The Warden, page 31
“Why was it forbidden? It sounds like a powerful tool.”
“It isn’t just about becoming unstable while your selves are apart. When they come back together, they don’t always do it alone.”
“Meaning?”
“Spirits. Demons. Malevolent aether. I’m not enough of a theorist. All I know is that Dalius was no longer human. Not in the most meaningful ways.” Gods, I hope he wasn’t human, she thought as she remembered sinking the cold and glittering claw that was her hand into him, drinking down his life like so much watered wine.
“Well, as human corpses tend not to get up and walk away—nor do elf, orc, dwarf, gnome, or any combination thereof that I’m aware of—I’m forced to agree. What do you do next?”
“Have a drink,” Aelis said. “Scratch that. Next I have to write letters. I can send a quick message to a Diviner back at the Lyceum, but longer messages require artifacts I don’t have, or spells I cannot cast. But I can give them the broad strokes and tell them letters are inbound.”
“I do not wish to rush you, Warden, but there is the matter of my amulet.”
“Could it wait till tonight?”
Tun smiled uneasily around his tusks. “It is a struggle even now, Warden. By nightfall, I doubt I will be as you see me now. I know that you should not be out of bed, and I am sorry to ask.”
“I’ll rest when I’m dead, Tun. Until then, I’ll always have work to do. Let’s get you and the pieces of the Demon Tree’s heart inside my tower and see what we can do.”
“I would point out that there is one piece of your earlier statement regarding Dalius that you must amend, Warden.”
“Hmm?”
“Neither the Demon Tree nor Nathalie were stopped by ‘us.’ I failed, rather pointedly, at both tasks. You did not. Take the credit.”
“I wouldn’t have found either one without you, Tun. And please … call me Aelis.”
Tun smiled, and they tramped back to her tower. With the sun streaming down and the feeling that she’d found a valuable friend, Aelis stopped worrying for at least a few hours about the missing body of the mad, sundered Warden Dalius.
* * *
With her orrery and her books of orbit calculation to hand, as well as some paper, Aelis found adjusting Tun’s amulet far easier than she expected. It was, in fact, somehow attuned to the six moons. She was no artificer, but the structure of the thing revealed itself to her easily, and the sense of solving a puzzle, of being smarter than the problem, satisfied her immensely. There were seven runes on the iron of his amulet, the same seven as were on the runestone that had animated the Demon Tree. Tun confirmed that they were the six moons and the planet itself, and the seven deities, but he wouldn’t expound on the Orcish names for them.
Aelis convinced him to give up a few drops of his blood, extracted with the silver needle she hadn’t taken on the trip. She set her alchemical ring on a solid flame and put both the back of the iron and the tip of a needle into the flame until they became pliable. Working carefully, holding the amulet with a set of tongs and bending so close to it she would’ve feared burning her hair if she hadn’t already singed ends off of it any number of times in an alchemy lab, she etched new runes into the back of it; one for each of the six moons, one for the Worldsoul in the center, with the goddesses to her left and the gods to her right. She had to stop to heat the iron and the needle again, but when the work was done she filled in each rune with Tun’s blood.
“How did you know to do any of this, Aelis?” Tun sat in stern concentration, his hands clasped tightly upon his knees, watching her and, for the first time she had seen, sweating.
“I don’t. But the theory is sound. We need to account for the human part of you as well as the orc. What better way to do that but human runes and your blood?” The iron quickly cooled and she set to wrapping the strands of hair back around it, though with surgical tweezers rather than her hands. Instinctively she tied the strands from each opposing god to the other, and a strand from the Worldsoul to the other six. When she finished, she fretted at it.
“That … I don’t know how I knew to do this.”
She handed the amulet back to him. Tun’s hand shook as he took it, then he slipped it over his neck. Almost instantly, he calmed. The lines of concentration drawn taut on his face eased. His fists unclenched. He took a deep breath.
