«A pleasure to be of service, honored Cavendish,» answered the invisible gnome. «I am surprised to find you here.»
«It surprised us too,» I told him. «Did you see what happened when Bleach-Hair caught up with Yasmin and the rest?»
«Only from a distance,» Wheezle replied. «Mr. Bleach-Hair's legs are considerably longer than mine, so I had difficulty keeping up.»
«Pity… the others could have used your help. But it's still not too late.» I pulled out my sketchbook and a piece of charcoal. «It'll just take a second to make a key for that portal.»
«What portal?» Hezekiah asked.
I ignored him as I started drawing my own face, but Wheezle answered the boy's question. «There is a transplanar portal anchored in the archway in front of us. Alas, persons from the Prime Material plane do not have the attunement to see such portals, but those of us born in the Outer Planes have no trouble discerning it.»
«A portal?» Hezekiah said, squinting at the arch. «I came through one of those to get to Sigil. My Uncle Toby showed me where it was.»
«Well, you aren't going through this one,» I told him, still drawing. «You're heading straight back to Lady Erin so you can report everything that's happened.»
«Like what?» Hezekiah asked.
Pausing a second, I ripped off a blank page from my sketchbook and handed it to the invisible Wheezle. «Why don't you jot down everything Lady Erin should know… just in case Hezekiah isn't sure what's important.»
«I know what's important,» Hezekiah objected. «And it's not fair: you get to dash to the rescue while I have to stay in Sigil.»
«We don't have time to argue,» I snapped. «Someone has to rescue our teammates, and someone else has to report to the authorities. It's the only sensible plan.»
«Then you report to the authorities,» Hezekiah said. «I'm going to save the others.» And he stepped toward the portal.
I didn't try to stop him; I doubted that he carried a picture of himself, and I had a sketch of my own to draw – every second I wasted might be one second too many for Yasmin.
Wheezle, however, didn't know what opened the portal and obviously didn't like taking chances. «Please, honored Clueless,» he said to Hezekiah, «I cannot permit you to rush in unwisely.» The paper I'd handed Wheezle fluttered in the air, then moved toward the portal as the gnome tried to block Hezekiah's passage. I had time to think, That's a blank piece of paper and Wheezle's invisible. Wouldn't it be a laugh if that counted as a picture of himself?
Then Hezekiah tripped over the invisible gnome, the two of them pitched forward under the archway, and, the portal was open.
At that moment, something went click in my mind. Sensates call it the «once-in-a-lifetime» instinct: an opportunity arises and you're struck by some premonition that says this chance will never come again. You see a cheesecake and your nose tells you that this is the peak, the pinnacle, that if you pass this one by, you'll never come close to such perfection ever again… or you meet a woman at some gathering, and the flames inside you say, «It has to be her, it has to be tonight, or my soul will shrivel to ashes.» Our Sensate leaders teach that your once-in-a-lifetime instinct is almost always wrong – there will be other cheesecakes, other encounters with this woman or someone equally fascinating – but they also say who cares? Pike common sense and leap in with both feet.
Once-in-a-lifetime instinct: see a portal, dive through it.
I dove.
I dove, throwing caution to the wind. More precisely, I dove throwing my sketchbook and charcoal wherever they might fall, because the portal would close within seconds and I didn't want to miss it. One moment, I was traveling through the soot-laden air of Sigil; and the next, I struck the dust-choked atmosphere of the other side.
Dust enveloped me, as thick as a blanket. There was no way to tell when I actually hit the ground – the dust in the air blended so directly into the dust underfoot that it was all a continuum, clogging, raspy piles of dust. I sank up to my elbows before I finally stopped, and it took all my strength to struggle to my feet. Breathing was impossible, and visibility reached less than an arm's length; a faint gray light barely managed to penetrate the continually swirling cloud.
How long could I hold my breath? Thirty seconds? A minute? How long before I had to fill my lungs with dust?
Something loomed in front of me, a slight darkening in the grayness. I grabbed at it and pulled it close enough to see; as I expected, the shadow was Hezekiah, blundering about blindly. Another moment and he might have been lost forever in the dust storm.
Leatherheaded Clueless – any citizen of Sigil knows, when you come through a portal into a hostile environment, you never stumble away from your entry point. Portals have to anchor themselves in some kind of archway; figure out what the arch belongs to, and maybe you've found shelter.
Carefully I looked up, keeping a firm grip on the boy's arm. Sure enough, my eyes blearily made out that we were standing in the mouth of an open tube, high enough and wide enough that the walls were only slightly darker blurs in the gray wash of dust. I staggered forward along the tube with Hezekiah in tow, both of us pushing against a strong wind that roared into our faces. The dust dragged heavily at my feet; and then suddenly, there was solid floor beneath us. Moments later, a door shut behind us with a sigh, closing off the wind and the sifting sound of dust.
Silence. We stood in a small chamber, its walls a dome-like patchwork made from triangles of glass. Outside, the dust continued to swirl in constant motion, dancing close to the glass but never settling down. Gray light filtered through the crystal panes, a light as frail as the thinnest dawn.
«Britlin!» Hezekiah whispered sharply. I turned and saw the boy standing above a huddled mass that lay in front of a second door. A few steps closer and I recognized the shadowy bundle as a body, lying in a slick of its own blood – a hobgoblin in chain mail, its lifeless hand still clutching a short sword.
«It's some kind of monster,» the boy said.
