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  Copyright © 2019 by David Rose

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  epub isbn: 9781644280690

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Rose, James David, author.

  Title: Mulgara: The Necromancer’s Will / David Rose.

  Description: First Trade Paperback Original Edition | A Vireo Book |

  New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA: Rare Bird Books, 2019.

  Identifiers: ISBN 9781947856882

  Subjects: LCSH Magic—Fiction. | Wizards—Fiction. | Fantasy. |

  BISAC FICTION / Fantasy / Action & Adventure.

  Classification: LCC PS3618.O7835 M85 2019 | DDC 813.6—dc23

  “A hidden grace in this horrible place, come loping and leaping with breath. The fugitive flowers in the malefic bowers,

  the captors of beauty and death.”

  —Denom Vandahl, Poems of the Classics

  Contents

  Irion’s Tale

  Seasmil’s Tale

  A Tale From A Good Butler

  Epilogue

  Irion’s Tale

  As a young necromancer, when necromancy was still legal, my great-uncle Maecidion had climbed the ranks of our House to perch on its highest seat. The only man in history to put the Conqueror to negotiation now lay still.

  After a funeral where my family thronged together in the ornate blacks of mourning, a gathering of mostly strangers had weathered the height of the rainy season, paraded under the half-finished statues of Do-Gooder’s Row, and now sat and squirmed.

  I, Irion Ordrid, had to suffer this charade, administered by a barrister calling off names that made me want to kill. My scalp never took to growing hair, making it all the easier to wipe the sweat from my brow in this oppressive heat. What I was witnessing I could hardly bear. I locked my pointed jaw, so as not to speak. Our House was in no shortage of enemies; but unlike the villainous House of Rogaire, too many had actually come to my family’s reading and now brushed and breathed against me.

  I thanked my eyes for being set deep in my face, for in the gloom they were unable to give away who I razored with passing glances.

  Cackles erupted. A crone hobbled her way to the barrister’s desk and was bequeathed the jabbering head of a Scepter. Scepters, once elected, answered only to Apex Scepters. The Apexes answered only to the Conqueror—the aforementioned reclusive and ultimate leader of our dismal lands.

  This head that I watched, whose jaw agonized moans out from its mummified flesh, belonged to a legislative slug who in life garnered fame for outlawing necromancy in Rehleia. Now he caused great mirth, pleading with us users of the black arts to only return him to death. Our gleeful responses made the dear thing weep dust for tears. While the world gazed upon his tomb, mistaking that he rested in peace, he would be suffering long after even Do-Gooder’s Row was one day complete.

  My amusement having been temporarily fondled, I was brought back to the day’s ugliness when a jar of my great-uncle’s Ghorlaxium went to the warlock who sat beside me. Blossoming only one day per year, its purple petals were unparalleled in their ability to hold an apparition in thrall. An assortment of torture devices, books, scrolls, and various other clutter went to smiling new owners.

  But the mob soon joined me in my outrage.

  —

  Rumors that Maecidion Ordrid was dying had caused great unease. When he died, or so went the most common thread of gossip from the bawling, typical, average, flinching Rehleian, demons would erupt from the earth and take my great-uncle “back”—a charitable act as they could ever have hoped for, except that the demons were reportedly going to grab all the innocent souls they could before scampering back to Hell.

  Those less inclined to listen to the holy dribble of Chapwyn priests were more worried that our land—only a decade removed from total warfare—would re-splinter. The Metropolitan Ward—dumb faces in even dumber uniforms charged with policing Rehleia and its three cities—they wouldn’t be able to hold back this chaotic tide. Haggling farmers in the market tossed speculations of inevitable doom as hearty as heads of lettuce and copper coin. An Ordrid civil war was a top contender, how my aunts and cousins would send the world to cinders by pulling in various secular powers.

