Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Book 5

  About the Author

  To all those still haunted by history.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “DO YOU THINK anyone’s home?” Ontiku asked cheekily.

  Jinua rolled her eyes while Hylas snickered and his demigod half-sister, Aketa, purred in amusement. The clearly-abandoned village stood at the base of a weathered mountain, draped in a regal robe of thick green forest. Nothing in the abandoned town betrayed the presence of anyone.

  They’d been walking through grasslands and hills for the past week and hadn’t passed a village with people for two days. They could have taken a route that would’ve led them to another town, but Aketa got skittish in places with lots of people. Jinua didn’t want to put her newly-mended mind through the wringer if she didn’t have to, so they’d procured extra supplies and took a different, much older path.

  The ancient road—made of layers of crushed mortar, sand, and rocks—had fallen into such disrepair, it crumbled beneath their sandaled feet. Before them, it led straight through the abandoned village and beyond, splitting off with one path curling up the mountain and the other going around through the adjacent valley.

  “What happened?” Hylas asked, as the four of them—plus Jinua’s mare Athos—walked toward the abandoned buildings. They had been built of mud bricks and wood around small courtyards or gardens, many half-collapsed or sloughing to one side. Jinua was unsure if they’d find one sturdy enough to act as shelter for the night, and with the sun painting the western sky a deep orange, they needed to figure something out, fast.

  As they continued, the wild forest began invading the village ruins. Trees burst out of rooftops and twisted shrubs overwhelmed home courtyards and gardens, with several giant pines taking over the marketplace like gossiping old ladies. Given their last encounter with a forest, Jinua half-expected this one to pick itself up by the roots and start walking.

  She kept Athos’s reins in one hand, her other hand on the pommel of her sword at her waist. She wasn’t wearing her bronze armor—too hot for that—which she almost regretted. There were plenty of creatures that could be using these houses for shelter.

  “Disease, perhaps?” she ventured. “Or war.”

  Ontiku paused. He looked up, past the trees, beyond the lush green leaves, to the mountain. He squinted. “The Necromancer War, to be precise. That’s Exstosi Peak.”

  Jinua whirled on him. “Really?”

  He nodded toward the peak. “There was a school up there, once, and like many, it was serviced by several surrounding villages just like this one. I wouldn’t be surprised if we found another set of ruins on the other side of the mountain.”

  “What’s Exstosi Peak?” Hylas asked.

  “It means Ghost Peak,” Ontiku explained. “There was a necromancer school up there.”

  “It was the sight of a battle in the Necromancer War,” Jinua added excitedly. “Almost fifty paladins marched up there to fight the necromancers, led by Holy Dolofin, who died during the fight.”

  Ontiku gave her a bizarre look. “They called it a battle?”

  She frowned. “Of course. The paladins and necromancers fought each other, dozens on each side. That’s a battle.”

  She and Ontiku had barely survived a fight against one necromancer and half a dozen humans. Dolofin must have led a brutal struggle.

  “Why didn’t the villagers come back?” Hylas asked, poking at the nearest mud home. The wall fell over, making him yelp and scramble away.

  “Everyone at the School of Ghost Peak was slaughtered,” Ontiku said bluntly. “As were many of the people who supported them. The survivors risked the same fate if they returned during the war. Afterward, there was no reason to return. No one was going to be coming down the mountain to purchase their food or blankets.”

  Aketa put her hand on the nearest tree. She nodded. “They’re young.”

  Two hundred years probably was considered young for a forest.

  The demigod frowned and knelt to tracks in the dirt. Jinua recognized that look. “Bear? Boar?”

  “Don’t know,” Aketa replied.

  That was worse. Aketa knew the tracks of almost every type of animal known in this part of the world. In the last couple of weeks, she had unerringly steered their little group toward tasty prey or led them away from dangerous predators.

  Jinua came closer. Aketa pointed up the tree, to slash marks in the bark. Jinua brushed her fingertips against claw marks; she had to spread her fingers wide to fit the wound in the bark.

  Whatever had made the claw marks had also shat at the base of the tree. Aketa poked through it—thankfully it was dried and old, not fresh and… squishy. The number of bones in the dung pile was troubling.

  “Predator,” Aketa said plainly.

  Jinua nodded. “Everyone stay close.”

  They managed to find a house that wasn’t on the verge of collapse, mostly because it didn’t have a tree growing out of it. Aketa prowled around the area to search for more tracks, and came back with the all-clear and a few squirrels to cook. The bloody claws on the end of her fingers gradually retracted to human nails as she handed Ontiku her kill.

  Jinua had been worried when she and Ontiku first agreed to let Aketa and Hylas travel with them. Though it’d been the right thing to do, in the back of her mind she’d wondered if she could keep them fed and if they could keep up with the hardship of life on the road.

  Turns out, she needn’t have worried. Aketa was the demigod daughter of Eskir, Lord of the Wilds, and had spent four years of madness living in an enchanted forest. Curing that madness (as much as Jinua was able) hadn’t diminished those skills, and she was able to bring them some fresh meat or berries almost every day.

