The Masked Witches

by Richard Lee Byers

  The ghost led its charges through the arch and repeated the cat-scratch gesture. As quickly as it had changed before, the passage reverted to its original condition, and those who had entered it disappeared.

  Dai Shan gave his head a tiny shake. When he’d wondered if Falconer and his peers might have a secret means of escape, he’d been wiser than he knew. And such being the case, perhaps he could accomplish something more—much more!—than mere reconnaissance, if only he didn’t run out of time.

  He waited another moment, making sure that the ghost and the witches weren’t coming back. Then he approached the arch and tried the scratching motion for himself.

  * * * * *

  Across the myriad nightmare worlds that made up the Abyss, manes were the lowest form of demon. They were slaves or prey to all the others, waddling, bloated child-sized things with maggots squirming in their open sores. Aoth never beheld one without recalling how Szass Tam had disposed of Nevron by turning him into a mane, a supremely ignominious end for Thay’s preeminent master of fiends.

  Maybe it was that flicker of memory that slowed his reactions, for by the time he had aimed his spear, Jhesrhi was already hurling bright yellow flame from her staff. Wreathed in fire like the wizard herself, the several tanar’ri fell down, screaming and writhing.

  Aoth supposed that left him to account for the Nar demonbinder who’d summoned the creatures. Taking care not to trip over a burning mane, or let one roll and flounder into him, he rushed the undead figure with the staff in its flaking, tattooed hands and the big round iron amulet dangling from its withered neck. Cera and a couple of the stag warriors raced after him.

  Somewhat to Aoth’s surprise, the Nar didn’t try to call up a new fiend. It simply swung its staff in a sweeping blow instead. Aoth simultaneously blocked with his targe, charged his spear with lightning, and thrust it into the walking corpse’s chest. The resulting flash and bang tore its torso apart, and it fell backward. The stag warriors hacked at it anyway. They’d learned that undead and trolls sometimes needed a lot of killing.

  Still, that one was rather clearly finished. Cera, the front of her bandages stained rusty brown, peered down at the remains. Breathing hard, she said, “That was pretty easy.”

  Aoth frowned. “It was, wasn’t it?” he said. And after all the hard fighting they’d done to get so far, he supposed he should be grateful. Still, something about it nagged at him, and he tried to figure out what.

  A sudden baritone voice speaking with a cultured Shou accent distracted him from his pondering. “Captain Fezim,” it said.

  Surprised, Aoth pivoted to see Dai Shan advancing into the golden glow of Cera’s conjured sunlight. Clad in his customary green coat, the little merchant was so immaculately groomed that he would have cut a strange figure on any battleground, let alone in a warren infested with the vilest creatures in Rashemen.

  Nor were his cleanliness and neatness the strangest things about his sudden appearance. “What are you doing here?” Aoth demanded.

  The Shou bowed. “The shrewd war mage cuts to the heart of the matter as incisively as I would have expected,” he said. “As you may recall, I too possess some knowledge of the occult arts. My explorations revealed that the hathrans’ quest had led you and your dauntless allies to the Fortress of the Half-Demon. So naturally, since the undertaking is mine as well, I rushed here by sorcerous means to assist however I can.”

  Aoth snorted and said, “In other words, to stake your claim to at least a couple griffons if you possibly can.”

  Dai Shan turned up his well-tended hands. “Sympathetic as I am to the difficulties of our Rashemi hosts, I confess that my motives aren’t entirely altruistic,” he said. “Perhaps, if pressed, even the most valorous of mercenaries might admit the same.”

  “Fair enough,” said Aoth. “But you’re too late to dip your mug in this particular barrel. We don’t need you. It’s all over but the cleanup.”

  “Then I congratulate you,” said Dai Shan. “Still, hearing that matters have advanced as far as you say, I find myself puzzled over the particular group of undead I sighted proceeding down a certain passage. From their demeanor no less than their gear, I assumed them to be powerful creatures of high rank. Enemies one would wish to destroy before proclaiming the current menace ended for good and all.”

  “Did you see a big thing that looked stitched together from pieces of different bodies?” Cera asked. “Or a witch in a tarnished silver mask? She would have been carrying a staff with antlers on the end.”

