Free The Temple of Heart and Bone by S.K. Evren

Necromancer remembered the warm
touch of Doloroth’s hand on his shoulder, and his firm grip as they shook hands
for the last time. He did not know how many others had received similar orders
from their Emperor, and it did not matter. He would not let his Emperor, or their
Empire, down.
    His power, he had been told,
would not be sufficient to bolster their current military situation. Their
reserves, who’d been training with less and less time before taking the field,
were beginning to fall back before multiple waves of advancing invaders.
Nothing could save the life of the Empire now. It would fall to those who
hungered for its luxuries, but were unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary
to appreciate and create them. The Empire, however, had never been afraid of
sacrifice, and now, he was told, he was being asked to make sure that their
ultimate sacrifice would not be in vain.
    For seven hundred years, the old
man, the old mage had sequestered himself, waiting for the right time to
emerge. He had never really known what would be the signal to return, but he
had spent centuries developing strategies for the moment it came. Poson, he
realized, had been the signal. This event, this Harvest, had been his master
strategy. With this army, unfeeling and unafraid, the ultimate children of the
very people who had slaughtered his way of life, he would retake the lands of
the Empire. He would reclaim the power of that Empire and ensure that the
sacrifice of over two and a half thousand years of culture, art, society and
history had not been in vain. He was now their hope, their last remaining hope,
and he would resurrect that Empire with the same force he had reanimated in the
fields surrounding Æostemark. This he had sworn, and this he would do.
    He relaxed in a chair, feeling
the pain of his bones subsiding and looking at his sketch of a city long
fallen. After so many centuries, after so many sacrifices, he was finally on
his way. No longer in hiding, no longer a mage, not even, really, an old man,
he was now “the Necromancer,” leading nightmare forces in an effort to rebuild
a dream. He let his thoughts drift back to Doloroth, feeling again the warm
hand on his shoulder, feeling the guilt at abandoning his friend and their
people to sacrifice, and finally, feeling hope that his efforts would be
rewarded in Empire and vanishing guilt. His head began to nod, just as the
captain’s had, and he drifted off into sleep.
     
    Two and a half days after the
ceremony had begun, the Necromancer pushed out his searching thoughts once
more. His Harvest was complete. All of his wakened dead had crawled, shambled,
or shuffled their way to assemble near Æostemark. The living were once again
beginning to enter the lands of the Harvest. The living, however, were not his
concern— yet . There was still much work to do before his legions would be
ready to rebuild Empire.
    The dead that could walk were
ordered into rank and file. Those showing too much damage, those that crawled
because they had no other mechanical means of choice, were heaped into wagons
and ox-carts that had once belonged to the living. Limbless torsos were tossed
on top of those with shattered legs or missing feet. They shifted and writhed
against each other, rattling like a perpetually collapsing cabinet.
    Just after noon, the march east
began. It was more of a funeral procession than any sort of military parade.
Dust and ashes kicked up in the wake of the columns added their haze to the
cloud-darkened, midday sky. Rain began to fall thickly before the march was an
hour old. The approaching storm advanced slowly into the west. The water fell
in opaque sheets, slashing at the air and striking the ground with a vengeance.
Visibility was cut dramatically by the rain. It was as if Nature had covered
the abominable column with a cold, dark shroud of lashing rain and concealing
clouds.
    Among the living in the column,
speculation arose that the Necromancer had called upon his