Jorm

(Thayan Chronicles Book 1)

Copyright © 2018 Alan Bayman
All rights reserved.

Edited By:

Amy Hakanson

Cover Art By:

Gwynn Tavares

To those I love and have loved. There is a piece of you in every dream I craft. But especially to my Princess, who has the biggest piece of all…

Contents

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2.

3.

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EPOLOGUE

Excerpt (foreshadowing)

1.

It was raining again. My eyes where above the water level, so I could see the splashes ripple on the canals surface, mottling the grey sky’s reflection. When the rain paused, and the ripples grew calm. I could also see things in the reflections edge; towering buildings of grey stone and the occasional silhouette of a person passing by.

 I was standing in the water, concealed by the edge of a bridge that passed over me. I did not remember anything before. I had been there, I think, for a very long time.  I have watched the water rise and fall, and day to flicker into night, then day again, countless times. I watched the moss gather, creeping along the canals edge, covering every surface save the water, only to be devoured as herds of small rodents, in a squeaking cacophony swept in, chewing on everything green, leaving behind only droplets of waste, that the insects feast on, which calls the fish, swimming and gliding around me, to feed.

I liked it when my eyes where under the water and the fish came about. I liked the bright colors painted on some of their sides, and the way they would dart at the surface to catch an insect or at each other when they fought.

It was their brushing or bumping against me that made me realize (or remember) that I have a body. I did not know if I could not move or if I had just forgotten how to. I could turn my eyes but not my head. Things crawled over me. Moss grew on me, and things slithered over me to eat the moss, but almost nothing tried to eat me. Once a fish tried to, nibbling on me with a strange stabbing sensation. After it began to float on its belly at the water’s surface, and the other fish began to eat it, only to die themselves, bobbing gently away from me downstream.

On this day, I was contemplating one of the few things that has ever caused me no small amount of loathing; the Stick.

Many things have come floating in the canal. Pieces of crate, rotting food, mostly. Once a man floated by, pale and bloated, his blue eye staring up as the fish devoured him from underneath. My favorite was a cork-less bottle, its crimson contents swirling around as it bobbed along, carried by the current. My least favorite was the Stick.

The Stick was small, about 6 inches in length. Smaller than other sticks. There was nothing remarkable about the Stick, really, except that instead of floating down the current like all the other sticks before and after it, the Stick floated up to the left side of my head and stayed there. When it rained, it would tap against my temple. Constantly.

At first it was curious. I tried to find patterns in the tapping. Time passed, and it became tedious, a distraction from the rain. More time passed. My irritation grew. And grew. And grew. It came to be that rain brought only irritation, thanks to the Stick. My thoughts where consumed by it. By that day I had driven me to such rage that something in me changed.

The Stick had suddenly stopped poking me. Looking over, I saw a pale grey hand just peeking out of the water’s surface, clutching the Stick so hard that it had broken in half.

I had moved. I didn’t know if I ever had before, or even if I could.

After I figured out it was possible, moving came (relatively) quickly. At first, I had to channel my irritation in order to force movement. I thought about the Stick and channeled that annoyance onto whatever part of my body I wanted to shift. I noticed more things then. Touch. The water current gently pressing against my skin. I had always noticed the drops of rain that tapped against my face and head when the wind shifted so that a storm would bring droplets down under the bridge, but now I could turn my head up and watch them fall.

And so, I did. From day, until night, and then day again, until it stopped raining. I then reached out and touched the gritty stone wall underneath the bridge, just within reach. It was hard and coarse yet covered in something slick that left a dark smudge on my fingers.

Moving my legs took some time, as I was buried in earth up to just above my ankles. I climbed out of the canal. Some memory stirred in me that this was too easy, that lifting myself should not have been so effortless.

The sun was setting as I pulled myself over the canal’s edge, feeling the water slide and pool of my bare skin for what felt like the first time. I stood and beheld the riot of orange and crimson splashed across the cloudy sky. It shown in sharp contrast to the blackened and dark masonry of the buildings around me, save for where the rain drench reflected the evening light, like embers on coal.

“Who owns you?” A voice jolted me out of my reverie. I looked down from the rooftops to see a man facing me near the base of the bridge. The bridge arched sharply from one side of the canal to the other. I had never noticed that from underneath. A few people were walking on a street that led to the bridge. Two of them stepped into buildings, shutting doors behind them. One woman, dressed in drab whites and carrying a cloth bundle, slowed and grabbed onto the bridges railing as she stepped on, trying not to slip.

As she did, the man facing me took a few steps closer. He was wearing a dark cloak about his shoulders clasped with a silver insignia. His tunic and trousers were an even darker color, and looked, soft, clean, and expensive.

Velvet, some wispy, half-forgotten memory told me.

“I said,” the man’s voice was cold, but his eyes were nervous and excited while trying to look stern. His face was young, with only hints of a beard to mark him as an adult.

“I said”, he repeated, stepping closer, almost within reach. “Who. Owns. You.”

He was talking to me. Could I talk back? I opened my mouth to try. I felt my chest squeeze and water flowed out of my mouth and onto the ground. He looked surprised for a moment but quickly recovered.

“Well,” he said looking around. His nervousness and excitement seemed to heighten all at once.

“Fresh meat,” he said, looking back at me. He grinned suddenly, reached into his cloak and pulled out a long slender wand. It was solid black with a silver tip, and I remember thinking how well it matched his clothing.

He pointed the wand at me and said something that I could not understand. Suddenly, there was a terrible sensation, as though my thoughts where being squashed down and swept away. I felt frozen and locked, unable to do anything except for what this sensation bid me to do.

This sensation came from the tip of the wand, that was now resting on the center of my chest. The man was now standing directly in front of me, still uttering strange words. Within the sensation I felt his mind seep into mine. The first and last thing it said to me was now you are mine.

I responded by doing what I did before when I couldn’t move: I summoned my rage. Thinking of the Stick started to get me moving, but this man had given me plenty of extra motivation. My thoughts where still scattered but my sudden rage took him totally off guard. For an instant his presence faltered, and my hand lashed out, grabbing him by the throat. His carefully crafted words turned into a strangled choke, and things began to change.

The sensation of oppression, from the tip of the wand resting on my chest, changed to a feeling of burning. Both hot and cold at the same time, and strangely, not all that unpleasant. The man tried to struggle against my grip. The wands tip felt glued to my chest and flickered with a blue and white fire. The feeling of oppression vanished, replaced with the burning sensation, that mingled and suffused with my rage. Instead of pressing hid mind into mine, his mind seemed to be dragged into the flames inside me.

He groaned and began to wither as the flamed on my chest and in my mind grew brighter. It all happened quickly, the flames and the withering. So quickly that by the time I realized what was happening, the man was nothing more than black dust crumbling around my fingers. A crumbling skeleton in expensive clothing collapsed on to the damp cobblestones that I had vomited on, the wand landing on the cloak as it billowed to the ground.

Something in me had changed. The rage in my mind had settled but the fire still burned. Not as brightly, but like burning coals, a smoldering heat, both hot and cold. Memories started coming back to me in bits and fragments. I had a name, but I could not remember what it was. A memory came to me, distant and warm of a woman laying next to me, layers of her dress draped across my legs, her face pressed against my shoulder. Surrounded by pillows, there was a softness all around, especially from her. Softness and warmth. She was young, but life had made her older. She smiled at me with a light in her eyes that reminded me of the fire that now smoldered within me.

“Jorm,” she whispered. “Jorm…”

That must be my name, I decided.

Other memories started coming to me, though they were not as vivid as the first. I remembered writing. A lot of writing. I realized that I could read, in more than one language. There was a name, an occupation for what I was.

Scrivener. I took notes, wrote letters, made copied of scrolls and tomes succumbing to age. I have little memory of whom I worked for, but I could recall a great deal of what I read and copied.

I looked around. The sun had set, and the nearest light came from a flickering lantern hung over the doorway on the other side of the bridge, marking it a tavern. Even fewer people were out now, and they hurried along fearfully, as if to escape the night.

It was dark, but I could see clearly. Though, I could not see colors unless they were close to the lantern. I could tell from the others hurried movements that they could not see well, if at all. They certainly couldn’t see me.

I knelt and shook the man’s clothing free of dust and brittle bone. The fabric was soft, reminding me of the pillows in my memory. He had an ornate belt with several pouches, two ornate knives, and a thick, heavy coin purse.

I put the clothes on. The tunic and pants where a little loose around me, but after tightening the laces they fit nicely. The boots where surprisingly snug. It was as if they conformed to my feet as soon as I put them on. One long pouch held a long slender sheath that looked fit for the wand he was carrying. The other pouches held pieces of dried herbs, small bones, and some parchment bound in twine like a book without a cover. The parchment had some writing on it that I immediately recognized as Late Cyrian, and so I put it back in its pouch to read later. Then I picked up the cloak and wand and returned the wand to its sheath. As I adjusted the cloak about my shoulders, I looked down at the pile fragments at my feet. A piece of the man’s skull stared back up at me with an empty eye socket. A breeze started up, stirring about pieces of black dust from which the skull rested.

I had killed him, but felt nothing. Nothing? Almost nothing. There was a faint glimmer of remorse, mingled with outrage, somewhere within those smoldering coals in my mind. I killed him. He had tried to enslave me. I killed him.

I wondered how I killed him. I had only grabbed him by the throat. The spell must have backfired somehow as soon as I started to choke him. I did not know.

On impulse I kicked the skull fragment into the nearby canal. I thought, maybe he could do with time staring away gazing at the moss and fish, so threw I rest of the pieces of him in. It was only later that I realized he was completely dead, unlike myself, whatever I am.

I then began to walk. The rain made the cobblestones slick with ice, but if I moved slowly, I could remain sure footed. Buildings on top of buildings rose up into the night sky, divided by canals, streets, bridges, and walkways. Old towers rose up, sagging, half collapsed into other buildings, who used the fallen masonry to grow around, on, and sometimes through the crumbling structures. Other buildings built on the side of the canals had sunk so low into the mud that only their uppermost windows could be seen. Newer buildings were built on top of them.

Street signs were rare and half hazard. All of them were written in Late Cyrian. Curious. Cyrians, I suddenly recalled, where a rigid caste society. They would never have any tolerance for all this unregulated building. So, this place may have been conquered by Cyria at some point, but the rulership did not last.

I found the pieces of an old sign near and abandoned washing well. The letters, though faded, were written clearly in Uben.

Ubenfold.

The name, the place, had a stirring of familiarity. The memory stirred within me again. I recalled the woman’s face, her dark and curling hair tumbled over one cheek, her eyes full of that fire…

…hair of darker completion can be found on the continents of Amberly, Ambrosia, Keldesh (of course), and Ubenfold:

 As stated previously, the Amber people have a variety of looks and completions due to their lecherous tendencies of breeding with slaves, and the great continent of Ambrosia holds a variety of peoples, very few of which can ever be found OUTSIDE of Ambrosia, since the Cataclysm. Keldeshians have blackened hair to match their blackened skin. It is now only common in Ubenfold that you will find people fair of skin and dark of hair…

The clothes I wore made a soft whispering sound as I walked the city streets. The roads where icy, especially at the bridges, but if I tread carefully, I would not slip. Few people were out at night. Bums huddled together for warmth in narrow alleys. Some men staggered, alone or in groups, from one tavern to another. Poorer buildings had flickering lights within, illuminating the silhouette of women sagging against window frames, adopting cloy postures and baring flesh to men who passed by. Rats moved with me in the dark but shied away from those who carried light.

I noticed the silver brooch that held my new cloak about me had some sort of symbol of heraldry. I reversed the brooch so that the insignia was facing inward. I did not want my identity mistaken, or worse, people to get the right idea about how I got the cloak.

I walked all night. I learned to avoid the guardsmen; gaunt men with torches of blazing green fire. Their hard faces and beady eyes grew increasingly suspicious as the hours wore on.

It was easier to think now that I had the burning embers within my mind. Still, it was easy to slip into a state if emptiness, of passive observation. So easy that I had spent the entire night doing nothing more than walking and watching. I made a note to remember to think.

Dawn brought color back to the world. That dark masonry and black mud remained the same, but the vines clinging to them took on shades of green and brown. Stained wagons looking of marbled mahogany began to roll down the larger streets pulled by oxen of grey and rust. The people wore drab workmen’s leathers. They hauled barrels of wine and ale, and carts of goods to sell at any one of the many market places I had wandered through.

The city had docks on the Southwestern side of it, and as morning arose I found myself near them, in a maze of alleyways connecting warehouses, slums, and brothels, with the occasional sailor’s inn at an intersection. I had been there a while because the guards seemed to avoid the area at night. As dawn approached, it didn’t seem like they would be coming around much during the day either.

I rounded a corner and beheld something new. The alley went a ways and turned again, following another canal. At the corner stood three men over a fourth. Two of the men wore filthy leathers and held thick wooden cudgels. The third looked somewhat cleaner and held a long thin knife that dripped blood on the hand that held it. The fourth man was dressed as a ships laborer, with sashes of cloth across his waist and chest. He had been stabbed many times, and his was sashes were soaked in blood.

The three men, as one, turned to face me. The cleaner one, obviously the leader, had a hard, rugged face made uglier by a broken jaw poorly mended, making his teeth offset, pulling to the left as he spoke.

“What o’ we here? Ah noble ofer a night o’ fun?” His crippled mouth made him hard to understand, but his intentions where clear. His two men took a few steps toward me, one raising his club with a grin and the other crouching down as if to rush me. “Leth thaay hello oys!”

The men began to rush me. Fear flared up in the embers of my mind. I did not know how to fight. Further, I only had a small knife and a wand I had no idea how to use.

I decided to bluff. I pulled out the wand and pointed it at them. The way the pouch was arranged on my belt, it was surprisingly fast. Luckily, I had sheathed the wand the right way and now had the silver tip pointed in their direction.

The men froze for a brief instant at the sight of the wand, then the leader shouted “Necro!” and hurled his knife. With a speed easily twice as fast as they were charging me, all three men bolted around the corner.

I listened to the sound of the men running fade into the distance, then looked down at the knife sticking out of my chest. It didn’t hurt, but I felt it grating against a severed rib as I shifted. Without thinking I pulled it out. There was a small slit in my tunic, but no blood.  Peeking through the slit, I could see a deep gash in my pale flesh, with a hint of grey sinew and muscle underneath. Then, for the first time, I grew hungry.

I did not salivate. It was more like an itch in my mouth, coupled with that familiar aching emptiness in my stomach that comes from going a long time without a meal. I glanced down at the dead man in front of me and it felt like the hunger magnified a thousand-fold. I tried to resist, the spark within me shuddering with revulsion, but my body moved of its own accord, bending down and sinking my teeth into the flesh of his arm. There was a pleasant burning sensation in my mouth, but no flavor. The flesh seemed to dissolve the moment it entered my mouth, turning into a hot liquid that sent a warm shiver through me as it slid down my throat.

It was a shock, the warmth. Feeling something that real, that alive, was intensely pleasant. If I hadn’t had the memory of being warm before, I wouldn’t have been able to stop eating. Even so, it took an enormous amount of effort, and I was only successful after the itching sensation in my chest from the knife wound stopped suddenly. I jerked back up from my crouch and tried to get my bearings.

I looked at the wound through the hole in my tunic and found it to be completely healed. Beneath me was a gruesome sight. I had devoured the flesh on both the man’s arms and part of his face. A confusing mixture of emotions welled up from the embers within me as his grey eyes gazed into mine. It was too much. Not wanting to think about it I dragged his body over to the canal and pushed it in. “Let the fish have him, and be happy,” I thought to myself.  I watched the water turn red around him as the fish began their little feasting dance by darting up against him, taking a nibble, and darting away. It was so familiar. It calmed me.

I watched for a while. I began to notice something else in the interplay between the body, the water, and the fish in their dancing feast. There was a shimmering sort of smoke above and around the body, slowly entwined with it. But it could not have been smoke, for it was in the water as well. As I focused on it, I realized that it was almost everywhere, drifting lazily in the air and water, but it was drawn to the body.

Miasma, a distant memory told me. But what was miasma? The memory for which the word came floated to the surface of my mind: copying some arcane text in a brightly lit room, my hand cramping from trying to get the illustrations exactly right, fearful of the wrath of my employer should I make a mistake.

The Necromantic currents, or Death Currents, most commonly known as Miasma, can be found in all forms of elemental patterns, but is easiest to perceive in the air and water elements. Laymen once believed it to be the wisps in the Veil between life and death. Nay, it is death itself. The very end cycle (and anathema) to the currents of Life, and the foundation to the Necromantic Arts.

Miasma will gather most where death avails itself; morgues, slaughter houses, and temples dedicated to the god Null. To use it, one must first perceive it, but beware, it is one of the deadliest of currents….

The book from my memory was titled, “The Seven Steps of the Magi, an Introductory Guide to Wizardry.” I vaguely remember the copying job was for the author of the book, a powerful man full of self-importance. Given the fear I felt in the memory, I wondered if he had murdered me over some typo.

I heard a noise behind me, turned, and saw a woman hurrying along the alleyway with a burlap sack full of clothing over her shoulder, head ducked down, trying not to be noticed. My hands and face (and surprisingly little else) were covered in blood. I did not think she would report me to the guardsmen, considering the sort of neighborhood this was, so I ignored her. I needed to get the blood off, but the canal was too deep for me to reach down and wash. I settled on wiping myself down with the inside corner of my cloak.

I began walking again, this time watching the wisps of Miasma that drifted around the city and trying to recall other buried memories related to it. More fragments came to me as I made new discoveries. Some memories came from The Seven Steps book, but most of them came from other books and scrolls, most of which were too hazy to get any further background.

I saw Miasma clinging to a man and intensify when he gave a wracking cough. By that I knew him to have a disease in his lungs, likely fatal. It was surprising how many people had diseases or infections quickening their life to an end.

A hairless man in chains with sunken cheeks and skin like parchment pulling a small cart in the direction of a merchant seemed to be almost completely of Miasma. I sensed it roiling beneath his skin like a storm trapped in a glass jar. Nothing alive could be like that. He must be a zombie.

Like me.

He did not acknowledge me in any way as we passed by one another, save his eyes. Watery grey and sunken, they locked on to me with such a fierce intensity that almost stopped me in the middle of the street. I could not tell what he was feeling, tense as he was. Anger? Despair? Hunger? I thought about the first man I met and concluded that this zombie must have been subjected to the same control that was tried on me, but with greater success. I wanted to free him but did not see how I could without making a scene. He passed by and disappeared toward some marketplace, the cart and merchant in tow.

A few streets later it occurred to me that if I recognized him as a zombie, then others could recognize me as a zombie just as easily, despite being well dressed and hooded. I had been lucky so far, but that couldn’t last. I needed somewhere I could hide, and though I didn’t like it, it had to be somewhere that had “food” nearby in case I got injured. I didn’t know if or for how long I could control myself if I got hungry.

I took to the alleyways near the docks again, this time searching for places where Miasma gathered. There were a few buildings where it gathered but something held me back. The Miasma didn’t drift there so much as was “pulled”. Something told me that whatever was in there, it would not be friendly.

One place I considered was made up of a small crowd of one room houses stacked on and around one another that had been turned into a brothel. From the ruins around it, at one time it may have been a tavern. All the ladies there where ill to some degree. It looked like a place I could hide in an emergency and the ambient Miasma would hide what I am. I would not, or couldn’t afford, to stay there a lengthy time unless I owned the place. But owning the place would force me into a situation I would not want; I would have to foster the suffering of the ladies who worked there in order to remain hidden. The embers within me did not agree to that at all. In fact, watching them suffer at a distance bothered me.

I found myself stopping at a little cottage set on one corner of the intersection between two canals. The other buildings crowded all around and sometimes on top of one another, but they all stopped a good 10 feet away from the cottage. Miasma hung over the old darken bricks like a fine sheet of mist. Hung over the front door of the cottage was a wooden carving of three circles entwined: the symbol of a healer.

Curious. Healing magic is supposed to repel Miasma. In fact, I had seen it earlier that day, when a priestess of Sol blessed a street urchin. Her hand, resting on his filthy head, caused a ripple in the air, and the Miasma settling about his flesh fled before her. Her merely walking down the street seemed to push it away from her.

I watched the cottage. A man with a broken arm staggered from the alleyways and through the front door. About an hour later he stepped out, grimacing, his arm tied and bound to a splint. Later, two men came dragging a third with a shattered leg and coughing up blood. The Miasma around the house intensified a little. Then the two men walked out muttering to one another. I caught, “stupid fool,” and “I warned him a thousand times, you can’t outrun a wine barrel,” as they passed. Then there was a loud splash from behind the cottage. I went over to see. The injured man, now dead, was floating, nude and face down, the fish beneath him beginning their dance. The water was clearer here than other places, and I could see the bones of many piled on the canal floor, picked clean by the fish.

This was a healer’s house, but a healer who lacked magic. Perhaps even an apothecary or herbalist with no knowledge of Alchemy. A perfect place to hide, if I played my cards right.

It was getting late. I opened the door and stepped inside.

2.

The room was large and sparsely furnished. A bloodstained table dominated the center of the room, with a smaller table next to it. The smaller table had some knives, sticks, bandages, some sewing needles, and a few rolls of thread. A few sturdy wooden chairs marked the perimeter of the room. There were two other doors, one directly across from the entrance, the other one to the right. The left wall had shuttered and boarded windows. A single lamp, brightly lit, hung from a hook in the center of the room.

Standing between the two tables was a tall middle-aged man in a bloodstained apothecaries robe. He was thin, but with a large belly, and balding with scraggly tufts of hair just over his ears. At the moment he was drinking from a large jug marked as distilled spirits. When he saw me, he brought it down with a cough, splashing some of the clear liquid onto his robe. He scowled at me, the mole on his cheek turning almost downward.

“Let me guess,” his voice sounded too deep for his thin frame. “You’ve a boil somewhere delicate? Slumming with the whores and you caught something?”

I shook my head. I felt like I needed to say something, but the last time I tried to speak to someone, I vomited canal water all over the ground. I tried anyway.

I opened my mouth, then realized my lungs where empty. Filling them filled me the scents of the room; blood, alcohol, wood, stale sweat and vomit. I was so overwhelmed that I momentarily forgot to say anything.

The man’s scowl deepened, but before he could say anything I blurted out, “Apprentice.”

“You what,” He started. Then he gave out a cold bark of laughter. “You, what, an apprentice to me, a healer with no magic? You daft or a cripple?”

I shook my head.

“You on the run?”

I didn’t know how to answer him. I wasn’t on the run, but at the same time I could not be found out. Did that count as being on the run? Without me saying anything he started nodding, the scowl coming back.

“Yeah, a thief, eh? Stole some fancy clothes and now you’re a marked man?”

I shook my head. “It’s complicated.” My voice sounded like sanding paper but was getting better with use.

The man’s scowl turned to a grimace. He swayed slightly as he set the jug down on the smaller table with a clank.

“No, and no,” he said. “I don’t recognize you’re accent, and you could be a thief. I’ll not have you stealing my- “

“I’ll pay you,” I interrupted. Reaching into my belt I pulled out my coin purse. Cracking it open I thought to pull out a few silvers, but the thing was stuffed with gold! So instead, I pulled out a single coin and held it aloft.

The man’s eyes widened when he saw it, then narrowed as he looked back at me.

“Gold every two months,” I said. “Nothing more. I sleep here. You teach me. I will feed myself, and do whatever you say, as long as it has to so with learning the craft.”

The man’s eyes had strayed back to the coin. He licked his lips, then started to scowl again.

“You sleep on the floor, in here or in the storage room. Anything in there turns up missing you pay for it.”

I nodded.

“You do everything I say, without any whining. This is bloody work. If you don’t like it, go right ahead and leave, but I still get my gold.”

I nodded again offering out the gold.

“And you take the damn hood off. I make no agreement with a man I can’t look in the eye.”

I pulled the hood back. I was not sure what I looked like, but I hoped that he was drunk enough to be unable to tell that I was undead. He squinted at me, frowning.

“You ill, or something?”

Just then there was a loud bang as the door slammed open. Two men stumbled in, one man half dragging the other. They were dressed as dock workers; thick, heavy sandals, pants that ended above the knee, and ragged wool tunics. The man being dragged had a ragged gash that wound around one arm, and trailed up to his shoulder, through his tunic and across his chest.

“Put him on the table,” the apothecary barked, and then went to go help. After a moment, I followed, lifting the bottom half of the man easily onto the table. All three men looked at me in surprise, until the injured man gave a cough and groaned.

The apothecary turned away and started wadding up a small bundle of bandages, soaking them in distilled spirits. “What happened to him?”

  “Got caught in the ropes,” said the uninjured man. “Rigging went tight when it should have been unhooked.” 

The apothecary shook his head. “Somebody got lazy.” The uninjured man nodded, anger on his plain face.

The apothecary then looked down at the man on the table. “Listen carefully, lad. I can tell by the way your breathing that your ribs are cracked. They could be broken. I’ve got to clean the wounds, and I don’t have anything for the pain that you can afford. It’s going to hurt like a father’s thrashing, but if you scream, or even take a tighten up too much, you’ll probably die. If I don’t clean it, rot will set in and you’ll probably die anyway. So, what’s it going to be? No, don’t speak, just knock once on the table for treatment, twice for no. But before you do, know that treating you is going to cost you half a silver. Three coppers for supplies and two for service.”

The man hesitated for a moment, then knocked once on the table with his good hand.

The apothecary nodded, and then with me holding the injured man down, began to dab the spirits-soaked bandages on his wounds. The man groaned and shuddered but tried to remain still. The Miasma hovering around his wounds shied away from the soaked bandage, and while it didn’t stay completely away, it was severely reduced.

After his wounds where cleaned, the apothecary picked up the needle and thread, and carefully sewed the deeper gashes shut. The injured man was given some of the spirits to drink and a rag to bite down on for the pain, along with repeated warnings that he must keep his breathing relaxed.

When the sewing was done, and bandages where wrapped around the wounds, the man’s friend and I carefully helped him to his feet.

“No work for a week, light work only for the next month or so, or he dies,” said the apothecary.

“But he as to work-,” his friend began, but the apothecary cut him off.

“Not my problem. Now pay me.”

Between the two men they managed to scrounge together 5 copper pieces. They left slowly, one man supporting the other, the door briefly illuminating the room with the evening sun. Then the apothecary turned to me.

“My name is Adan. And I’ll take that gold now.”

He took my coin, added it to the others, and hurried through the door to my left. From where I was standing the room looked like his bedroom recklessly collided with an alchemy lab. Vials, beakers, and jars of odd colored liquids lay scattered on some crowded shelves and even part of an unkept bed.

A moment later he returned, shutting and locking the door behind him and turned to me with a half-smile, half grimace.

“Now, let’s put you to work. Where to begin?”

3.

Time passed, though it was much more intense than when I was in the canal. I spent a lot of time cleaning things for Adan. Starting with the main room and all his instruments, then working back to the storage room, which held bandages, moldy grains, and a small distillery that he used to brew the alcohol for cleaning the instruments and drinking himself to a stupor.

He was initially suspicious of me. But I continued to be both reliable and competent, something he said he wasn’t used to in apprentices. I also sensed a lazy sort of apathy kept him from inquiring further.

When he wasn’t too drunk (and sometimes when he was) he would take in patients. At first, all I did was help them onto the table and hold them down if they were thrashing. But I watched everything he did, and when he realized my hands where sure and steady, he began to show me how to sew flesh together, tie tourniquets, bandage wounds, and set bones.

I took particular pride in my stitching. I recalled doing or copying illustrations as a scrivener and paid as close attention to all the little details with a needle as I would with a quill. I fancied my stitches much like my illustrations, the story they highlighted as that of one triumph over injury.

Well, sometimes. Other times (more often, in those days) our patients died at the table. If the patient was alone or no one was willing to pay for funeral arrangements, it was then my job to drag the body out through the storage room and out the back door, throwing it into the canal.

It was these times that I experimented with eating. I was uncomfortable at first. I worried that my hunger was like an addiction that grew with each bite and would become uncontrollable. Also, I am eating people. I was a person, once, though I didn’t think I was now. I am remembering more and more what I was like. The living me would be appalled at what I had become.

But strangely, whenever I thought about it, my mind would drift to the fish in their feeding dance. I became peaceful. I felt myself in a sort of dance, like the fish. Very odd, perhaps not quite sane, but it made the situation acceptable.

I discovered that if I overate I would look more alive, at least physically. My skin took on a pallor that was almost normal, and my hair and nails grew a little. I think my hair and nails would continue to grow, like a regular corpse, but I think eating sped it up.

I tried letting the flesh I was eating turn to liquid and then spit it out before swallowing. This was very hard to do, as I had to fight my instinctive hunger even if I wasn’t hungry. What came out was a black ichor roiling with Miasma. It practically was Miasma, in liquid form. I touched it with my finger and it immediately seeped into my flesh. It was a pleasant sensation, like eating.

When I found several sets of alchemy vials at a nearby pawnbroker (more on that later), I tried, and successfully filled several vials with black ichor. In liquid form, it seemed that the Miasma would not pass through the glass. I decided that I would regularly keep a few to experiment with but would always keep half a dozen of them hidden away in case I was injured.

