The Haunted Lands: Book II - Undead

by Richard Lee Byers

  “Well, yes.”

  “No. I’ve never done such a thing. It doesn’t seem to be in my nature. Otherwise, I would have let you kill me back in Thazar Keep.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  He shook his head. “Does it even matter to you?”

  “I fought beside you in that chapterhouse, didn’t I, at some risk to myself. I’m harder to slay than a mortal, but not indestructible.”

  “Is that why you’re here? Are you waiting for me to thank you?”

  “No! I just wanted you to understand. When I pushed you away before … I told you, I want things to be easy. If you craved cherries but they made you sick, would it be easier to live under the cherry tree or a day’s ride away from it?”

  He sighed. “I understand, and you were right. I don’t know how you could tell, but I’m not the same Bareris you knew.” He thought of his attempt to control Aoth and what had come of it, and it seemed to him only the latest in an endless chain of failures and shameful acts.

  She glanced to the east, watchful for signs of dawn. “I may have been right,” she said, “but I now see that what I said wasn’t the whole truth. Because, while it’s painful to see you and talk to you, it’s another kind of torment to keep my distance, too.”

  His throat was dry, and he swallowed. “What’s the answer, then?”

  “We’re not the young sweethearts anymore, nor will we ever again be. Vampires can’t love anyone or anything. But I believe we share a common thirst for revenge, even now, at what feels like the end of the world.”

  “Yes.” Indeed, as he contemplated the bleak, fierce thing the necromancers had made of her, his anger was like a hot stone inside him.

  “Then it makes sense for us to stand together. Perhaps, if we try, we can learn to be easy with one another and esteem one another as comrades.”

  Comrades. It seemed like the bitterest word ever spoken, but he nodded, shook her hand when she offered it, and tried not to wince at the corpselike chill of her flesh.

  “If we’re to be friends,” he said, “then you must tell me something. How did you decide just by looking at me that I’d changed so completely? Do you have the power to peer into my soul?”

  She smiled. “Not so much. But when was the last time you looked at yourself in a mirror, or better still, caught a whiff of yourself? The boy I remember tried hard to look like a Mulan noble. You managed to keep yourself clean and your head shaved even growing up in the middle of a shantytown.”

  “I can’t imagine going back to shaving my scalp. Once you give it up, you realize it’s a lot of trouble.” But maybe he’d find a comb.

  Mirror dimly recalled that one of his companions had given him that name, but no longer understood why. In fact, he wasn’t even certain who they were. He couldn’t remember their names or their faces.

  That was because he was wearing away to nothing.

  Yet he knew he had to persevere, even if he’d entirely forgotten the reason. The sense of obligation endured.

  So he walked on through a void devoid of both light and darkness. Either would have defined it, and it rejected definition. He trudged until he forgot how it felt to have legs striding beneath him. With that memory forfeit, he melted into a formless point of view drifting onward, impelled by nothing more than the will to proceed.

  I’m almost gone, he thought. I’m not strong enough, and I’m not going to make it. But if that was true, so be it. Defeat couldn’t strip a man of his honor. Surrender could. Someone wise and kind had told him that, someone he’d loved like a second father. He could almost see the old man’s face.

  He suddenly realized he was thinking more clearly, and possessed limbs and a shape once again. Then a torch-lit hall sprang into existence around him, appearing from left to right as though a colossal artist had created it with a single stroke of his paintbrush. In the center of the floor was a huge round table with high-backed chairs, each seat inlaid with a name and coat of arms.

  Mirror realized that if he looked, he’d find his own true name and device. With luck, he might even recognize them. Then he glimpsed a towering figure from the corner of his eye. He pivoted, looked at it straight on, and realized he had something infinitely more important to discover.

  Half again as tall as Mirror himself, the figure was a golden statue of a handsome, smiling man brandishing a mace in one hand and cradling an orb in the other. Rubies studded the sculpted folds of his clothing. Mirror ran forward and threw himself to his knees before the sacred image.

  Warmth, fond as a mother’s touch, enfolded him. You found your way back, said a voice in his mind.

