chapter seven

29 Mirtul, the Year of Risen Elfkin

Aoth and Brightwing studied Dulos, the hamlet far below. For a moment, the place looked ordinary enough, the usual collection of sod-roofed huts and barns, but then the griffon rider observed that no one was working the fields and that sheep, pigs, and oxen lay torn and rotting in their pens. Then, his senses linked to his familiar’s, he caught the carrion stink.

“The undead have been here,” he said.

“No, really?” Brightwing replied.

Aoth was too intent on the work at hand, and perhaps too full of memories of the massacres at Thazar Keep and beside the river, to respond to the sarcasm in kind. “The question is, are they still here, or have they moved on?”

“I can’t tell from up here.”

“Neither can I. Perhaps the Burning Braziers can. Or the necromancers. Let’s return to the company.”

The griffon wheeled, and her wings, shining gold in the sunlight, swept up and down. Soon Aoth’s patrol appeared below.

The force was considerably smaller than the army that had met disaster in the mouth of the Pass of Thazar. Supposedly, once the undead horde gained access to the central plateau, they’d dispersed into smaller bands. Thus, Nymia Focar’s host had no choice but to do the same if they hoped to eradicate the creatures as rapidly as possible.

When Brightwing landed, Aoth’s lieutenants were waiting to confer with him, or at least they were supposed to be his lieutenants. Nymia had declared him in charge, but Red Wizards had little inclination to recognize the authority of anyone not robed in scarlet, while the militant priests of Kossuth had somehow acquired the notion that Szass Tam and the other zulkirs had all but begged Iphegor Nath to dispatch them on this mission and accordingly believed everyone ought to defer to them.

Aoth tried to diminish the potential for dissension by making sure to solicit everyone’s opinions before making a decision and by pretending to weigh them seriously even when they betrayed complete ignorance of the craft of war. It seemed to be working so far.

“The enemy,” he said, swinging himself off Brightwing’s back, “attacked the village.”

Her red metal torch weapon dangling in her hand, the scent of smoke clinging to her, Chathi Oandem frowned. The hazeleyed priestess of Kossuth had old burn scars stippling her left cheek, the result, perhaps, of some devotion gone awry, but Aoth found her rather comely nonetheless, partly because of her air of energy and quick intelligence.

“They’ve come this far west then, this close to Eltabbar.”

“Yes,” said Aoth. “It makes me wonder if they might even have been bold enough to attack Surag and Thazrumaros.” They were larger towns that might have had some hope of fending off an assault. “But for the time being, our concern is here. Can someone cast a divination to see if the settlement is still infested?”

Chathi opened her mouth, no doubt to say that she’d do it, but Urhur Hahpet jumped in ahead of her. Evidently not content with a single garment denoting his status, the sallow, pinch-faced necromancer wore a robe, cape, and shoulder-length overcape, all dyed and lined with various shades of red, as well as a clinking necklace of human vertebrae and finger bones.

“If it will help,” he said, with the air of a lord granting a boon to a petitioner, “but we need to move up within sight of the place.”

So they did, and Aoth made sure everyone advanced in formation, weapons at the ready, despite the fact that he and Brightwing had just surveyed the approach to the hamlet from the air and hadn’t observed any potential threats. After seeing the lacedons rise from the river, he didn’t intend to leave anything to chance.

Nothing molested them, and when he was ready, Urhur whispered a sibilant incantation and spun his staff, a rod of femurs fused end to end, through a mystic pass. The air darkened around him as if a cloud had drifted in front of the sun, reminding Aoth unpleasantly of the nighthaunt’s ability to smother light.

“There are undead,” the wizard said. “A fair number of them.”

“Then we’ll have to root them out,” said Aoth.

Urhur smiled a condescending smile. “I think you mean burn them out. Surely that’s the safest, easiest course, and it will give our cleric friends a chance to play with their new toys.”

The Burning Braziers bristled. Aoth, however, did his best to mask his own annoyance. “Safest and easiest, perhaps, but it’s possible there are still people alive in there.”

“Unlikely, and in any case, you’re talking about peasants.”

“Destroying the village would also make it impossible to gather additional intelligence about our foes.”

“What do you think there is to learn?”

“We’ll know when we find it.” Aoth remembered his resolve to lead by consensus, or at least to give the appearance, and looked around at the other officers in the circle. “What do the rest of you think?”

As expected, the other necromancers sided with Urhur, but rather to Aoth’s relief, the Burning Braziers stood with him, perhaps because Urhur so plainly considered himself their superior as well. It gave the griffon rider the leeway to choose as he wanted to choose without unduly provoking the Red Wizards, or at least he hoped it did.

“Much as I respect your opinions,” he said to Urhur, “I think that this time we need to do it the hard way. We’ll divide the company into squads who will search house to house. We need at least one necromancer or priest in every group, and we want the monks and Black Flame Zealots sticking close to the Burning Braziers in case a quell or something similar appears. Clear?”

Apparently it was. Though after he turned away, he heard Urhur murmur to one of his fellows that it was a crime that a jumped-up little toad of a Rashemi should be permitted to risk Mulan lives merely to pursue a forlorn hope of rescuing others of his kind.

The nature of the battle to come required fighting on the ground, and as the company advanced, Aoth and Brightwing strode side by side.

“You should have punished Urhur Hahpet for his disrespect,” the griffon said.

“And wound up chained in a dungeon for my temerity,” Aoth replied, “if not now, then when the campaign is over.”

“Not if you frightened him properly.”

“His specialty is manipulating the forces of undeath. How easily do you think he scares?”

Still, maybe Brightwing was right. The Firelord knew, Aoth had never aspired to be a leader of men—he only needed good food, strong drink, women, magic, and flying to make him happy—and he still found it ironic that he’d ascended to a position of authority essentially by surviving a pair of military disasters. Contributing to a victory or two struck him as a far more legitimate qualification.

Which was to say, he was certain of his competence as a griffon rider and battle mage but less so of his ability as a captain. Still, here he was, with no option but to try his best.