«The dead kind,» I told him. «Probably stationed as a guard on this door when Yasmin, Oonah, and Kiripao showed up. Poor berk never knew what hit him.»
«Now let us rejoice that his journey is done,» said a third voice in the room. «He has shed the burden of life and found the purity that awaits all creatures in the cup of oblivion.»
«Hello, Wheezle,» I sighed. «Cheerful as ever.»
«Indeed, sir,» the invisible gnome said. «The other Dustmen often remark on my high spirits.»
Hezekiah looked like he was going to ask a stupid question. I covered his mouth with my hand.
«But how do I get back to Sigil?» Hezekiah asked.
«You go back to the portal and you…» I stopped. To open the portal, he needed a picture of himself; and I no longer had my sketchbook. «Wheezle, I don't suppose you still have that paper I gave you?»
«In the confusion of falling through the portal, I fear I let the paper go.»
And now it was blowing out there in the storm, or buried under a couple feet of dust. «Blast!» I muttered, trying to think of anything else I could use to draw a picture of the boy. Nothing came to mind, and time was passing quickly. «All right,» I told Hezekiah, «you're on the rescue team for now. But the second we find some way to draw a picture of you, you're going back to Sigil to report.»
«Once we rescue the others,» the boy answered, «we can all report.»
«Pray that you're right,» I nodded. «Just remember we're in unknown territory. Be careful, be quiet, and don't touch anything!»
«Yes, sir,» he saluted. And he immediately pushed the button that opened the door the hobgoblin had been guarding.
Under other circumstances, that would have earned him a couple arrows in the chest – two archers had been stationed on the other side of the door, crossbows ready and waiting. Fortunately for the boy, Yasmin and the others had come through ahead of us; the bow strings had been cut, along with the throats of the two men.
«Are you completely addle-coved?» I snapped at Hezekiah. «You don't just barge through doors like that! Wheezle, you take the lead… and keep a sharp eye out for traps.»
«Yes, honored Cavendish.»
Something invisible nudged the boy out of the doorway, and he stepped aside. A corridor extended for more than a hundred paces ahead of us, its floor ramping gradually upward. Like the first room, this corridor's roof and walls were made from triangles of glass fitted snugly together in a metal framework. Wan gray light filtered in from outside, so feeble it seemed the light itself had somehow become disheartened.
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.
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.
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 overwhelming 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.
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 lifeless 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?»
«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.»
«The scepter does not talk, honored Clueless, but its presence here explains much. My faction calls this weapon Klemt Ur't'haleem, which might be translated as Unveiler. Unveiler is the creation of… a certain god, whose name it is unwise to speak aloud. Many centuries ago, the scepter came into the hands of the Dustmen; by which I mean that a party of Dustmen freed it from its former owner, and gave that owner a prominent place in our factol's retinue of zombies.»
«So Unveiler belonged to the Dustmen and now it's here,» I said. «That tells us what the thieves were doing at the Mortuary this morning.»
«Indeed,» Wheezle nodded. «They must have used the exploding giant as a diversion while they crept inside and stole the scepter.»
«So what does this Unveiler do?» Hezekiah asked.
«It gives the user extraordinary powers to control the alchemical undead,» Wheezle replied. «It can even animate these pathetic corpses and fill them with energy; but for all that, it is still a despicable object. This poor creature…» He pointed to the wight, still greedily licking blood off her fingers. «She is out of touch with the cosmos. She cannot commune with the undead gods. Her death is a stifled, paltry thing.»
I couldn't see any stifled quality myself – she looked quite happy for a corpse. However, Wheezle was the expert in such matters, so I deferred to his judgment.
«If the scepter is evil,» Hezekiah said, «maybe we should break it.»
«My faction has tried,» Wheezle told him. «Alas, it is too powerful. The best we could do was hide it in the Mortuary until we found a way to unmake it.»
«And the thieves must have stolen it because they were sick of the high failure rate from their alchemy,» I said. «Probably those three wights we killed back at the Mortuary were the only ones they had actually managed to get moving. Unveiler let them power up this whole pile of discards.»
«That is a reasonable conclusion,» Wheezle nodded. «The enemy obviously has need of an army of undead servants.»
«As if we don't have enough headaches already,» I muttered. «Still, we have the scepter now; does that mean we can control the wights?»
«Any wights who see it in our possession will obey us,» Wheezle said. «We can turn them against their creators… as a temporary measure.»
«Why temporary?» I asked.
«These unfortunates must be freed,» the gnome replied. «We cannot leave them in their current condition. Yes, an army of wights might help us defeat our enemies, and I will reluctantly tolerate such an army until the task is accomplished. Once that is done, however, these souls must be released. The energy injection from this wand only lasts a few weeks – like throwing a few extra sticks of wood into a stove. Once that wood has been used, the wights begin to burn their own souls again. I will not be party to that.»
«And you have a way to release them?» Hezekiah piped up.
I wished the boy hadn't said that.
With a wave of his hand, Wheezle shouted something that sounded like, «Hoksha ptock!» Unveiler's orange glow curdled to a bilious green, casting sickly shadows over the heap of corpses. Bodies rustled like leaves; a few of them uttered heavy groans. The wight who had been licking her fingers gave a startled jerk, as if the ground had suddenly quaked beneath her. She turned to me with a puzzled look on her face, the flames in her eyes sputtering like a dampened fire. Her mouth let out a bewildered hiss… then her legs buckled and she fell to the floor.