  Tears spilled from Mirror’s eyes. “Lord, I’m ashamed. I can’t remember your name.”

  And maybe you never will. It doesn’t matter. You’re still my true and faithful knight.

  Since coming to the Central Citadel, Aoth had visited the griffons’ aerie at least twice a day. He’d made a point of learning the way so he could walk there by himself, without needing a guide.

  Yet in his haste, he’d gone wrong. He should have reached Brightwing by now, but he hadn’t, and as he groped his way along a wall, his surroundings seemed completely unfamiliar.

  He opened his eyes, but had to close them again immediately. Despite his resolve to use them sparingly, he’d overtaxed them, and for the moment vision was unbearable and useless. He couldn’t even tell whether he was indoors or out.

  Somewhere nearby, somebody shouted, the noise echoing through the hollow stone spaces of the fortress. Aoth couldn’t quite make out the words. He wondered if the legionnaires he’d put to sleep had awakened. If so, maybe the manhunt had begun.

  I’m sorry, my friend, Aoth thought. I couldn’t even reach you to sit with you while you die.

  “Captain,” said a voice.

  Startled, Aoth whirled toward the sound and aimed his spear at it. On the verge of hurling fire from the point, he belatedly recognized Mirror, as much by the chill and intimation of sickness radiating from him as the hollow timbre of his speech.

  The ghost’s disquieting nature notwithstanding, he and Aoth had been comrades for ten years, and the war mage was loath to lash out at him without cause. But neither could he simply assume that Mirror, who generally functioned as an agent of the zulkirs, hadn’t come to kill or detain him. “What do you want?” he panted.

  “To help you,” Mirror said.

  Aoth hesitated. Then, scowling, he decided to take the ghost at his word. “Then take me to Brightwing. We may have to dodge legionnaires along the way. For some reason, Lauzoril wants to kill me. I think he had Brightwing poisoned so I couldn’t summon her to protect me.”

  “Your steed will have to wait. I need to help you now, while I still remember what to do.”

  “The way to help is to get me to Brightwing.”

  “I need to heal your eyes first.”

  Aoth felt a jolt of astonishment. “Can you do that?”

  “I think so. After Bareris betrayed our bonds of fellowship, I had to set things right. And I sensed that I could, if I could only remember more of who and what I was.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes, when I went into the emptiness. I remembered I was a knight pledged to a god, who blessed me with special gifts.”

  “A paladin, you mean?” Thay had no such champions, because it didn’t worship the deities who raised them up. But Aoth had heard about them.

  Mirror hesitated as if he didn’t recognize the term. “Perhaps. The important thing is that my touch could heal, and I believe it still can. Let me use it to cure your sight.”

  Aoth shook his head. Maybe the ghost with his addled, broken mind had remembered something real. Maybe he truly had possessed a talent for healing. That didn’t mean he still had it. Every wizard knew that undead creatures partook of the very essence of blight and ill, and Aoth had witnessed many times how Mirror’s mere touch could wither and corrupt. The sword with which he wrought such havoc in battle wasn’t even a weapon as such, j
ust a conduit for the cancerous power inside him.

  Yet even so, and rather to his own surprise, Aoth felt a sudden inclination to trust Mirror. Perhaps it was because his plight was so hopeless that, if the spirit’s suggestion didn’t work, it was scarcely likely to matter anyway.

  “All right. Let’s do it.” Aoth pulled off the bandage, then felt the ambient sense of malaise thicken as Mirror came closer. Freezing cold, excruciating as the touch of a white-hot iron, stabbed down on each of his eyelids. He bore it for a heartbeat or two, then screamed, recoiled, and clapped his hands to his face.

  “Damn you!” he croaked. He wondered if he looked older, the way Urhur Hahpet had after the ghost slid his insubstantial fingers into his torso.

  “Try your eyes now,” Mirror said, unfazed by his anguished reproach.

  The suggestion seemed so ridiculous that it left Aoth at a loss for words. He was still trying to frame a suitably bitter retort when he realized that his eyes didn’t hurt anymore.

