Of Necromancy
The young man stood on the brink of the first gate and listened to the rush of the gate and felt the pull of the water around his ankles. He had been standing this way for a long time, fingering the handles of the bells protruding from the bandoleer across his chest. Each one filled him with a different memory, of torture or of happiness, he did not know.
His journey had begun as he had met an old necromancer dying on the field of a battle. The old man had explained the bells, and then died, pulled into death and along the river. The boy had picked up the bells and they had welcomed his touch. He wore them, but did not use them. He never used them unless he had to.
The young man remembered this day and a tear crept down his cheek, an ice crystal in life. He touched his charter mark, still untainted. He did not think understand why the mark was still pure, as necromancers' marks shouldn't be. Except the Abhorsen's. The Abhorsen stood for the charter, for good. Not for the free magic he could control if he wished.
He came to his senses as a ripple in the river came closer. He could see the dead creature and feel its hunger for his life and body. No. It would not get what it so longed for. He pulled the smallest bell from the bandoleer and examined its metal as the creature stalked him. He flicked his wrist and a light peel echoed off the water and all around. He forced his will onto the sound and watched as the creature froze, and then drifted away with the current.
He looked up again and made up his mind. He wandered forward and stepped through the first gate and let the water take him as far as it wanted. Its waters washed him until he opened his eyes and found stars above him. The called to him and filled him with a feeling of joy he had never felt in his life. He began to drift upward into the sky, toward the clouds.
A small voice screamed in his head and he fell to the river again. It was not his time. No. He sat up and watched as the wall of fire, the final gate, opened. A young woman and a black dog, a collar of charter marks, walked forward toward him. He smiled and rose to meet them, the bells on his chest humming with a pure note.