Necromancer Awakening (28 page)

“Not sure I know what that means anymore.”

Cisic chuckled. “Strange words, priest. Strange words indeed.” The laughter continued and Nicolas smiled.

After a moment, Cisic stopped laughing, and Nicolas could tell he was deep in thought.

“Perhaps…no,” Cisic said.

“What’s on your mind?”

Images resolved into Nicolas standing in front of hundreds of angry cichlos. He lifted the ocean with one hand and they welcomed him.

“I can take you,” Cisic said. “But the danger is great. If you command me to fight my brethren, I will lose. They are powerful.”

“I don’t get the ocean part.”

“You have swum with my fins and walked with my feet. I was once a great necromancer, but what do you remember most about me?”

“You were an asshole,
that’s
what I remember.”

“You have only lived my life, not my death. My spirit is nearly pure, and a joy fills me that I never knew in life. My people do not know this joy. They are honor-bound to ancient tradition.”

“Yeah…
assholes
.”

“Concentrate.”

Nicolas recalled the summoning. Cichlos people were separated into castes that were strictly segregated. There was no upward mobility possible, and any attempt to change one’s status met with punishment. Sometimes violence. Their system of honor was so well defined that a large percentage of their language and physical gestures was dedicated to the proper way of addressing people in specific castes. As a human he had no status among them at all. He understood the image now. He would have to gain their respect, and
that
would be an impossible task…as impossible as lifting the ocean.

“Take me,” Nicolas said.

“As you command. We go to the city of
Aquonome
.”

Cisic lifted Nicolas and plunged back into the lake. The bubble of air reformed around Nicolas’s head, and within moments the world was rushing past him.

Distant ribbons of light ran for miles along a gigantic crevasse and formed the underwater city of Aquonome. The ribbons were translucent tubes, similar to the bubble around Nicolas’s head, constructed by barrier magic to keep the water out.

Aquonome glistened in all colors of the rainbow like far away Christmas lights in a distant neighborhood. Two massive domes formed the city center, one larger than the other, and twelve barrier tubes extended from the smallest, six on each side, giving Aquonome the appearance of an underwater insect. Tiny bubbles moved between tubes at random intervals. A bubble would form in the wall of one tube and crash into the next, collapsing on impact.

Cisic led them toward the closest barrier tube, which projected out from the right side of the central dome. The scale of the place impressed Nicolas. If he laid every high rise in Austin end to end, it wouldn’t equal the length of one of these tubes. Small dots moved about, but he couldn’t tell what they were.

Power drained from him in a steady current of energy as they drew closer to the city. Except for Cisic he would be defenseless when they got there, and that knowledge tightened his chest with panic.

They passed through the barrier wall into one of the tubes and Nicolas felt the same electric shock as when he first entered Paradise. The bubble around his head collapsed and he inhaled.

He wished he hadn’t.

Aquonome smelled like a giant aquarium. All the decaying fish food and algae in the biology lab didn’t come close to
this
.

They emerged into a large open area that resembled a crowded mall. The barrier wall generated a bluish light that surrounded everything in a cool glow.

The small dots he had seen earlier were people—
Cichlos
people—humanoid fish of all different colors, each one brighter than the next, and they stood about two feet taller than Nicolas. He had been right about the webbed hands and feet, but seeing flesh on those enormous heads was a sight to behold. He had been wrong about their heads being too large for their bodies, though. That may have been true about Cisic the
skeletal
cichlos, but everything was in proper proportion on the
living
cichlos.

Rows of teeth filled their mouths, but the cichlos weren’t scary-looking…merely different. In some ways they were amusing. Their chameleon-like eyes were able to move in independent directions, making it look like they could stare in two different places at once, and they kept moving their heads up and down as if to examine him from head to foot and back again.

They all wore the same bluish grey clothing, in stark contrast to their otherwise colorful bodies. Every seam, every stitch, every tint appeared identical. Nicolas knew a thing or two about civilizations, and there was no way those clothes were the product of a preindustrial society. They were mass produced.

The tube vaulted over them into a giant arched roof about sixty feet high. Walls seemed to grow out of the tube floor itself to form small buildings not much taller than the cichlos.

The crowd had stopped and people stared at him, speaking words he didn’t understand. One of them yelled something, and another ran farther into the tube.

The sound of marching filled the plaza, and danger pulsed through the necromantic link. The crowd parted as a large cichlos…larger than the others…came toward him, surrounded by several undead cichlos skeletons. He must be a necromancer.

As if in response, an image of a general defeating an army of argram on a battlefield appeared in Nicolas’s mind. This wouldn’t end well.

The undead cichlos looked like fish bones come to life, enormous heads and skinny bones. They were unarmed.

The large cichlos stopped in front of him while the undead circled around. A midnight-blue cowl draped over the cichlos’s leathery shirt and pants down to what Nicolas assumed were the cichlos’s knees. That cowl would be a robe on a human. In fact, it looked like the robes worn by the Mukhtaar brothers in the mural at their estate. But on closer look it was a material Nicolas had never seen before, rippling in the breeze like cloth one moment and shining with a metallic glint the next. None of the other cichlos wore a cowl like this, but that wasn’t the only difference.

