Skulduggery Pleasant_ Death Bringer - Derek Landy [77]
“Please,” Skulduggery said, “enlighten us.”
“You were always an angry man,” Tenebrae said. “When you were alive, you just hid it better, hid it from your loving wife and your loving child. But I saw it, on the battlefield. That’s when you allowed it to surface. That’s when you allowed the real you to appear.”
“I must tell you, Auron, that amateur psychoanalysts do not impress me.”
“I wouldn’t expect them to, but I have proof. I had a theory and I tested it, and my suspicions were confirmed. Valkyrie, Solomon Wreath told me that when you were fighting the Faceless Ones, you used his cane. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Valkyrie said. “He told me to.”
“Of course he did. If he hadn’t given you permission, the moment you tried to use it the power inside would have killed you. You took that cane and you used that Necromancer power, instinctively and without training, and he saw in you a great potential. The same potential I saw in Skulduggery, all those years ago.”
Skulduggery tilted his head. “What are you talking about?”
“Remember Prussia? This was a few months after you were married. Mevolent’s people had raided the Necromancer Temple where I was studying. I was one of the only survivors, and we linked up with you and your team and tracked the raiding party across the mountains.”
“I remember,” Skulduggery said. “It took us three weeks to catch up with them. Morwenna Crow was with us.”
“That’s right. My dear Morwenna, the only Necromancer to serve on the Council of Elders. Yes, she was a fellow survivor.”
“I spent most of the time talking to her. I don’t think you and I exchanged more than five words.”
Tenebrae nodded. “One of the closest friendships I’ve ever had.”
“You’re a sad little man.”
Tenebrae laughed. “Regardless, we tracked the raiding party and we caught up with them. We waited, and we attacked. In the battle, I was injured. You were injured. All of us were injured, but we kept fighting. I had dropped the dagger that housed my power. I was bleeding, tired, the dagger was just out of reach, and there, lumbering towards me, was the biggest ogre I’d ever seen. Twelve foot tall, green skin, dressed in stitched leathers with tusks as big as my arm.”
“He was half that size,” Skulduggery said. “And he didn’t have tusks, he just had really bad teeth. Also, he wasn’t an ogre. His name was Jeremy.”
“You really know how to spoil a good story,” Tenebrae said. “I was on my back, looking up, so he appeared to be a twelve-foot-tall ogre. One thing you cannot argue with is the size of the axe he was swinging.”
“It was a big axe,” Skulduggery conceded.
“Bigger than any I had ever seen.”
“Oh for God’s sake…”
“And just before that axe split my skull and found my brains, Valkyrie, Skulduggery staggered into view. He fell, reached out, grabbed my dagger, and sent fifty spears of darkness into the ogre’s chest.”
Skulduggery said nothing.
“I hadn’t given him permission,” Tenebrae said. “That power should have torn him apart. But he controlled those shadows, instinctively and without training, and when Jeremy the ogre was dead, Skulduggery dropped the dagger and went looking for the next enemy to kill.”
Tenebrae looked at Skulduggery. “From that moment, I knew you were special. I knew I would need to keep an eye on you. A few years later, we Necromancers retreated to our Temples and fortified our positions. We decided to let the rest of the world fight among themselves. But not everyone respected our neutrality. Nefarian Serpine, in particular, seemed disinclined to leave us alone. He surrounded the Temple I was in, threatened us with utter destruction unless we shared some of our secrets. The High Priest chose me to be the one to venture out and teach Serpine what he wanted to know.”
“The red right hand,” Valkyrie said.
Tenebrae gave the slightest of nods. “Agonising death inflicted by merely pointing at your victim, providing he was within range. Serpine had heard about it and he wanted it. I taught him. During our lessons, we talked. He made clear his