words to her superior, Sister Paloma.

I scribble the note on her bared shoulder and the reply comes five minutes later, by which time Nessa has sniffed me, snorted, then chewed on my shirt. She’s eating grass now. I think we are friends.

I wonder what Sister Paloma was doing when my message arrived on her skin. It could be anything, including sitting next to King Madlin.

Her reply is also succinct. Yes. I will arrange horses for them. I will await his arrival.

A second line appears, answering questions I did not ask.

Your Rorsyd is still alive. However, Jannik Stryke seems insane after twenty years of torture.

Does Andacc know this? Possibly? If not, his men will see Jannik soon, if all goes as planned.

I reread the message. Of course, Rorsyd is alive, even with an iron spear in his body negating his magik… Knowing his fate, my journey to rescue him will be a whole other level of torment.

“Come with me.” Sister Five, beckons Asher to join her.

She will walk north with him and will be getting new mounts for them both. They may reach Tensorga before me. Unless she somehow read what I wrote to Sister Paloma, she doesn’t know who he truly is.

Asher has hesitated, and I smile encouragement. “She is safe.” Ironic that I’m saying this to an undead. “Go.”

“Be hero not a zero?”

“You heard that?” I find myself grinning. “Yes. Hero not zero.”

“Good. I a hero. Goodbye, Wyntre.”

First time he’s said my name. Wow. I feel like a mother sending her son off to war.

Watching Asher go with the sister, heading for his own destination in Tensorga, renders me…uncomfortable. Earlier, I did try to explain to him what is happening, where he is going, and what I might need him to do.

I feel a loss, as if I’ve disposed of an essential part of my life. He is not exactly a friend, yet I wish him the best. If this attack goes poorly, he carries my last hope.

And reminds me of my recent evil.

I will never be able to put his mind back into his own body, so what use have those two deaths been? I killed them to trial something that might revive Asher. A mere might. I’m not even sure my reasoning makes sense anymore. I was tired, frazzled… It is an experiment that failed. How do you atone for killing someone without good reason? I’m about kill a whole lot more people, too, but for better reasons.

Maybe we never get to atone and merely have to live with our sins.

We march from Slaedorth near dusk, the most disheveled army ever. Anathema and me, with Nessa the horse carrying one rucksack, not two—had to leave the other one behind—and with my uncoordinated soldiers of death. They have picked up most of the weapons but, at a guess, half of them are holding them upside-down. A few have fallen on them or stuck them in themselves and are walking like that—dangerously prickly. Some have already mislaid their weapons.

Our path will be littered with whatever they drop.

It is madness.

I’m fairly sure they’ll never use them in battle.

And so we advance, guided by a man on a horse who met us half a mile from the old encampment. Armed and armored beneath a dark, buttoned coat, wearing a compact flat-brimmed hat, he beckons us onward without speaking. I think he’s afraid. Perhaps Andacc failed to tell him precisely what he was to be guiding.

My undead do not need to eat or sleep but the guide and I do. This night, he makes his camp several yards from where I unroll my bed, and I’m guessing he’s torn between being closer to me and getting attacked by my undead for that proximity, and going too far away and being accidentally attacked anyway.

“I won’t let them do anything to you,” I assure him while I chew on some jerky, sip water.

He only stares and shrugs. The crickets make their rough music, while the undead offer a few restless moans and bony cracks, or thuds as they fall over their own feet.

I bite off some more meat, then find a carrot to munch on.

Men. His courage is clearly barely enough, but he fears looking a fool or a coward.

Our path the next day is marked by evidence of recent violence. Burned-out cottages, slain men, blood on doorsteps, riderless horses with bloody saddles. Smoke rises ahead and to either side. The guide is as spooked as ever but gestures for us to keep going. Andacc has done what I asked him to do—clear a path. I hope the right people paid the price for this. A few of his rebels are visible in the distance, riding in packs.

By the end of the second day, only an hour or two before sunset, Hugent Bay is in sight when we crest a rise. The guide has steered us through a pass on this well-paved road that winds down to the quiet bay—quiet due to Andacc.

Three boats lie on their side on the beach. One is almost sunk, another bobs in the darkening water, and a rowboat is setting out from it, aiming for the beach. The light is failing fast, though I think I have enough time to get down there and board.

My guide rides to me, stopping a yard away. He taps his hat in deference and fidgets his fingers on the reins, his actions jumpy. “I’ll hand you off to the crew. Then I’ll be off. Follow.”

“Thank you!” I yell after him then I knee Nessa into a faster gait.

My army spills through the tree line behind us as we dismount. The guide shouts his news, announcing us to the sailor waiting by the beached rowboat.

“What?” the sailor yells back, glancing nervously at what is coming.

