"Truly, it was nothing."

"Modesty does not sit well on you, bard."

Harkon had to smile. "It is not my natural habit."

"How long have you been in Cortton?"

The change of subject caught Harkon off guard. He smiled to hide it. "I came only recently, a day ago."

"The innkeeper says you were here for some weeks, then left after the dead began to walk. You knew what the town was like, how dangerous it was. Why did you come back?"

"I am a bard. I sing of great deeds, or great tragedies. I could spend my life singing other people's ballads, but the best songs, the ones that make a reputation, are those you write yourself."

"So you came back for a song," Konrad said.

"Yes."

"Is that worth risking your life?"

"Yes."

Konrad shook his head. "You sell your life cheaply, Lukas." He turned and clattered down the stairs.

Harkon watched him go, thoughtful. He had planned to make this a great game, to destroy everyone Konrad loved before he took him. It was part of the reason for the undead plague. Now, perhaps he should simply take the man and leave the others to clean up the mess he had made. Yet, if Ambrose suspected Harkon of being what he truly was, he could not leave Ambrose alive.

They had to die, all of them, as he had originally planned. Perhaps just quicker. It wouldn't be as much fun, but then, occasionally business had to come before pleasure.

TWENTY-FOUR

Blaine lay on the snowy street. His long yellow hair spilled out around his face like pale water. His cloak was bunched underneath his body, the white fur black with soaked blood. One leg had been bent at a painful angle, trapped under his body. Blood had poured from his mouth and nose, painting the lower half of his face black.

Elaine knelt by his lifeless body. The key to the door had been on the attic floor. It had glinted up at her from the patch of moonlight. The deadman had dropped it while killing Blaine. How she would have gotten outside without the key, Elaine didn't know.

Now, she sat by his body, watching his blood leak into the fur of his cloak. A line of blood trickled from the fur to snake through the snow like a dark river trailing the finger of a god. Elaine screamed and tore at the snow, scattering it. The blood trickled down to pool in the frozen street. There was nothing she could do to stop it.

Or maybe there was something. She had seen Sil-vanus raise the dead, felt him do it. Could she do it now?

Elaine reached out and touched his face. The skin was still warm. He was barely dead, so close to being alive. Could she bring him back? Jonathan had told stories of sorcerers that raised zombies. If she did it wrong, would Blaine come back as a walking corpse? That was worse than death, but Elaine had to try. She would wonder forever if she didn't.

She gazed at Elaine's wide, staring eyes, looking at the sky but seeing nothing. Snowflakes fell on his upturned face. They melted on his eyelashes, making tiny dots of moisture on his cheeks, like tears.

Elaine took a deep breath and tried to gather what she had learned from Silvanus, tried to imagine how to raise her brother back to life. It wasn't like healing a wound, was it?

A sound behind her made her whirl, half-falling into the snow. Two zombies stood at the mouth of the nearest cross street. One wove back and forth as if drunk. It took a step forward and legs collapsed. When it tried to stand, one leg slid out of its tunic and lay twitching on the ground. The zombie balanced on the remaining leg as if this had happened before.

A puff of snow fell from the opposite roof. She looked up and found a man-shape silhouetted against the moonlight. It leapt downward, almost seeming to float, hands and legs wide as if for balance. It landed with a thump on the snow and scuttled backward into the deeper shadows that hugged the houses.

The thing seemed almost to glow with a white leprous light, the tint of night-growing fungi. It crouched in the shadows. It looked like a naked man, but wasn't. It raised its face and looked at her. Its eyes glowed like black fire, sparking with an eternal flame that had nothing to do with moonlight.

It opened its mouth and hissed.

Elaine rose slowly to her feet. At the end of the street, the dead were gathering, but just as the other zombies had given way before the man that had killed Blaine, so they waited on this crouching thing.

Elaine gripped the key in her hand. Would it let her get to the door? She glanced down at Blaine. He was dead. He'd died to save her. She couldn't leave him like this. She couldn't.

The thing gave a bounding leap and landed on the other side of Elaine's body. Elaine froze, staring down at it. It had been a man once, a man of medium height with brown hair. An ordinary man. It wasn't ordinary anymore; it was bestial.

It grabbed Elaine's arm. Elaine stomped her foot at it as you would at a bad dog. It growled low in its throat and leapt straight at her. She had time to put her arms up to protect her face and neck, but then it was on top of her. Teeth tore into her sleeve, worrying it like a dog with a bone. Elaine screamed.

There was a last tug at her sleeve, and the thing sat back. She could feel its weight shift as it settled on its haunches. The weight pinned her legs, but nothing else happened.

Elaine lay there, waiting for the teeth to tear into her flesh, but they didn't. Minutes passed with her lying on the frozen ground. Snow fell in soft, downy flakes, and that was all. Finally, she lowered her arms just enough to peek at the monster.

She found herself staring into a pair of black eyes. Those eyes looked at her not as a man but as an intelligent dog would. It was not the blank stare of the undead, or at least no sort of undead she knew of. She almost asked it what it wanted, as she had the woman, but there was no one behind those eyes to answer the question. At least, not in words.

But it wanted something or it would have killed her by now. The zombie that had killed Blaine had wanted her blood. What did this one want?

It crept off of her, slowly, moving down her legs hand over hand. It scuttled backward to Elaine's body, grabbed his tunic, and began to lift the corpse over its shoulder.

She sat up, hand reaching outward. "No."

It growled at her, low and deep. Lips curled back from teeth too sharp to be human.

Elaine froze, unsure what to do. It was warning her off. It wanted Elaine's body, but that it could not have. If she could find Silvanus, he could tell her how to raise Blaine to life. If she lost the body, Blaine was truly gone.

"You can't have him." She forced her voice to be gentle, soft, as if she talked to a wild animal. "Please, don't take him."

It gave a growling shout. The dead at the end of the street began shuffling toward them. Whatever power had held them at bay was gone. The creature had called them.

It flung Blaine over its shoulder in one quick movement. Elaine crawled forward, hand outstretched, not sure what she was reaching for, the body, or the monster.

"Please, don't."

It rose to a crouch. Elaine's hands trailed the ground, his hair a golden swash over the creature's back.

Elaine stood reaching for him. The creature sprang forward, moving in a series of leaps that carried it down the street in great bounds.

"Blaine, please, no." She ran after them, but couldn't catch up. A sound brought her whirling to face the street. The dead were a solid wall limping toward the her. They were only a few steps away from the door. If she was cut off from it, they would drink her blood. She didn't want to die, not like that.

Elaine ran for the door. The zombies hesitated, confused by the fact that she was running toward them, not away. She pushed open the portal, and the dead surged forward. They understood what a door meant.