Dirge for a Necromancer - By Ash Stinson Page 0,27
about it, it all began to fade away. After a moment or two, all he could remember was something about a changeling and the burned banners in the hall. They’d been white—he could recall that much—with something red on them. What was it?
He closed his eyes and tried hard to remember, but he couldn’t. Everything was gone—the red pattern on the banners, the man’s face, the words that had passed between them. He couldn’t recall any of it. With a sigh, Raettonus turned onto his side and curled his legs up toward his chest, not feeling so much like sleeping anymore. He found himself wishing they hadn’t found a different room for Brecan, so at least he might have someone to talk to. Though, God knows, Brecan was always the absolute bottom of his list when it came to talking.
In Ti Tunfa, when he found his sleep poor, he could always seek out a tavern where he might get a few drinks and mayhap play a few rounds of chess with a drunken elf or two. Taverns never closed in Ti Tunfa.
What was he to do here? Wander the soldier’s barracks, looking for drinking buddies? No, with the Spartan philosophies of Zylekkhans, if he wandered soldiers’ rooms in the middle of the night, he was far more likely to stumble on things that would give him nightmares rather than soothe them.
Raettonus rubbed at his eyes and sat up. He couldn’t go back to sleep; he had to do something. He stood and pulled on his tunic. Dimly, he could make out the jagged outlines of the little figurines on the desk, and a shiver went through him. That’s just because of the cold, he told himself. Except he couldn’t feel the cold.
Chapter Four
Before he arrived at the door to Kaebha Citadel’s shrine, Raettonus didn’t really know where he was going. He had only been walking the lonely hallways, hand on his rapier, head lost in all kinds of thoughts. The doors to the shrine were slightly ajar, and through the crack he could see candlelight flickering within it. He paused outside the door, not sure if he wanted to go in. In the end however, he entered quietly. He certainly couldn’t go back to sleep, and where else was he to pass the hours until daytime?
Despite the candles, the interior of the shrine was still quite dim. Raettonus moved through the gloom uncertainly, pausing to look at the statues of the major gods as he passed them. He stopped at the statue of Cykkus—a suit of armor with wings, though the candles in his helm that served for eyes had been extinguished. For a moment, he simply stared at the statue, taking everything about it in and feeling the hate boil up in his stomach. “You know what?” he said to the statue, leaning in close and peering up into its empty helm. “I hope you’re miserable as hell too.”
He heard someone stir behind him, followed by soft hoof-falls. “Well, Magician,” came Daeblau’s familiar voice from behind him. “I wouldn’t expect to find you here.”
“I wouldn’t expect to find me here either,” Raettonus answered. “Just thought I’d drop by, air my grievances with your gods. You know, normal stuff to do at five in the morning.”
Daeblau smiled. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a religious man, Magician,” he said. “Certainly I didn’t think our gods would hold any importance for you.”
“I have a bone to pick with this one,” Raettonus said, nodding toward the statue.
“Black-winged Cykkus?”
“Yeah, sure,” Raettonus said. “Whatever you call it—Death. Death is the same in all worlds, and I’ve got a bone to pick with him. I don’t see any depictions of my world’s Death around here, so this is the one I’m gonna tell off. If it offends you… Well, you can apologize to it afterwards, or you can make a sacrifice to appease it, or however it is you Zylxians make your insane gods happy.”
“We don’t make them happy, Magician,” Daeblau said, looking toward the statue. “We just try to stay out of their way, and then whatever happens, happens.”
“So,” Raettonus said, “you just try not to draw their attention, huh? It’s bad luck?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say it’s bad luck exactly,” said the centaur. “Just that—well, you seem an educated man, Magician. Certainly you’ve read the stories? Mortals who find themselves the object of gods’ attentions don’t tend to come out of everything on top.”
“That’s if you believe the stories,” Raettonus said dismissively.