Necromancer's Curse Read online

  The white-robed gnome looked doubtful. “I have heard no word from him.”

  Broxlin turned to address the king with a shrug and a frown.

  “If there’s chance he’s here, we have to take it,” Thorgar decided.

  “Where should we check first?” Broxlin asked.

  Thorgar threw a questioning look at Alma.

  “The cathedral?” she said with uncertainty.

  “You heard the priestess,” Thorgar shouted to his remaining warriors, “to the cathedral!”

  Broxlin, Alma, and Thorgar moved to follow, and Bipp jumped forward with his hand out. “Wait! I mean, Your Highness, please…what do you want us to do?”

  Thorgar was already at the door, and he stopped with that same wicked grin. “This is your mess, come help me clean it up!”

  Logan was baffled by how fast the gnomes were able to traverse the castle. With Thorgar at their lead, they crushed another pair of newly animated skeletons that ambushed them not far from the King’s Hall. Once they made fast work of the monsters, the king was already on the move. Logan was pressed to keep up.

  “How can they move so fast?” he asked his brother.

  “Years of training, bucko,” Broxlin called back.

  “Got to be quick on your feet, lest the Necromancer’s creatures add you to their ranks,” one of the gnomes grunted.

  “I’m not sure coming here was the best idea,” Logan said.

  “I hate to say it,” Corbin said, “but for once I agree with you. I mean, we’ve been in plenty of fights since we left Riverbell—” He paused as if the sound of his hometown hurt his lips. “—and none of them were like what we just experienced.”

  “Those skeletons gave me the heebie-jeebies all over,” Bipp said.

  Logan wanted to tease him, but he knew exactly what Bipp meant. He felt the same way. The idea that a dead body could get back up and come after you scared the crap out of him.

  “Rest easy,” Isaac said. “The terror you experienced in the King’s Hall was part of the Necromancer’s spell. His undead minions had a shroud over them to fill the hearts of men with irrational fear. The enchantment I cast will hold for some time, blanketing you from the paralyzing effects of that dark spell.”

  Logan felt a little better knowing his fear had been the work of dark magic. Only a little, however, since the nagging voice in the back of his head said that his reaction was not all the Necromancer’s doing.

  “Why weren’t Thorgar’s gnomes impacted by the shroud?” Corbin wondered out loud.

  “That is an interesting question,” Isaac said.

  They rounded the corner to find the King’s gnomes slipping into a double set of silver doors on their left. Thorgar stood to one side, looking both ways down the hall, as his men piled in. He waved for Logan and his companions to hurry.

  Logan ran past the king and into a wide cathedral. The ceiling loomed overhead in an arch of finely chiseled woodwork and stained glass mosaics, dimly illuminated by the sparse glowing moss that clung to the cavern ceiling outside. The cathedral was large enough to fit hundreds of worshippers at a time, and it was elaborately crafted, with row upon row of pews and a wide, stepped altar at the far end of the room. Behind the altar, a very large statue of the god Ohm stood. Their footsteps echoed as they clapped against fine marble tiles covered in a thick layer of dust.

  Broxlin and his kinsman were calling out for the Hierophant as they split up to search the temple. Alma wrung her hands with sad eyes, taking in the squalor that had once been the mightiest church in all of Vanidriell. The silver doors slammed shut, startling Logan enough to spin around.

  “What news?” Thorgar called across the cathedral, his voice echoing in the rafters.

  “There’s no sign of the Hierophant,” Broxlin answered.

  “Scour the place,” Thorgar said. “He might still be coming out of the tidspùnkt.”

  “What’s that?” Logan asked.

  The king shot him a dark glance and grumbled to himself. Logan was not sure what he had just done to annoy him and felt relieved when Isaac stepped in to take the lead.

  “King Thorgar, please do not let my young friend’s sheltered etiquette mar the fact that we do need to understand one another to get through this. There is, after all, strength in knowledge, eh?”

  Thorgar conceded the point and motioned for them to help him as he moved to one of the pews in the back row. He pointed for Logan to get on the far side and Nero to grab the center, and they dragged the heavy bench, leaving behind dark grooves where it scratched the marble.