“Maybe Urhur won’t survive the battle,” Brightwing said. “Maybe that would be better all around.” It was one of those moments when the griffon revealed that, for all her augmented intelligence and immersion in the human world, she remained a beast of prey at heart.

“No,” Aoth said. “It would be too risky, and wasteful besides, to murder one of our most valuable allies when we still have a war to fight. Anyway, it wouldn’t sit right with me.”

The griffon gave her wings a shake, a gesture denoting impatience. Her plumage rattled. “This squeamishness is why they never gave you a red robe.”

“And here I thought I was just too short.”

As the company neared the village, Aoth heard the flies buzzing over the carcasses in the corral, and the stink of spilled gore and decay grew thicker and fouler. The sound and smell clashed with the warmth and clear blue sky of a fine late-spring day, a day when lurking undead constituted a preposterous incongruity.

It occurred to him that if he could only expose them to the light of the sun shining brightly overhead, they might not lurk for long. He pointed his spear at the barn he and his squad were approaching, a structure sufficiently large that it seemed likely two or more families had owned it in common.

“Can you tear holes in the roof?”

Brightwing didn’t ask why. She was intelligent enough to comprehend and might well have discerned the reason through their psychic link even if she weren’t. “Yes.” She unfurled her wings.

He stepped away to give her room to flap them. “Just be careful.”

She screeched—derisively, he thought—and leaped into the air.

Aoth led his remaining companions to the door. He started through then hesitated. Should a captain take the lead going into danger or send common and presumably more expendable warriors in ahead? After a moment’s hesitation, he proceeded. He’d rather be thought reckless than timid.

Inside, the mangled bodies of plow horses and goats lay where they’d dropped. The buzzing of the flies seemed louder and the stench more nauseating, as if the stale, hot, trapped air amplified them. Overhead, the roof cracked and crunched, and a first sunbeam stabbed down into the shadowy interior. Particles of dust floated in the light.

For a moment, nothing stirred except the swarming flies and the drifting motes. Then a thing that had once been a man floundered up from underneath a pile of hay. Clutching a saw as if it hoped to use the tool as a makeshift sword, it shuffled forward.

The zombie wore homespun peasant garb and showed little sign of decay, but no one who observed the glassy eyes and slack features could have mistaken it for a living thing. It made a wordless croaking sound, and its fellows reared up from their places of concealment.

Aoth leveled his spear to thrust at any foe that came within reach and considered the spells he carried ready for the casting. Before he could select one, however, Chathi stepped to the front line. Not bothering with her torch, she simply glared at the zombies and rattled off an invocation to her god. Blue and yellow fire danced on her upper body, and Aoth stepped back from the sudden heat. All but one of the zombies burst into flame and burned to ash in an instant. His face contorted with rage and loathing, a soldier armed with a battle-axe confronted the one remaining, first sidestepping the clumsy stroke of a cudgel and lopping off the gray hand that gripped it then smashing the undead creature’s skull.

Was that it? Aoth wondered. Had they cleared the barn? Then Brightwing screeched, “Watch out! Above you!”

A hayloft hung over the earthen, straw-strewn floor, and now darkness poured over the edge of it like a waterfall. In that first instant, it looked like a single undifferentiated torrent of shadow. It was only when it splashed down and the entities comprising it sprang apart, launching themselves at one foe or another, that Aoth could make out the vague, inconstant semblances of men and hounds. Even then, the phantoms were difficult to see.

Brightwing’s cry had no doubt served as a warning of sorts even to those who couldn’t understand her voice. Still, the dark things were fast, and some of Aoth’s men failed to orient on them quickly enough. The shadows snatched and bit, and though their touch shed no blood and left no visible marks, warriors gasped and staggered or collapsed entirely. The soldier who’d destroyed the zombie bellowed and swept his axe through the spindly waist of the creature facing him. By rights, the stroke should have cut the spirit entirely in two, but manifestly unharmed, the phantom drove its insubstantial fingers into its opponent’s face. He fell backward with the undead entity clinging like a leech on top of him.

“You need some form of magic to hurt them!” Aoth shouted. “If you don’t have it, stay behind those who do!” He pivoted to tell Chathi to use her torch.

Unfortunately, she’d dropped it, probably when one of the ghostly hounds charged in and bit her. The same murky shape was lunging and snapping at her now. She might have destroyed or repelled it with a spell or by the simple exertion of faith that had annihilated the zombies, but perhaps the debilitating effect of her invisible wound or simple agitation was hampering her concentration. Meanwhile, the monk assigned as her bodyguard was busy with two shadows, one man-shaped and one canine, of his own.

Aoth charged the point of his lance with additional power and drove it down at the shadow-beast assailing Chathi. The thrust drove into the center of the phantom’s back and on through into the floor. The spirit withered away to nothing.

“Thank you,” the priestess stammered, teeth chattering as if she’d taken a chill.

“Pick up the torch and use it,” Aoth snapped then glimpsed motion from the corner of his eye. He pivoted toward it.

The shadow gripped the semblance of a battle-axe in its fists, and despite its vagueness, Aoth could make out hints of a legionnaire’s trappings in its silhouetted form. The warrior who’d slain the zombie had risen as a shadow to menace his former comrades, and the transformation had occurred mere moments after his own demise.

Aoth tried to swing his spear into position to pierce his foe, but he’d driven it too deep into the earth. It took an instant too long to jerk it free, and the phantom warrior rushed into the distance and swung its axe.

Had the axe been a weapon of steel and wood and not, in effect, simply the ghost of one, the blow would have sheared off his right arm at the shoulder. As it was, the limb went numb. Cold and weakness stabbed through his entire body, and his knees buckled. He stumbled, and the shade lifted the axe for another blow.

Before it could strike, a flare of flame engulfed it, and it burned away to nothing. As close as they’d been, the blast could easily have burned Aoth as well, but he wasn’t inclined to complain.

“Thanks,” he gasped to Chathi.

“Now we’re even,” she replied, grinning. Torch extended, she turned to seek another target.

