The Power and the Glory

Book 1 Chapter XII: The Undead Mouse

Don't know how long I'll sit behind this door
Before you build a little moat one day
Around a castle that can't be ignored
Where no one ever comes to stay
-- Stuart Townend, My Fault

"This is a terrible idea."

"You've said that before."

Kitri scowled and folded her arms. The effect was ruined by the wind that kept blowing her hair over her face. No one could look menacing when they got a mouthful of their own hair every time they tried to speak. "It bears repeating. I just want to make sure you know what an absolutely dreadful idea this is!"

An especially strong gust of wind came along just as she finished speaking. It pulled her hair completely out of the loose plait hanging down her back. For a minute her face disappeared entirely behind her hair. It took a great deal of self-control for Abi not to openly giggle at the sight.

Instead she rolled her eyes. Kitri was too busy fighting with her hair to notice. "Don't be stupid. What harm can mice do, alive or dead?"

She meant it as a rhetorical question. Naturally Irímé took the chance to answer it. Unlike Kitri he had his hair pulled back much more securely. Not content with merely braiding it, he also had the braid tied up in a ponytail. Unfortunately that meant the wind wasn't distracting him as much, and he had more liberty to make smart comments.

"They eat everything in their path," he said flatly. She was sure that was an exaggeration. "If you get us killed by undead mice, I'll come back as a ghost and haunt you."

Abi was strongly tempted to retort with, Aren't you threatening to become a necromancer yourself? She stopped herself mainly because she still didn't know where the line was between necromancy and ghosts. There was a difference. Every scholar agreed on that, though they varied wildly on everything else. But no two books ever agreed on what the difference was. Not even ones by the same author, illogical though it sounded.

Perhaps the difference is ghosts choose to linger on, while necromancers call back spirits already gone, she mused as she picked up a relatively fresh dead mouse by its tail. But some ghosts only appear decades after they died. Does that mean ghosts necromance themselves?

She put that thought aside for future investigation. At the minute she had more important things to think about. Namely, proving she could in fact perform necromancy safely. It would have been more convincing if she was able to raise a dead person. Alas, she could just imagine the uproar that would follow if she suggested it. A mouse would have to do for now. That had the added benefit of her already knowing what she was doing. She'd raised many mice before.

True, she wasn't sure she'd raised them successfully. The problem with animals was that you couldn't tell if they were exactly the same as they had been in life. But no undead mouse had ever tried to eat her yet.

Abi stared very hard at the dead mouse. In the background she was dimly aware Kitri and Irímé were staring very hard at her. Carefully she gathered her magic and reached out with it towards the corpse.

Stand up, she ordered.

The mouse twitched. Slowly it staggered to its feet. It stood up and then stopped moving.

Abi sat back, feeling very pleased with herself. "There! You see? It's not attacking us."

"Yet," Kitri corrected her with the air of a born pessimist. "It's not attacking us yet."

Irímé took a few steps forward. He knelt down in front of the mouse, which was still on its feet but no more alive than it had been before. Abi watched warily.

What is he doing? she wondered. Does he think this is all a prank?

Even at the height of her career as a prankster, using a mechanical mouse to make everyone think she was a necromancer was not her style at all. Irímé should know. He'd helped her plan a few tricks in years gone by.