The Temple of Heart and Bone (6 page)

In this period of border
skirmishes and barbarian unrest, some of the children of the tribes were
invited to witness the might of the Empire. They were allowed, for the first
time, to attend schools where centuries had been dedicated to the theories and
practicalities of war. Sons and daughters of some tribes were allowed to take
the field with Imperial troops against the disorganized mobs of other tribes.
It was believed that this would secure ties with the Empire while encouraging
distrust among the externals. It had been hoped that, faced with the
overwhelming might of Empire, having watched the application of martial theory
and practice, these children of barbarians would return home as unwitting
agents of the Empire, cowed into convincing their peoples that the Empire was
Eternal, Immortal, Unassailable.

The children did return home, and
they did recount tales of the power and might of the Empire. In their
recounting, however, the children came to realize that, if they did not
challenge the power of the Empire themselves, they would be cast down and
slaughtered by rivals in their own clans. Those same rivals would lead their
peoples against the Empire to the point of extinction.

One son in particular had
achieved this realization with a great clarity. Adopting and adapting what he
had learned in the Empire, Mushel Thun forged his own tribal warriors into a
contemporary army under the banner of their war god, Nekatethesis. Negotiating
with acquaintances in the Empire, he bought steel to forge weapons for his own
people. His Imperial contacts, more interested in lining their strong rooms
with gold than what their “friend” intended to do with the steel, were happy to
sell to him.

At first, Mushel turned his tribe
against his neighbors in what he called a “holy war.” Elements inside the
Empire were delighted at the discord he was causing. Their delight, however,
was short lived. The young chieftain overcame and assimilated tribe after
tribe. Within ten years, he had built up a significant power base. Within those
ten years, he had also developed his own sense of power. Elevated by victory
after victory, the conquered tribes began to see him as something more than
human. Some even went so far as to declare Mushel a god, himself. Intoxicated
with his own power, Mushel began to demand tribute from the Empire.

The Empire had neglected its
forces on the Eastern Frontier. Mushel’s campaigns had created a decade of
peace on that border, and the armies of the eastern Empire had become lax, even
indolent. The Empire offered Mushel tribute, realizing it was no longer in a
position to defend itself against him. Though they began to strengthen their
defenses, the tribute to Mushel had elevated him further, both in his own mind,
and in the minds of his peoples. Tales of the riches of the Empire, of the
treasures of material and technology inflamed his people, accustomed to a
decade of victory and looting. Mushel, himself, demanded more—and more
outrageous—tributes from the Empire. Secretly, he hoped to force them into
battle. The Empire, however, continued to pay, reinforcing the beliefs of
Mushel and his army that the Empire was weak.

Finally, Mushel attacked. His
raids were tentative at first, testing the defense and resolve of the Empire.
Meeting little to no resistance, his forces made a major thrust across the
border, crushing everything in sight. Murder, looting, assault, and pillage followed
in his smoking footsteps. Vital crops were seized by his army to feed their
depredations into the Empire. Granaries once covered in artwork, crumbled into
smoking, charred ruins. Citizens of the Empire, those who were fit to work, or
pleasing to the eye, were taken into captivity. Others, the old or infirm, the
weak or disfigured, were slaughtered wholesale.

Though it had taken time, time
for the Empire to awaken, and time for its forces to be transported from other
areas, Mushel’s advance was eventually stopped. Infuriated by the destruction
they had seen, the armies of the Empire fought like none Mushel and his bandits
had faced. Mushel himself fell as his forces scrambled to retreat. It was said
that Nekatethesis had abandoned Mushel, angered by his apostasy. The loss of
their seemingly invincible leader turned the retreat into a rout, and the
Empire restored order once again to the eastern border.

The damage, however, was done.
Crops which had been vital to feeding the vast Empire were lost, and with them
the very citizens who had tended them. The weakening of defenses on other
borders, which had allowed the Empire to repel Mushel, encouraged others to
attack those fronts. Like a stricken beast, the Empire struggled to keep the
agents of her demise at bay. As the years passed, the mighty roar became a
wracking cough. The armies of the Eastern tribes, reformed and organized under
a stream of new leaders, returned to challenge the very existence of the
Empire.

