The Drowning City: The Necromancer Chronicles Book One (22 page)

“Can you clear this?” she asked Asheris.

He hesitated. “I’m no weather witch, but maybe I can manage something. Step back and brace yourselves,” he called to the guards.
“And cover your eyes. You too, meliket.”

Isyllt raised a hand to her face, peering through her fingers. Asheris cupped his hands and blew gently into them. His breath
steamed, and the diamond flared at his throat.

The breeze spiraled away from him, strengthening into a tame whirlwind. Isyllt winced as the heat of it struck her and gooseflesh
stung her skin. Leaves rattled, ripped free of branches; dirt and twigs filled the air and Isyllt closed her eyes against
the stinging debris. Something hissed and wailed—nothing human.

She opened one eye and saw the fog receding, the air around Asheris shimmering with heat. Then the wind died, leaving only
a thin gray haze clinging to the ground, and morning sunlight washed over the village.

Bodies littered the ground, curled like womb-bound babes or sprawled prone, fingers clawing at the soil as if to crawl. Isyllt
knelt beside the nearest corpse, a boy no older than thirteen. Dirt and weeds stained his hands, dark crescents under his
nails and sap green and sticky on his fingers. Beneath the garden grime his nails were blue, as if he’d frozen to death. Perhaps
he had; she couldn’t see a wound. He lay on his side, and blood had settled dark and purple in one cheek and outstretched
arm. His flesh was stiff as wax, colder than the air.

“What happened?” Asheris asked.

“Ghosts. The dead are hungry. They drained his life away. Does this happen here often?”

“No,” one of the guards said. A Sivahri man, face drained pasty and yellow. “We sing the dead on, to guide them to the twilight
lands. We burn offerings and prayer-sticks, and in exchange the ancestors watch over us.”

“And no ancestors ever decide they want more?”

His throat bobbed. “It happens, but not often. I’ve seen the madness take a ghost, but an exorcism usually puts things right.
I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“This was more than one ghost.” She stood, moved farther into the village. She’d seen slaughter before, villages looted by
bandits or savaged by demons, blood and bodies in the street, houses charred and smoking. All these buildings stood intact,
neat-thatched and clean. No destruction, only death.

Not everyone had died as peacefully as the boy. She saw clawed faces, blood crusted beneath their nails. Wide-eyed, rictus-mouthed,
hands raised to ward off blows.

Something moved in the shadows beneath a house and she started, reaching for her blade. Only a dog. The animal whined and
barked, then bolted past her toward Asheris and the soldiers. One woman crouched, offering a hand. The dog whined again, but
finally let her stroke his head.

Isyllt turned away from the soldiers. “Deilin Xian.”

The ghost appeared beside her, barely more substantial than the tattered fog. She snarled as she saw Isyllt. Then she looked
around and her face slackened.

“Is this what you would have done to your great-granddaughter?”

“No,” the woman whispered. “Never this. The madness was on me, but I only wanted to feel again, to be flesh again.”

“Who did this?”

Pearlescent nostrils flared. “My kin, my compatriots. Those of us who fell fighting the Empire.”

Isyllt gestured to the corpses. “And this is so much better than the occupation?”

Deilin glared, then shook her head and looked away. “I don’t know.”

“Where are they now, your murderous kin?” The whole village reeked of ghosts, so strong she could hardly feel Deilin standing
beside her.

Again the ghost sniffed the air. “Gone, mostly. But fresh corpses attract spirits.”

A soldier shouted, and Isyllt turned.

A corpse sat up.

She’d seen corpses stir before, as muscles stiffened or bloat swelled—this was nothing so innocent. A dead woman stood, moving
with an eerie marionette grace. Her eyes gleamed like pearls in her death-bruised face. The dog growled and began to bark,
rust-and-black ruff standing on end. Isyllt dismissed Deilin with a hasty word.

When the dead possessed the living, an exorcism might put things right. When ghosts or spirits possessed dead flesh, the result
was not puppetry but a terrible melding. The result was demons.

A soldier fired and missed. The next man didn’t; the demon staggered but didn’t fall. The wound didn’t bleed.

“Do you have spell-silver?” Isyllt shouted. The answer became clear as the soldiers fired at more corpses, none of which stopped
moving. She drew her knife, a bone-hilted kukri. Silver inlay traced the hilt and blade, wrapped the weapon in spells.

