The Haunted Lands: Book II - Undead

by Richard Lee Byers

Mirror didn’t trust himself to examine the war mage. After repelling the allips, he felt too hollow, too close to dissolving into mindless ache and malice, and in such a condition, his touch or even proximity might further injure a wounded man. “How is he?” he asked.

  Bareris kneeled, stripped off his leather gauntlet, and worked his fingertips under the mail to feel for Aoth’s pulse. “At least his heart is beating.”

  Malark sprinted through the labyrinth of corridors, chambers, and courtyards that was the Central Citadel. He was reasonably hopeful of escaping. Even if it didn’t kill his adversaries, Szass Tam’s gift would at least provide him a fair head start, and thanks to his training in the monastery, he could run faster and longer than most anyone he’d ever known.

  The question was, where should he run? His horse offered the fastest way out of the city, but he suspected Aoth and Bareris had posted guards at the stable should he elude them in the garden.

  Better, he thought, to procure a cloak and hood to throw on over his expensive courtier’s clothing, then slip out of the fortress. He’d worry about a quick way north later. If worse came to worst, he could run the entire distance about as fast as an ordinary horse could carry him.

  He plunged into another area open to the sky, an octagonal paved yard with a phosphorescent statue of the late Aznar Thrul, staff raised high, the bronze folds of his robe streaming as if windblown, towering in the center. Then something fluttered overhead.

  Malark surmised it was a bat’s wing—Tammith Iltazyarra’s wing. He tried to spring aside, but to no avail. Something furry bumped down on top of his head.

  The bat was so light that the impact didn’t hurt. It did sting, however, when the creature hooked its claws into his scalp and ripped at his forehead with its fangs.

  The bite sent an icy shock of sickness through his frame. He lifted a hand to tear his attacker away, and a second bat lit on the extremity and sank its teeth into his index finger. A third landed on his back, and, clinging to his doublet, climbed toward his neck.

  He threw himself down on his back and crushed the creature before it could reach its goal, then whipped his arm and smashed the bat on his hand against the paving stones, dislodging it. He grabbed the one on his head, yanked it free, and wrung it like a washcloth.

  Others descended on him. He rolled out from underneath them, sprang to his feet, and when they wheeled in pursuit, met them with stabs of his stiffened fingers. He hit one, and then they flew away from him, swirled together, and became a pallid woman in black armor, a sword extended in her hand. Despite the harm he’d inflicted on the bats, Malark couldn’t see any sign of it in the way she carried herself. Still, it was possible she’d been injured.

  “Perhaps you assumed,” he said, playing for a little more time to steady his breathing, “that I couldn’t hurt you without an enchanted weapon.” He had the monks’ esoteric disciplines to thank for it that he could. “Otherwise you might not have come at me as a flock of bats. You would have opted for something less delicate.”

  She glided closer. “That was the only mistake I’m going to make.”

  “Everything you’ve done since the Keep of Sorrows has been a mistake. You know Szass Tam, and now you’ve had a chance to take the measure of his rivals. Surely you recognize that none of them is a match for him. He may have encountered setbacks of late, but he’s still going to win.” He edged sideways and she turned to compensate.

  “So help me escape and come back with me,” Malark continued. “If I plead your case, the lich will forgive you. You’ll command your followers just as you did before.”

  She glared and showed him her fangs. “I don’t want anything to be as it was before, because I was a slave, with my mind in chains. Maybe you don’t know what that’s like, spymaster, but you will. With the Silent Company lost to me, I need some new progeny to do my bidding, and I’m going to start with you.”

  His mouth tightened. “Captain, it’s conceivable you may kill me, but I swear by everything I hold sacred that I will never allow you to make me undead.”

  “It’s always either funny or sad when people make vows they have no hope of keeping. In your case, I’d have to say funny.” She sprang at him.

  He twisted aside, hooked her ankle with his foot, and jerked her leg out from underneath her. She lurched forward. He snapped a kick into her kidney and chopped at the nape of her neck with the blade of his hand.

