Alone with his thoughts and memories.
He’d close his eyes, seeking sleep, but the images came instead.Of the ruins of his village, of the mass grave under the withered old apple tree, the full moon making the branches look like clutching hands.
Of the night the Wyverns had come with their army, and had not asked, simply taken.At the first sign of protest, resistance, they’d killed and raped and burned the place to the ground.When he’d tried to protect his Mum, one of them had struck him in the head and everything had gone dark.
Until he’d awakened under bodies, buried shallow, and clawed his way up, to find no one and nothing.
He’d sworn revenge and found a way to mass power quickly and so very easily.
His Da had been the village butcher, in their small town on the border between baronies, and Tassos had learned the art, working his way to journeyman without really having to think of an alternative.That is what you did, learned from your folks and followed their footsteps.
He’d found power in the life blood of living creatures.It took no time at all to acquire, to learn.He found teachers, who’d taught him until they’d tried to kill him.He coveted power, storing it within, learning and growing, until he learned to raise the dead: to create odium, the living undead, bound to his will.
After that, he intended to find the Wyverns, hunt each and every one, and kill them, and add them to his growing army.
It had seemed simple enough.Or so he had told himself.He was an idiot.
Tassos plucked at the blanket weakly, trying to pull it up, to blot the flashes of memories that flared against his inner eyelid.
The memory of the lass he’d taken, a maiden, just starting to wander the streets, still ripe and sweet and innocent.He’d caught her on the edge, acted as her first “protector,” offered food and a warm place to sleep, and all the wine she could drink.
She’d been so pitifully thankful as she drifted off; it had been so easy to slip her into the wagon, so easy to keep her drugged.
She’d curled in the sacking in the wagon bed, a gentle smile on her lovely face, smiling at him each time she roused and he offered her more drink.
His craving rose, deep and dark and hungry for letheon.For the sweet comfort of oblivion.He could still taste it at the back of his throat, and he swallowed hard as a soft whine escaped him.He longed for letheon’s sweetness, the glitter of its ruby color, the hint of plums underlying the smokiness of the aftertaste.
But he had no oblivion, no buffer, no distance.And when he closed his eyes, he saw Uncle Stancil’s face.
He’d made a crucial, bitter, terrible mistake.It hadn’t occurred to him that there might be a danger to raising odium from your village’s—your families’—mass grave.
It never occurred to him that they would speak.
He’d gloried in his power, rejoicing as the sacrifice lay dead at his feet, as the spell flared.As the dead rose, clawing their way from the depths of the earth, fabric and flesh tattered and rotted.“I have raised you,” he announced.“And from beyond this grave we will avenge your deaths and grow into a vast army.”
Heads turned, revealing skulls not yet clean, shedding ragged and decayed flesh.
Tassos abruptly realized he had raised more than bodies.Imposed over the rotting corpses were faces, spirits, souls, of his friends and family, staring at him.The vast power that he had…was no longer his.
It was theirs.
“Tassos,” Uncle Stancil drew close, bearing the stench of rotting flesh and new-turned soil.He put his skeletal hands on Tassos’s shoulders.“What have you done?”
That disappointment, their rejection, rolled over his chest and wedged itself in his heart.
He tried to distract himself.Counting the stones in the walls, trying to estimate how long he had been here.Reciting old poems, lyrics to old songs…but inevitably his thoughts tumbled and he was back at the grave, trapped by disappointment, grief, and despair.
“At what cost, nephew?The taint on your own soul?All the blood on your hands?”
For a time, he argued with them, fueled by righteous anger and fury.He’d done it all for them, after all, all his striving, and yes, all the slaughter, taking the fastest, most direct path to power.Only to have them reject it.
Reject him.
It wasn’t right, wasn’t fair…they didn’t appreciate his sacrifice—
With that, the vision returned, showing him the dead girl in Uncle Stancil’s arms as he returned to the mass grave with all the others.Bitter bile rose in his throat.Another round of puking began.
Which brought Nora back to his side, a lovely distraction, until again Tassos was alone with the darkness and the candle.
