Sacred Death, False Gods

Prologue

The murder of Vincent Crenshaw was a matter of international interest.

For forty years, he had served as an enforcer of mage law, the last fifteen of which he’d spent as head of the Vanguard. The matter of his death was therefore of great curiosity, sorrow, and widespread panic.

At sixty-eight, just a year shy of retirement, Vincent Crenshaw was violently murdered in an alley behind the bar he liked to frequent.

At last call, he had gone out, and in the morning, when the cleaners had arrived to wipe away the vestiges of last night’s merriments, they had discovered his lacerated corpse hanging from a lamp pole, his arms held up in a mock crucifix.

His immaculate white clothes, signaling his status within the Aladrian society, were drenched red, blood congealed on the cobblestones beneath him, his eyes gouged out. Later, during the autopsy, they were retrieved from his esophagus and placed back into their sockets.

After all, every Aladrian, regardless of their faith, believed that no man should have to venture into the afterlife without their eyes.

Despite being a small country of little note to the regular world, Aladria held sway in the magical world.

And so it was that at his funeral, dignitaries from all over Europe, America, Asia, and Africa had come to pay their respects to the man who had killed and captured no less than five hundred Deathless in his illustrious career.

He was a man who had fought across all continents, spearheading local law enforcement and resistance movements against the Deathless who had scattered from Aladria after the death of Mortandagh, the leader of their necromantic cult.

When Mortandagh was defeated fifty years ago, Vincent Crenshaw had fought as a young soldier in the Vanguard, along with the resistance movement called the Solignis Covenant.

The last survivors, cornered by the necromancer, had used the one holy artifact that they’d pinned their hopes on, the Sunflame spear.

Vincent Crenshaw, who at that time had been no more than eighteen years of age, had thrown the spear to Eldric Solwyn, the leader of the Solignis Covenant, who had driven the spear through Mortandagh’s heart, ending his reign of terror and ushering in an age of light for Aladria and the rest of the world.

And now Vincent Crenshaw was dead, a foreboding warning in his blood written on the back wall of the bar.

Death holds no sway over the Deathless.

While there was an immediate investigation underway on how Vincent Crenshaw had died, the message on the wall pointed to the Deathless, the surviving followers of Mortandagh.

Except that, according to all official records, there were supposed to be no surviving Deathless in Aladria. And the ones that were alive were imprisoned for life in a prison from which there was no escape.

* * *

The Lynsfeld Cemetery was a study in hunter-green on the eve of late July.

Vines crept over the wrought-iron fence around the cemetery.

The stonework of angels and reapers was riddled with age, dirt, and moss.

The grass reached up to Headmaster Eldric Solwyn’s knees.

It had just rained, and despite that, the blades of grass stood at an angle like the spears of some secret infantry.

Tombstones jutted out at odd angles from the grass.

There was no sun anywhere in the sky. Only layers of dark nimbostrati looming low, leaking slivers of dim light.

The guttural roars of thunder, the rustling of the cold wind, and the sobbing of Vincent Crenshaw’s relatives masked the sounds of the gravedigger’s spade.

He’d held off digging the thing until the last moment.

Something about not wanting the grave to be filled with water.

Seventy people stood underneath the shade of the great white oak under which the grave was being dug.

These included dignitaries from other countries, including the British and American officials from the Department of Arcane, several senior officers of the Vanguard, the Aladrian prime minister, and the senior faculty of the Umbrveyl Academy, including Professor Moore of the Profane Discipline and Professor Rhys of Alchemy.

Vincent Crenshaw had been a lifelong adherent of Solignity, and as such, a Solignite priest was present with a copy of the holy book. He was a weathered old man with a long beard, and he stood leaning against his staff.

Vincent’s corpse lay within a simple blackwood coffin. Around it stood his wife and two children, all three of them wearing black, all three of them weeping.

The gravedigger emerged from the six-foot hole, himself covered in mud. He threw the spade on the pile of dirt he’d dug and stepped back, cleaning his hands on his overalls.

“You are laid to rest next to your mother and your father, Vincent Crenshaw. A stalwart soldier of Solignis, you fought armed with light and flame. You fought the good fight. And now you may rest. May the Lady of Eternal Silence hold you in her tender embrace, and usher you to the promised place of Eternal Light.”

They buried him with his sword and staff. They buried him in his uniform.

The coffin was lowered into the ground by members of the Vanguard. Headmaster Eldric stepped forward, said a final few words, and then raised his hand at the mound of dirt, filling the grave neatly. He then placed a spell of protection on the grave and stepped back.

As the rain began to fall, the crowd gathered at the burial thinned. And within an hour, it was just Headmaster Eldric standing there along with Professor Moore.

“I cannot believe it,” she said, an invisible shield arching over her, keeping her dry. “All these years I served under him at the Vanguard, I never thought this would be how he’d?—”

“Elara, but it has happened,” Headmaster Eldric said, both hands behind his back.

“My friend is dead.” His face bore age upon it, his stubble growing dangerously close to a beard.

Perhaps he would shave it after reaching home.

What would people say if they saw him like that?

That he was on edge? The old man finally losing it?

“I checked in with my old connections at the Vanguard. The investigation is headed nowhere,” she said. “Perhaps I should resign from my post at the academy and maybe help them find out who did it.”

“I wouldn’t stop you, but that’d be unwise. The students need you now more than ever,” he said.

“Students, Eldric. You think students at Umbrveyl are remotely capable of taking on a Deathless by themselves? These are not olden times. The students are…soft,” she scoffed.

