The Lake of the Lost

“Stop. Good job. That’s a nice obedient set of mules you’ve got, friend. Now take those long, black fingers off the reins. Lock the axle. Now set those fingers on the rail in plain view. Keep those hands steady too. My comrade here’s a spaz with his crossbow lever.”

“I am only a poor necromancer,” said the wagon driver. His voice was deep and resonant.

The other man closed swiftly as the head of his crew - a dozen men. He gestured with a rusted iron speartip. “What’s in that big, chained crate you’re hauling?”

“A body.”

“Just one?”

“I’m low on stock.”

The spokesman with the spear eyed the wagon-driver as he walked up alongside the seat. His men circled around, spanning the bridge, two with loaded crossbows. “Bodies don’t sell anyway,” said the spokesman. He tapped his teeth with the tip of the spear. “You’ll have spell materials. If nothing else, there’s these fine cloven animals. Where’s the key to that padlock on the crate?”

Upon his face - a dark face, with a short salt and pepper beard, cropped curly hair, and iron eyes - Othelmedir the necromancer held a dour expression, like one grown weary of his Time. His brain moiled. How to escape?

Othelmedir cursed his carelessness. He should have watched the far bank of this lake when he first drove his oxen onto its bridge. A question of theory had distracted him: did the bridge represent a genuine piece of The Road of Graves? The huge paving stones each bore a deceased’s fading inscription, just like the stones in the rest of the road. Yet the bridge spanned a wide, cold, pale lake. With no soil beneath the memorializing stones, where were the remains interred?

“Down you come,” said the lead marauder, and with a tink of his speartip on the stones he drew Othelmedir’s attention.

“I am known in this country,” said Othelmedir, “and I’ve never paid a toll on this bridge.”

“Liar,” said the chief evenly. “You’ve never come this way. Anyway, we’re not tollmen.”

Othelmedir changed tactics. “Perhaps you know about this bridge? How can it be a part of the Road of Graves? I see the-”

“Pull him down,” the chief interrupted. One of the men stepped onto the driver’s bench and dragged Othelmedir out. In the bed of the wagon, the chained crate jingled.

Dragging their victim off his wagon, onto the bridge, the marauders discovered a giant. Othelmedir towered a head above the tallest marauder, though he rose thin as a pond reed under a cloak the color of oxblood. The chieftain reached up a long way, undid the clasp of this cloak, and pulled it away. He whistled, initially low at the soft richness of the velvet, then louder as he beheld a gleaming white mass over Othelmedir’s left shoulder, like a marble pauldron. “What’s this?” asked the chief, tapping the pauldron with his spear.

“Fabricated tissue,” said Othelmedir.

“‘Poor necromancer’ indeed.” The chief barked a laugh. Othelmedir’s nose crinkled.

“The box is chained tight,” called a bandit from the wagon.

Othelmedir placed a fist over his mustache and muttered, as if he were complaining under his breath. One of the bandits behind him saw the steady cadence of the moving lips, however, and kicked the back of Othelmedir’s knee. The necromancer fumbled his spell and fell like a redwood.

“Carve his neck,” said one man. He bent with a knife to put words to action.

The brigand chief tisked once. The knife man stopped. The chief said, “Stuff his mouth. That’ll stop spells. No need to make a vengeful ghost.”

Othelmedir started to thank the chief, keeping his sarcasm to himself, but was interrupted by the gagging cloth. It tasted like the spit of dead men.

The man with the knife watched Othelmedir without blinking, as the latter climbed back to his feet. Meanwhile, the others had started combing through the goods Othelmedir kept in the jockey box.
One man pulled out the necromancer’s singing mushroom, saw the human mouth on the underside of its cap, and dropped it in surprise. They took his firebug lantern, as well as his old steel basinet, his shovel, his banshee-wax, his flints, his cube of moss, and the flour sack he used to carry bone dust.

Othelmedir looked at his singing mushroom where it lay on the bridge. He frowned around his gag. He was thinking: how much of the spell had he completed before the marauder had kicked his knee, interrupting him? He had not begun the motifs of Desire or Nature; had he completed those of Shaping? If so, it was less of a spell, more of an unbounded, open invitation in Deadspeech.

Othelmedir felt a hand clap his shoulder, and heard the chief’s voice: “I have a deal. We won’t strip your shirt, your pants, or your boots. In return, you’ll produce the key to that box’s padlock.”

Othelmedir turned to face the chief. His hands had been tied before him; he raised them and pointed to his gag.

The chief shook his head. “No, my tall friend. You have no need to speak. Don’t make yourself difficult. I said I don’t want your avenging ghost on my back - and I meant it - but if you think we’ll stop short of-”

A sharp gasp - as if the atmosphere had suddenly exhaled through its teeth - interrupted the bandit leader. He and all his men turned to the water. Othelmedir had settled his eyes on his mushroom. The fungus’s tiny human mouth had started humming a soft song. Now Othelmedir let his eyes drift to the lake as well.

GASP.

GASP. GASP.

