ominous farmer’s scythe stabbed into the spine of the ground. Otherwise, there was nothing to show for their deaths, no arrows or dead horses, no signs of battle. Just corpses and the cindered remains of buildings.
“We should leave this place, I think,” Ladonna said.
“We can’t leave the bodies out to rot,” Par-Salian whispered.
“We’ll tell one of the neighboring villages,” Tythonnia said. “Hartford is a day’s ride from here.”
“Whatever killed them might still be about,” Par-Salian said.
“Exactly why we should go,” Tythonnia replied. She glanced around and was sickened by the charred body of someone too small to be an adult. A fabric-sewn rag doll, untouched by the flames, lay inches from the corpse’s fragile hand. Tythonnia looked away.
“No,” Par-Salian said. “I will not send more villagers to their doom. Not without knowing what unfolded here.”
The same thought must have crossed Ladonna’s and Tythonnia’s minds because neither of them pressed the matter. They would follow Par-Salian. He was older than both of them, and while age counted for little, he was rumored to be in line to lead the White Robes. That meant there was tremendous magic at his disposal.
Ladonna climbed down from her horse.
“What are you doing?” Par-Salian asked, his voice an urgent hiss.
“You wish to play leader? Fine!” Ladonna said. “Good leaders know when to rely on the expertise of their allies.”
Tythonnia bit her tongue as Ladonna handed her the reins of her horse. The black robe wizard calmly walked up to one of the unburned corpses as though long intimate with it. She kicked away a rag doll lying near the body and managed to turn the corpse over onto its back with the tip for her boot.
Tythonnia could not stop staring at Ladonna in that moment. There was something in her expression, the mesmerizing and lethal grace of someone utterly sure in her craft. Magic was a dance for her, sometimes the dance of a seductress and sometimes the dance of a tribal warrior. Silently, Ladonna knelt in the muddy soil and removed her gloves. With practiced hands, she clasped the sides of the dead man’s face and opened his opaque eyes with her thumbs.
Ladonna leaned in close, as though to kiss the corpse. She began whispering to it, her breath congealing as cold vapor. A trickle of mist seeped from the corpse’s lips.
The Black Robes and their skills in necromancy were renowned among wizards, and frankly, the skills of healing and resurrection powers once attributed to holy women and men were skills of the distant past, things of legends. No, she was not healing him or bringing him back to life. She was stroking the tattered veils that bordered the lands of death. She was coaxing a little of what was left back into its vessel. The corpse was no more living than an echo of the original voice.
Par-Salian blanched and looked away; necromancy was a controversial art, surrounded by its most vocal Black Robe supporters and White Robe detractors. The Red Robes remained neutral, as always, judging the situation and not the practice. Tythonnia continued watching out of curiosity because she’d never seen anyone use the magic of the dead before. It distracted her from her nagging thoughts, that there was something she should have noticed. But the whispers of the dead swelled the air, their ghostly strokes falling between the patter of droplets and finding all the negative spaces to fill. Tythonnia couldn’t understand their words, but the dead were speaking and Ladonna was listening.
Even when the corpse tilted its head up to within an inch of Ladonna’s ear, even when it reached up to stroke her face and stopped just shy of Ladonna’s cheek, Ladonna never flinched or appeared distressed. Tythonnia marveled at her bravery and had to wave a startled Par-Salian back from saving Ladonna.
Whatever Tythonnia was overlooking, however, continued to nag at her. It would not remain silent, even with all her attentions focused on Ladonna. She shook her head the same way she might shoo a fly bothering her and looked around. What was she missing? What was so important that-
Tythonnia’s eyes flew to the rag doll that Ladonna had kicked away from the corpse. It was still resting where it lay. She looked to find the other doll near the burned child, but it was no longer inches from her fingers. It was several feet away, closer to Tythonnia and Par-Salian.
The blood froze in Tythonnia’s veins, exposing her stomach and chest to an ice-water chill. She looked around and saw another rag doll and another. All lay in the mud, all near bodies or in the ruins of buildings, yet somehow untouched.
Tythonnia stared from doll to doll and from shadow to shadow, and while she saw none of them move, each seemed somehow closer than the last time, their limbs in different positions.
“Par-Salian,” Tythonnia said, trying to keep track of the rag dolls. She counted six … then seven. “The dolls!”
“What?”
Ten dolls rested in places Tythonnia knew there hadn’t been any dolls before. And they were edging closer.
“The dolls!” Ladonna shouted as she rose from the mud. Her fingers were scrambling for her reagents pouch. “The dolls murdered everyone! They’re alive!”
No longer bound by pretense, the heads of the dolls snapped upward in unison. There was a greenish glow to their wood-button eyes, and their stitched mouths strained open, tearing the burlap fabric. There was malice in their expressions and rage for anything living.
The dolls scrambled forward in the mud like a pack of dogs. There were more than a dozen, and they moved with frightening speed. They emerged from the burned buildings and crawled out from puddles, from beneath the mud and under the bodies.
Tythonnia had never seen such terrifying venom in their expressions. Par-Salian tried to cast a spell, but the creatures upset the horses. Tythonnia struggled to control her Dairly, and Par-Salian flipped over backward as his Qwermish reared up on its hind legs. The only one in a position to fight was Ladonna.
Par-Salian cried out, and Tythonnia regained control of her mare in time to see one doll on his back, biting his shoulder. There was no blood to be seen, but Par-Salian was in agony. He tore at the doll, but it would not let go, and more were advancing on him.
Tythonnia kicked her horse into motion and bore down on Par-Salian. He’d just managed to pull the doll from his back and throw it to the ground, but five others were mere feet away. With the reins quickly looped around her wrists, her fingers danced together as Tythonnia called,
As with all illusion spells, Tythonnia concentrated on the glamour and its intention, on the effect that would unfold. The magic found its mouth through her fingertips, and her eyes felt hot as it surged through and out of her. Arcane threads briefly manifested in the air and shot into Par-Salian. He vanished and instantly reappeared two feet away.
He appeared startled, as did the dolls. They hesitated a moment before shifting direction and charging toward Par-Salian. The dolls leaped at him and passed right through him. Tythonnia was grateful that the illusion worked, but it was a brief reprieve at best. The dolls were already looking around, trying to find the wizard.
Par-Salian, however, was ready for them. Because it was her spell Tythonnia could see him clearly. He hadn’t budged; her magic had merely displaced his image. Par-Salian’s fingers and mouth were already moving, ambient flickers of magic coruscating around his body. Palms directed downward, he whispered and the air hissed as a sphere of flame unfurled beneath his hands. The ball of fire crackled and steamed with the downpour, but it was not quenched. Par-Salian pointed at the dolls and the ball rolled through the air toward them. It caught one doll then another. It danced and burned at the behest of Par-Salian’s outstretched hand, tumbling this way and that, sweeping through the dolls, dousing them in fire.
Tythonnia pulled on the reins and forced her mare to trample the dolls coming toward her, but they were quick underfoot and dodged the mad, panicked dance of hooves.
Ladonna lost none of her grace. She stood her ground as a half dozen dolls scrambled to overtake her. Suddenly, one of the gaudy ring stones on her finger flickered, and as her arms swept the ground around her, a
