Mulgara

David Rose

Chapters (4)

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epub isbn: 9781644280690

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rose, James David, author.
Title: Mulgara: The Necromancer’s Will / David Rose.
Description: First Trade Paperback Original Edition | A Vireo Book |
New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA: Rare Bird Books, 2019.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781947856882
Subjects: LCSH Magic—Fiction. | Wizards—Fiction. | Fantasy. |
BISAC FICTION / Fantasy / Action & Adventure.
Classification: LCC PS3618.O7835 M85 2019 | DDC 813.6—dc23

“A hidden grace in this horrible place, come loping and leaping with breath. The fugitive flowers in the malefic bowers,
the captors of beauty and death.”

—Denom Vandahl, Poems of the Classics

Contents

Irion’s Tale

Seasmil’s Tale

A Tale From A Good Butler

Epilogue

Irion’s Tale

As a young necromancer, when necromancy was still legal, my great-uncle Maecidion had climbed the ranks of our House to perch on its highest seat. The only man in history to put the Conqueror to negotiation now lay still.

After a funeral where my family thronged together in the ornate blacks of mourning, a gathering of mostly strangers had weathered the height of the rainy season, paraded under the half-finished statues of Do-Gooder’s Row, and now sat and squirmed.

I, Irion Ordrid, had to suffer this charade, administered by a barrister calling off names that made me want to kill. My scalp never took to growing hair, making it all the easier to wipe the sweat from my brow in this oppressive heat. What I was witnessing I could hardly bear. I locked my pointed jaw, so as not to speak. Our House was in no shortage of enemies; but unlike the villainous House of Rogaire, too many had actually come to my family’s reading and now brushed and breathed against me.

I thanked my eyes for being set deep in my face, for in the gloom they were unable to give away who I razored with passing glances.

Cackles erupted. A crone hobbled her way to the barrister’s desk and was bequeathed the jabbering head of a Scepter. Scepters, once elected, answered only to Apex Scepters. The Apexes answered only to the Conqueror—the aforementioned reclusive and ultimate leader of our dismal lands.