chill and debility away. Her caress was pleasurable in a different way. Her fingers were hard with callus like his own, the digits of a woman who'd trained to fight the enemies of her faith with mundane weapons as well as magic, but there was softness in the way they stroked his cheek, and they lingered for a moment after the healing was done.
It gave him something else to think about, but not now, not when he didn't know what else was lying in wait in the hamlet or how the other squads were faring. He waited for her to minister to anyone else who'd suffered but survived the shadows' touch, then formed up his troops and moved on.
As it turned out, the undead had congregated in four sites altogether, whether for mutual defense or simply out of some instinct to flock, Aoth wasn't knowledgeable enough to guess. It wasn't easy to clean out any of the three remaining locations, but none proved as difficult as the barn. The Thayans purged the village with acceptable losses on their own side, or so Nymia Focar would certainly have said.
As he glumly surveyed the several dead men laid out on the ground, Aoth found he had difficulty achieving a similar perspective. Over the years, he'd grown accustomed to watching fellow legionnaires die, but never before had it been because he himself had ordered them into peril.
Necklace rattling, bony staff sweating a greenish film, perhaps the residual effect of some spell he'd cast with it in the heat of battle, Urhur Hahpet sauntered up to view the corpses.
'Well,' he said, 'it appears there were no survivors for you to rescue.'
'No,' Aoth said.
'I assume, then, that you gleaned some critical piece of information to justify our casualties.'
Aoth hesitated, fishing inside himself for the insight that had nearly come to him after Chathi burned the zombies. It continued to elude him. 'I don't know. Probably not.'
Urhur sneered. 'By the Dark Sun! If you claim to be a wizard, act like it. Stop moping. You blundered, but you're lucky. You have necromancers to shield you from the consequences of your poor judgment. Just stand back and let me work.'
Aoth did as the Red Wizard wished. Urhur cast handfuls of black powder over the bodies then whirled his staff through complex figures. He chanted in a grating language that even his fellow mage couldn't comprehend, though the mere sound of it made his stomach queasy. The ground rumbled.
Aoth felt a sudden urge to stop the ritual, but of course he didn't act on it. Szass Tam himself had decreed that his minions were to exploit the fallen in this manner. Besides, Aoth had served with zombies and such since his stint in the legions began. Indeed, thanks to the Red Wizards who'd brought them along, he already included a fair number in the company he currently commanded, so above and beyond any normal person's instinctive distaste for necromancy and its products, he didn't understand his own reaction.
The dead rose, not with the lethargic awkwardness of common zombies, but with the same agility they'd exhibited in life. The amber eyes of dread warriors gleaming from their sockets, they came to attention and saluted Urhur.
'You see?' the Red Wizard asked. 'Here they stand to serve once more, only now stronger, more difficult to destroy, and incapable of cowardice or disobedience. Improved in everyway.'
Responsive to Xingax's will, the hill-giant zombie fumbled with the array of lenses on their swiveling steel arms. The hulking creature was trying to give its shortsighted master with his mismatched eyes a clear, close view of the work in progress on the floor below the balcony, but it couldn't align the glasses properly no matter how it tried. Finally Xingax waved it back, shifted forward on his seat, and pulled at the rods with the small, rotting fingers at the ends of his twisted, stubby arms.
There, that was better. The activity below flowed into focus just as the two scarlet-robed wizards completed their intricate contrapuntal incantation.
Clinking, the heap of bones in the center of the pentacle stirred and shifted. It was, of course, no feat to animate the intact skeleton of a single man or beast. A spellcaster didn't even need to be a true necromancer to master the technique. But if the ritual worked, the bones below, the jumbled remains of several creatures, would become something new and considerably more interesting.
Despite the presumed protection of the pentacle boundary separating them from Xingax's creation, each of the Red Wizards took a cautious step backward. The bone pile lifted a portion of itself-a temporary limb, if one chose to see it that way-and groped toward the mage on the left. Then, however, it collapsed with a rattle, and Xingax felt the power inside it dissipate. The wizard it had sought to menace cursed.
Xingax didn't share his assistant's vexation. The entity's failure to thrive simply meant he hadn't solved the puzzle yet, but he would. It just took patience.
Perhaps the problem lay in the third and fourth stanzas of the incantation. He'd had a feeling they weren't entirely right. He twisted around to his writing desk with its litter of parchments, took up his quill, and dipped it in the inkwell. Meanwhile, below him, zombies shuffled and stooped, picking up bones and carrying them away, while the Red Wizards began the task of purifying the chamber. Everything had to be fresh, unsullied by the lingering taint of the ritual just concluded, if the next one was to have any hope of success.
Xingax lost himself in his ponderings, until the wooden stairs ascending to his perch creaked and groaned, and the undead giant grunted for his attention.
Now Xingax felt a pang of irritation. Unsuccessful trials didn't bother him, but interruptions did. Glowering, he heaved himself around toward the top of the steps.
A pair of wizards climbed into view. They knew enough to ward themselves against the aura of malign energy emanating from Xingax's body and had surely done so, but potbellied So-Kehur with his food-spotted robe appeared queasy and ill at ease even so.
The mage's nervousness stirred Xingax's contempt. He knew what he looked like to human eyes: an oversized, freakishly deformed stillborn or aborted fetus. Pure ugliness, and never mind that, if his mother had carried him to term, he would have been a demigod, but a necromancer should be inured to phenomena that filled ordinary folk with horror.
At least Muthoth didn't show any overt signs of revulsion, which was not to suggest that he looked well. Bandages shrouded his right hand, and bloodstains dappled his robe; even dry, they had an enticing, unmistakable coppery smell. The ghoul familiar he'd worn like a mask of ink was gone.
Muthoth regarded Xingax with a blend of arrogance and wariness. The undead entity supposed it was understandable. Muthoth and So-Kehur were Red Wizards, schooled to hold themselves above everyone except their superiors in the hierarchy, yet they were also young, little more than apprentices, and Xingax manifestly occupied a position of authority in the current endeavor. Thus, they weren't sure if they needed to defer to him or could get away with ordering him around.
One day, Xingax supposed, he'd likely have to settle the question of who was subordinate to whom, but for now, he just wanted to deal with the interruption quickly and return to his computations.
'What happened to the two of you?' he asked.
'We had some trouble on the trail,' Muthoth said. 'A man attacked us.'
Xingax cocked his head.
Muthoth colored. 'He was a bard, with magic of his own.'
'And here I thought it was an article of faith with you Red Wizards that your arts are superior to all others,' Xingax drawled. 'At any rate, I assume you made him pay for his audacity.'
Muthoth hesitated. 'No. He translated himself elsewhere.'
'By Velsharoon's staff! You couriers have one simple task, to acquire and transport slaves without attracting undue attention- never mind. Just tell me exactly what happened.'
Muthoth did, while So-Kehur stood and fidgeted. Impatient as Xingax was to return to his experiments, he had to admit it was a tale worth hearing if only because it seemed so peculiar. He was incapable of love in both the spiritual and anatomical senses, but in the course of dealing with beings less rational than himself, he'd acquired some abstract understanding of what those conditions entailed. Still, it was ultimately unfathomable that a man could so crave the society of one particular woman that he'd risk near-certain destruction on her behalf.
Of course, from a practical perspective, the enigmas of human psychology were beside the point, and Xingax supposed he ought to focus on what was pertinent. 'You didn't tell this Bareris Anskuld you were heading into Delhumide, did you?' he asked.
'Of course not!' Muthoth snapped.