  Perhaps more reasonably feared: if the powers who built roads instead of weaved magic became convinced that my house, the mighty House of Ordrid, had weakened to a critical point. Our annihilation had usually just been furtive Chapwyn church talk, or so I had always been told. But trying to eliminate our entire tribe—the same tribe that once rose legions of skeletons with the wiggle of an onyx-ringed finger—the people feared it would merely provoke us into summoning more unearthly allies.

  No, a good sheep of the new land would prefer if incorrigibles would just die in jail, or maybe unclog their plumbing, and then vanish until needed again. Though I was from a lower branch, it boiled me that some referred to my kinsmen with the blissful condescension of one who’s never had a knife to their neck. But it gave me some reprieve too, knowing their wishful thinking was different than actually taking up arms against us, the most notorious lot in all Rehleia.

  Before attending the clandestine school we dead-raisers call the lyceum, as all men from prominent families must, I’d suffered the maps and history lessons of a primary education. But unlike the Ouvarnias perched in the flamboyant city of Pelliul, or the politician-churning House of Lotgard, I find such learning only useful now to pinpoint my own family’s prominence.

  Rehleia is a knotted peninsula, like an afflicted fist stuck out on a withered arm. Pushing east and connecting Rehleia to the Other Lands is our Red Isthmus—named so for the rivers of blood that had once flown from its narrow hinterland down into the sea.

  At this east our lands meet the world of Azad, a desert kingdom littered with pit fires and bulb-topped minarets built low to the sand. Above Azad: Serabandantilith, raped by Azad and Rehleia once they figured out that ceasing their own war allowed for the pillaging of their weaker neighbor. Azad took the land. Rehleia took the people and the gold. The former mixing with the dark Suelans, beefing up Rehleia’s much-celebrated slave class.

  A few years after the Rehleian Years of Peace had officially commenced, trade began over the Red Isthmus, sweeping aside all its broken swords and lances.

  And as far as Rehleia is concerned, the House of Ordrid’s stronghold is here in Nilghorde. On a city hill above the brick wilderness, our family keep looks over the western sea. In this jagged crown, stowed in some charnel nook, the great Maecidion had finally died.

  It was long argued over: when he, rightfully the most infamous of the province’s celebrities, actually discorporated. His form was kept together, I was told, but despite diplomatic transactions with the demonic, means of animation still slowly seeped from the flesh as it rose from bone.

  Most of the estate was already in the possession of Maecidion’s most esoteric clutch: sisters Ophelia and Lialifer, cousins to my mother, and Morfil Ordrid, whose entire life had been dutifully in the shadow of his Lord and pedagogue. But that didn’t stop the vile throng from attending today. All were in accord; given just a goblet by
his wishes held the highest prestige in this society others dare called foul.

  The air was a kennel’s warmth, sinking down us and settling on the floor. The room itself was but stone and shadow, both made known only by a ring of dull candlelight. In this ring’s center, attendants pulled chairs out from under the other, bites were delivered and tended to, and murmurs slithered amongst the bequeathings yet-to-be.

  The barrister—looking as if batting away thoughts of being skewered—readied himself and continued reading the last will and testament of Maecidion the Virulent.

  —

  When Maecidion’s familiar was read off to anyone other than an Ordrid, the only thing that brought me to a fuller froth was that it went to Denoreyph Belot. Belot!—a self-important narcissist who cared about such frivolities as charm spells. For pursuing a discipline outside necromancy, he was especially hated. His dimmer critics obsessed over this feat, and obsessed all the dimmer that those who didn’t join them in their disgust had been in fact charmed themselves. I joined them, that and then some. Arrogant, Belot’s silk swayed as he strutted up and seized the imp in its cage.

  Belot! That prancing girl, I thought, reeling back to spit. Imp belongs in the family. I watched him until he sat back down to preen his sash and cross his legs like an actor.

  Bickering soon gave way to the normalcy of hissing. More of Maecidion’s chambers were cleared out and soon snatched by their corresponding names.

