Ward of the Philosopher by D. P. Prior

arcs in their wake. Villagers screamed. A dozen or more went down.
    “Lich!” Aristodeus cried, pointing his sword at the skeleton on the forecastle. “Kill the lich, and the rest will crumple.”
    Deacon’s vision narrowed as the swell of battle pressed in around him. Every thud, clash, and cry blasted through his skull with the force of thunder. A corpse with livid flesh and burning eyes lumbered toward him. He stepped back, and his sword clattered to the ground.
    “Deacon!” his mother cried from somewhere behind.
    Aristodeus glanced round, but he was heavily engaged by a cluster of reavers. Shock and despair registered in his eyes.
    The corpse drew back its sword, and at the same time, Deacon raised his prayer cord. Garbled petitions fell from his lips of their own accord. The reaver stiffened, and Deacon’s plea for Nous’s aid swelled to a torrent. Fire fled the reaver’s eyes; they grew black and hollow. All over the square, the undead were faltering, and the villagers tore into them, bashing, hacking, stabbing. Bodies twice dead flopped to the flagstones.  
    Aristodeus dispatched his assailants with precise, efficient blows. He turned back toward Deacon, even as a new tide of corpses lurched down the gangplank.  
    Gralia forced her way through the villagers readying themselves for the second wave of attack. She grabbed Deacon by the arm, tugged him back.
    “Gralia, no!” Aristodeus said. “This is what we spoke about.”
    Her grip on Deacon’s arm tightened, until he felt her nails break his skin. He winced and pulled away.
    “He has to learn,” Aristodeus said. “If not, one day, all the worlds will—”
    Jagged bolts of blackness struck the philosopher between the shoulder blades, and he hit the ground hard.  
    The lich rose into the air above the carrack and drifted down toward Aristodeus. A hundred threads of purple radiated from one hand; they snapped taut, and the new wave of reavers charged.  
    The lich aimed its other hand at Deacon. Tongues of dirty flame danced across its fingers.
    Aristodeus rolled to his feet, as spritely as a man half his age. He pushed Deacon behind him. To Gralia, he said, “All right, get him out of here. This is more than I expected.”
    The cadavers smashed into the villagers, and the tumult of battle resumed, fiercer and louder than before. Deacon was dimly aware of the blur of bodies, the rise and fall of weapons.
    The lich’s shadow fell over him; it was like being plunged into icy water. He couldn’t look away from its scorching eyes. They drew him in, and sibilant whispers echoed around his skull, entreating him to despair, to abandon his childish beliefs in a make-believe god.  
    Gralia’s strident voice rose in prayer to clash with the lich’s taunting.  
    Aristodeus said something, but the words were lost in the clangor and cries of fighting.  
    The lich’s eyes switched from Deacon to the philosopher. The flames wreathing its fingers burst forth in a cone of murky light. Aristodeus’s hand came up clutching a sliver of stone; it was black and veined with green. Where the fire struck, it sputtered and went out.  
    The lich hissed, and flicked the streamers of purplish vapor that connected with the undead. In response, a group of reavers broke off from the villagers and slammed into the philosopher. Aristodeus was buried beneath thrashing bodies. His sword clattered across the ground, and the sliver of black rock skittered after it.
    The lich glided closer, tugging its minions away from the philosopher with sharp pulls on the threads.  
    Aristodeus rolled to his back and tried to lever himself into a sitting position.
    The lich’s jaws clacked, and something like a laugh rattled up from the tattered lungs visible through its ribcage.  
    Gralia screamed.  
    Deacon glanced over his shoulder to see her surrounded by undead. Beyond her, villagers were fleeing toward the houses.
    As he turned back, dark fire burgeoned on the lich’s palm. The air