Page 16 of Cast in Atonement

Mrs. Erickson wanted to say no. Kaylin could see that clearly. But after a long hesitation, she nodded. “Not all of them,” she added. “But yes.”

“She can speak to them,” Bellusdeo said. “She can hear them. I didn’t even know they were there.” Turning to Kaylin, she said, “You’ve never seen them.”

“No.”

“You could see the ghosts of the children in Mrs. Erickson’s home.”

Kaylin nodded.

“Do you think your familiar was aware?”

“I don’t know—it’s not something I would have ever thought of asking. But I’ve looked at you through Hope’s wing before, and I’ve only ever seen one of you.”

Starrante cleared his throat. “Was it your wish to learn more about Necromancy in order to speak with the dead Mrs. Erickson sees?”

Bellusdeo was silent.

“If I understand the very complicated coming-of-age procedure for Dragons, they are not dead. There should be no ghosts.” When Bellusdeo turned toward the Wevaran, he said, “Our coming-of-age is also complicated, and it involves the deaths of all of our clutch mates in the birthing place.” He held up a limb as Bellusdeo’s eyes darkened. “I am not saying you were forced to devour your siblings. I am not implying that you are responsible for their deaths.

“Wevaran and Dragons are older races. With the Barrani, the process is simpler. With mortals, the process is simpler still, although mortals are ephemeral in comparison.

“The Necromancy you envision is a story meant to frighten the young or entertain an audience. It requires, among other things, a corpse. If such a school of magic existed, I believe it would prove ruinous for you, if it had any effect at all: You are not dead. You are not a corpse.”

Corpse.

Kaylin said nothing.

“Mrs. Erickson can see ghosts; I will trust the corporal’s observations in this regard. She cannot will them into being; she cannot give them physical form. If you wish her to somehow free the ghosts she sees—”

“I don’t.” Bellusdeo’s interruption was sharp, instant. “I just want her to somehow make them visible to me. I want to be able to speak with them, as she does. I want to ask—” She stopped.

In as gentle a voice as Kaylin had ever heard Starrante use, he said, “I do not believe she can do what you desire. She can serve as interpreter, as she has clearly done, but she cannot somehow alter your eyes or their state to allow you to see them, hear them, or speak directly with them.”

Bellusdeo didn’t believe him. Or didn’t want to believe him.

Kaylin’s worry deepened. One word—one name—had come to mind and it stuck there: Azoria. Azoria An’Berranin.

Azoria hadn’t had Mrs. Erickson’s natural gift. She couldn’t see ghosts. She could, however, make them. She had separated spirits from their bodies, trapping those spirits. Binding them somehow to both her will and the world in which Kaylin and Mrs. Erickson otherwise lived. Azoria could see spirits, those almost-ghosts, while their bodies still existed.

It wasn’t Necromancy as Kaylin understood it—if understood was even the right word, given that anything she knew came from stories and reports made to the public desk of the Halls of Law, not reality. Azoria’s magic had been a warped, twisted, subtle horror that no one but Azoria had clearly understood. Azoria was—thank whatever gods actually existed—dead. In Kaylin’s opinion, she’d been so close to dead for such a long time, it was hard to think that she’d been alive when they’d first encountered her.

She certainly hadn’t been Barrani by the end of that life.

Mrs. Erickson could see the spirits Azoria had extracted and trapped as ghosts.

But Mrs. Erickson could also see Darreno and Amaldi, and neither of them had been dead. Azoria had learned something different, something that overlapped Mrs. Erickson’s natural skills. What would she have been capable of had she been able to possess Mrs. Erickson?

What had Azoria learned from manipulating the dead Ancient in the outlands?

Kaylin’s head hurt. “Arbiter Starrante, tell us what you know of the historical roots of Necromancy.” She spoke Barrani, although she’d had to hit Records to find the word for Necromancer in Barrani before she’d come to the Academia.

“Necromancy is an almost entirely mortal contrivance. We who are Immortal are blessed—or cursed—with True Names, True Words. Death for us is an ending that is different in all ways than the wise understood from death for your kind. But mortals have existed in the shadows and margins of all worlds for a very, very long time.

“Mortals have often been concerned with death, with dying, with the very nature of mortality itself. You are aware of the stories—and perhaps the truths—of their unending battle against their very nature. Some mortals struggle with the sense of ending; they do not or cannot believe that death itself is the end. From this belief arose many—but not all—mortal religions.

“The fact of ghosts, the fact of what Mrs. Erickson sees, provides some glimmer of truth in the belief that death itself is not an ending for mortals.

“I believe that those individuals who were gifted as Mrs. Erickson is gifted gave rise to the belief in the spiritual among mortals: she can see the dead.” He lifted a limb before words fell out of Kaylin’s mouth. “The Ancients are, and have always been, above our comprehension. Studies, in Ravellon, when Ravellon was the heart of all worlds, were done. Those who consented to aid in this research were mortals; the research was longer, by far, than a single mortal’s life span.

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