The Necromancer King

The Dead Know More Than The Living

Kane did not wait to find out what the horn meant.

He already knew. Every person in Valdris knew. A single long horn in the middle of the night meant the Silver Order was not sending patrol guards anymore.

They were sending someone else entirely. Someone whose job was not to chase but to find. There was a difference between the two and that difference usually ended with a body.

He moved fast through the trees, his two skeletal soldiers following without a sound.

He found the ruins about twenty minutes later. An old stone building the forest had been slowly swallowing for years.

One corner inside still had a roof over it. Kane ducked in, sat down against the cold wall, and pressed his back into the stone.

He needed to think.

His two skeletal soldiers stopped in the doorway and stood there without being asked, their wide bony frames blocking most of the wind coming in from outside. Kane looked at them for a moment.

"Thank you," he said quietly.

They did not answer. But they did not move either.

He pulled his knees to his chest and stared at the dark wall across from him. His stomach was completely empty.

His body was exhausted. And somewhere out there in the forest a Hunter was looking for him with a sword and a silver cross and twenty years of experience.

Malachar's voice came from the back of his mind, low and unhurried.

"You chose a good position. Stone at your back. One entry point. Your soldiers at the door."

"I have had a lot of practice surviving," Kane said.

"I know," Malachar said. "I have seen your life, Kane. Every part of it."

Kane looked up at the broken ceiling. Rain dripped steadily through a crack in the stone.

"Then you know it has not been good," he said.

"No," Malachar agreed quietly. "It has not."

Something about the way he said it made Kane go still. Not the words themselves. What was sitting underneath them. Heavy and deliberate. Like a man who knew exactly where a knife was and was deciding whether to hand it over.

"Say what you want to say," Kane said.

There was silence.

Then Malachar spoke

"Your mother's name was Lira Ashveil."

Kane's whole body went rigid.

"What did you just say?”

"Lira Ashveil," Malachar repeated. Calmly "She died when you were seven years old. A fever the Church healers never came to treat."

Kane was on his feet before he knew he had moved. "How do you know her name? How do you know anything about my mother?"

"Because I know everything about you, Kane. I told you. I have seen your entire life."

"That is not an answer." Kane's voice came out sharp and hot. "Her name is not something you just say like that. Like it is nothing. Like she is just information." He pressed his fist against the stone wall. "How do you know her name?”

"Because the same people who want you dead are the ones who killed her."

The words hit Kane like a hand flat across the face.

The ruins went very quiet.

"Say that again," Kane said. His voice had dropped to almost nothing. The kind of quiet that is not calm at all.

"You heard me."

"I want to hear you say it again."

"Your mother did not die from a fever," Malachar said. "She was murdered. A woman in perfect health does not burn through a fever and die in two days while every person around her stays completely fine.

That is not how sickness works and you have known that for years. You just never let yourself say it out loud."

Kane's jaw was so tight it ached.

Because Malachar was right.

He had known. Somewhere in the back of his mind, in the place where the questions he was too tired and too hungry and too alone to ask had been sitting quietly for twelve years, he had always known.

"Who?" Kane said angrily.

"Duke Harrow signed her death order."

Everything stopped.

"Duke Harrow," Kane repeated slowly.

"Yes."

"The Duke Harrow." Kane's voice was dangerously quiet now. "The one whose face is on every city poster.

The one the Church praises every Sunday. That Duke Harrow signed a paper with my mother's name on it and she was dead two days later."

"Yes."

Kane turned away from the wall and then turned back again because he did not know what to do with his body and the thing rising in his chest was too big and too hot to stand still with.

"She was nobody," he said hot with tears nearly streaming from his eyes and his voice cracked on the last word in a way he hated. "She washed other people's clothes for copper coins. She lived in a house that was embarrassed to exist. She put dried herbs in water soup so it would taste like something for me."

He stopped and pressed the back of his hand against his mouth for a moment. Then dropped it. "Why would someone like Duke Harrow even know her name."

"Because of what she carried," Malachar said. "Because of what she passed to you. Power like yours does not appear without a reason. Someone knew what you would become and they tried to cut the bloodline before it reached you." A pause. "They failed."

Kane stood in the middle of the dark ruined room and thought about his mother's face. That tired smile. Those rough hands. The way she looked at him sometimes like she was memorizing him and he never understood why until right now.

She had known.

She had known something was coming and she had spent every day of his life trying to make sure he felt loved before it arrived.

His eyes burned. He did not let the tears fall. He took that burning and he pushed it down deep and he held it there where it turned into something else entirely.

Something sharp. Something cold. Something that would keep for a long time.

"Malachar," he said.

"Yes."

"Is Duke Harrow in Valdris City right now."

"He is asleep in his castle as we speak."

"Good." Kane's voice was completely steady now. Steadier than it had ever been. "I want him to stay right there."

"Kane?”

"Do not tell me to be patient." He turned toward the doorway where his two skeletal soldiers stood watching him with their hollow purple eyes. "Do not tell me this is bigger than one man. Do not tell me there is a plan and I need to follow it.

My mother life was taken unjustly and her killer is sleeping in silk sheets right now and I want you to understand that nothing you say to me tonight will make me feel differently about that."

Malachar was quiet for a long moment.

When he spoke again his voice was different. Softer. Like someone who had also lost something once and still knew where the wound was.

"I do not want you to feel differently," he said. "I want you to use it."

Kane looked at his hands. His dirty scraped hands that had dug graves his whole life. The hands of someone the whole city called a grave rat.

He closed them slowly into fists.

The system pulsed once and then the alarm became stronger.

ALERT: Hostile presence detected.

Distance: Thirty meters north.

Classification: Silver Order. Senior Hunter.

This unit was sent specifically for you.

Kane turned toward the doorway.

His two skeletal soldiers had already shifted, their purple fire burning sharp and focused, every hollow eye socket locked on the same point in the dark trees to the north waiting for the threat!