Striving to control his breathing, Aoth invoked the magic bound in his tattoos to alleviate his weakness and the chill still searing his insides. He then rattled off a spell. Darts of blue light hurtled from his fingertips, diverging to streak at shadows at various points around the barn. Some saw the attack coming and sought to dodge, but the missiles veered to compensate. It was one of the virtues of this particular spell that in most situations it simply couldn’t miss.

Next he conjured a crackling, forking flare of lightning. Like his previous effort and Chathi’s attacks, it blasted more shades out of existence, but plenty remained, or so it seemed to him, reinforced by the tainted essences of those they’d already managed to slay, and he wondered if he and the Burning Brazier could eradicate them in time to keep them from annihilating the squad.

Then a crash sounded overhead. Scraps of wood and shingle showered down, and Brightwing plunged after them through the breach she’d created into the midst of several shadows. Her talons and snapping beak flashed right and left.

Her entry into the battle helped considerably. It only took a few more breaths to clear the remaining shades away.

The griffon tossed her head. “Stick me on the roof to punch holes. What a clever idea.”

“It would have been useful,” said Aoth, “if it had been a different sort of undead, vampires maybe, or certain types of wraith, hiding inside here.” Something about his own words nagged at him, but he wasn’t sure what and didn’t have time to puzzle it out. He turned to Chathi. “Can you tend to those who are hurt?”

“You’re first,” she said.

She murmured a prayer, and a corona of blue flame rippled across her hand. She lifted her fingers to his face, and this time he, who’d experienced the healing touch of a cleric of the Firelord on previous occasions, had little difficulty resisting the natural urge to flinch away.

As he’d anticipated, the heat of the flames was mild enough to be pleasant as it flowed through him to melt chill and debility away. Her caress was pleasurable in a different way. Her fingers were hard with callus like his own, the digits of a woman who’d trained to fight the enemies of her faith with mundane weapons as well as magic, but there was softness in the way they stroked his cheek, and they lingered for a moment after the healing was done.

It gave him something else to think about, but not now, not when he didn’t know what else was lying in wait in the hamlet or how the other squads were faring. He waited for her to minister to anyone else who’d suffered but survived the shadows’ touch, then formed up his troops and moved on.

As it turned out, the undead had congregated in four sites altogether, whether for mutual defense or simply out of some instinct to flock, Aoth wasn’t knowledgeable enough to guess. It wasn’t easy to clean out any of the three remaining locations, but none proved as difficult as the barn. The Thayans purged the village with acceptable losses on their own side, or so Nymia Focar would certainly have said.

As he glumly surveyed the several dead men laid out on the ground, Aoth found he had difficulty achieving a similar perspective. Over the years, he’d grown accustomed to watching fellow legionnaires die, but never before had it been because he himself had ordered them into peril.

Necklace rattling, bony staff sweating a greenish film, perhaps the residual effect of some spell he’d cast with it in the heat of battle, Urhur Hahpet sauntered up to view the corpses. “Well,” he said, “it appears there were no survivors for you to rescue.”

“No,” Aoth said.

“I assume, then, that you gleaned some critical piece of information to justify our casualties.”

Aoth hesitated, fishing inside himself for the insight that had nearly come to him after Chathi burned the zombies. It continued to elude him. “I don’t know. Probably not.”

Urhur sneered. “By the Dark Sun! If you claim to be a wizard, act like it. Stop moping. You blundered, but you’re lucky. You have necromancers to shield you from the consequences of your poor judgment. Just stand back and let me work.”

Aoth did as the Red Wizard wished. Urhur cast handfuls of black powder over the bodies then whirled his staff through complex figures. He chanted in a grating language that even his fellow mage couldn’t comprehend, though the mere sound of it made his stomach queasy. The ground rumbled.

Aoth felt a sudden urge to stop the ritual, but of course he didn’t act on it. Szass Tam himself had decreed that his minions were to exploit the fallen in this manner. Besides, Aoth had served with zombies and such since his stint in the legions began. Indeed, thanks to the Red Wizards who’d brought them along, he already included a fair number in the company he currently commanded, so above and beyond any normal person’s instinctive distaste for necromancy and its products, he didn’t understand his own reaction.

The dead rose, not with the lethargic awkwardness of common zombies, but with the same agility they’d exhibited in life. The amber eyes of dread warriors gleaming from their sockets, they came to attention and saluted Urhur.

“You see?” the Red Wizard asked. “Here they stand to serve once more, only now stronger, more difficult to destroy, and incapable of cowardice or disobedience. Improved in every way.”

Responsive to Xingax’s will, the hill-giant zombie fumbled with the array of lenses on their swiveling steel arms. The hulking creature was trying to give its shortsighted master with his mismatched eyes a clear, close view of the work in progress on the floor below the balcony, but it couldn’t align the glasses properly no matter how it tried. Finally Xingax waved it back, shifted forward on his seat, and pulled at the rods with the small, rotting fingers at the ends of his twisted, stubby arms.

There, that was better. The activity below flowed into focus just as the two scarlet-robed wizards completed their intricate contrapuntal incantation.

Clinking, the heap of bones in the center of the pentacle stirred and shifted. It was, of course, no feat to animate the intact skeleton of a single man or beast. A spellcaster didn’t even need to be a true necromancer to master the technique. But if the ritual worked, the bones below, the jumbled remains of several creatures, would become something new and considerably more interesting.

Despite the presumed protection of the pentacle boundary separating them from Xingax’s creation, each of the Red Wizards took a cautious step backward. The bone pile lifted a portion of itself—a temporary limb, if one chose to see it that way—and groped toward the mage on the left. Then, however, it collapsed with a rattle, and Xingax felt the power inside it dissipate. The wizard it had sought to menace cursed.

Xingax didn’t share his assistant’s vexation. The entity’s failure to thrive simply meant he hadn’t solved the puzzle yet, but he would. It just took patience.

Perhaps the problem lay in the third and fourth stanzas of the incantation. He’d had a feeling they weren’t entirely right. He twisted around to his writing desk with its litter of parchments, took up his quill, and dipped it in the inkwell. Meanwhile, below him, zombies shuffled and stooped, picking up bones and carrying them away, while the Red Wizards began the task of purifying the chamber. Everything had to be fresh, unsullied by the lingering taint of the ritual just concluded, if the next one was to have any hope of success.

