"No," Renrik bristled, "not ghouls. They were once beloved, and they serve the Dain in death as they served in life. They are draugar."
"I understand," Melovar said. Not being a man of lore himself, he enjoyed pointing out their pretensions.
"The draugar are obviously better suited to colder climates, such as we have here in the north. The decay is our greatest challenge, for they will remain animated long after they've started to rot, or in battle when they have lost limbs or been stabbed many times."
"Impressive," Melovar said.
With Renrik leading and the Dain and Primate following close behind, the three continued past a massive vat, as high as the tallest tree and as wide around as a large house.
Renrik halted them. "Here, in Ku Kara, when the dead have served their purpose, and can go on no longer, they are recycled. The Lord of the Night gave us something far greater than your Lexicons." The necromancer and his Dain both looked up proudly at the vat. "We Akari have no Lexicon," Renrik continued. "We have no harvesters or extraction plants, eking out droplets of essence from the plant matter and the lignite. The Lord of the Night instead gave us a method of extracting essence from those with the most life force of all. We take our essence from those with much more life than plants. We, Akari, extract our essence from the dead."
~
MELOVAR left the lands of the Akari jubilant. He had his agreement, he still had the book of the Evermen, and he would now head to Seranthia to prepare for Dain Barden's arrival. It had turned out better than he had ever imagined.
The Primate would send a fast messenger to Zavros, ordering him to Ku Kara where the templar would learn from the Akari. In particular Zavros would discover how they extracted essence from the dead.
Soon the Akari would send their armies to Seranthia, and Melovar would unleash the draugar against his enemies.
When he had his own supplies of essence again, and his own method of producing more, he would once again have power at his disposal. When the Primate ruled all the world he would give the Akari the same fate he planned for all of the houses. He would destroy them and give the world peace from lore at last.
Dain Barden believed Melovar would tell him where to find the hidden relic, this powerful magic, the Evermen's greatest work. Melovar still didn't know where it was, but he was determined to find it.
When he did, he had no intention of sharing it with anyone.
~
DAIN Barden spoke with Renrik as they watched Primate Melovar Aspen's departing back. "Stick to the letter of the agreement," he said, "but don't trust them. When we have this relic of the Evermen, and when we have our avenue back into the Tingaran Empire, then we'll show them how powerful we've become since the exile."
Barden turned to his necromancer, the tall Dain looming over the man with the circle of finger-bones around his neck. "Never forget, Renrik. Never forget. They will always hate us."
16
EVRIN Evenstar cursed. Limping and hobbling, he'd managed to drag himself away from Salvation until he'd taken refuge in a forest far from the road, and then his fatigue, combined with the wounds he'd received at the Pinnacle, had the better of him, and he lost consciousness.
He sat up and cursed again. What time was it? Morning? More importantly, what day was it? How much time had passed since the destruction at the Pinnacle? How long had he spent in that dungeon?
He was lucky to have escaped, and lucky to be alive. A senior templar had visited the dungeon to make sure the Primate's orders were being followed — that the prisoner was being fed and watered, but also being kept under lock and key.
Evrin had looked up at the templar through the bars of his cell, his eyes suddenly squinting against the glowing pathfinder the templar held in his hand. When the templar turned the device to the cell, scanning the floor and walls, Evrin could finally see.
The templar had an enchanted sword, a straight length of rune-covered steel with a bronzed grip. The sword wasn't scabbarded; the templar had it drawn and was casually leaning on it, perhaps to impress the other guards.
Evrin had quickly scanned the symbols on the sword, looking for the activation sequence, finding the upper limit of what the enchanted blade was capable of.
"Shekular-suk. Ran-rumaya-tul-lan," Evrin spoke.
Evrin put his hands over his face, even as he continued to chant and his words took effect. The templar screamed as the sword expended most of its energy in a blinding flare. A wave of heat came from the blade, and with the sword's length close to his legs, the templar screamed and dropped the sword, jumping as far away from it as possible. It clattered to the ground, just in front of Evrin's cell.