The Emperor, Doloroth XVI,
realized the gravity of the situation. Ordering the preparation of special
vaults of knowledge and materiel, Doloroth commanded certain of his agents to
hide themselves from the coming storm. The old man clearly remembered stoically
accepting his orders from the Emperor as tears rolled down both their cheeks.
Doloroth, once a strong and vibrant man, had become gaunt and sickly, seeming
to reflect the ills of the Empire itself. The Emperor had been close to the old
mage, who had been his tutor in youth. The Necromancer remembered the warm
touch of Doloroth’s hand on his shoulder, and his firm grip as they shook hands
for the last time. He did not know how many others had received similar orders
from their Emperor, and it did not matter. He would not let his Emperor, or their
Empire, down.

His power, he had been told,
would not be sufficient to bolster their current military situation. Their
reserves, who’d been training with less and less time before taking the field,
were beginning to fall back before multiple waves of advancing invaders.
Nothing could save the life of the Empire now. It would fall to those who
hungered for its luxuries, but were unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary
to appreciate and create them. The Empire, however, had never been afraid of
sacrifice, and now, he was told, he was being asked to make sure that their
ultimate sacrifice would not be in vain.

For seven hundred years, the old
man, the old mage had sequestered himself, waiting for the right time to
emerge. He had never really known what would be the signal to return, but he
had spent centuries developing strategies for the moment it came. Poson, he
realized, had been the signal. This event, this Harvest, had been his master
strategy. With this army, unfeeling and unafraid, the ultimate children of the
very people who had slaughtered his way of life, he would retake the lands of
the Empire. He would reclaim the power of that Empire and ensure that the
sacrifice of over two and a half thousand years of culture, art, society and
history had not been in vain. He was now their hope, their last remaining hope,
and he would resurrect that Empire with the same force he had reanimated in the
fields surrounding Æostemark. This he had sworn, and this he would do.

He relaxed in a chair, feeling
the pain of his bones subsiding and looking at his sketch of a city long
fallen. After so many centuries, after so many sacrifices, he was finally on
his way. No longer in hiding, no longer a mage, not even, really, an old man,
he was now “the Necromancer,” leading nightmare forces in an effort to rebuild
a dream. He let his thoughts drift back to Doloroth, feeling again the warm
hand on his shoulder, feeling the guilt at abandoning his friend and their
people to sacrifice, and finally, feeling hope that his efforts would be
rewarded in Empire and vanishing guilt. His head began to nod, just as the
captain’s had, and he drifted off into sleep.

Two and a half days after the
ceremony had begun, the Necromancer pushed out his searching thoughts once
more. His Harvest was complete. All of his wakened dead had crawled, shambled,
or shuffled their way to assemble near Æostemark. The living were once again
beginning to enter the lands of the Harvest. The living, however, were not his
concern—
yet
. There was still much work to do before his legions would be
ready to rebuild Empire.

The dead that could walk were
ordered into rank and file. Those showing too much damage, those that crawled
because they had no other mechanical means of choice, were heaped into wagons
and ox-carts that had once belonged to the living. Limbless torsos were tossed
on top of those with shattered legs or missing feet. They shifted and writhed
against each other, rattling like a perpetually collapsing cabinet.

Just after noon, the march east
began. It was more of a funeral procession than any sort of military parade.
Dust and ashes kicked up in the wake of the columns added their haze to the
cloud-darkened, midday sky. Rain began to fall thickly before the march was an
hour old. The approaching storm advanced slowly into the west. The water fell
in opaque sheets, slashing at the air and striking the ground with a vengeance.
Visibility was cut dramatically by the rain. It was as if Nature had covered
the abominable column with a cold, dark shroud of lashing rain and concealing
clouds.

Among the living in the column,
speculation arose that the Necromancer had called upon his powers to give their
march cover. They spoke of him in awed and silent voices, casting fearful
glances at his wagon. Troseth, also, believed the rain had come from his
Master. He, however, kept his eyes away from the wagon, afraid to even think of
the old man, lest his thoughts somehow betray his hatred and earn him even
greater pain.

