The Haunted Lands: Book II - Undead

by Richard Lee Byers

  Tsagoth sprang at her, all four hands poised to snatch and rend. She waited until the last instant, then abandoned her pretence of sluggishness and thrust the point of her sword at his chest.

  She knew the ruse had fooled him when he failed to defend himself in time. The blade plunged into his heart.

  He kept clawing at her, but for a moment, the shock of the injury made his efforts clumsy, and except for a scratch down the side of her face, she was unharmed. She tore her sword free and slashed open his belly. Guts came sliding out.

  He plunged his talons into her shoulder and nearly tore her arm off. It wasn’t her sword arm, but it might be next time, or he might manage something even worse, because his wounds were no longer slowing him.

  She had to finish this exchange quickly. One sword couldn’t parry four sets of talons for long. She dodged out of his way, swung the blade high, and sheared into his luminous scarlet eyes. Then she broke apart into bats, localizing the injury of her mangled shoulder in one crippled, expendable specimen.

  The bats flew in the general direction of the Keep of Sorrows, the weak one trailing behind the others. She made sure their wings rustled audibly.

  Tsagoth peered after her. Two red gleams appeared above his muzzle as his eyes reformed. Tammith could only hope they couldn’t yet see as well as before, and that the desire to catch her and hurt her had pushed every other thought out of his head.

  He vanished and instantly reappeared in her path, hands raised to rip the bats out of the air. He didn’t realize that by shifting through space as he had, he’d placed himself directly in front of one of the squid-things that still showed signs of animation. Now, if the giant would only react!

  It did. Trailing filthy tatters of mummy wrappings, a gigantic tentacle rose and slammed down on top of the blood fiend’s head, smashing him to the ground. Then it coiled around him, picked him up, and squeezed. Bones cracked and their jagged ends jabbed through his scaly hide.

  Ready to dodge, Tammith waited to see if the leviathan would strike at her, too, but it didn’t. A scattered swarm of bats evidently wasn’t as provocative a target as a nine-foot-tall undead demon.

  She wasn’t certain that even the squid-thing could destroy Tsagoth, but she was confident he wouldn’t pursue her any time soon. As she swirled upward, she pondered one of the questions her adversary had posed: Where, indeed, could she go now?

  Situated at a juncture of secondary roads, Zolum was a humdrum farmer’s market of a town. As far as Dmitra could recall, she’d never visited the place before, and she felt none the poorer for it.

  But at the moment, it possessed two attractions. Even for battle-weary legions, it was only a few days’ march east of the Keep of Sorrows, and it was still standing. No wave of blue flame had obliterated it, nor had any earthquake knocked it down. So the council’s army had crowded in, compelling the burghers to billet soldiers who ate their larders bare.

  As Zolum was second-rate, so too was the hall of its autharch with its flickering oil lamps, plain oak floor, and simple cloth banners, devoid of gems or magical enhancements. In other circumstances, some of Dmitra’s fellow dignitaries might have sneered at the chamber’s provincial appointments, or groused about a lack of luxuries. Not now, though. Everyone had more important things to think about.

  Which was not to suggest that everyone was frightened or downcast. His nimbus of flame burning brightly, Iphegor Nath looked excited, and Malark smiled as if life were merely a play staged for his diversion, and the plot had just taken an amusing turn.

  A soldier led Aoth Fezim and helped him to a chair. The captain wore a dark bandage wrapped around his eyes.

  It was a pity about his blinding. He was a good officer. Still, he couldn’t command the Griffon Legion as he was.

  The most interesting thing about him at that moment was that he was an anomaly. The blue fire had injured but not killed him, and since the zulkirs needed a better understanding of that enigmatic force, Dmitra had a mind to vivisect him and see what could be learned. Although it could wait until he was in one place and his legion in another. Supposedly, the men liked him, so why distress them and perhaps undermine their morale when a modicum of tact could avoid it?

  The autharch kept a little brass gong beside his seat at the big round table, presumably to command everyone’s attention and silence, and Dmitra clanged it. The assembly fell silent, and the others turned to look at her. “Your Omnipotences,” she said, “Your Omniscience, Saers, and Captains. Not long ago, we believed ourselves on the brink of defeat. But fate intervened, and now we have another chance.”

