Years slowly passed, and I was ten, then twelve. I became a better fencer than Henry and won eight duels out of ten. Sometimes, Henry, Tom, and Rick all banded together to take me on. I loved that; it was a challenge both for me and them.
Martha marveled at my necromantic prowess. She realized very well that I could easily raise all the dead bodies in the neighborhood and put them down without breaking a sweat. Controlling any undead or summoning any demon, whether a war demon or run-of-the-mill succubus, came naturally to me. I felt all-powerful. And one day, it almost killed me.
I got a new teacher out of that.
***
Rene Ghirr urged his horse on until it dropped dead. Then he waited an hour, and the animal recovered. The zombie was starting to smell, but the advantages were obvious: an undead horse was not as fast as a live one, but it never tired and could gallop even with broken legs.
Unfortunately, its rider wasn't tireless himself. By the third day in the saddle, the necromancer was indistinguishable from the corpses he could raise. To put it simply, a once good-looking, forty-year-old man looked very much like a vampire-pale, red-eyed, with sullen cheeks, complete with unkempt hair and a black cape. Black was practical, after all-you'd have to launder a white one every day, while black would serve until it turned grey.
Rene, as you've already guessed, was a necromancer-a proper, powerful one, and also a scientist. Well, actually, he was a scientist first. He even taught art history at the Royal College of Heraldry.
As for necromancy, if you're born with a gift for magic, you can't just bury it-you can only nurture it. Or it will nurture itself, whether you like it or not. Fire outbreaks start happening around fire mages, rivers flood and rain falls wherever water mages live, and necromancers... If a necromancer doesn't know about their gift, various forms of the undead will always gather within his reach.
Rene learned about his gift early-he was nine. Jok, his favorite dog, had just died, and the boy spent all evening crying, repeating the same phrase. "I don't want Jok to die! I want him back!"
Rene learned to be careful what he wished for that very night when he found his dead dog, all smeared in graveyard dirt, right on top of his blanket. The boy's scream woke his parents.
Marghit and Weiss Ghirr were wise people. They didn't start shouting, "Demon!" "Unholy spawn!" "Dark Tempter!" or, to top it all, "Necromancer!" They just realized their child was...well, the very same one. Still, as educated people, they decided to figure it out by themselves.
They didn't wish for little Rene to grow up confined to a convent, or even worse, to be burned at the stake, accused of any and all troubles, from a crow nestling on a roof to a poor turnip harvest in the neighboring village. Even in convents, necromancers were burned. Rene's parents had different plans for their child.
Which is why Marghit spent the entire night by his bed, convincing him that nothing bad was going on. Yes, this is Jok. He was just tired and left you for dog heaven, my dear. But you called him from there, and now he'll have to stay in a dead body, poor boy. You should just release him. You love him, don't you? Then don't make him suffer anymore.
With the first rays of the sun, Weiss headed to the bookstore, where-he knew for a fact-they sold books on magic under the counter. That is where he bought his son Rene's first necromancy textbook, "Notes of a Practicing Necromancer Alfred Lucius. My First Steps, Mistakes, and Improvements". Rene learned that book by heart, cover to cover.
Jok spent the day in the boy's room. After nightfall, Rene put him back in his grave-and somehow, without realizing it, released his soul. Who says animals don't have souls? Rene could have sworn that upon flying away, Jok's soul gave him a cheerful yap, and he almost felt a cold nose poke into his palm. Don't be sad for me, boy. One day, we'll run on a green lawn together, just you wait.
Rene started to learn necromancy in earnest. He did it in secret, of course-his official field of study was art history, like his father's. After Rene turned twenty, Weiss Ghirr died, and his son inherited his position at the Royal College of Heraldry. Soon, however, he realized that it wasn't enough. Not enough money, not enough options, and not nearly enough ways to use his gift for necromancy, or he risked accidentally releasing magical energy. Rene didn't waste too much time thinking. Putting on a mask and a hooded cape, he knocked on the door of an amulet shop, offering his help to those on the other side of the law. He performed various services: he could summon a ghost, raise the deceased, call a demon, find out if a person was alive or dead, cast or dispel a hex-it's hard to list everything. The only thing he had never done was use his gift for murder, but simply having that gift was enough for him to be treated like a criminal.
Rene was thirty-five when Marghit, his mother, passed away, leaving him all alone in the world. He still had a house and money in his pocket, though. Rene didn't want to marry, reasonably suspecting that his potential wife might disapprove of his...hobby. And by then, necromancy was being punished with death by burning. He wanted to live more than to marry, and women of easy virtues from bawdy houses were enough to satisfy his base urges.