Xingax lost himself in his ponderings, until the wooden stairs ascending to his perch creaked and groaned, and the undead giant grunted for his attention.

Now Xingax felt a pang of irritation. Unsuccessful trials didn’t bother him, but interruptions did. Glowering, he heaved himself around toward the top of the steps.

A pair of wizards climbed into view. They knew enough to ward themselves against the aura of malign energy emanating from Xingax’s body and had surely done so, but potbellied So-Kehur with his food-spotted robe appeared queasy and ill at ease even so.

The mage’s nervousness stirred Xingax’s contempt. He knew what he looked like to human eyes: an oversized, freakishly deformed stillborn or aborted fetus. Pure ugliness, and never mind that, if his mother had carried him to term, he would have been a demigod, but a necromancer should be inured to phenomena that filled ordinary folk with horror.

At least Muthoth didn’t show any overt signs of revulsion, which was not to suggest that he looked well. Bandages shrouded his right hand, and bloodstains dappled his robe; even dry, they had an enticing, unmistakable coppery smell. The ghoul familiar he’d worn like a mask of ink was gone.

Muthoth regarded Xingax with a blend of arrogance and wariness. The undead entity supposed it was understandable. Muthoth and So-Kehur were Red Wizards, schooled to hold themselves above everyone except their superiors in the hierarchy, yet they were also young, little more than apprentices, and Xingax manifestly occupied a position of authority in the current endeavor. Thus, they weren’t sure if they needed to defer to him or could get away with ordering him around.

One day, Xingax supposed, he’d likely have to settle the question of who was subordinate to whom, but for now, he just wanted to deal with the interruption quickly and return to his computations.

“What happened to the two of you?” he asked.

“We had some trouble on the trail,” Muthoth said. “A man attacked us.”

Xingax cocked his head. “A man? As in, one?”

Muthoth colored. “He was a bard, with magic of his own.”

“And here I thought it was an article of faith with you Red Wizards that your arts are superior to all others,” Xingax drawled. “At any rate, I assume you made him pay for his audacity.”

Muthoth hesitated. “No. He translated himself elsewhere.”

“By Velsharoon’s staff! You couriers have one simple task, to acquire and transport slaves without attracting undue attention—never mind. Just tell me exactly what happened.”

Muthoth did, while So-Kehur stood and fidgeted. Impatient as Xingax was to return to his experiments, he had to admit it was a tale worth hearing if only because it seemed so peculiar. He was incapable of love in both the spiritual and anatomical senses, but in the course of dealing with beings less rational than himself, he’d acquired some abstract understanding of what those conditions entailed. Still, it was ultimately unfathomable that a man could so crave the society of one particular woman that he’d risk near-certain destruction on her behalf.

Of course, from a practical perspective, the enigmas of human psychology were beside the point, and Xingax supposed he ought to focus on what was pertinent. “You didn’t tell this Bareris Anskuld you were heading into Delhumide, did you?” he asked.

“Of course not!” Muthoth snapped.

“It’s conceivable,” said Xingax, “that he’s inferred it, but even if he has, I don’t see what he can do about it. Follow? If so, our sentinels will kill him. Tell others what he’s discovered? We’d prefer that he not, and we’ll try to find and silence him, but really, he doesn’t know enough to pose a problem. He may not dare to confide in anyone anyway. After all, the will of a Red Wizard is law, and by running afoul of the two of you, he automatically made himself a felon.”

Muthoth nodded. “That’s the way I see it.”

“We’re just sorry,” said So-Kehur, “that the bard killed some of our warriors, and the orcs had to kill a few of the slaves.”

Muthoth shot his partner a glare, and Xingax understood why. While telling their story, Muthoth had opted to omit that particular detail.

“Did you reanimate the dead?” Xingax asked.

“Yes,” Muthoth said.

“Then I suppose that in all likelihood, it didn’t do any extraordinary harm.” Xingax started to turn back to his papers then realized the wizards were still regarding him expectantly. “Was there more?”

“We assumed,” said Muthoth, “that you’d want to divide up the shipment, or would you rather I do it?”

Xingax screwed up his asymmetrical features, pondering. He didn’t want to forsake his creative work for a mundane chore. He could feel the answer to the puzzle teasing him, promising to reveal itself if he pushed just a little longer. On the other hand, the slaves were a precious resource, one he’d occasionally come near to exhausting despite the best efforts of the couriers to keep him supplied, and he wasn’t certain he could trust anyone but himself to determine how to exploit them to best effect.

“I’ll do it,” he sighed.

He beckoned to the giant zombie, and the creature picked him up to ride on its shoulders as if he were a toddler, and the mindless brute with its low forehead and gnarled apish arms, his father. His frayed, greasy length of umbilicus dangled over the zombie’s chest.

In reality, it wasn’t necessary that anyone or anything carry Xingax. If he chose, he could move about quite adequately on his own, but it suited him that folk should think him as physically helpless as his ravaged fetal form appeared. For the time being, he and his associates were all on the same side, but an existence spent primarily in the Abyss had taught him just how quickly such situations could alter, and a time might come when he’d want to give one of his compatriots a lethal surprise.

His balcony was one of a number of such vantage points overlooking the warren of catacombs below. Despite the extensive labor required, he’d ordered the construction of a system of catwalks to connect one perch to the next and only descended to mingle with his living associates when necessary. Even necromancers couldn’t maintain their mystical defenses against his proximity every moment of every day, nor could they work efficiently if vomiting, suffering blinding headaches, or collapsing in convulsions.

As his undead giant lumbered along with Muthoth and So-Kehur trailing at its heels, it pleased Xingax to see the complex bustling with activity, each of his minions busy at his—or its—job. That was as it must be, if he was to make progress in his investigations and earn his ultimate reward.

One of the Red Wizards had conjured a perpetual gloom to shroud the platform overlooking the enormous vault where the couriers caged newly arrived slaves. The prisoners’ eyes couldn’t penetrate the shadows, but an observer experienced no difficulty looking out of them. Thus, Xingax could study the thralls without agitating them.