  I hadn’t received so much as a wall sconce. One more carbuncled witch from the hills being called up to lust over my family’s possessions and a stink bomb may have to be the first in an arsenal of unhinged aggressions. Yes, a lover of caustic tricks am I. My pockets can range from such simplicities as a spool of yarn or a malodorous vial to more severe components that help build spells able to make one wish to see their own mother couple with mountain trolls. A quick inventory proved I’d brought a few rather useful—

  The den was pure noise. It was as if that Scepter’s headless body had pushed up the doors of his tomb, stumbled through the streets, and then led a pod of the Metropolitan Ward to hack up us patrons. The uproar became awe, then it became envy. A statue had been placed on the barrister’s desk.

  Seen in the clasped hands of every portrait of Maecidion to ever cover a sullen wall, the statue, a hand itself, was made of pure lapis lazuli. The size of your average man’s, strains of gold feathered and swirled in the deep blue of its outstretched fingers. In its palm, three faces made a row. The outer two left trails at its base near the wrist, thus completing a long-agreed-upon murmur that they resembled haunted tadpoles. And these both seemed poised to circle the central visage; caught in an eternal, devilish sneer.

  Astonished grumbles carried “Morfil” and “…for who then?” Chair legs squeaked. Hopefuls rushed the desk. A fistfight erupted.

  I didn’t need to tear down the aisle or crawl over any cursed heads. I knew it well. This peculiar ornament had been in Maecidion’s possession long before a single Suelan slave had been brought to Rehleian shores. It had also been previously owned by other powerful Ordrid leaders, long returned to oblivion.

  What would it would mean if the Virulent left it to me? What misery would be deserving to anyone other than I, if I were not to receive her?

  And while I’d been lost in such thoughts, fiddling in my pockets, a name had been read.

  When it was announced for a second time, the gathering boiled over from gasped vacuum to pure hysteria. Slugging his way forward, Gormorster Toadly, as surprised as his howling detractors, knew now the first announcement hadn’t been a trick of his ears. With a rodent’s face sitting on top of several glistening chins, the gormandizer smelling of sweat, sweets, and necrophilia looked to be the unlikeliest of all attendants to receive an invitation, let alone this choice artifact.

  I was soon leading the mob, hurling insults and looking for an available chair not bolted to the floor. While an imp was highly sought after, this was an heirloom. It going to anyone outside the House was detestable, and all the more foul to the senses that a flatulent glutton-wretch like Toadly would now own it. I had to wrestle down a misfit trying to rise from deep within me. Reappraising the genius of my recently deceased patriarch was by all accounts an ill strategy, even if he was dead.

  Toadly gloated and giggled, showboating by a series of squinty-eyed sneers. He held the statue like a pageant winner or a proud new father.

  I burst open the doors and marched out into the lobby. Last wishes be damned. That inner-misfit was winning, and it was straight to the coat closest. I pilfered through the dampened garb. It didn’t take long. I found the raven-feathered collar.

  “Belot,” I heard myself say, “Still wearing lyceum monstrosities.” I opened the coal coat and rifled through it. A smile broke free across my face by the second or third pocket. Charm spells were one thing, but Belot loved a single practice above all else; raping the minds of the dying. It took the meeting of two special powders to enact such a spell—two powders I then replaced with two components you’d never wish to see conjoined.

  When the crowd hobbled out from the hall, I melted back into the swarm. Some were angry, most disappointed, but those were more their ways than any. A few of the more brazen cursed Maecidion before catching themselves mid-utterance to look over their shoulder, staring into my disapproving glare. Before long the hall and the coat closet were all but empty. The fiends returned to their lairs to, as Chapwyn priests so ardently report, brew their irksome things; slither under the moonlight; and invoke, summon, and fondle the dead.

  —

  From the lower branch indeed, I would one day be feared and exalted for this warpath that I’d undertook. I kicked the door open and pulled the clerk in by her hair. In a dark corner serving only as a residence for spiders and scrolls, I uncupped my hand from her mouth and put one finger to my lips.

