@Culfinwen Lihtarwe YOU ARE THE SWEETEST and I seriously cannot believe we're back, I LOVE IT. It's like time travel, but better, because I don't have to see myself as a teen
@Taethowen I'm so glad you're enjoying this!!!!!! And I really really want you to bring back Modig, no matter what state it's in. Or *something*, just feed my desire for some of your words, how you do it doesn't matter as much.
Okay, so here is RAISED IN FULL, Pt 2, in which it concludes...
Dulcie woke in chains, with Shep shackled to her. He was unconscious still, but breathing. A familiarity with the arcane dampened the effects of sorcery on Dulcie, but Shep had no such protection.
Sitting up with a small whimper at the way her head ached, Dulcie bent over Shep and pressed a kiss to his forehead.
“Come back to me,” she pleaded. “Come back.”
And because time and trouble and fate had knit the two of them together in a way Dulcie could never quite explain, he woke. She helped him to sit up, with his back against a dry stone wall that cut across the barren, twilight field they’d wakened in. He was grey and sweating, eyes unfocused, but then his vision cleared and he took in their surroundings with a single devasted glance.
“Death’s hands, Dulse,” Shep said. “I know where we are.”
“Where?” she asked. There’d been so many fields over the years, so many barren campsites as they moved from place to place. They’d all run together in Dulcie’s mind, one much like the other.
“This is Bronnaward,” Shep answered in a bleak voice. “This is where I died.”
With a sinking feeling, Dulcie glanced over one shoulder. Yes, there was the thicket she’d made her camp by fifteen years ago, not knowing she’d stumbled onto the site of the Riven Wars’ most infamous battle. There was the little stone cairn she’d missed in the darkness that night, with its engraved reminder that in this place, many had fallen, casting down a great evil and defeating scores of the Tainted Dead.
There could only be one thing behind the mist ahead of them, then. The Mound. The earthen barrow where Bronn the Ever-Risen had finally been cast into death, and his name proved a lie. He’d been the greatest and most dangerous necromancer the world had ever known, and even in death enough of his power lingered that the Tainted Dead occasionally rose on Bronnaward, and drifted off to harry the living.
As Dulcie peered into the fog, the four Nightshades that had overpowered them materialized. Threads of sorcery still bound them to Dulcie and Shep, for Bronnaward was a four day journey from the distant inn and its overhanging, leafless forest. All that time, the Nightshades had been renewing their magic, keeping their charges in a bewitched sleep.
Dulcie watched numbly, one arm thrown around Shep in an instinctive, protective gesture, as the Nightshades stepped aside, forming an honor guard for another figure who stepped out of the mist.
“So here we are, Dulcie,” the Merchant said. “And it’s taken us long enough to get to this point, hasn’t it?”
Dulcie said nothing. The Merchant was not at all how she’d pictured him. She’d imagined someone tall, ascetic, emanating arcane energy. But this man of middling height and faded hair was entirely ordinary to look at. Forgettable, even. Had she passed him on the street, she’d never have known he was the cause of the half the trouble in Ridelmar. In fact, she likely wouldn’t have noticed him at all.
“What is it you want?” Dulcie asked, wishing she were stronger, braver, that her voice did not waver with fear. “Surely you’ve realized by now that I’ll never be one of your dirty hands. If you expect me to fall in line and raise the Tainted Dead for you, you’re better off killing me.”
The Merchant laughed, a commonplace laugh, a tinker’s laugh. “I have a thousand Nightshades across the country ready and willing to raise lesser dead things for me. Why would I go to so much effort to get ahold of you for that purpose, when any of them can do the same?”
“To prove a point,” Dulcie said. “To send a warning to anyone else who might cross you.”
“I’ve never been much of a one for proving points. Too expensive. Too much trouble. I’d have let you be, you know, if it weren’t for the fact that I need you.”
“Don’t ask him why,” Shep muttered to Dulcie. “It’s what he wants.”
