Work Text:
Toll The Dead
Thirty years ago…
Lurian stood outside his aunt’s tower. His uncle lived there, too, but that’s not who he needed.
In his arms, he held the lifeless body of his birthday present: a spider the size of a baby. She was beautiful, with delicate blue and black markings and soft clawed toes. He’d named her Fiona. She’d followed him everywhere for weeks, slept at the foot of his bed, plucked meat out of his hand as he fed her under the table.
And Elvanuit had killed her.
His father had taught him the cantrip prestidigitation. He used it now to remove all traces of the tears he’d been crying on the way over to Lady Fildara Filiom’s tower.
Grief made the boy bold. He knocked on the door. A slave opened it.
“I am Lurian T’Salvithian, and I wish to see my lady aunt,” Lurian told the halfling woman. She was about his height, gray hair neat as a pin, dressed in his aunt’s deep red livery.
“I will see if she is available.” The slave led him into the drawing room.
He’d never been in a necromancer’s drawing room before, never actually visited his aunt and uncle in their home. He and his sisters were too young for proper conversations with a famous and very busy wizard.
The art on the walls was all anatomical illustrations painted in hyper-detailed oils. Lurian studied them with fascination. He’d seen line drawings in textbooks, but these were so lifelike that it was almost like looking inside somebody.
“Boy,” said a cold, feminine voice behind him. His aunt. He spun to face her and bowed deeply, just as he’d been taught to do. “Do your parents know you’re here?”
“No, my lady,” he said. He glanced up at his aunt. She was almost six feet tall. She wore a deep blue velvet gown with a plunging neckline and her red hair braided into a complex spiderweb design.
“Rise, child.” He did. Lady Fildara looked faintly amused. “What in Lolth’s web are you doing here? And what are you holding?”
“This is Fiona. She was my birthday present, and my sister killed her.” He did not cry again. His voice did not quiver. He unwrapped his pet’s body, showing his aunt the oozing wounds in her abdomen where Elvanuit had stabbed her again and again. “I thought…”
“You thought I could resurrect your pet because I animate the dead.” She pointed to an ornate settee upholstered with burgundy dyed spider silk. “Sit.”
Lurian sat, cradling Fiona in his lap. “Yes, my lady aunt.”
Lady Fildara sat beside him. “Resurrection is not what I do. I am not a cleric.”
“Oh.” He looked down at Fiona. He wouldn’t cry again. He wouldn’t. Pale innards oozed out of Fiona’s abdomen onto her fur. He used prestidigitation to clean it away.
“How old are you, boy?” asked his aunt.
“Eighteen, madam.”
“And that was prestidigitation, was it not?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Most children your age cannot cast more than dancing lights, and many cannot even manage that.”
“I can do fairy fire, too.” Lurian cast fairy fire, bathing everything in the drawing room in a blue, glittery light. It didn’t last as long as it was supposed to, but it lasted longer than he’d been able to manage before.
His aunt’s eyebrows lifted. “You appear to have some talent for spellcasting. Remain here.” Lady Fildara rose from the settee and left the room in a dry whisper of skirts. Lurian remained. The clock on the wall ticked.
Someone screamed elsewhere in the tower. Lurian jumped. It didn’t sound like Lady Fildara or Uncle Pharven, so it was probably a slave being punished and therefore it didn’t matter.
Lady Fildara returned a moment later. A slave with a blank face and a shuffling gait followed her, holding a freshly severed hand.
“I will show you a spell that you cannot yet cast, and then teach you one within your capabilities. Would you like that?”
Lurian’s eyes lit up. “Yes, please!”
“Sit beside me.” His aunt sat on the floor. He sat beside her, careful not to disturb her skirts. Mother punished him when he wrinkled her skirts.
Lady Fildara set up five black candles around them and sketched out a spiderweb pattern dotted with runes and symbols with charcoal. She drew symbols on the severed hand and laid it in the circle. Then she began to speak in a language he’d never heard before. After a minute, the hand began to twitch. The symbols drawn on it vanished. It crawled around on the floor, leaking blood.
“Wow,” Lurian breathed, awestruck. “What’s that spell called?”
“Animate Lesser Undead.”
“Can I…May I touch it?” He looked up at his aunt for permission.
She smiled. “Of course.”
Lurian touched the hand. It was cool to the touch. It fascinated him, feeling tendons and bones move with nobody attached to them.
“Now, listen carefully. This is called Toll the Dead.” Lady Fildara spoke a word in that same language. A loud bell sounded. The hand jerked and stopped moving. “You try.” She pointed at her blank-eyed slave.
“Are they undead?” he asked. He’d never seen a zombie up close before.
“It is,” his aunt confirmed. “You can’t hurt it.”
Lurian took a deep breath and tried to say the spell exactly as his aunt had. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing.
“It’s your pronunciation,” said his aunt. She said the word again, slower, without casting the spell.
“Is that a language?” Lurian asked.
“It’s Draconic. It’s the perfect language for spellcasting, in my opinion.”
Lurian tried the spell again. His pronunciation was much closer to what his aunt had said. There was a little “clink” noise. He’d done it!
“That’s the correct pronunciation. Now work on your focus and intent. Intent is extremely important in spellcasting. This spell can kill. Try again.”
He did, pretending he was a big, scary dragon. The “clink” noise was much louder. One of the zombie’s fingers fell off.
“You can do better than that. Pretend it’s your sister.”
Lurian’s eyes narrowed. He imagined Elvanuit’s sneering face. A cold anger bubbled up in him. He recited the spell again. A bell sounded. The zombie slave dropped, head falling off.
He looked up at his aunt. She was smiling, so he smiled, too. His mother never smiled at him like that, like she was proud. That was how his mother smiled at Elvanuit.
“Well done, Lurian. I have one more challenge for you. If you succeed, I will help you make your very own grimoire. Would you like that?”
He nodded, too excited to speak.
“Follow me. Leave your pet.”
He left Fiona on the settee and followed Lady Fildara deeper into the wizard’s tower. They went down and down a black stone spiral staircase. They stopped outside a cell in a dungeon.
Inside the cell, Lurian saw a human lady and a human boy about his size. The lady had one hand and a blood-spattered dress. It struck Lurian as a little weird that humans had the same color blood as Drow. If one was better than the other, shouldn’t their insides be different?
“Kill the boy,” instructed Lady Fildara.
Lurian’s eyes widened momentarily with surprise, then he returned his expression to stoic passivity. “My lady aunt…the spell works on living things as well?”
“It works on anything receptive to necromantic damage,” she answered patiently.
Lurian cast the spell. The bell sounded with a dull clunk. The boy gasped and started to cry.
“You can do better,” said Lurian’s aunt sharply. “Again.”
The woman shrieked. “No! No, my lady, please! He’s only eight! Please!” Lurian looked up at his aunt. Her face was cold and hard, so he kept his face that way, too. Getting no response from his aunt, the hysterical human woman reached her remaining arm through the cell bars towards Lurian. Alarmed, he took a step back, out of her reach. “My lord, please! Have mercy on my son! Please!”
Lurian had never seen a mother behave like this. His mother certainly wouldn’t, not even for Elvanuit. He hesitated.
Lady Fildara crouched down beside her nephew and whispered in his ear, “Do this, or I will teach you nothing.”
Lurian took a deep breath and pretended the human boy was his older sister. He cast. The bell sounded out, deep and loud. The human boy dropped dead.
Lurian heard the human woman’s anguished scream, but he didn’t listen to it. What he listened to was his aunt murmuring in his ear, “Good job. I’m proud of you.”