The Haunted Lands: Book II - Undead

by Richard Lee Byers

  After what seemed an eternity, the deathshrieker’s wail faded, leaving Bareris and his mount unharmed. He sang a charm to cloak Winddancer and himself in a deceptive blur, and then another spell that made the roar of the battle fall silent.

  He rarely considered casting an enchantment of silence on himself, because it would prevent him from using any more magic. But over the past ten years, he’d learned a good deal about Szass Tam’s more exotic undead servants, including the fact that silence wounded a deathshrieker.

  Winddancer carried him close enough to strike, and Bareris pierced his foe with the point of his spear. While the enchanted weapon likely hurt the phantom, it was the absolute quiet that made it convulse.

  It tried to flee from the excruciating silence, but Winddancer stayed with it. The griffon had shaken off his dread, and now his savage nature ruled him. He wanted revenge on the adversary that had hurt and discomfited him.

  Bareris kept thrusting with the spear. Finally the deathshrieker turned to fight and plunged the intangible fingertips of one raking hand into Winddancer’s beak. The griffon froze and began to fall, but at the same instant, Bareris drove his spear into the spirit’s torso again. The deathshrieker withered from existence. Its jaws gaped wide as if it was voicing a final virulent wail, but if so, the silence warded its foes from the effect. Winddancer lashed her wings and arrested her fall.

  Twisting in the saddle, Bareris looked around and didn’t see any immediate threats. Good. He and Winddancer could use a few moments to catch their breath, and if his aura of quiet dropped away during the respite, so much the better. It was only a hindrance now.

  He urged his mount higher for a better look at the progress of the battle. At first, he liked what he saw. Despite everyone’s best efforts, some of the High Thayans on the road were reaching the field at the base of it, but only to encounter overwhelming resistance when they did. Meanwhile, the legionnaires from the Keep of Sorrows assailed the southerners’ formation but had failed to break it. Rather, they were beating themselves to death against it like surf smashing to foam on a line of rocks.

  Its leathery wings flapping, a sword in one hand and a whip in the other, a gigantic horned demon flew up from the ground. A halo of scarlet flame seethed around its body.

  The balor’s sudden appearance didn’t alarm Bareris. He assumed that a conjuror had summoned it to fight on the council’s side, and indeed, the tanar’ri maneuvered close to the crags as though seeking adversaries worthy of its lethal capabilities.

  But as it considered where to attack, the wavering red light emanating from it illuminated sections of the road. As a result, Bareris realized for the first time just what a gigantic host of undead was swarming down from the heights.

  With wizardry undependable, how had the necromancers created so many new servants? Where had they obtained the corpses? Had they butchered every living person left in High Thay?

  This is how it starts, Bareris thought. This is how Szass Tam has always liked to fight. He makes you think you’re winning, gets you fully committed, and then the surprises start.

  So-Kehur and Muthoth had armored themselves in enchantments of protection, and their personal dread-warrior guards stood in front of them in a little semicircular wall of shields, mail, and withered, malodorous flesh. Yet even so, an arrow droned down from on high to stick in the ground a finger-length from the pudgy necromancer’s foot.

  “We’re too close,” So-Kehur said. He heard the craven whine in his voice and hated it.

  His wand gripped in his good hand, Muthoth, predictably, responded with a sneer. “We have to be this close, or our spells won’t reach the enemy.”

  “What spells?” So-Kehur said, although it wasn’t a reasonable comment. After Mystra’s death, he’d scarcely been able to turn ale into piss, but when Szass Tam force-fed his followers insights into the changing nature of the arcane, he’d more or less recovered the use of his powers.

  But as far as he was concerned, it wasn’t worth it. He’d never liked knowing that the lich had constrained his will. It bothered him even though he’d always had better sense than to flout his zulkir’s wishes and so rouse the magic. But having Szass Tam shove knowledge straight into his mind was a more overt violation, and thus considerably more odious. Along with a vague but sickening feeling that a wisp of the mage’s psyche remained in his head, spying on him and polluting his own fundamental identity, the new lore rode in his consciousness like a stone.

