The Necromancer's Nephew (19 page)

“A challenge has been made!” Cenick announced, loud enough to be heard at the edge of the crowd, “This man here has challenged a necromancer and the challenge must be answered.”

“What are you on about?” Rande shouted.

Cenick turned to face him with an iron-hard gaze. “Prepare yourself, challenger,” Cenick
said, his voice low and cold, “M
ake peace with your gods, and find your strength.”

Rande screwed up his face in a confused squint. “You lank
-
headed gint, Whatta you think this is?”

Cenick ignored him, walking back to kneel beside Garrett. “Your blade please, young master,” he asked.

“Cenick, what are you doing?” Garrett whispered, “I can’t fight him!”

“The challenge was made without a blade, and must be answered in kind,” Cenick said, taking Garrett’s knife from his belt.

“I can’t do this!” Garrett whispered, “He’s twice my size! He’ll kill me!”

Cenick placed his hand on Garrett’s shoulder and knelt low, looking the boy in the eyes. “How big was the dragon, Garrett?” he asked, “You faced a dragon and lived! How
dare
you be afraid of trash like this?”

Garrett’s skin flushed with an unnatural heat, and his cheeks burned with shame and the memory of fire. He swallowed, his throat dry with the dust of the stockyard. Cenick stood and stepped away, leaving the boy to face his enemy. Rande no longer looked quite as tall.

“Who is your second?” Cenick asked the thug.

“My what?”

“Your man,” Cenick said, “Who will hold your blade and end your suffering if you call for mercy.”

“You’re off your spindle!” Rande scoffed. He passed his knife to one of his men and stripped off his vest and shirt. “This won’t take long,” he said.

Garrett stood, motionless, watching the big man walk toward him. Garrett's skin tingled, and the dull, distant roar of his own pulse filled his ears. He saw himself with a sort of detached awareness as though he only observed the fight from a distance
.

“Any final words, runt?” Rande asked.

Garrett suddenly burst into a fit of laughter, a nervous titter that quickly grew into an uncontrollable torrent of deranged giggles.

“That funny to you?” Rande said.

Garrett wiped his eyes with the heels of his palms. “It’s just…” he said, getting control of himself again, “just that I wished I had said that… You talk about final words, but you don’t know how important that really is. You don’t get another chance, you know.” Garrett sniffed, rubbing his eyes with his sleeve.

“Once you’re dead,” Garrett said, “even if I bring you back, you can’t ever talk again. You can never say anything to anyone again. Can you, Caleb?”

Caleb the zombie stood beside Cenick and answered only with a low moan.

“So I guess I should really be asking you,” Garrett’s voice grew suddenly cold, “Do you have any final words?”

Rande stared down at the boy necromancer. The thug’s smile twitched uncertainly. His eyes went to Caleb and Cenick and back to Garrett again. Garrett’s teeth shone from the shadow of his hood, lips stretched thin over a crazed grin. Garrett’s gloved fingers flexed into claws at his side.

Rande’s eyes narrowed, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Garrett waited, motionless, for Rande to make his move.

Rande’s shoulders slumped as he exhaled in an unsteady laugh. He stepped back a pace. “I like this kid,” Rande said, “He’s got marbles.”

Rande jabbed a finger at Caleb. “Ole Kurtz got what’e deserved, an’ that squares me with ‘im. As for you, boy,” he said, “Don’t come back to Lotown.”

Rande collected his things from his henchman and disappeared into the scattering crowd.

Cenick and Caleb walked over to Garrett who stood, trying his best to breathe normally.

“Well done,” Cenick said, clapping the boy on the back.

“Is Caleb all right?” Garrett asked, looking up at the two of them.

“The dead do not bruise easily,” Cenick answered, “He will be fine.”

“I’m sorry I left you here,” Garrett said to Caleb.

The zombie stared down at him, his pale lips trying to form words and failing. At last, he reached out a cold hand and patted Garrett atop the head.

“I’d better be going now,” Cenick said, smiling proudly, “Are you good to make it back to Uncle’s house alone?”

“I’m not alone,” Garrett said, “I’ve got Caleb with me.”

Caleb grunted reassuringly.

Winter came at last to the city of Wythr, bringing with it the ceaseless rains of the cold season. The rain washed away the last dead husks of the autumn locusts and darkened the dull, gray streets into glossy black mirrors. Garrett looked down at his reflection as he splashed through the shallow water that pooled between the cobbles. He cast a small, dark shadow against a band of gray sky. Beside him stalked a long, pale reflection, shimmering with raindrops. Caleb, like Garrett carried a sodden bundle of firewood
.

They turned from Chapel Street when they reached the open gates of the Arcane Quarter, walking up Vaaste Street to Uncle’s house. Garrett nodded at a passing neighbor, Mr. Tiggs, a scribe of some skill. The man waved back, nearly upsetting the stack of documents he was trying to keep safe beneath the canopy of an eelskin umbrella
.

When they reached the front steps of Uncle Tinjin’s manor house, Garrett set his bundle of wood on the landing and fished for the door key in the pocket of his waterproof coat.

A minute later, Garrett and Caleb stood, dripping in the dark entryway of the manor house.

“
Fraithe
,” Garrett spoke, and the witchfire sconces flared to life, filling the hallway with a greenish glow. Garrett pulled of
f
his coat and helped Caleb with his, hanging them above the drain in the small side closet.

“Uncle?” Garrett called out, hoping for, but expecting no answer. None came. Nearly three months had passed since the day the other necromancers had left the city. Little news of the war made its way back to Wythr, and no word of his uncle or his mission to the vampire city.

Garrett sighed, picking up his wood bundle, and motioned for Caleb to follow him upstairs
.

