Suddenly, I saw a curious shimmer in the air in front of the altar. It was like sunlight reflected off a waterfall, constantly changing and shifting. After a few moments of random gyrating, it flew together, resolving into a heavily-built human skeleton. Organs, muscles and skin appeared, rolling onto the bones like a series of window blinds crashing down. Finally, an oily-skinned barbarian stood before the altar, tottering dizzily.
“Bathrobes on the left,” said the vicar distastefully. The barbarian dutifully took one from a pile and made to cover his wobbling barbarian bits. “Collection plate just to the side. Donations are comPLETEly optional.” It was impressive how the vicar was able to insert an entire subtext into one syllable.
“I know him,” whispered Meryl, as we watched the barbarian don his bathrobe with deliberate casualness, to the absolute disinterest of nearby female adventurers. “I pulled his spine out.”
“I told you,” I replied. “People don’t die anymore. We go back to the same body because we’re undead, but people who’re properly alive have to come to a church to get a new one. I thought he might have been having me on, until I saw it for myself.”
“Who might have been having you on?”
“Him.” I pointed.
The next resurrectee was, of course, Slippery John. He was hard to recognize without his black ensemble until his stupid little curly mustache burst forth onto his upper lip. He took a seat opposite his friends, two of which I recognized from among the warriors whose suicidal frontal assault had permitted Slippery John’s equally suicidal infiltration of Dreadgrave’s back door.
“Where’s the book?” whispered a dwarf out the corner of his stringy black beard, as the vicar resumed sermonizing. The dwarf was typically thick-set, and he was busily trying to re-braid his beard as he spoke.
“Ja, yoo’d better haff some good noos, thief,” hissed the barbarian, a big blonde bastard with an accent reminiscent of one of those snowy countries up north. “Dose vur damt expensive horses.”
“Book?” asked Slippery John, still woozy. “Oh yes! That thing.”
“Ja. Dreadgrave’s book. De whole reason ve chust had our spines pulled out by de valking dead?”
Meryl nudged me in the exposed ribs. “Why did you want to see this?”
“I want to talk to that Slippery John guy a bit more,” I hissed. “I want to know who hired him. They might know more about the Deleters than we do.”
“You’re not going to make this some kind of quest, are you? Why don’t we just forget about it, go and find some other nice evil overlord to work for . . . ”
I shook my head. “I’m going to find the Deleters. You can do whatever you like.”
“Don’t be silly. You need someone to keep your bits sewn on. So what happens after you find them? Revenge?”
“ . . . Possibly.”
“You hesitated. Promise me you’re not just looking for a way to kill yourself.”
I contemplated the ideal non-committal reply, before settling on “No.”
We were crouched behind the bench on which Slippery John’s three cohorts were sitting, so I carefully poked my head above the backrest to take a closer look at them. Sitting between the dwarf and the barbarian was a female warrior wearing ridiculously ornate spikey armor with tantalizingly large sections cut out of it.
There was something terribly odd about the woman. Not the armor—that was standard adventurer fashion. Many armor shops specialize in that sort of thing; as a teenager I had had an extensive collection of catalogues which I’d often read under the bedclothes late at night. No, what was odd was the way she sat: ramrod-stiff, legs together, hands clenched around the knees, never shifting her weight or fidgeting. Her face was fixed in an expression of mild concern, which she seemed to be directing at a wall.
“So where’s the book,” she said. I couldn’t place her accent, either. It was petulant and airy, possibly from one of the rich coastal kingdoms with all those infuriatingly nice beaches. I also couldn’t detect any trace of a question mark on a statement that was clearly hungry for one.
“Slippery John practically had it in Slippery John’s hands,” continued Slippery John enthusiastically. “Everything was going perfectly. Slippery John had skilfully avoided the mindless stares of the undead hordes and Dreadgrave was at Slippery John’s mercy. Then—” To his credit, he only paused for a second as he noticed me and Meryl behind his comrades. “Incidentally, if anyone tells you a different story to Slippery John’s at any point you should probably dismiss them as filthy liars.”
