Page 138 of Deadly Maiden

I fold back the dog-eared corner and trace the scrawled words. Written a hundred and twenty-years ago, judging by the date on the page.

If one does wish to raise a recently deceased corpse from the realm of the dead, and note that it must be within a few days old at most, one must meld with the mind of that person. I have found that concentrating and closing one’s eyes helps the process.

Do not be discouraged at a single failure. This will require practice. Unfortunately it is a voyage each necromancer must tread alone, as it is with most of our arts.

Concentrate. Imagine you are there, seeing the remains of their thoughts. Be there. Be one with them. Exist within the framework of their cranium. This will not work on the living. Once you feel the connection, one should use a source of etharum or gheist to enervate the corpse’s brain. It will not think like a living fae and will respond to your commands. Be careful what one does order such creatures to do. Your very soul may be at risk.

“Well, that’s cheerful.”

I close the book and lay it aside on the compact roll-top desk.

I don’t have any recently deceased person to try that on. Out of curiosity, I lie on the bunk bed and try to see the inside of, first, Grundle’s brain and then the mind of the young sailor, Jorg. It feels as if my own thoughts are skating on ice. I cannot get anywhere near them. I slip away from the sailors, and my mind drifts lower, through the hull of the boat, sinking down, down, to where my small army marches among the fish.

They are already raised, but I am commanding them. If it takes practice, then perhaps I can still use them. Easily, I enter the mind of the first to find nothing much in there. The thoughts of a raised undead remind me of closed stores. I sneaked into one of those in Bollingham. The shelves were bare of everything except spilled shreds of noodles and dried-out apples and moldy cheese. My army is as moldy as one can get. Undaunted, I skip along, harmlessly brushing from mind to mind. This is so simple, so easy.

And truly, if I can do this, raising a new one should be doable?

Learn as you go.

The history of Slaedorth seems more like fiction, and unless I return there, none of this is relevant. It is the past and does not explain why we are fewer than we were. I may be the last necromancer. There’s a thought.

I make notes, sleep, and eat. I pace the small cabin. For the entire three-day voyage, I am treated as if I carry a plague.

Then I am summoned, told to come on deck. I climb the ladder, find the sea looking sultry not stormy, with the sullen, dark sky reflecting mournful colors on the wave-tops. To our left is one of the tips of the crescent-shaped harbor. On the promontory, a high-powered lighthouse has switched on, and when it sweeps the sea the waves turn golden and clear.

We’ve sailed fast, though, done good time, or so I am told. I clutch the railing a little less fearfully than my first evening on the boat. As the boat wallows, Tensorga Harbor sways on the horizon, the serrated skyline of buildings visible above the quiescent waves.

I stretch out my mental feelers for the undead that walk beneath us on the ocean floor. I’ve kept an eye on them and know I have lost at least half of my army, but if we remain here, more may rejoin us.

They stand, below, with their bones on sand and rock, happily not drowning, and with their dead eyes looking up at the bottom of the sailboat.

A clacking sound jerks me back to the surface, to where I am, on a softly rocking deck.

“Winds’ll rise.” Grundle ekes out words like they’re taxable. “We’ll sail closer, not too close, wait for the tide. Just a’fore dawn. Sneeeeak in to where Andacc wants you landed. There.” He points. “There. The Chained King.”

And Rorsyd. The cage he is locked into dangles over the harbor at the end of a metal rail that might be a crane. I swallowdown a sudden tightness, all the way to my chest. Remember to breathe. The wind gusts in my face, flaps the limp sail.

I am here, where I wished to be. “Tensorga.”

“Yup.”

It almost became a fevered dream on the voyage. Now it seems more of a nightmare.

I stiffen my spine. Time to be a warrior not a wimp. A hero not a zero.

“That your soulmate?” He jabs his finger at the cage.

How does everyone know what we are? The sister, of course.

“Yes. That’s Rorsyd.”

“That tower used to raise a chain from the sea, to block the harbor. Not in use anymore.”

“I see.” Does it help me in any way? I cannot see how.

“Fuck me with a bent cutlass!”

My eyebrows spring higher. “That…sounds alarming?”

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