Fire and Dust

by James Gardner

  As we hurried up the ramp, the dust storm outside tapered off. By the look of it, the dust only tossed itself about near the entrance to the building; once we had gained some height, we could see that the dust lay flat and quiet farther off. The flatness had an eerie quality to it – in a normal desert, the wind leaves ripples in the sand or heaps the surface into dunes. Here, however, the dust lay as evenly as sifted flour. No scrub brush, no cacti, no hills or valleys… just a motionless expanse of dust stretching flat to the horizon.

  «Creepy, isn't it?» Hezekiah whispered.

  «Yasmin would love it,» I replied. «The very essence of entropy. Wheezle probably likes the view too.»

  «Not especially, honored sir,» the gnome answered. «I revere Death; this place is simply lifeless. It's not the same thing.»

  The corridor ended at an open door which led into a chamber stinking of smoke. Not so long ago, the room must have been a comfortable lounge, equipped with adequately upholstered chairs and well-cushioned divans; but some time in the past few minutes, a battle had ripped the place to shambles. The far half of the room was scorched black, walls caked with soot and furniture burned to the springs. The near half sparkled with a thick layer of hoar frost, couches and chairs encased in ice. Where the halves joined, icicles dripped down from the ceiling, slowly extinguishing the dribbles of fire still smouldering from the furniture.

  Almost without thinking, I reached up and broke off one long icicle. I had always found icicles a comfort to suck – cold and clear, with a sharp point on the end that danced with your tongue. This icicle, however, tasted of smoke and soot; I spat out its water and tossed it away.

  No bodies here. No evidence to suggest who won. But one way or another, the fight was over. If Yasmin and the others had lost… well, in the absence of corpses, I could tell myself they'd simply been taken prisoner. All we had to do was find them and stage a rescue. Of course, if they'd won this fight, they must be exploring the area ahead and could still use our help. Either way, they'd be glad to see us.

  If they could still see. I couldn't help remembering the burnt bodies of the court rotunda, their eyes scorched out of the sockets.

  No. That couldn't happen to Yasmin. Her eyes were too… worth looking into.

  The battle-scarred room had two exits, one right, one left. Both had once been closed with sliding doors, but the doors had blown off their tracks thanks to the barrage of magic unleashed in the fight. I glanced out both doorways but saw nothing to indicate which direction our teammates had gone.

  «Given a choice,» Hezekiah whispered, «I always go left.»

  That gave me a strong urge to go right, but I resisted.

  * * *

  The left corridor curved around in an arc, circling away from the entrance we came in. I had no idea what this whole building was, but it resembled a huge central ring with the occasional ramp-like corridor radiating outward from the center, like spokes from the hub of a wheel. We had come in along one spoke; looking out the window, I could see another spoke-corridor some distance in front of us. At the free end of the spoke ahead, a dust storm swirled in the air, just like the storm where we had entered. I wondered if that spoke had a portal too… if all the spokes had portals as exits from this bleak dustscape. Perhaps this building shot air out the mouth of each spoke to keep dust from clogging the portal – it made as much sense as any other theory that came to mind.

  For the moment such questions could wait… but curiosity dogged me on one other point. If the heart of this building was a circular ring, what was inside the middle? I didn't know. The outer wall of this corridor might be made of those small triangles of glass, but the inner wall was sheet metal, polished to a mirror-like shine. All that wall showed was the haggard face of one Britlin Cavendish, his goatee and hair so streaked with dust they looked white instead of their usual fetching black.

  In time, we approached the next spoke around the ring. Its construction followed the same design as the first corridor, with a large chamber at the point where the spoke connected with the central hub; but the door between us and the chamber was closed.

  I waved at Hezekiah to stand back and walked up to plant my ear on the door. It was made of the same metal as the walls, and probably too thick to let sound pass through; but pausing to listen, futile though the gesture was, gave me a few extra seconds to debate what to do next. Enter fast or slow? Brash or sneaky?

  «Ah, pike it,» I muttered. «Time's a'wasting.»

  The door was operated by a button on the metal wall. I kicked the button with my heel at the same time as I drew my sword.

