Page 137 of Deadly Maiden

“She is yours. From Andacc!” He swings an arm to indicate me. Then he pulls his mount around, finds the stirrup, and lifts himself into the saddle. “I’m going! Damn this for a job.”

“Wait.” I hold up a hand. “Tie Nessa to the trees over there. Please. A Sister of Artreos owns her and asked me to do this.”

“Sure.” His eyes are wide, but he rides up and snatches the reins, gallops away toward the hut under the trees with Nessa in tow.

This is it then, the next part of this journey. I trudge across the sand with my boots squeaking and greet the terror-stricken sailor. Did I not tell Andacc what I was bringing? Did he not tell them?

“They won’t bite you.” I flash a smile. “And once on the sea, they’ll be fathoms below us.”

Assuming they don’t go the wrong way, get swept off by currents, or get eaten by some unfussy sea creature. This could still go very wrong.

“S-sure. In the boat, please, miss.” He scurries to it, drags it out into the small waves, throws in my rucksack, then holds the front of the boat while I take a seat. Once he’s seated himself opposite, he grabs the oars and pulls them through the water.

“How long to get to Tensorga?”

“Three days, miss.” He’s young, cute, with wavy brown hair, a fae in his early twenties. “They yours?” He lifts a finger toward the undead heading for us and begins to row harder and faster.

I might’ve dated him, long ago, before I became a scary necromancer. I smile. “Yes.”

This will be interesting. I’ve never been on a boat, and that small white sailboat looks as if it will be tossed about in the bigger seas.

The boat’s skipper proves to be an older man, his fair hair tied back, and a scar running down one side of his face. He is armed with a plain shortsword which he stores once the sails fill and the boat is carving out of the bay through the swelling waves.

“Grundle is the name, Miss Wyntre,” he says, once we’re out to sea. “You hang on tight, and we’ll get you there in one piece.”

“Thank you.” I am indeed hanging onto the railing, knuckles paling.

“The cabin has to be shared. Best if you stay below decks as much as you can.”

Moonlight silvers the tops of the waves and lights our way. He returns to me after fiddling with some ropes. “Ehhh.You’re a necromancer, Jorg tells us?”

“I am.” First time I have ever been asked like this. First time admitting it.

Will this be a problem?

Grundle clears his throat. “Okay. If Andacc says you’re okay, you’re okay, but stay below. And none of those.” He points downward, at the bottom of the boat, and I’ve no doubt he means the ocean under us. “None of them are welcome up here.”

“Sure.” I gift him a tight, fleeting grin. “I promise they will behave.”

I go below and stay there for the next day, using their chamber pot for waste when they signal I’m not welcome above. I have no choice but to let them clean and scrape and find me food. They do not sleep in the cabin after all. That next night, I hear them on deck, walking about and neither strikes up a conversation.

It will be a rather lonely voyage.

My necromancer label has evidently scared them off. Next time I’m asked, I might lie.

I have my books, though, having brought them to see what else I can learn. Two portholes allow me a view of the sea life, like the dolphins that breach the surface, swimming alongside the boat. Only once am I alarmed, when what appears to be a tentacle loops from the depths a few hundred yards in the distance, then lashes down onto the ocean and vanishes. I pound on the above deck until Grundle comes to the hatchway.

“Just a kraken,” he yells over the sound of the boat and the sea. Spray flicks across, sparkling the air behind him. “We have certified repellant! Nothing to concern yourself with, miss.”

Do I detect a degree of smugness?

I get to open my books, however, and learn all about the theory of magik and the various forms of etharum and how it can be transformed into orgharum inside the body of mages and shifters, and getharum or gheist, and then there is netharum. I’ve not heard of the latter. It’s the form necromancers use when they take etharum into their bodies.

Other types of necro magik exist that I could theoretically accomplish.

Speaking to the dead, raising fear, the raising and construction of an undead? Construction? Does that mean I could rearrange them somehow? Healing is mentioned but glossed over. Perhaps it is rare. Darkthing matter isn’t mentioned at all.

None of this really gives me the ability to do any of these forms. Nice to know they exist, I suppose? The only undead I can use are a few fathoms below the hull. I reread the handwritten recollections of a necromancer called Thaliss. The parchment has rust-colored spots, and some pages are rumpled and stained, as if they’ve suffered water damage.

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