The Necromancer’s Light by Tavia Lark

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Shae

They run across the body three mornings later. Duchess notices it first; her ears prick suddenly forward, and her neck arches. Arthur places a hand on her shoulder and draws her to a halt. “I don’t sense anything,” he says quietly. “Do you?”

“No.” Shae’s rings are no colder than usual on his fingers. Then he sees it, a depression in the foliage on the roadside ahead, and a flash of green cloth. He points. “Wait, there’s something there.”

Arthur passes Duchess’s reins to him wordlessly, draws his sword, and stalks forward. Shae holds the reins tightly, hoping Duchess can’t tell how unnerved he is. He likes her a lot, but she’s still gigantic, and he doesn’t think he can keep hold of her if she panics.

A few moments later, Arthur swears and sheathes his sword. “He’s dead,” he calls over to Shae.

Shae swears too and leads Duchess over.

For all his association with the dead over the past ten years, he only rarely encounters the recently dead. He’s used to skeletons, dried-out corpses, shells that only echo the people they once held. He’s not used to this: a man slumped sideways in the underbrush, utterly motionless. Hardly even a smell fouling the fresh country air. If they move him, his limbs will be stiff. There will be discoloration. But until they disturb him, he could just be asleep.

Shae’s vision swims. For a second, he sees his father’s body, slumped in their little front yard. Arms up, drenched in blood. He blinks, and he’s back in the present. There’s no blood on this body. No sign of any injury at all.

Arthur crouches and turns the dead man onto his back. The body’s tall, middle-aged, with a heavy beard. His eyes are still open. “He was a hunter, judging by his clothes,” Arthur says. “He didn’t even draw his knife.”

“I don’t think he just had a heart attack,” Shae says.

“Neither do I.” Arthur stands up, grimacing. He gestures down the road. “That must be his pack on the ground. He dropped it and ran—but what was he running from? A bandit would have taken the pack. An animal would have taken him. Something isn’t right.”

Something isn’t right. Shae can see that clearly. “I could ask him what happened.”

Arthur whips around. “What do you mean by that?”

Shae bites his lip. “I can reanimate him for a minute and ask how he died.”

“Absolutely not.” Arthur moves closer, standing between him and the body. “I told you I’d help with anything not counter to my oath, but raising the dead is a few fucking miles across the line.”

“It’s not raising the dead,” Shae snaps, then takes a shuddering breath, forcing himself to calm down. “I won’t touch his soul. That—that’s cruel, and it doesn’t end well.”

“Do you know that from experience?” Duchess dances beside them, and Shae flinches back from the movement. Arthur takes the reins from him and runs a soothing hand down her neck. “Sorry,” Arthur continues, and Shae’s not sure which of them he’s talking to. “Just tell me, how is reanimating the dead different from raising the dead?”

Another deep breath, before Shae snaps again. Arthur’s questions are reasonable, even if they drag up moments Shae prefers to forget. “I’d just be waking up his body, and relying on the body’s last memories. What his eyes saw, what his ears heard. It won’t be him, with any personality or emotions. Just the body’s record of his last moments.”

Arthur’s still frowning, but he says, “All right.”

Shae doesn’t quite register the agreement at first. He blinks. “What?”

“All right,” Arthur repeats. His frown melts into a lopsided grin, lighting up his golden face. “I trust you on this. And I really want to know what happened. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we found this guy.”

“I don’t think so either,” Shae says, a little breathlessly. Gods, Arthur’s going to kill him if he keeps saying crazy things like I trust you on this.

Arthur tethers Duchess across the road, and Shae fetches the man’s fallen pack. There’s nothing inside but food, water, and a net trap. Almost certainly a local hunter, but nothing to identify him. As Shae walks there and back, he looks at the ground. There’s a clear track from the man running, but nothing else obvious in the hard-packed dirt.

Shae kneels at the man’s side and reaches out, but stops before touching him. This will hurt—the necromancy always hurts, now, like he has less and less of himself to give each time. But maybe it will hurt a little less if he trusts Arthur too.

“I’m going to touch his chest and restart his heart and lungs enough for him to talk to us,” Shae explains. “He’ll probably gasp and choke at first. It’s disturbing, but it doesn’t last long.”

“Good to know,” Arthur says. “Should I do anything?”

Shae twists his rings around. “Could you hold onto me while I do it? The contact will help.”

“All right.” Arthur crouches down behind him.

Shae expects a hand on his shoulder. Maybe on his back. Instead, there’s a gentle touch as Arthur brushes the hair from the back of his neck, then settles his bare palm flush against Shae’s vertebrae. Heat floods through him, and he bites his lip on a moan of relief.

“Like this?” Arthur asks, so close his breath stirs in Shae’s hair.

“That’s great,” Shae manages. “Really great.” He takes a deep breath to steady his nerves, then presses his own palm against the center of the dead man’s chest.

