TG Two

In which Euthan and Isabey talk to her brother's ghost. Also, Euthan overdoes it.

Euthan helped Isabey load her brother’s coffin into the back of her wagon. Then she went into her house for several minutes, leaving Euthan outside.
The wind picked up as the sun sank toward the darkening horizon. The air took on a distinctly autumnal chill with the darkening of the sky. Feeling the bite of the wind, Euthan pulled on the long coat he’d put in his pack that morning when the weather had felt much more summery. When Isabey returned, closing the door behind her, she was wearing a simple black dress with leggings.
Clothing fit for digging in… and for a funeral, the necromancer observed.
Euthan said nothing. He climbed into the wagon’s bench-style seat on the passenger side. Pintsize fluttered up and perched on the carthorse’s back, which the stoic mare fortunately ignored. Isabey sat on the driver’s side and cracked the reins. The big draft mare clattered forward, her shaggy hooves clopping out a heavy rhythm against the dry soil. The wagon rolled at a crisper pace than Euthan had expected, heading toward the old graveyard outside town… but Isabey steered left instead of right at the fork in the road, ignoring the sign that pointed the way. Euthan tensed. Pintsize whispered into his mind, saying, Friend is calm. No one is here to see.
He trusted his familiar’s acute senses, but it took a few more minutes for Euthan to stop bracing himself for some unknown calamity.

Most of the ride passed in silence. Isabey appeared lost in thought, no doubt related to her brother, and Euthan had no urge to disturb her. At first, Pintsize enjoyed riding on the horse’s back, but soon enough he got drowsy and flew back to Euthan. Soon the musogriff was sound asleep, curled up in Euthan’s coat pocket.
After about half an hour, the wagon rolled around a bend in the dirt road and a patch of green became visible in the lee of a large hill, another kilometer or two away. 

“That’s the forest,” Isabey said, breaking her silence for the first time. “The Witch’s Chapel itself is a grove in the middle of it, but people call the whole forest by that name.”
Euthan eyed the cluster of trees skeptically. It seemed a bit small to call a forest. Then again, it was among the largest of such copses he’d seen in this region. He guessed there just wasn’t room for a real forest in the midst of the grassy sea.
Though the carthorse trotted at an easy pace, the sun had only just touched the horizon by the time the wagon reached the copse of trees. Isabey, knowing the ground, drove the wagon confidently off the dirt road and among the widely-spaced trees. The wood got denser quickly, but Isabey and the horse both seemed to know where they were going, and soon, a ring of much older trees came into view, their trunks nearly touching, their branches interwoven.
“The Witch’s Chapel,” Isabey said as she pulled on the reins, bringing the mare to a halt. Euthan could see why people found the place spooky. He understood now why Isabey had said the locals liked to tell winter stories about it. He frowned as he climbed out of the wagon. The necromancer reached out with his senses, tugging at the area around him with his awareness, but felt only the green, living presence of the trees and the brown earthy murmur of the ground beneath his boots. As he concentrated, ribbons and threads of magic began to appear, and soon they ran everywhere in his vision, like glowing strands of colored light.
He saw only what he would expect in any healthy natural area. Euthan supposed that Isabey was right. The locals’ tales about this place were, indeed, only tales. He relaxed.
Euthan helped Isabey unload the coffin from the wagon. Together they carried it into the ring of old trees.
“Does it matter where?” Isabey asked, her voice sounding as tired as Euthan felt. It had been a long day already and he had a lot of work ahead of him now. Deliberately, he pushed the thought away. Focusing on his weariness wouldn’t help. Besides, he’d volunteered. There was no other way to scratch the itch in his brain once he’d found himself an enigma to dig into.
“No,” Euthan answered. “Here, let’s set it down. This spot is as good as any.”
With the coffin carefully placed on the soft, dry duff in the midst of the ring of ancient trees, both Euthan and Isabey stood in silence, resting, for a minute or two. Isabey folded her arms over her chest and let out a tired sigh, saying, “It’s going to be dark soon. Should’ve started earlier.”
Euthan smiled at her, hoping he looked encouraging rather than weary. “Well, I didn’t find you earlier, did I?” She gave him a look he found difficult to read, but then a small smile creased her face, almost in spite of herself.
“Besides, it’s easier to connect with souls when they haven’t been dead long,” the necromancer continued as he pulled his travel pack off his back, undoing the drawstring that held it closed at the top. 

