The Necromancer

Chapter 9

Harry had never had an outer body experience before, but he guessed that must be what was happening to him as his mind seemed to leave his body so he could gaze down at the scene below him.

Rylan stood grinning at Harry, hands dripping with blood, while Harry’s body stood still as a statue, eyes unseeing, while the raven flapped around them both in a uneven circle.

“Kill, kill,” the raven screeched, though who exactly he was talking to Harry hadn’t a clue. He still wasn’t sure what the raven even was, and now was not the time to ponder on that particular mystery.

“They gave you a guide?” Rylan said while he briefly observed the raven.

Harry said nothing, could say nothing, since his mind was still floating somewhere far, far above the rest of him.

Rylan shrugged off Harry’s silence and went on as if Harry had answered him anyway. “And a raven, too. You must have made an impression, my boy. I always knew you had a lot of potential.”

Without warning, Harry’s mind fell back down in his body, and the sensation of being corporal again was almost painful as his muscles tightened and blood rushed in his ears.

“How?” Harry managed to grind out between clenched jaws. More than anything he wanted to know how Rylan had found them. He already knew why Rylan had murdered Rindyll; to punish Harry for daring to run away.

“How?” Rylan released a burst of obnoxious laughter and gave Harry a look as though he never realized before how stupid Harry was until that moment. “Did you really think anyone in this world could walk the deathlands without me knowing they’d opened a portal?”

Ah. Of course. Harry squeezed his eyes shut. He should have realized that. Someone should have realized that. At once Harry’s chest filled with fiery fury directed at Karakas and Auntie Eustice and most of all himself, for not realizing that a necromancer as powerful as Rylan would sense the moment someone else opened a gateway to the deathlands.

Harry should have known and now Rindyll was dead.

Rylan’s bloody smirk slipped off his face and at once his expression became one of intense focus. “You know why I am here, what I came for.”

Harry swallowed hard around the thick grief in his throat. “I know. And I’m going to have to disappoint you.”

Narrowing his eyes, lips thinning, Rylan stalked closer to Harry, who remained frozen in place. “You did not dare, boy.”

“I did,” Harry said in a trembling voice, because he knew that this was the moment that would decide everything, Harry’s entire future and probably even his life. “I burned it all.”

Rylan released an unearthly screech as he raised both hands, blood dripping from his palms, and send a burst of sheer magic in Harry’s direction. It hit Harry in the chest hard enough to crack a few ribs and it sent him flying backwards until he landed hard enough to drive the air from his lungs.

“Tell me you are lying!” Rylan screamed, advancing on Harry with furious strides. “Give me the ritual, you useless sack of shit!”

Harry fumbled in his pocket to get hold of the opal he used to cast wizarding magic while trying desperately to inhale breath after breath through his burning ribs. He raised a shaking hand and aimed a finger at Rylan. “Stupefy!”