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  “You’re in the future again.”

  Jakub nodded, and he composed himself and brought his mind back to the present. “What do we do?”

  CHAPTER 5

  “Let me see you cast the Lingering Air of Death,” said Kortho.

  Jakub shook his head. “I won’t get that until novice level three, at the earliest. Can’t you use yours?”

  “It takes a heck of a lot of soul essence to bring a person back, and the academy don’t like giving us a gram more than we need.”

  “I thought we were going to resurrect him at the academy?”

  “We always have failsafes, my lad. If something is to happen, I need to be able to resurrect him on the road. We’re in deep shit if it comes to that, but you never know.”

  Jakub nodded at the dead soldier at their feet, the only soldier who still had a head on his shoulders. “We could use Last Rites on him if I had enough soul essence.”

  “There will be things we can hunt and kill around here if you need more essence,” said Kortho.

  “Will we have enough time?” asked Jakub.

  “Last Rites can be used later in death than a true resurrection. Our window is larger for this. There’s one niggle, though.”

  “What?”

  “The Killeshi might not have killed these people, but this is still their land. Two travelers with fancy overcoats and soul necklaces will be attractive to them.”

  “We don’t have any leads, and every minute we do nothing, the window closes,” he said. He kicked the dead soldier with his foot, “This guy is the only thing we’ve got.”

  Kortho crossed his arms and shook his head.

  “What?” said Jakub.

  “What did you just do?”

  Jakub shrugged. “I don’t know, what?”

  “You kicked a dead man like he was piece of furniture, and you referred to him as a ‘thing’. The academy can teach you to de-sensitize yourself, but they’re not going to be able to fix your soul if it breaks completely.”

  “I have to stop caring about death, but respect it at the same time. Act like I don’t care, act like I do care. It’d be great if all the instructors taught from the same guide book.”

  “The next time Instructor Irvine takes you on an assignment, you can listen to him instead of me.”

  Jakub seethed, but not at his mentor. Kortho was right. Instead, he seethed because he’d earned a rebuke through his own stupidity. Deep down, all Jakub wanted to do was impress the man who he’d come to look at as a father-figure.

  Maybe Kortho could see the thoughts in his head, because he gave Jakub a smile. A liguana smile was a strange thing; the liguana people’s reptilian faces were formed in such a way that a smile from them looked like they were eyeing you up for dinner. Not that the liguanas ever ate people.

  Still, Kortho’s smile would have made most people edgy. Not so with Jakub, though, and he appreciated the gesture.

  “It’s hard to get the balance right,” he said. “Between de-sensitization and…what’s the word I’m looking for?”

  “Compassion? Make sure you keep it, because it’s in death that people need it most.”

  “Either way, I need essence so we can find out what this soldier saw. I won’t have the other instructors see me as a failure. It’s not like they have much faith in me.”

  “Don’t presume to know what your instructors are thinking.”

  “Irvine argued against me graduating. Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

  “I do, lad. Graduating by two votes to one isn’t the best margin. And that was only because I persuaded Instructor Mulgrew to see the light.”

  “If a guy fails the first time he tries something, that’s what he’ll be known as forever. Everyone who doubted me because of my nightmares, who said I was too dangerous to be a necromancer, they’d be right. And worse-”

  He stopped talking, because he didn’t want to finish the sentence out loud. It was too touchy-feely, and Jakub liked to keep his feelings where they belonged – in his head.

  Instead, he said it in his head. Worse, Kortho, I’d have let you down.

  That was the hardest thing about it. He wanted to prove the other instructors and necromancers wrong and show them that he was worthy of being one of them.

  There was more at stake than that, though; Kortho had put his own reputation on the line for him, and if Jakub screwed up he wouldn’t just be failing himself, but Kortho, too.

  He’d go through anything before he let that happen.

  A screech from outside drew Kortho’s attention, and the lizard walked over to the large oval window that had shattered in the woman’s Last Rites projection.

