Prophet of the Dead botg-5, Page 4

  But it did reveal the Fortress of the Half-Demon, visible as a dark nub on the northern horizon, and the sight helped to keep him trudging onward. In the castle, he’d surely find dry clothes, provisions, and a room where he could build a fire and rest out of the snow and the frigid, whistling wind for as long as it took to recover his strength.

  Then he’d run to Immilmar as fast as his legs and his rage could carry him, and if the Three truly cared about justice, he’d arrive in time to catch Mario Bez and his sellswords.

  Numb feet sliding, he labored to the top of the next rise. Half buried in snow, two more dark objects lay in the hollow before him.

  For a moment, in his weariness, he failed to recognize them as anything more noteworthy than the brush, evergreens, and other stunted trees dotting the snow. Then a long, mottled limb, some patches of hide charred black and others glistening raw with a few feathers still clinging to them, rose sluggishly and flopped back down.

  Startled, Vandar jumped and leveled the crimson spear. But neither the creature with the burned wing nor what he now recognized to be a man lying beside it moved any farther.

  By the rose and scythe, was Vandar looking at Jet and Aoth Fezim? How had they vanished from the Fortress only to reappear out here, and what disaster had befallen them?

  Vandar hurried down the slope. When it noticed his approach, the winged creature struggled to its feet, snow spilling from its back and flanks as it did. For an instant, the berserker still wasn’t sure he was looking at Jet. The griffon was too badly burned over too much of his body, and his halting, palsied movements in no way reflected the strength and speed of the beast that had accompanied Vandar and his brothers on the march north. But the smoldering blood-red eyes were still the same.

  “What happened?” Vandar asked.

  “Bez,” Jet rasped.

  “I suspected as much. He attacked the lodge too. I may be the only one left.” Vandar pivoted. “Is Aoth …?” He faltered when he saw that the burned man half hidden in snow wasn’t the Thayan after all but rather Dai Shan. Somehow, despite the lodge’s efforts at secrecy, every contender for the wild griffons had found his way north, not that the Shou had any reason to be glad he’d undertaken the journey.

  “Captain Fezim’s alive,” said Jet, “somewhere. I can feel him across our link. But he’s busy, and it could make the danger worse if I distract him. We’ll talk when he’s safe. Or if that imp”-the griffon stabbed his beak in Dai Shan’s direction-“wakes up first, maybe he can tell me where Aoth is.”

  “I understand you want to find him,” Vandar said, “but once you do, you need to carry both of us back to Immilmar. It’s our best hope of reaching Bez before he claims his prize and disappears into the south.”

  Jet laughed. The sound had always been so bloodcurdlingly harsh that it had taken Vandar a while to realize what it was, but now it held a bitter note that was new.

  “I’ve always known that humans are blind and stupid,” the griffon said, “but you take the prize. Open your eyes and look.”

  With a grunt, he extended his wing as far as he evidently could, which was about halfway. It bent in places and at angles where it shouldn’t, and in two spots, jagged bone stuck out through the skin.

  “I can’t fly anybody anyplace,” the griffon said.

  “Curse it!” Vandar said. “But all right. I was going to trek back to Immilmar on foot, and if I still have to, I will. But first, I’m going to double back to the Fortress. You might want to follow and lay up there for the time being. Good luck.”

  Vandar turned away and took five crunching steps in the snow. Then Jet said, “Berserker.”

  Vandar looked around. “Yes?”

  “I don’t know if you think of us of the Brotherhood as your rivals or your comrades. You humans have a way of complicating everything that should be simple. If we’re your rivals, then leave. But if we’re your friends …” The familiar faltered in the manner of a proud creature unaccustomed to needing to ask for anything. “I told you I can’t fly. Truly, I’m so weak, I can barely stand, and without my feathers, I’m nearly frozen through. If you go, I’ll die, and the merchant too, not that he matters.”

  Inside, Vandar flinched. “The warriors of the lodge were my brothers. The Halruaans murdered them.”

  Jet nodded. “Go get your revenge, then.” He lowered himself back down into the snow.

