Fire and Dust

by James Gardner

  I wondered what kind of magical radiations he perceived from the rest of us. Oonah's staff must put out a powerful shine, and Yasmin's dragon leotard would give off its own healthy glow. As for me, I had the lantern-stone in my pocket, not to mention my father's rapier; considering the amount of money he paid to have it enchanted, the sword must blaze as bright as a phoenix's fundament.

  «Cavendish!» Oonah growled in my ear. «Stop wool-gathering. Check for familiar faces in the crowd.»

  I looked around the corner of the building, and saw about twenty people milling in the street. Most had been attending funerals inside the Mortuary, so they wore clothes of whatever color their cultures associated with grief: black and white predominated, with the occasional dash of blood red. In among the mourners, a handful of gray-robed Dustmen tried to calm the crowd. «There's no cause for alarm,» I heard one call, as smoke from burning tenements drifted over the Mortuary dome.

  The people in the street were the usual mix of races you find in Sigil: humans, bariaur, tieflings, even one githzerai. The githzerai was a woman, and short for her species – nothing like the male I had seen in the Courts.

  «Ahh,» Brother Kiripao murmured. «This is more interesting.» He pointed to a group of five figures, just emerging from the Mortuary. All of them wore Dustman robes, with the hoods pulled down over their faces.

  «Magic?» I whispered. Kiripao nodded.

  «Five of them, four of us,» Oonah muttered beside my shoulder. «If they split up, we're in trouble. Still… I'll follow the first to leave, Kiripao the second, and Yasmin the third. If the last two go in different directions, Cavendish, use your best judgment.»

  The front two paused just before they reached the bottom of the Mortuary steps; warily, they looked both directions along the street. In that moment, I could see their faces clearly, despite the shadows cast by their hoods – they were the same githyanki and githzerai who peeled Oonah's office.

  «That's them,» I murmured. As I spoke, the two thieves descended the last step into the street and hurried off in the opposite direction from us.

  «Come along, Brother Cipher,» Oonah said to Kiripao. Without waiting, she slipped around the edge of the building and into the street, quickly crossing to the closest clump of mourners and blending in with them. Kiripao trailed behind Oonah, while Yasmin and I kept our eyes on the three figures still on the steps.

  The shrouded trio stood where they were for several seconds, watching the githyanki and githzerai head up the street; then they descended to ground level, straight into the crowd. There was something odd about the way they walked, the way they stayed inside the shadows of the Mortuary dome, the aggressive way they swung their arms – like apes, or like…

  «Eustace,» I murmured.

  «What?» Yasmin asked.

  «Never mind,» I said. «You're a priestess, right?»

  «My official title is Handmaid of Entropy.»

  «You can explain what that means another time,» I told her. «Do you have any power over the undead?»

  «Entropy isn't some god who protects you from ghoulies and ghosties,» she replied indignantly. «It's the supreme force of nature. We like to say we're the opposite side of the coin from druids – they hug trees, we chop the sodding things down as a sacrament.»

  «Both no doubt annoy the trees,» I told her, «but at the moment, I'm more interested in a cleric who can command wights to… pike it, there they go.»

  The three hooded figures had already entered the crowd. Now they threw off their robes, and hissed pure hatred at the mourners around them. As I suspected, the three were barrow wights like our delivery boy Eustace, animated corpses with razor-sharp claws in place of fingernails; and their job must be to cover the escape of the other two thieves.

  People screamed at the sight of the undead monsters, then stumbled backward in a rush. One woman tripped over someone behind her, and fell shrieking to the cobblestones. Immediately, the closest wight leapt to the attack, grabbing her wrist with one hand and raking the claws of its other hand down her arm. Where the creature's claws made contact, the woman's flesh withered away, her muscles dissolving to threads as the skin shrank tight to the bone. The wight hissed once in triumph, then let her wrist go; the arm clattered useless to the pavement, reduced to a skeletal husk.

  «What are you doing?» shouted a nearby Dustman to the wight. The man was in his forties, with red tattoo spirals inscribed on both cheeks. He walked straight up to the creature and stood in front of it, hands on his hips… like an outraged schoolmaster who's caught a student cheating. «Get back inside at once,» the Dustman said. «This behavior is intolerable.»

