Necromancer's Gambit
Book One of the Flesh and Bone Trilogy
by
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The corpse opened its eyes. It lay on the wooden table staring blankly at the rafters of the thatched roof above it. It didn’t understand what it saw. It was hardly aware of itself.
Autonomic responses began to kick in and it blinked. Its dead eyes did not require moistening, of course, but it couldn’t know that yet.
Its chest rose as it tried to draw breath. Air whistled past the ragged edges of the gaping wound in its front, one of its lungs having been punctured by the spear that had ended its life. A moan rattled from its throat.
With the scientific detachment characteristic of all necromancers, Mordius stood watching the animee struggle. Beyond making sure that the flows of his magic remained smooth and constant and so did not burn out the synapses in the animee’s brain prematurely, there wasn’t much more he could do. He would simply have to wait to see if the mercenaries had managed to get the body off the battlefield and to his home fast enough to avoid the dead brain decomposing too far. It was always the soft tissue that went first – the brain, the lungs, the eyes, the palate... If a necromancer couldn’t get to a body within the first few hours, it would only be able to follow the most basic of instructions and carry out the most mechanical of tasks, like fetching and carrying. Mordius had spent everything he had on hiring the mercenaries to procure the fresh body of a hero. It had also taken all his magical reserves to raise one so newly deceased. This moment was the culmination of a lifetime of dedication to his old master, Dualor, and the necromatic art. It had to work or all of his years of hard, and sometimes painful, study would have been for nothing! He offered up a silent prayer as he continued to watch the undead hero. Suddenly, the soldier sat up and looked straight at him with a glassy eye. Startled that the animee was able to co-ordinate its movements so easily, Mordius took an involuntary step backwards. He chastised himself, knowing it was important that he stand his ground from the beginning so that the animee would not think to challenge the mastery of the necromancer. Maybe he should have strapped the thing down before reviving it, but the thought had not occurred to him earlier. The animee moved its jaw uselessly, not even managing to vocalise a gasp. It looked at Mordius in mute appeal. The animee clearly retained instinct and intellect along with a command of its body! Excited but wary, Mordius slowly approached and used a rag to plug the ugly hole that had been left when he’d removed the offending, fatal spear. The animee’s chest cavity slowly filled and he found his voice. There was only a trace of the unsteady timbre that characterised animees raised quickly enough after death so that they could still speak. ‘Who?’ it rasped ‘I am Mordius,’ the necromancer enunciated carefully. It would need time to relearn the processing of even simple information and conversation. ‘Noo! Who I?’ ‘Oh, I see. You are a soldier.’ That was normally as much character or identity information an animee needed or could handle. ‘Sol-dier. Name!’ The animee swung its legs round so that they hung off the table. Mordius shuffled back another half step and licked suddenly dry lips. ‘You are... are Saltar,’ he conjured. The animee pushed itself off the table and tottered slightly. It caught itself with a hand on the table and planted its feet wider apart. Even so, it couldn’t stop its body from swaying. It looked Mordius in the eye again and the necromancer held his breath. The face of an animee could rarely be read. ‘No memory. Where am I? What am I?’ Mordius steeled himself. The thing was developing an awareness and sense of self frighteningly quickly. ‘You are in my home. You are safe. Safe, do you understand that?’ ‘Yes. I don’t know how I do. Tell me.’ Mordius resisted the urge to wipe the sweat beading on his brow. He cleared his throat and said in a relatively steady voice, ‘I will tell you the truth. I have to. Otherwise, when stray memories from your life return, you will know I lied and turn on me.’ ‘I understand truth.’ Mordius took a deep breath. ‘You were found on a battlefield.’ ‘I understand.’ ‘There were slain bodies all around you. You were clearly a great warrior, a King’s hero. But you were dead when found. I had you brought back and I raised you.’ ‘I was dead.’ ‘Yes, Saltar.’ ‘Magic!’ the animee spat. ‘I am dead! This is wrong!’ and he lurched at Mordius. The necromancer leapt back and put the large table between them. The animee’s movements were slow and uncoordinated. But how long would they remain so? Mordius spoke faster. ‘Yes, Saltar, it is my magic that keeps you alive. Do you really want me to remove it? Do you want to fall back into rot and decay? Food for the maggots? I have given you new life!’ ‘You have trapped my spirit in this dead body. I cannot pass onto… onto… curse you! I cannot remember where the dead go. This is evil. Release me!’ and he clearly tried to roar his rage although his vocal chords would not let him. ‘There is hope,’ Mordius said gently, placatingly. ‘What?’ and the animee stilled. ‘It is only my magic that sustains you now. If I die, you are ended. If you come to an end, I will be diminished. In many ways, I have given you something of myself. But there is hope if you give me something in return.’ The animee stayed where he was. Mordius sighed with relief. He had him hooked. ...
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About the Book
A dead hero opens his eyes. To his horror, he finds he has been raised from the grave to serve as the minion of a desperate necromancer called Mordius. Our hero's body has been stolen from a battlefield contested by two kingdoms that have been at war for generations. No one knows why warfare is now the way of life, but what is apparent is that dark forces vie for dominion over the entire realm. Our hero has no memory of who he was when alive, and knows only that he was a soldier called Saltar… or so Mordius tells him. Like all the undead, Saltar craves the warmth of life and reluctantly accepts a bargain proposed by the necromancer. Saltar agrees to guard Mordius and help him retrieve an unholy artefact that will give the necromancer absolute sway over death. In return, Mordius promises to restore Saltar to full life... Necromancer's Gambit is a work of metaphysical fantasy, revealing a world of epic scale as the backdrop to the intrigues and magic of the darker side of the human psyche. It is told with a vividness normally only expected of film. The action and pace leave the reader breathless, exhilarated and hungry for more.
About the Author
A J Dalton is one of the UK's leading authors of metaphysical fantasy. He has worked as a teacher of the English language in Thailand, Egypt, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The influence of these diverse cultures lends a rich and vivid quality to his prose.
Necromancer's Betrayal is his second novel. He has also written a number of articles and short stories. He currently lives and works in both Manchester and London.
To find out more about metaphysical fantasy, the writing of A J Dalton and getting published, go to http://metaphysicalfantasy.wordpress.com.