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The dead called out to me forevermore, eager to do my bidding. I let them dig from their graves, rise from where they’d last collapsed, and march—
Fire engulfed me…
…and didn’t stop.
“I need a break,” the man beside me said through the roar of flames. “Turn him slowly in the flames and faster at the top, or he’ll use his black magic.”
Eager flames devoured me, opening my eyes to it all as it burned my eyelids away. Gray flakes soon drifted up and away until my vision first blurred, then speckled, until it finally darkened. My lungs smoldered from the heat; seared even more from how I wanted to scream but wouldn’t allow such humiliation. Pain carried me within the reaches of death… but no further.
Wood moaned.
Iron fittings creaked.
Flames retreated.
My skin itched where it mended as I came up again, more violently around the charred flesh of my lips from which I drooled. For days I’d prepared my escape, but gathering bone proved tedious. Hardly did I bring it to the surface from the outreaches of my prison, did approaching flames cut my efforts short. Oh yes, Lord Tarnem had made certain of that.
Footsteps!
A set of two.
“We sent doves to all towns, villages, and hamlets, asking—” Flames crackled through the approaching voice, and sores hissed in their heat. “Witnesses have come forward, confirming the rumors, Your Highness. A piece of writing was found at a—”Crackle. Hiss. Pop. Pop.“…in the forest, but we continue our search for the woman.”
Liquid rage poured into my veins. They would never take my wife from me, that I had ensured. No matter how many arrows had punctured my organs, knives had severed my tendons, or axes had chopped through my bones… I’d fought them long after the horse had reached the Pale Court.
Until they’d poured oil over me and set me ablaze, to be precise.
“Halt the wheel!”
Halt, it did.
The heat licked away at my feet, but at least my vision returned, faster once I was able to blink again. A man walked up before me, dressed in white robes heavily embroidered with golden suns. He pressed a hand to his mouth to mask the stench, and pearls of sweat formed on his bald head as he leaned toward me, scrutinizing me from all angles.
“Two hundred years, but you bastard had to emerge during my tenure.” A snarl flitted across his hard-cut features, his robes filthed with the signs of a false god. “I am High Priest Dekalon.”
Of course he was. “Save your introductions for Lord Tarnem and Commander Mertok, mortal.”
“Your Highness.” The armored man beside him lowered his head enough the cast of flames glistened along the puckered scar that cut across the malformed bridge of his nose. “Fire indeed proves the only thing keeping him from shaking the ground and raising the dead. Soldiers are weighting down graves across the land at double the measure, but there are too many and the pits are full. We need to turn him.”
Dekalon gave a dismissive swat at the air as he watched me rise on the wheel. “I had hoped Helfa would spare me your sudden appearance. But then again, so has every high priest before me. A fine dungeon, is it not? My predecessors…” his voice faded into the roar of flames, only to filter back in one turn later, “…built into the mountainside on the hardest rock, not a single grave over the span of many furlongs.”
Which explained the scarce amount of bone at my disposal, gathered from insects, rats, and whatever other creatures had found their end between these stony walls. Escape would come neither soon nor easy, but none of that mattered as long as my wife waited safely at home.
My heart clenched.
I’d failed her so thoroughly. Had lost all control, so overwhelmed was I with ardor, corpses had dug from the ground by the dozens. An appreciated accident, given how mortals had attacked us moments later, putting my little one in grave danger. But she was safe now. The man’s words confirmed as much, eliminating all doubt.
After another excruciating turn, Dekalon reached out his hand, palm up. “Your blade.”
My throat narrowed.
The mortal beside handed over his knife.
A knife Dekalon brought to my shaky fingers. Carved handle sitting in the clasp of his hand, he rested the glinting blade against my blistering thumb. He pushed down, severing through red skin, flesh, and muscle. When the blade embedded itself in my bone, he brought his other hand to the handle for leverage.
Crk.
My bone gave, and my thumb dropped onto the filthy stone beneath us, only to roll into the flames with a wet hiss.