“Let’s just head back for the fortress,” sighed the dwarf.
“Er, actually, Slippery John was just getting to that. Fortress isn’t there anymore.”
“The place for chatting is outside!” yelled the vicar irritably, but it was futile. Every adventurer in the place had suddenly cocked an ear at Slippery John’s revelation.
“Yoo vot?” asked the barbarian, succinctly vocalizing the question on everyone’s mind.
“Some angels came along and rubbed it out. Good thing we don’t ever have to attempt that quest again, right?”
No one seemed to share Slippery John’s feelings. In an instant everyone was on their feet and yelling at each other at the tops of their voices.
“All that for nothing?!”
“How’re we supposed to get our armor back?!”
“Huh,” went the female warrior without emotion, apparently addressing an empty pew.
“Stop shouting!” shrieked the vicar. “This church is a place of quiet dignity and respect!”
“Anyway,” continued Slippery John quietly. Most of his former party were hotly complaining at each other so Meryl and I were the only ones paying attention to him as he began to slip off in his characteristic way. “Slippery John has to go buy some new black pants and hand in some quests over at Yawnbore, so perhaps Slippery John will get out of your way.”
Now was my chance. As he attempted to speed-walk past us without making eye contact I stretched my arm across his path and pulled him smartly into the shadows. “We need to talk,” I said.
“Ha ha!” he cried, smiling derangedly as I held him against the wall. “You fell for Slippery John’s cunning trap, undead slime! You have wantonly stepped onto holy ground, and are now utterly powerless!”
A pause. “No I’m not.”
“No, you’re not. Slippery John was banking on a bit of an outside chance, there.”
“What are the Deleters?”
“The angels? Saw them, did you? They fly around and they make things disappear.”
“Yes, we gathered that. I need more detail.”
“Hell, you know about as much as Slippery John does. They hang around in the dead world and only show up in the land of the living when they want to get rid of something. Slippery John saw them a few times clearing rocks out of the mountains north of Lolede. And whenever they delete a person, that person never comes back, not even to a church.”
“Is that right,” I said, rubbing my chin. Meryl was watching me with narrowed eyes.
“Can Slippery John go now?”
I adjusted my grip on his lapel. “Where do we find them?”
“Well, the last place anyone saw them was Dreadgrave’s fortress, but Slippery John doubts that that helps you much. You remember Dreadgrave’s fortress. The place where you used to live. That is, you, the individual standing directly in front of me with his back to the rest of the room.” His voice was gradually raising in volume, and he was staring meaningfully at something over our shoulders. “Slippery John isn’t surprised that you’d be a little upset with them, especially since they deleted all your fellow undead and everything. Slippery John says ‘fellow’ because YOU, THE PERSON SLIPPERY JOHN IS ADDRESSING, are an UNDEAD, who was until recently ONE OF THE UNDEAD GUARDS FROM DREADGRAVE’S FORTRESS, THE SAME PLACE THAT HAS BEEN GIVING US ALL A LOT OF TROUBLE LATELY!”
I was wondering what he was getting at, and why he was urgently jerking his head at me, u
ntil I felt something warm and oily close around my shoulder like a big meaty vise. I was gently but firmly spun around and found myself face to pectorals with that big bastard of a barbarian.
“Excoos me,” he said. “Didn’t yoo look after dat big pit vid all de rats?”
There were rather a lot of adventurers staring at us, now. The barbarian holding me had arms like sackfuls of angry melons. Things looked grim. But these were only mercenaries, after all, ranking on the intelligence scale somewhere between fish and gravel. “Not at all,” I tried. “You’re thinking of Jim. That guy was a dick.”
“Und didn’t yoo pull my spine out?”
“No, that was me,” said Meryl eagerly, getting between us. “I’ve been meaning to ask about your diet and exercise regimen, because you don’t usually see a spine come out so cleanly and in one piece. I was really impressed.”
“Oh. Tank yoo. I guess it comes dahn to plenty off protein und horsebahck riding.”