  Dai Shan gave a little nod. “In fact, wise daughter of the sun,” he said, “that’s exactly whom I saw. Those two and three others.”

  Aoth’s mouth tightened. He didn’t much fancy partnering up with such a glib little eel, but he’d fought alongside worse in his time. “If you lead us to the creatures, maybe we can spare you a griffon or two,” he said. “Failing that, we’ll pay you somehow.”

  “So be it,” replied the Shou. “And now that we’ve negotiated that, may I recommend haste? We wouldn’t want the foe to stray too far from the location where I observed them.”

  “One moment,” Jhesrhi said. Extinguishing her mantle of flame, she stepped to the wall and placed her fingertips against it. Aoth knew she was talking to the stone all around them, finding out where the other squads were and how they were faring.

  Jhesrhi turned back around. “Everything seems to be under control,” she said.

  “Good,” Aoth replied, looking at Dai Shan. “Now we can go.”

  The Shou led them along a twisting route through vaults and passages that echoed with the cries and clatter of conflict. Watching for signs of trouble, Aoth had to admire the ease with which Dai Shan negotiated the labyrinth, assuming the trader wasn’t lost.

  With their bells silenced, and their cloven hooves clicking on the floor, eight stag warriors paced in a line behind their human comrades. Aoth wondered how much they understood what was happening and decided he’d likely never know. In their mute inscrutability, they seemed emblematic of the entire fey- and spirit-ridden country.

  Another turn brought an archway into view and drove such reflections from his mind as he grunted in surprise.

  Dai Shan looked back at him. “Is something wrong, intrepid captain?” he asked.

  “Not wrong,” said Aoth, “but interesting. Cera and I saw three notches just like that cut at the top of an arch in the tomb back in the sacred grove.”

  “The same crypts,” Dai Shan said, “from which, you said, the durthans and werewolves seemingly emerged even though you’d established they were empty.”

  “Yes,” replied Aoth.

  “Well, it gratifies me to be in a position to solve that particular puzzle for you,” said the Shou. “Watch the arch while I recite the words I heard the scarred creature say. ‘In the name of the Vaunted, the Staff-Bearer, the Lord of the Forsaken Crypt, open.’ ”

  The space beyond the opening changed. What had been one passage until it doglegged out of sight divided into two. What had been featureless walls suddenly sported intricate carvings like fungus grown in an instant: a bewildering hodgepodge of skulls, skeletons, weeping mourners, flowers, wreaths, sunsets, and souls standing before their gods for judgment. Moreover, a nasty-looking darkness resisted the illumination of Cera’s conjured sunlight. It reminded Aoth of Gaedynn and Jhesrhi’s description of the Shadowfell, and he suspected that was exactly what he was looking at. Or, if not Shadow itself, a demiplane derived from it.

  The stag men shied at the transformation, and Jhesrhi turned to calm them. Cera grinned at Aoth. “So you see everything, do you?” she said.

  “Once in a while,” he replied, trying to sound vexed so she’d enjoy her teasing more. “There truly isn’t anything that any pair of eyes could see. This was one of those occasions.”

  “If you say so, my love,” she said. “If you say so.”

  “If my fearless companions are ready,” Dai Shan said, “I don’t imagine the gate will stay open fore
ver.”

  “Probably not,” Aoth said. Spear at the ready, he prowled forward, while Dai Shan stepped aside and relinquished the lead. Aoth supposed that was fair enough. The merchant had done his job, and it was time for the soldiers to do theirs.

  As soon as he stepped over the threshold, he felt an absence. He’d lost contact with Jet just as he had upon entering the Feywild. It was proof that he and his comrades truly were intruding on another level of reality.

  Nor was that the only indication. It was colder than it had been outside the arch. Cera murmured a prayer that infused the light that followed her like a faithful hound with warmth. But the surrounding gloom immediately started leeching both the heat and the radiance away. She was going to have to keep investing power in the enchantment if she wanted it to last.

  It was one more good reason to find and destroy the enemy leaders quickly. Aoth started forward, then heard a jangle of bells. He turned to see what had agitated the stag warriors.