“She is yours. From Andacc!” He swings an arm to indicate me. Then he pulls his mount around, finds the stirrup, and lifts himself into the saddle. “I’m going! Damn this for a job.”

“Wait.” I hold up a hand. “Tie Nessa to the trees over there. Please. A Sister of Artreos owns her and asked me to do this.”

“Sure.” His eyes are wide, but he rides up and snatches the reins, gallops away toward the hut under the trees with Nessa in tow.

This is it then, the next part of this journey. I trudge across the sand with my boots squeaking and greet the terror-stricken sailor. Did I not tell Andacc what I was bringing? Did he not tell them?

“They won’t bite you.” I flash a smile. “And once on the sea, they’ll be fathoms below us.”

Assuming they don’t go the wrong way, get swept off by currents, or get eaten by some unfussy sea creature. This could still go very wrong.

“S-sure. In the boat, please, miss.” He scurries to it, drags it out into the small waves, throws in my rucksack, then holds the front of the boat while I take a seat. Once he’s seated himself opposite, he grabs the oars and pulls them through the water.

“How long to get to Tensorga?”

“Three days, miss.” He’s young, cute, with wavy brown hair, a fae in his early twenties. “They yours?” He lifts a finger toward the undead heading for us and begins to row harder and faster.

I might’ve dated him, long ago, before I became a scary necromancer. I smile. “Yes.”

This will be interesting. I’ve never been on a boat, and that small white sailboat looks as if it will be tossed about in the bigger seas.

The boat’s skipper proves to be an older man, his fair hair tied back, and a scar running down one side of his face. He is armed with a plain shortsword which he stores once the sails fill and the boat is carving out of the bay through the swelling waves.

“Grundle is the name, Miss Wyntre,” he says, once we’re out to sea. “You hang on tight, and we’ll get you there in one piece.”

“Thank you.” I am indeed hanging onto the railing, knuckles paling.

“The cabin has to be shared. Best if you stay below decks as much as you can.”

Moonlight silvers the tops of the waves and lights our way. He returns to me after fiddling with some ropes. “ Ehhh. You’re a necromancer, Jorg tells us?”

“I am.” First time I have ever been asked like this. First time admitting it.

Will this be a problem?

Grundle clears his throat. “Okay. If Andacc says you’re okay, you’re okay, but stay below. And none of those.” He points downward, at the bottom of the boat, and I’ve no doubt he means the ocean under us. “None of them are welcome up here.”

“Sure.” I gift him a tight, fleeting grin. “I promise they will behave.”

I go below and stay there for the next day, using their chamber pot for waste when they signal I’m not welcome above. I have no choice but to let them clean and scrape and find me food. They do not sleep in the cabin after all. That next night, I hear them on deck, walking about and neither strikes up a conversation.

It will be a rather lonely voyage.

My necromancer label has evidently scared them off. Next time I’m asked, I might lie.

I have my books, though, having brought them to see what else I can learn. Two portholes allow me a view of the sea life, like the dolphins that breach the surface, swimming alongside the boat. Only once am I alarmed, when what appears to be a tentacle loops from the depths a few hundred yards in the distance, then lashes down onto the ocean and vanishes. I pound on the above deck until Grundle comes to the hatchway.

“Just a kraken,” he yells over the sound of the boat and the sea. Spray flicks across, sparkling the air behind him. “We have certified repellant! Nothing to concern yourself with, miss.”

Do I detect a degree of smugness?

I get to open my books, however, and learn all about the theory of magik and the various forms of etharum and how it can be transformed into orgharum inside the body of mages and shifters, and getharum or gheist, and then there is netharum. I’ve not heard of the latter. It’s the form necromancers use when they take etharum into their bodies.

Other types of necro magik exist that I could theoretically accomplish.

Speaking to the dead, raising fear, the raising and construction of an undead? Construction? Does that mean I could rearrange them somehow? Healing is mentioned but glossed over. Perhaps it is rare. Darkthing matter isn’t mentioned at all.

None of this really gives me the ability to do any of these forms. Nice to know they exist, I suppose? The only undead I can use are a few fathoms below the hull. I reread the handwritten recollections of a necromancer called Thaliss. The parchment has rust-colored spots, and some pages are rumpled and stained, as if they’ve suffered water damage.

I fold back the dog-eared corner and trace the scrawled words. Written a hundred and twenty-years ago, judging by the date on the page.

If one does wish to raise a recently deceased corpse from the realm of the dead, and note that it must be within a few days old at most, one must meld with the mind of that person. I have found that concentrating and closing one’s eyes helps the process.

Do not be discouraged at a single failure. This will require practice. Unfortunately it is a voyage each necromancer must tread alone, as it is with most of our arts.