“It’s like… I don’t know. Hmm.”
Euthan paused, digging around in the travel pack. Soon he withdrew what he’d been looking for: a small metal box with a hinged lid enameled yellow. He opened the box, still crouching over the travel pack, and pulled out a papery cylinder. It was made of ground herbs wrapped in hemp paper. Isabey peered curiously at this object, but Euthan didn’t notice. He was pondering the issue of soul-talking and time elapsed. The necromancer continued speaking as he shut the metal box and absently put it into one of his coat pockets rather than returning it to the travel pack. 

“It’s like they get farther away from the living world the longer they’re dead. Eventually, you just can’t find them anymore. Or they can’t hear you anymore,” he added as he took the herbstick in his teeth. He paused with it dangling from his lip, frowning in thought. Then he shrugged one-shouldered and touched the tip of the herbstick with the index finger of his free hand, lighting it with a spark of magic. Euthan drew on it, pulling in the stimulating herbal smoke. His eyes slid closed for a moment. 

Oh, yeah. That’s the thing.
Speaking through his teeth around the herbstick, he opened his eyes and continued speaking, digging through his pack for other things he was going to need for the soul-talking spell.
“Well. Point is, the longer it’s been since someone’s death, the harder it is to magic up their soul for any reason, by any method.” He took another drag, holding the smoldering cylinder to steady it, his expression one of visible relish as he savored the smoke. Then he pulled it from his mouth and gestured broadly with the hand holding the herbstick as he exhaled a gout of smoke that would have done credit to a dragon. 

Isabey raised one eyebrow, watching this display of (from her perspective) bizarre behavior. He didn’t notice. Euthan coughed at the end of the gout of smoke, once - the short, clipped cough of a long-time smoker. Then he added, “There’s a reason no one ever calls up those storied heroes of old.” 

Isabey eyed the herbstick in Euthan’s hand skeptically, one eyebrow still raised. “What… are you doing?” 

Euthan blinked. “Huh? Smoking. What, do people not smoke in Ibari?” 

Isabey shook her head, frowning. “Why would you want to put a burning stick in your mouth and breathe smoke?” Euthan, who was in the middle of a drag, coughed and almost dropped the herbstick as he laughed.

“Because it feels good, that’s why,” he replied with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes and a lopsided grin. Isabey looked skeptical. He took another drag as he began digging through his pack again. “More to the point,” he explained around the herbstick in his teeth, “it’s a tool. Take these ones,” he said, tapping the stick he was presently smoking. “Yellow tin. Energy blend. I’ve been walking all day, y’know,” Euthan added, a bit defensively, in response to Isabey’s expression. The Ibari woman rolled her eyes.
“If you say so,” she told him.
Euthan was pulling things out of his pack now, setting them to the side. He was quiet for a time, smoking and getting his magical paraphernalia together. After a few minutes of observing the necromancer, Isabey said, “So what do I have to do?”
“Nothing. You don’t even have to be here if you don’t want to be. But…” Euthan pulled his herbstick from his mouth and looked over his shoulder at her as he blew the drag out his nostrils, regarding her seriously through the swirling screen of smoke that rose as he exhaled. “This is your last chance to talk to him and hear him respond. To get his side of the story. You deserve to hear what he has to say.”
Isabey looked away from the necromancer, down to her feet. She was silent for a few seconds. Then she shifted her feet and sighed, “Okay. I’m ready if you are.”
Euthan sighed, too. “All right. Got to cover a couple things. First, you said he died last night, right?” She nodded. “Okay. He’ll still be reasonably… intact, then. But still, brace yourself. He’ll have started to… well. You know,” Euthan grimaced, trying to tiptoe around the issue of decomposition without upsetting her. Isabey just shrugged. “I know.”
Just to be sure, Euthan emphasized the point. “Good. All right. So… the body is dead. It’s not going to move. It’s his soul we’ll be talking to. But I need to open the coffin to do this. Are you ready for that?”
The young woman shrugged. If Euthan didn’t know better, the gesture would have looked indifferent, but he knew the pain that lay behind it. This was not easy for her. He felt a little guilty.
After a moment, she asked again, “I don’t do anything?”
“I mean, you don’t have to, no,” Euthan answered. “I know what I need to ask. But I can keep him here long enough for you to have a brief conversation. If you want to. If it’s too hard, I mean, you don’t have to…”
“Just get on with it,” Isabey cut in, not quite snapping; there was a hint of steel in her tone again, but only a hint.
Normally, Euthan didn’t take orders well, but for some reason, Isabey made him nervous, and that tone made him want to snap to. He swallowed. 

