There was always a haunted quality about the place, even before anything bad happened. -- Caroline Zancan, We Wish You Luck
Everyone in Saoridhlém knew some version of the story. The trouble was, all the widely-known versions varied wildly in the most crucial details. As for the people involved in the story, they refused to say what really happened. Everyone pieced together their own account, full of mistakes and outright fiction.
Not even Ilaran knew the full story. But he knew enough. One thousand and seven hundred years ago Prince Siarvin had been well-respected, increasingly powerful, and everything indicated he had a glittering career ahead of him. He could even have become the ruling prince of Tananerl. Then he visited Eldrin, capital of Saoridhlém. The next anyone heard of him, he had been embroiled in a scandal and accused of the most horrific crimes. Then the whole business was abruptly hushed up. Siarvin married a Saoridhin noblewoman and never returned to Tananerl.
You didn't have to be a genius to know there was a great deal missing from that story. Tananerl's people believed Siarvin had been the victim of a conspiracy, possibly by his older brother or other rivals. Saoridhlém's people believed he was a criminal who got off scot-free.
Ilaran's mother had believed her sworn-brother's[1] wife had many sins to answer for. She had died without ever learning the truth. Ilaran's princedom was finally secure enough for him to leave it unattended for an extended visit to Eldrin.
He owed it to his uncle and the spirit of his mother to finally learn the truth.
Passersby stopped and stared at him as he walked towards his uncle's manor. Ilaran ignored them all. He'd spent his entire life getting disapproving looks from some part of his family. At least today there was a real reason for them. He knew perfectly well what connotation green had for the Saoridhins. He'd chosen his clothes today with that in mind. Let them scowl and mutter all they liked. He was long past caring. Centuries of scorn, deserved and undeserved, had a way of creating indifference in even the most sensitive person.
Kastlán Manor was unusually large for the family home of a mere rúdaun[2]. What was stranger was that it had two separate buildings. Haliran-rúdaun lived in the main house. Her husband lived in the other one, and rarely left it even to visit his wife. Everyone took this as proof that their particular version of the story was true.
The gate-keeper stared very hard at Ilaran when he approached. She took in the colour and style of his clothes, the lack of jewels braided through his hair[3], and the high, pointed griordul[4] he wore. She bowed and greeted him before he even spoke.
"Your Highness," she said. "The lord is expecting you."
Ilaran raised an eyebrow.
I didn't send word ahead, he thought suspiciously as he walked through the gate. The obvious solution struck him as he made his way towards his uncle's house. Damn you, aunt. Stop meddling in my business!
The front door opened as he reached the steps leading to it. Prince Siarvin looked down at him with weary resignation. Ilaran stopped and bowed low.
"Greetings, uncle," he said in Siarvin's native language.
Siarvin shook his head. He looked awful, Ilaran realised when he straightened up. He was painfully thin, his eyes sunken and shadowed, and his hair lank and devoid of decoration. Even his clothes were a dull shade of brownish-red with no embroidery.
"I told you not to come," he said in the same language. "There is nothing you can do here."
"With respect, uncle, I disagree."
Common sense said Siarvin was right. But Ilaran had inherited his mother's stubbornness even though he inherited little else from her. He would learn the truth if it killed him.
Some understanding of this showed in his uncle's face. They stood looking at each other in silence for a long time. At last Siarvin sighed and stepped back.
"Well, now you're here you might as well come in. And for goodness' sake, did you have to wear that colour? Everyone will say you're an evil witch[5]!"
~~~~
There were many absurd stories in Neleth Ancalen. They claimed Irímé had no heart, or else that he wasn't really an immortal but one of the shapeshifting creatures his mother had found on one of her travels, or even that he was some sort of spirit.
Irímé wished he knew who had started them. More to the point, he wished he knew why they started them. His mother had made it very clear over the centuries that he was going to marry into the royal family, and heaven help anyone who interfered with that plan. If his future in-laws heard some of the rumours they would be reluctant to let the marriage go ahead.
Abihira herself probably wouldn't care. Irímé had known her all his life and he still didn't know what to make of her. She was the only person he'd ever met who let a snake bite her just to see what would happen.
Life had taken on an unreal, dream-like air as he prepared for his visit to the capital. He tried to cling to some semblance of normalcy. Like always he tended to the flowers in the greenhouse that he had planted himself. Like always he read books about mysterious and faraway places that he had never visited. Like always he attended every concert playing the music of composers he especially liked. But in the background he still heard people whispering about him when they thought he couldn't hear. It didn't quite hurt. People would always talk, about anyone and everyone. Yet he wished they wouldn't tell such ridiculous stories.
For the first time in many years his mother would accompany him to Eldrin. She had to discuss wedding dates and arrangements with Abihira's parents. Irímé just knew that meeting Abihira this time would be horribly awkward. It was one thing to think of their marriage as something far in the future. It was quite another to know it was practically just around the corner.
