The Masked Witches

by Richard Lee Byers

  The berserker took a breath. “Still, I do demand it,” he said.

  “Then it’s just as well that we meant to include you anyway,” Yhelbruna said, with perhaps the slightest hint of humor in her voice. “This is chilly weather for frogs.”

  “It appears, then,” Dai Shan said, “that we understand our task, and we know who else intends to strive for the greater glory of this noble land.”

  “Please,” said Dulsaer, sneering. “The sellswords and berserkers are at least soldiers of a sort. You Theskians are merchants. What are you going to do? Bribe the undead to go away?”

  The small Shou in his long green coat rose. He turned to face Dulsaer and spread his hands. Shadows, hitherto scarcely noticeable in the afternoon sunlight, stretched and darkened, and gloom gathered in the air. Dai Shan leaped, or maybe simply vanished, and then he was standing on a patch of empty bench directly in front of Dulsaer. He snapped a punch at the griffonrider’s face.

  Startled, Dulsaer failed to react. The blow would surely have smashed his nose except that Dai Shan stopped it an inch short of the target. The murk in the air cleared, and the sunshine streamed back.

  “Is this how it works?” Yhelbruna asked. “We show leniency to one man, and the rest of you decide you’re free to brawl in our presence?”

  Dai Shan turned and bowed to her. “Noblest of ladies,” he said, “one could quibble over the appropriateness of the word ‘brawl’ when no one has touched anyone else. But I’m not a quibbler. I take your point, and I apologize. Vanity got the better of me. There are occasions when I find it useful to be underestimated, but in the main, I prefer to be taken seriously.”

  “Demonstrate your prowess by destroying the undead,” Yhelbruna said. “That goes for all of you. Understand, we aren’t requiring you to do it all by yourselves. You can apply to the Iron Lord for additional warriors or any other help you need. But still, ultimately, the task is yours.”

  She flicked her wand through another intricate figure. Then she led the other hathrans and the glimmering telthors out of the amphitheater. Everyone else stood in silence as they passed.

  When they were gone, Bez leered at Aoth. “Well, what do you say, Fezim? Partners?”

  Aoth shifted his grip on his spear. His mail clinked. “It’s something to consider,” he replied.

  “Come on,” said the captain. “I don’t understand everything you and these lovely ladies accomplished in Chessenta this past year. I don’t know how anyone could make sense of all the stories. But it seems to have involved unraveling mysteries and secrets, and that’s what’s needed now. No one will ever stop these undead until we know how and why they’re rising.”

  “True enough,” said Aoth. “That’s what my friends and I can cook for the feast. What do you have to contribute?”

  “Surely that’s plain,” Bez replied. “You left your company in winter quarters; I brought mine. This is likely to come down to real battles, not just skirmishes in the woods, before it’s over. When that happens, you want to stand with your fellow professionals, not alone, or with a pack of crazy barbarians.”

  Aoth smiled. “You may have a point,” he said. “I’ve already seen how well ‘crazy barbarians’ stick to a plan. Equal shares, even though there’s a whole shipload of you and only three of us?”

  “Of course.” Bez said, thrusting out his hand.

  Aoth didn’t grasp it. He simply nodded. “I’ll let you know if I decide to take you up on it,” he said.

  The skyship captain’s eyes narrowed. “Are you joking?” he asked.

  “No,” replied Aoth. “Because I remember Turmish, too, although not the way you claim to. And I’ll partner up with you again if I think it’s necessary, but not until.”

  Bez snorted. “Suit yourself, Thayan,” he said. “Hold a grudge. You’ll regret it when I fly off with all the griffons. That’s assuming some wraith or ghoul hasn’t torn you apart before then.” He and his men turned and stalked away.

  Aoth turned and cast about. “Vandar! Wait!” he called, as he started toward the berserker and his lodge brothers.

  “So we are going to partner up with him?” Cera asked, scurrying after him.

  “If he’ll have us,” Aoth replied. “And much as he dislikes me, I think he will. What happened in the grove shows we can help each other.”

  “Even though he and his folk are ‘crazy barbarians?’ ” Cera asked.

