The Necromancer's Grimoire Page 39

  She stood on a cold and dreary moor. She knew the contents of his mind from the landscape he had created to house his soul. Mists crouched in the low rounded mountains to the east and settled low on the gray sea to the west. No shelter broke up the heather and bracken that stretched to the horizon to the north and south. No shelter. Rocks and boulders, as gray as the sea and sky, punctured the chilly landscape. He had not created a shelter for himself. He would be exposed among the stones and thorns. She looked for him among them.

  “Robert, my love,” she whispered. There was no need to shout here. He would hear her. She waited but he did not appear. She cast out for the reason why and felt the presence of his shame as low warmth in the chilly mist.

  “Robert. Come. You cannot hide from me.” The taunt brought him out. While Montrose would admit to shame, he would never permit her to think he would hide in fear. He stood before her, dressed cap a pe for war. His breastplate carried the drips of drizzle from the mist; his helmet and the strands of dark hair that emerged from under the steel edges were wet with it. Two swords hung from his sides, his broadsword for slashing and a shorter one for stabbing. Various other sharp instruments of death were tucked into his belt, his boots, everywhere she looked. He practically glittered with metal. She smiled sadly. He was armed against Death.

  “How is that working for you?” She murmured to him gently.

  His eyes narrowed in annoyance for just a moment before they widened with realization. A moment later he stood dressed only in his loose tunic, as though ready for bed. The white shirt flapped in the wind against his bare legs. He made a wry smile. She laughed, so happy to see him even under these conditions.

  “You do not need to wear a shroud, either, my love,” she said as she fingered the loose strings that closed the neck of the tunic. “I prefer this,” and she put him in his leathers, but without weapons. She imagined his tall boots on him, the ones that covered his knees, and they were there.

  But now blue eyes were guarded. He looked around him quickly before he reached for her and kissed her with a trepidation that suggested he could not trust his senses. Understandable. She sighed with pleasure as his rough beard scratched her chin and his breath caressed her cheek. He drew back. “How can you be so warm if you are dead?” he murmured.

  “I am not dead,” she answered him. “But you are, my love.”

  “Yes. I gathered as much.” He indicated the dreary landscape with a nod. “Why does hell look like Scotland?”

  She embraced him tightly. “Oh, love, love. You have created this place.”

  “Alisdair? Garreth?”

  “They live. They grieve.”

  He nodded. “And you?”

  “William watches over my body.”

  “The necromancer?”

  She stopped. Yes, where is the necromancer? She stepped back, reluctant to release him. “I will have to leave you soon. He is here about, and I suspect he means to try to keep me with you in your hell. He is using you as a weapon, my lord. He knows I am content to stay with you forever.” She looked at the monochrome landscape around them. “Though, if I did stay here, my love, I would redecorate.” She smiled at him again. “My world looks like Andalusia in the spring. Would you not like that better?”

  He nodded as if he understood, but she knew he did not. His sword reappeared in its scabbard and his baldric snaked across his chest and buckled itself. She saw the glint of steel materialize here and there as he armed himself again. A breastplate appeared on his chest. These are not the weapons that will defeat the necromancer. She looked up at him kindly. But it is all he knows. So be it. She stood on her toes to beg another kiss. His hands moved to her hips and drew her close to him as he put his mouth on hers, then rubbed his cheek in her hair. His eyes were soft. “I am not afraid.”

  “Never,” she agreed. But the armor and weapons spoke the truth.

  “No. These ideas once frightened me.”

  She nodded. “You never liked it when I traveled.”

  “That was because I could not follow. Now I see. I will not let him hurt you.” He put a hand on the pommel of his sword.

  “It is too late for that, my love.” She allowed him to see the hurt in her eyes. “He has slain you. The cut in your belly was a cut at my heart. It was his dagger buried in your body, but the cut was at my soul. His dagger opened you and spilled your blood upon the sands in Alexandria. He has succeeded in wounding me and you could not stop him.”

