however, it grew as solid as steel and cleaved him down the center.
After that, Hsieh wielded his weapon as though it were black lightning, felling one, then two, three, and four more enemies in as many eye blinks. The remaining
Shou quickly seized the advantage and began to slay their attackers.
Ruha was beginning to have visions of turning the remarkable weapon against Cypress when the last cult member fell. The witch stepped over a Shou corpse and rushed to follow Hsieh toward the intersection; then she heard the dragon's voice rumbling with another magic invocation. She scooped a handful of bloody pebbles off the street and turned, hurling them at her foe and utter- ing her briefest stone spell.
The rocks streaked straight into Cypress's empty eyes, striking with a loud, sharp crackle. The dragon's head snapped back; then a spray of bone shards and shattered scales erupted from the back of his skull. He roared, spraying a fine black mist into the air, and then began to shake his head.
Ruha turned to follow Hsieh. She was not disap- pointed; it would take a hundred such attacks to destroy
Cypress, but at least she had interrupted the dragon's spell-or so she thought, until a corpse's lukewarm hand caught her by the ankle.
Ruha twisted to avoid landing on the ylang oil and came down on her wounded side. The impact drove spikes of pain deep into her body. The witch found herself struggling for breath, and she knew she was dangerously close to blacking out. The corpse grabbed hold with its second hand and dragged itself forward. She looked down and saw that her attacker was the dead Shou over which she had stepped earlier. She tried to kick free, but it felt no pain from her blows and would not let go.
Hsieh appeared at Ruha's side and brought his sword down across the corpse's shoulders. The dark blade passed over the zombie's body like a shadow, causing no harm at all. The mandarin's narrow eyes grew as round as saucers; then the arms of a dead cultist grabbed him from behind and hurled him to the ground.
The cobblestones shuddered as Cypress resumed walk- ing. Ruha craned her neck and saw that she and Hsieh were not the only ones in dire circumstances. The dragon had animated all the corpses in the street. Though the zombies were slow and clumsy, they were pressing the Shou survivors by virtue of their numbers alone.
Ruha's attacker grabbed hold other belt, then slammed its free fist into the pit other stomach. She tried to scream in pain, but the blow had driven her breath away, and she could do no more than grunt. The zombie raised its fist to strike again. She released the oil sack and deflected the punch with her forearm. In the same motion, the witch drove the heel other free hand into the side of her attacker's head and heard the temple snap.
Pushing with all the strength in her legs, she rolled onto her side and threw the dead Shou off.
Ruha grabbed the oil sack and leapt up. As she turned to flee, the dragon's huge shadow fell over her body. She sprinted for the intersection. The pain in her side was excruciating, but she managed to ignore it and rush forward at a pace that would have made a hare-hound proud. She kept expecting Cypress to say something, to iwcommand her to stop or at least to taunt her, but he held his tongue. Ruha found the silence even more alarming than the hiss of his lungs filling to spray acid. The dragon was thinking of only one thing: killing her. To comment on his intentions would have been a meaning- less waste of breath.
The street trembled again, and Ruha knew she had no hope of outrunning her pursuer. She summoned a wind spell to mind and darted toward the street side, then heard the whoosh of the dragon's huge talons slicing through the air behind her. The witch forced herself not to look toward her pursuer's face; the last time she met his gaze, he had nearly taken over her mind.
Ruha angled toward the entrance to the nearest tene- ment. In the corner other eye, she glimpsed Cypress's other huge claw sweeping down to pluck her up. She slammed her feet against the street and managed to slow herself, allowing the black hand to sweep past without catching her. Then, feeling like a spiny iguana dodging a hungry Bedine boy, she darted forward again.
The tenement was barely three paces away. Ruha took a deep breath, then uttered her wind spell and exhaled.
A ferocious gust of air howled from her lips, blasting the heavy oaken door into splinters. The witch rushed blindly into the building's deep-shadowed interior. Three paces inside, she stumbled over a step and slammed face first into a wooden staircase.
Ruha gathered herself together and spun around, then barely leapt aside in time to prevent Hsieh's dark sword from piercing her heart. The mandarin stumbled over the same stair as the witch, but managed to recover more gracefully by picking up his feet and landing two steps up the stairwell. Behind him came two of his men, who also displayed their incredible agility by managing to catch each other when they also tripped over the step.
The witch did not know how any of them had escaped the zombies-in a manner similar to how she had, she sup- posed-but she was glad for the company.
'Where now?' Hsieh squinted at Ruha with his uncovered eye.
'I do not know.'
Ruha stepped around the stairwell and ran down a broad, dirty corridor toward the back of the building. As Hsieh and his men moved to follow. Cypress's hand burst through the doorway and caught the last one in line. The warrior howled in pain, and Hsieh raised his sword to charge the doorway.
Ruha caught him by the shoulder. 'If that blade did not affect the corpses, it will not harm Cypress. He is also undead.'
'Thank you. I would feel most foolish.' The mandarin gestured down the corridor. 'Please to make most of sol- dier's sacrifice.'
Ruha turned down the hall and tried a dozen barred doors before the captured man finally stopped screaming.
There was a brief silence; then the warrior behind
Hsieh said, 'Dead men follow us.'
'Cypress fears to destroy oil sack,' Hsieh observed.
'Otherwise, he sprays us with acid.'
'True, but I doubt he is willing to let us escape.' Ruha started down the corridor again, judging they had less than forty paces before it ended in a windowless stone wall. 'And we will soon run out of room. I fear the back of this building stands against Temple Hill.'
Hsieh caught Ruha by the shoulder. 'You stop dead men. We find way out.'
Ruha glanced down the corridor at the long line of zombies. The closest was only ten paces away, but was slow and shambling. She nodded. As Hsieh's warrior began hacking at a door, the witch picked up a small stone lying among the refuse against the wall. She used it to scrape a line up both walls to within a few inches of the ceiling. She connected them with another line on the floor, then laid the rock upon it. The leading corpse was only two steps away.
A muffled clamor sounded somewhere in the structure far above, presumably Cypress tearing the roof away. As much as Ruha wanted to glance at the ceiling, there was no time. She spoke the incantation other stone spell. The rock on the floor disappeared, then a shimmering gray wall formed between the three lines the witch had traced on the floor. The first corpse, a dark-haired cult member with an ugly skull wound, arrived at the barrier. He managed to push his head and one arm through before the magic wall turned as solid as granite. The zombie remained there, reaching for the witch's oil sack and moaning in the plain- tive, incoherent voice of a tormented spirit.
Another crash reverberated down from above, this time followed by the clatter of falling rubble.
'He is digging his way down through the building!'
Ruha cried, spinning toward Hsieh.
She completed the turn in time to see an iron bolt shoot through the breach Hsieh's man had hacked in the door. The dart buried its head in the opposite wall, and the muffled clatter of a bow crank sounded from inside the chamber. The warrior reached through the hole and lifted the crossbar off its supports.
'Get on with you!' cried the man on the other side of the door. His voice sounded both fearful and old. 'The next one won't miss!'
Hsieh's soldier shoved the door open and stormed inside, yelling, 'You dare to attack Shou mandarin!'
A heavy thud shook the building; then the ceiling began to crack and groan beneath a great weight. Ruha and Hsieh followed the warrior into a small, windowless shop filled with the cluttered shelves of an apothecary.
The soldier was leaning over a chest-high counter, hold- ing his sword to the throat of a mousy, squint-eyed
