No, I think he actually chose to save me. For whatever reason that I’m not sure I could understand even after I’ve lived a hundred years.
And that keeps me from taking another step forward and sealing his fate.
I don’t know what sort of man would potentially sacrifice himself to save his mortal enemy, but I know that the world would be a worse off place if it loses someone like that.
So, instead of turning and running, even if it’s what Evengi would want me to do, I take a step toward the necromancer’s ghost instead.
I feel my eyebrows rise and a smile play across my face as I realize that the dead necromancers may have a bargaining chip in Evengi, but I have a bargaining chip of my own. Myself.
“So,” I say as I pace in front of him. “I hear you like your necromancers living. It would be a shame if someone altered that.”
I reach into my shirt and draw out a poison vial hanging from a chain around my neck. A gift from my father, something to defend me if necromancy ever came up short. I shake the content of the vial. “This is the venom of a dragon’s tooth. It’s lethal and a fast-acting poison at that. Good luck getting my heart to beat again after I drink it. I’d be just as dead as you are now.”
The ghost hisses. “You’re lying.”
I pop off the lid. “Let’s prove it then.”
“Wait!” The ghost snarls as he holds up his hand as if he could actually stop me. “You would truly face death for this man?”
“Death has been my constant companion since birth,” I spit out. “Do you really think I’d actually fear it?”
The ghost is silent for a long moment before he says. “I suggest an exchange then. If this priest’s life is so valuable to you that you would trade your own, then prove it. Take his place. Come to the burial mound, and we will make a trade. You for him.”
I press my lips together as I consider his words. They are layered with utter surprise. I can’t blame him, I’m not entirely sure why I’m doing this myself.
I should turn around and leave now, abandon Evengi to his fate.
I place the lid back on the bottle. “I’ll come to your disgusting burial mound,” I spit out, hardly believing the words coming from my mouth. “But he had better be in one piece when I get there.”
The ghost smirks. “Believe me, as a necromancer you would know that dismemberment can be messy and complicated, but that is entirely up to you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Evengi
“You fool!” Natasya’s father howls in my ears. I grimace rubbing my ear against my shoulder. “You had every opportunity to let her die and yet you sacrificed yourself for her? Your blood will join a streaming river of red she leaves in her wake.”
“At least it will allow me to find some peace away from you,” I grumble as I stretch my fingers, trying to bring some circulation to my fingers.
I only just recently regained consciousness after the apparent thrashing Brom’s decapitated body gave me. I try not to take the defeat too hard. It’s difficult to defeat the dead, no killing blowwould stop them. No, the only way to stop the undead is by completely destroying them.
Incineration is the course that most choose when dealing with fighting the dead.
Unfortunately, I don’t happen to have any fire on hand, and I was never a very good magicker. As proven by the fact that I nearly got myself killed with a flame spell of my own back at the academy.
“Do you really think you will find peace if you are killed by a necromancer?” Natasya’s father continues. “You know surprisingly little for being a ghost hunter.”
I roll my eyes as I shift my weight slightly grimacing at the pounding in my head. Not all of it is because of the ghost, just most of it. The rest is likely the result of whatever blow I received to render me unconscious.
I turn my head to see that we are underground. Torches flicker because apparently not even the dead can see in the dark. Or more likely, the firelight has to do with whatever ritual they would like to perform. Perhaps the flames are meant to consume Natasya as they rip out her heart.
From the arrangement of the stones, I’d wager that I’m in one of the burial mounds. A central one given its size.
All around the mound are shambling corpses of the reanimated necromancers. I can make out the spirits floating above them flickering in and out of existence as a constant murmur drowns at my ears.
I start counting the decaying bodies gathered around but then give up. If it isn’t the full one hundred necromancers, then it’s pretty close.
I’m tied up and appear to have been stuffed into one of the slabs where they kept the dead before the bodies got up and wandered off.