“Yes’m.”

After a moment, he stubbed out the remains of his herbstick on his boot before grinding it into the soil with his toe. Then he closed the travel pack and stood up. “Give me a few minutes.”
Knowing his time to help had come, Pintsize yawned and poked his little white head out of Euthan’s pocket. The musogriff bruxed to himself happily as he climbed up to the man’s shoulder.
“He’s not just a pet, is he?” Isabey asked in a muted tone, watching as Euthan began to arrange his spell components. “You’re right,” the necromancer admitted ruefully, placing candles around the coffin. “He’s my familiar.”
“Familiar,” Isabey repeated in the flat tone Euthan had trouble interpreting.
“Yep,” he confirmed, not sure what else to say. The necromancer focused on his preparation.
“And…?” Isabey prompted after a moment. “What does that mean specifically?”
“He… well, he helps,” Euthan replied. “It’s hard to explain how if you don’t use magic,” he went on after a pause. “He really is my friend, though,” Euthan added with what he hoped was an endearing 'forgive me because I technically didn't lie' kind of smile.
Isabey didn’t return the smile. Her eyes were on the coffin and her expression was sad. She seemed to be only half-listening. Euthan decided to be glad she wasn’t angry about the half-truth earlier and moved on. He sprinkled powdered silver on the coffin, then stepped back. The groundwork for the spell was finished.
“So… uh. You said your brother’s name was Jayver, right?”
“Jayver,” she repeated, correcting Euthan’s pronunciation.
“Right. Okay.” Euthan nodded. “Then let’s do this.”

Dusk had come, but Euthan could still see well enough to do what he needed to do. He pulled a hinged metal box out of one of his innumerable coat pockets; this one had a white-enameled lid. He selected an herbstick out of it, then closed the box and put it back in his coat pocket. The necromancer put the herbstick in his mouth but didn’t light it yet. Instead, he went to one of the ancient trees and picked up a dead branch lying beneath it. Using this, he drew a circle in the duff around the coffin and the white candles he’d set at the offset directions, walking counterclockwise. Then he tossed aside the branch and bent to pick up the final candle the ritual needed - a red one. He set the red candle at the head of the coffin, within the circle he’d drawn with the branch.
Euthan lit the red candle with a touch and a spark of magic, the same way he lit his herbsticks. Then he picked up the red candle and used it to light the white ones, one by one, starting with the northwest candle, ending with the southeast. The wan light of the candle flames made shadows dance across Isabey’s face, exaggerating the young woman’s drawn expression of tension and grief. Euthan glanced at her, unable to ignore her sorrow. Then he returned his attention to his work.
The necromancer took a deep, steadying breath around the unlit herbstick still held in his teeth. Then he walked to where the red candle originally stood at the head of the coffin, always moving counterclockwise, and put it back in its place. He knelt, lighting the herbstick from the flame of the red candle while it sat in its ritual position.
Isabey watched in increasingly awed silence. Pintsize, for his part, just shifted on Euthan’s shoulder as the necromancer moved around so he didn’t fall off. When Euthan stood up again, the musogriff settled again and groomed the primary feathers of his left wing, waiting patiently for his magician to need him.
Where the yellow-tin herbstick had served only to help refresh him so he could function near his peak despite being tired, the white-tin herbstick contained a much more potent blend, using herbs naturally rich in the energies of life and death. It was an essential part of the ritual.
It would also, of course, produce hallucinations and significant intoxication, but there was no avoiding that. The trance, too, was an essential part of the ritual.
Besides, the white-lid blend felt amazing.
Around him, the necromancer felt rather than saw the threads of magic natural to the wood shiver. He shivered, too.
Euthan smoked. One puff, two, three; shallow hits, quickly exhaled. He leaned his head back as he let the smoke out, blowing it up toward the sky. After the third puff, he began to recite the words of the ritual, saying, “Three for life, the living trees, the living world.”
Three more puffs. This time, Euthan held each one in until, when he finally exhaled, there was no visible smoke left. He blinked, almost wobbling a little on his feet as he released the third drag.
Damn, I’m pretty high. I forgot how hard this one hits.
But he felt Pintsize on his shoulder, the warm fur and feathers soft against his cheek, and the sensation steadied him. He continued the incantation, saying, “Three for myself, the one in between.”
Finally, three quick, shallow puffs like the first set. This time the necromancer blew the smoke at the coffin after each draw. 

