The Necromancer's Nephew (10 page)

"That's as close to it as I'm going," Warren said. The ghoul held a furry forearm over his eyes to block out the golden light that streamed from the little windows of the dome at the center of the room. Marla had been able to approach no further than the tunnel's mouth in the wall of the large outer chamber. The light, she said, made her sick
.

Garrett thought it was beautiful.

He handed Warren the unnecessary witchfire torch and moved closer to the center dome.

He should be afraid, part of his brain reasoned. He was here to find a ghost, and ghosts should be frightening, but he could not imagine anything frightening inside that little sunlit house.

He walked around the perimeter a short distance, squinting his eyes against the brilliance of the light. He soon found an open doorway. His sight still overwhelmed, he could make out no details within. Nevertheless, he stepped through the door.

Garrett gasped, almost sobbing with the wave of emotion that swept over him as he entered the room. Golden warmth filled his body, and a scent like a summer meadow brought tears of half-remembered joys to his dazzled eyes. His knees trembled beneath him, and Garrett reeled, leaning a gloved hand against the stone doorframe for support. His fingers tingled as though he had plunged his bare hand into a stream of warm water. He pulled back his hand and stared at it, almost daring to rip the glove off to see if the scars were still there. Then he mastered himself, and his hand balled into a fist at his side.

"Welcome," a woman's voice said.

Slowly the golden glow dimmed enough that Garrett could make out the interior of the room. The domed chamber seemed larger inside than it had from the outside. All manner of plants filled the room, planted in urns and troughs, stacked upon shelves and hanging in baskets above him. A large circular pool of blue water dominated the center of the room, and, from the center of the pool, rose a low stone pillar. Atop the pillar sat what appeared to be a crystal shard about the span of Garrett's hand. The crystal shimmered with what could only be described as pure sunlight. Garrett had seen no light so beautiful in the three years since coming to the city of Wythr.

A movement in the corner of his eye drew his attention, and there he saw his first ghost.

Anna Gree stood a foot taller than Garrett. She was a slim woman, though obviously not a human. Her overly large eyes glowed a pale blue. Indeed her thin body and her ornate robes gave off a faint azure glow, and he could see the wall behind her through her translucent form. She wore long, wispy hair that hung straight down on either side of her heart-shaped face, though the tips of her long, delicate ears poked out. She smiled at him, and he smiled back. His eyes fell then to the wasted stumps where her hands should have been.

"Hi," he said, a bit hesitantly, "My name is Garrett."

"I know," the ghost replied, "M
y friend told me about you. Your friends are waiting outside, I take it?"

"Yes," he said, "the light is too bright for them."

"But it's not too bright for you?"

Garrett grinned. "I think it's wonderful!"

Anna Gree's smile widened.

"Your
friend
told you about me?" Garrett asked.

The ghost watched him for a moment and then nodded.

"Your name is Annalien, isn't it?" Garrett said.

"How did you know that?" the ghost asked.

"I don't know... I just did," he said, "It's like there's something..."

"Something you're forgetting?" Annalien mused.

"Yeah," Garrett said, "It seems like I can almost remember, but then it's gone again."

Annalien laughed, glancing sideways. "Very interesting."

"Do you know what it is?" he asked.

"It's not my place to say," Annalien answered, "but I've got a feeling it will come back to you in time."

"I hope so," he said.

"So, why did you come here?" she asked.

"Oh," Garrett said, "I'm sorry. I came here because the goblin king said that you had his flower."

Annalien laughed, a high, musical laugh. "Yes, yes, I did steal his flower, I suppose."

"Would you mind giving it back?" Garrett said, "I mean I could take it back for you, if you'd let me."

Annalien did not answer, but moved closer to Garrett, her ghostly sandaled feet making no sound as she approached him.

Garrett felt suddenly uncomfortable, wanting to step back, but he forced himself to stand his ground as the ghost drew near.

"You don't seem very afraid of me," Annalien said, stopping only a few steps away from Garrett.

"I... I guess I am a little," he admitted, "I've never seen a ghost before. It's just..."

"Just what?"

"Well, you don
't seem very scary," he said, "a
nd this place isn't very scary either."

"Your friends didn't find it very inviting."

"They don't really like sunlight very much," he said.

"I see," Annalien said.

"Why is there sunlight here?" Garrett asked, "I mean, how can there be?"

Annalien looked back over her shoulder to the glowing crystal shard at the center of the room and sighed. "It is beautiful, isn't it? I thought so myself when I first saw it. The day the Old World died. The day I died."

"I don't understand," Garrett said.

Annalien smiled and motioned for him to have a seat on a low stone bench, half-hidden among the ivy. She sat down beside him. She started to reach out to him with a handless stump then drew it back, looking away.

"I lost my hands when I picked it up," she said, "It had fallen from the sky, landing in the forest near the city. I saw it fall and followed it, believing that it was a sign that we might be saved. We had no hope, you see. The dragons had all fled away, and the elves simply awaited our doom."

"What doom?" Garrett asked.

She regarded him silently for a moment. "Why you're little more than a child!" she exclaimed.

"I'm thirteen," he said.

She laughed again.

"Garrett!" Warren called from outside, "You all right in there?"

"I'm fine," Garrett answered, "C
an you see well enough to come in?"

"Uh, I think I'll stay out here as long as you're all right."

"Your friend is very brave," Annalien chuckled.

Garrett said nothing.