“Warden … it … I … I have not felt this controlled since I was very young.”
“We’ll keep looking at it, adjusting it. It—”
Aelis’s words were driven from her as Tun stood, wrapped his arms around her, and lifted her off her feet in as surprising a display of affection as she’d ever experienced. “Tun! Tun! I have stitches in!” Immediately, just as easily as he lifted her, Tun set her down gingerly. “Sorry,” he said, and for the first time there was a hint of sheepishness in his voice. “I am not usually so ebullient.” He took a deep breath and a step back, his face blank once more.
“Warden, this is payment beyond the favor I had done you. If you have need of me—for anything—you call.”
“Tun. My friends call me Aelis.” She thought a moment, then said, “There is some work I’ll need help with around the tower.”
* * *
That day she and Tun made more headway cleaning up her tower than she had made in all the days since she arrived in Lone Pine. Well, Tun made progress while she sat down after the first quarter hour of work, her legs still unsteady. He even carried the disconnected calcination oven down from the second floor as if it were a bucket of water propped on his shoulder. She’d need a few pieces of ironmongery to get it attached to a chimney and make it usable, but it was in place.
When late afternoon came, so did Pips with food, and Tun made himself scarce. Aelis distracted the girl with a few lessons, but sent her home before the sun began to sink in order to send her letters. She carefully adjusted and aligned her orrery so that it mirrored the exact positions of the moons as closely as she could make it. Then she jotted the following message.
Dalius Enthal de Morgantis un Mahlgren. Sundered. Mad. Attacked me, others. Destroyed. Not in possession of remains. Letters to follow.
Aelis cast another spell into her orrery, calling upon a Second Order Abjuration, for that was most likely to be recognized as the signature of a Warden. She inserted her tiny scrawled message into a slot in the bottom of the orrery and concentrated upon it, holding open the ward she cast—transformed by the orrery’s own artifice into a beacon, a call to a diviner working at a matching orrery hundreds of miles away in the Lyceum—until she felt the connection take and hold.
When she pulled her tiny scrap of paper back out, it said, Secure remains if at all possible. Mahlgren very dangerous area. Be on guard. Letters immediately.
Aelis sighed, got out her lap desk and pen, and began to write. It would be several hand-cramping hours before she stopped.
26
THE DELIVERY
Three weeks passed as Aelis healed enough to resume her full workload. In that time, the people of Lone Pine had done everything they could to help her bring her home up to snuff—it had a roof again, for one thing, and a functional second floor—though there was no keeping a draft out of a decades-old stone tower. She was thankful for the vair lining her robes, and she even considered inviting the goat in for the warmth and the company. When she was well enough to walk the distance, she visited Elmo and Otto’s house and found it similarly knocked back into shape and the brothers a bit too embarrassed to say anything about it.
Another month passed, the air got colder, and it still wasn’t really winter yet, according to the locals. Aelis began to imagine her entry in Lives of the Wardens as a footnote in the life of another warden who found her entombed in a column of ice and stone.
The knock at the door was a welcome relief from more boredom as she paged through Aldayim and other texts, wishing she’d thought to bring some works on local history—or at least military history featuring Mahlgren and surrounds—with her in the first place. She’d asked for them in the letters she’d sent south with a merchant, but was beginning to despair of an answer before the snows came.
Pips was waiting on her front step, bouncing on her feet with energy. “It’s not time for our lessons yet, but I suppose there’s no harm in starting early,” Aelis said.
The girl thrust up a handful of letters. “A post-rider came to town. All these are addressed to Warden Aelis de Lenti un Tirraval and sealed with wax. He also said there’s a post carriage coming with baggage for you.”
“My gods, do I even dare dream they’ve sent me replacement equipment for what Dalius destroyed?” Aelis had a chance to glance only at the handwriting and the seal on one letter. The script was slick, even spidery, and the seal that of the College of Necromancy.
The old seal; a grinning skull.
