He took stock of himself and decided he didn’t need to. He didn’t feel exhausted so much as bewildered. He remembered spending days without sleep to spy on the Order of Conjuration, but had the crazy sense that it had happened years ago. “Thank you, Your Omnipotence, but I’m all right.”
She cocked her head. “‘Your Omnipotence’? Have you promoted me to zulkir? I fear Mythrellan won’t approve.”
He blinked. “Didn’t Mythrellan die during the war?”
“What war?”
“The one the rest of you zulkirs are waging against Szass Tam.” The one that had come close to transforming Thay into a desert, although no one could have told it from looking out over Eltabbar on such a warm, clear summer afternoon.
Dmitra shook her head. “I think you must have dreamed a very strange and vivid dream. I, alas, am simply a tharchion. I give my allegiance to Szass Tam, and since you serve me, so do you. There isn’t any war among the zulkirs unless you count the usual endless politicking and intrigue to steer the realm in one direction or another.”
“I … all right.”
“I insist you go and rest. I’ll have someone escort you.” She crooked a finger, and two slaves came scurrying.
He felt a twinge of alarm, but knew that was senseless. The men were just thralls, cowed and subservient. They had no particular reason to hurt him and wouldn’t dare to try even if they did. Nor did they possess the weapons or martial skills they’d need to have any hope of succeeding.
He stood and suffered them to close in around him. Dmitra smiled at him from her couch.
Something about her smile was ever so slightly wrong. Perhaps it held a hint of malice or triumph. Whatever it was, it reminded him she was an illusionist, and prompted him to exert his will to try to see clearly.
The world darkened abruptly as the semblance of day she’d created in his mind gave way to the reality of night. The men he’d mistaken for slaves were legionnaires about to plunge their swords into his body.
He thrust his stiffened fingers into their throats, one hand for each, and lunged, bulling his way between them. Dmitra was standing on the other side. Her eyes widened in dismay.
Though he didn’t see a telltale glimmer or anything comparable, he had no doubt she had defensive enchantments in place. He bellowed to focus every iota of his strength and spirit, and punched at her heart.
He felt ribs break. The shards had nowhere to go but into the pulsing organ behind them, and she fell backward.
It was a perfect death, for she’d perished wielding the art and guile that defined her. Malark felt the mix of exultation and envy that transported him on such rare occasions.
But he had no time for contemplation. He had other foes to fight. He pounced, grabbed the ruby amulet dangling on the Red Wizard’s chest, and gave it a jerk that snapped the illusionist’s neck.
Bareris had exhausted his bardic powers, and he had a single arrow left. Seeking an appropriate target, he peered at the ground.
The fog-entity wasn’t a logical choice. Even magic didn’t seem to hurt it, although given its amorphous nature, it was difficult to be sure. If anyone had wounded it, the steady growth it experienced as it absorbed victim after victim likely offset the damage.
He spied an orc nocking an arrow. Judging from its position on the battlefield, it had come from the Keep of Sorrows. Like the rest of its comrades, it was keeping its distance from the fog-thing. But as the southern army fell back before the entity and its formations disintegrated, the orc and its fellows were shooting foes who blundered within easy reach of their weapons.
Bareris let his own arrow fly before the orc finished aiming. The missile punched into the warrior’s neck just above its shoulder, and it staggered. It lost its grip on its bowstring, and its shaft flew wild.
Another orc shouted and pointed, and arrows hurtled up from the ground. Winddancer raised one wing, dipped the other, veered, and dodged the missiles. But one came close enough to tear a feather from the griffon’s wing, and Bareris realized his mount was as weary as he was.
It’s time to go, he thought, but couldn’t make himself give Winddancer the appropriate command. Not yet. He wouldn’t flee until he was certain the situation was as bleak as it seemed. He made the griffon climb for a better view of the battleground.
Large as an army itself, the cloud of gibbering, keening faces extruded arms that dissolved one southerner after another, although Bareris wasn’t certain why it bothered. All it really needed to do was flow forward and engulf the council’s warriors to obliterate them. The dread warriors inside it swung their axes and jabbed with their spears, dispatching anyone lucky or hardy enough to survive the vapor’s touch.
