by Tim Waggoner
When my story was done Quillion looked thoughtful. The walls became less solid looking as he considered, wavering as if formed from crimson liquid, and I realized the chamber was linked to his mind. It certainly made for a good interrogation room. Confronting suspects with scenes of them committing a crime was a great way to get them to confess. But I reminded myself that what I'd witnessed wasn't exactly the magical equivalent of video from a security camera. It was a recreation based on interpreted evidence and not proof by a long shot. Unfortunately an Adjudicator doesn't need proof. He or she just has to believe a suspect is guilty in order to pronounce a sentence. I just had to hope that my story, strange as it was, had sowed a seed of doubt in Quillion's mind about my guilt.
"You must admit that on the surface your story is quite outlandish," Quillion said after a time. "You expect me to believe that someone knew you carried Edrigu's mark, and what's more, that they knew it could be used to gain access to his collection. And that this someone stole your body, somehow animated it, and used it to steal the object?"
"I told you that Acantha asked me about Edrigu's mark and showed a close up of my hand on her program. Hundreds saw it, maybe thousands. One of them must've realized what the mark could be used for."
"Then why not just steal your hand?" Quillion asked.
I shrugged. "I'm no expert in Darklord magic. Maybe most of my body was needed for the mark to work properly. Maybe someone wanted to frame me and they wanted to make sure there was enough of 'me' present to be recorded by whatever security methods Edrigu had in place. Are you sure the chamber guardians saw me as complete? In other words, did I have a head?"
"Yes," Quillion said, but then he frowned. "I'll admit that the guardians' mental description lacked a certain amount of visual clarity, however. It's difficult to see through an aura of flame, you know. Their impressions of you were more mystically derived than visually. They know it was a zombie that entered the chamber, and they recognized the power inherent in Edrigu's mark. You are the only individual in the city who matches those criteria."
"So my headless body might've been used to commit the theft. Someone might have been controlling it from a distance, like a marionette with a very long set of strings."
"I suppose," Quillion said, but he sounded unconvinced.
I decided to try a different tack. "What was stolen?"
"An object of some importance to Edrigu, obviously, since he wore it on his person. Unfortunately none of his servants seem to know its purpose and since the Darklord himself is asleep and cannot be wakened to tell us more…" Quillion trailed off.
"Contact Victor Baron," I suggested. "He can back me up."
"Speaking with Baron would prove nothing. You could've committed the theft, perhaps at the behest of a client, and later cut off your own head and gone to the Foundry to have it reattached in an attempt to establish an alibi."
"I'm not a mercenary," I snapped. "I'm a private detective. There's a big difference."
"You do favors for people and they pay you in return," Quillion said with a shrug. "Perhaps this time the payment was enough to get you to suspend your moral code."
I wanted to tell Quillion he could shove my moral code up his hairless ass, but I knew it wouldn't help my case, so instead I said, "You could ask Devona. She–" I stopped myself. Quillion would just assume she'd lie to protect me. "We could ask Dis to verify my story. With his power…"
"Father Dis is a god," Quillion said stiffly. "He has far more important matters to attend to than deciding the fate of one zombie."
Quillion's dismissal of my idea had come a bit too quickly and was made too forcefully for me to take it at face value. A second later I realized what was really going on.
"You won't ask Dis to help me because you can't. He's resting just like the Darklords, isn't he?"
Quillion reluctantly nodded. "Dis normally uses far more energy than any of the Darklords during the Renewal Ceremony, but this year was especially taxing for him. He sleeps deeply, and like the Darklords, he cannot be awakened until he is restored to full strength."
This was bad for the city. With Dis and the Darklords temporarily out of commission Nekropolis was virtually unprotected. If a major crisis developed there would be no one available to deal with it. Hopefully, things would keep running smoothly enough until the Darklords awakened. If not… well, I didn't want to think about that.
"So what are we left with?" I asked. "We agree on the fact that my body was used to commit a crime, but there's no way I can prove to you that my consciousness wasn't in the driver's seat at the time the theft took place."
"That's not precisely true," Quillion said. "Because of your previous service to the city, I wanted to give you the opportunity to explain yourself. But since you are not able to do so adequately, I'm forced to rely on my usual methods of extracting information from those I question."
I didn't like the sound of that.
"I hate to break this to you, but I'm a zombie. Torture won't work on me. Whatever you do, I won't be able to feel it."
Quillion gave me a cold smile. "This is another thing that's not precisely true." As he spoke the crimson walls began to edge toward green and their hard smooth surface began to shimmer and flicker. "You know the flames which burn upon the surface of the river Phlegethon?"
This was sounding worse all the time.
"Yes. They're magical flames that burn the spirit instead of the flesh."
Quillion's smile widened.
"The Adjudicators created those flames."
