He cocked his fleshless skull of a head as he peered down at Jhesrhi and Cera. “The two of you fought well today. Too well to expect anything but vengeance if you fell into our hands.”
Jhesrhi gave Cera a poke with the staff. “This one deserves it. She fought of her own free will. I didn’t.” She proceeded to tell the tale the sunlady had concocted.
When she finished, Lod simply stared down at her for a while. A wizard’s instincts warned her he was using some occult means of perception in an attempt to examine her essence. I’m fire, she told herself, fire, ready to incinerate any dead, filthy thing that displeases me, and she gazed back at him unflinchingly.
At last he said, “You don’t look exactly like an elemental.” And all around her, anticipating that he was about to give the order to attack, direhelms, zombies, and wraiths gathered themselves to lunge and pounce.
“I admit,” Jhesrhi said. “My mother was human. But she burned to death giving birth to me, and afterward, my efreet father took me to raise. He taught me to hate the cold, wet, mortal part of me, and with his help, I reforged it into something stronger.”
“Congratulations,” Lod replied, a note of irony in his slightly sibilant voice. “Undead too, occasionally have to work to slough off clinging vestiges of the lesser beings we started out as. But that doesn’t change the fact that fire and our kind are natural enemies.”
“Sharp steel harms living warriors,” Jhesrhi answered. “That doesn’t stop them from wielding axes and swords, and in my time, I’ve known liches and the ghosts of mages to wield flame. I’d wager you yourself have a fire spell or two in reserve for when fire is exactly the right weapon for the occasion. If not, you’re a fool.”
The bone naga chuckled. “Perhaps I do at that. Yet even if so, should I trust living, thinking fire not to betray me?”
“I don’t deny I view your kind with distaste. But my current predicament obliges me to overlook that. Does my gift do nothing to prove my sincerity? The clerics of Amaunator stand in opposition to your kind more than any fire spirit ever could.”
Lod’s lower body shifted position, the coils sliding. “It is a nice gesture. Under other circumstances, I’d punish the woman properly to avenge those who burned when she called the daylight. But important matters await my attention in Rashemen, so I suppose we only have time for a little torture before the kill.” Swaying, he leaned out over the edge of the cart to scrutinize Jhesrhi even more closely. “That is what you expected, isn’t it?”
Be fire, Jhesrhi reminded herself, and when she replied, her voice was steady. “Do what you please. It doesn’t matter to me. But I don’t know how detailed your knowledge of affairs in Faerûn is. Your prisoner is Cera Eurthos. She’s the lover of Aoth Fezim, a sellsword captain hired to fight your forces. She’s also one of the principal candidates for the head of the church of the Yellow Sun in the land of Chessenta. You might find she’s more useful to you alive.”
“Hm. That does seem possible. And I confess, I know little about gods and divine magic and such, and I need to remedy that. Perhaps a priestess can instruct me.”
“No,” Cera said. “I won’t help you in any way.”
“Oh, I trust you will,” Lod said, “starting right now.” He turned to the vampires, who, Jhesrhi now observed, had at some point risen from the drained, lifeless bodies of the slaves. “Who’s still thirsty?”
Leering, mouths smeared with red, three of the pallid undead started forward. Cera stepped back, drew breath, and raised her hand to what, in a sane, living world, would have been a sky. She had, Jhesrhi knew, intended to play the helpless prisoner whatever transpired, but the threat of the vampires’ attentions was so repellent that instinct had taken over.
Lod spoke a word of chastisement, and even though Jhesrhi wasn’t the target, it made her body feel as if it were vibrating. Cera cried out and fell to her knees.
The vampires closed with her an instant later and threw her down on her back. Their white fingers ripped away mail and the leather underneath to expose flesh. Then the creatures bent down and bit.
“Try not to kill her,” said Lod. Swaying, he alternated between watching his followers feed and watching Jhesrhi.
Be fire, she thought, and anger and horror dwindled from her awareness as though they’d burned away.
