The Necromancer's Nephew (2 page)

"Looks like he got the worst of it." The rough voice was that of a massive, patchy-haired ghoul who casually tossed aside the wreckage of the shop's roof as though it weighed nothing.

"His name's Garrett," Warr
en said, kneeling beside him, "H
e was helping me."

"Leave him be, boy," the old
ghoul said, shaking his head, "H
e's done."

"He saved my life dad!"

"He's not one of us!" the old ghoul barked, "We don't have time."

As Warren and his father argued, the robed man knelt beside Garrett, his face unreadable beneath the shadow of his hood
.

"Tinjin," the old ghoul called, "will you talk some sense into the boy? The Chadiri'll be here sooner than later."

Garrett tried to speak, but only a faint wheezing sound came out. The hooded man looked down at him in silence. At last he pulled back his hood to reveal the gaunt features of an old man, his face lined by years of sorrow and horror, his hair thin and pale. Yet in his eyes burned still a warmth and humor undiminished by time.

"Bargas," the man said, "it is not our birth that make us who we are, but the choices we make. This boy has cast his lot with the keepers of the dead. He comes with us."

The streets of Wythr twisted like a fine network of veins between the high granite walls of the ancient city. The lifeblood of commerce pumped through its narrow lanes and alleys, bringing riches and refugees from the farthest reaches of the realm. Wythr, tomb-city of sorcerer kings, belonged to the priestesses of Mauravant. The sisterhood of the dead goddess ruled the gray city with ruthless efficiency and suffered no troublemakers, creating a haven of cruel safety against the chaos of the war-ravaged world outside its walls
.

Never was the sun seen in Wythr. The city lay in the hollow between the mountains and the sea at the northwestern corner of gods-cursed Gloar. Even at mid-day with the sun high above the jagged peaks of the eastern range, no bright beam could penetrate the gray cloak of perpetual haze in which slumbering Mount Padras wrapped itself. Though it might trouble a human like Garrett, who had not seen the sun at all in the three years since his arrival, in Wythr there were other folk whom this grim and eternal gloom suited quite well.

Business thrived in the shadows for troll trappers, naga apothecaries, and horned satyrs who looked up from their ebony carvings with glowing eyes to watch the human boy pass. Garrett pulled his hood a bit lower and walked a little faster. He did not fear these creatures now as much as he once had, but rather the coming of night, and with it the city curfew. Those who wished to see another dawn did not linger in the streets of Wythr after
Evenchime
.

Garrett turned down a short alleyway lined with gloomy little shops, their windows filled with loathsome curios and frightful reagents, useful for only the darkest of magic. He paused at the door of the endmost shop. Its broad window glowed with the golden warmth of a hundred luminous creatures. Fairies and their kin, captured in the wild southern forests, were bound with magic inside tiny silver cages. Such bright and beautiful pets demanded a high price in the twilight city and brought great wealth to those who could catch them. Very few creatures could catch a fairy, and one of these was a vampire.

Garrett cleared his throat and brushed the wrinkles from his purple robe. His gloved hand trembled a little on the handle of the door, as it always did. The boy marshaled his courage and opened the door. The tinkling doorbells drew the attention of the girl inside the shop.

She turned and greeted him with a smile brighter than any fairy's wing, the vampire girl, slender and tall, pale and perfect. She dropped with silent grace from a ladder that rolled upon a track the length of the shelf-lined back wall. Her long dark hair framed her sad-sweet eyes, spilling down to the shoulders of her gray linen coveralls. "Hi, Garrett!" she said.

"Hi, Marla!" Garrett smiled, immensely pleased that his voice had not cracked this time.

"Your uncle's package arr
ived this morning," she said, "W
e've got it in the back." She swung op
en the waist-high gate that led
behind the shop's counter and motioned for Garrett to follow her. He did so without hesitation.

Marla's long fingers drew back a heavy curtain, painted with swirling runes, and Garrett stepped through. His shoulder brushed against hers as he moved past
.

"Good evening, Garrett," Marla's mother greeted him as he entered the back room of the pet store
.

"Good evening, Mrs. Veranu," Garrett said.

"How's your uncle these days?" she asked, pulling a largish paper-wrapped bundle down from a shelf. As with most vampires that Garrett had met, he could hazard no guess at her age. Taller than Marla, but of a similar slim build, she looked no older than a woman in her mid twenties. Her short, sandy brown hair added to her youthful appearance. Her amber eyes flashed with an impish gleam, undimmed by her ghostly complexion. Nevertheless, her lips remained hidden behind a red silk scarf coiled around her neck, a colorful accessory that contrasted sharply with her somber gray clothing in the style favored by the vampires of the city
.

"Uncle's doing well," Garrett said, "I think he's really excited about this package, whatever's in it. Do you know what it is?"

"Of course I know what it is, you goose!" Mrs. Veranu laughed, "I had to find the beastly thing, and it wasn't easy! Still, if you want to know, you'd better ask him, though I can't imagine what's so secret about it." She let the heavy package drop on a stained workbench.

"Oh," Garrett said, "I also needed to get a flask of essence while I'm here, if I could."

"Certainly," Mrs. Veranu said, "Marla will help you with that. I need to finish a bit of inventory before we close for the night."

"Thank you," Garrett said, pulling a glass and steel canister from his shoulder bag. As soon as the canister was clear of the bag, it disappeared from his grasp. Startled, he turned to find Marla holding it, smiling at him from across the room. He shook his head. Her ability to move with inhuman speed, in complete silence, still unnerved him each time she played these little tricks on him. And each time, it seemed, she got a little bit faster.

"This won't take a minute," she said. Marla opened the canister's valve and fitted it into the base of a large mechanical grinder
, "
Is elkhorn all right?"