He didn’t scrutinize any one individual for long. He trusted his first impressions, his myopia notwithstanding. “Food,” he said, pointing. “Basic. Basic. Advanced. Food. Basic.” Then he noticed the wizards simply standing and listening. “Why aren’t you writing this down?”

“No need,” said Muthoth. “So-Kehur will remember.”

“He’d better,” Xingax said. He continued assigning the slaves to their respective categories until only two remained.

They were young women who’d found a corner in which to settle. Likely aghast at what she’d glimpsed on the walk to her current place of confinement, the one with long hair appeared to have withdrawn deep inside herself. Her companion was coaxing her to sample the porridge their captors had provided.

“Food and food,” Xingax concluded, feeling a renewed eagerness to return to the problem of the defective ritual. “Is there anything else?”

Maddeningly, it appeared there was. “My hand,” said Muthoth, lifting the bandaged one. “I’ve heard about your skill with grafts, and I was hoping you could do something to repair it.”

“Why, of course,” Xingax said. “I have a thousand vital tasks to occupy me, but I’ll gladly defer them to help a mage so incompetent that he couldn’t defend himself against a lone madman even with a second wizard and bodyguards to help. Because that’s exactly the sort of ally I want owing me a favor.”

Muthoth glared, looking so furious that Xingax wondered if he was in danger of losing control. So-Kehur evidently thought so. He took a step backward, lest a sorcerous attack strike him by accident.

Xingax called on the poisonous power inside him. He stared into Muthoth’s eyes and released an iota of it, hoping to suggest its full devastating potential in the same way that a mere flick of a whip reminds a slave of the shearing, smashing force of which the lash is capable.

Muthoth flinched and averted his eyes. “All right! If you’re too busy, I understand.”

“Good,” Xingax rapped. He started to direct his servant to carry him away then noticed that the confrontation had delayed him long enough for another little drama to start playing itself out in the hall below.

Specifically, one of the blood orcs had entered the makeshift barracoon. The warrior was somewhat reckless to enter alone. It must assume the slaves were too cowed to try to hurt it, and to all appearances, it was right. They shrank from it as it prowled about.

The orc’s gaze fell on the two women sitting on the floor in the corner. It leered at them, started unfastening its leather breeches, and waved for the slave with the short hair to move away from her companion.

The orc’s actions were neither unusual nor illicit. The wizards and guards had permission to amuse themselves with the slaves provided they didn’t damage them to any significant degree. Still, despite the lure of his work, Xingax lingered to watch for another moment. Though he would never have admitted it to another, he sometimes found the alien matter of sexuality intriguing as well as repugnant.

To his astonishment, the short-haired slave stood up and positioned herself between the orc and her friend. “Find someone else,” she said.

The orc grabbed her, perhaps with the intention of flinging her out of its way. She hit it in the face with the bowl of gruel. The earthenware vessel shattered, and the warrior stumbled backward. The slave lunged after it, trying to land a second attack, but the guard recovered its balance and knocked her staggering with a backhand blow to the face. Her momentary incapacity gave it time to draw its scimitar.

It stalked after the thrall, and she retreated. “Help me!” she called. “If we all try, we can kill at least one of them before the end! That’s better than nothing!”

Apparently the other slaves were too demoralized to agree, because none of them moved to help her. Knowing then that she stood alone, pale with fright but resolute, the short-haired woman shifted her grip on the shard of bowl remaining in her hand to make it easier to slash with the broken edge.

“She has courage,” Xingax said.

“That’s the one the bard wanted to buy,” So-Kehur said.

“Really? Well, perhaps his obsession does make at least a tiny bit of sense. In any case, I was wrong about her.” Xingax waved his hand, dissolving the unnatural gloom so the orc could see him. “Leave her alone!”

Surprised, the warrior looked up to find out who was shouting at it. It hesitated for a moment, seemingly torn between the prudence of unquestioning obedience and the urgency of anger, then howled, “But she hit me!”

“And she’ll suffer for it, never fear.” Xingax turned to So-Kehur. “The woman comes to me.”

After Aoth’s company destroyed the creatures occupying Dulos, he opted to stop there for the night. His weary warriors could use the rest.

So could he, for that matter, but he proved incapable of sitting or lying still. Eventually he abandoned the effort, left the house he’d commandeered, and started prowling along the perimeter of the settlement.

It was a pointless thing to do. Shortly before dusk, he and Brightwing had flown over the immediate area and found it clear of potential threats. On top of that, he already had sentries posted.

Yet he couldn’t shake a nagging unease. Maybe it was simply because the undead were more powerful in the dark. If any remained in the region and aspired to avenge their fellows, this was the time when they would strike.

Abruptly a shape appeared in the pool of shadow beneath an elm, and though Aoth could barely see it, its tilted, knock-kneed stance revealed it to be undead. No living man would choose to assume such an awkward position, but a zombie, incapable of discomfort, its range of motion altered by its death wounds, very well might.

Aoth leveled his spear and drew breath to raise the alarm, then noticed the gleam of yellow eyes in the creature’s head. The thing was a dread warrior, one of his own command. As it still possessed sufficient intelligence to fight as it had in life, so too could it stand watch, and apparently Urhur Hahpet or one of his fellow Red Wizards had stationed it here to do so. Maybe the whoreson believed Aoth’s security arrangements were inadequate, or perhaps it was simply that the necromancer, too, felt ill at ease.

“Don’t blast it,” said a feminine voice. “It’s one of ours.”

Startled, heart banging in his chest, Aoth jerked around to see Chathi Oandem smiling at him from several paces away. He tried to compose himself and smile back.

“I wasn’t going to,” he said. “I recognized it just in time to avoid making a fool of myself.”

The priestess strolled nearer. Though she still carried her torch weapon, she wasn’t wearing her mail and helmet anymore, just flame-patterned vestments that molded themselves to her willowy form at those moments when the cool breeze gusted.

“I thought all wizards had owl eyes and could see in the dark.”