I began trying to manipulate Miasma as well, trying to recall what I remembered from the books I had copied and drawing from the notes of the man who had tried to enslave me. It turned out that his scrawling notes in Late Cyrian where instructions on Necromancy. They were barely legible, and not very clear, but made for a strong base to work from.

What I discovered in those days was mostly in relation to my working with Adan. I could quickly ascertain the nature of a wound based on how the Miasma reacted with it. For example, I could tell if a broken bone had broken to a point and pierced muscle underneath, if there was internal bleeding, or even the nature of a man’s sickness. With that I first discovered how to manipulate Miasma; I was trying to mitigate the effects on a man with a coughing sickness, and I accidentally cured him by killing the disease. I almost killed him as well, but he walked out of the cottage at the end of the day and If I hadn’t of tried he would have died for sure.

But most of my experiments took place in the storage room at night while Adan was sleeping. After a while I started walking the streets and alleys just before dawn. Most of the people were asleep then, save for some of the ladies of the brothels, who, if they weren’t to weary or drunk, crowded in the bath houses, or in the poorer area I lived; they would sit on the edge of the canals with a roped bucket, soap, and a rag. I walked by lines of them, chatting quietly, some of them passing around a bottle or pipe. As my walks became more frequent some of them began to recognize me and a few of them would smile and wave. One or two even offered their services. This reminded me of the sick brothel I first considered living at, and I returned to it, memorizing several routes in case it was somewhere I needed to hide. I felt being out and about in the late hours was safer for me because magicians where in the upper class and would not deign to be out in the slums at night out of pride. I was right, but for the wrong reason.

As one discovery can lead to another, while memorizing my third route from the cottage to the brothel, I discovered a shop that was open late in the night; Cronwins Goods.

Cronwin was a pawnbroker. Though he seemed to be a normal man, he almost never slept, save a few hours at dusk. He almost never left his shop, and it was always open. If he was sleeping he left his door locked but had a rope out front that went inside to a bell that would wake him up if pulled. He had a narrow face with a hatchet of a nose, ruddy skin with black, beady eyes and matching, tussled hair. His shop was packed from floor to ceiling with stuff, some of it tied off with twine to keep from toppling into isles, so narrow you had to step sideways to pass through.

Every time I went there, I would find something interesting to mull over. It was difficult not to spend all my money there. From him, I ended up purchasing a variety of things: some humbler sets of clothes, test tubes, a mortar and pestle, a scrivener’s kit (expensive, but excellent craftsmanship, I couldn’t resist), boot polish, a comb, mirror, and an old jewelry box he practically gave away that I could sense Miasma around it.

To him I sold the dagger that was thrown at me and a few other odds and ends I had found. In all this, I discovered that I am terrible at haggling, and probably paid more for most of what I got and sold things for less than I should.

I still had enough gold for over a year of training though. That man I slew must have been filthy rich. That was something to worry about. He was undoubtedly a noble, or connected enough to them, and that meant there would be an investigation.

Why they hadn’t tracked me down already, I did not know.

4.

A few days after my third trip to Cronwins, I got a message from him. It was in the middle of the day. Adan was passed out in one of his chairs, snoring heavily while I was splinting a dock worker’s leg. A boy I recognized as one of the street urchins came running in with a wadded-up piece of parchment loudly declaring that Cronwin had promised him that I would pay a silver for delivering a message. He then held the wadded-up paper behind his back and thrust out his hand expectantly.

I glared at him. “Three coppers, or I’ll tell Cronwin you tried to ransom his note. A note, I’m sure he already paid you to deliver. Unless you’re lying and that parchment you’ve got is some nobles grocery list from a rubbish bin.”

By the way I now talk, you can tell I’ve been around Adan for a while.

The boy immediately deflated, making himself look smaller, his thrust-out hand now cradled in supplication. “Please,” he whimpered.

I walked over to him and held out my hand. “The letter first.”

Scowling, he handed me the wadded-up piece of parchment. It read:

Jorm;

I have something for you. Come tonight or sooner. Great opportunity.

--C

P.S. No trick, on my honor.

I looked back at the boy, who was still standing there, looking as small and meek as any street beggar. I gave him 3 coppers, and he immediately straightened up, grinned, and ran out.

“You’re too nice,” The dock worker said from the table. “Boy’s probably marked you as an easy target now. He’ll trade that info to all his friends. You’ve made him rich today and given yourself all sorts of headache.”

I shrugged. I already knew I was lousy at trade.

The night was cloudless and the air cooler than usual, almost enough for frost to form. Autumn was well on its way, and the trade streets where crowded with merchant wagons parked from out of town. Hired guards sat on a few of them with blankets over their shoulders and crossbows in hand, their eyes drifting somewhere between weary, drunk, and bored.

I gave them wide berth. I had chosen to come out just before midnight, when most taverns where closing down and then men visiting them where not stopping over to brothels but where staggering home. Pickpockets and thugs also roamed the streets at this time, but I was wearing my poorer attire and did not sway enough to mark me as an easy target. 

Cronwins Goods was closed and locked, but a few minutes after ringing the bell the man opened the door and let me inside. After letting me in, he locked and barred the door again, signifying the place was closed. This was unusual for him, and I said so. He looked at me nervously, the small lantern he held the only source of light in the room. I could see in the dark, but I wondered if he could see any further than a few feet.

“All apologies, good patron. I wish for our conversation to go uninterrupted. You are of course free to leave any time you like,” He gestured toward the door, causing his shadow to flicker wildly behind him. “But please, stay a moment let us share some tea.”

He always offered tea. Sometimes I partook. I found that I could drink liquids, and even eat small amounts of food if I chewed enough. But it always tasted terrible and sat heavily in my stomach until I puked it up again. If I didn’t vomit it out, it would eventually start to leak out of me in a more “natural,” but unpleasant and entirely uncontrolled manner.

I decided it was good to maintain the façade of being alive, so when he led me to counter and poured from an elegant teapot he kept behind it, I took the offered cup gratefully, and kept myself from grimacing when I sipped from it. Cronwin took a steaming cup under his nose and inhaled deeply, a smile playing across his lips. He then took a long sip and sighed.

“Dark leaves, with aspris root and lavender. Not too sweet, not too bitter, but oh so rich. An excellent batch, the best tea I’ve had in quite a while. The vendor is a friend of mine, if you are interested.”

“Is this tea your purpose in calling me here?”, I asked.

“Oh no, not at all,” he smiled. “Forgive my weakness, I can easily lose myself in a fine brewing.” He took another long sip, finishing his cup and setting it down on the counter. I copied him. I noticed he no longer showed any signs of nervousness. Indeed, he was his old self again. A memory stirred within me, having to do with some sort of alchemist book I had been copying. Both aspris root and lavender could be used to make a calming effect, strongly so if used in conjunction.

He had drugged us. Or rather he tried to, with partial success. Him, to make himself less nervous, and probably me to put me at ease. There was likely to be a catch or two in whatever it was he was going to offer, and he was looking to slip something into the deal in hopes that I wouldn’t catch on.

On the positive side, this meant I was pretty sure he had not figured out that I was a zombie. Most drugs don’t affect the undead, and if he knew I was one, he wouldn’t have wasted his “good tea” on me.

“I was digging through one of my old storerooms and came across something that I thought would be of great interest to you.” He reached behind his desk and carefully pulled out a blue silk bundle, about half the size of a loaf of bread. He carefully set the bundle on the counter and gently unraveled it.

Inside was the most exquisite doll I have ever seen. It lay on its back, wearing the tiniest perfect replica of leather armor, dyed black, with chainmail greaves, gauntlets and pauldrons with rings so small they could fit through the eye of a needle. Its elaborate helm ended at the face with a porcelain mask of a wolf, painted with such detail that it must have been done with either magic or a single hair from a brush.

“It is, exquisite,” I said, and I meant it. Its eyes were made of some material I could not make out because of the sheer amount of Miasma roiling in them. The doll was filled with it.

“Yea, beautiful, isn’t it?” Cronwin sounded so relieved when he spoke, I looked back up at him. He looked so relaxed, it was almost as though he was a different person. He looked as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, a weight that had been propping him up as much as he had been holding it.

“It is the perfect replica of a Judesen,” he continued. A Judesen was the elite guard of the White Council, the head of the Necromancers Guild and the ruling body of Ubenfold. I recalled there used to be a king when I was alive, but even then, the king ruled in name only and the White Council controlled everything from the shadows. They must have found at some point they didn’t need to hide anymore.

The word Judesen came from the words Judicar, meaning “Judge, jury, and executioner” in Late Cyrian, and Endesen, meaning “wizards envoy” in Uben. The two words summed up the role of the Judesen quite accurately.

All this went through my mind as Cronwin continued to talk. He told me that the doll once belonged in the box that I had purchased from him previously, but he had misplaced the doll and thought it lost or stolen. Seeing as I had already purchased the box, he felt that I should have the doll to go with it.

I figured this to be some sort of trap. The doll was obviously magical and most likely cursed. But I figured that curse seemed to revolve around the use of Miasma, and as someone who was already dead, Miasma couldn’t hurt me. I figured that I could take the doll, work out some way to drain the Miasma, and then sell it to some other merchant. With its detail and craftsmanship, I could get at least 50 gold for it. More if I found a collector.

I took the doll, rolled up in blue silk and stuffed it in a bag to take back home with me. There I unraveled it and placed it in the box I had purchased. It fit perfectly. It bothered me that Cronwin had tried to deceive me. I thought we were becoming friends. I planned on finding a new pawn shop to frequent from then on.

A few days passed as I spent some time examining the doll, but mostly with work. A plague had swept through the city, and while Adan spent his sober moments lancing boils and bandaging sores, I quietly killed the disease within patients. It backfired a little as rumors began to spread that Adan’s services could cure the disease, and within a day we had lines of patients out the door. At first the first crowd Adan eyed me suspiciously. But as more people came in he just shrugged and took their money.

It bothered the glowing embers within me to have to turn them away at night. But Adan insisted at closing the doors at sunset.

“If you don’t lock the door at dark, they’ll come at all hours,” he said. “Then you’ll never get any sleep.”

While this was true for him, I didn’t sleep. I wondered if I should start taking patients at night while he slept, perhaps encouraging him to drink more spirits so I would be less likely to wake him.

But then again, I was using the night to explore and experiment with Miasma. Perhaps a compromise is in order, I thought to myself. Maybe go out and treat some homeless vagrant? But then the Miasma that hovers over this place would not shroud what I was doing…

It was sometime after the eleventh hour of the third night after I received the doll that I heard the box move. I was holding a vial in each hand, one filled with dark liquid Miasma, and the other empty. I had recently discovered that my mental urging I could coax liquid Miasma to move. I say coax, because it was nothing like commanding. I felt like I had to convince it to go where I wanted. At the moment I was holding both vials upright and unstopped, but slightly tilted so their lips where just touching. I was trying to convince the Miasma to move from one vial to the other.

There was a click, and a faint creaking sound from the shelf directly behind me. I carefully sealed the vial of Miasma and slowly turned around.

As I have stated before, in the dark I can see clearly, but only in black and white. The room was unlit, but in shades of grey I saw that the box turned a few inches from its resting spot and the latch for the lid had come undone. I knew that It had been locked.

I watched it, unmoving as the lid creaked open no more than an inch. From within, I could see the mask of the doll’s head staring at me with two pinpoint eyes of roiling darkness. I thought of reaching for a weapon, but as soon as I glanced away, a black cloud of churning Miasma shot out from within the box and enveloped me.

I felt a sudden sense of vertigo followed by the sensation of my face slamming against the floor and the sound of the empty vial I was holding shattered next to me. Voices filled my head, a chorus of murmuring commands and pleas. I was lost. I could not mover or even think. I felt the Miasma filling me, soothing away the wound from when my head hit the floor, pushing out fragments of glass from the broken vial.

Then suddenly, the voices all at once halted. I could still feel their presence within my mind like they were holding their breath. Waiting for something.

When whatever they were waiting for didn’t come they began again, only stronger. Their voices went from a murmur to a roar, shouting, screeching, crying, and begging all at once. I thrashed around on the ground, my mind in agony, the Miasma from the box quickly healing the wounds from the broken glass I rolled in. I think I even punched myself, to try to get the voices out of my head. But whatever injuries I inflicted, no matter how severe, the Miasma quickly healed me.

Again, the voices suddenly halted, and again there was a waiting. And for a third time the voices began. They were deafening. I must have screamed. The agony was greater than anything I had ever remembered feeling. I remember wishing I could black out, of intense, frantic desperation. More glass shattered, my thrashing knocked the flask of Miasma from the table I had set it on. The released ichor responded to my need, wrapping around my head, giving my mind a protective shroud. It wasn’t enough to block out the voices, but it made the them bearable. 

For a third time the voices stopped. Again, they waited. I scrambled to my feet, cutting myself on glass, trying to reach for the doll and crush it. With a roar that threw me to the ground again the voices leaped from my mind, hovered over me as a black cloud of roiling Miasma with two pinpoints of green light glaring down at me, and then it flew through the wall to the outside without leaving so much a scratch on the stone.

I stared at the wall, frozen for a moment, when suddenly the door to the main room slammed open. There stood Adan. He was naked save for some ragged undershorts, and his skin was blotted and patchy from age and a strange belief that he only needed to bathe his arms and face. He swayed drunkenly one hand holding his lantern, the other a bludgeoning stick.

“What in the THOUSAND Hells is going on,” he bellowed. His eyes looked around wildly.

“Nine,” I blurted. I wasn’t thinking right. Too much had happened.

“What?” he looked down at me, startled.

“Nine. There are nine Hells. Each one has a thousand regions. I suppose you could say nine thousand hells, but a ‘thousand hells’ is a misnomer. There are also supposed to be nine hundred and ninety-nine sub realms to Hell within the Abyss, so I suppose you could say ‘what in the nine thousand nine hundred in--‘”

“DO YOU have any idea what time it is?” he yelled.

I stared at him for a moment.

“Um, no.”

“It’s time I should be sleeping.” He glared at me then looked around. “Clean up this mess. Since you’re so keen on keeping me up at night, you can work the table without me in the morning. I’m sleeping in.” He slammed the door shut. Then yelled through it:

“Wake me up again and I’ll beat your ass!” There was a pause, then, “turn customers away in the morning and I’ll beat your ass!” there was another pause, and then a third yell, this time further away, “piss me off again and I’ll beat your ass.”

5.

I waited until near morning to move from where I was and check on the doll. By then I had gathered my wits and was sure Adan was deep in slumber. The doll hung over the edge of the box, empty of Miasma but undamaged, save for a thin crack that ran straight through the right eye of the mask and across the left cheek.

I thought of mending it and then selling it. But the more I thought about it the less of a good idea it became. Mending the mask might reactivate its magic somehow, so it might attack me again. But if I sold it, whoever bought it might mend the mask and suffer as I did or worse. So, I decided to keep it for further study.

The day was less crowded than the one before. The plague was quick in its lethality, and those who caught it either succumbed quickly or recovered enough to not require our services. Still, there were many that morning whom I managed to save in time. As the day wore into late afternoon, Adan finally staggered in, already drunk, and sat in his usual chair in the corner. I made a pretense of getting him more spirits to drink, and as I did so I laid a hand on his shoulder and killed the plague that was just beginning to get a hold of him. I had spent so many days killing the disease that I could see right away when it was within someone.

He sat there for a while, sipping spirits and occasionally helping patients. After a time his mood seemed to improve, or at least elevate to his usual level of dourness.

The day ended as it often did, with Aden dozing in his chair as I locked and barred the front door. I roused him to go do as he usually did, go to an inn to fetch something to eat, drink, and pay one of the serving wenches for her more intimate services, or go to his room where I suspected he did some experiments of his own. Or maybe used to. These days I was pretty sure he just ate some of the dried pork he had hanging in his room and then drink himself into a coma.

At least he was getting some food in him. He occasionally had me go out and purchase it at the Warf Market. I decided to purchase a higher quality meat than he wanted to pay for and covered the difference. He didn’t say anything about it but ate a lot more often when I did. That was good. The Miasma was less reactionary to his presence when he ate more. I wanted to get him to eat some vegetables and see how the Miasma reacted.

Getting him to stand up took more effort than usual. I realized that while he had drunk his usual amount, I had not seen him eat anything that day. I helped him over to his room, half carrying, half supporting him.

He mumbled something as he stumbled through the doorway and collapsed on his bed. I turned to go, closing the door behind me when I heard him say, “I know it was you.”

I stopped with the door half closed and turned to look at him. He was looking at me with his eyes lidded, drool coming out of the side of his mouth.

“Boils,” he mumbled, “on my belly.” His began to slur, “cured it. You cure cure cure…  …you magic. Your, magic. Hate you. Why can’t I be you. You magic. Your, magic. I’m your magic. I want…,” he drifted off and began to snore.

I closed the door and went to the storage room. I considered fleeing but thought against it. Adan knew I could do some sort of magic, but still didn’t know what I was. If he found out, he could easily have me sold as property to some necromancer, but considering how much I had improved his business, I didn’t think he would. He hardly had to lift a hand at work anymore, just tell me what to do, and I had cut the number of fatalities on his operating table by more than half since I started helping him, even more so as my understanding of Miasma grew.

Still, the embers within me felt weary. I had begun to trust Cronwin when he betrayed me and did not want to repeat that experience. I spent some time planning in case I needed to escape in a hurry, and filled some vials with liquid Miasma, put them in cloth bundles, and hid them underwater in the canals scattered around, a good distance away but near places I thought I might be able to hide.

The next day seemed as usual as any other. Adan did not mention what he said the night before, and I wondered if he even remembered it. A few plague bearers trickled in, along with a merchant with a broken arm and a child with an injured foot that had healed incorrectly. The diseased and the arm where fast and easy as I had done them all before so many times now, but the foot injury was something new. I had never had to break and reset bone before. I found while I was doing it that I could focus the ambient Miasma to help me injure her. With aid of Miasma and a little practice, I could cause injuries with a precision of such detail, it would rival my calligraphy. However, it did exhaust me harnessing ambient Miasma to use. Resetting her foot was clumsy compared to what I knew I could do. I decided that if I had to reset bones again I would find a way to sneak some liquid Miasma into the room to work with.

When I finished, and the girl left, Adan surprised me by disappearing into his room and coming out with a large, thick, heavily bound and bloodstained book. He set it reverently on the table and said, “this is one of my prized possessions. It doesn’t leave this room or my bedroom. Patients and strangers don’t get to see it, or even know it exists.”

He went over to his chair and sat down again.

“Keep your body between the book and the front door. Throw some bandages over it when patients come in. But while we’re alone, read it. Memorize it. Know the pictures like the back of your hand.”

He took a sip of spirits, then coughed.

“And if you get so much as a smudge on it, your gold is going to be used to fix it. Understand?” He glared at me suddenly.

I nodded and looked down at the book.

It was titled: The Names of The Body, By Anthony Drake. Inside the cover it read: written by Anthony Drake, son of Lord Drake of the Almanon Empire. Translated (with permission) to Late Cyrian by Niles Kemberly, son of Count Kemberly of Ubenfold.

I felt a faint recognition at the name Kemberly. No memories surfaced, but I felt the embers of emotion within me respond, to my surprise, with anger.

The book itself was amazing, the drawings and calligraphy were far beyond my skill. I suspected magic was used in its making. Each chapter of the book addressed a different part of the human body, starting with the head and working its way down. The first page of each chapter always started the same: on the left-hand side was a drawing if a portion of the body the chapter addressed, in the nude. The drawing was in such exquisite detail it was almost as though I could reach out and touch it. The right side of the page in perfect calligraphy listed off the names of the various parts of the body shown. For example, on the first page there was the words Nose, Ear, Eyebrow, Iris, exedra, with lines denoting where each body part belonged. A bit boring, at first, until you got to the second page. 

The second page of each chapter was virtually identical to the first one. But the second page drawing depicted the same man with layers of skin stripped away, and the definitive words on the right side of the book gave names for what was underneath.

With each accompanying page another layer of the man was stripped away, until the chapter ended with the drawings of bones. About half way through the book, the chapters ran out of body parts from the man, and in the next chapter it started all over again, this time with the face of a woman.

“Genius, isn’t it?” Adan said as I gazed at the book in wonder.

“It is exquisite,” I breathed. I knew I had held books before that had rivaled this one in art and detail, but they were extremely rare, and magical. On that thought, how could I tell if this book was or wasn’t magical? I knew there was more to magic than just Miasma…

“The Almanon Empire,” Adan continued over my thoughts, “no people are more sophisticated in all the world. They’ve forgotten more knowledge than our backward little kingdom will ever know.”

“Have you ever been there?”

Adan nodded, his eyes distant. “Trained at the Academy in Eborough. But nobody calls it Eborough anymore,” he snorted. “Now it’s just The City of Masks.”

I nodded. It made sense; the City of Masks was the only place in Almanon where foreigners where not shunned. My knowledge was dated from when I was alive and it seemed like things hadn’t changed much.

“Such a beautiful city,” he continued, his usual dourness oddly absent. “Machines made of brass and alchemy kept the streets clean. Not a single puddle of filth, not a one! They had toilet rooms all over, that anyone could use, and underground pipes carried it all away. You can’t imagine how clean it smells.

And the buildings, the buildings! Each one sculpted like some mages sorcery. Even the hovels of the most poor had brickwork fit for a palace.” He sighed.

“The women, now, the women,” he began to smile, which abruptly vanished as the front door began to open. I threw some bandages over the book and turned to face our guest.

It was not a patient. It was a young page looking around nervously. In his hand he held a small leather satchel.

“Is there a, uh, man by the name of Jorm, here?” His voice cracked.

“I am he,” I said.

“Do you, uh, have a signet, or, uh, identification?”

“No,” I said, growing suspicious. “What’s this about?”

He looked around, as though trying to decide something. Finally, he shrugged, opened the satchel, and handed me a yellow envelope with a gaudy red wax seal stamped on it. As I took it the boy immediately hurried out the door.

“Hey-,” I tried to call out to him as the door slammed.

“What is it,” Adan asked.

I looked at the envelope, with its gaudy seal of buildings and half literate runes. I think the runes where supposed to declare “land, honor, and trust”, but they were poorly arranged, so they could be easily reinterpreted as “honorably defending land from livestock.” Somebody must have shortchanged the scrivener when he designed it.

Breaking the seal, the letter said;

Citizen Jorm,

 You are hereby required at the Estate House of Ubenfold Trust and Banking, on the matter of legally securing your financial future. I look forward to working with you in making this transaction easily and comfortably during your time of grieving.

Sincerely,

Earle Finnich,

Head of Trusts

Estate House of Ubenfold Trust and Banking

“Land, Honor, Trust”

I showed the letter to Adan, who shrugged.

“Better go then.”

“Who are they?”

“Small bank, north side of the docks,” he eyed me curiously. “They mostly deal in inheritances. Usually with ship captains, but some merchants use them too.”

I nodded. “I guess I should take care of this now then.” I didn’t like going out during the day, I would risk being spotted by a necromancer. But I didn’t see any alternative. Banks just weren’t open at night.

As I turned to step out, Adan said, “Hey, you really don’t know about the Estate House?”

I shook my head.

He gave me a long look, his usual frown deepening. “Just watch your back then. They run with a shady crowd. Do your business with them and get out quick as you can.”

“Maybe I should not go. Is the risk worth it?”

“You’ll be worse off ignoring it. You don’t want them looking for you. Or worse, hiring someone to go get you. Just remember that they don’t ask questions about where their money is coming from. Or going to.”

6.

The Estate House of Ubenfold Trust and Banking was nestled in the corner of a market square, surrounded by wagons selling fish and vegetables. It was an older building, but well maintained, with dark columns supporting a stone awning over the front entrance that the vendors used as shelter from the light drizzle that had been coming down the whole day.

Inside was spacious, with a high ceiling, rows of bronze lanterns evenly spaced along the walls, bright woven carpets, and thick heavy wooden desks with comfortable looking chairs. A man at the door dressed as a guard greeted me with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, and he asked me my business. I showed him the letter and he directed me to a desk where an older man dressed in expensive merchant’s garb sat. He must have had an affinity for silver, for he heavily laden with it. His hands clinked with silver bracelets and silver rings that taped against each other when he moved. His soft blue tunic was crushed against his chest with the weight of silver necklaces.

“Good day,” he said in a deep, assuring voice and a slightly more genuine smile than the guardsman. “I am Earle Finnich, Head of Trusts. What can I do for you?”

“I am Jorm. You sent me this letter,” I said, sitting across from him, and showing him the letter.

“Ah, yes,” he said, still smiling, although it looked like it took him more effort to do so.

He reached down, opening a drawer in his desk, and pulled out a small ornate box.

“First me must verify that you are who you say you are.” As he popped open the small box I resisted the urge to go for my sword. The box was much smaller than the one that held the doll but was similar in design. I placed my hands on the underside of the desk. It looked heavy, but I was strong. If he tried to attack me I was going to flip the desk over and bolt for the door.

He reached into the box and pulled out a small bone fragment wrapped in a few strands of black silk and set it on the table. It looked to me like part of a skull. I could see Miasma hovering around and through it like a small cloud.

“This is called a Bone of Lies,” he said. If you speak an untruth in its presence, it will rattle,” his smile widened. “Now, your name is Jorm, yes?”

I looked at the bone. I felt as though it looked back at me, glaring, like the cloud released from the doll had.

“Yes, I believe so,” the bone did not move. The man’s smile faltered.

“Do you have any other name?”

“No.”

The bone needed to move. I did not want the bone to move. With my desire I forced it to remain still.

“And you are a close associate with Mister Cronwin of Cronwins Goods?”

“Yes,” I said, startled. I did not like where this was going. I was about to get up and go when the man plucked up the bone fragment and briskly dropped it back in the box, closing it with a snap and putting it back in his drawer.

“We just needed to verify your identity,” he said, smile returning.

“Now, Cronwin passed away yesterday, and the day before he came here and declared you his soul beneficiary,” the man continued, pulling out a thick scroll.

I stared at him in disbelief. Why in all creation had Cronwin bothered to bequeath all his possessions to me, of all people? None of this was making any sense.

I could still feel the piece of bone watching me through the desk. Earle unrolled the scroll on the desk, revealing it to be a will and testament. The bottom of it was signed by Cronwin.

“The law states that the inheritor must be aware of an inheritance to receive it,” without hearing, it I sensed the bone fragment vibrate suddenly. “Were you aware that Cronwin willed his estate to you?”

I still wasn’t sure what was going on, but I didn’t like whatever game Earle was playing, and thwarting it seemed the best way to get out of this in one piece.

“Yes,” I said. The fragment needed to rattle again, but I stopped it.

Earle’s smile slipped for a moment, and he looked down at the desk where the bone fragment was stored. He then looked back up at me, his eyes hard, and tried to smile. He pulled out an ink and quill from another part of the desk and set them in front of me.

“Please sign below, where it says ‘beneficiary’. I’ll go fetch your notes.”

I signed as he came back with three more scrolls to sign. One was for the title of Cronwins Goods. One was a deed for the building Cronwins Goods resided in, along with the warehouse behind it. The last was a bank note for over 8 thousand in gold.

“I do hope for your sake you’re not going to try and cash this all at once,” he said, smiling thinly as he handed me the bank note. “It’s a rough neighborhood out there. All sorts of things can happen.” His cold eyes bore into me as he spoke.

“Goods can be exchanged with Raina,” he gestured to a desk behind and to the left of him, where a young woman in an off-white dress sat. “Until we meet again.” He leaned back in his chair, watching me head to Raina’s desk.

Raina struck me as an attempt in distraction. She was cheerful, naïve in a sort of bubbly way, and leaned over often when she spoke; revealing that her corset was far too tight for the size of her bust.

Being dead, this did nothing for me (or so I thought at the time). I did feel some memories of when it did; mostly faint images of the woman from my first vision.

Raina gave me a hundred pieces of gold, withdrawn from my account, and a familiar looking ring of keys for Cronwins shop and warehouse. With keys in hand and money in purse I immediately headed towards Cronwins Goods.

It wasn’t long passing through the noon day crowds that I realized that I was being followed. He was clever, whoever he was. He would always be behind someone else or turned away from me when I looked in his direction. He was a large man, but that’s all I could say about him, as he changed cloaks several times in perusing me. I only recognized him by the medallion he wore. He wore it hidden, but I could feel the Miasma churning in it like a tiny angry storm.

I took a roundabout route, hurrying along as fast as I could without running. It was risky being out like this during the day, and that spurned me to go faster.

Finally, I was in front of the store. I unlocked it, went inside, and locked and barred the door behind me.

I wanted to find out how Cronwin had died, and why he had bothered to will his things to me of all people. I went over to the counter in which I had purchased so many things over the last few months. On it was a thick half-opened letter next to an ink and quill.

