Chapter Text
PRESCRIPT
I, the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus of the Ninth House, begin this record in addition to my theorem notes as a vain hope, and as hopeful vanity. The last two living daughters of the Ninth go now on a journey from which they will not likely return, which makes this journal the only continuity my House may ever have. It is for their sake that I record my observations and impressions, so that if I fail they may at least know the reasons for my weakness.
If I succeed but do not live, I desire that this journal be interred with my remains, where no living eye shall ever behold it, in the deepest catacombs that Anastasia carved. Let any who disregard my wishes be excommunicated from the black altar and die unshriven, and may their souls be flogged through the River for a myriad unceasing.
First day of Cenotaph expedition
Arrived on Gadus asteroid outpost. Space sickness is bothersome but tolerable. Tried the placket of grave dirt, but it is a placebo, as I suspected; after an hour it was totally useless. The trip itself lasted seven, as Gadus is on the very outermost border of the Nine Houses system and in fact can be barely counted to belong to it. I must be prepared for the space sickness to persist or even increase. It is imperative that I master my symptoms by the time the other House heirs arrive. I cannot let them see me in this state of weakness -- though their underestimation of my capabilities may be useful.
Nav, of course, is the picture of health. A picture drawn in crayon by an idiot. If I did not need her for this I would have strangled her with my grandmother's knucklebone rosary just for the thanergy I could drain from her death.
Accommodations abysmal. The shuttle pilot called it an "inn" but it is a sort of barracks or longhouse, wooden walls (the expense hardly bears contemplating), a few dozen rooms along a central corridor. As the first to arrive I expected to have my pick of situation, but it is not so. The permanent crew of the Cenotaph, which will be boarding with us when the ship arrives, has claimed all rooms but a handful, and all but one of that handful have been staked out by the other heirs in advance. The proprietor of the place (a Mr. Coffin — a pathetic joke, one assumes) would not yield to threats, bribery, or rank. Said he had not been sure that the Ninth House would be making an appearance, so did not know to reserve a room appropriate to my needs. He is insolent and deserves to have the flesh peeled from his bones and his skeleton made a figurehead on one of his own ships.
The room he finally condescended to give us is hardly bigger than a crypt niche. No powered lights; proprietor made excuses about a faulty generator and lack of fuel this far out. Deliberate insubordination. I would have Nav challenge him if she were useful for absolutely anything, which she is not. I only pray she will be killed by the beast a week into our voyage and a suitable replacement will be provided.
I sent her to carry in our trunks, but even that task is too complex for her tiny vestigial brain. She complained that I should have skeletons do it. Thought about explaining to her that space sickness makes necromancy impossible currently, but she would undoubtedly take advantage. Finally bribed her into it with the promise of buying her whatever passes for food on this desolate rock.
I can hear her in the hall. I should have made her take a vow of silence, but I fear the nature of our task may make it untenable. For the same reason I shall refrain from sewing her lips shut with corpse sinew — for now. Though I begin to regret it. She's talking to someone, I assume one of the Cohort stationed here. Discipline is appallingly lax. They're laughing. About what? Doesn't Nav realize that we go in all probability to our deaths, and the death of our House? And she’s laughing.
I'm sure she's praying the beast will eat me.
Headache abominable. Must rest.
Next day
Headache better. Everything else worse. My person was appallingly violated during the night. Woke up this morning with Nav in my bed! May the festering ghosts of her nameless ancestors haunt her nightmares. If this insolent familiarity is to be the tone of our voyage we will not both survive, and I set it down in record now that it might outlast my death and the death of my heirs: it will be her fault.
I have been forced to try to reconstruct the night’s events, as I was unconscious for most of them. Space sickness forced me to leave Nav unsupervised in the common hall, a combination kitchen and charnel pit where the degenerates on shore leave goad each other with ridiculous tales of martial prowess and poison themselves with some sort of liquor they call "revenant’s blood". I would never have entered it, but it's the only place on the asteroid to get any kind of rations, and Nav was becoming obnoxious. Our robes and paint were enough to keep the soldiers at a distance, but not their smell. Coffin brought us what they call “food”, but that reek combined with the pre-existing odors forced me to retreat to our rooms or destroy the mysticism of the Ninth by vomiting all over my cavalier.
Perhaps I should have. Instead I spent several hours in misery while Griddle, I assume, drank the revolting liquor favored by these dregs of the Cohort, and was so blind to the world that she crawled into my bed(!!) instead of utilizing the cavalier’s cot. I woke up apparently trapped beneath the corpse of a dead bear that stank of sweat and snored like a clogged engine intake. Nav had her arm around me! As though I were her wife (may the King Undying have mercy on whatever poor soul suffers that fate)! I record this only so that, if she survives this journey, an accurate report of her crimes will return to the Ninth and she will receive appropriate punishment.
I should have brought Ortus. I should have brought Crux.
I was relieved beyond telling to find that I have regained some capacity for necromancy. Thanergy is still dreadfully scarce, but there was enough to raise a construct to pull Nav off me and dump her on the floor, where she belongs. She muttered an obscenity and went back to sleep.