Aoth shrugged. “I know the spell, but I haven’t been preparing it lately. I’d rather concentrate on combat magic, especially considering that I can look through Brightwing’s eyes when I need to.”

“Except that the poor tired creature is asleep at the moment.”

If Chathi had observed that, it meant she’d passed by his quarters. He felt a rush of excitement at the thought that perhaps she’d gone there intentionally, looking for him, and kept on seeking him after.

“Good. She’s earned her rest.”

“So have you and I, yet here we are, up wandering the night. Is something troubling you?”

He wondered if a captain ought to confide any sort of anxiety or misgivings to someone at least theoretically under his command, then decided he didn’t care. “There shouldn’t be, should there? We won our battle and received word this afternoon that other companies are winning theirs. Everything’s quiet, yet …” He snorted. “Maybe I’m just timid.”

“Then we both are. I’ve trained since I was a little girl to fight the enemies of Kossuth, and I’ve destroyed my share, but these things! Is it the mere fact they’re undead or that we have no idea why they came down from the mountains that makes them so troubling we can’t relax and celebrate even after a victory?”

“A bit of both, I suppose.” And something more as well, though he still wasn’t sure what.

She smiled and touched his cheek as she had to heal him. Even without a corona of flame, her hardened fingertips felt feverishly warm. “I wonder—if you and I tried very hard, do you think we could manage a celebration despite our trepidations?”

He wanted her as urgently as he could recall ever wanting a woman, but he also wondered if he’d be crossing a line he shouldn’t, for all that Nymia did it constantly. She was a thar-chion and he but a newly minted captain.

“If this is about my having saved your life,” he said, playing for time until he was sure of his own mind, “remember you saved mine, too. You said it yourself, we’re even.”

“It’s not about gratitude but about discovering a fire inside me, and when a priestess of Kossuth finds such a flame, she doesn’t seek to dowse it.” Chathi grinned. “That would be blasphemy. She stokes it and lets it burn what it will, so shall we walk back to your quarters?”

He swallowed. “I imagine one of these huts right in front of us is empty.”

“Good thinking. No wonder you’re the leader.”

When she unpinned her vestments and dropped them to pool around her feet, he saw that her god had scarred portions of her body as well as her face, but those marks didn’t repel him either. In fact, he kissed them with a special fervor.

Each gripping one of her arms, the two blood orcs marched Tammith toward the doorway, and she offered no resistance. Perhaps she’d used up her capacity for defiance seeking to protect Yuldra, or maybe it was simply that she realized the two gray-skinned warriors with their swinish tusks were on their guard. She had little hope of breaking away and wouldn’t know which way to run if she did.

The spacious vault beyond the door proved to be a necromancer’s conjuring chamber lit, like the rest of the catacombs, by everburning torches burning with cold greenish flame. Though Tammith had never seen such a place before, the complex designs chalked on the floor, the shelves of bottled liquids and jars of powders, the racks of staves and wands, and the scent of bitter incense overlying the stink of decay were familiar to her from stories.

Two Red Wizards currently occupied the room, along with half a dozen zombies. A couple of the latter shuffled forward and reached out to collect Tammith.

The gods had been cruel to make her believe that she might still have Bareris and freedom only to snatch them away. Her spirit had nearly shattered then, and she still didn’t understand why it hadn’t. Perhaps it was the knowledge that her love had escaped. He could still have a life even if she couldn’t.

In any case, she hadn’t yet succumbed to utter crippling terror and had vowed to meet her end, whatever it proved to be, with as much bravery as she could muster. Still, the prospect of the enduring the touch of the zombies’ cold, slimy fingers, of inhaling the fetor of their rotten bodies close up, filled her with revulsion.

“Please!” she said. “You don’t need those creatures to hold me. I know I can’t get away.”

The Red Wizards ignored her plea, and the zombies, with their slack mouths and empty eyes, trudged a step closer, but then a voice spoke from overhead.

“That sounds all right. Just position a couple of the zombies to block the exit, in case she’s not as sensible as she seems.”

Tammith looked up and observed the loft above the chamber for the first time. The giant zombie was there and its master, too. A number of round lenses attached to a branching metal framework hung before the fetus-thing like apples on a tree. From her vantage point, the effect was to break his body into distorted sections and make it even more hideous, if such a thing was possible.

Since the creature had decreed that she was to come to him, she’d expected to encounter him wherever she ended up. Still, the actual sight of him dried her mouth and made her shudder. How could anything so resemble a baby yet look so ghastly and radiate such a palpable feeling of malevolence? She struggled again to cling to what remained of her courage.

She didn’t hear either of the Red Wizards give a verbal command or notice a hand signal either, but the zombies stopped advancing as the fetus-thing had indicated they should. The orcs looked to one of the necromancers, and he waved a hairless, tattooed hand in dismissal. The guards wasted no time departing, as if even they found the chamber a disturbing place.

Tammith forced herself to gaze up at the baby-thing without flinching. “Thank you for that anyway. I’m tired of being manhandled.”

“And corpse-handled is even worse, I imagine.” The creature smirked at its own feeble play on words. “Think nothing of it. This could be the beginning of a long and fruitful association, and we might as well start off in a friendly sort of way. My name is Xingax. What’s yours?”

She told him. “ ‘A long and fruitful association?’ Then … you don’t mean to kill me?”

“Actually, I do, but death needn’t be the end of an entity’s existence. Lucky for me! Otherwise I wouldn’t have fared very well after my mother’s cuckold husband tore me from the womb.”

“I … I won’t be one of those.” She gestured to indicate the zombies. “I’ll make your servants tear me to pieces first.”

Xingax chuckled. “Do you imagine I’d have no use for the fragments? If so, you’re mistaken, but please, calm yourself. I don’t intend to turn you into a zombie. You have a much more interesting opportunity in store.

“You’ve seen enough,” continued the fetus-thing, “to discern what this place is: an undead manufactory. Given sufficient resources, we’d create only powerful, sentient specimens, since those are the most useful for our purposes. Alas, the reality is that it takes considerably more magic to evoke a ghost or something similar than it does to make a mindless automaton like my giant or my helpers’ helpers.

