Necromancer Falling: Book Two of The Mukhtaar Chronicles (26 page)

“We’ll start by retaking the northern gate,” Mujahid said. “We can use the gate’s tower as a fortified base from which to push farther into the city.”

“And the Barathosian weapons?” Donal asked.

“Magus Jaelin,” Mujahid said. “Order your brethren north toward the wall. Have them attack any Barathosian weapon installation they come across. Capture the weapon if possible, but don’t risk your lives to do so.”

Jaelin bowed at the waist and turned.

Mujahid thought better of it. “Wait. You’ll be seen.”

Jaelin faced him once more.

“Dismiss your penitent,” Mujahid said.

Her skeletal warrior dropped to the ground in a pile of bones. She must have summoned him from a grave. They’d have to return his remains to their resting place when this was over.

Mujahid ignited the symbol of ascension and threaded necropotency into the symbol of shadow—a spherical void hanging in the midst of his other symbols of power. The symbol was often used by priests to conceal particularly gruesome deaths from the eyes of bystanders. But enhanced by the symbol of ascension, the symbol could conceal the living.

Mujahid pushed the symbol forward, stretching it until it wrapped around Jaelin.

Pinpoints of blackness raced toward her from the surrounding shadows. Some shot out from under leaning rocks, while others emerged from darkened doorways and overgrown brush. The shadows themselves would cloak Jaelin.

When they converged on her, Donal gasped. “Where is she?”

Mujahid looked at Jaelin and smiled. He couldn’t see her face or even her outline, but she stood before him as an amorphous black fog visible only to him. Not even another necromancer would be able to detect her.

“She stands before us still, Majesty,” Mujahid said. “Jaelin, it’s important you make haste. Touch nothing except the ground you walk on and your own body. Speak to no one. Cast no magic. Do any of those things and the illusion will shatter. Now, find your brethren.”

Jaelin ran back into the city.

“You’ll have to teach me that trick,” Donal said.

“Survive a few dozen more Halls of Power and I’ll have no choice.”

Mujahid channeled necropotency into the skull symbol and cast it into a corpse wearing a wide-brimmed hat.

The images from the
namocea—
the process that forced a necromancer to relive the life of their penitent in the span of a moment—took hold of Mujahid and he rode the penitent’s time line for more than thirty years.

A moment later, when the namocea ended and Mujahid reawakened to the situation at Rotham, he ordered the penitent forward, into the city.

The horned creatures had disappeared along with the wagons they pushed, leaving nothing except impressions in the dirt.

Curious. They had been standing there a moment ago.

The necromantic link vanished. The undead soldier must have been discovered and killed as he entered the city.

A shame. Judging from the namocea, his penitent had been a good man.

The namocea.

Mujahid dug back into his memories of the man’s life for any information that could help.

The soldier—Ibashi—had grown up in a place overgrown with large, bending trees, similar to the palm trees of southern Religar. But there was too much vegetation. A memory of humid heat warmed him and made him want to open his robes to cool himself.

Flashes of a temple hidden in a jungle behind the gaping maw of a beast. Men razing his village and taking him from his family. Rigorous training as a soldier. An instantaneous journey across an endless sea. Two men in gray robes. One of those men dead because of the journey…voluntarily.

Fear. Uncertainty. Disbelief.

This wasn’t enough. Mujahid needed information. And so he’d try the unthinkable.

Can I summon him again?

Nicolas had told him he’d succeeded in summoning both the argram and the cichlos by focusing on need.

Well, Mujahid needed Ibashi. But he’d never heard of a priest summoning a specific person without that person’s corpse to receive the power. And judging by how faint the necromantic link had been when Ibashi died, he was too deep within the city to find.

Mujahid embraced the necropotency and allowed it to flow into the skull symbol. He focused on Ibashi; his life, his home, his fears, his aspirations. When he’d succeeded in blocking out everything except the need for Ibashi, he cast the symbol forward and waited for the namocea to take him.

Memories of a journey over land and a fierce battle ran through his mind. He focused on the battle, and when he saw the enemy, he sighed in disappointment. He had failed. He wasn’t Ibashi. He was a woman. Three argram, tarsal swords exposed and slicing through humans as they leapt from wagon to wagon, converged on her and killed her. Memories of a life lived eons ago, before recorded time.

When the images stopped and the binding was secure, he examined the skeleton of a frail old woman that stood before him. She had clawed her way up through layers of dirt, leaving a sizable hole behind her.

No, it wasn’t Ibashi, but Mujahid smiled anyway. The woman was so close to purification that he was certain he could release her on the spot.

But it was more than that.

A small part of Mujahid was happy to discover Nicolas could do something he couldn’t.

With enough preparation, and a little wisdom, that boy could ascend
.

He expelled the thought from his mind as being too absurd to consider. Ascension required decades of experience as a necromancer. An intuitive knowledge of necropotency few priests possessed.

No, it was time to concentrate on the here and now.

“I release you from your penance, sister,” Mujahid said.

The skeletal woman transformed into pure light and disappeared.

“How do you stop an army when a single one of their soldiers can destroy a city wall with the strike of a flint?” Donal asked.

Mujahid had no idea. Now, more than ever, he wished Nuuan was here to help him sort through this mess.

Where in the seventh hell are you, Nuuan?

“Do you have a penitent?” Mujahid asked.

Donal shook his head. “I’ll summon one.”

“Save your strength. Raise one of those corpses by the wall instead. It will consume less power and take less of a toll on you. Let’s take back that gate.”

Donal nodded and within moments had raised a dead Tildem soldier.

Mujahid took his own advice and did the same.