“A matter for another discussion. For now, we mourn Vincent. And as for the Vanguard’s investigation, Elara, it has been only a day since he was killed. Even with magic, these things take time.”

“Except that’s the thing, Headmaster. The killer left no trace.

It wasn’t like Vincent—a man I’ve known to be always on high alert—was killed by some Deathless on the run.

It was a calculated, well-executed murder, as if by the hands of someone who had already dealt death thousands of times.

As if they enjoyed it,” Elara Moore said, clasping her gloved hands tight, lips pursing at the memory of seeing Vincent’s body laid out in the morgue.

He had been cleaned of blood and gore, but the gashes on his skin were still there, revealing dark red muscle beneath.

“He did it the old-fashioned way, without magic.”

“I should like to think that’s why the British minister has brought detectives with him,” the headmaster said.

“How does that work though? They’re regular police,” Elara said. “They wouldn’t know what to look for.”

The headmaster, having lived and worked with such people for a long time in his life, knew that to be untrue. So he didn’t say anything to her. He only stood there, his head lowered, saying a silent prayer for Vincent.

Soon after, they both left, headed to the wake at Bourboner’s, the bar where Vincent had his last drink.

* * *

Night fell, and every sort of ill omen crept into the graveyard. Ravens bathed in rainwater, clicking their beaks and cawing at shadows. A rattlesnake rose out of the grass and pounced upon an unsuspecting dormouse. The lamps flickered wildly on their posts, then doused shut as the rain worsened.

In the distance, beyond the cemetery’s hill and the dirt road that led to it, was Lynsfeld, a town of little note, but a quaint town nevertheless.

Small buildings packed tight together, cobbled streets, stone benches around the fountain in the town square, and all the windows of Bourboner’s lit.

From within the bar, revelry spilled out, rivaling the sounds of the rainstorm.

Watching all this from atop the cemetery’s hill, a cloaked figure stood behind the ancient oak, biding his time.

When the rain clouds had unburdened themselves entirely and had started to trail south, leaving a half-moon in the night sky, the figure walked up to the grave of Vincent Crenshaw and stood there, sensing the magical protection placed upon it.

With a careless swish of his hand, he undid the spell. With another wave of his hand, he turned the grave inside out. The blackwood coffin floated out and lay tilted on the mound of dirt.

The figure tore open its lid and threw it aside with no effort.

Within it lay Crenshaw, face restored to splendor by the mortician, all bruises and slashes sealed.

The figure placed his hand upon Vincent’s head and spoke the profane words.

In one moment, the corpse blinked. And in another, he screamed at the sight of his murderer.

“Come now, Vincent. That is not behavior fit for someone such as you,” the figure mock-chided. “I am afraid the loving embrace of the Lady of Eternal Silence will have to wait. You have an appointment with me first. And then with your friends at that inn down there.”

Vincent stared affixed at the face hidden under the hood, at the unrelenting, burning gaze of his eyes.

“How do you think they will greet you when they find out that you lied on the official records? That you never killed all the Deathless you said you did. That one slipped from your fingers, and when the time came, came back to kill you. How will they take it when they find out that I brought you back to life?”

Vincent’s throat was hoarse as a result of screaming while dying, and then subsequently the autopsy process that had not been kind to his throat, particularly when dislodging his eyeballs from within. His voice came out as a rasp. “Impossible.”

“Not impossible,” the figure spoke with an unflinching authority in his voice.

“Your kind thought they burned our books, destroyed our altars, killed Mortandagh and all the Deathless, and yet here I stand, at the dawn of this new age, having uncovered Aeternum. And what better way to showcase it to the world than to bring back an old enemy from the dead?”

Vincent found the hilt of his sword in the coffin. He brandished it with weak hands, then turned it over, aiming the blade at his heart. He was about to plunge the sword into his heart, to die another time, but found that he could not. His limbs froze.

The figure said, “Tsk, tsk, Vincent. I brought you back. You’re my thrall.

To think I’d let you waste this beautiful demonstration?

No. I bid you walk with your graven feet to that inn where they all mourn you, all of the most important members of our world.

Go participate in your own wake. And when they see you and are unable to believe their eyes, you proclaim my arrival, you attest my powers. ”

“This is not Aeternumancy!” Vincent gasped.

“Oh, but what difference does it make when I have brought you back from the dead?” The hooded figure laughed, and then grabbed Vincent by his collar, throwing him out of the coffin and onto the rain-wet grass.

“What will you tell them?” he asked, his foot on Vincent’s back. “Answer me.”

Vincent’s efforts at trying to maintain agency of his body failed. Against his will, he uttered the words, “The Grath Nomad lives and he has brought me back from the dead.”

“Good. Very good,” the Grath Nomad said, taking the staff out of Vincent’s coffin. “Here, you will need this.”

The Grath Nomad whispered a final command in Vincent’s ear before watching him walk on weak legs down the hill, across the road, and into Lynsfeld.

* * *

Late at night, when the representatives of the mage world were gathered in the bar and drinking in memory of Vincent Crenshaw, Vincent Crenshaw walked in.

Ten minutes later, there was an explosion that blew out the windows in a display of angry red flames, brought half the building down upon itself, and threw out corpses in a splatter of dismembered body parts and viscera.

Headmaster Eldric had tried to conjure a protective shield to protect as many people as he could, but Vincent Crenshaw had detonated himself right in the middle of the packed bar, killing the British and American officials, severely injuring the Aladrian prime minister.

Vincent Crenshaw’s wife and kids died in the explosion.