The Necromancer's Grimoire Read online

  “We will not fail,” she assured him.

  “None would attempt this if they thought so,” he said reasonably. “But I am careful.”

  “You are.” Her heart swelled with love for him, and she felt the priestess inside her agree. All the women of the temple were seeing a man in a different light.

  William looked up from his book again, puzzled. “I just felt the kiss of a thousand maidens.”

  She gave him a sad smile, “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

  “Better than what this is going to feel like,” he grimaced as he touched a page with a finger. He took a few deep breaths. “But what is pain but proof that we are not dead?” He extended his arm and she watched as a glow began to form in the room. “Nadira,” William was serious. “He is going to attack the baron. My lord Montrose will not be able to use his sword against this foe.”

  She nodded and wiped her cheeks with both palms. “I know. We will do what we can.”

  William shook his head. “The only thing we can do is defeat him before he can strike at Montrose.”

  “Let us go.” She made a great effort to put aside her love for Robert. She felt the anxiety as cold bands around her heart. She would not be able to work if she were fettered with this fear.

  William set his feet firmly on the stone of the cave floor. His concentration was total. In her mind she heard him ask her, are you ready now?

  She raised both arms over her head and formed a triangle with her thumbs and forefingers. “I am,” she said, “ego sum.”

  Will lifted an arm, and with a glance one more time at the Grimoire, he drew the sigil in the air over his heart with his finger. Nadira watched the room for signs of entry. William drew the sigil over and over again, faster and faster. She was able to see the glow of light he generated with his energies. Each movement of his hand drew a line of light into the shape of a name. He cast it to the floor where it first glowed and then sparked.

  She pressed her fingers together harder and thrust tendrils of herself through her triangle into the next world. “I am,” she repeated, but this time the words went where no ears would hear them.

  A soft breeze swirled over the sigil on the stone floor of the temple.

  “Will.”

  “I see it.” She glanced at him quickly, then returned her concentration to her triangle.

  William wavered; the hand tracing the sigil in the air shook hard enough to throw off bits of light like a Catherine wheel.

  The breeze over the sigil on the floor had become a twisting column. Moments later Nerulu appeared in demon form, wavering and transparent within the chalky outline. His curled ram horns and pointed tail appeared, shrouded in the red mists he brought with him through the portal.

  She beckoned to Nerulu. “He gives you his energies freely. A gift. I will not have him harmed. You take as much as you need, but no more.”

  The swirling shape extended a sinuous thread of glowing light toward them. It snaked its way across the floor as it homed on the warmth of their living bodies. It paused at her feet, then changed direction toward William, touching him at his knees, then circling his body to pierce his heart.

  William let his breath out slowly in a long sigh.

  “That’s enough,” she said.

  The tendril glowed brighter as it pulled William’s life from his body. She repeated, “Enough! You have enough!”

  The outline of the sigil puffed into a cloud of smoke, and Nerulu stood tall and erect when it cleared. The tendril remained, connecting the demon’s left hoof with William’s heart, pulsing with umbilical life.

  She glared at Nerulu. “I will be obeyed.”

  The demon gave her a slight bow, “You will. Though the payment for my services is usually all of the living. Not a mere taste.” His yellow eyes moved to William and back to her, his snaky tongue flicked at his lips.

  “Not today. Today you will open the portal only. I have no other need for you. You are paid well enough for that task.”

  The demon turned his glowing yellow eyes from William and looked at her. “Say when.”

  “Now.” She touched him.

  She expected the flash of light and the sharp crack that signaled the opening of the portal. She anticipated a whirl like the ones that accompanied her travels. She did not expect to burn. A searing heat that came from inside immediately followed the crack. She felt the heat in the core of her body radiating outwards, as though she were the fire starter. The base of her spine writhed, and an unbearable surge shook her upwards, seeming to fling her body like so much laundry on a line. Nadira opened her arms and the whirling stopped. She forced her eyes open and demanded that they see. She was in the Abyss.

