Chapter 20: Resurrection

Blessed are you, Jumaliar, god of fertility, god of human sacrifices, giver and taker of life. Guide my blade as I delve into your mysteries.

Meticulously, ceremoniously, he prepared for the ritual, fastening the two drapes he wore during his procedures on top of his blue coat, one hanging from each shoulder all the way down to his feet. White on his left, red on his right, leaving blue in the middle. Air, blood, and water.

Slowly, and with great precision, Olmar Tvara began to cut into the leg of the man tied to his table. Three things were paramount: that his small knife inflicted as much pain as possible, that he could keep the man conscious during the entire procedure, and that he kept the body mostly intact.

He was a very careful man, valuing neatness and order above all. Had an unsuspecting witness been brought here blindfolded and then shown the cave he was working from, they might easily have mistaken it for a laboratory in Derimar, not the hole in the ground halfway up a mountain that it truly was. Everything here was clean, properly labeled, and well lit.

Of course, the smell would have given the purpose of his workshop away. The Derimar scientists’ preparation rooms might stink a little, but never of rotten bodies.

Tvara had always been fascinated by death. As a child, he had drowned kittens and played with their little dead bodies afterward, moving their legs to pretend they were alive again. Growing up, he realized there was so much more he could do.

The gods of the world had realized the same thing. When he was sixteen, Jumaliar visited him for the first time, and Tvara had wasted little time inviting her in, eager to learn the hidden knowledge of the gods.

What he had come to know went far beyond his wildest imaginings.

He, along with his brothers and sisters, was bound to a sacred mission. The gods of the world had always held an extraordinary fascination with life and death, and more importantly, the transitions between them. The concept of resurrection, he knew, was something of an obsession of theirs.

Thus, the Carrion Shepherds were divinely ordained to uncover its secrets, taking lives and reanimating the dead. On this task, they had worked tirelessly since the Fires of the Old Ones, probing and prodding the human body to learn what made it alive, and calling on the dark magic of the gods to replicate that state among the dead.

But despite millennia of meticulous research, none of them had ever succeeded at this task—not even once.

They could move the bodies, make them walk and even talk. The most experienced among the Carrion Shepherds could even infuse the corpses with a certain degree of autonomy. Still, the dead never actually rose. They were never more than puppets of flesh and rot, dancing on invisible strings moved by the Shepherds’ dark magic. They were still dead.

Even their talk was a clever ruse. The corpses, their souls gone at the moment of death, never to return, had no memories and no personality. All such things were stored in the brain, which was now decayed and corrupt. No matter how much his order wished otherwise, that information was irrevocably lost.

But at the time the deceased had been alive, lesser spirits had been around them, silently watching, learning—and remembering. They provided the right words at the proper times, making the dead appear to speak of places, events, and loved ones they seemingly recalled. In death, he played their bodies like a ventriloquist from the abyss. It was a neat trick.

But it was nothing more than a trick.

Because Olmar Tvara knew something the gods of the world did not want anyone to know. Together, he and his brethren had figured out their dirty little secret.

The almighty gods, despite all their wisdom and strength, did not actually possess the power to create life.

Once the soul left the body of man, not even the gods of the world could bring it back. Life and death was simply not within their dominion.

What he had learned was borderline blasphemous, but his status as one amongst the Carrion Shepherds afforded him a certain degree of leeway. Still, he would do well to remember his place in the divine balance of power. His secret knowledge of the gods' limitations gave him only so much protection from their wrath, should he ever fail them. They were still his masters, omniscient and omnipotent, with only one, tiny little exception.

He was just about to start cutting into the flesh below his victim’s left ear, when behind him, a light suddenly flared up, shining bright as the sun. It filled the cave with radiance and his heart with terror. Intimately familiar with the presence of the gods, Tvara immediately let go of his knife, turned around, and fell to his knees.

Fear gripped his heart. This was not Jumaliar. For reasons Tvara could not begin to fathom, Mardocar had come to his laboratory in her stead.

“My lord and god,” he said, stuttering over the words. “How can your eternal servant honor you on this day?”

