Unholy hl-3

by Richard Lee Byers

  "All the d-d-doorkeepers are undead, so you'd have trouble making your blandishments work on them. And if you did persuade them, they'd assign an escort to take you where you c-claimed you wanted to go."

  "Curse it." At the periphery of Bareris's vision stood an X-shaped wooden stand with shackles to hold a prisoners wrists and ankles, and he had to resist a sudden urge to turn and give it a kick. Hoping it would calm him, he took a breath instead. "Very well, if neither magic nor pure brazenness will serve, that leaves skulking and climbing."

  "Yes," Mirror said, "but not for you. Not yet."

  Bareris frowned. "What are you talking about?"

  "I can fly," said the ghost. The tusks and snout of the orc melted away, and his face became a murky semblance of the melancholy, mustachioed one he'd worn in life. "I have innate abilities to walk through walls and fade from view that Szass Tam's defenses may not affect, or at least, not as strongly as they'd cancel out a sorcerer's tricks. If things go wrong, I'll have a better chance of getting away. So let me try to slip inside by myself, and if I succeed, we'll both go in tomorrow night."

  Bareris didn't like it. Now that they'd come this far, now that Szass Tam was only a mile away, the urge to press on burned like a fever inside him. But he couldn't deny that Mirror's idea made sense.

  In the dark, the Citadel loomed like a bizarre, multi-bladed weapon raised to gut the moon. Like any castle worthy of the name, it stood at the center of a patch of open ground and had sentries patrolling the battlements.

  Peering from between two of the buildings nearest to the fortress, Mirror watched the guards and timed them as they made their circuits. When he understood the routine, he waited for a gaunt, yellow-eyed dread warrior to trudge by, then darted forward.

  He didn't advance invisibly, because even if such a trick would work for him, it wouldn't for Bareris. So he sneaked as he had in life when creeping up on an enemy. He stayed low, kept to the deepest shadows, and reached the foot of the outermost wall without incident.

  He inspected the huge granite blocks and the mortared chinks between them. He doubted that an ordinary climber could scale the vertical surface unless possessed of exceptional skill. Not quickly enough, at any rate. Bareris, however, was inhumanly strong, remarkably agile, and knew charms to make himself stronger and more nimble still. Mirror judged that his friend could make it.

  That meant it was time for him to do the same, before the next guard came tramping along. Alternately checking to make sure the minimal hand- and toeholds didn't run out and watching the crenellated wall-walk overhead, he floated upward.

  With his head at merlon-height, he took another wary look around. This section of the battlements was still clear and, according to his estimation, should remain so for a little while longer. He rose until his feet were at the level of the walkway, then stepped through a crenel onto the ledge.

  It was conceivable that if Bareris made it only this far, he could help Aoth, Nevron, and the others translate themselves into the Citadel. But the bard doubted it, and based on all that the past hundred years had taught Mirror about Szass Tam's wiles, he was inclined to agree. They assumed they'd need to cross the courtyard below, get past the inner wall, traverse a second bailey, and slip inside the towering central keep itself to have any hope of success.

  Onward, then. Mirror took a step toward the inner edge of the walkway-since Bareris knew a charm to drift down to the ground unharmed, the ghost didn't need to bother with finding stairs, either-and a sudden jolt of pain froze him in place. At the same instant, pale light shined from the stones beneath his feet.

  From the corner of his eye, he could just make out the crimson glyph that had appeared on the wall-walk three paces to his left. For a moment, he had a childish feeling that what had befallen him was unfair, because he hadn't actually stepped on the then-invisible sigil and wouldn't have expected it to affect a non-corporeal entity in any case. But he supposed that his predicament too, was an example of Szass Tam's cunning.

  He strained to move, but paralysis held him fast. He silently called out to the god whose name he had never remembered but whom he nonetheless adored, and tried again. He took a tiny, lurching step, then a bigger one, and then the clenched, locked feeling fell away.

