“Right,” Kari said, tapping a claw on the table. “And if the ward is strong enough to stop the shadow demon, it might keep the demon trapped inside the tower! So, the ward may keep the two apart, even if we can’t.”
“It seems this situation is falling increasingly under your control, Lady Vanador,” Markus said with a smile. “Though this has turned out far from our expectations, your work here has been most impressive. Leave Lord Black to me. I will keep him occupied as much as possible, or else take him into custody should the demon still be in control of him. Focus your efforts on Turillia and finding Emma; that should be enough to keep you busy for some time. Let me know if there is any other way I can help you.”
“I will, thank you,” Kari said. She let out a long, quiet sigh, thankful to have such a good new friend and ally. His position as Earl of Lajere meant he wouldn’t likely be accompanying the Silver Blades on any missions, but it was good to have a nobleman and paladin as a contact in the south. His help so far had been subtle but invaluable, and Kari wondered how much more complicated her mission would be had he not agreed to come along. Indeed, had he refused to loan her a griffon, she might still be on her way to the city—far too late to be of help.
Except I still haven’t figured out how I fit into all this, she thought.
When Eli joined them for breakfast, they filled him in. “It was Lord Black?” he blurted. “I knew something had happened, but I’d never have guessed it was him…”
Kari nodded, fighting down the tumultuous emotions better now. “We’re going to let the matter pass for now. If we move too soon, we may lose Turillia and Emma.”
“Like I said, it’s your dance,” Eli returned with a shrug. After a speedy breakfast, he left with the celestial token in his possession, intent on finding Emma.
Kari finished her meal and looked up at Markus. “I’m going to head over to the cemetery to see how Piotyr and Deirdre are doing. Would you join us for dinner tonight? I want to lay out my final plan of attack, now that we have a better idea of who and what we’re dealing with.”
“Of course. Do you need anything else from me now? Then I will head over to Lord Black’s tower and do my part. Farewell, Kari.”
She followed him out the door but went to the southwest district. Traffic was sparse, so Kari jogged steadily, stopping only at Kaelariel’s church to see if her friends had already left. The acolyte there told her Piotyr and Deirdre were at the cemetery; Kari was glad to hear Deirdre was up and about. Half-elites didn’t heal anywhere near as fast as half-guardians but being tended to by Piotyr and getting a good night’s sleep had apparently been enough.
Just as Kari had requested, there were a good number of city guards at the cemetery. Half a dozen stood watch at the gates, and Kari could see others walking along the top of the wall as though there were battlements. She was ushered into the cemetery with no need for introduction, and the guards said the priests were at the center.
Kari wondered at that; she expected there would be a lot of work to do beginning just inside the gate after what Emma had done last night. She wondered if her half-elite friends had stayed up all night to begin tending to the cemetery…
Once inside, her jaw dropped. Every crypt and mausoleum was back in order, their doors replaced, and even the graves showed little sign of disturbance. It was almost as if the entire incident last night had been a dream, but that wasn’t the case. Was it possible it had all been a massive, masterful illusion, orchestrated by Emma? Kari approached the nearest graves and knelt down.
The earth smelled fresh, as though it had been recently disturbed. Kari picked out the details that told her last night’s battle hadn’t been an illusion. While someone had cleaned the place up and quickly, there were still signs left behind that the dead had risen. Odd footprints dotted the ground between graves, and though the plots had been re-covered, they weren’t sculpted the way Kari remembered. She continued toward the center of the graveyard and noted chips of bone among the grass and soil where Sharyn had cut down one of the undead.
Kari found Piotyr and Deirdre performing a consecration ceremony under the newly risen sun. There, she could see that though the doors of the crypts and mausoleums were replaced, their faces were still cracked in places. There was plenty of damage and smaller telltale signs of the prior night’s horror, but someone had done an immense amount of work cleaning up after Emma. Was it possible the mallasti girl had come back and cleaned up her own mess? It seemed unlikely, but less so than Turillia or any of Lord Black’s people doing so.
“Good morning,” she greeted them. “Glad to see you’re feeling better.”
The priests ignored her while they finished their prayers and incantations. Deirdre looked up first, and she took a deep breath and blew it out, then smiled. “Thank you; I’m feeling much better,” she said. She looked over her shoulder and then around the center of the graveyard, and she gestured about. “As you can see, someone was busy in the early hours of morning. I can’t say I’m sorry for that; consecrating the grounds will take long enough without having to re-inter the bodies or replace the doors of the crypts.”
“Any idea who put the place back together?”
“Only that a great deal of arcane power was involved,” Piotyr answered. “Though I’m sure you came to that conclusion yourself. I can tell you for certain it wasn’t any of our fellow priests on Temple Street. It could have been our wizard benefactor, Dominick, or it may’ve been one of the other resident wizards, but I think not.” He met Kari’s gaze evenly. “I’ve the feeling that if Emma was able to raise this graveyard all at once, she was powerful enough to put it back together as well. The question that remains is: Why?”
Kari rubbed her chin. “I was afraid that might be the case. I don’t know why Emma would fix this, assuming she did. Maybe it was just to keep you and your sister from going after her and keep us all concentrated on Turillia. Can you sense their necromancy? Is either of them the necromancer you told me about the other night?”
“It’s the succubus,” Deirdre said with a huff. “The stench of her magic is sickening and unmistakable; she is clearly the one who despoiled the graveyard earlier this week. This display was not as bad, but it has the same reek about it.”
“So, Emma’s must be overpowering, then,” Kari ventured.
“On the contrary, hers carries no stench at all. I suspect it’s because she is not a necromancer per se; she is an archmage of the highest caliber, but her power is not rooted in death. She seems to be able to draw power from around her and instill it in objects to animate them—such as corpses—but she simply animated the corpses, she didn’t enslave them or endow them with malignant will.”
Kari raised a brow. “You seem to know your arcane magic.”
“We deal with necromancers fairly often, and have been trained what to look for,” Piotyr explained. “Kaelariel’s dominion over the dead gives us a very broad sense of death and necromancy, and those who abuse this power stink to our enhanced senses.”
“So, will they be able to raise these corpses again? Or will your consecrations hold?” Kari prodded. She didn’t want to insult the priests, but she needed to know whether undead would factor into things when she set the final snare for Turillia. She also assumed the half-elites were too young to have performed the initial consecrations here.