  Vandar tried to turn away once more. Plainly, avenging the lodge was the honorable course. Even Jet realized it and had just acknowledged as much.

  And yet …

  Jet was a griffon, the lodge’s totem in the flesh.

  And believing himself justified, Vandar had turned his back on the outlanders once already, and it was possible that if he’d chosen otherwise, his brothers would still be alive.

  Moreover, if he focused his attention inward, he could feel the wordless nudging of the fey spear and sword, strangely warm in his hand and on his hip, urging him on toward the possibility of battle, vengeance, and, perhaps still, even glory. The effect was subtle because it merely reinforced his own innate desires. Yet it was an influence nonetheless, and though he prized the virtues of the weapons as much as ever, he was learning to question the inclinations of the strange sentience that had tangled itself with his own like ivy wrapped around a post.

  He heaved a sigh. “I have flint and steel, and there’s wood about. We can make a fire and find something to eat, and then, when you’re up to it, we’ll hike back to the fortress together.”

  Aoth leveled his spear, and even that simple action made his neck, shoulders, and back spasm. He rattled off words of command, and the shriveled mage in the nightcap and nightshirt did the same, meanwhile sketching isosceles triangles with his wand. The ebony rod left streaks of amber phosphorescence in the air.

  Aoth finished first, only because he’d opted for a simpler spell. Darts of blue light hurtled from the spear and pierced the undead wizard’s scrawny torso. Lord So-Remas cried out and flailed, his casting ruined short of completion.

  Running footsteps pounded. All but certain he was moving too slowly to keep the two onrushing guards from driving their weapons into his body, Aoth blundered around to face them.

  He was right. If he’d had to protect himself, he would have been too late. But the orc had picked up a small table, and now he heaved it at the soldiers. The improvised missile bashed one guard and made him stumble. Startled, his comrade balked too.

  Aoth pulled his short, heavy sword from its scabbard and tossed it to the orc, who caught it deftly by the hilt. It wasn’t much to hold off two armored spearmen, but it was better than nothing, and handing it off was all Aoth had time to do. He had to use his magic-or what was left of it-to fight the most dangerous foe.

  He wrenched himself back toward the doorway to the bedchamber and found the Red Wizard had already shaken off the effects of the darts of light. Worse, he was already chanting a new incantation, one that made a sickly green glow flower in the depths of his sunken eyes and branch out through the veins in his temples to his hairless crown.

  Aoth started a spell of his own, but this time, So-Remas finished first. He flicked the ebony wand in an arc that ended with it pointing straight at his opponent. Shedding its clattering pieces, the lanceboard table leaped into the air and flew at Aoth.

  He tried to dodge and gasped at the resulting stab of agony. The table slammed into him and knocked him onto the floor, and that double jolt was just as excruciating.

  He curled up and tucked his head as, prompted by So-Remas’s wand, more objects flew at him. Struggling to keep to the proper cadence despite the punishment, Aoth gritted out another spell and jabbed with his spear on the final syllable.

  A red spark shot from the point to strike at the undead mage’s feet. There, it exploded into a fiery blast that knocked the wizard backward and filled the doorway with a hissing sheet of flame.

  Gasping, Aoth hoped that was the end of it, and for a heartbeat, it appeared to be. He was abo
ut to turn and see how the orc was faring when So-Remas strode back through the fire. Either he was innately impervious to it, or he carried some talisman that made him so.

  The undead noble flicked his wand up and down. The animated game table hammered Aoth like a boot stamping repeatedly on an insect.

  Aoth struggled to think of a counterstroke he might conceivably accomplish despite the ongoing torment and his depleted powers. The drawn curtains with the shuttered windows behind them caught his eye.

  The orc had said that on rare occasions, he’d seen his master when the sun was out. But that wasn’t the same as saying that he’d seen the undead creature in the sunlight, and Aoth was going to gamble that the thrall had meant the former but not the latter, and that there was a reason for it.

  He thrust his spear at a window and shouted a word of command. Raw force leaped from the weapon to tear down the drapes, shatter the greenish panes behind them, and smash open the shutters on the other side of those.