Rene got caught when he fell for the young Cassandra Likeworth. She was a niece of Hermann Likeworth, one of the theology professors, a stern and religious man who was Rene's constant objector during his classes. Something that the necromancer considered normal and even a prerequisite for new students-such as being absent-minded, being easily distracted, having failing attendance, and forgetting homework-in Hermann's eyes was akin to a crime. Waving his arms around, he listed the transgressions of his victims in front of the whole college and sent them to the stables to be punished and straightened up. The students nicknamed him Praying Mantis. As for his daughters, Hermann kept them in a convent and planned on making them nuns.
Rene knew all that very well, as he did about Hermann's views on religion, on necromancers, and not to mention, on women.
Cassandra was the daughter of his recently deceased older brother. Unlike Hermann, Alexius Likeworth had appreciated the finer aspects of life, like good wine, rich fabrics, and beautiful women. He had lived life to the fullest and hadn't denied his daughter anything. Until she was seventeen, Cassandra had been treated like a princess. And then, Alexius had a heart attack, and for five years, she became her father's caretaker. Over this time, the family lost some of its money, but not too much. Cassandra still had enough for a dowry. Yet she had refused to get married or to stop looking after her father-she loved him too much for that. And after his death, all of his fortune went to his brother, as their father had stipulated. Cassandra only got a dowry to be given to her upon marriage.
Hermann didn't really forbid his niece to marry or force her to become a nun. He knew that it was too late for that, and it would be against the wishes of his brother, too. But he wanted to find her a husband who conformed to his ideas of what a good man should be: a pious boy from a respected church-going family. That wasn't what Cassandra had in mind. Over the years of her father's illness, she had gotten used to full autonomy, not to mention her father had viewed religion pretty much the same way as he had earthworms. I walk, they crawl; we don't interfere with each other, but there's no point in crossing paths. What for? What would a human discuss with a worm?
During the years of Alexander Radenor's rule, such treatment of the Church had been common and even encouraged. It was Rudolph, Tempter take him, who had started to slowly oppress everyone who was indifferent toward religion.
As for Cassandra, she was the same as her father. She didn't care about the Bright Saint, and it never occurred to her to wake up in the wee hours to get to morning prayers. Pray? Why would she? If the Saint was good, he should already know she had never harmed anyone. If he was not, no point in praying, really.
She never said that out loud to her uncle, of course. She was smart enough to realize what kind of person her guardian was and to pretend to be a humble and god-fearing young woman. She covered her all too vibrant hair with a scarf, ordered simple clothes of dark colors, and passionately recited the Testament of the Bright Saint, all the while silently making fun of her uncle.
What were her reasons? She couldn't fight him anyway. If she ever tried to rebel, her uncle could beat her, lock her up, declare her to be mad, or confine her in a convent, as he did with his own daughters. Rudolph's justice gave him all the cards. All she could do was feign obedience and wait in the wings-find a man to marry and get rid of her detestable relative.
But what person would she choose? That was the first question. The second was finding the right man, since her uncle associated such exclusively with the same creatures as himself, all crusty and obsessed with their faith. Cassandra couldn't bring herself to call them people. They seemed inhuman, with empty eyes, the Testament of the Bright Saint on their minds, and a prayer on the tips of their tongues. For some, this might have been normal, but for her, it was pure poison.
Cassandra was offered the choice of two widowers, one a father of eight, the other of five, and a young man her age, who was especially pious, and, as a result of that, afraid to even talk to girls. She suspected that if she were to marry that boy, she'd remain a virgin forever. He probably had no idea that babies weren't brought by a stork. Moreover, he was half a head shorter than her, possessed the narrow shoulders of a man who had never in his life done any physical labor and had disgusting white plaque on his lips. The girl always wanted to spit at the sight of him. If he were her brother, she'd pity him, but as a prospective husband, he made her nauseous. She wasn't desperate enough to resign herself to that marriage.She had to act so cold and stiff that the poor guy first started to stutter in her presence and then just disappeared for good, informing Hermann that his niece was as hard as granite and adamant in her faith.Widowers weren't especially attractive
Rene, who already knew about her pregnancy-he was a necromancer, after all, and any experienced necromancer could easily detect the number of souls next to him-realized that logic was powerless against Cassie, and started to comfort her. It took him two hours-and very pleasurable ones. Yet Cassandra didn't want to go even after that. She was convinced only by her husband's promise to come to her after the epidemic was over.Rene wasn't fooling himself. He knew he would last a moon, while the epidemic was in its height and the others still needed him. Then his fate would be sealed. They would try to kill him. As long as you had a necromancer, finding a stake to burn him on was simple enough. So after fending off the disease, he would need to leave. But first, he needed to sell all of his things to get established in his new home, and his dearly beloved Cassie would have to be sent away from the city with all the money he could gather.So Rene set out to find a family wh
