The Lich Without a Soul Vessel

Four people stood up from the grass. Dark clothing, short-cut for movement, faces covered. Evan was genuinely puzzled — if these were city soldiers they would have announced it, and these four had the look of something private.

Tina and Teresa drew their weapons.

"What do you want?" Evan said.

"Give us the holy skull and the list," a rough voice answered. "We'll leave you intact."

So they were after Teresa. But their phrasing made it clear they intended to leave no one standing regardless.

"Are you Thompson's people?"

He activated his infrared sight. The firelight reached only so far, but through it he could see the exposed skin around their eyes, the tendons in their hands, the faint details that told him what he needed to know. They didn't react to the question — not a denial, not a confirmation, just nothing. Not Thompson's men. Someone else.

He saw their tendons tighten a half-second before they moved.

Four figures lunged. Evan's blade came up and the impact rang off it; his wrist rolled through the contact and the point found a shoulder before the man had finished his step. The man pulled back with a short sound, and Evan's left hand came up — Wind Blade, a sheet of them, spreading across all four. A crash of steel as curved blades came up to deflect, and most of the wind blades found edges to stop them, but not all. Blood appeared on several of the attackers.

In the space that bought him, Evan moved, and the blade found the wounded man's abdomen. His wrist turned. He stepped back clean.

The man tried to stay upright. He didn't manage it.

"Who are you?" Evan's voice was flat.

The three remaining attackers looked at each other without answering and came on again. Tina and Teresa engaged two of them. The third — still bleeding from the wind blades — threw himself at Evan with the particular commitment of someone who has decided the outcome doesn't matter. Evan read it, didn't waste time on finesse. Black smoke rose around him, and several tendrils of it found the man before he arrived. He produced one desperate sound and hit the ground as dry as leather.

Neither Tina nor Teresa had seen it happen clearly, occupied as they were. Evan flicked two more Wind Blades into their fights at the moment the attackers were pressing forward — both targets stopped for a fraction of a second, and both Tina and Teresa's weapons found openings in that pause.

Four down.

Then the four dead men began to stand up.

Evan felt the magical signature immediately. A necromancer, positioned at some distance, operating remotely. He met Teresa and Tina's battle-ready postures with a slight shake of his head and pushed his spiritual sense outward in a directed wave, found the hostile consciousness reaching for the corpses, and simply overran it. The standing dead went slack and fell.

A pained sound from the darkness. Half a li away, a horse. Then the sound of hoofbeats moving quickly away.

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Teresa and Tina ran to investigate. Evan followed without hurrying. Four horses tied in the trees — the attackers' mounts. Their saddlebags contained food, spare clothes, and some coin. Tina kept looking at Evan while she counted the silver pieces; she had clearly assessed that he wouldn't care. Teresa pocketed her share without ceremony.

"These were your problem, Teresa," Evan said. "What can you tell me about them?"

"Nothing. I don't know who they are."

She looked genuinely uncertain, which he believed. The curved blades, the movement patterns, the fact that they weren't Thompson's people — Evan had his own observations, but nothing conclusive. He let it go. Waltersdorf was the destination; whatever this had been, it was behind them.

"Curved blades aren't exclusively from the east," Teresa said, apparently still thinking about it. "They're preferred for cavalry work generally. The eastern connection isn't as automatic as people assume."

They rode. A month of travel through territory that got progressively less tense, avoiding main roads, arriving finally in New Church territory and the city of Waltersdorf. Evan felt something relax in his shoulders when the city came into view. The New Church had eliminated the practices that made him most visible as an enemy — the indulgence sales, the holy maiden tradition, the automatic treatment of any unusual person as a potential heretic. They tolerated the existence of people who believed differently. It wasn't comfortable, exactly, but it was a different caliber of uncomfortable.

They asked about Leonardo Calvin in the first decent neighborhood they found. The answers came easily enough — he was known. A baron, they were told, but not the kind of baron who did baron things. He lived outside the western gate at a small estate, spent all his time on magic and alchemical research, had a daughter who had died young, didn't bother with politics or feudal management beyond the minimum. His magical ability was apparently what kept people from taking advantage.

They rode west through the city. Waltersdorf was larger and busier than Kansas City — more variety in its shops, including several that sold the kinds of things Evan had only seen in Nicholas Andrew's memory: magical implements, components, items with specific uses that didn't have analogues in his previous world.

Outside the western gate, a modest estate. No one at the door. Teresa knocked. An old man appeared after a while, moving with the deliberate pace of someone past urgency.

Teresa's face changed entirely. "Uncle Alexis. You remember me."

Recognition, then delight. "Tina! No — Teresa! How many years has it been? Your father —"

"He died eight years ago. My mother the year before. We moved to Kansas City eleven years ago, and..." She gave the shape of it simply, without dwelling on it.

The old man absorbed it. Then he noticed Evan and Tina behind her. Teresa made introductions. Evan produced the letter.

Alexis, who was the estate's steward, brought them into the sitting room — large, with a crystal chandelier carrying magical lamp stones, a fireplace with chairs arranged around it, a long table, a suit of armor in the corner, and a relief carving above the hearth depicting the Maker's creation and the birth of the elements. He went upstairs.

The man who came back down had the hair of someone who had not thought about it recently and the clothes to match. He was laughing before he reached the bottom of the stairs.

"Little Teresa with friends! What a rare thing."

He shook Evan's hand with the grip of someone who used their hands for work. "I see from the letter that Becky is a genuine mage now. I only guided her briefly — just a passing interest, but she was a good student. Hard luck, her situation. And the young lord got a title? I wouldn't have predicted that."

"I watched him receive it," Evan said. "And I watched Becky make the crossing."

"Sit, sit. You're a wandering adventurer — the letter says. But that's cover, isn't it. What are you actually?"

"A necromancer. The adventurer identity is more convenient."

"I thought so. I felt it when you walked in." Leonardo looked at Tina, and his expression did something complicated — surprised, and sad at the same time, in a way that didn't quite resolve.

Evan noticed it.

Tina performed a small curtsy, the movement entirely correct.

Leonardo's smile reappeared, softer now. "No need for that. I'm sorry — looking at you reminded me of my daughter. The resemblance is..." He shook his head slightly. "What's your name, young lady?"

"Tina."

"A good name." He looked at her for another moment. "If she were still alive, she'd be about your age."