  The wight cocked its head to one side, and regarded the Dustman with intense interest. Then its hand shot forward, claws outstretched; the nails stabbed through the Dustman's clothes like gauze and buried themselves deep in his chest, five soul-stealing daggers. The Dustman gasped softly. Something creaked inside of him, a long agonized noise like someone bending a stick slowly to the breaking point. One rib cracked, then another, then another, snapping so fiercely the ends of the bones pierced outward through the man's chest and protruded whitely from his robes.

  Blood gushed in fountains, spattering the wight's face. It simply licked its lips and waited, waited till its life-draining grip had shriveled the man's chest to a pulp bristling with broken bones. Then it tossed the Dustman's corpse against the Mortuary wall, where it fell to the ground, rattling.

  «That's impossible!» Yasmin whispered.

  «How long have you lived in Sigil?» I whispered back. «Everything's possible here.»

  «But the Dustmen have a pact with the undead – the Dead Truce. Undead creatures like that wight simply won't attack a Dustman unless the Dustman attacks first.»

  «I know all about the Dead Truce,» I told her, «but those wights don't.»

  «Someone is playing hob with the natural order,» she said, and this time she wasn't whispering. «Someone is trying to disrupt…»

  The rest of the sentence was drowned out by the noise of Yasmin shucking off her backpack and drawing her sword.

  «I hope that sword is either magic or silver,» I said to her. «You can't hurt wights with just a normal…»

  But I didn't finish my sentence either, because Yasmin had already charged into the fray.

  * * *

  For half a second, I hesitated – after all, our instructions had been to watch the enemy and refrain from direct involvement. However, I couldn't let Yasmin face three wights on her own; and even if Yasmin hadn't been there, it was high time for me to start saving lives. Much as I tried to put it out of my mind, I had allowed the Collectors to carry the exploding giant to their doom, because my orders told me to hold back. My father would have roared, «Pike the orders, people are dying!»

  Whipping my rapier out of its sheath, I raced after Yasmin. A few mourners were already running in our direction, but they had enough sense to get out of our way; the rest of the crowd was shocked frozen with terror, unable to move as each of the wights chose a new victim to drain. All three victims were Dustmen, and all three Dustmen simply stared in disbelief as their hearts were ripped from their chests.

  Yasmin took the nearest wight in the back, a furious thrust that pierced straight through the monster's spine, out the front of its ribcage, and halfway into the Dustman it held in its claws. The wight turned its head to look at Yasmin and hissed, its breath reeking of humid decay. I was close enough to smell the stench; I was also close enough to jam the tip of my rapier into that open mouth, up through the palate, and into its brain. Thanks to the sword's enchantments, the blade punched straight through the wight's skull, scattering gray matter and bone fragments onto the hapless Dustman in the monster's grip.

  The Dustman didn't care. If he hadn't been dead already, getting impaled on Yasmin's sword had finished the job.

  Our arrival snapped the remaining mourners out of their stupors. Howling with fear, they scattered; one little halfling even ran ba
ck into the Mortuary, certainly not the place I'd run for protection. By the time Yasmin and I dislodged our blades from the now-dead wight, we were alone in the street with the two remaining monsters.

  «One on one?» I asked her. «Or shall we gang up on the closest of these berks?»

  «I'll take the closest,» she replied. «You keep the other off my back.»

  «Your wish is my command.»

  Giving Yasmin's wight a wide berth, I sped around to face the other one. Once upon a time, this particular wight had been a woman, but that had been years ago. Now her face was ravaged with tomb rot, her skin flaking away to reveal the ligaments beneath.

  «Hello,» I said to the monster. «Would you be available to model the next time I teach a figure drawing class? Students always have such a hard time with the anatomy of the face, and here you are, already dissected. You're a walking anatomy text book, my dear.»

  The monster hissed and took a tentative swipe at me. I flicked my sword at her hand, just enough to make a small cut on her wrist. No blood dribbled out: nothing but a trickle of reddish dust.

