8FOLD: The Necromancer Saga # 4, "The Old Magic"

[Amabel Holland]

Pinky, Sarah, and Bethany have lured the necromancer's vessel, Samson
Drake, into a trap, hoping to hold him while David and Trevor attempt
to bring about his ultimate destruction.


THE NECROMANCER SAGA # 4
"THE OLD MAGIC"
[8F-223] [PW-67]


-------------- SECRET CIRCLE --------------------

MAILE AKAKA, age 20. Aeromancer. Injured.
Once the top field agent of The Company, she orchestrated her own
abduction and memory wipe to defect to the circle. She now serves as
its leader.

AZABETH "BETH" COLLINS, age 37. Oneiromancer.
The circle's co-leader, recently awakened from a long slumber.

DAVID COLLINS, age 31. Mnemonomancer.
Husband to Beth, brother to Claire Belden, unlikely wielder of the
ancient blade Thirteen.

JUNE LASH, age 47. Ailuromancer. Deceased.
Maile's spymaster, commanding dozens of feline agents around the
globe. Slain by the necromancer.

SARAH AVERY, age 25. Evocamancer.
An engineering genius, she refuses to use her demon-summoning magic.

TREVOR JEFFRIES. Robot.
A sophisticated robot built by The Company to infiltrate the circle.
Retooled by Sarah, and equipped with sonic weaponry.

PINKY MURDER, age 23. Apparamancer.
Teleporter. Recently escaped from a formless hell. This also resulted
in Samson's escape, and in his transformation into the necromancer's
vessel.

--------------- DAYLIGHTERS ---------------------

Bethany Clayton (KNOCKOUT MOUSE), age 32.
Wielder of the Singularity Gauntlet, leader of the Daylighters. A
friend of Maile's.

Ghedi Dirie (ZIP), age 17. Apparamancer.
Long-range teleporter capable of moving large groups, but only to
places he's been before.

--------------- THE COMPANY ---------------------

CLAIRE BELDEN, age 31. Metamancer.
Missing, presumed to have defected, pursuing her own agenda with the
help of Trinity Tran.

TRINITY TRAN, age 35. Haematomancer.
Once a fugitive, working for The Company in return for their
protection; now, the head of the dominant faction within The Company.
Pregnant with David Collins's child.

GAIL MOORE, age 14. Apotromancer.
Teenager in the Company's employ, skilled in defensive wards. Loaned
to the circle by Trini Tran.

SAMSON DRAKE, age 28. Sciomancer.
Company assassin; formerly Maile's lover. Now the living vessel of the
necromancer.

-------------------------------------------------

David wasn't expecting to see Claire waiting for him and Trevor at the
edge of the pit, but it doesn't surprise him, either. It makes sense
that she'd be here.

   He's more taken aback by the fact that she's holding a sword that
looks identical to his.

   "Is mine a fake?" he asks.

   "Both are real," she says. "Same sword, different points in time."
Then she does something really unnerving: she smiles. "You have the
page from the book?"

   He knows better than to ask her how she knows. "Yes."

   "Good. I have the components for the ritual." She holds up a small
satchel. Just like her outfit, it's in her shade of olive green. "I
take it there's another group up north, setting a trap to buy you some
time?"

   "Yes."

   "So it's just the two of you here? Now three?"

   David nods. "Maile was injured."

   Trevor bristles. "And June stayed with Shallow House."

   "I'm sorry," says Claire. "I liked her." It sounds like she means
it. David's shock must be visible. She addresses this. "I have
emotions now, it's a whole thing, I don't really want to talk about
and besides, we haven't really the time. Hope you boys are prepared to
fight some skeletons."

   "Uh," says David, "like, how many skeletons?"

   "This is the pit of bones," says Claire. She drips with contempt,
like she's talking to an idiot. (Well, at least that much hasn't
changed.) "Suffice to say, there are a lot of skeletons. Trevor, come
here a moment?"

   Trevor hesitates.

   "Oh," says Claire, "no, we don't have time for the thing where I
talk you into trusting me, you just have to do it."

   Trevor shrugs and sighs and does as he's told. Before he can react,
Claire snaps a USB into his neck.

   "Activating hidden code," she explains. "Combat protocols. We're
going to need it."

   "Because of the skeletons?" says Trevor.

   "Bones are old magic," says Claire, plucking the USB from the port.
"Deep magic. Only thing older and deeper is cat magic. This is not a
safe place."

   "So," says David, peering over the precipice into the seemingly
bottomless darkness. "How do we get down?"

   "We walk," says Claire. She lifts a foot over the pit, then lets it
drop. It lands on the wall of the pit. She lifts her other foot, and
soon is standing on the wall. She motions for them to follow.

   Trevor goes first, then David, who struggles with the concept.
"This place has, uh, different gravity?"