The Necromancer had not called
down the sky-blackening rain. He appreciated it none-the-less, as it provided
an excellent curtain for his army to march behind. There were living souls
moving about the land again, soon to find open—and empty—graves. Some of them
might even think to investigate. Those who did would be cautious even on a
clear day. In this threatening rain, they would slow to a crawl, searching for
signs and portents. He, on the other hand, could move with confidence, and
soon, his passing would be the stuff of myth and legend—a ghost story told in
taverns. Even the evidence of the disrupted graves would begin to fade after
the rain had muddied the ground.

Leaning back in his chair, the
old man listened to the rain. It did not lull him to rest, but set his mind to
musing. The water lashed at his wagon, sounding like the claws of a hundred
minor demons eager to get in and devour his very soul. Their clawing was
frustrated, but continuous, as if they knew they could get in, but only with
time. Their frustration, he thought, stemmed from that time. They didn’t want
to wait to get at him. They wanted him now. Patience, he thought, as his wagon
continued to roll to the east, patience…

Drothspar
woke slowly. It seemed as if the weight of the world pressed down upon his
mind, blanketing it, smothering it, trying to keep him from waking. He listened
for the voice that had called out to him. It had promised life and purpose and
then… vanished. At least he thought it had. Or was it just a dream?

He struggled to move his body,
but it didn’t respond. He felt as if he had been covered in molten lead, a dire
liquid density pushing down upon his limbs. Still partly asleep, he reasoned.
He focused on his slumber, trying to remember his dreams.

But there were no dreams…

Were there?

His memory touched on a profound
blackness. No sound. No light. No beginning, no end. He had woken up from…
nothing. There had been only blackness, an eternal black wall.

It couldn’t have been drink. He
hadn’t had a real drink in years—more years than he could remember. If it
hadn’t been drink…? His mind struggled with the thoughts, yet there was no
urgency to the struggle. He had no sense of time. He felt almost, but not
quite, lucid.

If it hadn’t been drink, it must
have been…

Fever, Drothspar thought to
himself, it has to be fever. He felt the weight of his body pressing him down.
He was tired, so tired. He tried to concentrate. He was lying down, he was sure
of it. Wasn’t he? The more he thought about it, the more he was certain he
could feel his body.

He tried to move his left arm and
felt it slide forward, haltingly, as if breaking free of an oppressive weight.
He tried to move his right arm and it, too, responded. He experimented with his
legs, and they also began to move. He kept his arms and legs moving, afraid to
lose his physical link to consciousness. He tried to lift his head, but the
effort was too great. He could not see or hear anything, so he simply continued
to move. He was crawling, he was almost certain. Why was he doing that? Where
was he going?

His sense of time had not
returned when the first sound intruded itself upon him. Every time he moved, he
heard a strange clatter, like metal on wood. He stopped moving and the sound
stopped. The silence was frightening. He needed to keep moving, needed to hear
that sound, any sound. He began to crawl and heard the rattle once more. He was
dragging something with him. He wasn’t sure what it could be. It didn’t really
matter, so long as he could hear it.

He continued crawling, and the sound
of the rattling became more clear. Other sounds came to him as well. There was
a breeze. He could hear it in what he thought was the dry shuffling of leaves.
His mind grasped on to that sound. He was near trees! Why was he near trees?

He could hear his body dragging
along the ground, causing the occasional dry crackle. It sounded like… dead
leaves, fallen leaves. Something in his mind told him that more than a few days
had passed. He wasn’t sure how long and he couldn’t put it all together. The
one thing that seemed certain was that the more he moved, the more things came
back to him. He held on to that thought and kept crawling.

