Unclean hl-1

by Richard Lee Byers

  "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 tharchion 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 Kossut
h 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, an
d 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.