Exodus of the Necromancer

Aldoreth crossed the western plains of Midworld on foot since no beast would bear him.  His sandals were badly in need of repair or replacement.  The road he followed was littered with small stones and old turds from horses and beasts of the travelers who came before.  The weeds on the edges of the trail grazed his hands and hips as he passed leaving their seeds on his sleeves and robe.  Every now and then, a small animal would scurry off the path and birds would take wing as they sensed his presence.  He continued in this way toward the Great River, many miles east.

Mid-afternoon on the second day of the spring moon, he caught a scent of death.  The scent was unusual on the plains since the scavengers quickly absconded with and devoured whatever some bigger predator had left.  So, he followed the scent up wind to see what had died.  In the scant shadow of a group of scrubby trees, he found a war horse wearing a fine polished saddle but dusty from the trail.  The beast was quite dead from a mortal bite of something venomous.  The bite was high on its flank and still oozed a necrotic black ichor. 

A nasty end for certain.  But where is your master?

He followed the trodden weeds whence the beast had come.  He had no fear of the serpent that had bitten the horse.  It would sense Aldoreth’s presence and avoid him at all cost as nearly all wild creatures did.  The trail led him back to the road he’d been travelling, maybe eighty or a hundred wheels from where the beast had fallen.  There, he found a knight unlike any he’d ever seen in Midworld.  He was quite large even for his prone stature. He wore finely tailored cloth for breeches and for his shirt.  His belt, holster, and boots were highly polished like the saddle on the dead horse, but also quite dusty.  The weapon in the holster was black and dull.  His wide-brimmed hat covered his face.  The left sleeve of his breeches had an ominous amount of blood below the knee where a soaked bandana was tied.  A groan came from under the big man’s hat.

“Sir, knight!” he called. 

The man started and cried in pain when he jerked the bloody leg.  He pulled the Stetson off his face to behold Aldoreth, a thin, wrinkled, old man in dirty brown robes.  The robes had a hood, but he instead covered his head with a wide straw hat.  He carried a pack slung over one shoulder, a bladder over the other, and a walking staff of twisted, polished hardwood.

“Thank Christ!” he cried.  “I been laying here for a day ‘n a half hopin’ someone would come by!”  His voice was hoarse, and his lips were cracked. He smiled up at Aldoreth showing the lines of age around his eyes.

“You’re an odd knight, sir. Whence do you hail?” 

“Knight? I’m a Texas Ranger.”  He winced with pain as he sat up and pointed to the silver star pinned to his chest.  “Name’s Samuel Beauregard Bodine…or just Sam if ya prefer.  Pleased t’ meet ya,” he said and stuck out his hand.  Aldoreth looked at the stranger’s outstretched hand for a moment being unsure what to do with it.  He finally stuck out his own hand to mimic the stranger.  Sam Bodine took Aldoreth’s hand and shook it.  “I sure am pleased to meet you, mister.”

“I am called Aldoreth.  We are well met, sir.  Although, we are not well, are we?”  He knelt to examine the man’s leg. 

“I broke it when Jake threw me.  Jake’s my horse.  Seems there was a big ol’ rattler hidin’ in the tall grass by the road over there…’cept it didn’t have no rattle.  It jumped up and bit poor Jake as we were ridin’ by.  Jake threw me.  Broke my leg.  I can feel the bone pokin’ out.  Jake run off.  Dunno where the snake went to.  All this happened yesterday mornin’.”

“The serpent will have gone by now.  Your beast lies dead a bit northwest of here.”  Aldoreth uncorked the bladder hanging at his side and handed it to Sam.  “Not too much lest ye belly reject it.”

“Yessir…thanks” Sam replied and took sips from the bladder.  “I have a canteen somewhere…pro’lly still with Jake.”

Aldoreth considered and said, “I will fetch it for you before I go.  And anything else I can bring to you.  Do you have food?”

“Before you go?  Yer gonna just leave me here?”

“I am sorry, sir.  I have no beast to carry you and I have no strength myself.  As you see, I am an old man.”

