Shapers of Worlds Volume II, page 22
As they made their way up the hill to the duke’s bastide, Oldo brought up the subject again. “Let me have one of those old coins,” he said. “There’s a necromancer who sets up a booth in the marketplace once a week or so. He might be able to tell us something about its origins.”
“If you need to scratch the itch,” Baldemar said. Digging in the satchel, he came up with a worn disk of silver half the size of his palm. It showed the figure of a long-gowned woman standing in an archway. Words made of unreadable characters could be made out circling the coin. The obverse showed a jowly man’s double-chinned head wearing a headdress that looked like ram’s horns that came down past his ears.
“Could be a talisman or a medal,” Oldo said, examining it. “Maybe some brave hero was buried with it and deserves to be remembered.”
“We don’t often get what we deserve in this life,” Baldemar said. “For which most of us ought to be grateful.”
After they had paid off the man with a boat to sell and arranged for it to be brought round to the little wharf at the end of the street where Baldemar’s house stood, they went back home to store the rest of the proceeds from the demon’s pelf in a strongbox beneath the stairs. They were greeted as they entered by the cat Baldemar had inherited—perhaps temporarily, perhaps for good—from the old woman who had lived a few doors away and who had turned out to be more than an old woman.
She was the retired goddess of those who flee injustice, Fresscatria, who had come to rescue Baldemar and Oldo from two of Thelerion’s old enemies. But she had been captured by the pair of wizards, who planned to drain her of her mana. Still, all had worked out well, and now Fresscatria was enjoying an extended stay with Aumbraj the Erudite, an academic thaumaturge. Baldemar had volunteered to look after her cat.
The feline was oversized but svelte, coal-black but with a few touches of grey. She purred and rubbed herself against Oldo’s ankles, having taken a cat’s inexplicable preference to the older man, despite the fact that it was Baldemar who fed her daily and rubbed her glossy black neck occasionally, an intimacy that the animal tolerated for a few moments.
“She wants feeding,” Oldo said.
“Then we’ll need to go fishing,” Baldemar said.
The conversation was repeated almost every day, but sitting in a boat in companionable silence, with their lines in the water a few dozen ore-strokes offshore, was not an onerous duty. Baldemar, after a more than usually contentious career as a henchman, was content to pass whole weeks without feeling his heartbeat quicken.
They took their gear and went out to the skiff. Starting tomorrow, they would fish from the larger boat. Before he closed the door, Oldo told the cat, “We’ll be back with your supper.” The animal regarded him for a moment, then seemed to nod in acquiescence. As they walked down to the wharf, he said, “Sometimes I think that cat could talk if she wanted to.”
Baldemar laughed. “Like the boy in the joke about the burned griddle cakes?”
“Well, her former owner was a retired goddess,” Oldo said. “The cat could be a transmogrified priestess.”
“We have seen stranger things,” Baldemar said. “But sometimes, a cat is just a cat.”
The necromancer set up his tent in Vashmir Square at the end of every week, when punters had their pay in their purses and, by evening, had spent some of their earnings on ale and wine. Oldo timed his visit for the afternoon, when there would not be a line waiting outside the tent flap. He found the necromancer sitting on a folding stool out in the afternoon sun, reading a leather-bound book. He was a thin-visaged man, clean-shaven except for a spot between chin and lips, dressed theatrically in a long, black robe decorated with stars, crescents, and stylized lightning bolts. He even wore the traditional conical hat, tall and with its point folded over, adorned with the same symbols. A sign hung from one of the tent poles declared him to be Nachecko the Perspicacious.
Nachecko looked up as Oldo approached, set the book down, and rose. He spoke in a sonorous tone, “Would you know the secrets of the dead, the location of things buried in far-gone times, the meanings of omens and signs?”
“I’ve got something I want you to look at,” Oldo said, “and tell me what you can.”
