He left the treasure lying there and went outside. The sky was dark. The clouds were sparking with sheet lightning. Thunder rolled. Any minute, it would start to rain. If he was to pick up their trail, he would have to move quickly.
He saw the dead roc lying in the plaza in a giant, dark pool of coagulating blood. Well, he thought, so much for his ride out of here. Nibenay must have had the giant bird attack them, and they had made short work of the creature. But then, what did Nibenay care about his leaving the city safely? Had the Shadow King even paused to consider that when he set the bird upon them?
The thought of leaving the city safely suddenly and unpleasantly reminded him of its undead population. The sky was darkened by clouds. Night had come early to Bodach. And even as he stood there, he heard the wailing start, a chorus of doomed souls crying out their agony.
“Stop standing there like a stupid mekillot!” the Shadow King’s voice hissed in his mind. “Find out which way they went!”
“Be silent, you noisome worm,” Valsavis said, not caring anymore how he spoke to the sorcerer. If he could, he would wrench that damnable ring off his finger and fling it as far away from him as he could, but he knew only too well that it would not come off unless Nibenay wished it.
For a moment, the Shadow King actually fell silent, shocked by his response, and then Valsavis felt the tingling in his hand start to increase, and then burn, as if his hand were being held in flame. It began to spread up along his arm.
“Desist, you miserable reptile!” he said through gritted teeth. “Remember that you need me!” The burning sensation suddenly went away. “That’s better.”
“You presume too much, Valsavis,” said the Shadow King sullenly.
“Perhaps,” Valsavis said. “But without me, what would you do now?” He scanned the plaza carefully as he came down the stairs. There were bloody footprints left by a pair of moccasins going off to the left. He began to run, following them.
The Shadow King fell silent. Logically, without Valsavis, he could do nothing, and Valsavis knew that if there were some threat of punishment hanging over him, Nibenay could wait a long time before he saw the Breastplate of Argentum or learned the secret of where the uncrowned king was to be found. He grinned to himself as he ran down the street that the elfling and the others had taken. It was not every man who could manipulate a sorcerer-king. For all his incredible powers, Nibenay still needed him. And that meant that he, Valsavis, was in control. At least for the moment.
The thunder crashed and lightning stabbed down from the sky. The wailing of the undead grew louder. Things were about to get interesting, Valsavis thought.
He ran quickly down the street, following the path they had taken. They were heading north. He frowned. That seemed very peculiar. Why would they go north? Their flying raft was on the other side of • the city. Of course, they must have realized that they could not reach it in time. The streets would be full of undead before they had gotten halfway. So what was to the north? Nothing but the inland silt basins.
That was insane, he thought. Had they lost their senses? All they would succeed in doing was trapping themselves between a city full of the undead and the
silt basins. The living corpses would come after them, and they would have nowhere left to go except out into the silt basin, where they would drown in the choking stuff, a death that was certainly no more preferable than being killed by the undead. It made no sense at all. Why would they go that way?
The thunder crashed, filling the city with its deafening roar, and the rain came down in torrents. Valsavis came to a fork in the road. There was no more trail to follow. In seconds, the rain had washed away the already faint traces of roc blood that Sorak had left behind, and there were no footprints to follow on the paved street. Which way had they gone? To the left or the right?
Valsavis suddenly felt a hand grasp his shoulder. He spun around, drawing his sword in one smooth motion, and chopped the arm off the grisly specter that stood behind him, empty eye sockets staring, mummified flesh drawn back from aged bone, nothing but a hole where the nose had once been, a grinning rictus of a mouth whose jaws worked hungrily.
The arm of the corpse fell to the ground, but it did not bleed, and the corpse seemed not even to notice. Valsavis swung at the corpse’s face with his fist and knocked its head right off its shoulders. It fell to the rain-slicked street with a thud, its jaws still working. The corpse turned away from him and fumbled for its severed limb with the arm it still had. It found the amputated appendage, picked it up, and simply reattached it. Then it reached for its head.
“Gith’s blood!” swore Valsavis.
He swung his sword again in a powerful, two-handed stroke, cleaving the body of the walking corpse in half. The two severed halves of the corpse fell to the street, splashing into the water sheeting over the paving bricks. And, immediately the two halves started wriggling toward each other, like grisly slugs, and as Valsavis watched, astonished the rejoined, and the corpse starting searching for its head once more.
“How in thunder do you kill these things?” Valsavis said aloud. He looked up and saw several more dead bodies lurching toward him through the rain. “Nibenay!”
There was no response.
“Nibenay, damn you, help me!”
“Oh, so now it’s my help you want, is it?” said the Shadow King’s voice unpleasantly in his mind.
There were more undead coming out into the street around him. And each of them started toward him. Some were no more than skeletons. One came almost within reach, and Valsavis swung his sword again, decapitating the corpse. It simply kept on approaching, headless. He swung his sword again, grunting with the effort, cutting the skeleton in half. The bones fell apart and dropped, splashing, to the flooded street. And then, once more, they began to wriggle back together and reassemble themselves.
“Damn you, Nibenay,” Valsavis shouted, “if I die here, then you’ll never get what you want! Do something!”
He felt something grab him from behind and spun around, kicking out hard. The corpse was knocked back, falling with a splash to the rain-soaked street. But it rolled over and started to come at him once again.
“Beg,” said the Shadow King. “Plead for my kelp, Valsavis. Grovel like the worthless scum you are.”
“I’ll die first,” said Valsavis, swinging his sword once more as the rotting corpses closed in around him.
“Then... die.”
“You think I won’t?” Valsavis shouted, laying about him with his sword as the corpses kept coming, relentlessly. “I’ll die cursing your name, you misbegotten snake! I’ll die like a man before I grovel at your feet like some dog, and your own miserable pride will deny you what you want.”
“Yesssss,” said Nibenay, his voice a hiss of resignation. “I truly believe you would. And unfortunately, I still have need of you. Very well, then-”
And in that moment, Valsavis felt something crawling up his leg. He screamed with pain as one of the corpses he had felled climbed upon him and sank its teeth into his left wrist. Valsavis cried out, trying to shake it off, but there were still more corpses reaching for him and he had to keep laying about him with his sword to stay alive. He could not stop for a second. Wailing in agony, kicking out at the corpse that had its teeth fastened on his wrist, he could not afford to stop swinging his sword even for an instant to keep the undead from overwhelming him. Each one he struck down only got back up again moments later. And more were closing in. He was fighting for his life, as he had never fought before.
The pain was incandescent as the corpse chewing on his wrist crunched down with teeth that were as sharp as daggers. Valsavis felt the pain washing over him, and he fought with all his might to jerk his left hand free as he kept fighting off the advancing corpses, and suddenly, there was a sharp, snapping, crunching sound, and he was free.