She's snoring now. I'll kick her awake once I've done some basic reconnaissance and found a sonic to sit in until the layer of epidermis that she touched is completely obliterated. I can still feel where her arm lay across me; the damn thing is heavy as Samael's chain.
Evening
Intriguing possibilities and further mysteries. I have taken this time to write while I may, before events overtake us. We are here for only a few more hours while the last preparations are made, then we are to board the Cenotaph in obedience to the Emperor's instructions and begin the hunt for his most lethal and implacable foe.
Trivialities first: kicked Griddle awake around noon. Tried to berate her for last night's presumption, but she just stared at me and said "Harrow, there's only one bed ," in a stupid voice like she was quoting one of her disgusting comics. I pointed out the cav cot placed conveniently for her use at the foot of the four-poster. She said, "That's a bench. Fuck if I'm sleeping on that." Thank the mercy of our Lord we aren't staying here another night.
The day was taken up with the arrival of the other House heirs. The Second, both starched and predictably military, arrived first; they went directly to the proprietor to discuss "security arrangements" and have been making random patrols of the facility, though finding nothing. The Third House arrived soon after. Twin necromancers! And a cavalier frankly too snide to be believed, but probably more skilled with a rapier than mine. The twins are grotesquely mismatched; one regal and commanding, the other pallid and pitiful. The smaller one seems to take pleasure in behaving suspiciously. She clings to her sister like a shroud, but watches everything and, I have no doubt, misses little.
With the Second and Third in attendance the common spaces of the inn became too crowded. I dragged Nav back to our room and bolted the door with bone. She whined at first, but when she saw that I was resolute, she resorted to doing her inane exercises, with extra jumping and clapping that I’m certain was intended solely to annoy me. I was annoyed, but that came to nothing. It was and is vital that the other Houses learn nothing about us that we do not wish them to learn.
At noon a commotion heralded the arrival of another shuttle. Nav was becoming unsubduable, she said out of hunger, so I was forced to go out to obtain more rations. It was not a totally useless trip, as it gave me a good three minutes in which to study the newly-arrived Sixth. The formidable Master Warden appears questionably malnourished, and his cavalier doesn’t say much. He had the coloring of a corpse, no doubt from space sickness, and she kept forcing tea on him, as though that would do any good. They sat at their table in the corner of the main hall making notes and talking too quietly to overhear. Both seemed anxious, which frankly tells me nothing. Lord knows we all have enough to be anxious about, and if they know more than the rest of us (very likely) they won't be willing to share it.
The other Houses avoided me, of course. Only the Master Warden nodded at me and said “Ninth,” courteously enough. I should have realized that he may be the least susceptible to rumor and superstition. I shall have to keep that in mind.
The yearning with which Griddle looked out the door on my return to our room made me reconsider the feasibility of a vow of silence. I managed to corner her with a few skeletons and extract from her a promise to keep her hood up and her stupid mouth shut. No idea how long it will last, but every minute we go without spoiling our mystique is an advantage. It's the only advantage we can claim.
In the afternoon Griddle ran out of physical diversions and threatened to start singing a ditty of her own devising called “Ninety-nine Puking Skulls On the Wall” if I didn’t let her out. Seeing that she wasn’t bluffing, I was forced to concede. At least she kept her vow. Instead of loitering with the others as I had feared, she set to doing what I can only assume were sword-fighting exercises in the little courtyard by the shuttlepad. None of the other cavaliers cried "Imposter!", so her form must pass the most basic level of muster for a half-witted cavalier who's never fought a real duel in her life. I am thankful for these small mercies. And I am thankful that I was therefore in the courtyard myself, keeping an eye on her, to see the last shuttles land and the Cenotaph enter the asteroid's shell of atmosphere.
The last three shuttles arrived in a cluster before the great ship itself, like fish fleeing a shark. The first of these disgorged the Eighth House cavalier and necromancer like spitting out a couple of rotten teeth. They spoke to no one, and have not spoken since -- possibly they are also under a vow of silence. Possibly even a genuine one.
Out of another shuttle came four people, two adults and two children, Fifth and Fourth respectively by their colors; but no one paid them any mind. The last shuttle opened to reveal a gigantic man in Seventh green, a lump of frankly upsetting muscle with biceps even more grotesque than Griddle's, carrying his languishing adept like a rolled-up carpet. I gather this to be the Duchess Septimus. I don't see how she'll live out a week, since it seems the voyage here all but killed her. The Sixth Warden nearly had an apoplectic fit running to reach her, and had to be hauled along by his cavalier by the scruff of the neck. Whatever obscure operations they performed on her with vials and wires revived her enough that she was able to sit up and expel blood all down the front of his robes. Against all reasonable expectation, this made him ecstatic. I thought he would weep with joy.
Griddle had stopped to watch this bizarre exhibition along with everyone else. She bent over to pretend to adjust a fastening on her scabbard and whispered, "Kinky." At risk of belaboring the point for anyone left alive who may read this, I set down again the most persistent reality on all planets and in all climes: she is crass and a moron and I hate her.