The Merchant ignored him. “You see, I want a raising done that none of my Nightshades can manage. Two dozen of them have already died attempting it over the years, but I know you’re the one for the job. And if you do it for me, I swear to you I’ll let both you and your ill-mannered soldier alone, to live out your lives in peace and grow old, and someday die with your children and grandchildren about you.”
Dulcie winced as the Merchant struck a nerve. There’d be no future like that for her and Shep, whether she did as she was ordered or not.
“And if I refuse to do what you want?” Dulcie asked.
The Merchant shrugged. “Then I will keep you in chains, and cut your soldier’s throat while you watch. When that is done, I will raise him as a gaunt and you will continue to watch as he becomes everything he’s hated and fought against, and does unspeakable things to the living.”
Shep was absolutely silent. Motionless. Breathless.
Dulcie let out a sigh. “It’s the Ever-Risen you want to bring back, isn’t it? There’s no other reason for us to be here.”
“Of course,” the Merchant said. “But it’s been so long since he died. None of my Nightshades have been able to bear up under the cost of raising someone who’s been two and a half centuries in death. You, though, my wayward lamb. You’ve already done it.”
“That was an accident.” Dulcie glanced at Shep. He shook his head, nearly imperceptibly, and mouthed a few words to her.
Don’t do it. Let me go.
She turned back to the Merchant. “And if I do as you ask, you’ll let both of us be?”
“On my honor,” the Merchant said. “If you raise Bronn as a gaunt and bind him to me, I will never trouble you again.”
“Dulcie, no,” Shep rasped. “You never saw him in life. He was…a horror. Anything good in him, he’d traded away for power, and he brooked no rivals. Brought back like that, he’ll be the wickedest and most powerful dead thing the world has seen since the wars.”
“I’m counting on it,” the Merchant said.
“Alright,” Dulcie answered, before she could falter in her resolve. “I’ll do as you ask.”
“Then let’s get you to your work,” the Merchant said briskly. “I’ve waited near twenty years for this, I see no reason to wait any longer. Virien, watch the soldier. If he tries to escape, kill him.”
The Nightshade Dulcie had spoken with in the innyard stepped forward, releasing her from her shackles and casting a wary glance at Shep. Ignoring the sorcerer, Dulcie knelt before her one happy accident, her single stroke of good luck, and cupped Shep’s face with her hands.
“Listen to me,” she told him, voice tense with the import of what she had to say. “I love you now. And I will love you again. Remember that, my darling.”
Shep opened his mouth to speak, but Dulcie leaned forward and kissed him, and the words were lost between them.
“Alright,” the Merchant groused. “That’s quite enough. I’ll have a great deal to do after this.”
“I’m sure you will,” Dulcie said quietly, as she got to her feet and went to his side.
The three remaining Nightshades fell into pace behind them and they stepped into the fog, beyond which lay the burial mound.
#
The night Dulcie raised Shep had been the worst of her life.
For three years after fleeing the Arcanium, she’d drifted from place to place, entirely alone, living off her strange ability to raise the dead in full. It set her apart in people’s minds—they were afraid of her, in a way they were not afraid of ordinary necromancers, who were dangerous, but a known quantity, at least. Dulcie was different—she did something undeniably good with a skill meant for wickedness and avarice. It made people suspicious, or overawed, and so she kept in constant motion.
There was the matter of the Merchant’s messengers too, who’d begun to dog her steps. They never did her any harm, but it unsettled people even more, to see her arrive in a town with haints following in her wake, or a Nightshade arguing the Merchant’s case at her side. Dulcie wanted nothing more than to be rid of the Merchant’s emissaries, yet she could not shake them. Between her uncanny talent and her deadly followers, she found herself utterly and abysmally alone.
And then, on her twentieth nameday, in a fit of self-pity, she let a man whose brother she’d raised take her to his bed. She’d thought it would show him that she was no more or less than anyone else, but the whole thing was a disaster—his every touch was an act of worship, and at the end of things, he wept. Dulcie left before he woke, unable to bear another wondering glance, another prayerful acknowledgement of his good fortune.