  * * *

  With a soft swish, the door slid open. The only thing to emerge was an awful stench, like standing in the alley between a slaughterhouse and a tannery – the dull heaviness of blood and decay, overlaid with the piercing sharpness of harsh chemicals. I took a second or two to enjoy the bouquet, trying to identify the components by smell: certainly a lot of vinegar, and copper, and sulphur, and a dash of quicklime… but there were many more ingredients that eluded me, and no more time for sniffing. Wary of attack, I stepped into the room to see what made the reek.

  Bodies: corpses heaped in a mound that nearly reached the ceiling. About half were human, both male and female. The rest were an assortment from the other common races of the multiverse – elves, dwarves, hobgoblins, even a tiefling or two. Arms dangled limply. Many eyes were open and staring. Most of the dead wore clothes, some dressed quite elegantly; but a few were simply naked, tossed on the mound like refuse.

  I could see no injuries on any of these people, no indication of what killed them. The few closest to me looked like they had been young and healthy; the rest were simply hidden by shadows, and by the tangled mass of other corpses lying on top of them.

  «This is appalling,» Wheezle whispered. From the sound of his voice, our invisible Dustman was standing quite close to the mound of bodies. A moment later, I noticed the hair rustling on the head of a gnome woman: invisible fingers combed through her curls, straightening out the snarls.

  «Appalling,» Wheezle whispered again.

  «I thought you rejoiced in death,» I said.

  «Clean death,» he replied. «Pure death. But the dead deserve to be treated with dignity. These… can't you smell it?»

  «The chemicals?» I took a deep whiff again. Now that I was inside the room, the acrid stench was as sharp as a needle, stinging in my nose; I kept inhaling until the stink filled the back of my throat with its heady rasp. Then, of course, I collapsed to my knees, coughing uncontrollably. «Good smell,» I gasped between coughs.

  «It is the smell of… certain vegetable extracts,» Wheezle told me, clearly unwilling to be more specific. «They are used by ignorant ruffians who believe these extracts can reanimate the dead.»

  «The extracts don't work?»

  «Perhaps one time in a hundred, the technique creates a wight,» Wheezle replied. «These bodies are obviously the failures. But the low reanimation rate is only a minor concern. The great problem is…» I could hear him shuffling his feet in agitation. "The great problem is energy. Undead beings do not eat or drink or breathe – in order to move, they must derive their energy from other sources. Most are nourished by the unlimited magicks of the cosmos, as channeled through deities and other powers who rule the undead. It gives the undead a direct connection with the forces that sustain the multiverse… a profound spiritual link with the Great Blackness.

  «But undead created through alchemical means…» Wheezle's voice choked tight with anger. «They are like candles who burn their own tallow. They are… closed in. Shut off from external energies. They have no link with the gods of the undead. Such beings can only survive by consuming the energy of their own souls – burning themselves down and down, like rats starving to death in a cage. It is an ugly fate.»

  I looked at the mound of bodies again, trying to detect any difference between these corpses and others I'd seen. No sign of rigor mortis in any of them, despite the ov
erwhelming stench of decay. Was that unusual? I didn't know. As an artist, I'm only familiar with living subjects.

  The boy Hezekiah also seemed curious about the bodies heaped before us. «So these failures,» he began; «are they just dead? Or are they conscious, even if they can't move?»

  «They have a type of consciousness,» Wheezle nodded. «They simply do not have enough self-energy to stir themselves. Their souls will wither in time… unless, of course, we can free them from their damnation.»

  I didn't like the tone in his voice. Much as I recognized the horror of rotting away in your own corpse, I'd rather concentrate on saving a live Yasmin than dead strangers. Still, I had to ask one more question about the different types of undead. «Tell me,» I said to the invisible gnome. «If someone used alchemy like this to create wights, would the wights obey the Dead Truce?»

  «The Truce is a pact between my faction and the gods of the undead,» Wheezle replied. «These chemical abominations are cut off from the gods; that is their curse. Therefore, this kind of undead live outside the Truce.»

