It's part 2! Already gone further than the last time I tried to do this. Part 1 is here.
Crichton was right to be suspicious, for the gardener was no
ordinary gardener. His name, as given upon his assumption of employment, was Harold Smith,
but for most of his life he’d gone by another name: Cornelius Valdes,
Necromancer.
Not, admittedly, for some time. In his youth, he had really
raised hell; he’d conjure spirits for fun, often of the debauched kind, but
wasn’t above using his abilities for more morally dubious purposes either. It’s
surprising, for example, how many banks are built above old battlefields; all
it takes is a little knowledge and three litres of goats’ blood and soon
skeletal warriors are emptying the vault from the inside. But those days were
long gone; Harold had been on the run for the last ten years, but luckily for
him a life spent in graveyards had taught him how to appreciate the placing of
flowers, so he’d applied for a job as the Tunnicliffe’s gardener, a post he was
immediately granted after the sudden and untimely deaths of the previous three
holders of the post.
Some habits, however, are hard to shake off. Beneath the
copse of trees at the bottom of the Tunnicliffe’s expansive garden was the tomb
of a long-forgotten lord and his most willing servants, a fact which Harold had
immediately detected upon his first day on the job. He’d only given into
temptation a couple of times so far, when the marigolds were being particularly
troublesome, and once when that group of kids had kept uprooting his azaleas;
but today was different. Today, he had been humiliated for the last time.
Today, it was time for revenge.
It should be noted here that Harold was not, by most
standards, an extraordinarily bad man. By and large, he kept himself to
himself; he was never cruel to animals, and when he saw a beggar in the street
he would almost always discharge any small change, as long as he wasn’t tired,
hungry or in a bad mood. As you may have noticed, however, Louisa was an
absolutely terrible mistress, quite apart from being a snob of the highest
order, and years of abuse in her service had rendered Harold capable of some
quite drastic measures. This latest humiliation was just the tipping-point;
frankly, it is remarkable that he had not ordered his spectral minions to
destroy the household already.
It should also be noted, however that Harold had never been
an altogether competent necromancer even in his heyday, and ten years of barely
any (mal)practice had not helped hone his skills. In hindsight, raising the
dead in anger was never going to be a good idea; and doing so when you are a
sixty-year-old gardener was always going to end in tears.
Harold reached the copse of trees, muttering to himself as
he began the necessary preparations for his ritual. “Last bloody straw... who
does she think she is, telling me... I was Cornelius Valdes! Bloody witch...
serves her right... her and those bloody daughters, all of ‘em...” He drew a
large pentacle on the ground and took out his small pruning scissors, nicking
his right thumb and depositing three shining drops of blood on the ground,
then, taking out a small trowel with his left hand whilst sucking his wounded
appendage, dug five shallow pits around the tiny red stain. Straightening up,
he threw out his hands in his most impressive pose, and shouted strange words
to the cloudless sky, words which seemed to last longer than their own sounds
as they twisted and turned in the air.
There was a low, almost inaudible, rumbling, and then the
earth began to shake and split. Jagged fingernails scrabbled at the soil as
grey-skinned shapes began to rise from the pit where they had been interred a
thousand years ago, dead men pulling themselves back into a grotesque semblance
of life. Out they came, blinking their glowing red eyes at the new sunlight,
papery skin crackling in a wind they had not felt for what seemed like
eternity. Their outlines flickered, as if they barely existed in the world; black shadows dancing across their naked chests as they stood, thirty newly
animated corpses, in front of a now laughing Harold. With them, he would show
his enemies! With them, he would take over this priggish mansion, this snobbish
county, the whole pretentiously prancing country!
The tallest of the dead stepped forward. His eyes gleamed
not only with the fires of Hell, but with a far more dangerous cunning, a cruel
intelligence born of years spent in darkness and flame. He opened his black
mouth, revealing sharp yellow teeth.
“Ah, that’s better,” he said.
“Bow before me, wretch! I abjure thee to do as I command!”
shouted Harold, the old words of command coming back to him now. He felt almost
drunk with his remembered power. Why had he ever given this up? These creatures
were among the strongest he had ever raised, even in his heyday; the brightness
of their eyes and the speed of their rise told him as much. It seemed his power
had grown with age, not faded; he saw himself marching up the lawn with his new
minions at his back, his hoe and spade forgotten, saw himself sitting in the
hall of Tunnicliffe Mansion whilst those who had oppressed him grovelled at his
rather calloused feet.
It should be remembered that Harold was a necromancer, and
not a prophet.
The tall corpse gave him a cool glance, then closed his eyes
and raised his head, sniffing the air with apparent delight. Harold felt his
confidence drain like a bath with the mat of hair removed. The corpse turned
his back on the now slightly paler necromancer and addressed his fellows.
“Life, once more! Life, as I promised you! Life, to enjoy, to
cherish...” He turned back to Harold, a sneer creasing his face. “To take.”
Harold started to back away. The spell of binding! Surely he
couldn’t have forgotten the spell of binding...
There is a reason why there are not very many necromancers
around nowadays. Raising the dead is quite a tricky business, one that requires
a great deal of intelligence, preparation and clarity of thought, three
qualities that had been sorely lacking in Harold’s impromptu quest for revenge.
As may have been guessed, the ravages of age and anger had caused Harold to
forget to say the spell that bound the newly raised creatures’ wills to his
own. They were powerful, all right; but they were not in his power.
“I am Lord Achan. And mortals such as you, old man, have no
control over me.” The tall corpse’s sneer deepened as Harold lost control of
his bladder, then turned to run, leaving a liquid trail behind him as he veered
arthritically across the lawn. Achan turned once more to his fellows. “My
warriors, we have been liberated from our prison. Let us remember how we lived
our lives, and feel blessed that we have been given a second chance.” The
warriors looked solemn for a moment. “And now, let us live these new lives to
the fullest. Starting by removing that stupid old man from his.”
The warriors cheered and rushed forward in pursuit of the
diminishing figure of Harold.
“And then,” Achan muttered to himself, striding forward
after them, “we shall see about paying the world back for the wrongs it has
done.”