   "Oh, no," says Claire. "I'm the one doing that. So obviously don't
let me die or anything, because then you'd really be in trouble."

   "Noted."

()

There are, indeed, skeletons, and, in fact, a lot of skeletons. But
they're not the sorts of skeletons that David was expecting.

   In his mind he had imagined something out of Harryhausen (because
of course he was the sort of boy who was very into Harryhausen), full
human skeletons with swords and shields and maybe some tattered rags.
Each one complete and discrete and countable, this one and that one,
two over there and three here.

   But what awaits them in the pit of bones is much more protean and
improvised. They are collections of bones, with extra arms and missing
legs, ribless torsos and spiraling snakes composed only of femurs,
arms that end in skulls and legs in jawbones.

   They break easily enough. Bones are brittle things, after all.
Between Trevor's mechanical body and the two indestructible Thirteens,
these creatures are unmade easily. The problem is that they are just
as easily remade. An adversary is shattered, splintering into piles,
and then those piles quickly attach themselves to other bones,
infinitely recombining in the darkness.

   Claire ensures she and David can see ("never mind how, we haven't
time David") and Trevor's robotic eyes take care of themselves. Trevor
indeed is proving quite capable, moving recklessly into the thick of
it. His sonic weaponry shatters bones as well as it does eardrums, and
he attacks quickly and viciously with all four limbs, each of which
can equally act as arm or leg, hand or foot. It's all instinct and
intuition, or the closest thing to it that a super-processor has.

   Claire by contrast moves with confidence and finesse, each swing of
the sword or blast of brilliant green eldritch something carefully
calculated. She does not block or parry, but dodges, sidesteps, and
redirects, acting as if she can anticipate every attack before it is
made. And she can. Never mind how; we haven't time.

   David is neither brawler nor dancer. He has no instinct, no
confidence. He is less attacking and more trying not to be killed,
slashing wildly at whatever's in front of him.

   "You're more scared of the sword than you are of them," snaps
Claire. "Our ancestors have used that sword many times. Remember
them."

   David wants to yell back that that's what he's been doing. That
he's been using the memories and techniques of master swordsmen from
centuries past. That's the only reason why he's still alive.

   Claire falls back, annoyed, arriving just in time to bat away a
chain of hands and arms inches from her brother's face. "Hold up your
sword like this."

   He does as he's told, holding it at an angle.

   "Mind your head," Claire calls to Trevor. She holds her own sword
at the opposite angle, forming an X. The two swords clang together,
and there is a burst of red light stretching out like a wave. For a
good stretch of the pit, the creatures become dust. Further down,
however, they can still hear the clattering of bones.

   David is flabbergasted. "Why didn't we," but then he vomits. It is
red with blood and yellow with bile and there are chunks of something
that look disconcertingly like tissue.

   "That's why," says Claire. She turns from him briefly, vomits, then
turns back. "And it only bought us a minute or two. I need you to be
better than this." She resumes walking, setting a brisk pace.

   David hurries to catch up, calling after her. "I don't think I am,
though. I'm the one that screwed all this up in the first place."

   "No," says Claire impatiently. "That'd be dear old dad. The
necromancer was always going to come back, and in your lifetime."

   David can tell there's something more, something she's not saying.

   She can tell that he can tell, and so she says it, quickly and
casually: "I just moved up the timetable a bit."

   "You did what?"

   "I needed it to happen now."

   "Why?"

   "Never mind why. We haven't time."

   "Claire, people have died!"

   She starts to say that people die all the time, but stops herself.
"You think I don't know that? You think I don't carry that with me?"

   "Tell that to June," snaps Trevor.

()

June's broken body sprawls across the ice. Her eyelids are open,
staring lifelessly. Pinky doesn't want to look at them, but it feels
disrespectful to turn away. This woman died for them. For her. Looking
away means pretending she's not there. Pretending it didn't happen.

   It feels like she's the only one looking. All eyes are on Samson,
watching his perpetual grin twist into a snarl.

   "David's not here," he says. He turns toward the shadow he had
stepped out of just as it evaporates. He scoffs, then turns back to
the group, staring at them through closed eyelids.

   "You lured me here," he says to Pinky. "Knew I would follow."

   "Close her eyes," she begs.

   He runs his pink tongue across his red teeth. "You know, I think I
will, after a spell. But you won't like it when I do."

   Sarah puts an arm around Pinky's shoulder. "Steady," she whispers.

   "Gail," says Samson, cocking his head toward the apotromancer. "Do
you think you can hold me?"

   Without moving, he pushes against invisible walls. The sigils at
his feet start to buckle and ripple, becoming thin and strained.

   Gail grits her teeth for a moment, swallowing an impossible pain.
Then, she pushes back.

