Chapter 19 The Binding Oath
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The Binding Oath
It took almost an hour for the necromancer to regain consciousness—an hour spent hauling him around the snaking tunnels beneath the Bloodmoon compound and into the Rezaran crypt. By the time they arrived, Levan was drenched in sweat and cursing every Saint he had never quite believed in.
While he waited for Halant to wake, the kingpin leaned back against a marble-cold archway and stared at his dead parents—cast in eerie blue-white light, silent as marble pillars.
When he did finally bring them back, would they hate him for it?
Would they resent their barren wells, their lives without pleasure or pain?
Or would the absence of pain mean the absence of such things as bitterness or hatred?
What did it even mean, to exist without pain?
He rolled his wounded wrist, unable to imagine such a thing.
It troubled him to wonder how the loss of magic would impact his mother’s relationship to the Saints, whose entire manifesto was centered around magic as a life-giving, world-sustaining force.
Critics of the faith often noted how this ostracized Ludders, cut them out of any sense of abiding purpose.
Imagining Lorissa Rezaran without her deeply personal relationship to the Sixteen was like imagining an empty grave.
Halant stirred, groaned.
Levan had been here before with Nalezen Zares, a necromancer in his grasp but unwilling to cooperate. Hissing alleycats like Zares and proud, stubborn mules like Halant were more likely to grit their teeth and resist than to cave.
Even if Levan’s compelling had been cooperating, it would be impossible to order Halant to do his bidding.
Necromancy was an art so dark and power-draining that a mage’s full, authentic will had to be thrown behind it.
A compelled command didn’t have the required depth, the raw force—a problem Levan had encountered with Nalezen Zares.
No, he had to call to mind what Halant wanted. Use that as a bargaining chip in pain’s stead.
“Where am I?” Halant’s words smeared together.
“Raise these two mages and I’ll let you walk free,” Levan said blandly in Tarsan, still holding both wands in his golden palm.
Halant scoffed, a coarse, hacking sound. “Do you take me for a fool? I do not know to which order or organization you belong, but there isn’t a dark mage on Ascenfall who doesn’t cover his tracks.”
“You want Irisi, no? I can give that to you. Or I can slaughter you where you stand—it’s your choice.”
A glint of intrigue. “What do you mean by ‘give that to me’?”
“Your current army is doomed to fail. On some level you must know this. The Risen do not good soldiers make—the magicless cannot win wars.”
“With enough swords and siege units they can.”
“Perhaps. But do you have the raw wealth to afford an arsenal of analog weaponry? Such things are rare, and rare things carry a heavy price tag.”
Something like amusement twisted across Halant’s face. “You’re trying to buy me.”
“Once my parents are Risen, every ounce of ascenite in this crypt is yours.”
The necromancer’s mirth sharpened into hunger, a subtle dilation of the pupils, a slight puckering of the lips. “How do I know you won’t renege on your offer?”
“A binding oath.”
Caten Promivat. A sacred promise, an unbreakable agreement. Either mage would perish in an instant upon betrayal—the strand of magic that inspired the Bloodmoon loyalty brand, and likely Halant’s own ülam Kasit.
Halant clambered to his feet, brushed off his trousers, and surveyed the two bodies on the raised platform. “How long have they been dead?”
“My father a matter of days. My mother a matter of decades.”
Halant swore profoundly. “Not possible.”
“She is the crux, the axis, the purpose. You will work on her first, channel all your power into her resurrection.”
A derisive head shake. “The organs will be rotted, the blood hardened, no matter how uncannily unmarred she appears from the outside.”
“We have scores of mages dedicated to upholding the preservation enchantments on this crypt, and an unsaintly amount of ascenite amplifying them. If you cut open my mother’s chest, it would appear she’d died mere moments ago.”
A slight exaggeration. It had taken time to establish a crypt in the Havenwood after Lorissa died, and with meager ascenite and a single dedicated Healer, the preservation enchantments had not been as strong as they were now.
But he didn’t want to give Halant any further reason to doubt the boundaries of possible.
After a few moments of hesitation, Halant reached for his wand. With a twinge of fear deep in his gut, Levan passed it over.
A smirk tugged at the corner of Halant’s thin mouth. “What’s stopping me from killing you right now?”
“You don’t know the right words for leaving this crypt, and few mages ever venture down here—you’d die of thirst staring at my rotting corpse.”
Halant considered this.
“On your word,” Levan added. “We make the binding oath.” Halant would have to be the one to initiate the vow—because Levan’s own magic was an untamed beast.
The cold air in the crypt felt hostile in the ensuing silence.
Finally, Halant raised his wand and nodded. Levan crossed his black elm wand over the cinnabar wand, forming an X.
“Iv Katan Pocivak.” Halant began the spellwork in his native tongue—always stronger that way.
“In Caten Promivat. I offer freedom, plus all the ascenite in this crypt, in exchange for my mother and father’s Rising—and staying Risen.”
One had to be precise with a binding vow, and Levan watched the cogs turn in Halant’s mind as he examined the words for a trap. There was none. It was simple, specific, definitive.
“Iv Katan Pocivak,” Halant echoed.
Raw magic shot from the tip of Halant’s wand and sewed itself around the other.
Levan felt a tugging sensation, as though someone was trying to yank the wand from his grip, and he tightened his hold, noticing Halant do the same.
