The Living Dead

18

Mialee dreamed of eternity.

The energy that was the essence of the wizard no longer thought of herself in terms of a name. She had no name, but she did have vague memories of words. Some words were names, such as "Mialee," "Biksel," "Favrid," and something called a "Devis."

Really, Mialee did not "think" at all in the conventional sense. Thoughts did not move through a brain of tissue and blood, crackling electrically from nerve to nerve. Instead, she existed because she knew she existed. She was energy and vague consciousness. What had been the essence of Mialee the wizard soared through the multiverse, propelled across planes of existence by nothing more than will to move. It orbited distant, blue suns in a heartbeat, stopped in on the end of time. More words resurfaced: "spellbook," "notes," "stars." There was both surprise and delight that stars were not just points of light, but immense beyond imagining.

And there was something else. Memories, perhaps, or hints of memories, of a physical world, one among millions. Why was there memory here?This was no place for memory. What was happening? What could happen to conscious energy?

Another memory intruded. It hinted at life and afterlife, spirits and souls. Was this afterlife? After-what-life? Suddenly, the consciousness wanted very much to be somewhere else. The limitless expanse of the roiling multiverse was on fire…

A hand clasped her ankle. Such a strange sensation, yet comfortable.

A voice carried over the tumultuous ether. The sound echoed in the flaming void.

"Mialee," the voice whispered, shouted, and sang.

"What?" Mialee asked.

Mialee's eyes blinked open.

She found herself looking up at the beaming faces of Zalyn and Devis. A tiny raven perched on the cleric's shoulder. Darji squawked in surprise. "She's awake!"

Hound-Eye and Diir also stood over her, wearing looks of relief. A stranger, a male elf adorned with the same antique armor that Diir wore, also loomed. This newcomer looked as if he'd seen even more combat than Diir. She felt warmth and heard the crackle of a fire in a fireplace, and past the onlookers she could see a high, curved ceiling of smooth, brown wood. The height was misleading because of her prone position. Her eyes rolled left and right and she saw that the room was fairly cramped. It held another couple of strangers and…a child? She smelled incense, tea leaves, and something else, something foul.

The nasty smell was coming from her clothes, which still pinched like a corset. And Devis. And Diir. All of them were covered in-

The events of the last few days came back in a rush, and Mialee bolted upright, eyes wide. She stared at Devis and squinted.

"Snowdrop?" Mialee asked. "Pear best tax collector green?"

The others stared at her. All but Devis and Zalyn actually took a step back.

Mialee frowned. What was going on?

"Snowdrop!" the girl barked. Slowly and loudly, like an aristocrat trying to explain an order to a dim servant, she repeated her question. "Pear…best…tax collector…green? Sextant owl?"

"Zalyn," the bard said, worried, "What's she saying? What did you do?"

"Um," Zalyn explained, "I resurrected her. The most powerful resurrection spell I know. Ehlonna should have returned her to perfect health." The gnome shrugged. "Maybe it had something to do with the broken ne-I mean, many scholars believe the voice comes from-" She shook her head and pursed her hps. "This isn't a normal side effect, I swear."

"What in blazes is a 'sextant owl'?" Hound-Eye asked.

"Troll interrogate sickle, snowdrop," Mialee said more urgently in an effort to get Devis to explain what was going on. "Goblin trampoline bugbear!"

They all just blinked. Mialee fumed.

"Oh, dear," the little gnome muttered, and she dashed off to her large leather satchel. She rummaged through the clanking vials and produced an empty one, then held it up in the firelight to read a tiny label that Mialee could hardly see. The elf wearing armor like Diir's looked at the label over her shoulder.

"What is it, elder?" said the elf.

"Haystack?" Mialee asked in shock. Zalyn didn't look like an "elder." She was barely an adult gnome.

"Yes, that's it," Zalyn said and pursed her lips at Mialee. "Aphasia."

"Marmot proclivity?" Mialee replied. When she received another round of blank stares, she leaped off the wooden table and jabbed an index finger at the vial. "Friendship! Apple friendship!" she repeated, exasperated.