I went for my routine mountain hike, planning to spend a couple of days there. Rick and Henry went to a fair in the neighboring county, and I was bored out of my mind in the castle. So I just ran away. It's not like they will do anything worse than scold me when I get back. At least I'll spend a few days alone with myself and the wind. Why don't I have wings?I had strayed pretty far from home and stumbled upon the idea of meeting Henry and Rick instead of going back. Prepare a surprise for them, so to speak. The most important thing was not to fall into my teachers' hands in the first twenty minutes. Afterward, they would cool off.I had already spent a whole day hanging around the road. Typical-you'd have to be completely bonkers to go visit Torrin. It wasn't just a backwater place; it was the ultimate middle of nowhere. There was no way to leave, either by land or by water, nothing to gain except for fish. As for the silver, we and the locals kept our mouths shut, a
They showed up in two hours.Twelve riders, all dressed in capes-once white, and now smeared in dirt. Three Punishers with their heads shaven, the same look of obsession on their faces, flashes of light in their auras. That was not good at all.Darkness dissolves matter, and light burns it all. A normal person is balanced, but these... But who am I to say that? Demons are parts of darkness, and sooner or later, it will claim me, unless I manage to remain human.They stopped at the scene that I had carefully prepared for them. A dead horse and a man in a black cloak lying on his back. Of course, there was nothing under the cloak, but who would check?So, who'll go first? Ah, too bad I don't have a crossbow. Whatever. I'll manage. Especially since they stopped right where I wanted them to.I sized up the situation for the last time. All right, here we go!A daring leap into the center of the squad, and I landed right behind one of the pursuers
The gathering consisted of me, Rick, Henry, and Martha. It didn’t concern anyone else. They still lived here, they were my family, but it was those three who were there in the beginning, with my mother. Princess Michelle. My mother. Mom. I was so sorry that she had died, but alas. Any woman would die after giving birth to a half-demon—it’s the law. We take too much of their strength, not leaving anything left to continue living. It wouldn’t happen with a quarter-demon, the mother would live, but all half-demons were orphans. There were some exceptions, of course—incubi, vampires, all that riff-raff, but they weren’t true demons, just low-level rabble. Michelle would never have chosen one of them as my father. No, she picked the strongest one. No matter how her friends tried to talk her out of that, she gave it her all. They knew Michelle’s wish and funneled all their energy into her plan. Ric
In a week, after I had enough time to process everything, we gathered the family council, Rick, Henry, Martha and I.We didn’t invite anyone else. Cassandra and Mirabelle didn’t really want to be there, anyway. What could they do? Take pity on me? Please. Neither Rick nor Henry had ever lied to me. Sometimes, they hadn’t told the whole truth, until I was old enough to hear it, anyway. But I had never heard them straight-up lie to me.And now we had to decide on what we were going to do. I couldn’t leave the kingdom in Rudolph’s hands. A king? A crowned oaf sitting on the throne!The Saint only knows what part of his body he uses to think. I know I didn’t want to know.Rick was the first to speak up. “Have you seen enough?”I nodded. Enough? I was stuffed to the brink! For that chaos in his kingdom, uncle should be more than just killed!“So, what will you do?”That made me pa
Radenor was saturated with grime. Poverty, hunger, hate, they hung in the air like a foul mist, unnerving and irritating me. It was the first long trip in my life, and I felt uncertain. I had a companion in Henry, but we would soon part ways, as he was needed back home. I insisted upon that. Henry was responsible for all matters outside Torrin, and Rick wouldn’t be able to handle it without him for long. And I... I would.There was one more fact in my favor—I was hard to kill. I was immune to most poisons, I could use magic, and Henry was an ordinary human, who, whatever he said, had gotten out of shape during his stay in Torrin. He wasn’t that dashing fellow from seventeen years ago anymore.We argued for a while but finally got on the same page. Seeing as how it was improper for a prince to show up at court without servants—princes were helpless and unable to take care of themselves, after all—Tom was to go with me as my servant, as well
“Enough said. Does it still exist?”“It does, but not for long.”“We’ll see...”I was in my human form, of course, all pretty and gentle-looking. I liked my appearance. Wasn’t I cute? Fair-haired, blue-eyed, a perfect replica of my mother. Except for the fact that her tongue hadn’t been forked, and when I lost control, that was how the reverse transformation started. My voice also became raspy, hissing, but why should I care, really? I wasn’t going to kiss anybody here or let anyone look inside my mouth, and the rest didn’t matter.The claws, however... For some reason, they were the second to transform. Gloves wouldn’t help. The only way was to keep myself in check every minute. I absolutely couldn’t blow up. Do half-demons have good self-control? Honestly, not really. But I was also a necromancer, and necromancers who wore their emotions on their sleeves didn’t live long. For us, calm and peace of mind were crucial. And I was calm, quiet as a grave. Which was the exact place where t