In time, we approached the next spoke around the ring. Its construction followed the same design as the first corridor, with a large chamber at the point where the spoke connected with the central hub; but the door between us and the chamber was closed.
I waved at Hezekiah to stand back and walked up to plant my ear on the door. It was made of the same metal as the walls, and probably too thick to let sound pass through; but pausing to listen, futile though the gesture was, gave me a few extra seconds to debate what to do next. Enter fast or slow? Brash or sneaky?
«Ah, pike it,» I muttered. «Time's a'wasting.»
The door was operated by a button on the metal wall. I kicked the button with my heel at the same time as I drew my sword.
With a soft swish, the door slid open. The only thing to emerge was an awful stench, like standing in the alley between a slaughterhouse and a tannery – the dull heaviness of blood and decay, overlaid with the piercing sharpness of harsh chemicals. I took a second or two to enjoy the bouquet, trying to identify the components by smelclass="underline" certainly a lot of vinegar, and copper, and sulphur, and a dash of quicklime… but there were many more ingredients that eluded me, and no more time for sniffing. Wary of attack, I stepped into the room to see what made the reek.
Bodies: corpses heaped in a mound that nearly reached the ceiling. About half were human, both male and female. The rest were an assortment from the other common races of the multiverse – elves, dwarves, hobgoblins, even a tiefling or two. Arms dangled limply. Many eyes were open and staring. Most of the dead wore clothes, some dressed quite elegantly; but a few were simply naked, tossed on the mound like refuse.
I could see no injuries on any of these people, no indication of what killed them. The few closest to me looked like they had been young and healthy; the rest were simply hidden by shadows, and by the tangled mass of other corpses lying on top of them.
«This is appalling,» Wheezle whispered. From the sound of his voice, our invisible Dustman was standing quite close to the mound of bodies. A moment later, I noticed the hair rustling on the head of a gnome woman: invisible fingers combed through her curls, straightening out the snarls.
«Appalling,» Wheezle whispered again.
«I thought you rejoiced in death,» I said.
«Clean death,» he replied. «Pure death. But the dead deserve to be treated with dignity. These… can't you smell it?»
«The chemicals?» I took a deep whiff again. Now that I was inside the room, the acrid stench was as sharp as a needle, stinging in my nose; I kept inhaling until the stink filled the back of my throat with its heady rasp. Then, of course, I collapsed to my knees, coughing uncontrollably. «Good smell,» I gasped between coughs.
«It is the smell of… certain vegetable extracts,» Wheezle told me, clearly unwilling to be more specific. «They are used by ignorant ruffians who believe these extracts can reanimate the dead.»
«The extracts don't work?»
«Perhaps one time in a hundred, the technique creates a wight,» Wheezle replied. «These bodies are obviously the failures. But the low reanimation rate is only a minor concern. The great problem is…» I could hear him shuffling his feet in agitation. "The great problem is energy. Undead beings do not eat or drink or breathe – in order to move, they must derive their energy from other sources. Most are nourished by the unlimited magicks of the cosmos, as channeled through deities and other powers who rule the undead. It gives the undead a direct connection with the forces that sustain the multiverse… a profound spiritual link with the Great Blackness.
«But undead created through alchemical means…» Wheezle's voice choked tight with anger. «They are like candles who burn their own tallow. They are… closed in. Shut off from external energies. They have no link with the gods of the undead. Such beings can only survive by consuming the energy of their own souls – burning themselves down and down, like rats starving to death in a cage. It is an ugly fate.»
I looked at the mound of bodies again, trying to detect any difference between these corpses and others I'd seen. No sign of rigor mortis in any of them, despite the overwhelming stench of decay. Was that unusual? I didn't know. As an artist, I'm only familiar with living subjects.
The boy Hezekiah also seemed curious about the bodies heaped before us. «So these failures,» he began; «are they just dead? Or are they conscious, even if they can't move?»
«They have a type of consciousness,» Wheezle nodded. «They simply do not have enough self-energy to stir themselves. Their souls will wither in time… unless, of course, we can free them from their damnation.»
I didn't like the tone in his voice. Much as I recognized the horror of rotting away in your own corpse, I'd rather concentrate on saving a live Yasmin than dead strangers. Still, I had to ask one more question about the different types of undead. «Tell me,» I said to the invisible gnome. «If someone used alchemy like this to create wights, would the wights obey the Dead Truce?»
«The Truce is a pact between my faction and the gods of the undead,» Wheezle replied. «These chemical abominations are cut off from the gods; that is their curse. Therefore, this kind of undead live outside the Truce.»
«So,» said Hezekiah, «those wights who attacked the Dustmen at the Mortuary must have been the few successes out of all these —»
I clapped a hand over his mouth. My ears had picked up a slight rustle of sound. Listening harder, I heard it again: not from the corpses nor the corridor where we'd entered, but from the door in front of us, leading farther around the ring of the building. The door was metal and closed tightly, but a murmur of voices still came through indistinctly.
Keeping my hand over the boy's mouth, I circled the mound of corpses, hoping there'd be enough room to hide at the rear. There wasn't: the bodies were stacked tight against the wall, with no space to slide behind them. The voices down the corridor were getting louder… so I shoved Hezekiah down beside me and burrowed straight into the corpse-heap.
Neither of us could dig in very deeply – the heap must have massed several tons in dead weight. Still, we could force our way past the outer tangle of arms and legs, to a point where we blended into the whole. I prayed that would be good enough.
The intruders' loud conversation covered our grunting as we squeezed into the press of tattered clothes and naked skin. Every exposed patch of dead flesh reeked with the stench of chemicals and decay, but I fought back the coughs that ragged my throat. I didn't know how many people were about to enter this chamber; I just knew we wouldn't be able to hear them from so far away unless they vastly outnumbered us. With a last surge of strength I pulled my legs inside the pile, just as the door whisked open and dozens of feet strutted into the room.
I couldn't see the newcomers, couldn't see anything but the lifeless face of a young woman close to mine. Her eyes were open, with the blind stillness of the dead. Death surrounded me – my left hand rested on someone's leg and my other arm was jammed under a woman's stomach. There was enough air to breathe, but I held my breath.
«All right,» called a man's voice. «Everybody stop rattling your bone-boxes. Come on, I want quiet!» The talk subsided. «That's better,» the man said. «Now, let's see if this thing works.»
I gritted my teeth. Whatever «this thing» might be, I knew I wasn't going to like it. The speaker might even be testing a newly made firewand by incinerating the mound of corpses where Hezekiah and I lay hidden.