Zalyn looked apologetic. "Mialee, I'm sorry. When you died-"

"Pear turnip swimming?" Mialee asked. She died? She remembered everything up until the point she spotted Favrid down the forest trail, then nothing.

Hound-Eye jumped in. "When the thing, er, killed you, I sort of panicked," the halfling explained sheepishly. Mialee guessed the man didn't often confess panicking. "I took a bunch of those potions and poured them into your mouth."

"It seems one of them wasn't a healing potion, though," Zalyn interrupted. "It was something we call hinual quar, the 'talking dance.' I assure you, I had no idea the brothers kept this sort of thing in their stock. Probably left there by someone trying to play a joke."

There was something changed about the gnome's voice. She spoke with confidence, authority, and no trace of the nasal accent of the Dogmar gutters. Zalyn frowned and continued her explanation.

"It's a prank potion, really, popular with youngsters and students. They think it humorous to slip it into the teacher's tea before lectures, that sort of thing." The gnome shrugged apologetically. "I believe that we've inadvertently given you aphasia, Mialee. The effect is temporary, I assure you."

"Dragon turtle dangle?" Mialee asked.

"Can she hear herself?" Devis asked the gnome. "Does she know what she's saying?"

"Turnip gazebo wagon, potato," Mialee told him.

"I do not believe so," Zalyn replied, "I suspect that she has every belief that the words leaving her lips are perfectly clear."

Mialee began to say something more, but snapped her mouth shut. It would explain the situation. She didn't remember swallowing any potions, though, let alone dying.

The creature had her by the throat, but her athel wood collar protected her from the wight's crushing strength….

Sweet Ehlonna. Her final memory, walled off by the resurrection spell to keep her from losing her mind when she returned to life. The feeling of brief flight followed by a crunch, and agonizing pain followed by a split-second of chilling numbness before life left her body. The wight had killed her. She'd seen light and colors, dimly remembered. All of which made her presence in this cramped room all the more baffling. Zalyn certainly could not have brought her back from the dead-the little gnome was barely a novice, and not even accepted into her order, despite what she'd said. That was just lunacy.

"Will it pass?" asked Devis.

Mialee nodded agreement for the question, trying not to baffle anyone further.

"Certainly," Zalyn offered, "but without knowing how large a dose she received, I cannot say how long it will take. There must have still been some of the potion in her mouth when Ehlonna granted me the power to bring her back from the beyond. Perhaps it was a half dose, a quarter dose, or-"

"Or maybe we're stuck with a wizard who can't cast spells," Hound-Eye growled. "I don't know if any of you have noticed, but we need her."

Mialee regarded the halfling with an arched brow.

Hound-Eye blushed, scowled, and added, "Well, don't we? We need the girl to fight those things. I never heard a mage burn a zombie with 'turnip wagon potato'."

Turning from the discussion, Mialee listened closely to the sounds outside and thought she heard low voices-no clear words, but a cacophony of moans, groans, and guttural growls. Mialee noted for the first time that the few windows in the small room were boarded up, in a hurry from the look of it. The sounds she heard were not all animals. A low chorus of moaning, rasping voices growled in mockery of the lilting sounds of elves. These were elves with nothing to say but "urrrrrrrrrrrrr."

Mialee placed a hand on the wand and felt her fingertips brush the comforting weight of her spellbook. She slapped her forehead. Of course! She couldn't' speak, but she might not be illiterate. But the special pages of the spellbook were made for spells. To scribble notes to her friends in it would be a terrible waste. She waved her hands at the others. With frantic gestures, she indicated she needed something to write on, and pulled out her dipless quill from the book pouch.

"I think she wants parchment," Diir said.

"There must be something, Soveliss," the other armored elf said, and moved to rummage through a desk that was pushed against a second door.

