The Assorted Histories of Ashar: Del-Wor

No one in the town would admit to having invited her, but no one in the town would tell her to leave. To offer refuge to one of her kind or to engage in business with her kind was to incur the wrath of the law, was to bring the armored sentries of the capital. The art of necromancy had been banned in the land of Lirote for nearly three decades, and necromancers were punished by the flame. Yet here, in the simple town of Del-Wor, a Necromancer, a student of the art armed with years of practice rather than an amateur armed only with a Book of Nim, had come.

None of the townsfolk, simple people who strived for nothing more than to see their children fed, could say where she had come from or when she had arrived. Sometime after dawn, after the men had gone to work in the fields and the women and children had retired into the sanctuary of Nim to continue preparations for a funeral. She had been there, standing calm and proud in front of the mayor’s home, when the women had emerged from the temple to prepare food for the men to eat. She had still been standing there when the men had returned from the fields.

There was no question as to what she was. Her skin was the same shade as the corpse within the temple, and an ocarina hung from a cord around her neck. By itself, an ocarina was not a suspicious item, but the strange markings carved into the body of the instrument revealed the purpose for which it had been prepared. Unlike the crude wooden sort carried by amateurs, the Necromancer’s ocarina was silver and expertly carved.

The mayor, a thin man who was getting along in years, stepped forward from the group of farmers. His brow alone was not soaked with sweat, and he drew himself up straighter. He fell several inches short of the Necromancer, though, and he took a few steps away from her after he had approached, so that she did not seem to be staring down at him quite so much. He regarded her for several moments, and his mouth opened and then closed several times before he found his voice.

“What do you want?”

The Necromancer was much younger than him, but she regarded him without the reverence the townspeople showed. Her eyes showed no open resentment either, though. She waited before she spoke, watching him puff his chest up and pull his shoulders back in his best attempt to look intimidating.

“I was invited here.”

“Y-you couldn’t have been!” the mayor stammered. “We know the law, and we follow it! Your kind aren’t welcome anywhere anymore.”

“We are welcome anywhere that is not Lirote,” the Necromancer corrected him.

“Well, this is Lirote, and you are not welcome here!”

“I was sent for.”

“No you weren’t! Now get out of here! Out! I won’t let these people die just because someone was foolish enough to call for you when you are not needed! We can accept death here!”

“Who is the widow?” The Necromancer did not address the mayor. She spoke, rather, to the crowd of people who had hardly dared to breathe.

There was a rustling, and it was not long before someone stepped forward. Nalut Estine stepped forward. She was a young woman, and a small child clung to her skirt. Her modest dress could not conceal her condition from the Necromancer, who surveyed the woman and her fair-haired child for several moments. Estine put a hand over her stomach when the Necromancer looked at it. Her hand twitched, eager to press two fingers to her lips in the gesture to ward off foul spirits, but she resisted. A superstition was less frightening than flesh and blood that might be offended by the actions associated with such a superstition.

“Estine—” the mayor began sharply.

“I didn’t send for her!” The woman trembled at the accusation, and her light eyes filled with tears. Her terror increased when the Necromancer raised a hand, and, despite her best intentions, Estine clutched at her stomach.

“It does not matter who sent for me,” the Necromancer said, choosing to ignore the reaction of the woman. She looked at Estine before she spoke again. “Take me to your husband.”

Estine gave another small sob and sniffled, but she nodded. The small crowd parted as the pregnant woman led the Necromancer to the temple of Nim. Estine glanced over her shoulder several times, sure that the other woman would still be standing in the center of the town, but the Necromancer was following, her steps making no sound. The child had detached from her mother’s skirt and walked backwards a good deal of the way, staring at the stranger.

The temple was less ornate than others that the Necromancer had seen. It was to be expected, as a farming community would not waste great amounts of precious stone and other such things on a temple to the goddess of death. Llan, god of the seasons, and Blys, goddess of the vegetation, were sure to have a far more decorated place of worship. Still, the temple showed proper reverence for Nim. A statue of the long-armed goddess had been dutifully carved, her arms ever open to embrace any and all living things, and it was placed upon a small altar. In front of the altar, on the ground, a mat was set out, and the corpse had been laid atop the mat, dressed in fine clothes and anointed with the proper burial fragrances.

Nalut Morhin had died four days before the Necromancer had arrived, and it was on the sixth day that the town was to bury him. His widow looked on as the Necromancer knelt on one knee by the dead man and touched the clean binding on his head. The wound that had killed him, sustained by falling onto a rock in the field, had been treated shortly before he had died, and the wound was still bound, so as to make it easier for his widow to treat the body to its burial rights.

“Can you do anything?” Estine asked. She did not dare to hope that this woman could help her.

The Necromancer did not respond. She rose to her feet and loosened a black bag, made of material that Estine was sure was very expensive, that hung at her waist, behind her ocarina. The Necromancer reached into the bag and withdrew her hand a moment later. Black sand caught the reflection of the sun outside and glittered in her hand as she walked around the body, letting it fall into what seemed to be a perfect circle. At each of the cardinal directions, the Necromancer poured the sand to write a specific symbol. She reached into the circle and turned the mat so that the body’s head was at the north point and the feet at the south point, and she knelt, this time on both knees, just outside the circle, even with the head at the north point.

