broccolifloret

  In northwest Quinoptra, as the Imsha Peninsule rises up like a finger, the Oer Ka delta joins nd and ocean. Farmers grow their rice and cabbages in salty water. They ride solimecs, sturdier retives of our antelopes; in Vorsa their thick legs and stubby horns would be considered too homely for a fine carriage. But they're loyal and hardy. As night falls, people in the farmhold will blow a horn called surka to help the flocks and their humans find the way home. Raiders still come down the northwestern hills; the Megarchon's ws hold little sway here. Oer Kan farmers will die on a raiding party's magical whirlwind or poison rain, honoring the old feud, before they lower themselves to ask anything of the Megarchon's guards. Sometimes, however, other things will come with the raiders; things that run on many legs, or fly in strange wings, or don't seem to have any comprehensible shape at all. Things that used to be dead.

  Oer Kans won't ask the Megarchon's guards for help, but they will accept it from the King of the Dying Sun. I’m not convinced this is entirely thanks to me, but I wish to believe I had a part on it. After all, my predecessors only intervened in distant nds through the Underworld, remaining unknown to the local popution. Being present is far more efficient, though. Sometimes it's faster; more often it helps me understand the situation incomparably better. It's not enough, you see, to understand how necromancers send ripples into the Underworld. One must understand how they affect the world of the living.

  I must do this, because sometimes I arrive too te.

  Monday was dawning in Oer Ka; a slow, frozen dawn. A brittle dawn. Among the snow, red sprangletop; sheep delight in it. But no sheep remained, nothing but dried brown stains in the snow and tufts of bloodied wool. A stench of Underworld vomit fouled the bright air.

  Despite the miasma, some farmers had risked the fields. Not because of the stolen sheep, but because of what they picked up and carried on a stretch they'd improvised with a length of felt and two poles. Some of them made a point of giving loud, pained shouts, which is the way of mourning all across Imsha. I didn't belong there. And yet I had to intrude.

  One young woman looked up and turned toward the sound of my steps; her braids slid out of her hood and whipped in the dawn wind. Some of the more distant people I'd had dealings with had said I looked like another ghost to them, tall and pale and silent. This was of course immensely better than being mistaken for one of the aggressors.

  The woman spoke to the others, pointing at me. Her retives, I suppose, stopped and turned around, squinting against the wind.

  Across Imsha are spoken three nguages and at least eighteen dialects, depending on how you cssify them. I spoke none of them. Luckily, someone I could communicate with still lingered among the living.

  I wielded the bone dagger and shed a drop of blood as an offering. “I've shared my blood with you, O Ghost. Will you tell me your name?”

  He was called Big-Seashell Foxbrush. Which is to say, Foxbrush of the Big-Seashell cn, who owned these nds.

  Technically, they leased them from the Megarchon's representatives, who I gather were particurly corrupt so far from the source. I thanked Mr Foxbrush and asked him to be my interpreter. He didn't mind at all. All of his attempts to communicate with his family had fallen short, as there were no mediums among them. The woman who'd noticed me first was Little Poppy, his youngest child. If you only listened to him, you wouldn't have guessed she was an adult. It’s an attitude I find very strange.

  I turned to the Big-Seashells. They seemed to hold more curiosity than fear toward me. If I looked like an unknown quantity, at least I wasn't a known threat. I introduced myself in the words Mr Foxbrush passed on to me, presenting them with my deepest apologies for being unable to prevent the recent tragedy.

  The Big-Seashells didn't have much of a reaction—one supposes the recent events had proven to be all they could handle at the moment—but Mr Foxbrush wanted to know if I'd avenge him.

  “I can only touch the necromancer. If that satisfies you, I certainly will avenge you.”

  Mr Foxbrush was contented with this, as he was sure the necromancer's companions would run away when their strongest fighter was defeated. Before I could ask, he offered to show me where the raiders had gone to. I told the Big-Seashells to wait at their farmhold and gave them a barrier spell made of a crystallized blood drop.

  Big-Seashell Poppy held the spell in the palm of her hand. Crystallized spells are retively rare, as it's more practical to wrap them up on more durable cy. This one wasn't as powerful as the protective spell I'd set around the Mamani farmhold, but it didn't need to be. This particur matter would be finished in a few hours.

  “I'll see you again before nightfall,” I told the Big-Seashells. “Then you'll know the necromancer is dead.”

  We waved at each other (Mr Foxbrush also waved at his retives, but they didn't see him) and I returned to Menthe. My interpreter/guide mounted right behind, cold arms wrapped around me. He had no need to hold on, as ghosts possess no mass to be dispced by gravity. But many of them, especially the recently dead, find it comforting to continue acting as they’ve always done, so I allowed it.

  Besides, the western wind blowing in from the sea was colder.

  Until Azul Mamani came along, the only living person who'd shared Menthe with me was my little sibling. What a sad life.

  “Where to?” I asked.

  To the east. He'd tell me more when we got closer.

  And so we rode on through the feathery nit grass. Seeing how we still had a ways to go, I asked Mr Foxbrush about himself.

  He'd lived in the delta his whole life, fifty-four years. Had five children, born to three other parents. Little Poppy was the only one still unmarried.

  “So do you have any grandchildren?”

  Of course! Two of them, and when he remembered he'd gotten to hold them in his arms, he didn't feel so sad about dying.