He gestured and the walls of green fire, no illusion this time, came rushing inward toward us. For the first time since I'd died I felt pain – pain beyond anything I'd ever imagined was possible.
I screamed and I continued screaming for a very long time.
In the end I confessed. At least, I think I did. I don't have any memory of actually doing so, but Quillion made the green fire go away, and I lay on the floor of the Inquisitory, grateful that my dead body once more felt no sensation, though the echoes of agony still lingered in my soul, and I wondered if they always would.
He asked me more questions: who hired me, where was the bone flute now? But I just lay there, barely able to think, let alone answer. Besides, I knew it didn't matter what I said. Quillion believed me guilty, and that was the end of it.
"Very well," he said after a while, sounding irritated. "I suppose we'll sort out the rest of the details in due time. If nothing else, hopefully Edrigu will be able to track down the artifact once he awakens, and then we'll discover who hired you. For now, I pronounce you officially guilty of a crime against a Darklord and sentence you to be incarcerated in Tenebrus until the end of your days."
"You can't be serious!" I shouted. "This isn't about justice! It's about you having power and using it however it suits you! There's been no due process here, no real standards of evidence… I've spent my entire career in law enforcement one way or another, Quillion, and I can tell you that you wouldn't know justice if it walked up and bit you on your bald ass!"
Quillion's gaze became arctic cold. "Goodbye, Matthew, and may Father Dis have mercy on your soul."
Before I could summon up the energy to protest Quillion made a gesture and the floor beneath me disappeared and I found myself tumbling down into darkness.
EIGHT
I hadn't slept or lost consciousness since my resurrection, but I have no memory of my fall ending. One moment I was plunging through darkness, hands scrabbling to find some kind of purchase without success, and the next I was laying on a hard surface. I assumed I'd hit and not felt the impact – though I should've been aware of it at least – but when I sat up I discovered that none of my bones were broken. So either the fall hadn't been as long as it had seemed or some sort of magic was at work here. Whichever the case my body was still intact, and since I'd only recently gotten it back, I was glad I hadn't broken it.
I was surrounded by darkness and silence and part of me wanted to remain there, quiet
and unmoving, in the hope that whoever or whatever inhabited this place might not notice me if I could avoid drawing attention to myself. But the passive approach has never sat well with me, even when it's the smart way to go. Especially then. So I stood up and called out into the darkness.
"This really isn't much of a welcome. You could do a little more to make a guy feel at home, you know."
No response.
I'd heard plenty of rumors about Tenebrus over the years, but I'd never spoken to anyone who'd actually been there. It was reputed to be a nightmarish place – even by Nekropolis's standards – and escape was impossible. Or so the stories went. I'd imagined it would be a more savage version of an earthly prison, but now that I was actually here, I began to wonder if this was it, if the darkness, silence and solitude were punishments in and of themselves. Was every inmate of Tenebrus in the same situation as I was, standing alone in the dark as minutes became hours then days, weeks, months, years… The thought was terrifying to me, a punishment far worse than anything I could've imagined. If this was to be my fate for a crime I didn't commit I wished Quillion had used his powers to destroy me back in the Inquisitory and been done with it.
But then I heard the first faint stirrings of sound, a soft grating of metal sliding against a hard surface. I started to turn toward the sound, steeling myself for the possibility of an attack. But before I could do anything to defend myself – and really, what could I have done? – I heard a loud jangling of chains and I sensed something streaking toward me out of the darkness. Metal clamped around my wrists and my arms were yanked over my head. I was pulled upward until my feet dangled in the air and then it stopped. Manacles on chains, I realized, hanging down from the ceiling. They'd been lying coiled on the floor like a pair of iron snakes, waiting to lash out and grab hold of the newest inmate.
So not only was I destined to spend my time in Tenebrus swaddled in dark silence it seemed I wasn't going to be permitted to move about either.
Great.
I don't know how long I hung there. Long enough to regret the fact that I can't sleep and long enough to give up any notion that I might be able to escape on my own. I'd have happily chewed off my own hands to get down, but since I couldn't reach them…
Eventually I became aware of a pair of flickering glows ahead of me out in the darkness. Someone – maybe a pair of someones – was approaching, carrying a light of some kind. As whoever it was came nearer, I began to be able to make out my surroundings. I was in a cell whose bars were made of long lengths of bones, detached arms clutching hold of each other with skeletal fingers. The walls and ceiling curved around and above me, formed from a grayish substance that looked more like diseased flesh than stone. Rib-like protrusions extended from the walls, which were reinforced by long curving spinal columns. The flesh walls expanded and contracted as I watched, as if I were trapped inside the pulsating organ of some gigantic beast. I also saw that I wasn't alone in the cell. Hanging behind me were a pair of skeletons, neither of them human, though I couldn't guess their species from looking at them. Like me, they hung from a pair of manacles on the ends of chains extending downward from the flesh ceiling. Unlike me, they were far from recent arrivals, a fact which I freely admit took no great effort to deduce.
