The Haunted Lands: Book II - Undead

by Richard Lee Byers

  Bareris ached to hear her speak. Her voice was sweet and familiar, yet cold and flat, a travesty of the one he remembered.

  “Yes,” Dmitra said. “You’ve given us a good deal of trouble over the years.”

  “Then perhaps,” Tammith said, “I can atone for it now. I want revenge on Szass Tam for forcing me to serve him, and the only way I’ll get it is to fight for the council.”

  “That sounds plausible,” Lallara said. “But then, if the lich sent an impostor to mislead us and spy on us, I imagine he would give her a persuasive tale to tell.”

  “Your Omnipotence,” said Bareris, “I know Tammi … Captain Iltazyarra.” Although if she still remembered him, at least with any vestige of emotion, no one could have known from her demeanor. “I mean, I did when she was alive, and I can vouch that she didn’t accept her transformation or induction into Szass Tam’s army willingly.”

  “That’s fine,” said Samas Kul, “but how do we know she isn’t acting under coercion now? The blue fire didn’t free all of the lich’s puppets.”

  “Zola Sethrakt is the zulkir of Necromancy,” Lauzoril said, “and I’m the realm’s greatest enchanter. Even with our abilities diminished, we should be able to determine whether her spirit is free or not.”

  “But what,” asked Iphegor Nath, “if she came to embrace her condition and her station during her years of service to the lich? It’s plain from her stature and features that she was born Rashemi. Szass Tam gave her immortality, supernatural abilities, and high rank, and by some accounts, drinking blood is a carnal pleasure surpassing any the living can imagine. Perhaps she eventually decided she didn’t have it so bad.”

  “Your Omniscience,” Tammith gritted, “if you believe that, then, for all your wisdom, you comprehend very little of what it truly means to have your life stripped away from you, with only thirst and servitude left in its place.”

  “If Szass Tam doesn’t have her spirit chained up tight,” Zola said, “then it doesn’t matter what she truly feels. I can bind her to serve me.”

  Tammith rose so swiftly that the eye could scarcely track the motion. “No, Mistress. With all respect, I’ll never submit to another such shackle. If you try to impose it, you’ll have to destroy me.”

  And me, Bareris realized. He’d stand with her, crazy and suicidal though it would be.

  “I hope you realize,” Dmitra said, “that even with our magic impaired, we can destroy you. If we all exert our powers against you, you won’t last an instant.”

  “I understand,” Tammith said. “But then you’ll forfeit the chance to strike a crippling blow against your real enemy.”

  “Meaning what?” Nevron asked.

  “I heard you discussing strategy before I sneaked in.” Tammith smiled. “Vampires have keen ears. Your plan is good, but it could be better. Szass Tam lost many of his warriors to the blue fire. Now Xingax will labor to create replacements. But ifwe attack his manufactory, we can prevent it, and keep the northern armies weak.”

  “I take it,” Dmitra said, “that you know where Xingax currently has his lair, and how we can get at it?”

  Tammith inclined her head.

  Bareris positioned himself beside a pale marble statue of a robed wizard and struck up a song about a starfish that decided it belonged in the sky. The ballad detailed its comical misadventures as it doggedly tried to clamber up into the heavens and take its place among the other luminaries. The sculpted wizard seemed to frown as if he disapproved of levity.

  Bareris disapproved of it, too, or at least had long ago abandoned the habit, and the merry lyrics and rollicking tune felt strange coming out of his mouth. In fact, for some reason, they hurt.

  But Tammith had always laughed at the song when the two of them were young, and at length, huge bats swooped out of the darkness. Bareris recoiled a step in spite of himself.

  The bats swirled and melted together to become a woman. She’d removed her armor and wore a mannish leather jerkin and breeches. He wondered if she ever opted for skirts anymore.

  “Of all the songs you ever wrote,” she said, “I always liked that one the best.”

  He swallowed. “After the council of war, you just wandered off with Zola Sethrakt. You didn’t even speak to me.”

  “And so you thought to flush me out with a tune. Here I am. What do you want?”

  “For one thing, to say I’m sorry for what I did in the Keep of Thazar.”

  “I’m sorry it didn’t take.”

  “Don’t say that. You have your freedom now.”

  “But I’m still dead.”

  “No. Xingax laid a curse on you, but curses can be broken.”