Apparently that was good enough for Lod. For after a while, he said, “I have had reports from Rashemen, of course. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be going there. But please, my new friend, tell me everything you know.”
The pearly, seemingly sourceless glow of enchantment gleamed on swords, spears, shields, staves, wands, and crystal. The fine workmanship would have been apparent to anyone, but Aoth’s fire-kissed eyes could also discern the force of enchantment pent inside the articles.
Orgurth peered around the spacious, high-ceilinged cave, part forge, part conjuring chamber, and part armory, and said, “Well, all this should help, shouldn’t it?”
“It might,” Aoth replied.
After a round of introductions and explanations, Shaugar—the older cave dweller in the three-eyed wooden mask who’d helped haul Aoth and Orgurth to safety—and Kanilak had taken their new allies on a tour of their cavern home. The older man didn’t seem to resent the lack of gushing optimism in Aoth’s reply. But the youth glared like the owl whose visage he wore.
“No one crafts more powerful talismans than the Silverbloods!” he said.
Aoth supposed that within the borders of Rashemen, that might be true. As it turned out, the Wychlaran reserved all the mystic arts to their own sex except for the creation of magical weapons and tools. Males with a talent for wizardry or commerce with the divine could use their skills in that arena, but only if willing to join one of the groups of “Old Ones” sequestered in the Running Rocks. The Silverbloods were one such group.
It seemed like a dismal sort of life to Aoth, but so far, he hadn’t noticed any indication that the male spellcasters chafed at their subservience to the hathrans or their obligatory seclusion. Of course, the undead Raumvirans outside their granite gates had given them other things to think about.
And unfortunately, despite Kanilak’s touchy pride in the potency of Silverblood magic, the contents of the armory weren’t likely to solve the problem. Not by themselves, at any rate. Aoth took a moment to frame an explanation that, he hoped, would avoid giving further offense.
“I see the quality of your craftsmanship,” he said. “But many of these articles aren’t finished.” And thus, not as formidable as they ought to be. “If they were, you would have shipped them off to the hathrans and the Iron Lord’s warriors already.”
“We may have time to finish some,” Shaugar said. “If the siege drags on.”
“It won’t,” Aoth replied. “We slowed the enemy down when we destroyed their stone thrower. But it won’t keep them out for long.”
As though to validate his assertion, a boom reverberated through the caves, and the floor shivered. An undead mage had cast destructive magic at one of the stone seals.
“We also,” Aoth continued once the echoes died away, “have to face the fact that we don’t even have enough fighters to use all the weapons at the same time.”
The Silverbloods were apparently one of the largest enclaves of Old Ones. That, combined with their level of expertise, was likely why the Raumvirans had decided to attack them. But even so, there were only a few dozen of them.
“Then each of us,” Kanilak said, “will empty one talisman of power, then switch to another.”
Aoth nodded as he might have to a raw recruit on the training field, where even painfully obvious thinking warranted encouragement. “That’s exactly what we’ll do. Still, we’ll have the problem that constructs are sometimes resistant to spells. I’m an accomplished war mage, but if you were watching, you saw I couldn’t just dissolve the stone thrower. I had to chuck it over a cliff and let the violence of the fall destroy it.”
Orgurth grinned an ugly grin. “Then it’s hopel
ess.”
“No,” Aoth said. “Because useful as they are, automatons have their limitations too, and we’re going to exploit them.”
“Hold on!” Kanilak said. “You aren’t the leader here! You’re just a stranger we took in for kindness’s sake when you were running for your life!”
“That’s true,” Aoth replied. “But even if you’ve never heard of me, I’ve been commanding armies for a hundred years. I know how to be a war leader. Do you need one?”
The young man hesitated. “At moments when all Rashemen was in danger, the hathrans called the Old Ones forth. And we fought well!”
“I believe it,” Aoth replied. “But did Old Ones plan strategy and direct the battles, or did you simply play the roles the witches and lodge masters assigned to you?”
