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Chapter Twelve
A cold gust of wind from off the balcony caught Alexi taking a break from studying for his final examinations. He looked up from the mahogany writing desk, put away his ink quill, and contemplated the ceiling ensorcelled with an illusion that always showed the exact opposite of the current season. Outside there was winter, but in here the ceiling showed blue skies and a green canopy of oak tree limbs spreading in the sunlight. Birds flitted here and there, all without sound of course, and the occasional white cloud scudded across the horizon.
Ten writing desks with gilt bronze and wood marquetry stood in the room, each stacked with old books that held gilded pages smashed between rectangular plates of bound leather. Students sat at each, scribbling away on parchment, working out the formulae that might appear on their graduation tests. Checking the water clock in the schoolyard, he noted that he had a few hours before sunset. Because the clouds outside threatened snow, Alexi dressed warmly in a fur cloak and hood. Underneath he wore a yellow bodice, laced in front, and a double layer skirt of purple and blue. He took with him the small box containing a piece of Abyssal stone. To his knowledge, professor Hepsibah failed to notice its absence.
Alexi descended a flight of steps and noticed guards from the Blades Acuuarum stationed at the gate, checking all those coming and going into the city. Alexi listened for a moment to hear what the teenaged boys said, as they harassed a small group of girls headed for the cemetery to practice their craft.
"We can't let you out of the school, ladies," one declared, his voice familiar. It was Dudley. He flashed the group of girls a greasy smile and they all giggled and fanned themselves furiously. He'd gotten so cocky dating Rowena because she polished his knob on a daily basis. Yet Rowena held off on fucking him for reasons obvious to Alexi.
That conversation is going to go poorly, Alexi thought. But he had to admit, even in the harsh light of winter Dudley looked attractive. This was especially true today since Dudley's mustache and beard looked nicely trimmed.
Too bad it's all cosmetic, Alexi thought. He can't even read. He's a bully so people won't see how stupid he is.
"We're just going up the hill to the cemetery," a girl named Bethany said. Alexi admired how her eyes seemed to capture the sun beams and reflect yellow. Alexi loved the color yellow.
"You've got to let us pass," Felicity said, twirling one strand of her metallic blue hair around a finger.
One of Dudley's friends, an overweight warrior with ginger dreadlocks and rolls of suet, leaned on a spear. "Now lass," he said, "Don't make us get cross with you. We said you can't leave. It's by order of the headmaster. There's trouble in the city what with an Abaddon demon on the loose. We need you here where we can protect you in case it dares to show its head. We'll skewer that bastard before it even gets through the gate." He smiled and looked over Felicity's ample bosom. "As a matter of fact, you should stay here by my side and keep me company. We can get to know one another." The other boys laughed.
"What's your name, soldier?" Felicity asked.
"Harold," the ginger replied. He gave her a wink.
Alexi frowned and headed back into the school, his cloak sweeping the granite floor and scattering fall leaves that the wind had pushed under the staircase. The sound of giggling followed him into the hallway where the classrooms devoted to the study of Vitalum Vitalis were held. He jostled past several doors just as the professors let their students out for the day. The corridors quickly filled with the daughters of necromancy representing all seven years taught at the academy. It was during these times that Alexi felt eyes on him. The feeling had plagued him for almost a full day now, ever since he and Daphne returned from Slippery Squib and that ominous event at the Obelisk of Quiet.
Who's watching me? Alexi scanned the corridor, keeping his hood close to his delicate chin. But all he saw was a sea of girls looking back at him, some sullen and others laughing because it was lunchtime and the cafeteria would be packed with delicious food.
He turned to the right and headed toward the library. Cast iron chandeliers thick with tallow candles sweated saffron light. The darkly seasoned oak ceilings had many burn marks, and the granite walls flitted with cobwebs. He passed several professors talking in the halls, all of them wore the school colors of black and white. Alexi paid them no heed, listening to the "clop clop" the heels of his shoes made, somewhat muffled by the sweep of his skirt.
He reached the far end of the west wing that marked the boundary of the places academy girls were allowed to go. Alexi sometimes came here to read in the sun room. Thick green hedges whose tops were white with snow grew beyond the frosted glass, held within ironwork pillars that soared to a conical roof where the three suns shone brightly above the clouds. Inside this oasis some gardener had created a makeshift arboretum. Here and there sat reclining chairs, and tables with books on them. An old cup and saucer still here from his last visit held decomposing tea leaves in the bottom. The babble of water from a statue devoted to the water goddess and seven sea nymphs stood beyond the edge of a garden box where a massive indoor palm tree and ferns took root.