Until the fog-thing rippled, churned, and contracted in on itself, uncovering the marching corpses and skeletons. It shrank to a writhing point, then vanished entirely.
Bareris shook his head in amazement. If the thing was gone, perhaps that meant the southern army might yet prevail.
But no. When he studied the field, the last dogged trace of hope withered inside him.
The remnants of the southern army were too few, too disorganized, and too demoralized. They only wanted to run away. Whereas Szass Tam had succeeded in bringing enormous numbers of undead down from the top of the plateau. They and their comrades from the Keep of Sorrows had arranged themselves in well-defined battle lines and in the proper positions to assail their foes from three sides at once.
Aoth had been right to mistrust Bane. The council had lost the battle, and its agents had no choice but to run until the sun rose to slow pursuit. Only those possessed of horses or capable of flight were likely to last that long.
Bareris was grateful that Tammith could fly. Praying she still survived, and that she could somehow find him before dawn, he turned Winddancer south.
chapter ten
16 Eleint—4 Marpenoth, the Year of Blue Fire
Samas Kul impaled a link of venison sausage on his knife, lifted it, and smelled its spicy aroma. His stomach squirmed, and he discovered that even though he hadn’t eaten since lunch, and it was now mid-afternoon, he wasn’t hungry. The realization startled him, as if he’d looked down at his hands and discovered they’d turned green.
He supposed that last night’s debacle was responsible for his loss of appetite. Most of all, the horrible moment when he’d ventured to the front of the battle formation to confront the cloud-thing.
He hadn’t wanted to, but he’d judged that only a zulkir could destroy the thing. Because plainly, none of the lesser Red Wizards, nor Burning Braziers hurling gout after gout of fire, were having any luck against it.
So he raised his power and attempted to turn the entity into an enormous lump of stone. But it didn’t transform. Rather, it reached out and caught him in a dark, swirling extension of itself, and a terrifying intimation of dissolution ripped through his body and mind alike. He barely managed to cling to sufficient lucidity to activate the magic of the tattoo that whisked him to the Central Citadel.
Looking older than usual, and for once, shaken rather than ill-tempered, Lallara had appeared shortly thereafter, and then other Red Wizards capable of translating themselves across long distances. Samas realized that if they too were forsaking the field, the battle was surely lost, not that he’d had much doubt of it before.
Scowling, Nevron marched into the council chamber and took his seat at the table. He was the last to arrive at a conclave that, the zulkirs had decided, only they would attend, and not all of them at that. Like Yaphyll’s, Dmitra Flass’s chair was empty. No one knew what had become of her, only that she hadn’t transported herself back to Bezantur with the rest of her peers.
“Let’s get to it,” Nevron growled. “I summoned the high priest of Bane this morning. I thought he might care to explain yesterday to me. The son of a dog sent his regrets. He claims to be ill.”
Lauzoril’s thin lips twitched into a grim and fleeting smile. “That sounds plausible. Living as he does in a great te
mple, where would he possibly find a healer?”
“What does this mean?” Samas asked.
“Either that he fears to face my displeasure,” Nevron said, “or that he imagines he can flout my commands without consequences.”
“When your devils drag him forth screaming,” Lallara said, “you can ask him which it is.”
“I hope that day will come,” Nevron said, “but for now we have graver matters to address. What was that new creation Szass Tam sent against us?”
Zola Sethrakt cleared her throat. The slight stirring made her white and black jewelry clink. “My assistants and I,” she said, “have been reading the grimoires and journals the griffon riders took from the sanctuary of the creature called Xingax. In one passage, he describes such an entity, although it doesn’t seem that he had any intent of creating one himself. He thought the process would be difficult, and that it might prove even harder to control the thing.”
“But obviously,” Lallara said, “Szass Tam dared, even with sorcery weakened and unreliable.”
“Yes. Xingax called the entity a dream vestige.”