“So we function as we best we can, given our limitations. Many of the slaves who come here end up as zombies or at best ghouls. Others go to feed newly created undead in need of such sustenance, and afterward we animate their skeletons. Only a relative few have the chance to attain a more advanced state of being.”

Tammith shook her head. “I can tell you think that’s a boon. Why would you offer it to me when I’ve raised my hand to your servants more than once?”

“For that very reason. You have a boldness we can put to good use. Assuming the transformation takes. That’s the other thing I should explain. I recreate types of undead that became extinct long ago and breed others altogether new. It’s a part of my mandate, and more than that, my passion. My art. The closest I’ll ever come to fatherhood. The problem is that we have to refine the magic by trial and error, and well, obviously, it isn’t right until it’s right.”

She imagined what might befall a captive when the magic was still wrong. She pictured herself shrieking in endless anguish, her body mangled like an apprentice potter’s first botched attempt at shaping a vessel on the wheel. Hard on that image came the realization that she’d been a fool to cringe from the prospect of becoming a zombie. It was the best fate that could befall her. Her body would remain a thrall but her soul would fly free to await Bareris in the afterlife.

She lunged at the nearer of the Red Wizards. He had a dagger with a curved blade sheathed on his belt. She’d snatch it, slash the artery in the side of her neck, and all fear and misery would spurt away with her blood.

The necromancer had obviously been waiting for her to attempt some sort of violence. He barked a word she didn’t understand, swept his left hand through a mystic figure, and black motes swirled around it to form a spiral.

The flecks of darkness didn’t hurt her, but they fascinated her. She had no choice but to pause and stare at them, even though a part of her, now disconnected from her will, screamed that she mustn’t.

The wizard stepped back and the zombies shambled forward, closing in on her. Their clammy hands grabbed her and held tight. The spiral faded, allowing her to struggle, but writhe as she might, she couldn’t break free, and when she stamped on her captors’ feet, snapped her head backward to bash a zombie’s jaw, and even sank her teeth into spongy, putrid flesh, it didn’t matter. Since the creatures didn’t feel pain, the punishment couldn’t make them fumble their grips.

“I rather expected that,” said Xingax, “but it’s still a shame. You were doing so well.”

“Shall I subdue her?” asked the mage with the dagger.

“I suppose it would be best,” Xingax replied.

The Red Wizard extracted a pewter vial from a hidden pocket in his robe, and holding it at arm’s length, he uncorked it. He then moved to stick it under Tammith’s nose. She strained to twist her face away, but with the zombies immobilizing her, it was futile.

The fumes had a nasty metallic tang she tasted as well as smelled. Her limbs went slack, and wouldn’t so much as twitch no matter how she struggled. She might as well have been asleep.

“Put her in the pentacle,” Xingax said.

The zombies laid her on her back, spread her arms wide, and crossed her legs at the ankle. Then, for a considerable time, the Red Wizards chanted rhymes in an unknown tongue while brandishing smoking censers; slender, gleaming swords; and a black chalice carved from a single piece of jet.

At first it was sinister but ultimately incomprehensible. Eventually, however, the necromancer with the dagger—she had the impression he was the senior of the pair—crouched down beside her and dipped his forefinger in the black cup. It came out red. He rubbed her lips with it, then her gums, then worked it past her teeth to dab at her tongue. She tasted the salty, coppery tang of blood.

After that, she could somehow perceive the power gathering in the air and conceived the crazy, terrifying notion that the chanted incantations were a thing unto themselves, a living malignancy that was simply employing the mages to further the purposes implicit in the tercets and quatrains. She still couldn’t comprehend them, but she felt the meaning was on the very brink of revealing itself to her and that when it did, she wouldn’t be able to bear it.

A mass of shadow seethed into existence above her, thickening until she could barely see the ceiling or Xingax peering avidly down at her through a pair of lenses positioned one before the other. The clot of darkness took on a suggestion of texture, of bulges, hollows, and edges, as if it had become a solid object. Then it shattered.

Into an explosion of enormous bats. The rustling of their countless wings echoing from the stone walls, they flew in all directions. Xingax cried out in excitement. The Red Wizards, for all that they’d conjured the flock and were presumably in control of it, retreated to stand with their backs against a wall.

A bat lit on a zombie’s shoulder and plunged its fangs into its throat. The animated corpse showed no reaction to the bite, but despite its passivity, the bat fluttered its wings and took flight again only a heartbeat later.

Three bats settled on a second zombie, bit it, and abandoned it immediately thereafter. Because they crave the blood of a living person, Tammith thought, her heart hammering. Because they want me.

She made a supreme effort to roll over onto her belly. If she could only move a little, she could crawl away from the middle of the floor, then … why, then nothing, she supposed. The part of her that was still rational realized it wasn’t likely to matter, but she needed to try. It was better than simply accepting her fate, no matter how inescapable it was.

Her limbs trembled. The effect of the vapor was wearing off. She felt a thrill of excitement, of lunatic hope, and then the first bat found her. Cold as the zombies’ fingers, its claws dug into her chest for purchase as its fangs sought her throat.

As it sucked the wounds it had inflicted, the rest of the flock descended on her, covering her like a shifting, frigid blanket, the bats that couldn’t reach her shoving at the ones who had like piglets jostling for their mother’s teats. Scores of icy needles pierced her flesh.

Had she ever imagined such a fate, she might have assumed that so much cold would numb her. Somehow, it didn’t. The assault was agony.

The bats tore at her lips, nose, cheeks, and forehead. Not my eyes, she silently begged, not my eyes, but they ripped those too, and then she finally passed out.

Tammith woke to pain, weakness, searing thirst, and utter darkness. At first she couldn’t remember what had happened to her, but then the memory leaped at her like a cat pouncing on a mouse.

When it did, she decided Xingax couldn’t possibly have intended to create the crippled, sightless creature she’d become. The experiment had failed as he’d warned it might.

“So kill me!” she croaked. “I’m no use to you!”

No one answered. She wondered if she actually was alone or if Xingax and the Red Wizards were still present, silently studying her, preparing to put her out of her misery, or—gods forbid!—readying a new torment.