Hezekiah, still sitting on top of the corpse-heap, yelped and tried to catch his balance. The bodies beneath him were shifting, muttering incomprehensibly. As fast as he could, the boy scrambled off the mound, running to my side as if I would protect him from whatever happened next.
No need. The one active wight was on her knees, rocking back and forth like a child trying to comfort herself. The corpses too were moving, the whole pile shuddering in pulses. The muttering sounds grew louder, slowly blending together until all the bodies were moaning in unison, «Huhhhh… huhhhh… huhhhh…»
«Hoksha ptock!» Wheezle cried again.
«Ahhhhhhh,» the corpses sighed, and the wight hissed along. «Ahhhhh…»
«Hoksha ptock!»
Then, with a soft gooey sound, every dead body turned liquid – a runny brown liquid collapsing onto the floor with a loud splash, as gooey as egg whites. The fluid surged up to my feet like an ocean tide, flowing over my boots in a wave. Hezekiah tried to jump away, but there was nowhere to go: the spill of liquefying bodies covered the floor. We were both awash, up to the ankles.
«Yuck!» the boy shouted. «Euuu!»
«Do not fear,» Wheezle said calmly. «It is a form of ectoplasm. Not dangerous in any way.»
«So it's not poisonous?» I asked. «Good.»
The taste was something like olive oil, but saltier. With a little vinegar, it might make a fine salad dressing.
7. THREE SLABS OF CLAY
«It surprised us too,» I told him. «Did you see what happened when Bleach-Hair caught up with Yasmin and the rest?»
«Only from a distance,» Wheezle replied. «Mr. Bleach-Hair's legs are considerably longer than mine, so I had difficulty keeping up.»
«Pity… the others could have used your help. But it's still not too late.» I pulled out my sketchbook and a piece of charcoal. «It'll just take a second to make a key for that portal.»
«What portal?» Hezekiah asked.
I ignored him as I started drawing my own face, but Wheezle answered the boy's question. «There is a transplanar portal anchored in the archway in front of us. Alas, persons from the Prime Material plane do not have the attunement to see such portals, but those of us born in the Outer Planes have no trouble discerning it.»
«A portal?» Hezekiah said, squinting at the arch. «I came through one of those to get to Sigil. My Uncle Toby showed me where it was.»
«Well, you aren't going through this one,» I told him, still drawing. «You're heading straight back to Lady Erin so you can report everything that's happened.»
«Like what?» Hezekiah asked.
Pausing a second, I ripped off a blank page from my sketchbook and handed it to the invisible Wheezle. «Why don't you jot down everything Lady Erin should know… just in case Hezekiah isn't sure what's important.»
«I know what's important,» Hezekiah objected. «And it's not fair: you get to dash to the rescue while I have to stay in Sigil.»
«We don't have time to argue,» I snapped. «Someone has to rescue our teammates, and someone else has to report to the authorities. It's the only sensible plan.»
«Then you report to the authorities,» Hezekiah said. «I'm going to save the others.» And he stepped toward the portal.
I didn't try to stop him; I doubted that he carried a picture of himself, and I had a sketch of my own to draw – every second I wasted might be one second too many for Yasmin.
Wheezle, however, didn't know what opened the portal and obviously didn't like taking chances. «Please, honored Clueless,» he said to Hezekiah, «I cannot permit you to rush in unwisely.» The paper I'd handed Wheezle fluttered in the air, then moved toward the portal as the gnome tried to block Hezekiah's passage. I had time to think, That's a blank piece of paper and Wheezle's invisible. Wouldn't it be a laugh if that counted as a picture of himself?
Then Hezekiah tripped over the invisible gnome, the two of them pitched forward under the archway, and, the portal was open.
* * *
You can never see much through a portal, and this one was murkier than most – a gap of twilight in the middle of Sigil's afternoon. The twilight was darkened by a clot of dust clouds, whirling in thick spirals. Hezekiah tumbled into those clouds and out of sight, accompanied by a gnome-shaped silhouette that briefly broke through the dust.At that moment, something went click in my mind. Sensates call it the «once-in-a-lifetime» instinct: an opportunity arises and you're struck by some premonition that says this chance will never come again. You see a cheesecake and your nose tells you that this is the peak, the pinnacle, that if you pass this one by, you'll never come close to such perfection ever again… or you meet a woman at some gathering, and the flames inside you say, «It has to be her, it has to be tonight, or my soul will shrivel to ashes.» Our Sensate leaders teach that your once-in-a-lifetime instinct is almost always wrong – there will be other cheesecakes, other encounters with this woman or someone equally fascinating – but they also say who cares? Pike common sense and leap in with both feet.
Once-in-a-lifetime instinct: see a portal, dive through it.
I dove.
I dove, throwing caution to the wind. More precisely, I dove throwing my sketchbook and charcoal wherever they might fall, because the portal would close within seconds and I didn't want to miss it. One moment, I was traveling through the soot-laden air of Sigil; and the next, I struck the dust-choked atmosphere of the other side.
Dust enveloped me, as thick as a blanket. There was no way to tell when I actually hit the ground – the dust in the air blended so directly into the dust underfoot that it was all a continuum, clogging, raspy piles of dust. I sank up to my elbows before I finally stopped, and it took all my strength to struggle to my feet. Breathing was impossible, and visibility reached less than an arm's length; a faint gray light barely managed to penetrate the continually swirling cloud.
How long could I hold my breath? Thirty seconds? A minute? How long before I had to fill my lungs with dust?
