Asea produced a sphere from her collection of sorcerous adjuncts and screwed it into the end of a brass wand. With a word, she lit it. A soft glow emerged from the depths of the crystal. She let out a long breath and gestured for them to proceed into the tumbled building.
"Let's go," said Asea.
Karim virtually sprang to the head of the stair. Rik moved more slowly to follow him. The Barbarian pressed along behind. He might be keen to impress Lady Asea, but he was not that keen. He moved to the head of the stairs and looked down. With the Barbarian blocking most of Asea's light behind him, corners of the room were shadowy, but even so he did not like what he saw.
Sardec crouched on the stairs. Walking corpses shambled towards him. Asea raised her wand and spoke a word of power. Chained lightning danced within the chamber, flickering from animated body to animated body. A smell of frying meat and ozone filled the air. The walking dead slumped to the floor. Whatever spark of infernal fire had animated them was gone. Rik surveyed the scene with cold eyes while the voices whispered panicked phrases in his head. He did not know what had frightened them more, Asea’s lightning or the sight that greeted his eyes.
The chamber was a butcher's shop full of human corpses. In the centre of the room was a tub full of fluid that roiled agitatedly.
Karim sprang lightly down the stairs and Rik followed more cautiously, treading as silently as ever he had done as a thief in Sorrow and paying just as much attention to his search for hidden traps. Karim moved around the room looking for any enemies.
Rik moved cautiously towards the bubbling vat. He held his sword ready. Fear churned in his stomach. The voices gibbered as if they sensed his fear and responded to it.
His eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom now. He wished his nose would get used to the stink, but he doubted it ever would. He paused a moment and glanced around. It was like being in a butcher's shop, except that instead of sides of beef from cattle, the hanging bodies were those of men and women. He shook his head, as for the first time he really considered what had gone on here.
Someone had worked with all this stuff. It had not just happened to be here. It was the product of a lot of work and a lot of preparation. Someone had spent a good deal of time and money creating all this. What sort of diseased mind would do that? There would have been a time, not so long ago when Rik might have had trouble answering that question, but not now. He had encountered too many wicked sorcerers and their creations to have any trouble with that. He knew there were people who would do anything for power. There were those who would work dark miracles to satisfy their own curiosity and bolster their own egos.
He peered down into the vat. The fluid churned and he thought he made out two dark shapes down there. An almost overpowering urge to bend closer and look in filled his mind. He fought it back. He knew the price such inquisitiveness could exact from bitter experience. He was somehow not surprised when a head broke surface. He found himself face to face with a pale animated corpse, blood dripping from its hair and open mouth and eye-sockets. It reached for him, and instinctively he brought the blade up into the guard position as Karim has taught him. The point of his blade almost touched the hellish thing's chest.
It did not stop the creature. It pushed forward, trying to clamber out of the blood-filled tub despite the point piercing its breast. Rik leaned forward, putting all his weight on his front leg as he drove the blade home. Dark fluid flowed. There was an odd sizzling sound and the smell of burning flesh as the magical blade bit deep. Wisps of smoke flowed from the wound, more reddish black fluid dribbled from the corners of the corpse's mouth. It slid forward along the blade reaching for him. Its yellow-toothed, grey-gummed smile was ghastly, for there was no expression in its filmed, dead eyes.
Rik sprang back, ripping his blade free. From out of the gloom something streaked by. It buried itself in one eye of the creature and came out the other side. A moment later Rik realised it was a black fletched arrow. Barely a heartbeat later, another one took out the other eye. The corpse tumbled forward and lay still on the ground.
Everyone stood frozen like statues for a long minute while they waited to see what would happen next. Eventually Asea broke the tableau and advanced to inspect the corpse and the bubbling vat of hell-broth it had emerged from. She sniffed the air.
She swept over to the nearest of the corpses. The stink was awful. There was a suggestion of rot and chemicals and something else, curdled milk perhaps. Asea bent over the corpse, took out a small steel pin from her purse and collected a sample of the nauseating fluid. She studied it quite closely, sniffing it. Rik wondered how she could do that without showing any signs of illness. He supposed that after two millennia of practicing sorcery you could get used to anything.
"What is it, Milady?"
"Necroplasma," she said.
"What?"
"Necroplasma. It is a substance used by alchemists and necromancers when re-animating corpses. It is based on blood and used instead of it. You drain the blood from a corpse, fill it full of chemicals, perform certain unholy rituals over it and then re-inject it into the dead body to animate it."
"It's obviously been used here then."
"Nothing much escapes your keen eye, does it, Rik?" He looked at her sharply. Asea was not often given to the use of sarcasm. Perhaps she was feeling more strain than she showed.
"What is going on here, Milady? Why would anybody want to make these things?"
"A good question, Rik, and one to which there are several answers. The most obvious one is that they were making soldiers from the corpses."
"One cellar full would hardly be enough to hamper our whole army."
"Indeed, therefore it would be perhaps be wise to assume that there is more than one hiding hole for these things."
"Perhaps it was only one Necromancer going about his business."
"It would be nice to think that, but these days I find myself overly suspicious."
"If it's any consolation I share that trait. What are we going to do now?"
Asea examined the alchemical furnace under the vat. It was a complex device and she studied the workmanship almost admiringly. "We shall empty this vat and bring this equipment up into the light. I want to study it and see what clues I can find about its builder."
Rik wondered if that was the only reason she wanted to study it. In his association with the Lady Asea, he had discovered she was possessed of a certain fascination with the darkest of lore. There were times when he found that quite worrying about his patron.
He moved round the corner of the room. Looking behind the hanging corpses, he saw that there was another door that had been concealed by their bulk.
“I think I’ve found something,” he said. He picked the lock and opened the door. It swung ominously open.
The area Rik had found was much bigger than the cellar, and it was full of machinery. Asea pushed through with her wand and illuminated the area. Rik made out a vast complex of brass pipes and alembics. There were more corpses on tables. Someone had been dissecting one. Others had pipes stuck into their arms and had a strange shrunken look.
“What now?” Rik asked. He did not like the look of this in the slightest. There was something very strange about the bodies on the tables. He moved over to the one on the dissection table. It had a weird elongated look and its skin had a scaly quality. Vestigial fangs filled its mouth.
“Bloody hell,” said the Barbarian, pushing up behind Rik. “It’s a ghoul. Somebody’s made a fair mess of it too.”
He was not wrong. The flesh of the stomach had been flayed away, and various organs had been removed. Judging by the expression on its face, it had been alive at the time. Or as alive as such creatures ever got. Blackened, diseased-looking kidneys and other entrails half-filled the abdomen still. There was something odd about it. It took him a while to realise what.