“I demand that you return to your seats or take this outside immediately!” came the voice of the vicar from somewhere behind the wall of muscle. “I will not have squabbling in the house of the Father!”
I coughed. “Could you let go?”
“No.”
The situation was becoming increasingly claustrophobic. I considered options. Surrender, perhaps, let them work off their frustrations on my undying, non-pain-feeling body, then get sewn back together later. But I could think of too many disquieting purposes they might find for my body parts before growing bored. The only other option was to hope that a distraction would come up within the next few seconds. That was an even worse plan, and no less so for the fact that it worked.
The hostile murmuring came to a sudden stop as the largest stained glass window shattered loudly and spectacularly and everyone reflexively ducked (except for the dwarves, who were way ahead). A heavy rock wrapped in flaming cloth bounced off the floor and embedded itself in the torso of an elf with poor reaction time.
There was one of those big, stodgy silences that follow a shock, punctuated by the tinkle of settling glass and the meaty thud of shards embedding themselves in flesh. From outside, we could hear choral singing.
“UGH,” exclaimed the vicar, reddening with frustration. He squared his shoulders and marched stiffly down the aisle, crunching glass savagely underfoot. “This is so TYPICAL.” He flung wide the main door, and the singing abruptly stopped.
I pulled a large chunk of glass out of my face with a dry chlock and tentatively peered outside. “Is that a catapult?”
Meryl poked her nose around the doorframe. “I think it’s a trebuchet, actually.”
“Well, excuse me. Siege weapons weren’t my department. I was mainly rat pit.” I looked around, but the barbarian wasn’t listening. All the adventurers were jostling for space around the doorway, trying to get a good view of the scene outside in case opportunities for questing came up.
There, a small group of extremely wholesome-looking young people in flowing white garments were standing around the trebuchet. Two blonde men were resetting the mechanism while a freckled girl with flowers in her hair was trying to get another missile lit.
“What the hell is this?!” barked the vicar furiously.
“Hi, Barry,” said the ringleader, a middle-aged woman in round spectacles, nervously gripping the trebuchet’s trigger rope.
“Don’t you ‘Hi, Barry’ me! You know full well this is the busy part of the day!”
“Forgive us for our trespass, but we, the Enlightened Church of the Earth Mother Youth Group, could not stand idly by anymore. All these misguided souls being resurrected with your false teachings and tainting the spiritual essences of the ether, well, we couldn’t have lived with ourselves a moment longer.” One of the youths dinged a small finger bell in response to some unspoken signal.
“Don’t talk such rot,” said Barry nastily. “You want the prime spot near Dreadgrave’s fortress like everyone else. The Emancipated Church of Mongbotty tried it yesterday, and those sun worshippers were at it the day before.” I glanced at him and noticed that he had produced a very large and very un-pious-looking crossbow.
“Your aura darkens, Barry. Your spirit rejects the falsehood of your words.”
“Oh, piss off.”
The woman pulled on the trebuchet rope with her heavily beringed fingers and another missile plunged into the church roof. The youths rang their finger-bells again. Most of the adventurers took this as the signal to start running away.
“Look,” said Slippery John, squeezing around Barry. “Slippery John would just like to be off and let you get on with it, if that’s all right. Not much point in hanging around now the fortress is gone, anyway.”
“See how your crude building welcomes the hand of the All-Mother,” sang the youth group leader, fluttering her fingers. “The womb of life envelops . . . what did he say?”
“What were you saying earlier?” said Barry, grabbing Slippery John’s collar as he attempted to sneak off. “What do you mean, it’s gone?”
“It’s been deleted,” said the surly dwarf from Slippery John’s party. “No more fortress, no more quest. No need for us to hang around here.”
“The deranged menace of Dreadgrave is vanquished!” said Slippery John in a suitably epic tone of voice. “The people of Greydoom Valley are liberated from his dark rule of oppression!”
Barry’s teeth were clenched so hard that I could almost hear his jaw creaking like an old wooden gate. “What wonderful news,” he said.