Concentrate. Imagine you are there, seeing the remains of their thoughts. Be there. Be one with them. Exist within the framework of their cranium. This will not work on the living. Once you feel the connection, one should use a source of etharum or gheist to enervate the corpse’s brain. It will not think like a living fae and will respond to your commands. Be careful what one does order such creatures to do. Your very soul may be at risk.

“Well, that’s cheerful.”

I close the book and lay it aside on the compact roll-top desk.

I don’t have any recently deceased person to try that on. Out of curiosity, I lie on the bunk bed and try to see the inside of, first, Grundle’s brain and then the mind of the young sailor, Jorg. It feels as if my own thoughts are skating on ice. I cannot get anywhere near them. I slip away from the sailors, and my mind drifts lower, through the hull of the boat, sinking down, down, to where my small army marches among the fish.

They are already raised, but I am commanding them. If it takes practice, then perhaps I can still use them. Easily, I enter the mind of the first to find nothing much in there. The thoughts of a raised undead remind me of closed stores. I sneaked into one of those in Bollingham. The shelves were bare of everything except spilled shreds of noodles and dried-out apples and moldy cheese. My army is as moldy as one can get. Undaunted, I skip along, harmlessly brushing from mind to mind. This is so simple, so easy.

And truly, if I can do this, raising a new one should be doable?

Learn as you go.

The history of Slaedorth seems more like fiction, and unless I return there, none of this is relevant. It is the past and does not explain why we are fewer than we were. I may be the last necromancer. There’s a thought.

I make notes, sleep, and eat. I pace the small cabin. For the entire three-day voyage, I am treated as if I carry a plague.

Then I am summoned, told to come on deck. I climb the ladder, find the sea looking sultry not stormy, with the sullen, dark sky reflecting mournful colors on the wave-tops. To our left is one of the tips of the crescent-shaped harbor. On the promontory, a high-powered lighthouse has switched on, and when it sweeps the sea the waves turn golden and clear.

We’ve sailed fast, though, done good time, or so I am told. I clutch the railing a little less fearfully than my first evening on the boat. As the boat wallows, Tensorga Harbor sways on the horizon, the serrated skyline of buildings visible above the quiescent waves.

I stretch out my mental feelers for the undead that walk beneath us on the ocean floor. I’ve kept an eye on them and know I have lost at least half of my army, but if we remain here, more may rejoin us.

They stand, below, with their bones on sand and rock, happily not drowning, and with their dead eyes looking up at the bottom of the sailboat.

A clacking sound jerks me back to the surface, to where I am, on a softly rocking deck.

“Winds’ll rise.” Grundle ekes out words like they’re taxable. “We’ll sail closer, not too close, wait for the tide. Just a’fore dawn. Sneeeeak in to where Andacc wants you landed. There.” He points. “There. The Chained King.”

And Rorsyd. The cage he is locked into dangles over the harbor at the end of a metal rail that might be a crane. I swallow down a sudden tightness, all the way to my chest. Remember to breathe. The wind gusts in my face, flaps the limp sail.

I am here, where I wished to be. “Tensorga.”

“Yup.”

It almost became a fevered dream on the voyage. Now it seems more of a nightmare.

I stiffen my spine. Time to be a warrior not a wimp. A hero not a zero.

“That your soulmate?” He jabs his finger at the cage.

How does everyone know what we are? The sister, of course.

“Yes. That’s Rorsyd.”

“That tower used to raise a chain from the sea, to block the harbor. Not in use anymore.”

“I see.” Does it help me in any way? I cannot see how.

“Fuck me with a bent cutlass!”

My eyebrows spring higher. “That…sounds alarming?”

He’s staring over the railing. “Those. You keep them away! I told you!” Then he backs away one step, two, shaking.

Concerned but puzzled, though I do have an inkling as to why, I look into the sea. A sweep of the lighthouse beam runs across the ocean and the sea turns to glass, showing me my hundreds of undead looking back at me from many fathoms below—heads atilt, all slack-jawed, with their flesh-eaten grins of empty sockets and teeth, with their streamers of ripped and tattered clothing, and their rusted swords.

The light sweeps away, sweeps back around in a few tens of seconds.

They raise their weapons as one, as if saluting me, or those who haven’t dropped them do.

“Oh, them.” I purse my lips at the captain. “They do as I command. Grow a backbone, sir. I could invite one up to show you?”

His eyeballs turned whiter and wider, if that is possible. “No. No. No, thank you.”

“Good. That’s settled then. I’ll go below and get some rest. Call if you need me. Or if…” I gesture at the ocean. “If one of them climbs aboard to play checkers.”

Then I go back to bed, and I dream a nightmareless sleep. After all, what is there left to be afraid of? Tomorrow will decide this.