Save for the groaning shadow-sorceress and the meat animals clucking and snorting inside their cages, the market was silent and deserted, with bolts of cloth strewn through the narrow lanes and dried legumes spilling onto the ground from open sacks. Ox wagons and pushcarts sat abandoned upon the road that circumscribed the plaza, and all the buildings that fronted it had their windows shuttered and barred against the impending acid storm. On the far side of the bazaar, almost directly behind the dragon, loomed a handsome building of marble pillars and arched entranceways that could only be Elversult Hall.
The clang of steel against steel still rang from the darkness at Ruha’s back, but it seemed wiser to risk that battle than to venture into the open with the dragon. The witch reached for Hsieh’s shoulder, then groaned sharply as her bleeding wound protested with lances of pain. She settled for the mandarin’s arm and pulled him into the blackness after her.
They took no more than two steps before Cypress’s deep-voiced incantation rumbled across the marketplace. The sunlight burned the magical darkness into ash, which fell to the ground and spread a grimy layer of soot over the many corpses—Shou, cult, and horse—piled atop the cobblestones. Five blood-covered Shou were bouncing between three and four attackers each, striking as often with a driving elbow or flying foot as with whirling blades. The street beyond was clear as far as the intersection, but beyond that it remained thickly choked with refugees.
The cobblestones trembled with the heavy thud of the dragon’s step. Seemingly oblivious to his wounds, Hsieh leapt a mangled horse and charged toward his outnumbered men.
“Stay close, Lady Ruha!”
The witch clenched her teeth against the pain in her side and circled the dead beast, shuddering with fear each time she felt the ground tremble with Cypress’s heavy step. Hsieh reached the battle and swung his sword at the nearest cult member. The man raised a long-handled axe to parry. The minister’s dark blade passed through both weapon and armor with no more effect than a shadow. The instant the black sliver touched the fellow’s skin, however, it grew as solid as steel and cleaved him down the center.
After that, Hsieh wielded his weapon as though it were black lightning, felling one, then two, three, and four more enemies in as many eye blinks. The remaining Shou quickly seized the advantage and began to slay their attackers.
Ruha was beginning to have visions of turning the remarkable weapon against Cypress when the last cult member fell. The witch stepped over a Shou corpse and rushed to follow Hsieh toward the intersection; then she heard the dragon’s voice rumbling with another magic invocation. She scooped a handful of bloody pebbles off the street and turned, hurling them at her foe and uttering her briefest stone spell.
The rocks streaked straight into Cypress’s empty eyes, striking with a loud, sharp crackle. The dragon’s head snapped back; then a spray of bone shards and shattered scales erupted from the back of his skull. He roared, spraying a fine black mist into the air, and then began to shake his head.
Ruha turned to follow Hsieh. She was not disappointed; it would take a hundred such attacks to destroy Cypress, but at least she had interrupted the dragon’s spell—or so she thought, until a corpse’s lukewarm hand caught her by the ankle.
Ruha twisted to avoid landing on the ylang oil and came down on her wounded side. The impact drove spikes of pain deep into her body. The witch found herself struggling for breath, and she knew she was dangerously close to blacking out. The corpse grabbed hold with its second hand and dragged itself forward. She looked down and saw that her attacker was the dead Shou over which she had stepped earlier. She tried to kick free, but it felt no pain from her blows and would not let go.
Hsieh appeared at Ruha’s side and brought his sword down across the corpse’s shoulders. The dark blade passed over the zombie’s body like a shadow, causing no harm at all. The mandarin’s narrow eyes grew as round as saucers; then the arms of a dead cultist grabbed him from behind and hurled him to the ground.
The cobblestones shuddered as Cypress resumed walking. Ruha craned her neck and saw that she and Hsieh were not the only ones in dire circumstances. The dragon had animated all the corpses in the street. Though the zombies were slow and clumsy, they were pressing the Shou survivors by virtue of their numbers alone.
Ruha’s attacker grabbed hold of her belt, then slammed its free fist into the pit of her stomach. She tried to scream in pain, but the blow had driven her breath away, and she could do no more than grunt. The zombie raised its fist to strike again. She released the oil sack and deflected the punch with her forearm. In the same motion, the witch drove the heel of her free hand into the side of her attacker’s head and heard the temple snap. Pushing with all the strength in her legs, she rolled onto her side and threw the dead Shou off.
Ruha grabbed the oil sack and leapt up. As she turned to flee, the dragon’s huge shadow fell over her body. She sprinted for the intersection. The pain in her side was excruciating, but she managed to ignore it and rush forward at a pace that would have made a hare-hound proud. She kept expecting Cypress to say something, to command her to stop or at least to taunt her, but he held his tongue. Ruha found the silence even more alarming than the hiss of his lungs filling to spray acid. The dragon was thinking of only one thing: killing her. To comment on his intentions would have been a meaningless waste of breath.
The street trembled again, and Ruha knew she had no hope of outrunning her pursuer. She summoned a wind spell to mind and darted toward the street side, then heard the whoosh of the dragon’s huge talons slicing through the air behind her. The witch forced herself not to look toward her pursuer’s face; the last time she met his gaze, he had nearly taken over her mind.
Ruha angled toward the entrance to the nearest tenement. In the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Cypress’s other huge claw sweeping down to pluck her up. She slammed her feet against the street and managed to slow herself, allowing the black hand to sweep past without catching her. Then, feeling like a spiny iguana dodging a hungry Bedine boy, she darted forward again.
The tenement was barely three paces away. Ruha took a deep breath, then uttered her wind spell and exhaled. A ferocious gust of air howled from her lips, blasting the heavy oaken door into splinters. The witch rushed blindly into the building’s deep-shadowed interior. Three paces inside, she stumbled over a step and slammed face first into a wooden staircase.
Ruha gathered herself together and spun around, then barely leapt aside in time to prevent Hsieh’s dark sword from piercing her heart. The mandarin stumbled over the same stair as the witch, but managed to recover more gracefully by picking up his feet and landing two steps up the stairwell. Behind him came two of his men, who also displayed their incredible agility by managing to catch each other when they also tripped over the step. The witch did not know how any of them had escaped the zombies—in a manner similar to how she had, she supposed—but she was glad for the company.
“Where now?” Hsieh squinted at Ruha with his uncovered eye.
“I do not know.”
Ruha stepped around the stairwell and ran down a broad, dirty corridor toward the back of the building. As Hsieh and his men moved to follow, Cypress’s hand burst through the doorway and caught the last one in line. The warrior howled in pain, and Hsieh raised his sword to charge the doorway.
Ruha caught him by the shoulder. “If that blade did not affect the corpses, it will not harm Cypress. He is also undead.”