  But the howling, crashing terror of the battlefield, with quarrels and arrows flying and men and orcs falling dead on every side, was worse. I never wanted to be a necromancer in the first place, So-Kehur thought, or any kind of wizard. My family pushed me into it. I would have been happy to stay home and manage our estates.

  Horns blared, sounding a distinctive six-note call. “It’s time,” Muthoth said. He sounded eager.

  So-Kehur wasn’t, but he knew his fellow mage was right. No matter how frightened he was, he had to start fighting.

  He shifted forward and the two guards directly in front of him started to step apart. He clutched their cold, slimy forearms to keep them from exposing him. “I only need a crack to peek through!” he said.

  So that was what they gave him. He picked a spot along the enemy’s battle line and started chanting.

  Stripped of the cunning shortcuts and enhancements that were the craft secrets of the Order of Necromancy, reduced to its most basic elements, the spell seemed an ugly, cumbersome thing. But it worked. A blaze of shadow leaped from his fingertips to slice into two southerners in the front rank. They collapsed, and so did other men behind them.

  Muthoth snarled words of fear, and several men in the enemy formation turned tail, shoving and flailing through the ranks of their companions. A sergeant, failing to understand that the afflicted men had fallen victim to a curse, cut one down for a coward and would-be deserter. Muthoth laughed and aimed his wand.

  Other flares of power, some luminous, many bursts of shadow, blazed from the ranks of the legionnaires from the Keep of Sorrows, and from up and down the crooked length of the path that climbed to High Thay. When they realized their adversaries were casting more spells than they had before, the council’s sorcerers intensified their efforts as well. But as often as not, their magic failed to produce any useful effects, or yielded only feeble ones. Whereas nearly all the necromantic spells performed as they should, and many hit hard.

  A pair of Red Wizards—conjurors, judging from the cut of their robes and the talismans they wore—appeared in the mass of soldiery opposite So-Kehur, Muthoth, and the troops surrounding them. They looked old enough to have sons So-Kehur’s age, and were likely genuine masters of their diabolical art. Reciting in unison, somehow clearly audible despite the din, they chanted words in some infernal tongue, and So-Kehur cringed at the grating sound and the power he felt gathering inside it.

  Muthoth hurled flame from his wand. It burned down some of the council’s soldiers, but the conjurors stood unharmed at the center of the blast. They shouted the final syllables of their incantation.

  Nothing happened. No entity answered their call, and the sense of massing power dwindled like water gurgling down a drain.

  So-Kehur’s fear subsided a little, and he realized he’d better not permit the conjurors to try again. He jabbered an incantation of his own. A cloud of toxic vapor materialized around the southern wizards, and they staggered and crumpled to the ground.

  I beat them, So-Kehur thought. I was sure they were going to kill me, but I was better than they were. Muthoth grinned at him and clapped him on the shoulder without a trace of mockery or bullying condescension, as if, after all the years of shared danger and effort, they were truly friends at last.

  So-Kehur decided the battlefield wasn’t quite as horrible a place as he’d imagined.

  Perched on a round platform at the top of Thralgard Keep’s highest tower, Szass Tam peered into a scrying mirror to track the battle unfolding in the gulf below. Som
etimes he simply beheld the combatants. At other moments, glowing red runes appeared as one or another of the ghosts bound to the looking glass offered commentary.

  Lacking mystical talents of his own, Malark sat on a merlon with his feet dangling over the crags and peered down at what he could make out of the struggle. Szass Tam doubted that was a great deal. The night was too dark, and everything was too far away.

  “I see more flickers and flashes,” Malark said, “than I did a while ago. It’s like looking at fireflies, shooting stars, and heat lightning all dancing in a black sky together.”

  “My wizards,” Szass Tam said, “are showing the council what they can actually do.”

  “Can they do enough? Are you going to win?”

  “It might be sufficient, but I’m not finished. The Black Hand lent me even more power than I expected, and I mean to use it.”

