The masked witches

Thank you, she said. She rubbed her stained lips with the back of her hand. The blood was foul, but wonderful, too. I couldn t stop drinking it.

I m glad it didn t do you any permanent harm, he replied.

That s twice you ve pulled me back from oblivion, or as good as, she said. She reached up, caressed his cheek, and traced the path of his jugular, her fingertip sliding over the ridges in his flesh. Would you like to help me wash the bad taste from my mouth?

Some of his broken souls moaned, Yes! But others urged caution, reminded him of his mission, or simply felt awkward and inept, and those were the voices that prevailed.

He stepped back from her and asked, How did the ekolid break free?

She smirked at his implicit refusal, and her fangs retracted into what appeared to be ordinary canine teeth. The fiend explained it well enough, she said. It was strong, and I m not a Nar.

Let s press on, then, and find those who are, he replied.

He retrieved his greatsword, and Nyevarra, her mask. The two zombies who d gone mad had stopped thrashing, and when he told them to get up, they obeyed as if they didn t even remember their panic.

Uramar ordered the creatures to finish smashing a way through the wall. When they did, the burial chamber stood revealed.

It was full of gold and gems, often used to fashion grotesque images of devils and demons in the forms of statuary, brooches, and sword hilts. One of Uramar s selves, a simpleminded one, wished he and his companions had brought a lantern so he could see all the treasure gleam. Others felt a reflexive thrill of greed. But he barely noticed the stray flickers of thought. He was too intent on the trio of sarcophagi on their pentagonal dais.

Nyevarra grunted. That was a lot of trouble to go to for only three, she muttered.

Uramar smiled. I think it will be all right, he said. Tombs are like houses. It s powerful folk who have big, luxurious spaces all to themselves, or nearly so. And if these people were powerful before they died, we can hope they ll come back the same way.

Prying with their pickaxes, the zombies shifted the heavy stone sarcophagus lids out of the grooves where they fit, then slid them to the side. One by one, the lids crashed to the floor. Whatever ultimately came of it, Uramar found he enjoyed this bit of desecration for its own sake. For how often, during the idleness and solitude of his long years in bondage, had he wanted to do something similar?

Inside the boxes were crumbling bones, dust, and the gem and metal portions of whatever garments the dead had worn. Uramar took a bottle of Lod s pigment from the pouch on his belt, and, careful not to crush the fragile things, daubed symbols of reanimation on what remained of the skulls.

It was time for the incantation. Nyevarra joined in, and gradually other voices started whispering along as well. For a change, they were not the phantom voices that commonly pestered Uramar. He didn t know whose voices they were. He wondered if even Lod did.

As he, Nyevarra, and the unseen chorus neared the end of the spell, he had a sense of twisting, or pressure and resistance, as though some abstract but fundamental aspect of the world was being forced into an u

When Uramar s sight returned, the Nars were already sitting up. The magic had brought them back as ghouls gaunt, hunched, and hairless with sunken eyes, mouths full of fangs, and claws on the ends of twisted fingers.

What s happened? asked one of the creatures. He d come back with his nose entirely rotted off, which made his withered face look even more like a skull s than was the case with the other two.

We ve given the world back to you, Nyevarra said, and you back to the world.

Why? Skull-face asked.

Because we want your help, Uramar said.

Skull-face sprang out of the sarcophagus, then faltered, seemingly startled by his own agility.

We re reborn better than we were before, Nyevarra said.

Skull-face looked down at himself, then examined his rotting features by touch. I would have thought I d be repelled, he murmured. But I m not. What I am is hungry. He licked his lips with a black and pointed tongue.

A second ghoul sprang up. That one had been a woman. One breast dangled, and one was gone, along with the ear and cheek on the same side. It s strange, she said. I can t remember anything after the axe came down. Was it all just nothing, then, without even a hell to suffer in?

It doesn t matter, Uramar said. You re here now.

Thanks to you, said the third ghoul, standing up in a more gingerly fashion than the others. He d been extensively tattooed, and he twitched repeatedly as the designs redrew themselves, a stroke at a time, in his shriveled hide. Because you want our help. With what?

You were lords and conquerors once, Uramar said.

We invite you to be such again, and help found an empire like none the twin worlds have ever seen.

The female ghoul gri

Uramar sighed and replied. Actually, that s one of the many things we need to talk about.

FOUR

Huldra was a reasonably imposing figure in her black-and-white hooded cloak and mask. The colors flowed and changed from one to the other as she marched along, like she was the moon itself come down to the sunlit center of the village of Yivel. And Aoth fancied that the rest of their little procession Jhesrhi, Cera, Vandar, and himself appeared as impressive as the hathran striding at the head of it.

Yes, all in all, it was no wonder that the inhabitants of the little huddle of longhouses and huts came scurrying to attend them. No one dared to keep them waiting, although, evidently hoping to avoid notice, some villagers made a point of standing behind their neighbors.

Huldra lifted her staff a length of birch with an ivory crescent for a head and thumped it down again. Dirty snow crunched beneath the ferrule. Who speaks for this village? she asked.

Since there was a gray-bearded man, muscular but ru

Do you know why I ve come? Huldra asked.

No, Borilak said, and now his anxiety showed through. Traveling hathrans visited the village once a month. But to hear Huldra tell it, it had always been as a friendly counselor and healer, not as the cold, magisterial figure who stood before him with even more threatening-looking associates in tow.

Then you don t know anything about the massacre in the north? Huldra asked.

No! the aging berserker said.

That s strange, Huldra said. Very strange.

Aoth had to give the hathran credit. He d drafted her not because he had any reason to think her a skilled dissembler, but simply because she was the hathran who ministered to the settlement. Yet she was being as subtly menacing as a Red Wizard inquisitor.

Please, lady, Borilak said, tell us. A murmur ran through the onlookers.

I believe you all know, Huldra said, that even with the durthans gone, the Erech Forest is a dark and tainted place. That s why the Wychlaran urged the Eagle Lodge and those allied with it not to settle the western shores of the lake. But you couldn t bear to let rich land go unclaimed, and we hathrans have protected you as best we can.

Get to the point, growled Jet, monitoring the proceedings through his master s eyes and ears. Aoth suppressed a smile.