Toil and Trouble: 14

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'Undead sorceresses,' I said. 'Lovely.'

'I love you,' said Zareen.

I blinked. 'Thank you. Er, why?'

'It's been an age since I last had a good corpse-raising mystery to sink my teeth into.'

I winced a bit inside. The near juxtaposition of corpse and teeth-sinking was doing unfortunate things to my brain. 'Thank you for those mental images.'

'Always welcome, my darling.'

'You really are pleased with me, aren't you?'

She beamed at me.

'Then you should be pleased with Jay, too. He got the book.'

Her smiled faded. 'So, new questions. I cannot yet say whether Drogryre was involved with any of these covens, or if so, which type. But somebody really wanted to find her grave, and I'd say it's an awfully big coincidence that the area happens to have a history of necromancy as well.'

'Bill said Wester expected to find some kind of treasure.'

'He might have been promised something by way of a reward, if he was successful. Or they might have guaranteed his interest by telling him there were riches to be uncovered.'

'So you don't think there was treasure?'

'From what you've told me, Bill dismissed the idea, and he ought to know. That said...' Zareen sat back again. 'There was sometimes a tradition for magickers being buried with things like their grimoires, their Wands, their familiars (mummified), or any other personal artefacts they possessed some strong connection to. But I think Bill would have known about things like that.'

'Bill was her grimoire.'

'Eventually. I doubt she pulled Bill out of her hat the moment she took up magick. He's the kind of accomplishment that crowns a lifetime career, and presumably she had some other, more ordinary grimoire throughout her life up to that point. Even if she did, though, it's unlikely either Wester or Ancestria Magicka had any interest in that. Bill ought to have been enough.'

'So no treasure, no grimoire, probably no artefacts.'

'I'm telling you! It has to be necromancy.'

'Maybe back then, but now? The woman's been nothing but bone for centuries. What could anybody hope to accomplish with the skeleton of a long-dead sorceress? If they want to raise a strong magicker from the dead, how about somebody, er, fresher?'

That gave Zareen pause. 'It is harder with the recently deceased,' she said, though with a little doubt. 'People keep track of corpses nowadays. Nobody dies of plague and gets chucked into mass graves anymore. It's one thing to go dig in a field somewhere for somebody long-forgotten; quite another to crash an active graveyard and walk off with someone's grandmother.'

'Still, though,' I persisted. 'When you raise a magicker from the dead, what's the intent?'

'Enslavement to your will.'

'Right — as an undead being still capable of practicing magick, in some form or another. You want to purloin their abilities for your own use, which is why deceased Waymasters tend to have a round-the-clock guard posted over their graves for about six months straight. If this is the goal, do you think a crumbling old skeleton would be of any interest to anybody?'

Zareen frowned. 'I feel like I know the answer to this, but it's not coming to mind.'

'The answer?'

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