Alexi's eyes searched the granite walls to the west. There, behind thick vines, was an old rusty door. Beyond it lay the cold, deserted halls belonging to a vast complex of ancient ruins left over from when this place functioned as a palace before the events now called the Red Revolution and the shift of Zanda to a theocracy.
This is how I get to the Hollows, he thought.
Alexi crossed the stone floor quickly, checking to the left and right, and into nooks and crannies to make sure no one was here studying or even snogging with a boy brought here illegally. Sometimes, Grimmet, the janitor, spent a few hours sweeping the sun room floor while drinking lightly from a liquor flask. Alexi suspected he did so to escape the ever-watchful eye of the school administration.
When he reached the iron door, Alexi realized he'd have to pull the vines out of the way. He jerked on the thick green cords, tugging as hard as he could, and he only managed to cut his hands open on the wooden spurs.
"Dammit," he swore. He pressed a handkerchief to his smooth, baby soft palms.
Alexi frowned and stared at the impossible vines and cursed his weak body. Dudley would have just yanked these weeds out of the way in seconds. His anger and frustration welled up inside him and awoke Drago, the knot inside Alexi's guts, and the pain doubled him over.
I can't cry out, he thought. Someone might hear me. Warm tears fell from his cheeks.
Coughing, he managed to straighten and then raised his hands before the defiant plant. "Interficiem koro," he uttered, eyes blazing red with necromantic power.
Before his outstretched fingers, the leaves turned black, the vine withered, and the whole plant turned to ashes.
Alexi caught his breath and stepped back from the door. He knew his power grew on almost a daily basis, but this last effort hardly winded him at all. "That shouldn't have worked as well as it did," Alexi uttered to no one. Then his eyes fell to the lock. The same enchantment should technically work on iron, as the necromancy he'd just used reduced things to their ultimate end.
He swallowed, held his hand over the iron padlock, and felt the power from Drago filling his flesh. It raised goose pimples on his hairless skin. "Interficiem koro," he said again. Red splotches of rust appeared on the iron padlock and they spread rapidly. Soon the thing weakened, and it eventually fell of its own weight onto the floor where it continued to fall apart until all that remained was a pile of red dust.
Alexi swallowed his spit and reached out to the handle, tugging it open. The screech of the iron on the door frame echoed down the hall beyond and made Alexi wince. He checked once more over his shoulder and then stepped into the gloom beyond.
Dust and snow blanketed most things he saw. Sunlight streamed through broken windows and through several holes in the roof of this once great hall. Broken tables, chairs, and couches lay scattered about like kindling. Everywhere his eyes fell, Alexi saw signs that others had used the room recently. Discarded candles and summoning circles (that no doubt failed to summon anything) had been painted on floors. He also saw bones and teeth, things left over from the undead that prowled these corridors, or from animal sacrifices meant to increase necromantic resources for a greater effect. This room had no occupants now, probably helped by the fact that the double doors at its end had been barred. He walked over to one of the windows that overlooked the bluff on which the sprawling complex was built to suss out his route through the abandoned palace.
Cold air and snowflakes pelted his face. He stared at the hillside that he'd have to negotiate beyond those double doors. In places, the granite, concrete, and glass structure still held onto its former glory. Stone gargoyles completely enshrouded by thorn bushes and vines peeked out at the snow-covered academy. The dilapidated wings of the complex had a kind of majesty to them. He spotted broken glass, toppled columns, and shattered walls. Roofs had collapsed in more than half of the areas between him and his destination: the exit at the bottom of the hill about half a mile away. A windswept courtyard barely visible through the limbs of leafless aspen trees faced the Zandan river with its now iconic iron-wrought fence and gate, chained to keep the undead from crossing its threshold. On this side of the fence, the once grand gardens had gone completely wild. Perennials had cracked the masonry and weeds choked every pot and fountain.
Alexi walked over to the door and managed to free the bar so that he could open the great doors. Peering beyond, he saw a hallway with many unpaned windows staring emptily at the open sky. Snow, leaves, and garbage left by students choked the floor and the plaster peeled from the walls. Empty torch sconces showed where the corridor might have been lit a long time ago.
