I chuckled. “It's all right. I should be more aware of my surroundings.”
He offered me a small smile. “Do you think we could have that talk now?”
“Talk?” I frowned, then remembered what I'd been about to tell Caleb before Taroc showed up. “Oh. Yes, of course. Um, why don't we go out to the garden?”
“Sure.”
“This way.” I led him outside, then to the right and around the keep's corner.
We went through the gate in companionable silence. I was glad to see Caleb's shoulders relax as the vibrant greenery closed in around us. Funny how a simple walk through nature could give you peace. I needed to remember to come out to the garden more often. Being surrounded by stone all day could take a toll.
“How about here?” I waved at a spot of grass hemmed in by flower beds.
“Sure.” Caleb dropped to the ground and sighed, his hands digging into the grass as he looked up at the tall stalks of violet blooms, so heavy, they arched over the smaller plants below. “This is nice.”
“It is. The children come out here to play at least once a day.”
“They know something we don't.”
“Apparently.”
“And you know something I don't,” he prompted.
I cleared my throat. “All right. Finding you and the others was a joyous event, not merely because you were found, but also because we'd been battling something else for a while.”
“Something else?”
“The Corrupter has found a way to animate the dead.”
“Excuse me?”
“The last time I went to Fress, I found the graveyard empty—the graves empty. We soon discovered why. The Corrupter stopped sending the Corrupted to attack cities and villages. Instead, he sent corpses animated by Death Magic.”
“No,” Caleb whispered.
“Yes,” I said and looked away. “I was pretty upset to find the bodies of my parents gone.”
“Oh, Ember,” Caleb said and laid a hand on my knee. “I'm so sorry. I didn't think about your parents.”
“Not just mine. As I said, the whole graveyard was empty.”
“Then my grandparents and my mom . . .”
“Gone. My grandparents too, I assume. I didn't think to look for them. The Corrupter has been using our dead as weapons. The worst part is that the only way for us to stop the dead is to burn them. So we can't put them back. Even now that the Emperor's created a counterspell, we—”
“The Emperor created a counterspell?” Caleb interrupted.
“Yes. But that only means we'll rebury the bodies in mass graves. There's no way of knowing who they are or even what graveyard they were taken from. All we can do is try to identify their races.”
Caleb's gaze drifted off.
“Caleb?” I laid a hand on his shoulder.
He flinched and refocused on me. “Sorry, I . . . I'm still trying to—”
“Yeah, I get it,” I said. “Believe me, I understand.”
We were silent for a while. Just sitting together in our horror and pain, in the middle of all of that beauty. Untouched by it. Even the glory of nature couldn't erase what the Corrupter had done.