  She pulled in all her tendrils but the one tied to William. Then projected them outward in an explosion of light particles. One would touch the necromancer. One would find him.

  And there he is.

  With a great swelling of intent, she called the necromancer to her, feeling the tug at the other end of her focus that signaled she had connected with him. He tried to remove the barb of light from his chest, but like a fly in a web, his struggles only drew her closer.

  She drew on all her memories of summer days and brightly flavored ices. She imagined the vivid colors of silken gowns and floating veils. She remembered Thedra’s dancing girls and the music of the streets of Istanbul. She opened her arms and gathered in the power and grace of the sultan’s fine white stallions on the parade ground, and the feasts and orgies of the Romans. All this and more she knew were the images that would entrap the necromancer.

  The necromancer tried to resist. He was strong and knew what she was doing to him. She felt him conjure blocking walls and tempests of fury.

  There was a pause, then a slow building of something else. She braced herself as she felt him probing her mind. Around her swirled his attempts, earthquakes, storms at sea, fires in cities…he piled on the images of death and fear. She allowed herself to feel the despair of the innocent, knowing such eruptions were transient and would fade as they always did. Around her she formed the fields of Andalusia in the springtime. She stood among long blades of green grass waving in the warm breezes and looked up at the blue sky

  Something fell slowly, spinning toward her. She waited. This is a test. He throws something my way, I throw it back. But as the dark form grew closer she could see it was a man, and as it landed with a thump at her feet she saw it was Montrose.

  No.

  He is an illusion as everything here is. The necromancer wants me to despair.

  Nadira knelt at the man’s side. It was Montrose. He was dressed in his fighting leathers with his high boots and baldric buckled diagonally across his chest, but the scabbard was empty. He lay as if dead, his body broken from the fall, arms and legs bent and twisted. She looked up.

  Try again. She thought at Farshad. This is not Robert. It is a shade of his form only.

  No. You look again, the necromancer replied.

  She touched Montrose’s cheek. Cold. The lids of his blue eyes were half open, the crescents of blue were dull and dry. Above his leather belt caked flakes of blood dusted his trousers and tunic. This body has been dead at least a day. Maybe two. She touched the stab wound that had killed him. The shivers of dread she felt only reminded her of how the necromancer would try to control her. Icy fingers of panic crawled up her spine and she felt his satisfaction. This is not Robert. It is a trick of the mind. This is how love becomes a weapon.

  Alexandria. She felt the necromancer plant the vision on her mind. She saw Montrose striding down the wide streets toward the docks, Alisdair and Garreth marching behind him. His sword hung at his side, his tall boots swung with determined rhythm. He was going somewhere important. She looked at his face. She recognized the set of his jaw and the steely intensity of the familiar blue eyes. He must be going to meet Massey.

  She tried to look ahead, to will herself to get there before he did. She felt blocked, as though she were wading through thick mire. Ve
ry well. I can only move with them. The three men turned a corner and she could see the wharf ahead, the masts of the anchored ships like a forest without leaves. She found herself in step beside them. There was no sound, which usually signified to her that she was observing something that had already happened. She reached out to touch Montrose and found she could after a fashion, but that he could not feel her hand, nor did he appear to sense her presence. Grasping at his clothing did nothing. There was the initial contact, then her hand slipped through the cloth.

  She tried to engage Alisdair and Garreth as well with the same negative result. No tendril would enter any of the men. I am a spectator only.

  Six men came striding around the corner of a warehouse, swords at their sides. Both groups of men stopped. She watched as each group recognized the other. Swords were drawn. Garreth pulled his ax from his belt and shook it out until the handle reached the sweet spot in his hand. Montrose had his broadsword poised at the ready, the blade placed strategically across his chest. Alisdair’s great claymore rose from behind him as the big man reached with both arms over his head to pull it from the huge scabbard on his back.

