At the Queen_s command

It was after the receipt of the second letter that the Prince had begun his examination of the issue of necromancy. His library, though one of the largest on the Continent, had surprisingly few references to it. They generally fell into three categories. The first explored such rumors as a matter of folktales. The second condemned practitioners as diabolists and promised them an eternity in lakes of burning brimstone. These books, all written by learned Church fathers, claimed that practitioners, liars that they were, grossly exaggerated their success.

The third category's exemplars were the books on his desk. While the Prince confined his studies largely to those of the natural sciences, many reference books did touch upon the subject here and there. An anthropologist, in sorting a variety of avian bones found in a midden, used a magickal sense of which bones belonged to which grouping to help with his sorting. His subsequent reconstruction of the skeletons proved accurate. This was taken as a confirmation of the Law of Contagion, and the anthropologist went on to speculate, based on impressions he'd gotten from the bones, as to the life-cycle of extinct birds. He went so far as to suggest that someday magicks might be able to reanimate the skeleton and verify his theory about the birds' locomotion.

Such was the nature of most mentions. No one claimed outright to have reanimated the dead, but they speculated that such a thing was possible. In other cases, certain magicks and magickally fashioned preparations had been effective in banishing ghosts and spirits from certain locations. If true, these reports suggested that magick could interact with the departed.

Had du Malphias dared do what others only speculated about?

Vlad steepled his fingers. Addressing that question would be the endpoint of an inquiry that had decidedly more humble beginnings. If reviving the dead were even possible, it would require great knowledge, great intelligence, and great power. There was no doubting du Malphias had the first two qualities, but great power? According to everything Prince Vlad had been taught about magick, such levels of power were simply unknown.

In the Old World.

The Shedashee were more adept at magick than any of the settlers. Whether or not they could raise the dead was a moot point. They were more skilled and powerful than Vlad had been led to believe was possible. That fact put the lie to that very proposition. Add to that the idea that the Crown granted charters for schools of magick, and anyone teaching outside the charter system would be decried by Crown and Church. Could it be that magicks more powerful than commonly believed were possible, and that the Crown was hiding this bit of reality from the people?

Vlad smiled. Though the peasantry might not think the Queen would ever lie, they were lied to every day. Official statements proclaimed the Villerupt campaign a victory for Norisle. Allies had been scapegoated for failures, every dead man had been declared a hero, and every officer had been elevated despite having had to retreat from the Continent. With so much ceremony attending the troops' return, one could not help but think they had been the victors.

The Prince accepted that greater and more powerful magicks existed. He based this on the evidence of the Shedashee and the fact that when he'd been taught to shoot, his instructor praised him for having taken to it more quickly than Princess Margaret's children had. "There will be more of this for the likes of you."

But, in fact, there had not been. The King had died childless while fighting on the Continent. Margaret was elevated to the throne, bypassing his father who, at that time, served as Governor-General of Mystria. He'd later been recalled to Launston and reentered the monastery from which he'd been drawn to marry Vlad's mother, and the Governor-Generalship fell to Vlad.

Whether or not du Malphias could raise the dead, heal those believed dead, or somehow cobble together bones and make them function, all three possibilities resulted in a single outcome. Du Malphias would have a superior supply of labor. Moreover, troops convinced of their functional immortality might abandon fear and good sense, fighting on in situations where they might otherwise flee. Such resolution would create an army that would deliver devastating casualties no matter how hopeless their situation.

He recognized, instantly, that his three conclusions amounted to the same thing: the balance of power in Mystria had shifted. While New Tharyngia had proved as wealthy a colony as Mystria, its smaller population and corresponding diminution of military power had curbed Tharyngian adventurism. More power, especially with du Malphias in charge of it, pointed to great trouble ahead.