  He set his jaw. His voice was harsh. “Like Richard. Once more I have failed to protect the one I love.” His clothing and armor disappeared and he stood before her, dejected, naked in the cold. His arms hung listless at his side. A frigid wind from the sea began to blow. It lifted the strands of his wet hair and lashed his face with them. Chill bumps raised on his flesh and an icy sleet pelted him.

  Oh no. Nadira put her hands on his strong arms. “No. You cannot take the guilt of the world and make it yours. You must see the truth, however, or you will not be able to move past this place.” She stopped the rain and dressed him again without the armor, but this time set his broadsword at his side. He is never defenseless. The armor was not necessary, but the sword was. She put his hand back on the pommel. “You always have the power to defend yourself and others. But, some hurts are not meant to be healed. Some weaknesses are not meant to be defended.” She stared hard at him, willing him to understand.

  She said, “You see yourself as a shepherd, mighty against the wolves of the world, and yet a wolf yourself. But you must permit others to find their own strengths. You must permit others to learn to defend themselves against their own dragons. Their failure is not yours. We are placed in situations to force us to learn to help ourselves or we will all remain sheep, forever vulnerable to the wolves and dragons of the world. Do you understand now?”

  He turned to gaze into the gray mists. “What would have happened,” he asked slowly, “if I had let the dragon eat me?”

  She took his hand. “You then would become the dragon, mighty and strong, afraid of nothing.” She brought his hand to her lips, then put his palm to her cheek. “When you let go, you gain everything.”

  “Is this my punishment, then?” She heard despair and resignation in his voice. “I know I will be here alone. Forever.” He scanned the gray sea with eyes filled with despair.

  She tilted her head. “Oh. Forgive me, forgive me.”

  He looked at her sideways and the sadness in his eyes tore at her. “For what?” He asked.

  “In my pleasure at seeing you again I have forgotten the reason I am here, just as the necromancer hoped I would.”

  She closed her eyes and released his hand. She cupped hers together, calling for Richard. She felt him far away. She brought him closer and felt the necromancer stir. The magus had not anticipated this reunion. She allowed her love for both brothers to intensify the call to Richard and then blew a fraction of it in the necromancer’s direction. She was satisfied when the magus quickly backed away.

  The image of Richard came into her hands. The warm glow of his library lit his sandy hair from behind. He smiled as he recognized her. There were questions in his eyes. Then he peered out of her hands at the dreary landscape behind her and grimaced, “Not Scotland, Princess. No.” he said with a shudder.

  “Then I will send him to you. Warm him. Forgive him. Love him.” She looked up into Montrose’s lapis eyes. “I love you. I will see you again soon.” She blew gently into her palms. Montrose disappeared from the misty moor and reappeared in Richard’s bright library. His dreary death world disappeared when he did and she floated alone, now, in the blackness of the Abyss.

  She watched the scene in her palms as the brothers stood apart for a long moment. With recognition came a burst of joy that manifested as a sparkling prism of colored light that flared up into her eyes and blinded her with its glamour. She closed her hands together and the powerful beams spread out between her fingers in eternal streaks of light that stretched throughout the Aby
ss. With increasing excitement she realized that all of that energy belonged to her, strengthening and filling her with something she had not possessed before.

  She opened her palms again and looked inside. Richard was fully engulfed in Montrose’s overpowering embrace, nearly crushed with the strength of his brother’s love. The release of Montrose’s guilt and shame blew through her hands like an explosion. And found the necromancer. She closed her palms again and raised her eyes to the blackness of the Abyss where somewhere the necromancer now crouched in fear. She opened her palms outward toward his lurking presence and allowed the prisms of light to shine upon him with a blast of love.

  Yes. Fear me, for I come with this power you can never possess. As strong as evil and hate can be, they wilt before the intensity of this love between these brothers.