With a final glittering flourish, the string of magic shivered away, and both mages loosed their breaths.
Levan distantly wondered whether Saffron might propose such an oath in the name of rebuilding their trust. That she hadn’t already suggested it was suspicious—she was willing to slay a Whitewing and hand over incriminating evidence, but not do this.
Then again, perhaps she was simply smart enough to keep her options open.
She had to be able to flee if he threatened her.
Levan jerked his head toward his mother’s body, anticipation flaring behind his ribs.
“Now.”
Halant edged closer to the dais upon which the dead Bloodmoons lay, resting a palm on Lorissa’s stony chest. The whole crypt hung suspended on a held breath.
“Avi vicerak.”
Levan was yanked back eighteen years.
His body was still narrow, gangly, every inch of it aching and sore in the aftermath of the torture curse. His eyes burned from tears, his throat from screaming. He remembered that most of all—how badly his eyes and throat would burn, how embarrassed he felt. How small, pathetic.
He remembered a broad hand at his back, pushing him into the cabin in the Havenwood where his mother’s body was kept.
She lay on a brass bedstead, cold and still, chestnut braid resting on her chest. The floor was covered in the hoard of ascenite the Bloodmoons had spent years accumulating.
Coins and jewelry, trunks and carved busts, diadems and swords and vambraces, all of it essential in keeping her viable—because the further Lorissa moved from her death date, the more unnatural her preservation, and thus the more raw power required to uphold it.
The simple spellwork of those early days had long since ceased to be enough.
Vogolan shoved Levan toward the bed, and Levan stumbled and fell, his knees slamming into the top of an ascenite chest, the pain barely registering compared to sen doloran.
He lifted his wand, believing as deeply as he could that this time, this time, he was strong enough.
This time he wanted it badly enough. This time he had endured enough suffering to finally twist his magic into something new and terrible and worthwhile.
He channeled all his agonized focus into one singular point and incanted, “Ans visseran.”
Nothing.
No, no, please. Work.
“Ans visseran.”
Nothing. He thought he might die from the despair.
And now, in the crypt of the mansion his father had built in his dead mother’s honor…
…nothing still.
Halant sighed. “I told you. It’s been too long…”
“Continue,” Levan said crisply, with a jerk of a nod.
“Is there an outer limit to that word?”
“You will remain here until it is done.” Levan smoothed his robes and strode toward the atrium of the crypt. “I’ll ensure you are well fed and watered. Bring you a waste bucket, clean clothes. What’s your pleasure of choice?”
“Sex.”
“I’ll bring you daily company.”
Halant smiled wryly. “I like my partners…chilled. Cold to the touch.”
A shiver of revulsion cut through Levan. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“A joke.” Halant’s curious grin only broadened. “But I do like the scarred, the wounded. Something interesting to look at.”
Uneasiness spread through Levan like a fever, like a disease.
He gave the necromancer another swift nod, turned on his heel, and faced the door to the crypt.
Pulling a tiny ornamental hourglass from his innermost pocket, he tapped the top and murmured tempavicissan quietly enough that Halant would not hear.
Not that it mattered—without an hourglass of his own, the necromancer was as good as buried in this tomb.
The tunnel outside was dark, dank, the sounds of dripping water and scuttling inkmice echoing through the maze.
As the door sealed shut behind Levan, he lifted his wand to his mouth, exhaustion pulling at him like gnarled fingers.
His wrist felt like two iron nails had been driven down into the bone, pain shooting all the way into his neck.
“Et vocos, Sando Segal.”
A pause, then, “It’s the middle of the fucking night.”
“And I’m your fucking kingpin,” Levan snapped, unable to keep the sharp whip from his tone. “Steer clear of the crypt. That is an order.”
An order, but not a compelled one. Because Levan’s magic had gone from a controlled blade of fire to a sputtering candle, a reckless forest inferno.
Without it, did he stand a chance at leading this organization in his father’s absence? Even Miret had walked away from him. And Sando Segal would never have spoken to Lyrian the way he’d just spoken to Levan.
Control was slipping through his fingers, and if there was one thing Levan could not abide, it was the loss of control. The only thing holding the operation together was his father’s loyalty brand, and—
Hold on.
How was the brand still active, with the old kingpin dead?
It was an enchantment, at its very core.
And for an enchantment to remain permanent, the caster—or another mage working closely with them—would have to give up a part of their well permanently.
He had never heard his father utter the words medei perpetua, but his back had always been turned while heating the poker over the fire.
Ample opportunity to murmur beneath his breath.
Levan had never thought too closely about the mechanics of the brand. It was a painful subject, with painful memories attached—the sort of thing his mind preferred not to look directly at, because then he’d have to confront the reality that his father had mutilated his own son as a child.
In any case, there were hundreds of branded mages under Bloodmoon command. Had his father really been paranoid enough to sacrifice hundreds of small corners of his magical well to ensure their loyalty?
Levan knew the answer as soon as he thought the question.
Of course he was paranoid enough.
It would explain so much—his father’s relatively weak magic, his increasingly splintered mind.
The way he had to rely almost exclusively on his ruthless memory rather than arcane power.
How easy it then became for Levan to compel him when necessary, when his father’s decisions could have compromised the entire operation.
It would also mean that, now Lyrian was dead…
The brands were no longer active.
All the Bloodmoons could walk free.
And so could Levan.