  And since they didn’t, he supposed he could muster the fortitude to test them. He warily cracked them open, then gasped. Seeing wasn’t the least bit painful, and somehow he could already tell it never would be again.

  Indeed, vision was a richer experience than ever before. Wandering blind, he’d blundered into the covered walkway connecting two baileys. No lamps or torches burned in the passage, yet the gloom didn’t obscure his vision. He could make out subtle variations of blackness in the painted stone wall beside him and complex patterns in the dusty cobbles beneath his feet. He could only liken the experience to borrowing Brightwing’s keen aquiline eyes, but in truth, he was seeing even better now than he had then.

  He realized he’d been seeing in this godlike fashion ever since the blue fire swept over him, but the torrent of sheer detail had overwhelmed him. Now he could assimilate it with the same unthinking ease that ordinary people processed normal perceptions.

  He turned to the wavering shadow that was Mirror. “You did it!”

  “My brothers always said I had a considerable gift. Sometimes I could help the sick when even the wisest priests had failed. Or I think I could.” Mirror’s voice trailed off as if his memory was crumbling away, and his murky form became vaguer still.

  Aoth wondered if the act of healing, so contrary to the normal attributes of a ghost, had drained his benefactor of strength. He prayed not. “Don’t disappear! Stay with me! If you can cure blindness, you should be able to cure a poisoning, too. We’re going to Brightwing.”

  This late at night, no one was working in the griffons’ aerie. Aoth felt a surge of anguish to see his familiar crumpled on her side, eyes glazed and oblivious, blood and vomit pooled around her beak. He reached out with his mind but found no trace of hers. She was still breathing, though.

  “Hurry!” he said, but Mirror just stood in place. “Please!”

  “I’m trying to remember,” Mirror said, and still he didn’t move. Finally, when Aoth felt he was on the brink of screaming, the ghost flowed forward, kneeled beside the griffon, whispered, and stroked her head and neck. His intangible hand sank ever so slightly into her plumage.

  Brightwing thrashed, then leaped to her feet and swiped with her talons. Thanks to spells Aoth had cast long ago, her claws were capable of shredding a spirit, but Mirror avoided them with a leap backward.

  “Easy!” Aoth cried. “Mirror just saved your life, or at least I hope so. How are you?”

  “My belly hurts.” Brightwing took a breath. “So does my head, and my mouth burns.” She spat. “But I think I’ll be all right.”

  Aoth’s eyes brimmed with tears. He hoped he wouldn’t shed them, because the griffon would only jeer if he did.

  “We’re going to find the vermin who poisoned me,” she continued, “and then I’m going to eat them.”

  The vengeful declaration served to remind Aoth that they were still in trouble. “I’d like to watch you do it, but we can’t fight the whole Central Citadel.”

  “Would we have to?” Brightwing’s voice took on an unaccustomed querulous note. “What’s happening?”

  “People suddenly want to kill me, and they knew it would be easier if you were out of the way. So they tried to separate us back in Zolum, and when that didn’t work, they fed you tainted meat.”

  Brightwing snorted. “I should have realized that, as usual, you’re to blame for any unpleasantness that comes my way. All right, if it’s like that, saddle me and we’ll flee the city.”

  It was good advice, especially considering that Aoth had intended to run off anyway, until Bareris tampered with his mind. So it surprised him to realize just how reluctant he was to go.

  Deserting because he wanted to was one thing. Fleeing because he feared for his life would leave him feeling baffled and defeated. It would also mean he could never command the Griffon Legion again. He’d never aspired to do so, and in the years since his elevation, he’d honestly believed he didn’t enjoy the responsibility. But after blindness rendered him unfit to lead, he discovered he missed it. Indeed, he’d felt guilty and worthless because he couldn’t look out for his men anymore.

  “Besides … since I don’t understand why this is happening,” he said, “I don’t know how just badly people want to kill me. It may be badly enough to hunt us down if we try to run. I also have misgivings about fleeing when earthquakes and tides of blue fire are ripping the world apart. It doesn’t seem a promising time to try to build a new life in some foreign land.”

  “Then what will we do?” Brightwing asked.

  “You’ll stay here with Mirror and be quiet. I’ll talk to Lauzoril and try to straighten things out.”

