Lies of Light

59

6 Uktar, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The Canal Site

Willem looked at the line of canvas bundles and frowned. Stained with dried mud, the dull, bone-colored material bore the muddy brown handprints of the men who’d wrapped them and carried them to the open stretch of ground near the shore of the Lake of Steam. The sulfur smell of the water drove away the ripe stench of the dead bodies in the canvas bundles.

The short, squat foreman stared at Willem as though awaiting orders. When Willem shooed him away with a wave, the man started to turn but hesitated.

“Oh, what is it?” Willem demanded of him, all patience fled.

“Shouldn’t I have a few men ready, Senator?”

“Whatever for?”

“To load the bodies on the boat?”

“What boat?” Willem asked.

The foreman inhaled, was about to answer, then let the breath out in a gasp. He stared, wide-eyed, at something over Willem’s shoulder.

Willem put a hand to his sword hilt and turned as a strange soundsort of a mixture of hissing and tinkling flittered from the air behind him.

Marek Rymiit stood in the muddy grass and blinked up at the sky. The sparse, scudding rain dampened his bald head and made him grimace. His strange tattoos glimmered under a sheen of rain water.

“Master Rymiit,” Willem said, taking his hand away from his sword.

Marek tried to shake the wet from his voluminous robes and nodded in response. He took a couple of steps forward and finally glanced over the scene.

“Send your man away,” the Thayan commanded.

Willem turned to the foreman, but the grubby little man was already walking away at a brisk pace, his short legs bouncing him down a little hill. Willem smiled when the foreman lost his footing and slid the rest of the way down the hill on his backside. When he stood, covered in wet mud, he broke into a run and disappeared among a gang of workers loading lumber onto ox carts.

“Difficult finding good people these days, isn’t it?” Marek said.

Willem turned and traded smiles with the Thayan, who gestured to the canvas bundles.

The two of them stepped closer to the line of corpses, and Marek said, “I do wish you’d put them in a tent or something. This incessant rain goes straight to my joints.”

“I apologize, Master Rymiit,” Willem replied, “but we used all the canvas we had left to wrap the bodies.”

Marek sighed and said, “Well, that was unnecessary, wasn’t it?”

Willem looked over at the wizard, watched him wiggle his fingers as if stretching them, warming them up for what? He’d seen musicians do the same thing.

“The men were more comfortable wrapping them in something,” Willem said, leaving out the fact that he’d ordered it himself. He was uncomfortable with dead bodies just laying out in the open. He wondered why that could be. What did he care, really? “I can have them”

“No, no,” Marek interrupted. “No, it’s better we do it ourselves. If it’s true the men felt uncomfortable with the sight of their dead comrades, I suppose they’ll be even less comfortable with what’s about to become of them. If we compel them to help, you could have a mutiny on your hands before they have a chance to think twice.”

“Mutiny…?”

The Red Wizard laughed and said, “Really, Willem, my dear, you didn’t expect your rabble to like that their dead comrades are being put back to work alongside them.”

Willem took a deep breath and said, “I hadn’t thought about it.”

Truth be told, Willem didn’t actually care. When he thought about it, he couldn’t help feeling as though there was a time, long ago, when the thought of employing zombies, of having a hand in the desecration of the dead, when any sort of a hint of the use of slave labor, would have turned his stomach. Where he’d come from, in Cormyr, it simply wasn’t done.

“I’m not in Cormyr anymore,” he said aloud, though he hadn’t intended to speak.

Marek laughed again and said, “You’ve been out in the cold and wet too long, my boy. Or is it your young bride who’s causing you to talk to yourself? They say that after a time, married couples begin to resemble one another.”

Willem shook his head.

“Pardon?” the wizard prompted, and Willem winced at his irritated mien.

“Shall we unwrap them?” Willem asked.

Not waiting for an answer, he squatted next to one of the bundles, drew his dagger, and cut the twine that held it closed. Marek stood watching him as he pulled back the heavy, wet material to reveal the still features of a young man barely out of his teens. Though the men had washed his face, mud still clogged his nostrils and crusted in his eyelashes, holding his eyelids closed. “Sad, isn’t it?” Marek said.

Willem didn’t look up at him. He could hear the sarcasm in the Red Wizard’s voice. Willem thought that if he turned and saw that Marek was smiling, he might become offended, and he just didn’t have the energy for that.

“You look tired,” the wizard said. “You should get back to the city more often.”

“I’m needed here,” Willem lied.

“Of course you are,” Marek said, playing along.

Willem went to the next bundle, and the next, as Marek Rymiit stood watching in silence. By the time he had removed the canvas from all fourteen of the men, he was soaking wet and covered with mud. The smell of the dead bodies mixed with the lake’s stench made him gag several times while he worked. After the first one, he stopped looking at their faces.

When he was done, he stood and brushed the mud off his hands as best he could.

“Come here, Willem,” Marek said.

Willem walked oyer to the Thayan, who stood with his hand in a velvet sack he must have produced from a pocket while the senator was busy unwrapping the corpses.

“Take these,” the Red Wizard said, pulling from the sack a handful of little black stones, “and place two in each of their mouths.” He nodded at the bodies, and Willem took the stones. He shifted them in his cupped hands. “Onyx,” Marek explained. “Two in each mouth.”

Willem turned to go, but Marek reached out and grabbed him by the forearm. Willem flinched at his cold, clammy touch, and almost dropped the gemstones. Before he could speak, Marek’s other hand came up, and Willem didn’t quite have time to register the dagger before the blade bitnot too deeplyinto the flesh of both his wrists.

