The Temple of Heart and Bone (3 page)

The soldiers held steady around
him, though their eyes betrayed a sudden fear and doubt. The monolith of the
altar began to tremble and heave as if some vast force below were working
itself upward. The altar gave a violent lurch, sliding several feet to the east
and crushing one of the cavalry guards in the process. The gaunt old man was
knocked backward to the feet of the woman on her stake.

The black cat rushed to the old
man’s side and was run through by the soldier in plate armor. His blade pierced
the body of the cat, and twisted cruelly within it. On being struck, the cat
wrenched itself to attack, but the surrounding soldiers, waiting for just such
a move, tackled it as a group. Its claws rent at their armor, but found no
purchase. Its teeth clamped on their helmets, but were deflected. Struggling
mightily, the soldiers held the cat down while their leader’s blade opened an
ever-wider wound in the stricken beast. Maimed and bled beyond its ability to
live, the cat fell limp, and the officer drew his blade from its body.

The tremors that had rocked the
city subsided. Several of the black-robed men moved quickly to adjust the
altar. Failing to move its massive stone weight, they rushed to reset the braziers
on either side and to right the candles. After a few moments, the old man came
to his senses and felt the weight of the dead animal upon him. The commander of
the soldiers moved his hands brusquely, signaling some of his men to remove the
carcass from their master. The old man’s eyes held a burning question, but he
pushed it aside as he focused on his own task and stood again at the altar.

He reached for one of the knives
prepared on his right. He spoke again, his voice still grand in scale, but lesser
than before the tremors had occurred. New sounds began to intrude upon the
ceremony. Bricks rattled against stone, and a dry scraping sounded in the
shadows. The cavalry soldiers eyed each other nervously, and even the
black-robed men grew pale and fearful.

The old man took up his knife and
turned to the woman on the stake. His eyes darted in agitation as he noticed
she was not directly behind him on his right, but a man’s length off to his
left. He continued muttering through his disturbance and almost gently caressed
her terrified cheek. With his other hand, he plunged the knife into her breast
and caught her face harshly with his hand as she writhed in pain. He worked the
knife to free her heart from her chest, but in so doing noticed something in her
eyes, something that only she could see. She became placid and calm, as if she
had witnessed a scene of utter contentment and beauty—then the old man saw it,
something different. In the space of a lost heartbeat, her look changed to one
of shock and terror.

The old man placed her heart in
the brazier. Like the first, it smoked and blackened, and the old man turned
again to the center of the altar. He took up the second knife on the right and
opened his other hand. Standing before the brazier, he let his blood flow into
the fiery coals to mingle with the dripping, popping heart. His voice again
grew to immensity, and again shook the foundations of Æostemark.

There was a subtle difference in
the sound. When his voice first rose in the ritual, there had been a shocking,
jolting power to it. At this second sounding of his voice, a wave of command
and insistent instruction flowed upward and outward, shattering nearby glass,
and pushing out fallen leaves in forests near and far. An opening formed in the
blue-green dome covering the land. It spread with the wave of energy and
dissolved the bell entirely. The clatter of falling bricks continued, urged on
by the intensity of the sound. The dead, glazed eyes of the bodies on the
stakes looked emptily at the old man. He, in turn, gazed at them, as if waiting
for some reply. The black-robed men watched their master intently, while the
soldiers watched the shadows of the buildings and each other.

A band of border guards rushed
into the city’s smoking square to investigate, and a small skirmish began in
the flickering firelight. The caravan’s dismounted cavalry fell upon the border
guards, cutting them down before they could organize themselves properly. Cries
rang out from the guards, calling to companions who could not hear them. Swords
clashed against each other and deflected into the cobbled street. Crunching
blows bit into armor and flesh, and blades were withdrawn with sickly, sticking
sounds. Still forms once again littered the streets of Æostemark, and the smell
of fresh blood lingered in the night air. Within minutes, the fight was
finished. Some few of the caravan’s dismounted cavalry had fallen beside the
border guards’ entire detachment. The wounded soldiers were helped back to the
fountain by others, and again, those remaining took up the ring.

