The Living Dead

22

Mialee sneezed twice into her spellbook and went into another coughing fit. Devis sat on the floor beside her, noodling around with a new ballad on his lute, and sympathized. Between the festering rat residues already buzzing with tiny flies, the days-old gore encrusting everyone's clothes, and the foul, but necessary, waste bucket in the corner, drawing breath in their little sanctuary was a dangerous adventure. Devis set aside the lute and opened his leather vest. Most of his under-tunic was still clean, at least relatively so. He shrugged and tore two wide strips from the bottom, tied one around his own nose and mouth-winced at how long it had been since he'd taken a bath-and offered the other to Mialee. She looked at the rag with distaste, but relented after she sneezed violently one more time.

"Thistle-" Mialee frowned, and said more slowly, "Thanks, garlic."

She sighed with a weak grin and tied the covering over her lower face. She shifted closer to him and placed a hand on his knee as she returned to her spellbook. Devis looked over her shoulder-he couldn't make out the details, but it looked like she was studying ways to make things disappear.

"It's always easier to surprise someone when they can't see you," Devis said.

Mialee looked up at him in mild irritation, and scooted a few inches away, turning the book's spine to the bard.

"All right, all right," Devis said, and resumed work on his new melody, plucking idly.

It had been nearly a day since Zalyn annihilated the swarming rats and sent the wightlings packing, for a while. Hound-Eye and Nialma played in one corner-the halfling would bark the name of an animal, and the little girl would pretend to be the animal. She was giggling, and Devis was gratified to see his old pal Hound-Eye had actually begun coming back from the dark place he'd inhabited since Takata's death at the bridge. The little girl particularly loved to play pretend rat, which seemed to disturb her mother and father, but the girl was giggling and laughing. Pell had opened up a bit, and Devis learned that the man was a scholar. He and his family had just returned to Silatham when the wightling rats struck the sleeping town. Now Pell's family was less than half the size it had been a week ago.

Humming over the idle notes, Devis's thoughts turned to something more pleasant. He regarded the elf woman beside him out of the corner of his eye.

Mialee confused the daylights out of him. Obviously, Devis had grown attached to her during the journey south, and thought that she just might have been feeling the same way. His instincts about such things were usually sharp. Then, the wight attacked and unexpectedly killed her and shattered him.

After Mialee's return to life, she and the bard joked with each other, shared a few awkward moments, but Devis sensed her mind was distant. It wasn't just the residual effect of Zalyris aphasia potion. Occasionally, as when she touched his knee and called him "garlic," he closed the distance, but she drew back as soon after.

As his fingers played over the strings, Devis speed-picked a progression of chords he had never played before, a collaboration of notes that created a sound entirely new, yet as familiar as a timeless hymn. The bard smiled beneath his ersatz facemask. The hook was exactly what the ballad needed. It just took time for such things to emerge from the jumble of random melodies in his fingers.

As the song's magic surrounded him with simple, twinkling lights that flitted about the room like fireflies, the wightlings seemed very far away, even as the corrupted, rotten victims of Silatham screamed and howled outside in the early morning. The air itself seemed to get cleaner, if only a little, an unanticipated side effect of the new spell song.

Zalyn's face was drawn and sallow, and her breath came in steady, pained wheezes. She leaned against Clayn, who had leaped to her side when she began wobbling. Devis saw that she clutched the golden symbol of Ehllona in tiny, white-knuckled hands. Acrid, foul-smelling rat-smoke drifted through the hot, cramped room.

The elder of Silatham had just turned back another wightling onslaught. There had been fewer rats but more humanoids, and something new, at least inside Silatham-vultures and wolves, dozens of them.

The barricade was badly damaged. Devis, Pell, Soveliss, and Mialee raced to pound the cracked and broken boards back into place.

"It seems," Zalyn said as Clayn helped her to a seat on the floor, "my usefulness is beginning to wane."

"Elder," Clayn began, "Holy Ehlonna will protect us. She must find a way to-"

"Ehlonna is not the problem, dear, brave Clayn," Zalyn said wearily as the ranger crouched beside her. Devis wished he could help the old woman with an uplifting poem, but dared not stop his efforts on the windows.

"Moradin," Clayn spat, "he betrayed us. Released the Buried One before the Mother was ready."

"No, if anything, Moradin has done more than his fair share. Do not speak ill of the Dwarffather, only his strength kept the Buried One in check while Ehlonna convalesced," Zalyn smirked.

"The problem is not with the gods, my boy," she said with resignation. "It's with me. I am dying."

Everyone in the room froze. Devis winced as a heavy, jagged chunk of table dropped painfully on his toe, but he bit back a yelp.

"Don't all of you look at me like that. I am well over eleven hundred years old. Even among elves, I am ancient. The effort of fighting back so many of the Buried One's minions has forced me to draw on my own strength as much as the Mother's," Zalyn smiled weakly, though Devis saw pain in her eyes. "Ehlonna does not share her gifts with the world lightly, and she always asks for them back. Favrid and I have led very long lives with the Mother's help. We had to, for the sake of our cause. But," she coughed, a wheezing hack that filled the bard's gut with sickening certainty, "we always planned to enter Ehlonna's embrace together. I fear he may have to catch up with me."

"You cannot die, Elder," Clayn insisted. "We will find a way to bring you back. You are all that stands-"

"Of course she's not," Soveliss interjected. "Anyone can die, Clayn. And not everyone gets a second chance," the ranger said, eyeing his grandson and Mialee darkly.

That surprised Devis, but he understood, he thought. His friend had lost his love and his children, and Zalyn had not been able to bring them back to life. Of course he resented the ones who returned. The bard sympathized, but hoped Soveliss would be able to overcome his bitterness soon. Devis missed Diir.

"He speaks the truth, ranger, and you know it," Hound-Eye said, looking away from little Nialma.

Zalyn said, "A soul must want to return from the beyond. Even a god cannot force a free spirit back to this world if it does not want to make the journey. My conscious mind keeps me fighting Ehlonna's call while I reside in this body, but once free of it, I fear that what I find beyond will be too much for this old soul to give up."

"Don't die, Elder," Nialma said.

"Little one, it is not something I can change. I wish there was some way you did not have to learn this, not at this age, but all things end." Zalyn grinned, and a gnomish twinkle appeared in her eyes. "But I will not leave you until you are safe. And when I am gone, Ehlonna will look after you, Nialma. I promise."

Devis pounded one last board into place and sniffed. For Nialma's sake as well as his own and everyone else's he hoped Zalyn's faith in Ehlonna was even half justified. The alternative was certain doom.

He heard a squawk from Darji and jumped. The little bird was back from her scouting mission, wriggling through one of the few openings left unblocked for ventilation. The raven still glowed with the soft, blue energy Zalyn had cast to keep Darji safe.

"I have word from Favrid, Elder," the little bird cawed. The raven chirped into Zalyn's ear while the elder nodded. The elf straightened, and some of her old strength seemed to return to her bent frame.

"Favrid is alive," Zalyn announced, "but restrained. I must think on this while I rest. This evening, we will speak further."

Zalyn promptly sat cross-legged, closed her eyes, and slipped into a state of meditation.

"Anyone have any dice?" Devis asked.