The nearest corpse twitched and lunged for her legs. The blade bit deep, jarring against bone. The demon shrieked as smoke
curled from the wound. Her boot caught it in the face with a crunch. Isyllt yanked the knife free and swung for its neck.
The demon screamed again; the next stroke caught its larynx and the cry became a gasp.

The third stroke opened its neck to the bone. Flesh crisped and blackened. Isyllt planted her boot on its head, forcing its
face into the mud as she wedged the knife between vertebrae and sawed. She felt the spinal cord sever, both through the blade
and in the rushing chill as the spirit left the flesh.

Gulping air, she staggered away from the mangled body. The corpse was harmless now, the spirit dissolved; demons only had
one chance at life.

Another clawed for her, nails raking her outflung arm. She buried the knife in its gut and twisted. Nothing close to fatal,
but it screamed as the silver burned. The stench of bowel filled the air as she tugged the blade free; ropes of blood clung
to the metal, thick and sticky as jam. Someone else was screaming, high and unceasing.

“Fire!” she shouted at Asheris. “Fire will stop them!” The screams ended in a gurgle; pistol shots echoed.

She kicked the demon’s legs out from under it, wrestled it to the ground. Easy with the newly wrought, still clumsy and awkward.
An old demon was nothing she ever wanted to meet again.

This was butcher’s work—when the corpse fell still she pushed herself up, wiping at the mud and blood splattered on her face.
The air smelled of roasting flesh.

Half a dozen bodies smoldered on the ground, while another handful writhed and flamed and shrieked. The soldiers huddled back-to-back
while Asheris set demon after demon alight.

What came after the butchery was worse.

One soldier was dead, another badly mauled. Isyllt eased the woman’s pain and checked the wounds as best she could. Corpse-bites
always festered, but sometimes worse traces lingered. When she finished, the woman’s comrades carried her off for proper treatment
and returned with a barrel of salt from the closest village.

One by one Isyllt and Asheris searched the houses for demons or survivors—of the latter they found a few: an infant in her
cradle, a toddler hiding under his bed, a dog nursing a litter, two cats, and a caged bird. Whether the ghosts took pity on
them or they were simply too small to be worth eating, Isyllt couldn’t say.

When all living things were out of a house, Isyllt circled the building with salt and Asheris burned it to the ground. He
was one of the most skilled pyromancers she’d ever seen—fire answered him instantly, burned clean and fast, never a stray
spark to threaten them. Even by the fourteenth house, when sweat ran down his face and strain washed his skin gray, the flames
never faltered.

She salted the charred remains as well. The reek of death and witchery clung to everything, seeping into the soil. The crops
had already spoiled from the chill. The village was as dead as its inhabitants; no one would rebuild here soon.

Xinai found the first ghost-marker late the next afternoon. Bones and beads woven around a wooden frame, dangling from a branch.
A ward and a warning—it marked cursed land, haunted by spirits and the hungry dead. Even with Shaiyung beside her, Xinai had
no desire to meet another gangshi, or any other incorporeal predator. They climbed higher into the foothills to avoid it,
though that left them edging beside the mountain’s wards as well.

They were perhaps a third of the way around the mountain; she’d never ventured so far northeast before, and nothing was familiar.
Riuh only shook his head when she questioned him, and soon they were both cursing under their breath as they stumbled through
the brush and over craggy hills. Xinai snarled at Riuh nearly as often as he spoke, only to apologize a few minutes later.
After an hour of this he gave up talking, and Xinai cursed herself for not remembering the potion that put off her courses.

The mountain towered over them, blocking the sky. Once or twice when they broke through the tree line, she smelled the smoke
and sulfur stench of the burning cauldron. The jungle spread out all around them, dipping and swelling over the hills, rising
to meet the eastern mountains. Shadows floated across the canopy as clouds drifted east, where they thickened and shed their
rain.

As dusk came on, Xinai was cursing in earnest. They’d passed three more ghost-wards, a greater expanse of unclean jungle than
she’d ever seen before. Twilight chased purple shadows across the hills and the light was nearly gone. And as they circled
east, the diamond’s pulse began to fade.