As I turned my attention back to whoever was approaching, a voice came from behind me.
"This isn't good."
A second voice added, "If that's who we think it is, you're going to wish you were left alone to rot in here with us."
I glanced back over my shoulder at the skeletal duo.
"Why didn't you two say anything when I called out earlier?" I was irritated. If I'd known I shared a cell with a couple talking skeletons I could've been pumping them for information the entire time instead of just hanging there, bored out of my mind.
"We didn't want to scare you," the first skeleton said.
"We figured we'd give you a few weeks to settle in before introducing ourselves. Give you a chance to acclimate a bit."
"Get your prison legs, so to speak," the second one added.
"Very considerate of you," I muttered.
"Thinking nothing of it," Skeleton Number One said, sounding pleased with itself.
I promptly forgot all about the ossified idiots as the light drew close enough for me to begin making out the features of the new arrivals. There were three of them, two men and a woman, the former walking on either side of the latter.
The males were of a type: eight feet tall, muscular and brownskinned, naked save for small tan loincloths that left little doubt as to their gender. The most striking detail about the men was that each had a jackal's head resting atop his powerful broad shoulders. Their eyes shone with human intelligence, but as they approached my cell, canine lips drew back from sharp teeth in feral snarls. Both creatures held golden spears whose points glowed with warm yellow light – a combination weapon and torch. I wondered what would happen if that glowing spearpoint was thrust into my undead flesh and I made a mental note to myself to avoid pissing off the jackalheads if at all possible. But far more intimidating than the guards was the woman who walked between them. She was Keket, ancient Egyptian sorceress, Demilord and overseer of Tenebrus.
Tall and slender she carried herself with regal bearing. Her body was wrapped in winding strips of grayish cloth and a long dark blue cape trailed behind her. Her face was concealed behind a golden mask of finely wrought feminine features and though the mask's eyes were made of solid metal, I had the impression that she could see through them – or perhaps somehow with them.
First Victor Baron, then Quillion, and now Keket. I was getting to meet a lot of dignitaries lately. I might've thought I was coming up in the world if my current situation hadn't demonstrated the exact opposite.
Keket and the guards stopped when they reached my cell door.
"Matthew Richter, welcome to Tenebrus."
Keket's voice was soft as the whisper of a snake sliding through grass, but I had no trouble making out every word.
I'd seen her once before, in the Nightspire during the last Renewal Ceremony, but it hadn't been an occasion for idle chat and we'd never spoken before.
"Do you always personally greet the new arrivals?" I asked. "Or am I just special?"
It was impossible to read Keket's expression behind her mask, but when she spoke, her tone was one of amusement.
"When Quillion informed me that the savior of Nekropolis would be joining us, I simply had to come welcome you in person. I do so enjoy seeing the high and mighty brought down low. It's one of my favorite parts of the job."
"Still bitter because Dis didn't choose you to be one of the five Darklords? You really ought to consider getting some therapy for that."
Again I couldn't see her expression but I could feel the anger rolling off of her as if it were a physical force. My skeletal cellmates must've felt it too for they let out frightened moans.
"I must say that I'm somewhat disappointed to see you," Keket said. "Guilty or innocent, anyone who was able to prevent the destruction of the entire city should be smart enough to avoid ending up here."
I sighed. "To be honest, I can't disagree with you."
Keket nodded to one of the jackalheads, and he stepped up to the cell door and removed an iron key ring from the leather belt holding up his loincloth. I say key ring, but instead of keys, it contained a number of skeletal fingers of various lengths and thicknesses. The guard stepped up to the cell door, selected a "key" and inserted it into a hole carved into one of the skeletal hands that formed the bars. The guard turned the key, was rewarded with a soft snick, and when he withdrew the key, the skeletal hands unclenched, releasing each other, and the bars withdrew into the ceiling and floor. The jackalhead then stepped into the cell, selected another key, and unlocked my manacles. He didn't bother to try and prevent me from falling to the ground, and though I tried to avoid it, I ended up falling onto my side. With a snarl the jackalhead bent down, grabbed hold of my shirt, and unceremonio
usly hauled me to my feet.
"Come with me," Keket said, and without waiting for me to reply, she started off down the hallway, her cloth wrapped feet making no sound as she went.
The guard who'd released me glared at me to make sure I understood I didn't have a choice in the matter and I walked out of the cell. He didn't relock it as we left, and given the state of my cellmates, I could see why he didn't bother.
"Good luck!" Skeleton One called out as I walked away.
"Whatever happens to you, we hope it won't be too hideously awful!" Number Two added.
I ignored them and followed after Keket, and the jackalheads walked beside me, keeping their gazes fixed on me and growling softly to let me know what they thought of me.