They set the wood on the tiles beside the hearth in Garrett’s room to dry. Garrett saw little sense in heating the rest of the house. The servants didn’t need the heat, and Garrett could throw on a sweater for his brief runs to the kitchen and privy. He lifted a fresh log from the dry pile and rolled it onto the fire, crushing the coals beneath into a swirl of sparks. He stripped off his damp woolen
over
shirt and dragged a clean one from his dresser drawer
.

“
Greetings, Fair One, I hope to find you well
,” Garrett spoke in Fae.

“
Well I seem, Dusk-Dweller
,” Lampwicke answered from her cage atop a table near the hearth. She looked up at him with a tired smile. “
Are your daelingh well?”

“
Daelingh
?” Garrett said.
“I don’t,” he began in Gloaran
before switching back to Fae, “
I don’t know that word
.”

“
Daelingh
,” Lampwicke said, looking around, trying to think. She placed her tiny hand on her chest. “
I am… Fae-ery
.”

“Fairy?” Garrett offered.

“
Yes, Fairy
,” she said. “
Those
like me are Fairy too, they are my Daelingh.
”

“People!” Garrett said, “
Yes, my… people… are well… I think.
”

“
You do not hear from the Old One?
” she asked.

Garrett shook his head. He remained silent for a moment,
and then
noticed the expectant look on the little fairy’s face. Garrett frowned. “
I could not find any flowers today. I am broken.
”

Lampwicke giggled.

“What?” he asked.

“
You mean you are 'sorry',
” she corrected him, using the proper Fae word, “
and I am sorry, but this cup is 'broken'.
” She indicated the pink porcelain teacup that he placed inside her cage as a makeshift bath. A crack ran from the base of it to a broken gap at its lip.

“
What happened?
” he asked, his eyes full of concern, “
Are you… wounded?
”

Lampwicke looked slightly ashamed, her eyes downturned. “
I was angry. Sometimes I am very tired of this veortne cage!
”

Garrett did not ask for a translation.

“
I am... sorry,
” Garrett said, “
I give to you my promise, I must find a way to make you free.
”

Lampwicke smiled, giving off a soft pinkish glow.

Caleb groaned, drawing Garrett’s attention to where he stood beside Garrett’s desk. The zombie raised his fist and brought it down stiffly atop a pile of books.

“Huh?” Garrett said.

Caleb moaned and brought his fist down on the books again.

Garrett shook his head. “No,” he said, “breaking the cage won’t work. Marla told me that once the spell is woven, the cage doesn’t really matter. The spell holds Lampwicke inside, even if we cut all the bars away and got rid of the cage entirely.”

Caleb groaned in frustration and swung his arm, knocking a book from the top of the stack onto the floor.

“Caleb!” Garrett yelled, “What’s wrong with you?”

Caleb dipped his head and stepped back, murmuring to himself. Garrett crossed the floor and bent to pick up the book. He started to place it back on the pile when he noticed its title,
A
T
reatise on the
U
se
… “Wild magic?” Garrett said, examining the book, Zara’s birthday gift. He had read through it a few times, but never made much headway with the cryptic texts contained therein. He opened it again now.

His eyes passed over the mystical language once more, but this time, certain words began to catch his eye… words whose meanings he now understood.

“Fae!” Garrett said, “It’s written in Fae… or something like it!” He ran to Lampwicke’s table and laid open the book before her.

“
Can you speak this?
” he asked breathlessly in her language.

Lampwicke’s shining eyes lifted from the pages of the book, and she nodded.

“
Can you teach me meaning this?
” he asked, his grammar faltering somewhat.

“
Yes,
” she said.

Garrett looked up at his zombie. “Caleb, you’re amazing!”

Caleb’s face twisted with the memory of a smirk.

The doorbells of the Veranu pet shop jingled as Garrett and Caleb stepped in from the rain. Marla looked up from behind the counter and smiled. A green-robed priestess of Mauravant stood before her. The woman turned to look at Garrett, and her red lips curled in distaste when she saw the medallion and purple robe beneath the lapels of Garrett’s coat.

“You’re too late, necromancer,” the priestess chuckled, “I’m afraid I’ve just purchased every last drop of essence in this young lady’s stock.”

Garrett forced a smile and inclined his head respectfully, saying nothing.

“It was not cheap, no matter what assurances this girl may have given me to the contrary,” the priestess said, “I do hope your fellow death-dabblers prove to be worth the tremendous expense of keeping them supplied.”

“The war goes well then?” Garrett asked, brightening at a chance to hear any news from the North.

The priestess lowered her green-shadowed eyelids and sniffed in disdain. “I wouldn’t know, really,” she said, “I try not to concern myself with earthly trifles. Our true enemy lurks in a realm beyond the thin veil you call reality.”

“I don’t understand,” Garrett said.

“You wouldn’t,” she said,
and then
added, “…or would you?”

Garrett glanced at Marla questioningly. Marla shrugged her shoulders and gave a thin smile.

“The hearts of men,” the priestess said, “The hearts of men are easily kindled with the fires of perdition. In any case, there’s nothing for you here. You might as well be off.”

Garrett said nothing. Neither did he move.

The priestess’ eyebrows
rose
, and she looked at Marla. “You sold me everything, did you not?” the priestess demanded, “You aren’t holding out on me, are you?”

“No, holy one!” Marla assured her, “The entire stock is yours. The boy is a friend of mine. He comes to visit me everyday at this time.”

The priestess glared at the vampire girl, attempting to read any deception in Marla’s face. She turned at last, with a look of confusion to Garrett. “But he’s a…” she began, and then an expression of revulsion crawled over her face. The priestess snapped her attention to Marla once more.