Her fingers itched to pull the envelope open and devour that letter first, followed by the others, but she tossed them all aside. “Let me fetch a scarf and my effects and we’ll walk down to meet the coach.”
It was a brisk walk, with the wind whipping at her robes and Pips peppering her with questions as always. Soon they were in the village and just outside the inn, where folk were gathering. Word had spread about the post carriage’s arrival.
The post-rider had already left, and Aelis had a letter thrust in her face as soon as someone spotted her, a man leading a winded, lathered horse by a halter.
“Warden,” he said, his features twisted with anxiety, “can you make this out? I know what the man told me, but…”
Aelis grabbed the letter and glanced over it. “It says if the horse he left in trade for the fresh one dies, founders, or fails to provide value, this letter can be exchanged for coin at any Post House.” She handed the letter back and said, “You probably ought to see to the beast, hmm?” And if you ever accost me while I’m walking again I will feed your bones to a ghoul. She didn’t say that part, but given how quickly he moved away she wondered how much of it showed on her face.
She was sitting at the counter inside the inn, her hands wrapped around her second cup of warmed apple wine, when a carriage pulled up outside with a great clatter. Most of the villagers went scrambling out to meet it; Aelis forced herself to dignity, which meant patience. She hated being patient, but the pain along the wound in her stomach did make it a little easier.
When she did come outside she thought it seemed awfully familiar, a long, low, boxy shape she’d seen before.
And the arbalest mounted on it she knew she’d seen before.
Then Timmuk, a huge ivory-bowled pipe stuck in his mouth sending merry curls of smoke around his head, was waving as he pulled on the brakes, but Aelis only barely returned his gesture.
The tall, lean form that leaped to the ground from the other side of the wagon held her attention rather more tautly than the grinning dwarf.
Aelis had come to wonder if what she’d felt for Maurenia those months before had been some passing, silly fancy, a dash of danger and spice to liven up a dull rural posting.
When the half-elf pushed her hood back and her dark auburn hair fell and curled around the point of her chin, Aelis’s breath caught.
Maurenia smiled. Aelis felt as though she wanted to melt, and Maurenia’s smile widened—not the knowing smirk she’d seen before, but something more than that.
“The Dobrusz brothers took themselves a royal contract, Lady de Lenti,” Timmuk called, and it was a chore to tear her eyes from Maurenia to pay attention to the dwarf.
Everything else that was said and done passed in a blur; the invoice for her new alchemical equipment. A hamper of wine from her father. A chest of victuals preserved by an Abjurer’s seal. Aelis signed for it all. She wasn’t sure if she had the ready money to pay for any of it and she didn’t care.
Maurenia left the Dobrusz brothers to the hot apple wine and drove the wagon, with Aelis beside her on the board, to the tower.
“Looks better,” Maurenia said, as it hove into view.
“Had a lot of help putting it right.”
“Finally impressed the locals enough.”
“I suppose.”
“Still going mad out here on the edge of the world?”
“A little.” Aelis felt like a schoolgirl around her first crush, and searched vainly for something witty to offer.
Maurenia pulled the wagon to a stop and leaned close. Her face had the same dusting of freckles over sun-coppered skin. Her eyes were the same ice-crystal blue. She smelled the same. Aelis leaned forward and their lips met, but not for long. Maurenia leaned her head to rest it against Aelis’s, and they stayed like that.
“We didn’t come to stay for long. I can linger a bit. A week, ten days. It would’ve been presumptuous to pack up and move.”
“A week, ten days sounds fine. Great.” Aelis found herself on the verge of stammering, so she clamped her mouth shut, but she couldn’t keep it that way for long. “I don’t think a day went by I didn’t think about you.”
“Think what about me?”
Aelis leaned forward to kiss her again, took a deep breath of her clean, herbal scent. “Mostly that.”
“Maybe we’ll get snowed in here,” Maurenia breathed, and Aelis was a little smug when she saw the way color rose in the half-elf’s cheeks and heard the way her breath caught.