The old man, meanwhile, had come
to a state near frenzy. He walked from one bound corpse to the next, staring
into their eyes. He walked to the woman and lifted her chin. She gazed blankly
back at him. He started to turn away, her chin sliding out of his fingers, when
her warm hand snapped its restraints and caught his wrist. Dead eyes fixed him
coolly. The black-robed servants rushed up to his side brandishing small
weapons of their own. The old man ripped his arm out of her grasp and spoke to
her in the same ancient language he had used before. Her eyes showed no
emotion, but her head nodded acceptingly. She snapped her other arm loose from
her bindings and stepped away from the stake. Her chest gaped open, like a
glaring eye accusing all around her. A few feet away, the body of the dead
border guard broke its own bonds and stepped away from its stake. It stood,
chest steaming in the night air, facing the old man, waiting. The black-robed
minions backed away toward the living soldiers, unconsciously seeking their
protection.

The still forms of the recent
battle began to shudder and stir in the shadows where they had fallen. Maimed
and bleeding, they stood and dragged themselves into the light surrounding the
altar. The living winced and gagged at the walking atrocities they had
committed. They were all soldiers, and had seen the secrets of man spilled on
the ground in battle. They had not, however, seen such bodies rise again to
stand accusingly before them. The soldiers had known, to some degree, the
mission of their master. Knowing, however, was quite different from
experiencing.

The leader of the caravan’s guard
approached his master, standing quietly to one side, awaiting acknowledgement.
The old man, glowing with dark pleasure, turned to admire his night’s work. His
eyes fell on each and every body before him, noting its condition, noting its
obedience. He had been pallid after his second invocation, but now drew himself
up in strength and power. His gaze finally settled on his guards’ commander,
and his eyes permitted the man to speak.

“My Lord,” the commander began,
“what do we do now?”

“Now, my dear Troseth, we wait,”
came the old man’s reply.

“For what, my Lord?”

“The Harvest, Troseth.” The old
man turned to look out into the shadows of the city. Troseth followed his view,
at first seeing nothing. Something, however, disturbed his eye. Some movement
seemed to taunt his gaze, a slight changing of the shadows. As he watched, his
mind worked to form images from the broken patterns of the darkness. What
emerged shattered all of his preconceptions. A rotting collection of bones,
dragging tattered clothes around its feet, shuffled slowly out of the
blackness. “The Harvest.”

Across
the shattered city of Æostemark the dead began to rise. The ground erupted,
spitting forth the vile fruits of war, disease, and human frailty. Dry,
skeletal fingers pierced up through the ground like fast growing weeds. Massive
stones pushed away from crypts. Coffins crumbled under the soil. The bones of
the wealthy shambled forth to join those of peasants and beggars.

The maddened, searching citizens
of Æostemark finally began to see rewards for their efforts. One woman, both of
her hands raw and bleeding, saw movement in a pile of rubble. She rushed over
and clawed at the brick and stone, hoping to find a friend, a loved one,
perhaps her own child. As the weight of war and collapse pushed aside, a cold,
hard set of fingers closed around her wrist. Clamping down with crushing
strength, the hand pulled her down into the rubble as it rose, the way a
drowning man might offer his savior as sacrifice to appease an angry sea.

Outside the city, in several of
the massive fields surrounding, the ground boiled up, shedding the weight of
its own skin. Great communal graves, the resting places of invader and defender
alike, shuddered and released their contents. Silhouetted against the night
sky, the emerging figures looked not unlike giant black ants emerging from the
soil.

Some of the dead, those having
suffered more damage than others, began searching the ground for something,
though not nearly as feverishly as the maddened living. Here and there a
collection of bones would reach down, sift through the dirt with one remaining
hand, and pull another set of bones from the moist, dark ground. Arm or hand,
leg or skull, the animated form would seek to reattach its missing bones and
join its comrades. Other skeletal forms, those too incomplete or too badly
damaged to walk, dragged themselves by whatever means necessary to follow.

Mass graves continued to open in
the fields around Æostemark. The skeletal forms of animals pushed and scrambled
their way from their own burial sites. Horses, having once lain bloated on the
field, emerged gaunt and thin, sleek in their skeletal structures. Moonlight
sifted through their massive rib cages as they followed an unseen call. Great
lines of dry and clicking bones from a vast radius moved to that call, all
heading toward Æostemark.

The remaining living denizens of
Æostemark began to wake slowly in the night. Some heard the shifting of rubble,
the clatter of stone falling on stone. They thought that, perhaps, the deranged
seekers had moved too close, or that another rotting building had chosen to
fall. Others thought that the looters were getting bold again, and sought what
weapons they had. They lit their lanterns and peered through barred windows
into the surrounding night. Alone in their homes they could see, and sometimes
feel, the passing of shadows in the darkness. Even the shadows, revealing no
hints of form or structure, caused the very hair to stand on their skin.