  “Aye, I remember you being a slippery one with your tongue last time you came here too, Oalthrinder,” Thorgar said as they pushed the bench in front of the silver doors.

  “Those were better times,” Isaac said. “Please, your lordship, tell me what has happened to your mighty kingdom?”

  Thorgar snorted. “You mean to tell me you came here, knocking down age-old barriers like it’s no big deal, and you didn’t even know what you was getting yourself involved in?” He moved to another pew and motioned for them to help him move it.

  “I’m afraid so,” Isaac said.

  Once they had the third pew stacked against the doors, Thorgar stood back to admire his handiwork. Logan was happy for the reprieve. The benches were heavier than they looked, and his shoulders were burning.

  “That should hold ‘em back for a bit,” Thorgar said, slapping his palms together to get the dirt off.

  “But how will your men get inside...er, sir?” Logan asked.

  “There are a several paths into the Elium,” Thorgar said. “And my boys know ‘em all. So we’ll seal this one off for now.”

  Broxlin walked up with a frown. “I don’t think he’s here.”

  “Maybe he made it out after the barrier went down,” Thorgar contemplated.

  “Not likely,” Broxlin said. “The clerics said nothing would be able to get past the shield for at least a thousand years.”

  “Ach, so they promised,” Thorgar grunted, nodding his head at Isaac, “but these fools came waltzing in just fine, didn’t they?”

  Isaac bowed his head slightly. “King Thorgar, I assure you the magic I used to take down the barrier was no small feat. To be honest, it took a great deal of energy out of me, and if it weren’t for the threat of undead roaming the halls, I would be deep in meditative healing at this moment.”

  Thorgar rolled his eyes. “Well...at least it wasn’t easy.”

  “Why don’t you quit crying like a little girl about us being here and just explain what in the Hel is going on?” Logan barked, unable to keep his mouth shut any longer.

  Broxlin gripped his war hammer and gritted his teeth together so hard it looked like his jaw might snap. “You disrespectful little whelp—”

  Corbin held up his hands. “Please, there’s no need to turn on one another.”

  Logan shoved him aside and jutted his jaw forward. “Don’t apologize to them. You want a piece of me? Come and get some, cupcake!”

  Logan stepped forward and caught a fist right in his gut. He had not seen Broxlin move an inch, and the unexpected blow bent him right over, eye level with his real attacker, Bipp, who shook a balled up fist.

  “Now you listen to me, Logan Walker,” Bipp yelled. “I’ve stuck by you through thick and thin, in some of the worst situations anyone could dream up. But if you think you’re going to walk around like a hotshot and disrespect the bravest gnome that’s ever done walked Vanidriell, you got another thing coming!”

  Logan’s shoulders sagged, and he frowned at his best friend. He rubbed his stomach and stared blankly at the ground. “Geez, I-I’m sorry, Bipp. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “I do,” Thorgar said, drawing all their attention back to him. “It’s the damned Necromancer’s Curse. Like a foul smog, it clouds the mind, turns kin against kin, sets your mind to devilish intent. It’s even worse out there.” Thorgar stuck a thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the silver doors. “
The cathedral will give us some shelter from it, but the damned wretch has been stewing away in these walls for as long as we have, and I imagine the curse is everywhere at this point.”

  “That’s potent magic,” Isaac said. “How did this come to be?”

  “You mean folk out there don’t know?” Broxlin said.

  “That’s what we keep trying to explain,” Bipp said. “Our people know not of what happened here, only that Ul’kor fell centuries ago, scattering our race to the far corners of Vanidriell in its wake.”

  “Was folly that done this,” Thorgar brooded, staring across the cathedral at the statue of Ohm. “I should’ve listened to the damned cleric when I had the chance.”

  “Hublin?” Bipp asked.

  Alma took a sharp intake of breath behind them, making the sign of blessing and kissing her closed fist.

  “That wretch? Aye, this is all his fault. But would that I had listened to his friend, Acolyte Paletto, when he warned me of the fool’s path. Then perhaps I could have cut the dog down before he grew fangs enough to bite his master’s hand.”

  “So it’s true, then?” Bipp asked with trepidation. “Hublin really is the Necromancer?”

  Broxlin snorted derisively.