The man swept back the flap of the tent and gestured for Oldo to enter. “I shall tell you matters of great dread, mysteries none other can plumb, ancient deeds terrible and dire—”
“Bottle it,” Oldo said, entering and sitting on a stool before a small table set on an old carpet whose geometric designs were faded and wan. “I spent more than thirty years as chief of security to a thaumaturge of the Red School.”
It was sufficient explanation for the ghost-raiser. “Fair enough,” he said, and named his fee. Oldo opened his purse and paid out the silver. Nachecko let the tent flap swing closed and took a seat across the table from Oldo. “What have you brought?”
Oldo had wrapped the silver disk in a soft cloth. Now he uncovered it and laid it between them. “This.”
Nachecko leaned over the table to peer at the silver without touching it. His hat threatened to fall off, so he removed it and stood it upright on the rug beside him. His brows knitted. “Where did you get that?” he said.
“I’m not telling you,” Oldo said. “You’re the . . . necromancer.” He had almost said “ghost-wrangler,” a term Nachecko’s kind disliked.
“You didn’t steal it from your Red School wizard?”
“He’s dead. Why do you ask that?”
Nachecko cocked his head sideways and looked at the disk, as if a new angle of view might reveal something. “It has an odour of . . . Well, let’s just say it is no ordinary coin.”
“I was thinking a medal,” Oldo said, “or maybe a talisman.”
The necromancer tilted his head a different way. “You could be right.”
“I’ve brought it to you to find out.”
The man regarded him for a moment, then said, “Why?”
Oldo shrugged, rubbed a calloused hand over his close-shaven pate. “Curiosity, I suppose.”
Nachecko’s brows rose. “With some objects, curiosity is not advised. Remember the cat.”
“The cat is fine,” Oldo said, reaching for the silver. “But if you don’t want the fee . . .”
“It’s not about the fee,” the ghost-raiser said. “Now you’ve got me curious. Let’s see what we can see.”
From under the table, he brought up a small, square box, its every surface carved with figures in relief: men and women in antique costumes, beasts both real and fanciful, and the usual complement of astronomical signs.
“Since you’re not a complete noncomp,” he said, “I’ll skip the pitter-patter.” He undid a latch on the front of the box and lifted its hinged lid.
Oldo craned his neck to look. An amorphous grey substance filled the container, but when the necromancer said, “Ghost, arise,” the greyness spiralled up and took on the general shape of a long-haired man standing beside the table. The figure was dressed in a floor-length robe, both man and garment rather diaphanous and with a tendency to waver around the edges.
“My predecessor,” said the ghost-raiser to Oldo. “You don’t see the hat because I kept it for myself.”
Oldo shivered as he felt a chill emanate from the phantom and knew from experience that here was the preserved kra of a once-living person. His former employer, Thelerion the (self-described) Incomparable, used to keep a couple to guard certain doorways in his manse.
The necromancer indicated the silver disk on the table. “Ghost, examine this and tell me what you can.”
The kra bent to look. A ripple shot through its fog-like substance. It sprang back, and a look of horror distorted its nebulous features, the mouth falling open to a depth that would have been anatomically impossible in flesh. A thin shriek filled the tent, then the ghost fled back to its box, dwindling rapidly until it was again just a puffball of mist within. A small hand emerged from the greyness, grasped the latch, and pulled the lid shut.
“Well,” said the necromancer, “that was unusual.”
“Wasn’t it?” said Oldo. “Now I’m even more curious.”
The other man looked from one side to another, then back to the silver. “I’m still curious, but . . .” He gestured with both hands. “Consider: what is there that can frighten a ghost?”
Oldo weighed the question. He was thinking that the old medal, or whatever it was, might be worth more than its weight in silver. If it was valuable, he could deliver a boon to Baldemar, who was putting him up for free. “Let’s find out.”
“It could be dangerous,” said the ghostman.
“I’ll double your fee.”
“He said he would need to make preparations,” Oldo told Baldemar, back at the house. “He’ll come here when he is set up.”