  “That was the call of a duskfen,” he said, looking back at Jakub. “Where there are duskfen, there are sure to be wyrms, too. It’s time to hunt. We’ll harvest enough essence to perform a Last Rites spell on this poor gentleman, and then we will see where that takes us.”

  “Okay. Let me have a look around and see what I can loot,” said Jakub.

  “Good thinking.”

  “Aren’t you going to have a look?”

  “I’ve found enough trinkets after thirty years in the field. Fill your boots.”

  As Jakub went from body to body checking what gear Queen Patience’s soldiers had, he didn’t feel a flicker of shame. Some would have called it stealing from the dead, but the academy taught its pupils differently. Looting was necessary, and that was that.

  Some people had names for looting, ones designed to make them feel better. Redistribution of equipment. Weapons and armor recovery. Jakub preferred the good, old-fashioned word of looting, one taken from the books he used to read as a child where parties of adventurers would battle through level after level of dungeons, taking whatever gear they could from their fallen enemies.

  “Most recruits hesitate when salvaging equipment,” said Kortho. “You’d have made a good grave robber.”

  He leaned by the window and lit his pipe. He didn’t need to loot, since his equipment was already better than anything the soldiers had.

  “Well, they’re not going to use it anymore,” said Jakub, unclasping armor from a soldier and reaching under the man’s shirt to find a secret pouch, “Better I salvage it for the Queendom then let the Killeshi come and claim it. It’s not like we have the time to bury the bodies.”

  “I don’t need a lesson in practicality from a novice. My de-sensitization was done long ago. When a lot of you young ‘uns are faced with having to break a man’s fingers to release the death grip on his sword, you get all pale and sicky.”

  “They’re already dead, and it’s not like I killed them. Every item I take from them goes toward helping the Queendom.”

  “Correct. Get a move on. This won’t be a nice place to hunt if we lose the light.”

  Moving from soldier to soldier, he used his fourth tattoo to identify their gear for him. While the three tattoos for his glyphlines were large, clearly shaped, and in a prominent position on his left forearm, his fourth tattoo was barely a pinprick on his left thumb.

  This tattoo was a link between the world and his brain, where certain sensory information was processed and then changed into words in front of him.

  Looking at a soldier’s sword – wrapped tightly in a death fist – he could only tell it was made from either iron or steel, and that it was well-maintained. He couldn’t get any more detailed than that.

  Touching it with his thumb, however, and these vague descriptions of ‘iron or steel’ and ‘well-maintained’ turned into better information.

  Hardened Iron Sword

  *Common*

  Value: 57

  Jakub spent the next ten minutes checking each soldier, reviewing the strength and worth of their swords, daggers, armor, belts, and boots and comparing them against his own until he was sure that he’d checked each corpse. He only took what a) improved his own attack or defence and b) what fit him.

  When he was finished, his thumb tattoo summed up his looti
ng for him.

  *Loot Received!*

  Leather Shoulder Pads

  *Common*

  Salve of agony x2

  *Common*

  A paste that numbs pain.

  Boots of Focus

  **Uncommon**

  Wearing the Boots of Focus keeps your brain on the task in hand. You are more able to concentrate when you study, and less likely to be struck by panic, fear or rage when in difficult situations.

  Jakub took off his black overcoat and then clasped the shoulder pads over his shoulders. The fit wasn’t as snug as he’d have liked since the soldier was bigger than him, so Jakub would have to put on a more muscle to get them fitting perfectly. Still, they were secure and he felt more protected wearing them.

  Where his new shoulder pads increased his defence, his new boots reduced it by a point. Even so, the special ability of the boots to focus his mind meant that the loss in defence was more than worth it.

  He was impressed that he’d uncovered an uncommon item in his first ever looting. The feeling it gave him was strange; like a jolt of adrenaline.

