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  CHAPTER 1

  “I heard it’s dangerous to resurrect someone in the open, unless you tie them up. Instructor Fern saw one guy flip out when they brought him back. He was so out of it that he grabbed a knife and stuck Fern in the gut,” said Jakub. “You’d think he’d have been a little more grateful, you know, considering Fern cheated death for him.”

  “We won’t be making the same mistakes as Instructor Fern,” answered Kortho. “I’d like to end our mission with both our bellies perfectly unstabbed.”

  “Binding them up works. Still scary as shit for the person getting brought back, but it’ll stop them going crazy until they get their head together.”

  “We have fully-equipped chambers back at the academy. If the necromancers of centuries past saw how things have moved on, they’d die of shock…and then we’d bring them back to life again.”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess? Such a probing response. Curiosity is dead among the young, isn’t it?”

  “My head is throbbing, Kortho. We stayed up late, we got up earlier than God, and I’ve got seven bottles of Blue Mist swirling in my gut.”

  “This isn’t a weekend getaway,” said Kortho. “When we get back to the academy, they’re going to demand a full report. Everything you did, learned, saw, heard. How’d you think it’s going to look when all you can say is ‘I was so hungover I didn’t learn anything’?”

  “Even you instructors were young once. Maybe they’ll give me a wink and a kindly smile.”

  “Really, Jakub? Come on. How will it look?”

  “How will it look for me, or for you? I’m not the only one who’ll have to explain it if we fail.”

  “Tenure is a great shield against criticism, and if you listen to me, you might learn that yourself one day. We’re teacher and student out here, Jakub. Not friend and friend. Do an old lizard a favor and pretend he’s wise enough to listen to.”

  Jakub thought about it as he and his necromancer mentor waded through the knee-high overgrowth. After five days’ travel away from the academy on a rented trader wagon, he’d been glad to just be able to walk again.

  He hadn’t banked on the Killeshi terrain being so damn tough to travel through, though. It was as if the place hated them being there.

  As well as the travel, his mind was fogged from having too many beers after they set camp outside the wagon the night before. The trader driving the wagon had brought his beautiful daughter along, and Jakub had drunk more of what Kortho called ‘courage draughts’ than was wise.

  He wouldn’t normally have tried to seduce the trader’s daughter, knowing it was against academy guidelines on a field assignment. He wouldn’t have tried it on his first assignment either.

  Jakub hadn’t been thinking clearly lately. A couple of days earlier, Abbie Marth - his girlfriend of three-years and a warlock in the academy - had graduated at the same time as him. She’d been given a field assignment at the same time, too.

  Halfway across the land, and she’d be away for a year.

  So, they’d agreed to break things off. He didn’t want to, but Jakub couldn’t see how a necromancer and a warlock could keep a relationship going when they would spend the next thirty years of their lives being sent all around the Queendom.

  He guessed it had affected him more than he realized and he was still reeling from the blow. He resolved now - after his night of being stupid with beer - to get back his focus. Damn Abbie, damn long-distance relationships, damn warlocks.

  When he told Kortho about it, the liguana had shook his head.

  “I’ve piled up enough regrets of my own over the years to recognize someone else’s,” Kortho had said.

  “‘Duty above self, duty above love, duty above all.’ That’s the academy motto, right? That doesn’t leave much room for other stuff.”

  “Lad, academy mottos look fancy on a crest, but they won’t answer your questions when you’re on your deathbed and wondering why you pissed away your life. There was a time I walked into the right inn at the right time on the right night, and I saw a girl looking back at me. The academy motto would have had me walking straight back out, and if I’d done that, I’d have nothing to look forward to in my retirement than an empty house.”

  “Not everyone meets a girl in an inn. Not everyone needs it.”

  “A book is never going to whisper into your ear on a cold night.”

  “Hey! I’ve had girlfriends before. Loads of them. Besides, nobody ever got written into the history annuls for being in love.”

  “The bards, on the other hand, make their trade in songs about love,” said Kortho. “I’ve yet to hear one sing about the time a student stayed in his room to read a book. Abbie is a nice girl. Knowing young love, you probably would have fallen out soon anyway, but you’re never going to know if throwing away the seeds before they get a chance to grow.”

  After a night of drinking to forget it, his stomach was threatening to empty, his head was throbbing, and the trader’s daughter hadn’t been interested. He suspected Kortho knew this and was making him pay for it.

  “Why do you think a resurrection in the open screws up a person’s mind so much?” said Kortho, keeping one of his slit-shaped eyes on Jakub, while flicking out his tongue and catching a fly as it buzzed near his face.

  “Ask me again in an hour.”

  “Let me just open my evaluation log and make a note…”

  “You know, they say playing cruel tricks on people is a sign of a sick mind. Whose idea was it to drink beers last night?”

  “And who can’t stop after just one? I’m a believer in second chances though, Jakub. Unless you are too hungover to remember academy teachings…”

  He was damned if he’d let his mentor win. He dredged his brain for a scrap of a clue, and then he had it.

  “When we resurrect someone in an unfamiliar environment, it takes their mind a while to wake up. Like if someone just picked you up in your sleep and left you somewhere strange.”

