behind families, a legacy of pain and want that they could not ease. Just like her father.
She had never known her mother's husband. He had been killed by Ekur, one of the powerful priests of Gilgeam and ruler of Kehrsyn's hometown of Shussel. Ekur had ruled with a hand that was incompetent in action and potent in reaction, and he had lusted after Kehrsyn's mother Sarae. Loving and devoted, Sarae refused Ekur's obscene propositions, turning down even a wealth of livestock and spices for the dalliance of a single evening. In the end, Sarae's loyalty turned and bit her as does a trained asp, for Ekur's soldiers brought the hapless woman to him, killing her husband in the process. Ekur didn't take the widow in. He simply took her.
As a child, Kehrsyn had wished that she could have known her father, had someone to love her and protect her in all the ways her mother, desperate just to find enough food, could not. Ever since the pivotal spring day by the plum tree, when she passed out of childhood and into adulthood, Kehrsyn had since wished that her father could have known her, to have had the opportunity to hold his child even once before he'd died. She found it unquenchably sad that the man had died for Sarae's faithfulness without ever getting the chance to see the fruit of their union, and the grief was made all the worse that she, that child, had been an extra mouth to feed, an extra burden on one who unwillingly sacrificed her mate on the altar of love and devotion.
By the time Kehrsyn shook herself from her melancholy, it was entirely dark outside, and she heard a light winter rain falling, droplets tinkling on the shutters and trickling down the walls. She could see a faint red glow in the kitchen from the dying embers of the hearth, but no other light remained. Assailed by the chill from without and her longing from within, Kehrsyn moved to the corner of the room, gathered a few cushions and pillows by touch, and arranged some of them on top of her to keep her warm and some beneath her for comfort. Her bag did its usual double duty as her pillow. She intended merely to rest, or maybe to catch a catnap, while she waited for the courier.
The pillows soon began to warm to her body. Brooding over memories that never were and lulled by the weeping sky, Kehrsyn let herself slide into a slight doze.
At first, Kehrsyn didn't register the significance of the fact that she'd heard the floor creak, but then she heard the whispered, bubbly voices of the dead, maddeningly just beyond understanding, like a string of familiar syllables jumbled in a nonsensical pattern.
She heard the corpses rising to their feet, whispering of blood and dark magic. They moved quietly, but in the dead of night every sliding footstep rang like a tolling bell. Their murmuring voices drew closer. Their eyes, glowing like lanterns, scanned the darkness looking for the living. The nearest zombie's neck was broken, and his head lolled around, casting irregular patterns of light and darkness as he looked for her, calling in the gurgling tongue of the deceased.
She heard the door close and latch, sealing her in with the shuffling, hungry dead. She reached for her rapier but found herself naked…
Kehrsyn awoke with a start. She glanced around, eyes wide, pupils dilated in fear. She saw that one of the corpses was indeed not where she'd last seen it. Dread gripped her heart, and bile rose in her throat, impelled by her empty stomach. She saw a flicker of light in the kitchen, a dun splash moving in the darkness. It vanished. She heard the sliding sound again, and the feet of a body in the kitchen began to slide out of sight.
Confused, Kehrsyn shrank back unto the cushions. She pulled one of the pillows out from behind her and placed it in front. She panned her head back and forth, looking for movement, ears tuned for any noise, mouth open to aid the sharpness of her hearing.
In the kitchen, she saw a silhouette step into her line of sight. It held a bull's-eye lantern in one hand, easily recognized by the telltale red glow of the light behind its slatted louvers. Whoever-it-was opened the slats the tiniest amount and shone the light on the body on the floor.
'Nah,' a male voice said, adding some explanation Kehrsyn couldn't quite hear.
He moved on, and two others followed him, passing through Kehrsyn's line of sight one by one. She heard the leader mutter under his breath, and a few moments later the other two passed by again, heading to the door, carrying one of the dead bodies between them, grunting quietly with the dead weight.
Hoping to evade detection, for it seemed they were seeking out the corpses that littered the building, Kehrsyn moved more of the pillows until she lay against the wall, concealed by soft cushions. As far as she knew, only her head was exposed, and that she kept hidden behind a large bolster with her hair veiling her face so that her eyes might not reflect the lantern light.
There she lay as the intruders moved around their grisly task, quietly moving corpse after corpse out of the building. Kehrsyn watched their progress carefully. They cleared her room, they cleared the kitchen, and they began to move deeper within the house.
Knowing they expected no one in the building to move voluntarily, Kehrsyn decided to discover more about the body snatchers. It might shed some light on the events surrounding the troublesome wand. She wriggled out from behind the pillows and worked her way across the room, against the wall where the floorboards were less likely to creak. She avoided the kitchen, in case the group chose to meet-or, worse yet, eat-there when they were finished. Instead, by dint of careful timing, she sidled across the hall and sneaked to the front room, where she hid among the camping baggage.
She watched as shadowy figures shuffled in and out, bearing their dead burdens. She heard the cold rain outside, and, hidden among the sounds of droplets splashing in the darkened streets, the distinctive drumming sound of rain on oiled tarpaulins.
As the activity wound down, the leader of the expedition stood near the front door, sipping brandy from a hip flask. Kehrsyn could smell the potent aroma spreading through the chill air.
One of the workers came in, dripping with rainwater. He wiped his face with a rag, then blew his nose loudly.
'They's all loaded up, sir. It's rather more harder than loading cordwood, if you take my meanin'.'
The leader took another swig, recorked his flask with a satisfied sigh, and asked, 'How many do we have?'
'I sure'n lost count, sir,' came the reply. 'But we got 'em all, and we can't do none better nor that, if you take my meanin'.'
'Fair enough,' said the leader, shrugging.
'So where to, sir?'
'We'll load them aboard Bow Before Me.'
'What's that, sir?'
The leader waved a hand with some irritation and explained, 'The merchant ship that came in the day before yesterday.'
'But that's Zhentarim, sir,' said the henchman with grave concern. 'I don't think we want to be doin' that, if you take my meanin'.'
Kehrsyn picked up the slightest pause before the leader answered, 'Let's take a look at this carefully now, right? It's clear as a bell why this will be no problem.'
He's stalling, thought Kehrsyn.
'What reasons would those be, sir?' asked the concerned lackey.
Another brief pause, then, 'First of all, if these bodies get discovered in our possession, we're in serious trouble. Let's let the Zhentarim take the risk of stashing them until we're ready, even if they don't know they're helping. Second, it's a merchant ship. Anyone who sees us loading things up won't think it's out of the ordinary. People load and unload things from merchant ships all the time, day and night. Merchant ships have tight schedules, you know. But if we took them back to the temple, neighbors might see. They might talk.'
The lackey scratched the back of his head through the hood of his cloak and asked, 'You sure we'll be able to do this without them catching us?'
'The ship's guards don't know any more about what gets loaded than anyone else. They'll be happy to stay inside by the fire on a night like tonight. And if they don't, well, I can talk my way past them, no trouble. Trust me.'
'Yes, sir.' The lackey took a few steps down the ladder, then stopped to look one last time at the leader. 'Glory to Tiamat,' he said.
The leader nodded and said, 'All glory.'
