A Different Kind of Deadly (14 page)

"By the Gods," I gasped.

"What is it, Marv?"

"Leo... I think the Eyes can bring Undead back
to life."

19: Jiki's
Lament

"It s-seems they found
Razitar,"
Jiki commented lightly, shifting
the lantern above her workstation.

"You still keep that elf around?"
Diana asked, glancing at her chest cavity, which was now hinged
open. It was luck that enabled Jiki to do repairs in this fashion;
if she had to break the Doll open then Marvin would be torn apart
in a similar manner due to the symbiotic nature of their
Contract.

The Rusalka scowled deeply at the cracks that
had formed on the insides of Diana's joints, with many rusting from
years of foregone maintenance. 

"Blame s-s-sentimentality," she stuttered. "It
was c-common, where I'm from, for women to keep tokens of their old
pas-s-sions."

"Tokens I understand," Diana joked, "but you
take it a step further by keeping the man altogether."

Jiki paused from her labor to crane her
dripping face over the Doll, plain in its displeasure.

"Marvin is not Inval."

Diana blinked. It took a moment to make the
connection between their lighthearted banter to this sudden
statement -which sounded a lot more like an accusation in the
Doll's ears.

"I know that."

"Do you?" Jiki grabbed a wrench from her
toolbox, swiveling back to the problem area. "S-seems pretty
obvious from the look on your face when he is-s-sn't
watching."

"And what would that look be?"

"Dis-s-sappointment." Jiki cranked a bolt
tight. "Res-sentment, too. S-still a child, Diana. Hating men for
being who they are and not what you want them to be."

Diana tried to summon her anger, but found it
a futile attempt. Any ire she could muster was immediately
redirected at herself.

"That isn't true," she denied. Jiki saw right
through this feeble rejection. She didn't look at Diana, but she
made certain that the Doll could see her eyebrow raised in all its
skeptical glory.

"Where Razitar is c-c-concerned," Jiki
continued, "There is only rage now. It s-sustains me, and binds my
s-spirit to the Moor."

"You never did tell me what happened between
the two of you... beyond the obvious," said Diana, motioning to
Jiki's undead state. "How in the world did you get involved with a
Rûnalde'qar?"

Jiki didn't mind the question on the surface,
but Diana felt a tremor beneath her clammy fingers as she continued
reinforcing the mechanisms that made up her body. It was as
deceiving as a hurricane lurking beneath a stagnant pool; the
furious emotion acting as the Rusalka's reason for
existence.

"A c-common tale, at the
time," she began. "I lived in the northern plains with my tribe,
but during the
Feshoun
Urah
, the trading fes-s-stival during the
autumnal equinox, s-slavers raided our c-camp."

"Slavers in the northern plains? I didn't
realize you had them there."

"We don't," she replied
flatly. "The Feshoun Urah takes place on the outskirts of the
Howling Desert, where we meet with our desert-dwelling brother and
s-s-sister c-clans. Isoviel s-s-started its infamous priestess
c-candidacy that year. I was among the first of those
honorably
s-selected for
training."

Isoviel, despite being a beacon of culture and
civility on the surface, was a place not so different from the Moor
of Souls. Cruelty was administered in near-imperceptible doses upon
those with few means, like poison slowly killing its weary
victims.

While Diana knew little about the nuances of
its culture, she did know that it was a theocratic society built
upon the Goddess Korosuth. At the heart of power was the High
Priestess. While she was to remain impartial in nearly every way,
the four Orchids, her handmaidens, acted as the true expression of
power in Isoviel.

Despite elves never dying of old age, the High
Priestesses had a habit of falling to all sorts of fatal tragedies,
resulting in the increasing need for replacements.

Priestess candidates were highly respected,
but Diana couldn't determine whether it was due to the divine
aspect of their position, or out of pity. There was a saying in
Isoviel that it was better to be born an animal for slaughter than
to be a priestess potential. While Diana could never determine the
conditions that would warrant such an extreme phrase, it was
universally understood that it was there for a reason.

"I s-s-survived on s-skills I learned in the
plains," said Jiki. "Razitar aided me more than once. In c-childish
youth, I believed his flirtations c-came from love." She sighed -it
was the sound of a woman gargling underwater.

"He was playing with your
feelings?"

"He was too s-systematic for that," Jiki
corrected her. "Razitar needed knowledge exclusive to priestesses
in order to further his res-search. And he benefited from my
influence in the higher cas-s-stes... until he became a
Rûnalde'qar," she finished simply. "Eventually my harping
exc-ceeded my usefulness. He s-strangled me to death at an oasis,
and dumped my c-corpse at the Pit in Nethermountain."

"So how did you wind up in
Krisenburg?"

