A Guardian of Shadows (Revenant Wyrd Book 4) (34 page)

“Come for us. We don't need wyrd to slaughter you,” she said coldly. The words swirled over the bloody image of the Looker inside the green orb. Without thinking, Mag tossed the ball into the air, and her message sought out the camp of the chaos dwarves.

Cianna pressed herself back against the closed door and willed her racing heart to slow.

From what she could tell, reaching out to either side, she was in some kind of hallway. She sensed, without really knowing how, that this hallway opened up to a single room. And it was extremely cold inside. The chill in the air was noticeably different than that outside. It was the chill of death, the dank embrace of an ancient grave.

Cianna cupped her hands to her face and blew hot air into them in an attempt to warm her fingers. She reached for her necromancy, hoping she could start a ghost light by which to see, but she couldn't feel her necromancy any longer.

“This is a test,” she heard a woman say before her. Cianna was disorientated. There was an echo to the voice, like the woman was far off, yet at the same time she felt the woman's breath upon her cheek. A moment of panic flared through her when she realized there was no telling what was even in the room. She suspected she was in a hallway, and that there was a chamber before her, but she could really be standing on the edge of a cliff, and the puff of air on her face might really be an updraft, not breath.

“What kind of test?” Cianna asked, reaching forward to see if she could feel the woman, but there was nothing immediately in front of her. It made her dizzy, thinking she could be moments away from plunging into an abyss. Or worse, there could be untold horrors lurking for her, just out of range of her fingers. Cianna pulled her hands back to her chest.

“A test to see if you are worthy of your gift.”

“And what happens if I fail?” Cianna asked.

“Our walls can always use more insulation,” the woman said indifferently.

“Right, don't fail,” Cianna said quietly.

“Come,” the woman told her.

“I can't see where I’m going,” Cianna complained.

“Then you must trust the dead,” the woman said.

“But I can't feel them,” Cianna countered.

“Nonsense; you are talking to the queen of all the dead now,” the woman said. Instantly Cianna saw in her mind the woman with the shapely lips, the tall golden top hat, and the skeletal tattoos.

“Who are you?” Cianna asked. She remembered Flora telling her about the loa in the Realm of Fire, and imagined this was Mama Brigit, as the old sorceress had described. Easing forward one tentative step at a time, Cianna tried in vain to trust this stranger who beckoned her forth. But still, she tested the ground in front of her before placing the full weight of her body on her foot.

“In time. For now, you must learn to trust me. Stop,” the woman said. Cianna stopped. “Very good, a quick learner,” the woman cooed. Her voice was soothing to Cianna's ears, and she relaxed a little.

Follow her orders; I can do that,
she thought.

“Turn to the left and take five steps. Before you there is a pedestal.”

Cianna obeyed, and the woman spoke true. Five steps took her exactly in front of a pedestal.

“On it, you will find a plate of food. Take a bite.”

“What is it?” Cianna asked.

“Obey,” the woman said.

There was no choice. She imagined the walls shoved full of decomposing bodies of would-be necromancers who’d come this way and failed to obey. Her bones wouldn't be joining theirs.

She reached forward, feeling around blindly until her hand hit a cold plate. She explored it with her fingers and soon felt a mound of food, cold to the touch, and somewhat slimy. Her stomach churned, and her nose crinkled. Cianna thought she heard the woman chuckle behind her, though it could have been her imagination.

She tentatively grabbed a small piece of whatever it was and put it in her mouth. The taste was awful, and bile rose in her throat.

“It's better to chew and swallow without thinking about it,” the woman said.

Cianna screwed her eyes shut, despite not being able to see anything anyway, and chewed just enough to break the food up so she could swallow it. She coughed, and fought with herself to keep the food down. After several sweaty moments, an ache in her stomach, and shaking in her limbs, Cianna straightened.

“That was awful. What was it?” Cianna asked. But there would be no answer.

“Turn right. Take ten steps forward, and there will be another pedestal.”

Cianna hesitated for a moment, but just as she imagined Mama Brigit telling her to obey, she followed her commands. Again, she was at the edge of another pedestal.

“Drink,” Brigit said.

Cianna reached forward, her hand knocking into a stone beaker. Hastily she grabbed it before any of the contents could spill. She raised it to her nose, and before she could stop herself, she inhaled. The smell of iron and the musky scent of meat that was long past rotting came to her nose. She coughed.

“Love to punish yourself, I see,” Mama Brigit said. “Drink.”

Cianna pressed the glass to her mouth, the thick fluid passing her lips like mud. She resisted the urge to chew it, and instead opened her throat and let it ooze down.

Cianna slammed the beaker down, and again fought with herself not to vomit. She leaned forward, pressing her hot, sweaty forehead to the cool stone of the pedestal, trying to will the nausea away. Her stomach churned painfully, and she groaned in discomfort. It was a close call, but in the end she won. As she straightened, she felt another awareness slip over her mind, and she saw images she had never seen before in her life. A childhood that wasn't hers, filled with lavish parties and decorative dolls. The scene changed, and she was aware of a completely different childhood, on the streets of the Ivory City when it was fresh and new, the Ivory Tower just being finished as she gazed upon the skyline, her eyes drifting south, where she knew the Necromancers’ Mosque was.

