The Warden, page 37
Aelis had less taste for subtlety as two of the remaining charged at her from the same direction. She dropped the ward in her right hand and called on more of her will. A Second Order Necromantic Bane surrounded her left fist in a coruscating cloud of purple-black. She bent her knees lightly, cocked her fist, and punched straight through the rib cage and spine of the skeleton in front of her with a form that would’ve earned an approving nod from Lavanalla.
It was true that with the Bane called to hand, she had no need of form. It was the magic that did the work, not her fist, not the turning of her trunk and the power driven up through her legs and torso.
But competency pleased her. A thing well executed was a joy in itself, and she felt a surge of joyous anger.
Three. The one immediately following managed to raise its blade in self-defense. She battered it aside and cut savagely into the thing with the flat of her sword, sparing the edge the contact with bone. She battered in its skull, dealt it wounds that would’ve killed any normal attacker, and chipped the edge of her sword despite her care.
Two, you fucking idiot, and they are dumping their Animation into each other. Fuck.
The realization came in a rush as, cut down to a quarter of their number, the skeletons of this particular barracks suddenly became a lot more lively. The lights in their skulls grew larger, brighter.
Instead of coming at her one at a time, the two skeletons stopped, then began advancing at her from opposite sides.
She hadn’t counted on anything that sophisticated. Speed was her ally. She rushed to the nearest one, even as she heard the shuffle of skeletal feet behind her. She led with her sword, then planted a foot wide and spun, pivoting on the toe of her planted foot. Her dagger swept at its neck on the backspin; she was lucky, hit tendon, felt the skull go slack and tumble halfway off. Behind it now, with it between her and its remaining barracks-mate, she kicked it hard and sent it straight into the other.
A clattering of bone against bone like some nightmare mummer troupe rattled in Aelis’s ears. She was settling into a defensive stance when she realized that the second skeleton had gripped the one she’d kicked and smashed it into the wall. The bones lost their guiding force and fell to pieces on the floor.
Then the last remaining undead leapt at her with a speed few mortals could match, clawing for her eyes.
She felt the tips of its fingers scrape across her cheek, but she only needed to put one hand around it.
Aelis had no need to hold anything else back, squaring up against her last enemy. Aldayim’s Lash was a Fourth Order Necromantic Banishment. It snapped in her mind like a whip. Her hand, wrapped around the skeleton’s arm, buzzed with tingling, cold power. She discharged it.
The skeleton disintegrated.
Suddenly unbalanced, Aelis took three fast steps backward, arms flailing, till she hit the wall. She sank down, breathing heavily, till she was sitting against the cold, dusty, bone-strewn floor.
Aelis decided to give herself a moment before springing back to her feet. She made it about one third of the way to her feet, then sat back down heavily.
“I’ll just sit a moment,” she wheezed to the empty crypt. “Bide my thoughts. Carve some notches on the hilt of my sword. Eight of you fuckers,” she said, kicking feebly at the nearest pile of bones.
To be fair, you only really destroyed five of them in the fight, came a voice that was one part Urizen, one part Lavanalla, and one part her own critical self.
“Well, that’s probably five more at once than Ressus Duvhalin has ever faced down in open combat.”
Except it would never come to open combat with him, she thought. And she had to admit that was probably true. While Aelis was a Necromancer first and always, she had thought and acted as an Abjurer.
“Face first into danger, because how else are you going to get an attractive scar?” She snorted, and finally pushed herself up. She sheathed her sword and her dagger after wiping them on her coat. “How would a Necromancer have done this, which is to say, how should I have done it?”
Probed first, she thought, worked out the fact that they dumped their Animating Force from one to the other. That they would become stronger, faster, and more independent as they reduced in number because of it.
“Then the Lash, threaded onto that coupled binding. If I had put enough into it, it might have taken them all at once. At the least it would have done three or four and staggered the rest.” She could hear Duvhalin’s lecture on her poor approach as it was.
“Obviously the right thing to do would be to scour all the crypts and locate the control rod that all of Mahlgren’s dead were bound to,” she said. “If I had a hundred competent and trustworthy Necromancers to do the searching, anyway.”
She walked about the room, inspecting the remains of the skeletons to see if they could tell her anything. No marks, runic or identifying, were graven into the back of the skulls, as had once been customary. No unit or county insignia anywhere. Not even a number series on the femur.