  He had hoped to destroy her with grief, but instead he had united the two brothers in death. She could never have forged this weapon for herself. She could never have killed her beloved. She pressed these thoughts ahead of her as she steered herself toward him. You cannot run. You thought to use my love against me, and now I turn it against you.

  And he was afraid now. Just as he had used fear and guilt against his victims, his own ignorance of love and compassion blinded him to the consequences of killing Montrose. His fear left a trail easy for her to follow as he fled before her. Soon she caught up with the golden threads that snaked and thrashed behind him. The cords grew thicker as she neared and when she gained enough momentum, she reached out an astral hand and snagged one of the threads as it whipped past her.

  As her hand contacted the strand she felt a wave of his thoughts pulse through her. She saw William standing in the temple. The surge of power that Richard and Robert had generated had pulsed through her and thus through her umbilicus to William. He stood surprised and elated. She saw him raise his hands to the temple walls and wonder at the colorful sparks that glittered in a bright fall of light and sound from his fingertips. Her body lay at his feet, a warm glow emanated from her still form. William was putting his new power to use, fortifying her body. The spinning ball of light that was the portal was twice the size as before. She turned back to the necromancer. Even my acolyte has exceeded your power, Evren Farshad.

  She brought the golden cord to her forehead. As it touched the space between her eyes the necromancer appeared before her. Around her snapped a landscape of lines and circles, numbers and symbols. The world of the alchemists in image and form. His world. He stood in the center, dressed in the silken garments of a pasha. His turban shone brightly with stored energies and a jewel glowed on his forehead. He carried his staff as Master of the Dead.

  She looked down at herself. She was not fully formed in his world. She created a body for herself and dressed it in the deep blue robes of the High Priestess of Elysium. She smiled at him from behind her many veils that waved with the energies of the cosmos. Her unbound hair blew about her head.

  “Yield!” she cried. “You are finished!”

  He did not answer but cast a beam of light in her direction. It was a feeble attempt and she saw it for what it was, a desperate gesture of a defeated man. She put up a hand as it struck her and shattered it like a prism into all the colors that exist.

  She drew in everything she had ever known. Every lesson, every experience, every pain every joy. These memories came to her as streaks of light from every direction in his world. Each beam of light contained images from her life and from all her lives before. The very essence of her being was drawn to her. She raised an arm to collect them. Huge swathes of knowledge condensed upon reaching the center point in the small of her hand. She locked eyes with the necromancer, knowing he had already emptied his arsenal against her.

  She smiled again. Her arm came down, her finger pointed directly at his heart. He spun his staff in a graceful arc, ready to deflect her cast. She shook her head ever so slightly before releasing the concentrated energies of her soul and the love of the reunited brothers. No staff could deflect the array of light that surrounded and penetrated him. He spun about with the staff, incredulous that there was not to be a further battle of wills. Her light encased him, lifted him from his feet and whirled him about inside a clear ball of crystalline energy.

  Nadira released her breath slowly and carefully so as not to blow him into minute particles. She beckoned the ball that contained him to move closer. She peered up into the glassy interior. The necromancer knelt, laying his staff beside him and he bent to look at her through the bubble that encased him.

  “You enjoyed your earthly power,” she said gently. “And there is no harm in that.” She reached up to touch the surface of his prison. “But you harmed others. You disrupted their journeys; you created anger and hate where it had not existed before. Your time of destruction is over.” She removed her finger from the shining globe.

  “You have overcome the limitation of the physical,” she continued, turning away from him in thought. “Death will not stop your predatory excursions. In fact, it would increase them as you would no longer have the limitations of food and breath and body upon you.”

  He was silent. She waved her hand and brought his shining prison lower so she could meet his gaze. “Think away. I read your every thought.”

  He nodded, knowing it was so. “I cannot know yours, Nadira the Reader. You must speak to me if I am to learn what is next.” She felt his fear rising.