The letter was originally addressed to someone else, but the name had been blotted out and my name was written next to it. The letter gave detailed instructions on how to find all the hidden stashes within the shop and warehouse, including a trap door hidden within one of the hidden stashes containing his ‘most prized possessions’. A lot of other writing had been blotted or scribbled out, but I managed to glean that the original addressee was his nephew, and that Cronwin was proud of his nephews vaunted status among the Stockies.

This was worrisome. The Stockies was an organization of thugs, cutthroats, pickpockets, and thieves whose territory ran from the lowest docks to the Southern stockyards. They originated in the stockyards, which was how they got their name. According to the chatter of patients I’ve treated, they are one of the stronger gangs in the city.

The letter ended with Cronwin’s signature. As I finished it, I noticed some of the ink used to blot the letter had spilled on the counter top. Someone had, it looked with great effort, scrawled a few words in the spilled ink with their fingers. It read:

Damn you

Unsure what to make of this, I began to search through Cronwins secret caches. There was practically a treasure hoard of jewelry hidden in a few compartments underneath the store. In his study I found several alchemical elixirs of for healing and the curing of diseases, a loaded hand crossbow with a poison tipped dart, and a journal.

At first, I thought the journal was written in cypher but then I quickly realized it was written in Oobos, the Orc dialect, with a few words in Late Cyrian thrown in to try to make it confusing. I was tempted to read it right away, but I wanted to check the rest of the caches first.

The cache in his bedroom nestled between his headboard and the wall had a few more healing elixirs, a small tightly rolled up scroll, a wicked looking stiletto, a set of lockpicks, and another loaded hand crossbow.

Going through the back of the store and into the warehouse (which, large as it was, was just as crammed with merchandise as the store) I found larger valuables hidden away. A bronze statue that would take four men to lift. A chest full of rare pelts. A stack of paintings of varying sizes.

At this point it occurred to me that Cronwin was likely a fence, probably for the Stockies.

The last hideaway was the one with a trap door. The top had what I could only describe as a burglar’s kit. Several suits of well-made black clothing, a variety of saps, a few throwing knives, another loaded hand crossbow, a small case for crossbow darts, a few bags of coins, a rolled-up piece of leather witch neatly displayed a myriad of lockpicks and small crowbars, half a dozen soft leather gloves, a couple of wigs, and a very well made short sword.

Both the cache and the trap door were boobytrapped, but the note told me how to get around them. The trapdoor itself was little more than a horizontal locker. In it was what looked like a foraging bag reinforced with studded leather. It was well oiled and apart from being a little dusty, in pristine condition. Pulling it out, it felt light, like it was practically empty. When I opened it up all I could see were folds of a soft cloth interior. It looked as though it was lined with silk of some sort.

When I reached into the silken folds, something opened within my mind. It was like white a lotus blooming next to the embers of passion within me. There were dozens of petals, and each petal had a bulb of space within its center. Most of the spaces were empty, but some of them were filled. I brought my attention to the filled ones, and they seemed to grow as I focused on them. One space held an ornate pair of spectacles. Another held a half a dozen books bound to together with strips of leather. A hunter’s bow made of bone. A small silver cage. And lastly, a vial made of solid black glass.

I focused curiously on the black crystal vial and as I did so something touched my hand. Pulling it out of the bag, I was now holding the vial I had envisioned. The moment my hand left the bag the image of the lotus vanished from my mind. Reaching into the bag again caused the lotus to reappear, this time the lotus was missing the black crystal vial. I took the vial and pushed it back into the bag, and it reappeared on the lotus.

This bag was wonderous. If it held true for the rest of the petals, it already held a bunch of items, yet it weighed nearly nothing! Further, it could hold a great deal more with little or no effect to its weight.

I took the bag, strapped it over my shoulder, and put the rest of the items from the upper cache in it. I then put in all the jewelry and alchemical elixirs I had found. I figured that if I am being pursued it might be a while before I came back here. The potions and jewels took up a lot of space on the lotus, until I got the idea of putting the smaller items in a couple of sacks and then stuffing them in. As long as the sack could fit in the bags opening, it would only take up one lotus pedal.

While doing so I noticed that the warehouse had a pile of things that looked devoted to alchemy, so I went rummaging through it, bagging things I thought Adan might like and some things for my own experiments.

Amid all the vials, tubes, and beakers, I found something that would completely change both my approach to medicine and alchemy. It was a small metal box containing a dozen syringes made of silver and glass. The box itself was a means of cleaning them; you simply added a few cups of water to the bottom of the box with the dirty syringes inside, and then hung it over a fire. When the box stopped steaming the syringes would be clean. Instructions were written on the inside lid of the box, in Dwarven.

I wondered how the box had gotten there as I quickly put it in my bag. That reminded me of the journal written in Orc, so I went up to Cronwins old room and began to read.

The book was half journal, half diary. It listed various transactions, proving that Cronwin was indeed a fence for the Stockies and a few other criminals, but to him that was just a side business. It turned out that his main source of income involved the doll he gave me. He had made a deal with someone he alluded to, but did not outright say their name, who gave him the doll in return for a cut of the profits. Cronwin would sell or otherwise give the doll to someone who “had wealth but was low born”. The doll would then possess the person, forcing them to give or will everything they owned to Cronwin, and then kill themselves.

Cronwin was warned that if the doll was not “fed” victims regularly, it would turn on him. To thwart the dolls betrayal, he had a box crafted and enchanted so that it could not harm him while it was within it.

I think the doll tried to “feed” on me, and when it failed, tried to turn on Cronwin, but couldn’t because of the box. Then it went back and forth between attacking me and attacking Cronwin, until finally the mask broke, freeing whatever was in the doll from the boxes confines.

From the looks of the journal, he had been using the doll for years. The doll would ensure that the inheritance would be undisputed; the possessed would kill all immediate family and anyone else nearby who might get in the way.

I thought it fitting that Cronwin died from the curse he had placed on so many.

7.

I was just going through the last few pages of the journal when I heard a noise downstairs. Looking around, I realized that the sun had recently set and from the gentle taps on the roof it was raining outside. On such nights the streets quickly cleared after dark. Whoever followed me from the bank must have taken it as an opportunity to break in and rob me.

I crept down the stairs that led up to Cronwins room and looked around. Whoever was trying to break in was doing so from the warehouse door. That made sense, as it was further from the main road, but it was also disturbing because they must know that the warehouse and shop are connected, as I had come in through the shop door.

Unless it was a burglary unrelated to my pursuers. 

I went to the shop door entrance, thinking I could go out and get a look of who was trying to break in, and maybe alert the guards. Sic’ing guardsmen on them would be a risk, but I couldn’t defend the shop on my own.

I rested my hand on the door latch and paused before turning it. I had forgotten to unbar the door. Before I could grab the bar and slide it away I realized I could hear raspy breathing on the other side. Several people were standing just on the other side of the door. Stopped, I put my ear to the door instead.

Three people breathing. The scuff of boots. Someone tried to muffle a cough, followed by a harsh whisper, “Keep it down, I thought I heard something.”

I backed away from the door slowly, looking for another way out. The only other exit I knew of was in the warehouse, and the noise of them forcing open the door had grown louder. I could hear wood cracking.

There must be another way out, I thought to myself. Cronwins room was the likeliest place for the him to make an escape route, and I reasoned that if he made secret compartments he must have made a secret exit.

I hurried up to his room, shutting the door behind me and moving his nightstand over to block it. There was a loud crash downstairs, followed by silence. I knew they were inside. I looked around, searching for some sort of secret latch or door, but could find nothing. I was calm, although the embers within me burned with fear and apprehension, my thoughts where clear and steady as long as I stayed clear of them. I knew it was odd, to have this churning matrix of feelings in the back of my mind that I could steer clear of or merse myself in at will but I had never bothered to contemplate the matter and didn’t have time to now.

Someone was starting up the stairs when I remembered the rolled-up scroll in the secret cache behind the bed. I reached down and grabbed it and started to open it just as someone kicked open the door with a force that took the door off its hinges and broke it in half over the nightstand.

Startled, I turned as the scroll opened. That is what saved me.

The scroll was a magical trap. The explosion sent me hurling into the wall opposite the bed. The bright light from it temporarily blinded me, even though I wasn’t facing it when it went off. I found myself instinctively rolling on the floor. My whole body was tingling, especially my right arm, that had been holding the scroll.

When my sight returned I realized I was on the ground and bits of me where on fire. I was ravenous. My entire right arm and parts of my right side were gone. The opposite side of the room was a blazing inferno. The tingling all over my body was it smoldering. Looking around frantically I noticed that the smoke in the room was being sucked through the boards on a section of the wall. I knew it must be a secret exit to outside, but I didn’t have time to figure out how to open it. I ran at it punching with my good arm through the boards. My hand broke at the first punch, but I ignored it until I had burst my way through to the other side.

Outside. I was on a small balcony. There was a narrow ledge that led to another balcony nearby. The rain cooled my skin, but I could see flames coming out of the opening I had just made.

I tried to crawl along the narrow ledge to the other balcony, but with one arm, a shattered hand, and my entire right side severely charred, I could not do it. On the slick tiles I slipped and fell to the ground below.

I hit the ground with a thud. I heard my ribs break. Suddenly, someone was lifting me. I found myself face to face with an enormous man who looked strikingly like Cronwin. Behind him stood two other men, one with a shaved head covered in scars and another with a ragged black beard and unkept hair. Both were dressed in clothing like those in Cronwin’s stash.

All this I only caught a brief glimpse of before I was consumed with hunger.

“Well, well, we-”, Cronwins nephew began, before I launched myself at his face. A red haze overcame me. I could sense that I was feasting, a pleasure greater than any corpse I had ever consumed. Distantly, I heard screaming, then the screaming turned to gurgling, then only the gentle taps of rain over the crunching sounds my jaw made.

When I came to my senses, I was crouched over two bodies in the alleyway. From the size of him I could tell that the first body was that of Cronwins nephew. That was the only way I could recognize him; I had eaten most of the upper half of his body.

The other body was the bearded man. He had been holding a sap in one hand. His other arm was missing at the shoulder, and it looked like he had tried to crawl away before he bled out.

I had healed completely. At first, I thought I had regrown a new arm. But then I noticed a pinky ring, one that the bearded man was wearing, on his arm that was now missing…

I had to get out of there. The big man had been wearing a cloak. I dumped the bearded man on top of him, then used the cloak to drag the bodies down the alley. A canal was only a few blocks away, and in the dark with it raining I was unlikely to be spotted.

Next to me was Cronwins Goods and the connecting warehouse which continued to burn, despite the rain. Around a corner and I could no longer see its flickering light. A block away and all I could see was rain and dragging the two bodies I dragged through the grey darkness. Some rats watched me curiously from sheltered alcoves, but otherwise no one witnessed my passing.

At the canals edge I searched the bodies before throwing them in. They had some cheap knives, a few rings, some coin, and each had a copper medallion with a symbol on It marking them as a Stockie.

The medallions I threw in the canal. With the rings and coin, I went to a nearby brothel and bought a spare cloak from one of the girls. It was a little small, but my cloak was in tatters. I took a roundabout way home and came in through the back door a few hours before dawn.

I took off my clothes, sponged myself down, put on a fresh set of “humble” clothing, and tried to think of what to do next.

The bald man had seen my frenzy. He was out there, somewhere, and I had no way of finding him. If he talked to anyone, the necromancers could quickly find out, and I would be enslaved. The best course of action was to run, but to where?

The city, I recalled, was surrounded by marshland and swamp. Most of the marshland was farmland, and the White Council kept a close eye on everything that went on there, especially since most of the farms where rare herbs and spices. The swamps were safer from the White Council, but Orc tribes were known to inhabit them. People didn’t travel the few roads through the swamp or even by boat without heavily armed guards. Even then, groups would disappear all the time. I wasn’t sure if any of that had changed over the years, but for some reason it didn’t seem likely.

I could travel. With the money I had, I could get on a boat and sail overseas. But to where?

Almanon wasn’t an option; the Alchemists in The City of Masks would be just as dangerous as The White Council. They might even decide to experiment on me.

Empowa would be an even worse option. While I could potentially hide myself in one of the trade cities like Thanrest or Highhold, I would have to either brave the Dwarven city of Ackerage, sneak past the rabid fanatics in Cyria, or try the Elf plagued Southern trade roads. All of whom would likely try to kill me on sight, before they even found out I was undead.

I might try and make my way to the continent of Kaven. They tended to dislike people from Ubenfold, but I was told that the city of Bermen was one of the wonders of the world, as it was one of the Triad: Bermen, Ackerage, and The City of Masks, as the three biggest trade cities in the world.

Lastly there was Mckarden, Ubenfolds Easterly neighbor. Not a lot of people lived in Mckarden, a continent always shrouded in mist. People didn’t survive long, as magical beasts where far more common there. Colonies never got larger than a few fortresses scattered around the coast.

Mckarden would be the safest place to run to, I decided. Bermen would be my second choice; it was more dangerous, but easier to get to with all the trade ships going there.

But most importantly, all my knowledge was fragmentary, and at best, horribly outdated. Fleeing needed to be the last of all resorts.

I looked at my bag. It was virtually undamaged by the fire it had gone through. Luckily, it had been protected on my left side when the exploding scroll had gone off on my right. I wondered if there was anything left to salvage from the shop and warehouse, but I knew it would be foolish to go there and knowing the city dwellers it would be picked clean by tomorrow night.

I bundled up the rest of my things and put them in the bag. I was trying to decide if I should say goodbye to Adan or not when I heard the front door bang open. I don’t know why I didn’t just run. Not being directly connected to your emotions has some drawbacks, it seems. This time I was lucky I didn’t.

I hurried over to the door to the main room and opened it slightly, peeking in. The door used to groan like a rusty gate in winter, but I had oiled all the hinges in the house so that my comings and goings wouldn’t wake Adan.

Someone was being dragged over to the operating table. Adan stood by his chair, scowling (he must have opened the shop while I was packing). Two men came into view, lifting a third onto the table.

One of the two men then said, “They’ll take care of you here. We’ll pay for it, don’t worry.” He then tossed a bag of coins to Adan, who fumbled in catching it.

“Make sure he doesn’t die,” the man snarled at Adan. Adan shrugged.

The man glared at Adan for a moment, then turned to the man on the table. “I’ve got to find the boss.”

“Boss-is-dead,” the man half groaned, half slurred. “Saw-it-all.”

“Yeah,” the man’s voice hardened, “but did you see it before or after you were delirious?” The man hurried to go, then stopped just before stepping out.

“Stay alive. If you’re right about the boss being dead, then we really need you up as soon as you can, boss.”

As the front door closed Adan noticed me peeking in from the other room and smiled tiredly.

“Oh good, you’re back,” he turned away and started walking toward his room and made a gesture at the table. “You can take care of this mess. I’m going back to bed.”

The man on the table tiredly looked over at me, and his eyes widened in horror.

He was the scarred bald man from the alley.

8.

“No, nononono,” He groaned and tried to get up off the table but was too weak. I could see Miasma swirling around and against him as I approached. His shirt was off, and one of his arms was heavily bandaged. It had an infection that looked like it had been treated but kept coming back because of a disease in his blood that was hindering his ability to heal. I had seen it before, many times in prostitutes and sailors that came in. The disease itself wouldn’t kill you, but if you were wounded it would fester, and you would die.

“I could cure this easily,” I said, walking up to the table. “The question is, do I want to?”

“Please-pl-ease,” the man stuttered. He wet himself. He was feverish and terrified, and if I didn’t calm him, he would either die or start screaming. I looked over at the injury on his forearm. From the shape of it I guessed that I must have bitten him. An idea came to me. If he was not an educated man, this could work easily. If he was, well, I could honestly say I tried to save him.

“Shh,” I whispered, putting a finger over his lips. He froze, terrified, and as he stared into my eyes I killed the disease and infection within him.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the Miasma start to drift away from him, and his eyes shown with confusion as the euphoria of healing began to settle in his body.

“Let’s take a look at that,” I said, grabbing a scalpel and cutting away the bandage. I choose the sharpest scalpel and made sure to cut with a quick smoothness to demonstrate how skilled I was with the knife. He remained as still as a trapped hare.

There was a chunk missing from his forearm. I pretended to chuckle.

“I was hungry, wasn’t I?”

The man began to tremble violently.

“Don’t worry,” I smiled. “I’m not hungry now.”

With my back turned to him, I opened my bag. From it, I rummaged around until I took out a healing elixir and a syringe. I used some of the elixir and filled the syringe, making sure he didn’t see anything I was doing.

I then put everything else away and faced him, holding the syringe.

“Now,” I said. “This might feel strange. But if you hold still enough, you will live.”

The man was still as a rock as I carefully injected the healing elixir into the wound. Healing elixirs are cure-alls: drink one or apply it to a wound and it will mend any damage to the body. I wanted to heal his wound, but just the one wound, and I didn’t want it to heal completely.

The muscle, tendon, and finally skin slowly grew back, almost completely healed. I then pushed some Miasma into the wound, and finished healing it so that it would scar, and that some of the nerves there would remain dead and there would hopefully be an occasional twinge of pain.

“I have halted the disease within you,” I lied. I had killed it.

“Of course, diseases have a way of coming back, especially when necromancy is involved.”

The man was no longer feverish, though he was all the more terrified.

“I think you will be just fine, though. Free to live a long and healthy life, instead of, say, a short and reanimated eternity.” I put the syringe back in my bag.

“I must recommend that to maintain this pristine health and fitness, it is absolutely crucial that you remember and tell your friends that Cronwins inheritor died in the shop fire.” I stared at him intently. “Can you remember that?”

“Cronwins inheritor died in the shop fire.” He nodded and then slowly got off the operating table. He backed away, never turning his back to me, until he reached the door, then he bolted through it as though all the devils in Hell were after him.

I sighed. Hopefully, that took care of things. I didn’t want to flee the country. I was comfortable here in my little room behind the healer and apothecary. I was learning a great deal and leaving would mean so many risks and unknown dangers that it really must be a last resort.

I kept the bag on but cleaned the table to make it ready for the next patient. Before I was done, another injured person was already staggering through the door.

9.

The next few weeks were slow and uneventful, but not at all dull. Adan began to drink less and teach more.

He introduced me to different ways of stitching up a patient. Some stitches, like on the skin, could be removed later. Stitches inside the body, however, would cause internal scarring unless the thread was made of something the body could absorb. Rodent gut worked best for absorbable stitches but was pricey. The only reliable way of purchasing it was through the Dwarven markets, who raised “some kind of rat-thing” as livestock.

External stitches could be made of anything, as long as it was clean, but silk worked best. The strong narrow strands could run through flesh with a minimal of tearing. But pricing was also a problem, and patients who had enough money for silk sutures usually had enough money to afford magical healing.

At night I sought to use the cadavers from dead patients to find a suitable substitute for rodent gut. I found that through the careful use of a sharp blade combined with using Miasma to rot away the surrounding tissue I could harvest long strands of ligament. These weren’t nearly as long as rodent gut, but they were free, and seemed to work well for small injuries.

Adan provided me with gossip from his trips to the nearby taverns and brothels. He still drank, but only ale now, and ate meals regularly. He told me that Cronwins Goods had burned to the ground, that its inheritors were all considered dead, and that Ubenfold Trust and Banking had claimed all remaining assets “to cover damages incurred from the fire.” I doubted the damages were more than a third of what Cronwin had in the bank, unless they were planning to rebuild the shop and warehouse, and even then, they would make it all back and then some in reselling the place or renting it out.

But I didn’t mind. I had gotten away with a magical bag full of wealth, and the rest was a small price to pay for being able to stay in the city.

On that note, I went through the bag to take a closer look at what I had grabbed.

The spectacles turned out to be the second most valuable item I had acquired, after the bag. When I put them on, I felt them touch my mind. Like the lotus, the shadowy silhouette of a woman appeared, comely in stature though her features were blurred.  She would whisper to me things about any object I looked at while wearing the spectacles; what it was called, whether it was trapped, if it was enchanted, what those enchantments did, and the object’s purpose. The first thing it told me was about the bag. It was called the Travelers’ Handbag and it was enchanted to hold up to 77 items while ignoring their space and weight.

The black crystal vial was called Neros Bottle, and if you filled it with fresh blood, overnight it would turn the blood into a lethal poison. It was the same poison covering the darts on the two hand crossbows I collected. 

The hunters bow was made of wolf bone. It was called Eo’wan an Elven word that means “lone wolf.” It was enchanted to enhance the holder of the bow the ability to run, smell and hear like a wolf could.

The bundle of six books had all rare and valuable tomes. Abner’s Book on Alchemy, is a cornerstone book on the profession. Atlas of the Endless Sea, a rare compilation of maps on the far South. Ship’s captains have killed for this book.  The Epic Tale of Xoroku, a rare and controversial story about an Orc uprising, pre-Cataclysm. Celestial Revelations, a very, very old book describing the movements of the stars and celestial bodies. To a collector or certain wizards, it would be priceless. A Time to Die, a book describing the effects of Miasma on the aging process, this book I found most interesting.

The last book was called The Names of Things. It is a compilation of names for creatures whose mere utterance could drive one to madness, or worse, summon such a creature. I tried to burn the book, but it would not burn. The pages would not tear, and blades turned away from the flesh like material the book is made from. I returned the book to the Travelers Handbag, intending to only take it out again if I had found a way to destroy it.

The spectacles gave me a rough estimate of the value of the jewels I had. I was now a very wealthy man, though finding a way to spend the wealth would be problematic. The healing elixirs and potions were useless to me, though I could use them to save people on the operating table. I decided I was going to use them on children that came in, at no charge, or to adults that gave me the impression that they were good people. Or I could save someone’s life who would be useful in owing me a favor.

In the back room, I started setting up the alchemy equipment I collected. Adan came in, took one look at all the equipment, and added his own from his room.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” he said excitedly. “But I couldn’t afford it. My inheritance gave me this house but a lot of debt.”

“How much debt,” I asked. He shrugged.

“About a thousand gold. Over the years I’ve whittled it down, but with the interest I’ve never been able to bring it below five hundred.”

I was setting up a rack of vials when he spoke. After he finished, I reached into my bag and pulled out a smaller bag. From within the smaller bag I pulled out two gold necklaces studded with gems. I set the necklaces on the shelf between us and put everything else away.

Adan’s eyes where wide as he stared at the necklaces.

“Take those and sell them. Pay off your debt. Use the rest to buy us more alchemy equipment.”

Adan frowned, thinking, until his face melted into its usual scowl.

“No, and no. I won’t be indebted to you. You may have done some good things for me and this place, but I won’t be servant to no moneylender.” He slid the necklaces across the counter in front of me.

“You misunderstand,” I said, moving the necklaces back between us. “I am not buying your debt, I am investing in your business. I do not like being beholden to others as much as you do. So, what do you say? Partners?”

Adan stared at me for a long moment, his eyes flickering like they did when he was deep in thought. Suddenly, his scowl broke into a grin and he snatched the jewels off the shelf.

“Partners!”

Adan left the next morning to go see some jewelers, leaving me to tend the shop. The day was slow, with one patient who had survived a knife fight from the night before.

The man was a fisherman and had extensive scarring on his hands and arms. As I stitched up his shoulder, he talked about using fishing line to sew up injuries while out at sea. I gave him some pointers on stitching and he showed me the best fishing line to use for sewing wounds. I gave him a discount for the information.

It was late afternoon when Adan came back with three men hauling a cart full of goods between them. The men unloaded the cart in the back, then left to go get more. After two more trips it was almost nightfall the men finally left for good.

Adan had acquired enough money from selling the first necklace to pay off his debt completely. With the sale of the second necklace he spent the rest of the day at the auction house looking for alchemist equipment. He managed to find an estate for sale that had an extensive laboratory. He then found a noble bidding on the estate and offered to combine his funds with the lords in return for “three cartloads of anything he could grab” from the laboratory.

I was impressed. While we still didn’t have much in the way of ingredients, we had all the equipment we needed. He even managed to disassemble a second, more robust distillery than the one we had. I wanted to use it right away, to see what effect it would have on liquid Miasma.

10.

Four months went by. Adan sold a bracelet from my bag to get us some key ingredients for our new alchemy lab. I spent my nights trying to distill liquid Miasma, then repairing the new distillery from my failures.

I did not go out much. With my new partnership with Adan I did not see any need to, and I thought it would be good for the city to forget me for a while.

My understanding of necromancy grew. I had learned to manipulate Miasma, both liquid and vapor, and could even cast a few minor spells with them. It was with these manipulations that I was eventually able to distill Miasma.

Typically, when distilling any liquid, one went slowly. This is because the act of distillation is to separate components within the liquid. For example, if I took a vial of salt water, and began to distill it, I would be separating water from the salt. In one container I would have salt water that would become increasingly saltier until only salt remained, and in another I would acquire pure water.

When I first evaporated liquid Miasma, the vapors would simply pass through the glass. I was reducing Miasma to its component self. It brought up a lot of questions. What made liquid Miasma a liquid? In returning it to vapor, where did whatever made the Miasma liquid go? Was a liquid with a higher concentration of Miasma even possible, or was it like trying to distill water to get, water? I felt there was something missing and that a concentration was possible, but the solution eluded me. That is until I was able to manipulate Miasma with my mind directly.

I tried bringing some liquid Miasma to a slow boil while holding it still in the boiler. After an entire night of trying I realized something was happening but holding all the Miasma that had gone to vapor in the boiler was too exhausting.

So, the next night I cranked the boiler up as high as it could go and tried to hold the Miasma in it for as long as possible.  The boiler almost exploded but I managed to turn it down in time.

I could sense something happening in the boiler. I crept the temperature up slowly, until the boiler was just on the verge of becoming unstable. Slowly, a green glowing liquid began to trickle into the adjacent vial.

It took four hours. An entire vial of liquid Miasma had only made a few drops of this new substance. The boiler contained no residue, and after some tests I surmised that the distillation process of liquid Miasma condensed it in its entirety into some new liquid. This hypothesis was reinforced with the lack of weight differential: the few drops of the new liquid in a vial weighed about the same as the full vial of liquid Miasma I had used.

I got a set of scales and distilled another batch to be sure, weighing the vial of liquid miasma and the product. My scale was of poor quality, but as far as it was concerned they weighed the same.

For the next month my nights were spent refining the distillation process. It turned out that roughly one entire human cadaver equaled 10 vials of liquid Miasma, which in turn made one fourth a vial distilled Miasma. Distillation time remained the same, but I could work in larger batches, to the point that I could make an entire distilled vial in a single process.

It was near midwinter, so I had plenty of cadavers to work with, and had nine and a half vials of distilled Miasma.  With some captured rats and a few spare cadavers, I began experimenting.

The stuff was lethal when injected into rats, even in the smallest amounts. They were resistant to eating it, except when it was mixed with meat. At first, I thought feeding it to them got no reaction, until I fed it to a rat that looked sickly. Shortly after eating, I noticed the sickly rat absorbing all the ambient Miasma around it. A day later its condition was considerably improved.

Killing the rats that ingested the substance resulted in no unusual reaction, although their dead bodies were more receptive to Miasma. From my readings I surmised that they would be easier to reanimate.

Dead body parts exposed to the substance simply dissolved. I was a little apprehensive to this reaction. I used regular liquid Miasma as a healing elixir and was hoping to use the distilled version as a powerful supplement in case of an emergency. But there was a chance it could burn a hole in me instead. I had no undead flesh to work with other than my own. So, with caution I began.

I put a heavy drop of the liquid in the palm of my hand and cupped it there. It did not burn or sizzle, nor did it absorb into my body. After a few hours of letting it set there I tasted it. It gave a pleasant burning sensation on my tongue and woke the hunger within me. By ingesting doses that were successively greater I found that it just like regular Miasma, only it took a long time to digest.

I imagined it would be useful if I went out expecting to get injured. I could be already regenerating as the injury occurred.

I wondered what injecting it would do. It did kill the rats, but I was already dead. I decided to try injuring myself and injecting the distilled Miasma into the wound to see if it quickened the healing process.

I cut a long gash from my left elbow to my thumb and had the syringe of distilled Miasma in my right hand to inject it. I made a mistake by filling an entire vials worth into the syringe. When I pricked the needle into the flesh of the wound, I planned on only injecting for a moment with a steady stream to observe its effect. However, as soon as the substance entered me, my whole body spasmed uncontrollably. My right hand squeezed, releasing the entire vials worth into my arm.

A hot, burning sensation raced up my arm and shoulder. When it reached my heart, the embers within my mind exploded.

My whole body tingled and burned at the same time, as though it was burning from within as rapidly as it was healing. My chest and guts screamed in agony. A wrenching sensation seared through my chest, then stopped, then began again, over and over. Dimly I was aware that it was my heart, and that it had started beating again.

As the fire within my body consumed and sustained me, so too did the embers in within my mind. My thoughts where a riot of emotion, joy, rage, sorrow, until it was all one, so intermingled that they somehow cancelled one another out, and I was adrift, the eye in the storm, in a whirling sea of fire.

Until the memories came.

She was standing on an old pier, the girl from my first memory. She wore a red dress, that matched her hair, that fluttered and danced in the wind as she held it down against her, her smile so touching it almost brought me to my knees. She was smiling. She was smiling at me. At me and no one else.