  «So,» said Hezekiah, «those wights who attacked the Dustmen at the Mortuary must have been the few successes out of all these —»

  I clapped a hand over his mouth. My ears had picked up a slight rustle of sound. Listening harder, I heard it again: not from the corpses nor the corridor where we'd entered, but from the door in front of us, leading farther around the ring of the building. The door was metal and closed tightly, but a murmur of voices still came through indistinctly.

  Keeping my hand over the boy's mouth, I circled the mound of corpses, hoping there'd be enough room to hide at the rear. There wasn't: the bodies were stacked tight against the wall, with no space to slide behind them. The voices down the corridor were getting louder… so I shoved Hezekiah down beside me and burrowed straight into the corpse-heap.

  Neither of us could dig in very deeply – the heap must have massed several tons in dead weight. Still, we could force our way past the outer tangle of arms and legs, to a point where we blended into the whole. I prayed that would be good enough.

  The intruders' loud conversation covered our grunting as we squeezed into the press of tattered clothes and naked skin. Every exposed patch of dead flesh reeked with the stench of chemicals and decay, but I fought back the coughs that ragged my throat. I didn't know how many people were about to enter this chamber; I just knew we wouldn't be able to hear them from so far away unless they vastly outnumbered us. With a last surge of strength I pulled my legs inside the pile, just as the door whisked open and dozens of feet strutted into the room.

  I couldn't see the newcomers, couldn't see anything but the lifeless face of a young woman close to mine. Her eyes were open, with the blind stillness of the dead. Death surrounded me – my left hand rested on someone's leg and my other arm was jammed under a woman's stomach. There was enough air to breathe, but I held my breath.

  «All right,» called a man's voice. «Everybody stop rattling your bone-boxes. Come on, I want quiet!» The talk subsided. «That's better,» the man said. «Now, let's see if this thing works.»

  I gritted my teeth. Whatever «this thing» might be, I knew I wasn't going to like it. The speaker might even be testing a newly made firewand by incinerating the mound of corpses where Hezekiah and I lay hidden.

  The man recited a few nonsense syllables, his voice uncertain and stilted, as if he were reading the chant from a piece of paper. A moment later, there was a soft chuffing sound followed by a crackle, like the crinkly edge of lightning before the full thunder's boom. A wand of storms? I asked myself. But then the weight of the corpse-heap shifted and I heard leather-soled boots hitting the floor.

  Something hissed fiercely – a type of hiss that was all too familiar. A wight's hiss.

  Several people in the room gasped. Several more whispered to each other, words I couldn't make out. Slowly, the whispering changed to a murmur of approval: «Amazing!» «Brilliant!» «Pike me with a feather!»

  «Take a look at it!» cried the man who was obviously in charge. «Our very own soul-sucker. You'll never see a handsomer corpse. Say hello, deadman.»

  There was another loud hiss. The group of onlookers cheered.

  «Tickle one of the ladies next!» shouted a male voice. «I want me a new dance partner.»

  Male voices laughed, but a female voice called, «You don't need a new partner, you need a new dance.»

  Female voices laughed at that one.

  «Bar that talk,» snapped the leader. «We have work to do. Stand back, all of you.»

  The buzz of conversation diminished as the leader started again: the muttered nonsense words; the chuffing noise; the crackle of lightning; then the mound of bodies shifted as another corpse pulled itself to its feet. Again and again the process repeated… until the leader said, «All right, that's four of them. Theresa, this'll be your team; lead 'em down to the lock.»

  «Right, captain,» replied a woman's voice.

  «And you undead berks,» continued the captain, «you're going to take orders from Theresa, right?»

  He was answered with a chorus of hisses.

  «Good. Don't give her no grief. Now off you go.»

  I heard footsteps slowly recede – one person walking normally, and four shuffling behind. Four wights pulled off the pile; four less bodies hiding Hezekiah and me.

  The process continued: corpses reanimated in groups of four, then each group sent off under the guidance of a living person. The darkness around me began to brighten as the mass of bodies decreased. Soon everything above my level would be gone, leaving me at the top of the pile. At that point… things would get interesting.