  Samas Kul snorted. Although no one had set out food in the hall, he had grease on his full, ruddy lips and a half-eaten leg of duck in his blubbery hand. “Another chance. Is that what we’re calling it?”

  Dmitra smiled. “What would you call it?”

  “Considering that we have reports of whole cities and fiefs burned or melted away, of the land itself tortured into new shapes, I’d call it a disaster.”

  “That,” said Iphegor, “is because you don’t understand what’s happening.” He raked the company with the gaze of his lambent orange eyes. “What you take to be a calamity is actually an occasion for great rejoicing and great resolve. Kossuth has always promised that one day the multiverse would catch fire, and that much of it would perish. It’s our task to make sure it’s the debased and polluted portions that burn, so that we’ll dwell in a purer, nobler world thereafter.”

  “Nonsense,” Dimon said. The tharchion of Tyraturos had even fairer skin than most Mulans, and blue veins snaked like rivers across his shaven crown. He was a priest of Bane, god of darkness, as well as a soldier, and wore the black gauntlet emblematic of his order.

  Iphegor pivoted to glare at him. “What did you say?”

  “I said you’re talking nonsense. This blue stuff isn’t really fire, and your god and his prophecies had nothing to do with its coming. It’s here because Shar and Cyric killed Mystra. We know that much even if we know precious little more, so you might as well stop trying to convince us that the crisis means we ought to exalt your faith above all others.”

  “You see only the surface of things,” Iphegor replied. “Look deeper.”

  “That’s always good advice,” Dmitra said, hoping to avert an argument between the two clerics, “whatever god one follows. We need to weigh our options and choose the one that will leave us in the strongest position when the disturbances end.”

  “Assuming they ever do,” Lallara said.

  “They will,” Dmitra said, trying her best to sound certain of it. “The question is, what shall we do in the meantime?”

  “Make peace,” Lauzoril said.

  “No!” someone exclaimed. Turning, Dmitra saw that it was Bareris Anskuld. She wondered briefly why he’d remained on the other end of the room from Aoth. They generally sat together if they both attended a council, and it seemed odd that he wouldn’t be at his comrade’s side in the moment of his misfortune.

  Prim and clerkish though he was, Lauzoril was also a zulkir, and unaccustomed to being interrupted by his inferiors. He gave Bareris a flinty stare. “Another such outburst and I’ll feed you to your own damn griffons.”

  With a visible effort, Bareris clamped down on his emotions. “Master, I apologize.”

  “As is proper,” Lallara said. “But I might have produced an outburst myself, if you hadn’t beaten me to it.”

  “I hate Szass Tam as much as any of you,” Lauzoril said. “But the truth is, we’ve all been fighting for ten years, with neither side able to gain and keep the upper hand. As a result, Thay was on its way to ruin even before the blue fires came. Now the realm truly stands on the verge of annihilation. All of us who possess true power should work together to salvage what we can. Otherwise, there may be nothing left for anyone to rule.”

  “Are you talking about reestablishing the council as it once was?” Zola Sethrakt asked, her voice cracking. She was a youthful-looking woman, comely
in an affected, angular sort of way, who never went anywhere without a profusion of bone and jet ornaments swinging from her neck and sliding on her arms. As a result, she could scarcely breathe without clattering. “I’m the zulkir of Necromancy now!”

  “Rest assured,” Lauzoril said, “you will always enjoy a place of high honor.”

  “Every order has the right to elect its own zulkir, and mine chose me!” Zola screeched.

  “The dregs of your order elected you,” Lallara snapped, “after the lich led all the competent necromancers into the north. So I suggest you pay careful heed to whatever your seniors on the council advise, and graciously accept any decision this body may happen to reach. Otherwise, if we do invite Szass Tam back, and he resents you spending the last ten years in his chair, you can contend with his displeasure without any support from the rest of us.”

  Nevron scowled. It made his face almost as forbidding as the tattooed demonic visages visible on his neck and the backs of his hands. “Then you agree with Lauzoril?”

