The scrolls of sin, p.1
The Scrolls of Sin, page 1
“REVENGE!” originally appeared as “Mulgara: The Necromancer’s Will,” a Rare Bird book edited by Michelle Dotter. Copyright © 2019 by David Rose. Significantly revised from originally published text.
Interior art by Dana Peska of Aeonian Design
Contents
Black Magic Summer
The Leaf of the Palm
Arigol and the Parilgotheum
A Conqueror’s Tale
REVENGE!
I The Final Meeting
II The Mortician’s Tale Part One
III Maecidion
IV The Mortician’s Tale Part Two
V The Municipal Dungeon
VI All Malevolent Masquerade
VII The Mortician’s Tale Part Three
VIII Snier’s Tale
Bosgaard and Bella
The Archer and Adaline
A Hero, Emerged
Related works
Amden Bog: A Novel in Stories
Black Magic Summer
“My neck had been killing me all bleak buzzard day. Wet feet, my hands filthy, my ring mail pushed my boots down further, further into hot, loose mud. There in a high window I saw a pretty girl. How she waved and blew her kisses. Watched as we marched off. Off to war. To die under the foul Ordrid’s blades and a black banner. Cut and hacked, sliced to gobs, like thieves having spread open watched-upon doors, rather than the legs of her; lithe, cool and welcome.”
—Testimony of a peasant, one who lived
“You!” the Ouvarnia spat at the flipped face of his interrogator. “Ordrid scum! Gods curse the world—twins, no less. You look like the ghastly frogs that jump around in my fountain.” The man twisted helplessly in the ropes that hung him upside down. “How many garden fountains do you have,” he said, summoning his strength. “Hmm? In this foul coffin of a keep?”
Having been bitten, punched, and flung down a flight of unforgiving stairs, Umbort Ouvarnia’s head now throbbed as if his skull had been swapped out with the hatching egg of a dragon. He fought the pain, twisting his wrists under the ropes that constricted his bare chest and arms. After his suggestion that he be used for ransom, the only thought that had prevailed in the early hours of his capture was his escape. To see his little ones again, their honey-dew eyes, plump jowls parting, giving smiles to make envious the sun. But that had all withered away. Dying like a man now, a noble ambassador of his House’s iron pride. He worked his ankles futilely in their ropes, and then gave up, letting his head hang.
“Coffin,” Edimor Ordrid said, amused. Twin Ordrids were indeed in this foul room, deep in their keep in Nilghorde. With them, dangling from a rafter, was this prized prisoner. Edimor picked up his knife from the worktable. “We do the same work, you and I. I,” the young necromancer hissed, “I just delight in one, unique addition. Your beads: I must find mine. In the air. In the seas and in the mind. In the polluted heart of clever men. Once skewered onto the cosmic abacus, then and there do we learn…magic. Learn what fire ignites the leaping frog who jumps and cheats the death who pursues him—invented a way? Invented a way to manipulate death, you ask? Dear me, Umbort Ouvarnia—you mean discovered the way.”
At the snap of a finger, the other twin, Edomax, stopped ruining a perfect stack of cordwood to prance over and knock senseless Umbort with a choice log.
Now in the quiet once more, Edimor could focus on their work. There would come a moment where his brother Edomax would make fire. Until the imbecile managed to balance the arrangement of the logs with a remembrance that his bald head sat on his neck, their task would have to be illumined only by the cruel sun staring at Edimor through embrasures in the thick wall. Edimor wiped his sleeve across his sweating and hairless brow.
It was true that Edimor and Edomax were twins—though, by the sight of them, or any other working sense, the two couldn’t be further unalike. When Edimor failed to memorize a string of runes, he beat his head against the wall. His brother did so for recreation. The one time they were tasked with patching up an undead servant, Edimor strained nights on end to learn how his grandfather so seamlessly charged life in the dead. Edomax played with the creature’s balls. One would study the contents of a brazier, the other would get his head stuck in it. One toiled. One played. One burned white-hot with hawk-eyed ambition, the other dallied, entranced by the trite and perverse.