“Rise, son of the worm,” the god of genocide commanded him, his voice strong as thunder, rumbling through the mountain. The cold stone floor of the cave trembled as he spoke.

Tvara stood up, his legs shaking. To his great shame, he had to steady himself against the table. He kept his head bowed, never daring to look directly at his lord.

“You will do me service today,” Mardocar declared, the air crackling with every syllable. “In Realmshield, there is a woman, a Dark Flame, staying at the Ranhoff mansion. She must be convinced to go to Terynia. You must see to it that she is there the day after tomorrow. Not one day before, and not one day after.”

Trying to swallow, Tvara could feel how dry his throat was. He was afraid he’d start coughing when he replied.

“Your will is mine, my god,” he said, hoping he was deferential enough.

“The woman must never know I am the one who sent her. She must go to Terynia of her own volition. This is the decree of Mardocar, the almighty.”

* * *

When night fell, she went to bed as early as possible.

Dina couldn’t stand the accusing stares of the Ranhoffs. At the earliest opportunity, she excused herself and went to her room, closing the door behind her. The guest chamber on the second floor was well-furnished, though not quite as opulent as the rest of the house. A small bookshelf filled with heavy tomes leaned against one of the walls. By the small window facing the herbal garden outside, there was a chair and a table large enough for one person to sit at, and next to her bed stood a small nightstand.

She soon found herself tucked under a heavy blanket, unable to sleep. The events at the square the day before still made her mind race. Dina had been thinking about them for the better part of two days, trying to make sense of what had happened, without gaining any clarity.

What puzzled her most was why Mardocar had tried to hide his involvement in sending her to Terynia. Normally, when the gods wanted her to go somewhere, Patera simply wormed her way into Dina’s mind and commanded her to go. Although unpleasant, it was both clear and efficient.

But this roundabout way of manipulating her into going, she didn’t understand it. There seemed to be no benefit.

She also found it highly unusual that it was Mardocar who had orchestrated her travel plans, not Patera. And yet Patera hadn’t offered any protest, so she was clearly in on it as well. It was all very strange. But trusting the gods, she knew things would become clear in the end.

Eventually, she must have drifted off despite the chaos in her mind, because when she next opened her eyes, the low murmur of the Ranhoffs down the hall and the clatter of servants cleaning up after dinner had faded, replaced by the total, almost eerie silence of the night.

No, not total, Dina thought. There was a rustling sound coming from down the hallway.

She sat up in bed, trying to peer through the darkness.

Amid the shadows, the door to her room began to open with a slow, creaking groan as a small hand grabbed the doorframe from the outside.

She caught a whiff of something rotten drifting through the air. Whoever was paying her a visit in the darkness was certainly not one of the Ranhoffs' attendants.

“Stay away!” she called out, but there was no response. The door kept opening, very slowly.

Very deliberately.

Dina looked around the room, trying to find something to defend herself with, but had little luck. Whatever was coming for her probably wouldn’t be scared off by an old book. Frantically, she reached for her special kit, trying to get a knife out, but before she could grab one, the door had opened enough to let her caller fully inside.

In the doorway stood the eight-year-old son of Councilman Ranhoff.

Or, to be more precise, his rotting corpse.

The dead body shook with each step it took, barely keeping its balance. For a moment, Dina thought it would trip and fall as it crossed the threshold, a hand’s breadth high, but the corpse kept going.

One of its eyes tracked the room, as if trying to pierce through the darkness. The right one, clouded and crawling with maggots, lagged behind, staring off in a completely different direction.

She sighed, more weary than scared. Clearly, there was dark magic involved here. She’d never heard of any Deepwell mages having the power to bring back the dead. And since dark magic was granted only by the gods… well, that meant the boy was here either on Patera’s orders or at least by her blessing.

“What do you want?” she asked, not quite sure what to expect from her nightly visitor.

“I want to be with Mommy and Daddy again,” the boy said. “But you took me away from them.”

The child wasn’t wrong. For days now, she had wrestled with what had happened and had come to an undeniable conclusion. Even though her magic was given to her by the gods, she was the one wielding it. If she hadn’t healed the councilman’s wife, or if she had performed the ritual differently, the boy would still be alive, and that had little or nothing to do with the gods. Perhaps she hadn’t actively killed him, but his life would not have been taken had she not prayed to Patera.

