Necropolis (Royal Sorceress Book 3) (40 page)

She shook her head, fighting down the urge to cry – or to kiss him, again. It had been years since she’d cried; she’d never even broken down after Sir Charles had betrayed her, fearful of confirming the thoughts and prejudices of those who saw her as a weak and feeble woman. But now ... now she wanted to cry. Instead, she gathered herself, drew on her mental disciplines, and stood upright.

“I am ready,” she said. She pushed her doubts to one side and took up position beside Sir Sidney, who lay down on the bed, looking for all the world like a human sacrifice.

“Do it.”

Blood transfusion was not an exact science, Gwen knew, as Raechel picked up the needle and carefully inserted it into Olivia. Sometimes, it worked; sometimes, the patient had an allergic reaction that killed them, for reasons modern science had yet to explain. It was quite possible that Olivia’s blood alone would kill Sir Sidney, even though it hadn’t killed the Tsar. Gwen couldn’t help feeling queasy as Raechel removed the needle from Olivia, then injected her blood into Sir Sidney. And if there should have been more preparations involved, Gwen knew, they had no idea what they might be.

There was a long pause. Sir Sidney’s breathing grew ragged and harsh, then he recovered. Gwen watched him nervously, then nodded to Raechel to move to the other side of the room. If she had to act quickly to burn Sir Sidney, it was better not to have Raechel anywhere nearby. And then she nodded to the man. It was time.

Sir Sidney raised the knife until it was level with his eyes, hesitated a moment, then stabbed down into his chest. Gwen had seen more horror and violence in the last year than any other noble-born woman in Britain, but the sight of his suicide still shocked her. Blood bubbled up from the wound, then started to run down his chest and soak the bed. Olivia let out an odd sound and took a step forward, pressing her hand against Sir Charles’s chest. Gwen felt her head twist suddenly as she sensed her adopted daughter draw on her powers.

“Heal him,” Olivia snapped at her. “Now!”

Gwen forced her reaction aside, placed her hands on Sir Sidney’s head and concentrated, trying to focus her magic through his body. It felt
vile
, utterly unlike any other magic she’d tried to use, as if there was something fundamentally
wrong
with what she was doing. Her hands felt as if she’d buried them in a cesspit. The reaction was so strong that it was all she could do not to throw up on the spot, despite her experience. And the touch of Olivia’s magic was almost worse.

Life energy
, she thought, suddenly. Olivia’s power was drawing on the remains of Sir Sidney’s life, rather than her own magic.
If the prospective undead is dying, there’s more energy already in place to tap and convert. But if the undead is dead already, it needs to draw life energy from the Necromancer.

She forced herself to concentrate as Olivia’s magic surged towards Sir Sidney’s brain, threatening to convert him into one of the undead. The sheer surge of power shocked her; she forced herself to hang on grimly, trying to keep Sir Sidney alive and reasonably well. But there was a long moment when she felt as though she’d failed completely, before she sensed a spark of energy flowing through Sir Sidney’s mind. And then there was a much larger surge and she felt herself flung back from his corpse.

“Gwen,” Raechel called. “What happened?”

Gwen shook her head as she picked herself off the floor. On the other side of the room, Olivia was doing the same. It had been a physical reaction, of that she was sure, but where had it come from? Sir Sidney was no Mover. Had the magic somehow triggered
her
magic, she asked herself; had she thrown
herself
away from Sir Sidney? Or had something else happened? Perhaps God Himself had interceded to prevent them committing a dreadful sin ...

She looked over at Sir Sidney, just in time to see his face take on the grey tone of the undead. His eyes were tightly closed, but by the way they were twitching she was sure that they too were transforming into something else. She watched as his fists trembled, then his entire body jerked violently. It was impossible to tell if they’d succeeded or not. Sir Sidney just wasn’t reacting like the Tsar.

“Stay back,” she ordered sharply, as Raechel started to move towards the convulsing corpse. “Do
not
go anywhere near him.”

She summoned fire, ready to burn Sir Sidney to ash if necessary. His body jerked again, then his eyes snapped open, revealing – as she’d suspected – a dull yellowish glow. He sat upright slowly, moving with a cold deliberateness that chilled her to the bone. But at least it wasn’t the fast movements of the undead. He looked more as if he were relearning to move his body.