  «Some people think the rapier is an ineffectual little weapon,» I told the wight, «but they're only familiar with the blades used in competition fencing.» I stepped in just long enough for a slash that cut several exposed ligaments on her left cheek, then backed quickly away. «A competition rapier is only a thrusting weapon,» I explained, «but as you can see, a real rapier has two perfectly good cutting edges. Are you following all this?»

  By the look of it, the wight was only interested in finding a way past my guard. She kept lunging, hissing and missing, as I swirled the blade in a continuously circling parry. The little nicks I gave her did no serious damage, but they kept her at bay; and second by second, her rage grew.

  «I don't suppose you'd like to tell me why you broke the Dead Truce,» I asked the wight. «Whom you work for, what their plan is, that sort of thing?»

  She hissed.

  «So the truth is, you can't talk, right?»

  She hissed again.

  «That would be a yes,» I said to myself. Not being an expert on the undead, I had no idea whether your average wight was capable of speech; then again, these were obviously not average wights. These were creatures who should be examined by knowledgeable authorities.

  Without taking my eyes off the wight in front of me, I called to Yasmin, «Keep dancing with your playmate out here. I need to consult a professional.» Then, with a flurry of sword strokes, I drove my wight back toward the Mortuary steps. (The monster really was a ham-handed fighter… but then, when you can wither opponents with one swipe of your claws, you don't have much incentive to acquire finesse.)

  Up the stairs we went, wight hissing, my blade slashing. The huge iron-plated door gaped wide open, and we went inside, the wight still backing away from my attack and spitting with fury.

  I had attended my share of funerals in the Mortuary, but had always used the main entrance. This back area was unfamiliar to me, a curving stone corridor with numerous doors – some open, some closed, and a big one leading to the front of the building, blown off its hinges by the exploding Phlegistol. With the exception of the wight's continuing hisses, the place was as quiet as a tomb. Admittedly, that shouldn't have been a surprise.

  «Hello!» I shouted. «Anybody home?»

  My voice echoed off the stone walls; the sound seemed to last forever. The wight made a half-hearted charge toward me, but backed away as the edge of my rapier sliced a gash across her collarbone. Accepting the inevitable, she began to back down the corridor that led to the front of the building. I could smell things burning ahead of us, and slowed my pace… not from fear of the fire, but from concern about the smoke. Wights are dead, so they don't have to breathe; if I started to get dizzy from smoke inhalation, the monster in front of me would gain a distinct advantage.

  «I'd really love to talk to a Dustman,» I yelled, the Mortuary dome echoing dustman, dustman, dustman. «I have a renegade wight here that a Dustman should examine. It broke the Dead Truce. Someone should have a look at it.»

  «A renegade wight, you say?»

  At the far end of the corridor a gaunt figure appeared, backlit by the flicker of fires ravaging the front part of the Mortuary. For a moment the figure looked like some kind of undead thing itself, a corpse dressed in gray robes; but then my eyes adjusted to the light and recognized the reclusive Factol Skall of the Dustmen.

  The wight was sandwiched between Skall and myself. She turned at the sound of his voice, and studied him.

  «Be careful, your honor,» I said to Skall. «She killed several Dustmen out in the street. I saw her.»

  «She attacked first?»

  «Yes, your honor. Without provocation.»

  «I find that hard to believe.»

  The wight was looking back and forth between Skall and me, hissing more violently than ever. Her eyes burned as bright as the flames at the factol's back. Suddenly, she feinted a lunge at me, then hurtled toward Skall, claws poised for the kill. I raced after her, sprinting as fast as I could while preparing to slash off her head. Much as I had hoped the Dustmen could interrogate her, saving the factol's life had higher priority.

  The wight sped toward Skall. I sped after her. Skall stood calmly as the two of us descended upon him; and at the last moment, he simply held up his hands and said, «Stop.»

  My legs froze, my brain froze… even my arm, swinging down with the decapitating stroke, simply stopped dead in the air as if trapped in ice. The wight, however, seemed immune to whatever magic Skall used to paralyze me. She closed the remaining gap and seized Skall's arms with the ferocity of a rabid dog that has finally found someone to attack. Hissing gleefully, she dug her claws into his wrists and squeezed.