  The only downside was her discomfort among people, which Jinua could understand, since the girl had massive horns growing out of her head. She’d shrink in on herself anytime they got to a crowded area, and it’d take hours before they got her talking again.

  Her half-brother Hylas did not have any divine gifts, but he shared a similar anxiety around crowds, being a necromancer and all. He’d stay hunched close to his sister until they were on the road again.

  He was a hard worker, though, and never once complained about setting up camp, starting a fire, skinning the squirrels, tending to Athos, or the long miles of marching. The only time he did complain was when Jinua made him take off the bandages that bound his breasts.

  “It’s not good for you, keeping yourself bound for hours on end like that,” she’d pointed out.

  “They help me not feel nervous,” he’d argued.

  “You’re going to squeeze your lungs right out of your body,” Ontiku had said.

  They’d compromised: since it was the case that, no matter how much she tried, Jinua could not heal Hylas’s anxiety, he could wear his bindings however much he wished when they were visiting a town. However, they came off after a few hours in the wilderness. In the absence of crowds, his constant state of nervous anxiety diminished, though the threat of attack by wild animals increased exponentially.

  The mud house did not have any furniture, except the remnants of a couple of grass-stuffed mattresses in a back room, each harboring an entire civilization of bugs and rats. There were some pieces of dusty wood in the corner that, given their size and placement, Hylas said had probably been a loom. They used the wood to make a fire in the hearth. The fireplace was built into the wall separating the main room from the garden in the center of the house, where Athos happily munched on wildflowers and scrub grass.

  Jinua got the fire started and cooked the squirrels, muttering a prayer to the gods as she did so: “Eskir, Lord of the Wilds, thank you for blessing us with this bounty. Saiji, Lady of the House, thank you for giving us a roof to cook. Fiery Jadiim, King of the Gods, please continue to light our way. Today, I serve.”

  She kept her prayer quiet, not out of shame but because everyone else in the group got twitchy whenever she mentioned the gods. Aketa didn’t seem to care about them one way or another—even though she was directly related to one—but Ontiku and Hylas were both necromancers. Godless. Condemned.

  They hadn’t committed any evil acts…yet, so Jinua held out hope that they would continue to stay off the path that led all necromancers to corruption.

  As she cooked, she had a surreal sense that it had been two centuries since this hearth had been used to create food. Two hundred years since children had laughed and played games in these halls while their parents bickered with each other, and their grandmother had woven blankets in the corner. Two hundred years since there had been farming and trading and gossiping about their neighbors. Two hundred years since the Necromancer War, and before that the people of this town had just…lived, right next to a necromancer school.

  That must have been terrifying, Jinua thought. She remembered the undead hoards that Enejel had raised back in Glyrta and the feeling of cold, dead fingers trying to pull her apart. One necromancer had been able to raise a small army of undead and gain control of an entire town. How much damage co uld an entire coven of them do?

  The other three finished setting up their makeshift camp—laying out sleep rolls and checking to make sure the house wouldn’t collapse on them. Jinua pulled the roasted squirrels off the fire and they ate. Aketa tore into her meal like she was afraid one of them would snatch it from her. Jinua was just happy they’d finally gotten her to eat cooked meat.

  When they were done, Aketa sat in front of Jinua, mimicking her crossed legs. Jinua chuckled. “You want to meditate with me?”

  Aketa nodded. Jinua wiped her greasy hands on a kerchief and set her palms on her knees. “All right. Deep breath in… Hold it. Deep breath out… Hold it. Deep breath in…”

  The day after leaving the siblings’ hateful hometown of Paramis, when Jinua had sat down to meditate—just as she did every morning and evening—Aketa had watched her with a confused tip of her head. A couple of days later, she’d shyly asked Jinua to teach her to do that. “It looks. Calm,” she’d muttered, fingers tapping against her horns.

  Jinua was a paladin with healing powers, but they did not specialize in the mind. Her god Jadiim was a war god, who had only learned to heal physical injuries and illnesses found on the battlefield. With the help of a forest spirit, she’d been able to mostly repair Aketa’s shattered mind, but not completely.

  However, Aketa’s mind seemed to be getting gradually better without her healing touch, through a combination of talking to the three of them and meditating with Jinua. They still wanted to take her to a professional, probably a paladin of either Yatehi or Kewey, but it seemed Ontiku had been right: accepting herself and being accepted for her true demigod self did wonders.

  Jinua had closed her eyes, quietly leading Aketa through the breathing exercise, so she heard rather than saw Hylas scoot his way over to Ontiku. “Can you teach me some necromancy now?”

  Jinua cracked open one eye, watching them.

  Ontiku sharpened one of his six bone knives. Each knife had a slight curve that suggested it was once some sort of rib and was wrapped with dark leather for an easy grip. He had black leather armor with a built-in sheath in the lower back for all six, but he almost never wore it, keeping it folded up in one of Athos’s saddlebags. It was traditional necromancer armor, after all, a dead giveaway of his godless status.

  Instead, he usually wore a simple peasant’s outfit that sported a vest with hidden sheaths sewn in the back, allowing him to magically deploy his bone knives at any enemies…or ducks, or pigeons, or any number of animals that Aketa was unable to get her claws on.

