Necromancer Falling: Book Two of The Mukhtaar Chronicles (44 page)

Aelron stood. “The man with the missing feather is in that room, isn’t he?”

Morrigan pursed her lips for a moment. “Most of him.”

“Show me.”

Morrigan stepped through the doorway.

Aelron followed her into a room that was darker than the last and smelled like death itself. A single window, high in the opposite wall, cast a beam of yellow light on the center of the room at a steep angle. Particles of dust drifted through the light. He suppressed another sneeze.

But it wasn’t the darkness, the solitary beam of light, or the motes of dust that concerned him. What concerned him was the man on the floor at the other end of that beam of light. Or rather, what was
left
of him.

Half of a man’s
torso
lay on the floor. A shell of flesh with internal organs hanging precariously from fascia. The remains of a stomach hung twisted within entrails that wrapped the fleshy mass, binding it together like a macabre sack. A sack resting in a pool of rotten food, feces, and urine.

Aelron suppressed a gag. “Gods.”

“When the others disappeared,” Morrigan said, “that one ended up exactly like you see him. Their powers of transport
must
have something to do with the feather.”

Another bell tolled, this time louder than the first.

“Barathosians?”

Morrigan nodded. “A second bell means an attack is imminent.”

“Then we need to get to the wall.”

Aelron turned toward the door behind him, but Morrigan was already standing there, blocking his exit. She’d somehow covered fifteen paces without him seeing her move.

And she wasn’t out of breath.

“First,” Morrigan said, “I need something from you.” She took slow steps toward him. “No one who hears the story I told you leaves this building unless they’re with the Sodality.”

Aelron glanced at the door.

“There’s power in you,” Morrigan said. “Your friends and family might not see it, but I do. Just like you’ll see it in others someday. I’m not making a threat, Aelron. I’m making an offer.”

Aelron had suspected it would come to this at some point, with all that talk of training and tracking. Strange as it was, the notion appealed to him. He’d spent decades of his life with a group of people who didn’t want him around. What would it have been like to spend decades with people who
did
?

He always wondered why he’d stopped aging. And there was no reason he shouldn’t have been able to moor with an adda-ki. Maybe Morrigan had the answers he sought.

But there was another reason to consider her offer; the pull of the phantom coin had diminished since he’d met her.

“Suppose I’m interested,” Aelron said. “We hardly have time for some elaborate initiation ritual.”

“Do you want me to complete the training the rangers started? Do you want to become a member of the Sodality? A warrior of Zubuxo?”

So she
did
know he was a ranger.

Aelron stared at her. His brain was telling him to say no. He’d traveled here with a brother he’d just met to fight a war against an enemy he didn’t know. Nicolas and Kaitlyn were coming to rely upon him, to some degree. They were going to need his skills and expertise, even if they didn’t know it yet.

But his heart had different ideas. There’d been a connection with Morrigan. What kind, he couldn’t say, but it was there all the same. She had answers to questions he’d been asking for more than twenty years. She made him believe that all the things he hated about himself had some greater meaning. Some greater purpose.

“I can’t say I understand why,” Aelron said. “Not completely, anyway. But yes. I do. I want to join your order. I want to know why I don’t age. I want to learn about this
veil
of yours.”

“Then consider the elaborate initiation ritual concluded.”

“You have a spare one of those cloaks around here?”

Morrigan huffed. “This is a sacred garment, forged from the veil at the headwaters of the Great Orm River. Zubuxo himself imbued it on the night of the new moons—a night that comes but once every five years.”

“Yeah. One of
those
.”

“Regarding your
wall
comment earlier,” Morrigan said, ignoring him. “We don’t want to be anywhere
near
the wall when this attack starts. I saw what they did in Tur. We wait for them to get inside the city,
then
we attack.”

“What can we do that the Caspardis militia cannot?”

Morrigan smirked and jogged toward the door. “Time for your first lesson.”

He followed her into the street. “And how many lessons are there?”

“As many as it takes.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

In the year 1077 BCE, Imran Mukhtaar stepped over the threshold, becoming Imran Lord Mukhtaar. Though lord Mukhtaar entered the Rite of Ascension with his brother Kyran, Kyran was never seen again. The loss of his brother led Lord Mukhtaar to forbid future generations from allowing more than one family member to attempt ascension.

- Coteon of the Steppes, “The Mukhtaar Chronicles: Coteonic Commentaries” (circa 680 BCE)

If Lord Imran’s restriction was meant to be perpetual, he did a poor job of promulgating it. There have been numerous occurrences, centuries before our birth, of sons ascending while the father yet reigned. I will have to make some explicit comment about this in the Chronicles. It wouldn’t do to let this stand as an impediment to ascension for the worthy.

- Mujahid Mukhtaar, Private Commentaries, 15 CE

Nicolas materialized, and the low hum of the Orb of Arin greeted him. The multi-hued swirls of divine power on its surface emitted an iridescent vapor, obscuring the turquoise sky through the window behind it.

The sanctuary
.

Nicolas was thankful the translocation orb had taken him to the heart of the Pinnacle. The Pinnacle was a city-sized structure, built atop an island in the Sea of Arin. The last thing he needed was to have to scour the place for Tithian.