“I’m so sorry, little one,” she said, trying to offer the boy some consolation. “Only the gods can restore your body.”

“But you’re a Dark Flame!” he cried out. “You can heal me. I know you can, ma’am.”

Perhaps she could, Dina thought. She’d never tried healing someone who had come back from the dead before. But the rules still applied. She would need payment, and a suitable sacrifice. She told the boy as much.

He seemed to consider that, and for a moment, he said nothing. The boy’s single working eye flicked back and forth across the room.

Then he smiled, and an earthworm wiggled out of his mouth.

“But there’s a sacrifice in my parents’ room! You could give Mother to Patera!” he suggested, his voice filled with rasping glee.

For a moment, Dina considered the trade in souls. In a sense, agreeing to perform the healing would restore things to the way they should have been, had she not prayed to her god in the first place. The boy would once again be alive, and his mother dead.

Then her still-sleepy mind recognized the contradiction in the boy’s words. The entire purpose of his visit had been to return him to his mother, and yet he was perfectly willing to have her killed.

Great, she thought, more annoyed than angry. She already had a sneaking suspicion where this was going, but decided to play along. This was not the Ranhoffs’ son, even if it was his corpse.

“If that’s what you want, Patera would be happy to heal you,” Dina told him. “But just the sacrifice isn’t enough. The god of healing requires that a payment be made to me, too. And I cannot heal your entire body for less than a thousand talons. I’m sorry, but I don’t think you have that much money.”

“But Father has!” the boy reminded her.

Dina groaned. Now that she had figured out the boy’s presence in the room had been orchestrated by the gods, she was no longer interested in healing him. It probably wouldn’t work, anyway. Knowing the gods, it seemed likely that whatever spirit was behind this nightly visit had gone off-script when presented with the opportunity to take another life, even if it went against whatever reason it had originally had for contacting her. To figure out what was really going on, she had to help it get back on track again.

“I know he has,” she told him. “But that’s his money, not yours. And since you’re the one asking for the healing, the payment must come from you.”

It wasn’t a great argument, but in this situation, it was good enough. Had this actually been a case of a real boy in need of healing, his father would obviously have wanted it to happen, and her whole argument about who should pay would have been moot. But the fact that it worked now was yet another proof that things here weren’t quite what they seemed.

“In the fairy tales Mother reads to me, there’s talk of a very special sacrifice,” the boy explained. “The Golden Goat can make me well without the need for payment.”

The Golden Goat. That’s a new one.

“Where can I find it?”

She was not surprised in the slightest when the rotting corpse of the boy she had killed three days prior revealed her destination.

“Terynia,” he said, eager to point the way. “You must go to Terynia before I decay beyond what the worth of the Golden Goat can cover. You must be there the day after tomorrow.”

Dina sighed. Despite her annoyance at Mardocar’s attempt at manipulating her, she knew she still didn’t really have a choice. If the gods wanted her in Terynia, she had to go to Terynia. She just didn’t understand why they wanted her to think going there was her own idea. All they had to do was tell her so themselves.

After promising to leave at her earliest convenience, the boy retreated, though she didn’t know to where. Perhaps the corpse went back to its grave, she thought, or maybe it just stuffed itself into a locker somewhere in the house, where his parents might one day find it when they began to search their rooms for the source of the putrid smell permeating the air.

And just before she drifted off, a borderline blasphemous thought entered her mind.

Had she just outsmarted the gods?

The next morning, Dina lingered at the Ranhoff estate before finally leaving Realmshield. Mardocar’s meddling still grated on her, and she made no effort to hurry. What should have been a two-day journey to the capital stretched into three.

With some trepidation, she wondered if the gods would strike her down for her insolence.

But when she finally arrived in Terynia, a full day later than she’d been instructed, the only thing that happened was that she was met outside the city walls by a Knight Eternal and a Blood Sister, both of whom were most annoyed by her tardiness.

Author's Note

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