Tale of the Necromancer by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

17

It took only an instant.

“Daughter of my love…”

Marguerite cringed in pain at the sound of her father’s voice. Tears, her favorite companions, stung her eyes as opened them to see the ghastly, transparent apparition of her father. She expected to see him smiling at her as he always did.

But there was only sorrow, regret, and anger in his eyes. She took a step away from him in surprise. “Father?”

“I have tried to call out to you for so long. To warn you.” He reached toward her, as if to touch her cheek, frowning as he quickly realized he could not touch her. “Yet I did not have the strength.”

“I—I do not understand, I summoned you because I need your advice, and I—”

“You must escape this place. You must flee the monster Gideon. You must run! Death in the woods is preferable to being his prisoner!” Rage and hatred twisted his features into something she barely recognized.

She blinked, stunned at her father’s outburst. She did not know what to say—she had never seen him this angry. “I do not understand…I—I know what he is, but—”

“You may know what he is, my daughter. But you do not know what he has done.”

This was not at all how she expected the conversation to go. She had wanted to speak to her father of Gideon, yes—but not like this. “What…what has he done? What do you know?”

The hatred faded, turning only to sorrow, and he shook his head. “The dead know much, my beloved. And for what I am to tell you now…know that I take no joy in it. But you must understand the depravity he has committed. You must.”

Marguerite braced herself for what was to come but knew deep down that she could not truly be prepared. “Tell me.”

* * *

Gideon hummedas he arranged the table to his liking. He had insisted on cooking dinner, and he had sent his servants away for the evening. He enjoyed the convenience of having help, and maintaining a castle was certainly not a one “man” job—lich as he might be. But he far preferred to do as much as he could with his own hands.

It gave the results a greater foundation—of being valid and real. If he cooked the meal himself, it was more personal. More intimate.

He smirked. Intimate.

It was not that he was not extremely eager for what would happen after dinner was concluded. Oh, he very much was. Quite literally, his eagerness had grown painful. But it was not what waited for him through the long hours of the night that brought him such joy.

Love.

His Marguerite had spoken to him of love!

Smiling while he hummed, he set out the silverware and the candles. They were to dine in one of the smaller studies—a far cozier space when the fire was lit than his dining room. He would tell her of the world that awaited her, of the cities they would visit and the lands they would travel.

When the time for dinner came, and she did not arrive to join him, he frowned. Perhaps she did not know where he was—although she always managed to find him. She said it was easy enough to follow the scent of his cooking.

Perhaps she had fallen asleep, or was bathing, or was engrossed in her “prayers.” It was no matter. He would fetch her. When he reached their room, he found it empty. It was then that he began to grow concerned. “Marguerite?” He called her name but heard no reply.

He searched the castle for a half hour. By the time he found the locked door, he was in a near panic. Had something terrible happened to her?

Had she escaped again?

No. No, that was not possible. She had professed her love for him, reluctant as it might be. She will make peace with what I am. And soon, when she is ready, what she will become. I will make her a lich like I am. But she is young. That is all.

He knocked on the door. “Marguerite?”

There were muffled voices on the other side. A man’s voice, deep and insistent, and a woman’s interjecting—Marguerite—her tone distraught. What was going on in there? “Marguerite!”

He had sent his servants away.

There was a soul on the other side of that door—he could sense it. A soul, but no body. He pounded on the wood. What had she done?

When she did not answer, he growled and shifted his form to that of his true self. He slipped under the locked door, oozing through the cracks, until he loomed on the other side.

Rage overcame him like a flash of lightning, sudden and unexpected.

Marguerite stood in the center of a white chalk circle. He knew the symbol by heart, and it seemed so did she. She was weeping, tears once more streaking down her face unchecked. She was trembling, her eyes wide, and she looked on the edge of a mental break.

But that was not why he was angry.

It was the spectral form of the man who stood beside her. A man who was dead and gone. Or at least—he should have been gone.

Instantly, he knew what had happened. Instantly, he knew why Marguerite was so very upset.

“How dare you.” The words left him before he could stop them from issuing forth.

The glass in the room cracked and shattered.

She winced at the sound of his voice that she could not hear, but that resonated through her soul. He expected Marguerite to scream. Perhaps to faint. But once more, he underestimated her. She flew to a nearby table, picked up a small letter opener, and brandished it at him like a dagger. “Stay away from me!”

“The truth is told,” the ghost of King Henri the Second said, sneering at him. “She knows what you have done. She knows it all. Your truth is laid bare, monster…and now you shall reap what you have sown.”

With the gesture of a large black claw, the ghost was sent back to the ether from which it had come. He would hear no more from the king, and neither would Marguerite. He would have his revenge, but now was not the time.

Shifting back to his mortal form, he stepped toward his wife. “Marguerite—”

“No more. No closer.” She retreated another step, inching toward the door that led to a balcony. They were on the fourth floor, near to the top, and on the side of the cliff on which the castle stood. There was no escape for her.

Lifting his hands to show that he meant no harm, he took another step toward her, ignoring her plea. “Marguerite, calm down, we may speak of this in—”

He froze as she turned the sharp knife on herself, pressing the tip to her throat.

“I said no more.”

That time, he listened.

* * *

She sawfear in his eyes as she pressed the knife to her throat. True fear. “You cannot mend me if I die.” She laughed, sickly amused by the concept. “You do not wish me dead.”

“No. Of course not.”