  She planted her front foot and recovered her balance, but her upper body was still canted forward. That should have kept her from even perceiving the strike at her neck, let alone reacting quickly enough to counter it. But she twisted at the waist, grabbed Malark’s wrist, and ripped the back of his hand with her fangs.

  Her bite was frigid poison, and another wave of lightheaded weakness almost buckled his knees. He shouted to focus his strength, and she thrust the point of her sword at his midsection.

  Fortunately, she was still in her awkward crouch, and they were too close together for her to use the long blade easily. It gave him just enough time to twist his arm free of her grip and her fangs and fling himself backward. Her thrust fell short by the length of a finger.

  Tammith Iltazyarra straightened up and returned to a conventional swordsman’s stance. She had his blood smeared across her mouth. More of it ran down from his torn hand, and dripped from the wounds in his brow to sting his eyes and blind them. He wiped them and willed the bleeding to stop. It didn’t quite, but at least it diminished.

  Tammith stared into his eyes and stabbed with her will, trying to hypnotize him. But his psyche proved too strong, and he struck back with a kick to her knee. She snatched her leg out of the way and cut at his torso. He dropped low, and the stroke whizzed over his head.

  The combatants resumed circling, exchanged another set of attacks and then another. Still, neither could land a decisive blow.

  It was plain to Malark that he was more skillful. Unfortunately, Tammith’s preternatural strength helped to make up the difference, as did her sword, armor, indefatigability, and resilience. In theory, the naked hands of a monk could hurt her, but it was difficult to strike to great effect when mere pain appeared unable to slow her for more than an instant, and she no longer required the use of most of her internal organs.

  Yet Malark had to finish the duel quickly. He couldn’t linger, sparring, until her allies caught up or until someone came to investigate the commotion. It was time to take a chance.

  She stepped forward, then back, or at least it was supposed to look that way. In reality, her lead foot hitched backward, but the other stayed in place. She was trying to throw off his sense of distance, to make him perceive her as farther away than she actually was.

  He advanced as if the trick had deceived him. She lunged, her sword extended to pierce his guts.

  Using both hands, he grabbed the blade. It cut him instantly. With her inhuman strength, his adversary needed only to yank it backward to slice him to the bone, sever tendons, and possibly even shear his fingers off.

  He hammered a kick into her midsection. The shock locked her up and weakened her grip. He jerked the weapon free.

  By doing so, he cut himself more deeply, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t care about the pain—wouldn’t even really feel it until he chose to allow it—and his fingers were still able to clasp the hilt.

  Employing both hands, he seized it in an overhand grip like a dagger, swung it over his head, lunged, bellowed, and struck. It was a clumsy way to wield a sword, but the only way to attack with the point and achieve the forceful downward arc he required.

  The point crunched through her mail, pierced her heart, popped out her back, and stabbed into the pavement beneath her toppling form, nailing her to the ground.

  A wooden stake would have been better. It would have paralyzed her. But at least the enchanted sword had her shrieking, thrashing, and fumbling impotently at the blade. In another moment, she might collect herself sufficiently to realize she could free herself by dissolving
into mist, but he didn’t give her the chance. He gouged her eyes from their sockets, then drove in bone-shattering blows until her neck broke and her head was lopsided.

  He stepped back, regarded his handiwork, and felt a pang of loathing that had nothing to do with the harm she’d done to him. She was an abomination, an affront to Death, and he ought to do his utmost to slay her, not leave her to recover as she unquestionably would. But it wasn’t practical. In fact, considering that she’d survived repeated beheadings, it might not even be possible.

  He’d cleared her out of his way, and that would have to do. He turned and ran on.

  chapter nine

  21 Eleasias–15 Eleint, the Year of Blue Fire

  Aoth peered at the faces looking back at him. At first he didn’t recall them. He only had a sense that he should. Then one, a ferocious countenance comprised of beak, feathers, and piercing eyes, evoked a flood of memories and associations. “Brightwing,” he croaked.

  The griffon snorted. “Finally. Now maybe I can have my lair all to myself again.” She nipped through the rope securing Aoth’s left wrist to the frame of the cot.

