The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [52]
“You said iron couldn’t be used in—” Awa began as she watched him work but he cut her off.
“I said iron dampens our ability to work our arts,” said the necromancer, stirring the bowl with a finger. “Try raising a skeleton the next time you’re holding a sword. Now, if it’s on your belt that’s something else … provided your belt’s not iron, of course. It’s all about binding, Awa, about trapping reality in a certain shape, which is the last thing we want sometimes and the first thing we need at others. We usually need reality to be malleable, mutable, open, not closed and set. Now drink this.”
“What?” Awa frowned at the bowl. Since moving back in with the necromancer she had been plagued with vivid, traumatizing nightmares, and if they did not involve Omorose they invariably featured her tutor torturing her. Several dreams had featured poison. “Why?”
“Because I am, for one final night, your master. Shall I make you?”
“No,” Awa said, and drank the mixture. She tasted other elements in the draught but there was nothing for it, and despite the rarity of luxurious, thick milk she gagged on her fear and the flakes of metal. He was going to murder her, she knew it, but why had he told her to live and—
“You’ll pass the iron soon enough, and then your abilities will return,” said the necromancer as he drew his fingers back inside his tunic and began pulling it over his head. “We all have a little in us, in our blood. It’s part of what makes blood such an essential element—it contains the mystical properties of incomprehensible life, yet it also carries cold, hard reality. Drink a little sometime and tell me I’m lying; you can tell by the taste. That’s why so few are disposed to working our wiles —too much iron, dampens them to the point that practicing witchcraft is impossible. That’s why you have to start young, to train yourself to fight against your very blood, to—What’s the matter?”
Awa had backed away as he stripped nude, the haze in the room making her dizzy, the milk curdling in her belly. She glanced into the fire to see if the pot hook was still there but he had removed that, too. He was moving toward her, his spindly nakedness disturbing in a way that no cadaver could match—they were supposed to look dead, after all.
“Don’t touch me,” she whispered. “Don’t you even—”
“Touch?” He blinked once and then laughed. “No, little Awa, no no. You won’t even have to touch me! My skin just needs to touch the stone, nothing more. I’m sorry to blather on, but I’m appreciating how much I never told you, how much you have to learn. Too late now, too late, too late. Now come over here and listen.”
He turned and clambered onto the table, and she saw that a wide flap of skin was missing from his mid-back down to his left buttock, the beet-red, rectangular wound only now scabbing over. Wincing as the granite met his exposed meat, he settled his puckered body down onto the oil-brimming channels like a starved hog in a nearly dried-out wallow. The smoke grew thicker and Awa realized he had blocked the chimney, her eyes stinging and her lungs burning. He gave a pleased sigh as he stretched out, his head turning to Awa.
“The iron’s taken effect by now.” His voice quavered the slightest bit, like an accomplished but nervous liar trying to fool his mother, and like an astute parent Awa picked up on the tremor though all other ears would have missed it. “You can’t do anything, so don’t try to be smart or it will end worse for you than it did for Omorose. Just do as I tell you and you’ll have your freedom.”
“Don’t you speak her name,