Willem hissed and again almost dropped the gems, but

Marek let fall the dagger and held both his hands over Willem’s, squeezing them together. Pain made Willem’s breath catch in his throat, and he could feel the hot blood mixing with the scudding precipitation, which was cold enough to help soothe the pain. Marek stared down at his hands and began to babble in a language that made Willem’s ears ring. Willem started to shake, and though he could breathe again, he couldn’t speak.

Marek let go of him all at once, and Willem stepped away.

“Don’t drop them, my boy,” Marek said.

“What onwhat are you…?” Willem blustered.

Marek glanced down, and Willem followed his gaze to his own hands. The cuts on his wrists had already healed, the pain had been replaced with an uneasy nettling, and the black gemstones were traced with delicate slivers of deep crimsonblood red.

“My apologies, Willem,” Marek said. “It works better somehow if you don’t know it’s coming.”

Willem got the distinct impression that was a lie. “What works better?”

“Place the stones in the corpses’ mouths now,” said the Thayan. “Two in each mouth.”

Willem hesitated.

“I’ve infused them with your blood,” Marek explained, though it appeared to tire him to have to do so. “When they animate, they will look to you for instruction, not me.”

A chill ran through Willem’s body, and his knees went weak. He blinked, but gathered himself quickly. He wasn’t sure he

“Go on, now,” Marek said, irritated. “I’d like to return to the warmth of my hearthfire before dark, if you don’t mind.”

Willem turned and squatted next to the first corpse. Though it wasn’t easy, he shifted all of the little stones to his left hand. After a few tries he finally figured out how to hold the stones with one hand and force the corpse’s mouth open with his right. He dropped two of the blood-infused onyx chips into the dead man’s mouth and pushed it closed.

“Good boy,” Marek said.

Willem grimaced at that, but moved on to the next body, and so on down the line of dead workers. When he was finished he stood, and almost fell to the ground when his head spun. His head felt heavy and his eyesight dimmed. Blinking, breathing deeply, he began to feel normal again after a moment.

“You should eat better,” the Thayan told him with a wink.

Willem shook his head and stepped away from the bodies.

Marek began chanting meaningless words and waving his hands in front of him. His face was set and determined, cold and inhuman, and though he might have looked or sounded ridiculous if it was indeed meaningless gibberish and waving about, Willem knew there was nothing random about it. Willem’s hair began to stand on end, and he itched his scalp. He shivered and had to clench his teeth together to keep them from chattering.

One of the bodies-moved.

Willem stepped back, almost skipped in the mud, and drew in a sharp breath.

A second corpse twitched, and the arm of a third reached up to the sky then fell back down. Within a few heartbeats all fourteen of them jerked where they lay on their backs.

Bile rose in Willem’s throat, and he choked it back.

One of the dead men rolled over onto all fours. Mud dripped from its nose, and it opened its mouth wide, its dead lips falling away from teeth caked with dried mud. The two stones fell out of its mouth and splashed onto the wet ground. The thing, its mouth still open, staggered to its feet. Still clothed in its simple homespun peasant’s blouse and breeches, at first it looked almost normal. But the pale, gray cast of its skin and its yellowed, jaundiced eyes betrayed it. Its arms hung limp at its side, and it staggered. When its bootand it only wore one, the other was likely still buried in the mud where it had diedstepped on the onyx chips, Willem heard a quiet crumbling sound. When it moved its foot again the two gemstones were gone, replaced with a black powder.

Two or three at a time, the other corpses awakened, rolled over, and expelled the gemstones. They stood, shifting on uncertain feet, staring blankly in whatever direction they happened to be facing when they first stood.

Marek approached them, and the creatures didn’t seem to notice him at all. He bent and retrieved one of the stones. He came to Willem and held it out to him. Willem took the gemstone in his hand before he realized it had just been spat out by a zombie. The thought made him flinch and squeeze the stone, which crumbled to black dust in his hand.

“It’s like a piece of charcoal,” Willem said, brushing the dust from his hand.

“More than twenty-five gold pieces each,” Marek said. “Worry not, though, I’ll bill the ransar.”

Willem looked at the black dust that still coated his fingertips. There was no trace of red. His stomach turned at the thought that his blood had somehow been ingested by those hideous abominations.

“They’re all yours, my boy,” the Thayan told him. “Keep your commands simple. They’re not quite as quick-witted as they were in life, though by the look of these peasants and the nature of the work they were content to do, I doubt it was a long way down for any of them.”

Willem nodded, but avoided looking at the zombies.

“Really, Willem,” Marek said, putting a hand on his shoulder, “why so squeamish? They’re better workers now by half. All they lack is the ability to understand how little they matter in the world. Think of it that way, and it’s really a blessing for them.”

Willem couldn’t look at the Thayan’s leering smile. And the wizard’s hand lingered too long on his shoulder.

“Let me know when you have another five and ten of them,” said Marek, “and I’ll come back, or send Kurtsson, to make more for you. In time, you’ll have more undead than living workers, toiling away at all hours without a drop to drink or a bite to eat, oblivious to the weather, and so on. You’ll want to wear something over your mouth and nose in the summer months, believe me, but I’m guessing that was true when they still breathed, eh?” Willem nodded and shook his head at the same time. The zombies had all turned to look at him, awaiting his command.