Behind the walkways on each side were galleries, outfitted with ornate stone seats for those witnesses who grew weary of the victims' resistance. Those stood empty at the moment.
Kehrsyn roused herself. Massedar and Demok were already moving onto the walkway. Kehrsyn marveled at Massedar's ability to disguise himself so thoroughly. Even his gait had become Ekur's. Demok followed behind with perfect ease, apparently unconcerned to be carrying a corpse among a cabal of those he said he'd sworn his life to destroy. Unbidden, Tiglath's words came back to her: no one is what they seem. Kehrsyn wondered how far she could trust the self-proclaimed Harper. Unfortunately, in her current situation, she had no choice.
No choice. It was becoming all too common a theme in her life. She hurried after her two companions, doing her best not to look awkward or rushed as she did so.
Massedar stopped toward the far corner of the room, while Demok continued around to where, judging by the ornate design of the robes, the senior cleric stood talking with his subordinates. Demok stepped down onto the torture floor, unwrapped his burden, and lay it on top of a stack in front of the chief priest. With a deft move, he draped a cloth over the corpse's face. Two guards entered with the other body.
Massedar whispered to her, "Tell thou the guards to place that body here before me."
She passed his message along, and, with as much of a shrug as could be managed while hefting a corpse, they placed the body where she indicated. When they unwrapped the oilcloth from the corpse, they saw that the body had been carefully wrapped head to toe in a mummy's bindings. A smell of dust and mildew graced the already inhospitable odors of the room.
"Whoa, been keeping that one for a while, have you, Ahegi?" said one of the bearers with a leer. "Must be someone special. If you need an onyx, just tell one of them," he added, pointing to the several workers who moved among the bodies placing black stones into the mouths of the deceased.
Demok moved back to stand close to Massedar, out of the way in the corner of the gallery.
Kehrsyn joined him there and whispered, "How on Toril did they get so many bodies? Wouldn't they rot?"
"Embalming," whispered Demok. "Or a prayer that keeps them fresh. Simple work for priests. They've been stockpiling."
Kehrsyn grimaced.
"Zhents are patient," added Demok.
"And… tolerant. I don't think I could handle having a dead guy in my-"
"Sshh!"
Kehrsyn looked over and saw that the high priest had stepped to the very edge of the walkway. Everyone in the room ceased their conversations and waited attentively. Silence ruled the room for a long tenbreath, broken only by the sound of a cough heard faintly from the ramp.
The high priest's hood was huge, draping over his shoulders so that only the lower part of his jaw could be seen. Kehrsyn assumed that the material of his black hood was thin enough, at least in places, to allow him to see. His sleeves trailed along the floor, and his gown washed behind him for several feet. Every inch of his robe was stitched with fine sigils and formulae in bright green thread. At a distance it appeared the black material had a green opalescence. Upon his chest he wore a circular ephod emblazoned with Bane's sigil, a clenched fist emitting green rays of power, and in his right hand he bore a long, ornate staff topped with a fist carved in obsidian.
"My servants," began the high priest, and his voice was low, seductive, reasonable, "it is time. No longer shall Unther wallow without a ruler. No longer shall the Untherites, in fear of the pharaoh, turn to other, weaker gods for help. Tonight we shall place Unther under the outstretched arm of Bane. Tonight the army will have a cause to fight for, and a cause greater than mere survival, for no one is willing to die for survival, but all will be willing to die for the glory of Bane. Tonight the Northern Wizards, who stand atop the chaos and proclaim themselves lords, shall have their weakness revealed to all. They shall be torn down and dragged through the streets, to be spat upon by the widows and stoned by the children. Tonight shall the army grow greatly in strength and continue to grow as it smites the forces of the Pharaoh of Mulhorand. Tonight marks the return of the new Empire of Unther, under a new god with a new king!"
Kehrsyn almost moved to applaud at the pause, expecting it to be done, but held herself when she saw that no one else moved.
"We have just spoken with the Chessentans, and they understand that their services have been contracted by Unther, not by any particular faction within Unther. They will not interfere as we move. In fact, I rather fancy they'll be relieved to see a stable government paying their wages."
A chuckle rippled through the assembled priests.
"Let us then begin. Let those who have fallen by the weakness of their government"-he gestured to the carnage at his feet-"be the first to strike a blow for a new power!"
He reached with his free hand into the voluminous sleeve of his other arm and pulled out the familiar thin lines of the Alabaster Staff.. Violet swirls of energy began to coalesce as he held it out over the bodies.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The assembled priests stepped forward to the edge of the walkway with a great rustle of fabric on stone. One cleric, a woman who stood at the right hand of the high priest, intoned a liturgy to lead the others. While the high priest held the Alabaster Staff high, the other priests joined the canter and began to weave their magic.
As they moved through the gestures of the incantation, their hands seemed to draw energy forth from the wand, and the luminescent purplish smoke reached outward in a web of energy until the wisps drifted in the wakes of their hands and the power of the staff covered all the room.
The words and gestures looked like a spell, but whereas most spell invocations lasted a short while, that one continued on and on, the priests droning and moving in unison.
"What kind of ritual is this?" Kehrsyn whispered to Demok.
He gestured with one finger for her to be quiet, then started to slide stealthily along the wall toward the high priest.
A body in the far corner of the torture floor moved and started to rise, lurching upward from the waist as if a drunkard abruptly awakened. Kehrsyn watched in horror as its limbs flailed around before it found its feet and stood, swaying slightly. A hellish light shone from its open mouth, and a purplish haze wafted from its nostrils like smoke and merged with the web of energy emanating from the Alabaster Staff.
Kehrsyn cast her eyes around the floor in shock and saw several other bodies twitching as the priests' ritual took hold. She glanced over at Massedar and saw that, while he was going through the same motions and appeared to be chanting in unison with all of the others, no magical traceries graced his gestures. She was at once alarmed that he knew the choreography of the ritual and relieved that he was not actually participating.
Other bodies rose up in no apparent order, other than that they were, of course, the ones on top of the hideously quaking pile. One near at hand staggered to her feet, and Kehrsyn saw that it was a geriatric woman, apparently dead of malnutrition, her slack mouth showing her few remaining teeth. She stood like all the others, facing the high priest with the same vile glow shining from her gullet. Somehow the fact that she might have been someone's grandmother made her animation all the more heinous.
Others rose, singly or in pairs, until about four dozen zombies had risen to their feet. The frequency with which they rose was increasing.
Then the body that Demok had carried in began to rise. It shuffled to its feet, the cloth laid across its face sliding off as it stood. It stared at the high priest with dull but undivided attention. Kehrsyn scrunched her face in wary disbelief as she saw its profile.