  A shaft of daylight shined in and caught So-Remas in its center. The undead shrieked and burned, his desiccated skin and the withered flesh inside charring like paper, the purifying power of the sun achieving what Aoth’s burst of arcane fire hadn’t.

  Aoth dredged up the concentration for a little more magic. It helped that, now that So-Remas had lost his focus, the lanceboard table had stopped battering him. Aoth cast more glowing darts, and they and the sunlight together were enough. The Red Wizard pitched forward onto his face. By now, he was mostly bare bone, which burned to coals and then to ash like the rest of him.

  It occurred to Aoth that if Cera were here, she’d say her god had looked out for him. That in turn made him remember that, as far as he knew, she and Jhesrhi were still trapped in the dark maze. Somehow, he had to get them out!

  But he couldn’t think about that now. Aoth twisted around and saw that the spearmen had backed the orc against a wall.

  Fortunately, they’d turned their backs on Aoth to do it. With his teeth gritted, he crawled close enough to drive his spear up between one soldier’s legs.

  The gelded man whimpered and, knees buckling, collapsed. The other warrior’s head jerked in his wounded comrade’s direction. Risking everything on an all-out attack, the orc lunged and slashed. The remaining guard fell backward with blood pumping from a gaping wound in his neck.

  Aoth looked around to make sure there were no other immediate threats. He noticed the orc doing the same.

  “Thanks,” Aoth gasped.

  The slave shrugged. “I had to fight, or they would have tortured me to death for helping you. It wouldn’t have mattered that you forced me.” He leered a crooked leer. “Although there was more to it. I wanted to kill them.”

  “You need to break open the secret panel. Fast, before more guards show up. I’d do it, but I’m not sure I can stand back up.”

  The orc attacked So-Remas’s hiding place. The enchanted sword cracked and crunched through the wood in what Aoth knew to be a matter of moments even though it felt like a cruelly long time to him.

  The thrall handed him a silver bottle. “This is the stuff.”

  Clumsy with pain and eagerness, Aoth fumbled out the stopper and took a long pull of the tasteless, lukewarm elixir inside. He felt the vertebrae in his neck shift, but without discomfort. In fact, all the cramping, throbbing soreness was fading away from his neck all the way down to his rump. He let out a long sigh of relief.

  He would have been happy to sit and savor his liberation from torment. But he and the orc weren’t out of danger yet, and although he’d recovered his physical strength, his mystical power would return only with rest. He jammed the stopper back in the bottle, scrambled up, and hurried to So-Remas’s hiding place.

  “What else have we got?” he murmured to himself.

  Fortunately, there was something, a long, thin, golden-hilted poniard of an athame. He snatched the ritual dagger from its sheath, and knowledge of its attributes poured into his mind. So-Remas had bound spells in it just as Aoth himself was accustomed to store magic in his spear.

  He judged that it would do. In fact, it should do nicely. When more of So-Remas’s soldiers charged into the room, he met them with a nasty smile and a shriek of focused, bone-shattering sound.

  The ambush started well. Sarshethrian, his newfound human and stag-man allies, and his shadowy slaves had caught the undead wayfarers by surprise and slaughtered several in the first few moments. Then, however, the creatures of the Eminence of Araunt started fighting back and maneuvering through the darkness, until Jhesrhi suddenly caught a whiff of something putrid.

  She spun around. Somehow, two withered ghouls with luminous green eyes had gotten behind her, and now they were rushing in with needle fangs bared and jagged claws poised to rake and tear.

  She felt a surge of loathing, less at the foulness of the undead creatures or the danger they represented-although that was there too-than at the prospect of being touched by anything even remotely manlike. She made a slashing motion with her staff and hurled a fan-shaped blaze of flame into the ghouls’ rotten, vaguely canine faces. They fell down, burning and thrashing.

  Bells chimed. She looked to her flank and found one of the stag men there. He’d been scrambling to intercept the ghouls, and her flare had nearly hit him too. Maybe he was urging her to be more careful, although because she didn’t understand the language of the bells, and the expression on a stag warrior’s long, narrow face with its brown eyes and dusting of down never changed, it was impossible to tell for certain.