Something loomed in front of me, a slight darkening in the grayness. I grabbed at it and pulled it close enough to see; as I expected, the shadow was Hezekiah, blundering about blindly. Another moment and he might have been lost forever in the dust storm.
Leatherheaded Clueless – any citizen of Sigil knows, when you come through a portal into a hostile environment, you never stumble away from your entry point. Portals have to anchor themselves in some kind of archway; figure out what the arch belongs to, and maybe you've found shelter.
Carefully I looked up, keeping a firm grip on the boy's arm. Sure enough, my eyes blearily made out that we were standing in the mouth of an open tube, high enough and wide enough that the walls were only slightly darker blurs in the gray wash of dust. I staggered forward along the tube with Hezekiah in tow, both of us pushing against a strong wind that roared into our faces. The dust dragged heavily at my feet; and then suddenly, there was solid floor beneath us. Moments later, a door shut behind us with a sigh, closing off the wind and the sifting sound of dust.
Silence. We stood in a small chamber, its walls a dome-like patchwork made from triangles of glass. Outside, the dust continued to swirl in constant motion, dancing close to the glass but never settling down. Gray light filtered through the crystal panes, a light as frail as the thinnest dawn.
«Britlin!» Hezekiah whispered sharply. I turned and saw the boy standing above a huddled mass that lay in front of a second door. A few steps closer and I recognized the shadowy bundle as a body, lying in a slick of its own blood – a hobgoblin in chain mail, its lifeless hand still clutching a short sword.
«It's some kind of monster,» the boy said.
«The dead kind,» I told him. «Probably stationed as a guard on this door when Yasmin, Oonah, and Kiripao showed up. Poor berk never knew what hit him.»
«Now let us rejoice that his journey is done,» said a third voice in the room. «He has shed the burden of life and found the purity that awaits all creatures in the cup of oblivion.»
«Hello, Wheezle,» I sighed. «Cheerful as ever.»
«Indeed, sir,» the invisible gnome said. «The other Dustmen often remark on my high spirits.»
Hezekiah looked like he was going to ask a stupid question. I covered his mouth with my hand.
* * *
«Now,» I said, «the original plan still stands. Hezekiah goes back to Sigil, while Wheezle and I stay to rescue the others. Don't argue, there isn't time.»«But how do I get back to Sigil?» Hezekiah asked.
«You go back to the portal and you…» I stopped. To open the portal, he needed a picture of himself; and I no longer had my sketchbook. «Wheezle, I don't suppose you still have that paper I gave you?»
«In the confusion of falling through the portal, I fear I let the paper go.»
And now it was blowing out there in the storm, or buried under a couple feet of dust. «Blast!» I muttered, trying to think of anything else I could use to draw a picture of the boy. Nothing came to mind, and time was passing quickly. «All right,» I told Hezekiah, «you're on the rescue team for now. But the second we find some way to draw a picture of you, you're going back to Sigil to report.»
«Once we rescue the others,» the boy answered, «we can all report.»
«Pray that you're right,» I nodded. «Just remember we're in unknown territory. Be careful, be quiet, and don't touch anything!»
«Yes, sir,» he saluted. And he immediately pushed the button that opened the door the hobgoblin had been guarding.
Under other circumstances, that would have earned him a couple arrows in the chest – two archers had been stationed on the other side of the door, crossbows ready and waiting. Fortunately for the boy, Yasmin and the others had come through ahead of us; the bow strings had been cut, along with the throats of the two men.
«Are you completely addle-coved?» I snapped at Hezekiah. «You don't just barge through doors like that! Wheezle, you take the lead… and keep a sharp eye out for traps.»
«Yes, honored Cavendish.»
Something invisible nudged the boy out of the doorway, and he stepped aside. A corridor extended for more than a hundred paces ahead of us, its floor ramping gradually upward. Like the first room, this corridor's roof and walls were made from triangles of glass fitted snugly together in a metal framework. Wan gray light filtered in from outside, so feeble it seemed the light itself had somehow become disheartened.
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 overwhelming 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 lifeless 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.»
«The scepter does not talk, honored Clueless, but its presence here explains much. My faction calls this weapon Klemt Ur't'haleem, which might be translated as Unveiler. Unveiler is the creation of… a certain god, whose name it is unwise to speak aloud. Many centuries ago, the scepter came into the hands of the Dustmen; by which I mean that a party of Dustmen freed it from its former owner, and gave that owner a prominent place in our factol's retinue of zombies.»
«So Unveiler belonged to the Dustmen and now it's here,» I said. «That tells us what the thieves were doing at the Mortuary this morning.»
«Indeed,» Wheezle nodded. «They must have used the exploding giant as a diversion while they crept inside and stole the scepter.»
«So what does this Unveiler do?» Hezekiah asked.
«It gives the user extraordinary powers to control the alchemical undead,» Wheezle replied. «It can even animate these pathetic corpses and fill them with energy; but for all that, it is still a despicable object. This poor creature…» He pointed to the wight, still greedily licking blood off her fingers. «She is out of touch with the cosmos. She cannot commune with the undead gods. Her death is a stifled, paltry thing.»
I couldn't see any stifled quality myself – she looked quite happy for a corpse. However, Wheezle was the expert in such matters, so I deferred to his judgment.
«If the scepter is evil,» Hezekiah said, «maybe we should break it.»
«My faction has tried,» Wheezle told him. «Alas, it is too powerful. The best we could do was hide it in the Mortuary until we found a way to unmake it.»