Edimor focused on a brown loaf, cutting the bread into slices. He then used his teeth to pry free a stubborn cork, sticking his knife inside the jar, whipping around the blade and pulling it out coated with butter. He spread the butter onto a slice. Chomping on his meal, for what he and his half-wit brother were doing was hungry work, Edimor poked the Ouvarnia in the ribs with his blade.
“Nope,” Edimor said. “Still out.”
“That’s good, Eddie,” Edomax said. “Just give me the word, I’ll club ’im again. Nice and swift for you.”
Edimor checked the purple mush sticking to his mortar and pestle. “We don’t want to kill him. Not yet.” Crushed Ghorlaxium needed to sit, but it had been long enough.
Brewing a broth that made its drinker spill truth was not the hardest potion to render. The components were trim. Verbal? No. Somatics? Never. Alignment of certain planets, current phase of the moon, summoning entities of the shadow realm? How the magistrates would have lusted to learn all that was needed were a few key materials and a lucid imagination.
Edimor watched as his brother finished stacking the cordwood under the cauldron. A Ghorlaxium truth-serum was not as hard as shooting one’s soul into a waiting corpse—but the damn broth better be perfect!
Prior to Umbort’s last knock on the head, according to the fair-haired worm, Ordrid magic had gotten out of control. Yes, Edimor conceded, there were the abductions and, yes, there were the flying things infecting the once-quiet air. But the whole Orisulan peninsula roused to a stir? Melodrama. Farmers, merchants—all fleeing, pushing south to the city of Oxghorde, where cobbled streets bloated to new records with the passing of each moon. This economic strain prompted the House of Ouvarnia—“at last,” the noble Umbort cried—into armoring their horses and taking paths of wagon trains, right into the city of Nilghorde.
Edimor watched Edomax cup his hands around the flame of a tallow candle. When Edomax burns himself, Edimor mused—which he likely would—he could hardly feel a greater heat than the summer furnace that had oppressed the battlefield, so recently suffered. The uncontested mammoth, Nilghorde still towered grey, bulking black against the western sea. In it trafficked no Ouvarnian hordes. Nor were they slinking up alleyways. Once officially challenged, the proud, twisted, ever-vengeful House of Ordrid sundered forth. They met the Ouvarnias first in the sprawl between the House’s home cities. The countryside was soon an ebb and flow, staining the grounds red, be it untilled fields or the cobbled steps of Pelliul’s westernmost gate.
Edomax had been deemed too demented and queer, at least while the combat was young and no dire signs had yet to call for more sworders. Thus, the demented and queer and imbecilic of the two had been stuck in the keep during the last battle, withering and tricking until called upon by his brother.
Edimor had been injured. The Ouvarnias and their deputized underlings circled him and his conscripts, hacking and swinging until no Ouvarnia lived and Edimor’s left arm hung lifeless. Now in a sling, the injury made spellcraft damn near impossible. A dimwit with two working hands would have to do.
Ghorlaxium proper was for those from the shadow realm. Ghosts, the fleeing peasants would have said. A diluter existed for controlling, in a sense, those whose hearts still naturally pounded. Edimor used his good hand to sprinkle the cutting agent. Leaves of Luka, included at the age-old five-to-one ratio, never failed. Using a pestle almost the size of the club that had broken his arm, he mashed the compound into a gooey purple paste.
Satisfied, Edimor took in the full sight of hanging, mouth-open Umbort. He had been captured right as Edimor had been helped into a casualty wagon. They’d long deprived dashing Umbort of his effects: his clothes, his stars and bars, his decorative crosses. And dignity, too.
This prisoner of war did not impress the elders. Sent to fall, striking branch after consecutively lower branch, most of Edimor’s uncles varied in their hatred but all stood classically firm in one observation: the Ouvarnia’s dismal use. Umbort had been cast down to finally greet Edimor and Edomax, like a divitch ball coach putting his worst players in only after a game was victoriously certain. But in this game, Edimor sneered, a war between two great Houses, victory was far from guaranteed. This looming cloud had struck fire in Edimor; he was pleased his father and uncles allowed him now the wiles of his “puny spells.”
