THE NECROMANCER

THE NECROMANCER, by Ngo Binh Anh Khoa

 

 

The sun was lost in arrows pouring down

As raucous cannons boomed incessantly,

Barbaric cries would far and wide resound

Amid the field drowned in a blazing sea.

Fast rained hell-fires, rose repellent smoke;

Fierce roars like savage thunders rent the air;

Strained voices, joined in wordless tongue, then spoke

Of chaos, fury, ruin and despair.

Above, dark clouds draped o’er all worldly views,

Below, wild flames lit up the swallowed skies,

Far splattered on the tainted land were hues

Which coarsely stained the Earthly Paradise.

Old Death had rung his silent passing bell,

Thence, mortal lives in dust and fires fell.

 

Days burned the nights, and nights bled dry the days,

Till beasts their vigor lost, flame-breathers died,

Naught but brisk winds passed through the land ablaze,

Dulled arms in mangled flesh and cold hands lied.

Beneath the skies turned dark by dreary smoke,

Upon the soils dyed red with butchered forms,

Where circling vultures’ hungry voices spoke

O’er corpses swarmed by maggots, flies and worms,

The Necromancer in a pitch-black hood

Invoked trapped spirits of the soldiers slain;

By nether power forced, the dead then stood,

In breathless murmurs, sealed lips spoke again.

 

All gruesome details of their horrid deaths

The shades, once kinsmen split apart, retold:

How in harsh rains of arrows left their breaths,

How steels in flesh felt hot then deathly cold,

How voices robbed from slit throats then spoke naught,

How limbs impaled by ruthless arms then stilled,

How tongues by iron sealed no whimper wrought,

How courage was by sudden terror killed,

How light in eyes once radiant glowed no more,

How beats in chests once vital ceased to sound,

How ears once keen heard no more feral roar,

How minds once bright were in deep darkness drowned.

 

Laments were vented then to putrid air,

How they could ne’er to natal soils return,

To parents old, to children young, wives fair;

Would they of what had taken place here learn?

Or would they clueless stay and in vain wait

For those who’d come home as a passing breeze?

With no news heard for too many a date,

Would hearts with turmoil laden know of peace?

So on, so on, of woes and plaints they’d speak,

Till scattered smoke unveiled the moonless night

With starlight dimmed by dark clouds, gloomy, bleak,

An umbral world – morose was such a sight.

 

The quiet Necromancer wrote each word

Into the tome bound in black panther skin,

No sound was missed, no utterance unheard,

Recorded were the voices that’d once been.

Old tales poured out till tales at last ran out,

And frigid silence froze the earthly hell,

Trapped shades resigned to ever flit about

Were freed then by a vow and whispered spell.

“Your words I’ll carry to your families,

So freed you may be from the woes you’ve shed,

Ill-fated soldiers, may you find your peace

Within the timeless Kingdom of the Dead.”

 

Brief thanks the spectral ones in chorus spoke,

And to the Necromancer bowed their heads,

Thick shadows stretched out from her midnight cloak

And severed their yet fully severed threads.

To nothingness each ghost unbound returned,

No further murmur left their fleshless lips,

Unchained from wily lords, their rest they’d earned,

To life no longer clung once burdened grips.

Naught was then heard, no winds, no vultures’ cries,

Except soft sounds by yellowed pages flipped.

Within the darkness shone bright crimson eyes

On papers filled with words in blood-red script.

 

The Necromancer, in the night’s embrace,

Would, in the shadows, mutely disappear,

From soils defiled to each recorded place,

She, as a norm, would travel far and near.

To grant the dead that which they did convey,

Through forests, mountains, lands and seas she’d roam,

A visit to each household she would pay,

To see each word disclosed delivered home.

Thus she – a Fallen damned, a soul unblessed –

Relentlessly moved round the realms of light

To soothe the living, lay the dead to rest,

And mayhap be at peace one day she might.

Accepted, scorned no longer she might be,

A soul released from age-old fetters, free.

 

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Ngo Binh Anh Khoa is an English teacher currently living and working in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He enjoys reading fantasy novels and poems, and composes poetry every now and then in his free time. His poems have appeared and are forthcoming in Scifaikuest and Eternal Haunted Summer.

Audio by: Karen Bovenmyer.  She teaches and mentors students at Iowa State University and serves as the Nonfiction Assistant Editor of Escape Artists’ Mothership Zeta Magazine. She is the 2016 recipient of the Horror Writers Association Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Scholarship. Her poems, short stories and novellas appear in more than 40 publications and her first novel, SWIFT FOR THE SUN, an LGBT romantic adventure in 1820s Caribbean, debuted from Dreamspinner Press March 27, 2017.