His mouth opened, slowly. “I ...”

Gwen shuddered at the sound. He sounded
dead
, as if his soul was gone completely, and yet he was
talking
. No other undead, apart from the Tsar, had been able to
talk
. All they’d been able to do was moan. Sir Sidney paused, opening and closing his mouth a few times as his lips worked soundlessly, then started to speak again.

“Gwen,” he said. His voice was so harsh it took Gwen several seconds to understand that he’d spoken her name. “It ... worked.”

“Good,” Gwen said, keeping the flames crackling around her fingertips. It was easier to increase the strength of her fires than restart them, if necessary. “How are you feeling?”

“Dead,” Sir Sidney said. His voice sounded better this time, as if practice was making it easier to talk. “I feel ... strange. My body is heavy. Yet my mind is bound to it.”

Olivia walked around Sir Sidney until she was standing near Gwen. “Can you hear the whispering?”

“I can hear more than whispering,” Sir Sidney said. “I can hear the Tsar’s great thoughts thundering in my head. I can sense his mind struggling for control. The undead are ... odd.”

Gwen watched grimly as Sir Sidney rose to his feet. His movements were deliberate, as if he could no longer rely on his body. She couldn’t help remembering some of the young magicians who went out drinking and came back to Cavendish Hall struggling to walk in a straight line. Was Sir Sidney effectively drunk or had the link between his mind and his body been badly damaged? She would have bet on the latter.

“I know,” Olivia whispered. “But can you control them?”

“I don’t know,” Sir Sidney said. “I feel so ... heavy.”

Olivia looked over at Gwen. “We’ll take him down and test his powers on some of the dead,” she said. “If we have succeeded ...”

Gwen nodded, then turned to Raechel. “You go first and tell them what to expect,” she said. The last thing they needed was one of the guards beheading Sir Sidney when they saw his face. “I want to stay behind him.”

Raechel nodded and slipped out of the room. Gwen hesitated, then motioned for Sir Sidney to start walking. He obeyed, staggering slightly as he moved, as if he didn’t quite know how to walk properly. It was odd, given how fast some of the undead could move, but perhaps unsurprising. His body had been effectively crippled. Gwen had seen stroke victims struggling to relearn how to use their bodies, even after a Healer had mended the damage, but this was worse. His body was literally dead.

What does this mean
, she asked herself,
for the Tsar
?

She shuddered at the thought as they slowly walked down the stairs. If the Tsar was really nothing more than a healthy mind in a dead body, just how long could his mind last? But Gregory had to have done more to the Tsar than she’d realised, even if she’d done something comparable. Could his body be caught permanently between living and undead? Her head hurt when she tried to reason it out. If the Tsar’s heart was no longer pumping, how was he getting the oxygen to his brain? And if he wasn’t getting oxygen, why wasn’t he dead – or deader?

“I need to walk faster,” Sir Sidney said. “But my body will not obey.”

“Perhaps that is for the best,” Gwen said. If the Tsar was mad now, Sir Sidney might well go the same way. “Let them see you can’t chase them.”

They came off the stairwell and through what had once been the ballroom. Defenders – British, French and Russian – stared at them in disbelief. Gwen allowed them to see the flames dancing over her hand, hoping it would provide some reassurance. Lord Standish looked torn between horror and a strange kind of delight, knowing that Sir Sidney’s new status meant that he was back in command of the mission. Gwen silently promised herself that she would slap him down if he tried to assert himself too much. There was no time for a power struggle in the ranks.

The handful of dead defenders had been placed in a side room. Gwen cursed out loud as she saw shapes moving in the darkness, then generated a light globe and cursed again as she saw the rats near the bodies. A thought struck her and she reached out with her magic, catching one of the rats and yanking it through the air until it dangled in front of Sir Sidney. The rat squeaked and struggled helplessly against the invisible force holding it in place.

Behind her, Olivia let out an odd sound. “It might be better to let me use the rat,” Olivia said, quickly. “We don’t want to split his mind too far.”

Gwen nodded and hastily pulled the rat away from Sir Sidney. A handful of young Necromancers had discovered their powers by accidentally bringing a beloved family pet back to life – or, rather, to a shambling mockery of life. Using undead rats was risky, she knew, but there were few other weapons at their disposal. Besides, there were so many rats in Moscow that they would never run out of them.