«And the thieves must have stolen it because they were sick of the high failure rate from their alchemy,» I said. «Probably those three wights we killed back at the Mortuary were the only ones they had actually managed to get moving. Unveiler let them power up this whole pile of discards.»
«That is a reasonable conclusion,» Wheezle nodded. «The enemy obviously has need of an army of undead servants.»
«As if we don't have enough headaches already,» I muttered. «Still, we have the scepter now; does that mean we can control the wights?»
«Any wights who see it in our possession will obey us,» Wheezle said. «We can turn them against their creators… as a temporary measure.»
«Why temporary?» I asked.
«These unfortunates must be freed,» the gnome replied. «We cannot leave them in their current condition. Yes, an army of wights might help us defeat our enemies, and I will reluctantly tolerate such an army until the task is accomplished. Once that is done, however, these souls must be released. The energy injection from this wand only lasts a few weeks – like throwing a few extra sticks of wood into a stove. Once that wood has been used, the wights begin to burn their own souls again. I will not be party to that.»
«And you have a way to release them?» Hezekiah piped up.
I wished the boy hadn't said that.
With a wave of his hand, Wheezle shouted something that sounded like, «Hoksha ptock!» Unveiler's orange glow curdled to a bilious green, casting sickly shadows over the heap of corpses. Bodies rustled like leaves; a few of them uttered heavy groans. The wight who had been licking her fingers gave a startled jerk, as if the ground had suddenly quaked beneath her. She turned to me with a puzzled look on her face, the flames in her eyes sputtering like a dampened fire. Her mouth let out a bewildered hiss… then her legs buckled and she fell to the floor.
Hezekiah, still sitting on top of the corpse-heap, yelped and tried to catch his balance. The bodies beneath him were shifting, muttering incomprehensibly. As fast as he could, the boy scrambled off the mound, running to my side as if I would protect him from whatever happened next.
No need. The one active wight was on her knees, rocking back and forth like a child trying to comfort herself. The corpses too were moving, the whole pile shuddering in pulses. The muttering sounds grew louder, slowly blending together until all the bodies were moaning in unison, «Huhhhh… huhhhh… huhhhh…»
«Hoksha ptock!» Wheezle cried again.
«Ahhhhhhh,» the corpses sighed, and the wight hissed along. «Ahhhhh…»
«Hoksha ptock!»
Then, with a soft gooey sound, every dead body turned liquid – a runny brown liquid collapsing onto the floor with a loud splash, as gooey as egg whites. The fluid surged up to my feet like an ocean tide, flowing over my boots in a wave. Hezekiah tried to jump away, but there was nowhere to go: the spill of liquefying bodies covered the floor. We were both awash, up to the ankles.
«Yuck!» the boy shouted. «Euuu!»
«Do not fear,» Wheezle said calmly. «It is a form of ectoplasm. Not dangerous in any way.»
«So it's not poisonous?» I asked. «Good.»
The taste was something like olive oil, but saltier. With a little vinegar, it might make a fine salad dressing.
7. THREE SLABS OF CLAY
«We have done a great thing this day,» Wheezle said. «The undead gods will not forget us.»
«Is that a good thing?» Hezekiah whispered to me.
«Probably not,» I whispered back. «But I'd rather have them pleased with us than angry.» In a louder voice, I said to Wheezle, «Of course you realize you've destroyed… sorry, freed… a lot of corpses who could have been on our side.»
«They would not truly be our allies, honored Cavendish. You must have observed how quickly the wight killed the drow once I took control of the scepter. Undead animated in this way always despise the persons responsible. The wights cannot resist direct commands from their creators, but they do their best to twist those commands contrary to the original intent. We will do better taking over the wights created by others – those wights will be grateful to us, at least for a time.»
I had to grant the truth of what he said. Wights would never be trustworthy for long, but the one we freed from the drow had smiled at me in a friendly manner… until Wheezle turned her into brown goop all over my boots.
«All right,» I said. «Let's find more wights and tear this place apart.»
The corridor continued to curve before us, following the building's central ring. This time, however, the inner wall was not opaque metal – it was another triangular patchwork of glass, finally revealing what lay inside the ring.
The center was simply a bed of dust, light brown in the gray light. Our building surrounded the dust like an arena around a playing field, raised about two storeys above the surface. The enclosed region was enormous, a circle about four hundred yards in diameter – the far side of the ring was only a dim shadow in the grayness.
For a moment, I thought the dust floor was completely empty. Then I caught some motion a quarter way around the ring. Asking Wheezle to stop for a moment, I pressed my nose against one of the glass triangles and peered out at the unmoving dust.
Four figures had just emerged from a door at the base of the building, figures who moved with the peculiar arm-swinging gait of wights. Slowly, they waded into the arena, dust up to their thighs: a team of wights walking directly forward, swinging their claws to scoop up handfuls of dust and throw it over their heads.
The disturbed dust did not drift down slowly as I might have expected – it fell as fast as stones. Was each dust mote as heavy as a boulder? No, the wights showed no strain as they tossed around handfuls of the stuff. After a few moments' thought, the explanation struck me: the arena had no air. The dust didn't drift because there was nothing for it to drift upon; with no air resistance, the dust fell as fast as anything else.
«No wonder they wanted to manufacture all those wights,» I murmured. «Whatever they're up to down there, they need creatures that don't have to breathe.»
As we continued along the corridor, I glanced out the window from time to time. More and more wights were wading into the dust – all the four-monster teams that had been assembled while Hezekiah and I hid in the corpse-heap. They soon spread around the whole circle, simply walking and throwing dust in the air.
