Chapter Thirty-Two – The Pit of Half Lives

The Pit of Half Lives was so-named due to its purpose. Prisoners of Wanderer’s Bane were not simply killed and restored to life through necromancy like the cave’s original inhabitants. But in order to make his servants more powerful, Narion Nightsong had learned how to use magic to draw the life essence from the soul of a living person and transfer that essence to the unliving, the necromanced.

To that end, the dark elf had imprisoned travelers who had wandered into his cave seeking shelter (or adventures who had entered out of pure curiosity for the fearsome “Wanderer’s Bane”). The Pit wasn’t a jail, not in the traditional sense. There were no cells or chains. There were no bars over the Pit’s mouth. But the eight-foot sides of the hole were slick stone, and the captives inside were far too weak to attempt escape.

Tara might have questioned this weakness, if she wasn’t aware of its cause. The necromanced had access to their master’s power, and from above the pit they could draw on the life essence of the captives whenever they wished, reaching out with dark magic that was impossible to escape.

Tara winced as she and the others were shoved roughly into the pit. She caught herself, braced on her arms, but her palms smarted from the jarring contact.

“What in the world were you thinking?”

Tara raised her head at Horon’s growl. The Fenman was often irritated, but the anger in his eyes as he faced her was much deeper than how he had ever looked at her before.

“Did it not occur to you how helpless we are?” asked Horon. “We have no weapons. We are trapped her underground, surrounded by enemies. When that necromancer recognized you as the ‘Last Hero of Allerion,’ I thought we had a hope. A wiser mind, I think, could have used that recognition to their advantage. But you chose to antagonize him? A sorcerer with more power than you could dream of?”

Tara stammered. She was surprised by his anger, as much as she understood it. “I—I thought that—”

“That what?” interrupted Horon. “That this isn’t how your vision is supposed to go?”

Tara’s mouth snapped shut. She was too ashamed to say, “Yes.”

Horon ignored her discomfort, turning his attention to Elita. The little gnome was still huddled and silent, almost petrified with shock. She didn’t move as the necromanced above them prepared to take their life essence, but the Fenman stood over her, shielding her with his broad shoulders.

Silver light gleamed from the fingers of the necromanced. Tara gasped at a sensation not unlike cold wind that didn’t pass through her, but seemed to pull at her from inside. She fell on her knees, struggling to breathe as the life essence was forced out of her body. When the sensation passed, she was trembling and sweating. She was physically sick, throwing up on the pit’s straw-strewn floor.

“Easy.” Someone placed their hand on her shoulder and Tara glanced up, startled. The person beside her was an older man, gray-haired and thin-faced. “The first time is always the worst. Believe it or not, you do get used to it.”

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Tara almost forgot her nausea for amazement. She knew the man at once, but this time, she bit back from saying his name. Still, she was delighted to know that they had at least reached their optional objective—Berga’s husband himself.

“Whatever possessed you to come into this place?” said the man. He shook his head sadly. “I should have known better myself, but I didn’t recognize the cave in the storm I was caught in. I was half-drowned in rain by the time I crawled here. If I had known what I was getting into, I would have rather faced the weather than Narion Nightsong and his cursed servants.”

“You’re adventurers, aren’t you?” whispered a woman nearby with lusterless eyes. She was half-sitting, half-lying on the cold ground. “That’s how most of the young are captured. They hear of ‘Wanderer’s Bane’ and can’t resist seeing for themselves if all the stories are true. They are true—you can see for yourself. And now those you have left behind will not even have graves to remember you by.”

Tara didn’t have the heart to mention that they had come here in search of Berga’s husband. The last thing she wanted was to cause the old man pain by thinking himself the cause of their misery. But dispirited as she was, she refused to believe this was the end.

“They won’t need graves to remember us,” she whispered to the woman. “We’re getting out of here.”

“How?” asked Horon. The Fenman, paler after the weakening magic of the necromanced, was still bitter. “What will you do? Sprout wings and fly us out of here?”

Tara glanced at the huddled, unmoving gnome. “Is she alright?”

Horon wasn’t able to speak at once. Finally, he said, “She will be.”

“She wasn’t like this on the slave ship,” murmured Tara.

“Well, that was routine for us,” returned Horon dryly. “We had a plan then and the means to escape if we kept our heads.” He glanced around slowly. “Elita is brave, but she is a gnome. She knows that her kind are at greater risk for being used by unscrupulous minds. Gnomes are a clever people, skilled with building and crafting. Perhaps even a necromancer could find a use for that kind of skill.”

And she would be separated from us, Tara finished in her own mind, understanding the terror that Horon did not speak aloud.

She crouched next to the Fenman and took off her cloak, putting it around Elita’s trembling shoulders.

“No one’s taking you anywhere,” Tara said, wishing she truly believed it. She certainly prayed that the gnome wouldn’t be separated from them. “But Horon’s right. Gnomes do have a way with earth and stone. My visions aren’t always accurate I guess, but I know for a fact that you aren’t the kind of person who gives up. Maybe there’s a weakness in the stone around us you can sense…some way you can discover for us to get out of here.”

Elita showed signs of awareness for the first time. Her eyes blinked behind her goggles. “Even if we could get out of this pit,” she said, “where would we go? We have no weapons. We don’t stand a chance against the necromanced.”

Tara placed her hand on the gnome’s small back, feeling the little creature shivering. “We certainly won’t have a chance if we don’t try. This is bad, but…would it help if I told you this is exactly where we’re supposed to be?”

The gnome’s laugh was hiccup. “What do you mean?”

“It’s her addled visions again,” grumbled Horon. “Pay them no mind, Elita. But—addled as she is—there is merit to what she says. We have faced far worse than this. Rouse yourself. It isn’t your way, nor mine, to yield without a fight.”

The gnome moved hesitantly from under Horon’s shadow. “I don’t have any tools,” she murmured, “but I can test the stone.”

The rest of the prisoners, less than a dozen, were mostly disinterested as the gnome followed the pit’s perimeter. The gnome felt the stone with her knobby hands, her wrinkled brow more furrowed than ever as she concentrated.

When she reached them, the gnome’s shoulders slumped once more. “It’s no use,” she said. “The stone is thick. It is strong. There is no weakness—even a gnome could not dig here without time and tools.”

Berga’s husband was unsurprised. “There is no way to escape. We are helpless here, all of us. We might as well be buried alive.”

His words were cut short by the sounds of fighting outside. The necromanced standing over the pit hissed suddenly, their bodies poised for attack. The sound of running footfalls stopped suddenly, and Tara jumped when a shriveled head rolled over the pit’s edge and stopped at her feet.

“Ah,” came Wenrik’s grinning voice, and they saw the Borzerk warrior looking down at them. “I thought you might need me after all.”