  “That’s assuming that he or his minions don’t strike you down on sight.”

  “I think I know who can prevent it, if only I can reach him.”

  Brightwing snorted. “It sounds stupid to me, but when has that ever stopped you?” She cocked her head. “Say, you aren’t wearing your blindfold.”

  Perhaps it was Malark’s imagination, but the ash shaft of the spear seemed to shudder in his grip as though it resented resting in any hand but its master’s. He wondered if that could possibly be true, if the weapon was in some sense alive and aware. Perhaps he’d have a chance to ask Aoth about it later, but for now, they had a more urgent matter to address.

  Malark hadn’t expected to see his comrade again, because he’d heard what fate Dmitra had decreed for him. And although it wasn’t the death he would have chosen for Aoth, there hadn’t been a reason to intervene. But when, with his lambent blue eyes uncovered and obviously no longer blind, the war mage slipped into Malark’s apartments, it was plain the situation had altered.

  A small, flat-faced goblin guard used its apelike arms to open the red metal door to Lauzoril’s conjuration chamber. When Aoth saw what waited on the other side, he stopped short. Malark didn’t blame him.

  The room beyond the threshold was the sort of arcane workroom familiar to them both after years spent at the beck and call of wizards. The steady white glow of enchanted spherical lamps illuminated racks of staves and ceremonial swords, a stylized wall painting of a tree that, as Dmitra had once explained, represented the multiverse, and an intricate pentacle inlaid in jet and carnelian on the floor. A thurible suffused the air with the bitter scent of myrrh.

  The surprise was the steel table with sturdy buckled straps to immobilize a man, gutters to drain away his blood, and an assortment of probes, forceps, and knives to pick and slice at him. A healer might conceivably have used such equipment. So did a number of the interrogators in Malark’s employ.

  “Steady!” he whispered. “It’s too late to run. They’ll only kill you if you try.” As if to demonstrate that he was right, a pair of blood orc guards and a Red Wizard of Enchantment advanced to take charge of Aoth.

  Aoth strode into the chamber, and Malark followed a pace behind him. An orc reached to seize hold of Aoth’s arm. Shifting, the griffon rider evaded the creature’s hand and shoved it into its fell
ow. The pair got tangled up and fell down together.

  The Red Wizard jumped back a step and lifted a fist with a pearl ring on the forefinger. Brightness seethed inside the milky stone. Malark interposed himself between the enchanter and Aoth and gave the former a glare and a shake of his head. Flummoxed if not intimidated, the wizard hesitated.

  By then, Lauzoril’s other minions were scrambling to intercept Aoth, but they were too slow. He had time to march up to the zulkir and drop to his knees without anyone coercing him. Malark did the same.

  Lauzoril frowned. It was a pinched little frown, just as all his smiles were grudging little smiles. “Well,” he said, “it’s taken half the night, but someone finally caught him.”

  “No, Your Omnipotence,” Malark said, “I didn’t. As you surely observed, Captain Fezim obeys your summons of his own volition. Neither I nor anyone else had to force him.”

  “He resisted the escort I sent to fetch him,” Lauzoril said.

  “That was a misunderstanding,” Malark said. “You’ll note, he extricated himself from the situation without seriously hurting anyone. He’s too loyal a legionnaire to rob you of the use of any of your servants, even in a moment of alarm and confusion.”

  “Good.” Lauzoril shifted his gaze to Aoth. “Captain, if you are the man your companion claims you are, a faithful soldier willing to give his life in the service of his liege lords, then permit the orcs to secure you on the table, and I’ll undertake to make what follows as painless as is practical. Refuse, and my enchantments will compel you.”

  “Master,” Malark said, “may I respectfully ask why you’re doing this?”

  “Don’t you know? It was your mistress’s idea.”

  “No, Master,” Malark lied, “she didn’t confide in me.”

  “Then I suppose I can explain. She suggested I examine the griffon rider with all the tools at my disposal and see what I can discover about the blue flame.”

  “I assume she recommended this while Captain Fezim was blind and unable to perform his usual duties.”