T Lain: The Living Dead

She pulled herself up to a sitting position and stared at the rain gusting in through the open window. The wind and cold water helped clear her head, and she swung her legs off the bed and stumbled back to the window. She marveled at the accomplishment.

The wind was refreshing, but was quickly chilling the room. She closed one shutter and reached for the other. Biksel would let her know when he needed back in.

A tiny ball of black feathers careened into her forehead beak-first. Mialee fell flat on her back. She stared at the ceiling-spinning once more, just like old times—and felt blood well up from the new gash in the center of her temple.

Mialee’s right hand balled into a fist. She was going to do the unthinkable. She was going to kill her familiar and sort out the consequences later. Why had Biksel attacked her?

I didn’t. What are you talking about?

“Mialee,” the shape squawked in a raspy, feminine bird-voice.

Mialee reached down and cupped the tiny, battered, avian body and lifted it to eye level. The elf woman blinked blood away from her eyes.

“Mialee,” the bird repeated. “Help.”

The raven, who probably weighed only a third as much as Biksel soaking wet, began shuddering uncontrollably.

“Hold on,” she said with soft urgency.

With one foot, she kicked at the pile of clothing and gear. Her wand with the red tip clattered to the floor, one of Mialee’s extra pieces of traveling security. Her spell components, she noticed gratefully, hadn’t been disturbed. Still holding the bird in two hands, she kicked again at the pile, scattering a fan of gold pieces across the floor.

Valuable as the gold was, it wasn’t what Mialee was looking for. She scattered clothing, packs, some rations, her rapier, and a long sword—had Devis been wearing a long sword?—across the wooden floorboards.

Healing potions weren’t there. She never traveled without a few.

Hound-Eye. She had no idea how long he’d been lurking under her stool before Devis nabbed him. She still suspected Devis of fixing that little encounter.

A pitiful warble escaped from the bird in Mialee’s hands. She had to do something or she’d never find out how the creature knew her name. She had a sick feeling she already knew. She had not chosen a raven to be her familiar by accident.

Catch up with me, Biksel. My potions were stolen. I’m taking her to that temple we passed on the way in, if I can find it.

Her?

Mialee raced down the stairs, leaped over the last few and skidded into the dark and mostly empty tavern. Gurgitt stood behind the bar wiping a glass.

“Morning, mistress elf,” the barkeep said cheerfully.

“Don’t you ever sleep, Gurgitt?” Mialee asked.

“Oh, now and then,” the fat man chuckled. “Can I be getting you something? Bandage? Towel?”

“Which way to the nearest cleric? I passed a temple on the way, but the streets are so crooked.”

“That’d be the Temple of the Protector, I imagine. It’s an elf temple, too.” Mialee’s eyes and the blood running down her face told Gurgitt she wasn’t in the mood for a travelogue, and he cleared his throat. “Anyway, you came in from the north, yes? You walked right past it. Head right out the door, there, and go north up the street, take a right, two soft lefts, another right, curve around the hangin’ tree to about three o’clock and head straight past Cam’s All Night Clothier’s. Temple’s got a big silver crescent on top.”

“Right,” Mialee said, utterly confused but hopeful that Biksel could find the place. They’d both seen the out-of-place structure, and the raven was not confined to these malodorous streets.

“Mistress elf?” Gurgitt called as she neared the doors.

“Yes?”

“Might I recommend Cam’s Clothier’s? Always open,” the barkeep said. “He’s my cousin’s sister’s boy.”

Mialee glanced down and noticed for the first time that she was still stark naked. A small warble came from the injured raven in her hands.

“No time,” she called over her shoulder.

She kicked the swinging doors open and stepped out onto the boardwalk that lined the muddy street. Mialee considered clothing purely utilitarian, anyway. The wild bears common in the northern forests didn’t care about how nattily their victims were attired, but if their victim had a pocket with a knife in it, they might take notice.

Of course, Mialee thought as her teeth began chattering, it’s early autumn and it’s raining. Staying warm was a perfectly acceptable utilitarian purpose.

Are you trying to freeze to death?

“N-n-no,” the woman stuttered as she ran, hoping the exertion would warm her. The few citizens of Dogmar awake at this hour gaped as the shivering elf passed.

I shall fly ahead and let them know you’re coming.

“D-d-do that,” Mialee said.

Devis had been in the Dogmar lockup for five hours. As the sun rose behind rainclouds, a little dim light filtered into his solitary cell. Unfortunately, the barred hole also let in a lot of moisture. Devis couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so slimy.

The only other things in the cell were a foul waste bucket that apparently had never been emptied and a few wooden bowls crusted with the remains of some gray dwarf-gruel. He himself had not been fed, but he doubted the food would be worth eating anyway.

The bard finished humming a small healing tune. He was no cleric, but his music could patch up the average dwarf-pummeling. As his wounds closed, he tried to remember a musical spell Gunnivan had sworn would shatter any stone. Something about “sound and silence, stillness in the stone…” That was it. He switched to Gunnivan’s old tune, the lyrics coming back naturally.

The locking mechanism on the door and the black bars on his open window were carved from a hard, igneous rock the locals called deknae. Dwarves mined it from the ancient lava tubes on the north side of Morsilath—the volcano had long been extinct. Deknae became as solid as steel when treated with the right amount of heat.

A stone was a stone. Devis sang softly and imagined shattering deknae.

“Shaddup!” a deep voice boomed from one of the other cells. The voice belonged to an unseen half-orc. A cacophony of other voices shouted out support for either Devis’s song or the silence of the jailhouse.

Devis continued his tune, blocking out the little arguments and petty exchanges that flew back and forth across the cells between the pro-music and anti-music factions. He didn’t really expect the spell to open the lock on his first try, but he made the attempt anyway.

The arguments and chatter ceased abruptly as the door to the dungeon squealed open above them. Devis lowered his song to a subvocalization, keeping the energy of the magic going but without giving away what he was doing to the guards he heard stumbling down the stone steps. From the sound of the approaching guards, Devis could tell they were carrying a third person—a person not moving under his own power, if the sound of two dragged feet thumping against the steps was any indication. Devis held the magic ready.

The guards stopped, to Devis’s surprise, right outside his cell. The stocky dwarves had an elf propped up between them, and the slender figure’s bare, blond hair hung in his face as the man’s head lolled over to one side. The style of his battered leather armor looked positively antique and bore savage gouges that looked to the bard like claw marks from a very large dog, or maybe a wolf. The leather armor was spattered with dark swaths—probably blood—and the pair of scabbards hitched to the elf’s weapon belt hung empty. One of the elf’s guards left the unconscious man with his partner, then stepped forward to unlock the barred door.