“Well, where ya goin’?  I left outta Round Top two days ago tracking a renegade Indian…can’t be more ‘n 10 miles east.  The sheriff there knows me and knows where I was headin’.  He’ll send a wagon out for me.”

“I do not think you are where you think you are, sir.  There is no ‘Round Top’ here.  There are no towns for many leagues…certainly not for a hundred leagues.  This is the Green Desert.”

“Green Desert?  I’ve never heard of it.  I’ve lived all my life in Texas and never heard of such.”

“Likewise, sir…I am unfamiliar with any place you call ‘Texas.’  I believe you have travelled much farther than you think.”

Sam Bodine considered this for a moment.  “Texas is a big place.  You should have heard of it.”

“I am sorry, sir.  I have not.”

“Come to think of it, this place is a lot different than place I rode into chasing that Tonkawan outlaw.  I had him in sight trapped in a dry riverbed.  He cursed at me in his native tongue…and threw somethin’ like red sand toward Jake ‘n me.”  The Texan took a parchment from his vest pocket and unfolded it saying, “Got his warrant here.  Suspected of murder and cannibalism in the County of Bexar.  Killed a white woman ‘n ‘er boy…was gonna eat ‘em.”  The parchment showed a drawing of the elderly native man with eagle feathers in his long hair and a pierced septum.  “He’s ‘n old priest or I guess they call him ‘shaman’…last of his tribe.  Swears vengeance for his people or some such.  I’m out to bring him in or bring him down before he causes anyone else harm.”  

“Interesting.  Its coincidence I imagine,” said the old man,” but I too am outcast from my home.”

“Well, he ain’t exactly outcast.  He’s more of ‘n outlaw.”

“I was referring to you, sir, not your prey.”  

“What?” The big man on the ground furrowed his broad brow.  “I’m no outcast.”

“But of course, you are, sir.  This renegade you were following…he has cast you out of your world and sent you to this one.  He must be a sorcerer of great power to have done this. 

“A sorcerer, you say!  Ha!  He sure don’t look like no sorcerer.”

“Takes one to know one, you could say,” the old man replied.  “I am a sort of druid, you see.  Though not nearly as powerful as your foe I daresay.  But this is how I’ve been able to sustain myself across nearly half the Green Desert on foot with naught but a bladder of water.”

“A druid?”

“More like a cleric in fact.”

The big Texan seemed skeptical.  Aldoreth sighed and said, “Very well…you see that bit of scrub there?” pointing toward a short bush a few yards away in the tall grass.  He muttered something unintelligible, and the grass wilted and turned brown as did the scrub.

“I’ve been healing the sick and wounded in my village for many years, but the moment they discovered I was truly a necromancer, they banished me.  They’ve got it in their heads that because I deal in death, somehow, I am evil.  That is the reason I am crossing the Green Desert…they’ll not have me in the Westerlands now.”  Aldoreth seemed despondent having said it out loud. 

“This don’t look like any desert I’ve ever seen.  It’s green alright, but desert?”

“It’s called the Green Desert because all the rain that falls here is swallowed up by the sand before it can pool.  You’ll never find a stream or pond to drink from here.  The plants do well as do the animals that eat the plants.”

“So what’s on the other side of it?”

“Absolution, perhaps.  Destiny.  Consequence.  Even opportunity.”  He could see confusion in the big man’s eyes.  Normally that was fine, even intentional, but he had pity for this dying man.  “East of the Green Desert is a river which flows southward into a lake. And at the lake is a great city where the king resides.  And where the king resides is where to find justice.”

The big man grinned.  “That, I understand.”  He shifted his weight and propped himself up on an elbow with a grunt.  “Justice is my business. But I also deal with death,” he said, touching the weapon on his hip.  “I reckon we all do at some point.”

“Ay, that we do.”  But your last time is soon approaching, he thought to himself, and figured the big man was thinking the same.

They were both quiet then for a while listening to the breeze whispering through the tall grass until a shadow passed over them.  Above them, at a great height circled a black buzzard in the cloudless morning sky.

“That’s discouraging,” Sam said, looking up at the scavenger in the sky.

“It’s not for you, though,” Aldoreth said.  Sam looked at him.  “Your steed.”