Behind the shuttles came the Cenotaph. It is the Emperor's warship, with which He fights battles totally unknown to the trepid souls of the living. It is the arrow in His quiver which traverses the whole of the universe and never fails to slay its mark. It is the floating tomb in which we will spend the rest of our short lives, and then we will pass from it either into the River or into another kind of afterlife more glorious than any beyond our present imagining. It is a great round hulk of metal, with more in common at first glance with a saucer or orbital station than a ship, and its hull is frescoed with bones that are either constructs or were harvested from beasts larger than buildings, slain by the Emperor's unresting Hands.
By the time it had finished docking, all of us, the scions of the Houses and our cavaliers, had gathered in a huddle in the courtyard to watch in silence. Even Griddle was quiet, though her jaw was hanging open.
A hatch in the side of the ship, larger than the doors of Drearburh, retracted. A small white-haired person stepped out into the evening chill. He has the appearance of a birdlike old man, but if he was ever a natural-born human I'll eat my own tibia. He's not a revenant either, he's far too sprightly and coherent. The first thing he did was caper about halfway down the boarding ramp and cry, "Welcome! Hail to you all, beloved children of the Father who rescued us all from Death! Well-met, brightest jewels among his treasures! Glad I am to see you all have arrived without mishap -- well, without too much mishap," he amended, with a goggle and grin for the Seventh, who was then being supported by one of the Sixth pair on either side while her own cavalier frowned pulpily a pace behind. The old man said, "I am a keeper of the ways of the First House and a servant to the Necrolord Highest. Mine is the task of shepherding you to the best of my poor abilities on this great adventure you have undertaken. You must call me Teacher; not due to my own merits of learning, but because I stand in the stead of the merciful God Above Death, and I live in hope that one day you will come before him with the blood of his oldest enemy on your hands, and then you will call him Teacher, and Master, too, and then you will all be of the First!"
Like children huddled around a fire in the pit of deepest night, we had all drawn closer to the foot of the docking ramp. Griddle pressed closer to me than she ought, but if I moved away from her I would be forced closer to the Eighth, which would have been worse.
It was sepulchrally cold in the thin, manufactured atmosphere. The orbital heaters shifted to a lower setting, simulating night on an asteroid even farther from Dominicus than the House of the Ninth. I heard a wind blowing through trees in that treeless place.
Teacher's voice dropped low with thrilling menace. He is an excellent orator. "All these long millenia, the Necrolord's holy Saints, his fists and gestures, have been slowly claimed by a vast and terrible death; not the trifling war against mere human terrorists, but the much greater one that Our Lord waged to bring us all back to life and has not stopped fighting for the space of one breath in ten thousand years. The Necrolord is hunted, to this day, by those ancient foes who would seek to devour us all to spite his loving heart. Know this: what you shall learn here are deep secrets, and they are not imparted to the faint or faithless. If you set foot on this ship, do so in the full knowledge that you have been chosen by God to hunt the most fearsome of all devils. You are indeed blessed, my children!"
Three heartbeats passed in silence. A small voice -- one of the Fourth children -- called out, "Where are we going?"
The man of the Fifth shushed them, but Teacher beamed. "Ah, the forthright Fourth -- the Fourthright! Ever to the heart of the matter. We go beyond life itself, young Sir Chatur. In this lies peril beyond imagining. Literally! It has never been tried before, and so I have no idea of the scope of the danger, except to say that it is surely vast. Yet the rewards are even greater. Those who acquit themselves well on this voyage will be offered the chance to ascend to Lyctorhood and bask eternally in the light of the King Undying."
The Third cavalier straightened his obnoxious jacket, preened his blindingly smug hair poof and demanded, "No more riddles. What the devil are these devils, anyway?"
"They are called Resurrection Beasts," the old man said somberly, "and more I cannot tell you without your sworn oath of secrecy and commitment, symbolized in your boarding this ship. Fetch your things! The tide that is beyond the grip of gravity soon turns, and we must be gone!"
Then he swept back up the boarding ramp like a drunken wading bird and disappeared.
The surface of the asteroid now is a bustle and blur. Cohort soldiers are embarking and disembarking by the legion, carrying things on and off the ship. The other heirs are scattered about, packing or waiting; the Third is having some kind of row in the common hall. Griddle came to fetch the trunks and then went back outside to stare at the ship some more. I do not know what she is thinking, this last hour before we depart. Probably that this will be her final escape, to far surpass all the attempts I strangled before they could be born.
God forgive me. I profane this holy crusade -- yet I must. I do it for my House, for His Ninth House and for what it guards. In the name of what He could not kill, I go forth to kill what He has condemned to death.
I do not anticipate any difficulty in that regard. I carry death with me as even these other necromancers cannot. I feel her hand on my shoulder now, her lips on my brow. I hear a cold wind where none exists. Soon we leave these shores, and we shall not soon return.