Page 74 of The Malevolent Seven

‘Cade Ombra, Paladin and brother to us all, redeem your soul and—’

‘Cade Ombra, our holy cause rests with y—’

‘Cade Ombra—’

‘Cade Ombra—’

Corrigan was running out of lightning, and more importantly, he was tiring himself out, and even he’s not so stubborn as to leave himself helpless just to prove a point.

So the six of us stood there, listening to the rest of the dead justiciars telling me my duty, commanding me to defeat the Seven Brothers and protect the Mortal demesne from an invasion by the Pandorals.

When at last they all stopped, Mister Bones walked up to what was left of Dignity’s scorched skull and pissed on it.

‘Proud of yourself?’ I asked the jackal.

He barked in reply, which I took as a yes.

I reached my hands out for the mutt’s neck. ‘You deceiving son of a bitch.’

‘Don’t take it out on him!’ Galass said, getting in my face.

I sidestepped her and stomped over to the mutt, who was now sitting on his haunches, head tilted and looking up at me adoringly. Alice was right. Those ears were too fucking long.

‘The game’s over,’ I said. ‘Time to show yourself.’

‘What are you—?’

I held up a hand to forestall Galass’ objections. ‘Go on,’ I told the jackal. ‘Make your big entrance.’

He rolled onto his back and at first I thought he was still screwing with me, but then the jackal spasmed and I heard the crack of bone breaking.

‘Mister Bones!’ Galass cried, but I grabbed her arms to keep her away from him.

There were more cracking sounds, and a kind of stench like the smoke from a candle being blown out, over and over again. The little canine form stretched out, the fur shedding in some places, lengthening in others, changing from silver-grey to blond, the muzzle pushing back into his face even as the head grew to the size and shape of a man’s.

Well, not aman’s, exactly. More of a boy’s.

‘Fidick?’Galass asked.

Guess I was wrong about Mister Bones not being anything more than a jackal.

Chapter 38

The Revenant

I had any number of reasons to be afraid of the naked eleven-year-old boy smiling at me over Galass’ shoulder as she hugged the breath right out of him. Most of these stemmed from having covered up his corpse on the floor of my tent not so long ago.

There’s nothing overly impressive about reanimating the recently departed; a body is just a body, after all. A collection of parts. Bones, muscles, sinew, veins– they’re all just bits and pieces of matter with needs that magic can provide. Fluids need to replenish and flow. Skin needs to grow and die and grow again. Is it complicated? Sure– and expensive as. . . well, expensive as hell. But it can be done.

Even the problem of the mind can be solved, assuming you’re feeling a driving need to have the corpse in question talk back to you. Some wonderists have been known to use a spell to reconstruct the original consciousness from a gestalt of those memories and instincts still present in the dead flesh of the brain. The result is gruesome, of course, but if you want to spend the equivalent cost of recruiting, housing and feeding an army just to acquire one shambling, drooling slave to be at your beck and call, people like me can get the job done.

Fidick, however, wasn’t reanimated. Not only had his spiritual essence– the unknowable mixture of his consciousness and the ecclesiasm that housed it– been removed from his body the instant he’d traded it to Tenebris and then swapped bodies with Mister Bones, but the fundamental design of his body had been implanted into the poor jackal as well. To add insult to injury, the mutt’s body had been reshaped to look like that of a dead eleven-year-old boy.

Fidick wasn’t a revenant. He was a miracle.

And there’s only one way to make a miracle.

Shame came up beside me and I could tell the same question banging furiously at the inside of my skull was doing likewise to hers.

---