Baldemar was at the kitchen counter, cleaning the day’s catch, a fat bumbler. The cat was sitting on the floor nearby, her tail twitching in anticipation. He put the fish’s liver in a bowl and set it down where the feline could get it. The cat managed to purr loudly while eating.
“What would frighten a ghost?” he said.
“I told him a demon was involved. No details, of course. He said that could explain it.”
Baldemar gave a small grunt. “Let me see it again.”
Oldo brought out the cloth-wrapped object and laid it on the counter. Baldemar studied it, flipping it over to examine both images. “Could be a goddess,” he said, “and a king or emperor on the other side. It would help if we could read the script.”
He peered at the silver again. Oldo noticed that the room was silent. He looked down at the cat. She had ceased purring and was ignoring the half-eaten fish liver. Now she was looking up at the counter, and her ears were laid back flat against her black-furred skull. Oldo heard a hiss.
“Not her goddess, then,” he said.
“Let me know when the ghost-wrangler is coming,” Baldemar said. “I think I’ll sit in.”
“Now you’re curious, too?” Oldo said.
Baldemar went back to scraping scales off the bumbler. “Feels that way.”
Nachecko arrived carrying a large, square travelling case but without his distinctive robe and hat. “Can’t walk about dressed like that,” he said as Oldo answered the door. “Half the people want to ask me about their dead kinfolk—for free, no less—while the other half throw stones and make signs against the evil eye.”
“Every profession has its drawbacks,” Oldo said. “You should try henchmanning for a narcissistic wizard.”
“No, I shouldn’t,” the necromancer said. “Nobody should.”
Baldemar came into the foyer. “Come through to the grand parlour,” he said and led the way across to the double doors. Oldo looked about for the cat, which usually came to vet anyone who had the temerity to enter her territory, but she was nowhere to be seen.
“Do you need anything?” Baldemar said when they were in the room that neither he nor Oldo frequented, preferring to spend their together time in the kitchen.
Nachecko looked around. “Can we clear off that table? I have to set up my apparatus.”
The table was covered in bric-a-brac that had come with the house, based, Oldo assumed, on a demon’s sense of sophisticated décor. He and Baldemar gathered up the figurines, miniature vases, engraved copper plates, and indefinable oddities that covered the tabletop and piled them on the plush seat of an overstuffed armchair.
The necromancer opened his case and brought out a bundle of rods. He tugged at and manipulated them, revealing that they were jointed and connected at several points, until he had contrived a free-standing network that supported a multi-sided cavity at the top. Into this, he inserted a semitransparent blue globe, after first wiping it carefully with a cloth of pure white silk. Finally, he set beneath it a disk of what looked to be gold, as wide as a palm and the height of a finger’s width. He adjusted the circle’s position, a little this way, a little that, while peering at the blue orb.
Finally satisfied, he said, “That looks good.”
“What’s it for?” Oldo said.
Nachecko assumed a knowledgeable air. “You probably think a necromancer’s only line of business is summoning ghosts and compelling them to answer questions.”
Baldemar said, “Isn’t it?”
“That’s the bread-and-cheese level of the craft. ‘Ghost-wrangling.’ I’ll bet you’ve used that one yourselves.” Neither Oldo nor Baldemar made a response. The necromancer eyed them both with suspicion, then went on, “But we of the upper echelons of the profession can lace up our boots in other ways.”
“And we’re about to see one of those alternate lacings?” Oldo said.
“You are.” Nachecko flourished a hand toward the apparatus. “Given the right circumstances, this device can summon from the Underworld the ba of a deceased person.”
Baldemar issued a skeptical grunt. Oldo was more willing to be convinced. He knew what everyone knew: that every person had two essences, a ba and a ka. During life, the former accumulated all the evil that its possessor performed, while the latter gathered the good. After death, the kra—a spiritual hinge that connected the two “souls”—set them loose. The ba went to the Underworld, and the ka to the Overworld, one to dwell in eternal misery and the other in perpetual bliss.
Kras usually evaporated, although some lingered at the site of a particularly memorable death. And some were captured by those who knew how to set spiritual nets for them.