“Three for death, for the dead... for Jayver.” He made sure to pronounce the man’s name correctly.
He put out the herbstick, pinching the burning tip out between his fingers. Watching, Isabey winced, but the necromancer showed no sign of pain.
Euthan paused. This is it. The moment of truth. He was a little nervous. Not about failure - he could feel Pintsize channeling, guiding the flow of magic through himself, then Euthan, and finally, out into the developing patterns of the spell. The power was running strong tonight; Euthan felt a little giddy as the magic rushed through him. He had no doubt at all that the spell would work.
What worried the necromancer was what Jayver might say.
Time to find out.
“Okay, Isabey. This is it. I’m going to open the coffin and call his soul up,” Euthan told her. “I can’t keep him here too long. So don’t waste the time you have.”
He winced internally at the sound of his own voice. Even through the fog of herb-smoke and magic in his mind, he heard the cold distance in his tone and regretted it. He couldn’t control it, though. Death was in him, the magic shooting through his veins as his heart raced to keep up. It was impossible to keep its influence out of his voice. He didn’t even know how to try. In a way, it was like Death was speaking with him. Or through him.
Also, he was really high.
“Ready?” Euthan asked.
“Ready,” Isabey said.
Euthan closed his eyes. His long, agile fingers moved in the air, tracing precisely designed patterns. Through his closed lids he could see nothing but blackness and magic, a sort of woolly fuzz which could be tugged on, drawing it into threads, then woven into the pattern of a spell - a complex and intricate game of cat’s-cradle.
The necromancer reached for the magic and pulled. It responded instantly, rising within him and around him like a spring tide, waves of magic crashing and foaming through his body. A smile bloomed across his pale features. The patterns were so clear now. He could feel the unique resonance of each thread, see its particular color, hear its subtle note, even smell and taste it. It was a living tapestry of synesthetic sensation.
Euthan had always been gifted with magic. In these moments, with the spellsong humming in his heart, he felt completely at home - never awkward or out of place. It felt natural. More than natural. Euphoric.
The necromancer’s hands danced, pulling the final threads into the pattern, weaving them in. He tied the closing knot and felt-heard the clang of energies falling into place. The spell was woven. He set his jaw against the wave of giddy joy that filled him at the rightness of that sensation.
Euthan focused. On his shoulder, he felt Pintsize sit up, the musogriff’s scaly, birdlike claws moving in their own distinct patterns as the familiar helped channel the flow of magic through his mage. The magician examined the spell’s weaving through his closed eyelids, searching for any flaw, any error whatsoever. He already knew there would be none, for the resonance of the final coming-together had been perfect - but he checked anyway.
He found nothing. The spell was flawless.
The necromancer took a deep breath and relaxed. The magic he’d been holding back within himself now spilled forth, rushing into the weave of the spell. Euthan thought he heard funeral bells somewhere far away, then a rusty scraping like cemetery gates swinging in a cold wind.
The dead had taken notice.
A spidery confluence of many people whispering filled his ears. Euthan couldn’t make out what was said, but he could feel the emotions of the whisperers in his bones. Some were curious. Some were sad, even desperate. And some were angry. Hostile.
Euthan shivered. Then he pushed on the river of power, calling out through the lands of the dead. He needed to find one specific voice.
“Jayver? Do you feel your body here?” Euthan murmured, too lost in his necromantic trance to notice the hollow echo of death magic in his voice by now. Isabey, though, shuddered at the sound. “Come here, Jayver,” Euthan continued. “Come speak to us here, where your flesh lies.”
The necromancer paused.
Yes. One presence had separated itself from the whispering mass. It was growing closer. Getting louder. He’s coming.
Euthan hesitated for a split second, then set his jaw. He opened the coffin.