   She's calm. Deliberate. The lines of the sigils grow thicker,
darker. Stronger. Deeper. Her motions are practiced and unhurried. For
Pinky, magic is something that lives in her guts. A reflex spurred on
by emotion. A feeling she can't pin down or explain, but that she
knows to follow. It's jazz. But Gail is something else entirely –
every note played precisely and in order. Pinky has no doubt it's
played with feeling and skill, but it is always the same melody
performed the same way.

   And the necromancer knows the tune. Knows where to push and when.
Gail stops looking quite so cool and composed. She shakes and falters.
She rushes to adapt, and in doing so, she skips a note, botches
another. The sigils start to bend and melt, and the girl starts to
bleed from her mouth.

   "Drop the first ring," says Bethany.

   Gail does as she's told, surrendering the circle that kept Samson
confined, while maintain the one that protects the four of them.
Herself, Pinky, Sarah, and Ghedi.

   Bethany remains outside the circle. Alone with Samson. (And June.)

   Pinky can't help but think of Maile stepping outside the circle
back at Shallow House, alone with Samson. Ready to take him on without
thinking twice about it. Risking her life for everybody else's. And
what did that get her? Belly ripped open. Almost died. And Pinky gets
this feeling in her own belly, like Bethany's going to end up the same
way.

()

Try as he might, David is still having a hard time with the whole
"fighting through a mass of undead" thing. Trevor's taken to it like a
duck to water. He's even been making use of the pit's roughly
cylindrical shape, stepping and leaping sideways along the walls and
what David's mind still thinks of as a ceiling. A three-dimensional
skeleton-fighting robot, that's Trevor.

   But David is just overwhelmed. Claire has had to stop and save him
more than once, though it hasn't been so dire that they needed to do
the two swords thing. What's left of David's insides is thankful for
that.

   One of the skeleton creatures coming toward him is surprisingly
human-shaped and fully-formed, which would be oddly comforting if the
bones weren't almost entirely black. The exception of course is its
red-stained teeth.

   It hurts to look at it, in the way that deep magic often does. But
David finds to his horror that he can't seem to look away from it. He
can't even close his eyes or blink. Can't turn his head away even as
there are other creatures he needs to be paying attention to.

   The black skeleton with the red teeth gets closer and closer until,
suddenly, inevitably, it has grabbed hold of his wrist. The touch is
an agony. Worse than a burn. Worse than needles in the roof of his
mouth. Worse than anything he's ever felt, and that includes the time
Claire ran him through with a sword. It hurts worse than dying.

   Trevor grabs hold of the black skeleton by the skull and pulls it
off of David, flinging it violently down the pit. While it's briefly
airborne, Claire zaps it, shattering it like a clay pigeon.

   She looks annoyed. "Buy us time," she says to Trevor. "This will
take a minute."

   A hazy green bubble surrounds the two siblings, and Claire holds up
David's wrist. There's a small black patch, the size of a quarter.

   "Necrosis," she says. "I can numb the pain and slow its growth. But
after this is over, you'll want to get it debrided."

   "Debrided?"

   "They have to cut it out of you," says Claire.

   David feels like he's about to faint. Claire rolls her eyes, no
doubt wondering how the hell the two of them are related.

   "So, he's in my memories, and now he's in my body," says David.

   "Don't be melodramatic," says Claire. "We'll cut him out of your
memories, too. When we end him for good."

   David's pain is finally subsiding. "What does he want?" he asks
suddenly. "Like, I know he wants to stop me from killing him. But what
comes after?"

   "Death," says Claire casually. "But more than death. Worse than
death. Humans have a certain reverence for the dead. We bury them or
burn them. We close their eyelids. Treat the body as something sacred.

   "But the necromancer," she continues, "he sees them as something to
be defiled. Perverted. He takes what someone was in life, and he
twists it. Kindness into cruelty. Uses who they were to break your
heart. That's what he feeds on. The shock and anger, the suffering.
Even Venus is not so cruel."

   David feels like he should say something, but as usual he doesn't
know what. Claire finishes her spell in awkward silence, and then they
rush back into the depths.

()

Bethany doesn't stand her ground like Maile did; instead, she rushes
forward. Makes sense. Maile had lightning at her command. She could
fight at a distance. Bethany has to get in close and start throwing
punches.

   She swings a heavy fist at his body, her high-tech sci-fi space
glove making it as dense as osmium. It's a glancing blow, but that
should be enough to collapse his ribcage.

   So she's surprised when it doesn't seem to faze him. But not so
surprised that she doesn't anticipate his counterblow. She jumps back,
beyond his reach.

   Then she's immediately on the offensive again. She tightens her
fist, as dense as a moon. Pinky feels the pull of its gravity. The
lines of the circle start to bleed toward it. Gail strains to hold it
back. Samson has no such luxury; his body falls laterally toward it.