  The Nilghorde Hall of Records was monstrous. The main doors towered green with midsections of stained glass, but deep in its catacombs the door swinging shut behind me peeled three layers of different paint. The central corridor had been a murmuring hive of footsteps. Moving about, this way and that, irate merchants and disputing tenants slammed doors and stamped down stairs.

  Now only flickers of their shadows made way to me. I was at the Residency Office; used only by the Ward and magistrate’s apprentices, and maybe that was why it was at the end of such a long tunnel. To my good fortune, only one clerk toiled in lamplight behind the reception desk. To my bad fortune, I’d spent the last of my Ghorlaxium on the potion I’d made for her.

  When boiled in small doses and cut with Leaves of Luka, Ghorlaxium makes the living spew out all they know. I knelt above the clerk in dual dismay. I needed another batch; if all went well, this woman who’d gulped the potion past the edge of my blade would lead me forward. But, more pressing, an overdose didn’t kill—that would at least give me some options. If only I had the time. But rather than death, my miscalculation had resulted in a rolling blabber.

  “Kornard kept on,” she said, looking past me with bulging eyes. “My sister couldn’t pla…please him after having her baby. The baby that woulda been ours coulda never have been.” I considered killing her. “Mother woulda never…” She trailed off into a string of inaudibles. I gazed around. Somewhere in this mess of boxes, scrolls, drawers, wobbling towers of books there was a name, and with it an address. “Mother woulda killed all four of us!”

  After an eternity, the abortion confession ceased.

  “Are you scared?”

  “Terrified” the clerk said, her voice as flat as her hair matting the floorboards. She lay like an open-casket funeral, even when I took my hands off her wrists.

  “Are barristers designated by duty?” Her mouth opened but said nothing. “Here, in this office?” I added.

  “Why…yes, by specialty you could say.”

  “Good,” I said, petting her h
ead. Then, spacing my words out to eliminate any more blunders,“Where can I find magistrates in charge of probate? In charge of wills?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I pressed down on her wrists. “Then who does?”

  “Yodïor, my boss.”

  “And he comes?”

  “Soon.”

  I’d heard of a trick back at the lyceum for keeping them quiet. “Make a noise now only if you’ve never lied.”

  It worked.

  —

  Not a one, not a larval lawyer or single member of the Ward, approached the reception desk. Having deprived the clerk of her apron, I sat behind the slab and watched the lamp oil burn. The central corridor’s shadows weakened, fading down from what was once a stamping march to a few furtive slinks and far calls. The lamp smoke grew thicker, my back began to ache, and then a silhouette grew as it approached. A black dot soon emerged in lamplight, turning into a lumpy man whose glasses reflected shifts of yellow and orange.

  “You must be my supervisor,” I said, putting down the sheet of parchment I’d been pretending to read. “Yoddy, Yodi.”

  “Who—where is Loona?”

  “That was her name, Loona. She went home, sick.” The little man’s face glistened with sweat he’d worked up while walking down the hall. But that wasn’t the only reason he was sweating. Looks over his shoulder and nervous scratches to his crotch and ass told me everything. “I’m a temp.”

  “A temp? We don’t—”

  His attempt to flee was as muffled as his screams. The sheet of parchment balled and shoved in his mouth, my blade separating his chins, Yodïor kicked as I lifted his feet off the stones. The little door with the awful paint swung open for a second time.

  “No!” Yodïor screamed before I kicked him in the gut. Gasping to regain his breath, he lay in Loona’s blood, which by way of an unfortunate slip, I too felt: cooled and congealing. I’d slit her throat when the potion had worn off. A means to an end no driven man has time to worry over. Though she was on her stomach and this Yodïor lay on his back, I mused for but a moment how they lay locked in a stare, unifying two on opposing sides of the grave.