“Would it not be easier? To take my life, like you did Leopold’s father, and then command me like one of your revenants? Father told me what Gabriel de Lorges whispered to him as he lay crumpled on the field of the jousting tournament. How you commanded de Lorges to strike a fatal blow against him.” Her hand shook, but she gripped the knife tighter to keep it from trembling. “You could do the same to me. Command me to love you.”

He shook his head, agony creasing his features. “Marguerite…no. I would never do such a thing. I do not want a servant—I do not want a pet. I want you, as you are. By my side.”

“And you would do anything to have it.” She took another step away from him. “Anything at all. You would murder a village. You would murder my best friend. You would murder my father. You killed him so that you could convince Catherine to have us wed.”

Gideon’s hands balled into fists at his sides, clenching tightly enough that his knuckles went white, before something in him surrendered, and they released. “Yes. I would kill anyone, destroy anything, if it meant I could have you.”

“You destroyed my life!”

“What life?” He laughed. “A half-daughter of a naïve king? Please. I am offering you everything you could ever want, and my undying love. The life I took you from had no future. No happiness. You would have married Leopold and died loveless.”

“Loveless?” She shouted the word, not believing what she was hearing. “You think the life I led before you killed it all was loveless? I had my family. You took them all away from me!”

“Am I not worth such a trade to you?” He reached out to her. “Please, Marguerite…put down the blade. Let us talk over dinner, and a bottle of wine, and—”

“No! I will be party to this no longer!”

Darkness came over him like a cloud over a moon. His silver eyes went cold. “You have no choice. There is nowhere for you to run. Nowhere you can hide. You are mine, Marguerite. Now and forever.”

And so, she arrived at the crossroads and knew which was the only path ahead of her that she could traverse. She expected to feel terror. But she did not. She knew what must need be done, and she was…at peace with it. Perhaps her conversations with the dead made it so. Or perhaps she finally accepted that which she should have done a long time ago, before his corruption poisoned her heart.

“There is but one thing left for me to do.” She smiled faintly at him. “One place where I can go that you cannot reach.”

His silver eyes widened. He took a silted step toward her. “No—”

“Goodbye, Gideon Raithe.” She took the knife from her throat just long enough to rip her wedding ring from her finger and hurl it at him. In the same moment, she fled onto the balcony, shoving open the doors with their shattered panes. They cut her hands. She did not care. It would not matter soon enough.

The ledge of the balcony was low enough that she could jump easily onto it.She turned in time to see Gideon coming toward her.

The thin band of gold still rolled across the floor, bouncing a few times before skittering along on its edge like a coin. Its path was ended abruptly as a dark boot flattened it to the stones.

A whisper of dark fabric.

“Marguerite—wait!”

The stone crenellations on the balcony dug into her palms. She could feel the grit as the edges of the blocks jabbed into the cuts on her hands. She watched the man who pursued her—who had taken everything from her. The monster she had fallen in love with. Dark robes swirled around him. Only his silhouette was visible, cut out against the firelight of the torches behind him.

He reached for her.

I choose to die.

She let herself fall backward into the darkness.

Indigo wool fabric whipped in the wind as the world rushed past her. Someone screamed her name, but it was too late. Hewn stone walls of the castle exterior turned to rough, jagged cliffs.

Then…all movement stopped.

Her ribcage collapsed.

Her lungs flooded with blood.

Her skull cracked.

She died.

Jagged rocks had met her at the bottom of the castle. Its parapets were black silhouettes against a barely brighter sky. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move.

She was already dead.

The silence of her heart was deafening. Her body was dead.

But she was still…there, somehow. Lingering. Stuck. Waiting for Death himself to fetch her.

Someone was suddenly there beside her. But it was not the reaper, although black robes swirled around him, caught in the wind she could no longer feel. He knelt beside her. Claws, long and jagged, as dark and shining as onyx, reached for her. Silver bands caught the dim starlight, stark in contrast against the shadows around him.

He spoke.

“You will never die alone.”

A promise and a threat.

Comforting and terrifying.

Angry…and mournful.

She was afraid of him. She was afraid of dying. But that wasn’t all she felt. There was something else there, lurking in the shadows of her stilled heart.

He lifted her in his inhuman hands, cradling her dead and broken body close to him. She watched, somehow within her body and without it, as he pulled a necklace from the depths of the darkness he was made from.

A talisman hovered over his palm, floating like the circlets around his wrists. Whispers came from him then, as inaudible as his promised threat. They were only felt like a chill on the wind. She could hear him because she was not alive.

But the words he said were strange and broken. Not any language she could have ever fathomed. But it called to her—sang to her—and her soul responded. The talisman hovering over his palm began to glow. It pulsed with a white light, not quite a heartbeat, but not quite anything else.

She began to glow, all the same. Her soul shone and pulsed in time with the glowing talisman.

The light left it. Like lightning striking a tree, it entered her. The talisman clattered to the rocks, empty and abandoned.

Pain surged through her, like nothing she had ever felt before. Agony of her injuries, and something else. It felt like roots were inside her, squirming, writhing things that wanted to wrap around her and never let her go.

She had been broken to pieces, and he had mended her with the only thing he could use.

Himself.

Darkness, as deep as the void, as cold as death, wormed into her soul. Twisted and tangled together with her own until she was more the tree than she was herself anymore.

Marguerite screamed. She screamed with her body, with her mind, and with her soul.

For none of it belonged to her anymore.

And it never would again.