  Massey’s wicked grin reminded her of the day of Richard’s murder. She could not stop the feeling of rage and despair that welled up in her heart. The necromancer felt her anger and grasped at her through the emotions he had wrung from her. As the men crouched for the melee she looked up for the sorcerer. He would use these destructive emotions against her, weakening her. Yet he cannot do this without my permission, she reminded herself. I will not permit it.

  Around her in silence the nine men whirled, striking each other, dodging blows, leaping and ducking in their dance of death. She stood among them; the swords blew through her, the blows passed by her without raising a strand of her hair. Their sweating bodies darted to and fro while she stood firmly in the center of the destruction. One by one she saw Massey’s men cut down, their blood splashed on the packed clay and sand at her feet.

  Alisdair’s blows severed limbs with ghastly accuracy; Garreth’s ax cleaved skulls and knocked men to the ground, but her eyes were only for Montrose. He had separated Massey from the others and was forcing him against the walls of the warehouse. She winced as his sword passed through her again and again in flashing arcs. Though she did not feel the steel, she could feel his rage and satisfaction in the cold precision of his blows. He was bigger and stronger and certainly more determined than Massey. He would triumph.

  Massey’s eyes quickly lost their arrogance as he saw each of his men fall. He struggled with the effort of defending himself against the slashing blade that beat him backwards with every stroke. Montrose’s mouth was moving; he was saying something to Massey. Nadira did not have to hear the words to know their meaning. The force of Montrose’s strikes knocked Massey off balance and one more stroke sent him to the ground. She saw her lord’s mouth form Richard’s name as he pulled back for the deathblow. Montrose moved in to kill with the same economy of effort he displayed with his words.

  The point of his sword entered Massey’s throat with a splash of blood. Nadira looked away, blinking at the Mediterranean sun to cleanse her eyes from the grisly thrust. She took a deep breath and returned her eyes to Montrose as he twisted his blade with his powerful arms and shoulders, driving the steel into the ground under Massey’s neck and wrenching it side to side to withdraw it again. She turned away. She did not want to see what was left of Richard’s murderer, for such a wrenching thrust must surely have severed the man’s head. This thought was immediately followed by the intrusive voice of the necromancer.

  No. You will want to see this.

  Nadira spun about, looking for the sorcerer. All she could see were the bodies of Massey’s men laid out on the ground, glistening with gore. She saw Alisdair and Garreth sweating, panting, shoulders heaving with the effort to breathe. The fierce heat and thick air of Egypt was so different from their northern lands. She turned to Montrose, hoping his face had lost the vicious snarl that had made her look away from its savagery. He has been avenged now. He should be at peace. The snarl had disappeared, but now his face was curiously slack, surprised. The blue eyes were dark. He blinked rapidly. She took a step closer. Of course he would he overwhelmed with emotion at the moment of vengeance, but his eyes should not be so dark in this bright sunlight. They should be a vivid blue. They should glitter with triumph. Something was wrong with his eyes.

  She reached out, knowing she would not be able to hold him, but perhaps he would feel her with him. The emotion of this moment must have been too much for him, for he sank to his knees beside Massey’s mutilated body. Perhaps in relief, or maybe in prayer. Or his old wound pains him and he cannot breathe. But no. His sword dropped to the ground. His face was not anguished with pain or composed with relief or bright with the triumph of success. Nadira felt a slow crescendo of dread. Her ears rang with a roaring turmoil that exactly matched the feeling that flooded her heart.

  Montrose blinked one more time, then the blue eyes closed and he toppled forward over Massey, his bloody hand came to rest inches from her slipper. She fell to her knees beside both bodies, trying to turn him face up. She wanted to see his eyes again. Her hands grasped at nothing and passed through his broad back. Alisdair’s hands pushed through her astral body, clutching at Montrose’s brigandine. He had one hand on the leather vest and another on Montrose’s baldric and with a powerful heave turned him face up. Garreth’s face appeared next to her as he knelt beside his lord, mutely running his hands over Montrose’s brigandine, tugging at the laces that closed the sides.

