Aldrik rounded on her, and his eyes blazed. "Certainly! This idea of murdering people for the energy in their bodies is something only you people of the houses would come up with. It's an abomination. Do you hear me?"
"Yes," Ella said. "I hear you, and I apologise if I've offended you. The Dain has told you, I'm here to learn, and to understand, so I can explain to those less tolerant. I haven't seen anything here to warrant the prejudice of those in the south. Thank you, Necromancer Aldrik, for showing me."
Mollified, Aldrik led Ella out of the underground chambers, and into his workroom.
There, Ella's instruction began in earnest.
15
DAYS passed, with Ella learning from dawn to dusk, and the prickly necromancer trying to hide his surprise at the pace of Ella's learning. He hesitated when Ella asked to take some of his books back to her room to study, but Ella again mentioned the Dain, and he grudgingly acquiesced.
Ella's dreams became filled with the whorls and bridges of runes, circling through her consciousness and joining together to become the complex matrices of the Akari's lore.
Aldrik said she would be able to try animating her first draug after a month. Ella was ready after a week.
Aldrik chose the body of the woman killed in the whaling accident.
Ella stood silently over the corpse laid out on the wooden table, recently thawed and ready for the essence. Her eyes ran over the pale skin, no longer seeing it as a woman, but seeing it as a canvas for the runes. She put on the protective gloves and took a scrill and vial of essence from a stand nearby.
Aldrik and three other necromancers looked on as Ella began to draw.
She kept her hand steady, a thin line of vapour rising from the symbols as Ella drew them one by one. She kept her head turned to the side; if the vapour got into her lungs it would make her quite ill.
Ella's heart fluttered. If she made the slightest mistake, put a line out of place, she would have failed. Unlike a work of enchantment, this wasn't a sword, or armour; this was a woman's body. If she failed, the woman wouldn't even go into the vats; she would be burned to ash.
In Ella's mind she turned to pages in the books she'd read, added symbols where they seemed appropriate, inserted a gap between matrices to delineate them. She added activation sequences, scores of them. This wasn't a nightlamp, with a sequence to bring light and another to restore darkness. This was a draug, a revenant; it would be woken once, and once only.
Ella lifted the scrill away from the body. Her arm was tired and she stretched, careful to avoid making any fateful motions.
Ella looked at the men watching her. Her eyes widened in surprise.
Dain Barden stood with the necromancers, his arms folded across his chest. His expression was inscrutable as he saw Ella dip her scrill in the essence, and continue.
Finally, Ella was done.
She put away her tools and the essence before removing the protective gloves. She leaned backwards and heard her back crack painfully. How long had it been? It was hard to tell down here, under the ice city.
"Your work is not complete," Aldrik said.
"I know," Ella said, frowning at him.
Ella looked down at the rune on the revenant's cold chest. She placed her fingers on it, tracing the heart-rune, larger than the rest, as she spoke. "Mordet-ahl. Sudhet-ahl. Suth-eroth. Soth-eruth. Mordet-suth-ahn."
Ella continued to chant as the woman's eyes suddenly opened. Ella fought to remain impassive and still the raucous beating of her heart. Her palms were sweaty, even though the air was frigid. It wasn't over yet.
"Tsu-tulara-ahn. Morth-thul-ahlara. Sudhet-ahlara-ahn. Shah-lahra-rahn!"
Blue light travelled from the heart-rune to the matrix beside it, a fiery glow moving in a spiral pattern as it lit up the symbols covering the revenant's body. Ella saw it move down the woman's chest, over her hips and down to the runes covering her legs. The arcane symbols on her arms began to glow eerily, from her shoulders to her hands. Her face remained clear, but her eyes were solid white, the colour of the frozen snow.
The revenant sat up.
"Rise and stand," Ella said.
She stood back to make space around the wooden table. The revenant slid off the table and rose to stand tall, looming over Ella, her dead eyes filling Ella with fear, but also with accomplishment.
"Well done, Ella," Aldrik said. "Working alone, you brought a draug back in sixteen hours. Quite an accomplishment, I must say."
Ella looked at the Dain, who nodded at her and then walked away. Was he pleased? The three necromancers also left, leaving Ella standing with Aldrik and the revenant.
"What is your name?" Ella suddenly said to the woman.
She stayed silent.
"Ella," Aldrik said, "you know she can't speak."
"Walk to the wall, touch it, and return," Ella said.
The revenant didn't move.