The body is cold, even through layers of leather and wool. Shae closes his eyes and calls on the cold within him. It answers eagerly, running down his arm, piercing bloodlessly through the dead hunter.

Shae feels the cold as always, but it doesn’t consume him. Arthur’s hand on his neck grounds him in life as he reaches for death.

“Wake blood and breath,” he whispers in Lyrisenian. “Give me your voice. Give me your time.”

The last word hasn’t left his lips when the body seizes up, a horrible gurgling sound rising from his throat. The mouth opens, and spit flies into the dark beard. His eyes don’t move, still dead and sightless, but when the convulsion ends, the faint rise and fall of breath remains.

“Radiant Vara,” Arthur whispers behind Shae’s ear. His hand is tense on Shae’s neck.

“We have about a minute.” Shae’s slightly dizzy, but far stronger than he would be without Arthur at his back. He says, louder, “What were you doing just now, friend?”

Wet breath rattles through the body’s throat. Words come with it, rumbling echoes of a deep, strong voice: “I was running. I was heading home, and then I was running.”

“Where is home?”

“I don’t know,” the hunter says. He doesn’t sound lost, just matter of fact.

The smell is overpowering. Shae resists the urge to cover his nose, even if the dead body wouldn’t know he was being rude. “What were you running from?”

“I don’t know,” the hunter says again.

Either he doesn’t remember, or he couldn’t identify the threat. Shae considers his questions carefully. “Did you see it?”

“Yes.” The ribcage heaves. “There were two.”

“What did they look like?”

“A shadow. Not an animal, not real. Too many teeth. Too many eyes.” The hunter’s entire body twitches with some remembered reflex. “There was a dead man with it.”

Shae’s heartbeat picks up. He wonders if Arthur can feel his pulse where they touch. “Was he walking?” he asks quickly. “What color were his eyes?”

“Yes,” the hunter answers. “Red.”

Arthur’s hand tenses again on Shae’s neck. Shae swallows, but keeps going with the questions, not wanting to waste any time. “What happened then?”

“I fell,” the dead man sighs, lips barely moving. “Then everything was cold and dark.”

Shae frowns. “What’s the last thing you saw?”

“Nothing,” the dead man says. “I saw nothing.” His voice grows fainter as he speaks, and his ribcage shudders weakly under Shae’s hand.

“Did it hurt?” Shae asks quickly. “Did you feel anything?”

But with one final rattle, the dead man slumps motionless once more. The flow of cold power cuts off, the last of it recoiling up Shae’s arm. Shae hangs his head, counting his breaths as his power resettles beneath his heart. It’s easier than it’s ever been before, with Arthur’s thumb gently stroking the side of his neck, easing away the tension.

“Thanks,” Shae says eventually, and immediately regrets it because Arthur lets go and stands up.

“Red eyes,” Arthur says, shaking his head. “Either demon possession or an acolyte of the Flame Twins, and I wouldn’t better on the latter.”

“I wouldn’t either.” Shae twists one of his rings, his nervousness mounting once again. They’re still so far away from the border, surely Izen can’t reach this far south yet. The spells in Shae’s rings are still intact, surely Izen can’t have found him on purpose. It could be another demon, with another target.

“And the other creature sounds like another vaidkos,” Arthur says. “I don’t like that we’ve run across two of them now. That’s as many as I’ve ever seen in my life, within one week. But he didn’t say anything about it attacking him, and I don’t see any injuries on him.”

Shae stands up too. His shakiness and nausea has nothing to do with the after-effects of magic. “It’s the same as the one in the graveyard,” he says quietly. “It took his soul.”

The warm breeze rustles through the trees, stirring up road dust and whipping Shae’s coat around him. Arthur puts a hand to his chest in warding. “Light guide us,” he mutters. “I need to report this to the order.”

Reflexive fear tightens Shae’s nerves. He can’t afford too long of a delay, and the thought of Arthur leaving him for the Radiant Order makes his pulse pick up. “Are any of you stationed nearby?”

“No, but the next village should be close. I’ll just talk to the local guard and pass a message along,” Arthur answers, alleviating Shae’s sudden worry. He rubs his stubbled jaw, looking down at the hunter. Then he kneels down and gently closes the dead man’s eyes. “We’ll need to tell them to come out and retrieve our friend anyway.”

“All right.”

He’s more relieved than he should be that Arthur doesn’t want to detour. He’s gotten far too used to being able to rely on his companion, instead of keeping him at arms’ length, no closer and no farther. And he has a sinking feeling that all of this—the soul stealing, Izen, his own weakening spirit—is related. He’s going to need all the help he can get.

The sand is pouring through the hourglass. Shae doesn’t know how much is left. It might be time to tell Arthur the truth about his journey. The whole truth.