"Yeah," Garrett said, "we don't need anything fancy. Uncle's just got a few rezzes for a contract this week."

Marla nodded and began to lift large scoopfuls of wriggling horned beetles from a barrel and drop them into the grinder's hopper. Garrett winced at the awful crunching sound as the vampire girl spun the wheel of the machine, and a lambent green ooze began to fill his canister. She slowed the wheel as the glass window on the canister showed it nearly full. She lifted the flask from the machine's base and wiped a drop of the glowing essence from the nozzle before closing the seal on the container. Garrett had to grin when she licked her finger. Disgusting or not, he still thought it was cute.

"Do you have a few minutes?" Marla asked.

Garrett had as many as she wanted. "Yeah... yeah!"

"Mom, can I show him the baby?" Marla asked.

"Isn't it almost curfew?" Mrs. Veranu asked without looking up from her tablet.

"I... I have a little time before I have to be back," Garrett said.

"All right then, just don't keep him too late, Marla."

Marla grinned, setting aside the filled canister and waving Garrett over to a largish cage in the corner, a cage covered with a tattered blanket. "B
e very quiet," she whispered, "H
e's still asleep."

Garrett knelt on the floor beside Marla, his arm pleasantly tingling where she leaned against him. Her hair smelled like the memory of flowers. She lifted the edge of the blanket, and Garrett marveled at what he saw.

Inside the cage, upon a little mound of hay, lay a small, bat-like creature, no larger than a kitten. At first he wondered if it might be dead, but then he saw its tiny chest move as it breathed in its sleep. It had no eyes, only a featureless black carapace above its broad mouth. Indeed the whole thing seemed to be covered in leathery black plates with only a wispy gray mane along the back of its neck, surmounted by two tiny curved horns atop its head. In addition to its membranous wings, it possessed as well miniature sets of arms and legs ending in three-clawed talons that stretched and flexed as the creature dreamed. It gave a sort of mewing yelp and nestled deeper into its bed of hay.

"What is it?" Garrett asked.

"It's a baby gaunt," Mar
la said, her eyes glittering, "C
an you believe it?"

"A gaunt?"

"Yes," she said, "the Moonwings have come to the city, and they've brought a covey of gaunts with them!"

"Moonwings?" Garrett asked. Sometimes Marla thought that everyone else knew as much as she did about everything.

"The Moonwings are vampires who ride fully grown gaunts like the ones that gave birth to this little one. They're here now and staying with us at the embassy."

"Ride them? How big do they get?" Garrett asked.

"Big enough!" Marla laughed, "Oh, Garrett, they're beautiful! I wish I could ride one!"

"But why are they here in the city?"

"I don't know," Marla said, "it must be something..."

Mrs. Veranu cleared her throat loudly, interrupting her. Marla looked as though she were about to speak again when a new sound broke the silence. The first mournful sound of the
Evenchimes
rang out through the city, signaling the end of the day and the impending onset of curfew. The sound sent a thrill of fear through Garrett's chest
.

"You'd better go," Marla said
.

"Yeah"

Mrs. Veranu helped bind Uncle's package to the side of Garrett's shoulder bag since it was too bulky to fit inside. She hustled him toward the door with the admonishment to run all the way home
.

He paused at the door, risking another moment to say goodbye to Marla. Curfew be damned, he loved seeing her smile
.

"Go!" Marla's mother gave Garrett a gentle shove out the door
.

The last worried shoppers of the evening hurried to clear the street. Again the temple bells rang out, only three more until curfew
.

Garrett ran
.

The purple robes and knee-high boots favored by the brotherhood of necromancers, while striking in appearance, at least when worn by the fully-grown members of the order, proved
ill suited
for Garrett's undignified sprint. Fortunately, only a handful of people remained on the street to bear witness as the boy clopped loudly down the darkened lane
.

Uncle's package proved ungainly as well. The weight of it pulled him off-balance with every step, and the wrapper had begun to tear as the twine bindings sank into the soft bulk underneath the paper
.

Garrett dared a glance down to secure to load and noticed the tear. Through it, he caught a glimpse of curly hair, so white that it seemed to sparkle in the dim light
.

His skin crawled to think what might be inside the package. Rare were the days when Uncle did not ask Garrett to transport some manner of dead thing either here or there, but the contents of those grisly parcels were seldom a secret
.

The third chime rang out. He would never make it home in time.

Garrett's feet ached, and the strap of his satchel rubbed his shoulder raw even through the heavy wool of his robe. His pulse pounded in his ears and his breath came in ragged gasps
.

The fourth bell rang.

Garrett looked around frantically. A thin fog crept from black alleyways into the empty streets. The sound of a bolt being thrown shut echoed through the silent lane, and the witchfire street lamps hissed and sputtered then flickered out. The starless shadow of night engulfed him.

Garrett stumbled to a halt at an intersection of three streets. One of them
led
home, but doubts filled the darkness. It had to be that way. Garrett ran again, almost immediately catching the toe of his boot on an uneven cobble. He fell hard, landing on the package. Soft and thick, the mysterious parcel broke his fall, but the canister inside his bag bounced free and skittered across the pavement. Garrett scrambled on hands and knees to retrieve it, grateful for the canister's firefly glow.

His fingers closed around the cool metal, stopping its roll. Cold tendrils of fog passed over his hand, and Garrett felt a sensation like ants crawling up the back of his neck, dark magic.

The last bell rang.

Garrett froze. His eyes strained against the darkness, seeing nothing beyond the ghostly circle of green light cast by the essence flask. Nothing happened. He laughed, barely... almost a squeak. Perhaps the Night Watch was only a story after all.