“Asked them at spear point,” the prince said, but his face softened in compassion, took the sting from his words. “Raef, don’t you think I understand? I held the body of my father in my arms. I—” He lowered his head, put his hands to his eyes.
The man in the black robes said something to him and the prince, nodding, looked up again. “The battle, too, is past and done. We cannot undo it. I take the blame. I should have kept the people together, but I thought it best to send you on while I stayed behind to prepare my father’s corpse. I will carry our apologies to our brethren. I am certain they will be understanding.”
To judge by the low growl among the crowd, the prince’s certainty was not shared by his people. The old woman burst into tears. Hastening forward, she clasped her feeble hands on the prince’s arm, begged him, as he loved them, not to go.
“What would you have me do, Marta?” the prince asked, gently patting the gnarled hand.
She looked up at him, suddenly fierce. “I would have you fight, like a man! Take back from them what they stole from us!”
The low growl increased in volume, spear clashed against shield. The prince climbed on a boulder, so that he could see and be seen by all the crowd gathered in the cave. His back was to Haplo and Alfred, but Haplo could tell by the rigid stance and the squared shoulders that the man had been pushed almost past endurance.
“My father, your king, is dead. Do you accept me for your ruler?” The edge in his voice sliced through the noise like the whistle of a sword’s sharp blade. “Or is there one of you that means to challenge me? If so, step forward! We will have the contest here and now!”
The prince tossed aside his fur cloak, revealing a body young and strong and well muscled. By his movements, he was lithe and obviously skilled in the use of the sword he wore on his hip. For all his anger, he was cool and kept his wits about him. Haplo would have thought twice about confronting this man. No one among the crowd took the prince up on his offer. They appeared ashamed, and all of them lifted their voices in a shout of support that might have been heard in the far-distant city. Again, spear clashed against shield, but it was in homage, not in defiance.
The man in black robes came forward, speaking aloud for the first time. “No one challenges you, Edmund. You are our prince”—another shout—“and we will follow you as we followed your father. It is natural, however, that we fear for your safety. If we lose you, who will we turn to?”
The prince clasped the man’s hand, looked around at his people and, when he spoke, his emotion could be heard plainly in his voice. “Now it is I who am ashamed. I lost my temper. I am nothing special, except that I have the honor to be my father’s son. Any one of you could lead our people. All of you are worthy.”
Many of his people wept. Tears flowed freely down Alfred’s face. Haplo, who had never supposed he could feel pity or compassion for anyone outside his own people, looked at these people, noted their shabby clothing, their wan faces, their pitiful children, and he was forced to remind himself sternly that these were Sartan, these were the enemy.
“We should proceed with the ceremony,” said the man in black robes, and the prince agreed. He stepped down from his boulder and took his own place among his people.
The man in black robes walked among the corpses. Lifting both hands, he began to make strange designs in the air and, at the same time, he started to chant words in a loud, singsong voice. Moving among the dead, passing up and down the silent rows, he drew a sigil above each one. The eerie singing grew louder, more insistent.
Haplo felt the hair rise on his head, his nerves tingled unpleasantly, his skin crawled, though he had no idea what was being said. This was no ordinary funeral.
“What’s he doing? What’s going on?”
Alfred’s face had gone livid, eyes wide and staring in horror. “He’s not entombing the dead! He’s raising them!”
14
“Necromancy!” Haplo whispered in disbelief, conflicting emotions, wild thoughts overwhelming him with confusion, “My Lord was right! The Sartan do possess the secret of bringing back the dead!”
“Yes!” Alfred gasped, wringing his hands. “We did, we do! But it should not be used! Never be used!”
The man in black had begun to dance, weaving gracefully among the corpses, twining in and out between them, hands floating above them, continuing to make the same, singular signs that Haplo recognized now were powerful runes. And then Haplo knew suddenly what had struck him as familiar about the corpses. Looking into the crowd, he noted that many among the living, particularly those huddled near the back of the cavern, were not living at all. They had the same look as the cadavers, the same white flesh, same sunken cheeks and shadowed eyes. Far more of these people were dead than alive!
The necromancer was nearing the end of the ceremony, seemingly. White insubstantial forms rose from the corpses. Possessed of shape and substance, the forms lingered near the bodies from which they sprang. At a commanding gesture from the necromancer, the misty forms drew back, yet each kept near its corpse, like shadows in a sunless world.
These shadows retained the form of the being each had left. Some stood straight and tall over the bodies of straight, tall men. Others stooped over the bodies of the aged. One little one stood near the corpse of the child. Each appeared reluctant to be separated from the bodies, some made a feeble attempt to return, but the necromancer, with a stern and shouted command, drove them away.
“You phantasms have nothing to do with these bodies now. Abandon them! They are no longer dead! Life returns! Get away from them or I will cast you and the body into oblivion!”
From his tone, the wizard would have liked to banish these ethereal shapes altogether, but perhaps that was impossible. Meekly, sorrowfully, the phantasms did as they were commanded, each moving away from its corpse, each standing as near as it dared without risking the ire of the necromancer.
“What have my people done? What have they done?” Alfred moaned.
The dog, leaping up suddenly, gave a sharp, warning bark. Alfred lost his magic, tumbled to the ground. Haplo ripped the bandages from his hands, turned to face the threat. His only hope was to fight and try to escape. The sigla on his skin glowed blue and red, the magic throbbed in his body, but, at the sight of what he faced, he was helpless.
How did one fight something already dead?
Haplo stared, confounded, unable to think through the magic, unable to sort out the possibilities that governed it to find any that might help him. His split-second delay proved costly. A hand reached out, closed over his arm, grasping him with a chill grip that came near freezing his heart. It seemed to him that the runes on his skin actually shriveled up beneath that deadly touch. He cried out in bitter pain, slumped to his knees. The dog, cringing, fell on its belly and howled.
“Alfred!” Haplo cried, through teeth clenched against the agony. “Do something!”
But Alfred took one look at their captors and fainted.
Dead warriors led Haplo and carried the comatose Alfred into the cavern. The dog trotted quietly behind, although it took great care to avoid the touch of the dead, who seemed not to know what to do with the animal. The cadavers laid Alfred down on the floor in front of the necromancer. They brought Haplo, sullen and defiant, to stand before the prince.
Had Edmund’s life been measured in gates, as was Haplo’s, the prince must have been near the Patryn’s age, around twenty-eight.
And it seemed to Haplo, as he looked into the serious, intelligent, shadowed eyes of the prince, that here was a man who had suffered much in those twenty-eight years, perhaps as much as Haplo himself.