I fell to my knees in front of her, the box of sweet meats in my hand forgotten. Her smile widened, hair whipping around her face, framing her dark eyes with a softness and warmth that at once destroyed me and sent me soaring…

I plunged into another memory. She was kissing my neck, her fingernails raked across my back. We were standing in a half open doorway tearing one another’s clothes off. One hand of mine clutched a handful of her hair. The other tore her bodice open, knocking an unlit lamp that went crashing to the floor. We both froze, startled, then started laughing.

“So violent,” she breathed, resting a hand on my naked chest. She gazed up at me hungerly.

“How violent can you be?”

As I hauled her into the room to throw her onto the bed I fell into another memory.

The roar of a tavern. Hazy smoke and bright lanterns. A mandolin playing as some bard hidden from view belted out raunchy song.

She is there again, sitting on my lap, one arm thrown around me, her head thrown back as she laughs at the lyrics.

I am nervous. I do not like taverns. I am but a humble scribe for the White Council. But she asked, and for her I’d do anything.

In this memory I remembered who she was. She was Shailyn.   She was the former mistress of some young noble’s son, denounced as a whore, and forced into prostitution. Until I found her. Until we found each other.

She laughed again, as the bard sang of a ‘virgin bride’ convincing her doddering old husband that his virility had made her five moons pregnant on their wedding night.

“If you where my wife,” I said, smiling, “I would have you even if you were having another man’s baby.”

Her laughter cut off and her face grew serious as she leaned in, pressing her forehead against mine as she gazed into my eyes.

“If you were my husband, the only babies I’d be having would be yours.”

The fires within me roared in response. This was the source of the storm. Shailyn. Shailyn my love. Shailyn my wife.

A frenzy of memories crashed through me, screams of anguish, terror, and pain. The thunder of my heartbeat was slowing, the storm of memories receding. The inferno of feelings inside me was tempered back. It was a bonfire compared to the embers it was before, but it remained separate within me. Not quite as separate as before though; it was too big to not bleed into my thoughts.

My heart had stopped beating again. I was laying on the floor of my lab, empty syringe next to my arm. I had healed completely. More so, I looked more alive than before. My skin looked a sickly pale instead of ashen grey.

I sat up. My vision had improved. I could see colors in the dark, though muted. I wasn’t sure what to make of this, and I wandered if it was a temporary effect of the distilled Miasma or if I had permanently changed what I was. Was I still a zombie? My heart was not beating, so I was obviously undead, but what kind of undead remained the question.

Luckily, I chose to begin the experiment just after dark, as I had been incapacitated most of the night. Adan finding me like that would have brought up questions I wasn’t ready to answer. Possibly ever. I liked Adan, but I wasn’t sure I could ever risk him turning me in.

My thoughts drifted to Shailyn. What had happened to her? What had happened to us? Did she move on after I died, remarrying with descendants I might happen across on the street? Was she forced back into prostitution and the short, brutal life that entailed? 

The fire within wanted me to rush out and find a Divinationist. Such a service was rare and very expensive in the city. I doubted that I could find one that wasn’t in the richest areas without it being a sham.

Unless, I thought, the Divinationist was an Orc. I had heard the Orcs studied divination among their Shamans, and there was a sizeable orc population on the East side of the city, by the slave quarters. The city’s slave quarters were much smaller than other cities (the undead didn’t count as slaves, and were cheaper to take care of, didn’t tire or sleep, and historically never rebelled). But it still had a sizeable auction and breeding house.

But first, I had to check if there were any differences other than my enhanced sight. The sight itself appeared to be permanent. Or at least it showed no sign of diminishing, like alchemical concoctions tend to do. Adan noticed I “looked a third dead, instead of half dead,” and asked if I made some healing remedies.

I spent the next night running tests. My control of Miasma, both liquid and ambient, had vastly improved. With my thoughts alone, I could pull liquid Miasma out of a vial and command it to hover as a ball over my hand. With concentration I could make it turn into basic shapes. With practice, I was sure I could do more subtle manipulations.

With that, Necromancy came much easier, and the basic cantrips came to me easily. I would have to find or remember more advanced tomes on the subject if I wanted to take the knowledge further or try experimenting on my own. But the next coming dawn I decided to put it off in lieu of finding a Divinationist.

After telling Adan I had errands to run, I left for the auction house. I thought I might buy an Orc slave and have it lead me to a Shaman in exchange for its freedom.

It was early in the morning and I was wearing my fancier clothes. Fog made it hard to see beyond a few yards. I walked down a trade street, and wagons were already set up with vegetable or meat vendors, knife grinders, tea carts, or heavily guarded spice traders.

Beggars sat between them, loudly lamenting their fate to anyone who glanced their way.  Some of them wore bloodied bandages so poorly done I didn’t have to look at the ambient Miasma to know they were fake. Others seemed genuinely in need. They gave me pause as I felt a twinge of sympathy. I hadn’t felt anything like that in unliving memory.

The wagons became fewer and the beggars more common as I got closer to the slave district. The goods sold changed to appeal more to slave owners; manacles, collars, whips, slave garb, and the like. The beggars were dirtier and looked more genuine, and a few of the women among them offered to sell themselves. My twinge of sympathy grew stronger and I hurried along.

The slave auction house was an opulent building in stark contrast to the crumbling poverty around it. An ornate archway made of some foreign white stone marked the entrance. It opened into a large courtyard with white and blue tile. A fountain enchanted with soft illumination was in the courtyards center, adorned with scantily clad women in slave collars lounging at its base.

I wondered how the women could stand lounging around a fountain without freezing to death in this weather until I saw the faint tracings of an enchantment on the ground around the fountain that seemed designed to draw heat in. I wondered briefly why a slave owner would care about the comfort of slaves on display, but then realized that the very curiosity of warm women in cold fountain would be part of the display’s attraction. 

It only occurred to me a moment later that I could see the enchantment. The lines and weavings of flowing runes reminded me of ambient Miasma when it was harnessed for magic.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” A voice next to me broke me out of my reverie.

I turned to see a short, sturdy older man dressed in expensive silks. His fingers were covered in rings of silver and gold, a few of which glistened with enchantments of their own. Behind him towered an enormous Orc dressed as a guard but wearing a slave collar, who stared down at me impassively, arms folded. To his right was a comely girl dressed in tight fitting servants garb and slave collar holding a tray with several cups of wine. She smiled at me in a way that did not touch her eyes.

“My finest wares,” the man gestured at the fountain. “All of them masterfully trained in the art of pleasure.” The man snapped his fingers the two closest girls drew one another into a languid, intimate kiss.

This was not at all what I expected when I came here. In hindsight it was obvious; if living slaves were not purchased for labor, the majority of them would be used for sex.

I almost said, “I’m not here for sex,” but at the last moment I changed my mind, thinking I was going to say something along the lines of, “I’m looking for a worker, Orc, not human.” What I ended up saying was:

“I’m not here for a human.”

The man’s eyes widened in delight.

“Ah, a connoisseur of the exotic,” he grinned.  “Yes, we have a number of exquisite creatures to delight a variety of tastes. Might I inquire as to your preferences? Is there a particular kind of creature you are looking for?”

“Orc,” I said after a moment. I didn’t want to purchase a sex slave, but I couldn’t think of a way of correcting him without looking like a fool.

The man nodded and then took a cup of wine from the girl next to him. After offering me a cup, he whispered something in her ear. She immediately turned and walked toward one of the back doors. It was painted red and looked reinforced enough to withstand a siege. He admired the slave as she walked away before turning back to me. 

“They make such excellent servants. Loyalty is bread into them you know. Or guaranteed with the right enchantments.” There was a part of me, in the far back of my mind, where the twinge of sympathy had come from earlier, that was giving me a steady, growing urge to crush his skull.

He invited me to stand over by the fountain, where he said it was as warm as a hearth fire and one could see more shimmering lights beneath its waves. I took him up on it to distract myself.

A few minutes later the serving slave returned with four people. One was a guardsman with a sap and whip. The other three were Orc slaves.

“I’m sorry to say that we have little demand for Orc women trained in the arts of pleasure, so this is all we have on hand at the moment. But if there is a special preference you had in mind, let me know, and we can discuss arrangements.”

“Now then,” he gestured at the first slave, a tall woman with light green skin, high cheeks, tiny tusks, and an indignant glare. “This is Oosha, she was a huntress we caught a year ago. Untrainable, she will require an enchanted collar. Savage and passionate, she is good for both warming your bed and making you a tidy sum in the fighting pits.”

He turned and gestured toward the next woman. She was shorter than the first, and a little wider and older. Her glare was far more intense than the first woman. “This is Du-mok, captured a few months ago. Not as much of a fighter as Oosha, but capable of many crafts. She is also resistant to training and would require an enchanted collar.”

He then gestured toward the third slave, who was dark green of skin, with brown highlights. She was short for an orc, shorter than me, and not nearly as muscular than the other two. Her yellow eyes looked through me, as though she were only pretending to pay attention.

“Last but not least, this delicate flower, is Shan-lo. Shan-lo is skilled in a variety of arts and crafts, and could make a very entertaining servant, and her supple frame is surprisingly resilient to the most vigorous of passions. Further, she is by far the most docile of the three, making an enchanted collar not a requirement, though I still recommend it.”

He turned to me, smiling.

“What do you think?”

It wasn’t a choice, really. While I could technically afford an enchanted collar, it would cost me a huge sum of money for an enchanted item I was going to end up not using anyway. Besides, the way Oosha and Du-mok were looking at me, they were likely to try and kill me the moment the collar came off.

Shan-lo, it turned out, barely spoke Cyrian, and she could write, but only in Orc. This reduced the price for her considerably.

Before noon and after a bewildering amount of paperwork I found myself standing outside the auction house as the brand-new owner of an Orc slave.

We immediately went into a nearby tavern. It was the only other place in the area that did not look totally run down, and it looked as though it catered to people visiting the slavers auction. It was near empty now, with a few men dressed as guardsmen at the bar and no one at the tables.

I sat with her at a table as far from the bar as I could and ordered a bowl of stew with a haunch of roast lamb, and some ale to wash it down. She looked at me in surprise when I slid all the plates over to her. She picked up the haunch almost timidly and offered me the first bite. She blushed slightly when I shook my head, then began to devour it with a ferocity anyone starving could recognize.

By the time she got to the stew she began to slow down. I pulled from my Travelers Bag a roll of parchment and a piece of charcoal.

On the parchment I wrote

We must talk, in Orc and handed the parchment and charcoal to her. She paused in her eating, scribbling something down, and then handing it back to me.

Thank you for bringing Honor to my tribe, she had written.

Explain, I wrote in response. It is tricky writing questions in Orc. It was easier to write out commands.

I am runt, she wrote back. I bring dishonor to tribe. I have little value. Chief sells me to men. You buy me at good price. Honor to tribe.

There were some cultural implications I was not grasping. I shook my head.

I need to find a Shaman, I wrote. I need one who can see the past. You will help me, and I will set you free.

She frowned when she read what I wrote, but then she wrote,

The half-dead should not seek the life they once lived, but you are my Master and I will help you.

I stared in surprise. Tell me how you know I am half-dead.

Smell, she wrote, wrinkling her nose.

Do you fear the half-dead? I managed to write a question.

I do not fear them, she wrote in reply. My tribe believes that sometimes a lifetime is not long enough to get things done. Our Shaman would sometimes bring back ancestors with unfinished business.

Her tribes Shaman must be either a necromancer, or at the very least dabbled in Necromancy. Getting in contact with her tribe could be dangerous, especially if he tried to enslave me.

Tell me if he is one who can see the past, I wrote. 

He cannot, though he can talk to the dead, she replied. But my tribe does know someone who can see that far. I can take you to our Trademaster in the city, where you can bargain for knowledge.

I wasn’t sure what she meant by ‘bargaining for knowledge’, but it sounded like a solid lead.

When you are done eating, take me to your Trademaster.

After reading my last message she picked the bowl of soup up with both hands and slurped it down, some of it spilling onto the thin burlap that made for her tunic. I thought of getting her new clothing. It was far too cold for her to be walking around dressed as such.

She dropped the empty bowl onto the table with a crash, then proceeded to chug her mug of ale in a manner that a roughened sailor would envy. She then slammed the empty mug down, belched loudly, and smiled.

“Doo-arou. Thank you, Master,” she said.

I got the most curious impression that her table manners had been deliberate. At first, I thought that she might be testing me to see if I would punish her, but looking into her eyes kindly regarding mine, I realized she was in some way showing me respect.

I nodded at her, gesturing for us to go, then took all the parchment we had written on and tossed it into the tavern’s hearth fire.

Outside, I pulled her over to one of the wagons selling clothes for slaves. Most of what they sold didn’t appeal to me, but there were a few things that were servant’s garbs. I got her a grey wool dress, soft leather sandals with some foot warmers, a nice looking (if pricy) soft leather bodice, and a grey hooded cloak treated to keep off the rain.

Shan-lo seemed surprised at my generosity. I didn’t really care. I had plenty of money, and little to spend it on.

While I was there, I also got her a virtus.  They call them something else these days, but a virtus is a lady’s belt with a small knife built into its buckle. It was originally designed for young unmarried women to defend their virtue.

Shan-lo’s eyes grew big as she learned how the knife detached from her belt. Her fingers traced over the flat side of the blade, then she brought it up to her eye level, and gave me some sort of salute. I smiled at her, as it seemed the right thing to do, and she smiled back.

11.

It took several hours for Shan-lo to find her clans Trademaster. Wandering through the Orc district at first seemed like a very bad idea, until Shan-lo had me buy a few necklaces of beads and arranged them about my neck. In writing she explained to me that the beads meant that I was ‘Restless’.

Restless meant that I had died so angry or determined that my spirit had willed my body to move again. In Orc customs, that meant it was dishonorable to get in my way, for only the greatest of warriors and sages could have a will strong enough to transgress matters of the flesh. At first, I thought of objecting to such a title. Then I remembered The Stick and realized that it accurately described how I came about.

The Trademaster was tall and rail thin, with dark green skin, narrow tusks, and a single patch of black hair in the back of his head woven in elaborate knots that went down to his waist. His bare chest was covered in tribal tattoos, and he sat behind a small cooking fire with a pot of tea brewing over it.

He spoke at length with Shan-lo, his body relaxed but his sharp, yellow eyes darting between us.

Finally, he turned to me and spoke,

“I speak your tongue, yes? Shan-lo say you honor us. We listen to Shan-lo. Shan-lo say you seek the past. The dead do not seek the past. The past is when they were living, and you are dead. But you Restless, yes? No Shaman wake you? If yes, then you are beyond life, and death no matter.”

I paused, thinking about what he said. Then I carefully spoke,

“I do not know if I am Restless. I don’t know if I was made or I willed myself to be. But I think I might be, or I have since willed myself to become Restless. Part of the reason I seek the past is to answer this question.”

The Taskmaster nodded slowly, then poured himself some tea into a few wooden cups. He offered some to Shan-lo, who took it. He did not offer me any, but since he already knew I was undead, I took no offense.

“I know Shaman who help you,” he said after the tea was finished. “But you help Shaman first, or Shaman no meet you.” He leaned forward, almost over the cooking fire. “Shaman have ancestor, half-dead, like you. Shaman ancestor trapped in dark place. You fetch Shaman ancestor, we take you to Shaman. Yes?”

I thought about this for a moment, then said, “tell me about the dark place.”

The Orc nodded.

“Cold, unfriendly. The water is black. Living cannot live there. Only the half-dead can walk. Bad poison Shaman died there. Bad poison Shaman keeps ancestor trapped.”

I frowned. If some dead Orc necromancer cursed the place and this ancestor zombie was trapped there, I wasn’t sure there was much I could do.

But then, I didn’t see the harm in trying. And if the Orc Shaman was a necromancer, maybe he left some books I could study.

I nodded. “Very well. I’ll see what I can do. I cannot guarantee anything though.”

The Trademaster smiled. He then murmured something to Shan-lo, who said something harsh in reply. He frowned, then they spoke again for a while. He then turned to me and said,

“Shan-lo will show you the way, it not far. But when the water goes black she must stop. You go alone from there.”

I nodded, and the Trademaster spit into his hand and offered it to shake. I copied his gesture, though I had no saliva to spit with, and he shook my hand with a grin.

A few hours later, we were walking through the poorest sections of the Orc inhabited part of the city. I had thought the poor human areas were bad, but I had no idea the Orcs had to live so wretchedly. No sanitation. Mud filled huts and exposed sleeping quarters. Filth filled canals. Ambient Miasma everywhere.

With the nearby waters so wretched I was wondering if I would be able to tell when the water turned “black”. It looked dark enough to me. But then we rounded a muddy street corner and the water in the canal off to our left looked as black as night. I could sense Miasma writhing around underneath the waves. The water wasn’t pure liquid Miasma, but it was close.

Shan-lo froze as soon as she saw the waters color, and I bid her to wait around the corner. There had been few signs of life before we arrived here, but in this area there was none. Old, crumbled buildings and empty shanties surrounded me. It was eerily quiet for a place so deep in the city. No sound, even from the near still waters of the canal. No insects.

All the Miasma in the area seemed to flow in and out of a single building that had been built over an intersection of the canal. It had collapsed and was sunk almost up to its roof in the intersection. Once ornate stone shutters, now cracked and crumbled, adorned a single window, exposing the blackened depths of the house’s innards.

My memory of what followed grows hazy, which is in itself telling, for most of the time since my awakening my memory is near flawless. I remember climbing into the window. I remember the black water rising to touch me, and willing it to move aside.

I remember the water flowing up and around the walls and ceiling forming a tunnel. The water was so thick with Miasma, I must have been able to manipulate it, but I don’t remember how. Stepping down into the curiously dry floor within the house. Grey stone cracked with black water writhing within. I have no recollection of breathing, yet for some reason I recall the smell of cinnamon, or something like it. It was utterly silent, save for the faint sound of rippling water. The tunnel followed me as I moved, clearing a path before me and then collapsing behind.

I remember descending and old stairwell made of rusted iron. It creaked and groaned when I set foot upon it. As the black water receded before me, it revealed cracked old stone tiled floors and a myriad of bones. I was reminded of the part of the canal behind our cottage where I used to dump bodies. But here there were no fish to strip the bones bare. At least, none that I could see.

As I stepped among the bone littered tiles in my little moving tunnel of water, I discovered a body with flesh clinging to it, but as I moved to examine it further my memory grew hazy again.

I remember the raging fire within me grow cold and dim, almost back to the embers they once were. I remember my thoughts weakening, and a numbness, almost like falling asleep, overtaking me. I watched as Miasma within my body started to leak out, and I stood there too tired and uncaring to do anything about it. The walls of my tunnel began to close in. Before me, out of the water, stepped the translucent form of an Orc. He was grossly emaciated, his body looking little more than flesh stretched over bones. His eyes glowed with a green light that reminded me of distilled Miasma, and he wore tattered robes and held a black staff so infused it seemed to radiate darkness.

He uttered something in Orc. I did know or care what he said. He pointed the staff at me, so that it’s tip touched my forehead, and from it my mind began to leak out like the Miasma was from my body, only instead of just “out”, it was going into the staff.

This, I think, was his only mistake, and lucky for me. The staff touching my head reminded me of The Stick.

The embers within me flared and I almost instinctively grabbed the staff. That disrupted whatever he was doing to me, and the inferno in my mind came roaring back, and Miasma stopped leaking from me.

The Orc shade gave a wailing shriek and tried to yank the staff from my grasp, but I was much stronger than it. With a single pull I yanked it from the creature’s hands. It started at me with a look of surprise mingled with fear. And then it gave another wail and vanished.

I looked around for the Orc, but all I could find were more bones and the fleshy body I had seen earlier. It was a human in tattered clothing. It was undead, but it had so little Miasma within it at was barely existing. I could also sense it somehow had some sort of connection to the staff. The staff itself was writhing with Miasma moved in concert with the blackened water. I could sense something in it touching my mind, like the Traveler’s Bag does, but this was darker, a whisper appealing to my hunger. The staff wanted to feed me and feed itself in doing so.

I broke it over my knee.

There was a great rush as the Miasma within it was released, and my memory returned to its usual clarity. There was a ripple in the water that coincided with the staff breaking, and the Miasma began to bleed away from the water. Soon the water would hold no Miasma and I would have no way to keep from getting wet. I wasn’t sure what submerging my Travelers Bag would do to it, so I picked up the undead gentleman, slung him over my shoulder, and hurried up the stairs and out the window.

12

“Who are you?”

The dead man’s voice sounded surprisingly young, considering his body’s condition. He looked parched and withered, like a corpse left out in the desert sun. This was surprising, considering that I had found him underwater.

I reached into my bag and after some shuffling handed him a vial of liquid Miasma.

“Drink this. It should restore you.”

His motor skills were barely functional, so I had to help him drink. As soon as he did, his skin began to pulse and writhe, until he looked almost alive again.

He looked young. He must have still been a boy when he died.

When we came back, I purchased a room at the tavern over by the slave house. He lay on the dingy room’s one bed, his skin now a light grey, but he looked otherwise like a street urchin in tattered rags. His hair was a dark brown and his eyes a deep blue, like an infant.

Shan-lo said something in Orc, and he replied in the same language. Then he thanked me for rescuing him. He explained that he had gotten lost in the Orc slums and was lured in to the dark waters.

He told me his name was Elgin. I told him he could repay me by introducing me to the Shaman he was related to. He said he would ask his ancestor. He said he needed to go to them, but he would be back in ten to twenty days to take me to them.

I was a little weary of trusting him to uphold his end of the bargain, but I had little to lose, and he seemed to have strong ties to the Orcs who make a very big deal out of keeping your word.

I then turned to Shan-lo with some parchment and chalk to communicate with and offered to officially free her. To my surprise she refused. Instead, she offered to go with the dead man to his Shaman, and then return with him to me. After of which she would return to her tribe, and act as and envoy between them and me, occasionally visiting to teach me about her tribe and how to speak the language.

I got the feeling she would be getting a lot more out of this arrangement than I would, that this job I would be giving her would bolster her status in her tribe in some way. Still, I could see no down side from my perspective. I agreed.

It was near sunset as I started walking home, and I had many things to ponder. I had seen the enchantments in the slave auction house. That meant I could see magical currents other than Miasma. According to what little I have read, that meant I could possibly perform other types of magic as well.

But that brought up more questions. From what I knew of the undead, there were only two types that could perform magic other than necromancy, and that was vampires and litches. From my walking about during the day and obvious lack of blood cravings I was certain I was not a vampire. A litch was a necromancer who gained immortality through becoming an undead whilst retaining most of their power. I had heard that to become a litch the necromancer had to take their own heart out and put it into some sort of box or something. I was sure my heart was still in my chest: I remembered it beating when I injected the distilled Miasma.

So, what the hell was I?

Adan greeted my return with a bellow of, “get your ass over here and help me suture this leg before I have to cut it off!” About an hour and one mangled-but-patched-up leg later we closed for the evening. Adan did not ask me what I did while out but told me to give him at least a day’s notice when I was planning on going out for an entire day.

Day flowed into night as I spent it pondering the further uses of distilled Miasma. Injecting it further seemed to have no effect other than healing my wounds at an astounding rate. Unlike liquid and ambient Miasma, it was extremely difficult to manipulate. My thoughts could wrap around and push or pull at it like the others, but it seemed heavier.

Perhaps physical weight equated with manipulative potential? But if that was true, then vaporous ambient Miasma should be the easiest to manipulate. Yet, I found the easiest to move was the black inky liquid Miasma.

A few weeks passed, and my studies had come to a standstill. My basic manipulation of all forms of Miasma had greatly improved, but there were no new discoveries. I had long since memorized the book Adan lent me, and its applications to medicine was fascinating, but I wanted to use magic to enhance the healing process. The problem was all my skill in magic revolved around killing things. I used it to destroy diseases and stave off infections and to perform sutures that caused the least amount of damage to my patient. But that seemed to be the limit of what I could do.

But I refused to be dissuaded. My living memory, fragmented as it was, recalled tales of great necromancers performing resurrections. If a master necromancer could revive the dead, why couldn’t a competent necromancer heal the living?

There was also the possibility that I could use other types of magic. But it was obvious that the manipulations of Miasma were where I excelled, and I wanted to use my talents to maximum effect.

With that in mind I debated if I wanted to be a healer at all. Why study life, if your talents resided in death? Why heal, when harming is so much easier? I had all sorts of philosophical and complicated answers, but the truth was simply because I wanted to. Studying and healing these bodies reminded me of what it was like to be a living, breathing thing. I could feel the fire within me missing it, yearning for it.

Sometimes when I focused on that yearning, and let it consume me, my heart would start beating again, and I would drown in sensations of exquisite pain and loss. To some that may sound masochistic, perhaps it is. But I had been severed from all feeling for so long, there were times I welcomed any emotion.

On the eighteenth day after I had met Shan-lo and Elgin they returned, sending a page to let me know they were waiting at the tavern by the slave house. It was early in the morning, so I left a note telling Adan I would be gone for a while and hurried over.

Elgin looked much better, dressed in cotton tradesman garb, although by his apparent age and stature he looked more like an apprentice. Shan-lo wore hunting leathers more befitting of her tribe, though she still wore my slave collar.

“I thank you again for saving me,” Elgin said. We talked for a while, me telling him about what I did in the city, and him telling me more about himself.

He told me about how he became trapped by the dead Shaman. He was fleeing from a group of Orc thugs and got lost. After some wandering he thought he heard them coming and dove into the canal, without realizing the water had turned black. The next thing he knew, I was setting him free.

He also told me a little about his origins. His mother is called a Shaman by the Orcs, but she is actually a witch living in the marshlands East of the city. She would often send him into the city for supplies she could not get through trading with the Orcs.

“You have to be careful trading with Orc tribes though,” he said. “Some of them believe that the dead aren’t supposed to be walking around. If their Shaman knows a bit of necromancy or talks a lot to his ancestor spirits, then they are easy going. But a lot of them are convinced they need to “return you to your restful slumber,” which usually means cutting off your head and setting you on fire.”

With Elgin translating, Shan-lo told me she was hungry. I wondered briefly how long it had been since she had eaten, for it looked as though she had lost some weight. I ordered the same thing we had before for her, then handed 6 silver coins, telling her that I wanted her to be a healthy weight by the end of the month. At that she blushed a little but smiled a great deal.

Elgin said, “We should head to my mother’s house soon, while the way is still open.”

“Will it take long?”

“Not while the way is open. When it is, it only takes half a day. Otherwise If can take a month or longer.”

“What about getting back? I don’t want to be trapped there.”

“Don’t worry,” he grinned. “Leaving my mother’s house is always easier than finding it.”

13.

It took the rest of the day to find his mother’s cottage. During that time, we spoke at length over a variety of things. He told me of some of the rarer herbs we passed by (some of which I stopped to pick), and I told him some of their uses in alchemy. He told me a little about the Orc tribes that his mother dealt with, though he only knew a little about them; his mother often kept him hidden in fear they would try and destroy them.

The only tribe he knew much about was the Dem-huk tribe, which was the one Shan-lo belonged to. Their Shaman and chief communed a lot with the dead, so his mother allowed Elgin to trade with them.

“A third of their tribe are zombies,” he said, “and when they hunt they dress like corpses.”

“Why?”

“To scare their enemies,” he grinned. “They also take both their dead and the bodies of their rival tribe after a fight. Makes them look un-killable.”

We had taken a small boat. Elgin and I rowed, but it was hardly necessary. The current took us straight to a little cottage surrounded by trees. Most of the land in the marshlands was comprised of floating pieces of vegetation, and the land the cottage rested upon was no exception, though it was larger than most pieces.

I could sense enchantments all over the house and property, and even something in the surrounding area. I had no idea what they did, though I assumed many of them had to do with safety and protection.

Most of the cottage looked like it was made from interwoven sticks and brambles that the island itself was made from. They were so thick and well woven that they looked like a solid wall at a distance. The single window frame and chimney were made of clay. The small window held no glass, and the shutters were open, and I could faintly hear singing from within.

Shan-lo stayed in the boat with a bag full of dried meats and travel rations and a small jug of watered wine. Elgin led me inside to a surprisingly spacious room. In one corner was a small bed covered in thick sheepskin furs. Shelves were built into the walls around it, littered with various books, scrolls, and nick knacks. A wooden table with a stone top dominated the center of the room. On it was the half-butchered carcass of some enormous eel. A knife stuck out of its head, and one of its eyes was missing. The opposite corner to the bed was a fireplace, where a small fire burned cheerily beneath a grey cauldron. Liquid churned and bubbled within, though it was nowhere near overflowing. The walls were covered with crammed shelves or hooks where items hung. Bags, jars of herbs, herbs hanging to dry, incense, knives, a bow and quiver, the list goes on. The floor was soft and covered in animal skin.

Amidst all this was Elgin’s mother. She looked surprisingly young, barely a girl come of age. She had a light pale skin, with thick dark wavy hair tied tightly behind her head. She was short, her fame finding a happy union between petite and voluptuous. She had a longish nose, but it was proportionately well framed on her delicate face, with deep red lips and cheeks flushed from attending the fire. She moved back and forth between the fireplace and the table like a dancer in a cream-colored blouse and a dark skirt, her feet barefoot as she twirled, cutting short strips off the eel here and there and then placing them daintily in the cauldron.