"I wasn't a Rusalka initially," she explained.
"The necromancers animated me in a number of fashions, until I was
too rotten to be useful. Spirit-based undead s-s-seldom form
quickly. It took me decades to get my bearings. I visited
Nethermountain often in those days," she mused, closing Diana back
up again. "Imagine my s-s-surprise when Razitar, eyes freshly
plucked from his head, fell into the Pit. Just like that, my rage,
which had been fueling me all that time, finally found its
s-s-source."

Jiki's was a complicated expression, a smile
made terrifying by the murder in her bloodshot eyes. Despite her
pleasant manner, a Rusalka was a vindictive and evil spirit; Diana
took it as a silent reminder to never get on her bad
side.

"But he was dead." Jiki closed her eyes,
slamming a clenched fist on her work station. "He had the nerve to
let himself get killed before I could repay the favor. S-so I took
his body, just so I c-c-could s-stew over it. Hatred keeps me
young, after all. Without his c-carcass I would've faded into that
pesky white tunnel c-c-centuries ago."

"It's amazing what a grudge can do for a
woman," Diana muttered, eliciting a bubbly laugh from her
friend.

"My hatred pales to yours, Diana," she beamed,
helping her sit up. Jiki handed Diana a metal hauberk to try on. "I
c-c-can't imagine the things you'd do to K-Koronos if you ever got
your hands on him."

"I doubt there are punishments worse than
anything a demon could whip up."

"
Oh
, I'm s-s-sure you'll
try."

"You know me so well, Jiki." Diana fastened
the hauberk shut. "And everything fits perfectly, as
usual."

"It helps that your s-size never
c-c-changes."

"So what'll it cost me?"

"Your life."

Diana took an immediate step back, grabbing a
wrench as her nearest weapon. Jiki snorted at the
response.

"As in: c-come back alive, Diana," she
clarified. If it were possible for a Doll to look sheepish, then
Diana did at that moment, rubbing her arm awkwardly. "Leo already
told me what kind of mess you're in. C-consider making a fool out
of K-Koronos payment enough."

"SAND WHALES! THERE ARE SAND WHALES,
MARVIN!"

Leo's unmistakable voice boomed throughout the
cavern. Diana and Jiki exchanged bewildered stares, rushing up the
perimeter of the room to see what all the fuss was about. The women
caught snippets of an absurd conversation about paraplegic donkeys
and a haunted mineshaft until Uhh's droning voice queued them in on
the real matter.

"
Ssspirits arrre unique. Borrrn to siiiingular purrrpose. Eyes
arre, Eyes arrrrre... Not bound to sssource material. Can brrrring
life to any medium.
"

Seconds of silence trickled by. On instinct,
all eyes centered on Marvin. He gaped into the glass of Razitar's
coffin.

"By the Gods."

"What is it, Marv?"

"Leo..." His next words came with the
reverence of a man who had stumbled upon a miracle. "I think the
Eyes can bring Undead back to life."

20: Brave
Failure

"What do you mean
by that?"

Diana rushed across the platform, grabbing me
so hard by the shoulders that I felt her fingers denting the
pauldrons on either side.

"Marvin?" Red flecks danced in her irises like
flying embers. "What do you mean by they can bring Undead back to
life?"

I shook free of her grip, not by force, but by
the simple action of taking a step back. Diana snapped back to her
senses and released me from her lethal hold; all eyes were now on
me.

"Thinking that the Eyes were a power source
was too simplistic," I began explaining. I raised my palms to the
group, straining the unspoken point that this was all theory based
upon what few leads we had. "It's like a reservoir and a channel
all in one; the Eyes can animate -or amplify- anything they've been
inserted to. Theoretically, they should be able to resurrect
someone who already died."

"Resurrecting the dead is
one thing, Marvin," Leo cautioned. This was the beginning of an
often-held debate in Nethermount: the semantics of life, death, and
everything in between. "If you want to be technical about it,
necromancers resurrect the dead all the time, but it's a different
state of being,
which is why we call
them
undead
and
not
re-lifed
or
some crap like that."

I recognized the circular argument; Leo took
his profession too seriously to let it drop, so I decided to end it
before Diana had to get involved.

"The bottom line is that the Eyes are an
extremely powerful artifact," I said. "They're the reservoir,
channel, and catalyst all in one. Razitar was born blind; the Eyes
changed his state of being so he could see."

Leo grumbled, but he couldn't refute that
statement. The Eyes could recreate the person in possession of
them.

"One problem." Diana folded her arms. "The
Eyes were torn straight out of his head. The magic in them
overwhelmed Razitar's system and killed him outright. He was a
powerful mage, the kind that could take out the vanguard of an army
if he wanted. Something managed to get close enough to pluck them
out with surgical precision in a matter of seconds."

I turned around and knocked my head against
the glass.

"Diana, don't we have enough enemies to worry
about?"