  As Dai Shan had predicted, the arch behind them had changed again. Instead of connecting to the tunnel they’d just left, it framed a straight length of passageway also shrouded in murk and decorated with funerary carvings. Fortunately, though, their side of the arch had its own three notches to mark it as a doorway back to the mortal world. Aoth and his comrades shouldn’t have any trouble identifying it once their business was through.

  Jhesrhi calmed the stag men once again. They all stalked onward through echoing spaces that proved to be at least as labyrinthine as the ones that truly lay under the fortress. Sarcophagi rested on daises or stood on end in niches. Urns reposed on shelves. The jumbles of mournful carvings on the walls sometimes yielded to more ordered spaces resembling the facades of tombs. Occasionally, the way widened out to accommodate rows of headstones, a freestanding mausoleum, or even an entire graveyard under a vaulted ceiling. The place was like a fever dream of interment.

  And its vastness was a problem. Eventually Cera stated what everyone had surely started to realize. “There are too many alleys running off in all directions,” she said. “The undead could have gone anywhere.”

  “Can you track them?” Aoth asked, of her and Jhesrhi, too.

  “Maybe,” Cera said. “I can ask the Keeper where they went.”

  “And I can talk to the stone and the air,” Jhesrhi said.

  Aoth left them to it. Meanwhile, he prowled about, peering and listening, trying to catch any sign of their quarry or of any lurking threat native to the halls. Presumably doing the same, the stag men likewise paced the twilight perimeter where Cera’s radiance began to fail.

  Dai Shan, however, ventured farther. Aoth remembered the means by which the Shou had made a fool of Folcoerr Dulsaer and decided he was the sort of mage who felt at home in the dark. Yet it wouldn’t necessarily help him if a wraith or demon pounced out at him from cover.

  But nothing did. Dai Shan turned and came trotting back. For once, his imperturbable face betrayed a hint of excitement. “Brave captain,” he said, “come and see.”

  Aoth glanced back at Cera and Jhesrhi, each still intent on her labors, making sure they were all right. He followed Dai Shan into the gloom.

  The Shou led him around a corner to an arch flanked by black marble statues of sphinxes sitting on their haunches. Incised on the pointed capstone were three grooves.

  “Do you see?” Dai Shan asked.

  “Yes,” said Aoth. “Presumably the enemy was making for a different doorway to leave this place. This may well—”

  The view before him shifted. The arch still opened on a farrago of grim and sometimes bizarre stonework, but it was different stonework. A bas-relief of skeletal Kelemvor enthroned and holding his scales had given way to a row of grimacing demonic heads sticking out of the wall like rainspouts. A sarcophagus big enough for a fomorian had become steps leading down to a small boat with an empty bed in the center, a craft perhaps destined to wait forever for someone to put a corpse onboard, set it ablaze, and shove it out onto the black water beyond the quay.

  Aoth realized no one had spoken the words that had supposedly produced such a transformation before. Then he realized Dai Shan was standing a pace behind him.

  As he started to turn, something slammed into his head. If not for his helmet, and a hundred years of experience in rolling with impacts he couldn’t avoid, the blow might well have snapped his spine.

  As it was, it stabbed pain through his neck and threw him off balance. He struggled to get his feet under him, while Dai Shan plowed into him like a wrestler intent on bulling his opponent out of the ring.

  That’s a mistake, thought Aoth. He moved his hands up on the haft of his spear and stabbed at the spot where Dai Shan’s neck met his shoulder.

  Somehow, Dai Shan sensed the attack coming. He let Aoth go and jerked backward. It saved his life, but he failed to avoid the stroke entirely. The spearhead raked across the front of his torso and gashed him.

  “Give up,” Aoth said. “You’re unarmed and wounded. You can’t win.”

  Dai Shan made a shallow bow. “Reluctant as I am to contradict such a perspicacious leader of men,” he said, “it appears to me that I’ve already won. You may find it instructive to examine our surroundings.”

  Aoth risked a glance and discovered that when the Shou had tackled him, he’d shoved him to the other side of the arch. Worse—much worse—the view on the side where they’d started had altered, too. There was still a tomb-scape there, but not the same one where he’d left Jhesrhi and Cera working their magic.