  “No,” Lallara said, “at least, not yet. But I concede that for once, his idea is worth discussing.”

  “So do I,” Samas said.

  “I would, too,” Dmitra said, “if—”

  “If you didn’t know Szass Tam better than the rest of us,” Lallara said. “By all the fiends in all the Hells, will we ever have a conversation without you harping on that same observation?”

  “I apologize if it’s become tiresome,” Dmitra said, “but I repeat it because it’s both pertinent and true. I don’t claim I truly understand Szass Tam. None of us do. But I have some sense of the way his thoughts run, and I assure you, it’s a waste of time even to consider making peace. Having begun this war, he’ll see it through to the end, no matter the cost. If he indicated otherwise, it would be a ruse.”

  “We could play that game, too,” Samas said. “Pretend we believe he desires peace, exploit his talents to help manage the current crisis, then turn on him later.”

  “Remember how this all started,” Nevron said. “The assassinations and other maneuvers that nearly won him his regency without even needing to fight a war, and then tell me you’re confident you could play as cleverly. I’m not sure I could. I’d rather have the bastard as my open enemy raising armies against me in the north than give him free run of the south.”

  “Well said, Your Omnipotence,” Iphegor said. “The Lord of Flames wants us to fight, and cauterize the vileness that is Szass Tam from the face of Faerûn.”

  Dimon made a sour face. “As I’ve already explained, His Omniscience is mistaken if he truly believes that his deity, who is, to speak frankly, merely the prince of the fire elementals, has any sort of special role or significance in the current situation. But though his premises are faulty, his conclusion is valid. Speaking as a hierophant of the Black Hand, I too advise relentless aggression until we lay our enemy low, for such is the creed of Bane. It’s how men achieve glory in this life and the one that follows.”

  “It’s how Red Wizards commonly conduct themselves, also,” Dmitra said, “and it’s an approach that’s served me well. So I oppose the idea of sending any sort of emissary to Szass Tam.”

  Samas heaved a sigh. “I suppose I do, too. He’d probably just change our envoys into ghosts and zombies and add them to his legions.”

  One by one, the remaining zulkirs rejected the notion of suing for peace. Zola looked relieved when it became clear how the informal vote was leaning.

  At the end of it all, Lauzoril pursed his pale, thin lips. “So be it, then. Perhaps it was a bad idea. But surely we all agree that, even if we’re resolved to remain at war, we can’t prosecute it aggressively at the moment. According to Goodman Springhill’s spies, Szass Tam has retreated north with the greater part of his army, and we should retire to our own strongholds, to rebuild our strength and determine how to overcome the current impediment to our spellcasting.”

  Bareris lifted his hand. “If Your Omnipotence has finished, may I speak to that point?”

  “You’re here to offer your opinion,” Dmitra said, “so long as you do it courteously.”

  “Thank you, Mistress,” said the bard. “I’m well aware that I lack the wisdom of a zulkir, a tharchion, or a high priest. I’m just a junior officer. But I have learned a little about war during my years of service, and it seems to me that now is the perfect time to launch a new campaign against Szass Tam.”

  Lauzoril shook his head. “How can that be, when our forces are crippled?”

  “Because, Master, such things are relative, and the lich is more crippled. For the moment, wizardry has lost a measure of its power. That means, in the battles to come, men-at-arms and priestly magic will play a decisive role, and who has more of both? You do—you zulkirs who control the populous south and the sea trade that enables you to hire sellswords from abroad. Whereas the majority of Szass Tam’s troops are undead, constrained to serve through sorcery, and when the blue fires came, he lost the use of a good many of them.”

  Malark nodded. “My agents confirm it.”

  “So I respectfully suggest you press your advantage,” Bareris said, “before Szass Tam figures out how to neutralize it.”

  Nevron grunted. “I see the sense in what you recommend, but the world is in turmoil. I doubt we understand a tenth part of what’s happening. We certainly don’t know how to extinguish or turn back the blue fires. Do you think an army can march and fight under such conditions?”

