I heard footsteps slowly recede – one person walking normally, and four shuffling behind. Four wights pulled off the pile; four less bodies hiding Hezekiah and me.

The process continued: corpses reanimated in groups of four, then each group sent off under the guidance of a living person. The darkness around me began to brighten as the mass of bodies decreased. Soon everything above my level would be gone, leaving me at the top of the pile. At that point… things would get interesting.

Lightning crackled and the woman lying on my arm came to life. She pushed herself upward, planting her hands on my shoulder for support. As she crawled across me, her knee dug forcefully into my back; I clenched my jaw to avoid grunting in pain. That woman was the last of another group of four, and she was quickly marched off under some living lackey's leadership. How many active enemies did that leave in the room? I didn't know, and couldn't lift my head to look.

The next corpse reanimated was the woman with her face next to mine. I saw the transformation: one moment, she was blind and staring; then chuff, crackle, and jagged threads of blue light came lacing through her skin like bloated veins. Her eyes blinked once, lazily… she was staring right in my face. Then, twin pinpricks of fire erupted at the heart of her pupils, flaring outward until the entire surface of the eye blazed with flame. I could feel the heat on my cheeks.

She hissed directly at me and lifted one hand. The hand was sharp with newly grown claws.

Horror clutched at my heart, and I rolled away from the newborn wight, slipping out from under the few corpses that still weighed me down. The wight swiped her claws at me but missed; her hand slashed cleanly through the body beneath me, shredding the putrefied flesh. A fresh stink of rot and chemicals filled my nose, heady with nausea… but I continued my roll to the edge of the corpse-heap, sliding down the exterior like the side of a haystack. Even as I fell, I was grabbing for my sword, tugging to clear it from its sheath.

The bodies I brushed past slowed my fall, softening my impact on the floor. As soon as I landed, I scrambled to my feet and checked the opposition. Only two of the enemy squad remained, thank The Lady: a hobgoblin with its back to me and a drow, a dark elf, holding a bulbous scepter that glowed a sickly orange. The drow simply gaped, astonished at a corpse coming to life unaided. As for the hobgoblin, it turned to see what the drow was staring at… which only made my job easier, giving me a clear opening to hit the soft part of its throat. My rapier slashed out once, bit deep, and severed whatever hobgoblins have in place of a jugular. Its blood sprayed gushers over the pile of still-dead bodies.

Something roared within the pile. For a moment, I thought it was the wight who'd tried to rake me with her claws – I could see her struggling to escape from the corpses still lying on top of her. Then a huddle of lifeless bodies suddenly heaved onto the drow as Hezekiah rose from the mound, roaring a battle cry. The drow fell cursing to the floor, struggling to lift his scepter despite the weight of corpses pinning his arms. Before he could manage it, the scepter was snatched from his hand by Wheezle, the little gnome finally turning visible as he scrambled away with his prize.

For a moment, we all stood waiting: me with my blade embedded in the hobgoblin's neck, Hezekiah wobbling to keep his balance on top of the corpse-heap, and Wheezle catching his breath as he leaned against the wall. Then the wight wrenched herself free from the mound and threw herself at the drow, slamming down where he was still pinioned by bodies. The wight's own body prevented me from seeing what happened next; but the drow gave a wailing scream of terror that ended abruptly in a gurgle.

Clearly, Madame Wight was not affectionately disposed toward the man who woke her from her nap.

«Stop!» Wheezle shouted. Hezekiah and I weren't moving, so he must have been talking to the wight; and sure enough, she rose from her kill peacefully, licking blood off her claws with great satisfaction. She even took a moment to look my way and smile. The smile appeared friendly enough… if only her teeth didn't have points as sharp as spikes.

First things first, however – I ran to the door and pushed the button to close it. The last thing I wanted was a friend of the drow prancing back with four wights in tow, coming to investigate why someone screamed.

The door slid shut quietly. Seconds dripped by and nothing happened. At last I let my breath out with a relieved sigh.

«All right,» I said, «will someone please tell me what's going on?»

«I do not know all the answers, honored Cavendish,» Wheezle began, «but this scepter tells me many things.»

«The scepter talks?» Hezekiah asked with interest. He was still perched atop the corpse-heap, but he had lowered himself into a cross-legged sitting position where he seemed quite comfortable. «Uncle Toby once had a garden hoe that talked, but he sold it at the fall fair.»

«The scepter does not talk, honored Clueless, but its presence here explains much. My faction calls this weapon Klemt Ur't'haleem, which might be translated as Unveiler. Unveiler is the creation of… a certain god, whose name it is unwise to speak aloud. Many centuries ago, the scepter came into the hands of the Dustmen; by which I mean that a party of Dustmen freed it from its former owner, and gave that owner a prominent place in our factol's retinue of zombies.»

«So Unveiler belonged to the Dustmen and now it's here,» I said. «That tells us what the thieves were doing at the Mortuary this morning.»

«Indeed,» Wheezle nodded. «They must have used the exploding giant as a diversion while they crept inside and stole the scepter.»

«So what does this Unveiler do?» Hezekiah asked.

«It gives the user extraordinary powers to control the alchemical undead,» Wheezle replied. «It can even animate these pathetic corpses and fill them with energy; but for all that, it is still a despicable object. This poor creature…» He pointed to the wight, still greedily licking blood off her fingers. «She is out of touch with the cosmos. She cannot commune with the undead gods. Her death is a stifled, paltry thing.»

I couldn't see any stifled quality myself – she looked quite happy for a corpse. However, Wheezle was the expert in such matters, so I deferred to his judgment.

«If the scepter is evil,» Hezekiah said, «maybe we should break it.»

«My faction has tried,» Wheezle told him. «Alas, it is too powerful. The best we could do was hide it in the Mortuary until we found a way to unmake it.»

«And the thieves must have stolen it because they were sick of the high failure rate from their alchemy,» I said. «Probably those three wights we killed back at the Mortuary were the only ones they had actually managed to get moving. Unveiler let them power up this whole pile of discards.»

«That is a reasonable conclusion,» Wheezle nodded. «The enemy obviously has need of an army of undead servants.»

«As if we don't have enough headaches already,» I muttered. «Still, we have the scepter now; does that mean we can control the wights?»

«Any wights who see it in our possession will obey us,» Wheezle said. «We can turn them against their creators… as a temporary measure.»

«Why temporary?» I asked.

«These unfortunates must be freed,» the gnome replied. «We cannot leave them in their current condition. Yes, an army of wights might help us defeat our enemies, and I will reluctantly tolerate such an army until the task is accomplished. Once that is done, however, these souls must be released. The energy injection from this wand only lasts a few weeks – like throwing a few extra sticks of wood into a stove. Once that wood has been used, the wights begin to burn their own souls again. I will not be party to that.»