Shaugar put his hand on Kanilak’s shoulder. “Go easy, son. Captain Fezim’s not belittling the Silverbloods, and obviously, if we don’t like his plan, we won’t follow it. But considering that we haven’t even managed to come up with one of our own, it makes sense to at least hear his thoughts.”
“Thank you,” said Aoth. “One of a golem’s weaknesses is that it’s a made thing. That’s never helped me much because I’m not a maker. I can turn a weapon stronger and sharper and store power inside it, but that’s all. You fellows, though, are master enchanters, and I assume those who make can unmake.”
Now it was Shaugar’s turn to hesitate. “It’s an interesting notion,” he said at length, “but no Old One has ever crafted anything like those metal beasts outside.”
“You must animate something,” Aoth replied. “The underlying principles will be the same. And you don’t even have to disable the automatons permanently. If you can just cripple or confuse them for a few heartbeats, that should be good enough.”
“How’s that?” Orgurth asked.
“Because most of the enemy are constructs. I don’t know why it’s that way. There wasn’t any shortage of actual ghouls and such garrisoning the Fortress of the Half-Demon or raiding elsewhere in Rashemen, for that matter. But still, we don’t have that many reanimated Raumvirans to contend with, especially because the tumbling boulders squashed some.”
“And without the Raumvirans to control them,” Kanilak said, “the golems don’t count for anything!” The possibilities inherent in the notion had finally purged the belligerence from his tone.
“That’s right,” said Aoth. “It will work if we can control the timing and flow of the action so that, when the automatons fail, the undead are where we can get at them.” He looked to Shaugar. “What do you think?”
“I think,” said the man in the three-eyed mask, “you should come tell the others what you just told us.”
* * * * *
The wordless psychic call came midway through Dai Shan’s watch, and so eagerly had he awaited it that he nearly responded straightaway. But his father had taught him—sometimes with his fist or his cane—that a Shou merchant lord always thought before he acted, and a moment’s reflection sufficed to convince him he shouldn’t simply abandon sentry duty. As the grisly detritus throughout the fortress attested, the North Country was full of trolls and similar dangers, and he, Vandar, and Jet had no way of sealing up the Fortress of the Half-Demon to prevent incursions from the benighted wilderness outside.
And even had it been otherwise, he didn’t want his companions in adversity to decide he was behaving suspiciously.
Thus, he waited for Jet to lumber up the steps to the battlements above the gate to relieve him. As he’d half expected, the surly beast ignored his greeting. Nothing made the griffon resent his current inability to fly more keenly that having to negotiate the often cramped and narrow castle stairways.
Dai Shan descended to the courtyard with its litter of broken golems and frozen corpses, an assortment of the latter missing their heads for a reason he had yet to understand. Glancing upward to make sure Jet wasn’t watching him instead of the snowy wasteland beyond the walls, he slipped into what had once been a stable. The enclosure had a couple of mangled corpses of its own, both, by the look of them, zombies before Aoth and Vandar’s warriors hacked and battered them to pieces.
The Shou slipped into one of the stalls, where neither Jet nor Vandar would see him simply by peering through the doorway. Then he sat down cross-legged on the frozen dirt floor with its scatter of ancient rotten straw, breathed slowly and deeply, and emptied his mind of everything but his purpose.
When he felt himself centered, poised, his consciousness leaped from his body to hurtle south like an arrow. After an instant of exhilarating, almost dizzying lightness, he suddenly stood between a whitewashed longhouse with the heads of dragons, unicorns, and hounds carved into the eaves and a smallish amphitheater dug out of the ground.
His return to Immilmar was possible because he’d previously created a shadow and sent it on ahead of him. He’d initially told Jet and Vandar the truth when he’d said he’d exhausted the capacity to spawn such servants, but he’d lied when claiming it had yet to renew itself. For why should his rivals share in whatever knowledge he garnered?
Unfortunately, it had taken the phantom a while to make the trek, for, tireless as it was, it hadn’t been able to travel by day. Nor had that been its only deficiency. Its thoughts murky and inhuman—stupid, if the truth be told—it hadn’t known any better than to lurk near the Witches’ Hall, the one place in the capital where someone was most likely to detect it.