Aelis stretched her senses, calling on very nearly her last reserves of power and will to probe the bones and scattered bits of tendon, rusted iron, and wood that lay around the chamber. She felt nothing: no stirring of necromantic power.
“Probably safe to leave it behind then.” She rolled her shoulders, feeling sweat slicking against her clothes, and ducked out through the open death’s-head door.
That very last reserve Aelis had saved she used to probe the basin and the plinth where her animated bone-and-blood chimera had opened the door to her.
“By my mastery of the First Art, I command you to close,” she murmured, trying not to feel ridiculous, and failing.
To her shock, the voice that had spoken in her mind twice before spoke again.
When the crypts of Mahlgren are opened with the First Art, they do not close without the proper tools of command.
Aelis was silent a long moment, pondering the message. Then, aloud, in disbelief and with creeping, gnawing panic, she said one word.
“Crypts?”
THE END OF BOOK I OF THE WARDEN
TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK II: NECROBANE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A book has one name on it but many people behind it, and this one is no exception. Tremendous thanks to Ren, for seeing a pitch on Twitter, taking a chance, and loving these characters as much as I do; to Paul and everyone else at J&N, for all their help; to Chris and everyone else at Tor, for making a thirty-year dream come true.
Closer to home, thanks are due to my list of beta readers: Jacob, Yeager, Josh, Jason, Stephanie, Ceejae, thanks to all of you for taking the time.
Thanks to my mom and my family, for having put up with so much weirdness for so very long; it all mattered in the end, I promise; to my in-laws, Pat and Dan, at whose house I started writing this book almost eight years ago.
Thanks also to the dutiful editor cats: Westley, who has been with me since the very start of my first novel, and who still refuses to get in the bed if I don’t; Hector, who said goodbye before this book came out but was beside me for uncounted hours while I worked on it; and Rose of Sharon Cassidy, who is still learning exactly what her duties entail, but getting good instruction from her brothers.
Thanks to all the friends and readers who bought my books, to every bookstore that’s ever carried them, to every person at a con or festival or fair who stopped to listen to the pitch and walked away with a copy, or bought an audiobook or an ebook when you got home.
Thanks to the folks on the Shadow Sanctum for listening to me piss and moan about this and a billion other things.
Last but never least, thanks to L; it is inadequate to utter clichés like “I couldn’t have done this without you,” but I couldn’t. If there are words to emphasize the thousands of ways that is true, I don’t know them.
P.S. If I forgot anyone, I owe you a drink.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DANIEL M. FORD (he/him) is a native of Baltimore. He has an M.A. in Irish literature from Boston College and an M.F.A. in creative writing from George Mason University. He lives in Delaware and teaches at a college prep high school in rural Maryland. When he isn’t writing, he’s reading, playing RPGs, lifting weights, or mixing cocktails. His previous work includes the Paladin Trilogy and the Jack Dixon novels.
Visit him online at danielmford.com, or sign up for email updates here.
Twitter: @soundingline
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Map
1. The Tower
2. The Orrery
3. The Welcome
4. The Hedge Wizard
5. The Work
6. The Thorns
7. The Bear
8. The Bed
9. The Sword
10. The Gold
11. The Knife
12. The Tracker
13. The Kiss
14. The Farewell
15. The Wilderness
16. The Demon Tree
17. The Aftermath
18. The Camp
19. The Earl
20. The Gardener
21. The Wand
22. The Capture
23. The Interrogation
24. The Return
25. The Remains
26. The Delivery
27. The Archmagister
28. The Post
29. The Cabin
30. The Visitor
31. The Fort
32. The Crypt
33. The Skeletons
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE WARDEN
Copyright © 2023 by Daniel M. Ford
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Chris Cold
Cover design by Esther S. Kim
Map by Jennifer Hanover
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates / Tor Publishing Group
120 Broadway
New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Ford, Daniel M., 1978– author.
Title: The warden / Daniel M. Ford.
Description: First edition. | New York: Tor, Tor Publishing Group, 2023. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2022056793 (print) | LCCN 2022056794 (ebook) | ISBN 9781250815651 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250815668 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3606.O728 W37 2023 (print) | LCC PS3606.O728 (ebook) | DDC 813'.6—dc23/eng/20221202
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022056793
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022056794
eISBN 9781250815668
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First Edition: 2023
Daniel M. Ford, The Warden