“Still…”  Sam looked back to the sky.  Another buzzard was approaching from the south.  He turned his head to scan the skies and a shiny trinket fell from his collar but still hung on a bit of twine around his neck.  A silver ring with a yellowish diamond in its setting.

“That ring, sir,” Aldoreth said, “which you wear on a string…your wife’s?”

“Yessir, it was.  She’s…passed.  Almost a year now.  I was very sad for a long time.  Sometimes I still cry for her.  And for our little girl who stays with my sister when I am away from home.  By the time she grows up, she won’t remember her mother…and it breaks my heart.”  His voice quivered with these last words.

“Very sad indeed, sir.”  Aldoreth paused out of respect for the man’s melancholy, but he was a bit excited and could wait no longer to tell the man why.

“I need your wife’s stone, Sam Bodine.  I have an idea to get you out of this desert alive. I will return the ring itself, but the stone will be consumed and I will have your transport.” 

Sam looked at him with a furrowed brow.  “You can help me?”

“I cannot promise to get you to your home.  I cannot promise you will ever see your child again.  But I can keep you alive and get you out of this desert.”  His eyes were wide and bright.  “The ring, sir!”

“Well,” Sam said, “It means a lot t’me ya know. But I guess if you wanted to rob me, you wouldn’t need to do anything but wait.”  He pulled the twine over his head and handed it along with the ring to Aldoreth.

He took the ring and examined the stone through squinted eyes.  “Yes, this should do.”

Then he considered as he stared into the distance…the way he’d come.  “I’ll need to concentrate.  I’ll need quiet.  I may be gone most of the day, but I will return.”  Then he looked down at the big man and at his wound.

“First, we must set the bone and close that hole in your leg.”  He reached into is pack and rummaged until he grasped a pouch fashioned from a sheep’s bladder.  He pulled the drawstring open and removed a clutch of withered leaves.  “Put this in your mouth.”

“Tobacca?”

“I don’t know what that is, but no.  This is from a vine that grows wild in the west.  We call it ‘demon’s tongue’.  I found a vine a few days ago and collected what I could reach.  Once it dries, it is useless, but I kept it fresh.  It will numb your pain while I work on your leg.  If the bugs get in, it won’t matter if you get out of this desert.”

Sam put the clutch in his mouth, chewed twice, and scowled.  “Well don’t it taste like a turd!”

“Ay, it does offend the senses…hence the name.”

He gave the leaves a few more chews and then spit as though it were indeed a chaw of tobacco.

“No, no. Keep it in you.  Just disregard the flavor for a few moments.  You need not chew it. Just keep it in your mouth.”  Sam did as bid.

“So, you say you’re some kind of healer?  Or a priest?”

“I have healed wounds and ailments of the body and of the soul. I have mixed some happy elixirs and some sad ones. I have ushered the angels and the devils, heard the last words of the living and the first words of the dead.”

“Ay, a bit of both.  I’ve healed wounds and ailments of the body and of the soul.  I’ve mixed some happy elixirs and some sad ones.  I’ve ushered the angels and the devils, heard the last words of the living and the first words of the dead.”

The big man was silent a moment, then said, “Sounds like you’re not so far from the shaman I was followin’.   Does a lot of that sort of mystical stuff.  Some say he speaks with his ancestors. Some say he eats the flesh of his enemies to gain their life…wha-do-ya-call…their essence.  Makes him live longer.  You seem pretty well on in years yourself, mister.  You know anything about that?”

Aldoreth slowly sat himself down on the ground beside the Texan and grimaced as he did.  “I am quite old, sir.  I may be the oldest man in the Westerlands…though I’m no longer in the Westerlands.  Its true, the secret to a ripe old age is in the food I eat.  Lots of vegetables.”  He chuckled a bit.  “There may be truth to what they say about your…shaman.  But I wouldn’t know.  Never tasted so much as a swine in all my time.  Fish, fowl, and anything that grows from the ground is all I ever eat.  And I have my lean figure and many days as reward.”

Aldoreth saw no satisfaction in the big man’s eyes.  And he noticed he’d placed his hand on the butt of the weapon he wore on his hip. 