  But at the same instant, figures as shadowy and poisonous as himself surrounded him. Perhaps the necromancers kept the murks, as such undead were called, caged inside the wall, or maybe the flare of light had drawn them; focused on breaking free of his immobility, Mirror had missed the moment of their advent. Before he could come on guard, the spirits scrabbled at him with long, wispy fingers, their weightless essence raking through his.

  The attacks caused no pain in the physical sense, but they did something worse. Confusion and fear surged through his mind and threatened to drown coherent thought. Every day he struggled for clarity and purpose, for identity itself, and now the murks were clawing them to shreds.

  He called to his deity a second time, and for an instant, his shadow-sword blazed with golden radiance. The murks withered away to nothing. Since they and he were made of the same unnatural foulness, the glow could just as easily have slain him as well, but it didn't. He'd learned to direct it, or perhaps it was simply the god's grace that enabled him to do so.

  Something stabbed him in the back. He turned to see a corpse at the top of the stairs he hadn't bothered to locate before. The gaunt thing wore a mage's robe, and its sunken eyes glowed. Tattooed runes covered the exposed portions of its gray, rotting skin.

  Mirror's mind still seemed to grind like a damaged mechanism. It look him an instant to recognize the thing as a deathlock, an undead wizard less formidable than a lich but troublesome enough. And the spells inked into its body would give it additional power.

  The deathlock extended its hand, and darts of ice hurtled from its long, jagged nails. Mirror tried to block them with his shield but moved too sluggishly. Fortunately, the attack, magical though it was, passed harmlessly though his spectral body.

  He charged the undead sorcerer before it could try again. He cut it and cut it until it tumbled back down the stairs…

  Where it collided into the foremost of the blood orcs who were rushing up. Other figures were hurrying along the battlements. Atop one of the lesser keeps, a horn blew.

  Plainly, it would be suicide to continue forward. Willing himself as invisible and intangible as possible-as close to utter emptiness as he dared-Mirror whirled, leaped off the wall, and sprinted back the way he'd come.

  He didn't know how to tell Bareris their scheme was impossible. For warriors of his forgotten brotherhood, it was shameful to say such things; it was an article of faith with them that righteousness would always find a way. But he didn't know what else to say.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  11–18 Kythorn, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

  Bareris reached for the handle of the tavern door, then faltered.

  He scowled at his own foolishness. Why should he feel timid about a trifle like this when he'd spent the past hundred years battling the worst horrors the necromancers could create? But perhaps that was the point. He was accustomed to war and vileness, whereas he'd long since abandoned the practice of entertaining, and he had no idea whether time, sorrow, and the passage into undeath had left the knack intact.

  But he had to try. In the wake of Mirror's failure to penetrate the Citadel, it was the only idea that either he or the phantom had left. And so, masked in the appearance of a dark-haired little Rashemi, wishing he'd sung when Aoth and then the ghost asked him to-it might have knocked some of the rust off-he entered the ramshackle wooden building with the four hawks painted on its sign.

  The common room was crowded. He'd hoped it would be, but now the size of the audience ratcheted up his anxiety another notch. The yarting, a musical instrument that Arizima had procured for him, made his intentions plain, and the buzz of conversation faded as he carried the instrument to the little platform where, no doubt, other minstrels had perfo
rmed before him.

  Nervous though he was, he remembered to set his upturned cap on the floor to catch coins. He tuned the yarting's six silk strings, then started to sing "Down, Down to Northkeep."

  To his own critical ear, he didn't sing or play it particularly well, and since he hadn't practiced it in a century, he supposed it was no wonder. But when he finished, his audience applauded, cheered, and called out requests. Somebody wanted "Barley and Grapes," a tune he'd often performed during his years abroad, so he gave them that one next. And thought it sounded a little better.

  The third song was better still. The glib banter-joking with the men, flirting with the women-came back more slowly than the music, but eventually it started to flow as well.

  He sang sad songs and funny ones. Ballads of love, war, ribaldry, and loss. Memories of a Thay of green fields and blue skies, of cheer and abundance. And as the music visibly touched his audience, he found to his surprise that it moved him too.

