Chapter 3

Reive

He had to think a little. At the very least to bring his thoughts into order. Oh, Dark, he hasn’t been alive for seven hundred years!

Reive looked down at the breathless girl and narrowed his eyes. She’d already managed to enrage him. The necromancer bent down, heaved her up by her feet and presumptuously slung her senseless body over his shoulder. But first he cast a glance over his talkative acquaintance and decided her figure was quite what it ought to be. As they say, everything was in place.

Not like him.

Reive looked at his own left palm. He wrinkled his nose. If he hadn’t knocked the girl out a minute ago, she’d have been screaming like a frightened peacock by now. But he had to admit there were some problems with his hand. It hadn’t fully reconstructed itself. It was a bare bone scarcely covered with flimsy flesh.

The necromancer thought a little.

He wasn’t dead. But he wasn’t alive either, in the accepted sense of the word. This was an interesting effect of the curse. However, apart from his hand which would scare even a draugr, everything else was all right.

Reive put his hand to his breast and confirmed that his heart was beating. He wasn’t one of the undead.

He pursed his lips in a grim smile.

“Well, who else has doubts I’m the Undead King?” he said and then boldly smacked the senseless girl on the bottom.

The necromancer didn’t think about why he was carrying this girl, this chance acquaintance. It was clear to anyone not burdened with a conscience – he was going to use her as a live magic crystal. His current level of energy was only enough to show tricks to kids. The grave hadn’t only held Reive under the ground but also diminished his magic powers and didn’t allow him to restore them.

Still, the necromancer had tried. All these years. Every time he noticed some warm-blooded creature run across his field, he fell upon it through the ground with the ghostly cords of the Dark, sucking out its life and magic in their entirety. They were usually foxes, moles or hares. Sometimes, when a human being came into sight, the necromancer tried to kill him, too. But the last time this had happened was so long ago that Reive didn’t even remember whether he’d managed to do it. Mages usually resisted, and only complete non-mages were helpless against Reive.

However, after people fainted several times and the anarel dried completely, people stopped going to the Ash Field. The place had a long and storied history and had finally fallen into disrepute. Since then, it became difficult for Reive to maintain his strength. This was the reason why one of his hands had been almost completely destroyed.

Reive raised his head and looked at the horizon. The edge of the forest was already visible and that was where the necromancer was headed.

He closed his eyes and checked his orientation. Correct! Dark told him: the royal castle Firel was ten miles in a straight line.

His castle... He’d be home soon...

Approaching the forest fringe, the necromancer tried to return his thoughts to the present. Frankly speaking, it wasn’t that simple, considering how used he was to complete solitude. He was used to entertaining himself with flights of fancy and play of the imagination. But now, he had a girl with him, who, it must be admitted, managed to distract him even in her unconscious state. Her whole being exuded a faint scent of vanilla. Such a warm and homely one that the man involuntarily half closed his eyes and inhaled it deeper. It reminded him of a home-made bun fresh out of the oven. How much he wanted to bite into her with his teeth and feel how soft and sweet she was inside.

“Oh, Dark, I haven’t eaten vanilla buns for quite a long time!” the man grinned, not thinking about pastry at all.

He hadn’t had a woman for a very long time. However, he wasn’t used to dealing with unconscious women. This is why he wasn’t going to use this opportunity even a little.

A short time later, Reive wandered into a close thicket and, looking around with twilight vision, he found a bear’s lair. It was a small narrow cave, a perfect fit for two people who had decided to spend the night in the forest.

Of course this perspective would hardly appeal to his companion, but the necromancer didn’t see any other options. He couldn’t appear in the city for the time being. He’d spy out what it was like there first. Know the game.

Reive dropped the girl into the corner of the cave and threw a pile of branches onto the ground. Then he set to work building a fire by the exit. He had to fortify himself. After all this was his first meal for half a millennium.

Without worrying that the girl would wake up too soon, the man left the lair and quickly found a fox nearby. The scarlet currents of life unerringly led him to his victim. Having stolen up to the animal, Reive put his bony hand out, curling his fingers like the claws of a raven. He simply sucked the life out of the animal.

The Dark unwillingly reacted to its former master’s orders. The necromancer made a wry face, feeling that recovery would take more time than he had hoped.

However, his hand was now completely whole. As soon as the animal’s energy flowed into the man, the injured wrist at once grew over with flesh and was covered with dark skin under which veins were throbbing distinctly.

Satisfied, the man seized the fox by the tail and returned to the “camp”. He sat down beside the entrance, and fashioned something like a brazier from the branches.

Though Reive came from a noble and rich family, he knew quite well how to prepare game and roast meat. He’d learned a lot since he captured his first city with a band of ghouls when he was twenty-one.

Once he had finished preparing the food, the necromancer turned his attention to his clothes. Unfortunately, his magic was only able to save the long jacket with silver buttons. Everything else had rotted.

A little later, Reive found a turbid pond near the lair. It was all swamped by mud. But that didn’t stop the necromancer. He plunged his head into the cold water, and finally felt truly alive.

So, when it was time to awaken his green-eyed companion, he looked quite presentable.

He put a portion of meat onto a leaf of burdock for her, and carefully lay down next to her on the branches.

The girl’s eyelashes fluttered. She was about to come to her senses. The necromancer pillowed his head on his hand, lying alongside the girl, and waiting calmly. He was desperately thirsty, but he didn’t want to leave the girl. Strange as it was, he liked being with her. Perhaps he’d missed human society for all these years. Maybe, just out of curiosity or something else. He didn’t give it any thought.

Reive closed his eyes and explored the surroundings with twilight vision. There was a large patch of darkness ten steps away from the lair. It seemed to him that it was a man. Maybe a hunter mauled by a bear. A dead body going nowhere which would transform into an undead all by itself.

Reive decided to help it, turning over a suitable invocation in his mind. Level seven seemed a good choice: the creation of a half-thinking zombie. Nothing complicated.

Pushing himself up from the ground, the necromancer sat down resting his elbows on his knees. His eyelids slowly lowered. When they rose, his eyes turned red. The Undead King didn’t have to pronounce words of the ancient language. His energy and experience allowed him to do magic almost silently.

He barely moved his fingers, forming the required symbol with them and pronounced one key word, “Kherileyr!” (Arise!)

The earth didn’t shake. The wind didn’t throw up clouds of sharp dust into the sky. But if there had been other necromancers nearby capable of ordering dead material, they would have felt the Dark coming to life. A fine but strong black thread thrust into the dead man’s body like an arrow, filling it with a web of twilight magic.

Reive sighed and lay down again on his back, crossing his legs and clasping his hands behind his neck.

When the zombie stumped up to his new master, glaring maliciously with a greenish light coming from his dark eyes, the necromancer said, “Bring me some water. You’ll find the bowl near the place where you came from.”

The zombie nodded and went out slowly. After his awakening, his legs could hardly obey him.

The necromancer pursed his lips as if smirking. Today, he read his new servant like a book.

“What on earth is going on here?” came an annoyed girl’s voice, as soon as the dead man disappeared.

The necromancer turned his head and smiled, meeting the blazing eyes. The girl blushed erotically again.