The Torch - Necropolis
Feb. 4th, 2011 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsolThis is the fourth chapter of a seven-part fantasy story. First Part, Second Part
Third Part
DO YOU HAVE ANY FAMILY? Ember asked out of nowhere.
“Ember, please,” grunted Xandra, her brows knit in concentration. “This is difficult.”
I’M JUST TRYING TO FIND OUT A LITTLE ABOUT YOU, Ember said innocently.
Xandra shifted her weight from left foot to right foot and tensed her body. She wiggled her toes in their respective toeholds to reassure herself that she still had a decent purchase with two out of her three points of contact with the wall. She then let go with her free hand and quickly reached up to a new hand-hold eighteen inches up. Ancient mortar crumbled and the stone shifted slightly, but the handhold held. Xandra reapportioned her weight and prepared to shift one of her feet.
WHAT I MEAN IS, YOU KNOW EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT ME, Ember clarified.
“That’s because you’re two weeks old,” Xandra replied, shifting her left foot to a nice clean gap. “I could recite your entire life story in the time it would take to fall off this wall. ‘I was lit. I ran some. I annoyed Xandra until we fell.’ THUD.”
THERE’S NO NEED TO BE UNKIND, groused Ember, spitting a cloud of purple and gold sparks.
“I suppose not,” said Xandra. She reached her right foot up and over a yard, stretching herself to her limits. “To answer your question, I have a child.”
I SEE, Ember said. He thought for a few moments.
I UNDERSTAND CHILDREN COME IN SEVERAL VARIETIES, Ember said.
“It’s called gender, Ember,” said Xandra. “Mine’s a girl.”
THAT SOUNDS ‘NICE’, Ember essayed.
Xandra jabbed the butt end of Ember’s torch into a gap in the mortar for purchase. “We must work on your conversational skills, kindling,” growled Xandra.
They were approaching the top of the wall the common folk called Restraint. It was built in haste four hundred years earlier to wall off the portion of Beth Shamon now known as The Necropolis. At that time, several riverboats full of Turrenyi mercenaries were docked in Beth Shamon waiting to go upriver to the front of the Everwar. A fight broke out on the docks, and seeing one of their number in trouble, the mercenaries debarked en masse to defend their friend. By the obscure calculus used by an ages-old sorcerous defense of the city, this apparently qualified as a full-on invasion of Beth Shamon, inside the innermost walls. The defense triggered, and spontaneously every dead human being inside the city walls reanimated and began to savagely attack anything that moved.
Beth Shamon found itself in the grip of a citywide zombie apocalypse. The dead proved to be extremely difficult to destroy; no handy methods of killing them, such as beheadings or destroying brains, had much of an effect. It was eventually necessary to herd the undead, using the Turrenyi mercenaries as bait, into one of Beth Shamon’s less scenic slums and wall them off behind Restraint. This took care of the lion’s share of the reanimated, but there were still pockets of resistance that had to be systematically stamped out. Fortunately the defense only affected those already dead at that specific moment, so no new undead were ever created. A few dead remained sealed in deep tombs and buried under enough earth to be unable to dig themselves to the surface; excavating in Beth Shamon still requires a special permit and an armed escort.
Meanwhile, the living dead were left to rot behind Restraint. They mindlessly clawed at the wall that held them back, and over time, from time to time, they broke out. Beth Shamon kept a constant detail to watch the wall from the city side, and occasional hazardous repairs needed to be made.
Xandra had chosen to climb Restraint because the top of the wall represented a pathway into the heart of the city. By scaling the wall and running along the top of it, she could thread her way between the mindless undead who wanted to destroy her and the outraged citizens who wanted to tear her into pieces, all from the relatively safe vantage of a 50’ height. The torch would be visible, the path would be clear, and she could get a good third of the way towards the city center and the arena with relatively little exposure to danger.
Xandra threw her free hand up and grabbed the edge of a capstone. Firming up her grip, she swung her body side to side and then flung a leg over the rim of the wall. She dragged her body over the edge, rolled onto her belly and stood up. From atop the wall she had a good view of both Beth Shamon proper and the Necropolis.
The two were studies in contrast. Beth Shamon was a bustling, active city with cramped alleys and winding streets threading through tenements and towers and domes of polished marble. A hundred thousand chimneys spewed smoke and steam, washing out the details of the distance views. Every street was crowded with the activities of the living; through every window and on every terrace Xandra could see evidence of the many day-to-day tasks the people of Beth Shamon performed as a matter of course.
On the other side of the wall, the Necropolis was a skeleton of a city. Ancient buildings devoid of maintenance for centuries had fallen in on themselves, the way that fruit left to rot leaves a shell that finally collapses to show that the center is empty. Scrub bushes grew up through gaps in the crumbed masonry and tumbled rocks, kept short only by the lack of good soil and the occasional firebombing by the Beth Shamon watch to keep the ground clear and visible.
But although the Necropolis was a compete ruin, it was far from still. They were hard to pick out against the background of jumbled brush and weathered stones, but the dead were still down there, still angry, and still determined to get out and kill. A pile of skin and bones roiled and twitched at the base of the wall, the individual skeletal components difficult to pick out from each other. The claws of hands reached up and raked at the stone of Restraint, some of the fingerbones worn down to nubs from countless years of being scraped against hard stone. Dotted along the wall, Xandra could see a few of the dead who had been more successful than the rest at scaling the wall; every so often a skeleton could be seen with its phlanges jammed into a gap between the rocks, midway up the wall, hanging like a lichen, its other limbs artlessly scrabbling for purchase on the unforgiving surface of Restraint.