Alexi turned left, keeping one eye at the trees and hillside visible through those empty windows. He took two flights of stairs down, stepping carefully to minimize footprints in the snow. Outside, he could no longer see the tops of spruce and aspen; instead he looked at their thick trunks. If he went to peer outside to get his bearings, he could see the academy a hundred feet up, perched on its bluff that overlooked the city. And after thirty minutes of walking, Alexi came to a large doorframe with several holes in the walls to either side. Just beyond spread a ghastly sight: a chamber filled with human bones. A large iron door hanging on only one hinge, rusted with age and pitted from something that had hammered on it from the far side, swung in the wind.
Gathering his courage, the dainty necromancer strode into the room, kicking ribcages and femurs out of his way as he made for the opening on the far side. He'd passed seemingly countless corridors that afternoon. Most had a dilapidated beauty to them, others not so much. He saw floors that had six-foot-wide cracks in them from parts of the building pulling away, intent on crashing down the hillside at some point yet to come. Explorers long before Alexi had fashioned makeshift bridges from flat boards in order to cross in relative safety. However, others now gaped so wide Alexi was forced to find a detour. The relatively fresh appearance of these crevasses meant that the foundation on this side of the palace continued to pull away from the rest of the structure. One room even contained the tattered remains of some brilliant tapestries. Alexi stopped to admire one that held an image of a golden hydra, but ran when the pile started to move and giant rats appeared.
Thus far, however, he'd not come across something as grotesque as the sight before him.
"This looks like the lair of some monster," Alexi uttered, looking to his left and right. Teeth marks showed that something with a large bite radius had chewed upon these bones. "Best not to attract any unneeded attention here."
Above him, a domed skylight darkened as clouds scudded over the three suns. Then a smell of rotten meat wafted to his nostrils. He raised his eyes from the bone-strewn floor to see a huge shadow appear in the doorway. A creature standing nine-feet tall stooped its head and walked inside. Great swaths of rotten skin sloughed from its bones. One of its eyes crawled with maggots; the other stared at Alexi, an orb floating in bubbling yellow goo. It had massive legs swathed in rotten flesh. The buzzing of carrion flies filled the air. Its huge mouth hung open, revealing a rotten tongue and breath so foul it ushered from its throat in a noxious green cloud. It's sharp, bloody teeth gleamed at him.
The monster roared and strode across the room toward him, crushing bone to meal under its disgusting feet. As it entered, it wrenched free the iron door from its remaining hinge, filling the hall with an unbearable screech. Then it hurled the door at Alexi. The nimble necromancer easily danced to one side as the monster's aim was a bit off. When it landed, it crashed through a heap of bones creating a cacophony that Alexi was certain was heard for miles around.
"Undead ogre...," Alexi said, trying to contain his panic. "You're a big fella. I think I'll call you Dudley." Alexi backpedaled, keeping both eyes on the zombie that intended to rip him to pieces.
The huge thing tread forward on stumpy legs and reached for him with claws that ended in razor sharp talons. Black blood and foul ichor dripped all over the floor.
Alexi stopped and straightened his spine. He held out both palms and summoned the necromantic energy in the room. This caused the monster to stop and look to the right and left as if aware of something that Alexi couldn't see. But then it shrugged off the magic and continued to walk forward.
Help me, Alexi directed his thoughts at the knot inside him.
And then Drago responded.
Pain filled his frail body but the power that coursed through Alexi's veins made up for that weakness and steeled his skinny arms and legs with the strength of the ancients. Alexi hurled all of that power into the huge undead ogre, and halted the hulk in its tracks. Alexi felt the necromancy extend from his fingers like tendrils in control of a puppet, filling the limbs of the flesh and bone monstrosity until he could feel the singular source that animated this thing and gave it unlife.
"You are mine to control," Alexi whispered, closing his fist around that invisible gem of necromantic power. And then he lowered his arms. "Turn around," he ordered the giant zombie.
The monster obeyed.
Alexi walked up to it, swatting the flies out of the way, and reaching into a bag to pull out a perfume bottle. He wet the space under his nostrils with it and then put it away.
"Follow me," he said. Then he walked past the monster and through the door. Behind him the great thing plodded after, now as obedient as a dog to its master.
Alexi swelled his chest in pride. What he'd done surpassed the accomplishments of anyone enrolled at the school. In fact, he questioned whether any of his professors could manage a feat like this and not be winded.
He continued on his way, choosing to go down another corridor with a broken ceiling and floor littered with trash. "Clomp Clomp Clomp" came the footsteps of the zombie ogre, shaking plaster free of the damaged walls. Here and there, the floor was smeared in thick swaths of old blood: evidence of vast numbers of undead feeding. Up ahead, he heard the moaning from the throats of at least a dozen undead, maybe more.