A chill sense of dread filled
each heart, making it pound in the chest containing it. Blood coursed through
the veins of the living, surging in an effort to make itself known, to
segregate itself from what instinct sensed was moving outside. The rational,
conscious mind argued against what the subconscious and soul had discovered as
a slight scent in the air or as a living being’s intuition. The citizens stood
in their places, fighting down urges to run and hide. They had homes to defend,
fortunes and wealth to consider. Who could be frightened by a few bumps in the
night?

In the square, bodies gathered
before the Necromancer and his minions. The black-robed priests, having once
retreated in fear, fell on the ground in awe and worship. Their eyes revealed a
living ecstasy, a dark joy in their master’s success. They knelt to the ground
and prayed as if wracked by fever.

The Necromancer, for his part,
watched their slavering adoration with contemptuous amusement. Had their faith
in his power been true, their admiration might have struck them less as a
surprise. He, however, paid scant attention to the living around him. For seven
years he had held the spirits in place in a vast radius around Æostemark. He
had contained the dead and dying through his sheer will and power. It had
drained him, cost him, even come close to destroying him, but now the Harvest
had begun. The seeding, seven years earlier, had borne its dark fruit, and his
patience had been rewarded. He had encouraged the invasion that led to the
slaughter of two great armies around Æostemark. He held up the ideals of pride,
hope, and, ultimately, religion to give the invaders a prize worth dying for.
He promised them life beyond death, and now, here, he had finally delivered.

Rank after rank of the dead stood
before him. Some were mere bones, flesh stripped by creatures large or too
small to be seen by the eye. Others had some flesh still rotting from their
structure. These, he realized had died more recently, a bonus to his seven year
plan.

The magic that bound the spirits
to these forms had been quite powerful, if costly. If only he’d had this power,
this knowledge, in the years he had served the Empire. He had known how to
encase spirits in their corporeal forms before his long slumber. He had used it
as threat and punishment against his Emperor’s enemies. He had even been able
to reanimate a body or two, though it had taken all his concentration. Never
before had he wielded this amount of power. Awakened seven hundred years after
the fall of his Emperor, he was shown the path by the visionary who had roused
him, the visionary who served him still, Poson. His only question was, “Why?”

Poson had always been obsequious.
He was a fawning, bootlicking sycophant who had sworn his loyalty the moment
the awakening was complete. Why had he not used this power himself? Why had he
sought out the barely living husk of a thousand—and more—year old Imperial
Mage? True, as a mage with the knowledge of captivating souls he could more
readily cross into necromancy, but surely others had possessed this knowledge.
Why disturb the guilty slumber of a being who sought only to fade away?

The Necromancer’s face flushed a
deep red at the thought. He felt guilt for the fall of the Empire. What use had
his power been when it couldn’t stop the flood of uneducated, ill-mannered,
bipedal vermin from trampling over what he had served for over three hundred
years of his life? A scowl crossed his face and his teeth bit into each other
accusingly. Anger welled into his eyes and he clenched his bloody fists. No
more, he thought, looking out again over the undead forms still gathering in
and around the square. He created now a new force, a new “Imperial Army.” This
army would not grow tired. This army would not flee the field before superior
numbers of inferior creatures. They would require neither food nor sleep, and
their victories would only swell their ranks.

He looked out over the city of
Æostemark. “City,” he scoffed. Æostemark was a collection of hovels compared to
the majesty of the cities of the Empire. The Empire, he thought. The glory, he
remembered. The guilt, he felt accompanying those disjointed memories. He
raised his bloody hands to his head, knocking off his black mitre and streaking
his lank white hair with his own blood. He would wash away that guilt, yes, he
would, wash it clean. With what, he wondered to himself. He began to shake violently,
the emotions boiling inside him seeming to burst in his very muscles. He shook
and tore at his hair, maddened by the thought of his failure. Failure. Having
failed once, could he not fail again? His head began to rock back and forth
over his chest. His eyes darted left to right, looking for answers, pleading
for answers. Slowly, through his agitation, the blood from his hands ran though
his hair and down his forehead. Falling into his eyes, he became annoyed and
dashed it away.

Blood. Of course, that was why he
was here. He would wash away the past with the blood of the present. He would
forge the future on the bodies of his enemies. He slowly brought himself under
control. He stopped his violent shaking and raised his head proudly. He looked
out into the gathered dead before him and selected some two hundred in his
mind. Closing his eyes, he issued an order to slay the living vermin hidden
away in the rubble of Æostemark, carefully excluding those who served him.
Everything, he thought, has its uses.