Further down the wall, Xandra could see a form standing erect on her level. This would have to be the city watchman assigned to this stretch of the wall, who kept an eye on the progress of the tireless dead and, where necessary, kept them inside the wall. Xandra assumed she would have no trouble with that one. Also, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a glint of light reflected from the top of a nearby minaret. Somebody with a spyglass? It made Xandra uncomfortable, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.
She began to run the top of the wall. She had hoped for a relatively even surface, but she was disappointed in that respect. Restraint had been thrown up in haste, with no time or attention taken to the details of craftsmanship. The top was narrow, a yard and a half wide, and uneven in height. There was a finished surface in the form of flat slabs of granite, but long years of weathering had cracked and jumbled these, revealing the gravel and jumbled masonry fill that represented the wall’s ballast. In places the top few layers of the wall had sloughed away, generally into the Necropolis, leaving gaps where one had to balance precariously on the City-side stones to transit the walltop.
Xandra ran nimbly. The Alizarin Sisterhood trained in the high country, and Xandra had the footing of a mountain goat. She leaped from stone to stone, jumping gaps, running up inclines, causing little showers of dust and grit to drop from both sides of the wall. Ember’s flame trailed behind her like a banner, whipping in the wind, sending purple and gold sparks up to the heavens.
Xandra leaped over the nest of some great white ocean bird, which squawked and ruffled its feathers. She drew closer to the position of the watchman, who watched her coming uneasily. He stood in the middle of the walltop. Standing up from the City side of the wall was a long pole in a bracket with a kind of broom-head – a device used by the watch officer to literally sweep the undead down off the wall if their climbing was too successful.
“Lady,” the watchman called when she drew close enough for conversation, “you’re not supposed to be up here. And anyway, there’s no room for you to pass.” Xandra did not slacken her pace, and the guardsman’s eyes widened.
“I said, THERE’S NO ROOM FOR YOU TO…” Xandra flung herself out into space on the city side of the wall. Her left hand caught the sweeping-pole and slewed her around the guardsman; she alit flat-footed on the wall behind the guard and kept running. The watchman straightened from his cringe and watched her jog away, the heat from Ember’s flame distorting her retreat. Twenty feet down the wall, one of the climbing undead hissed; to the guardsman it sounded like a cackle. “Ah, shut up,” he snarled, throwing a pebble down to bounce off the climber’s skull.
Xandra ran into the city. New neighborhoods sprang up, ghettoes of high, narrow, cheaply-built apartment blocks with four families jammed into each floor. Rooftops were almost as tall as Restraint, and there were gardens and bird-coops and pens of miniature pigs on every flat roof with the myriad chimneys sprouting through it all.
There was a group of people gathered on a roof not far from the wall. As they saw the torch pass they began to jeer. Chunks of brick and pottery began to fly, smashing on the wall and around Xandra as she ran. Xandra kept an eye on her tormentors as she jogged; they were too far away to score any direct hits on her unless she ran into them. The people on the rooftop were obliged to merely shake fists and curse as Xandra ran by.
The citizens on the next roof had a different plan. One of them had rigged a hammock of sorts with stretchy tubing holding it between two chimneys, making effectively a large slingshot. As Xandra drew opposite that roof, four residents dumped a brazier of coals into the hammock and drew the entire bundle back. Xandra could do nothing but watch helplessly as the giddy people stretched the hot coals back and fired a black shower of the stuff directly at her.
The coals struck Xandra in a dozen places along the right side of her body. They were all cool to the touch. “Thank you, Ember,” she said.
YOU’RE WELCOME, the kindling replied.
On the rooftop, the residents prepared for a second shot. They had a bucket of nails. They were stretching the bundle back when somebody stepped between the chimney supports. It was an eelman, wearing his throwing-chain badge of office around his shoulders. He folded his massive arms and eyed the young bucks and their mischief. “And what do we think we’re doing, boyos?” he asked.
“We’re snuffing us a torch!” the young artillery-men replied.
“I’ll show you a snuffing,” growled the eelman, stepping forward.
Xandra ran past the tenements and deeper into the city. Ahead on her left she could see the Necropolis opening up into a kind of plaza. In the center of that plaza was a dead tree, an enormous ancient oak with heavy twisted limbs and no leaves. Hanging from the branches of the tree were a dozen bodies, strung up in nooses. Then Xandra remembered: this was the Hanging Tree.
The Emperor was a superlative magician, the best in the realm. In part this was because he had developed his skills over his countless years of existence, and he knew tricks nobody else could remember. But in equal measure this was because the Emperor wanted no challenge to his rule over matters magical as well as temporal. He tolerated the presence of sorcery within his realm, because sorcery was entirely too useful to be abandoned, but when the Emperor suspected that a practicioner was acquiring too much skill, that individual was arrested. In a unique ritual, the Emperor’s troops would enter the Necropolis through the Dirty Gate, force the undead back for a time, and hang the offending wizard from the Hanging Tree. Wizards are known for their ability to cheat death, but by placing them on his specially prepared tree, their powers were limited and their threat to him was neutralized. By keeping sorcery weak, however, the power of magic in Beth Shamon was greatly reduced, and much that could have improved the lives of ordinary people was held in check.
As she ran, Xandra was surprised to see the tree move. One of the branches with a dead wizard hanging from it raised itself, like a person holding up a lantern so he can see better. The mummified corpse swung on its tether, but Xandra could see that its black eyes were open, and it could see her. A cold voice spoke in her mind.
“Oh, no,” it said sadly. “The final insult. O my Emperor, you were not content to imprison Jevros Thul, Heliomaster of the Ninth Circle, and many others besides, in this dead place. Now you must parade your power before us, mock us in our undeath? O my Emperor, this is the last straw. We cannot touch you out there, but you have made a mistake coming where we can reach you in here. Bring us your torch, O my Emperor. Bring it to us. And if you want it back, you must come and get it.” All at once the dozen bodies on the tree began opening and closing their jaws, and Xandra realized they were laughing.
