“Thank you.”

“No trouble. Plenty of raw materials around here. Stand up! Do you remember your lessons?”

Wakim stands.

“Which ones?”

“Temporal fugue. To make time follow the mind, not the body.”

“Yes.”

“And killing?”

“Yes.”

“And combining the two?”

“Yes.”

Anubis stands, a full head taller than Wakim, whose new body is well over two yards in length.

“Then show me!”

“Let the music cease!” he cries. “Let the one who in life was called Dargoth come before me!”

The dead stop dancing. They stand without moving and their eyes never blink. There is silence for several seconds, unbroken by word, footfall, breathing.

Then Dargoth moves among the standing dead, advancing through shadow, through torchlight. Wakim stands straighter when he sees him, for the muscles of his back, his shoulders, his stomach tighten.

A metal band the color of copper crosses Dargoth’s head, covers his cheekbones, vanishes beneath his gray-grizzled chin. A latitudinal band passes above his brows, over his temples, meets at the back of his skull. His eyes are wide, the sclera yellow and the irises red. His lower jaw makes a constant chewing motion as he rolls forward, and his teeth are long shadows. His head sways from side to side upon its twenty inches of neck. His shoulders are three feet in width, giving him the appearance of an inverted triangle, for his sides taper sharply to meet with his segmented chassis, which begins where the flesh stops. His wheels turn slowly, the left rear one squeaking with each revolution. His arms hang a full four and a half feet, so that his fingertips barely brush the floor. Four short, sharp metal legs are folded upward along his flat sides. The razors come erect on his back, fall again, as he moves. The eight-foot whip that is his tail uncoils behind him as he comes to a halt before the throne.