The Journeys of a Different Necromancer by James J. Crofoot

Part One
     
     
     
The Necromancer’s
Tower
     
    “ Go on, Thomas,” urged Brandon. “You’re a baby if you don’t.”
He rose to his knees and puffed out his chest with self-importance.
“On your thirteenth birthday you must raise the dead. That’s the
law.”
    Thomas’s blond-haired head poked over the hill the three boys
hid behind. “Waking the Dead” was a rite of passage for a boy in
his village. It consisted of knocking on the door of the dark
magician’s tower, counting to ten, and then running away. If
caught, he would turn into a mushroom or lizard, unnatural things
for a boy to be.
    The tower itself stood forty feet tall with a base of about
thirty. Before their parents were born, the magician used dark
stone blocks to build it. In the clearing where it stood, only a
few twisted and stunted trees grew.
    No one saw the man inside, except on those rare occasions when
he came to the village for food.
    Thomas had seen him on one of these rare occasions. Normally,
parents pulled their children inside when he came, but Thomas hid
once, eager to study this man the whole village seemed terrified
of. From the bushes, Thomas watched.
    This dark magician was old and bent, his face gaunt, his long
hair and beard unkempt. The man walked as if there were nothing
wrong with everyone running into their houses, barring every door
and window and anxiously waiting for him to leave. He went to the
storehouse, grabbed a bag of grain, put his coins on the barrel
beside the door, always two gold, and left.
    What did the old man do that made them so afraid, Thomas
remembered thinking.
    Thomas never told a single soul about that time, not even his
friends here with him today, Brandon and Spencer.
    Well, today he would find out what the old man knew. Over the
hill he went.
    Upon reaching the ancient door of oak and iron, the portal
scared by the decades of sun’s heat and storms’ beating, he
knocked. Thomas felt a great change about to take place, but he
needed to know what secrets lay on the other side of this
threshold. The count passed but still he stood there, wanting to
know what secrets lay inside. Brandon and Spencer yelled for him to
run, but he only knocked again. Thomas could hear a door slam on
the other side of the door through the small, barred window just
above his head.
    Then footsteps.
    Someone walking down stairs, someone coming closer. The door
groaned on its hinges as it slowly opened and there stood the bent,
gaunt old man. His hair and beard still in an unkempt manner, his
clothes still dirty and torn. Now, with the old man closer, Thomas
smelled death.
    Thomas could see the inside of this mysterious place. Stacked
on the shelves lining the walls and on a table that stood in the
middle of the floor, the boy saw what he thought people called
books, a word he learned from a passing merchant once.
    “ What do you want?” the old man asked with a scowl.
    “ Sir.” Thomas made a clumsy bow. “I was curious to see what
was in this great place and also to meet you. You don’t seem all
that dangerous to me. May I come in?”
    The man scowled some more and walked away, leaving the door
open.
    * * *
*
    Several hours later, Thomas stood at the edge of his small
village, just looking at the houses where everyone he had ever
known lived. He then tilted his head to gaze up at the full
moon.
    His parents would never agree, but he had to get out of this
speck of a place, too small to even have a name. How would he see
the kingdom, or Targon, its capital, if he could not read and
write? He needed to learn the things only Xavier could teach him.
Knowing the task would not be easy, he would already be in trouble
for being so late, with a steadying breath, he walked to the place
he called home.
    * * *
*
    “ I went fishing, Mum,” Thomas said upon being questioned as to
his whereabouts.
    “ And who did you go with?” she questioned further. “Your
friends, Brandon and Spencer? They were home hours ago. And