Xandra felt the wall lurch. She looked over the edge into the Necropolis, and she saw that the undead mass was stirring. One reached up the wall, put a skeletal hand on the surface, and then tentatively dragged a knee up to rest on the wall’s surface. Though it was off the ground, it did not fall back. It lurched up the wall with another hand, another knee, climbing up the vertical surface. It was as if gravity now stuck the undead to the vertical wall. Simultaneously the vengeful dead realized this and hissed.
A swarm of crawling, staggering and running skeletons flooded up the wall towards Xandra. “Oh, no. Come on, no,” she muttered. Her running slowed and then stopped as she realized that she would be cut off on all sides. Xandra drew her sword.
The first of the skeletons reached the top of the wall, cautiously reached over the edge, found the gravity on the walltop to their liking. Hunched over, a shabby flaking-away corpse shambled up. Xandra kicked it in the midsection. It didn’t care. She circle-kicked it in the head. Its head snapped back, broken off at the spinal column and holding on only by a strip of weathered skin, but still the corpse moved. Xandra cut off its leg on the Necropolis-side and let it overbalance, falling off Restraint to the tumbled cobbles of the square below.
THAT SEEMED LIKE AN EFFECTIVE APPROACH, Ember opined.
“Some assistance, please?” Xandra begged.
ASSIST HOW? Ember asked. Xandra didn’t have a good answer.
A crawling corpse clawed at Xandra’s ankles; Xandra leaped over it and stomped on its skull, crushing it. A new arm reached over the edge of the wall near Xandra’s feet; she lopped off the portion that she could see. Two skeletons charged at Xandra from the same side; she pushed between them, and realized too late that one of them would tumble to the street on the Beth Shamon side. She reached out with the torch and let the skeleton grab it, its body at a 45 degree angle, its feet scrambling at the stones at the edge of the walltop.
“I have found a way for you to help,” Xandra supplied.
IT’S TOUCHING ME, Ember mourned. Bracing her feet and crouching down, Xandra pulled the skeleton up and, rolling onto her back, planted a foot in the undead’s breadbasket. She let its momentum flip it up and over the wall, flailing as it flew down to the Necropolis side. Xandra spun to her feet only to find herself surrounded by a score of the creatures. The warrior looked down the wall; still more were crawling or walking up the wall. Across the plaza, the tree held up the dead wizards who seemed to all be clamoring for a better view.
“I think our only chance is getting at that tree,” Xandra said, shoving a skeleton away from her.
WHAT GOOD WOULD THAT DO? Ember asked.
“I’m not sure,” Xandra said. “But sometimes you have to play a hunch.” She sheathed her sword.
Xandra jumped off the wall on the Necropolis side. There was a skeleton just below her. A foot caught it in the chest. The odd nature of gravity was such that the skeleton couldn’t just fall off the wall; it was dragged down the wall a foot, but friction kept it from giving way entirely. Xandra skipped down to the next skeleton, and then the next, stair-stepping her way down the undead, bouncing off one, swinging off the neck of another, until she was low enough to the ground that she could jump into a scrub-bush to break her fall. She disentangled herself from the branches, got to her feet, and began to lope for the tree.
“Yes, that’s right,” the cold voice of Jevros Thul sounded in her head. “Bring us the torch. Bring it here.”
“Coming,” Xandra snarled.
Some of the faster skeletons were hot on her heels. Xandra ran past another bush, caught one of the bigger branches, and let it snap back as she ran. She heard a WHACK and a sound like somebody dropping a sack full of ninepins, but she didn’t stop to turn and see what had happened. She broke cover from the jumbled stones and brush and began sprinting across the mostly-intact cobbles of the plaza toward the Hanging Tree.
The Tree shuddered. Then, with a rippling and heaving of its trunk, it contorted and strained its bulk, and a root ripped out of the ground. It then braced itself with that root and ripped out another root, and then another. Like a giant freed from leg-irons, the tree came shuffling through the tumbled cobbles it had just unearthed, shambling up to meet Xandra. One of its great limbs whipped through the air, flailing wizard-bodies along with it, sweeping horizontally toward Xandra. Only by jumping up and rolling over the great bole was she able to avoid being smashed to a pulp.
WHAT WAS THE PLAN HERE, AGAIN? Ember inquired. Xandra was too busy to answer.
Another limb whipped overhead and smashed down at Xandra. She rolled to one side and the branch missed, cracking the cobbling with the force of its impact, and dropping a dead wizard on the ground next to Xandra like a marionette allowed to droop to the floor. Xandra drew her sword and slashed at the black noose-rope that secured the wizard. To her horror, the rope appeared to have a tarry consistency; it would not cut, but held her blade securely. The branch of the tree whipped away, and with it the wizard was unceremoniously flung up into the air. The sword was jerked from Xandra’s hand, and it flew hundreds of yards away, landing in some jumble of ruins.
“Oh dear,” said Xandra softly.
THAT ROPE-STUFF IS LIKE RUBBER, ALMOST, Ember speculated.
“Do you think you can burn it?” Xandra asked.
BURN IT? PROBABLY NOT; IT’S MAGICAL, Ember mused. BUT MELT IT? THAT’S POSSIBLE.
“I’ll take possible,” Xandra answered. “Beats certain death.”
She ran for the trunk of the dead oak. Its bark was rough, slightly moist, and smelled all wrong, but it was easy to grab with knees and hands. Xandra shinned up the contorting trunk. A knot in the trunk opened and closed and gave a low howl as she climbed; Xandra avoided it. The tree reached a thick branch in to try to pluck Xandra from its back. Xandra thrust Ember at the suspended wizard that came along with it.