“That shaman…there’s something else I’ve heard folks say.  They say he’s a trickster.  They say he can take the form of an animal. Or the form of another person.”  His words slurred a bit and his eyelids hung a little low.

“Relax yourself, sir.  You have no need for your arms.  I have no need to do you harm and you have nothing I want.  Otherwise, I would simply wait for the spirits to come calling and take you home. If I was this shaman you speak of, I’d likely have little interest in healing your leg and taking you out of this desert.”

“That’s what worries me,” he drawled.  Then, Sam Bodine did indeed relax and quickly fell asleep.  Aldoreth put the man’s big hat over his face to keep the sun off.

Setting the bone home was no easy task.  He had to pull with all his meager strength on the foot while pushing with one leg against the big man’s crotch.  Finally, once the bone was set, the blood flowed a little quicker.  So, he set about packing the wound with a mixture he made with herbs and sand to help clot the blood, then wrapped the wound with Bodine’s neckerchief and a bit from his own robe.  But to splint the leg, he’d need a couple of fairly straight sticks and a bit of rope.  He remembered seeing a coil of rope on Jake’s saddle earlier.  He’d use that and search for sticks on the way.

Now, he had a bit of a rest.  He sat beside the big Texan and took a deep breath.  After a few minutes, he began to speak to the unconscious man.

“Make no mistake, Sam Bodine, I am no hero.  The wheel turns…until it doesn’t.  If I can keep it turning even a little longer, that is what I will do.  I also had a child.  It was so long ago, I can barely remember…as though it were another life.  He was young when the gods took him, nearly ten years aged.  A sudden and quick illness.  The boy was a blessing and a joy for us and in a blink, he was gone.  The wheel stopped turning for me then…and for my wife, Alayna.  It never started again for her.  She died soon after.  Some would say she died of starvation…she would take no food. But I know it was from a broken heart.  I would have followed.  But then an old man – even older than I am now – came to our door.  Death was a common visitor in our country, but he said it was the sorrow that drew him.  Said he could feel it from across the countryside and from the other side of the Bluehill Mountains.  He had need of someone who could feel so much sorrow.  He wanted me for an apprentice.  I had been a farmer, but my crops withered and rotted after my son took ill and died.  And with Alayna gone as well, I had nothing keeping me.  And he promised me one thing if I left with him and learned his trade: I would see my wife and son again.  And that was all the prodding I needed.  I left with him the very next day back across the Bluehills, into the land of Callistia and a town called Lost Jessup.  Ah, but you know naught of these places.  Suffice to say they were a long journey from my farm.  He was very old, and I thought many times during that journey that he would not make it.  But he had an ass and an acolyte to help him travel and I did what I could.  And he did indeed make the journey and he lived for many years after.  He taught me a great many things…including how to set your leg, Sam Bodine.  He taught me to commune with the dead so I could indeed see my wife and child again.  They are happy together and that is enough to satisfy me and keep me breathing.  I will join them in due time.  And he taught me to raise the dead, but I cannot do that without a precious stone such as your wife’s diamond.  Not that it must be a rare stone, just a stone representing a strong emotion…love, or sorrow, or even hate.  It could be a flint, or a quartz, or just a bit of sandstone.  Necromancy is about passion…the will of the heart.  It is never just about death.  I can feel your love for your wife in this stone, Sam Bodine.  And it will save you today.”

Aldoreth put the ring on his smallest finger and with some effort, got to his feet.

“You stay put.  I will be a little while.”  And then he set out the way he had come.

The tall grass was laid low by his initial trek, so he found his way back easily.  There lay Jake, the Texan’s steed, slowly baking and bloating in the sun.  Flies crawled over him mostly around the snakebite and the mouth, eyes, and ears.

“Hello, Jake.  I have been speaking with your master.  He tells me many good things about you, what a fine steed you have been.  How would you like to serve him one last time?  Let us get you back on your feet, eh?”

Aldoreth knelt in the tall grass beside the beast.  The sickening smell of rotting flesh made him wince, but he made up his mind to get used to it if he was to get Sam Bodine back to civilization…it would be a long walk next to a rotting corpse.  He held the ring of Sam Bodine’s wife with both hands in his lap, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and began the incantation.