She hummed loudly to herself as she did so, her voice low for a women’s, yet rich and sultry.

She suddenly stopped mid twirl and faced us.

“You’re back!” She cried, skipping around the table and throwing her arms around Elgin.

“Hi mom,” he smiled, returning her embrace. He then gestured toward me. “This is Jorm. The zombie I told you about.”

“Hello,” she said, giving a bright, genuine smile. She had dark eyes that seemed to smolder. “Thank you for saving my boy. I owe you a debt, and I intend to repay it.”

I gave a polite bow as one would give a lady, and her smile widened.

“I have questions about my past,” I said. “Can you help me answer them?”

“I can try,’ she said. “But it is almost dinner time. You will have to wait until after.”

She then returned to preparing the cauldron, quickly cutting off more pieces of the eel and throwing them in. Sometimes she would add some herbs from a nearby shelf. Sometimes she would utter something in a language I didn’t understand, that sounded like it could be Old Uben, and a bit of enchantment would briefly flare in the pot.

Finally, she grabbed two pieces of leather and used them to pick up the cauldron. As she did so she said, “Elgin dear, hold the door open. You and Jorm wait inside. Jorm, for your safety please don’t come outside.”

She hurried out the door, which Elgin closed behind her.

“What’s going on,” I asked, and Elgin brought a finger to his lips to shush me.

He slowly walked over to me and whispered, “Mother is going to feed the guardian of her house.” I heard a thump outside. “He is jealous and possessive of her.” Zombies don’t seem to have much in the way of facial expressions, but I could see anger in Elgin’s eyes, and his fists were clenched till his knuckles went white.

“What about Shan-lo,” I whispered.

“Shan-lo will be fine. She is not on the island, and she is a girl. Now keep quiet, he has very good hearing.”

We waited for a while, listening to the crackle of the fire and the occasional sound of something large moving outside. There was a sudden cracking sound, and the women’s voice cried out. I turned to go towards the door, but Elgin grabbed me by the shoulder. I looked at him and he shook his head. I was about to shake off his hold and head towards the door when the woman called out,

“Elgin, dear, will you fetch me my bottle of tincture by the blue bookend? Jorm, please wait a moment longer. I have plenty of books on my shelves, you are welcome to read any of them.”

Elgin went over and picked up a bottle from a shelf with and amethyst rock propping up a row of books. I caught a glimpse of the label just for a moment, but with my memory that was all I needed. It said “sapiem” in Old Uben.

Sapiem is a topographical healing balm. It is usually used on welts and other injuries where the skin is not broken. It is not a particularly fast healing balm, as it is one of the weakest of magic healing serums. However, it does provide the benefit of covering up injuries, if one wanted to hide them.

I began wondering how often she had to feed her jealous guardian, and how many bottles of sapiem she had to go through every month to pretend nothing was wrong.

Or perhaps it was a pact. Witches, I was told, used the most primitive and primal of magics, but there was nothing stopping them from being a warlock as well. Warlocks worked through deals and contracts with magical beings, demons, and gods. A risky business, to be sure, and the warlock almost always loses out in the bargain, but it was a quick path to power.

Or, perhaps in this case, it’s for security. We are awfully close to the city, and the White Council took a hard view on witchcraft. Maybe this was the price she paid for living this close to civilization.

When Elgin and his mother returned, Elgin’s head hung low in submission. In contrast his mother stood tall and was glaring fiercely at nothing in particular until her eyes found mine. Then her rage melted into her previous calm cheer, and I felt a sudden sharp pain in my chest, followed by a brief thunder in my head, like my ears popping.

“Are you all right,” she asked, hurrying over. I had grabbed on to the edge of the table to keep myself from falling over.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think my heart beat for a moment.”

“That shouldn’t happen,” she said, easing me over to sit on the corner of her bed. “Your heart chakra should be empty.”

“My what?”

“Your heart chakra,” she said, holding one hand over my heart. “There are seven chakras that bind your soul to your body. That is, when you are alive. When you become a zombie, the only one left working is the seventh,” She moved her hand to the top of my head. “If you are lucky, powerful, or remain a zombie for a very long time, you can reawaken the sixth,” she moved her hand over my forehead. Her skin was both warm and cool at the same time to touch. Curious.

“What would it mean if my fourth chakra,” I gestured toward the center of my chest, “was not empty?”

She stepped away.

“I don’t know.” She thought for a moment, then told Elgin to go fetch the cauldron that she had left outside.

“Different types of undead have different types of connections to the world. Wraiths only have the sixth chakra connection,” she touched her forehead, “and can grow the fifth and fourth,” she touched her throat and heart, “but never the seventh. Same with banshees, but they start with the fifth. Vampires start with the most; fourth, sixth, seventh, second,” she tapped her heart, forehead, crown, belly with each number, almost making a dance of it.

“They are the only ones I know of who can regain them all. Litches maybe, but they must literally take their heart chakra out and bind it to something outside themselves. So, while they technically have all their chakras filled, one of them is always missing.”

“Tell me more about these chakras.”

She smiled at me.

“I’ll lend you a book on them.”

Elgin had come in and placed the caldron, washed and half full of fresh water over the fire. She picked a few herbs hanging from the ceiling and tossed them in.

“I never got your name,” I said.

She whipped her head around, a mischievous smile on her face.

“I never gave it.” Her smile turned into a smirk.

Was she flirting with me?

“Alula. Call me Alula.”

Alula, meaning a lover’s wisdom, in Old Uben. Interesting.

14.

The sun had set. Shan-lo had been invited inside. She sat on a thick pile of skins by the fire, chewing lazily on a piece of dried meat. Alula had cleared away and wiped down the stone table top, and then arranged for different piles of incense, one on each corner of the table. In the center of the table she placed a wooden bowl, filled with water. Elgin had me cut some strands of my hair and place them in the bowl. Then as she lit the incense one by one, she began chanting softly. Her voice was beautiful, hypnotic. I still could not comprehend the words, but it had familiar vowels and tonal inflections. It sounded like something between a command and a prayer.

I felt something change within the table and an enchantment begin to form within the bowl. To my mind’s eye it appeared as blueish, like a hazy cloud with shapes moving within it. As the shapes grew clearer I began to see them within the reflection of the water.

They were my memories.

As I watched them in the reflection they began to wash through me. Pain ripped through my chest as my heart began to beat.

I wish I could just skip this part and move on to the results. I wish I could put into the words how profoundly the revelations moved me. But I am no poet. I am a linguist and a scrivener. Since dying, I became and alchemist, necromancer, surgeon, and many other things, but still, the words of this moment still fail me, leaving only broken quills and clenched fists in my recollections.

To sum, for that is all I can do, I was a scrivener for The White Council. Books on all sorts of magic, but particularly necromancy, where mine to copy or translate.

I was fit for the job because of my high intelligence, steadiness of hand, and complete lack of talent in magic. Old wizards trusted me to make copies or translations of their tomes, confident that whatever knowledge I acquired could never be used.

I was useful but not unique. That was my mistake, to arrogantly assume my value was greater than the convenience of my masters.

I spent my time and much of my arguably lavish wages in some of the city’s finest inns and brothels.  My family had succumbed to plague when I was young. I had no interest in marriage, until I met Shailyn. Shailyn Hibrone.

A young Lady, second daughter to Lord Hibrone, Master of Ships to the White council. Shailyn had been seduced by one of the sons of The White Council. After some time as his mistress the son grew tired of her, and left her heartbroken, penniless, and denounced as a whore.

I met her in an expensive brothel. She was in high demand, being new. She was always trying to give everyone what they wanted from her, love, attention, a shoulder to cry on. I think it was how she hid from the pain of everything that had happened to her; hiding from her loss of family and subsequent humiliations by burying herself in the needs of others.

Everyone took, and no one gave anything, save money. Until me.

I took her drinking, dancing, to plays and street performances. I never asked for her body after our first meeting. I only touched her at her invitation. She asked if it bothered me that she was a whore, and I said something half poetic about seeing her heart and not caring about anything else. She wanted out of it anyway, and I wanted to help her.

We moved in together. My neighbors were scandalized. The brothel she quit was outraged. But we did not care. We were married a week later.

There was six months. Half a year of bliss. The brothel lodged a complaint that I ignored. I was supposed to gain the approval from the Council before I married, this I ignored as well. I was confident that my job was too important for me to face any lasting punishment for such a minor disobedience. 

But I was wrong. The Councilman’s son did not like seeing his ex-lover so happily in the arms of another. He had been looking forward to seeing her in the brothel on occasion. He barged into our home, drunk, demanding her services and declaring our marriage void. When she refused he slapped her so hard, she fell. Her head struck the corner of my writing desk.

He was a nervous man, who had a habit of laughing when under duress. That’s why I found him laughing hysterically as he stood over my wife’s crumpled body, with a pool of blood forming beneath her head. That’s why I immediately grabbed my letter opener and stabbed him in the chest.

You can’t kill a necromancer’s son and expect him to stay dead. In his testimony to his own murder he said that my wife and I invited him over and I attacked them both. I was not allowed to speak. My sentence was that my life and unlife was to be given over to the victim’s father to use as he saw fit.

My last living memory was laying naked on a rune etched table, with candles, incense, and runes all around me. Standing at my head was the Councilman’s son.

“This is going to hurt a lot,” he said, “and it’s going to go on hurting, forever.”

My last thoughts were of my wife and Jorm. Jorm, you see, is not my name. It is the name we had decided for our child, if it was to be a boy.

15.

I came back to my senses and found myself leaning against the table. My fingers had dug into its wooden underside, leaving indentations. My heartbeat, fading away once again to stillness, though it wasn’t as painful this time.

My face was wet, and when I brought my hand up to touch it, my hand came back as a black smudge. I had been crying liquid Miasma.

Alula and Elgin stood across from me. Alula looked wide eyed, while Elgin slightly curious.

“We only caught glimpses,” Alula breathed. She almost danced with curiosity. “What did you see?”

I looked back at my hand. The black ichor lilted towards me as I inhaled to speak.

“I know who I am.” There was a pause as they waited for me to speak, but I did not know what to say.

“And who are you?” Elgin said.

“I am Jorm. I was once someone else. A scrivener, among other things. But now I am Jorm.”

“Well, Jorm, I didn’t know you were so well connected.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw the man with you, near the end, when you were tied to that table.”

My head jerked toward Elgin.

“You know that man,” I said sharply. Alula, startled, took a step back.

“I recognize him from the statues in the city,” Elgin replied, “He is Marcus Du’Loc. He’s on the White Council.”

I stared at him. Awkwardly, he continued.

“He uh, is really old now. Really really old. But he’s a necromancer, so, probably doesn’t matter much. The statues of him are from when he was young, though. And they look just like him. Same clothing even.”

I slowly started to smile. The fire raged inside me, but I kept my distance, though I was close enough to sense its heat.

He was still alive. Or maybe undead. He had taken everything from me, and now, if I planned carefully, I could return the favor.

Night fell. Shan-lo slept curled up in a pile of furs by the fire. Alula in her bed. Elgin and I talked quietly until dawn.

He told me his mother was willing to teach me about magic, or anything, really, but in return she wanted me to share my knowledge and help them free the dead.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Zombies are nothing but property in the city. We have thoughts, just as regular people do, and our feelings are subdued, but they are there. We deserve our freedom.”

“Most zombies are mindless,” I said.

“Not so, in the city. Non-sentient zombies are cheaper to make, but less useful, so the White Council only makes them to plow the fields. Almost any city zombie you meet has a mind of its own.”

“How do you plan on freeing them?”

Elgin shrugged. “No idea. But we must try. If we don’t, who else will?”

“I will think on it,” I said starting forward. A plan was forming in the back of my head, but it was still in pieces. I needed more information. And contacts. This could get political. And bloody, if it went wrong, which plans always do.

“Do you know how to fight?” I asked.

“A little, why?”

“I need to learn. It’s not something anyone would expect of me.”

“Then I suggest you have her help you,” he gestured over to Shan-lo. “If she can’t teach you, she’ll know someone who can. So, you’ll help us?”

“To rescue enslaved zombies? Not without a good plan. That’s what you were trying to do in the city when you were captured, wasn’t it?”

He went still for a moment, then nodded guiltily.

“Let me work some things out,” I said. “If I come up with a way of freeing some who have a decent chance of working, I’ll let you know.”

I already knew that I had to create some sort of information network to find out more about Marcus Du’Loc. He probably had business in the zombie slave trade anyway.

On that thought, I wondered why I should stop at zombie slaves. Why not free regular slaves as well?

Prioritize. First Marcus, then zombies, then slaves. Or something like that. I doubted that it would go that way, but it was a good first step.

I learned more about Elgin and his mother. Elgin was just under two hundred years old. When he died he came back as a zombie. Neither he nor his mother knew why, but she readily accepted him.

A few years later she died of old age, to be reborn to a family nearby that she had made plans with. She repeated this process every fifty years or so, dying of old age, being reborn nearby, to have Elgin come and fetch her when her memories started coming back. It is apparently a common practice among witches.

Dawn came with the sound of heavy footfalls outside and Alula rushing out to greet her guardian. There was a deep voice, deeper than any I had imagined, speaking in a language I had never heard. Then there was silence, for a long time. Eventually the footfalls left with a surprisingly quiet splash into the water, and Alula returned. She looked haggard, bruised, and angry, with her hair mussed and her blouse torn.

“We’d better go now,” Elgin said quietly. I turned to speak to Alula as she bustled about the room while trying to hide her torn clothing, but Elgin stepped between us, shaking his head silently.

I let him lead us outside and into the boat, Shan-lo was looking back and forth between us curiously but said nothing. After we were far enough away that we had passed through the last of wards, I spoke.

“What was that all about?”

“None of your business,” he snapped.

“It is my business. If your mother is enslaved to a demon, then I need to know.”

He glared at me for a moment, then sighed.

“It’s not a demon. It’s her lover. And, it’s complicated.”

“Doesn’t look complicated to me. How long do you think she’s got before he kills her?”

“He WON’T kill her,” Elgin’s fists were clenched. There was a redness tinging the corners of his eyes. I wondered if that was what I looked like when the rage and hunger overtook me.

He looked down suddenly and shook his head. I saw the redness fade, mostly.

“He won’t kill her because he can’t. He’s bound to protecting her.” He paused, lost in thought. Then said, “I will tell you, because you need to trust us if we’re ever going to rescue our brethren in the city. And maybe this is a problem you can help us solve, eventually.

“She met him three years ago. He was one of the human tribesmen in the swamp to the East. He had been banished from his tribe because he was crippled. She found him on a raft, waiting to die. She took pity on him and brought him in, fed him, took care of him.

“Mother is not good at medicine, but she is good at transmutations. As they became lovers she offered to change his body into something new. He agreed, but insisted it be something he could protect her with. She changed him into a Gargoyle.

“Everything was fine for a few months until he caught my mother flirting with a trade merchant,” Elgin grimaced. “He tore the merchants head off.

“Ever since then he’s been viciously territorial toward any male that comes to the house. Mother is no longer allowed to leave. They fight a lot, but they are bound together through magic; one cannot hurt the other without hurting themselves.”

“Why doesn’t she break the binding,” I asked.

He shrugged. “She blames herself for him being the way he is. Says she shouldn’t have flirted with the merchant. Tells me about his troubled soul.”

“Is she right?”

“What?”

“Is it her fault?”

“No. I don’t know.” He sighed. “She’s not good at being with one man. Never has been. She even had a reputation for it. I had always hoped she would find just one person to be with, but I didn’t want it to be anything like this. This, this is wearing her down. It’s breaking her.”

I looked at him for a while. Still rowing, he grew uncomfortable under my gaze.

“How long have you been self-aware as a zombie,” I asked.

He didn’t answer me for so long I had given up and thought he wasn’t going to when he said, “Ten years.”

“And you had seen about a dozen summers before you died?”

“Thirteen.”

I nodded. We rode in silence for a time. After a while I spoke.

“There are those in the city who believe a woman’s place is under the heavy hand of a man. The unrulier she is, the heaver the hand must be. I’m not a lot older than you, but I have read a great deal. I have seen nothing good come from this.” I turned to look Elgin in the eyes and said, “mark my words. He will kill her, even at the cost of his own life, if we do not stop him.”

I wasn’t sure if the Gargoyle would kill Alula or not, but I had read tales of these sad and twisted relationships. They never ended well for the lovers or those who knew them.

“How do you know,” he asked.

“You said your mother had a reputation for promiscuity.”

“For what?”

“She likes sleeping around.”

“Oh. Yes.” He looked awkward for a moment. Kind of amusing that he chose now to be after everything else he had said.

“She didn’t promise her loyalty before he demanded it, did she?”

“Well. No,” he replied.

“So, he knew she slept around. He slept with her knowing she sleeps around. Then he gets angry for her for doing something he already knew she did. He acted betrayed for a loyalty he knew she didn’t have. They have a name for people like that in the books I’ve read, and they’re called tyrants.”

We rowed for a while in silence. Shan-lo hummed quietly to herself, sipping on the last of the watered wine.

“So, what do we do?” Elgin looked at me. “I don’t want him to kill my mother.”

“We watch, and we wait. Rebelling against tyranny is tricky business.” I paused. “In the meantime, we train. We learn.”

Well figure out how to kill a Gargoyle. Just in case we need to topple this tyranny the traditional way.

Priorities. This must be done first. So, first Gargoyle, next Marcus, then zombies, and finally slaves.

I had a feeling the list was going to get a lot longer before it shortened.

16.

The canal entrances to the city are three times as wide as a regular canal. The city wall forms a bridge over it, with flanking towers on either side. Each one has a portcullis of oiled wood and iron that is lowered at night to prevent smugglers and creatures from the marsh sneaking in.

But the gates where often in disrepair and were left open so the fishermen could come and go. At any given night at least one of the gates was open.

We could tell the gate we entered through was one such a gate because small fishing boats were already returning with their haul. The guards on the shore eyed us suspiciously but did not try to waylay us. I knew then that if I was to start traveling this way in and out of the city often, I would have to bribe them or face constant searches.

The morning light sent rippling reflections on the nearby buildings and canal walls as we rowed in, discussing our next move.

Elgin was going to get supplies and return home. Right after the Midwinter festival he was going to come back and fetch me to go visit again. Elgin also gave me several books his mother had given him for me to read. One was on herbalism, two were on witchcraft, and one was on alchemy. Or rather, a witch’s version of alchemy, with simpler recipes that have a lot more side effects. I was to return them when I next visited.

Shan-lo would return to her tribe within the city and find me someone willing to train me to fight. I would go every other night and visit her at the inn by the slavers auction (the inn has no name, other than “Inn”). I gave her some money to support herself and hire someone to train me.

If she could not find someone right away, I was to come anyway for language lessons. She would teach me Orc, and I planned on showing her how to speak Modern Cyrian.

Adan greeted me with the usual “get the hell over here and help me,” the moment I walked in the door. It was good to be home. Patients were the usual crowd of dockworkers with various work injuries they could not afford a magical healer to fix, with a higher number of sick people since it was winter.

Over the next couple of nights, I read the books leant to me. Most of the herbs I recognized, and it was interesting to find were they came from. The books on witchcraft seemed to assume the reader was a woman; there was a lot of rituals that either worked in relation to one’s menstrual cycle or could only be done during various stages of pregnancy. There were however some spells that helped one sense other types of magical current. These later proved to be immensely helpful.

Applying my knowledge from the book on alchemy had to wait. I had other work to do.

I started going out again on walks through the poorest parts of the city in the cover of night. My enhanced sense of Miasma gave me a greater understanding of the goings on in the buildings I passed. I stopped in front of the brothel that I first considered hiding out in. It was still riddled with death.

It was a large building that had once been an inn, but now only offered temptations of the flesh. The part of the building that once served as a kitchen had been mostly destroyed by a fire. The rest of the building was sagging in disrepair. Several of the rooms had their doors broken open or were destroyed and the only thing separating them from the common room was a thin blanket, from which the sound of grunting and rutting came from within. 

I watched from the ruins of the kitchen as the owner worked, with two thugs besides him, taking money from customers and directing them to rooms. Customers had between five and ten minutes, depending on the owner’s mood, before he’d direct one of the thugs to unhook a heavy cudgel from his belt and go into the room and demand more pay. Usually the customer was either dragged out or the thug came back and handed a few coins to the owner, who stuffed them in a heavy purse at his side.

Not once did a woman come out of the rooms, until the end of the night. Then they all filed out, bruised, tired, some of them limping. They all went to the back of the inn as one and used a bucket on a rope to rinse off with. The guards and owner watched them. The owner held a large jug of ale that he passed around to the women. The women were frostbitten and cold. Most of them were sick and shivering and the canal wasn’t helping. As the men herded them back into the inn, I heard them mutter to one another.

“We’re going to lose a few more soon,” one man said.

“We better get some more then,” replied the owner. “We need a surplus for the midwinter festivals.”

“He’s going to charge more,” the other man said.

“He always does this time of year,” the owner said. “But I’m not going to be short supplied this time. Ain’t worth it.”

All three of the men were sick as well, although the owner was the healthiest. A simple pattern of Miasma drifted through his body, centered around his groin. I suspected that he had been spending some of his gains on cures.

I spent a week watching him. He paid off local criminals from bothering him but wasn’t part of any organization. He said he owned the inn, mostly because no one else wanted it; it was in too poor of a district and too costly to repair.

He got his women from a man who bought daughters from poor families willing to sell off one of their children so that the rest of them could eat for the winter. It wasn’t considered slavery because slaves where often better trained and therefore of higher value. As I watched them in their misery, thoughts of my wife when I first met her would come unbidden to my mind. I would imagine her among them, sharing in their misery, and the fire within me would flare in cold fury.

My original plan was simply to buy or subvert and take over the brothel and run it as it was. I could not do this. Not with her memory haunting me. I would have to change it, but that would create its own problems. The prevalent death in the brothel could hide me from necromancers, without it I could be discovered. Also, if the place did not make money, I would need to find a way to sustain it.

I could repair the building and make it into a regular inn, but it would cost a great deal to invest, and with so little return, being in one of the poorest places in the city, it just wasn’t worth it.

I decided to table the idea for a time and work on other things while I mulled it over.

I spent time contemplating my recovered memories of tomes I read while working as a scrivener and began applying that information to my studies. I learned to shape dead and decaying flesh. I could have made a zombie, but I had little interest in reanimation, apart from discovering more about myself.

I found that over time the arm that I had torn off to replace my own had slowly molded itself to become indistinguishable from my original arm. Likewise, if I took a piece of foreign tissue and applied it to a corpse I could shape it to restore any missing pieces the body had. In this way I could restore a corpse to a pristine condition. I recalled reading that it was the first step to greater reanimations and ultimately to resurrection.

To this I asked myself if I could take a piece of dead tissue to replace undead tissue, why couldn’t I take a piece of dead tissue to replace living tissue? The answer was that I could, but it would be tricky. Too much dead tissue used to restore the living and the living would succumb to the overwhelming proximity to concentrated Miasma and simply die. Sometimes it would even reanimate on its own. But with a small amount of reanimated tissue, roughly no greater than 25% replacement, and the creature would not only survive, but be strengthened from its original state.

I learned all this from experimenting on rats. I had taken to breeding them to use their intestines for suturing. I was quite successful in that regard, and we had cut the cost of buying sutures considerably, as long as Adan remembered to feed them when I was away.

 As planned, I was seeing Shan-lo to learn their language. She had found someone to train me to fight, but they were “out hunting” and would not be back for a couple of weeks. From what she wrote to me he was worth the wait.

I learned to my surprise that there is more than one Orc language, both written and spoken. It made sense, with Orcs in each different region changing their culture and their language along with it.

But Orc culture was something I had never thought about and was from my readings was encouraged not to. Many human scholars referring to them as simple savages little better than animals on two legs.

The Orc language I was learning was Tomo, or “trade-tongue” in Orc. It was the simplest Orc language, and most Orcs knew it. The language of Oobos, as humans knew it, was Tomo with bits of other Orc dialects thrown in.

Tomo’s writing system was little more than math, and part of the written Orc I already knew as well. The written Orc I knew was Zhu-mo, or “war-tongue”, and was the written tongue for most of the tribes in Ubenfold.

As our communication improved I told her about my experimentations with attaching dead (or rather reanimated) tissue to living beings. She grew excited and told me she wanted me to meet someone. I agreed, and a few nights later when I walked into the inn there was another Orc woman with her. She was only slightly taller than Shan-lo, far older and portly, but the family resemblance was unmistakable.

“Jorm, this is Dhan-lo, me mother,” Shan-lo spoke slowly in Orc, so that I could mostly understand her. I stood stiffly and gave a slight bow with a nod, as Shan-lo had taught me how to greet an elder.

Dhan-lo smiled and said something rapidly in Orc. It sounded complimentary, but I wasn’t sure as Shan-lo’s response sounded curt. I walked over to the table, pulling out parchment and charcoal.

“Master,” Shan-lo wrote, “will you mend my mother’s foot?”

I looked over at her mother. Shan-lo said something to her, and she nodded slowly, moving her left leg out from under the table and lifting the grey dress she was wearing slightly.

Her foot was gone up to her shin. In its place was a wooden block carefully carved to resemble a sandaled foot with soft leather straps binding it to her leg.

I stooped over slightly and examined it. Her leg had healed long ago, though walking on this contraption had weakened her knee and the rest of her body.

“Tell me why your Shaman has not healed her,” I wrote.

“He cannot,” she wrote in reply.

“I have never done this before on man or Orc,” I wrote. “Only rats.”

“Please try, Master,” she wrote. “I think you can. Her life will be better, and you will win great respect from my clan.”

“Then I will try,” I spoke in Orc, and they both gave the same beautiful smile, a mirror image contrasted with age.

I paid for a room for the two of them, along with their evening meal. Dhan-lo smiled gratefully and said a few things to her daughter while touching her hair affectionately. Shan-lo snapped back her replies, I heard the Orc words for “no” and “wrong” a lot, and she blushed a lot. I think her mother was trying to play matchmaker with me, and in the tradition of all mothers, embarrassing the hell out of her daughter.

I bid them farewell and went home, spending the rest of the night on other projects.

The next evening after sunset I grabbed some spare body parts and drugs, put them in my Traveler’s Bag, and headed over to the Inn. They were waiting at the bar, and I took them to their room.

I had Dhan-lo lay down on the bed and remove the prosthetic. I then examined her other foot so that I would have something to compare. It wasn’t necessary though it made it easier.

I pulled from my bag a human foot and leg that was roughly her size. She grew alarmed and through some translating asked if that was going to be her new leg. I told her no, that it was only the raw materials.

I then let her know that I had to cut the end of her leg to seal the new one on. She asked if her daughter could do it, and I didn’t see why not, so I agreed.

At my direction, Shan-lo skinned away the bottom of her mother’s stump until flesh and bone lay bare. They did not ask for drink or any pain killer, and her mother grimaced and grit her teeth, but did not cry out. I was impressed, I had witnessed grown men be reduced to hysterics for less.

I quickly placed the human foot over the bloody mass and began to mold it into her missing foot. It was a lot harder to do than with the rats. I had to break out two vials of liquid Miasma to finish the job. The black liquid seeped into the foot and helped me mold it without killing her.

It took about four hours. When I was done, she was pale and covered in sweat, but otherwise healthy. Her new foot looked normal, though it was a pale grey.

She flexed her new foot, and her eyes widened. She sat up quickly and ran her hands over the grey skin. She said something, and her daughter translated.

“I can feel it. Earth and fire, I can feel it.”

I beckoned her to stand. She did so slowly, carefully placing her weight down on her new foot. Then with a sudden cry of delight she leaped in the air and ran around the room. As she spoke rapidly to her daughter, her voice full of joy, I thought to myself, this is what necromancy can do, it is more than death. She ran at me full speed almost knocking me down as she threw her arms around me.

“Thank you, Shaman Jorm,” she said in thickly accented Cyrian. A pain shot through my chest as my heart beat suddenly, sending a warmth through me. My body tingled as she let go, smiling and talking again to her daughter. My heart stopped beating just as quickly, but the warmth lingered. I resisted the urge to grab her, to try and recreate the warmth as it dissipated.

17.

Over the next week I replaced two eyes, another leg, an arm, and attached several floating ribs for Shan-lo’s tribe. Their Shaman sent a message practically begging me to meet him, and everyone in her tribe wanted to train me to fight. This meant that I had the pick of whoever I wanted to train me, and by Shan-lo’s recommendation I picked Haas, the tribes retired Leader of The Hunt, who now held the title Second Eldest. I asked her what the title he now held meant, and she explained that the Elders acted as teachers for the children. First Eldest taught the Ways of Earth and Stone and taught the history of the tribe. Second Eldest taught the Ways of Fire and Night and how to fight and hunt.

I asked if he had time for me if he was training all the children. She told me that the tribe had few children these days. They had lost a great deal and most of their best warriors had been crippled or killed. That was changing, though, now that I restored four of their best warriors and her mother.