Troseth and his surviving
soldiers had watched their Master’s seeming-seizure. They also kept close eye
on the animated bones before them, praying fervently to whatever they held dear
that their Master would not lose control. Even the men that Troseth
knew
had no faith in anything other than their own sword mumbled reverently under
their own breath.

Though standing quite still,
their hollow eyes focused on the Necromancer, the dead seemed to exude a
terrible sense of hunger. They were a vacuum of life, pulling at the spirits of
the living around them. The soldiers, handpicked for their discipline, fought
the same battle of will versus instinct that the inhabitants of Æostemark
fought behind their barred and shuttered doors. The soldiers, however, consciously
knew they were facing the dead. These soldiers would also live through the
night.

Two hundred of the recently risen
dead struggled against the flow of incoming bodies to spread out into the city
of Æostemark. The Necromancer’s orders seemed to shake them from the slumber of
the grave. They no longer shuffled as they had when they assembled in the
square, but walked with purpose. Hollow eyes sought things that only they could
see, and unspoken communications spread between them as they marched out into
the shadows.

By now, all the living in
Æostemark were awake. Merchants and soldiers watched through window and door
with lanterns and candles close at hand. Weapons fit every fist that could hold
them as hearts hammered in uncertainty and fear. There was no time to seek
shelter. Instinct told them that death was in the streets, that it would not be
possible to run to the garrison for protection. The soldiers in the barracks
within the city numbered only six after their comrades had gone to investigate the
disturbance in the square. The six, too, had considered a break for the border
post, but their intuition also told them death was outside the door.

One of the soldiers, watching the
streets outside, let out an explosive breath. He began to fumble with the bolt
on the door.

“Hey, boys, it’s the sergeant!
He’s back from the square with the others.” He looked more closely out at the
returning soldiers. Dark stains, bled of color by the pale moonlight, covered
their bodies. “Hey! I think they’ve got blood on ‘em! Must have been some sorta
scuffle out there. I bet they’ll have some stories to tell.” He looked about
the room, his eyes searching. “Hey, somebody stir up something hot for ‘em to
drink, eh? They’re looking pretty cold.”

As the guards approached the
outside door, the watching soldier noticed a deep, wedge-shaped gash in the
side of the sergeant’s neck. His gorge rose up within him, and he jumped back
with a primal screech of fear. His shaking hands clawed at the weapon sheathed
at his side and his friends looked at him as if he’d gone mad. He looked back
over his shoulder at them, imploringly, his eyes begging for help, begging for
understanding, as fear closed his throat. The door crashed open and the
sergeant stepped inside. With a power born of desperation, the soldier who had
been on watch managed to draw his sword and strike at their sergeant. The men
in the back of the room gaped at what they thought was some maddened attempt at
mutiny. The sword bit into the side of their sergeant, deeply, painfully. He
didn’t even wince as he swung the blow that decapitated his attacker. The
remaining soldiers in the room drew their own weapons as their sergeant
advanced, sword still embedded in his side.

A merchant living near the
soldiers heard the crashing of their barracks’ door. He raced from his own door
to the window that looked out onto the barracks. He strained his eyes to focus
on the inside of their building, struggling to make out a figure in the
distance. Focused as he was on the distance, he never saw the skeletal hands
that broke through his window, filling his eyes with splinters. His head was
pulled through the window, his throat run repeatedly over the jagged, shattered
glass. He choked and coughed, his blood racing to fight for breath, while
skeletal thumbs gouged in upon his eyes. Finally, the dry, hard hands slackened
their grip on his head, sensing kinship in their new creation.

On the other side of town, a
large merchant and his family heard a crash in their cellar. Certain now he was
dealing with looters, the big man caught up his lantern and a wooden club and
marched down his stairs shouting threats and curses.

“You vile thieves,” he shouted,
“you sons of rotting whores! You break into a man’s business, threaten his very
livelihood with your greed, you worthless scum! You wait until I get down
there. I’ll teach you a thing or two about breaking!” He shuffled down his
stairs, working himself up into a frenzy through fear and anger. He felt the
tightness in his stomach, heard the pounding of his pulse in his ears. He was
angry and afraid, and angry at being afraid. He slipped into the shadowy black
cellar and headed for the broken window. Moonlight poured through the broken
glass, but no one stood near the window. He turned to see a hollow set of eyes
staring back at him.