Three plumes broke the choppy pale surface of the lake, like the while spray. As the water fell in sparkling curtains, three upright cadavers stood upon the surface, joining a fourth. The bodies were mostly skeleton. Only some small pieces of flesh still clung like tattered sailcloth to their bones. A bloom of ice spread from the toe-philanges of each, giving them surfaces to walk upon.

“Gasps,” said one of the marauders, naming the un-dead. As he said it the nearest creature reached up. From a bag chained to its neck, it plucked a stone. It whipped its arm back. Forward. The stone flew and struck the man in the head, fracturing his skull. He dropped. Dead.

“Down!” called the chief. “Under the wagon.”

The men were already in motion as two more stones whipped like slingshots. One carved a crimson line along a marauder’s neck, just grazing him. Othelmedir had fallen to his belly - he crawled under the wagon.

GASP. GASP. GASP.

More of the rising dead. The mules drummed the bridge stones and braying like asylum patients, but the wagon’s brake held them in place.

GASP. GASP.

All could the crackle of forming ice. Three more stones whipped against the wagon, splintering boards, tearing fabric.

“They’re closing,” said one man who had darted his head above the parapet.

“Back to the shore,” said the chief. The men shimmied in that direction.

They stopped before they had begun. Two Gasps walked around the wing wall at the end of the bridge.

In front, behind, strolling with crackling steps across the freezing lake - the gasping dead came. The marauder chief flinched as another stone punctured the wagon cover. Like a wild cornered animal he stared all around, eyes white.

The chief saw Othelmedir. The latter jerked frantically at his gag.

“Kill the necromancer,” hissed one of the chief’s men. “He conjured them.”

The marauder chief crawled over to Othelmedir and, with a knife, cut the cloth from his face. Othelmedir spit.

“Did you summon them?” the chief demanded.

Another pebble from the front of the bridge drew sparks off the flagstones.

“It’s your own fault,” said Othelmedir. “You interrupted my spell.”

“Damn your-”

Othelmedir cut off the leader. “One of you, take this key and open the padlock.” One of the marauders cursed him. “Do it or we are all corpses.”

The same marauder cursed again, grabbed the key, and rolled from under the wagon. A stone zipped past his head as he threw himself at the cage lock.

Below the wagon, Othelmedir murmured steadily.

GASP. GASP.

Another stone zipped in, and the marauder at the wagon staggered. He held his footing though, and managed to jamb the key in the lock and twist.

At almost the same moment, Othelmedir completed his recitation.

The marauders fell silent - the one by the lock retreated. Even the Gasps paused.

The padlocked, chained box rattled.

Padlock, chain, and box boards exploded out from the back of the wagon - and a monster emerged.

A thing enormous and massive; a thing of stitched tissues; a thing of three elongated man-arms, and three eyes lying skewed on a disgusting face of cured human skin; a thing that stank of formaldehyde and burned hair. This behemoth stepped out from the crate and down from the wagon in one stride. When its foot struck the ground, a flagstone with a faded name cracked.

All of the gasps had mounted the bridge by then. They were not mindless. They paused.

“Grot,” said Othelmedir, for that was his monster’s name. “Kill the Gasps.”

Boom - boom - boom - boom. Each step of the golem struck the surface of the bridge like a drum, vibrating the stones under the chests of the men hiding beneath the wagon. The Gasps had, by then, formed a close circle on the bridge, surrounding the wagon. They launched into a pelting barrage. A circle of hail flew at the stomping behemoth.

The gasps died - again - in a circle.

The marauders, the chief, and Othelmedir crawled from beneath the wagon as Grot flung himself among the un-dead like a wolf among deer, scattering bones. The marauders watched the violence with communal appreciation. The un-dead, throwing themselves at Grot, had no more mind for the living men. They threw themselves against Othelmedir’s horror, only to disintegrate under blows from one of its three fists, or scatter into ribs whenever they met the front-kick of a two-hundred pound leg.

“A fine bit of mancy,” said the chief.

Othelmedir had started replacing his belongings inside the wagon’s chest. “He has standing orders for my protection,” warned the necromancer.

Only a dozen or so Gasps had risen from the lake. They could inflict no lasting wound on the reinforced leather exterior of Grot. Grot wiped them out to the last. The greatest damage the golem sustained was that one of his eyes was punctured. Othelmedir noticed this as he mounted the wagon, and Grot stomped back toward him. He frowned. He would need to find another eye.

As the necromancer pulled the axle brake, dusted and donned his thick velvet cloak, and set the skittish mules stamping nervously back on his intended course, he heard a grumble among the marauders. He ignored it. Then he heard the chief’s voice once more. “A protection fee might heal ill feelings among the family of my man who’s dead, stranger.”

Othelmedir tugged on the reins. He pulled the brake. He considered. The golem stamped up to stand beside the driver’s bench, awaiting orders. Othelmedir turned to his golem.

“Grot, kill those as well. Delicately,” he added, as the golem spun and pounded back on the marauders. The chief roared, and ordered his men to fight.

“I am low on good stock.”