“We won’t have to carry them very far,” I said. “Once I raise them as zombies, they can do their own walking.”
I breathed deeply and stared up. The corpses hung off the top of the tower, a hundred yards from the ground. That was a long way to fall, and even though I was a god, flight wasn’t one of my magical powers. If I hit the ground from that height, I’d burst like a rotten pumpkin.
I thought about simply flying Talon up there to get some corpses down, but seeing as my harpy was outside the city walls, I would have to fly it into Aith, and the guards on the city walls would notice. Nope, this one was going to have to be all me.
“Just don’t look down,” I muttered as I prepared to climb.
I took Grave Oath out and gripped the blade between my teeth for easy access. Then I dug my fingertips into the grooves between the stones—which, thankfully, were large and deep, and made for good handholds and footholds—and began my ascent.
Becoming a god had given me a natural boost in strength, energy, and endurance, and all of these helped what would otherwise be a tricky climb. That didn’t mean it was easy, though, not by any means, and it took some time and a lot of effort to get to the top. I kept my eyes on the zenith, always. It wasn’t that I was afraid of heights. I wasn’t, and never had been. It was the pull of vertigo, the treacherous suck the ground seemed to exert with ever greater force the farther away you were from it.
Finally, after what seemed like a repetitive eternity, I found myself among the cocooned corpses. That was when I finally looked down for the signal from Isu and Rami-Xayon that the coast was clear. The two of them looked like insects.
The pull of the ground sucked at my body with a sudden roar, as if invisible hands were pawing at my body, trying to rip me off the wall and smack me against the unyielding, distant ground. I had to dig my fingertips deep into the groove to fight against this unseen force, and I focused on keeping my breath steady to maintain a cool head.
Rami-Xayon and Isu were each watching a different street. Thankfully, they each gave me the signal that we were all set. Rami-Xayon had said that I should look for the three smallest bodies, but at this point, I just wanted to get this over with, so I went for the three closest cocoons.
Each one was suspended from the top of the tower by a thick thread of spider silk. The sticky substance was immensely strong, and even with Grave Oath’s sharp blade, it took quite a bit of effort to cut through the threads.
When I’d severed the first one, I watched the cocooned body plummet earthward. It seemed to fall forever, tumbling over and over through the air, until finally, it slammed into the cobbled street below with a heavy thud. Thanks to its tight wrapper, the body remained intact; I had no doubt that any body dropped from this height without a protective cocoon would splatter like a rotten tomato on impact with the ground.
I heaved a sigh of relief when the final corpse thumped to the ground before I made a hasty climb back down to Isu and Rami, who had already dragged the cocooned corpses into a thick pool of shadow in a nearby alley.
“You looked like a spider yourself.” Rami-Xayon stared at me with a sudden hunger in her dark phoenix eyes. “It was a sight.”
“You truly showed you were a god up there,” a suddenly jealous-looking Isu purred. “A powerful, dominant god.”
As enjoyable as it was to have these two women trying to outdo the other’s desire for me, we didn’t have time for this now. Though this did bring to mind a way our alibi might become reality. Wouldn’t it be the perfect way to get these two to get over their grudge? If I let them compete like this for a while longer, without time constraints, they might just get so aroused that before long, they wouldn’t care about the other’s presence anymore.
We’d see later. Right now, there was a mission to complete.
“This spider silk is a bitch to cut through,” I said, changing the subject. “It’s not going to be easy to get these corpses out of the cocoons. How far are the sewers?”
“This way,” she said.
I picked up the biggest corpse and slung it over my shoulder, Rami-Xayon took the medium-sized one, and Isu the smallest. The necromancer brought us to a large tunnel nearby that led to Aith’s sewer system. It was pitch black in the sewers, but Isu, knowing we’d be coming here, had brought a torch and a small fire kindling kit. She lit the torch and led us into the sewers.
Safely outside the scope of any guards, I cut the corpses out of their cocoons with a lot of cursing and vigorous sawing. The biggest one was a barbarian warrior. The second one was a chubby merchant, and the smallest one a scrawny rogue. All had a green undertone to their skin. Isu explained that the discoloration was caused by preservatives in the spider cocoons. We crushed the spider-root fruit and rubbed the juice all over the corpses before shoving the fruit pulp into every orifice we could find. It definitely wasn’t my highest moment, but I was always willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.
Once the corpses were sufficiently stuffed, I closed my eyes and raised the trio as zombies.
“We can get to the spider pens via the sewer network,” Isu finally said. “Follow me.”
We walked briskly through the sewers, the zombies striding silently behind us. The sewer system was as advanced as any I’d ever seen. I wondered what would have happened if Aith
