determined what I shall do with you. But you appear a hearty specimen. You have some use.'
Owen shook his head. 'You will not make me into one of your pasmortes.'
'I definitely hope not.' Du Malphias tapped his finger against the hanging glass. 'Curious properties, this fluid. I created something akin to it a number of years ago.'
From the pocket of his black frock coat he produced a crusted bottle. 'Others have conducted alchemical researches looking for the fabled Philosopher's Stone. They expect to find something that will turn dross to gold. Their dreams of avarice, while admirable, are pitiful in their lack of ambition. I sought something different, and I call it vivalius. After years of experimentation in my spare time, since you Norillians have required me to serve my country with my knowledge of military science, I have discovered and refined many of its more interesting properties. Creating the pasmorte is but one thing to which it is well suited.'
He set the bottle between Owen's legs and turned toward the returning Quarante-neuf. The servant bore a wide, flat, wooden box, but du Malphias eclipsed it before Owen could get a good look. The Tharyngian opened it and fiddled with something, while looking back at Owen over his shoulder.
'Vivalius quickens healing and I would have used it on your leg, save that your application of the weed ruined any chance I had of truly testing the results. This is a pity because I think you would have done well under treatment.' Du Malphias turned, a small pistol in his hand. 'I should say, you will do well under treatment. One leg with vivalius, the other with the native preparation.'
Du Malphias sighted down the pistol's barrel. 'In the name of Tharyngia, Captain Strake, I thank you for your contribution to science.'
The man's cold smile evaporated in the cloud of gunsmoke.
Chapter Thirty-One
July 14, 1763
Prince Haven
Temperance Bay, Mystria
P rince Vlad sat in his laboratory. He'd cleared a place at his table and had laid out all three of Owen's letters, along with the journals and the best map of the surrounding colonies. He'd added to them several piles of books in a variety of languages, and had marked many passages with slender paper slips.
The third letter, the one brought by Jean Deleon, had arrived only that morning from Temperance. The letter covering it came from Doctor Frost, who indicated that Deleon said he had more information he would be pleased to sell in the event it would bring a good price. Deleon was certain the information would be very valuable.
The Deleon letter confirmed what had been suspected in the earlier two and expanded upon it. Du Malphias had indeed managed, somehow, to return a man to life. Ilsavont had been distant but clearly functional and the Prince was willing to assume the writer of the journal had been dead or dying or dying again as explanation for the journal's deteriorating reports.
It was after the receipt of the second letter that the Prince had begun his examination of the issue of necromancy. His library, though one of the largest on the Continent, had surprisingly few references to it. They generally fell into three categories. The first explored such rumors as a matter of folktales. The second condemned practitioners as diabolists and promised them an eternity in lakes of burning brimstone. These books, all written by learned Church fathers, claimed that practitioners, liars that they were, grossly exaggerated their success.
The third category's exemplars were the books on his desk. While the Prince confined his studies largely to those of the natural sciences, many reference books did touch upon the subject here and there. An anthropologist, in sorting a variety of avian bones found in a midden, used a magickal sense of which bones belonged to which grouping to help with his sorting. His subsequent reconstruction of the skeletons proved accurate. This was taken as a confirmation of the Law of Contagion, and the anthropologist went on to speculate, based on impressions he'd gotten from the bones, as to the life-cycle of extinct birds. He went so far as to suggest that someday magicks might be able to reanimate the skeleton and verify his theory about the birds' locomotion.
Such was the nature of most mentions. No one claimed outright to have reanimated the dead, but they speculated that such a thing was possible. In other cases, certain magicks and magickally fashioned preparations had been effective in banishing ghosts and spirits from certain locations. If true, these reports suggested that magick could interact with the departed.
Had du Malphias dared do what others only speculated about?
Vlad steepled his fingers. Addressing that question would be the endpoint of an inquiry that had decidedly more humble beginnings. If reviving the dead were even possible, it would require great knowledge, great intelligence, and great power. There was no doubting du Malphias had the first two qualities, but great power? According to everything Prince Vlad had been taught about magick, such levels of power were simply unknown.
In the Old World.
The Shedashee were more adept at magick than any of the settlers. Whether or not they could raise the dead was a moot point. They were more skilled and powerful than Vlad had been led to believe was possible. That fact put the lie to that very proposition. Add to that the idea that the Crown granted charters for schools of magick, and anyone teaching outside the charter system would be decried by Crown and Church. Could it be that magicks more powerful than commonly believed were possible, and that the Crown was hiding this bit of reality from the people?
Vlad smiled. Though the peasantry might not think the Queen would ever lie, they were lied to every day. Official statements proclaimed the Villerupt campaign a victory for Norisle. Allies had been scapegoated for failures, every dead man had been declared a hero, and every officer had been elevated despite having had to retreat from the Continent. With so much ceremony attending the troops' return, one could not help but think they had been the victors.
The Prince accepted that greater and more powerful magicks existed. He based this on the evidence of the Shedashee and the fact that when he'd been taught to shoot, his instructor praised him for having taken to it more quickly than Princess Margaret's children had. 'There will be more of this for the likes of you.'
But, in fact, there had not been. The King had died childless while fighting on the Continent. Margaret was elevated to the throne, bypassing his father who, at that time, served as Governor-General of Mystria. He'd later been recalled to Launston and reentered the monastery from which he'd been drawn to marry Vlad's mother, and the Governor-Generalship fell to Vlad.
Whether or not du Malphias could raise the dead, heal those believed dead, or somehow cobble together bones and make them function, all three possibilities resulted in a single outcome. Du Malphias would have a superior supply of labor. Moreover, troops convinced of their functional immortality might abandon fear and good sense, fighting on in situations where they might otherwise flee. Such resolution would create an army that would deliver devastating casualties no matter how hopeless their situation.
He recognized, instantly, that his three conclusions amounted to the same thing: the balance of power in Mystria had shifted. While New Tharyngia had proved as wealthy a colony as Mystria, its smaller population and corresponding diminution of military power had curbed Tharyngian adventurism. More power, especially with du Malphias in charge of it, pointed to great trouble ahead.
Of course, anything wrought through magick could also be unmade by it. A spell could light brimstone afire. Another spell, applied quickly enough, could extinguish that fire. Granted, the mage would have to touch the fire to make the magick work-getting burned in the process-but the fire would go out. Touching a magickally enhanced soldier would likewise constitute a severe danger.
But iron is an anathema to all magick.
The Prince turned and snatched up the journal. He flipped halfway through, to where the pages became blank, and started making notes. He jotted a crude diagram and did some calculations. Then another idea popped into his head and he made another drawing.
He pushed his chair back and grabbed a measuring string. Looping it about his neck, he darted from his study and down across the lawn toward the wurmrest.
He never quite got there.
Nathaniel Woods waved from the shore as he pulled the canoe up. Kamiskwa jumped from the back and helped
