The Last Court Necromancer

This is not the sort of story that begins with once upon a time in a royalist past. It begins with you coming here in the dead of winter to disturb my peace and make me tell it. Don’t interrupt me, young revolutionary, you with your would be coup in need of a leader—a figurehead. Now sit and drink your wine and warm up. My wife will be home soon, and I want you gone before she gets here. I’ll not have you bothering her as well as me. Drink! Listen! You came for a story and I aim to give it to you, but then you’ll leave and tell your own tale. I know, you might have first heard it as fairytale, a myth, a whisper. Yes, those whispers are why you’re here, but this story is more than a half-thought piece of memory. It’s true. It’s our history, with blurred dates and faces and things our current rulers want forgotten. But you suspected that, that’s why you’re here. You should know that anyone can wear a crown. If they can take it. That’s where my story begins. # In the 21st year of Queen Terese’s reign, Sofia Aravič was a necromancer in the royal court. You know her now as the last court necromancer, but at the time she was just another one among many, and her skills were mediocre, at best. She had only managed to cross the veil into death once in her life, had never successfully resurrected a mouse, much less a person, and her attempts to know the future by looking into death were fifty-fifty, at best. But Sofia had one gift that kept her in court instead of out peddling potions and vague fortunes out on the streets: she could make the veil between life and death shine. She could show it to you, in all its beauty. Sofia took her thoughts and moods and painted them glistening in the air for all the court to admire. She could make the veil dance for the living, and could sing grave flowers into bloom. It is said that her voice was where her magic lay. It was at once such show that Princess Lora, then the heir to the throne and now the object of your quest, fell in love with Sofia. I could tell you a story of a love that blossomed quickly, like the flowers in spring, and grew strong like that oak you passed outside, the one littering my yard with acorns. This story—of a hopeful love growing in peace—is cut off, half-written. It’s a fiction, and it’s not the story you came for. So let us return to Sofia and Lora and the love that happened. # Their love grew against a background of unrest. This story you know: a small group of necromancers turned the magic that connected them to death against the living. They renamed themselves vitamancers, and you know them as predators, who have broken all bonds with natural death. Yet, in the last years of Queen Terese’s reign, it was the living the vitamancers turned against the remaining necromancers. The same people who had spent their days creating healing potions, casting fortunes, and resurrecting the unnaturally dead as well as they could, found themselves disliked, and then persecuted. Lies were told, stories were spread, and people were attacked. I say people, not necromancers, because they were people before they had magic, and that should not be forgotten. This persecution, this hate, was a slow thing, a year or two or three (who can tell when the first lie was told as truth?) until it wasn’t a slow thing anymore, until famine and sickness made the hate boil over. How do I capture that spreading fear amongst the necromancers of Tielst against the backdrop of these historical events? The whispers and the flights to foreign lands. The empty hearths, and lost friends. The connections, severed. It wasn’t my fear, then. It wasn’t my concern, yet. Lora was—naïve, at best. Privileged. Selfish. Selfish, yes. She lived in a palace, and was isolated from all the outcomes of her mother’s policy choices. To her the vitamancers and all their accusations of inequality were foolish, silly distractions from day to day existence. She thought surely, surely, the people would realize her mother was doing her best for them and the vitamancers power would fade away. So she stepped away from the throne, trusted her mother to make the right decisions. The necromancers would be fine. Sofia would be fine. There was nothing to be afraid of. Not realizing it should have been my fear, my concern, is the gravest mistake of my life. A crown is a promise: to rule fairly and justly. We did not. And we suffered the consequences. Sofia told Lora as much, but she didn’t listen then. And why would she? At that point Sofia’s worst fears seemed like nothing more than nightmares, things sprung forth from a dark and anxious mind. Nothing Lora couldn’t fix with a kiss. But you aren’t here for unheeded warnings, are you? No, no, you’ve learned since then. As have I. Promises shouldn’t be broken. So it was that same summer when Sofia and Lora held hands in the garden and Lora dismissed her necromancer’s concerns, that fear and corruption spread. The queen was accused of being under the influence of the court necromancers. The vitamancers said she sacrificed peasant women into death, cutting the veil open and shoving them through herself. They said she did all this to see a future that was wrong more than half the time. One by one, Terese sent away the court necromancers. All except for Sofia, who stayed because her lover willed it so. I understood the queen’s actions at the time. Surely, surely, if we met vitamancers in the middle, they would stop. We could give them something that would buy the remaining necromancers safety. We could put out the fires they had started, and now fed. I know now that our willingness to talk, to work something out was kindling gathered for them. It was a crown they wanted, not compromise. We should not have been willing to compromise with lives. We should not have been willing to compromise by accepting any part of their story as true. This was not something to be solved with a kiss. This is not a story that ends in justice. Except—there is a justice to learning you were wrong. # Sofia stayed in the palace as summer’s heat lingered on, setting everyone on edge and filling the city with the feeling of waiting, wanting for release. The release of a cool breeze, or the release of violence. More power was ceded to the vitamancers, now ostensibly part of an elected city council. A new development. Democracy, they said. But it was an election secured in fear, and it’s only purpose was to give them power, not secure a better government for the people. No one was speaking for the people at that point. Not the court, not the crown, not the vitamancers who still fed the people lies and hate. There were no more veil shows. Sofia said the veil had grown dark, tumultuous. It wasn’t worth showing, anyway. There was no more singing, except softly, at night, when she and Lora were alone. Sofia gave up her position and became a common servant in Lora’s service. It was the only way to keep her safe. Lora didn’t realize then, that Sofia stayed to keep her safe. Not the other way around. Even