Ember’s hue changed from purple to a deep cherry red, and the flame focused into a tight cone emanating from the head of the torch. As Xandra passed the tip of the cone through the black rope holding the wizard in place, the noose thinned and snapped. The wizard-corpse fell to the cobbles; the remains of the rope recoiled like an injured snake and smoked furiously.
Xandra looked down. The undead of the Necropolis had caught up, but they weren’t trying to climb the tree to get at Xandra. Some of them were clawing furiously at the cobbles, trying to dig their way down to clear earth. Others had swarmed over the dead wizard’s body and were dragging it to the hole opening in the ground. The undead were trying to bury the sorcerer as fast as possible. Xandra heard a cacophony of dry, sterile voices in her head: “Do me next, Xandra!” “No, I am older; do me!”
Xandra scurried around to the far side of the trunk and began to climb, reaching the points where the tree’s branches forked out. The tree tried to bend its limbs in upon itself, but there were limits to how far the oaken branches could flex. From the relative safety of the high crotches, Xandra could point Ember at each noose in turn. Ember extended his cone to burn away the ropes one by one. Each time the body fell to the ground, the undead would surround it and inter it. The first wizard was already lost to view, covered with heaps of earth and the cobbles loosely replaced.
Soon only one wizard remained. Xandra reached up to burn it away as well, but the cold voice called in her mind once more. “Stop, Xandra,” said the dead wizard. “I, Jevros Thul, do not command it, but I do ask it.” This gave the warrior pause.
“Why shouldn’t I cut you down too?” Xandra asked. “This tree is trying to kill me!”
“Cutting me down will not stop the tree,” Jevros Thul replied. “It is our captor and our torturer. Had I known you could free us, I would never have crossed you. We did not believe you could defeat the Hanging Tree, nor did we think you could sever O my Emperor’s bonds. I should have considered that a kinding from the One True Flame would have power over even O my Emperor’s magical workings!” The dead wizard laughed dustily.
Xandra considered. “If I have freed your comrades,” she said, “then I will free you as well.”
“You need me to escape this place,” Jevros Thul responded. “You have freed my eleven companions, and that is a debt that must be repaid at least in part. I cannot take my rest knowing that you will perish. I shall remain in bondage, but I shall help you to escape the Necropolis. Come, you have little time.” Indeed, the undead were gathered around the Hanging Tree now, and some of them were beginning to explore the notion of clawing their way up the trunk.
“Goodbye, Alizarin Sister,” Jevros Thul intoned. “Good luck, and do not forget the Sorcerors of Penultimate Power. We shall not forget you, the rest of death notwithstanding.” With another hollow laugh, the one remaining mummified wizard clenched its fists. Across the plaza, the heavy portals of the Dirty Gate slammed open with a thundering crash. Cries of panic echoed across the square; for the people on the other side of the gate, the opening of those doors represented their worst nightmare coming true.
Xandra selected a branch and ran out along it. The other limbs of the tree flailed at her as she ran, but she jumped off the branch, caught it with her free hand to break her fall, and tumbled to the ground outside the ring of undead. She then sprinted for the Dirty Gate.
A few corpses jumped in her way. Without a sword, Xandra had no choice but to bowl them over as she ran. She sustained a number of nicks and bruises in the process, but she was able to run her way almost to the doors of the gate before facing down several ranks of skeletons choking the doorway. Half of them turned to hiss at her; the other half were interested in escaping out into the City proper. Xandra gauged the leap she would need to make to clear them, and decided it was more or less impossible to make.
One row of the skeletons suddenly fell to the ground. On the City side, two enormous men hove into view. Bearing heavy poles, they reaped the undead’s feet out from under them. The men were Dhamsans, bald and tattooed from head to foot, and with iron collars welded around their necks. They were ex-slaves, probably freed only as recently as Xandra’s adventure at the Dragon gate.
The skeletons having all been knocked down, the Dhamsans grinned at Xandra. One of them executed a grandiose bow; the other gestured to Xandra that the way was clear. Xandra leaped over the fallen skeletons and trotted out the gate.
A thick crowd of stunned Beth Shamonians ringed the Dirty Gate. They stared in amazement as Xandra jogged into their midst. They parted ranks as Xandra trotted by, torch held high. Then the first ranks of the undead began to swarm from the gate, the Dhamsans retreating before them, and the Beth Shamonians were too busy to worry about Xandra any more.
YOU LOST YOUR SWORD, Ember said sadly.
“There are always more swords,” Xandra replied virtuously.
**
In the gloom of the Emperor’s sanctum, the Farspeaker nervously shuffled into the presence of His Ultimacy. It was hard to look at the Emperor; he was a dark form with an uncertain outline.
“Xandra has escaped the Necropolis and bears the torch deeper into the city,” he reported.
The Emperor stirred. “That is excellent news,” he said, his voice a deep and resonant purr.
The Farspeaker fidgeted, not wanting to tell the rest of it. “She, ah, freed most of the wizards on the Hanging Tree in the process,” he said. “Added to the slaves she freed, and the mess she made of the Jarda pipe.”
“Yes.” The Emperor was clearly in a thinking mood, not an executing mood, which suited the Farspeaker well. “The methods of Xandra are somewhat messy but effective.”
The Farspeaker was emboldened. “Your Ultimacy will be happy to hear,” the green-robed man continued, “that the people of the City are impressed by Xandra’s exploits. Where they hear of them, their hatred for her ebbs. Those who have witnessed them, act to support her.”
A cloud rose from the Emperor and descended on the Farspeaker. His screams were agonized but short.