The first thing that Haas said to me was, “stupid.”

He was tall, rail thin with chipped tusks, pale green sagging skin and stark white hair. But he moved like a great cat stalking his prey as he looked me over, shaking his head.

He walked around me, muttering stupid in Cyrian over and over. We had met in the stables behind the slavers inn, and his feet didn’t even make a rustling sound as he stepped on the hay littered floor.

“Excuse me, but what here is stupid,” I asked.

He stopped abruptly and reached out, poking my shoulder with a single finger. Unbalanced, I staggered.

“Stupid,” he snapped. He reached out again, pushing my arm. I almost fell again.

“Stupid,” he said even louder. As I righted myself he pushed a single finger into the side of my head. I fell over.

“Stupid!” He chuckled.

Annoyed, I stood back up.

“I’m not-,” I began.

“You stand like old cripple,” he cut in. “No, that insult cripples. You stand like old human woman who never learned to hunt. Head out and low. No balance. Orc baby with stick beat you up.”

Shan-lo looked away, trying not to giggle.

He did have a point though. Most of my mortal life had been spent at a writing table. My posture was atrocious.

I shrugged. “Can you help me?”

The old Orc grinned. “You unda?” he gestured at me. “Body stupid. But head smart. I am Haas. I can make your body smart. Body smart, then you learn to fight. Hunt,” his grin widened, “live,” and he threw back and laughed.

First, he showed me to stand on the balls of my feet with my knees slightly bent and my stomach tucked in. He would have me stand that way for about 5 minutes then he would have me walk across the room and get in the position again. If I was out of position he would correct me with a tap of his finger. If my posture was too bad he would poke me with said finger and I would usually fall over.

After a few hours of this he had me doing the same posture while carrying a cup full of water. Sometimes I would carry it, but usually I had to balance it on my head without it spilling.

I visited him once a week. He would give me these training sessions and I would go home and practice them. I started feeling the difference after the first week; I stood taller and stumbled less often.

The midwinter festivals came, and with it drinking, merriment, and a plethora of injuries that came from such activities. I was tempted to replace lost limbs and other parts with reanimated substitutes, but I was weary word getting back to the necromancers. What would happen if a member of the White Council came on board of a ship where some of the impoverished sailors sported zombified body parts?

At night I wandered through the poorer parts of town, and even risked some of the higher income areas, foolish as it was. Every year the alchemists put on displays for the festivities, and most of the city crowded over to their Guild House to watch. I skirted the edge, catching glimpses of dancing lights and flying illusions, but mostly watching people. Warm dressed families hoisting their young ones onto their shoulders to catch a better view. Young lovers sharing laughter and kisses. Street performers twirling staffs with ends aflame. Pickpockets casually strutting about, looking for an easy mark. Vendors with racks of hot sizzling meat and vegetables that they would sell on thin sticks at exorbitant prices. Hucksters and bards, dancers and whores, the merry and the drunk all mingled together in a riot of cooked food, ale, music, and flashing lights.

Later at night, the crowds would thin as the night grew frosty, and the nearby taverns would fill. Most of the families would head home, leaving a younger, rowdier crowd. Most of ladies that walked alone now were the kind that would trade their company for a bit of coin. They did not stay alone for long.

It was a night like one of these that I met my wife Shailyn. Near the entrance of one of these crowded inns our eyes met. I offered her coin so that she would be mine for the evening, but I was hers from then on. We danced, we drank, and when the hour grew late, bought a room and threw ourselves at each other. And the next day we did it all over again. I blew over a year’s worth of savings for that winter festival with her, and it was worth every copper.

I spent several nights this way, lost in memory on the richer side of town. Surprisingly, I was not found out. Fortune favors the fools, I suppose. I did cross paths with other undead, being used as beasts of burden or dressed as manservants and following around wealthy patrons. They all had this lost, hopeless look about them, as though they were silently screaming. As much as I wanted to help them, I feared they might give me away, so I avoided them.

It was on the last night of my foolish wanderings when I was avoiding an enslaved zombie by ducking down an alleyway, that I encountered her.

I spotted her crumpled form between two midden heaps. She looked like nothing more than a mass of hair, clothing, and blood. I saw the Miasma whirling around her and knew she had very little time to live.

I hurried over, bringing out a healing elixir from my bag, and brought it to what was left of her lips.

It kept her alive, but only just.

It was one of the better elixirs I had. I used another, and that helped as well, but still she was dying.

Again, I was reckless. I could have easily been caught. I didn’t know this woman, nor what befell her. Every logical thought in my mind was telling me to stop wasting expensive potions on a stranger and walk away.

I carried her home. I kept to the shadows, running as fast as I could without jostling her too badly. When her life started to fade I would stop and feed her another elixir.

By the time I made it back, I had run out of the better potions and was using the cheap ones at an alarming rate. I set her carefully down on the operating table and with a small blade quickly stripped her of her clothing.

She was an unconscious mess. Her eyes were missing. Her back and pelvis was shattered. Most of her ribs were cracked but thankfully not broken. Her jaw snapped in two places and had multiple cuts and human bite marks. She had been violated sexually.

I started with the vital stuff. The potions had obviously repaired most of her internal organs, but the shattered back was affecting her heart. Opening her back up I quickly pulled out the broken pieces grabbed some spine from someone who had died the day before and molded a replacement. I had to replace several ribs as well just to be on the safe side. But it was having trouble taking, and her heart was giving out again. All the while I did this I could hear Adan snoring through his bedroom door.

I fed her another elixir while fishing for a vial of liquid Miasma. The only kind I had in my bag was the distilled stuff, and I was certain that if I left her, even for a moment, she would die. So, I loaded up the distilled Miasma into a syringe and injected it into the undead spine to fuse it.

To say it worked is an understatement. Not only did it fuse perfectly, the distilled Miasma went through the undead flesh and started healing the surrounding tissue. Within seconds her heart rhythm became steady, and the mush of the ambient Miasma began to drift away.

I used the same method for repairing her pelvis and eyes. Part of her face and nose had been bitten away, and I repaired this with unliving tissue as well. As soon as I had, and idea occurred to me, and I injected more distilled Miasma into her now unliving nose. It restored the rest of her body.

She was still unconscious. I did not know if she would ever wake. Trauma could put the mind in a deep slumber from which one may never return.

While she was sleeping, and on the table, I went over every inch of her, checking for hidden injuries or scars. I was determined that if she woke up her body would be in as good or better condition than before she was harmed. There was a deep scar on her left ankle. I cleared the scar tissue away and healed it properly. Her nose was a little odd shaped for her face, so a changed it slightly to make it more symmetrical and give her a comelier look.

A few other minor details I fixed, like a broken finger that had been set poorly, probably in infancy. After that I wrapped her in a blanket and set her in the makeshift bed in my lab that I never used.

Dawn came. Adan was out somewhere. I kept the house closed. I spent the morning watching her while tinkering with a few experiments.

As noon approached she started to stir. I set my tools down and kneeled by her side. After a moment of disorientation, she looked at me and started.

“Be at peace,” I said. “You are at a healing house. My name is Jorm.”

“What happened to me,” she asked. Her blue eyes gazed into mine. I don’t know if they were her eyes original color, but they suited her well.

“You were attacked during the festival. The damage was extensive. I brought you to this healing house, near the dockside, and mended you.”

She nodded slowly, her face creased in drowsy puzzlement.

“I don’t remember.”

“That is not surprising. The mind can blank to protect itself from terrible things. It will come back in time, but I warn you, the memories will not be pleasant,” I paused. “You may wish to consult a priest of Sol. With the right donations they could help your mind recover. If you tell them your story they might even do it for free,” I smiled.

She smiled faintly in return, still looking tired and a little puzzled.

“Why am I naked?” Her question made me curious. Not that she asked it (that was understandable) but the way she said it. She was not at all alarmed that she was naked on a cot surrounded by alchemist equipment and rat cages. She was only curious. I had said that I was a healer, but I was not dressed as one, this room looked nothing like a healer’s house.

“I can give you some of my spare clothes to wear,” I said, watching her closely. “I can also get you something to eat, if you are hungry. What is your name?”

 “Tina,” she said, after thinking for a moment. I surmised that I may not have healed her all the way and that she may be suffering from a concussion. If it was true, it was miraculous that she ever woke up.

Also, Tina. Short for Beltina, meaning “the flower of Kaos,” in Old Amben. Kaos is name of the Goddess of Chaos. One of the Big Three, or the original gods that created everything. It was likely to me that her parents or grandparents were missionaries, as Kaos is not a popular goddess around here.

“Alright Tina,” I said, “and what do you do? Are you betrothed? Married? What of your family?”

“I don’t remember,” she said. She was a terrible liar.

I nodded and got up to grab her something to eat from Adan’s room. But when I went into the main room, Adan was there, putting a splint on a hung-over fisherman’s ankle. His scowl ran deeper than usual, so I helped him finish up. Once the fisherman left, he glared at me and said, “I went to go and get you and heard a lady’s voice inside.” I opened my mouth to reply but he cut me off.

“I don’t care what you do on your own time. But you’re my partner, so if you knock her up, you do the honorable thing, ya’hear?”

I sometimes do not react well to surprises. This was one of those times. I just stared at him. His glare deepened.

“Do you understand?” he growled.

“Yes,” I said. Still at a loss for words.

He nodded and was about to turn away when he suddenly rounded on me and said, “And don’t you be raising no kids around here either. This is healing house, not a hearth and home. Blood and death and dying is no place for a child.”

“Yes,” I repeated, still reeling.

When I returned to the room, Tina was dressed in my clothes. She had used a comb I left out to brush her hair. It was thick, curly, and a rustic blond in color. With her deep blue eyes and newly formed face it gave her a striking beauty, like in a painting of Elves or celestial beings. Her expression was cautious and apprehensive.

“Food,” I said, holding out a haunch of dried fish and half a loaf of bread.

She took it and began to eat. I watched her, wondering what to say. I did not know what to do with her. Normally, at this point some sort of payment would take place and then the patient would be sent on its way. But this was not a patient, or at least not a regular one. I had rescued her. I remembered something a sailor once told me while I was sewing up the arm of his friend whom he had fished out of the bay.

When you choose to save someone’s life, it becomes your responsibility.

“What do you plan to do now,” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said after a moment.

We sat together in silence, me watching her eat. When she finished, I offered her a skin of watered wine to wash it down.

“You can stay here for a time. Get your bearings. I’ll get you some better clothes, and you can pay me back by doing some of the work here so I can focus more on my research.”

She nodded. “What do you do for research?”

I smiled. “You will see.”

Actually, she wouldn’t. I planned on doing most of my research when was asleep, away, or too busy to watch.

Tina, it turned out, made an excellent maid. I did not have her clean up the gore in the operating room, but instead had her clean the lab and Adan’s room. After her first day cleaning Adan’s room and having his sheets washed, Adan immediately stopped objecting to her presence.

She was timid and frightened of loud noises, which was to be expected under the circumstances. The first few nights I heard her crying softly and offered her a sedative to help her sleep. She agreed to it, but the first night she only pretended to take it and spent most of the night pretending to sleep while watching me. I spent the night refining my manipulation of Miasma while balancing a cup of water on my head.

From then on, she would always ask for a sedative. I told her I would only give it once in a while, as the formula was expensive. While true, I also did not want her too dependent on the sedative. I had seen how Miasma has a stronger hold on those has who habitually imbue alcohol and other painkillers.

Sometimes during the day, Tina would talk to the patients as they came in. We found her to be a lot more socially adept than both of us. She would carry on light conversations, putting patients at ease and at the same time gaining more information about their injuries or other maladies they might have. We decided that she was better suited out front, fetching water or fresh sutures, or otherwise talking to the patients. She would turn away during the procedures or leave if things were too gristly in general, but overall, we found people were easier to deal with when she was there.

Later that week, I received word from Elgin that there had been a delay, and it would be some time before I could go out and seem him and his mother again. So instead, I went out to meet Shan-lo’s Shaman who had been so eager to meet me.

In the morning Shan-Lo and I took a short boat ride from the city. The sun had just risen, and the thick morning fog was rapidly burning away. He was at the time the least muscular Orc I had ever met. He was short, with soft yellow skin and a protruding belly. He wore a leather jerkin covered with strips of leather from which hung pits of bone and beads, and leather pants adorned in the same fashion. He made a swishing, clinking sound when he moved.

When I stepped ashore he bowed low, his yellow eyes wide in admiration.

“I greet you, fellow Shaman,” he spoke in fluent Cyrian, put his hands together and nodded.

“I greet you,” I responded by copying his gesture, as Shan-lo had instructed me on the way there.

He grinned. Miasma seemed to ebb and flow around him with his breathing.

“You wished to see me,” I said.

“Yes, I wanted to see with my own eyes the dead human who could do so much necromancy. He does things that require lifetimes of practice in just a few months. Now I see why.”

There was a pause, as though he was expecting me to say something.

“…and?” I asked. He looked puzzled for a moment, then grinned.

“I know what you are. But do not worry, your secret is safe with me. But I have many questions. For instance, how do you stay sane? It is okay if you wish to keep that a secret of course. But I was wondering if you could share other things as well, such as how do you produce so much Necrosis-ah, Shan-lo says you call it liquid Miasma-”

“-Just a moment,” I interrupted. “You said you knew what I am. What do you think I am?”

“You are Ha-Tu. You are a Zombie Lord.”

I frowned in puzzlement. I had only vague references to the term. Most were stories of raging beasts that brought hordes of zombies to wipe out small villages. Then a memory came to me, which was odd because I thought I had recalled all my lost memories.

It was a book on various undead creatures and how they were created. I’ll spare you from a direct quote because the description was very technical and painstakingly detailed. But in summary, it described making a Zombie Lord as a variant of creating a litch.

To become a litch one takes out one’s own heart and channels it and all your remaining life force into a phylactery, while replacing the energy that keeps you alive with Miasma. The phylactery literally becomes your heart and soul, and your body-an undead vehicle for your consciousness. If the phylactery remains unharmed, you cannot be killed.

There is a price, however. With your mind kept separate from what’s left your body and soul, your humanity declines. A litch is cold and calculating on a good day and utterly ruthless the rest of the time.

Zombie lords were an attempt to keep a litches humanity while still granting undeath and near immortality. The soul and heart are channeled into a phylactery, but then the phylactery is placed where the heart was. In some cases, the heart isn’t removed at all; the soul is sealed in it and it becomes the phylactery. The result is a zombie-like litch that is fully in touch with its humanity.

It also drives them completely insane.

And I do mean completely. Dreamweavers describe their minds as “shattered fragments, scattered across the realms of thought; a dismemberment more complete than any curse or trauma.”

All this went through my mind right after he spoke.

“You lie,” I said. Pain pulsed though my chest. An overwhelming sense of rage and terror overcame me.

“You lie!” I roared and threw myself at him. Memories came flooding through me. Not old ones but new, days and weeks ago. Times I had tricked myself into thinking I was studying, learning to fight, experimenting.

I was eating people.

Crawling through the shadows of the city at night. Howling at the gods for my loss of Shailyn. Tearing apart bums and street urchins that got in my way. Stalking young nobles that resembled the Councilors son, dragging them from brothels and feasting on them in alleyways. Dancing in seedy taverns, drunk on the vitality from consuming live flesh. Crying tears of liquid Miasma on the breasts of a terrified tavern wench.

Suddenly, the thoughts of the Shaman broke into mine. I ceased paying attention to what I was doing since the memories were so overwhelming. We were locked in a duel, me with one of my hands holding him by his jerkin and repeatedly slamming him into the ground while black fire poured off him and onto me, shredding my skin and flesh, exposing bone.

He had connected minds with me, like the young necromancer apprentice once had. But instead of trying to take over my mind, his voice came shrieking through, “I am not your enemy! Peace! Have mercy!”

Startled as I was rearing up, I let go of him. He fell almost head first, collapsing onto the ground. The fires burning me instantly went out. Dimly I was aware of Shan-lo speaking frantically in Orc. The Shaman looked up at me, his face bloody but relieved, drew a ragged breath, and then his eyes rolled back in his head. He grew still, his breath faint.

I was eating people.

Emptiness consumed me. A heavy weight of self-loathing and despair drove me to my knees. All the color and life from the world bled away into a stark, oppressive silence within me.

Something cool touched my cheek. A faint trace of the morning mist had brushed against me. The last of it. It caused me to turn my head and regard the nearby waters of the wetlands. The slow current was littered with leaves and tiny flowers. Without thinking I dove in head first.

As I sank, I wanted to go back to the days under the bridge. I wanted the silence, the fish, and the moss to be the only things to think about. Raindrops dancing on the watery surface. Birds. Maybe a floating bottle bobbing and weaving in its journey downstream.

The water was much deeper than the canal. I settled on the bottom, looking up at the surface, the morning sun glinting through in ripples and swirls. A sense of peace came to me. My heartbeat ceased again, taking the horrid feelings with it. But I did not want to leave.

I should stay down here, I decided. Where the city is safe from me. Where people are safe from me.

There was a disturbance above. Shan-lo had dove in. Her silhouette pierced the water like a spear in a hail of bubbles. She swam down, looking about frantically, until she saw me. She began to swim in my direction when something far off to my right began to move toward her.

What I had mistaken for a log resting on the bottom turned out to be a long reptile, resembling a wingless dragon with mottled green and brown scales in shapes like bark.

It was fast. As it glided towards her she caught sight of it. Surprised, she began to scramble towards the surface.

She was not going to make it.

There was a thud in my chest. I could not let her die. Feelings of rage at the beast began to surge through me as my heart began to beat, but I tried to remain calm. I reached into my bag. It didn’t seem to have any trouble working under water (lucky for me, as that had still been untested). Pulling out a vial of liquid Miasma, I used it to cast one of the offensive spells I was practicing.

The creature wavered as some of the ichor flew into it. It paused, vomited a little bit of red, then started rushing over to Shan-lo.

I lost it. In rage and desperation, I launched myself at it from the river bottom. I wouldn’t have made it in time had the thing not turned to face me. Its enormous head turned to face me as its mouth opened to reveal rows and rows of teeth.

I did not care. My body had absorbed the remaining liquid Miasma to heal itself, and as it brought its snapping jaws down on my arm I drove my other hand through its eye. It tried to recoil, but I made a fist so that my hand stayed lodged in its skull. Enraged I began kicking and biting it until the water was red and it stopped struggling.

I swam up to the surface where Shan-lo was still heading to shore. I could sense other things in the water moving in, attracted to the blood. Or maybe I just imagined it. But I felt she was in danger.

My heart thundering in my chest I swam after her, kicking up waves as I splashed. I have little skill in swimming, but I made up for that in supernatural strength. I collided in with her with such a force that I almost lifted her from the water. She gave a startled yelp and then threw her arms around me.

I dragged her onto the shore, laughing, the warmth of the city air a sharp contrast to the canal water. Shailyn looked down at her wet cloths and giggled.

“You ruined my dress. Again.” She tried to frown but her smile won over.

“It was worth it,” I laughed, pulling her up to me.

The sound of minstrels playing in a nearby tavern caught our attention, and I picked her up whirling and singing as we danced.

I am a terrible singer, which caused her to laugh and kiss me, trying to get me to stop. Her wet hair clung to me. The evening lanterns danced in her eyes reflection. I brought her lips to mine-

-and I realized I was reliving a memory.

I froze, my face inches away from Shan-lo. I was holding her off the ground. She was staring at me wide eyed, her face flushed. I set her down slowly. A mixture of emotions played over her face as I stepped away. Then she squared her shoulders and pointed behind me.

I turned and saw she was pointing at the unconscious Shaman. I hurried over to check on him. His breathing was shallow and his heartbeat faint. I gave him a few of my elixirs and made him swallow them.

After a moment he groaned. He then rolled onto his side and vomited on the grass.

I handed him another elixir and looked up at Shan-lo.

“I’m sorry,” I said in Orc. I was calm. Thinking back, I realized my heart had stopped beating while I was healing the Shaman.

Shan-lo spoke slowly, mixing Cyrian with simple Orc words to make sure I understood.

“Master, it okay. I know. I always know.”

“You know? What do you mean?”

She responded by reaching down and placing her hand over my heart.

We stared at one another in silence. I felt like I was standing on the edge of some cliff and felt the muscles in my chest flex as my heart came close to beating again.

I pulled back. A pained expression flickered across her face as she lowered her hand. Then she pointed toward the Shaman.

“He tell me. He guess it, but I know.” She placed a hand over her heart and then tapped her head. “He help you.”

18.

The next memories were painful. Even now they cause no small amount of discomfort. I learned that while my memory is indeed flawless in its recording of events, my mind is equally capable of ignoring and compartmentalizing events that are unsettling in nature.

The barrier between my emotions and my consciousness is mostly construct of my mind, and only partly because of my undead nature. It is the construct I used to piece myself together after what was done to me. Sort of. My mind was sundered for the hundreds of years I spent under a bridge in a canal as those pieces came back together into something that worked.

But I was far from healed. A broken mind is very different than a broken body and cannot simply mend with time. You must want to heal, and strive for it, and the mending process is often more painful than what sundered it in the first place. This is why so many minds once afflicted, remain so. For, how does one suffer unendurable pain only to find one must endure an even greater pain to be free of it?

The Shaman was able to help me. It was only then that I learned that his name was simply “Shaman.” His talents lay in necromancy, and in that he had very little skill. However, he was he was capable of communing with his ancestors, of which over ten generations of Shamans long since dead routinely visited him. One of them was a Dreamweaver who told me I could finish mending my mind with the help of the others and their knowledge of Zombie Lords.

“Once, long time ago, all Orc chieftains become Zombie Lords. They live forever, they rule forever, have many wives, and raise ancestors to fight alongside their clan.

“But the dead cannot beget life, and a shattered mind brings slow recovery or no recovery at all. Some succumb to madness and are killed or destroy their tribe. Chieftains that survive are the strongest but have no children. Clan blood weakens as only the weakest beget the weak. The elders see this, and in time chieftains only become Zombie Lords in desperate times. In a time of prosperity, the lore became hard to find.

“Then humans come. They steal the lore, pervert it, and become litches. Their nobles and powerful try it, to hold on to their riches and lovers forever, but succumb to madness.

 “But not you. You we will help you mind heal, and you will make our clan strong in turn. We will teach you how to awaken your heart, your fourth chakra, and touch the living, as the living do. But be warned. You are still dead. You will only come close to being alive again.”

Awakening my fourth chakra was apparently what I had been experiencing when my emotions ran high and my heart started beating again. During those times I am more alive than dead, or undead.

I will breeze through this next part, as it was especially hard to explain. When my fourth chakra awakens, I must feel as much as I can. It needs to be a great catharsis, otherwise the emotions will build up while my fourth chakra is “asleep.” The emotions will overflow, and my mind will fracture to let them out.

I must do this to keep my mind intact, while facing the indignities of how I was made undead along with the murder of my wife and subsequent torture. If I hadn’t already spent hundreds of years staring at fish in a canal, I was sure this would have rendered me into a vegetative state.

I will not recount what happened the first times I tried to awaken my chakra.

19.

So where did I go from there? Simply put, with less time and more training. The Dreamweaver let me know that my body did not require rest, but my mind did, so several hours every night became devoted to meditation. He told me that if I practiced I could let my mind process my memories the way dreams normally did. If I practiced long enough, I may even be able to pull my mind into the Dreaming. If I did, he said, it would be both good and bad. On the good side my mind would become a lot stronger and resilient to madness, and this sort of voluntary lucid dreaming was the first thing one learned if one was to study Dreamweaving. On the bad side, the Dreamlands crossed over to the realm of the Faerie, who claimed it as their domain. While my presence could be small and therefore hard to notice, they were not at all fond of the undead.

A few hours before dawn were devoted to this inner contemplation. I noticed an immediate difference, like a man who bore a lifetime in starvation receiving his first full meal. This was both good and bad. It was good in the sense that my mental acuity sharpened, far greater than when I was alive. My senses were sharper, and my movements were more precise. However, there was a stillness in me that was unsettling. I felt the absence of breathing, the beat of my heart and the blood in my veins.

My other organs in their lack of use bothered me as well. There is a great symphony of movement, twists and turns, gurgling and bubbling within us all that, being born with it, we largely ignore. But without it brings forth a profound sense of loss. At times I found myself grieving over my own death.

Shan-lo became instrumental in my mental therapy. When I practiced awakening my heart she was there to bring me back to perspective. When I injured myself, she would be nearby with a vial of liquid Miasma. In my rage things would be destroyed, trees, plants, our campsite. She would be there, cleaning up before irrational guilt at the destruction I caused assailed me.

As uncomfortable as it is, I must mention one episode in detail.

It was night in the wetlands. I was grieving for Shailyn, curled up, muttering her name like a mantra. Shan-lo thought it was her name I uttered, so she walked over, knelt over me and laid her hands on me in comfort.

Startled, I jerked up, and our eyes suddenly met.

The night had been unseasonably warm in the wetlands. Shan-lo, in the manner of her kin, wore only a belted loincloth, sandals, and thin strips of leather woven into her hair to keep it tied back. Her body was coated in a thin grease used to keep the mosquitoes off.

In the dim light, her body glistened a dark green, like a jade statue of some erotic goddess. With my heart hammering in my chest, I felt a hunger in myself long since forgotten. She must have seen the expression in my face change because her eyes widened, and her breath caught. With my sharpened senses I could see a faint red flush come to her face and flow down over her exquisite breasts.

I grabbed her as I stood up, holding her under her arms and lifting her effortlessly off the ground so that we were eye to eye. For a moment we were suspended there, frozen, our faces almost touching. Slowly her arms began to encircle me, and my lips found hers. Her tiny tusks pressed against my upper lip and her mouth tasted of mead and spices.

My heart was roaring in my chest and it became too much. I dropped her and staggered away as she fell. I turned away as she scrambled to her feet.

“Master-,” she began but I cut her off.

“No!” I shouted through clenched teeth. Everything was raw, too intense. I turned to look at her, my hands were uncontrollably clawing my hair. “I will not, not, take you unwilling.”

She looked confused for a moment, then grinned suddenly.

“Can’t,” she said reaching into her belt and drawing her virtus dagger. “I know what this is for.”

I shook my head, pulling out some hair as I did. My heart was still thundering, and the feelings were so intense I could barely speak.

“You, you, I won’t take, what you don’t want to give.” I was sinking to my knees.

“You my master,” her voice was soft. She dropped the virtus onto the ground, and slowly walked to me. “You have my everything. You not like slave traders. You, I give.” She stood before me, her eyes soft and glimmering.

“I give,” she smiled warmly.

“You’re not her,” I whispered. The pounding in my chest was tearing me apart.

“I know,” she said. Her hands seared my face with an overwhelming comfort they rested on my cheeks. As her forehead pressed against mine my heart began to ease. I felt as though I was drifting, floating along, being pulled by her touch.

“I know,” she repeated, again and again, until I heard her.

I learned more about the changes within me. The living body is perhaps the greatest alchemy lab ever created. When one is angry or frightened, your organs produce elixirs to sharpen your senses and quicken your reflexes. If one is in the throes of romantic intimacy, potions are formed within you to soothe your troubles and prepare your body for its ultimate act; creation.

But my body is dead, alchemical reactions remain so within me. My adrenal gland does not dance to the tune of fight or flight. Neither do (ahem) other organs respond to the attentions of a comely lass. 

This is the barrier I between myself and my emotions. My feelings are subdued because I lack a living body to react to them. That all changes when I awaken my heart. I become “alive,” at least in a limited sense. With all my organs functioning (yes, all of them) I become something greater. A living zombie. Both undead and alive.

It would be ideal to remain in such a state if it were not for the many downsides. I react to everything in its extreme. Were a man to rudely shove me in the street while I wasn’t paying attention, I could easily react be tearing his head off before I even knew what I was doing. Grieving in such a state is a horrid experience, made worse by being the only way for me to completely do so. And while being awaken in the throes of passion could easily lead to great feats of stamina and ingenuity, to inspire many a bard and sighing maidens for many generations to come, a passing glimpse of unintended flesh could just as easily turn me into the kind of predator I abhor the most.

Shan-lo and I became lovers. Not lovers in love, or rather not the kind of love between people who wish to spend their lives together raising a family. She cared for me, no doubt, but she spoke to me about an Orc named Thanok, whom she had known since she was a child, who she always had her eye on. He was older than her, and much higher in status. But his first wife had died in the last plague, leaving him bereaved and, in Orc tradition, unable to remarry for a year and a day. Shan-lo felt that with her rise in status and in being a Shaman’s consort, she could catch his eye and eventually become his new wife.

She was also uncomfortable with many acts of sex. The Slave Traders had mistreated her before selling her, and while she was a very emotionally strong woman, those memories would often haunt her.

She did like me, love me even, but she knew I too was grieving for someone else, and she wanted many children I could not provide. I told her that I wouldn’t mind her having someone like Thanok’s children while remaining my consort, but she disagreed, saying that if I saw her with another man while my fourth chakra was awakened I would probably kill them. It was a good point, and likely true.

