I couldn't see any stifled quality myself – she looked quite happy for a corpse. However, Wheezle was the expert in such matters, so I deferred to his judgment.
«If the scepter is evil,» Hezekiah said, «maybe we should break it.»
«My faction has tried,» Wheezle told him. «Alas, it is too powerful. The best we could do was hide it in the Mortuary until we found a way to unmake it.»
«And the thieves must have stolen it because they were sick of the high failure rate from their alchemy,» I said. «Probably those three wights we killed back at the Mortuary were the only ones they had actually managed to get moving. Unveiler let them power up this whole pile of discards.»
«That is a reasonable conclusion,» Wheezle nodded. «The enemy obviously has need of an army of undead servants.»
«As if we don't have enough headaches already,» I muttered. «Still, we have the scepter now; does that mean we can control the wights?»
«Any wights who see it in our possession will obey us,» Wheezle said. «We can turn them against their creators… as a temporary measure.»
«Why temporary?» I asked.
«These unfortunates must be freed,» the gnome replied. «We cannot leave them in their current condition. Yes, an army of wights might help us defeat our enemies, and I will reluctantly tolerate such an army until the task is accomplished. Once that is done, however, these souls must be released. The energy injection from this wand only lasts a few weeks – like throwing a few extra sticks of wood into a stove. Once that wood has been used, the wights begin to burn their own souls again. I will not be party to that.»
«And you have a way to release them?» Hezekiah piped up.
I wished the boy hadn't said that.
With a wave of his hand, Wheezle shouted something that sounded like, «Hoksha ptock!» Unveiler's orange glow curdled to a bilious green, casting sickly shadows over the heap of corpses. Bodies rustled like leaves; a few of them uttered heavy groans. The wight who had been licking her fingers gave a startled jerk, as if the ground had suddenly quaked beneath her. She turned to me with a puzzled look on her face, the flames in her eyes sputtering like a dampened fire. Her mouth let out a bewildered hiss… then her legs buckled and she fell to the floor.
Hezekiah, still sitting on top of the corpse-heap, yelped and tried to catch his balance. The bodies beneath him were shifting, muttering incomprehensibly. As fast as he could, the boy scrambled off the mound, running to my side as if I would protect him from whatever happened next.
No need. The one active wight was on her knees, rocking back and forth like a child trying to comfort herself. The corpses too were moving, the whole pile shuddering in pulses. The muttering sounds grew louder, slowly blending together until all the bodies were moaning in unison, «Huhhhh… huhhhh… huhhhh…»
«Hoksha ptock!» Wheezle cried again.
«Ahhhhhhh,» the corpses sighed, and the wight hissed along. «Ahhhhh…»
«Hoksha ptock!»
Then, with a soft gooey sound, every dead body turned liquid – a runny brown liquid collapsing onto the floor with a loud splash, as gooey as egg whites. The fluid surged up to my feet like an ocean tide, flowing over my boots in a wave. Hezekiah tried to jump away, but there was nowhere to go: the spill of liquefying bodies covered the floor. We were both awash, up to the ankles.
«Yuck!» the boy shouted. «Euuu!»
«Do not fear,» Wheezle said calmly. «It is a form of ectoplasm. Not dangerous in any way.»
«So it's not poisonous?» I asked. «Good.»
The taste was something like olive oil, but saltier. With a little vinegar, it might make a fine salad dressing.
7. THREE SLABS OF CLAY
«We have done a great thing this day,» Wheezle said. «The undead gods will not forget us.»
«Is that a good thing?» Hezekiah whispered to me.
«Probably not,» I whispered back. «But I'd rather have them pleased with us than angry.» In a louder voice, I said to Wheezle, «Of course you realize you've destroyed… sorry, freed… a lot of corpses who could have been on our side.»
«They would not truly be our allies, honored Cavendish. You must have observed how quickly the wight killed the drow once I took control of the scepter. Undead animated in this way always despise the persons responsible. The wights cannot resist direct commands from their creators, but they do their best to twist those commands contrary to the original intent. We will do better taking over the wights created by others – those wights will be grateful to us, at least for a time.»
I had to grant the truth of what he said. Wights would never be trustworthy for long, but the one we freed from the drow had smiled at me in a friendly manner… until Wheezle turned her into brown goop all over my boots.
«All right,» I said. «Let's find more wights and tear this place apart.»
With a swish, the door opened in front of us. Wheezle took the lead; he was no longer invisible, but he carried Unveiler… something we wanted the wandering undead to see as soon as possible. I followed Wheezle and Hezekiah followed me.
The corridor continued to curve before us, following the building's central ring. This time, however, the inner wall was not opaque metal – it was another triangular patchwork of glass, finally revealing what lay inside the ring.
The center was simply a bed of dust, light brown in the gray light. Our building surrounded the dust like an arena around a playing field, raised about two storeys above the surface. The enclosed region was enormous, a circle about four hundred yards in diameter – the far side of the ring was only a dim shadow in the grayness.
For a moment, I thought the dust floor was completely empty. Then I caught some motion a quarter way around the ring. Asking Wheezle to stop for a moment, I pressed my nose against one of the glass triangles and peered out at the unmoving dust.
Four figures had just emerged from a door at the base of the building, figures who moved with the peculiar arm-swinging gait of wights. Slowly, they waded into the arena, dust up to their thighs: a team of wights walking directly forward, swinging their claws to scoop up handfuls of dust and throw it over their heads.
The disturbed dust did not drift down slowly as I might have expected – it fell as fast as stones. Was each dust mote as heavy as a boulder? No, the wights showed no strain as they tossed around handfuls of the stuff. After a few moments' thought, the explanation struck me: the arena had no air. The dust didn't drift because there was nothing for it to drift upon; with no air resistance, the dust fell as fast as anything else.
«No wonder they wanted to manufacture all those wights,» I murmured. «Whatever they're up to down there, they need creatures that don't have to breathe.»
As we continued along the corridor, I glanced out the window from time to time. More and more wights were wading into the dust – all the four-monster teams that had been assembled while Hezekiah and I hid in the corpse-heap. They soon spread around the whole circle, simply walking and throwing dust in the air.
«They're searching for something,» Hezekiah said in a low voice.
«You think so?» I asked.
The boy nodded. «There must be something buried in the dust and they're trying to find it.»
For once, Hezekiah appeared to be right. The wights slowly worked their way across the surface, sweeping through the dust with their hands. I wouldn't call it a methodical search; but perhaps this random wandering was one way the wights could do a bad job for their masters without actually disobeying orders.