  For several seconds, Skall didn't move a muscle. Then, slowly, he twisted his arms in the wight's grasp, so that he could grasp her wrists as tightly as she held his. The two stood there clutching each other, the crimson light of the wight's eyes flaring brighter and brighter in the dark corridor.

  The embrace lasted almost a full minute, while I stood by helpless, unable to move. Slowly, the hatred on the wight's face changed to puzzlement, and she tried to pull away; but Skall held on easily, without a hint of strain. The fire in the wight's eyes continued to grow, casting two blurs of scarlet on the gray stone wall. At the last moment, she turned over her shoulder to look at me, her rotten face grimacing with fear and confusion. Then her entire body burst like a soap bubble, showering the corridor with a spray of cloying red dust.

  «Remarkable,» said Skall. His robes were crimson with the dust, his face powdered to the color of blood. With a sudden surge, strength returned to my limbs and I could lower my sword arm. «Remarkable,» Skall said again. Turning his back on me, he walked off into the burning Mortuary, completely ignoring the flames.

  * * *

  «Where have you been?» Yasmin asked. She had just retrieved her backpack, and was once more holding my charcoal sketch in her hand. The wight she'd been fighting lay chopped into pieces on the pavement.

  «I've just had a chat with Factol Skall,» I told her.

  «Did you learn anything?»

  «That I never want another chat with Factol Skall.» I poked the pieces of Yasmin's wight with my toe. Red dust spilled from the sword wounds. «Is that dust typical when you kill wights?»

  «I don't know,» Yasmin answered. «I've never fought a wight before.»

  «Maybe one of our colleagues has.» I looked down the street in the direction Oonah and Kiripao had pursued the thieves.

  Yasmin followed my gaze. «Should we go after them?» she asked.

  «You go ahead,» I told her. «If our friends chase the enemy into the Hive, you'll have a hard time picking up their trail… but then, Oonah's the sort to leave marks as she goes. Deliberate scuffs in the dirt, arrows drawn on the pavement, that kind of thing.»

  «What are you going to do?»

  «I want to examine these wights more closely. The
y've piqued my curiosity.»

  «All right.» She looked at me keenly for a few moments, as if trying to put some emotion into words. Finally, she simply said, «Watch your back, Cavendish.»

  Before I could reply, she was running down the street, a lean figure in tight black dragon-skin. I tried to burn the image into my memory; it was something I'd want to sketch later on, and who cared if it didn't earn money.

  * * *

  Dust.

  Red dust pouring out of the wounds instead of blood. And underneath the robes that the wights wore as disguise, their ragged clothes were clogged thick with another kind of dust, a fine silt that reminded me of sculptor's clay.

  I stroked the silt, then licked a bit off my finger. It had a soft nippy taste, like weak curry powder. Maybe these wights had a hide-out in a spice warehouse. However, the dust wasn't yellow like curry – on first glimpse, it had a light tan color, but on closer inspection I saw it was actually a mix of white and dark brown particles.

  Red dust, white dust, brown dust… what I needed was a dwarf, a dwarf of a fanatical dwarvish bent: the kind who studies soil the way a lecher studies women. We had a few such dwarves in the Sensates, forever bringing in new minerals for everyone to sniff, lick, and eventually chew. It was only by the grace of healing spells that I still had a full set of teeth; at that moment, however, I would have welcomed one of those rock-kisser dwarves with open arms, if he could identify all these different types of dust.

  Without such knowledge, I could only take samples of the dust and hope to get them identified later. For the brown and white dust, I ripped away a scrap of wight's clothing that was heavily imbued with the stuff; for the red dust, I tore off a page from my sketchbook and held it under one of the wight's wounds, catching the sifting dribble that took the place of blood. Carefully, I folded both samples and tucked them into my pocket.

  As I straightened from examining the last wight, Hezekiah galloped around the corner of the Mortuary. «Britlin,» he shouted, «come on, hurry!»