  “I am Nadira the Hierophant now.” She lifted her veils to reveal her face to him. “I have harrowed hell and encased the sultan’s great necromancer and so removed him from the earth. I have freed every man you had ensnared in your filaments of bondage. ” She pointed at the severed ends of his golden umbilicus that lay flaccid beside him in the glass prison.

  The necromancer sat up on his knees quickly, alarm on his face. “Hanim-effendi!” He picked up the severed end of his umbilicus and stared at it with horror.

  She frowned at him. “Who do you fear, now, magus?”

  “You have encased me, it is true. You must understand that this means my light has gone out of the world above while I am in your prison.” He closed his eyes in thought. “And in hell, too, perhaps…I do not know.”

  “Yes?” She stretched her mind to his thoughts. A primal fear lurked there, too horrifying for him to release. She put her hand through the bubble. “Place your forehead against my palm,” she instructed. He obeyed, closing his eyes.

  Through her hand she saw images of a far-away land. A desert. Mountains. High mountains. There, high above the desert plains, a lone flame flickered in the night. The stars blinked out one by one as something dark approached. She bent her mind to understand. Something had been attached to the necromancer with long astral tendrils. His own golden thread had connected him to a great power. A power that used his energies, absorbed his experience and in return, fed the necromancer power he had not earned himself. Now those tendrils lay snapped by her victory.

  She had wondered how the sultan’s magus could be so powerful without having learned the lessons of love. Nadira the Hierophant removed her hand from his head. “He lives in the mountains?”

  The necromancer nodded. “And, Hanim, he wonders where I have gone, for in an instant all trace of me disappeared. Perhaps he will come to look for me.”

  “And yet you do not see that as a rescue.” She felt a twinge of disquiet.

  The necromancer lifted the remnant of the golden tether that connected him to the Other and showed her the frayed ends. “When you severed this cord, my body fell. It dies on the floor of the villa as we speak. He will want to know. He always wants to know. It is better for both of us if he does not appear.”

  “He is not your ally, then?”

  The necromancer laughed without humor. “No, Hanim. We have a contract. I use his power, he uses me. It is not mutually beneficial. There are...” his face contorted. “…less than pleasant aspects for me. Even you will not be able to protect me from his wrath. When he comes looking for me, he will
find you.”

  “I see.” She moved her mind though hell, searching for the source of his power. She looked for the other end of his golden tether. Nothing. He was cut off. Her glass globe separated him from his master completely. She turned to him. “Perhaps this prison will protect you, Evren Farshad. I will send you into the Abyss safe inside its walls. Though your body will soon die, I cannot permit your soul to fly free.” They stared at each other through the crystal ball. A thought entered her mind from the glowing energies in her heart. The priestess spoke to her. Nadira raised her eyebrows. “Perhaps you might spend eternity righting your many wrongs, Farshad.” She left him with that idea as she fortified his bubble and with a wave of her hand cast it and the magus into the Abyss where she could see it grow smaller and smaller in the darkness. “He will have trouble finding you,” she called after him. “I have disguised you well.”

  As the bubble disappeared, so did the necromancer’s death world. She found herself floating in the Abyss again, formless. Enough of this.

  She pressed her palms together and reappeared in the temple chamber. Her body welcomed her with its warm pulsing life and she made it sit up and look around.

  William opened his arms to her, “Nadira look!” his face shone with wonder as sparks flew from his fingers to descend gently around her in a rain of multicolored light.

  She rose and took William’s hands, turning them palm up to see the glowing lights that flickered in their centers. The portal closed behind her, the spinning ball diminished to a point of light and disappeared.

  She raised her eyes to his soft brown ones and said, “How do you feel, Will?”

  “Wonderful!”

  She smiled sadly and took him in her arms. His arms folded over her. She felt his questions. She said, “I am so thirsty.” She knelt by the wall and dipped her hands in the water in the basin. She brought her hands to her mouth and drank.

  William knelt beside her and said, “I felt it when you cast him into the Abyss, Nadira. I saw him diminish. You have stopped him forever.”