ChapterOne
Robyn tipped her head back, brushing aside the heavy hood of her black cape as she squinted up at the sky as she gauged the weather. Fate had favored her with overcast gray skies that threatened rain and thunder. Though she didn’t welcome rain, the weather at least spared her from the agony of midday sun. It was why she preferred to travel during fall and winter. She could cover more ground unhampered by the pain that was the cost of her skills, and with less scrutiny as people busied themselves with their harvest before they would be sequestered indoors during the snow fall. Few noticed the passage of a necromancer.
Her lips thinned. Although necromancers could be found in every corner of their world, they were nearly universally distrusted. No one liked a person around who had the ability to resurrect the dead when it meant that the resurrected would be bound to them.
Laypersons mistakenly believed that necromancers sought to enslave other beings. Though that was true of some necromancers, most simply guided those bound to them until a master necromancer could transfer the binding to a safe place for the resurrected to live out its second life in peace. It was not a decision to be made lightly. Only those souls who cried out for life denied them and refused to leave the earthly plane were given the opportunity.
It was never a baby or those who passed blissfully and peacefully into the next life. The latter could be summoned to speak to their loved ones as spirits before descending back to the underworld. It was this skill for which necromancers were still sought, despite people’s fear of them. Then there were others who paid coin for her to give ceremonies at the burial of their loved ones to aid their souls in passing over peacefully.
Attending burials and helping people connect with their loved ones could be the most beautiful or the most painful task for Robyn, but it was a service she lived for and her true calling since she was a teen and showed a talent for it. A talent that had her father hiding her away at the monastery of the necromantic art when she had just come of age and had many suitors interested in marrying her.
She had no regrets. Though it stripped her of much of who she was in appearance, it was a small price to pay for helping people when the world could be hostile and unforgiving. It had been such for centuries, since the realms of humans and fae collided together. Dangers now filled their world, which made her service all the more important in her estimation. She did not hire on to travel with those adventurers or parties who might require the skills of a necromancer in battle. Nor did she sell her services to contend with demons, another skill with which necromancers were proficient.
No thank you.She had no lust for adventure like some of her peers. She had never even had an occasion where she needed to resurrect anyone, and she had been content with that.
Until she felt the call.
Robyn shivered as she felt it prickle over her skin, a howling energy of anger, restlessness, and betrayal. It ate at her, consumed her until it tormented even her dreams. It demanded her response, which is what had her traveling far from the regular trails and roads into the wilderness despite her better judgment.
She only hoped that it did not rain before she descended the mountain path and could find some shelter. Dropping her gaze, she narrowed her eyes, skimming over the twisted walkway winding down among jagged gray stones that jutted up to the sky. There were patches of grass and stubborn weeds and even a few spindly, half-starved trees. This part of the mountain was mostly barren, though a great number of dead leaves blew across the stones from distant places.
The dismal trail continued to wind in its cliffside descent until it ended at the bottom of a valley. There a tall, half-crumbled tower stood among a thick cluster of trees—the only ones in this part of the mountain that didn’t appear to be barely clinging to life due to the shelter the valley provided.
Robyn sighed as she looked at it. It possessed not even the meagerest of comforts as far as she could see. It appeared so old and thoroughly abandoned that whatever it may have once possessed had likely rotted away. But it was better than nothing. At least it would afford her a place to rest if she could get there before the sky opened up on her. And she would pray that there would be no mage tech lingering that might awaken the moment she set foot there.
She had nothing against the tech, but it would be disconcerting in such a place and with magic so old and corroded that it wouldn’t be trustworthy.No.All she wanted was a dry place to sleep before she continued on in search of the source of the call. She was heading in the right direction. She knew that much.
Robyn groaned as she picked her way around and over the stones. Perhaps she should not have been so quick to refuse the necromancer staff. It added very little that couldn’t be accomplished by her hazel wand, but it would have been nice right about now.
