The Heart of the Thief: The Necromancer

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The Necromancer
The old wizard sat in the tower and watched as the world below him descended into chaos. He sat cross-legged, tattered robes fluttering about him in the wind, head bowed, deep in concentration. Sweat poured from his pores, and his heart beat at one-hundred and eighty beats per minute, far beyond the recommended number for a man of his age and physical condition. The potion that he had imbibed hours before had pushed his worn body to its limit, but without it, he would not have been able to raise the dead nor conduct illusions powerful enough to befuddle Silas Amaro, Firenze, and their Medjay guards. As soon as he had heard that Firenze had made a deal for the witch, he had formulated a plan that had been brewing in his subconscious for some time. In the bowels of the Aerodactyl, he drank the ancient solution and crafted the world that would confuse the chief of the Secret Service. Making worlds was heady business; he found himself drifting between realities, unsure what was real and what was fabrication. It didn’t matter, in the end. He knew how Silas would react, and he predicted the chaotic scene which unfolded beneath him. The more troops that the Medjay slew, the more revenants were created, and the more eyes Dazbog had available.
    He could see through all their eyes.
    Necromancy was a forbidden art, banned by the Emperor centuries ago, yet the wizards of old were meticulous record-keepers, anthologizing their discoveries in comprehensive tomes such as Necromantiae and Maleficium, the latter of which was a favorite, for it was rather easy to read and understand, having been written in a vulgar form of Elmeric. Had I never read them, I would not be here today he thought suddenly. It was easy, sometimes, to forget the truth, to be blindsided by the siren’s call of blissful ignorance. It was possible to forget everything you knew, to make the mind tabula rasa, and start again. But that was not an option for an old man who had lived enough to know that life is suffering, and no amount of sentience could change that fact.
    The knowledge that it was possible to possess the dead—with your consciousness or that of a demon’s—had changed everything in Dazbog’s view. He had been indoctrinated as a youth in the Cult of Rankar, serving as an altar-keeper, lighting the fires, taking up the penance pieces, bowing his head in prayer with the rest during the holy Rite of Creation. The numerous pains of life were bearable because of the Essential Truth, the belief that Rankar’s Sacrifice guaranteed salvation of the soul and a rebirth free of suffering. The wealthy and the powerful resided at the top of society because they had lived past lives of honor and merit. One simply had to give alms to the Cult and live a virtuous life, and they would be removed from the cycle of pain, albeit temporarily. The next life was always the life that mattered. If you were born a pauper, then the life of a pauper you would lead to atone for the sins of your past. The Cult helped preserve the order of society, establishing a divine justification for social class while giving the less fortunate a reason to obey authority. Dazbog saw the way religion was used as an adept and accepted it, believed it, and continued to light the fires and pray. His belief was total, unwavering, as taut and unbending as iron. Then one day a priest saw him light the fires with a snap of his fingers and his life of devotion was over. He was sent to the Academia at Bilbao, where religion was sneered at with the haughty derision of those in the know, and Dazbog was immediately an outcast, ostracized for his ignorance. “Forget all that you learned in the Priesthood,” said one of his teachers. “That tripe is for the masses and the meager minds of the nobility. You’re a real player now. No more need for fantasy.”
    Yet the world of the Academia lived in its own reality. Not all knowledge was accepted, and although his teachers despised the Priesthood, they did their part to enforce the social order. Magicians existed to serve the nobility, and the Conventum of Mages, composed mainly of wizards possessing noble blood, sought to limit the power of wizards by controlling what branches of magic were taught, as well as refusing to educate those deemed “unsuitable” for service. Dazbog entered the Academia soon after its curriculum was in the process of changing due to the Calamity of the Galvanian-Valice war, and so he experienced firsthand the depreciation of his schooling.
    He could still see the sunny courtyard, the throngs of students clad in glittering robes, talking and walking together to the classroom of Titian, the alchemy instructor. Titian was a gaunt man with no lips and wrinkled ears that resembled giant mushrooms; he was very soft-spoken and strict, wielding a thin, sharp stick in his right hand that some students referred to as his “wand.” Most of the students disliked him, thinking him a relic of a harsher time. Dazbog, however, found his class captivating. While his fellows stared through lectures with glassy-eyed indifference, thinking alchemy to be the domain of village herbalists, Dazbog diligently took notes and committed to memory the recipes for dozens of potions. It was a subject where hard work paid off; unlike many of his classmates, he had no innate talent for elemental magic, which was more of an art than a science, according to his professors. Of course, none of it was science. A few well-intentioned souls had put together a working Theory of Magic, postulating that extra-dimensional channeling was responsible for pyromancy and its ilk, but the theory was vague on specifics and didn’t explain divination, alchemy, or necromancy, along with a hundred other matters. “Magic exists because God made it part of the universe,” said one professor without irony. The Academia and its academics would cite God when it suited them. It was Titian that made Dazbog understand.