«They're searching for something,» Hezekiah said in a low voice.
«You think so?» I asked.
The boy nodded. «There must be something buried in the dust and they're trying to find it.»
For once, Hezekiah appeared to be right. The wights slowly worked their way across the surface, sweeping through the dust with their hands. I wouldn't call it a methodical search; but perhaps this random wandering was one way the wights could do a bad job for their masters without actually disobeying orders.
In time, we heard the sound of shuffling feet directly ahead of us – four wights with a hobgoblin guide. Before I could stop him, Wheezle simply called, «Hello!» and waved the scepter. The instant the wights saw that someone new held Unveiler, they turned on the hobgoblin and ripped him to gobbets of bloody meat.
«Wheezle,» I said, «next time, let's try to take one of these berks alive. If we can interrogate a prisoner, we might learn useful things.»
«A hundred apologies, honored Cavendish.»
Since the phrase was usually «a thousand apologies», I don't think Wheezle was particularly contrite.
The wights trotted along at a healthy speed, far faster than the sullen shuffle they had shown previously. In minutes, we had caught up with the next team of four, this group led by a human woman. «Take her alive!» Wheezle shouted as soon as her party came into view; and a heartbeat later, the woman was pinned against the glass wall by her former followers.
With four pointy-toothed wights grinning malevolently in her face, the woman opened her mouth to scream. Immediately, one of the wights stuffed its hand between her lips, pressing her head back hard against the glass panes. She still screamed, as any sensible person might with a corpse's hand thrust into her mouth; but the muffled sound went nowhere.
As I trotted up to her, I told the wights, «Don't hurt her… for the moment.» I said it only for the woman's benefit – as long as Wheezle held Unveiler, the wights didn't care a pin about orders from me.
The woman's eyes were wide and watery, glaring at me with vicious fury. She was in her early thirties, of middling height but very wiry. Up where the wights held her hands, her knuckles each sported a thick knot of callus, as if she liked to use her fists on passers-by; Brother Kiripao's knuckles had an identical set of calluses.
«Hello,» I said to her. «I'm going to ask this nice wight to take his hand out of your mouth… and if you behave, he won't have to put it back in. All right?»
Grudgingly, she nodded. «Do what he says,» Wheezle murmured to the wights, tapping Unveiler lightly against his thigh.
The wight slowly removed its hand, watching for any sign the woman might try to scream again. However, the hard-edged expression on her face showed that her initial outburst had been a one-time reaction; now she wanted to show how tough she was. «Who are you?» she growled.
«We don't have time to exchange life stories,» I said. «You're going to tell us everything we want to know, and you're going to keep answering our questions until we say otherwise.»
«If I don't, you're going to feed me to the wights?»
The wights all leered with their pointed teeth, but I shook my head. «That would be too easy. If you won't talk, I'll turn you over to… The Kid.»
Dramatically, I spun around and pointed at Hezekiah.
«Me?» he gulped.
«Him!» I said, turning back to the woman. «Looks like a gawky little Clueless, doesn't he? Too stupid to live. I wish I had a ducat for every person who's thought that… every corpse left festering in an alley, the body mutilated and the face frozen in agony. Look at him again. Can anyone really be that much of a leatherhead? Or is it just an act to make you think he's harmless?»
«Britlin…» Hezekiah began, but I stopped him quickly.
«No!» I cried, cringing in front of him. «Don't be angry with me for giving away your secret. Please, master, don't… don't…» I stumbled against him, and in reflex, the boy reached out to steady me. The moment his hand touched my shoulder, I gasped, «Oh saints, the pain!» and collapsed, whimpering.
«Please,» Wheezle said to the woman, «please, honored lady, you see I am a Dustman and no stranger to death. Yet even I cannot bear the hideous atrocities which this youth might visit upon your person. They claim he learned the arts of torture from the Lords of the Abyss. Surely you have heard of him? Surely you have heard of… The Kid.»
A pity I was down on the ground, moaning like a barmy – I would have given a pound of gold to see the expression on the woman's face. Or on Hezekiah's face, for that matter. Still, I hoped the boy would have the wit to play along with the act; if we didn't scare this woman with cheap theatrics, we'd have to use real torture to get information out of her. That would mean noise and delay and a burden of guilt I preferred to avoid.
Carefully, Hezekiah stepped over me and approached the woman. I groaned louder and wondered if the boy was about to mess up my plan. «Don't let these berks peel you,» he said in a passable imitation of a Sigil accent. «I'm really quite harmless.»
And then, suddenly, Hezekiah was terrifying. From my position on the floor, all I could see was his boots; and they were the most frightening boots I had ever seen in my life. Terrible visions erupted in my mind, showing those boots kicking me mercilessly, breaking bones, crushing the skulls of children and grinding eyeballs under their heels.
Boots marching over the stubble of scorched fields.
Boots stamping face after face, annihilating every flicker of life.
Then, just as suddenly, Hezekiah was once more just a Clueless youth, innocent and ungainly. «You see?» he said in his normal voice. «I'm harmless.»
I moaned, and this time the moan was no act. It took all my strength to stop myself from shivering in the afterchill of terror. My sudden unreasoning fear must have come from magic, of course – some spell cast by Wheezle or Hezekiah himself, to make the little leatherhead seem monstrous; but my usual composure was shattered by the experience. I found myself asking which was the illusion: the suddenly horrendous aura surrounding the boy, or perhaps his usual bumbling persona. What did I really know about him? A Clueless hick who just happened to know high-powered magic… did that make sense?