The Necromancer untied the cord holding the ocarina in position and lifted the silver instrument to her mouth. She blew on it, and Estine was surprised at the low pitch that drifted through the temple. She stared at the woman near her husband, conscious of a chill that crept up her spine. The Necromancer’s eyes closed, but her body remained rigid.

When the Necromancer opened her eyes, she was no longer knelt in a simple sanctuary to Nim. Instead, she was knelt in the bleak landscape that was Myret, the first realm in the Land of Death. All around her there was flat, empty ground. A treacherous river cut the landscape, its bank only feet away from her. The course of the black water ran toward a gate in the middle of the vast emptiness that otherwise made Myret what it was. The gate stood alone, without any kind of support.

The woman rose to her feet and walked alongside the winding river. Every step was planned and examined. To fall into Hadele, the River of Death, was to surrender the soul to its course. Even with her deliberate steps, the Necromancer felt an uneasy footing at times, but she did not alter her course. She reached the gate and raised the ocarina in her hands to her mouth. She covered the appropriate holes and blew across the mouthpiece. A note, higher than the one that had led her to Myret, swept across the empty landscape.

The gate opened to her command, and she stepped through.

Cidar was not quite as desolate as Myret. The ground bore grass, though it was brown, and a few withering bushes dotted the path of Hadele, which flowed on without end. The air was still, and yet there was the faintest sound within it, the sound of a child laughing, as if at play. Another black gate stood a ways off, but the Necromancer was not interested in it. She was interested in the man walking along the river, approaching the gate.

She made no attempt to draw attention to herself, but she followed his course, smoothly taking each curve of the river. Although a pebble or two attempted to give way beneath her footing, she did not stumble or even hesitate.

The man raised his head and looked past the gate as the unseen child gave a squeal of delight. His momentary distraction made him falter, and he fell from the river’s bank into the darkness of Hadele. The Necromancer quickened her pace, and she was waiting when he surfaced, thrashing wildly in the water, trying to throw off some force that sought to carry him away. He stared in surprise at the pale, thin hand offered to him, but he grasped it nonetheless.

The force of Hadele would not admit defeat. It pulled at the man, seeking to either wrench him from the Necromancer’s grip or else pull her into the water with him, but it was no use. She remained firmly knelt on the bank of the river, and, with her help, Morhin was freed from the water and once more on the bank. His clothes were not wet, and he seemed to wonder at this for several moments. Before long, the oddity of the Necromancer’s presence occurred to him.

“I haven’t seen anyone else here,” he said to her. “I heard Ler, my son, laughing and playing, but I haven’t seen him.”

“He died,” the Necromancer said.

“About a year ago,” the farmer replied. “But I didn’t think it was odd. I mean, I am dead, aren’t I? I think I am…”

“What you heard was a shadow. Your son is in the arms of Nim, and he cannot stir from there now. Not after this long.”

She said nothing more, and the man was silent as well. The Necromancer drew her ocarina to her lips again and played the same note she had sounded to enter Myert, and she closed her eyes.

In the temple of Nim, the Necromancer rose to her feet, her ocarina ever at her lips, before her eyes opened. Estine gaped at her. The woman’s skin was paler than it had been, and she looked almost tired. For a moment, Estine thought that the Necromancer was going to collapse, but she did not. Instead, she turned her eyes to the body of Estine’s husband.

Estine gave a shuddering gasp as her husband’s eyes fluttered open and he sat up on the mat meant for his funeral. She forgot the Necromancer, forgot the wide-eyed child still standing near, forgot everything but her husband, and she hurried to fall on her knees beside him and embrace him. He stroked her hair, murmuring reassurances and offering promises to recount the event to her later.

Morhin looked at the Necromancer and smiled at her. “You must be our guest,” he announced as Estine helped him to his feet. “You will stay with us, sleep in our home, share our meals. We shall do whatever we can for you. Anything to repay you.”

“I will move on,” the Necromancer responded. “It is the way of things.”

She said nothing more, leaving the couple to stare at her in shock and the small child to watch her departure with awe. After a moment, the child hurried after her.

The little girl caught up with the Necromancer and tugged at her belt until the pale woman looked down at her. The child plunged a small hand into her pocket and pulled out a small cloth, tied at the end, which contained a fair amount of coins.

“I’m not supposed to tell who gave this to me, but they said that you were s’posed to have it if you brought Poppa back.”

The Necromancer took the pouch and untied it, selecting a single coin and pressing it into the girl’s hand. “You have done your job well, and I will not ask you who gave this to you. Your secret can be kept.” She straightened up, loosening the brown pouch at her waist and adding the coins into it. Just as she started to walk away, the small child tugged at her tunic again. Again the Necromancer regarded her patiently.

The child dug into her other pocket and retrieved another item, holding it out to the Necromancer with a smile on her face. She was untouched by the town’s fear of this woman and saw her only as someone who had given her back her father.

The Necromancer examined the object after taking it from the child. It was a small white ball, about the size of a drop of ink.

“It’s a sul,” the little girl said proudly. “You make it by putting some flour in honey and rolling it in sugar! I always get three a week, and that’s my last one.”

The Necromancer watched as the girl skipped off, back to where she had left her parents. She had not even been given the chance to refuse the gift. Her pale eyes took in the landscape. The men were back farming, and the mayor had likely advised the women to take shelter. As the Necromancer walked away from the empty town square and back toward the path she had been on before the call for her to come here, she placed the sul under her tongue.