“That,” the Emperor said as his cloud fed, “is not excellent news.”
Third Part
DO YOU HAVE ANY FAMILY? Ember asked out of nowhere.
“Ember, please,” grunted Xandra, her brows knit in concentration. “This is difficult.”
I’M JUST TRYING TO FIND OUT A LITTLE ABOUT YOU, Ember said innocently.
Xandra shifted her weight from left foot to right foot and tensed her body. She wiggled her toes in their respective toeholds to reassure herself that she still had a decent purchase with two out of her three points of contact with the wall. She then let go with her free hand and quickly reached up to a new hand-hold eighteen inches up. Ancient mortar crumbled and the stone shifted slightly, but the handhold held. Xandra reapportioned her weight and prepared to shift one of her feet.
WHAT I MEAN IS, YOU KNOW EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT ME, Ember clarified.
“That’s because you’re two weeks old,” Xandra replied, shifting her left foot to a nice clean gap. “I could recite your entire life story in the time it would take to fall off this wall. ‘I was lit. I ran some. I annoyed Xandra until we fell.’ THUD.”
THERE’S NO NEED TO BE UNKIND, groused Ember, spitting a cloud of purple and gold sparks.
“I suppose not,” said Xandra. She reached her right foot up and over a yard, stretching herself to her limits. “To answer your question, I have a child.”
I SEE, Ember said. He thought for a few moments.
I UNDERSTAND CHILDREN COME IN SEVERAL VARIETIES, Ember said.
“It’s called gender, Ember,” said Xandra. “Mine’s a girl.”
THAT SOUNDS ‘NICE’, Ember essayed.
Xandra jabbed the butt end of Ember’s torch into a gap in the mortar for purchase. “We must work on your conversational skills, kindling,” growled Xandra.
They were approaching the top of the wall the common folk called Restraint. It was built in haste four hundred years earlier to wall off the portion of Beth Shamon now known as The Necropolis. At that time, several riverboats full of Turrenyi mercenaries were docked in Beth Shamon waiting to go upriver to the front of the Everwar. A fight broke out on the docks, and seeing one of their number in trouble, the mercenaries debarked en masse to defend their friend. By the obscure calculus used by an ages-old sorcerous defense of the city, this apparently qualified as a full-on invasion of Beth Shamon, inside the innermost walls. The defense triggered, and spontaneously every dead human being inside the city walls reanimated and began to savagely attack anything that moved.
Beth Shamon found itself in the grip of a citywide zombie apocalypse. The dead proved to be extremely difficult to destroy; no handy methods of killing them, such as beheadings or destroying brains, had much of an effect. It was eventually necessary to herd the undead, using the Turrenyi mercenaries as bait, into one of Beth Shamon’s less scenic slums and wall them off behind Restraint. This took care of the lion’s share of the reanimated, but there were still pockets of resistance that had to be systematically stamped out. Fortunately the defense only affected those already dead at that specific moment, so no new undead were ever created. A few dead remained sealed in deep tombs and buried under enough earth to be unable to dig themselves to the surface; excavating in Beth Shamon still requires a special permit and an armed escort.
Meanwhile, the living dead were left to rot behind Restraint. They mindlessly clawed at the wall that held them back, and over time, from time to time, they broke out. Beth Shamon kept a constant detail to watch the wall from the city side, and occasional hazardous repairs needed to be made.
Xandra had chosen to climb Restraint because the top of the wall represented a pathway into the heart of the city. By scaling the wall and running along the top of it, she could thread her way between the mindless undead who wanted to destroy her and the outraged citizens who wanted to tear her into pieces, all from the relatively safe vantage of a 50’ height. The torch would be visible, the path would be clear, and she could get a good third of the way towards the city center and the arena with relatively little exposure to danger.
Xandra threw her free hand up and grabbed the edge of a capstone. Firming up her grip, she swung her body side to side and then flung a leg over the rim of the wall. She dragged her body over the edge, rolled onto her belly and stood up. From atop the wall she had a good view of both Beth Shamon proper and the Necropolis.
The two were studies in contrast. Beth Shamon was a bustling, active city with cramped alleys and winding streets threading through tenements and towers and domes of polished marble. A hundred thousand chimneys spewed smoke and steam, washing out the details of the distance views. Every street was crowded with the activities of the living; through every window and on every terrace Xandra could see evidence of the many day-to-day tasks the people of Beth Shamon performed as a matter of course.
On the other side of the wall, the Necropolis was a skeleton of a city. Ancient buildings devoid of maintenance for centuries had fallen in on themselves, the way that fruit left to rot leaves a shell that finally collapses to show that the center is empty. Scrub bushes grew up through gaps in the crumbed masonry and tumbled rocks, kept short only by the lack of good soil and the occasional firebombing by the Beth Shamon watch to keep the ground clear and visible.
But although the Necropolis was a compete ruin, it was far from still. They were hard to pick out against the background of jumbled brush and weathered stones, but the dead were still down there, still angry, and still determined to get out and kill. A pile of skin and bones roiled and twitched at the base of the wall, the individual skeletal components difficult to pick out from each other. The claws of hands reached up and raked at the stone of Restraint, some of the fingerbones worn down to nubs from countless years of being scraped against hard stone. Dotted along the wall, Xandra could see a few of the dead who had been more successful than the rest at scaling the wall; every so often a skeleton could be seen with its phlanges jammed into a gap between the rocks, midway up the wall, hanging like a lichen, its other limbs artlessly scrabbling for purchase on the unforgiving surface of Restraint.