  “Better mad and wild than treacherous,” he said.

  * * * * *

  Uramar scrutinized the hieroglyphs on the limestone wall. Some of his broken selves, the ones who were scholars of esoterica, were interested. They picked out symbols they recognized—the names of Abyssal powers and Infernal personages, mostly—and muttered as they speculated on the meanings of those they didn’t.

  He suspected they’d keep at it all day if he allowed them to, for it was the first Nar tomb complex he’d visited. He and his fellows had mostly begun by waking durthans and other wise Rashemi who’d perished in recent times. Those recruits had in turn helped them locate older ruins, barrows, and sunken, overgrown graves.

  Of course, that wasn’t the only way to find the resting places of the dead. A person could explore unmapped portions of the deathways and see where they led. That, as he understood it, was how his fraternity had discovered the new land in the first place. But it was a dangerous undertaking.

  A frantic “Stop!” reminded him that his current methods weren’t entirely safe, either. He pivoted, and his scarred, mottled hands shifted his greatsword into a middle guard.

  A few paces ahead, four zombies had been breaking down a wall that brought the downward-sloping passage to what Nyevarra was sure was a premature end. The stroke of a pickaxe had knocked away plaster, but, by pure luck, left the wavy seven-armed sigil beneath unmarred.

  Another blow certainly would chip it. Nyevarra did not content herself with snapping a command at the zombie to make sure that didn’t happen. She grabbed its gray, slimy forearm and hauled it backward.

  Short and solidly built like most Rashemi, Nyevarra had been a durthan. She still wore the robes and silver mask that had denoted her status, although the former were rotten and moldy; the latter, black with tarnish. Always somewhat unpredictable, Lod’s magic had brought her back as a vampire. It was a condition she generally relished, although she’d been briefly distraught when her former familiar had appeared and instantly attacked her, and she had had to destroy the thing.

  Uramar hadn’t blamed her for feeling upset. The telthor’s reaction to her rebirth really didn’t seem fair, considering that the wretched thing had been a bat. Or the spirit of a bat, or whatever.

  As Uramar reached her side, he took another glance around, making sure none of the zombies showed any sign of taking another swing. For, while no member of the Eminence was truly mindless, the mute and sluggish things came close.

  “What is that?” he asked, indicating the symbol with a slight inclination of his blade. He thought he already knew, but she was the expert on the mystical arts of the land.

  “A trap,” she said, confirming his guess. “If we disturb it, something bad will happen. Given that the Nars’ great art was demonbinding, I imagine a fiend will spring forth and attack us.”

  “So how do we proceed?” he asked.

  “You and the zombies stand back,” she replied. “I’m going to try to call the spirit forth under my control. I’ll offer it freedom in exchange for a promise to leave us alone.”

  “All right,” said Uramar. “Go ahead.”

  The operation took a little while. First, Nyevarra removed a stone from one of the pockets of her robe and scratched an elaborate geometric figure, composed mainly of interlocking triangles, on the floor. Both the rock and the lines it made glowed a sickly blue. It was the first actual light he’d seen since descending into the vaults, for the undead didn’t need it to find their way.

  She stood in the center of the design she’d created. Swaying, she crooned a cha
nt that sent echoes whispering through the dark. Some of the carved symbols on the walls pulsed with phosphorescence. Despite its stupidity, a zombie shivered, and tears of sludge oozed down its slack, rotting face.

  The trap symbol expanded. Suddenly, a creature resembling a huge insect burst from nothingness to thump down on the floor.

  Its body was no bigger than a mastiff’s, but its sets of spindly, many-jointed legs and three pairs of droning membranous wings nearly filled the corridor from wall to wall. Serrated mandibles gnashed and clicked above its cluster of bulging black eyes, and its several tails, each tipped with a curved stinger, coiled and lashed about.

  Uramar had seen many things that the average mortal would consider horrible and hideous, including his own lopsided patchwork form reflected in a glass. And such things generally failed to disturb him, as they would not disturb most undead. But the demon, if that was what it was, seemed somehow overwhelmingly, even transcendently, vile. Everything about it shocked and sickened. The ugliness that made him strain just to keep his eyes on it. The buzzing that scraped at his nerves. The acidic stench that burned his nose, filled his mouth with a foul taste, and made his stomach churn.