Finally she stubbed her toe once too often and sat with a snarl, flinging a stone down the slope. Riuh turned back, eyeing
her so warily she wanted to throw rocks at him too.

“If you want to stop, we should go down again.” He gestured toward the shadow of the woods below.

“So the ghosts can kill us and the kueh peck our guts out? Not that it matters, when we’re going the wrong bloody way!”

Riuh’s eyes narrowed, but Xinai waved him silent. Her jaw slackened as a thought kindled. She pushed herself up, scrubbed
sweat off her face, and clambered down the rock-strewn slope in the direction they’d come.

“What is it?” Riuh asked as he caught up.

The fourth ward she’d seen hung in front of them, rattling softly. She frowned at it, knelt to examine the rain-soft earth
beneath the trees. Just enough light left to see without a charm. “Ha,” she muttered. “Look.”

Riuh crouched beside her, looked past her pointing finger toward a line of kueh tracks. No more than a day old; she could
smell fresh droppings somewhere close. They’d passed half a dozen such tracks, but it had taken her this long to realize what
was wrong.

Riuh stared, frowning. “They pass the wards.”

All the tracks they’d seen crisscrossed the line of markers, wandering in and out of the blighted spot. Kueh, like tigers
and dogs, had no love for ghosts.

“Those motherless dogs—” Riuh shook his head, nearly laughing. “False wards?”

“The wards are real enough, but I wonder how much blight there really is behind them.”

“I’m fool enough to find out if you are.”

She glanced up at the shadow of the mountain, the stars blossoming all around it. “In the morning. A little foolishness goes
a long way.”

The western sky caught fire and lined all the clouds in orange and violet as Isyllt and Asheris returned to the Khas. Weariness
dragged at her limbs, slumped her aching shoulders. Asheris hadn’t spoken since they left the village, and she had no will
to draw him out. The fierce exultation of the fight was long drained from her, leaving only a sick hollowness behind.

She sent Li away and drew her own bath, shedding her filthy clothes on the bathroom floor and sinking into the warm water
with a grateful breath.

When she’d scrubbed dried mud and gore from her hair, she drained the cooling water and refilled the tub, then reached for
her fallen coat and pulled the wrapped mirror from her pocket. She could all but hear Kiril’s chiding voice—good mirrors were
expensive and hard to replace at a moment’s notice.

“Adam,” she whispered, trailing her fingers across the surface; water streaked and beaded in the wake of her touch.

A moment later an image resolved, the mercenary’s face focusing in the glass. His skin was pasty, eyes bruised, green vivid
behind purple-shadowed lids.

Isyllt let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “What happened to you? And where are you?”

A smile twisted his mouth. “The local wildlife. But Vienh promises the worst has passed.” Isyllt raised a brow at that, remembering
her missing scarf, but she knew Adam wouldn’t trust carelessly. “She found me a smuggler’s cache to hide out in for a while,”
he went on. “You look more comfortable. Not to mention cleaner.”

She snorted, tilted the mirror upward. “It’s very pleasant, for house arrest. But I think someone will try to kill me soon.”

“Who?”

“An assassin posing as an apprentice mage—maybe she really is both. The Viceroy uses her to clean up messes.”

“Then you’ve got more than one problem. The Dai Tranh has someone in the palace posing as a servant, and they’re planning
some entertainment during the execution tomorrow. Anhai’s maid helped frame you, and it sounds like she wants a more permanent
solution now.”

“Lovely. Something to look forward to. What’s her name, the maid?”

“Kaeru—I don’t know the clan. The other woman’s I didn’t catch.”

“Good work. Have you heard about what happened in Xao Par Khan?”

“I’ve been keeping my head down today. What happened?”

“Ghosts attacked, killed everyone, but I don’t know why. Let me know if you hear anything useful.”

“What do you want me to do tomorrow if trouble happens at the execution?”

“Stay close and watch. If I have to run, I’ll try to meet you at the docks by sunset. I should go. Be careful.”

“You too.”

She broke the connection and his face faded into black. The water had cooled, and her fingertips were wrinkled. She ached
for sleep, but instead she combed her hair and dressed and went to find Asheris.

He answered the door in a robe and loose trousers, the smell of soap and water still clinging to his skin. The hollow look
around his eyes lingered.

“Are you all right?” she asked.