The smell wasn’t bad as opened coffins went, Euthan noticed distantly, but the hot climate had done the corpse no favors. Already it had begun to deteriorate.
Along with the smell of death, the ghost of Jayver rose up from the opened coffin, translucent and naked. Jayver’s head, thankfully, was where it should have been, but the memory of his execution showed in the puckered gash that ran around the ghost’s neck like a gruesome necklace.
Isabey covered her face with her hands, all except her eyes, which peered out in fascinated horror at the scene before her.
Jayver’s ghost stared at Euthan with dark, hollow eyes full of a terrified, vibrating rage. Euthan swallowed. It was like looking into the eyes of a cornered animal. A man who had lost everything.
“Jayver,” Euthan said softly.
The ghost’s eyes flickered down - to the coffin, to his own corpse, to the paraphernalia of the necromancer’s ritual - then back up to Euthan’s face. Jayver’s ghost growled, a horrible sound from the depths of his being.
“Let… me… out,” the ghost seemed to pant through the wolfish snarling.
Euthan held up his hands to show they were empty. Though some part of him deep down was afraid, he had no time for it. The emotion that commanded his attention and left no room for any other was a deep, terrible pity.
“I’m not holding you anywhere,” the necromancer told the ghost. “I can’t free you from death. You’re still dead.” Euthan paused. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
A beat. Then Jayver bared his bloodied teeth.
"No,” he countered. It was not an accusation of deceit, but a denial - total rejection of what he was hearing. “I'm not dead. I'm not dead. I'm not!" The ghost growled, quietly at first, then louder and louder, each time more desperately than the last.
"You are. I’m sorry,” Euthan repeated from the depths of the haze in his mind, the cool, horrible calm. He reached out to the ghost, intending to offer support, but Jayver drew back as if he believed Euthan was trying to strike him.
"Who are you?" Jayver hissed, and his eyes flicked up and down Euthan’s thin frame. The necromancer couldn’t decide if Jayver was trying to anticipate an attack or if he were looking for weak spots to attack himself.
Euthan decided not to think about that. Instead, he said, "I'm a friend, Jayver. I'm the reason you can see the living world right now. I can't keep this going forever, but you've got a little time to talk to us."
Jayver's eyes narrowed, and Euthan saw a hint of intelligence spark in them at last, cutting through the dead man’s unreasoning rage.
"A little time... how long?"
Euthan thought, taking stock of the flow of magic and his physical condition.
"A few minutes...? Maaaaaaybe as long as half an hour? Tops."
Jayver looked at the necromancer for a moment, then let out a bark of humorless laughter. "A few minutes?"
Euthan winced.
"Yo, cut me some slack, man. I'm only creating an on-demand reality hole here. I'm a magician, not a miracle worker."
The necromancer thought he heard Isabey snort behind him, but he might have been imagining it. Jayver just stared at him, his hollow eyes dark pits in his ghostly face. After a moment, the ghost grated, “I’m… dead?”
“Yes,” Euthan confirmed quietly.
“How long…?”
“About a day.”
Jayver barked out another laugh, and Euthan saw madness glint in his eyes. “One day? I’ve been here for one day?”
The necromancer said nothing. There was nothing to say.
“A day…?” Jayver asked again, his voice a piteous whisper. Euthan’s compassion for the man deepened.
“Yeah, man. One day. I know it feels longer for you.” Euthan paused. “Or maybe you feel like it’s just happened. Everyone’s different.”
The ghost shook himself as if he were a wet dog shaking out its coat, then gave Euthan a flat stare. The expression eerily reminded him of Isabey. "So what? So I'm stuck here? I'm just... dead?"
"I'm really sorry, man. I wish I could help you. I've already done what I can to buy you the maximum possible time here now."
"Buy?" Jayver eyed the necromancer with a sharpness to his ghostly stare.
Damn.
He’d slipped up using that word. He wished Jayver hadn't asked. Euthan hadn’t wanted Isabey to know about this particular detail. Not yet. But one couldn’t lie to the dead - they always knew - so Euthan answered despite his reluctance, chewing at his lower lip as he dragged out the first word.