Samas snorted. “‘Vestige’ seems a puny word to describe anything so dangerous and immense.”
“I suppose,” Zola replied, “but that’s the name he gave it. It’s somewhat similar to a creature known as a caller in darkness, which is made of a number of spirits melded together. A dream vestige begins as hundreds of nightmares gathered, combined, and infused with the energies of undeath. It grows by devouring any being possessed of a mind.”
“Is it as impervious to magic as it seemed?” Lauzoril asked.
“Not entirely,” Zola said. “But even though we could see it, it isn’t a physical entity. Intangibility gives even a common wraith a measure of protection, and this creature has strong additional defenses. So, with wizardry diminished. …” She shrugged her bony shoulders, and her necklaces and bracelets clattered.
“We’re lucky,” Samas said, “that it only existed for a while. Maybe Szass Tam will prove incapable of making another, or maybe he’ll lose control of it if he does. Maybe it will eat him.”
Zola sighed. “I’m sorry, but it didn’t cease to exist. A dream vestige can pass back and forth between the physical realm and what I infer is some sort of demiplane of dreams. When Szass Tam judged that it had done all he required, he sent it there.”
“To keep it from slipping its leash and getting into mischief,” Nevron said, “like a conjuror keeping an elemental in a ring or bottle. I’m familiar with the concept. So, you’re telling us he can call the thing forth whenever he feels the need, and that it will grow bigger and stronger every time it kills somebody.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Our luck is a wondrous thing,” Lallara said. “There are two schools of wizardry, divination and illusion, that make a study of dreams, and those are the two zulkirs we lack. Yaphyll went over to Szass Tam, and Dmitra is missing.”
“I suspect,” Lallara said, “Dmitra, too, has betrayed us. Remember, at one time, she was Szass Tam’s most devoted minion, and she urged us to fight at the base of the cliffs.”
“With a god endorsing her point of view,” Lauzoril said.
“Are you sure?” Lallara asked. “Dmitra is the zulkir of Illusion. Perhaps she tricked us into believing the Black Hand spoke to us.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” Lauzoril said, “because that would make it Szass Tam and two other zulkirs against the rest of us. But let’s stay focused on the lich’s new servant. We no longer have a wizard with a special understanding of dreams in our company. But we do have an authority on undeath.”
Zola’s mouth tightened. “If you’re asking me if I know how to stop the creature, Your Omnipotence, I’m sorry, but the answer is no.”
Lallara sneered. “Zola Sethrakt at a loss. How astonishing.”
“Perhaps,” Lauzoril said, “since the dream vestige is a form of undead, the priests can destroy or at least repel it.”
“Don’t count on it,” Nevron said. “I watched Iphegor Nath and a circle of his acolytes try and fail. I detest that arrogant whoreson, but he’s the best of his breed. He always has been.”
“The Order of Abjuration,” Lallara said, “can try to devise a ward to hold the dream vestige back. Although if it can jump back and forth between this world and some astral realm, that makes the task more difficult.”
“Perhaps it’s time,” Lauzoril said, “to ask ourselves whether it even matters if we can devise a defense against the dream entity.”
Nevron glowered at him. “Are you suggesting what I think you are?”
“Reluctantly,” the zulkir of Enchantment replied, “but someone has to say it. We just lost the greater part of our military strength.”
“We have other troops,” Nevron said.
“Who are out of position to confront the horde of undead that is surely racing south, and too few to stop it even if they could. Because somehow, Szass Tam has raised a vast new army when it should have been impossible. He and his necromancers also appear to have discovered how to make wizardry reliable again while the solution still eludes us. In short, the lich holds every advantage.”
“I don’t care,” Nevron said.
“Nor does it matter to me,” Lauzoril responded, “what your pride obliges you to do. But I don’t intend to die struggling to cling to my position in a realm that mostly lies in ruins anyway. Not if the cause is hopeless.”
“It may be that Szass Tam would offer us terms,” Samas said.
Lallara laughed. “Now that his victory is at hand? He’d butcher you and feed your bloated carcass to his ghouls before you could even blink.”