"Ah, yes," the ghost said, "you asked what doom came to the elves. I owe you an answer."

"How many moons are there in the sky?" she asked.

Garrett paused, wondering if he had misunderstood the question. "One moon," he said.

"Correct!" she said, "At least you are correct now. There was a time, long ago, when your answer would have seemed to me as foolish as my question seemed to you. There were once two moons in the sky."

Garrett stared at her in disbelief.

"One, the moon you know now, silver and pale, still watches over the world above, but she had a sister. A crystal moon once hung in the sky beside her, and, because of her, there was no night. This second moon caught the light of the sun and cast it back down on the face of the world when the sun had set, and all the world reveled in her beauty.

"Most of all, the dragons loved the crystal moon, for dragons love beautiful things, and nothing was so beautiful to them as her light. It was the only thing they loved that they could not possess, for their domain extended only to the skies above and not beyond. For this reason, they made a pact with a thing that could traverse the blackness between the worlds... a creature which had the power to give them the one thing they desired but could not reach."

Garrett looked at the crystal shard at the center of the pool.

"You've already guessed the end of my story!" Annalien laughed.

"How can you... I mean, how would you even... a whole moon?" Garrett said.

"If only you had been there to council the dragons!" she laughed and then grew somber. "But then, they would not have listened. They realized far too late they had been betrayed."

"What do you mean?" Garrett asked, "Who betrayed them."

"The Enemy fulfilled its part of the bargain," she said, "The crystal moon shifted from its sacred path and fell from the sky. By all sane reason, no one should have survived that day."

"What happened?"

"I do not know," Annalien admitted, "We waited for our end to come. The dragons fled to their respective fates, leaving us, their creations, to face our deaths alone. The crystal moon burned a fiery path through the sky, and we wept for the end of all beauty and life. And then..."

"What?" Garrett asked.

Annalien shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know what happened. There was a brilliant flash of light, and then a roar that shook the earth. Where the moon had been before, now fiery stars of flame fell like tears from the red sky. One such tear, the one you've already guessed at, fell near here, and I hurried to see where it had fallen.

"I found it in a burned patch of forest at the bottom of a shallow hole in the earth. The shard lay there in the naked soil, wreathed in white flame. It was so beautiful. I reached out with both hands to take it up...

"The others found me there, senseless, beside the stone, my hands burned to ash. The flames had cooled, and so they took up the stone and my dying body to bring us back inside the city. I lived long enough to know that my people had survived that savage day, though the world would never be the same again.

"I don't know why I remained here when my body died. It feels as though I have something left to do, though I do not know what it is."

Garrett chewed his lip. "I don't understand... I mean why are your hands still gone. If your real body is all dead, and your ghost body is just a memory of what it was before, why doesn't it... remember your hands the way they were too?"

The ghost laughed. "Look who's lecturing me on bad memories! The boy who can't even remember how he knows my real name!"

Garrett frowned.

"No," she said, "It is a fair question, and I am ashamed to say I do not know the answer."

"I'm sorry," Garrett said, "I've just never met a ghost before."

"You're more accustomed to the less-talkative dead, I assume," she said.

Garrett nodded.

Annalien smiled, and looked away. "This was once a city filled with life and boundless hope. I suppose the silent dead are its real masters now. Perhaps I should try being more like them."

Garrett studied the toes of his boots for a while before speaking. "I'm sorry," he said, "I don't mean to offend you. I just wanted to ask you about the flower."

Annalien turned back to him. She moved as though to put her hand on his shoulder,
and then
let her wasted arm drop to her side. She sighed. "The flower must stay with me," she said.

"But he really loves that flower," Garrett said, "and I think the light here hurts him too much to come and ask you for it himself."

"A goblin who loves something?" Annalien mused, "Now that is an oddity worth a hundred ghosts!"

"What do you mean?" Garrett asked.

"Goblins were created for war," Annalien said, "I was not the only one to have a bad day when the moon fell out of the sky. It drove the dragons mad. They could still sing their wonderful songs and call life into being from nothingness, only now their songs were full of sorrow and rage. Rage against everything. Rage against the race of men."

"Why?" Garrett asked.

"I suppose because you took the world from us," Annalien said, "You took what was once beautiful and pure, and twisted it to your will. They hated you for that. They hated you so much that their hate twisted them, and twisted their song. And so they sang into being creatures like the goblins... creatures created to wage endless war against mankind."

Garrett stifled a laugh. "The goblin didn't seem very scary," he said.

"Imagine a thousand of them, waving swords and howling for your blood. And then imagine their masters behind them, driving them into battle, trolls, hydras, and worse."

Garrett nodded. He tried to imagine the massive troll trapper from the marketplace, only without the floppy leather hat and friendly smile.

"Now imagine an angry dragonflight, ripping the clouds apart as they come sweeping down on your army and burning you all to cinders," Annalien said.

Garrett flinched. He had no trouble imagining that.

Annalien looked at him, suddenly comprehending. "Oh," she said, "Oh, I'm so sorry, boy. I think I talk too much sometimes. It’s not often there's someone here to be hurt by it."

"It's all right," Garrett said, "I got burned a long time ago. It doesn't hurt anymore."

"No," Annalien whispered, "some burns don't ever stop hurting... not really. I'm so sorry."

"Anyway," Garrett said, "I think the goblin really cares about this flower of his. He doesn't seem hateful at all... a little crazy maybe, but he's not bad."