  Not to happiness. He was done with that. But to an awareness of something besides the urge for vengeance, in the same way that being with Aoth or Mirror occasionally could. And in that awareness was the suggestion of ease, a tiny diminution of the pressure that drove him ever onward.

  I could have had this all along, he thought. Why didn't I?

  Because hatred was his sword, and he had to keep it sharp.

  Besides, even a hint of solace felt like a betrayal of Tammith's memory.

  Still, perhaps it wasn't entirely unforgivable to appreciate this interlude as he'd appreciated riding a griffon again, and for the same reason. Because it was almost certainly the last time.

  Before he was done, he even gave them Tammith's favorite, the tale of the starfish who aspired to be a star. His eyes ached, but undeath had robbed him of the capacity for tears, and no one had cause to wonder why a comical ditty would make him cry.

  When he judged it was time for a break-he didn't need one, but a live man surely would have-his cap was full of copper with a sprinkling of silver mixed in, and his appreciative listeners were happy to drink with him. It was the latter he'd hoped to accomplish.

  He offered tales and rumors to prompt them to do the same without feeling he was interrogating them. Gradually he drew out all they'd heard about the dungeons beneath Szass Tam's castle and strange creatures roaming the slopes of the mountain on which their city sat.

  So-Kehur crawled on the outer face of the gate at the west end of the bridge. The structure was a barbican sufficiently high and massive to discourage any attacker, but that didn't necessarily mean every bit of stonework remained solid enough to withstand a pounding from the council's artillery and magic. So far, though, that did indeed appear to be the case.

  It occurred to him that, clambering around the heights with various limbs extended to anchor him, he must look rather like a metal spider. It likewise crossed his mind that some folk might think it beneath the dignity of the autharch of Anhaurz to make this inspection.

  But he fancied that any first-rate commander would understand his desire to see for himself. Aoth Fezim would understand.

  And speaking of the sellsword captain, the troops he led, and the archmages they served, where in the name of the Black Hand were they? So-Kehur swiveled his various eyes to gaze at the highway running north. No one was there but the common sort of traveler, and, as was often the case in the bleak new Thay that Szass Tam had made, not many of those.

  So-Kehur shivered in frustration. Patience, he told himself, patience. It was good that the enemy army was advancing slowly. It gave him that much more time to prepare for the siege to come.

  A voice called from overhead: "Milord?"

  He looked up at the battlements. His aquiline face tattooed with jagged black lightning bolts, Chumed Shapret, his seneschal, was standing there, along with a sweaty, tired-looking soldier in dusty leather armor.

  So-Kehur felt a pang of excitement, because Chumed's companion was one of the scouts they'd sent forth to keep track of the council's army. Apparently, intent on his examination of the higher reaches of the gate, he'd missed seeing the fellow arrive below him. He climbed toward his minions as fast as he could, and they each shrank back an involuntary step. Maybe they were afraid that in his haste, he'd close a set of serrated pincers on one of them or sweep them from their perch with a flailing tentacle.

  If so, they needn't have worried. He'd long since learned to handle a steel body better than he'd ever managed the form into which he'd been born. He swarmed over the parapet, retracted his various limbs to their shortest lengths, and the two soldiers dropped to their knees before him.

  Though he generally enjoyed such deference, he was too eager to leave them that way for more than an instant. "Rise!" he said. "And tell me, when will the council arrive?"

  The scout gave Chumed an uncertain look. "Tell him," the officer said.

  The scout shifted his eyes back to So-Kehur. "I don't think they're going to, Master. Arrive, I mean."

  "What are you talking about?" So-Kehur demanded.

  "They swung around the city and headed south. They're looking for another way to cross the river."

  So-Kehur told himself it couldn't be true, but obviously, it could. It made perfect sense that even zulkirs and one of the most respected captains in the East would hesitate to attack the stronghold he'd made of Anhaurz, especially considering how much of their strength they'd already expended taking the Dread Ring.