He needed one of those protoforge fragments immediately. Caspardis was in trouble, and he couldn’t leave Kaitlyn and the gang there for too long.

Toby pulled at the leash and bayed. But when Nicolas faced the direction Toby was pulling, he saw nothing.

Nicolas rubbed at his right eye. For a moment, he thought he’d seen a shadow jumping up from a dark corner. And he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.

But no one was there.

Toby calmed as a Pinnacle guard opened the sanctuary door and entered.

“Archmage,” the guard said.

“The Prime Warlock,” Nicolas said. “Where is he?”

“I saw him last in the Great Hall, but that was hours ago.”

“Find him. I don’t care if it takes the entire Pinnacle Guard. Find him and tell him to come to my chambers without delay.”

“Archmage.” The guard saluted and ran down the great spiral stairs.

Nicolas’s head throbbed.

What I’d give for a couple of smart phones right now.

He walked down the twisted spiral stairs, in the general direction of his chambers. As he rounded the center column—a twenty feet diameter of sandstone—he noticed all of the sconces were in their place. For him, mere
days
had passed since he’d crept up this very passage on the way to confront his birth father, Kagan. The sandstone walls looked much the same, but the sconces that once lay in pieces on the floor now hung in pristine condition.

When he circled the column once more, he emerged onto a landing formed by two hallways running opposite one another. Four guards in Pinnacle livery—billowing material with yellow and red stripes from shoulder to toe—stood at attention along the back wall of the landing, pikes in hand. They saluted as Nicolas looked up and down the hallways, trying to find a familiar door, scratch on the wall, or any other sign that would lead him in the right direction.

Nicolas returned the salute.

“Forgive the presumption, Archmage,” one of the guards said. “Frederick mentioned fetching the Prime Warlock to your chambers. You’ll find them
that
way, Excellency.”

“Thank you,” Nicolas said. Word must be spreading about his dislike of being called
Holy One
. But
Excellency
was a new one.

The corridor didn’t look familiar, but Nicolas tugged at the leash and led Toby onward.

Again, the strong sensation of being watched returned, and he glanced up and down the hall.

No one.

As he approached a large window that looked out over a vineyard, he recognized the door to his chambers. It rested within an arch of sandstone, and bore two gold mosaics; one resembling the Orb of Arin, and the other in the image of Arin’s helm.

Last time, he’d approached from the opposite end of the hall.

No wonder I’m lost. This place is a labyrinth.

Two guards on either side of the door saluted as Nicolas pushed it open.

Nicolas glanced around the room—what he could see of it—before entering. He was a man without a home, and it never occurred to him until this moment. The thought of going back to his life in Austin seemed foolish. A naive longing, at best. Austin held nothing for him anymore. What was he going to do? Go to grad school? Get a job as a field archaeologist? Teach?

He could no sooner put Erindor behind him then he could Kaitlyn.

But as much as he felt a connection to Erindor—by birth, by duty, by divine calling—this wasn’t his home
either
. They said he was the master of this place. The Pinnacle. But he couldn’t even find his own room without directions from a guard whose armor looked like it was designed by Michelangelo.

He wasn’t the master of this place. The Pinnacle was
his
master.

If that giant map on the wall was a map of the Pinnacle, it would be of some use!

The back of his head throbbed, and he massaged it. But the sound of footsteps in the corridor—hurried, judging by how close together the footfalls were—made Nicolas step into his chambers.

Toby spun around and whipped his tail back and forth as the footsteps stopped.

“Archmage,” Tithian said.

“Good,” Nicolas said. “The proto—”

Nicolas thought better of it and stepped around Tithian to shut the chamber door.

“The protoforge fragments,” Nicolas said. “I need one.”

Tithian’s eyes grew wide, and he stammered. “I haven’t had a chance to test them yet.”

Nicolas liked Tithian. The man was incredibly helpful. But how could he have dropped the ball like this?

“This was the single most important priority here,” Nicolas said. “What could have possibly kept you from testing them? There’s a war starting out there!”

Tithian made a placating gesture with his hand. “It still is. And I will begin my tests the moment they arrive. I assure you.”

“But you said they were
here
, didn’t you?”

Tithian shook his head. “My contacts in Tildem are bringing them here as we speak. But it’s a long journey. And I can’t translocate them for the reasons I’ve already mentioned.”

How the hell could I have forgotten that?

When Tithian had tried translocating to retrieve the fragments in the first place, something
deflected
him fifty leagues away—one hundred and seventy five miles.

“These contacts,” Nicolas said. “Are they trustworthy?”

Tithian looked away for a moment and raised an eyebrow.

“That bad?”

“They can be trusted to do what they’re paid to do,” Tithian said. “Believe me when I tell you there was no other way. These are the people you go to for a job like this. The Azure Dawn.”

“The
Azure Dawn
? Sounds like a made-up terrorist group from an eighties action flick.”

“The Azure Dawn can be a touchy subject at the Pinnacle. The governments of the Three Kingdoms look the other way in exchange for service, such as now.”

“We’re letting a bunch of criminals off the hook because they
do stuff
for us?”