“What's happening?” she asked, grasping at the pedestal for support against the vertigo the alien memories brought to her mind.

“Turn right, take fifteen steps, there will be another pedestal.”

Cianna crouched where she was, willing the room to stop spinning. Snippets of conversation were joining the memories flooding through her mind, as if the separate people she had memories of were joining together in conversation at the back of her mind.

“Obey.”

“Dear Goddess, give me a moment,” Cianna barked. She stood, leaning heavily on the pedestal. When she felt she was strong enough to walk, she shuffled to the right fifteen steps.

“Eat,” Mama Brigit commanded. This time the voices and memories in Cianna's head took all of her focus away from the slimy balls on the plate before her. When she bit into on she barely registered that whatever it was popped and oozed a kind of jelly between her teeth.

More voices, more memories. This one was a victim of rape, who hunted down her attackers after becoming a necromancer and visited upon them every plague she could think of, nearly wiping out the small town she had been raised in when the contagion she conjured caught and spread through the village.

“Take five steps, again there will be a pedestal.”

Ten more times she was commanded to move, and ten more times she alternately drank horrible fluids, or ate cold, rancid food, before the memories became too much.

Her head felt on fire, and there was a continuous cacophony of conversation happening in her head. She saw images that weren't her own, memories of other lives that threatened to overwhelm her, pushing away what made her Cianna, and replacing all of her memories with memories of other people, other lives.

She fell to her knees, and was only slightly aware of something being placed in front of her before she started vomiting violently. It felt like her very soul was being ripped out of her body through her mouth, every muscle commanded by a reaction to whatever toxic food she had been fed.

And still the memories swirled, the knowledge of other lives bombarded her.

When she felt her head was about to split she screamed out one word.

“STOP!” and the voices fell silent. Within the fabric of her new, shared mind, she felt the tenuous thread of Cianna, and pulled her to the surface. This was a familiar life, this was something she knew, something she had experienced. She pulled her memories around her like a cloak, and pushed all the others away where they stayed.

“A necromancer,” Mama Brigit said, helping Cianna to stand. Cianna leaned heavily on the loa as she was led to a chair. “Is so much more than a single person.”

As she sat, lights around the room began to grow into existence until Cianna could see she was in a small chamber, a long table set before her with platters of real food, and mugs of real drink. Beside her was a large wooden bucket. In the left-hand corner stood a small wooden door.

“What's that door?” Cianna asked.

“That door leads to other temples for other necromancers from other worlds. You won't be going in there.”

Cianna shook her head. There were enough oddities happening right now that she didn't need to think of alien necromancers.

When she looked up, she noticed the walls. She didn't have to imagine the dead crammed into the small spaces of the walls as insulation anymore, because she could see them. The inside walls of the chamber were made of glass, allowing her to glimpse different bodies all mashed together in the small space, pressed painfully into the glass. Fluid and rotten meat hung from bones that mashed starkly white against the stained glass, all staring out at her.

“Those are people who failed the test?” Cianna asked. She couldn't draw her attention away from the dead bodies in the walls, all in various states of decay.

Mama Brigit took a drink from a clear goblet, then nodded as if they were discussing nothing more than the weather outside.

Cianna looked back down at the bucket just to draw her mind away from the images.

“What's the bucket for?” Cianna asked. She was still sick, her muscles weak, and her bones feeling like they were numb inside her skin.

“That's for when you realize what you consumed,” Brigit said.

Before she could help herself, Cianna looked up at the pedestals. On the first plate was a pile of rotting fingers and toes. Her stomach churned painfully, and she retched into the bucket.

“In the customs of the necromancers, one must consume the flesh of those who came before in order to obtain their memories.”

It sounded so clinical, but Cianna couldn't help but imagine what she had eaten, not to mention what in the realms all of those liquids were. Her stomach churned painfully, and she vomited again.

“Yes, I assume you will be sick for some time, but at least not as sick as a human would be,” Mama Brigit said. “As I was saying before, a necromancer is so much more than one person. You are Cianna LaFaye in body, and retain the majority of her memories, but you also are now a repository for the souls of all the necromancers who came before you.”

When her stomach stopped churning and she could finally breathe again, Cianna spoke.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you are only a body for the necromancer. You are no longer Cianna LaFaye, though you may still act like her and look like her. You are now the necromancer. There is only ever one, but that one necromancer is an embodiment of every necromancer that ever lived.”

Cianna's head swam. She didn't want this. She was tired, and she was sick, and she tried not to think about what this meant, despite the colony of voices buzzing in the background of her mind relentlessly now. She wanted sleep, and she thought maybe this all wouldn't be so bad in the morning when she had time to rest and then look at it with fresh eyes.

“Eating rotting meat is toxic,” Cianna said. “You poisoned me.”

“It's toxic for humans. Normally the necromancy within them won't let them die from this ritual. But you
aren't
human in the least, Cianna. The only thing tying you to this plane is the way you were conceived. You are full angel
birthed
by another angel. Angels are only ever made by the Goddess, and not in the way humans are. By that, you are tied to the human plane.”