Touche again.

What was that Orman had said? About the Price?

Yeah. Quite a broad.

9

They bought Cri’s story about the attack.

But I’ll be damned if I know why. She was about as believable as Richard Nixon saying “I am not a crook.” Her voice faltered and her eyes rolled and sweat appeared on her upper lip and none of it mattered one single bit. While I was sitting there on the front of the carriage by the “driver,” Gruffle, looking around for a place to run, the guard at the gates to the Keep was just nodding and waving us on through.

Cri’s story had been so unconvincing I thought the guy was joking. But he wasn’t. The gates opened, Gruffle gave the oxen the giddyup and we were in.

It was weird. The guard at the gate looked and sounded just as frightened as Cri did. And so did the little dude that supervised the parking of the carriage and so did the toadies who rushed out to carry the Lady Gor’s things. And so did everyone else.

And I mean everyone else. And that included Smada.

It had started about five miles from the Keep, I guess. There were just the four of us: Cri, Smada, Gruffle, and me, all riding on the front seat of the carriage (which was huge) for the air. The plan was pretty simple. When we got to the gate, Smada was to literally hide under the bed inside the carriage, Gruffle was supposed to play driver—which was easy, his uniform almost covered his face—Cri was supposed to spin her little tale of how she had been attacked, and I was to be the mysterious traveler who had come to her aid at the last moment when she was fleeing Smada’s loyalists.

Smada was supposed to have been killed during the fight.

It was a garbage story—nobody should have bought it. But the other three were utterly convinced it would play, and they were right. That was pretty weird, too, but all part of the same dim weight we’-d been carrying since, like I say, about five miles from the Keep.

It started—no fooling—with a buzzing in the ears.

Look, I know, I know how that sounds, but it’s a fact. It felt to me like there were gnats or something.

At one point I actually slapped the side of my head trying to swat one.

Cri had given me a thin smile and said, “It is the Cloak of Dead,” and the other two had just nodded.

Which didn’t explain a thing to me and I said so, and they tried to explain some more and they did, eventually. But it wasn’t any better. Seems it had to do with—are you ready?—a magic spell.

The Cloak of Dead was the deal Gor had made to give him power over the land, power over the Zombies, power over the fears of everyone around him. I mean everyone, which explained why so few people were willing to help Smada and why none of them were willing unless an outsider, me, who hadn’t had a chance to be influenced, was coming along.

By “influenced” I mean scared. Really scared. Deeply scared. Always scared. It infused their thinking and their movements. It filled their dreams with gut-wrenching, tortured nightmares every night. The people were off balance and cowed and always, always, exhausted by this never-ending fear and the buzzing I heard mfeant we were approaching the source.

I, personally, just found it irritating. But so had everyone else when it had first started. It took a while, apparently, for it to creep down into your marrow and suck you small.

It had been long enough for my companions. They were uniformly pale and their breathing was too quick and they had a tendency to jump about a foot at every sudden sound, their eyes darting this way and that all the time like trapped fawns.

It was sickening at first. Particularly Smada. I still didn’t know how I felt about him but I knew damn well I didn’t like seeing him sitting there trembling! That’s right, trembling. Actually shaking, quivering, from terror and I wanted to reach over and slap the sumbitch for shaming himself so.

Which was not only insensitive, I realized later, but outright stupid. Later I thought about how I would have acted feeling such fear. How any normal mortal would have acted.

I decided I’d have probably run away. But would I have hatched some crazy plan through chattering teeth and then, so bloody scared I could barely control my bowels, tried sneaking into the most dangerous and awful place in this Place to fight the most horrible monster alive?

Like I said, I’d have run away. But they didn’t; they fought. Petrified, pale, and, yes, trembling, they had fought back. Not your average folk.

But I wasn’t thinking that at the time. I was being an ass again. I was letting my disgust with them show, snorting and deliberately ignoring them.

Nice guy, huh?

The Keep was huge and perched atop a rock crag high over the river and it was dead flat black from its outer walls to its tallest turret, where Gor lived. Absolutely black. And dusty, as if made out of coal. The inner courtyard was filled with the dust as some flunky passed us through into the interior of the main Keep. There was another flunky waiting there for us who led us up a couple of stories to still another flunky who wanted to hear Cri’s story again.

He was a slimy little rat, and the idea of squashing him was so sweet a thought I almost forgot about the plan, about Gruffle and Smada waiting down at the carriage to sneak up later, about Cri at my side—about anything else but hearing him squeal.

But I cooled it. He bought Cri’s story, too, and we were sent climbing once again. The third-level scum bought the bit, too, but he was a little tougher. He actually sneered when Cri started explaining about how I had appeared, a mercenary, and offered to help and her voice really skittered out of her mouth when she was talking to him. I thought sure she was going to blow it, so I interrupted his sneering inquisition, stood right up and over his face, held out my palm and pointed to it.

“Do I get my coins or do I not, little toad?”

For just a second he and I met eyes and I really and truly wanted him to make some smart-ass remark— fear affects everyone differently—so I could shove it slowly back in with my gloved thumb.

But he got smart and shut up, except to nod.

We went through three more levels of stooges before we got to the audience room. Apparently word had spread ahead about the foul-tempered mercenary. The squid were actually bowing to me by the time we reached the chamber.

This was shiny black. Looked like marble and maybe it was. There was a huge black throne with a carved black inverted pyramid behind it and on either side there were tall thin oil lamps sending flickering yellow flames twelve feet into the air.

Lined up around the throne but a level down were half a dozen priest types and a couple of scythe-wielding guards and one old fat bald man with a pregnant paunch and a hook nose who beat three times on a black drum. He was naked and sweating and he smiled the most repulsive gap-toothed smile imaginable in my direction. I sneered at him. He just laughed and spittle flew and he pounded the drum three more times.

Gor entered. He was tall with jet-black hair and long flowing robes trimmed with red satin curlicues, and never in my life had I ever seen anyone whose every moti6n so totally exhibited control. This was his little universe and he damn sure knew it.

So did everyone else. They visibly shivered at his appearance. And these were his friends!

He had red eyes. And they glowed when they were pointed at you.

Cri managed a little extra something from somewhere and started off on her spiel once more. But it was clearly too much for her. Gor would smile patronizingly and interrupt her and she would panic and start all over again and I expected the guards to start hacking away with their scythes any moment.