Suddenly she was frantic to know, which made her blindness intolerable. She felt a flowing, a budding, in the raw orbits of her skull, and then smears of light and shadow wavered into existence before her. Over the course of several moments, the world sharpened into focus. She realized she’d healed her ruined eyes, or if the bats had destroyed them entirely, grown new ones.

It suggested that Xingax’s experiment hadn’t been a complete failure after all, but she appeared to be alone nonetheless. Her captors had deposited her in a different chamber, a bare little room with a matchboarded door. Up near the ceiling, someone had cut a hole, probably connecting to the ubiquitous system of catwalks, but if the aborted monstrosity was up there peeping at her, she couldn’t see it.

Which, she recalled, didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t. He’d concealed himself easily enough when taking stock of the new supply of slaves. She wheezed his name but received no reply.

She supposed that if she did constitute some sort of glorious success, and he wasn’t here to witness it, the joke was on him. But in fact, she doubted it. The Red Wizards had managed to stuff a little magic into her, enough to preserve her existence and restore her vision, but accomplishing the latter had left her even weaker and more parched than before. She stared at the myriad puncture wounds on her hands and forearms, willing them to close, and nothing happened.

At that point, misery overwhelmed her. She curled up into a ball and wept, though her new eyes seemed incapable of shedding actual tears, until a key grated in the lock of the door. It creaked open, and an orc shoved Yuldra through and slammed it after her. The lock clacked once again.

Tammith extended a trembling hand. She knew the other captive couldn’t do anything substantive to ease her distress, but Yuldra could at least talk to her, clasp her fingers, or cradle her, perhaps. Any crumb of comfort, of simple human contact with someone who wasn’t a pitiless torturer, would be better than nothing.

Yuldra flinched from the sight of her ravaged body, let out a sob of her own, wheeled, and scrambled into a corner. There she crouched down and held her face averted, attempting to shut out the world as she had before.

“How many times did I take care of you?” Tammith cried. “And now you turn your back on me?”

Nor was Yuldra the only person who’d so betrayed her. She’d spent her life looking after other people. Her father the drunkard and gambler. Her brother the imbecile. And what had anyone ever done for her in return? Even Bareris, who claimed to love her with all his heart, had abandoned her to chase his dreams of gold and excitement in foreign lands.

She realized she was on her feet. She was still thirsty, it was a fire burning in her throat, but she’d shaken off weakness for the moment, anyway. Anger lent her strength.

“Look at me,” she snapped.

Her voice was sharp as the crack of a whip, and like a whip, it tangled something inside of Yuldra and tugged at her. The slave started to turn around but then shook off the coercion.

“Fine,” Tammith said, stalking forward, “we’ll do it the hard way.”

She didn’t know precisely what it was. Everything was happening too quickly, with impulse and fury sweeping her along, but when her upper canines stung and lengthened into fangs, their points pressing into her lower lip, she understood.

The realization brought a horror that somewhat dampened her rage if not her thirst. I can’t do this, she thought. I can’t be this. Yuldra is my friend.

She stood and fought against her need. It seemed to her that she was winning. Then her body burst apart into a cloud of bats much like the conjured entities that had attacked her, and that made the world a different place. The sense of sight she’d so missed became secondary to her ability to hear and comprehend the import of her own echoing cries, but the fragmentation of her consciousness was an even more fundamental change. She retained her ultimate sense of self and managed her dozens of bodies as easily as she had one, yet something was lost in the diffusion: conscience, perhaps, or the capacities for empathy and self-denial. She was purely a predator now, and her bats hurtled at Yuldra like a flight of arrows.

Rather to Tammith’s surprise, given Yuldra’s usual habit of cringing helplessness, the other slave fought back. She flailed at the bats, sought to grab them, and when successful, squeezed them hard enough to crush an ordinary animal, wrung them like washcloths, or pounded them against the wall. The punishment stung, but only for an instant, and without doing any real harm.

Meanwhile, Tammith clung to the other thrall and jabbed her various sets of fangs into her veins and arteries. When the hot blood gushed into her mouths, she felt a pleasure intense as the fulfillment of passion, and as it assuaged her thirst, the relief was a keener ecstasy still.

Before long, Yuldra weakened and then stopped struggling altogether. Once Tammith drank the last of her, the bats took flight. They swirled around one another, dissolved, and instantly reformed into a single body, now cleansed of all the wounds that had disfigured it before.

That didn’t make the remorse that came with the restoration of her original form any easier to bear. The guilt fell on her like a hammer stroke, and she felt a howl of anguish welling up inside.

“Excellent,” Xingax said.

She looked up. The fetus-thing had been watching through the hole high in the wall, just as she’d suspected, and had now dissolved the charm that had hidden him from view.

“I believe that with practice,” he continued, “you’ll find you can remain divided for extended periods of time. I’m confident you’ll discover other uncommon abilities as well, talents that set you above the common sort of vampire.”

“Why didn’t you answer me when I called to you before? Why didn’t you warn me?”

“I wanted to see how far instinct would carry you. It’s quite a promising sign that you managed to manifest a number of your abilities and take down your first prey without any mentoring at all.”

“I’m going to kill you,” she told him, and with the resolve came the abrupt instinctive realization that she didn’t even need to shapeshift to do it. His elevated position afforded no protection. She dashed to the wall and scrambled upward like a fly. It was as easy as negotiating a horizontal surface.

Partway up, dizziness and nausea assailed her. Her feet and hands lost their ability to adhere to the wall, and she plunged back to the floor. She landed awkwardly, with a jolt that might well have broken the old Tammith’s bones, though the new version wasn’t even stunned.

As the sick feeling began to pass, Xingax said, “You didn’t really think we’d give you so much power without insuring that you’d use it as we intend, did you? I’m afraid, my daughter, that you’re still a thrall, or at best, a vassal. If it’s any comfort to you, so am I, and so are the Red Wizards you’ve encountered here, but so long as we behave ourselves, our service is congenial, and we can hope for splendid rewards in the decades to come.”