Regardless of my time with Shan-lo, my thoughts would still turn to Shailyn, and I wondered what happened to her. The Shaman told me he couldn’t find her soul, and that it was likely that she moved on or was reincarnated. Learning her fate would require some powerful Divination magic since I had nothing physical of hers and it had been so long ago.

The things I had unintentionally done and subsequently blocked out of my mind also required attention and reconciliation. I tracked down some of the places from my memory to learn about the people I had eaten.

What I discovered was that all but a few of the people I devoured worked for or with Ubenfold Trust and Banking. I had gone after them. Supposedly, they would have left me alone since I hadn’t claimed Cronwins inheritance, but I had hunted them anyway. I suspected that they had not called a Judicar or guards after me out of fear of scrutiny into their own practices. I wondered why they hadn’t posted a bounty on my head until I got wind in a bar full of mercenaries that they had a reputation for shortchanging their contracts and recently had been blacklisted.

Once again, I had lucked out. In hindsight, I should have taken notice. There were too many coincidences for it to remain merely luck. But while in the middle of it, it seemed palatable, and I was in the busy trying to get a handle on my grieving and emotions to wonder why moments of emotional discord threw me across the path of one of my enemies, or that no one seemed to notice me to call the guards. Revelation would come much later.

20.

Like many things in life, my next discovery involved large necromantically infused rats.

I had been trying to increase the ratio of undead parts and organs augmented to living rats with the rats surviving the result. Up until then, Tina was the only living being I had encountered that had made it past twenty percent undead parts to living.

The discovery happened after an accident, where a crate fell on one of my rat cages, crushing the rats within. I rushed over to save a few of them via augmentation.

It was surprisingly successful. It turns out that when a living body is already near death prior to surgery, it takes readily to necromantic augmentation. Or it dies very messily. I found out I could augment as high as thirty three percent this way, a full one third of a living organism!

Additionally, once the organism is thus augmented over the twenty percent ratio, other effects come into play. Rats that were once weary of me grew docile. Miasma did not affect them as much, and I suspected their aging process had been retarded. They were slower to heal, and depending on their injuries, healing magic could damage them. My liquid Miasma (distilled or otherwise) could heal them fully if injected into their undead augmentations; both the augmentation itself and their living parts.

Last and most importantly, I could manipulate the living alchemy within them through their augmentations. I was not sure how this worked, but if I touched the necromantic leg of a rat, I could put it to sleep, invigorate it, make it hostile, euphoric, or a variety of other changes. I could even enhance or subdue its own healing process. With a syringe of Miasma, I could enhance the reaction exponentially.

With this in mind, I augmented several infant rats with enhancing their growth, health, and intelligence in mind.

Enhancing their bodies and giving them perfect health was easy, but their brains were so small and the alchemy of the mind so complex to work with (apart from maximizing already present efficiency) that I gave up on enhancing intelligence until my knowledge of alchemy grew.

The next day out of curiosity, I asked Tina if I could run some tests on her. She agreed, and I placed my hand lightly on her augmented face. It turns out that I could affect her just as well. Even more so because her body is more complex which makes way for a greater variety of reactions.

With this new tool I used it to maximize her physical health, heal her bruises from the daily grind, and help her sleep when dreams troubled her. In time and taking the lessons I learned from the Dreamweaver, I offered to induce her into a relaxed state so that she could address her trauma.

Again, she acquiesced, and I learned the whole of her story.

“I was a prostitute,” she said, her voice relaxed and faint. “I hope you don’t hate me. I hope you don’t turn me away.”

“Never for that,” I said. “Besides, you’ve earned your place here.”

She nodded dreamily, her eyes half open.

“Please continue,” I said.

“My father was the captain of a trade galleon, and a priest of Kaos. With his prayers he was one of the few men capable of navigating the Tempest Sea. It made him very rich.

“One day he told us he had a vision from the Goddess. I don’t know the details, but it ended up with him playing three games of dice with a beggar.

“The first game ended with a tie, so he gave half of all his wealth to the beggar, in return for a moldy cloak. The second game he lost, so he sold his ship then and there, on the docks of this city, never to sail again. The third game was another tie, so he kept his wife, my mother, and sold me to a brothel, in return for the beggar’s soup spoon. I was their only child, as my brothers had died at sea.

“He left me with an enormous sum of money and sold me to one of the highest paying brothels in the city. It made little difference.  Within a year I had spent all my money on frivolous things, despite being paid as an expensive whore, and had debt collectors looking for me. I tried selling many of the frivolous things I bought, but the debt collectors took them as payment, saying it barely made a difference in what I owed.

“So, during the winter festival I tried to sneak down to the docks and purchase passage on one of the ships. Three men from the collectors caught me.”

She stopped. Her breathing grew heavy. I could keep her body relaxed but I knew her mind was under terrible stress.

“We can stop here for now, if you like,” I said.

“No,” she shook her head slightly. “I’m afraid that if I don’t speak now, I will be too afraid to once you stop calming me.

“They pulled me out of the cart I was in and threw me in an alley. Said they were making an example of me. They then,” she paused, tears were running freely from her eyes, but I kept her relaxed.

“They raped me. Two of them. The third one just started hitting me until I blacked out.” She was choking slightly, so I stabilized her. She sighed.

“That’s all I remember. Thank you.”

We sat there for a time, in my lab with my hand on her cheek. Me keeping her calm and relaxed while she collected herself. Eventually, when she seemed relaxed enough, I began to move my hand away from her when she said, “Wait.”

I stopped, and settled down again, thinking she just needed more time. But she then spoke.

“There is something I want to talk to you about, but I know I am going to be a mess once you let go,” she paused, biting her lip, then continued.

“I have been here several moons now, and not once have you tried to lay a hand on me. Even though you’ve made me more beautiful than I was before,” her hand came up and touched her hair.

“Surely, as a man who is both a healer and an alchemist, you are married?”

I thought about Shailyn, and then after a moment, about Shan-lo.

“It’s complicated,” I said.

She nodded. “Yet I feel, a connection to you. I feel I can trust you, and you have proven it. I can talk to you like I can talk to no other,” she smiled at me, and the smile suddenly vanished.

“But I do not want to be your lover. I don’t want any man, inside me, ever again,” she spoke slowly and paused. I knew it was taking her great effort to speak, despite my calming effect.

“But can I love you? I will not ask for much. Maybe hold your hand some time, or to sit here how we are now, with you relaxing me so I can speak freely. You can have your wife, or consorts or lovers or whores, I don’t care. I don’t want that. Do this for me and I’ll give you anything you want. I can’t give you my body, but I can use my hands, or even my mouth-,”

I held up my other hand to silence her. A searing pain of desire and pity flooded my chest until I stilled my heart again. I almost forgot to keep her calm, in calming myself.

“We will not be physically intimate. I have problems with limitations once my passions become unfettered, so best not leave that to chance,” I paused. She would have been holding her breath if I allowed her.

“I see no reason why we cannot do this,” I said. “There are others in my life, but as it stands there is room for you. I cannot say that I love you, or that I will, but we can have this.” I was suddenly reminded of the rats becoming docile to me after I augmented them.

“It is possible that in mending you I created some sort of bond between us. I must research it. You must accept that at least some of what you feel for me is artificial.”

“I think I know,” she replied. “I felt it as soon as I woke up in your lab. But it is not love. It’s a feeling of safety around you. It’s almost as though I can feel what you’re feeling, and I know you’re not feeling like hurting me.”

I thought over what she said.

“Has that feeling ever changed?”

“A moment ago,” she replied. “For a moment it seemed like you were sad, and you wanted me all at once.”

This definitely called for more research.

At her request, we spent some time in silence, holding hands. Eventually I nodded to her, and slowly eased up on my calming effect on her mind. After a moment her breathing became rapid and she plunged into hysterics. I touched her face again and put her to sleep. In the morning, I would wake her with a mild invigoration, so that she could contemplate the nights unpleasantness while being well rested.

While she slept, I continued my research, all the while thinking about the brothel I found long ago. The ladies residing there would all routinely suffer some fate like Tina’s. I knew I could not fix the world, but I was wondering if I could make it a little less terrible than it was.

In the morning while Adan and I were preparing for our first customer and Tina took our linens to the washing women I turned to him and said, “You have noble blood, yes?”

He gave me a sidelong look as he neatly laid out a set of knives.

“There’s more vinegar in my piss than the average sorry sod, if that’s what you mean, yes.”

“So then, you can buy property,” I said, still looking at him.

He stopped and turned to face me. His usual scowl crinkled in amusement.

“You looking to expand our illustrious business?” He said with no small hint of sarcasm.

“Actually, I was thinking of us expanding into other businesses. Ones that would benefit from this one as well as increasing our income.”

He grew thoughtful at that and turned away to continue out preparations. After a moment he said, “What did you have in mind?”

I gave him the address.

“What, that old place? It’s a burned down whore house.”

“It has potential.”

Adan shrugged. “Everywhere in the slums ‘has potential.’ But you haven’t steered me wrong so far, so I’ll look into it. Partner.” He grinned a little.

A few days later he came back from a trip to the realtors. Tina had taken to mending my clothes in the corner of the main room during slow times and was doing so while humming to herself. He glanced at her, smirking briefly before he spoke.

“I checked out that property you mentioned. We could buy it for a song, but it just ain’t worth it.”

“Why?”

He sighed. Tina stopped humming, obviously listening in.

“The foundation is soaked through. Anything built there starts to shift within a year. Entire buildings come down within ten years. That’s how the fire happened; part of the wall came down in the kitchen.

“The last three times the place has been renovated it was used to fool some young noble out of his inheritance money. It would be built up out of some shoddy materials and then sold to someone who would then watch it fall apart in front of his eyes.” He gave me a hard look.

“If that’s the kind of business you’re thinking of getting into, then you’re going in alone. I’ll have no part in it.”

I shook my head. “We’ll rebuild it as a tavern, using decent materials. There’s a brothel there now. We’ll fix the girls up, and they can be tavern wenches.”

Adan’s scowl deepened. “Did you hear anything I just said? I told you the foundation is soaked. You can’t just un-soak a foundation. You have to dig it all out, prop up the foundations edge, fill it with something watertight unless you’re stupid and want an underwater basement come next rain, and then hope you’ve dug deep enough and the whole damn thing doesn’t sink anyway. After all that it’s going to cost ten times what the property is worth.”

“Buy it anyway. I have an idea. But don’t tell anyone. If everyone thinks we’re fools, the brothel that is there will be a cheap sell as well.”

“We are fools,” he snorted, “or at least you are if you are going to try this out with an idea you’re not even sure will work.”

I shrugged. “Fine. Then I’ll only use my money for it. But you’ll only get ten percent of the profit made.”

He grimaced. “Twenty percent. My name’s on the deed, so anything bad that happens there comes down on me.”

“Since when is a noble responsible for tavern brawls? Twelve percent.”

“Fifteen, or no deal.”

“Done.”

We shook hands, and I realized that for the first time in my unlife and perhaps in my previous life as well, I had successfully haggled.

Now, all I needed was my idea to work.

“Oh, and don’t worry about the brothel,” he added. “They are squatters.  The moment you buy the property, everything on it not legally there becomes yours, or so the city law says. I can have the city guards round them all up and arrest the men running it for trespassing if you like. It’ll cost you though, the guards don’t like going over to that part of town.”

“I’ll take care of that,” I said. “Just get me a copy of the deed.”

I took the copy of the deed, broke out my scrivening kit, and made an additional copy. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed writing. A steady, even hand, each curve of carefully drawn calligraphy, placed precisely so. The writer of the deed was quite skilled, and it was a pleasure copying his work.

I found a peace in writing and scrivening that seemed to mimic some of my new meditations. It is part of why I am writing down these recollections.

It was late in the evening as I watched the brothel work from the burnt-out kitchen. I had brought several extra vials of liquid Miasma with me, and in the dark of night I coaxed them into moving underneath the owner and his bodyguards.

It was a slow night, with only a few patrons at this hour. As the last one walked away I approached.

“Six coppers for ten minutes,” the owner said gruffly. “Pay up first.”

He was sitting at a small table with a lamp in its center, dressed in thick furs to keep the night chill at bay. His bodyguards flanked him, one giving his usual intimidating glare, the other looking bored.

With a mental gesture I cast a spell I had been practicing, channeling it through the dark Miasma pooled at their feet. All the men suddenly grew pale and began to shiver all over. One guard, no longer bored, put one hand on the table to stay on his feet.

“Wh-hats, ha-happening,” the owner was struggling to rise while the other guard fumbled with his cudgel.

“Some call it ‘The Wraiths Kiss’,” I said. “Orcs call it ‘The Dying Mans Winter.’ I prefer its Elven name; ‘I’than L’har’, or ‘The Lover Scorned’.”

“What’d you want,” the owner said through clenched teeth. The guard holding himself up by the table collapsed to his knees.

“Simple,” I said. “I want everything. Everything you own is now mine. Everyone who works for you now works for me.” I pulled out my extra copy of the deed.

“All legally, of course,” I unrolled it and showed it to them while they struggled to breathe. The armed guard suddenly took a swing at me with his cudgel. I released the last of the Miasma he was standing on into him and he collapsed into a convulsing heap.

“Anyone else?” I asked.

“Please let me live,” the other guard choked from the floor.

“Maybe, in a moment,” I said. The Wraiths Kiss wasn’t designed to kill, only incapacitate. But I found that if you overloaded the spell with Miasma it can be lethal. You just needed a lot of Miasma.

As it stood, all that would happen to the remaining two is that they would be miserable for the next half hour until the spell wore off. But if I released the remaining Miasma under them into the spell, they would die. It was like the difference between making it hard to breathe and taking away all the air.

I walked around the table to start going through the owner’s belongings. I noticed he was clutching a dagger in his hand. I deliberately looked at the knife, then back at him, and said, “Go ahead, try.”

He glared at me, shivering, but dropped the knife on the ground. I made sure his other hand was bare then collected his and both bodyguards’ belongings onto the table. The surviving guard was curled up into a shivering ball on the floor.

I put on my spectacles and began going through the owner’s stuff. Most of what he had was money. I looked up at the owner to comment on this when the spectacles whispered to me that his cloak was enchanted to ward off the cold and had several hidden pockets. I stripped it off him and he began to shiver violently, so I threw the dead guard’s cloak on him.

The hidden pocket held a few elixirs for healing and curing disease, but also a ledger, and, to my utmost surprise, an enchanted slave collar. These things were ridiculously expensive. How could he have possibly acquired it?

I put the slave collar on him and activated it. I then released the spell on him. He glared at me as he grew still.

“Tell me how you got the collar,” I commanded.

“Found it on a dead slave girl,” he grunted.

“Did you steal it?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you use it?”

“I use it all the time.”

“Tell me how.”

The man got a wild look in his eyes.

“I find a boy, a street urchin. And I have my men catch him and put the collar on him.”

“Then what do you do? Tell me everything,” I said.

“I take him up to my room and I bugger him. After that, I make him bugger me. After that I get all mad, so I drown him. I used to drown them in the canal, but then we dragged a horse trough-”

As I have mentioned before, sometimes I do not react well to surprises. I did not at all expect what he said. So, I had surprised myself, by picking up his knife and stabbing him in the chest. I briefly wondered why I didn’t stab him in a spot such as the neck, eye or heart and quickly realized I had chosen a place where he would expire in a slow, agonizing manner.

That would not do.

My heart was beating, and I had to spend a while calming it to stillness. He was bent over, coughing up blood while trying to pull the knife out. I took the collar off him (attacking a slave breaks the enchantment, but it can be reused) and using necromancy I severed the hand of the dead guard.

Grabbing the owner, I roughly pushed him back in his chair, yanked the knife out of him in a spray of blood, and shoved the severed hand into the wound while molding it to the wounds shape. He gave a gurgling scream as he tried to shove me off.

“No, you don’t get to die yet,” I told him as the wound sealed. It was imperfect. It probably hurt like hell, but it was enough that I could probably put the slave collar back on him, and the enchantment would work. Before he got too oriented I slapped the slave collar back on him and looked at it through the spectacles to see of it was working. It was.

“You must have rope,” I said. “Tell me where you keep it.” He showed me one of the bottom rooms that still had a door where they kept various supplies. I grabbed several lengths of rope and tied up the remaining guard, and then collected as much of the remaining liquid Miasma as I could.

By now, several of the women, alerted by the owner’s cries, were peeking around their blanket doorways at me. I waved them over, but they disappeared back into their rooms.

For the next half hour, I commanded the owner to list me all his assets. He held no bank account but had a few hideaways in stashes or with people who owed him. I had him wait for me with the lamp off while I went and collected them, under the order to not free the bodyguard. It did not take long. His stashes comprised of a few coin purses full of silver and some extra sets of clothes. One stash, though, had a whole lot more money that the others.

After returning I asked him a few questions about his business. When I quickly realized that he wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know, I took him around back, by the canal. The tide was high, and the water was almost up to the canals edge from the last rain. I thought of all sorts of things I should do to him out of revenge or some sort of justice for the children he raped and murdered.

But the more I thought about it, the more it weighed me down. Terrible things happened in the city all the time, often with the only hope that if you were lucky Adan and I would be able to stitch you back together. This man was by no means alone in his atrocities. In this city, in this world, atrocities were legion. Trying to make some sort of example of him would be just another terrible act in a night full of them.

So, I simply killed him. It was quick, efficient, left very little mess, and after I stripped his body, I turned it into liquid Miasma and stored it. Returning to the front, I put the slave collar on the bodyguard and untied him.

21.

“Please, everyone, gather around,” I said.

I was sitting in the chair the owner once sat. His table lantern had the wick pulled as far out as it could go, filling the dilapidated room with an unusual brightness. There were a few bloodstains on the floor, one from which had a long streak that led to the back of the inn where I had dragged the dead bodyguard before rendering him down.

Nine young women who the guard had herded from their rooms came before me, some of them limping, some with a little shuffle, all of them malnourished and filthy.

“I am the new owner of this establishment, which makes all of you my responsibility.”

I reached into the Traveler’s Bag at my side, and started pulling out loaves of bread, haunches of dried meat and fruit, and skins of watered wine, and started piling them on the table. They all stared at the growing pile hungrily until I gestured them over. As one they scrambled, almost knocking each other over to get to the table. I kept pulling out food until they were all eating their fill. Then I stood and started pulling out thick wool cloaks from the bag, handing one to each of them.

I watched Miasma drift around their hands, feet, to the tips of their ears and noses and knew that some of them would be losing parts of themselves to frostbite. I could fix that, but it would be a risk.

Soon they were finished eating and wrapped snugly in their warm cloaks. Many of them were swaying on their feet, made drowsy from eating.

“To bed,” I said. Pulling out all the extra blankets that were in the storage room and handing them out. “I will talk to you all tomorrow. Sleep together if you like, in whatever rooms you want.”

They all shuffled out, choosing to sleep together in the few rooms that still had doors.

I turned to the bodyguard.

“So, what should I do with you,” I asked.

He was a big man, looking of Cyrian decent, with blond hair and blue eyes.

“Have me guard?” he said.

“You helped the previous owner with what he did to street urchins,” I said quietly.

The man shrugged. “He was the boss, we did what he said. It ain’t like it was illegal.”

“Actually, raping and killing children is illegal.”

“Oh. Even street kids?” His words were curious, like he actually didn’t know.

I stared at him. I had assumed he was a smart man when he curled up on the ground and begged for his life. That was, after all, the smart thing to do when someone used magic against you and you had none. But it appeared that I had overestimated his intellect. Or at least his disposition. Was he a sociopath or as dumb as a rock? Both?

“Even street kids,” I confirmed. “What’s your name?”

“Darryl,” he smiled nervously.

“Well Darryl, your new job is to watch over the girls while I am gone.”

“I’ve done that before,” he nodded.

“Did you do it alone?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, the girls were here with me.”

I looked at him, hard. He wasn’t saying it as a joke, and he spoke with all sincerity. Not even the hint of a smile.

I recategorized him as dumb as a rock or master thespian. So far, it was leaning strongly to the former.

Our conversation continued along those lines. Darryl it turned out had a good instinct as far as self-preservation went, but otherwise couldn’t think his way out of a burlap sack. It made him an excellent thug, and a good guard if all you needed was someone to stand around looking dangerous.

I sent him to bed and spent the rest of the night preparing the grounds for the ritual I had designed.

In the late morning when they woke up, I fed them all again and instructed them to all go down the road to a lodging house, where they would be staying for the next few months. I had arranged their lodging a few days before. The accommodations there were meager but extravagant compared to this place.

“They will feed and shelter you there. During that time, I will be repairing this inn. I will stop by on occasion to check in on you. When the inn is repaired you will have a choice; work for me or be on your way. I’ll not stop you if you choose to leave.

“You do not have to work while at the lodging house. You will not necessarily have to whore while working in the inn. I will be using you in the kitchen, dining room, and with the cleaning. Any questions?”

None of them had any. I produced a dozen cheap peasants blouses with dresses form my bag and handed them out. The ladies were livelier than the night before, murmuring thank you and some of them curtsying. The went around the back and rinsed off by the canal, before donning their new clothes and leaving.

I paid Darryl a month’s worth of wages and told him to keep squatters from moving onto the property. I then went home to help Adan with patients until the evening.

That night I began my ritual. I dumped twelve men’s worth of liquid Miasma onto the ground and sat down to meditate. I focused on letting my mind seep into the Miasma beneath me, encouraging it to mix with the water soaked in the ground. After a few hours I sensed it was like the water soaked with Miasma that the undead shaman was living in. Once it spread out far enough, I started pushing on the water infused Miasma like I had when I made an underwater tunnel.

It was difficult, and there were times when I had to give up and start over, but in a few hours before dawn I had pushed the water away from underneath the entire property line. To my surprise I sensed a great deal of empty space under the building. That would be useful later.

I set up a modified ward to hold the infused water in place, holding the ground water from seeping back in. It would have to be renewed every week or so until I found a better way to do it.

After that, things went smoothly. A few months went by as I worked, trained, and meditated while hired craftsmen rebuilt the inn.

Adan was busier than ever. With our occasional alchemical supplements, my own supply of rat gut, and Tina’s hospitality we nearly quadrupled our clientele. Fewer patients died, which meant less food for me, but the greater volume of people coming in made up for the difference.

Haas had finally decided that my posture was good enough to start learning to fight. I went from just standing there to just standing there and punching or kicking. Sometimes he would have me hold a blade in various stances.

My knowledge of Necromancy grew with each experiment. I was able to make a dead rat move for a couple of seconds and was sure that if I wanted I could start delving into reanimation. The prosthetics I created already were after a fashion, but there were differences in making an animated part compared to an entire construct.

I had taken to meditating the first few hours of every night while Tina curled up next to me. She had fewer nightmares when we did this, and I would always toucher her and placer her into a deeper, healthier slumber before I went to work. In so doing, I began to recognize what the biological state of a person looks like while their mind is in the Dreaming. For some reason, observing this enabled me to reach deeper meditations.

Through interviews with the Shaman and his Dreamweaver ancestor we were able to ascertain that I was no longer eating people. Well, uncontrollably at least.

Neither was I blacking out recent memories. I tried facing some of the more painful memories, but my progress was slow. The Shaman was not dissuaded, however, telling me that the ancestors were enthusiastic about my progress.

Shan-lo and I would often meet during these meditations in the wetlands. I would sit cross legged in some small clearing we had found, while she would camp out nearby and watch out for anything going wrong while I woke my fourth chakra. Sometimes, I would seek her out, and we would tumble among the reeds, clothing forgotten. Her body was strong- densely packed with muscle for one so small. She would flush and tremble with eager excitement, and then grow bored and dismissive just as quickly once we were done. I once asked her why, and she gave a smile with a shrug and said, “You are not him.”

22.

It took six months to rebuild the Inn. First, I named it Blackwater Inn. After which, I quickly realized that there is much to do in running an Inn and I was terrible at it. There is purchasing food, stable supplies, inn supplies, permits, bribes, alcohol for the bar, more permits (bribes), maintenance, maintenance supplies, security, more bribes, and pest control. The only thing on the list I wasn’t worried about was the pest control, as I really saw it as an opportunity for more suture supplies and liquid Miasma.

I took my troubles to Adan, and he simply laughed.

“I told you it was more trouble than it was worth,” he sneered. “What? You thought you could just build a business and let it run itself? You’re a greater fool than I thought.”

“It’s your business too,” I said.

He grinned at me. “I did my part, as promised. Now you do yours.”

I spent a week over at the Inn, trying to sort out which of the girls would do what kind of job. Finally, one of them came up to me and said, “Milord, have you ever run an inn?”

“No,” I said, sighing. “And I know I’m making a mess of it.”

She smiled faintly, and said, “Why don’t you hire a seneschal?”

I was about to respond with something like “I can’t because I’m not a noble,” when I realized I didn’t need one, I just needed someone who could run an inn for me. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before, and it would have saved me a lot of time and money if I had worked it all out before the Inn was finished. 

Finding someone turned out to be easy. Too easy. I asked a former patient of mine, a local shopkeeper who had been kicked by his horse, if he knew anyone who qualified as an innkeeper and needed work. He immediately introduced me to “a good friend of his;” a tall man with sandy brown hair and a lopsided smile. Said his name was Winden, and he would be happy to work for me.

In the first few weeks of Winden’s hire everything went splendidly. We were able to open, and patrons started coming in good numbers. Then a cart overturned in front of the Inn while one of the girls was fetching eggs, almost killing her. Then the wards I set broke and the kitchen flooded. That night a brawl broke out and one of the patrons stabbed the other in the eye, killing him. I had to stay away for a week while the kitchen continued to sink out of fear the guards would investigate me. By then the water had spread to the pantry, destroying several months’ worth of food.

I was looking around the Inn, searching the ambient Miasma for whatever had broken the wards, when I noticed there was no Miasma at all around Winden. All the miasma he would unintentionally walk through or near would immediately veer into someone or something else.

I followed him for a time, my suspicion growing, when I saw some ambient miasma veer into a serving wench suddenly. The moment it did she stumbled and almost dropped the mug of ale she was carrying.

So, I sat at the bar, watching Winden work behind it while casually tossing ambient Miasma in his direction. It was weak, but it seemed to divert harm thrown his way in a six-foot sphere radiating from a bag at his waist.

That evening I brought over an entire jug of distilled spirits and challenged to drink him under the table. The wager was that if he won, I would give him the Inn. If I won, anything of his was mine, and he’d work for half a year for room and board only. He grinned as we shook on it.

“I haven’t lost a wager in years. I don’t plan on it now.”

As I’ve said before, food and drink do nothing for me. The spirits gave me an unpleasant stomach sensation until I hurried to the lavatory before it leaked out of me. Winden was out in less than an hour.

While unconscious, I donned my spectacles and looked in his bag.

Inside was a single polished white stone with flecks of black. The spectacles told me that it was a Cursed Luckstone. It worked by slowly draining the luck from those around it and storing up good fortune, then it would activate whenever some misfortune was going to befall whoever carried it.  It was potent in short bursts, but by no means foolproof as I had demonstrated. Also, the stone could be broken, releasing all the pent up good fortune in one moment.

I tuned the stone to myself, then put in my bag. I was going to hide it in the canal (maybe giving bad luck to fish), but it didn’t seem to be able to work while hidden in its confines.

Winden was still hung over when I saw him the next evening. He was also furious when he found out I had taken his “lucky rock.” I told him I had someone who knew some magic look it over and found out it was cursed. He immediately relented, but I got the feeling he already knew about the nature of the stone.

That was the end of the issue, for on that very same day shortly after stepping out for errands, Winden was stabbed to death by an enraged fisherman. The fisherman swore up and down that he looked exactly like the man his wife was having an affair with. I supposed that using the Cursed Luckstone for so long caused him to run up a deficit in fate.

A curious thing happened later that week with the Cursed Luckstone. At the time I thought little of it, attributing it to my absent mindedness or a lack of coordination, but in later hindsight, a much more sinister light was revealed.

Three times throughout the week I opened my Traveler’s Bag to fetch the Cursed Luckstone and make sure it was not affecting me in any way. On two of those occasions when I first tried, I ended up pulling out The Book of Names instead. Each time I put Book back and then drew the stone out, thinking the error was mine. Now I am not so sure.

Instead of searching again for a new seneschal, innkeeper, seeing as it was just that job, I instead offered it to the woman who came up with the idea in the first place. She resisted at first, being afraid that no one would take her seriously or respect her as a woman trying to run an Inn.  I convinced her by informing her Darryl would be under her direction, along with any other bouncers we decided to hire.

It was a good choice, and the woman, whose name was Petra, quickly made herself indispensable. Soon the Inn was bringing in a steady income of both money and information. Adan accused me of giving him more than fifteen percent as a way of showing him up, so I showed him the inns accounting. After that he said, “So we’ll make back a little money you put into it before it sinks,” and left it alone.

23.

On this night the wetlands were shrouded in fog. The grasses and trees in my night vision looked grey and hazy, with harsh lines blurred into soft curves. It was unseasonably warm, giving signs of an early spring. Animals croaked as insects gave out a riot of clatter, and occasionally’ the soft trill of a night bird in search of a mate could be heard.

