The next part started because I asked the wrong question.
"Can you use one to raise the dead?"
Silas barked a laugh so sharp both goblins looked up.
"Can I use one? Certainly. Can you use one? Not if you want your brain leaking out your ears."
"I meant in theory."
"Everything is possible in theory. In theory, that one could become king of Ashford." He pointed at the shorter goblin.
The goblin puffed his chest out at once.
Silas pointed at the taller one. "And that one could learn table manners."
The taller goblin bared his teeth.
"In practice," Silas said, "reanimation has almost nothing to do with bringing a person back. That's temple nonsense for peasants and poets. You don't restore the self. You impose function."
He said it lightly.
Then he reached under the table and produced a rabbit leg wrapped in cloth.
Fresh enough that the paw still flexed when he set it down.
I looked at it.
"You keep that under the table?"
"Where else would I keep a rabbit leg? In my hat?"
He took up a needle-thin metal probe from the tray, touched the point to a line of tendon near the ankle, and fed a hair-thin thread of mana through it.
I saw the thread this time.
Faint violet.
Not with my eyes.
With that other sense the Flow had sharpened in me.
It slid into the tendon, caught, split, and tightened.
The paw curled.
Uncurled.
Curled again.
Silas let it repeat three times, then cut the thread.
The paw dropped flat.
"There," he said. "No soul. No miracle. Just stimulus, pattern, tether, response."
I stared at the leg.
"The wolves in the forest. When we first met, were they yours?"
Silas was busy wrapping the rabbit leg again.
"Ah," he said. "The wolves. Yes. About that."
He tucked the cloth bundle away and picked up his pipe.
"They were mine."
I looked at him.
"I assumed that after the first twenty clues."
"No, no. Not mine mine. Ownership is vulgar. I arranged them." He lit the pipe from the little heat shard and puffed twice. "First field test. Living pack. Shared threat response. Distributed aggression. Excellent bite discipline, dreadful follow-through."
He nodded to himself, pleased.
"You sent them at us on purpose."
"Sent is such an ugly word. Guided. Encouraged. Set a mood."
"One of them tore open my leg."
"Yes. I remember. Very dynamic entrance. And your friend looked magnificent under pressure." He exhaled a thin stream of smoke and tapped ash into a bowl. "In my defense, I expected you both to do slightly better."
I kept looking at him.
He spread one hand.
"What? It was useful data."
"For what?"
That made him grin.
Not the wide clown grin.
The smaller one.
The real one.
"Necromancy is easy," he said. "Dead tissue obeys if you do the work. Boring, after a while. Useful. Elegant, sometimes. But boring."
He turned and pointed the pipe stem at the goblins.
Both of them straightened.
"Now that," he said, "is interesting."
He clicked his tongue once.
The taller goblin moved to the left side of the cave.
He clicked twice.
The shorter one went right.
Then he said nothing at all.
Just lifted two fingers.
The goblins both turned toward the shelf, one reaching for the jars, the other for the cups beneath them. Smooth. Immediate. Timed.
Three heartbeats later, they had set the cups in a line and begun filling them from the same bottle with careful, alternating movements.
One hand lifted.
The other hand waited.
Then traded places.
I watched the exchange.
So did Silas.
"A dead body can march," he said. "Fine. Wonderful. A corpse can carry bricks, stab a man, dig a hole. Tedious work. What interests me is coordination. Shared load. Shared impulse. Shared attention. A pack. A squad. Ten bodies moving on one clean line of intent. But with understanding of what they are doing."
He stepped closer to the goblins and snapped his fingers beside the taller one's ear.
The taller goblin held still.
The shorter one twitched.
Silas's grin sharpened.
"See? Leak in the bridge. Still there. Better than the wolves, though. Wolves were all appetite and nerves." He looked at me. "These two can learn."
The taller goblin set down the bottle. The shorter one slid the last cup into line.
Silas waved them off.
They retreated together.
"How are you doing it?" I asked.
"Badly," Silas said. "But better every month."
"With necromancy?"
"With whatever works. Threads. Habits. Reinforcement. Fear. Rhythm. Small resonances. Sometimes crystal support." He tapped the wrapped black shard with one fingernail. "A black stone is good for sealing a pattern. Pattern. That matters."
I looked at the shard again.
Pattern.
More than a battery.
A box for structure.
A box for command.
Silas saw the shape of that thought on my face and laughed quietly.
"No," he said. "Absolutely not."
"I didn't say anything."
"Your face said plenty. It usually does when you're about to do something educational and stupid."
* * *
He still let me try.
An hour later he had me at the side table with the spent black fragment, the rabbit leg, and one of the pale heat crystals.
"Small," he said. "We are going to be delicate for once in our miserable lives."
He made me start with the elemental shard.
I fed a thread of mana through the heat crystal and into the dead tendon.
The crystal answered immediately.
Heat moved through the tether and dispersed into the tissue. The muscle warmed. Twitched once. Then slackened.
"Again," Silas said.
I did.
Same result.
The heat crystal amplified the quality I fed it and dumped it forward.
Then he replaced it with the black fragment.
"Now the ugly one."
I touched the shard.
Cold crept into my fingertips.
Nothing like the draining hunger of the mine crystal. A sealed, inward pull. A pressure behind glass.
I fed mana through it.
The response was slower.
Thicker.
The thread narrowed.
Compressed.
The shard held the shape instead of amplifying the force.
When I pushed the tether into the rabbit leg again, the paw curled once and stayed curled.
I felt the pattern sit there, suspended.
Waiting.
Silas leaned in at once.
"There," he said softly. "There it is."
My hand tightened around the table edge.
"It's holding the instruction."
"Better word than most people would use, yes."
"Not energy."
"Energy too. But shape matters more." He tapped the black fragment. "Elemental shards push what they are. Black ones preserve what you tell them. Briefly, in a piece this small. Longer, in a better one."
I looked from the curled paw to the fragment.
Then to the wrapped egg-sized crystal on the tray.
Silas followed my gaze and snorted.
"No."
"You said that already."
"Good. Then this is reinforcement."
He took the fragment away from me and tucked it back into its cloth.
"You may play with tethered rabbit parts when I'm present and sober. Those are the terms."
"How often are you sober?"
"Rude." He handed me one of the filled cups the goblins had arranged earlier. Bitter stimulant. "Drink that. Then bottle the rest of the anti-rot wash. The world remains full of people too stupid to stop cutting themselves."
I drank.
It tasted like bark, metal, and punishment.
Silas beamed.
"Marvelous, isn't it?"
The goblins laughed.
Actual laughter this time. Sharp, ugly little clicks.
I set the cup down.
"You gave that to villagers?"
"Diluted. I do have standards." He paused. "A few."
* * *
That night I stayed at the table after the others slept.
The cave crystals gave off their weak white glow.
On the stone before me sat three things.
The little heat shard.
The cold shard with frost feathering over its base.
And the spent black fragment wrapped in cloth.
I touched the heat crystal first.
Warmth spread into my fingertips.
Obvious. Honest. It did what it was.
The cold shard came next.
Dry bite. Tight skin. Breath fogging faintly in front of my mouth.
Again, obvious.
Then the black fragment.
I left it wrapped.
Still I could feel it sitting there.
Quiet.
Contained.
Like a shut door with weight against the other side.
I thought about the wolf pack in the birches.
The goblins moving at a finger lift.
The rabbit paw holding one curl after the command had already been given.
Pattern, Silas had said.
Pattern.