Necromancer Falling: Book Two of The Mukhtaar Chronicles (37 page)

“Do you have any idea how much
this
weighs?” Aelron asked, brandishing the coin in front of Kaitlyn’s face. “Even when it’s in another room, I
feel
it. Pressing down on me like the boot of a sadistic father.”

Aelron stared down at the coin in his hand.

And I thought
I
had daddy issues.

“I understand what it’s like,” Kaitlyn said. She stepped forward, took Aelron’s hand in hers, and looked at the coin it held. “The pressure builds and builds until you’re certain the world will come crashing down around you if you don’t give in. And by the time you finally flip that coin, you don’t even care which side it lands on. You just want it over and done with.”

Aelron looked up from the coin and into her eyes.

“You’re not alone in this,” Kaitlyn said.

“You have a
coin
of your own?” Aelron asked.

“I’ve worked with people who have the same…
weight
bearing down on them constantly. I’ve watched them get better. You don’t have to live like this.”

Aelron started to draw his hand back, but Kaitlyn held firm.

“Can I take a closer look?” Kaitlyn asked.

Aelron seemed reluctant at first, but he nodded. Kaitlyn took the coin and closed her hand around it.

“I think I know how this works,” Kaitlin said. “A coin only has two sides. Tell me, Aelron, do you think we should camp for the night or keep going?”

Aelron’s breathing grew heavy and he reached for Kaitlyn’s hand, but she drew away.

“No,” she said. “You don’t need this. You just need to answer the question. I promise nothing bad will happen. We’ll do whatever you suggest. What do you think we should do?”

“You don’t understand,” Aelron said. “If I don’t—”

“Camp or keep going,” Kaitlyn repeated as she stepped back.

Aelron turned away from Kaitlyn, and she gave Nicolas the same look. She clearly thought she could talk Aelron down, but Nicolas could see him clenching and unclenching his fists, over and over.

Nearly a minute passed before Aelron looked down and closed his eyes.

“Camp,” Aelron said. “We’re all tired. We need rest.”

Aelron opened his eyes and looked around the small copse of trees, like he was expecting some unseen enemy to attack.

“This doesn’t feel right,” Aelron said.

Kaitlyn took his hand, placed the coin in his palm, and closed his fingers around it.

“You don’t need this,” Kaitlyn said.

With a yell, Aelron flung the coin out into the darkness.

“I hope you’re right,” Aelron said as he walked past Kaitlyn. “I hope I didn’t just kill us all.”

Contrary to what Nicolas expected, Kaitlyn seemed shocked. Isn’t that what she’d planned?

Nicolas stepped away from the dwarf tree as Kagan rose from the ground and took a step toward Aelron.

Nicolas told him to stand down. Aelron had made his decision, and something told Nicolas he wouldn’t go back on it. Besides, he could have killed Nicolas the first time he threw that dagger, but he didn’t.

“What changed your mind?” Kaitlin asked. “I know it wasn’t what I just said. That wouldn’t have been enough for you to just throw it away like garbage.”

Aelron stared into Nicolas’s eyes, expression blank once more.

“It lied to me,” Aelron said. “On the side of the road, where we met. It lied. It led me to believe you would be the source of great evil in this world. Well I
know
evil. You’re not evil.”

“I’m glad we had this little
come to Jesus
meeting and you saw the light and everything,” Nicolas said, “but I can’t have you traveling with people I love if you’re gonna snap.”

Aelron looked at Kaitlyn, who nodded in response.

“And what is
this
all about?” Nicolas asked, staring at Kaitlyn. “You’ve been talking like you know
him
better than you know
me
.”

“I can’t explain it,” Kaitlyn said. “After he drank from my water skin, I started…
knowing
things about him. You need to hear what he has to say.”

Kaitlyn
had
shared her water when Aelron’s skin ran dry. Could this be what the cichlos were terrified of? Had she somehow
imbued
the water skin with magic?

“Do you remember what you were thinking the last time you held that water skin?” Nicolas asked.

“You were a babe when our father sent me away,” Aelron said.

The water skin could wait. Did he hear what he
thought
he heard?

“Are you saying you’re…my
brother
?” Nicolas asked.