    The homely instructor had stopped him one day after class by placing an elongated hand on Dazbog’s shoulder. He remembered the weight of that hand, heavy despite its skeletal appearance. “I want to speak with you, apprentice,” said the lipless mouth. Dazbog froze up inside, for he had never drawn the attention of a teacher, preferring to remain invisible during sessions as he was after-hours.
    “Yes, master?” responded Dazbog. He kept his eyes on the blackboard, not daring to look at his teacher.
    “I have noticed your proficiency at the art of mixing potions. There is something in you that can be molded and shaped into greatness, unlike many of your peers, who have lucked into elemental talents. They will never be privy to the arcane, for they are creatures of service, content to do what is asked of them and nothing more. It was not so long ago that mages decided the fate of the world, making their own answers instead of offering servile overtures to the nobility. Take this,” he said, removing a book from his robes and handing it to Dazbog. “Show it to no one. Read it cover to cover and then come back to me.” He dismissed the student with a gesture.
    Dazbog had taken the book back to his quarters and placed it on his cot, staring at the object from a distance as though it were something alien and dangerous. It was bound in black leather, presumably dragon skin, which meant that it was very old, for dragons were thought to have been driven from the continent before the arrival of the Emperor. Open it. Why did he hesitate? He had taken it, after all. Was it heresy to read a book? It was not. Pushing away his doubts, he strode across his quarters and seized the tome, opening it in the middle. Something stared back at him from the page, its grin a jagged gash across its face. His first instinct was to flee; the image wasn’t just utterly horrible, it struck a chord deep within his being, and he knew that he was looking at something forbidden to human eyes. However, he found that he could not stop staring at it transfixed, captivated by its utter terribleness, by its magical ability to render sheer terror within his soul. The visage was somewhat human-like, but its jaws were elongated and full of dagger-shaped teeth. A horn sprouted from its head and curled upward like a plume of smoke, and its ears were wolfish, pointed, and hairy. The eyes were what made his blood curdle. They looked as though they were watching him like a lion watches an antelope, freezing him with their predatory stare, peering straight through his head and seeing nothing there but meat. I am nothing but meat he thought suddenly. His faith in the Great Cycle of Being trembled. He knew innately that the demon was real, which caused him to ask what kind of god could make a horror like this? Somehow, Dazbog moved to the book and closed it. He sat down next to it and listened to his heart beating. After several slow breaths, he opened it again, this time starting at the first page.

    He read the volume in its entirety that night. The words appeared on the page as he read, as though the book were parsing his brain for language he would understand. He learned that ancient magicians had determined that the soul was imaginary, that consciousness was an illusion, and that when one died, demons could be summoned to command the body and tear memories from its dead brain. His faith crumbled instantly upon reading the book; it must have cast some sort of spell of indoctrination. He left his room early, before light, and walked to the town square, staring at the world around him as though he were newly awakened to its existence. The scattered individuals stalking the streets looked less like luminous beings and more like prisoners doomed to a life of constant suffering. He lingered before a child sitting on a stoop, gnawing at a piece of petrified bread that crawled with maggots. Passing an alleyway later, he heard a woman’s scream followed by a chorus of evil laughter. Have I been blind all my life he thought. Did these people deserve the lives of pain that they led? Was the circle of reincarnation a lie? Were the rich not virtuous and deserving of their wealth?
    An Anti-Natalist caught his attention as he made his way back to the Academia. The man stood beside a fountain, naked except for a loin cloth, his withered genitals hanging around his neck, the emblem of his heretical sect. His flesh was meager, his eyes hollow yet full of a vividness that belied his emaciated form. He preached, as all Anti-Natalists did, of the evils of procreation and the lie of the Cult of Rankar, his voice haggard, gesticulations cutting through the air as though to ward off imaginary stones. No one listened to him; were he preaching in the middle of the day, it was likely that the police would drive him away, for heresy was only nominally tolerated. Upon seeing Dazbog, the man stopped preaching and pointed towards the young wizard.