  Some of his souls simply couldn’t bear the fiend’s presence. They snapped and started screaming. But fortunately, most were resilient enough to allow him to ignore the clamor.

  Two of the zombies, however, succumbed to the demon’s influence. They fell down, thrashed, and pawed and swatted at themselves.

  Uramar tensed when Nyevarra’s knees buckled, and she too appeared on the verge of collapse. But she croaked a word of power and straightened up again.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, raising his voice to make himself heard above the droning.

  “Yes,” the vampire said, “and you should be, too. I have the demon penned between the sigil on the wall and the one I drew. It’s an ekolid, by the way. A lesser obyrith.”

  Lesser, said the demon, its psychic voice stabbing into Uramar’s mind, is a strange word for one of you paltry undead to apply to me.

  “We’re the ones who have you caged,” Uramar said.

  For how much longer? the demon replied. Your barrier and the witch are one and the same. I push, she has to push back. And so she exhausts her strength.

  “If that’s true,” Nyevarra said, “then I suppose it would be prudent to shove you back into your original prison while I still can.”

  The wasp-thing laughed. Its mirth was like a whip lashing and slicing the inside of Uramar’s head. But you can’t, little leech. I don’t know how long I was bound here. A long while, I think. But I can see that you’re no Nar, and you don’t possess their skills.

  “I don’t see a point to your hostility,” Uramar said. “The Nars enslaved you, so why would you want to fulfill their purpose? I was once in a similar situation, and I certainly had no desire to please my captors. Let Nyevarra set you free. All we ask in return is that you go in peace. Otherwise, we’ll have to lock you away again or kill you.”

  It would be nice to thwart the Nar who bound me, the demon said. But how would he ever even know about it? Whereas you little folk are cringing right in front of me. I can actually hurt and destroy you, and that too will set me free.

  “We’re not cringing,” Nyevarra began. Suddenly the blue glimmer in the lines on the floor blinked out, and the ekolid sprang at her.

  Its forelegs slammed into her shoulders and chest, and its momentum plunged her to the floor beneath it. Its tails whirled around its body to drive their stingers into her flanks. Its mandibles spread to grip her head between them.

  Uramar raised his greatsword, willed his cold flesh colder, and rushed in. “Kill it!” he called to the zombies. He wasn’t sure that any of them would obey under the circumstances, or that they’d be of much use if they did, but it was worth a try.

  Meanwhile, Nyevarra’s body vanished in a puff of mist and swirled away from the demon’s murderous embrace. The ekolid immediately oriented on Uramar, and its several tails reared like serpents.

  As Uramar lunged into striking distance, he couldn’t see any sign that the deathly chill that surrounded him was bothering the fiend. He hadn’t really expected it to, but it was another measure that was at least worth a try.

  “Let’s see you ignore this!” snarled one of his warrior selves, and he swung the greatsword down at the demon’s head.

  The obyrith responded with two simultaneous actions. One of its stingers stabbed into Uramar’s flank just above the hip. A different tail whipped into position to parry the sword stroke near the top of its arc.

  As the stinger ripped free, a burst of pain doubled Uramar over. But the greatsword cut a little nick in the demon’s tail, and it faltered, too. A psychic shriek rasped through Uramar’s head.

  The ekolid shook off the paralysis of sudden pain with a rattling shudder of its entire body, transparent wings, lashing tails, and all. At the same time, Uramar found renewed strength of his own in the power that shivered through his sword hilt into his hands.

  The ekolid scuttled forward. Though still not fully recovered, Uramar managed to snap his point into line. The demon jerked to a halt just before it would have rammed its own head onto the blade. Then it hopped backward.

  A life-drinking sword, it said. How does a slave stitched together from scraps of offal acquire such a treasure?

  “I’m not a slave,” panted Uramar, straightening up. Not anymore, he wasn’t. “You have no idea who we are, or the things we’re going to do. It’s a shame you won’t live long enough to find out.”