“You want to bring a rat back to life,” Raechel said. “Is that
wise
?”

“I wish I knew,” Gwen said. Could the undead infection spread from a rat to a human? There were no reports of it, but she knew that meant nothing. Most undead infections tended to come from murky origins. “What else do we have to use?”

She snapped the rat’s neck, then dropped it in front of Olivia and returned her attention to Sir Sidney. He was kneeling in front of the body of one of the defenders, almost as if he were at prayer. Moments later, the body twitched and jerked to life, shambling madly around the room. Gwen watched, grimly, as two other bodies rose, before Sir Sidney almost collapsed from exhaustion. The Tsar had had an advantage, she realised grimly. He’d picked on live victims for his first display of power.

“I am ready,” Sir Sidney said. He looked at Gwen, then staggered back to his feet. His undead followed him, shambling forwards like dogs. “Let us go to confront the Tsar.”

“With three undead?” Raechel demanded. “Are you sure?”

“It will be enough,” Sir Sidney insisted. His voice sounded stronger now, despite his obvious weakness. “I can try to force my way into his gestalt, to take control of his creatures, to fight it out with him and win you time to evacuate the palace. But it will not last for long.”

He started to walk towards the door, followed by the undead. Gwen shuddered, looked over at the gathering crowd of undead rats, then nodded for Olivia and Raechel to stay back as she followed Sir Sidney out towards the main door. She shuddered again as a line of rats streaked past her, gambolling around Sir Sidney even though they were under Olivia’s control. They didn’t moan, but there was something eerie about their silence.

She gritted her teeth as the defenders stared in horror at the undead, their hands clutching their weapons tightly. Gwen hoped and prayed that no one would take a shot at Sir Sidney. A bullet might not impede one of the undead, but God alone knew what it would do to him.

Outside, the smell of burned flesh was almost overpowering. Gwen gagged, but managed to stay on her feet. Sir Sidney showed no sign of noticing as he stopped, just outside the barricades. Perhaps that wasn’t surprising, Gwen thought; the undead, if Olivia was right, had no sense of smell. She heard, faintly, the sound of whispering as the undead registered their presence ...

... And then swarmed forward, moaning with rage.

Chapter Thirty-Four

T
he rats, Olivia rapidly discovered, were much – much – easier to reanimate and control than human beings. Perhaps there was less of a gap between living or dead rats than there was between living or dead humans, or perhaps it was their far simpler minds, but she found herself almost taking pleasure in bringing more and more dead rats under her control. The rats she touched originally bit others, who in turn brought others into the gestalt. By the time Olivia directed the rats to swarm outside and join Sir Sidney, she had over seven hundred under her control and more on the way.

They’d be a major problem for a living army, she knew, but the undead would largely ignore them unless they worked together. She directed them to mass behind Sir Sidney, trying to see through hundreds of ratty eyes. It was harder to see through their eyes than control them, but she could still direct them to prepare to attack. A swarm of fifty rats, chewing at dead flesh, would bring down an undead within seconds, then leave it crippled and helpless on the ground. And then she saw the horde of undead thundering forward, moaning with rage ...

... And then she felt Sir Sidney’s mental commands reaching out to grab the undead, screaming his orders into their gestalt. There was a long pause, then the first row of undead stopped, only to be pushed over and trodden on by the second or third row. Olivia staggered under the impact as Sir Sidney’s command – a simple STOP – slammed into her head, even though it wasn’t directed at her. The undead seemed completely confused; some stopping, others still lunging towards Sir Sidney, right into his influence. For a long moment, Olivia thought they’d won.

Olivia shuddered as she felt the Tsar, suddenly aware of what was happening, reach out his mind towards the undead. His orders washed through the gestalt, driving out Sir Sidney’s orders, but they were weaker, somehow. It took Olivia a long moment to realise that he was trying to issue orders that were simply too complex, given the situation. The undead were torn between a simple command to stop and the more complex commands to ignore Sir Sidney and charge.

But they can’t ignore him
, she realised, as she understood – finally – the link between her blood and the undead.
They appear to be speaking with the same voice. Neither of them are actually superior, so one set of orders cancels another, only to be cancelled in turn.