  So-Kehur felt dizzy, and the tall towers rising from the sides of the gate and at intervals down the length of the bridge seemed to mock him. He'd labored long and hard to create an invincible weapon and had succeeded all too well. The result of all his work would be to deny him the slaughter he so craved.

  But no. It didn't have to be that way. Not if he refused to allow it.

  He turned his eyes on Chumed. "How soon can our troops be ready to march?"

  Chumed blinked. "March, Milord?"

  "Yes, march! We'll head west a little way, then hook around to pin the invaders against the river."

  The seneschal hesitated. Then: "Master, naturally we would have defended the city had the enemy chosen to attack. That's our duty. But unless I'm mistaken, we haven't received any orders to go forth and engage the council elsewhere."

  "No other force as large as ours is close enough to do it, and anyway, I'm in authority here. Do you think the regent would have given me my position if he didn't trust me-indeed, expect me-to show initiative?"

  "Master, I'm sure Szass Tam has complete confidence in you. But in light of the powers the rogue zulkirs command, maybe it would still be prudent to consult him before you act. I mean, you're a Red Wizard and have other mages under your command. Surely someone knows a way to communicate with High Thay quickly."

  Yes, surely. And if So-Kehur were to employ it, perhaps Szass Tam would opt to leave his old enemies unmolested in the hope they'd eventually leave Thay of their own volition. He never would have done so in the old days, but Szass Tam had changed since establishing the regency, and no one truly understood his priorities anymore.

  Even if the lich did want the invaders pursued and destroyed, he might decide to dispatch a more seasoned general to command the effort, or even descend from the Thaymount to see to the task himself. So-Kehur could find himself consigned to a subordinate role or left behind to mind Anhaurz while the blood spilled elsewhere.

  And all those possibilities were unacceptable.

  He tried to frame an excuse to give Chumed, then suffered a spasm of irritation. He was thinking like the old So-Kehur, that plump, cringing, contemptible wretch. The new So-Kehur was a lord, and lords didn't have to justify their decisions to their subordinates. Rather, they disciplined them when they were insolent.

  Drawing on one of the peculiar talents he'd developed after abandoning the external attributes of humanity, he lashed out with his thoughts. Chumed cried out, staggered, and nearly reeled off the wall-walk before collapsing onto his side, where he writhed and b
led from his chewed tongue and his nostrils. Though not the target, the scout too caught a bit of the effect. Crouching, face contorted, he clutched his forehead in both hands.

  For a moment, So-Kehur remembered his long association with Muthoth and how the other young necromancer had liked to bully him. He felt both squeamish and pleased to at last be the bully himself, but of the two emotions, pleasure was by far the stronger.

  He delivered only a few restrained blows to Chumed's psyche; the seneschal was too useful a deputy to kill. Upon finishing, he said, "I trust we're done with questions and second-guessing."

  Shaking, Chumed clambered to his knees. "Yes, Milord."

  "Then get our army ready." Meanwhile, the artisans would transfer So-Kehur's brain into a body specifically intended for the battlefield.

  Mirror thought he heard something that might have been a footfall, the faint sound almost covered by the whistling of the cold mountain wind. Or perhaps he simply sensed the advent of trouble. Either way, he didn't doubt his instincts. They'd saved him too many times, even if they hadn't helped on the terrible day when Fastrin killed his body and dealt his soul the spiritual wounds that had never truly healed.

  "Come on," he whispered. He started toward an extrusion of basalt large enough to serve as cover, then saw that Bareris wasn't following. The bard was still singing under his breath, still casting about with wide, black eyes and a dazed expression on his pallid face.

  Even after centuries as a phantom, Mirror almost reached to grab his friend and drag him behind the rock before remembering that his hand would simply pass through Bareris's body. Instead, he planted himself right in front of the bard and said, "Brother, come with me now." Insofar as his sepulchral tone allowed, he infused his voice with all the force of command that had once made younger warriors jump to obey.

  Bareris blinked. "Yes. All right." Mirror led him into the patch of shadow behind the basalt outcrop.