It took some time.  The words came easily…he’d always had a knack for memorization.  But he’d always had some trouble calming his mind, ignoring the breeze and the sun, the sound of insects, an itch on his scalp.  Eventually these distractions faded until there was nothing but the words whispered through his numb lips.  Within an hour he was entranced and reciting the incantation as he’d been taught so many years ago.  He almost slept then…just on the edge of consciousness, whispering the words as the morning sun slipped over his wide-brimmed straw hat into midday. 

Something woke him.  His eyes opened on a moment of confusion, but he soon remembered where he was and what he was doing there.  And his hands were burning where they touched the ring, or more precisely, the stone in the ring.  He held it up by the chain of twine to see the stone radiating faintly in the sun.  The spell was complete.  But it wasn’t the stone that had wakened him.  Something had changed while he was entranced…something besides the angle of the sun or the radiating heat from the diamond.

Sam Bodine is dead, he thought.  He could sense it as though he were kneeling beside the Texan and feeling the beat of his heart (or lack of it) in his neck.  It was the gift of the necromancer to sense the passing of life even miles away from the deceased.  Sam Bodine’s passing was as certain to him as Jake’s.

But how?  The wound was bound tightly…he couldn’t have bled….  But the serpent may have returned.

He turned in the direction of Sam Bodine’s corpse to see a thin line of white smoke rising on the slow breeze.  I think perhaps the serpent is not a serpent.

He was slow getting to his feet.  His knees and back ached and various joints made noises as he rose.  He walked back through the tall grass to Sam’s corpse, keeping all his senses on alert.

There, he found a slight man sitting cross-legged next to Sam’s corpse.  He was wearing little more than a loincloth. His skin was dark but mostly painted and scarred all over with what appeared to be runes.  He wore trinkets made of polished pale wood or bone on leather thongs around his neck.  As Sam had described, he indeed wore eagle feathers in his long hair and a polished bit of bone through his septum.  And he wore Sam Bodine’s Stetson.  Blood was smeared around his mouth and chin.  His eyes were closed and he was muttering something in his native tongue much as Aldoreth had been doing only moments earlier.

Sam was indeed dead.  He lay were Aldoreth had left him, his eyes open.  His leg wound was still tightly bound and only a small crimson spot had soaked through the bandage.  But there was plenty of blood around the gaping hole in his chest where his heart had been.

A few feet behind the shaman, was his campfire burning bright red but without wood.  Over the fire, on a spit, was Sam Bodine’s heart minus one bite.

“You would be the sorcerer Sam told me about,”  Aldoreth said.  The shaman opened his eyes.  He was not surprised to see Aldoreth standing on the road.  He said nothing, only stared back without expression.  “Tonkawa?” Aldoreth asked.

The shaman nodded.

“This is unfortunate.  I had promised Sam I would keep him alive and get him to civilization.  Now you have broken my promise for me.”  The shaman was stoic, making no indication he understood anything Aldoreth was saying.

“I suppose I should still keep the other promise I made.”  He held up the ring of Sam Bodine’s wife by its string, its stone shining with a bright white radiance.  “I promised to return his ring.”  He tossed it onto the body of Sam Bodine where it rolled a bit and fell into the hole where his heart had been. 

The Tonkawan watched this and reached into a bladder he wore at his waist.  Looking back up at Aldoreth, he flung a red powder in his direction and shouted something Aldoreth did not understand.

Aldoreth felt the sensations in his flesh lessen.  He became numb throughout his body.  He looked down at his hands as his vision dimmed.  His hands and his staff faded and disappeared.  Before the rest of him vanished as well, he said two words, “Sam” and “Vengeance.”

The Tonkawan looked back down at Sam Bodine’s body.  Its eyes were shining with white radiance.  Its right arm shot up and gripped the small shaman around the throat.  It squeezed with a force much greater than Sam Bodine himself could ever muster. Before he died, the Tonkawan heard the last words Aldoreth the Necromancer would ever speak in Midworld, “Find your wife, Sam.”

-Steven W. Capps, “Big Steve”