  “You know the rules: you need to know proper history and conduct before learning any spells,” Ontiku said to Hylas, not looking up from his knives.

  “But I know the Creed.”

  “Oh?”

  Hylas cleared his throat and recited:

  “I am the link that transcends life and death,

  yet I am master of neither.

  I take no human life,

  except when it threatens my own.

  I raise no malice or violence,

  against the innocent.

  I take no slave,

  living or dead.

  I raise no human dead,

  without their will or that of their kin.

  I punish no soul—living or dead,

  without the Order’s will.

  I swear to abide this Creed,

  in life and beyond death.”

  Ontiku paused in his sharpening. “I told you that exactly once.”

  Hylas grinned. “I have a good memory.”

  Aketa grunted in agreement.

  “Breathe in,” Jinua instructed quietly. “Hold it. Breathe out.”

  She needed to take her own advice. She was holding her breath, waiting for what the elderly necromancer would do next.

  Ontiku studied Hylas for a moment, then shrugged. “All right. We’ll do a death vision.”

  “What’s a death vision?” Hylas asked.

  Ontiku handed him the bone knife. “You’re going to tell me where this bone came from and how that creature died.”

  “…how?”

  “Meditate on it.”

  “I don’t like meditating,” he grumbled. It was true; he’d tried to join Jinua and Aketa a couple of times, but constantly fidgeted and found something else to do.

  Jinua abandoned her own meditation entirely, watching the two necromancers. The idea of teaching Hylas made her uneasy. The boy already knew how to see and talk to ghosts; no helping that— they were born with it—but learning more was the first step toward using that power for evil ends.

  Hylas scooted over to his sister, putting his back to hers, and copied her breathing routine. It was one that Jinua’s mother Cirhina had taught her, years ago. The Lykhuusi had several meditation techniques, and this one was supposed to calm your nerves before battle. Jinua wondered if there were others that would be more helpful to Hylas, or better yet, Aketa, but she didn’t know them.

  Can’t regret that now, she thought, watching the two siblings. They had the same hook nose and peach-like skin that fried under the sun, though Hylas had a cloud of golden hair, like his father, and was quite a bit skinnier than his sister. Aketa had dark hair like her mother and was all lean muscle under the knee-length hunting dress they’d gotten her in the last town. They’d kept the furs and pelts she’d worn in the moving forest. Summer was almost over, and fall would soon bring chilly nights.

  Jinua quietly uncrossed her legs and went to Ontiku, leaving the siblings to their task. “Is this wise?” she whispered as quietly as she could. This room did not offer much privacy. “Power requires responsibility. He’s not ready.”

  “Death visions are not spells,” Ontiku responded, equally quiet. “We live out the subject’s final moments, see what they saw, hear what they heard, feel what they felt. They’re taught early to instill in us the respect for both life and death.”

  Jinua hummed, looking for the flaw in that plan. “Seems like a lot to put him through.”

  “Necromancers talk to, summon, and ask favors of people who’ve died. The least we can do is experience what they have. To understand their pain and where they’re coming from.”

  Hylas gasped, making Jinua and Aketa jump. His eyes glowed yellow-green.

  “Hylas?” Aketa asked, getting up in a crouch.

  “Let him be,” Ontiku ordered. “This is normal.”

  A second later, Hylas shuddered, blinking his eyes back to his normal dark green. He glared at Ontiku. “You jerk.”

  The older necromancer smirked. “Well?”

  Hylas handed him the knife. “It was a boar. You lured it into a pit trap full of spikes.”

  “Very good.”

  A thread of tension in Jinua’s back eased. “Here I was worried they were made of human ribs.”

  “Some of us used to do that,” Ontiku said, putting his knife away.

  And the tension returned. “What?”

  He nodded. “In the early days of the Order, and even before that. Mostly they were donated by the deceased as a way to continue to help the coven or a specific necromancer. Their lovers or family members would leave them their bones to be used as needed, and it was considered a great act of love. Love that endured beyond death. But sometimes…” Here he made a face, wrinkling his nose and mouth almost in a sneer. “…they were taken from slain enemies.”

  “Like the Bleeding Bone Coven,” Jinua said, remembering the history lessons the priests had taught her at the abbey.

  “Exactly. They were the last coven to do that.”

  She frowned. The Bleeding Bones had existed about five hundred years ago, but... “Weren’t there a few necromancers during the war who made weapons out of paladins’ bones?”

  Ontiku made that face again. “Yes, and the ones who weren’t killed by paladins were punished by the Order for that particular war crime.”

  “Why?” Hylas asked. “They’re dead, and they attacked us.”

  “Death is sacred,” he said firmly. “It’s what makes life special. When you lose respect for one, you lose respect for the other.”

  “But the paladins slaughtered necromancers,” Hylas said. “All because their gods didn’t like how the Order made its own decisions instead of blindly following one of them.”

  Jinua blinked. “What?”

  Hylas fidgeted, like a child caught with their hand in the honey jar. “I mean…gods never liked necromancers anyway, but the Order stayed neutral in everything, and Jadiim didn’t like it, so he declared war.”

 

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