Mialee took the time then to peer at the other occupants of the room who had not yet said a word. One, a bald, scholarly elf in expensive-looking but gore-spattered robes, huddled next to the fire and regarded everyone with nervous eyes. Crouched beside him was an elf woman holding a very young elf child-perhaps no older than seven years-on her hip. The family, for that's exactly what they appeared to be, was less filthy than everyone else present, including Mialee, but still looked like they'd been through hell These people were terrified and in no mood for conversation. The bald man looked like he trusted no one and meant to keep his family as far from the others as he could in the tiny space.

"Banana?" she asked, pointing at Diir.

As she was beginning to expect, the others were baffled. She walked to Diir and positioned herself between her ally and the other elf. She jabbed her finger at the man rummaging through the desk while she flapped her other hand like a bird beak next to her mouth. "Ba. Na. Na."

"I think she wants to know why Clayn referred to me as 'Soveliss'," Diir jumped in. Mialee marveled at his wordiness. "Elder," Diir said to Zalyn, "perhaps you could explain?"

Mialee sighed. Everyone she knew had gone insane. Diir was calling the hyperactive little gnome "Elder," and was referring to himself as "Soveliss." Mialee considered Zalyn and her new, scholarly speech pattern. The little gnome returned her look with one of apology and tucked a lock of hair behind one pointed ear.

Mialee closed her eyes, put a palm to her temple and wished for the hundredth time that elves could sleep. She was getting a headache.

The elf called Clayn turned and pressed a few torn scraps of paper, already partially covered in elf-script, into her hand.

"Tornado honeybee, alacrity," Mialee thanked the ranger and took up the quill.

Her nimble fingers scrawled a few words on the paper. Mialee felt a wash of relief when she saw she could read them, and they made sense. Devis read the words aloud, reading over her shoulder. Apparently this pernicious magic Hound-Eye had given her didn't affect her fingers. She tried to remember how many spells she could cast without speaking, but there were only a few. A few was better than none.

" 'Where am I?'" the bard read." 'How did I come back? Elder? Soveliss?''" As Mialee scribbled rapidly, the bard added," Are those zombies outside?'"

Devis regarded Mialee with a third of his practiced, lopsided grin. "Oh, the easy stuff."

The elf woman gave him an irritated but gentle shove. She wasn't going to write the fact down for all to read, but Mialee found Devis's steady presence strangely comforting, even if the bard couldn't understand her when she talked and wouldn't take this seriously.

Zalyn turned to Clayn. "Clayn, how much time do I have?"

The ranger put an eye to a small gap in the boards over one window for a few seconds. He counted silendy. When the elf turned back to Zalyn, he said darkly, "I estimate an hour, maybe two. They have already drawn closer. The turning cannot last much longer. I hope Ehlonna is prepared to grant us a reprieve one more time."

"I'll ask her," the gnome said, smiling, and Mialee realized the little cleric was giving orders. "Please keep an eye on them and alert me as soon as they breach the divine protections. The temple is lost, but Ehlonna's chosen make their own places of worship," Zalyn told the elf, who resumed his lookout at the boarded window.

The little gnome fingered the holy symbol around her neck absently. Mialee blinked. Zalyn no longer wore the crescent of Corellon Larethian. The over-sized medallion the cleric now wore bore a carving that depicted a rearing unicorn beneath branching boughs-the symbol of Ehlonna, goddess of the wood.

"It appears we have been given a gift of time," Zalyn said. "While we wait for your voice to recover, Mialee, perhaps it's time I revealed to you who I really am, what you're doing here, and why we risked returning you to life in this place. First, I should tell you that I have been the sole occupant of the temple of the Protector-actually an ancient temple of Ehlonna, our sacred Mother-for nearly a hundred years. There are no brothers or high clerics. I brought you back."

The gnome muttered an arcane spell, Mialee noted, then suddenly bent and aged before Mialee's eyes. She had become the withered, tiny crone from the Silver Goblet. Mialee could see now that the stinky little "prophet" was in fact an ancient, shriveled elf. The question was, which was the illusion-the gnome, or the crone?

Mialee's eye grew wide. "Saddlebag, albino," said the elf woman, forgetting to write. "Saddlebag."