Four months later, she hadn’t bled, and her belly was swelling. The prospect of attempting to manage her rootless, hand to mouth existence with a child tarnished her every waking moment. So she wandered aimlessly, in the wild places between towns, until one night she bedded down near a thicket on a barren, fog-shrouded field.
Lying in the darkness that night, with no more to her name than a handful of coins and the future stretching long and bleak ahead of her, Dulcie wished for death. And when she fell into sleep, she dreamed of it. Of the incantation that burned her throat like fire when she raised the dead. Of the trades she made to bring them back to full life, bit by bit chipping away pieces of herself in exchange for a miracle. Of the life-sapping cold that followed a raising.
She woke chilled to her core. Blood was slipping down the insides of her legs as she lost her child, and, though she would not learn it till later, the ability to carry another.
Shep sat nearby, with his head in his hands.
“Send me back,” he’d said bitterly. “I don’t want to live again.”
Dulcie had been able to do nothing in response but curl up on her side and sob. It was the sight of her entirely undone that brought Shep the rest of the way into life—into the will for life. He’d banked Dulcie’s fire, and made hot tea, and changed and washed her linens when she bled through them. They stayed together for three days on the cheerless heath of Bronnaward, and by the end of it there was an unbreakable bond between Dulcie, who could raise the dead, and her soldier, who could put them down, and who had known death himself for over two hundred years.
No moment in which Shep walked the earth could ever be quite as dark for Dulcie as the time before he came to her. She held to that, as she followed the Merchant deep into the heart of earth, traveling down and down through a tunnel whose doorway was set into Bronn’s burial mound.
At last they came out into a great, subterranean chamber, and Dulcie caught her breath at the sight of what was waiting there. An army of Nightshades, and of the Tainted Dead, their eyes glowing like balefire, all preternaturally quiet in this nether world.
Torches guttered as the Merchant and Dulcie passed through the gathered horde, to where a stone tomb stood at the center of the chamber.
“Is there anything you need?” the Merchant asked, as Dulcie stepped up to the tomb and pressed a trembling hand to its ponderous cover.
“No,” Dulcie said. Everything she needed was aboveground, waiting on the heath.
“Go on, then,” the Merchant urged. “Do what we’ve come for.”
Dulcie cast about herself, taking in the stone chamber and the silent, waiting army. She thought of how long the Merchant had laid his plans, shored up his power, ensured that in the end, he’d be given what he wanted. One final, terrifyingly strong dead creature, to bend to his will. To use as a weapon, though for what, Dulcie did not know, nor did she care to. She’d heard enough from Shep about the Riven Wars—that dark and hopeless time when the dead fought the living, and life was often only a slow way of dying. She could not return the land to such brutality.
But neither could she bear to see her soldier tormented for disobedience on her part.
Dulcie pressed one palm flat against the surface of Bronn the Ever-Risen’s tomb. With the other, she clutched the charm she’d been given by the Widow, of Saint Imelda, mistress of remembering, and of forgotten things. And she began the incantation to raise the dead.
At the first words, tension and anticipation rippled across the chamber. Soon all Dulcie’s attention was absorbed by the task of speaking the necessary syllables, of forcing them from her mouth when her lungs and throat rebelled, scorched by the heat of the incantation’s power. She spoke for what felt like a lifetime, power rising around her to a maddening crescendo.
When it had reached its height, everything stilled. Dulcie found herself caught in that silent, eternal moment within which she made her choice. To give of herself, rather than taking from death. To sacrifice something worth an act of restoration. This was the precipice. This was where she might give the Merchant his dark heart’s desire, or turn aside.