While the other cichlos were all colors of the spectrum, this one’s skin—if skin was the right word—was pure white, accented in places by orange stripes and splotches, and his eyes had a distinctive pink tint, which reminded Nicolas of some of the albino tribes he had studied.

The albino made a show of looking Nicolas up and down, and then glanced at the tube wall from where he and Cisic had emerged. The cichlos said something, but Nicolas didn’t understand what he was saying. At least he
assumed
the albino was a man, but he didn’t know for sure. There was something masculine in his bearing.

The albino turned toward Cisic for the first time and grew agitated. He uttered something unintelligible and waved his hand. A tugging sensation grabbed at Nicolas’s chest, and the necromantic link disappeared from his mind, leaving him with feelings of loss and guilt. Cisic didn’t crumble to the ground in a pile of bones…he
vanished
.

Mujahid had told him a necromancer couldn’t mess with another priest’s link. It seemed Mujahid had been wrong about that too. The albino had banished Cisic with no discernible effort, and there was nothing Nicolas could have done about it.

He opened his mouth to speak and the cichlos backhanded him with an armored fist, filling his mouth with the metallic taste of blood. He could feel his lip swelling already.

Two penitents lifted Nicolas up, squeezing his arms in vise-like grips.

As the albino turned and walked away, the undead guards dragged Nicolas behind.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Nicolas, confused and afraid, tried to stand but couldn’t break the grip of the large cichlos skeletons.

Questions raced through his mind. Where were they taking him? How did Mujahid not know a necromancer could make another’s penitent disappear? And what was his deal with never trying to summon more than one? This albino had four.

His captors came to a stop and released him. They stood like bony columns circling Nicolas.

The albino spoke with another cowled cichlos, but he couldn’t understand them. They were loud and used a lot of hand waving.

He sensed power all around him, so he did the only thing he could think of—he attempted to fill his energy well.

The albino flinched and leaped toward Nicolas with an angry guttural sound.

Nicolas closed his eyes, expecting the full weight of the albino to land on him. Instead, he felt a powerful blow to his head, and his head snapped sideways. He drew as much power as he could, but an impenetrable wall rose up around his energy well, making the power useless.

The albino snorted and kicked him again, this time in the side. Sharp, cracking pain tore through his chest.

The albino tried to kick him again, but the other cowled cichlos yelled and stopped him. The albino snorted, as if frustrated, and withdrew farther down the tube with his undead penitents.

The other guards helped Nicolas to his feet and led him in the same direction the albino had gone. He clutched the side of his chest and winced, doubling the pain when he gasped.

They walked for several minutes then came to a halt so fast he stumbled. There was nothing special about where they stopped. The place was empty. One of the guards turned toward the tube wall and Nicolas had a terrible thought.

They’re going to throw me out!

A hum emanated from the barrier wall, and those mental goose bumps returned. There was a vast ocean of energy just beyond his reach that recoiled every time he tried to draw it in.

A tearing sound startled him, and three bluish-grey wisps of barrier energy, liquid in form, emerged from the thin veil that separated them from the lake. They coalesced into two transparent walls spanned by a liquid ceiling ten feet above the ground. When the viscous energy had formed a hollow cube, it stopped moving and solidified into an opaque barrier wall.

Unlike the wall of the tube, which swirled with multihued wisps like the surface of a soap bubble, this cube looked as if the barrier had transformed into something as hard as metal.

The guards threw Nicolas into the cube, which forced him to grab his side in pain as he hit the far wall. Another aqueous wall rose up out of the floor and sealed him inside the cube. This wall was different from the others, however. It remained translucent and crackled with an energy that gave it a green tint. The guards stared at him and waved their hands around.

Nicolas looked at them through the green barrier as he stepped toward it. Their faces were expressionless, as far as he could tell, but the closer he got to the barrier the faster their gestures became.

He’d been captured, tortured, and even executed on this strange world. He’d survived his own drowning for what? To be beaten for no good reason? Enough was enough.

“You enjoy this, don’t you,” he said.

They backed away.

“You like torturing people? I didn’t even do anything!”

Speaking made him wince in pain, but he didn’t care. The broken rib was nothing next to what he’d already gone through on this hellhole of a world.

A light breeze danced into the cube through the green barrier and tickled his face. He raised his hands, palms out, and placed them about an inch away from the surface of the crackling energy. He moved them across surface of the barrier without touching it, and the cichlos waved their arms faster.

“Oh,
this
upsets you, but kicking my ass is perfectly fine,” Nicolas said.

He took a deep breath and pushed both his hands through the green barrier.

White-hot energy blinded him, and all sensation disappeared as he was flung backward into the cell. He felt nothing—neither the ground beneath him, nor the breeze that had been circling around his face. He shook his head and sensation came flooding back. His hands felt like they were on fire, and when he looked at them, he wished he hadn’t. His right hand, which must have taken the bulk of the force, was unrecognizable, and the barrier had burned the other to the bone.