  Alisdair did not wait for Garreth to undo the ties. His hunting knife slashed the leather thongs and the brigandine fell away to reveal the hilt of a huge wide dagger protruding from Montrose’s belly just above his thick leather belt. Bright blood oozed around the wound, welling up in a red wave that splashed his friend’s hands and soaked the long braid of her dark hair that fell free from the leather armor and rolled limp to the sands. His belly rose and fell with each gasp for air. His blood splashed in rhythm with his breath.

  It was a gut thrust, just above his belt and below the edge of his brigandine. The thick vessel that carried his blood from his heart to his legs was severed. Nadira’s whole body went cold. She glanced down. Massey’s dagger was still sheathed in the dead man’s belt near her knees. The hilt in her lord’s body was not Massey’s.

  She felt the necromancer’s deep satisfaction.

  Nadira warned herself that this whole scene was being created by the magus to enthrall her with fear and grief. She forced herself to see through the illusion. She hardened herself against this bloody onslaught of images. I will not despair.

  Alisdair knew better than to pull the knife from the wound, which would hasten the blood flow. Instead, his fingers curved helplessly over the hilt. Montrose’s life ebbed away with every beat of his heart. Nadira put her hand over the wound, willing the blood to stop. It did not.

  Montrose twitched. He made a soft gurgling sound in his throat. He would bleed to death here. Soon. It took mere minutes to drain a body of its life. His body had been opened in a place impossible to stanch, and unable to heal. Both men knew it as well. Nadira forced herself to think, knowing the necromancer was creating this lurid drama to trap her within the powerful emotions the scene generated within her.

  She screamed in frustration, drew a breath and screamed again. It is not the truth!

  The necromancer appeared beside her, smiling in his triumph, but Nadira had eyes only for her lover.

  Montrose’s body jerked as his blood pumped through the open tear in his body and his heart struggled to send what remained of his life to his limbs. Nadira was numb. Her mind refused to believe she was watching him die. This is not real. Alisdair lifted his friend by the shoulders and cradled his head against his broad chest, holding him tightly against the violent spasms that heralded his death. Garreth began to pull at his blond hair, clawing his fingers into his scalp, rocking back and forth i
n his grief.

  Montrose arched his back once more against Alisdair’s arms. His long legs kicked hard and his boot heels dug deep furrows in the sand. He went limp just as suddenly. His head lolled back against Alisdair’s shoulder, cradled there as gently as a mother holds her child.

  Nadira sat back on her heels in shock. This is only an image, she reminded herself. An illusion. My love is being used as a weapon to strike at me. Effective, very effective. But not fatal. I do not believe these images.

  She closed her eyes against Evren Farshad. His lust for her grief continued to try to penetrate her defenses. She had to know the truth. She whirled what was left of her weakened energy and then cast it out in a spray of bright particles. Find Robert’s soul, she commanded them. Or don’t. If Robert was truly dead, his soul would be in the netherworld. If he lived, she would not find it among the spirits and shades of the dead.

  Her tendrils searched the vast necropolis of the underworld for him. The one particle that touched Montrose’s soul pierced her heart.

  She staggered to her feet. A wall of intense emotion rose up from the depths of her being, and uncontrolled, rose swiftly up her spine to the crown of her head, cracking the illusions and bringing the images of Alexandria crashing down around her until she hung suspended alone in the Abyss. Light shot out in every direction from her body. I have regained myself. He cannot trap me again.

  So. Emotion is also the key.

  Emotion, but controlled. This raw power but without the features of grief or pain, happiness or hate. The power is in the intensity without the meaning. If it is meaningless, it can be shaped as one chooses. When the emotion is tied to an event, it is about the event. Loose the ties, it becomes pure power. This is an expensive lesson.

  “Robert!” She cried, and immediately she saw the death world of Robert Longmoor, Baron Montrose, as it formed around her, and it seemed all joy had faded from the world.