  Thorgar held up a hand to silence his brash commander. He leveled his gaze at Bipp. “Years ago—well, wait, it would be ages now—Hublin was on a pilgrimage to seek Ohm’s guidance.”

  “Was that when he went to Rovinal?” Bipp asked, “the town attacked by cobolds?”

  “Aye, it was,” Thorgar said with a heavy heart. “So you know some of the tale it seems. We lost a score of goodly gnome folk that day. A travesty for sure, but one that we answered with steel and fire. I personally took a battalion to the outskirts of Rovinal and decimated the cobold tribe’s ranks, repaying them tenfold for what they done to my people. In the end, they retreated back into their dark holes, and we headed back to Ul’kor, but for Hublin that was not enough. He met us on the open road and demanded that we turn around and finish the job. I thought the lad was just in shock over the deaths he had witnessed, but it should have struck home when the he began raving of a culling and of cleansing the land of the wicked. Those were the words of a fanatic, and I should’ve picked up on it. See, he wanted us to go back and execute every last one of the cobolds, women, children, and warriors alike.”

  “The idea of it still turns my stomach,” Broxlin added ruefully. “It was eerie to hear a holy man speaking of such dark deeds.”

  “Aye, we were fools,” Thorgar said. “We told him to go back and pray for the dead, as is rightly so, that too much blood had been spilled and killing those left would not bring back the dead. Well, that did it. Hublin had a right fit, like a spasm of hatred, spewing a litany of curses at us as we rode away.”

  “You allowed such open disrespect?” Corbin asked, eyeing Logan warily.

  “Again, I thought the lad was just troubled from watching the slaughter of Rovinal. Who could ever be expected to be unfazed in the face of such dark deeds? I figured the lad would heal over time and come through stronger for it.

  “What we did not know was how deeply disturbed he was to begin with. Didn’t find out until later, after he had already left our kingdom. Seemed Hublin made outlandish claims that he spoke with Ohm.”

  Isaac furrowed his brow. “Wouldn’t the idea of a holy man communing with his god be expected?”

  “Yes, in all normal accounts this would be true enough. Except Hublin was going around saying that Ohm claimed him as his chosen, here to cleanse the world of the darkness. I see the skepticism in your eyes. You think this is not such a bad thing, right? And I agree with you. The concept of elevating oneself to Ohm’s radiant light is the noblest way of being I can imagine. But actions speak louder than words and stronger than dreams. Unbeknown to us, the fool went in search of the Shadow Stone.”

  Isaac took a sharp intake of breath.

  “Ah, so you know of the Shadow Stone? Then perhaps you have also heard the history of this unholy artifact, its links to the fall of Kel’iza, the part it played in the Warlock Y’lleha’s rise to power, or how Óðinn lost his eye in battle with the dragonlich?”

  “Only a fool or a madman would openly search for such a thing,” Isaac said with open disgust.

  “Then you can appreciate why the Blessed Hand sacrificed their very lives to raise the barrier, and why we willingly forfeited our lives to become eternal guardians over this place.”

  “Are you saying the Shadow Stone is here, in this castle?” Isaac blurted.

  Thorgar answered him with heavy eyes and a grimace that needed no words.

  “Hublin was gone for many long months, and some in his order thought he had died out in the wilds. But then one day the weary cleric returned. He said he had been on a pilgrimage, though he would not say to where, only that Ohm had guided his path. The Blessed Hand are ever forgiving, and they took him back into their fold. After he returned, he locked himself way in his sanctum. For weeks, he never left the place, taking his meals there, sleeping there, not even leaving to bathe. This was not uncommon, of course. Many clerics sought understanding through long weeks of meditation, strengthening their bond with the healing arts through Ohm’s guiding hand.

  “It was a novice who first alerted the clergy to Hublin’s doings. He was delivering a meal, and Hublin must have been too tired to remember to properly conceal his dealings. The novice spied on the table signs of the dark arts. It was a dead fox the boy saw, lying in a circle of the fallen, surrounded by totems and ingredients no holy man has any business touching. The boy ran at once to the Chamberlain, telling all that he saw.