  Kortho nodded and gave Jakub a playful punch on the shoulder. “I’ve always said the mark of a true necromancer is being able to hold your beer. Resurrection is like waking from a dream, but a thousand times stronger. Couple it with resurrecting in the place you died, it’s a recipe for a reborn man to run around like a lunatic.”

  “The trader is going to love us when we load a corpse onto his wagon and tell him it’s our guest for the journey home.”

  “The chambers of the academy are a safe resurrection spot than this. The Queen is sending one of her inquisitors to meet us out here in a week’s time, and he’ll want to start the interrogation and torture straight away. He can sit on my claw and spin. When it comes to necromancy, it’s our way or no way.”

  A twanging noise drew Jakub’s attention. It sounded like a poorly-tuned lute, but not quite as if someone had actually struck a string. It was more like something was imitating the noise a lute would make, and getting it wrong.

  Twangs answered from his left and right, from somewhere in the thick of the Killeshi trees. The sound was wrong, somehow. As if it was music coming from something that shouldn’t play it.

  He reached to his sheath on his belt and touched the hilt of his sword, but Kortho patted his arm.

  “The trees,” he said.

  A flute joined the chorus of lute notes. It was a haunting sound, the sound of the flute played by the wind.

  “The trees?”

  “They say a bard taught them his songs. They tried remembering them, but if you live long enough, your memory looks like the head of a watering can . When they try to play the songs now, we hear this sound.”

  “I never heard of sentient trees.”

  “It isn’t quite
like that.”

  “It’s making my hairs stand on end.”

  “Then think about something else,” said Kortho.

  Jakub searched his head for a change of subject. “He’s in deep shit, isn’t he? The traitor.”

  “Death might have been the best thing for him. He’s going to regret us bringing him back to life.”

  “You make your choices, you pay your debts. That’s what Instructor Irvine always says at the beginning of a lesson. Everything a necromancer does builds up a debt, and you pay it with soul essence. If you don’t, death comes for you. It must be the same with everyone else – you pay for your actions.”

  Kortho nodded. “Just when I start to think you are irredeemable, you say something with a hint of intelligence.”

  “Do you think there’s really a bunch of gods up there, tallying everything we do in life?”

  “Concentrate on the master who’s next to you now, tallying what you do on this assignment.”

  “It’s just, you gotta wonder about bringing a man back to life so he can spend the next few months getting tortured.”

  “There’s a reason for de-sensitization training. If you skip classes, you come to regret it.”

  “Ask all the instructors who’s the one student who never skipped anything? You know what they’ll say.”

  “Spells and magic come easier to some, while combat comes easier to others,” said Kortho. “De-sensitization is as much a skill as a state of mind. If I thought I had a problem with it, I would request extra training.”

  “I’m fine around corpses and death. That stuff doesn’t bother me. It’s the ethics of it, I guess,” said Jakub.

  “A person can be de-sensitized from their conscience, too,” said Kortho. “Now, Jakub, field assignment rules must rear their boring faces. I have to ask you what you know of our target.”

  “Harry Helmund. He was a Queen’s soldier in the ranger regiment. Thirty-eight years old, son of Irene and Falco Helmund. Born in Tommerstown, and he left when he was sixteen to join the army. He spent…”

  Kortho waved one of his clawed hands. “Enough. There’s such a thing as remembering too much information.”

  “You never know when you’ll need it,” said Jakub.

  Jakub’s mind palace was a technique taught to him by Instructor Irvine. There was nothing magic about it – it was a way of using your memory to full effect. In simple terms, Jakub had an imaginary palace in his mind, and he stored information he needed to remember in each room.

  “A cluttered mind freezes when you need it most,” said Kortho. “It’s like a fat man trying to outsprint a wolf. I keep mine lean. There’s a lot in there, sure, because I have lived a long life. I try not to remember things I don’t need. Tell me who this man is and keep it relevant this time.”

  Jakub closed his eyes and took a stroll around the room in his memory palace where he stored everything ‘Harry Helmund’ related. He imagined the information on the soon-to-be-resurrected traitor as a wild bush, and now he had to trim it back so only the fruits showed.

  He did so in a millisecond and then faced his mentor. “He was an officer in the army, and he rose to a rank high enough to get privileged information. Then he deserted, and we caught him sailing back from the Fire Isles. It was presumed he sold information to the Baelin Empire, but he chewed a poison pill before they could question him.”

  Kortho nodded. “It’s a grim business. Luckily, death isn’t always an escape, nor is it a release. Resurrection and inquisition awaits Harry Helmund.”

  CHAPTER 2

  When they got close enough to see the outpost for the first time, the sight spread revulsion through Jakub’s already-tender stomach. It only lasted for a second before his training kicked in, but the tightening of his belly was there all the same.

  With good reason, he told himself.

  Given that this was supposed to be an officially recognized military outpost of Queen Patience, he hadn’t expected to see the perimeter lined with wooden stakes, each with a decapitated head stuck on the pointy end.

  “Swords out,” he said, looking at the nearest one, which was a woman with red, curly hair flowing to her neck.