  Lightning crackled and the woman lying on my arm came to life. She pushed herself upward, planting her hands on my shoulder for support. As she crawled across me, her knee dug forcefully into my back; I clenched my jaw to avoid grunting in pain. That woman was the last of another group of four, and she was quickly marched off under some living lackey's leadership. How many active enemies did that leave in the room? I didn't know, and couldn't lift my head to look.

  The next corpse reanimated was the woman with her face next to mine. I saw the transformation: one moment, she was blind and staring; then chuff, crackle, and jagged threads of blue light came lacing through her skin like bloated veins. Her eyes blinked once, lazily… she was staring right in my face. Then, twin pinpricks of fire erupted at the heart of her pupils, flaring outward until the entire surface of the eye blazed with flame. I could feel the heat on my cheeks.

  She hissed directly at me and lifted one hand. The hand was sharp with newly grown claws.

  * * *

  Horror clutched at my heart, and I rolled away from the newborn wight, slipping out from under the few corpses that still weighed me down. The wight swiped her claws at me but missed; her hand slashed cleanly through the body beneath me, shredding the putrefied flesh. A fresh stink of rot and chemicals filled my nose, heady with nausea… but I continued my roll to the edge of the corpse-heap, sliding down the exterior like the side of a haystack. Even as I fell, I was grabbing for my sword, tugging to clear it from its sheath.

  The bodies I brushed past slowed my fall, softening my impact on the floor. As soon as I landed, I scrambled to my feet and checked the opposition. Only two of the enemy squad remained, thank The Lady: a hobgoblin with its back to me and a drow, a dark elf, holding a bulbous scepter that glowed a sickly orange. The drow simply gaped, astonished at a corpse coming to life unaided. As for the hobgoblin, it turned to see what the drow was staring at… which only made my job easier, giving me a clear opening to hit the soft part of its throat. My rapier slashed out once, bit deep, and severed whatever hobgoblins have in place of a jugular. Its blood sprayed gushers over the pile of still-dead bodies.

  Something roared within the pile. For a moment, I thought it was the wight who'd tried to rake me with her claws – I could see her struggling to escape from the corpses still lying on top of her. Then a huddle of l
ifeless bodies suddenly heaved onto the drow as Hezekiah rose from the mound, roaring a battle cry. The drow fell cursing to the floor, struggling to lift his scepter despite the weight of corpses pinning his arms. Before he could manage it, the scepter was snatched from his hand by Wheezle, the little gnome finally turning visible as he scrambled away with his prize.

  For a moment, we all stood waiting: me with my blade embedded in the hobgoblin's neck, Hezekiah wobbling to keep his balance on top of the corpse-heap, and Wheezle catching his breath as he leaned against the wall. Then the wight wrenched herself free from the mound and threw herself at the drow, slamming down where he was still pinioned by bodies. The wight's own body prevented me from seeing what happened next; but the drow gave a wailing scream of terror that ended abruptly in a gurgle.

  Clearly, Madame Wight was not affectionately disposed toward the man who woke her from her nap.

  «Stop!» Wheezle shouted. Hezekiah and I weren't moving, so he must have been talking to the wight; and sure enough, she rose from her kill peacefully, licking blood off her claws with great satisfaction. She even took a moment to look my way and smile. The smile appeared friendly enough… if only her teeth didn't have points as sharp as spikes.

  First things first, however – I ran to the door and pushed the button to close it. The last thing I wanted was a friend of the drow prancing back with four wights in tow, coming to investigate why someone screamed.

  The door slid shut quietly. Seconds dripped by and nothing happened. At last I let my breath out with a relieved sigh.

  «All right,» I said, «will someone please tell me what's going on?»

  * * *

  «I do not know all the answers, honored Cavendish,» Wheezle began, «but this scepter tells me many things.»

  «The scepter talks?» Hezekiah asked with interest. He was still perched atop the corpse-heap, but he had lowered himself into a cross-legged sitting position where he seemed quite comfortable. «Uncle Toby once had a garden hoe that talked, but he sold it at the fall fair.»