“So, she finally wants to see us again,” over the din I said to Elgin. Shan-Lo was sitting at the other end of the boat, looking around uneasily.

“There have been problems with the Gargoyle,” he said. “His name is Bastion. He sealed up the boarders of Mothers land for a while, and killed anyone who came in.”

“How did he do that,” I asked. “I thought he was just a tribesman.”

“Gargoyles have a natural talent for earth magic. Mother taught him some before things went bad.”

“Still-”

“He made a deal with an Orc tribe. Their Shaman enchanted tattoos on him. He can move like a ghost now and pull people into the Spirit Realm.”

“That’s some powerful magic,” I said thoughtfully.

“He can do other things, but only in the Spirit Realm. Gargoyles in the spirit realm become like earth elementals.

I didn’t know a lot about the Spirit Realm. I knew that the realm of Null, or Death, was part of the Spirit Realm, but separate from it at the same time, the details of which I had yet to grasp. Spirits and souls inhabited the realm and it served as a path to other places like Arcadia, the Abyss, and places where the deities themselves dwelled, or ruled in singularity.

But apart from my knowledge of Null’s Realm, I didn’t know anything else about it.

The fog grew thicker as the night grew long. Eventually, a pale fire light could be seen in the distance, signaling Alula’s house. We drifted along in silence, letting the current carry us there. Shan-Lo’s ease seemed to grow, alerting me as well. Elgin turned to me and began to whisper, “When we get off the boat hurry straight away to the cottage. Don’t-,”

that was the moment the boat exploded.

There was a terrible roaring sound. Bolts of stone burst through the boats floor, tearing it apart like hot hail through parchment. Elgin was torn apart. Pieces of stone went through my arms and legs as I leapt from the boat. Midair I heard Shan-Lo scream. I tried to turn and see her as the black waters enveloped me. Something had muddied the water. The realization that I was essentially wading through mud in the presence of someone who knew earth magic came to me a moment too late. The murky water suddenly cleared as the dirt blasted through me.

As I drifted towards the river bottom, I caught the silhouette of a great winged shape, moving towards Alula’s house. It held a struggling figure in its right arm as it disappeared from my sight.

It took me four days to crawl back to my room. My body was not healing the way it should. I was continuously leaking Miasma, and I knew that if I ran out, I would be destroyed. It had taken all my reserve potions from my Travelers Bag just to get home.

It was past midnight when I stumbled through the back door, calling out for Tina. I looked around. Her bed had not been slept in and her cloak was gone.

I drank another vial of Miasma and tried to think of what to do. I could not go looking for Tina in my condition. I might be able to survive revealing what I was to Adan, but then what? I doubted his skill in alchemy was anywhere near proficient enough to cure my condition. The only person I knew who could quickly find the Shaman was Shan-Lo, and the Gargoyle had her.

Miasma continued to seep out of the holes in my flesh. Part of me just wanted to give up and rest. I was partly dead already, would going the rest of the way be much different?

Then I thought of the Gargoyle, winning. Winning like the Councilman’s son won all those years ago. Destroying me and all I hold dear. Getting away with it.

That was not going to happen, not this time. The Gargoyle had made deals to increase his power beyond what I knew was possible. Two could play at that game.

I opened my bag and pulled out two items: The Cursed Luckstone and The Book of Names. I held the stone aloft, making sure it was attuned to me, and then shattered it against the floor. Immediately, before the released luck dissipated I opened the book to a random page.

Some pages stuck together as I slid my fingers across them. I let them go, trusting the magic from the stone to guide me. I opened the page to a summoning. It was not elaborate. It required no chanting or sacrifices. Simply a series of words in a language I could not understand but could easily pronounce. As one proficient in languages in general and a former scribe to mages, I got the impression that the whole two pages to be read aloud were simply saying the creatures name.

It took me three minutes. I spoke slowly, making sure to get every syllable correct. I will not write the words or actions of the ritual here. Saying or acting even part of the ritual would risk calling attention to oneself, and not necessarily from that which I summoned. Do not follow my path, lest ye walk among fools.

I finished the ritual and waited. Nothing happened. Five minutes passed. Then ten. I started moving to put the book away and fetch one of my last bottles of Miasma when I heard a soft tapping sound from a nearby shelf.

The doll I saved had popped open its box and was now sitting on the edge of the shelf, looking at me. The tapping noise was it drumming its fingers on the shelfs edge. It still looked tiny and lifeless, and yet it moved its fingers as its empty eyes seemed to follow me when I sat up.

We stared at one another for a time as I tried to think of what to say. The doll seemed to be content in the silence, but I really couldn’t tell. Finally, I ventured, “What should I call you by?”

The doll chuckled in a voice deeper than its size would imply.

“You have my name, you spoke it to call me here. But if you must address me in a way that is short and quick, you can call me Barnabe.”

“Okay Barnabe, I want-”

“I know why I am here,” Barnabe cut in. “I know what you want from me. I know what you need. It’s why I came.”

I was disturbed by the implications of what he was saying, but I was already committed. The Gargoyle would not win.

“Then name your price,” I said.

“Not quite so fast,” the doll chuckled. “There are rules to follow. Three for three. Three things for you, and three things for me.”

“First,” it gestured at itself, “you have given me a vessel to be here by. I will repay you by repairing yours.”

The doll began to sing. Various items within my lab began to melt into a liquid. They pooled at my feet, and then began to flow up my body into and out of my wounds. I felt a slight tugging in the Miasma within me, and then it suddenly stopped leaking. My wounds closed quickly after that, though I was ravenously hungry. I quickly drank a vial of Miasma.

“Done,” Barnabe said. The liquid metal had hardened into a solid puddle on the floor.

“Second,” it continued, “the gift of vengeance. I will give you the means to bring your enemies down before you. How you use it is up to you. Of course, as you use it, it will use you.”

The pool of steel at my feet melted and coalesced into the shape of a mask identical to the one the doll was wearing before hardening once more. It had changed from a shiny steel to eggshell white.

I picked it up. It felt as thin as glass, yet harder than iron.

“What must I do for this,” I asked. “And what does it do?”

“Oh, it does many things. It will hide you from the Council, in plain sight, if you are clever. It will show you how to make other masks. These masks will help you be the right person you need to be when you get your revenge. Or for other things.

“But be careful,” the doll chuckled, “the masks we wear often shape who we are.”

As I thought about what he said, he continued.

“What you must do for me is, make me a mask. A very special one. It will take you years to complete, but that is fine. When it is done, you will take it and the Book of Names to a very special place and leave them there. The mask I made you will guide you to the location, when the time is right.”

I nodded. All the requests so far seemed reasonable. Tenable even. I wondered where this special place I was supposed to take the mask was, though. Perhaps Barnabe wanted me to take it somewhere in the Abyss or across the Shroud into the land of the dead.

Or maybe the third command was where he was going to screw me over.

“My last gift,” the doll said. “To protect those, you care for. So many passions bottled up. Trapped within you, yes. I will give you the gift of song. I name you, Nepherine.”

It made no sense. The word meant “bard” in Old Cyrian. Though the way he said it sounded a lot like “Nephreie” which meant “world song” in Old Uben.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What good would making me a Bard do?”

“Bard,” Barnabe scoffed. “Your words will do more than sell pretty verses to send maidens’ hearts aflutter. Everything, even magic itself, has a sound. You will sing it. Only Dragons and Gods have greater power.”

Instantly I knew what he meant. When magic gets powerful enough, instead of warping the world to suit your desire, it breaks it. You get your desired effect but unless you really know what you are doing (like a Dragon or a God) side effects can happen. Reality doesn’t fit back together the way it should. Any sort of change is possible. Use it enough and you make holes. Holes in reality that things like Barnabe can slip though.

“Why would I ever dare use such a gift?”

“You needn’t,” Barnabe replied, swaying his tiny hands back and forth, as though listening to a song. “I would never force you to. It is simply there for you to use, if you never need it.”

“And in return,” I asked, uneasy. “What must I do for this?”

“After the third time you use it, you must change the name you are using. Never again will you go by Jorm.”

I had never told him my name.

“I have to go now,” he said. “There are other things I must be doing. Keep this doll in the box. I will be back. I wouldn’t recommend intentionally letting harm come to it. After all, if you revoke my gift, I will revoke yours.”

And with that, the puppet slumped down on the shelf, as though invisible strings animating it had been cut.

There had been no fanfare, no display of power in making me a Nepherine. I briefly wondered if it was some sort of prank or deception and decided that the only way I could find out was if I tried to sing, which I didn’t dare to.

Curiously, it calmed the smoldering emotions within. I no longer felt helpless. If I could sing, I would always have a last move to make, even if it could destroy me. That is, if it wasn’t Barnabes way of making a joke.

I wanted to ask why I should change my name, but I was weary of the price I would have to pay in him answering. I had read about when dealing with such creatures and nothing was for free. I had already asked it why I should use the gift it gave me and suspected even as small a question as that had some sort of price.

The doll was slumped down, leaning against the open box like a drunkard losing consciousness. Its eyes were once again lifeless. I picked it up and carefully placed it back in the box. It was warm, but cooling, like a body whose life had just left it.

I spent a few minutes mulling over our conversation. I went back and forth over everything that happened, yet I reaffirmed my decision.

Then I put the mask on.

The world around me changed. New sensations came roaring into my head. The taste of the air. The song of the earth. Scintillating ripples of colors laced over everything. It was like the very ceiling opened and the light of the heavens poured down into me and upon everything I beheld.

I think if I was alive, I would have lost consciousness. Instead I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, watching the grains of weed ripple with lights of green and blue while the stones sang underneath me.

Eventually, I overcame my awe and began to think. What was I looking at? What was I sensing?

It was the essence of things, I realized. Like Miasma was the essence of death, I was sensing the essence of the air, wood, stone, and a few other things I could not yet define.

The mask helped me sense other currents. With it I could see things that were unseen, magic or otherwise. The Gargoyle would not catch me unawares this time. This time I would be getting the drop on him.

24.

It was late evening. I left a note for Tina, telling her I was okay and not to worry, and went out to rent a boat. Hindsight bringing clarity, I should have checked in on her. I could have simply found Adan and asked, but I did not.

The East Gate guards were now familiar with me, and readily accepted my bribe for passage.

This time, with the mask on, I could clearly see Alula’s domain as I approached it, like a great white dome of mist, the size of a small mountain.

I could also sense the Gargoyle’s early warning system, like a song rippling through the surface of the water. To avoid it I tied the boat off to a tree and to the river bottom. The spell only triggered on the water’s surface, so I walked in underneath it.

As I approached her house I began to walk around it, looking for the Gargoyle. If it wasn’t for the mask I would not have seen him. A stone island covered in foliage near the house was the Gargoyle, with its wings carefully wrapped around the base of a tree. It was the size of a small wagon. Its wings bent oddly to mimic rock almost perfectly, and apart from its eyes, it was perfectly still. Its gaze swept around Alula’s house constantly in search of trespassers. Had I approached her house first, I would have been noticed immediately. 

Its perch was surrounded by a variety of wards and magic traps. I looked over them carefully. Most of them I could not identify. The wans that affected necromancy I recognized immediately.

Still underwater, I pulled out my last three bottles of Distilled Miasma. I wanted this to be overkill. Sitting cross legged on the river bottom, I carefully began to cast a spell. I had placed myself a ways away from him, so that the water obscured my sight of him, but I could still sense where he was through the mask.

The name for the spell I was casting is called Through the Veil. That’s is the nicest name it has. It has a few other names; Nulls Breath, Deathwind, Ollithorns Rending of Souls. All these other names have slight variations on the spells effect, Deathwind being the most drastic and potent, it is infamous in its use. Ollithorns method is the cruelest, adapting the spell into an instrument of torture.

During the spell, the Necromancer must place themselves on the Veils boundary, that point right between life and death. Easily done for the undead. Then one creates a conduit from the realm of the dead to this one, in such a way that contact with a living soul rips it from the body and hurls it into the Realm of the Dead, like a tree in a hurricane.

It takes a lot of time and power to cast. But only a master’s wards can stand against it, and I doubted the Gargoyle was that skilled.

In half an hour’s time, it was ready. I hesitated for one moment, making sure the currents of Miasma were correctly aligned so that there was no way it could not hit the creature, and then I released the spell.

The area the Gargoyle was in took on a greenish purple hue as the wards around it exploded. I swam to the surface, readying my wand to take up the Gargoyle’s soul.

The tree it was wrapped around was completely destroyed. It thrashed around the remaining stump, giving off a high pitch keening shriek that shattered the night. I could see its soul still loosely tethered to its body, writhing around in mimicry of its earthly pains. Or perhaps it was the other way around.

I climbed ashore on a nearby piece of floating dry land. In its convulsions it had destroyed most of the other wards around it, but I did not know if any of my blades could pierce its flesh, as some rumors spoke of Gargoyle being harder than dwarven steel. So, I began casting another spell, one that only weakened a soul’s connection to its body, but in the Gargoyle’s condition I was sure it would kill it.

“Stop!”

A woman’s voice called out from nearby. Alula’s voice. I should not have stopped. I should have completed my spell and then turned.

But I did, and as soon as I turned to Alula, looking angry and frightened on the shores of her home, the Gargoyle was on me. It would have taken a phenomenal act of will to overcome such a pain, yet it hurled into me, its soul still writhing in agony, as it bore down, crushing my bones and shattering my legs. Its face was a cracked and chiseled facsimile of some reptilian beast. It ground its teeth together like a millstone, still in pain, as it hissed. “NOT, HAVE, HER. Take you with me…,” it brought a hand down to crush my head. I caught it. I was strong, but it was bigger and stronger. Its hand began to continue towards me as the bone in my arm began to crack.

My heart began to hammer in my chest as I dimly heard Alula shouting something. Then I felt it. The song of earth magic. She was going to heal the Gargoyle.

From within me I drew a shuddering breath and gave out a low angry growl. My heart was awake, and I was angry. That anger was expressed as a sound. Like a song.

Nepherine.

My voice shattered up his hand and blew his arm off at the shoulder. Still growling, as I could not and did not want to stop, I sat up, grabbed his face and snarled.  His head came apart like ash in wind.  Alula screamed.

“Shut up!” I snapped, my fury still running free with me. She fell to her knees, silent, frozen with a look of terror on her face. I could sense the hum of my words wrapped around her throat. Her soul was bound as well, a puppet to dance on the strings of my words.

I suddenly resented and desired her, with her flirtations and her charms, only to turn against me and defend her pet Gargoyle. She didn’t want men, she wanted pets. I wanted to make her my pet, to turn the tables on her and bind her to me instead.

All this went through my head as I called across the water to her. My voice brought us together, pulling the floating island I was on to her shore. I stepped over to her and she met me half way. Confusion, rage, and desire all warred with her as she brought her hands up to my face.

And touched the mask.

I had forgotten that I as wearing it. She did not recognize me. She only saw a man killing her Gargoyle and subduing her.

“It’s me,” I said, pulling the mask from my face, and for a moment, my world shattered.

I was kissing her. Then I was killing her. Then she was breaking free and killing me. Then I walked away from her. Then we were laughing together. Then I was holding her as she sobbed. Then we were standing together again, as though we hadn’t moved, and nothing had happened.

Her eyes were wide in anger and confusion. She was trying to speak, but no words were coming out.

I let out a sigh, and that released her. She staggered back, her hands curling into fists.

“Why!?” she shouted. “Why!?”

“He killed your son and took Shan-Lo. I need to know where he hides things. She might still be alive.”

“He told me Elgin was captured by the Council again, along with you.” She looked at the mask I held. “I thought you were the Council. When I saw you. With that, thing on,” she grabbed her head. “What did you do to me?”

“I’ll explain later, right now I need to find Shan-Lo.”

Alula shook her head.

“She is in my house. He,” she looked at the Gargoyles crumbled remains, “said the Council hurt her. She has been in a slumber ever since. I have not been able to wake her. Some kind of spirit was trying to eat her memories, but I got rid of it.” 

“A thought eater? Those things are dangerous. How did you get rid of it?”

“No, it wasn’t a thought eater. I would have needed help dealing with something like that.”

She was seeming to come back to herself as we stood there. Part of me was still lingering on the sensation of her lips on mine, as well as the knife hidden in her bodice a moment later that was plunged into my chest. No, my heart.

But I had calmed enough to stay in control. I just couldn’t speak with emotion. It was dangerous.

“I would like to see her still. Then I will tell you what happened.”

She led me into the house. Shan-Lo laid naked on Alula’s bed. Runes had been drawn all over her skin, like the ones on Alula’s table. She looked beautiful in the dim candle light. My heart felt like it wanted to burst from my chest, and involuntarily, I gasped.

The sound echoed through the room. The candle light grew brighter, brighter than daylight. Traces of golden light began to trace the runes on her body. After a moment Shan-Lo’s eyes shot open, and she arched her back, gasping.

I hurried over to her. The lights began to dim. She sat up, grabbing me roughly as I came near.

“You’re alive, lover,” she said in Orc, hands digging into my arms, her dark eyes intense. The golden traces in her runes vanished as the candle light returned to normal. She was sweating and panting, and her body seemed to thrum like it did shortly after her passions were spent.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. My hand went to her face, and she grinned and pressed her cheek against it. For another instant, my world shattered again.

We were making love right there on Alula’s bed. The Shan-Lo was crying and I was holding her. Then both of us were yelling at Alula as Shan-Lo scrambled to find a weapon. Then we were making love again, this time with Alula joining us. And then again, we were back to staring at each other, my hand on her cheek, as though nothing had happened.               I would have staggered back if Shan-Lo hadn’t had so strong a hold of me.

 “What’s the matter,” she asked.

I made a hand gesture she had taught me, meaning “dangerous to speak”.

Her eyes narrowed as she looked over at Alula suspiciously, who was staring over at us wide eyed with her mouth open. I shook my head, put my hand to my throat, and made the symbol for “danger.” I was calming down, but I absolutely did not want to use the Nepherine power a third time. With these strange visions (Hallucinations? Dreams? Illusions?) I worried for what they had done to me already. Besides, after the third time I used it I would need to change my name.

Shan-Lo and Alula talked. Shan-Lo’s story corroborated with mine, and when Shen-Lo got to the death of her son, she winced, but nodded for Shan-Lo to continue. For a moment I wondered why she was not as upset, but then I remembered that Alula was the one that turned him into a zombie in the first place. She probably figured that she could do so again.

Alula seemed more interested in the new magic I had shown. With quill and parchment, I told her that I could sing spells. She went pale when she read my words. I tried to reach for the parchment piece, to ask her what was wrong, but she pulled away.

“I need to be alone for a while,” she said quietly, heading for the door. “Stay here tonight. You won’t be disturbed.” With that she left.

25.

That night Shan-Lo seemed to be ravenous. Rarely was she so passionate, and never so sustained. I felt the echo of my song hummed through her, easing her fatigue as it brought us closer.

As it did we split again, or rather the moment split, into a thousand other moments. A lifetime of what could have been washed between us, where my hand went one way, or another, where a word became a kiss, where heated passion or even anger became conversation, or simply sleep. 

They branched out into a great mandala of intimacy, love, sharing, with strife and anger branched out in the far remote recesses of possibility.

We felt them wither away, collapsing into the nothingness of what could have been, made alive only in our memory. The worlds we shared drifted away until only two remained. In one we lay tangled together, our passions spent. In the other we simply spent the whole-time laying side by side gazing into one another’s eyes.

I was not sure which one was real until she brought a hand up and lightly touched my shoulder, and I briefly broke eye contact to look at it. Her hand was warm and glistening with sweat.

“Did all of that happen?” I asked.

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” Her voice was soft, faint, and tinged with confusion. 

“You miss her,” she said suddenly. I immediately knew she was speaking of Shailyn. We had this conversation already, but we were having it again.

“Yes,” I said. The magic didn’t seem to be affecting my voice. I did not know why I knew it wouldn’t.

“But you do not speak of her. Nor do you seek her.” Shan-Lo’s hand danced over my heart, like it had when we talked before, but it hadn’t happened.

“What do you mean, seek her? She passed away three hundred years ago.” I knew the answer already, but this is how the conversation went.

“But you know Necromancy,” she frowned. I could see in her eyes she was speaking like it was rehearsed, that she knew what I was about to say.

“Ah, I see your meaning. Humans are not the same as Orcs. They do not wait around on the other side of the veil, looking after their loved ones and descendants. They pass on to be reincarnated. A reincarnated soul cannot be called across the Veil.”

“So, you think she has given up on you, and moved on,” her hand glided across my cheek.

“She would have had to. Unless she somehow studied Necromancy in her life, she wouldn’t know how to stay.”

In the other possibility this conversation made Shan-Lo angry. She wanted to know how I was so sure Shailyn wasn’t waiting for me across the Veil and accused me of being a cruel husband by ignoring my departed wife.

We gazed at each other, unseeing as we watched the fight play out. In that dream it ended our relationship. In this one, our closeness survived, but we were locked together like the land and the moon; sometimes a little close and sometimes a little further, but never quite touching, and never drifting away.

“This is so strange,” she said. “We’ve done so much, yet we didn’t, and now I feel stuck with you like a boat caught along a great current, without being able to turn or anything.”

“I know, I don’t know why this is happening, or how. Just that it has something to do with the magic I used.”

“I can feel it leaving me,” she sat up a little, looking around. “I can only faintly see the other us now.” She squinted at the door as I was storming out of it, in the dream.

“What are they doing now,” she asked after a moment.

“I don’t think I should say,” I replied. “It seems like if I tell you, it will make it more real, and if I told you enough, it would make this the dream, the vision would become the way we are.”

She nodded in assent. “What now?”

“Now, we wait for Alula.”

In the silence of our waiting I thought of all the things we experienced in that didn’t happen. Or did they? Even though we didn’t physically carry out those actions, we remembered them is if we did. How important was a false memory of what could have happened, if it is as clear and detailed as if it did?

I could tell Shan-Lo was having similar thoughts as we looked at each other. Dream or not, we knew on a deeper level now, where words were less needed.

Eventually, Alula returned, bringing the dawns light with her as she opened the door. She looked tired and haggard, and her eyes were red rimmed from crying. She sat down next to her table in the middle of the room, leaning heavily against it.

“My son is dead,” she said in a tired half choke, tears returning to her eyes. “He can’t come back, without a heavy price to be paid.” She seemed to sag further into the table.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Maybe you are, but you’ll only feel it when your fourth chakra is awake,” she said coldly. Then she shook her head.

“I am tired. I am angry. You make an easy target to make do with, but it is not your fault. It is mine.” She looked at me, with an intense look I could not decipher. Loathing, hatred, desire?

In some of the more farfetched visions of Shan-Lo and I together (near the edge of the mandala), Alula had returned early. In a few of those she had attacked us, but in most of them she had joined in.

“I spoke with the head of my order,” she said, interrupting my thoughts. Her voice carried more strength as she sat up.

“She told me about you. She said that you are the man who will always walk two paths, between living and death, and between what must and what must not be. You are the ripple in the fulcrum.”

She stood up and seemed to draw strength from the room around her. It made sense, this cottage being her place of power. She looked at me, suddenly regal, her dark eyes still smoldering.

“She told me to be honest and forthright with you, and you would likely be so in turn. So, I will. She told me you have the power to bring my son back. That power is not in necromancy, but in your voice. But you must care enough to do so. Sincerely, care. You are my best chance at bringing him back.

“I am willing to serve you in any way I can to convince you to care.” She leaned forward, ever so slightly, but the suggestion was clearly made.

That explained why the desire was there, and the anger.

“You don’t have to sleep with me to garner my good will,” I said.

“If you’re not interested, just say so, though I’m not sure if I’ll believe you, as I can see what goes on in your chakras,” she gave a flirtatious smile.

“But perhaps you’re a man of monogamy? You don’t strike me as such. Few men are, and no Orcs that I know of,” she looked back and fourth between Shan-Lo and I.

Shan-Lo broke in before I could respond.

“He is Ha-Tu. He should have many lovers. But no more than three wives.”

“What!?” We hadn’t talked at all about this, but it was the last thing I expected her to say.

She looked pointedly at me and continued.

“But his wives should be free to find strong Orcs to make babies with, since he cannot. Among them he would raise his closest guards and craftsmen, and one who would take his mantle should he pass.”

Ha-Tu. She was treating me as one of the undead chieftains of the past. Did that mean she saw me as her chieftain? No, she was still in a clan of her own.

But she had always been ambitious. If I became a chieftain, a real Ha-Tu, then she could become one of my wives. A chieftain’s wife is like nobility among Orcs. Plus, she could have children with whatever Orc she desired, and most Orcs would gain status in doing so.

It would make her childhood love available. That is where she was going, this was mostly for him. Even with what passed between us, I still knew her feelings for him. But it was okay. I had my Shailyn, and she had her childhood love.

People think that love comes in some sort of limited quantity, and that it must be doled out to one and one person only. That in loving more than one person that somehow puts limits on it, and you would have to take away your love from one person to give it to someone else.

But it is infinite. It can be divided so and remain infinite. The only limits it has are those imposed on it through fear and jealousy, be they real or otherwise.

That is why I could miss Shailyn, care for Shan-Lo, and look after Tina without any conflict. And why I could accept that Shan-Lo saw others and Tina would eventually find someone to be with (or so I imagined). I suppose there is jealousy for some. But jealousy comes from what we do have in limited supply: time. But I am undead. Time has lost most of is meaning. 

I would have liked to keep them all for myself, and who wouldn’t? But I knew that the only way for that to happen was to collar them, and I was no slaver.

I had been lost on thought and had stopped paying attention to the conversation. When I refocused, Shan-Lo and Alula had been talking, and of all things, flirting. Shan-Lo was telling Alula some of the things we had done together in the vision we had, and Alula’s smoldering stare was now fixed on her.

Things did not progress from there, but the promise of future endeavors hung heavy in the air.

Alula wanted me to sing her son back to life, but first I had to care enough to do it right. She offered to summon spirits and other beings to help me understand and use my power. In that she aimed to seduce me, but in knowing her motivations, I did not mind.

Shan-Lo wanted me to become a Ha-Tu. I decided to look into it. If anything, it would give me a new identity for when I sing a third time and have to give up the name “Jorm”.

EPOLOGUE

Returning home and finding Tina was a tiring endeavor. Adan was furious with me. Tina had gotten it into her head that I had been killed and had approached Adan in such a panicked state that he had left her in his room on powerful sleeping tonics until he could find me.

“Don’t do that to the woman,” he snarled. “She’s delicate enough as it is. Either take her with you or stop romping about at night. You should know better.”

I agreed to calm him down, then never left her side for several weeks.

During such time, I began to plan. I would have my revenge. I would free the slaves, living or otherwise. I still sometimes glimpse things. The look like ghosts of what might have been. Could this be a budding talent in the art of Divination, or something more? I do not know. I must study more. So much to study, plan, and learn… 

…I grow tired of writing, for now. The hour is late. Ash falls gently down through the shattered ceiling and onto my desk as I quill these last few pages. The ruins are all that is left now, in this once great castle. I just received a summons from the Emperor, as one of his last subjects, to the throne room. I wasn’t sure the room even still existed. Ash and soot mar the pages as I write the final one…

…At the same time, my quill writes under the gentile light of several lanterns placed over my clean new marble writing desk; a gift from one of my colleagues. The high ceiling of my office room has celestial drawings carefully etched into the wood, enchanted to glow softly like the night sky when the lamps go out. Through the adjacent door I can hear students chatting in the hall as they get ready for my next lecture. They speak of love and tiny intrigues as though they were newly founded discoveries that they themselves invented (bless them). As this last page is written, the noise grows louder as more of them file in.

Which one of these moments is real? Which is just the dream of what could have been? I must continue writing, to find out. For it is all happening as I write it and as it happened at once.

I will give my lecture or see the Emperor. Then I will pick up my quill again, and see what has happened, as I remember it.

Excerpt (foreshadowing)

Sacrificial magic is the oldest and most primitive of magics. Simply put, one takes an object and destroys it, freeing the currents within. The practitioner then scrambles for those freed currents to weave them into whatever desired effect. The result is oftentimes reckless, inefficient, and riddled with side effects. However, the mental strain of weaving Sacrificial magic is magnitudes less than virtually any other Art, and so may come in use in times of exhaustion. Be cautious, however. Those that often practice the Art of Sacrifice will quickly find that objects (and people) they hold emotional attachments to are more effective to use in their castings. It is easy to begin perceiving such attachments as a mere focus for their rituals and can readily lead to the most diabolical of acts. Therefore, the Art of Sacrifice is deemed illegal in most civilized lands.

It is interesting to note that many a layman assume a correlation between Necromancy and Sacrificial magic. Indeed, many an act lauded as vile acts of Necromancy were in fact committed by a Sacrificial Mage.

But know this; there is a commonality, in that Necromancy deals in the end of Life, and Sacrifice in the destruction of all things, Life included. That is where their similarities end. To compare the Sacrificial Arts to Necromancy is the equivalent of comparing a boy sharpening a stick to make a spear, to that of a Master Weaponsmith at his forge.

--Narmathere, Master Necromancer