He crawled until he eventually
struck something solid. Reaching out with his hands, he touched either side of
the object and felt around it. He couldn’t quite feel as well as he thought he
should, but he could discern ridges on the surface. Its size and shape
suggested the trunk of a tree. He tried to lift his head and managed to tilt it
back slightly with the aid of his hands. A hazy darkness hovered before him. He
thought that he could perceive a deeper darkness where his hands had found the
tree. It wasn’t much, he admitted to himself, but it was the first thing like
sight that had come to him.

He pulled at the ground with a
renewed vigor. If he just pulled hard enough or far enough it would all come
back to him. He crawled on and listened to the rattle of his movements.
Occasionally, he’d hit a tree and lift his head to view the majesty of its
blur. He’d then work his way around it and continue.

He had no idea of how far he’d
come or how long he had been crawling when he first noticed a scent in the air.
It was the scent of dirt. He could smell the soil through which he crawled! It
was a dark scent and somewhat moist. And there, he thought, wasn’t that the
scent of fallen leaves, dry and musty, mixed with the dirt?

The scent of the soil tugged at a
memory somewhere deep in his mind, but he shuddered away from it. The memory
didn’t seem like a good one. He couldn’t focus on the memory anyway, as if it
didn’t want to be found. That bothered him for a moment, and then he let it go.
He soaked up the scents around him, sensing them constantly, which seemed
different. He knew that was somehow strange, but, like the memory, he let it
pass. He was doing too well to let worries slow him down. He had to keep going.

He began to feel moisture in the
ground as he moved with his hands, and the difference between dirt and rock. He
could feel his fingers bite deep into the soil to gain purchase. Aside from
sight, his senses seemed to be clearing.

Even his mind functioned more
clearly. He thought about what his senses were telling him, and they told him
that he had woken up in the forest. As he continued to crawl, however, he
realized that it had been some time since he’d struck a tree. He wasn’t sure
how much time, but he was certain it had been a while. The scent of dry leaves
and loam had faded. The ground no longer crackled at his passage.

He was out of the forest. The
smell of grass grew around him as he crawled. He felt like he was moving
faster. Partly, he thought, it was due to his returning strength, but as he
focused on what he felt, he noticed that the ground was uneven beneath the
grass. There were little mounds or furrows that provided his hands something to
grasp and his feet something to push against. As he moved over the uneven
terrain, his mind put together the image of a long fallow field.

He thought of a farm, and then of
honey. He’d been heading to the Ferns’ farm for honey! He had no idea which
field the Ferns had left fallow, but he reasoned that if he had left the forest
to find one of their fields, then the farm itself couldn’t be far.

Lifting his head, he tried to
perceive where the farm buildings might be, but nothing stood out to him. He
lowered his head without his hands. His neck was getting stronger. The effort
hadn’t been wasted, he thought, and continued to move.

Eventually, he felt himself push
off of the last fallow furrow. He was once again on even ground, and he
wondered what he would find next. He tried to recall the layout of the Ferns’
farm as he crawled, wondering if someone would find him slithering across their
fields like a blind snake.

His musings were interrupted when
he struck his head on something solid. He thought he’d hit it pretty hard, but
it hadn’t hurt at all. He didn’t bother to complain about the missing pain and,
instead, reached out his hands to feel for a tree trunk. His hands came very
close together before they found the object. It was round, though smaller than
the trees of the forest. It had no ridges of bark, but was almost smooth. He
raised his hands up the surface until they struck an object on either side.
These were hard, but not round, more squared-off or rectangular. They entered
the round shaft on one side and exited on the other. Their joining formed a
strange, short cross.

He thought about it.
Cattle
fence
suddenly leapt to mind. It was the Ferns’ cattle fence! There was
only one field that was between the forest from his cottage and the Ferns’
cattle fence. If he turned right and followed the fence, it would lead him
straight toward the farm. He kept the fence on his left side, reaching out as
he crawled to feel for the posts.

What would happen once he passed
the last fence post? Sure, someone might see him, but then again, they might
not. No one had noticed him yet. If he continued to feel only for breaks in the
gaps, eventually, he’d pass that last post blindly. He needed to follow the
rails to the posts. That way, when the fence turned, he could turn as well. He
couldn’t crawl and feel the rails at the same time; they were too far off the
ground. He wondered if he had the strength to stand.

