The Necromancer’s Light by Tavia Lark
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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Arthur
Arthur sees three horses ahead just north of the border. He urges Duchess faster to intercept them. He recognizes two of them: Georgia Oakven’s flashy white steed, and the little dark bay gelding he helped Shae buy just the morning before.
None of the horses have riders. They whip past Arthur and Duchess, eyes wide and ears pinned back, racing for the safety of the Lanwatch gate. Arthur sees a streak of blood across the white horse’s flank as it passes.
Duchess shies under him, but quickly calms as Arthur nudges her into a canter. Arthur wishes he had her composure. It’s all he can do to keep his hands steady on the reins.
He’s never been north of the border before, and all he has to go on are vague memories of maps and the directions from Karis. Seven miles northeast of Lanwatch. But Vara’s Radiance hasn’t left him, even without a focus item. Whenever he turns the wrong direction, whether through confusion or a turn in the road, the warmth inside him fades. It surges like wildfire when he’s on the right path again.
As the trees thin out and the scope of the Lyralan Crater spreads around him, a needle-prick of darkness pierces his awareness. A whisper of evil in the same direction that Vara’s Radiance guides him. Arthur doesn’t know if it’s vaidkos or demon or walking corpse. He just knows he has to keep going.
He might have missed the tower remnants were it not for the ravens. The ruins are just north of his path. But the cawing cries and fluttering wings attract his attention. He rides closer in and sees the first broken body. A woman with her throat torn out, a raven pecking at her stomach, and a Riverswords-blue armband. The rest of the bodies spread out behind her.
Arthur dismounts, shoving away his nausea and fear, and checks for survivors. There are none, but something selfish and scared inside him eases when he finishes looking through them and hasn’t found Shae.
Wherever Shae is, it’s not on the bloody ground here.
The fallen deserve to rest in peace, buried or burned to return to the earth and sky. Arthur can’t give them that now. All he can do is touch his heart and murmur, “May Vara’s Radiance light your way.”
He mounts up again and rides east, pushed by Vara’s Radiance towards the whispering darkness.
His destination appears at the edge of the crater. A lone farmhouse, dilapidated but not completely ruined like the other buildings he’s seen so far in Lyrisenia. There are holes in the roof, and the windows are broken. A chicken coop sits empty in the front.
Vara’s Radiance flares inside him, then goes dark, and he knows he’s in the right place. Uneasy pressure fills his ears, like he’s climbed too high a mountain. His skin crawls, and the air is too cold in his lungs. There’s something evil behind the house. He gallops forward, Duchess’s gait never faltering beneath him. She only stops when he reins her in sharply at the sight ahead.
At the center of a blackened orchard kneels a solitary figure. A plume of shadows twists above, rising like smoke through the skeletal branches. Two dark gray stones sit in front of him.
Arthur swings from the saddle and unsheathes his sword. He still can’t identify the source of the darkness he feels, pressing into his awareness like the edge of a knife not quite breaking the skin. But he recognizes, with an even stronger pang, the figure before him.
“Shae!” he shouts, running forward. “Get over here!”
He needs Shae to get away from the shadows. Away from danger. Forgetting he threw his pendant away, he presses his hand to his chest. All he touches is tunic and leather armor, but golden light still comes to his call. The rays burst from him, intended to form a protective shield—
But they dissipate in a circle around Shae’s kneeling figure, and Shae doesn’t move.
Were it not for the sick tension humming through the air, the necromancer would look peaceful. Reverent. His pose is very like that of prayer.
Arthur stops short, ten feet away, sensing something wrong. “Shae,” he says hoarsely. “What’s going on?”
Shae’s body shakes. Trembles. A wheezing sound breaks the silence of the orchard, growing louder with each second, until it heightens into peals of harsh laughter. The sound grates in Arthur’s ears. Still laughing, Shae jerks to his feet and turns around.
He looks far too pale, the skin under his eyes bruised with exhaustion. He’s nearly skeletal, his bones ready to break through his paper-thin skin. Bruises mottle his neck. His eyes flicker black, then gray again. The shadows aren’t just surrounding him. They’re rising from his body. He’s the source.
“Shae, what have you done?”
