His flesh, though, rather than being dried and dead, was covered with tattoos of strange occult designs. They were beyond counting. Every inch of the man, every speck of skin, was covered in the dark designs.
For years, Gerald had heard the whispered descriptions. He knew without a doubt who this man had to be.
Behind him stood a tall woman with blond hair pulled back in a single braid. Although he had never seen one before, he knew by her hair, her tight red leather outfit, and the cold look in her icy blue eyes that she could be none other than one of the notorious Mord-Sith.
Behind the three, the sea of the nearly naked figures, their flesh smeared with ash or whitewash of some sort to make them look intimidating and frighteningly like ghost men, had come to a halt and now stood with grim expressions, watching from black painted eye sockets.
“I am Lord Arc,” the man in the dark robes said. When he held a tattooed hand out to the side, Gerald could see that even the palm was tattooed. “This is the spirit king, Emperor Sulachan.”
Gerald had never heard of Emperor Sulachan.
“What is it you want?” he heard himself ask.
The spirit king’s thin lips widened with the slightest hint of a smile. “We have come for your dead.”
The sound of his voice sent pain tingling along Gerald’s flesh.
My dead?” Gerald asked.
The spirit king’s thin smile grew wider and his eyes more dangerous. “Yes, your dead. We have use of them. They are to become our dead.”
With that, he lifted his arms. Far and near the muddy dirt a number of the graves began to churn almost as if it were a thick stew coming to a boil.
At the same time, the bluish, spiritlike glow of the spirit king changed to a disturbing greenish luminescence.
Gerald then saw an arm here and there push up through the ground. Hands of the dead beneath that ground wriggled and threw dirt aside. Feet emerged and kicked at the imprisoning soil.
The dead were escaping their graves.
The dirt churned and pitched in agitation, as if unwilling, or unable, to contain what was below. The whitish figures stood out of the way of the corpses twisting and pulling themselves up from the ground. It was as horrifying a sight as Gerald had ever seen, much less imagined.
Some of the corpses beginning to emerge were dark and desiccated. Their joints popped and snapped and cracked as they ripped at the shrouds cocooning them, tearing them away. Beneath the shrouds, the remnants of clothes had been stained with decay and then as the bodies dried and shriveled, the clothes bonded to the hardening flesh so that they were almost one.
Other bodies were slimy and bloated with decay, their clothes soaked through from the ooze coming from the breaks in their flesh. Their wet shrouds came apart like wet paper. In their struggle to pull themselves up through the ground, moldering flesh snagged and tore. Great wet chunks were pulled off them, leaving bones exposed.
Through splits in the flesh of some, Gerald could see gooey masses of maggots writhing beneath the blackened skin. Others of the dead were little more than skeletons with scraps and bits of sinew, flesh, and remnants of clothes holding most of the bones together. Some were so decayed that the effort of trying to emerge from the ground was too much and what was left of their bones crumbled in the attempt. Other graves were resting places where any traces left of the dead were beyond rising.
But a great many were sufficiently intact to emerge through the muddy ground. Many of those growled in anger at the ground trying to hold them back. They snarled with menace as they tore themselves away from the confinement of their graves, their eyes all glowing red. Gerald could only imagine that such a sinister crimson glow was the mark of an inner fire of occult powers animating them.
He stood frozen in fright as he watched the dead—the dead he had put to rest in the ground—leave their eternal rest and come back out of the ground. He recognized many of them, some by their faces, some by their clothes—remembered who they had been in life, anyway. Many were decomposed and decayed beyond recognition, so he didn’t know who they had once been.
Now they were something else other than what they once had been. Now, they were the dead husks of departed spirits. Those husks were now somehow returning to the world of life. Gerald didn’t think, though, that their spirits were returning as well. These seemed to be spiritless bodies driven by magic, not the power of the Grace and Creation.
For a moment, he thought that perhaps he had passed away and maybe he was actually dead, and he was at last seeing the mysteries of the underworld revealing themselves to him.
It was a fleeting thought, banished by the stench of the dead. He was all too alive. At least for the moment.
As the newly escaped corpses rose up they stood among the chalky figures, waiting along with them, staring with those terrible, glowing red eyes as the last of the dead were finally liberated from their graves. He noticed then that the dark painted eyes of the chalky figures resembled some of the dead, those who were little more than skeletal remains with their big dark eye sockets in their skulls, except the dead had a red glow back in those dark recesses.
“Lead the way,” Lord Arc said at last once the ground had stopped moving and all the corpses who could had emerged.
That’s who the man had said he was—Lord Arc. Gerald had never heard him called “Lord Arc” before. He had always heard that the leader of Fajin Province was “Bishop Hannis Arc.” It couldn’t be anyone else. It had to be the same man.
As frightened as Gerald was, he was not about to question the change of title. “The way, Lord Arc?” he asked. “What do you mean?”
“Why, the way to Insley, of course,” Lord Arc said. “I have yet to visit the place. Seeing as it is one of the towns in my empire, I thought it fitting that I visit it.”
Gerald blinked. “Your empire, Lord Arc?”
The man lifted an arm toward the southwest. “Yes. The D’Haran Empire. I am assuming rule of the D’Haran Empire.”
Gerald had heard some of the young men who had returned from the fighting talking about some of their experiences. They had said that since the terrible war with the Old World had ended and the world was now at peace, Richard Rahl was now the Lord Rahl ruling D’Hara. As far as Gerald knew, a Lord Rahl had always ruled D’Hara.
He swallowed, averting his eyes from the man. It was difficult for Gerald to look at the menacing tattooed occult designs covering his face and scalp, but more than that, it was unnerving to look into those terrible bloodred eyes.
“I deeply apologize for my ignorance, Lord Arc. I am but a humble gravedigger for a little town that is quite removed from the rest of D’Hara and we infrequently receive news here. I had always heard that Lord Rahl, Richard Rahl who led us in the war, was the leader of the D’Haran Empire.”
Lord Arc smiled indulgently. “Yes, that was once true, but the House of Rahl no longer rules D’Hara, or anything else for that matter. His flesh has no doubt already been eaten off his bones