On the day before they left he went out to the archery range for the first time in several months. For most of the day he fired at the targets again and again, until he could almost convince himself he'd silenced his dread of tomorrow. All the same, in the evening he went back to the house full of barely-smothered resentment -- towards his mother, towards the royal family, towards everyone who arranged his life for their convenience and never consulted him.
I wish tomorrow was over, was his last conscious thought before he fell asleep.
~~~~
It took Abihira the better part of a week before she was able to slip away from the palace unobserved. If she was still in Seroyawa she would have had no difficulty avoiding everyone. But she hadn't lived in her parents' home for over five centuries. She first had to rediscover the best hiding places before she knew where to go.
At last she found an old barn far out in the palace grounds. In winter it was used to store grain for the horses. In summer it was empty except for mice and a few pieces of horse tack.
It was the last place anyone would expect necromancy would be practiced.
Over the years she had found many ancient books full of long-forgotten magic she didn't fully understand. Unfortunately for everyone she understood enough to piece together the general idea. Result: necromancy.
She hadn't gotten beyond the theoretical stage in Seroyawa. Now she had peace and quiet, her collection of notes, and a stack of mouse corpses in various stages of decomposition.
First attempt, she scribbled in her notes, fresh corpse. She paused and looked at the dead mouse. It was missing most of its fur, and the smell made her nose wrinkle. She added "(relatively)" after "fresh corpse". Method: runes.
There was just one problem. She couldn't figure out what sort of runes the books' authors had in mind. Most of them were from planets far away. Some were in languages she didn't speak. Abihira flicked through a book before giving up.
I'll figure it out myself.
She drew the runes generally used for "life" and "death". After a minute's thought she added the Classical Seroyawan character that meant "become". Then she took a deep breath and reached out with her magic.
Nothing happened. The runes might as well have been meaningless scribbles. Abihira shrugged and added a new line to her notes.
Outcome: failure.
Her second attempt could hardly be called an attempt. She tried to recite a spell. The problem was she didn't know what spell to use.
"I need better books," she grumbled.
It was a pity the Saoridhin form of necromancy had been outlawed countless millennia ago. Records of it were practically nonexistent. The only surviving mentions she could find were about how evil and deadly it was. What a ridiculous overreaction to something that had never caused any harm and had actually helped solve some crimes. No one had even bothered to record why it suffered such a sudden and dramatic fall from grace.
Next she tried magic on its own. This time she got a result. It just wasn't the one she wanted. Before her astonished eyes the mouse's corpse crumbled to dust.
Third attempt, she scribbled in her notes. Her handwriting, never the neatest, now strongly resembled the wanderings of a drunken spider. Outcome: failure. Must find out what happened.
~~~~
She spent the rest of the afternoon trying to recreate the incident of the disintegrating mouse. Most of the corpses were completely unaffected. Some of them became notably more decomposed. Two even burst into fire, and one exploded. Abihira added increasingly illegible entries to her notes with each successive failure. She almost forgot what she had originally been trying to do.
Then, to her own amazement, one of the corpses got to its feet. It took a few shambling steps before it collapsed. Abihira stared at it for several minutes. It never moved again.
She grabbed her pen, splashed ink over the barn floor in her haste to write, and scribbled a barely-coherent account of the incident. Then she began trying to reanimate the mouse again.
By the time the sun set she had managed to make most of the corpses move. The fully-skeletal ones were the easiest to control. With the still-intact ones she was fighting against rigor mortis, and usually it won. None of the reanimated mice stayed reanimated. As soon as she stopped using magic on them they always fell down and went back to being normal corpses. None of them were truly brought back from the dead. They were just puppets she forced to dance on her strings.
Abihira wrapped her books and notes up in a waterproof horse blanket. Her mind was full of plans and possibilities as she went back to the palace. Obviously the next step was to try to actually create a living corpse. For that she would need a lot more practice. And more corpses. As many corpses as she could find.
She just had to keep her parents from learning about it.
Chapter Footnotes:
[1] Swearing to be brothers and/or sisters is a fairly widespread custom and indicates how much the swearers trust and admire each other. As soon as they swear the oath they're considered actual siblings even though they're not related, so Siarvin isn't Ilaran's uncle by blood.
[2] rúdaun = Title roughly equivalent to baronet.
[3] Both men and women in Saoridhlém commonly braid jewels -- artificial jewels, in most cases -- into their hair. It's both a form of decoration and a way to show off their wealth.
[4] griordul = A sort of high, pointed headdress similar to the medieval horned headdress, usually embroidered and sometimes with a veil attached. It's worn by both men and women in Tananerl, but is virtually unknown everywhere else.
[5] evil witch = The word used here ("vorþon" in Tananerlin, "ómra" in standard Saoridhin) refers specifically to a legendary character, often a villain in fairy-tales, who causes disease everywhere they go. Like most titles in Saoridhin it's used for both men and women.