“Snows early here. Snows often. Been flurries already.”
“Well, that’s just awful. Wagons can’t roll in snow. Even flurries. Best to be cautious, really.” They lingered like that a moment, inches apart, eye to eye. “We should unload the wagon.”
“Right.”
“And probably drive it back to the inn and see to the horses.”
“After we open a bottle of wine,” Aelis said.
The unpacking went quickly.
* * *
True to her word and her duty as a post-carriage wagoneer, Maurenia left soon after the wagon was unpacked, but with a kiss and a promise to walk back. Aelis wanted to grab her and not let her leave, but a glass of good Tirravalan orange had steeled her nerves and she felt more ready to face her correspondence.
Instead, she picked up the letter with the old Necromancer’s seal on it. While the packet was ominously heavy, it was the kind of paper it was a pleasure to touch, of a fine weight and creamy texture, begging for ink, the kind she couldn’t afford to bring with her in quantity and hadn’t seen in months. She peeled the seal back, and took a deep breath.
Almost immediately, her heart sank.
Warden de Lenti,
The Earldom of Mahlgren was known, during the war, to have engaged in many dubious strategies to secure its borders and hold back the orcs who had overwhelmed its neighbors. That its resident Warden—the Dalius de Morgantis you named—would engage in a Sundering is hardly a surprise. There was little Dalius would not do to save the lands he loved; the Morgantis were seigneurs under the Earls of Mahlgren for hundreds of years. But rumors and suspicion speak of even darker forces at work in Mahlgren’s heart, overseen by graduates of our own college at Dalius’s urging. Necromancers of conscience such as you and I could not be swayed by promises of gold or power, but not all of our brethren are made of the same stuff. Dalius was not only the Warden Commander of the Earldom, but related to the ruling family. Uncle of its last earl, I believe, which could perhaps help to explain his passion in its defense.
It is true that war may change what a man is willing to do with his gifts as well. It is perhaps not ours to judge.
But it is ours to make right their mistakes, and to do it for the good name and good work of all of us who serve Onoma.
I have enclosed with this letter such maps and documents as may aid you in this task, Warden de Lenti. Do not fail our calling.
Archmagister Ressus Duvhalin
Clearly a late addition, in a smaller hand beneath the signature, was written one more line.
Ponder Aldayim’s remarks at the beginning of the final stave of his masterwork.
Aelis was reasonably certain she knew the lines that the Archmagister referred to since she knew Aldayim’s Advanced Necromancy as well as she knew any book. But deliberately, reverently, she went to her bookshelf and lifted the volume clear.
It took her a few moments to find the right page, holding the heavy book open on her left arm and flipping with her right hand.
The greater part of the first half of this work is dedicated to the First Art as we have known it, and the second to the healing and restorative properties to which I propose we may turn it. For most of us wearing the black, the proper raising, binding, animation, and enhancement of Servitors, Corpses, Skeletons, Gestalts, Chimeras, and Exotic creatures is the work of our days. It is right and fitting that this should be systematized and organized for ease of study; the use of animated skeletons, for instance, could ease the burden of dangerous or grueling work, and better that the already dead fall in war than the young and hale.
Even so, what one Necromancer may raise, another must be able to destroy. The First Art is ripe for exploitation by those without the discipline only to use it where it is necessary, or the scruple to use it only for the betterment of the many. I foresee the need for a different servant of Onoma; one who does not reach beyond the veil of night and roll back its touch but one who uses the powers She grants to fight death on all its fronts, not merely as physician or surgeon but as a champion of the Grave Maiden, who sees to it that death is neither unduly powerful nor stripped of its mystery. It is for this, for the Necrobane, that these following few pages are meant.
“Onoma’s breath,” Aelis whispered. She nearly let the letter slip from her hand as the weight of this new knowledge, and the immensity of her task, settled onto her shoulders.