"Yyyyyyyyeah. Um. So, that's why there's a hard time limit on this..." Even as he spoke, he felt his nose start to bleed.
Uh oh. Speaking of which, time's passing. Better hurry this up.
"Time limit...?" Jayver asked, watching Euthan with a degree of intent focus that made the necromancer uncomfortable. His nosebleed was getting worse, though, so he ignored the ghost’s suspicious stare… except to notice that it was remarkably similar to Isabey’s.
I wonder which is the older sibling, Euthan felt himself wonder dryly somewhere in the back of his intoxicated, preoccupied mind.
"Yeah. Uh. Time limit. About that,” Euthan said. “So the way this works, long story short," the necromancer explained, trying to ignore the warm trickle of blood over his lips, “is that I'm acting as a channel for death magic. I’m just chock-full of death,” Euthan tried to soften the message, but knew he’d failed the delivery even as he spoke; his smile was grim and humorless despite his light tone.
“The longer I do this... Well. Yeah."
Euthan gestured in the general direction of his bloody nose, lifting his eyebrows. The wan light of the candle-flames played over his coppery hair.
The languid ooze of blood leaking from his left nostril glistened, too.
“I’ll hold it as long as I can. I’m a professional,” he said, trying to sound confident and reassuring.
“But…?” Jayver wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily.
“But I’m only human, friend,” Euthan replied as smoothly as he could under the circumstances. As he spoke, he felt the right nostril start to bleed, too. D****t, meat, get your s**t together, he growled at his own weakening body in his thoughts; in the same moment, as if nothing was happening, he continued speaking.
“Nothing lasts forever, this too shall pass, all that good stuff,” Euthan explained, aware that he was rambling but not quite able to stop himself. The necromancer paused for breath. He wasn’t dizzy yet, but he felt vertigo lurking somewhere in the background, waiting to pounce.
“At some point,” he said after a breath or two, “I’ll die, and then, well... spell over.”
Behind him, Euthan heard a gasp as he said the word ‘die’.
If I survive this, she’s going to kill me.
“And then…” Euthan continued speaking to ignore Isabey as much as to drive home his point.
“And then?” The ghost echoed when Euthan paused again to catch his breath.
“And then, Jayver, you and I can have as many long conversations as you like. But I won't be able to do much to help your sister anymore."
As he finished the sentence, the necromancer grimaced.
Oof. Euthan felt dizzy for a moment. He swayed ever-so-slightly on his feet, but shifted his boots and steadied himself.
Just the drugs? Probably just the drugs, he lied to himself. He felt sweat breaking out on his brow.
“So let’s get this going, yeah?” the necromancer concluded, addressing the ghost. "We've got some questions for you.”
The ghost closed his eyes. Euthan felt something sweep over his spell-weavings like a passing breeze and knew that Jayver was examining them using whatever strange senses the dead had access to.
"Shiiit,” the ghost drew the word out in a tone that was partly incredulous and partly impressed. “I see it now. You really are killing yourself to do this." Jayver’s voice had lost its suspicious, hostile tone, taking on a note of confused but genuine respect.
Euthan smiled again, feeling his own warm blood from the nosebleed trickle over his lip, onto his teeth, into his mouth. It tasted salty, metallic. Alive.
"Yup,” he agreed. “So talk fast, friend.”
In the darkness, he saw Jayver smile back. "Ask, necromancer."
"So," Euthan began after a moment. "Do you remember your death?"
The ghost closed his eyes, and for a moment he seemed far away. "Yes..."
"So you remember why the soldiers said they executed you."
Jayver turned his back abruptly, facing away from both Euthan and Isabey.
"I was a fool," the ghost growled. Lime-green magelight flickered around the ghost’s ectoplasmic presence as Euthan’s spell clashed against the normal rules of reality, struggling to maintain the dead man’s link with the living world. The ghost ignored it, repeating his angry regret with greater intensity: “A fool!”