“Even if he was inclined to be merciful,” Lauzoril said, “I’d prefer a comfortable life in exile to subservience.”
Nevron shook his head. “I won’t give up.” But for the first time in all their long acquaintance, Samas heard a hint of weakness and doubt in the conjuror’s voice.
“No one has to flee yet,” Lauzoril said. “We can keep searching for a way to turn the situation around. But we’ll also make preparations to depart, and take comfort in the fact that, whatever resources Szass Tam may possess, he doesn’t have ships, and some forms of undead can’t cross open water.”
“Very well,” Nevron said. “I suppose that’s reasonable.” He turned his glower back on Zola, studying her, and his mouth tightened. He stroked the hideous face tattooed in the palm of one hand and muttered under his breath.
A creature resembling a diseased satyr appeared behind the conjuror’s seat. Open sores mottled its emaciated frame. It had horns and a head like a ram, but with seeping crimson eyes and pointed fangs. Its serpentine tail switched back and forth, scraping a cluster of metallic spines on the tip against the floor. It clutched a huge spear in its four-fingered hands. Nevron pointed, and it oriented on Zola.
The necromancer jumped out of her seat. “What are you doing?”
“It’s only a bulezau,” Nevron said, “not all that powerful for a demon. A true zulkir shouldn’t have any trouble defending against it.”
The tanar’ri leveled its spear and charged.
Zola shouted a word of power and swept her hand through a mystic pass. Swirls of jagged darkness spun from her fingertips to fill the space between the bulezau and herself. The demon lunged in and stuck fast like an animal caught in brambles. Zola grabbed a bone-and-onyx amulet.
The bulezau vanished from the shadowy trap and appeared behind her. She sensed it, started to turn, but was too slow. It raised its spear high, rammed it into her torso, and the force of the blow smashed her to the floor. The bulezau threw itself on top of her, clawed away hunks of flesh, and stuffed them into its mouth. The rattle of the jewelry on her flailing limbs found a counterpoint in the snapping of her bones.
Samas swallowed and wondered if he would even be hungry at suppertime.
“If this really is the end,” Nevron said, “I’ll be damned if I meet it in the company of a useless we
akling claiming to be my equal and looking to rule our shrunken dominions along with the rest of us.”
Samas noticed that Kumed Hahpret had turned an ashen white.
If the war had taught the people of Thay anything, it was that horrible entities were apt to come stalking or flying out of the dark. That was why Aoth approached the walls of Mophur wrapped in a pearly conjured glow that also enveloped Brightwing, and with a fluttering banner of the Griffon Legion tied to the end of his spear.
Even so, crossbow bolts flew at him from the battlements. One struck his shoulder with stinging force but glanced off his mail.
“Bareris!” he shouted. The bard was better able to communicate over a distance.
“Stop shooting!” Bareris called. “We fight for the council. Look carefully at Captain Fezim and you’ll see.”
More quarrels flew. Brightwing screeched in anger. “Go away!” someone yelled.
Aoth flew Brightwing away from the walls and waved his spear for his fellow griffon riders to follow. They landed beside the High Road, near the mounted knights and men-at-arms who’d fled south with them. The griffons were so tired that they didn’t even show signs of wanting to eat the horses. Some wounded, heads hanging low, the equines were in even worse shape. One charger toppled sideways, dumping its master on the ground, writhed once, and then lay still.
While he flew, the kiss of the wind had kept Aoth alert, but on the ground, he suddenly felt weary enough to keel over himself. He invoked the magic of a tattoo to clear his head and send a surge of energy into his limbs. It helped, but not a great deal. He’d already used the trick too many times.
“What’s wrong?” asked the knight at the head of the column. Aoth tried to recall the man’s name and rank, but couldn’t dredge them out of his memory.
“Apparently,” said Aoth, “the autharch of the city doesn’t want to let us in.”
“He has to!” said the knight. “Now that it’s dark, Szass Tam’s creatures will be on our trail again.”
The Haunted Lands: Book II - Undead Page 25