He ran after Edgar’s mob and found three more dead guards. One of Edgar’s men lay dead as well. Kelley kept running, gripping the sword hilt firmly. He didn’t want any part of the violence, but he was determined to be ready.

A dozen steps from the Stone chamber and-

– an explosion.

Fire belched from the chamber, scorched bodies flying out, tumbling against the stone walls like dice.

The dungeon shook. The stone floor came up and smacked Kelley in the face, his sword clattering away, ringing in his ears, dust and screams and the smell of burnt fresh. He blinked his eyes, tried to see. Smoke filled the hall, crumpled blackened bodies, clothes still aflame.

Kelley forced himself to his feet, then shook his head and picked up his sword. He staggered into the stone chamber.

Roderick stood tall and straight in the center of the large room, a semicircle of blackened bodies in front of him. Edgar stood ten feet from Roderick, his face half bloody and charred, anger and pain alive in his one good eye. He lifted his sword, yelled, and charged the astrologer.

Roderick stretched out a hand, harsh words flying from his mouth. Jagged blue bolts left his fingers and slammed into Edgar’s body. He shook and twitched as the blue lightning coursed through his body. His eyeballs popped. Bile boiled from his mouth.

Roderick released him, and Edgar collapsed into a smoking pile.

Kelley blinked at the scene, mouth agape. Oh. My. God.

Roderick poked at Edgar’s body with a toe, satisfying himself that the man was gone. “Society do-gooders. I’d expected to see them long before now, I must admit. Fools.”

Roderick looked up at Kelley, spotted the sword in his hand. “I appreciate your coming to my rescue, Kelley, but as you can see, I’ve handled the situation.”

“Um… okay.”

Roderick went from body to body, examining each one. “Help me get these corpses into a pile, will you, Kelley? They’re a bit crispy, but they’ll make for an interesting experiment when we zombie-fy the next batch.”

Three months passed like an eye blink. Even after the success with the bird, Roderick insisted on more odd experiments.

Kelley let himself go numb. He plodded through his daily routine with Roderick, adjusting lenses, lugging corpses, finding corners of the dungeon to fill with writhing zombies until they could be burned or hacked apart by castle guards. For about a week, Roderick called upon Kelley’s skills as an alchemist to concoct a series of potions. It was hoped injecting the corpses with these potions might promote various effects when they were exposed to the stone’s rays, but the astrologer soon grew tired of this avenue of experimentation.

They tried animals for a while. The dungeons echoed with the sound of fluttering wings as zombie pigeons filled the air, until their wings decayed and their feathers fell out and they could no longer stay aloft. The pigeons then scooted along the floor, flapping skeletal wings and going nowhere.

Zombie goats tried to butt Kelley, but there was no passion in it. They’d simply put their horns against Kelley’s leg and lean into him without zeal.

Zombie chickens, zombie pigs, zombie ducks, zombie fish, zombie cats. One incident with a zombie bear that left two guards dead.

The pathetic sight of a zombie puppy made Kelley weep openly, and he was forced to retire to the White Tower for the rest of the day, where he drained a jug of wine. Maybe breaking down like that was good. Maybe it showed he yet retained some shred of humanity. Or maybe he was just that much closer to madness.

On his way into the dungeon the next morning, Kelley met Roderick on his way out. The astrologer carried an armload of diagrams and parchments. He looked happy and excited.

“Just in time, Kelley. Follow me.”

“What’s going on?” Kelley asked.

“No more cranking those lenses by hand, my good man. I think you’ll be impressed. Come see.”

Kelley followed the astrologer out of the castle to St. Vitus Cathedral. Halfway there he guessed where they were going. It had been a long time since Kelley had first encountered Edgar and seen the underground river in the caves beneath the cathedral. He tried to act surprised when Roderick led him down and through the vault.

Where there had been a ragged hole knocked into the wall, there was now a proper archway. The stonemasons had done their jobs. The tunnel beyond that was smoother and wider. When they reached the river, Kelley observed a row of wooden posts with thick rope strung between for safety.

“As you can see, we’ve diverted this underground river to open up the chamber beyond,” Roderick explained. “We’ve cleared a number of areas for different purposes, but what I want to show you is just up ahead. Be careful going down the ladder.”

The ladder had now been anchored more securely, and Kelley followed Roderick down to the trickle of a stream where the underground river had once flowed freely. Flickering lamps hung from hooks, illuminating the path-a flagstone walkway that now paralleled the water all the way into the main chamber with the waterwheel.

Kelley noticed that the trench had been deepened to allow a greater flow of water to the wheel. The wheel wasn’t turning at the moment. Workers were busy installing a larger version of the apparatus from the dungeon, with more lenses, gears, levers, shafts-all of the astrologer’s bright playthings. The money and man hours already put into the project must have been staggering. Kelley could only guess.

Roderick was showing off, gesturing grandly at the wheel. He dove into a tedious and protracted explanation of the machine’s workings, the colossal efforts needed to divert the river and expand the chamber, the exact calculations to place the reflecting mirrors. Kelley let the information wash over him, the technical details becoming white noise in his ears.

He belched and tasted last night’s wine.

Kelley realized he was killing himself. He’d fallen into a deep depression; drank himself to sleep every night and ate barely enough to sustain himself. For his health and his sanity, Kelley had to escape this place. As the astrologer droned on, Kelley thought how he could do it.

Kelley felt confident the spell on his ass-brand had been broken when Edgar had been killed, so there was no magical restraint on him now. But security in and around the castle was tighter than ever. People who knew the secrets of the castle dungeons-people like Kelley-were especially kept under lock and key. The emperor didn’t want tales of the walking dead to spread throughout the city. The peasants were already wary enough of the strange goings-on at court, with rumors of alchemists and magicians. Turning lead into gold was one thing, but trespassing against the laws of God and nature was something else entirely.

He considered the tunnels. When Kelley had first encountered Edgar, the man had taken him through a twisting tunnel that had let out in the woods beyond the castle. It had been months, but could Kelley perhaps find that same passage, use it to escape? He looked about the chamber and spotted a number of caves leading off in various directions. He’d probably get lost, and anyway, there was an armed man at every entrance.

Never mind. He would escape or die trying. Kelley would form some kind of plan, and he would leave.

Kelley spent the rest of the day hauling items from Roderick’s antechamber near the dungeon down to a workspace beneath the cathedral. There were some delicate instruments that needed careful handling, and the astrologer didn’t trust the common laborers to take proper care.

That night Kelley lay awake in the White Tower. He’d already written the day’s events into his journal, but he did not crawl into a wine jug as usual. Saving himself was his new purpose. That he might not deserve saving didn’t enter the equation. He’d earn it later.