Further down the wall, Xandra could see a form standing erect on her level. This would have to be the city watchman assigned to this stretch of the wall, who kept an eye on the progress of the tireless dead and, where necessary, kept them inside the wall. Xandra assumed she would have no trouble with that one. Also, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a glint of light reflected from the top of a nearby minaret. Somebody with a spyglass? It made Xandra uncomfortable, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.
She began to run the top of the wall. She had hoped for a relatively even surface, but she was disappointed in that respect. Restraint had been thrown up in haste, with no time or attention taken to the details of craftsmanship. The top was narrow, a yard and a half wide, and uneven in height. There was a finished surface in the form of flat slabs of granite, but long years of weathering had cracked and jumbled these, revealing the gravel and jumbled masonry fill that represented the wall’s ballast. In places the top few layers of the wall had sloughed away, generally into the Necropolis, leaving gaps where one had to balance precariously on the City-side stones to transit the walltop.
Xandra ran nimbly. The Alizarin Sisterhood trained in the high country, and Xandra had the footing of a mountain goat. She leaped from stone to stone, jumping gaps, running up inclines, causing little showers of dust and grit to drop from both sides of the wall. Ember’s flame trailed behind her like a banner, whipping in the wind, sending purple and gold sparks up to the heavens.
Xandra leaped over the nest of some great white ocean bird, which squawked and ruffled its feathers. She drew closer to the position of the watchman, who watched her coming uneasily. He stood in the middle of the walltop. Standing up from the City side of the wall was a long pole in a bracket with a kind of broom-head – a device used by the watch officer to literally sweep the undead down off the wall if their climbing was too successful.
“Lady,” the watchman called when she drew close enough for conversation, “you’re not supposed to be up here. And anyway, there’s no room for you to pass.” Xandra did not slacken her pace, and the guardsman’s eyes widened.
“I said, THERE’S NO ROOM FOR YOU TO…” Xandra flung herself out into space on the city side of the wall. Her left hand caught the sweeping-pole and slewed her around the guardsman; she alit flat-footed on the wall behind the guard and kept running. The watchman straightened from his cringe and watched her jog away, the heat from Ember’s flame distorting her retreat. Twenty feet down the wall, one of the climbing undead hissed; to the guardsman it sounded like a cackle. “Ah, shut up,” he snarled, throwing a pebble down to bounce off the climber’s skull.
Xandra ran into the city. New neighborhoods sprang up, ghettoes of high, narrow, cheaply-built apartment blocks with four families jammed into each floor. Rooftops were almost as tall as Restraint, and there were gardens and bird-coops and pens of miniature pigs on every flat roof with the myriad chimneys sprouting through it all.
There was a group of people gathered on a roof not far from the wall. As they saw the torch pass they began to jeer. Chunks of brick and pottery began to fly, smashing on the wall and around Xandra as she ran. Xandra kept an eye on her tormentors as she jogged; they were too far away to score any direct hits on her unless she ran into them. The people on the rooftop were obliged to merely shake fists and curse as Xandra ran by.
The citizens on the next roof had a different plan. One of them had rigged a hammock of sorts with stretchy tubing holding it between two chimneys, making effectively a large slingshot. As Xandra drew opposite that roof, four residents dumped a brazier of coals into the hammock and drew the entire bundle back. Xandra could do nothing but watch helplessly as the giddy people stretched the hot coals back and fired a black shower of the stuff directly at her.
The coals struck Xandra in a dozen places along the right side of her body. They were all cool to the touch. “Thank you, Ember,” she said.
YOU’RE WELCOME, the kindling replied.
On the rooftop, the residents prepared for a second shot. They had a bucket of nails. They were stretching the bundle back when somebody stepped between the chimney supports. It was an eelman, wearing his throwing-chain badge of office around his shoulders. He folded his massive arms and eyed the young bucks and their mischief. “And what do we think we’re doing, boyos?” he asked.
“We’re snuffing us a torch!” the young artillery-men replied.
“I’ll show you a snuffing,” growled the eelman, stepping forward.
Xandra ran past the tenements and deeper into the city. Ahead on her left she could see the Necropolis opening up into a kind of plaza. In the center of that plaza was a dead tree, an enormous ancient oak with heavy twisted limbs and no leaves. Hanging from the branches of the tree were a dozen bodies, strung up in nooses. Then Xandra remembered: this was the Hanging Tree.
The Emperor was a superlative magician, the best in the realm. In part this was because he had developed his skills over his countless years of existence, and he knew tricks nobody else could remember. But in equal measure this was because the Emperor wanted no challenge to his rule over matters magical as well as temporal. He tolerated the presence of sorcery within his realm, because sorcery was entirely too useful to be abandoned, but when the Emperor suspected that a practicioner was acquiring too much skill, that individual was arrested. In a unique ritual, the Emperor’s troops would enter the Necropolis through the Dirty Gate, force the undead back for a time, and hang the offending wizard from the Hanging Tree. Wizards are known for their ability to cheat death, but by placing them on his specially prepared tree, their powers were limited and their threat to him was neutralized. By keeping sorcery weak, however, the power of magic in Beth Shamon was greatly reduced, and much that could have improved the lives of ordinary people was held in check.
As she ran, Xandra was surprised to see the tree move. One of the branches with a dead wizard hanging from it raised itself, like a person holding up a lantern so he can see better. The mummified corpse swung on its tether, but Xandra could see that its black eyes were open, and it could see her. A cold voice spoke in her mind.
“Oh, no,” it said sadly. “The final insult. O my Emperor, you were not content to imprison Jevros Thul, Heliomaster of the Ninth Circle, and many others besides, in this dead place. Now you must parade your power before us, mock us in our undeath? O my Emperor, this is the last straw. We cannot touch you out there, but you have made a mistake coming where we can reach you in here. Bring us your torch, O my Emperor. Bring it to us. And if you want it back, you must come and get it.” All at once the dozen bodies on the tree began opening and closing their jaws, and Xandra realized they were laughing.