Eager to find out, he crawled
along until he found the next fence post. Pulling himself very close, he
followed it up to where the rails joined. Placing a hand on each rail, he
pulled his torso up the post. He seemed to be bent unnaturally, and, though he
didn’t feel it yet, he was certain it wouldn’t be comfortable for long. He
followed the post with his hands until they came to the second rail. He pulled
himself up again and tried to settle his feet. He gripped the rails tightly,
worried that he might topple over. The shadows of the fence no longer intruded
on the haze of his vision, but the rattling of his movements increased.

Holding on to the rail, he tested
his weight on his feet. His balance seemed different, almost missing. He
wondered if it was another casualty of his fever. His weight didn’t seem to be
much of a problem, but he definitely needed work on his balance.

Falteringly, he shifted his
weight to his outstretched leg. Following with his hands on the rail, he
clumsily stood on that leg and drew in the other. It was slow, slower than
crawling, he admitted, but at least he could follow the fence rails. He was
surprised by his strength, and almost equally alarmed by his lack of balance.

He slowly shifted his weight one
leg at a time, always careful to follow with his hands. He weaved and wobbled,
and caught himself from falling several times. As he went along the fence line,
he realized that he did have some sense of balance. He could tell when he was
leaning too far in one direction or another. At first, he thought it might just
be that his arm was strained or slacked against the rails, and that was telling
him that he was off-center. Eventually, one of the rails collapsed under his
touch. Drothspar remained standing, though he did wobble. He took a step in the
direction of the next post and found it with his hand. Pleased, he continued
along the next rail, resting his hand lightly on the wood for guidance. He only
leaned against it once for support. He was certain he’d have plenty of
splinters from the old wood, but it didn’t matter because he could walk.

He followed the fence when it
turned the corner and wondered why no one had noticed him yet. The fence ran
right along the farm’s main structures; he should be close enough to see, but
not so close as to be concealed behind barn or stable. Maybe it was night, he
thought to himself, but surely their dogs would be barking wildly.

He stopped and listened. He had
focused so much on walking, following, and balancing that he’d ignored the
silence of the farm. There were no lowing cows, no muttering chickens. No
shouts were bouncing back and forth between farmhands, and no dogs were barking
at his approach. Those dogs
always
barked at his approach. They usually
waited until he was fairly close; they were probably hoping to make him jump
out of his skin. But he was near the farm structures themselves now, he was
sure of it. The dogs had never let him get that close before. There was fun and
there was duty, and those dogs never forgot which was the priority. He decided
to call out to them.

Tilting his head back, he opened
his mouth to yell and nothing happened. Maybe his throat was dry, he thought.
He tried to swallow, but couldn’t tell if he’d succeeded or not. He tried to
whistle, but failed. He decided to make whatever noise he could, and hit his hands
along the fence rail. He heard his hand smack down solidly, and his body
rattled at the motion. Nothing else stirred. He hit the fence three more times,
and still no man or creature responded. He leaned his body against the rails of
the fence and thought about his situation.

He looked up and noticed that his
vision was getting slightly better. The dim haze that had been all he’d seen
was beginning to get brighter. He thought he could make out the dark forms of
the farm buildings in the distance, though their height and shapes seemed
wrong. He wondered, briefly, if he could be somewhere else, but there were no
other farms, occupied or abandoned, anywhere near this part of the forest. The
Ferns had cut their land from the very forest itself. He wished he could call
out, even if it was just to hear the sound of his own voice. Maybe the illness
had taken it from him.

He was fairly certain it had been
an illness which had laid him low. It was the only thing that could explain how
so many of his faculties had been damaged. He wondered, then, how he’d gotten
out into the forest. Could the fever have plucked him out of his bed and walked
him out to find honey for some heat-oppressed reason? If that were true, he had
probably just crawled himself away from whoever might be searching for him. If
he could just find someone at the farm, maybe he could somehow explain what had
happened and they could help him return home.

Home. He missed Li.

The thought struck him from out
of the blue.