Bone Lord 4, стр. 34

“Do you think Anna-Lucielle’s Charm magic would help soothe his mind?” I asked.

“It probably would,” Elyse said.

“Excellent. I’ll bring her over here.”

“You mean the harpy will, I presume?”

“The Talon Express is a lot faster than a rowboat.”

“How will anyone there know the harpy is there to pick her up?”

“I was thinking of the same issue,” I said. “I have something new I’m itching to try.”

“If you keep fishing for my interest, I’ll stop listening, you know.”

“I’m going to make one of my zombies talk to her.”

Elyse couldn’t help but laugh at this prospect. “I thought the undead couldn’t talk? I’ve never heard a single one of your creatures utter anything even vaguely comprehensible.”

“If I don’t give it a shot, how will I ever know if it’s possible?”

“That’s quite true,” Elyse said. “And if you could get your undead minions to talk, it could prove to be rather useful in the future, for risk-free message delivery, for example. You could send ultimatums to armed enemies without risking the life of a living messenger.”

“You got it,” I said with a grin. “Here goes.”

This required me to do two things in quick succession: I sent Talon flying off toward the pirate ship Anna-Lucielle was on, and then I shot my mind, like a loosed crossbow bolt, into the heads of one of the zombies on the ship closest to hers.

Moving the zombies with as much ease as moving any of my limbs, down to the most intricate of motor functions, was simple for me at this stage, but talking was so different, it took me back to square one. I would have to think in detail about the mechanics of it all again.

But first, I had to get my zombie within earshot of her, and that meant getting on the same ship. A few of the pirates looked at the zombie in surprise when I sent it walking across the deck to grab a rope and a grappling hook. But I’d told Percy and the other pirates that they were not to interfere with the activities of any of my undead creatures, however strange they might seem, because their actions were an extension of my actions. So, they just stood and gaped.

Controlling the zombie’s hands and arms, I whirled the grappling hook around my head and flung it across the gap between ships. The zombie’s prodigious strength, far greater than that of even the burliest blacksmith, allowed it to easily toss the grappling hook up and over the neighboring ship’s mast. This gave the zombie enough swinging room to travel cleanly from the first ship to the second without getting close to the ocean.

Anna-Lucielle looked with increasing consternation at the undead creature as it approached her. I wondered if she could see me checking her out through the zombie’s yellow-green eyes.

“Uh, Vance?” she said uneasily. “Is that you? Are you in there?”

Now came the tricky part. I spoke, using my own voice, as I’d do for any other action I needed the zombie to complete. All that came out of the zombie’s mouth, though, was a garbled, phlegmy growl.

“Graargarrgh, grrr arrgh,” the zombie growled.

“It is you, right, Vance?” Anna-Lucielle said. “Or are these things growing brains? Vance, answer me; this is freaking me out.”

“Grargh graarghgragh, argh arrghh,” the zombie growled when I’d attempted to say, ‘Yeah, it’s me, damn it.’

I could make my undead do the most detailed fighting maneuvers, but this, what would seem the most basic thing… I needed to do something to let Anna-Lucielle know that it was me, so I thought fast. I reached out with the zombie’s hand, grabbed her perky left tit, and gave it a good squeeze.

“Hey!” She swatted the zombie’s hand away. After a moment of shock, a knowing grin broke across her face and she laughed.

“It is you in there, Vance, isn’t it?” she said. “But what is it that you’re trying to tell me?”

I found myself going through the layers of intuitive knowledge I had about language, especially how we speak. Forming coherent sentences or words—even syllables—was proving to be much harder than shooting an arrow through an enemy’s skull from a distance of a hundred yards, or dual-wielding a sword and a flail to fight off multiple opponents. Strangely enough, anyone could do the first thing, at least anyone who had half an ounce of brain more than the thickest dunce and the combat techniques required far more skill and coordination as a human. Why was this different for the zombies?

Ripping out tongues was a common enough punishment in Prand for perjurers or other such criminals who told damaging lies, and they sure lost the capacity to speak. I also knew that soldiers who were fond of smoking pipes developed diseases that affected their throats and their ability to speak and that soldiers who survived bad throat wounds often had trouble speaking clearly and intelligibly after such wounds had healed.

My zombies decayed a lot slower than normal, truly dead human corpses, but they still decayed. Perhaps the damage to their throats was enough to rule out speaking for the rest of their existence.

Were they then doomed to be dumb forever? Of course not, I thought right away. Speaking wasn’t the only way people communicated. I turned the zombie around and sent it running to the captain’s chambers.

“Vance, wait!” Anna-Lucielle called out after me. “I still don’t understand what you were trying to tell me.”

“Grarghh!” I yelled out over my shoulder.

Once in the captain’s cabin, I sat at the desk, dipped the captain’s quill in the inkwell, and scrawled out a note on a neat sheet of paper I found. I couldn’t speak, but of course, I could write; I’d made the zombies’ hands do the most intricate possible movements before, so why not this? The zombie’s motor functions were not as effective as my own, but I still managed to write a somewhat legible letter.

This is Vance. Could you come help us on my new warship? I need your Charm