  Kortho stopped walking. “A novice always wants to use his sword instead of his eyes.”

  His black necromancer garb made him look fearsome, and Jakub knew that was how Kortho wanted it. The one thing he couldn’t make more intimidating was his face. Friendliness shone out of him, even in a situation like this.

  With thirty-five years more experience as a necromancer, Kortho probably didn’t feel the same instinctive revulsion as Jakub, and he wouldn’t have to rely on his training to push it back. He was so desensitized to death that Jakub doubted the scene even registered with him.

  “Decapitation means their days of being a threat are over, wouldn’t you say?” said Kortho.

  Jakub nearly answered but stopped himself. Kortho was wearing that look again; the tightening of his reptilian mouth, and a furrowing of his brow that made his eyes look even narrower.

  This was a trick question, and Jakub needed to think about it. Today wasn’t just about completing his first recognized necromancy assignment since graduating; it was an evaluation, too. Kortho, as much as he was a friend to Jakub, was also a necromancy master, and he had a duty to report on Jakub’s performance.

  He might have only just graduated as a necromancer in the Queen’s Academy, but he’d already seen enough corpses to tell real from fake. The nearest to him was the woman’s head. The stake cut through her neck and it had destroyed her face. There was nothing fake about the look in her eyes; utter terror.

  “This is staged.”

  Kortho nodded at the skewered woman’s head closest to them. “Did you read the book I gave you on the Greydyre campaign?”

  “No.”

  “I thought as much from the soppy look on your face. Don’t let the heads get to you; the soldiers haven’t gone crazy. This is Killeshi territory, and brutality breeds brutality.”

  He wasn’t convinced Kortho was right. Nobody knew much about the Killeshi, not even how they came to settle this part of the world. Some people said they had been here for hundreds of years, and their tribes were older than the Red Eye Queendom and the Baelin Empire put together.

  Others said that the Killeshi were descendants of sailors from the Finmark Isles, whose ship had crashed ashore and left them stranded here. With no way to get home, they’d turned to the land around them and through that they had survived.

  That was the version Jakub chose to believe. He liked the idea of sailors battling the elements to survive, and then putting down roots.

  “I take it that the Queen hasn’t toured her outpost and seen what the soldiers do here,” said Jakub.

  “You think she wouldn’t approve?” said Kortho. “Maybe they should be warning the locals away with politely worded signs.”

  “You’re taking the piss now.”

  “Don’t be so bloody naïve. The Killeshi are as demented as they come, and no number of niceties will save your arse if they get hold of you. Fact is, we need an outpost out here, and we can’t let the Killeshi drive us away. The only way to keep them at arm’s length is to adapt.”

  As much as he didn’t like the brutality of the stakes and the way they were jammed through the necks of the deceased, Jakub admired the way the soldiers in the outpost had adapted.

  Now that his training was kicking in and his revulsion was slipping away, he could see why this was necessary. The area was a savage one, and there was a reason they only had a lone military outpost here, rather than proper towns and cities. If normal folk moved here, the kinds who didn’t know how to use swords and axes and magic, it would be a slaughter.

  “We should just leave this place to the Killeshi. Let them have it.”

  “Let them have it? It’s already theirs. Don’t let the outpost fool you. Everything above land is theirs, and its only superstition about a bunch of severed heads that keeps them from
storming this place, slaughtering everyone, cooking their flesh, boiling their bones into dust for their potions, and then burning the place down.”

  “It’s something below ground that we need here, isn’t it? That’s why we keep the outpost.”

  “The official answer is ‘no comment’, even to me. Between two necromancer pals, the answer might be different. I have a mate who served here years back, and he was never allowed to go below ground.”

  There was only one thing that could be. “It has to do with the Arcane Boundaries,” he said.

  Kortho nodded. The skin on his lizard mouth wrinkled, and his eyes flickered with the wisdom he’d accumulated over the years. “You better slow down now. If I hear you say three intelligent things in a row I’ll fall on my arse.”

  Jakub laughed. Had any other master from the academy said that, he’d have taken it the way they meant it – as an insult. From Kortho, it was just a joke. His relationship with Kortho was different than with the rest of the masters. In fact, it pushed the boundaries of conflict of interest.

  The reason was that Kortho was kinder to Jakub than the others. Ridiculously kind, in fact. While the other instructors bestowed on Jakub a contempt he didn’t think he’d earned, especially after he had one of his many nightmares, Kortho treated him like a friend. No, not just that – like family.

  This showed mainly in the holidays – Christmas and Summer Solstice – when the Queen’s Academy would empty and everyone would go home to their families to celebrate the holidays.

  With no family to go back to, Jakub often found himself loitering around the academy after it was empty, passing the holidays in the grand library. He’d use the time to read the course materials for upcoming classes so he could get ahead of the other trainee necromancers.

  That had changed one summer solstice two years earlier, when the academy had emptied and Jakub once again found himself alone in its halls – aside from the other orphaned or isolated recruits, none of whom took a liking to him. He was heading to the library when he saw Master Kortho carrying a box, straining to hold it with the limited reach of his lizard arms.