«Keep him away from me!» the woman shouted.
«I do not have authority over The Kid,» Wheezle answered. «But if you tell what you know, perhaps he will not trouble himself to make an example of you.»
«All right, I'll talk,» she said. And she did.
Yes, this really was the Plane of Dust that Oonah had mentioned a few days earlier. The plane was nothing but an infinite ocean of dust – no water, no air, just dust untouched by the slightest wind. I'd heard a rumor that the Doomguard maintained a citadel somewhere on this plane, because it was the sort of lifeless place that appealed to their sensibilities; but this building didn't belong to the Doomguard. Miriam told us we were standing inside the Glass Spider… «Glass» because of its see-through walls, even though they were constructed from something much more indestructible than ordinary window panes. The «Spider» part of the name came from the building's shape: a circular central body almost half a mile in diameter, with eight arms radiating outward around the circumference. Each arm was a long sloping corridor like the one where we'd come in, and the outer end of each housed a portal to some other part of the multiverse.
«Is that a good thing?» Hezekiah whispered to me.
«Probably not,» I whispered back. «But I'd rather have them pleased with us than angry.» In a louder voice, I said to Wheezle, «Of course you realize you've destroyed… sorry, freed… a lot of corpses who could have been on our side.»
«They would not truly be our allies, honored Cavendish. You must have observed how quickly the wight killed the drow once I took control of the scepter. Undead animated in this way always despise the persons responsible. The wights cannot resist direct commands from their creators, but they do their best to twist those commands contrary to the original intent. We will do better taking over the wights created by others – those wights will be grateful to us, at least for a time.»
I had to grant the truth of what he said. Wights would never be trustworthy for long, but the one we freed from the drow had smiled at me in a friendly manner… until Wheezle turned her into brown goop all over my boots.
«All right,» I said. «Let's find more wights and tear this place apart.»
* * *
With a swish, the door opened in front of us. Wheezle took the lead; he was no longer invisible, but he carried Unveiler… something we wanted the wandering undead to see as soon as possible. I followed Wheezle and Hezekiah followed me.The corridor continued to curve before us, following the building's central ring. This time, however, the inner wall was not opaque metal – it was another triangular patchwork of glass, finally revealing what lay inside the ring.
The center was simply a bed of dust, light brown in the gray light. Our building surrounded the dust like an arena around a playing field, raised about two storeys above the surface. The enclosed region was enormous, a circle about four hundred yards in diameter – the far side of the ring was only a dim shadow in the grayness.
For a moment, I thought the dust floor was completely empty. Then I caught some motion a quarter way around the ring. Asking Wheezle to stop for a moment, I pressed my nose against one of the glass triangles and peered out at the unmoving dust.
Four figures had just emerged from a door at the base of the building, figures who moved with the peculiar arm-swinging gait of wights. Slowly, they waded into the arena, dust up to their thighs: a team of wights walking directly forward, swinging their claws to scoop up handfuls of dust and throw it over their heads.
The disturbed dust did not drift down slowly as I might have expected – it fell as fast as stones. Was each dust mote as heavy as a boulder? No, the wights showed no strain as they tossed around handfuls of the stuff. After a few moments' thought, the explanation struck me: the arena had no air. The dust didn't drift because there was nothing for it to drift upon; with no air resistance, the dust fell as fast as anything else.
«No wonder they wanted to manufacture all those wights,» I murmured. «Whatever they're up to down there, they need creatures that don't have to breathe.»
As we continued along the corridor, I glanced out the window from time to time. More and more wights were wading into the dust – all the four-monster teams that had been assembled while Hezekiah and I hid in the corpse-heap. They soon spread around the whole circle, simply walking and throwing dust in the air.
«They're searching for something,» Hezekiah said in a low voice.
«You think so?» I asked.
The boy nodded. «There must be something buried in the dust and they're trying to find it.»
For once, Hezekiah appeared to be right. The wights slowly worked their way across the surface, sweeping through the dust with their hands. I wouldn't call it a methodical search; but perhaps this random wandering was one way the wights could do a bad job for their masters without actually disobeying orders.
In time, we heard the sound of shuffling feet directly ahead of us – four wights with a hobgoblin guide. Before I could stop him, Wheezle simply called, «Hello!» and waved the scepter. The instant the wights saw that someone new held Unveiler, they turned on the hobgoblin and ripped him to gobbets of bloody meat.
«Wheezle,» I said, «next time, let's try to take one of these berks alive. If we can interrogate a prisoner, we might learn useful things.»
«A hundred apologies, honored Cavendish.»
Since the phrase was usually «a thousand apologies», I don't think Wheezle was particularly contrite.
* * *
We continued on our way with the four liberated wights trundling amiably behind us. Wheezle had chatted with them briefly, offering them a choice of being «freed» immediately or accompanying us on our hunting mission. All four were hissingly eager to slice into more of their former masters… which should be a warning to all you readers who want to create wights of your own.The wights trotted along at a healthy speed, far faster than the sullen shuffle they had shown previously. In minutes, we had caught up with the next team of four, this group led by a human woman. «Take her alive!» Wheezle shouted as soon as her party came into view; and a heartbeat later, the woman was pinned against the glass wall by her former followers.
