TEZZERET
I arrived a few yards short of the outer fringe of the zombie mob. Checking back over my shoulder revealed no sign of the gate, which was as it should be. I triggered the eye-and-ear link built into my bascinet. “You there?”
“Everything’s go,” she whispered in my ear.
“All right, then.” I activated my armor’s primary defenses, took a deep breath-and was seized by a fit of uncontrollable retching.
“Duh-ammn,” Doc said. “Gag. Choke. Guess I was wrong about smelling ’em before, huh? Gag some more. Retch, too, just to be sociable.”
I was unable to reply, as the feculent miasma of decay gases unleashed by the rotting flesh of a million-plus zombies had exceeded by far the limits of my imagination, and thus also overwhelmed my countermeasures. I was wholly occupied with trying to avoid filling my bascinet with my own vomit.
Holding my breath did not help, as the air I inhaled might as well have been a chemical weapon. It scalded my nose and throat, and presumably my lungs as well, triggering an equally convulsive spasm of coughing. Eventually, I gathered enough of my mental resources to tweak the armor’s anti-sand field, intensifying its blue crackle so that it would burn off noxious decay products as it did the desert’s powdered glass-and so I was once more able to breathe.
“Tezzeret, what happened? Are you hit? What’s going on?”
“Nothing. It’s all right. Zombies stink.”
“Well sure they do, but-”
“Imagine swimming in nyxathid vomit.”
“Ooo. Damn, do I have to?”
“I have a fix. One moment.” I was able to mentally retrace my armor’s link to her ear-and-eyepiece, and adjust her anti-sand field as I had my own; she couldn’t be much use to me if she was retching too hard to breathe. “That should cover you. Now it’s your turn to cover me.”
“I’m on it.”
I activated another prepared spell, this one a very straightforward sonic illusion, which made the sky seem to crack with thunder, and followed with words that might be heard, like thunder, for tens of miles.
“MY NAME IS TEZZERET.
“I AM NOT HERE TO FIGHT. I WOULD SPEAK WITH THOSE WHO SEEK THE
CENTER OF THE LABYRINTH
“WITHOUT MY HELP, YOU WILL NOT SUCCEED.
“MY NAME IS TEZZERET…”
I damped the sound within my bascinet so that I might hear not only Baltrice, but also my own thoughts.
I allowed the illusion to cycle through three full times, while bending all my resources toward detecting any response, be it hostile, friendly, or neutral. It was a matter of some ironic amusement to me to have created an illusion intended to convey truth.
When I discovered no response beyond attracting some carnivorous interest from nearby zombies, I activated my primary defensive screens and began to walk toward the Laybrinth.
The zombies, of course, closed in upon me. I activated the outermost layer of my armor’s defensive screens, which I had devised with Baltrice’s help, as I find her solution to our zombie problem to be both elegant and efficient. Any zombies bold enough to actually attempt to touch me instantly burst into flame hot enough to set not only their whole bodies ablaze, but to spread to the others pressing in behind them. My progress was necessarily slow-being incinerated was no deterrent to their functionally mindless appetites-but it was steady, and served the additional purpose of making it absolutely clear to Renn and his presumptive army of necromancers that I was not attempting anything resembling stealth or swift assault.
Instead, I simply pushed on, the apex of a long wake of burning zombies, in the reasonable belief that the necromancers ahead wouldn’t begrudge the loss of a few tens of thousands of their undead servants, and hoping that they would presently respond to the audible illusion, still thundering above me, by ordering their minions to stand aside.
However, I burned my way through the zombies all the way to the base of the nearest structure without any noticeable reaction from anyone or anything except the zombies, who continued to slog toward me and immolate themselves.
The external surface of the Labyrinth had the texture of glass etched to appear frosted. It was clearly not susceptible to burning or melting, no matter how much power I fed into my incendiary outer screen. There was no visible entrance, which was not distressing; quite the opposite, in fact-had I found a door on my very first approach, I would have assumed it was a trap and moved on. “Doc? Do you have any preference for which direction we should move?”
“Does away count?”
“Yes and no. It is a direction, but it’s not one we’ll take.”
“Oh, sure. Y’know, I’m getting the feeling that you get us into these situations on purpose.”
“It seems unlikely.” I turned my back to the wall and edged to my right, the inferno of zombie fire following my path.
“That’s a nonanswer,” Doc said accusingly. “What it seems doesn’t have much to do with what it is. And unlikely isn’t the same as untrue.”
“Correct on all three counts,” I said. “You’re learning.” The column of greasy black meat smoke from the zombies was already a couple miles tall. If Renn and his necromancers for some reason couldn’t hear my thunderous illusion, they should certainly be able to track my progress by the smoke.
“I think you put us in mortal danger to shut me up.”
“If so, it doesn’t seem to work.”
“You know what I mean. You talk me into crazy stunts like this little adventure, and once we’re in it and I really see how much danger you’ve put us in, it’s too late for me to do anything about it. Unless I want to get us both killed.”
“Your veto power does seem to be limited by circumstance.”
“That’s another nonanswer,” he said. “Do you practice that crap, or does it just come naturally?”
I allowed myself a fractional smile. “Both.”
“And that’s another thing.” His voice rose. “You think it’s funny.”
“Somebody has to.”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about! It’s not funny-and you sure as hell shouldn’t be enjoying yourself right now!”
Still no sign of activity from our presumed adversaries. “Doc, if I wanted to spend my life listening to complaints about my behavior, I’d have gotten married.”
“Oh, like we’re not married. How much more ‘of one flesh’ do you think we could get?”
“First, I’m really not comfortable with that.”
“Try if from my side.”
“And forget the ‘of one flesh’ business. Worry about the ‘till death do us part’ angle.”
“Um, yeah. Speaking of death-activity on our left.”
I turned to look back the way we’d come. Other than burning zombies, there was nothing I could detect. “I don’t see it.”
“That’s too far. Keep our back to the wall, then scan forty-five degrees off perpendicular.”
“It’s my back.”
“Whatever. Relax. Got it?”
A few dozen yards away, a number of zombies appeared to be pulling back from the crush, as though avoiding the flames of their closer brethren. “That’s activity?”
“You see it happening anywhere else?”
I didn’t.
“They’re not doing it on their own,” Doc said. “It’s being done to them.”
“Threat assessment?”
“Shrug. Too early to tell.”
A mental adjustment that thinned my greaves and sabatons by shifting some of their etherium into the equivalent of boot lifts gave me a slightly better view. The opening gap had become a ring, as several hundred zombies had turned aside from their mindless pressing in upon the Labyrinth to gather themselves into a roughly circular clot of undead. There was motion in the middle of that clot, and shortly I was able to make out what it was: the innermost zombies had either fallen or laid themselves down on the sand, and the zombies around them were walking on their bodies until they too reached the center and laid themselves down. The pile of recumbent zombies grew as tall as the creatures themselves, and the upright specimens were forced to clamber up the growing mound.