  “Found something good?” said Kortho, puffing out smoke from his pipe. He pressed his own thumb tattoo. “Boots of Focus, eh?”

  “Imagine fighting your way through a dungeon and then killing the monster at the end and scoring something rare or mythical? What a rush that’d be,” said Jakub.

  “I’ve seen lads and lasses lost themselves to looting. Taking risks where they shouldn’t. It can be an addiction, Jakub. Only loot because you need the equipment; don’t loot for the rush of it.”

  Kortho was a downer, but he was right. Even so, it was Jakub’s first looting in the field, and he’d heard stories about how slim pickings were usually. He guessed that he was lucky that his first job after graduation had sent him into an outpost of deceased soldiers.

  Yet…the implications of his thoughts hit him - he was rejoicing over death.

  Desensitization was one thing but gloating over the death of others was something else.

  Chiding himself, he put on his boots of focus and then put the two salves of agony in his leather inventory bag.

  “Finished?” said Kortho.

  “Ready.”

  “Good. A hunt will take your mind off Abbie Marth.”

  “I did the right thing with her.”

  “Don’t start repeating the duty over all nonsense again, Jakub.”

  “I made the right decision,” he said, hoping if he said the words strongly enough, even he would believe them.

  “Look,” said Kortho. “When graduation comes, hearts get broken. I was sorry to see it happen to the both of you, even if you broke each other’s hearts at the same time. Forget about Abbie Marth.”

  Jakub nodded. “That’s the idea. You never know, a few years down the line…”

  “No; you have made your choice. Next time you see Abbie, she will be different. A warlock’s path is different to a necromancer’s, and perhaps it is good that this ended now rather than suffer more later. Now come, I don’t like hunting when I can’t see.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The land surrounding the outpost was filled with stone ruins. They were too aged to tell what they’d been, and a lot of the stone blocks had been looted. Still, the skeletons of old buildings remained.

  “King Redwin tried to settle here,” said Jakub, hoping to impress Kortho with his knowledge. “Back when the Killeshi lands were first discovered. He wanted to ‘gift’ the Killeshis with Red Eye civilization.”

  “Aye, and we can see how well it worked. Bloody stupid idea. You know how many poor sods died trying to settle this place?”

  Jakub frowned. He’d hoped to find a gap in Kortho’s knowledge, but this obviously wasn’t it. No sooner had he started the conversation, than he was back under the fire of questions.

  “No idea,” he said.

  “Me neither, but a bloody lot – that’s your answer. Any time we’ve ever tried to build something here, the aggressive bastards have killed everyone and torn the buildings down. It’s only the outpost that’s survived.”

  “That can’t all be thanks to the soldiers.”

  “There’s something under the outpost that the Killeshi don’t like,” said Kortho. “Don’t worry about that. Don’t downplay the soldiers either – you have to be one tough son of a whore to survive around here.”

  And now those tough sons of whores are dead, thought Jakub, killed by who knows what and for a reason we can’t figure out.

  Jakub suspected the body of the traitor was central to it, and that pointed the finger of blame at the Baelin empire. Except, the Baelineese couldn’t set foot outside of their own lands because of the Arcane Boundaries.

  The Baelin empire was much stronger than the Red Eye and had powers as mystifying as they were deadly. It was only the Arcane Boundaries that stopped a full-on invasion, and that was what made recovering the traitor’s body so important.

  Who knew what the traitor has told the Baelineese? There was no way the traitor would have inner knowledge of how the Arcane Boundaries worked, but any information he could sell to the Baelin empire was potentially damaging.

  They needed to know exactly what information he had sold. Then the Queen could be reassured that nothing valuable was told or could make plans to counter if the opposite was true.

  Either way, the window was closing. Dousing a corpse with goodlight kept the resurrection window open for longer than normal, but it didn’t last forever.

  Kortho walked on ahead, hacking at overgrown thorn weeds with his jagged sword. “We don’t need anything big,” he said. “Just enough to harvest soul essence sufficient for a Last Rites spell.”

