move, though it was not he who had bid it do so. The motions were not his own, either; an odd sway to his hips suggested that his captor was a woman, or had been in life.
He could see, but his vision was distorted — doubled. A glance at Nanda showed him two women: the Nan he knew, familiar and loved, beautiful in every feature; and a second Irinanda, tall, icy and haughty, the planes of her face angular and unpleasing. His possessor’s view of Nanda was quite different from his own.
‘Konrad?’ she said, watching him warily. ‘Where are you going?’
He tried to answer, but she who had taken control of his limbs kept his lips pressed tightly together, and no words emerged. He fought, and for a time, sight and sound faded altogether as he threw everything he had at the interloper. For a moment he thought he might succeed; she stopped, and staggered, her concentration broken.
Yes! Konrad exulted, and surged up in triumph. He would reclaim himself, and then he would wipe every last one of the ghosts of Divoro off the face of the—
Iron bands clamped around his skull, or so it felt. They tightened, and squeezed; something splintered, and he screamed.
Do not fight me, said a low, female voice, echoing through his thoughts like a sharp sound in an empty room. Our alliance is temporary.
Olya, he spat. It is Olya Vasilescu, is it not?
Who else could have power enough?
Why then do you need mine?
Because I cannot do all that I would wish.
Vision returned, and hearing. He had passed out of the cavern of corpses and proceeded some way back along the passage, wending steadily upwards. What had become of Nanda, Alexander and the others? Distantly, he heard a pounding, as of someone hammering upon a locked door.
They need not be killed, Olya remarked conversationally, as Konrad’s body proceeded onward at a measured pace.
Konrad needed no assistance to read the implied threat in her words. You could not have asked for our aid?
You would not have given it.
She was right, for another few steps brought Konrad in his usurped body back into the little room in which Jakub lay. Konrad — Olya — knelt by the divan upon which he reclined, and took his hand. ‘Dedushka,’ said Konrad’s voice, with a timbre and inflection not his own. ‘Today you rise.’
He cannot rise, Konrad snapped. He is gone.
Thanks to you, so he is. But what you have done, you will undo.
I cannot. His soul lies in The Master’s care now.
He felt his lips curve in a smile. ‘Bring the serpents here,’ said he/Olya aloud.
What. Muffled as his senses were, Konrad became belatedly aware that they were not alone in the room. Lev and Anichka came into view, both walking with odd, slightly stiff movements, as though they, too, were directed by others. Each bore one of his serpents wrapped around one arm. The tight embrace might have looked affectionate, except that Konrad could feel rage and agony radiating from them both. They were bound there.
Konrad felt his lips move again; Olya was speaking. ‘It was you who carried away this man’s spirit. You will fetch it back.’ She pointed at Jakub; Konrad’s arm rose and fell.
We cannot, gasped Ootapi. The Master will never permit it.
‘You will have to find a way to do it without his knowledge.’
You cannot compel us, spat Eetapi. We do not obey!
Olya said, with chilling calm, ‘Then your Malykant will never be restored to you.’
Konrad made another futile attempt at escape. But wrest though he might, every struggle only entangled him more thoroughly; with every straining effort, his bindings tightened. Diana will deal with you, he informed Olya.
She ignored this. ‘Well?’ she said to his serpents. ‘What shall it be?’
Konrad tried to resign himself to disaster. Try though she might, she could not hold him forever. It must tire her to keep him bound this way, and sooner or later he would wrest himself free. He only hoped she would not do too much damage in the interval.
But to his immense surprise, Eetapi said, in a shivery whisper, Very well.
He was, for an instant, surprised into silence. Loyalty? From the serpents? Did they not rebel against his every order? Had they not argued with every syllable he had ever uttered, mocked him for his every mistake and delighted in his every failure? If one Malykant came to grief, The Malykt would soon install another. That was the way of it.
Eetapi, he said. Ootapi, you must not.
They did not hear him, trapped as he was behind the curtain of Olya’s iron will. That, or they chose to ignore him. They heaved a twin sigh, their pale, half-manifested forms flickering.
Quite what they did, Konrad was in no position to detect. That it cost them greatly, he could well imagine; time passed, and shadows began to roil about their coiled forms.
Eetapi screamed something in a tongue Konrad had never known.
Then a third ghostly presence materialised by slow degrees: male, aged and furious. Cold radiated off the spirit of Jakub Vasilescu, turning the stone floor to ice at his feet.
‘Dedushka,’ breathed Olya. ‘How I have missed you.’
The wraith that was Jakub stared down at Konrad, his expression more malevolent than pleased. It was not his many-times-removed great granddaughter he saw kneeling at his feet, but the dispossessed Malykant. ‘It is fit,’ he said in a wintry voice.
Then Olya addressed Konrad again, silently this time, and the bands of pain tightened around him. Malykant, you will raise him.
