Chapter 3
He lost him.
Vale stands at the mouth of the empty alley where the necromancer should be emerging, blessed sword still drawn, and fights the urge to put his fist through the brick wall.
Three centuries of hunting dark mages, and he let the most dangerous one of his career slip through his fingers.
The alley is barely wide enough for the man's shoulders, and how he made it through that fast while half-collapsing from magical exhaustion is beyond Vale's understanding.
He's not sure whether to be impressed or furious, so he settles for both.
It's pretty much par for the course for him.
The Old City has swallowed the man whole.
Vale searches for another hour, but his tracking spells find nothing except the residual echo of their brief chase and the ambient hum of a hundred other magic users who call these cramped blocks home.
The necromancer knows this district the way Vale knows the edge of his own blade, every shadow, every hole-in-the-wall, and Vale has to admit, however reluctantly, that he's been outmaneuvered. It's not his finest moment.
He grits his teeth and sheathes his sword on his back.
He starts the long walk back to headquarters, ignoring the hostile stares from the locals.
They'd known what he was before, but watching him sprint through their streets with a blazing sword while chasing one of their own puts a different spin on things.
By morning, everyone in the Old City will know a Templar was here hunting someone. It's going to make his job harder.
The walk gives him too much time to think.
Too much time to remember grey eyes and quiet resignation, to replay the image of that fine-boned face in the moonlight.
The necromancer had touched the spirit with such gentleness, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
He'd murmured rest now with the steady certainty of someone who had performed this kindness a thousand times and meant it every single time.
He'd looked at Vale not with defiance, but with the tired acceptance of a man who'd been expecting this moment for years and had already grieved it.
How long has he been looking over his shoulder?
How long has he been practicing? His face reads young, mid-twenties at most, but the spells he'd thrown at Vale had not been lacking in power, and the corruption threading through his skin speaks to years of sustained use.
Years of choosing to keep going despite what it cost him.
Years of deciding, over and over again, that whatever he was doing was worth dying for.
Vale can't get the image of those black veins crawling up pale skin out of his head.
He shakes it off. Or he tries to. The necromancer is dying from his own magic, and that much is undeniable.
He's been practicing extensively, probably for years.
That level of corruption doesn't happen overnight.
Whatever the man claimed about only helping spirits, he's been at this long enough to poison himself past the point of recovery.
It's no longer a question of whether the magic will kill him, but when.
But something doesn't fit. Vale's instincts keep insisting on it, quiet and persistent, the same instincts that have kept him alive for three centuries and have never once been wrong. He's learned, the hard way and more than once, not to ignore them.
The Cathedral is a monument of stone and stained glass at the heart of Haven.
Pointed arches and flying buttresses reach skyward, and the building is easily the tallest in the city.
A wide set of stairs climbs from the street to a manicured courtyard where there's a fountain large enough to wade in, its water still flowing despite the January cold.
During the day, the benches surrounding it are filled with Sisters consulting civilians on their concerns.
At this hour, the courtyard is empty. The only sound is running water and the distant complaint of a city that never fully sleeps.
Vale arrives at Sanctus Cael's office just after midnight.
The older man is waiting, still dressed in ornate robes despite the hour, white hair pulled back, wrinkled hands holding a scroll that glimmers under the lamp.
He's nearly five hundred years old and has never served as a Templar.
He started as a priest and climbed to Sanctus through politics and persistence, but he's never seen a battlefield and he's never had to chase a necromancer through a graveyard at midnight.
Vale tries not to hold that against him.
Someone has to deal with the politics, and better Cael than him.
"I assume you don't have a necromancer in custody," Cael says without looking up.
"I found one, if that makes a difference.
" Vale stays standing, arms crossed, too restless to sit.
The chair across from Cael's desk is ornate and deeply uncomfortable, which Vale has always suspected is intentional.
"Male, mid-twenties in appearance. Extensive death magic corruption, so he's been practicing for a long time.