“Aelron Ardirian,” Aelron said. “Your
elder
brother. Kagan’s firstborn.”

Nicolas rubbed his forehead. If that were true… “That means,
you
should be archmage. Not me.”

Aelron smiled, but there was a sadness to his eyes. “Therein lies my particular tale of woe. I don’t have magic. A fact our father didn’t handle very well. I was five years old when he sent us to live with the Shandarian Rangers because of it. At least, that’s what the rangers told me. Our father didn’t grant me the luxury of an explanation before sending us away.”

“Us?” Nicolas asked. “I was told I was taken directly from the Pinnacle to…”
Maybe best to keep that close to my chest for now.
“To where I’m from.”

“I was talking about our mother.”

Nicolas’s legs stiffened, and for a few moments his heart raced. He’d spent so much time dealing with everything—getting pulled to Erindor against his will, saving a world from a despotic religious leader who turned out to be his father—that he’d spent no time at all wondering about his mother. How could he have gone through all of this and never tried harder to find out? What kind of person was he?

“Where is she?” Nicolas asked. “
Who
is she?”

Aelron turned away. Nicolas must have touched a sore spot.

“I need to know,” Nicolas said. “I just…need to know.”

Aelron rubbed the back of his neck for a few moments, then faced Nicolas.

“I haven’t told this story in…decades,” Aelron said. “Our mother was the daughter of a Shandarian ambassador. She wasn’t a magus, but she traveled to the Pinnacle with our grandfather once, and that’s where she met our father. She joined me at the Elysian Fortress, but we weren’t allowed to see each other because of my training. She wasn’t supposed to be there at all, actually—women can’t be spending time around a bunch of celibate men, you know—but they took her in as a courtesy to Kagan.”

“What’s the Elysian Fortress?” Kaitlyn asked.

“The mother house of the rangers,” Aelron said. “North. In the Great Algidian Peaks. By rights, I should have returned to the Pinnacle twenty years ago, but we were cut off by the yellow dome.”

“Is she still there?” Nicolas asked.

Aelron’s face contorted. Nicolas knew the answer before he spoke.

“About a year after we arrived, she took ill,” Aelron said. “They say they don’t know what sickness it was. I’ll spare you the details my brother rangers didn’t spare me.”

The pain was brutal and unexpected. Nicolas’s heart ached the way it had when his dad died. His adoptive father. Not this shambling ex-tyrant zombie standing next to him.

The hope that his mother lived disintegrated. He’d never get to know her. More sin to lay at Kagan’s feet. He was beginning to think he’d only scratched the surface of that man’s depravity.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Nicolas asked Kagan, who had sauntered up between them. “Is any of this true?”

“Every word,” Kagan said. “
Most
every word, at least.”

“And which part did he get wrong?”

“I didn’t send them away because my son would never be a magus. I sent them away because I knew what I was about to do, and I didn’t want them here when I did it. Something my mentor said…well, I inferred it wouldn’t be safe. At the very least, the result would be unpredictable. I didn’t want them around to reap the suffering I would sow. So I sent them to a place I knew the Barathosians couldn’t touch.”

“You’re saying it was an act of kindness?” Nicolas asked.

“You were supposed to go with them too, Nicolas,” Kagan said. “But when I sent for you, it was too late. You were already gone.”

It was too much. The sociopath traveling with them turns out to be his brother. Their mother was sent away to be safe only to die alone. He’d never know her.

Kaitlyn put her hand on his arm.

“I’m twenty-one years old and I just learned my mother died thirty-nine years ago,” Nicolas said. “Any idea how freaky that feels?”

Toridyn came up from behind Kaitlyn, holding and petting Toby.

“What’s all the commotion?” Toridyn asked.

A cold breeze blew through the copse of trees, carrying with it the scent of a distant rain.

“Why would you say you’re twenty-one?” Aelron asked. “That’s not possible.”

Nicolas considered telling the story. But brother or no, he didn’t know this person.

“
My
mentor once told me time doesn’t always behave,” Nicolas said. “Let’s leave it at that for now. Until we know each other better. But you don’t look any more middle-aged than I do. How do
you
manage it?”

Aelron shook his head. “When I discovered who you are, and I saw that you looked no older than I do, I started hoping
you
would have the answer to that question. It was another reason the rangers cast me out. I was too different for them.”