  He saw that his associates had actually tied him to a bed in the griffon’s pungent stall. Shafts of moonlight fell through the high windows. Tammith’s skin was white as bone in the pale illumination. Mirror was a faceless smudge.

  “How are you?” Bareris asked.

  “I’m not crazy anymore, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Do you remember what happened to you?”

  “Part of it.” Some kind of spirits had attacked him, not spilling his blood but seemingly ripping away pieces of his inner self. He’d fallen unconscious, and when he awoke, he was like a cornered animal. He didn’t recognize anyone or understand anything. He thought everyone was trying to hurt him, and fought back savagely.

  The healers had tried to help him, but at first their magic hadn’t had any effect. Then someone had hit on the idea of housing him with his familiar, in the hope that proximity to the creature with whom he shared a psychic bond would exert a restorative effect.

  Maybe it had, for afterward, he grew calmer. He still didn’t recognize his companions, but sometimes his fire-kissed eyes saw that they meant to help and not harm him. During those intervals he was willing to swallow the water, food, and medicines they brought, and to suffer the chanted prayers and healing touch of a priest without screaming, thrashing, or trying to bite him.

  The recollection of his mad and feral state brought a surge of shame and horror, as well as fear that he might relapse. Sensing the tenor of his thoughts, Brightwing grunted. “Don’t worry, you’re your normal self again, for what little that’s worth. I can tell.”

  “Thank you. I suppose.”

  The griffon bit through the other wrist restraint. His limbs stiff, Aoth sat up and started untying the remains of his bonds. His minders had used soft rope, but even so, his struggles had rubbed stinging galls into his wrists and ankles.

  As he dropped the last piece of rope to the floor, the final bit of the jumbled puzzle locked into place. “Malark!” he said. “Did you get him?”

  “No,” Bareris said.

  “Curse it! Why did I bring you into this in the first place? What good are you?”

  Even as he spoke, Aoth realized he was being unfair. But he didn’t care. He’d been crippled and humiliated twice, once by blindness and once by madness, an enemy had escaped, and the false friend who’d tampered with his mind was a convenient outlet for his frustrations.

  Bareris frowned. “I’m sorry Malark got away. But at least you unmasked him. He can’t do any further harm.”

  “You offered to leave the Griffon Legion,” Aoth replied. “It’s time for you to do that.”

  “No,” Mirror said.

  Aoth turned his head just in time to see the ghost’s blur of a face sharpen into a kind of shadow-sketch of his former self—a lean, melancholy visage, an aquiline nose, and a mustache.

  “I know I owe you,” Aoth said, “and I know you’ve taken Bareris for your friend. May he prove more loyal to you than he did to me. But—”

  “We champions of the order are one,” Mirror said. “What stains one man’s honor tarnishes us all, and by the same token, a companion can atone for his brother’s sin. I helped you. Accordingly, our code requires you to forgive Bareris.”

  Aoth shook his head. “We aren’t your ancient fellowship of paladins or whatever it was. I’m a Thayan, and we don’t think that way.”

  “We are who we are,” Mirror said, “and you are who you are.”

  Even by the ghost’s standards, it was a cryptic if not meaningless declaration, yet it evoked a twinge of muddled, irrational guilt, and since Aoth was truly the injured party, he resented it. “The whoreson doesn’t even care whether I forgive him or not. If you understand anything about him, you know he only cares about his woman.”

  “That isn’t true,” Tammith said. Her voice had an odd undercurrent to it, as if echoing some buried sorrow or shame. “He always valued his friends, even when grief and rage blinded him to his own feelings, and now his sight is clearer.”

  Aoth glowered at Bareris. “Why are you standing mute while others plead for you? You’re the bard, full of golden words and clever arguments.”

  “I already told you I’m sorry,” Bareris said, “and I truly want your forgiveness. But I won’t plead for something to which I have no right. Hold a grudge if you think you should. Sometimes a wrong is bitter enough that a man must. Nobody knows that better than I.”