Xandra felt the wall lurch. She looked over the edge into the Necropolis, and she saw that the undead mass was stirring. One reached up the wall, put a skeletal hand on the surface, and then tentatively dragged a knee up to rest on the wall’s surface. Though it was off the ground, it did not fall back. It lurched up the wall with another hand, another knee, climbing up the vertical surface. It was as if gravity now stuck the undead to the vertical wall. Simultaneously the vengeful dead realized this and hissed.
A swarm of crawling, staggering and running skeletons flooded up the wall towards Xandra. “Oh, no. Come on, no,” she muttered. Her running slowed and then stopped as she realized that she would be cut off on all sides. Xandra drew her sword.
The first of the skeletons reached the top of the wall, cautiously reached over the edge, found the gravity on the walltop to their liking. Hunched over, a shabby flaking-away corpse shambled up. Xandra kicked it in the midsection. It didn’t care. She circle-kicked it in the head. Its head snapped back, broken off at the spinal column and holding on only by a strip of weathered skin, but still the corpse moved. Xandra cut off its leg on the Necropolis-side and let it overbalance, falling off Restraint to the tumbled cobbles of the square below.
THAT SEEMED LIKE AN EFFECTIVE APPROACH, Ember opined.
“Some assistance, please?” Xandra begged.
ASSIST HOW? Ember asked. Xandra didn’t have a good answer.
A crawling corpse clawed at Xandra’s ankles; Xandra leaped over it and stomped on its skull, crushing it. A new arm reached over the edge of the wall near Xandra’s feet; she lopped off the portion that she could see. Two skeletons charged at Xandra from the same side; she pushed between them, and realized too late that one of them would tumble to the street on the Beth Shamon side. She reached out with the torch and let the skeleton grab it, its body at a 45 degree angle, its feet scrambling at the stones at the edge of the walltop.
“I have found a way for you to help,” Xandra supplied.
IT’S TOUCHING ME, Ember mourned. Bracing her feet and crouching down, Xandra pulled the skeleton up and, rolling onto her back, planted a foot in the undead’s breadbasket. She let its momentum flip it up and over the wall, flailing as it flew down to the Necropolis side. Xandra spun to her feet only to find herself surrounded by a score of the creatures. The warrior looked down the wall; still more were crawling or walking up the wall. Across the plaza, the tree held up the dead wizards who seemed to all be clamoring for a better view.
“I think our only chance is getting at that tree,” Xandra said, shoving a skeleton away from her.
WHAT GOOD WOULD THAT DO? Ember asked.
“I’m not sure,” Xandra said. “But sometimes you have to play a hunch.” She sheathed her sword.
Xandra jumped off the wall on the Necropolis side. There was a skeleton just below her. A foot caught it in the chest. The odd nature of gravity was such that the skeleton couldn’t just fall off the wall; it was dragged down the wall a foot, but friction kept it from giving way entirely. Xandra skipped down to the next skeleton, and then the next, stair-stepping her way down the undead, bouncing off one, swinging off the neck of another, until she was low enough to the ground that she could jump into a scrub-bush to break her fall. She disentangled herself from the branches, got to her feet, and began to lope for the tree.
“Yes, that’s right,” the cold voice of Jevros Thul sounded in her head. “Bring us the torch. Bring it here.”
“Coming,” Xandra snarled.
Some of the faster skeletons were hot on her heels. Xandra ran past another bush, caught one of the bigger branches, and let it snap back as she ran. She heard a WHACK and a sound like somebody dropping a sack full of ninepins, but she didn’t stop to turn and see what had happened. She broke cover from the jumbled stones and brush and began sprinting across the mostly-intact cobbles of the plaza toward the Hanging Tree.
The Tree shuddered. Then, with a rippling and heaving of its trunk, it contorted and strained its bulk, and a root ripped out of the ground. It then braced itself with that root and ripped out another root, and then another. Like a giant freed from leg-irons, the tree came shuffling through the tumbled cobbles it had just unearthed, shambling up to meet Xandra. One of its great limbs whipped through the air, flailing wizard-bodies along with it, sweeping horizontally toward Xandra. Only by jumping up and rolling over the great bole was she able to avoid being smashed to a pulp.
WHAT WAS THE PLAN HERE, AGAIN? Ember inquired. Xandra was too busy to answer.
Another limb whipped overhead and smashed down at Xandra. She rolled to one side and the branch missed, cracking the cobbling with the force of its impact, and dropping a dead wizard on the ground next to Xandra like a marionette allowed to droop to the floor. Xandra drew her sword and slashed at the black noose-rope that secured the wizard. To her horror, the rope appeared to have a tarry consistency; it would not cut, but held her blade securely. The branch of the tree whipped away, and with it the wizard was unceremoniously flung up into the air. The sword was jerked from Xandra’s hand, and it flew hundreds of yards away, landing in some jumble of ruins.
“Oh dear,” said Xandra softly.
THAT ROPE-STUFF IS LIKE RUBBER, ALMOST, Ember speculated.
“Do you think you can burn it?” Xandra asked.
BURN IT? PROBABLY NOT; IT’S MAGICAL, Ember mused. BUT MELT IT? THAT’S POSSIBLE.
“I’ll take possible,” Xandra answered. “Beats certain death.”
She ran for the trunk of the dead oak. Its bark was rough, slightly moist, and smelled all wrong, but it was easy to grab with knees and hands. Xandra shinned up the contorting trunk. A knot in the trunk opened and closed and gave a low howl as she climbed; Xandra avoided it. The tree reached a thick branch in to try to pluck Xandra from its back. Xandra thrust Ember at the suspended wizard that came along with it.
