The Necromancer’s Light by Tavia Lark
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CHAPTER EIGHT
Arthur
Arthur’s blade blazes light as he sinks it into the vaidkos’s chest. The creature screams at him, gray-red spittle flying from its jaws, and its six red eyes bulge out before going dark. Its legs buckle, and Arthur yanks out his sword in a spray of brackish blood before the creature collapses to the earth. As soon as the body falls limp, it begins to wither away in plumes of dark smoke, until all that’s left is ash settling into the dirt.
Duchess stamps nearby, ears pricked towards the vanished monster. Her tail’s up like a flag, and she looks like she’s ready to fight or flee—with a preference for fleeing.
Arthur can’t blame her. He feels sick from just being in the vaidkos’s presence, and he knows the corruptive power would be worse if he didn’t have Vara’s blessing protecting him. The fight was longer than it should have been. He could have killed it quicker, if not for Shae’s request.
“Necromancer?” he calls out. The graveyard is too quiet. “Shae!”
Shae doesn’t answer. Arthur swears and runs, sword in hand, towards the open grave. He skids to a halt at the foot of it and looks down to see the necromancer crumpled in a heap on top of a broken coffin. He swears again and drops his sword, then jumps down into the grave next to Shae.
The coffin cracks under his weight, and he falls to his knees. “Hey there, Shae, are you with me?” He reaches for Shae’s wrist—one of his gloves is off, for the first time Arthur’s ever seen. He yanks his own glove off too and presses his fingers to Shae’s wrist, searching for a pulse.
He finds one, slow and shallow, and relief floods through him. Shae’s body moves with the faint effort of breath. But his skin is still ice-cold under Arthur’s hand. If Arthur couldn’t feel the pulse, he would think the necromancer was dead.
He brushes the hair from Shae’s cold, pale face and shakes his shoulder. “You there? Hey, wake up for me, all right?”
Shae’s brow furrows, and a shiver runs through him, but he shows no sign of waking.
Arthur glances from the unconscious necromancer to the decayed corpse’s face, visible through the broken coffin lid. His stomach flips, but he fights back his instinctive revulsion. He doesn’t know the first thing about necromancy, and he doesn’t really know what the fuck Shae did here. But Shae looks so lost and cold, so helpless, that Arthur has only one course of action. He gathers Shae up into his arms—the man really needs to eat more—and hoists him up out of the grave.
It’s awkward, even as light as Shae is, and he thinks surely the jostling will wake Shae up. But Shae stays completely limp as Arthur pushes him onto the surface, then clambers up after him.
“I’ll take care of you later,” he tells the corpse, brushing dirt from his hands. Then he scoops Shae up into his arms, cradling him close to his chest.
He’s so cold.
It’s barely noon, but Arthur doesn’t want to make even the short trek to Hannick with Shae in this state. They’ll have to camp here until he recovers. He carries Shae through the open door of the burned-out chapel. The man curls up in his arms, like he’s trying to get closer to Arthur, and Arthur’s stomach flips again with something entirely different from revulsion.
The chapel floorplan is simple—a few back rooms behind the main worship chamber. Arthur sets Shae down against a wall in what was probably once the head priest’s bedroom. There are unusable remains of furniture, narrow windows, a fireplace leading to a broken chimney. More of the roof is intact here than the rest of the church.
Arthur starts to stand up, but a tug on his tunic stops him. Shae’s hands unconsciously grasping the fabric. “I’ll be right back,” he says, gently loosening Shae’s grip. Shae’s bare hand feels warmer than when he first found him in the grave, and an undue amount of relief eases Arthur’s heart. He feels safe enough leaving Shae while he heads back outside.
He checks on Duchess, making sure she didn’t hurt herself in the confusion. Only a patch of fur scraped away where she must have run past a fencepost. He leads her into what was probably once a vegetable garden, right outside the windows from the priest’s room, and removes her packs.
Then he steels his nerve and returns to the graveside. The atmosphere in the graveyard has entirely changed. There’s no more uneasiness chilling his nerves, no more whispers just out of earshot. The day is warm with sunlight and birdsong, and the uncovered grave and mound of dirt beside it are the only signs that something was ever wrong.
He forces himself to jump back down into the grave to retrieve his and Shae’s gloves. Shae’s coat. Then he climbs out and grabs his sword from where he threw it. He’d like to cover the grave again, but he’d need to repair the coffin lid first, and that would mean looking around for tools and wood. That would talk too long. A nagging feeling drives him back to Shae.
The necromancer is still huddled right where Arthur left him, unconscious against the wall. A thin, crumpled figure, looking just as ruined as the room around him. Arthur lays out a bedroll for him and then kneels at his side to check on him.
A single touch to his shoulder sends a burst of fear through Arthur. The necromancer’s even colder than before, the chill clear through the rough cotton of his shirt, and he’s trembling under Arthur’s hand. Arthur lays his palm against Shae’s cheek, and the unconscious man whimpers, leaning instinctively into the touch. His expression is razor-sharp and fragile, with none of the softness of sleep.
Arthur should light a fire, but he’s too scared to let go of Shae for that long. Why the hell is he so cold? Was it something the ghost did to him, or was it something he did to himself? Shae’s arm lies limp in his lap, the fresh cut no longer bleeding.
He slides down the wall to sit on the floor and pulls Shae into his lap. The necromancer will probably stab him for this when he wakes up, but he can deal with that then. For now, he just wants the man not to freeze to death on a warm summer day. His heart hurts with the way Shae curls into him, as if desperate for touch—and with the memory of the last time he held someone like this.
