“Ella,” Dain Barden said without preamble, meeting her eyes, his expression grim. “Once, I gave you my help. Now I am asking for your help in return.”
“I’ve tried,” Ella said, guilt wracking her. “I’m no healer, nor am I an expert with revenants. I can’t find out what ails your daughter and your necromancers.”
“Then help us in another way. Many of our draugar are wounded and need tending. You know our lore, and we are now down to just a few necromancers: Aldrik, whom you know, and three others. Six more have died. I need you to go to Aldrik and offer your services.”
Ella knew she was in Dain Barden’s debt. He had allowed her to learn his people’s lore, and now he needed her help. “Of course,” she said.
“Good. I thank you. We need to regain our full strength if we’re to help out here and hold for the emperor’s arrival.” The Dain summoned a guard. “Take the enchantress here to Aldrik. He knows her and is expecting her arrival. And Enchantress?”
“Yes?”
“Use that mind of yours. See if you can find the source of this illness, and stop it.”
“I’ll do my best,” Ella promised.
The Akari guard led Ella to a large square tent, set aside from the rest. Entering, Ella walked past scores of slumped revenants, most standing, some prone on the ground. At the center of the tent, four gray-robed necromancers each hovered over an iron table. A fifth table was empty.
A revenant lay on its back on each of the tables. Each necromancer had a scrill in his hands and worked with concentration as he renewed the runes around the wounds, closing the deepest gashes, mending the broken bodies. Smoke sizzled up in thin plumes as they worked, and each necromancer kept his head tilted to the side. Their eyes were shadowed with exhaustion.
Aldrik, a plump necromancer and Ella’s former teacher, looked up as Ella entered. “The Dain told me to expect you,” he said. “Can you help?”
“What do you need me to do?”
He ceased working and carefully placed his scrill in a holder. “It’s a simple task, but it is time-consuming, and there aren’t enough of us to tend them all. Take a draug and lie it down on your bench. The deepest wounds break the matrices and prevent the lore from functioning, so the runes must be drawn over again. When you are finished with one, move onto the next. Any questions?”
“No,” Ella said. “I understand.”
She walked over to the clustered warriors—many of the revenants staggered as the lore struggled to keep them animated—and took a tall man by the hand, resisting the urge to cringe at the cold touch of his fingers. The huge warrior regarded her with a white-eyed stare but allowed her to guide him to the workbench.
“Lie on your back,” Ella said.
The revenant complied, and Ella breathed a sigh of relief. She found a set of tools on a stand nearby, but she looked about for essence.
“Here,” Aldrik said, coming forward to hand her a vial.
Ella ran her eyes over the warrior’s body. His bleached leather armor was torn wide open, revealing a broad chest with a palm-sized hole at his heart. She could see where the matrices were broken, and without thinking too much about what she was doing, she took a scalpel and cut away the torn flesh before using needle and thread to sew the gash closed.
Ella then fitted gloves over her hands and dipped a scrill into the vial of essence. She held it in the bottle for a single breath and then withdrew the scrill and touched it to the flesh. Ella began to draw over the rune structures, fixing the lines, reconnecting the whorls and bridges. A hissing sound came from the tip of the scrill, and a thin stream of blue smoke rose into the air. Ella tilted her head as she worked, wrinkling her nose at the scent.
It smelled even worse than usual.
Ella put the thought out of her mind as she concentrated on the task at hand. She knew that every warrior she sent back to the field was a warrior who would challenge Sentar’s minions.
Ella felt good to be working, the fear and sadness melting away as she concentrated. As she devoted all her effort to her task, Ella thought about the illness striking the Dain’s necromancers. Her primary theory was that the rot in the bodies was causing those who spent the most time with the revenants to succumb to diseases lodging in the corpses. By working with the necromancers, Ella could discover if any of the revenants were especially putrid.
She examined the body she currently tended. It didn’t seem any different from the revenants she’d seen before. Ella pondered. Surely the Akari were more experienced than she and knew what they were doing?
Aldrik came over to inspect Ella’s work and then nodded. “Well done, Enchantress. Please, there are many more. If we work all night, they will be ready to fight on the morrow.”
Ella nodded and found another broken body to mend.
47