“Yarlaith, I’ll help you! I’ll grab some medicine and try—”
“No. Please… a moment.” He closed his eyes and smiled. “Give a moment for the three of us to be… together.”
He held a single hand in the air. “Seal this place… nobody can learn… and we can be together forever.” His words came harder with every breath. “Thank you, Morry… I wanted… us… even just once….”
“No!” She held his hand and shook him, but the old healer did not stir.
Yarlaith the White died smiling.
Morrígan submitted to her tears, sobbing as they ran down her face.
He only wanted to help. He only wanted to save Mother.
Exhausted, she sat and quietly contemplated her uncle’s last words. To seal the chamber off would mean all of their hard work and progress would be lost, but he and her mother could rest together for eternity. She looked down at the healer. He had lived his last days as though a shadow had been cast over his life. Now, it seemed that he was happy for the first time in months.
Why… why did you have to be such a fool! Yarlaith the White was a gentle man, certainly not cut out for the dark arts. Why did you even try?
Morrígan closed her eyes, trying to recall the first day she had seen him as Yarlaith the Black, the Necromancer. Her sobs echoed through the chamber, and her chest quivered in the cold.
It was Fionn. His arm… Yarlaith had tried to save his arm, and then he discovered Necromancy. They hadn’t heard from Fionn the Red since, and Morrígan still wasn’t sure why he and his companions had picked that fateful day to cross the Glenn, bringing the mountain troll to Roseán.
She shook the memory from her head, eyes fixed on the two dead bodies: her mother dressed in white, and Yarlaith burnt black. Why did you risk it all? Why did you do all this for me?
She paused.
“For me?” she whispered out loud. That’s what she had assumed: that he was doing all this for her, because the loss of her mother had hit her so hard. Yarlaith had seen how distraught she was on the day her mother died.
“But why would he go to so much trouble?”
Then she saw it. Morrígan wasn’t sure if it was the half smile that ran crooked across the old man’s face, or the way his twisted finger seemed to be pointing down to the beautiful woman on the ground, but something stirred at the back of her mind, and everything made sense.
Yarlaith was my father’s brother, but the two never got along.… That was his only connection to me. But still he cared. Still he loved me.
More things fell into place as she recalled what Yarlaith had said about the talent for magic. Passed down from parent to child.
The rest of her world came crumbling down.
“No!”
She didn’t want to believe it. Her father was a drunkard, a coward, a fool. He was abusive and negligent. He even fled when they were attacked.
Another thought surfaced.
No, your father loved your mother. He helped raise you; he taught you how to use magic. He died attempting to bring his love back from the dead.
Morrígan screamed. All of her life she had wanted a happy family, a mother and father who loved her. Now in the damp cave, hundreds of feet below her hometown, with thousands of dismembered and dead soldiers, her family was finally reunited.
No… not like this. This isn’t right. This isn’t fair!
Hatred and regret clouded her thoughts.
They took it from us.
Why couldn’t they have just understood? Burning tears filed her eyes.
Small-minded fools, too afraid of what they don’t understand. If only they could see what we’re capable of.
She raised a hand over the two corpses. She squinted and concentrated on the spell, on the flesh made dead.
Twist it. Make it whole again.
Nothing happened. She dug deep into her soul, and in the back of her mind, she heard an almost silent scream. As she focused more, the shriek slowly grew louder.
The screaming. That means it’s working!
A man’s voice joined the noise, but it was almost imperceptible.
Morrígan tried to forget about the noise and focused instead on her pendulum, the heaviest weight upon her heart. Both of the voices in her head suddenly amplified tenfold, raging through her skull like a storm. The screamer sounded like a woman, the voice that of a man, and he was begging her to stop.
Morrígan opened her eyes and saw the two corpses rousing, as if waking up from a long slumber.
No, I will not stop. The man’s voice in her head pleaded, but she ignored it. She looked within for more power and found two new sources within her heart.
The voices are of Mother and Yarlaith. What if I can draw on their souls too?
As she pulled on the fear and anguish of her two marks, the spell began to take hold. The two corpses slowly sat upright, and two pairs of lifeless eyes stared back at her. Their thoughts resounded through her mind, and the power of three people flowed through her body.
Within the cacophony, she heard other voices, those of many other men, soft like whispers. When she closed her eyes and focused on them, they too grew louder, speaking in a strange language. More joined in with other valiant war cries. Morrígan couldn’t understand the words, but she felt anguish and despair within them. As each voice joined the dissonance, she grew stronger. Slowly, she opened her eyes.