I cannot, gasped Konrad.
These words brought instant punishment: agony wracked his tortured spirit. He screamed, and for a few blissful moments lost consciousness.
He was brutally shaken awake. A lie, hissed Olya. Have you not, alone among all mankind, died and risen and died and risen again?
Distantly, Konrad wondered how she knew anything about it. How long had these abominable cultists been researching his doings, spying upon his escapades, and laying their revolting plans?
That is the truth, he admitted. But it is not by my own will that I am raised. It is no power granted to me, or to any woman or man. Only the Great Spirits can restore true life.
Still you lie, she snapped. This cannot be the truth. She spoke, then, aloud, lifting Konrad’s arm to point at grey-faced Lev and wan Anichka. ‘One of them shall raise him, then. Are not the very best practitioners admitted into The Malykt’s Order?’
Lev and Anichka stared back at her, glassy-eyed. Konrad could imagine a similar battle going on in each of their minds with those who held them in thrall. For a moment Anichka looked likely to break free; her eyes narrowed, she gave a tearing gasp, and her possessed body broke for the door.
It did not last long. Her growl of rage became a scream of torment, and she collapsed.
All this Jakub beheld with the air of a disdainful lord. And is this the best that you have to offer? My descendants’ wits have weakened along with our blood.
‘Why!’ screamed Olya with Konrad’s voice. Why, she snarled again inside his mind. Why will none of you aid me?
Another wave of shattering pain accompanied these words, and Konrad’s senses deserted him again. Because, he gasped, because we cannot. What manner of necromancer are you, that you believe the fundamental laws may be so easily broken? It is given to none of us to restore anything but a semblance of life to dead flesh. Replacing parts of the body with living tissue is of no use whatsoever. Nature cannot be tricked. Your plan has failed.
The solution, said Jakub silkily, is obvious.
Konrad did not at all like the satisfied smile that wreathed the wraith’s ethereal face.
‘What solution?’ whispered Olya.
If it must be living flesh, there is plenty of that to hand.
He looked right into Konrad’s stolen eyes as he spoke.
Abandon this old shell of mine, he ordered Olya. What use is it to me, when I might have a younger, stronger frame instead? I shall have this one. His smile widened.
Konrad had no time to prepare himself. Jakub struck at once, and after a brief, surprised interval, his granddaughter joined him.
And it was done, with extraordinary ease. In the same way that one might, with clever timing, send a tumbler spinning to the ground with a very little pressure, so Konrad’s consciousness was somersaulted out of his own body. A push from the one; a tug from the other; and Konrad was bodiless, shivering near the ceiling, made a wraith in Jakub’s place.
He watched, helpless, as Konrad-that-was rose to his feet. The erstwhile wraith’s repulsive smile was translated to Konrad’s own face; he hated the way that grin stretched his familiar lips, hated the way his own dark eyes burned with a monstrous glee he had never been guilty of himself — not even at his very worst moments.
Jakub stretched, rolled the shoulders of his fine new body, and nodded his satisfaction. ‘It shall suit me admirably,’ he said, and even Konrad’s voice sounded different; lighter, darker, deeper, anything but his own.
His head tilted to look up, up at the ceiling, where Konrad’s shocked spirit clung. ‘Enjoyable, is it not?’ he said, the smile fading. ‘A century or two in that state and you, too, will trade anything at all to reverse the events of this day.’
It would not take anywhere near so long as a century. Konrad screamed his frustration and dove, intent upon thrusting Jakub out of his stolen limbs and reclaiming his own self without an instant’s delay.
To his humiliation, Jakub fended off this ill-judged attack with ease. And laughter. ‘You forget!’ he called, with offensive joviality. ‘I have a great deal of experience at the incorporeal state, while you have none at all.’
This was inarguable. Konrad had enough to do to keep himself together; what was left of his being sought to dissolve into tatters and stream away, leaving him blessedly insensate. He recalled how often he had instructed his serpents to collect and bind just such a beleaguered spirit, a soul too shocked, appalled and frightened to manage the process for itself.
What was worse, an insistent part of himself fought the necessity, for the prospect of oblivion interested him more than he could ever have expected.
Jakub walked away. ‘Come, Olya,’ he called, and to Konrad’s horror it was Anichka who answered the summons, falling into step behind her grandfather with none of the awkward gait of before. She walked fluidly, confidently, her carriage different from the Anichka he knew.
He cast around blindly, and soon saw her: another recently dispossessed ghost like himself, curled into a tight ball in a corner of the ceiling. She was doing better work than he: her spirit-self shone brightly, subject to none of the deterioration he fought in himself.
This was what it meant to be among the greatest living necromancers, he supposed. Her talents far exceeded his own there.
Master, hissed Eetapi from somewhere far too close by. What are you doing on the ceiling?