  “One of Hublin’s dear friends, Paletto, was sent to check on him. When Paletto arrived, the fox was alive and well, running around Hublin’s sanctum while the cleric worked to catch it. Paletto confronted Hublin, and the deranged cleric did not even try to deny the truth. Instead he claimed it was Ohm’s miracle, to bring the dead back to life. He was tried before the Guild Tribunal and stripped of his rank, but not before renouncing Ul’kor and abandoning the city for the wilds. He claimed we were too weak to face the darkness, not righteous enough to accept Ohm’s strength.”

  “And no one tried to stop him?” Logan asked.

  “A half-mad drunk with delusions of grandeur?” Thorgar said. “No one lifted as much as an eyebrow over his fit. Would that we had, before he brought the army of cobolds and undead back to our doorstep.”

  Thorgar looked miserable, wracked with guilt and sorrow. Logan could almost see the faces of all those the gnome king had watched perish reflected in his sad eyes.

  “But…why in blazes would he team up with the cobolds?” Bipp exclaimed. “Weren’t they the very darkness he claimed to be working to wipe out in the first place?”

  “When Hublin returned, he was not the same gentle yet disturbed young gnome who had left us. He had been changed, altered by ancient forces into a despicable creature, bent and misshapen as if Ohm’s clay had been muddied. His mind was cracked, and yet he wielded a gruesome power, one that rivaled anything our highest clerics could perform.”

  “The Shadow Stone,” Isaac whispered.

  “Aye, the dark relic of the Shadow Lord, he who yearns through the aether to twist our world’s fate. The Shadow Lord, who is constantly seeking a way out of his eternal prison, so that he might overtake us all and spin the Nine Worlds into never-ending chaos. It was truly his dark will which overtook Hublin, seeping in through the corners of the lad’s mind little by little, until finally he became mad, so lost in the darkness that he would do anything to gain more power. You see, in some twisted logic, he had convinced himself that the only way to overthrow the seeping darkness was to rule over it, and in overthrowing those he saw as weak, he vied to turn them into his new dread army.”

  “Isaac,” Nero said, “could it be that this Healer’s stone and Shadow Stone are the very same object?”

  Isaac looked as if he had already surmised as much. “Before Hub
lin became the Necromancer he was a cleric…otherwise known as a healer.”

  Corbin had to sit down. This was all too much for him to take in. He looked down at his hands. How can this be happening? At every turn our path becomes darker still. All he wanted was to save his people from the Crystal, but it seemed a never-ending stream of hurdles meant to block his path. First it was Kyra and the Acadians who only wanted to know they were safe, next it was the enslaved remnants of his ancestors, kin to him yet living in servitude to the evil Duke Thiazi and his ice giants. Now, on the cusp of finding a relic that could destroy the Crystal, they had unwittingly unleashed a creature so powerful it had taken down the greatest civilization to ever exist in gnome history. And if that was not bad enough, the relic they were searching for turned out to be an ancient tool of some creature called the Shadow Lord.

  “We must retrieve the stone,” Isaac brooded.

  “But you just said—” Bipp said.

  Isaac nodded. “Aye, and I am a madman, surrounded by fools, or maybe it’s the other way around.”

  Logan looked fit to punch someone. Corbin could see he was struggling with the same inner turmoil. Logan caught him staring and unclenched his jaw to throw Corbin a weak smile. “This too we shall overcome,” he said.

  It was an old saying that Elder Morgana used from time to time. When things were getting tough, when it seemed they would never get better, the old woman would utter the phrase. It lifted Corbin’s spirit, and he threw Logan a melancholic smile.

  “Before we do anything else,” Isaac said, “it would be wise for us to have Alma to give us a blessing. Hopefully that will be sufficient to counteract the ill effects of the Necromancer’s curse.”

  Thorgar gave a curt nod.

  “King Thorgar,” Nero said, “there is still one thing I do not understand.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How is it that you and your men have been alive all these years behind the barrier?”

  Thorgar and Broxlin looked at each other. The one-eyed warrior frowned.

  “Weren’t alive, really,” Thorgar said, trying to figure out the right way to explain, “more like…a fog, or a mire. The barrier went up and time stood still, sorta. I still moved and thought, but it was at a speed I cannot properly put into words, slower than you could imagine. And I dreamed…there were lots of dreams.”