For fifteen years, Dulcie had chosen sacrifice. She’d given her true name, her ability to see colors, her shadow, the memory of every book she’d ever read. The capacity to sleep through a night without waking, to be greeted with kindness by a dog, to feel the wind against her face. So many other pieces of her, left along the way, when the only thing she truly wanted to be rid of was this terrible gift, of cheating death and bringing those it had claimed back to life.
But Dulcie could not trade her talent away, because it would have been the purest relief to her, and a trade had to hurt. As long as she possessed it, too, she felt an obligation to use it—to do what she could for those around her, who grieved for their dead in a way Dulcie could not yet understand.
Her incantation hung on the air, pulling at the veil between life and death. It would be so easy, to let the magic choose for her, and raise Bronn as a vengeful gaunt. The sorcery would steal from her for the raising, taking as much of the good left in her as it required.
Or she could cut her power off, let the magic die, and the Merchant would ensure that Shep died with it.
You never saw the Ever-Risen in life. He was a horror, Shep’s voice said in Dulcie’s mind. Anything good in him, he’d traded away for power.
And he brooked no rivals.
So Dulcie made her choice. She completed her work and stepped away from the tomb. The Merchant surged forward eagerly, gesturing to the nearest Nightshades to push the stone cover aside.
When they did, it was no gaunt who rose from that long and cursed resting place. It was Bronn the Ever-Risen, restored to himself, raised in full as only one person in all the world could have managed. The cost of her sacrifice and the force of his power was enough to drive Dulcie to her knees.
He was a horror.
And he brooked no rivals.
Through the chaos that ensued, as Nightshades and the Tainted Dead fell upon Bronn at the Merchant’s orders, and were scattered or broken by his sorcery, Dulcie crawled away. The cavern shook with blast after blast of arcane fire, dust trickling from the ceiling, pieces of stone falling, until the earth roared, and collapsed in on itself, and Dulcie fell into a place like death.
#
Somewhere, a bird sang.
The sound of it was grating—tuneless and unmelodic.
Dulcie knew that birds sounded sweet to other people, and that there was a reason their song turned to discord for her, but she could not remember what that reason was.
When she opened her eyes, she saw a shaft of sunlight cutting across the clean white coverlet of a bed. Her hand lay on the counterpane, though the sun did nothing to warm her skin, and she knew there was a reason for that, too.
“Dulse?” a ragged voice said, and she turned her head to find a man, seated in a chair beside her. A sword rested on his lap, and there was a charm around his neck—it took Dulcie a moment to make out the figure. Saint Imelda, Mistress of remembering, and of forgotten things.
“Yes?” she answered.
“Death’s hands, I thought you’d never wake. What happened down there? Everything caved in from up above, and it took us two days just to get you out. There was nothing and no one else left, living or dead.”
Dulcie frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”
The man leaned forward. “The Merchant? The Ever-Risen? Bronnaward? Don’t you remember any of it?”
“No.” Dulcie gnawed at her lower lip for a moment as the man searched her face with concern. “Who—who are you?”
The man went dead-white, and for a moment she thought he might be sick. “Dulse, it’s Shep.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know a Shep. I know a James Shepton, who’s to study at the Arcanium with me come spring…” Her voice trailed off. “No. That’s not right. There—there’s been more since then, hasn’t there? But it’s just gone, when I try to think of it. I’m sorry, should I know you?”
To Dulcie’s horror, the man at her bedside, with his capable look and stern air, buried his face in his hands and began to sob. She waited a moment, torn between discomfort and compassion, but the softer side of her won out in the end.
It always did.
“Here now,” she said gently, reaching out to brush his fingers with her own. It felt like habit, that reaching, though she couldn’t have said why. “Whatever’s gone wrong, I’ll help. You’re going to be alright. We’re going to be alright.”
Outside, the bird continued to sing, its jangling music tuneless but joy-filled. And though the sun that shone on Dulcie did not warm her, the absence of warmth made it no less bright.
“I know,” Shep said, his voice breaking on the words. “Believe me, Dulse. I know.”
THE END