  “Then you’re going to raise the force you told me about. Are you sure that’s wise?”

  Szass Tam chuckled. “Sure? No. How can I be, when, to the best of my knowledge, no magus has ever roused such an entity before? It’s possible that Bane understands my ultimate intentions, and gave me the strength to try precisely so I’d overreach and destroy myself. He is a god, after all. I suppose we have to give him credit for a measure of subtlety and discernment.”

  “Then maybe you should refrain.”

  “No. Call me smug, but I like my chances. Besides, if I shrink from attempting this, how will I ever muster the courage to perform the greater works to come?”

  “Fair enough. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Thank you, but no.”

  “In that case …” Malark hesitated.

  Szass Tam smiled. “You’d like my help to reach the battlefield quickly.”

  “Yes, if you can spare the magic. So many interesting things are happening below that it would grieve me to stand aloof.”

  Szass Tam plucked a little carved bone from one of his pockets, swept it through a mystic pass, and whispered an incantation. Shadow swirled in the air overhead and gathered into the form of a gigantic bat.

  The beast’s rotting wings gave off a carrion stink. It furled them and landed on a merlon, its talons clutching the block of stone.

  “It will obey your commands,” Szass Tam said, “and carry you wherever you want to go.”

  “Thank you.” Malark swung onto the bat’s back and kicked it with his heels. It hopped off the merlon and glided over the battlefield.

  Szass Tam hoped Malark would be all right. It was pleasant having a confidant again. At one time, Dmitra had played that part, but he hadn’t been able to confide his grandest scheme to her. She wouldn’t have reacted well, and he’d assumed that no one ever could. He didn’t believe in fate, but even so, it almost seemed like destiny had brought a former monk of the Long Death into his orbit.

  But Malark had served his purpose. He didn’t actually matter anymore. Szass Tam had far more urgent matters to concern him, and it was time to address them. He summoned one of his favorite staves and raised it over his head.

  “What’s this?” Brightwing asked. Aoth looked where she was facing, then cried out in shock.

  A prodigious mass of fog spilled down the cliffs like a slow waterfall. Anguished faces appeared—stretched, twisted, and dissolved amid the vapor. A chorus of faint voices, some moaning, some gibbering, others laughing, emanated from it.

  It was some form of undead, though it was far more gigantic than any creation of necromancy Aoth had ever seen. But it wasn’t the size of it that dismayed him. It was the enormous might and insatiable hunger his fire-touched eyes saw burning inside it. “We’re in trouble,” he said.

  Brightwing laughed. “No! Look! It’s all right.”

  The fog hung over the crags like a curtain, and where the swirling vapor intersected the road, insubstantial tentacles writhed from the central mass to snatch for the orcs and ghouls scrambling on the slopes. The creatures they engulfed convulsed and dissolved into nothingness.

  If the mist-thing simply continued attacking Szass Tam’s army, all would be well. But then, though it continued to reach for the occasional luckless northerner like a man plucking berries from a bush, it floated lower.

  It splashed at the foot of the crags and drifted outward. Its path carried it across the clump of northerners who’d managed to reach the bottom and keep themselves alive once they got there, but straight at the southern army as well. Panicking, some of the council’s legionnaires threw down their weapons and turned to flee.

  “Griffon riders!” Aoth bellowed. “Kill it!” He and Brightwing dived at the fog-thing. He pointed his spear and hurled a burst of flame into the heart of it. His men shot arrows.

  The entity responded by snatching for them with lengths of its vaporous body. It hadn’t reached nearly so far before, and the attack caught Aoth by surprise. A frigid column of shadowy, babbling faces engulfed him.

  His thoughts shattered into confusion. He suddenly knew without questioning that his psyche and flesh were about to crumble, and then his attacker would absorb the residue.

  Screaming, Brightwing lashed her wings and carried them free of the fog. Gasping, peering around, Aoth saw that other griffon riders hadn’t been as lucky. Mired in writhing pillars of murk, they and their mounts disappeared. Meanwhile, as far as he could tell, their assault hadn’t injured the mist-entity in the slightest.