  Brightwing spread her rustling wings, then gave them an irritated snap. “Either forgive him or kill him. Whatever will stop all this maudlin blather.”

  Aoth sighed. “I’m just getting up off my sickbed. I’ll need a bath and a meal before I feel up to killing anyone.” He shifted his gaze to Bareris. “So stay in the legion if you’d rather.”

  Bareris smiled. “I would. Thank you.”

  “What’s been going on while I was insane?”

  “The zulkirs are convening another council of war. You recovered just in time to attend.”

  “Lucky me.”

  Nevron gazed at his fellow zulkirs—prissy, bloodless Lauzoril, gross, bloated Samas Kul perpetually stuffing food in his mouth, and all the rest—and suffered a spasm of loathing for each and every one of them.

  Nothing unusual in that. He despised the vast majority of puny, muddled human beings. In general, he preferred the company of demons and devils. Even the least of them tended to be purer, grander, and certainly less prone to hypocrisy than the average mortal. He often entertained the fancy of abandoning the blighted realm that Thay had become and seeking a new destiny in the higher worlds. What a glorious adventure that would be!

  But it could also prove to be a short one. Nevron was a zulkir and confident of his own mystical prowess. But he also comprehended, as only a conjuror could, what awesome powers walked the Blood Rift, the Barrens, and similar realities. He would have to confront them with comparable capabilities if he was to establish himself as a prince among the baatezu or tanar’ri.

  Which, he supposed, was why he tarried where he was, learning and inventing new spells, crafting and acquiring new talismans, and impressing new entities into his service. It was the most intelligent strategy, so long as he had the judgment to recognize when he’d accumulated enough. Otherwise, preparation could become procrastination.

  Dmitra Flass clapped her hands together to call the assembly to order. The percussive sound didn’t seem louder than normal, but was somehow more commanding, as if she’d used her illusionist abilities to enhance it in some subtle way. They were all gradually figuring out how to make their spells reliable in the dreary new world Mystra’s death had spawned.

  The company fell silent, zulkirs and lesser folk alike, but the response seemed slower and more grudging than on previous occasions. Nevron wondered if Dmitra perceived the challenge apparent in the rancorous stares of several of her peers.

  “
We’re here—” she began.

  “To decide our next move,” Lallara snapped. “We know. You don’t have to begin every council by harping on the obvious.”

  “In fact,” Nevron said, “you don’t have to begin them at all.” A fiend bound in the iron bracelet he wore around his left wrist whispered to him, encouraging him, as it often did when he said or did anything that smacked of malice or conflict.

  Dmitra arched an eyebrow, or rather, the smooth stretch of skin where an eyebrow would be if she hadn’t long ago removed it. “Someone must preside, and we seem to have slipped into the habit of letting the task fall to me.”

  “Well, perhaps we should slip out of it,” Lallara said. “I’m not fighting Szass Tam just to see someone else set herself above me.”

  “That was never my intention,” Dmitra said.

  Nevron sneered. “Of course not. But it’s inevitable that the one who presides over our deliberations exerts a degree of leadership, and perhaps you aren’t the best choice for the role, considering the damage Malark Springhill did.”

  Dmitra sighed. “We all opted to trust Malark.”

  “But he was your servant,” Nevron said, “and thus, your responsibility.”

  Dmitra waved a dismissive hand adorned with ruby rings and long crimson nails. “Fine. You guide the discussion. What does it matter, so long as we confer to some intelligent purpose?”

  Her quick acquiescence caught Nevron by surprise, and the spirit in the bracelet sniggered at his fleeting confusion. Through an exertion of will, he afflicted it with pain, and the laugh became a scream, another sound that only he could hear.

  “As you wish,” he said. Since she’d plainly wanted to preside herself, Lallara gave him a glower, not that it differed appreciably from her usual clamp-mouthed, venomous expression. “This is the situation. We’ve sent a host of messengers—ravens, griffon riders, spirits, and others—racing around to countermand the false orders and refute the fraudulent intelligence Malark Springhill transmitted, and to find out exactly what lies he disseminated.”