"Jayver? What do you mean?" Isabey asked her brother’s ghost, cutting in for the first time.
"A damned fool, too stupid, too stubborn to see the truth in front of me!” Jayver snarled, still facing away.
"Which was?" Euthan asked, hoping Jayver would clarify.
The ghost looked toward Euthan and Isabey over his shoulder, and his face was a mask of pain. Euthan couldn’t tell if Jayver’s face seemed unsettlingly skull-like because of the faint candlelight or if the ghost actually looked more deathly than before.
The faint, eerie lime-green magelight light now filled the ghost’s eyes, and licks of what might have been smoke or flame in the same phosphorescent color flickered out between the ghost’s teeth as he spoke, his voice rising alongside his roiling emotions as both escalated in rage and despair.
"I was a fool who trusted,” the ghost hissed, whirling around to face the two living humans once more. “But I didn’t know! I didn’t know! Isa, I swear, I had no idea at first. The b*****d made it all… he made it sound so reasonable…" And now Jayver’s ghost was focused on his sister, as if begging her to understand even as he ranted in his rage. “When I saw… when I saw what my King did with the sacrifices…” The ghost seemed to shudder, raising his gnarled hands into claws as if to tear at his own face, and the magelight flickered brighter for a moment. “... but I was sure, so sure that he acted for the good of the kingdom. The good of the kingdom,” he repeated, his tone dark and sardonic.
"I was a soldier,” the ghost grated with awful, wounded pride, “and it was not my place to question."
The necromancer blinked in shock. The meaning of the ghost’s ranting sank in.
“Oh my God, you did kill him,” Euthan blurted. Isabey gasped.
Jayver’s ghost looked at Euthan, his face twisted into a welter of confusion and rage. "Of course I did! Who wouldn't? What they did there… it was evil - insane! So many - so many lives! Lives like yours! Wasted!"
Isabey stepped up beside Euthan, hands over her mouth in horror. "But why, Jayver? What could ever be so terrible? Why?”
Jayver's ghost stared back at his sister. A complex expression crossed the dead man’s face, a compound of love, rage, and regret.
The ghost started to answer. Euthan watched Jayver’s mouth open, but behind the ghost’s teeth he saw a seething mass of eerie magelight, brighter than before, as if the dead man’s tongue and insides had all been replaced by pure pulsing magic.
A headache pulsed across Euthan’s temples with blinding speed and intensity. The spell shuddered as his grasp on it faltered.
Whatever Jayver said was lost in a rush of senseless whispering and other sounds from the numberless other entities that lurked Beyond as the spell began to lose structural integrity. Magic leaked freely from its pattern as if in sympathy with the blood flowing from the magician’s nose.
Euthan’s vision grayed out for the space of a heartbeat. He wavered on his feet. Pintsize chittered in alarm from his perch on the necromancer’s shoulder. With some effort, Euthan pulled himself fully upright again, but vertigo struck and sank its venomous teeth in deep, leaving the man dazed beneath its bewildering bulk.
Euthan grimaced, fighting the inevitable.
This is taking more out of me than I thought it would. I don't know if I can --

Even as that thought crossed his mind, Euthan felt himself fainting.
Aw, s**t, he thought on the way down. But he couldn't do anything about it. Euthan heard fluttering wings as Pintsize dove for safety, and had just enough time to feel relieved that he wasn’t going to fall on the little creature. Then he hit the cold earth.
Euthan smelled the night and the ancient trees. The cool, green scent soothed him. 

Damn it, the necromancer thought in a bleary, dazed way. I meant to keep that window open longer.
Then darkness claimed him.

Author's Note

The usual note about not sparing my feelings and speaking your mind. Thank you.

Reviews

[James Watts]

Another enticing chapter. The trade-off the necromancer makes to perform the spell. How much it takes out of him, how much it takes of him, to perform this ritual is a very nice touch to the story. I now find myself even more invested in finishing this. Excellent work.