  “Does the illustrious war mage understand now?” Dai Shan asked, the slightest of smiles upturning the corners of his mouth. “Lacking the true secret of the portals, you will wander here alone until you either succumb to thirst or attract the attention of something that resents trespassers. The sunlady, the elementalist, and those peculiar deer men are in essentially the same predicament, although they at least have one another for company.”

  “And I have you,” said Aoth. “To cut on until you open the gate again.”

  The Shou inclined his head. “An eminently practical solution,” he replied, “if only I were in every sense the true, unique Dai Shan. But alas, it isn’t so. I’m merely a shadow, doomed to fade away no matter what, so neither torture nor murder worries me unduly.”

  “Then why even bother to attack me?” asked Aoth. “Why not just lure us in here, ‘fade,’ and leave us trapped?”

  “Again, I congratulate you on the acuity of your mind,” said the Shou. “That’s an entirely sensible question. The answer is that I neither know all the qualities of this place nor the full capabilities of you and your allies. Pooling your resources, you, Jhesrhi Coldcreek, and Cera Eurthos might just have found a way out. The two ladies still might. But not you, mighty warrior, not alone, not when your particular system of wizardry revolves around blasting and smiting, not solving subtle conundrums of metaphysics. And ultimately, it’s you who are my competitor for the griffons.”

  Aoth had the ghastly feeling that Dai Shan had just told him the truth in every respect. Yet it was possible he was bluffing, that he wasn’t really going to melt away but was instead just waiting for a chance to escape.

  And even if he wasn’t, Aoth very much wanted to hurt him. He snarled a word of power, jabbed with his spear, and hurled darts of blue-green light from the point.

  The missiles stabbed into Dai Shan’s torso, and he stumbled back against the wall. Aoth lunged after him.

  The darkness thickened and swirled around the Shou like a black whirlwind. Then he vanished.

  Aoth suspected his foe had only shifted a short distance. He whirled, seeking him, and spotted him immediately. But before he could do anything about it, the gloom churned, and Dai Shan disappeared for a second time.

  Aoth’s battle instincts told him the merchant had jumped back to his original position. He pivoted just in time to catch a clanging snap kick on his targe. Spinning and leaping, Dai Shan instantly tried to kick over the top of the shie
ld.

  Aoth simultaneously shifted the targe to protect his face and thrust around the side of it. The stroke caught Dai Shan in midair and drove into his belly.

  The Shou landed on his back. He tried to heave himself up off the floor, but the effort proved to be too much for him. He gave Aoth a little nod.

  “It was a singular honor,” Dai Shan whispered, “to watch such an illustrious man-at-arms ply his trade. Thank—”

  The Shou disappeared, but it was different than before. The darkness hadn’t stirred to help him whisk himself across space. Rather, he’d simply faded away as he’d said he would.

  With him vanished any trace of vengeful satisfaction that Aoth might otherwise have felt. Because it didn’t matter that he’d destroyed that particular manifestation of his rival’s power. Dai Shan had outwitted and outmaneuvered him, and as a result, not only he but also Jhesrhi and Cera were in trouble.

  Aoth comprehended all too well that he didn’t know how to control the portals. Dai Shan had concealed the actual procedure. But just to make absolutely sure, he faced the arch and said, “In the name of the Vaunted, the Staff-Bearer, the Lord of the Hidden Crypt, open.”

  It didn’t.

  * * * * *

  Feeling every bit as energized, as angry, as he had when he first descended into the tunnels, Vandar trotted in search of more enemies. The berserkers he’d chosen for his personal hunting party trotted after him. Just ahead on the left, an arch opened on a passage running off the main corridor at an oblique angle. It was an architectural feature the ancient Nars had evidently favored, at least for their dungeons, tombs, and conjuring chambers.

  Something about the arch snagged Vandar’s attention, although he had no idea what or why. Except for the three grooves carved at the top, it didn’t look any different than the many other openings he’d passed.

  Puzzled, he stopped and examined the arch. He still couldn’t see anything special about it, and was about to move on when he realized that while he himself hadn’t noticed anything, the red spear in his left hand and the crimson broadsword in his right one had. Making themselves felt in a manner all but indistinguishable from his own native intuition, the perceptions of the fey weapons had bled into his thoughts.