With four pointy-toothed wights grinning malevolently in her face, the woman opened her mouth to scream. Immediately, one of the wights stuffed its hand between her lips, pressing her head back hard against the glass panes. She still screamed, as any sensible person might with a corpse's hand thrust into her mouth; but the muffled sound went nowhere.
As I trotted up to her, I told the wights, «Don't hurt her… for the moment.» I said it only for the woman's benefit – as long as Wheezle held Unveiler, the wights didn't care a pin about orders from me.
The woman's eyes were wide and watery, glaring at me with vicious fury. She was in her early thirties, of middling height but very wiry. Up where the wights held her hands, her knuckles each sported a thick knot of callus, as if she liked to use her fists on passers-by; Brother Kiripao's knuckles had an identical set of calluses.
«Hello,» I said to her. «I'm going to ask this nice wight to take his hand out of your mouth… and if you behave, he won't have to put it back in. All right?»
Grudgingly, she nodded. «Do what he says,» Wheezle murmured to the wights, tapping Unveiler lightly against his thigh.
The wight slowly removed its hand, watching for any sign the woman might try to scream again. However, the hard-edged expression on her face showed that her initial outburst had been a one-time reaction; now she wanted to show how tough she was. «Who are you?» she growled.
«We don't have time to exchange life stories,» I said. «You're going to tell us everything we want to know, and you're going to keep answering our questions until we say otherwise.»
«If I don't, you're going to feed me to the wights?»
The wights all leered with their pointed teeth, but I shook my head. «That would be too easy. If you won't talk, I'll turn you over to… The Kid.»
Dramatically, I spun around and pointed at Hezekiah.
«Me?» he gulped.
«Him!» I said, turning back to the woman. «Looks like a gawky little Clueless, doesn't he? Too stupid to live. I wish I had a ducat for every person who's thought that… every corpse left festering in an alley, the body mutilated and the face frozen in agony. Look at him again. Can anyone really be that much of a leatherhead? Or is it just an act to make you think he's harmless?»
«Britlin…» Hezekiah began, but I stopped him quickly.
«No!» I cried, cringing in front of him. «Don't be angry with me for giving away your secret. Please, master, don't… don't…» I stumbled against him, and in reflex, the boy reached out to steady me. The moment his hand touched my shoulder, I gasped, «Oh saints, the pain!» and collapsed, whimpering.
«Please,» Wheezle said to the woman, «please, honored lady, you see I am a Dustman and no stranger to death. Yet even I cannot bear the hideous atrocities which this youth might visit upon your person. They claim he learned the arts of torture from the Lords of the Abyss. Surely you have heard of him? Surely you have heard of… The Kid.»
A pity I was down on the ground, moaning like a barmy – I would have given a pound of gold to see the expression on the woman's face. Or on Hezekiah's face, for that matter. Still, I hoped the boy would have the wit to play along with the act; if we didn't scare this woman with cheap theatrics, we'd have to use real torture to get information out of her. That would mean noise and delay and a burden of guilt I preferred to avoid.
Carefully, Hezekiah stepped over me and approached the woman. I groaned louder and wondered if the boy was about to mess up my plan. «Don't let these berks peel you,» he said in a passable imitation of a Sigil accent. «I'm really quite harmless.»
And then, suddenly, Hezekiah was terrifying. From my position on the floor, all I could see was his boots; and they were the most frightening boots I had ever seen in my life. Terrible visions erupted in my mind, showing those boots kicking me mercilessly, breaking bones, crushing the skulls of children and grinding eyeballs under their heels.
Boots marching over the stubble of scorched fields.
Boots stamping face after face, annihilating every flicker of life.
Then, just as suddenly, Hezekiah was once more just a Clueless youth, innocent and ungainly. «You see?» he said in his normal voice. «I'm harmless.»
I moaned, and this time the moan was no act. It took all my strength to stop myself from shivering in the afterchill of terror. My sudden unreasoning fear must have come from magic, of course – some spell cast by Wheezle or Hezekiah himself, to make the little leatherhead seem monstrous; but my usual composure was shattered by the experience. I found myself asking which was the illusion: the suddenly horrendous aura surrounding the boy, or perhaps his usual bumbling persona. What did I really know about him? A Clueless hick who just happened to know high-powered magic… did that make sense?
«Keep him away from me!» the woman shouted.
«I do not have authority over The Kid,» Wheezle answered. «But if you tell what you know, perhaps he will not trouble himself to make an example of you.»
«All right, I'll talk,» she said. And she did.
* * *
Her name was Miriam and she didn't know much. Ten days ago, she'd been a streetcorner thug in Sigil, playing the protection peel over a few blocks of dingy shops: «Cross my palm with silver, or I'll burn your place down.» When some basher in a tavern offered her a heavy purse in exchange for three weeks of strong-arm work, she'd said yes. That's how she'd come here to the Plane of Dust.Yes, this really was the Plane of Dust that Oonah had mentioned a few days earlier. The plane was nothing but an infinite ocean of dust – no water, no air, just dust untouched by the slightest wind. I'd heard a rumor that the Doomguard maintained a citadel somewhere on this plane, because it was the sort of lifeless place that appealed to their sensibilities; but this building didn't belong to the Doomguard. Miriam told us we were standing inside the Glass Spider… «Glass» because of its see-through walls, even though they were constructed from something much more indestructible than ordinary window panes. The «Spider» part of the name came from the building's shape: a circular central body almost half a mile in diameter, with eight arms radiating outward around the circumference. Each arm was a long sloping corridor like the one where we'd come in, and the outer end of each housed a portal to some other part of the multiverse.