"Don't blast it," said a feminine voice. "It's one of ours."

Startled, heart banging in his chest, Aoth jerked around to see Chathi Oandem smiling at him from several paces away. He tried to compose himself and smile back.

"I wasn't going to," he said. "I recognized it just in time to avoid making a fool of myself."

The priestess strolled nearer. Though she still carried her torch weapon, she wasn't wearing her mail and helmet anymore, just flame-patterned vestments that molded themselves to her willowy form at those moments when the cool breeze gusted.

"I thought all wizards had owl eyes and could see in the dark."

Aoth shrugged. "I know the spell, but I haven't been preparing it lately. I'd rather concentrate on combat magic, especially considering that I can look through Brightwing's eyes when I need to."

"Except that the poor tired creature is asleep at the moment."

If Chathi had observed that, it meant she'd passed by his quarters. He felt a rush of excitement at the thought that perhaps she'd gone there intentionally, looking for him, and kept on seeking him after.

"Good. She's earned her rest."

"So have you and I, yet here we are, up wandering the night. Is something troubling you?"

He wondered if a captain ought to confide any sort of anxiety or misgivings to someone at least theoretically under his command, then decided he didn't care. "There shouldn't be, should there? We won our battle and received word this afternoon that other companies are winning theirs. Everything's quiet, yet…" He snorted. "Maybe I'm just timid."

"Then we both are. I've trained since I was a little girl to fight the enemies of Kossuth, and I've destroyed my share, but these things! Is it the mere fact they're undead or that we have no idea why they came down from the mountains that makes them so troubling we can't relax and celebrate even after a victory?"

"A bit of both, I suppose." And something more as well, though he still wasn't sure what.

She smiled and touched his cheek as she had to heal him. Even without a corona of flame, her hardened fingertips felt feverishly warm. "I wonder-if you and I tried very hard, do you think we could manage a celebration despite our trepidations?"

He wanted her as urgently as he could recall ever wanting a woman, but he also wondered if he'd be crossing a line he shouldn't, for all that Nymia did it constantly. She was a tharchion and he but a newly minted captain.

"If this is about my having saved your life," he said, playing for time until he was sure of his own mind, "remember you saved mine, too. You said it yourself, we're even."

"It's not about gratitude but about discovering a fire inside me, and when a priestess of Kossuth finds such a flame, she doesn't seek to dowse it." Chathi grinned. "That would be blasphemy. She stokes it and lets it burn what it will, so shall we walk back to your quarters?"

He swallowed. "I imagine one of these huts right in front of us is empty."

"Good thinking. No wonder you're the leader."

When she unpinned her vestments and dropped them to pool around her feet, he saw that her god had scarred portions of her body as well as her face, but those marks didn't repel him either. In fact, he kissed them with a special fervor.

Each gripping one of her arms, the two blood orcs marched Tammith toward the doorway, and she offered no resistance. Perhaps she'd used up her capacity for defiance seeking to protect Yuldra, or maybe it was simply that she realized the two gray-skinned warriors with their swinish tusks were on their guard. She had little hope of breaking away and wouldn't know which way to run if she did.

The spacious vault beyond the door proved to be a necromancer's conjuring chamber lit, like the rest of the catacombs, by everburning torches burning with cold greenish flame. Though Tammith had never seen such a place before, the complex designs chalked on the floor, the shelves of bottled liquids and jars of powders, the racks of staves and wands, and the scent of bitter incense overlying the stink of decay were familiar to her from stories.

Two Red Wizards currently occupied the room, along with half a dozen zombies. A couple of the latter shuffled forward and reached out to collect Tammith.

The gods had been cruel to make her believe that she might still have Bareris and freedom only to snatch them away. Her spirit had nearly shattered then, and she still didn't understand why it hadn't. Perhaps it was the knowledge that her love had escaped. He could still have a life even if she couldn't.

In any case, she hadn't yet succumbed to utter crippling terror and had vowed to meet her end, whatever it proved to be, with as much bravery as she could muster. Still, the prospect of the enduring the touch of the zombies' cold, slimy fingers, of inhaling the fetor of their rotten bodies close up, filled her with revulsion.

"Please!" she said. "You don't need those creatures to hold me. I know I can't get away."

The Red Wizards ignored her plea, and the zombies, with their slack mouths and empty eyes, trudged a step closer, but then a voice spoke from overhead.

"That sounds all right. Just position a couple of the zombies to block the exit, in case she's not as sensible as she seems."

Tammith looked up and observed the loft above the chamber for the first time. The giant zombie was there and its master, too. A number of round lenses attached to a branching metal framework hung before the fetus-thing like apples on a tree. From her vantage point, the effect was to break his body into distorted sections and make it even more hideous, if such a thing was possible.

Since the creature had decreed that she was to come to him, she'd expected to encounter him wherever she ended up. Still, the actual sight of him dried her mouth and made her shudder. How could anything so resemble a baby yet look so ghastly and radiate such a palpable feeling of malevolence? She struggled again to cling to what remained of her courage.

She didn't hear either of the Red Wizards give a verbal command or notice a hand signal either, but the zombies stopped advancing as the fetus-thing had indicated they should. The orcs looked to one of the necromancers, and he waved a hairless, tattooed hand in dismissal. The guards wasted no time departing, as if even they found the chamber a disturbing place.

Tammith forced herself to gaze up at the baby-thing without flinching. "Thank you for that anyway. I'm tired of being manhandled."

"And corpse-handled is even worse, I imagine." The creature smirked at its own feeble play on words. "Think nothing of it. This could be the beginning of a long and fruitful association, and we might as well start off in a friendly sort of way. My name is Xingax. What's yours?"

She told him. " 'A long and fruitful association?' Then… you don't mean to kill me?"

"Actually, I do, but death needn't be the end of an entity's existence. Lucky for me! Otherwise I wouldn't have fared very well after my mother's cuckold husband tore me from the womb."

"I… I won't be one of those." She gestured to indicate the zombies. "I'll make your servants tear me to pieces first."

Xingax chuckled. "Do you imagine I'd have no use for the fragments? If so, you're mistaken, but please, calm yourself. I don't intend to turn you into a zombie. You have a much more interesting opportunity in store.

"You've seen enough," continued the fetus-thing, "to discern what this place is: an undead manufactory. Given sufficient resources, we'd create only powerful, sentient specimens, since those are the most useful for our purposes. Alas, the reality is that it takes considerably more magic to evoke a ghost or something similar than it does to make a mindless automaton like my giant or my helpers' helpers.