“Just don’t trip and kill yourself,” she muttered. “The irony would be insufferable. Here lies Robyn Harrow. She died by tripping over a stone while looking for a spirit that won’t shut up and now gets to spend eternity haunting the mountain with them.” She shuddered. “And I definitely don’t want to spend eternity with whatever miserable being is making all this noise.”
She winced as another blast of energy and its psychic bellow hit her. “I’m coming. You aren’t getting any deader so just hold on,” she grumbled, picking her way down the mountainside.
Whoever it was, they certainly had an impressive reach. Maybe it had been a mage? They came into power fairly quickly when the fae and human worlds collided, since they already had an understanding of the occult at that time and knew how to manipulate various energies. It would make sense for a slain mage to have that sort of power and be lost out in the middle of nowhere. In the early days, humans attempted to reclaim the world. Though it was with rather pathetic results, she could easily see a mage venturing this far into the mountains in those days in an attempt to push back an invading army of orcs or trolls.
But most magi, or mages, didn’t bother to make such trips unless paid very handsomely for their time due to their extensive education. They either oversaw various temples and monasteries, if they were so inclined, or were hired onto prestigious positions at any of the capital cities among the numerous kingdoms throughout the world.
Her lips pinched together in consideration. It could be a sorcerer.
It took a few generations for raw potential to develop among the populace strong enough to draw attention for standard tutelage. Like necromancers, they tended to be skilled in one art and educated chiefly on how to wield their particular power rather than receive the in-depth training one accepted into a mage’s college would.
Though there were numerous schools by law, there was only one Universitas Magorum, and anyone with a lick of magic dreamed at some point of going there. Despite how mages got their start in the early days, those coveted invitations only went to powers that popped up within noble and distinct families. Naturally, that stuck in the craws of sorcerers something fierce. It was little wonder that sorcerers often found a way to hunt glory and wealth for themselves by taking up tasks that mages spurned and ignored.
“But at least they weren’t branded,” Robyn muttered, her fingers brushing over the sigil of Saturn magically set into the skin of her forehead.
For all their considerable power, sorcerers weren’t considered a public concern like necromancers and therefore didn’t have quite the same level of training required by law, or a brand to identify them following their final ordeal. A sorcerer had autonomy that Robyn envied, and many reaped considerable rewards from their ventures.
So, yes, it was possible that a sorcerer could have traversed this far into the mountains either alone or hired into a company of travelers, but she was still betting on a mage. The ruins that were drawing in her were quite old, and the surroundings lacked anything else of interest. Certainly nothing that would attract an enterprising sorcerer looking to make a name and coin for themselves.
She gave the landscape a hard look and shook her head.
The orc clans had withdrawn from the mountains hundreds of years ago due to lack of sufficient prey, heading into the rich and dangerous northern lands where they tended to keep to themselves in territories that bordered centaur and minotaur lands. There was nothing here to inspire investigation, and, except for what was left of the castle around her and the pocket of trees clustered around it, there was nothing to inspire even the most misanthropic sorcerer to settle there. The land was hard and unforgiving with little good soil for planting as far as she could tell. Even the castle was in such disrepair that not even a hybrid sorcerer unwelcome in the company of humans would choose to make their keep there. Robyn certainly wouldn’t have chosen to be there if the spirit had been considerate enough to shut up and leave her in peace.
But of course not. It happened just as she was warned by her masters of necromantic study. The moment the dead tasted her magic, he locked onto her and roared his demands until she couldn’t take it anymore and laboriously set off toward him, never quieting in the slightest the entire time.
“Has to be a mage to assume that anyone has the luxury to set aside whatever they’re doing at a moment’s notice to attend to their demands,” she mused. “At least most sorcerers I’ve known could be reasoned with.”
And gods knew she had attempted numerous times to do so before giving up with a string of profanity that had drawn more than one nervous eye to her as she stalked from the town that she had been comfortably residing in despite the natural suspicion of the residents that followed her.