   "Ears," calls out Bethany. She had warned them about this before;
the blow will be deafening.

   Just before the inevitable impact, Samson stretches out his
fingers, wrapping them around the gauntlet. His hand starts to
collapse upon itself.

   If it hurts, or if he notices, he doesn't give any indication. "Do
you think this is the only battle? Yours, the only planet?"

   There's a noise like ice cracking. But Pinky looks around, and
can't see any cracks.

   "A thousand vessels fight a thousand champions across a thousand
worlds. I am vast, and you are small."

   Bethany kicks at his leg, pushing herself and her fist out of his
grasp. She falls to the ice.

   And now, Pinky sees the cracks. The fractures in the singularity gauntlet.

   "You're not even the only one with that toy about your hand." He
gloats. "The other one put up more of a fight." He waves his hand
dismissively but carefully, as if pulling at a knot.

   And then, the gauntlet falls from Bethany's hand like broken pieces
of stone. She lets out a sudden cry of shock. Like she just lost a
limb. Or a sister.

   It gives Samson enough time to grab hold of her.

   And Pinky knows what he's doing. She can feel it, because she can
still feel the part of him that's inside of her, like a queasy ache
sliding through her intestines. Because maybe there are no shadows
here for him to twist like whispers and knives, but the necromancer's
vessel still has the touch of death lurking in his fingertips.

   "You've known my touch before," says the thing inside Samson. He
pitches her head back, letting the hair fall from her face. Across one
cheek is an ugly patch of dead tissue, a memento of some adventure
years ago.

   "Yes," he says, relishing it. "He held onto some sliver of me while
I slept and waited. But I am no sliver."

   "I survived him," she chokes out. "I'll survive you."

   "You don't really believe that."

   But there's a panic in him, a confusion. Pinky can feel it. This
conversation shouldn't be happening at all. She shouldn't be able to
speak, and he shouldn't need to answer. She should be dead by now. Why
isn't she dead?

   And then, Pinky feels the answer. It's a feeling that's familiar to
her, an old friend. But one that's alien to Samson, alien to the
ancient thing rotting inside of him. It's fear. Fear of Bethany. Fear
of an ancient thing that's rotting inside of her.

   She's glowing. It's a black glow: a paradox.

   "No," says Samson, withdrawing his hands from her face. "No!" He
takes a few faltering steps back. Just when he thinks he's clear, he
flies through the air as if thrown, crashing against the shining white
wall of crystalline ice.

   Bethany stands up, then continues rising, floating off the ground,
enveloped in the black glow. The glow is in her skin, in her hair. In
her eyes.

   In her voice. "Evil heart must beat in time 'gainst good."

   "The paradox heart," says Samson in awe.

   "Is that what it is?" says Bethany, studying her own hand. "Yes. I
remember it now. Then it was me we've been afraid of this whole time.
Even you're afraid of me."

   "There are shadows and then there are shadows," says Samson,
standing up. "This vessel has outlived its purpose." He throws himself
backward against the wall of ice. The ice bursts through his back and
belly.

   In the same instance, Bethany collapses to the floor, exhausted.

   Samson smiles with his red teeth one last time. "But the other will
do nicely, won't it, Pinky?"

   Pinky doesn't answer, nor does she understand. But she does feel
relief as the bits of Samson twisted up inside her melt away.

   "I told you," says a woman's voice. "That you wouldn't like it when
I closed her eyes."

   June's corpse rises from the floor. Her smile is slyer than
Samson's, more restrained, more like she's amused at some private
joke. But her teeth are still red and her eyes are still closed.

   "No!" says Pinky. "It's not right! Leave her alone."

   The June-thing ignores her. "This is a place of the old magic. And
there is no magic older than cat magic."

   The circle snaps like a rubber band. Gail quickly mends the ends of
it together, but almost immediately it stretches again, brittle and
ready to break.

   "You cannot hold me. The magic bends to me."

   "She's right," says Gail.

   "Not she," says Sarah. "That's not June."

   "Whatever it is, we have to get out of here," says Gail. "While we
still can."

   Pinky turns to Ghedi. "You get everyone else out. I'm going to warn David."

   "I'll go with you," says Sarah. Pinky was hoping she'd say that.

   Ghedi clasps Gail by the wrist, then gestures toward Bethany. The
three of them fade from view.

   "Are you sure you're up for this?" says Sarah. She points to
Pinky's arm, to the wild magic leaking into her skin.

   "I think so," says Pinky. "At any rate, I have to be." The circle
starts snapping, falling to pieces over and over again. Then, in a
scream of jasmine, they too are gone.

NEXT TIME: THE BROKEN CIRCLE

COPYRIGHT 2023 AMABEL HOLLAND