Ember’s hue changed from purple to a deep cherry red, and the flame focused into a tight cone emanating from the head of the torch. As Xandra passed the tip of the cone through the black rope holding the wizard in place, the noose thinned and snapped. The wizard-corpse fell to the cobbles; the remains of the rope recoiled like an injured snake and smoked furiously.
Xandra looked down. The undead of the Necropolis had caught up, but they weren’t trying to climb the tree to get at Xandra. Some of them were clawing furiously at the cobbles, trying to dig their way down to clear earth. Others had swarmed over the dead wizard’s body and were dragging it to the hole opening in the ground. The undead were trying to bury the sorcerer as fast as possible. Xandra heard a cacophony of dry, sterile voices in her head: “Do me next, Xandra!” “No, I am older; do me!”
Xandra scurried around to the far side of the trunk and began to climb, reaching the points where the tree’s branches forked out. The tree tried to bend its limbs in upon itself, but there were limits to how far the oaken branches could flex. From the relative safety of the high crotches, Xandra could point Ember at each noose in turn. Ember extended his cone to burn away the ropes one by one. Each time the body fell to the ground, the undead would surround it and inter it. The first wizard was already lost to view, covered with heaps of earth and the cobbles loosely replaced.
Soon only one wizard remained. Xandra reached up to burn it away as well, but the cold voice called in her mind once more. “Stop, Xandra,” said the dead wizard. “I, Jevros Thul, do not command it, but I do ask it.” This gave the warrior pause.
“Why shouldn’t I cut you down too?” Xandra asked. “This tree is trying to kill me!”
“Cutting me down will not stop the tree,” Jevros Thul replied. “It is our captor and our torturer. Had I known you could free us, I would never have crossed you. We did not believe you could defeat the Hanging Tree, nor did we think you could sever O my Emperor’s bonds. I should have considered that a kinding from the One True Flame would have power over even O my Emperor’s magical workings!” The dead wizard laughed dustily.
Xandra considered. “If I have freed your comrades,” she said, “then I will free you as well.”
“You need me to escape this place,” Jevros Thul responded. “You have freed my eleven companions, and that is a debt that must be repaid at least in part. I cannot take my rest knowing that you will perish. I shall remain in bondage, but I shall help you to escape the Necropolis. Come, you have little time.” Indeed, the undead were gathered around the Hanging Tree now, and some of them were beginning to explore the notion of clawing their way up the trunk.
“Goodbye, Alizarin Sister,” Jevros Thul intoned. “Good luck, and do not forget the Sorcerors of Penultimate Power. We shall not forget you, the rest of death notwithstanding.” With another hollow laugh, the one remaining mummified wizard clenched its fists. Across the plaza, the heavy portals of the Dirty Gate slammed open with a thundering crash. Cries of panic echoed across the square; for the people on the other side of the gate, the opening of those doors represented their worst nightmare coming true.
Xandra selected a branch and ran out along it. The other limbs of the tree flailed at her as she ran, but she jumped off the branch, caught it with her free hand to break her fall, and tumbled to the ground outside the ring of undead. She then sprinted for the Dirty Gate.
A few corpses jumped in her way. Without a sword, Xandra had no choice but to bowl them over as she ran. She sustained a number of nicks and bruises in the process, but she was able to run her way almost to the doors of the gate before facing down several ranks of skeletons choking the doorway. Half of them turned to hiss at her; the other half were interested in escaping out into the City proper. Xandra gauged the leap she would need to make to clear them, and decided it was more or less impossible to make.
One row of the skeletons suddenly fell to the ground. On the City side, two enormous men hove into view. Bearing heavy poles, they reaped the undead’s feet out from under them. The men were Dhamsans, bald and tattooed from head to foot, and with iron collars welded around their necks. They were ex-slaves, probably freed only as recently as Xandra’s adventure at the Dragon gate.
The skeletons having all been knocked down, the Dhamsans grinned at Xandra. One of them executed a grandiose bow; the other gestured to Xandra that the way was clear. Xandra leaped over the fallen skeletons and trotted out the gate.
A thick crowd of stunned Beth Shamonians ringed the Dirty Gate. They stared in amazement as Xandra jogged into their midst. They parted ranks as Xandra trotted by, torch held high. Then the first ranks of the undead began to swarm from the gate, the Dhamsans retreating before them, and the Beth Shamonians were too busy to worry about Xandra any more.
YOU LOST YOUR SWORD, Ember said sadly.
“There are always more swords,” Xandra replied virtuously.
**
In the gloom of the Emperor’s sanctum, the Farspeaker nervously shuffled into the presence of His Ultimacy. It was hard to look at the Emperor; he was a dark form with an uncertain outline.
“Xandra has escaped the Necropolis and bears the torch deeper into the city,” he reported.
The Emperor stirred. “That is excellent news,” he said, his voice a deep and resonant purr.
The Farspeaker fidgeted, not wanting to tell the rest of it. “She, ah, freed most of the wizards on the Hanging Tree in the process,” he said. “Added to the slaves she freed, and the mess she made of the Jarda pipe.”
“Yes.” The Emperor was clearly in a thinking mood, not an executing mood, which suited the Farspeaker well. “The methods of Xandra are somewhat messy but effective.”
The Farspeaker was emboldened. “Your Ultimacy will be happy to hear,” the green-robed man continued, “that the people of the City are impressed by Xandra’s exploits. Where they hear of them, their hatred for her ebbs. Those who have witnessed them, act to support her.”
A cloud rose from the Emperor and descended on the Farspeaker. His screams were agonized but short.
“That,” the Emperor said as his cloud fed, “is not excellent news.”