    “There stands a man who sees!” he said. “His eyes wear the look of someone who has awoken from a great slumber and found that the world has turned to ash around him. It has always been ash! From ash we came, flickering embers carrying feeble sparks. What is a spark but a bit of energy falling prey to entropy? There is no cycle of rebirth, there is just the endless transfer of fire from one generation to the next without regard for the pain of sentience. To live is to suffer. Why must we pass this burden on? Your body tells you to procreate, for it is an unconscious machine tasked with the sole purpose of spreading one’s seed. Does the mind rule the body, or the body rule the mind? Take my knife, seer, and finish the journey towards truth. Do as thy God did and sever thyself.”
    The man thrust his blade handle first towards Dazbog, a mad gleam in his eyes. The wizard leapt back, afraid; suddenly the knife was in his hand, and he was reaching under his robes. He castrated himself with one deliberate movement. Seeing his testicles lying on the ground in a growing pool of blood, Dazbog swooned. What have I done, what have I done, what have I… he could hear the cheering of the Anti-Natalist, he felt the knife slip from his grasp, shuddered under the rush of pain that flowed through his body. My hand was not my own he screamed inside his head, but whose hand could have done the deed if not his own? He made his way back to the Academia, rushing to his room where he fell to the floor unconscious.
    It was Titian who found him and carried his body to his own chambers, where he mended his flesh.
    “A senseless mutilation,” he said, when Dazbog awoke. “Why would you do such a thing?”
    “I will never procreate and participate in the endless cycle of suffering,” said Dazbog. “Your book revealed that the Cult is a lie, and that we are nothing but lingering traces of a dead god’s failure. There is no soul if demons can fill our bodies.”
    The old man looked at him strangely. He left Dazbog’s bedside and paced around his quarters, stopping before a desk littered with odd objects. Taking a small bone into his hands, he turned to his pupil and sighed.
    “You have robbed yourself of future pleasures. You may think that you do not need them, but asceticism is as much a lie as any other philosophy. The Anti-Natalists are fear-mongers, weak persons excusing their weakness as a curse from God,” said Titian. He snapped the bone in two and dropped it into a small bowl. Dazbog felt a deep pain in his groin and grimaced.
    “Still, their passion cannot be denied,” continued his teacher, adding what looked like blood to the mixture. “I will give you a choice. What I have here, what I am making… it is not something that can be consumed and forgotten. You recall the myth of the first man and woman? Pham and Jesu? Pham drank from the fermented grapes and suddenly realized he was an individual, and so gave his wife the gift of wine. From their awakening sprang forth the vastness of human culture, or so they would have you believe. What I am giving you will do the opposite. You will realize that your self is but a small partition of your mind, and you will be able to shunt it away when needed. All necromancers must be able to do so to control the dead. Someone must fill the void lest it be filled by demons. So, Dazbog, will you drink?”
    There was no choice for Dazbog. He drank the concoction and instantly felt the illusion melt away like fog on a cloudy morning. No desires or emotions floated through a suddenly clear mind. No purpose moved him from his seat. A machine he was, guided by his programming like the automata of the Northrons.
    “You know but you do not understand,” said Titian. “You are a thrall, and my voice is your master. Now look into your mind and find your self there. It is a small flickering light. You will see it from a distance, as though it is the only illumination in a valley of darkness. Smooth that light over the valley floor. It shall become shallow and thin, stretched to its limits.”
    He saw the light in his mind. How tiny it was, how bright and yet so empty of substance. He did not need to ask how to flatten and extend the light; he knew how, and so it was done, and the essence of his self was spread like butter over the darkness.
    “Partition it into five pieces,” said Titian.
    Five puddles formed, glimmering like reflected firelight. Each puddle was as alien to him as the visage of a stranger.
    “You can take your divided consciousness and place a partition in the body of a dead man as you would in any transference spell,” said Titian. “Most wizards do not think to divide the soul because most wizards were educated through rote learning and have never attempted to use their minds. This is a simple technique, but it can be very powerful and performing it on a large scale requires the use of necromancer potions such as the one you have just imbibed.” He took a deep breath and sat down on a stool, clearly fatigued. Dazbog would later recall how the man’s hands trembled as he spoke, as well as the ashen look of his wrinkled face.
    “You will ask later why I have given you this knowledge. In the future you shall either praise my name or curse it for the misfortune I have brought you. I am sorry, Dazbog, to lay this burden on you as my master laid it on me. This burden is the burden of truth; we live in a world that cares not for truth, a world that sees truth as just another property to be manipulated to serve the ego. Do what you will with this power, for I abdicate. There is no place for me anywhere now.”
