Triumph of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [125]
According to legend, the Temple of the Necromancers had been raised up from the stone of the mountain by the hands of the dead themselves. The summit of the mountain formed the Temples cavelike back wall, the magically altered peak that spiraled gracefully into the clouds was the Temple’s roof. The two side walls, facing east and west, were built out from the back. Following the natural lines of the mountain, they each rose up from the tops of sheer cliffs Bishop Vanya’s Garden—referred to in these days as the “top” of the mountain—was actually five hundred feet below.
The columned portico of the Temple, facing north, opened onto a large, circular expanse of level ground. Here, paving stones had been laid out in the shape of a wheel. Nine sidewalks formed nine spokes that led from the outer walkway to a huge altar stone in the hub of the wheel. One symbol of each of the Nine Mysteries was engraved at the end of each walkway. All nine symbols were repeated, carved into the altar stone.
This area had once been well kept. Comfortable wooden benches stood at intervals around the wheel’s hub. Between each of the nine spokes, beds of flowers had bloomed, coaxed by the hands of the druids to grow at this high altitude.
In this once lovely Garden, in this magnificent setting, people came from all over Thimhallan to counsel with, ask advice of, or merely pay a cordial visit to their dead. The Necromancers—born to the Mystery of Spirit and permitted by the Almin to dwell in both worlds, that of the living and that of the dead—acted as interpreters, carrying messages from one world to the next and back again.
The Necromancers had been a powerful Order, the most powerful in Thimhallan at the time of the Iron Wars, or so it was whispered. A word from the dead had been known to topple thrones and bring down royal houses. The Duuk-tsarith who feared nothing living, reportedly had trembled when they approached the Gardens of the Necromancers. There had been those, particularly among the rulers of the land, their warlocks, and their catalysts, who had looked upon this power with a jealous eye.
No one knew exactly how the Necromancers perished during the Iron Wars. It was a confused time. Countless numbers of people lost their lives during that bloody conflict. The Necromancers had always been a very small sect; few people were born to the Mystery of Spirit, and fewer still had the discipline to enable them to endure a life of death. It is easy to understand how a small group might have perished and their passing gone unnoticed.
Suffice it to say that at war’s end the catalysts announced that the Necromancers had been wiped out. The practicers of the Dark Arts, the Technologists, were blamed for the murders, as they were blamed, for every evil that had befallen the land during the past century.
Few missed the Necromancers. The dead of the land—and there were many—had generally died bitter deaths. The living were only too happy to put their grief out of their minds and get on with living, which, in many cases, was difficult enough.
If any thought to wonder why no more children were born to the Mystery of the Spirit, they might have asked the catalysts or the Duuk-tsarith or the parents of children who occasionally heard voices not audible to others or talked to friends that were not there. In these instances, the children either outgrew this strange phase or, if the “phase” persisted, the children disappeared.
What Father Saryon said about the Temple was true—people were prohibited from setting foot on Temple grounds. But—and this is not to disparage the word of the catalyst, who was undoubtedly repeating the gossip of the Font—it was not true that the Temple had fallen under a curse. It was not true that certain powerful catalysts had tried to lift the curse and had never returned.
The truth of the matter was very simple—no one had ever bothered. The only curse the Temple of the Necromancers lay under was