The Necromancer

Chapter 5, Part 5

The hinges of the wooden box creaked open with a groan that told me it had been a while since they moved. "Winston," Skip said, "meet Darion."

Inside the box, on a bed of soft black velvet, there was a single bone. Most of it was that kind of dull yellowish/creamish color that old bones seem to get, though one end of it was charred black.  From the size and shape of it, and based on my experience in putting my minions back together, I'd say it was a leg bone. "Um... hello," I told the bone as I slipped my arm off of Skip's shoulder like a teenager caught misbehaving. My cheeks were burning like hot coals, and were probably just as red. 

"I know I should have told you about this earlier," Skip said. She tenderly closed the box again and snapped the locks back into place. "It's just... I just don't talk about it a lot." She put the box back on the blanket like she was tucking a baby into its crib. "I didn't think you needed to know about him."

"So that's what this is all about," I surmised. I'd never really cared too much why Skip wanted to find Amcerlizar; that was really her business. I was just trying not to get turned over to the Paladins, and  got caught up in it all. I'd even stopped thinking of it as just her mission; it had kind of become mine too. "Revenge? Amcerlizar killed your husband or something?" It wasn't a very uncommon story around these parts. Necromancer warlords aren't exactly known for their mercy when every additional corpse means a new recruit for their armies. Somewhere out there, her husband was hopping around on one leg and trying to wield a battleax against some poor villager. But it was disappointing that she was after something so common.

Skip actually laughed in response. "Oh, no! No, that's not what I meant." She placed a hand on the box and gave a sort of sad smile. "No, actually... Darion... well, he worked for Amcerlizar."

That was certainly not what I expected. "And now you want to kill him?"

"I'm fairly ambivalent about that part," Skip answered. "Mog is the one who is out for vengeance. It's kind of how we met up: he needed a human who could gather information for those times where brute strength just wouldn't cut it, and I needed some backup for situations where that brute strength really comes in handy. And we've just kind of become friends since then."

Bells continued to chime in the bay, and I thought I could hear the sounds of guests starting to leave the feast and return to their rooms. "Can we just go back to the part where your husband worked for Amcerlizar?" I asked.

She pulled the knife from her belt and handed it to me. "Darion is a smith. One of the best in the world." She shook her head and gave a sheepish grin. "Sorry: was one of the best."

I looked down at the knife that Skip always carried. I'd never quite noticed it before, but it was very finely crafted. Not that I knew anything about knives, or metalworking. Or much of anything, really, other than Necromancy. But I did my best to pretend like I was closely examining the craftsmanship of it by candlelight.

"But Darion didn't just make normal swords and axes and whatnot. He was more an inventor. Really, really incredible things. Amcerlizar found out about this. And he needed better weapons for his skeletons to go fight the Paladins. At first, Darion refused to work with him. Didn't want to take sides and all that, for fear of our safety." She gave a mirthful laugh, with a far-off look in her eyes as she dove into the past. "He showed up on our doorstep one night with wagons of gold. Said that he couldn't kill Darion, because his skills wouldn't necessarily transfer over in death." I nodded in agreement. The example that had been used in school was a famous swordsman who had been resurrected to serve as a Necromancer's personal champion in a duel, and in death had forgotten how to block (leading to a very poor showing in the fight). Some things in your mind just won't follow you out of the grave. "Anyway: Amcerlizar said Darion could either come work for him, or he'd just kill us both right then and there to prevent the Paladins from getting to him. So he and Amcerlizar worked out an agreement, and then he left us alone."