  It flowed toward the mass of the southern army, devouring men and the conjurors’ demonic warriors as it went. Only zombies, skeletons, and golems—mindless things—endured its touch with impunity.

  Malark sent the zombie bat swooping low over the southern army. It was a reckless thing to do, but no arrows or thunderbolts came flying up to strike him or his steed. The enemy was too busy fighting the force from the Keep of Sorrows and goggling at the fog-thing seething toward them from the foot of the cliff.

  Malark spied Dmitra conferring with several illusionists, the lot of them amid a contingent of bodyguards. It was too bad her minions hadn’t fled and left her unattended, but he’d cope.

  The bat furled its wings and plunged to earth in front of the zulkir and her entourage. Someone cried out, and guards hefted javelins.

  Malark swung himself down from his mount. “Your Omnipotence.” He bowed.

  Dmitra shook her head. “I wondered if you were insane to betray me. Now I know you must be, to do so and then return.”

  Malark smiled. “I’m sure it looks that way. You’re an archmage, and you and your servants have me outnumbered. Even worse, Szass Tam’s creation is advancing on our location. If I don’t finish my business and get away quickly, it will eat me as readily as it would you.”

  “What is your business?” Dmitra asked.

  “Knowing me for as long as you have, I thought you might have guessed already.”

  “I have an idea. Did you come to keep me from trying to destroy the creature?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “To switch sides again?”

  “No, I’m where I belong. But you, Mistress, were always generous to me in your fashion. I’ve always liked you. I want to repay your kindness by giving you a better death then you’d suffer with your body and mind breaking apart in the fog-thing’s grip. In particular, I hope to spare you the ugliness of undeath, either as one small part of that abomination yonder or as a lich under Szass Tam’s control.”

  Dmitra laughed a little puff of a laugh. “It sounds as if you’re challenging me to a duel.”

  “You could put it that way.”

  “But that implies some sort of equality where none exists. I’m a zulkir of Thay, and you’re a treacherous worm. Kill him!”

  Legionnaires threw their javelins. Malark sidestepped some and batted one away with his forearm. He waved the giant bat forward.

  The zombie was clumsy crawling on the ground. But its sheer bulk, gnashing fangs, and long flailing wings made it formidable. It bobbed its head and bit the top of a warrior’s skull o
ff, and Malark dashed forward.

  A soldier tried to thrust a broadsword into his belly. He twisted out of the way, caught his opponent’s outstretched arm, and spun him around to slam into one of his comrades. Tangled together, they fell with a clash of armor. One of the lesser illusionists rattled off rhyming words of power, and Malark chopped her across the throat before she could finish. Another stride brought him within striking distance of Dmitra.

  She gave him a radiant smile.

  He felt himself falling, suffered a pang of alarm, and then his eyes flew open. He realized he’d dreamed of plummeting and then awakened.

  Disoriented, he looked around. He and Dmitra were sitting on the roof of a tower in her palace in Eltabbar. A carafe held red wine to fill the golden goblets, trays offered lobster, oysters, beef skewers, grape leaves, figs, sweetmeats, and other delicacies, and a scarlet awning provided shade in the midst of amber sunlight. Slaves hovered at a discreet distance.

  Beyond the red marble balustrade and the walls of the castle, the city murmured, its voice arising from teeming streets and bustling markets. To the west, south, and east were green fields, and to the north, Lake Thaylambar, reflecting the clear blue of the sky. Sailboats and galleys dotted the surface.

  It occurred to Malark that the vista was as lovely as any he’d seen in all his centuries of protracted life. Then, belatedly, he realized Dmitra was speaking to him. He resolved to pay attention and catch the sense of whatever she was saying, but she reached the end too quickly and then watched him, awaiting his response. He tried to think of something to say, but he was still muddled, and nothing came.

  Dmitra laughed. “I thought you dozed off.”

  “I humbly beg your forgiveness.”

  “No need. You went without sleep for a tenday to find out what Nevron and his followers are up to. You can go to bed if you like.”