Plowboy,said Gerant affectionately.Despite all my best influence.
“I’m not exactly a duchess myself.” Darya looked from the fountain to the temples, considering the line of three. “Sitha has my vote. I can fight undead, but I can’t do much if a roof falls on me.”
“When you put it that way, I can muster no counterarguments.”
And since I’d be the one trying to shield you from the roof, I’ll make third and all.
They first entered a long anteroom, big enough for twenty or thirty people to stand at need, without furnishings or much ornament. On the walls, golden sconces shaped like spiders held burnt-out torches in their forelegs, and the maple double doors were carved with raised images of webs and looms.
In the shadows of the far corners, shapes began to drag themselves forward. Bone and rusted armor scraped against the marble floor. Darya saw long yellow fingers, a burnt-black skull dragging itself along with its spine, and—“Three walkers.”
“Two at the other end.”
Without thinking about it, she’d turned away from Amris and stepped backward. Either he’d responded or had the same thought, for they stood back to back, each with a sword drawn. “We could go for the doors,” she said. “Get into the main room and shut them out.”
“They’d only be here when we need to leave.” He was echoing thoughts she’d had herself, confirming but mostly making conversation, while the bones made their slow, grisly advance down the corridor. A helm on one of them still had red feathers. “The temple may yet stand, but the back paths could be blocked.”
“Damn. Here we go, then.”
* * *
Amris recognized none of the armor. There were no faces left to identify: his right-hand opponent had only patches of dried flesh and skin clinging to its skull, and the one on the left lacked even such adornments. He was glad of it. Thyran’s monsters had been monsters, but the undead had often been friends and comrades up until their death.
His first overhand strike beat aside a skeletal arm and smashed through several ribs on its way down. His opponent wobbled but kept coming, clutching at air with fleshless hands. Feeble sparks of grayish-pink light burned in the deep sockets where its eyes had been, and its jaw worked steadily on the air, teeth clashing and parting and clashing again.
All of them did that, each slightly out of rhythm with the others.Clack CLACK clack CLACK clclcl CLACK.
The sound of Amris’s sword hitting bone, and of Darya’s doing the same behind him, was the only source of relief. Darya wasn’t silent, as she had been with the cockatrice, but kept up a constant stream of muttered profanity, lyrics to the macabre concert the seven of them were putting on.
Another stroke from him took the head off one of the skeletons. The body lurched blindly onward, still clutching. Its companion grabbed at Amris, but he hacked its arm off at the shoulder, spun, and split the headless one’s spine lengthwise at the same time as he kicked in one of its knees.
“They’re brittle,” he said, stomping down on a severed foot. “I’ll say that in their favor.”
“Like fine, disgusting porcelain.”
A chop to the hip took care of the corpse that yet stood. The remaining arms and legs still twitched, though Amris noted with relief that the persistence didn’t extend to individual bones. “Or chopping firewood,” he said, and suited actions to words.
“Gerant says that Optyras… I’m guessing he was the… Oh, piss off, you”—a smash did, indeed, sound like a milk jug falling onto a stone floor—“the proud father of these things. Gerant says he never did consider the future.”
“Among his many other failings.”
Amris heard a series of tiny crunches and very deliberate stomps. “Be fair, both of you,” Darya said. “I don’t think I’ve ever thoughtWill this body hold up against people with swords in a hundred years?” She stopped talking long enough for another crash, then added, “Yes. Yes, it is.”
When the skulls were split in half and the hands had stopped clawing at the air, Amris said, “Hmm?”
“Huh? Oh. Why I’m not a world-conquering necromancer. I lack foresight. And necromancy.”
“Alas.”
He cleaned off his sword and turned to meet Darya, who was doing the same. The exertion had left her flushed, and her pink face brought to mind the rose Gerant had given him. He’d left his old life with one lovely weapon from the mage, and it seemed he’d been brought into his new existence by another.
* * *
The doors weren’t locked. Darya almost fell when she went to try one and it opened easily, which Gerant found very amusing. She wished, not for the first time, that she could glare at a sword without feeling silly. She also wished Amris hadn’t been present to witness, or to put out a steadying arm.
“Strange,” she said. “I’d have thought they’d barricade themselves in here, at the end.”
The room beyond was a great hall, with an arched roof and carved pillars, a huge altar at the front, and pews carved of the same red-gold maple as the doors. There were many corners where bodies could lie, and maybe they did, but Darya couldn’t see any, nor did she hear the scratching sound of bones moving.