“My lord!” Jaelin yelled. She was running toward him from the gate, about a hundred yards away. “It’s no use! The penitents can’t touch them!”

“What?” Mujahid ran forward to meet her. “What do you mean?”

She stopped in front of him and caught her breath.

“I made it deep into the city before breaking your illusion. But it was no use. Every time we attack the Barathosians, they either disappear or the penitent refuses to touch them.”

“That’s not possible,” Mujahid said. “Your penitent cannot
refuse
!”

He glanced toward the northern gate, where three Barathosian soldiers emerged, and ordered his penitent to attack.

It refused.

“Majesty,” Mujahid said. “Send your penitent!”

“I’ve tried! It won’t obey!”

Never in his considerable years had Mujahid heard of such a thing.

“We can’t stay here,” Mujahid said. “Until I discover why this is happening, we have to assume they can use our power against us.”

This was troubling to a degree Mujahid was only now understanding. It brought everything he knew about the relationship between a priest and a penitent into question.

Mujahid glanced around, trying to feel the wind on his face. When he was satisfied it wasn’t blowing toward them from the city, he ignited the symbol of ascension and cast a cloud of disease toward the gate.

Power returned to his well as the three Barathosian soldiers choked to death.

“Now that I’ve seen some of their tactics,” Donal said, “I can defend Arin’s Watch.”

Mujahid gave him an incredulous stare. “Moments ago you were asking how anyone could defend against their weapons, and now you’re going to save a city?”

“I must try.”

“Arin’s Watch will fall, with or without you,” Mujahid said. “If you refuse to return to the Pinnacle with me, I urge you to press on to the Shandarian Union. I can be in Shandar in minutes. Within the hour I can alert the Union government. Perhaps they’ll…offer assistance.”

Mujahid didn’t know why he said that. He didn’t believe a word of it. And from Donal’s expression, neither did he. But what else could they do? Tildem’s army wasn’t capable of handling this threat. And from what Mujahid had seen of those metal cylinders, he doubted the combined might of the Shandarian Union
and
the Religarian Empire could turn the Barathosians back.

And now
necromancy
had failed.

A nearby explosion knocked Mujahid off his feet. When he realized there was no impending attack, he shook his head.

“If
they
don’t kill me, I’ll likely trip over an anthill and do the job for them,” Mujahid said.

Donal extended his arm. “Take my hand and let’s make for Arin’s watch.”

Mujahid nodded and let the king help him to his feet. He didn’t agree with Donal’s plan to defend Arin’s Watch, but maybe he could convince him otherwise on the road. Or better, maybe he could convince General Garon. Donal was many things, but foolhardy wasn’t one of them. He’d listen to a battle-hardened officer.

Shouts reached him from the direction of the gate as the other necromancers arrived.

“Keep your penitents at the ready, all of you,” Mujahid said, dusting himself off. “I’ll summon another and scout to the north. Protect the king.”

The necromancers bowed and fanned out behind the retreating Tildem soldiers.

Mujahid ignited the symbol of ascension and allowed the necropotency to embrace the skull symbol.

How about someone a little more
evil
this time? Someone who’ll stick around a little longer.

He cast the symbol forward and waited for the namocea to take him.

Two days passed without Mujahid spotting another Barathosian.

A day earlier, Mujahid recommended turning east toward the coast, secretly hoping they would find a Religarian naval patrol in the Sea of Arin to escort them out of Tildem. Donal had agreed with the course change, though Mujahid kept his true purpose hidden. Donal was being hard-headed about saving Tildem.

He couldn’t fault the man. Mujahid would pay a dear price to protect the safety of the Mukhtaar Estate and all its secrets.

But Mujahid had ways of protecting the estate that didn’t involve a foolhardy attempt to defend a defenseless set of walls.

As they drew closer to the sea, Mujahid found it unnecessary to scout far ahead. He tried to tell himself the Barathosians couldn’t navigate the treacherous waters of the Sea of Arin this far north of James’s Gate—the narrow straight between Tildem and Religar. But the truth was if the Barathosians
did
appear on the horizon, there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it.

Mujahid stood at the top of tall, white cliffs that ran north and south along the Tildem coast. A hundred feet below, gentle waves lapped against the shore of white sand, bordering the sea in a rim of white froth. Billowing gray clouds formed a thunderhead to the east, and the winds from the desert plains of Religar drove it toward them.

But that thunderhead wasn’t the only storm on the horizon.

Hundreds of ships anchored off the cost of Tildem, forming a series of concentric circles around a massive catamaran that had three decks above water. There was something strange about the catamaran’s pontoons, though. A row of narrow, rectangular portholes ran fore and aft along each pontoon, encased in a wooden frame. Pontoons were normally a single piece, or several connected at seams, but they never had portholes.

There was no way this fleet could have
slipped past
the Religarian scouts.

The crags north of the fleet were daggers of rock reaching into the sky, and they were impossible to pass without intimate knowledge of the sea and seasons. But the Barathosians were launching smaller, more agile vessels capable of navigating the twisting pathways of water and rock. And those ships were heading north toward Pilgrim’s Landing.

That would put the Barathosians within reach of the Pinnacle.

As the small ships entered the craggy, narrow waterways, several turquoise blurs shot out from the crags and over the ships, creating a mist from the beating of their wings, which spanned at least forty feet.

Shrillers. Odd for this time of year.

Several shrillers circled the small ships, craning feathery necks as long as their wings.

The ships began to veer off course. Some crashed into the crags, while others collided with each other.

Something’s wrong. Shrillers hunt in pairs or alone. They never swarm.

As the leading ship steered into a rock face, a shriller flew through one of the sails and crashed into the cliff, falling to the water and narrowly missing the boat’s upper deck.