Why the demiurge had established these conditions, no one knew. He had created Phenomenality and set it running, then went off to do other unimaginable things without bothering to inform any of his creation’s denizens of the whys and wherefores.
“Behold,” said Nacheko. He rested his palms upon the blue globe and spoke, in an undertone, several syllables. When he lifted his hands away, the glass began to glow, brighter and brighter, until it flashed in a moment of harsh actinic glare. When the spots that had appeared before Oldo’s eyes faded, he saw that the orb was now clear as crystal; it showed a harsh landscape, as seen from high above, of bare rock and grit, stirred by a scouring wind that whistled and moaned. The perspective shifted as the view enlarged, as if they were descending. Now huddled shapes, widely scattered, could be seen: ragged figures, each hunched in solitary misery, clothed in scraps of tattered fabric that fluttered in the constant gale that whistled and moaned.
“The Underworld,” Nachecko said.
Baldemar leaned in for a closer look. “It is,” he said. “I’ve been there.” When that won him a sharp glance from the necromancer, he added, “I led an unusual life.”
Nachecko recovered his aplomb. “If we have an object, the right kind of object, that is closely associated with one who formerly lived, it is possible to make a connection with the deceased’s ba. If the connection is strong enough, the remnant can be forced to respond.”
“Forced?” Oldo said. “How can what those poor wights are going through be made worse?”
“There are ways,” the necromancer said. He rubbed his hands together. “Now, let us see if your silver piece has the power I think it has.”
The disk was in Oldo’s pouch, wrapped in its silken cloth. He brought it out, and when instructed to do so, placed it on the gold circle beneath the apparatus. Nachecko studied it for a moment, then nodded to himself.
“Yes, indeed. I think so.”
He placed his hands on the top of the globe again and began to hum. The sound was tuneless, atonal, and gradually it blended with the sound of the wind. Now Nachecko removed one hand from the globe and touched his fingertips to the silver disk. The scene in the clear orb began to shift, as if seen from a pair of eyes flying across the desolate landscape. The ground sped by faster and faster, the huddled figures blurring as the velocity increased.
Then the speed slowed. The viewpoint slid down an invisible incline toward the murky horizon, passing over bas hunched against the wind, until one heap of fluttering rags became the sole focus. The image of the hunched shape, seen from the rear, grew until it filled the globe. It grew further, and now it was just the back of a head wrapped in coarse cloth.
The viewpoint circled the head until the three observers were looking into the haggard face of a man. He seemed to be of advanced age, with deep seams graven into the cheeks and around the mouth and eyes and grey stubble sprouted on the chin. The rheumy eyes stared sightlessly ahead, all vision concentrated on inner despair and regret.
Then the eyes blinked and focused.
“He sees us,” Nachecko said. “Now, we can begin.”
“Who is he?” Baldemar said. “Or I should say, ‘was’ he?”
“Someone with a close connection to your medal,” the necromancer said. “He either wore it or made it, would be my guess. Let’s find out.”
He lifted his hand from the globe, reached into his case, and brought out a metal tube about the length of a forearm and the thickness of a wrist. He did something to one end and out of the other shot an intense beam of light. This he aimed at the face filling the globe.
The ba flinched and tried to turn away, and the dry-lipped mouth uttered a moan of pain.
“They can’t close their eyes,” Nachecko commented, “nor look away from the desolation of the Underworld. It’s a little added misery, and it’s usually enough.”
He extinguished the beam and said, “Ba, are you ready to answer questions?”
Another moan was the only answer. Nachecko reestablished the light, drawing a shriek from the ba. “Answer, and I’ll take it away,” the necromancer said.
“I will answer,” said the ba.
Nachecko cut the light. He reached for the silver disk and held it where the weeping eyes could see it. “What do you know of this?”
The face’s gaze centred on the metal, and a new species of sadness transformed its features. “Ah,” the ba said, “I used to make things of beauty, things of power.”