  Cera cried, “Keeper! Keeper!” throughout the fight. She’d been invoking her god all along, but now there was a shrill note of desperation in her voice.

  Jhesrhi turned. A misty, faintly luminous figure covered in gashes and puncture wounds was floating toward the sunlady. A flying mace made of golden light bashed at the ghost, and brandishing the identically shaped weapon of metal and wood in her hand, Cera sent flares of radiance stabbing through it. But the attacks didn’t stop it.

  A shredded face oozing into visibility on the wavering blur that was its head, the ghost grinned and plunged an incorporeal hand into Cera’s shoulder. She cried out and reeled backward.

  Jhesrhi hurled more flame from her brazen staff. The flare caught the phantom and burned it from existence.

  Which didn’t mean she’d acted soon enough. She glanced around to make sure nothing was about to attack her, then rushed to her friend.

  To her surprise, Cera recoiled. “You’re on fire!” the sunlady gasped.

  Jhesrhi realized it was so. She must have cloaked herself in flame without realizing it at the same moment she used it to strike at the ghouls.

  With a little irrational twinge of reluctance, she pulled the fire back inside herself, and the chilly gloom of the deathways became oppressive once more. But that didn’t matter. Cera did.

  “Are you all right?” Jhesrhi asked.

  Cera took a breath. “I will be,” she said, pain in her voice. “Once we’re out of here. Is the battle over?”

  Jhesrhi looked around and decided that it was. All the undead travelers made of solid flesh were down, and the wraiths and such were gone, incinerated, exorcised, or otherwise expunged from existence. Sarshethrian’s servants, murky forms that resembled rats, leeches, centipedes, and beetles to the extent they resembled anything, were slinking away down various passages, while, lengths of shadow lashing around him, the fiend himself repeatedly kicked a fallen skeletal swordsman.

  Jhesrhi recognized the phenomenon from her years on battlefields across northeastern Faerun. The fight had ended too quickly to suit Sarshethrian. He was still full of aggression and was expending the spiteful energy as best he could.

  Still, there was something comical if not contemptible about watching a self-styled archdevil comporting himself like a child in the throes of a tantrum. It reminded her of Tchazzar’s excesses, and she made a little spitting sound, softly enough that she didn’t expect him to hear.

  He di
d, though, and, his halo of shadow drawing in its ragged tendrils and groping and coiling in a less agitated fashion, left off abusing the dead thing to turn and give her a sardonic smile. “I take it you think I’ve forgotten my dignity.”

  Jhesrhi shrugged. “Do you care?”

  “Yes. I told you, I want the three of us to be friends. And when you hear the rest of the story I started earlier, perhaps you’ll be more inclined to forgive my … excitement.”

  I doubt it, Jhesrhi thought, but there was no point to saying it aloud and annoying him any further. She and Cera still needed his good will.

  “I told you how I freed Lod the bone naga from his endless servitude.” Sarshethrian sat down atop a granite urn in the midst of several mangled, reeking corpses like that was the most natural place in the world to take his ease. Maybe for him it was. “And how his personal liberation inspired him to dream bigger dreams.”

  “Yes,” Jhesrhi said. Finally, she thought, they were coming to it. Sarshethrian was about to explain exactly who was attacking Rashemen.

  “Lod envisioned a great fraternity of the undead,” Sarshethrian said. “It would find those who were thralls and set them free. It would take those condemned to mindlessness and lift them into sentience. Ultimately, it would set the undead above the living to hunt wherever, however, and whomever they wished, without fear of retaliation.”

  “And you agreed to help him accomplish all that as well,” Cera said, an edge of disgust in her voice.

  “Yes, of course,” Sarshethrian said. “To that end, we invented more new wizardry, unearthed ancient secrets, and I taught him to traverse the deathways. My home, you see, was a web of secret paths that would enable him to go virtually anywhere to recruit new followers, instruct old ones, and reach any living realm he wished to assail, even one on the far side of an ocean.”