But apparently, nobody had, and now that Dai Shan had inhabited it, obliterating its own identity in the process, he wouldn’t linger. He whispered a charm to cloak himself in darkness, then skulked away.
As he neared a little stand of oaks, he caught rhyming words and registered a sort of rhythmic pressure impinging on his arcane sensitivities. He paused and peered because he recognized the voice. It was Yhelbruna herself working magic alone in the freezing night.
Or trying, anyway. Dai Shan couldn’t identify the language she was speaking. Some tongue of the Feywild, perhaps. But as a mage of sorts in his own specialized fashion, he recognized the strident insistence in her tone. It was the way ritual casters sounded when their magic was failing, when the spirits ignored them and reality balked at bending to their will.
Yet this was the most celebrated hathran in Rashemen struggling to exert power in what was surely a consecrated and thus conducive spot. Her current lack of success was accordingly strange, so strange Dai Shan felt tempted to continue spying.
He wouldn’t, though, because time was short. He needed to stick to his plan, and besides, even if she was having an off night, no one was more likely to take notice of him than the witch in the leather mask.
He prowled on to Blackstone House, a shabby excuse for an inn but the best the Rashemi capital had to offer and the establishment where he’d secured accommodations for himself and his retainers. He surveyed what the rough exterior timber wall afforded in the way of hand- and toeholds, and then he clambered upward.
Halfway to the shuttered window that was his destination, he realized he didn’t actually know if his followers still occupied the rooms on the other side. They might have gone home to Thesk after his disappearance, especially if Bez had reported him dead.
Oh, well, if someone other than a Shou responded to his tapping, Dai Shan could likely still elicit information somehow and ensure his informant’s silence afterward as well.
As it turned out, though, it was moon-faced, round-shouldered Cheng Lin who hesitantly opened the shutters and goggled out. “Master!” he yelped.
Inwardly, Dai Shan winced at the volume of his retainer’s voice, the naked astonishment in his expression, and, well, everything raucous and raw. With attendants of this caliber, was it any wonder he had to do everything himself?
“My dutiful helper,” he said. “It gladdens me to find you and the others faithfully awaiting my return.” The gods forbid they should actually have gotten up off their arses and come looking for him. “Perhaps you’ll do me the prof
ound favor of stepping back from the window.”
“Yes, Master!” the other Shou answered, and Dai Shan climbed inside.
As his master’s major domo on the road, Cheng Lin had his own little private room. A couple of Shou voices murmured on the other side of the door, but they didn’t sound excited. Apparently no one else had heard the functionary squawk.
“Captain Bez told everyone you died in the fighting,” Cheng Lin said.
“How kind of the illustrious soldier to mention me. I imagine it was in the course of laying claim to the griffons.”
Dai Shan pulled the shutters closed, making the room darker, so dark, in fact, that the shroud of shadow that still clung to him all but smothered the glow of the little oil lamp altogether. The scant light remaining just barely gleamed on the tusks and glass eyes of the stuffed boar’s head on the wall.
“He didn’t,” Cheng Lin said. “I mean, he tried to take the griffons, but the main witch, that Yhelbruna, wouldn’t let him.”
Dai Shan felt a surge of excitement potent enough that habit alone might prove insufficient to preserve his composure. He took a breath and made a deliberate effort to steady himself.
“Then, if I understand my loyal assistant correctly, the beasts remain unclaimed in their invisible birdcage.”
Cheng Lin nodded, his double chin wobbling. “Yes.”
“In that case, please relate all that’s occurred hereabouts since the brave captain was generous enough to grant me passage aboard his skyship.”
Cheng Lin obeyed in a somewhat disjointed, backfilling fashion, but still, the tale of Bez’s disappointment, botched assassination attempt, and subsequent flight emerged clearly enough. At the end, the pudgy servant said, “I wrote to your father to tell him of your death. I mean, your supposed death. I had no reason to doubt what the southerner said.”
Prophet of the Dead: Forgotten Realms Page 18