Edimor needed to learn Umbort’s deepest, darkest secrets. In order to provide his House with vital layouts of the Ouvarnian keep? Yes. Provide insights into that House’s vulnerable troves? That too. Or, grinning, shoot his soul into his dead body. One of the most difficult of necromantic arts, but—if he could just do it—if Edomax could follow the simplest of instructions—using Umbort’s body, Edimor would ride to the city of Pelliul, suffer the hugs and kisses, suffer the tales told of wandering, wait, assassinate their top leadership, then trot back home the sung hero.
It was not easy, being an inmate in a House where one failed spell meant no dessert as children and no honor as men. Some nights, gazing up at the moon, Edimor—to his shame—furtively wished to live the life of ease peasants seemed to wallow in. They never had to contend with a twin who was attached to his reputation like a malignant tumor. But ev en for those few unfortunate farmers and tradesmen who did, they surely did not live under the shadow of an older brother like Maecidion.
Maecidion, the Great Maecidion, the up-and-comer who was spoken of like the thrice coming of Prince Basofial. Yes, the great Maecidion, hair long and black streaming in the battle wind; he had yet to fail a single spell, mumble incorrectly a lone incantation…and he had never dared shoot his soul into enemy dead, either.
Edimor watched Edomax point toward the cauldron and began reading from the scroll he’d prepared. Edimor focused his mind. He visualized the necessity: crystalline skies, crystalline skies being penetrated by a lone flying star—unimpeded by cloud or rain, the crystalline skies—
Pulling Edimor right out of his concentration, Edomax said the transmutations, lowered his finger at the dry kindling, then, with an audible pop, Edomax turned around, his head and shoulders covered in snow.
“You blundering idiot!”
“Sorry, Eddie,” Edomax said, shivering. “Give me another chance, I—”
“You’ll get it right or else! How else will I—we achieve any semblance of glory if you can’t tell the difference between a pyre uncial and a simple hoarfrost?”
Edimor watched, huffing. Edomax reread the scroll and pointed his finger. This time the logs lit up, licking the cauldron’s base with a greening flame.
Edimor shut his eyes, listening to the crackles, smelling the smoke. Crystalline skies, then crystalline skies being penetrated by a lone flying star—unimpeded by cloud or rain, then the crystalline skies being penetrated by a lone flying star that falls, cutting through to the center of the world, ending in a perfect, according solitude:
The truth.
Edimor opened his eyes. The water would be boiling soon. Until then, his only charge was keeping his brother at bay, away from Umbort, who he prowled and circled as lustfully as a hyena. Other than learning what “more important” Ordrids had already poked free; that this prisoner of theirs was but a mild financier, Edimor had gotten little out of Lord Stitched-lips—a metaphor he and Edomax had attempted to turn into flailing reality until the wretched Ouvarnia could no longer stomach the sight of an approaching needle. Edimor picked up his knife again, this time slicing open Umbort’s thigh. Now, swinging and writhing, upside down as a bleeding bat, Umbort was no longer spared the indignity of his screams.
“Oh,” Edomax cooed, having defied his brother’s request the moment their plaything came to. “Pain, that’s all you feel. You want to feel good, yes?”
“Max,” Edimor said, wiggling a corked empty vial. Edimor handed it off to Edomax, who then went skipping back to the cauldron. Turning to Umbort: “Fresh water right before boiling point,” Edimor said. “First bubble—scoop up and put a cork on the vial. All else in the cauldron: useless as you.”
Edimor walked over, joining his brother. He now held the vial, filled and sealed by Edomax as directed. He pulled out the cork, putting the glass rim to his lips. He sucked free the faintest taste, mixing the potion with its last ingredient. Perfect, according solitude—the truth, he thought, spitting the fluid back into the vial and sealing it firmly.
“Now,” he said. “We are ready.”
Umbort’s eyes grew wide. He wiggled, shouting, “Do your worst! My family will lay this dungeon to a rightful waste. Turn me into a toad. Burn me with warts. Turn me to tatters. My name shall be bronzed with full honor in my family’s halls. Can either of you utter such things from your lips?”
“Max,” Edimor said, trying to feign lack of interest in the man’s screed. “Make sure our creature’s mouth remains open, please.”
He should have known better. Any of the torture tools lying about would have lived up to the challenge. Yet, Umbort Ouvarnia was being steadily sent to his grave while enduring a molestation of tickles.
