Do not awaken the Undead king

  I was walking along the deserted field, with my feet sticking in the thick grass. My thoughts were all jumbled together because of the anger and disappointment I could scarcely restrain. Why did it turn out like this? Why? I’ve been preparing this project for a year and a half! Almost two years, even without taking the research time into account. No one has ever studied the language of bone dragons so thoroughly! Now, I can not only write and read in Ashgenrian, but also speak the language a little. What’s more, I’m sure my pronunciation is even better than Professor Gardaren’s! My grandma used to say I acquired the gift of being a linguist at my mother’s knee. Well, I told this to the Professor when I asked him to help me with entering Graduate School. He dared to laugh, when he gave me my diploma (with a C grade) back, and said, “I’m proud of you! Now, you can translate every children’s fa

  He had to think a little. At the very least to bring his thoughts into order. Oh, Dark, he hasn’t been alive for seven hundred years!   Reive looked down at the breathless girl and narrowed his eyes. She’d already managed to enrage him. The necromancer bent down, heaved her up by her feet and presumptuously slung her senseless body over his shoulder. But first he cast a glance over his talkative acquaintance and decided her figure was quite what it ought to be. As they say, everything was in place. Not like him. Reive looked at his own left palm. He wrinkled his nose. If he hadn’t knocked the girl out a minute ago, she’d have been screaming like a frightened peacock by now. But he had to admit there were some problems with his hand. It hadn’t fully reconstructed itself. It was a bare bone scarcely covered with flimsy flesh. The necromancer thought a little.

  At first, Reive didn’t understand what had happened. A black stain appeared on Angelina’s chest, encircling her lungs with long sticky tentacles. She was suffocating. The necromancer frowned in puzzlement. His sharp eyes were used to noticing changes in any situation, and they moved from the burdock where the meat lay, to the branches where the girl was shivering, and then all along the walls of the cave. Reive tried to grasp the reason for her seizure. He could find no reason. There wasn’t any poison in the food. The dry brushwood didn’t emit any black magic. And the shelter itself was an ordinary lair. It could mean only one thing: Angelina was ill. Regrettably, Reive wasn’t a doctor. He was a necromancer. If she kicked the bucket right now, the best thing he could do would be to make her into a nice clever undead girl. Say, a stryga. Or a lich. Though he didn’t even have enough ma

Without raising her eyes to him, she continued, “My name’s Angelina Vallebour. I grew up in the family of a potter, Ilona Vallebour, in the province of Arc. But the woman who replaced my mother wasn’t my real mother. I knew that from childhood, but it wasn’t done to talk about it, even to this day. My real mother gave me to Ilona. And every month, she paid her large sums of money, so I would need for nothing. I shouldn’t have known who my parents were. But one day, I overheard the truth.” The girl paused. Then, she shot a nervous hunted glance at the necromancer. Reive stiffened feeling how the young graduate’s voice held his attention. It wouldn’t let him go. It forced him to keep listening to her story. “So, my real mother turned out to be a very influential woman. Duchess Myria Clarian Castro-Arcs. The owner and sovereign of the whole province of the Arc. The sister of His Majesty the King. She concealed my birth because I’m a child born out of wedlock.”

“Sure,” Reive nodded calmly, gesturing to the monster. “Put it here and go out. Wait outside and guard the entrance. And don’t you try to stick your nose in here. See how you’re scaring the lady!” The necromancer gestured with his hand and the horrid scream-producing zombie gave me a nod. A cold wave ran down my spine. For a second, a blood-red flame flashed in his eye sockets. Then, everything became as it was before. It occurred to me that this zombie was very lucky: he still had his eyeballs. Now they were yellow-grey, with black pupils. From a distance, they might seem quite normal. If they didn’t flash with such a hungry red light, of course. I desperately wanted to huddle against Reive. To seize his hand, to hide behind his back which didn’t shudder like mine from each movement of the zombie. Then, I realized: a man who could raise the undead was much more dangerous than the undead he raised. I shifted my gaze to