  Perhaps you can tell me all about it when you’re groveling to me in the Abyss, the demon said. That’s assuming a travesty like you even has a soul to go there. Really, I think it’s just as likely that everything you are is about to disappear like a blown-out candle flame.

  The pain of the puncture wound above Uramar’s hip had faded to an ache, but flared into agony once more. A pale grub the size of his thumb came squirming out of the hole.

  At that moment of shock, revulsion, and pain, the ekolid lunged. The two zombies who hadn’t lost what passed for their minds lurched past Uramar and swung their pickaxes. The one on the right popped a couple of the demon’s round black eyes into smears of jelly. The other tore a wing. The ekolid retaliated and all but ripped them apart with arcing, whipping stabs of its stingers.

  At the same time, Nyevarra, in womanly form once more, shrieked three rhyming words. Lightning crackled from her outstretched hand to blaze across the demon’s hindquarters. The blast made the ekolid falter for a scant instant, but had no other effect that Uramar could discern. It continued to scuttle toward him.

  He dipped the greatsword low, as if he meant to shear the obyrith’s forelegs out from underneath it. Its tails shifted to defend against such an attack and strike back at his torso. He retreated just out of reach of the stingers and let go of his weapon with his left hand. Suddenly he whipped out his arm, and threw a barrage of conjured hailstones from his fingertips.

  Caught by surprise, the ekolid offered no defense. And while it might be impervious to pure cold, the hard bits of ice pulped and tore at the rest of its eyes almost as effectively as the zombies’ pickaxes.

  The demon recoiled, and, slashing, Uramar pursued. Nyevarra cast away her tarnished mask, revealing a face that a mortal might have found pretty except for its ashen pallor, needle fangs, and snarl of bestial fury. She leaped onto the demon’s back among the buzzing wings and started biting.

  Despite their combined attack, killing the ekolid wasn’t easy. But finally the demon collapsed with much of its head, torso, and limbs either crisscrossed with gory wounds or chopped away entirely.

  Its death throes were mere shudders, but from the corner of his eye, Uramar glimpsed something else crawling in the spreading pool of its dark, putrid blood. It was the larva, already bigger than when it had wriggled out of his side. He bellowed and stamped it to mush.

  For a moment, slumping, he imagined that was the
last thing he needed to do. Then he realized that Nyevarra was still clinging to the motionless ekolid and still licking and sucking at its wounds.

  It was normal behavior for a vampire, but the results weren’t. Her body swelled, and there was a squirming beneath her clothing, as though new appendages were sprouting. Her skull made crunching noises as it changed shape. Her two eyes divided into four, and the beginnings of mandibles curled from her temples.

  Uramar dropped his sword, grabbed Nyevarra, and dragged her off the ekolid. She struggled, but her strength, though greater than human, was less than his own. Knowing of a no more sophisticated remedy, he slammed her into the wall repeatedly.

  Rather to his surprise, it worked. Her shape ran and blurred, writhed and shifted in his grasp, until she was herself again, and she stopped fighting to break free.

  He let go of her carefully and watched to see if her seeming return to normalcy was a trick. It didn’t seem to be. She didn’t use her restored mobility to attack.

  “Thank you,” she said. She rubbed her stained lips with the back of her hand. “The blood was foul, but wonderful, too. I couldn’t stop drinking it.”

  “I’m glad it didn’t do you any permanent harm,” he replied.

  “That’s twice you’ve pulled me back from oblivion, or as good as,” she said. She reached up, caressed his cheek, and traced the path of his jugular, her fingertip sliding over the ridges in his flesh. “Would you like to help me wash the bad taste from my mouth?”

  Some of his broken souls moaned, “Yes!” But others urged caution, reminded him of his mission, or simply felt awkward and inept, and those were the voices that prevailed.

  He stepped back from her and asked, “How did the ekolid break free?”

  She smirked at his implicit refusal, and her fangs retracted into what appeared to be ordinary canine teeth. “The fiend explained it well enough,” she said. “It was strong, and I’m not a Nar.”

  “Let’s press on, then, and find those who are,” he replied.