Ronan was nothing like Shae. Tall, strong, darkly tanned, laughed at everything, but especially at Arthur. He liked to cuddle and trace patterns on Arthur’s skin. He was sweet. He talked about his dreams of a quiet life on a farm, and he asked about Arthur’s work. Far too many questions about Arthur’s work, in retrospect. His sweetness was poison. His dreams were a drug.
Arthur’s arms tighten instinctively, and Shae mumbles something Arthur can’t understand. He isn’t shivering as hard, and when Arthur touches his arm, his skin is warmer. Arthur slides his palms down to cover his hands and feels the fragile bones warming under his touch.
Only then do his own shoulders loosen. The tension that’s carried him through battle and aftermath fades. He tips his head back against the old stone and thinks about demons, living and dead. He says, his voice sounding rough in the ruins, “Radiant Vara, am I on the right path?”
As usual, Vara doesn’t answer. It bothers Arthur in a distant, habitual way. He doesn’t think this is wrong, though, holding the necromancer close. He’s sworn to help those in need, and Shae is so clearly in need.
Shae’s nothing like Ronan. He isn’t sweet. But more and more, Arthur wants to know what bitterness tastes like.
***
It’s another two hours before Shae wakes. He doesn’t move, exactly, just stiffens in Arthur’s arms. It’s gradual, and Arthur’s not sure how long he’s been awake before a tense, quiet voice says, “You can let go now.”
But Shae still doesn’t move, all his sharp edges held in stasis. The weight of him feels warm and comfortable against Arthur’s chest. Arthur doesn’t move either. “I can let go, or I can stay,” Arthur says. “Do you want to get up?”
Shae’s head slumps lower on Arthur’s chest. “I don’t want to,” he says, even more quietly. Like it’s a secret. “But I have to. I need to check on the grave, I need to see...”
He half falls out of Arthur’s lap, then drags himself to his feet. He’s unsteady from sleep or exhaustion or both. Arthur jumps to his feet too, his whole body stiff from sitting in place so long, and grabs Shae’s wrist before he can go any farther.
“The dead woman can wait. We need to talk first.”
Shae glares daggers at him, and it’s crazy how relieved Arthur is to see that glare. All the cold fragility has melted from Shae’s face, and he’s flushed with anger or embarrassment. He looks alive again. “Unless you fixed her coffin while I was out, I need to do that now. It’s disrespectful to leave her like this.”
He’s right, and arguing will him will be more trouble than it’s worth. Arthur sighs. “Fine. Let’s look for a shovel.”
Splitting up to search would make more sense, but neither of them suggests that. Shae just trails along at Arthur’s heels like a ghost himself, quiet and constant, as Arthur checks for store rooms or closets. They find a singed tool shed outside the vegetable garden, and sure enough there are a few shovels. Arthur grabs the least-splintered looking one. They can’t find a hammer or nails, so Arthur ends up using the shovel as an axe to break some wooden boards from the door.
He wedges the boards over the lid of the coffin to cover the hole, then climbs back out. “Do you need to say anything?”
Shae shakes his head silently and sits down at the foot of the grave, arms around his knees. He still hasn’t put his coat back on, and Arthur vividly remembers how his cold, narrow body felt tucked against his.
Arthur yanks his mind away from that distraction. He touches his heart and lifts his head to say, “May Vara’s Radiance light your way.” Then he picks up the shovel and starts covering the coffin.
The work is hard, but the steady movement is a relief. A chance to do something practical, something physical. The sun sinks lower as he works, and he’s aching and sweating by the time he’s done. He sets down the shovel and drops next to Shae, who still isn’t looking at him.
Arthur leans back on his hands and looks out at the peaceful, swaying woods around them, the orchard trees heavy with fruit. “Tell me what happened.”
“The vaidkos had eaten the ghost. I had to pull her out before you killed it, or she would have vanished. That’s why I told you to wait.” Shae grimaces. “That thing was probably the reason she woke up in the first place. There shouldn’t be vaidkos this far south of the border.”
That bothers Arthur too, but he’s still fixated on a different problem. “I meant, why did you collapse? Do you always do that?” When Shae doesn’t answer immediately, Arthur grabs his chin and forces him to face him. “You scared the shit out of me, okay? You were completely frozen. I told you before, I’m not doing this job unless I know what to expect.”
Shae’s eyes go wide, and Arthur feels him swallowing under his fingers. His pulse quickens. “Fine.” He jerks away. “I don’t always collapse, but it’s gotten worse over the years. When I use my powers, it drains me.”
Arthur can still feel the smooth texture of Shae’s skin, an echo of touch against his fingers. “What should I do if I find you like that again?”
Forget Shae’s smile. The way he blushes, delicate pink, is going to haunt Arthur’s dreams for the next fortnight. “The same thing you did this time,” he says eventually. “Human contact is the only thing that helps.”
Puzzle pieces click into place. The way Shae followed close to him, even when he was pissed off about something. The way he panicked that morning in the Blue Wyvern when Arthur left to get breakfast without him. The single lie he told under Arthur’s truth spell: It’s all right if we separate briefly. As long as I know where you are, I’ll be fine.
“It’s not just when you use your magic, is it,” Arthur says slowly.
“No.” Shae sounds very tired. “But most of the time, just being near people is enough. You especially—I think it’s a paladin thing? You have this aura.”
“So, that’s why you hired me.” Arthur grins. “You wanted a portable fireplace.”
That startles a laugh from Shae. “Yeah, something like that.”
They sit together a while, as the sun sinks lower towards the horizon. Eventually, Arthur creaks to his feet. He’s going to be sore tomorrow. The fight was nothing, but shoveling isn’t a movement he’s used to. He reaches his hand down to Shae. “Let’s have dinner. I’m starving.”
Shae takes his hand and lets Arthur pull him up.