Nicolas nodded.

Wait. Mentor.

What was it Kagan had said? Something about having a mentor around the time the barrier went up? Mujahid never mentioned anything about that!

“Tell me about this mentor of yours.” Nicolas said.

“Kindly old man,” Kagan said. “He’d come across the ocean with the Barathosians. Once he discovered how
open
to his knowledge I was, he decided to stay. He was surprised I’d discovered so much about vitapotency on my own, so he helped me perfect the rest. His name was Azazel. I knew much, but I had been going about it all wrong. And…”

Nicolas waited for words that never came. “Any day now.”

Kagan remained frozen in place. Nicolas turned inward to the necromantic link, but every message he inserted vanished like water down a drain. He nudged Kagan with his elbow and the dead man looked up.

“I was about to tell you,” Kagan said, “that you were supposed to go with them. But when I sent for you, it was too late. You were already gone.”

Nicolas narrowed his eyes. “You said that already.”

“I did?”

Great. My penitent has dementia now.

“You were talking about Azazel one minute, then you froze like Han Solo in carbonite the next.”

“You realize he has no idea what you’re talking about, right?” Kaitlyn said.

“Azazel?” Kagan said. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in…”

Kagan froze again.

“Can somebody tell me why my penitent has Alzheimer’s?” Nicolas said.

“You were supposed to go with them,” Kagan said. “But—”

“When you sent for me, I was already gone,” Nicolas said.

“You knew?”

“Oh
hell
no.”

What in blazes was going on with Kagan? Confusing images. Freezing at the name of…

Wait a minute.

“Azazel,” Nicolas said. “Isn’t that a demon’s name, Kait?”

“Azazel?” Kagan said. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in…”

“There he goes again,” Aelron said.

“I think it is,” Kaitlyn said.

“…
kindly old man. He came across the ocean with the Barathosians. Once he discovered
…”

“I think you broke dead Kagan,” Toridyn said, flicking Kagan’s shoulder with his over-sized finger.

“The Old Testament uses the word a couple times,” Nicolas said. “But not as a demon, now that I think about it. The usage is a bit confusing there. But when dad made me read the Book of Enoch, it was used as the name of a fallen angel. In fact, if I remember correctly, Enoch says Azazel was responsible for damned near every evil ever committed.”

“Charming,” Kaitlyn said.

Aelron sniffed. “This Enoch of yours would reevaluate Azazel’s contribution to evil if he knew about Kagan.”

“I don’t like this,” Nicolas said. “If I can move between worlds—”

“You do
what
?” Aelron asked.

“Then it stands to reason I’m not the only one,” Nicolas said.

“Wait,” Kaitlyn said. “You’re saying you think a demon flits back and forth between Earth and here?”

“It can’t be a coincidence,” Nicolas said. “I’ve seen too many things here that are similar.”

“Of course you have,” Kaitlyn said. “They’re just as human here as we are.”

“No, you don’t get what I’m saying. How do you explain a baroque cathedral under a mountain in the Shandarian Union?”

Kaitlyn pursed her lips.

“Mujahid’s pad,” Nicolas said. “Looked like Saint Peter’s Basilica. Now how do you explain that? They don’t have our religions here, but they build a structure based on Roman mythology? They have to have gotten it from someplace.”

“Or
we
did.” Kaitlyn said.

Nicolas had once said the same thing to Mujahid. Did Erindor get the symbolism from Earth, or did Earth get it from Erindor?

“Either way,” Nicolas said. “If there’s a fallen angel involved in this, we have bigger problems than the Barathosians.”

Nicolas put his hands on top of his head.

“It’s too much, Kait. Just one of these problems is enough to make me lose sleep, and we’ve got like…twenty-seven now.”

“And we’ll solve them all,” Kaitlyn said. “One at a time.”

Nicolas exhaled through pursed lips. “You’re right. Let’s get back to camp and get these people to Caspardis. The sooner we get there, the sooner we can see about the city’s defense. You never told me what you did to that water skin, by the way.”

“I don’t know what I did,” Kaitlyn said. “I can’t even tell you what I was thinking the last time I held it.”

“I reckon the cichlos were right to give us the boot.”