“What I had to,” Shae rasps. “I gave my soul to the power, and it’s too late to turn back. So, fuck off if you know what’s good for you.”
Arthur’s heart pounds in his throat. His ears are about to pop from the pressure. He adjusts his grip on his sword. “I’m not fucking off this time.”
Shae laughs again. “Suit yourself, paladin.”
That’s the only warning before knife-like shadows arc around him and streak towards Arthur’s heart.
“Radiance,” Arthur swears and prays, and dodges.
He swings his sword up to deflect the shadows, and the blade shimmers golden with Vara’s gift. The shadows hiss as they collide with the steel, then ricochet back. Arthur lunges sideways to dodge the next volley, severing a handful of shadows in midair. They dissipate. More stab towards him in their stead.
Shae remains still as ice throughout, a statue in the midst of roiling shadows. Only his face gives any indication of life—sick amusement crumpling into rage.
That anger that gives Arthur hope. He refuses to believe he’s too late.
“I’m sorry,” Arthur says, parrying another blow. He sidesteps the next strike from behind. “I should have left with you.”
Shae lifts his chin. “That doesn’t matter now.”
Arthur can fix this. He has to be able to fix this. He just needs an opportunity to get close to Shae without getting skewered first. “I’m serious. The order didn’t need me. I wanted them to need me, but they didn’t. I shouldn’t have let you go alone.”
“How noble,” Shae spits. His face twists with rage, and the next shadow launches past Arthur’s blade, punching into his left shoulder. The leather armor can’t deflect it, and the skin splits. “But I don’t need you either. Your righteous charity isn’t required.”
Arthur’s shoulder burns with cold, then the heat of blood, but he doesn’t dare take his eyes off Shae to look at it. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care.”
“Then why are you so angry?” Arthur sees the slightest flinch in the stony face. “I think you still care. I think you want me to help you.”
“I don’t care,” Shae hisses again. But the frozen statue fractures. When Arthur steps forward, he steps back.
The shadow knives dart towards Arthur, and he can’t deflect all of them. He pushes forward anyway, praying silently, and the light flares around his blade, buying him another second. He has one chance to save Shae. The cleansing spell will take all his strength, and if he fails, he knows that Shae will kill him before he recovers.
He’s not afraid of dying. He just hates the thought of what that would do to Shae, if he ever wakes up from this madness on his own.
“Let me help you,” he says. Takes a deep breath. “I love you.”
Shae’s eyes widen for a split second, then darken wholly black. Arthur takes the single moment of surprise to throw his sword aside. If he fails, he won’t need his sword anyway. He seizes Shae by the shoulder, by the back of his head. Feels the trembling resistance to his touch and ignores it, tangling his fingers in Shae’s hair.
“I’ll kill you,” Shae snarls as Arthur presses his lips to his forehead.
Shae’s cooler to the touch than he’s ever been. Arthur’s entire consciousness centers around a single, simple prayer: Help him.
Vara’s answer isn’t light or heat. Arthur’s not even sure the power comes from Vara. It’s a surge of emotion from the depths of his heart. Memories rush through him. The way Shae snapped at him that morning in the Moon’s Barrel. His smile at Duchess, barely an hour later. Touching his thigh to reposition him in the saddle. The serious look on his face at the Harvest Lord graveyard, insisting on covering a dead woman’s grave. The way he never flinched when cutting open his own arm, but flew to Arthur’s side after the vaidkos ambush.
Shadows slice into his arms and shoulders, trying to pull him away. They don’t dig as deep as they could. They don’t go for Arthur’s throat. Even now, Shae isn’t trying to truly kill him.
Arthur holds fast to the thin, trembling body in his arms. He remembers the Harvest Lord’s graveyard again, pulling Shae close after, warming him up with his own body. Arthur sticks on that memory, more than anything that came after. The kissing, the sex, the smiles—he loves that, he wants that, but what truly matters is holding Shae. Giving up as much of his own heat, his own life force, as Shae needs.
Shae’s breath is ragged now. Shadow-cold claws loosen around Arthur’s arms.
“I love you,” Arthur murmurs again into Shae’s cold skin, and he feels the moment when Shae breaks.
He falls against Arthur, panting and trembling. The last of the shadows wither into nothing, and the dead orchard brightens almost imperceptibly around them.