Philip Athans - Lies of Light

He looked down at Willem and thought about that.

“You never knew what you had,” he said.

Marek frowned and drew a fingernail around the wax seal, breaking it. He pulled out the cork and placed it on the table, then tipped the vial so the garlic clove dropped onto his palm.

“You’ll thank me for this later, my boy,” Marek whispered, then he bit the clove in half and swallowed what was in his mouth without chewing it. The little nugget of garlic would stay in his stomach, lodged there to soak its power into him for years, even decades. “And this one is for you.”

Marek sank to one knee, enduring the pain in his hip and ignoring the popping of his joints. He dropped the remaining half of the garlic clove into Willem’s open mouth. With a deep breath, he climbed back to his feet.

“What next?” he breathed.

In answer to his own question, Marek picked up the onyx gem and turned back to the corpse. Once again he struggled down to one knee. He had to force the stone into Willem’s mouth, sliding it up under his teeth and forcing it past his bloated, dry tongue.

“A special stone, for a special boy,” the Thayan whispered.

He looked up at the table and sighed, smiling. He should have had the black firedrake-the runt he’d kept for himself as a personal servant-place the material components on the floor next to the body, so he wouldn’t have to keep kneeling and standing.

He stood, and retrieved the two bowls. Kneeling again, he dipped two fingers into the grave dirt and drew a short line on Willem’s bare chest. He went back for more dirt, then more and more as he drew vile sigils across the corpse’s pale flesh. When he was done, he poured the water over the dusty symbols. The water soaked into the grave dirt, adding just the touch of chaos necessary to bend the evil runes into their most potent configuration.

Marek stood and looked down at the body-it was just right. Everything was perfect.

He began one of two simultaneous spells, the incantations wrapped together in a way that tested even his experienced tongue. He paused only as long as it took to swallow the sliver of raw meat. His fingers traced intricate patterns in the air, the shard of bone pressed against his left palm with his middle finger. When the bone dissolved into dust, he dropped both hands to his sides.

Still chanting the interwoven necromancies, Marek bent at the waist and wrapped a hand around the hilt of the flamberge. With one swift motion, he pulled it free. The precise moment that the tip of the blade left Willem’s cold flesh, his body jerked and his bulging, vacant eyes rolled around in their sockets.

Still holding the extraordinary sword, Marek stepped back, and let Willem-or to be more precise, the creature that Willem had become-roll onto its belly and vomit out the desiccated black gemstone.

“Stand, thrall,” Marek ordered.

The creature struggled to its feet, its whole body shaking. It looked down at itself, naked and pale, the lightning that flashed in the window playing over the sword wound that no longer bled. Marek could see its eyes focus, and a dim beginning of sentience returned to its gaze.

“That’s right,” Marek said, letting a wide grin spread across his face. “You’re no zombie to be made to dig and claw at mud, my boy.”

The creature looked at its creator, its smoldering eyes running up the wavy length of the blade and stopping on Marek’s grinning face.

“Yes,” the Thayan said, taking a step closer to the hunched, naked undead wretch. “You know me. You know your master.”

Recognition flooded into the creature’s eyes all at once, to be replaced a moment later with impotent rage, then a desperate realization of what had become of it.

“Good morning, my boy,” Marek Rymut said, then he started to laugh.

The creature grunted, its lips still pulled away from its teeth in a terrible grimace. It lifted its sunken face, skin stretched tight and so pale it was almost green, up to the ceiling, to the lightning outside.

Marek laughed.

The thing that had once been Willem Korvan screamed.

Marek didn’t stop laughing, and his creation didn’t stop screaming, for a very long time.