Merritt had then taken them to the little library and stood watch at the door while Magda cleaned Naja up enough so that she wouldn’t draw suspicion if anyone saw her. After using a damp rag to gently wash some of the blood off the face of an only half-conscious Naja, Magda had managed to get the robe onto her. While only partially responsive, Naja had been aware enough to be grateful to have the robe to wear.
After that, Magda had let Merritt hurry and get to work healing the woman while Magda stood watch.
Merritt finally stepped up behind Magda. “Anyone out there?”
“No, not for a while.” Magda looked back and saw Naja standing close behind him. “How are you?” she asked the sorceress.
“Merritt helped me enough for now. He is very talented. I think I will be strong enough to walk to a safer place where he can finish.”
“Your house?” Magda asked Merritt.
He pressed his lips tight as he considered it. He glanced back briefly at Naja.
“I wish we could get there. We’d be secluded and alone. But I really think it needs to be someplace closer. She can walk for a short while, but I’m afraid she wouldn’t make it that far and then we’d be in trouble.”
Naja looked past Magda to peer out the crack in the door. She abruptly stepped back in surprise.
“There are dead people out there.”
Merritt nodded. “This is the catacombs, down under the Keep, where the dead are laid to rest. We’re just a ways above the dungeon where we found you.”
Naja was clearly alarmed. “We need to leave, now.”
“They’re dead,” Merritt said. “They can’t hurt you.”
“Yes they can,” Naja said.
Magda slid the door closed and turned to the woman. “What do you mean?”
“Emperor Sulachan uses the dead.”
Both Merritt and Magda stared. Magda, having fought a dead man, was not all that surprised by Naja’s claim.
“Uses them how?” she asked.
“To serve him.”
“How can the dead serve him?” Merritt asked.
“For Emperor Sulachan, the dead can serve him as well as the living. In some cases, better.”
“Better.” Merritt repeated as he stared at her. “They have no heartbeat. They have no life in them. How can they do anything?”
“Chickens can move and flop for hours after their heads are cut off. They have no heartbeat, either,” Naja said, “and that doesn’t even involve any magic.
“The emperor has rare, gifted people called makers,” she said, leaning in, speaking in a quiet, reverent tone. “I never met any myself, but I do know that makers have remarkable powers of originality. They imagine what others never envisioned before, and through that mechanism are somehow able to create what others never could.”
Magda glanced up at Merritt. “We understand. We have makers as well.”
“Then you understand the wide range of the totally new and unexpected creations they can sometimes come up with. Most people’s minds travel along the same road traveled by everyone else, never straying off the route of conventional wisdom. Makers know no such boundaries. They have a rare ability to make their own roads of thought. Their minds venture through the wilderness of all that exists, combining random bits of knowledge in ways that have never been imagined before.”
“We understand that much of it,” Magda said. “What does this have to do with making the dead walk again?”
“The emperor’s makers have created new forms of magic, new spells, that function in part by altering the nature of the grace. Through the new forms of power envisioned by the makers, along with the help of the emperor’s many gifted, they have learned to use magic to control the dead.”
“How do you know all of this?” Merritt asked.
“I know because I was one of the gifted who helped them. Though the manipulation of the spirits of the dead in the underworld, and investing powerful magic into the corpses that those spirits came from, the dead are made to respond. That was the secret that the makers unlocked, using the spirits of the dead from the spirit world, linking them back to corpses they came from, using that connection in the Grace, the spark, that runs through creation, life, and into death, connecting it all. With the new spells designed by our makers, the dead are made to serve the wishes of Emperor Sulachan.”
“Against their will, then?” Magda asked.
Naja shook her head. “They have no will. They are dead. They are like a raw material which, through the methods dreamed up by makers, is crafted to serve as the emperor wants.”
“Serve? How do they serve?” Merritt asked. “What purpose would the dead have that could serve Sulachan better than the living?”
“The dead never get weary, they don’t know hunger, or pain, or pity. They don’t need to eat, or sleep, or rest, or stay warm, so they don’t need any supplies. They have no ambition but the one given to them. They have no capacity for fear so they act without hesitation.”
“Act how?” Magda asked. “What do the emperor’s forces use these dead people for?”
“For all those reasons I mentioned, they make perfect assassins.” She gestured beyond the door. “They can be right there, in your midst, and you never know it. You walk by them and never see them for what they are.
“The dead can be animated as needed. They are then given a single-minded purpose. They never stop trying to carry out that purpose.
“For these reasons, they also make the perfect warriors. The dead have their limits of service, though. There are things for which Emperor Sulachan cannot use them.
“When he needs the same sorts of things done that the dead do well, but with some intelligence behind them, he uses the half people.”
“Half people?” Magda leaned in. “What are half people?”
“Living people he has stripped of their souls.”
Chapter 76
Merritt folded his arms across his chest. “How much, exactly, do you really know about all of this? How complete is your understanding of it?”
“I told you, I was Emperor Sulachan’s spiritist.” Naja heaved an impatient sigh. “Must we discuss this now? Can we please go and talk about it later?”
“We need to know some things, first,” Merritt said.
Naja gestured toward the door. “What you need to know is that any one of those dead could be a servant of the emperor. You wouldn’t know it until one of them sat up, grabbed you by your throat, and ripped your arms off. If the emperor or his minions knew we were in here, they could set one or a dozen of the dead on us to tear us apart.”
“She’s right,” Magda said, recalling the horror of what had happened with Isidore. “We should get out of here.”
“How could he get any of those dead people down here to do his bidding?” Merritt asked, not ready to leave before he had a better grasp of it all and exactly what they faced. “He may be powerful, but he’s all the way down in the Old World. How could he do a thing like that from such a great distance?”
“Easy. One of those loyal to him prepares a dead body, here, at the Keep or in Aydindril, and then has it laid to rest out there in your catacombs among the other dead people. How would you know? How would you know that the body that was being laid to rest down here wasn’t one of the ones that had been prepared to serve Sulachan’s purpose? Any of his people hidden here as spies or traitors at the Keep could then bring the dead out of their death sleep”—she snapped her fingers—“as quickly as that.”