I found him in Greyhaven Cemetery helping a spirit pass on. "
That makes Cael look up. "Helping a spirit pass? How?"
"He told it to rest and it disappeared." Vale keeps his voice neutral, which takes more effort than he'd like. "He wasn't raising the dead or binding spirits. He was talking to it. The spirit seemed to want him there."
Cael raises an eyebrow. "Templar Vale, I hope you're not suggesting that illegal death magic is acceptable if the spirit appears willing."
"I'm suggesting it doesn't match the profile of our rift-maker.
" Vale meets his commander's gaze and holds it.
"The rift attacks have been aggressive, violent, massive amounts of raw, uncontrolled power.
The level of corruption I saw on this necromancer would make opening that many rifts in that short a time physically impossible. He'd be dead already."
"Unless he spent the last two months burning through his strength and is now suffering the consequences."
Vale wants to argue, but he can't. Not yet.
Not without more information. The doubt is there, lodged in his chest in a way that is highly obnoxious, but doubt without evidence is just a feeling, and feelings don't hold up well in front of the Sanctus.
"I'll find him again. He's injured and weakened. He can't have gone far."
"See that you do." Cael's voice drops, the way it always does when he's about to say something he considers pragmatic and Vale considers a chore. "And Vale, when you find him, I don't need him alive. The city needs a resolution, not a trial."
Vale nods and turns on his heel before he says something that lands him in hot water.
He knows what Cael is really saying: bring back a body, close the case, let everyone sleep easier knowing the monster is dead.
It's the kind of math that makes sense from behind a desk, where the numbers are abstract and the bodies don't have faces.
The problem is that Vale isn't sure the man he found is the monster they're looking for.
He is dangerous, yes. He is illegal, absolutely. But he is not a monster.
Monsters don't comfort ghosts before sending them to rest. Monsters don't look at you with resignation instead of rage. Monsters don't apologize before they run.
He should go home and sleep, but he doesn't.
The Order's archives are deep beneath the Cathedral, protected by holy wards powerful enough to incinerate the damned before they even realize it's happening.
There have been many attempts to infiltrate the archives over the centuries, and none have succeeded.
The wards grow stronger every year, though that doesn't stop people from trying.
Stubbornness, in Vale's experience, is one of the few constants in the magical world.
Vale descends the spiral stairs, lit by glowing sconces set into ancient stone, and emerges at the bottom where a deep red rug leads him to an oak desk that looks older than he is.
Behind it sits the archivist, a woman who has been tending these records for two hundred years and knows the location of every document in the vault the way a mother knows the faces of her children.
She has curly blonde hair and freckles scattered across a round face, and her name is Sister Fiora.
He puts an arm across his chest and gives her a half-bow. She scurries to mark her place in the book she's reading and stands to greet him with the eager brightness of someone who doesn't get nearly enough company down here and is delighted by the interruption.
"Sister Fiora." He straightens. "I hope you don't mind me visiting so late."
"You know you're welcome here anytime." She waves a hand between them. "Business or pleasure?"
"Business." He gives her a regretful look.
As much as he'd enjoy time to peruse the archives for the joy of it, those days are hard to come by with rifts tearing through the city.
"I need everything you have on necromancers operating in the Old City.
Particularly the Greyhaven area. Going back ten years. "
Fiora's eyebrows rise. "That's specific. Does this necromancer have a name?"
Probably. But they hadn't exactly had time for introductions before Vale drew his sword and sent the man running.
The encounter had gone from zero to chase scene in under a minute, which is efficient by Templar standards but not particularly conducive to exchanging pleasantries.
He'd expected to get a name on the walk back to the Cathedral, but that required actually catching him, and that particular failure is something of a first.
"We're not exactly friends," he says dryly. "Look for unusual activity. Helping spirits pass on instead of raising them. Someone who works with ghosts but doesn't bind them."