  “You sound like the kind of grandpa a kid would like to have. I only met one of my grandmas, and that briefly.”

  He'd also been best at water-soothing spells to prevent storms from raging too much and ocean waves from growing too big and rivers from overflowing.

  “Sounds really useful.”

  It sure was. He'd been appreciated far and wide because of this skill. Much like this one sister-in-w had been appreciated by her delicious peach wine.

  “You're a brave man, Mr Foxbrush.” More precisely, he'd been one, but the recently dead are also often sensitive to such remarks. “After a violent death, many will balk at confronting the people who did it. Especially if there's creatures from the Underworld involved.”

  Mr Foxbrush reminded me that in Oer Ka it's considered unlucky to mention the Underworld out loud; I apologized, but he assured me it wasn't important. As for any concerns he might've had, he'd rather see those creatures banished, so that he'd move on knowing his family would be safe.

  “That's brave indeed.”

  The rearview mirror showed Mr Foxbrush glowing with pride. It was good to be able to do this, at least. So often my part amounts to very little, especially to the people left picking up the pieces—the very literal pieces of their beloved ones.

  Mr Foxbrush wanted to know if I wasn't cold.

  “No, but thanks for asking. Aren't raiders supposed to strike on autumn, anyway? Before the sheep are sacrificed for the winter and all.”

  These people, Mr Foxbrush said, were particurly wicked and not necessarily rational.

  The path was bumpier ahead; not that it'd stop Menthe, who'd been grafted with enough spells to let her speed unimpeded through far rougher ground. She could handle swamps and deserts and the icy tundra. Mr Foxbrush stretched a glowing arm over my head to point me in the right direction, a path snaking up the hills. I'd be surprised if anything substantial grew there, even in the spring. The raiders had gone to the easternmost side, where a creek trickled down the peak and a sharp rock wall provided them with some shelter from the winds. Beyond the path was only open ground, easy to defend.

  “Look at that.” I pointed at a barrier spell carved on a lonely tree. “It wouldn't stop me, but it would slow me down.”

  I dismounted and went down on one knee to shatter it. It protested and groaned against me, and I had to exert a good amount of strength to prevail. Mr Foxbrush loomed over my head, pointing out the carvings didn't look like any writing he could remember seeing.

  “Smart observation.” Oer Kan farmers were rgely illiterate, but that didn't mean they cked eyes. “It's a nguage from the Underworld. Our necromancer has learned it from someone else—either another human or someone from over there.”

  Mr Foxbrush wanted to know if that made any difference.

  “Necromancers with non-human teachers tend to be more experienced. I don't think this is the case, though. We haven't found any traces of Underworld interference in Oer Ka for the past few months, not even minute ones. And such a sudden burst of undisguised violence? Looks amateur to me. Someone who only now discovered a new spell.” And rushed to try it on an unsuspecting victim, but couldn't bring myself to say that out loud.

  Mr Foxbrush urged me to go on, as the tiger had just sharpened its cws.

  He hadn't missed the implication: this was only the beginning of the necromancer's career.

  Mr Foxbrush glowed in arm. The snow under my feet crumbled; the soil was falling apart, too. My muscle memory reacted before my conscious mind; I rolled out of the way just in time. At the edge of my sight, a couple of long, slim tongues rose out of the ground. There'd be more. I jumped to my feet just as fast, before the ndslide could catch me. A multifaceted eye blinked at me in between clods. From its position came a warm, wet gust—breath suffused with miasma.

  A lesser maw. Don't be fooled by its name; it'd swallowed—almost literally—a good stretch of all the open ground in sight, rising up with tongues and fangs and wet walls of cartige. Smarter than it looked, it had already begun slipping free from the necromancer's control; its gleeful malice battered my mind. I welcomed its attention. I unsheathed the bone dagger and bled an offering for it. Come get me; I'm tasty.

  The maw's eyes rolled with delight as it reared up to attack. I spyed a hand over the frozen ground. The earth was infuriated; it wanted the maw out, by any means necessary. I had a neckce with an earth spell cast in silver, and I poured it into the nd, lending it the spell's strength and mine. Before the maw's tongues and teeth reached me, the soil rose up with a power to crush continents. A single maw didn't have a chance. It bellowed its pained rage, futilely trying to free itself. I cpped my hands twice, almost losing bance and falling on my ass. Ungainly or not, it made no difference. The gates opened; the maw sank into the Underworld.

  Only then did the earth mellow into a satisfied calm. Mr Foxbrush slid out from behind a tree, beaming with joy.

  Several spells coiled around me, prickling and fizzing. Again I reacted before thought, blocking and shattering them in a single movement that focused all my will: a uba form. All I felt was a faint burning across my arms and face, rgely blocked by my jacket.

  Once, I'd practiced the uba forms until I thought my arms would fall off and my legs would never support my weight again. And then I started from the beginning once more. And now, I did them as naturally as breathing.

  I jumped to my feet. Ten or so people in riding clothes stood ahead. My ignorant eye couldn't find much to separate them from the Big-Seashells: they wore round hats instead of kerchiefs around their heads, and arm-braces of tooled leather, and hunting bows slung across their backs. None of that was enough to mark them as raiders. The one who did it was Mr Foxbrush, radiating anger.