The Journeys of a Different Necromancer Read Free

Thomas
looked up to see his teacher’s eyes resting on him. “Come, boy. I
think it’s time you started studying on that fourth
floor.”
    * * *
*
    Days later, a score of Kross’s soldiers came to the tower.
They wore red leather armor and carried shields emblazoned with
stylized red griffins. Their swords were two feet long and curved.
A mounted lieutenant led them, but stopped and let the footmen
approach the black stone tower in the middle of the desolate
clearing. When the footmen got close, though, they screamed and
burst into a fine red mist.
    “ Did you do that, Xavier?” asked Thomas, standing beside
Xavier on the tower roof.
    “ Yes,” his teacher said as he watched the horseman looking up
at him. “I put in place a powerful ward while you slept last night.
Any one of them that comes closer than I want will end the same
way.”
    The lieutenant cautiously approached to within yelling
distance. “Old man, is that your work in the village south of
here?”
    “ Yes. It’s my work,” Xavier shouted in reply. “Just leave me
alone. That’s all I want.”
    Thomas watched as the horseman looked around him. With his
horse neighing, prancing nervously, and spinning around, he had to
keep turning his head. Then the lieutenant stopped trying to keep
the horse in place as it tried to run. He pulled its head around
with the reins and galloped away.
    Thomas looked up at his teacher in awe of the power the old
man controlled. He, one man, had turned back not only the men
below, but surely the whole of the army. “Will they return, do you
think?”
    “ If they want to lose more men.” Xavier turned to his student.
“Come, boy, time to get back to your studies.”
     
     
     

Part Two
     
     
     
An Army
     
    Ten years passed and Thomas continued to learn. He came to
appreciate his teacher’s views on the living, how they always
seemed jealous and selfish, always despising those who were
different. Granted, Thomas’s dealings with people became limited
with his village gone, but the village two days’ away supplied them
with food and the people there reinforced his teacher’s way of
thinking.
    Then, one day in late summer, Xavier proved himself mortal.
Despite a lifetime of giving life to the dead, he could not
maintain his own. Now the student stood over the grave of his
one-time teacher and contemplated whether or not to give life back
to the man. However, although Thomas agreed with the man who taught
him many things, he could not agree the things brought back from
the grave had that spark of life, that spirit original in
people.
    He thought of the army which defeated the kingdom of his youth
and how that army bypassed the village he called home until the age
of thirteen. The same army that bypassed his and Xavier’s home when
shown the power his teacher called forth. The new king wrote often
before his teacher died. In his letters he would always request of
Xavier to raise an army of the creatures, like those still guarding
the village to the south.
    But all Xavier wanted, when alive, was to be left alone.
Therefore, the letters went unanswered.
    Thomas now held the latest letter in his hand, yet another
asking for an army. The reason he became a student in the first
place had been to see this city of Targon and now the letter gave
him a ticket to go. He did not want to be left alone, especially not in this crypt
of a tower.
    The next morning, he packed Xavier’s shoulder bag and
left.
    * * *
*
    Upon reaching the capital city, Thomas bought new clothes. A
new tan leather tunic and green hose, which did not reek of
unspeakable stains, now made up his wardrobe. A very hot bath,
costing a silver coin, washed away a good many other unpleasant
odors. A fact which the people of this place seemed to notice
greatly with hands to their noses and in their backing away from
him as he walked down the street.
    Then he explored the city. He tasted many different foods with
a voracious appetite. The worst of which,