    He was quite right about that fact. The very next day, Titian was arrested and brought before the Conventum. Dazbog was called forth as a witness, though he was held in contempt of court after refusing to say anything, even when threatened with truth serum. The prosecution brought forth evidence obtained from Titian’s quarters: forbidden necromancer’s books, formula for dark potions, even a corpse that had been preserved in formaldehyde. He was charged with performing necromancy, possessing banned media, and corrupting the morals of a student, and found guilty on all accounts. The penalty was death, a rather elaborate process that initiated with the imbibing of a hemlock-derived poison, followed by the removal of the head from the body by use of a silver scythe, and concluding with the burial of the body separate from the head under ten feet of salted earth. The head was kept in a locked box for several days, then left out in the open earth to be defleshed, after which the skull was ground down into powder and thrown into the wind. Dazbog did not witness this process, for he was expelled from the Academia, his hopes of achieving a license to practice magic forever dashed.
    So his life had followed a different path: a brief career with the Haliurunnae as a witch hunter, where he learned a great deal; a pilgrimage to Kemet to learn forbidden arts; his purchase of the Tower in Capetia and his establishment as an underground necromancer willing to perform deeds other reputable magicians would not. He had watched the degeneration of the Academia from afar as the Conventum weakened its ranks and lessened the status of magicians everywhere. It is not enough to watch; eventually one must act. He had acted on a deterministic course, his beliefs never wavering since their fateful formation. Now, with the pieces in place and the Heart of Rankar soon to be in the Land of the Dead, his life’s work would commence. This is just the beginning, the beginning of the end. Alas! No one shall praise my name, no one shall know what gift I gave the unborn masses. Rankar’s failure will not be my own. Could he do what God could not?
    A revenant stirred his consciousness. Even under the influence of the potion, he could not spread his active mind to all of them, and so many functioned independent of his guidance, with only a vague directive. Others were immediately inhabited by demons, though they were weak-willed and easily manipulated or banished. There was always the danger of something stronger coming into this world, yet he was experienced enough to avoid attracting that sort of attention. It is a mistake you’ll only make once, if you live through it he thought. Nameless, insentient creatures from incomprehensible places… even the thought of their existence sent chills down his spine. He focused his thoughts and put himself in the eyes of the revenant.
    He saw a squat creature with huge bulbous eyes clutching the pants leg of a tall dark man who brandished a spear. A soldier and its pet he thought dismissively until he saw the Thief and the courtesan. A light danced like a tiny star, and her eyes gleamed emerald as the light burned through the small army and melted their hearts. Dazbog felt a shock grip his chest, the pain reverberating through all of those possessed bodies, amplifying dulled senses and sending screaming signals to his nervous system. Immediately he was out of their heads, fleeing like a wounded beast, grabbing the partitioned pieces of his mind and fitting them back together as quickly as he could. Eyes flickered; the dark sky above came into the focus, the shouts and calls of soldiers echoing through the valley reaching his ears. With a moan, he fell over, blood pounding in his forehead, limbs shaking with uncontrollable nerves. You can outlast this. The tremors will end, and you will rise from the ashes like bennu bird. Frail teeth chattered together hard enough to fragment and fall from his mouth like splinters. For a moment he was back at the Academia, lying on stone, watching a young witch chat with a handsome nobleman whose only real talent was the vagaries of divination. Is it my lot in life never to touch a woman he thought, as a wave of nausea climbed up his throat. Suddenly, he was spitting blood in his tower in Capetia, hunched over an idol of Prax, mumbling words that he did not understand as the flames of the fireplace sent shadows dancing across the walls like pagans at a solstice pyre. Come, if you are there, ancient thing, and answer the questions I have been dying to ask… the idol trembled, the flames died, and a laugh echoed out across the night, ringing with the unstable mirth of a killer. The whole image shuddered and cracked like glass, and Dazbog was back in reality, huddled against a parapet, his heart slowing gradually, blood pressure dropping so fast that he felt dizzy and drowsy, though he must not succumb to sleep. Death would mean another rebirth on the wheel, undoubtedly lower in the grand hierarchy, likely a worm or a scarab, considering the things that I’ve done. He pushed away the fragments of his old beliefs, surprised that thoughts of reincarnation had floated through his head. Almost instantly the Heart came rising from the depths of his unconscious, dragging him out of introspection and back into the mania of fanaticism. They had it, the witch and the thief, and they were down there with the dead and the demons, and there was nothing that he could do about it.

Next Chapter: The Pursued Meet Their Pursuers