  “Yes,” Bareris said, “and why shouldn’t it try? What do you have to lose? The blue fire is no more likely to consume a legion on the march than one hiding in its barracks. It can spring up anywhere, with no warning.”

  Malark fingered the birthmark on his chin. “The disruptions have damaged my network of spotters and scouts. But some of my agents are still on the job, and even with impaired magic, I’m optimistic that they can relay information quickly enough for it to be of use. If a wave of blue flame is flowing across the countryside, perhaps I can warn an army in the field in time for it to get out of the way.”

  “That’s encouraging,” Dmitra said. “Having heard the advice of our tharchions and their subordinates, I now believe we ought to fight the northerners as aggressively as we can. What do the rest of you think?”

  Samas shook his head. It made his jowls and chins wobble. “I don’t know …”

  Lallara sneered. “No one is requiring you to go yourself.”

  The fat man seemed to swell like a toad and his blotchy face bloomed even redder. “Are you questioning my courage? I fought at the Keep of Sorrows, the same as you!”

  “Yes, you did,” Dmitra said, “and none of us doubts the bravery or loyalty of any of the zulkirs.” It was, of course, a preposterous statement, at least with regard to their alleged fidelity, but it might serve to steer the discussion back into productive channels. “I understand your misgivings. Truth be told, I share them. But I also know we’re fighting for our lives against a powerful, brilliant adversary, and we must take advantage of every opportunity.”

  Samas snorted. “I seem to remember you saying much the same thing before we marched a critical portion of our strength into Szass Tam’s trap. But all right. Let’s see if we can finally bring this stupid war to an end.”

  One by one, the other zulkirs concurred. “So—specifically, what will be our strategy?” Lauzoril asked. “Do we take back the Keep of Sorrows?”

  The silver stud in her nostril gleaming in the lamplight, Nymia Focar cleared her throat. “Master, that wouldn’t be my advice. Reclaiming the fortress would require a lengthy siege, if it can be done at all, and we want to accomplish something quickly, before Szass Tam regains the full measure of his arcane powers.”

  “What would that something be?” Nevron asked. “Is it time to assault High Thay itself?”

  Dimon shook his head. “No, Your Omnipotence, I wouldn’t recommend that, either. It would be even more difficult and take longer than getting back into the keep. So my advice
is to ignore the fortress but reclaim the rest of Lapendrar. It should be easy enough with Hezass Nymar and his legions dead. Next, retake your lost territories in northern Eltabbar, and conquer as much of Delhumide as you can. Once you do that, you’ll have the Thaymount surrounded, cut off from the Keep of Sorrows and Surthay and Gauros as well.”

  “I like that,” Dmitra remarked. Then, from the corner of her eye, she glimpsed an unfamiliar figure standing just inside the door. Startled, she jerked around in that direction.

  Bareris looked where everyone else was looking, then cried out in astonishment.

  Tammith had somehow slipped past a locked door without an assembly of the greatest wizards in the world noticing until she was fully inside. Tammith, clad in the somber mail and trappings of a champion or captain of Szass Tam’s host, her pretty face, though dark in life, now whiter than white in contrast to all that black. Tammith, whom he’d destroyed ten years ago, or so he’d always believed.

  Iphegor Nath jumped up from his chair, overturning it to bang against the floor. He raised his hand and scarlet flame burst from it.

  Bareris leaped up, too, without knowing what he intended, or why.

  Tammith dropped to her knees. “I come as a peaceful supplicant!”

  That was enough to persuade Iphegor to hesitate. He had plenty of reason to despise and distrust the undead, but not quite enough to lash out when one humbled herself before him. Even now, such creatures were considered to have their legitimate place in the proper Thayan order of things. Most of the vampires and dread warriors in the realm served Szass Tam, but thanks to the labors of Zola Sethrakt and her subordinates, the lords of the south commanded some as well.

  “It appears,” said Dmitra Flass, “that everyone can safely be seated.” She fixed her gaze on Tammith. “I see what you are, blood-drinker. But who are you?”

  “My name is Tammith Iltazyarra. Until Szass Tam and his lieutenants lost control of me and I deserted, I commanded the Silent Company. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”