“The, er, children of the Earth Mother see now that there is room in her bountiful fields for all faiths,” said the woman as her acolytes began packing up the trebuchet. “So we’ll just be toddling off . . . oh.” One of her youths was whispering something in her ear.
“What?!” went Barry.
“Er. Juniper tells me that that last missile might have been—”
Her words were unexpectedly hyphenated by a dreadful earth-shaking boom. An extremely large chunk of Barry’s church flew off in several different directions. A great belch of oddly-colored flame unfolded into the air, and then, with a terrible sense of inevitability, what remained of the building toppled over and crumpled into ruination.
The silence became more and more awkward as it rolled on. One of the youths rang his finger bell uncertainly.
Barry dropped to his knees in the rubble. “Gone,” he said, quietly. “I’ve lost it.”
The youth group lady coughed. “Sorry.”
“I’ve lost it all,” he continued, burying his fingers in the powderized brickwork. “It was all I had. I spent all my money forcing Emmett out of this place. I’ve got nothing. And it’s all because of—”
His accusing finger stabbed at the air where the youth group had been, but they and the trebuchet had tactfully slipped away into the trees while Barry had let it all out. He looked around, and I met his gaze. His face was a terrifying thing to behold—and I’d been hanging around zombies for the last three months.
“You,” said Barry, getting slowly to his feet and taking up his crossbow again. The tone of his voice lowered dangerously as he decided he could vent his frustrations on me. “You’re one of them. Undead. Aren’t you! From the fortress!”
“What on earth makes you think that?” I said, quickly.
“You’re gray as ash and you’ve got no nose!”
The few remaining adventurers, remembering what had attracted their attention before the trebuchet incident, were gathering behind Barry the vicar. I coughed. “Yes, well, I have a condition. And I must say I find your prejudice against the physically disabled quite upsetting.”
“Heed not the lies that slither from the black tongue of Darkness,” boomed a familiar voice. “They are the prostitutes of the Adversary, who fell to their knees and drank deeply of the vile liquids that ooze from his grotesque member.”
Our friend the priest was standing at the back of the crowd, having reappeared at the first opportunity to make my life di
fficult. A long silence followed.
“Whoa,” said Meryl. “What doom fortress were you living in?”
TWO
“I’ll tell you what I want to know,” said Meryl, a little later. “I want to know where they found a big cage on wheels at such short notice.”
I was systematically pulling at the bars, looking for one that wasn’t completely rigid. “I can’t say that’s my biggest concern right now.”
“Struggle while you can, beast,” intoned the priest smugly. “Soon divine retribution will visit you!”
I head-butted the nearest bar, frustrated. “You’re in this cage as well, you know.”
“I have been nominated to deter your escape,” he replied, folding his arms. “The minions of demonkind are slippery with the foul butter of dreadful cows.”
I really couldn’t think of a response to that, so I went back to looking for a weak spot in the cage. Fat chance. Wherever Barry the vicar found his equipment, they clearly had good workmanship standards.
He had spent the last hour or so negotiating with the small group of adventurers who still cared enough to hang around. Desirous for vengeance they may have been, but most of their type wouldn’t even do their own washing-up unless you called it a “quest” and paid in cash. Finally he came back over and glared at us through the bars.
“I’ve been listening to some of the stories of what you used to get up to in that doom fortress.” His scowl of righteous indignation cranked up a few notches as he spoke. “Pollution. Playing God with life and death. Torture. Murder. Spines getting pulled out. Rats. It’s all so . . . untidy.” He spat the word like a sour apple.
“It is the LORD’s truth,” went the priest, glaring at me.
“But that I could have overlooked,” continued Barry. “This is the life that adventurers accept. They were the ones intruding and you were expected to retaliate, even if your methods were obscene.” He picked through his words slowly and carefully, trying not to let his anger explode. “No, it’s the innocent people of the county villages who must be avenged. The endless pillaging. Killing people. Setting fire to things. Raping—”
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