as things are falling apart there were small moments, still remembered. The way Sofia’s dress fell from her shoulders at a brush from Lora’s hand. Her scent, floor soap and sweat, as Lora’s lips found her neck, kissing against the pale hairs curling behind Sofia’s ear. Lips pressed together in a moment stolen between working shifts. Hands grasping a heavy, maroon curtain. Slipping behind it to be together— But that is not the story you came to hear. What you must know is that even as things tumble towards chaos, our impulses tell us to cling to normalcy, to steal those small moments, instead of acting to fix things. The beautiful and tragic thing as summer wound on into autumn and then into winter, was how so many people, Lora and Sofia included, went on with their lives. But not forever. A group bent on nothing but power, will eventually seize it. Promises be damned. Compromise be damned. # It was a quiet, grey dawn when the coup happened. They called it a revolution afterwards, in the way that the word is sometimes pasted over a seizure of existing societal structures to make it seem as if some great change actually occurred. But no, ministries were renamed, new people were stuffed into old roles, and the world turned on. There was no revolution then. What happens in the future remains to be seen. It may not be a bad thing, to repurpose what is. More than a palace would burn in a true revolution and it may not be sustainable against all the beliefs and traditions people, ourselves included, hold dear—no—no don’t say you you’re different. You’re the one looking to set things right by finding a secret princess and placing her on the throne. There are few things more traditional than that, but I digress. Lora had stolen Sofia away from the servants’ quarters and they’d absconded into an occupied room to spend the night together, away from prying eyes and Lora’s mother’s morning prayers. That fact might be what saved them both—yes, saved. You didn’t come here for a tragedy, did you? This story isn’t a tragedy. It was the screaming of panicked courtiers fleeing the palace and into the waiting arms of the vitamancers that woke them. The screaming, and the screams abruptly ending. Lora almost ran out into those waiting arms of death, trying to reclaim some power. Sofia stopped her. Held her back, hid her behind a curtain. Clutched her close and covered her mouth with one hand as organized armed forces stormed by, searching for a princess they had orders to kill. Lora’s royal power was gone, collapsed in on itself. For what is power, but a promise? The princess collapsed then, realizing her mother’s reforms (such as they were, I know now that they were far too little far too late) had failed and that her mother was probably dead or would be soon. Sofia let her cry, for a moment. The last court necromancer also knew grief, but she knew when it needed to be set aside. Tears still fresh on Lora’s cheeks, Sofia tugged the princess up and dragged her from behind the curtains and down the hall, down another hall, and then through a discreet door and into the servants tunnels. They’d still have to get out of the palace, but these cool, mildew-damp tunnels were safer than the main halls at this point. Lora wished they could hide there forever. Twist by twist and turn by turn, through claustrophobic paths that Lora had never tread, they went till the princess lost track of their path. She couldn’t have made it out of these tunnels if she had wanted to. And she didn’t think she wanted to. She had been so sure of herself. So sure of order. So sure her family hadn’t broken the promise that kept them in power. Lora and Sofia stopped in an alcove, for a short break, so Sofia could plan and so the princess could shed a few more tears. Not enough, for the steady settling weight of what was lost. Instead of tears, Lora turned to kisses—never enough to keep anything safe, but enough to make her forget for a moment, how everything was so fragile. Fragile as Sofia’s flesh, fragile as the bones underneath. Fragile as life. They pulled apart, and there were more tears. Sofia said there was a small gate in the gardens that lead out to the busy streets beyond the palace. Sofia thought they could lose themselves in the city if they could get to that gate, get to the garden, and get out of the palace. With those words and one last kiss, they were off again. This is not a story where plans go right. # The gate in the garden was locked and the vitamancers found Sofia and Lora as they tried to find another way out. There was no grand monologue, not from our villains, not from our protagonists. In that moment, the vitamancers might not even have realized they’d cornered the missing princess. What use was explaining why they wanted to seize power, when they had won? And in that moment Lora lost her ability to speak. There was no pride left. Only stunned silence. Sofia. Sofia, though. She acted. The last court necromancer who had always been so bad at magic, reached for the veil. With a surety over her powers she’d never had before, Sofia ripped it open, and pulled Lora into death. She closed the door behind them. # This is not the ending of the story, as you know since you are here, but what Sofia did and thought whilst guiding her princess through death is lost. Whether she understood her magic more deeply than ever before is not known. If she was acting more on instinct than learned skill is lost. She has never spoken of it. I have never asked. # The part that matters to you—and to me—is that it didn’t end in death. We found our way out of death and into new lives. This isn’t the story you came for but it’s the story you found: one of a steady, slow-growing love, of learning to churn butter and track crops, one of chickens and herbalism (it’s a bit like necromancy, Sofia would say, as she plays the village wise woman) and cattle and establishing a home. Later there were children. This is a story of the strangers who helped two wandering women and never asked questions. This is the story of strangers who became friends. Of summers spent in the fields, and winters telling tales together as the thin wine mulls over the fire and the stew simmers. This is a story of growing old together. There’s no secret princess for you to find and place on the throne, no necromancer with untold powers waiting in the wings to bolster your forces. Our children are grown with their own families, their destiny is not entwined with yours. Revolutions aren’t about passing a crown around. They should be about letting go of the past. And with that I will ask you to go. Take this bread and cheese for the road, young revolutionary. I wish you well. You have heard my story and here it ends, with you leaving and me waiting for my wife to get home—she’s treating our neighbor’s toddler, sick with the pox. He’ll live. Another tale to be told, much like yours. You see, revolutions aren’t about stories past, or the one I’m telling right now. They are about the stories that will be told.