Through another doorway, Alexi came across a room split in half by the sinking foundation which had buckled and shattered walls on either side. Enormous wood columns held up a roof that had crashed down in places revealing other floors both above and below. Straight down and across a twenty-foot gap, hundreds of zombies moved back and forth in a kind of sub-basement. The far side of the room held a staircase that went down to that level with a few undead shambling here and there. But that's where he needed to go to get out.
There's no way across this, Alexi thought. His gaze fell on a column about two feet in diameter, made of ironwood under an area where the ceiling had crumbled. It looked the right height, at least.
"Dudley, grab that pillar there and lay it across this gap," Alexi said.
The huge zombie walked over to the support, following the necromancer's orders. With a massive heave of its shoulders (and some sloughing of its rotten flesh) it yanked the column free. It lifted this thing (that must weigh in the neighborhood of two-thousand pounds) and laid it across the gap as if it were hefting a toothpick On the other side, more zombies appeared at the top of the stairs, excited that food was coming their way.
"Guard this bridge. Let none pass except me," Alexi said.
It almost looked like the ogre nodded.
Satisfied, Alexi walked forward on the bridge. As he picked his path, he looked down on the zombies below with amusement. They gazed up at his skirt, clawing with their hands, hoping he would fall down there and feed them for a moment. In front of him though, three zombies were rapidly approaching.
Alexi hurled forth the necromantic strings he'd used to control the ogre, and made puppets of these monsters. The effort left him feeling a little more tired, as he'd exercised his powers quite a bit today. But he turned them around to intercept three more headed his way. "Keep them at bay until I leave."
Then he finished crossing the makeshift bridge and took off down the stairs.
Twice more, he made puppets of zombies near the bottom, turning them back on the host in the sub-basement that had begun to gather once they saw Alexi was coming to them. In front of Alexi, the way out was now barred by a row of hungry zombies clawing at the door. He extended his necromantic strings, took control of ten, and marched them to either side. Then he forced them to to deal with the much larger host encroaching upon his backside. Now at the door, Alexi destroyed the padlocks with a single utterance of "interficiem koro" and pushed them aside to wander into the overgrown courtyard and thence unto the iron fence. Just beyond lay the Zandan River and the city proper. He took a moment to breathe the fresh air and to look up at the suns. Moans from inside the building alerted him to the fact that all the zombies he controlled might soon be overwhelmed.
I guess I should deal with that, he thought.
Alexi turned and closed the doors, using the fallen chains to wrap around the handles. When finished, he stepped back and cast an undead ward upon the doors. "Et non praeteribit," Alexi said, and a symbol appeared on the frame. "That should last for a week or so. Plenty of time for my purposes." Indeed, he already saw it worked as the zombies on the far side backed away from the portal, shielding their faces with their naked rotting limbs.
Then Alexi walked across the weed-strewn courtyard to the iron gate. He was so skinny that by removing his cloak, he could squeeze between the bars, but his skirt did not escape unscathed.
"Bother," he said, donning his cloak once more.
Most of the buildings on this side of the gate lay empty and dark, with shattered windows and dilapidated roofs. But a hundred yards or so further down the avenue, blocked off by a wooden barricade, the roads of Zanda teemed with people going about their business. Smoke spewed from thousands of chimneys, and carriages carried nobles to afternoon luncheons, rolling by without so much as a look in Alexi's direction.
He strode downhill, keeping to the sides of the road just in case an errant eye went looking, and then slipped out from behind the barricade and into the traffic flowing alongside the river with none the wiser. Alexi hailed a carriage, climbed inside, and said, "Take me to a shop called `Agony' on the Street of Perversions. It's in the Hollows."
"Yes, young miss," the driver in a salmon doublet said before closing the door.
The man climbed atop the carriage. Soon the "clop clop" of horse's hooves and the steady roll of the carriage wheels found Alexi daydreaming as he fancied himself one day enjoying the fruits of high society thanks to his burgeoning powers.
"I will be the most powerful necromancer in the world," Alexi said to himself. "And all stupid worthless men like Dudley will rue the day they ever crossed me."
Chapter Twenty-Four is now available to read at http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/discussion-board-for.html under the label "The Orb of Winter" if you care to read ahead.
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If you go to my website directly from this posting, you will want to begin with "CHAPTER EIGHT" in the forums.