“Open,” Edomax said.
“Mm-mm,” Umbort protested from sealed lips.
“Ooh-pen.” Edomax crept his hand up the rope, gripping the man’s most sensitive pulp.
“Stop!” Edimor said. “Stop that, you abnormality.” But the fondling opened Umbort’s mouth quicker than hot iron. Edimor seized the opportunity and shoved the potion down his throat. Edomax took a knee, using his hands now to clasp around the man’s head, slapping four fingers over his mouth as the potion sprayed from Umbort’s nostrils.
Umbort Ouvarnia gagged and choked, he seethed and he snotted, and then he swallowed.
*
Edimor’s scroll was almost full. “Let’s see,” he said, taking one eye off the parchment to gauge the state of Edomax’s boredom. “We have the names of your children, the colors of your horse, the name of your horse, the names of the sots who empty its trough. Ah yes.” Edimor rattled off the very last of them, then shook out his wrist.
Once sauntering through the jasmine streets of Pelliul, that city would take him to this man’s home, his family, his over-with life. No detail was too small, too insignificant. He had to impersonate this—looking again to his hastily written notes— this confirmed bore to perfection. The House of Ouvarnia dealt not in magic, but their suspicions had grown understandably in recent days. Anyone suspected of Ordrid contamination was disarmed and promptly quarantined.
Edomax sat on the top of the staircase. “Can we please get on with it?”
Ignoring his brother, even when he threw and shattered a cupel, Edimor looked at the docile face of his captive. “One last question, Umbort. What is the worst way to die?”
As he had will all the other questions, without hesitation, Umbort languidly replied: “Suffocating.”
Edimor shrugged, tossing a log that still burned at one end. He’d even prepared a bucket of oil that would’ve ignited like summer. Not the whole body, of course. Just a leg. An arm too, maybe. Perfect wound by warfare for the shiny Ouvarnian banquets. “Very well then.” This was perfect, actually. “Oh, Edomax.”
Edomax placed a thick rag over Umbort’s face until his inverted lungs burst. With his good hand, Edimor applied a reconstructive lather usually meant for undead slaves. That gash in the thigh he’d made required attention. Edimor wanted to look good for “Umbort’s” return.
“How happy they will be,” he said to Edomax, still pinching the dead man’s nose between his thumb and finger. “Maecidion never dared this. How they’re going to greet me. A warrior home. They’ll squawk and they’ll sit and they’ll drink and sleep and then, one by one, I’ll slice their vile throats.”
*
“Every single crack?” Edomax asked from outside the coffin, paintbrush dripping with glue.
Edimor laid lordly in his temporary bed. The coffin was lined with straw. A superfluous comfort no doubt, but he wasn’t dead yet. He stank of the oils Edomax had bathed him in. They would prevent his flesh from decaying while he was away. Yet, in this deeper realm of the keep, there were other villains scurrying about. Wrapped in the vestments of the tomb, Edimor lifted his head. “Yes!” he said, eyeing Edomax from over the lid. “Every crack. Make it so no vermin can squirm through. When I return, when I reenter, well, I’d like be un-gnawed on.”
“And you want me to nail down the lid?”
“Raped by a snake! Yes!”
Edomax concentrated on his brushing. “What do I say if they ask where you are?”
“They won’t,” Edimor said, thinking of the limp, lifeless, naked body lying just a few feet away. “They don’t care. But, if we’d be so lucky, just take them down here and pry the lid. I shouldn’t be gone long.”
“I will count the minutes.”
“Don’t get smart—and when I’m gone, stay the hell out of my bevy.”
“Ah, yes.” Edomax snickered. “The bevy.” It was well known Ordrids practiced their craft on slaves. Living, undead, no matter; the stock Edimor had compiled only attested to his trial-by-failure ambition. That they remained locked away for future experiments incited his dear brother to occasional outbursts. It was unfair, Edimor was so often told, that only he be granted a flock of flesh. Though they shared a room, they shared little else. And their father, tired of Edomax’s pleas, cast aside the complaint by flippantly declaring he could have his brother’s bevy if, and only if, there was no one who wished to claim it. “It will remain untouched, dear brother.”