  “There should be duskfens and blightwood wyrms around here,” said Jakub.

  “You paid attention in critters and creatures class.”

  “Madam Jolo is a good instructor.”

  “Yes, all the male students seem to think so.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Oh, just that the male population of the academy tend to try and impress Madam Jolo more than, say, old Instructor Irvine.”

  “Well, Irvine is an old ass.”

  “He’s still an instructor, lad, as am I. I’m both old and an ass too, so care careful what you use as an insult, and careful who you say it too.”

  “As if you’d ever report me.”

  “Mess up this hunt, and that might change. Come on; we’ll have to hike around to find something, but I don’t want to stray too far from the outpost. Night is coming, and we don’t want to be in the Killeshi forests when it gets dark. We’ll have to sleep in the outpost tonight.”

  “I have my artificed tent.”

  “Too conspicuous, too unprotected. The Killeshi will know of the slaughter at the outpost, and they’ll steer clear from it until they judge it safe. They might be bloodthirsty, but they’re practical. For tonight, at least, the outpost is the safest place for us.”

  Jakub grimaced at the thought of sleeping within the walls where the massacre had happened. They should have had the traitor’s body by now, and they should have been well on the way out of the Killeshi lands and to a nearby town, where they could have bedded down in a nice inn.

  “I’d kill for a warm room in an inn, a relaxing bath, and the biggest flagon of beer you’ve ever seen,” he said.

  “You’d kill for something so small?”

  “Sure. I’d resurrect them afterwards, of course.”

  “Yes, once you learn how. You’ve got a long way to go until then, so how about you learn something from this assignment? All the talent in the world won’t deliver you to mastery. You have to work to get yourself there.”

  Kortho was right. He was in the future again, where he knew he spent too much time. Well, in the future, the past, or in his dreams. All three places were harmful for Jakub, and he needed to focus.

  Right now, focusing meant checking the terrain around him for signs of a blightwood wrym nest. Remembering Madam
Lolo’s lecture on creatures of the Killeshi lands – and remembering the short-cut dresses she always wore that accentuated her impossibly long and smooth legs – he knew that the wryms loved nesting in Killeshi lands because of the minerals in the soil.

  It made the land poorly-suited for farming since redstyke minerals were harmful when ingested and as such meant the soil couldn’t be used for growing crops, but the blightwood wryms couldn’t get enough of it.

  So now, he focused on finding the signs of a wrym nest. The first of these hit him as they hacked through a tough outgrowing of thornweeds.

  “Hells, that smells like rotten shit. Think we’re near a nest.”

  “Yep. Big ones by the looks of it,” said Kortho.

  “How do you know?”

  Kortho nodded to his right, where the skin of a wyrm lay on the ground. It was a husk, since the wrym must have shedded it. It was six-feet-long and lined with pointed tips. If that were a full, live wyrm, the tips would be full of poison.

  “That’s a big skin, alright,” he said.

  “We need to be careful; their poison is excruciating.”

  Jakub remembered his lessons. “Blood from every orifice. How many orifices does a person have? Eyes, mouth, nostrils…do nostrils count as an orifice?”

  “Doesn’t matter. All I know is that your orifices were mixed up at birth, and your talking through an orifice where no words should come. Keep your wits about you and stay in the present. With wryms this size, we should get enough essence from one or two.”

  As they moved off, something made a grunting sound. Knowing that blightwood wryms didn’t grunt, his sensed pricked. He listened out, and another grunt told the direction of its source.

  “Something ahead,” he said.

  He crouched and moved forward. He was no rogue, so he wasn’t trained in the art of stealth. Even so, with his slight frame he could move quietly when he needed to, and to do that he needed to concentrate.

  Kortho didn’t need such concentration. Being reptilian, he could move with barely a sound.

  “As quietly as you can,” Kortho whispered. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”