  “By whom? Your zulkirs, whose magic is crippled, and to whom I’m more useful as a vampire?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t understand. You came here of your own volition, and yet you’re so bitter and cold. You act as if you don’t even want to see me.”

  “I didn’t think I would. I didn’t see it myself, but I heard reports that the blue fire burned most of the Griffon Legion out of the air.”

  “You’re saying you hoped I was dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t hate you, and I don’t blame you any longer for failing to rescue me. But I want my existence to be easy, and it’s easier when I don’t have to look at things that remind me of what I’ve lost.”

  “Perhaps you haven’t lost as much as you think.”

  She laughed. “Oh, believe me, I have. And even if I were still capable of loving the boy I adored when I was a child, where is he? Long gone, I think, poisoned by hatred and regret.”

  “I thought so, too, until you appeared before me.”

  “It will be easier for you if you realize nothing has actually changed. Bareris and Tammith are dead. We’re merely their ghosts.”

  He shook his head. “You can’t avoid me. You’re going after Xingax, and I am, too.”

  “We can hunt together. Just don’t prattle of things that neither one of us is capable of feeling or being any longer.”

  “All right. If that’s what you want.”

  “It is. Good night.” She turned away.

  “Wait.”

  She pivoted to look at him.

  “I took care of your father and brother. I sent money. But they’re both dead. Your father drank so much it poisoned him, and Ral caught a pox.”

  He didn’t know why he told her so brusquely, as if he were trying to match her coldness. Perhaps he wanted to hurt her, or to force her to betray soft human emotion, but if so, she disappointed him. She merely shrugged.

  chapter four

  10–26 Mirtul, the Year of Blue Fire

  Over the years, Aoth had all but covered himself in tattoos, repositories of minor enchantments that could be invoked when needed. So he was accustomed to the recurrent sting of the needle. Normally, it wouldn’t even have bothered him to have the sharp point playing around his eyes, and over the eyelids themselves.

  This time, however, he felt a flare of pain like the touch of a hot coal. He jerked back in his chair. “What in the name of the Black Hand was that?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the tattooist said. “My art has become difficult lately, just like any other form of sorcery.”

  “Then try being careful!”

  “Yes, sir.” The artist hesitated. “Do you want me to continue?”

  Aoth realized it was a good question. Did he want the wretch to go on etching sigils of health and clear vision around his eyes, even though the magic might conceivably twist awry and create an entirely different effect?

  “Yes,” he said. Because the tattooist had reportedly restored sight to the blind on two previous occasions, and with the priests unable to cure him, Aoth didn’t know what else to try.

  The needle pricked his eyelid again, this time without creating searing heat. Then Brightwing screeched.

  The griffon was just outside. Aoth reached out with his mind and
looked through her eyes at a legionnaire. The fellow had Brightwing’s saddle in his hands, and was holding it up in front of him as if he hoped to use it as a shield.

  Aoth pushed the tattooist away, jumped up, strode across the room—he’d grown sufficiently familiar with the layout of his billet to avoid running into the furnishings—and threw open the front door. “What’s going on?” he said.

  “This idiot thinks he can take me away!” Brightwing snarled.

  To the legionnaire, Brightwing’s utterance was just a feral shriek, and he reacted by taking a step backward. “Sorry to disturb you, Captain,” he said, “but there are orders to round up all the griffons whose riders are dead or disabled and give them to legionnaires who are fit but lost their mounts, or else take the animals along for spares. Do you see?”

  Aoth understood. As the war ground on, exacting a constant toll in men and beasts, it was standard procedure. But if he lost Brightwing, he’d lose a piece of his own spirit and all the sight he had left. Bareris knew that, but he evidently wanted her anyway. It was more proof of what a false friend and callous bastard he was.

  “I’m a war mage,” said Aoth, “and Brightwing is my familiar. She won’t carry any rider but me.”

  “I don’t know anything about that, sir. I have my orders—”

  “I’m still your commander, even if I am injured!”

  “Yes, sir, but this order comes from Nymia Focar herself.”

  “It’s a misunderstanding,” Bareris said. When Brightwing turned her head, Aoth could see the bard hurrying down the path.

  The soldier frowned. “Sir, with all respect, she spoke to me herself. She told me to make sure I collected Captain Fezim’s griffon.”

  “But later on,” Bareris said, “she spoke to me.” Aoth could feel the subtle magic of persuasion flowing like honey in the bard’s voice. “She told me she’d changed her mind, and Captain Fezim should keep his mount. So you can go on your way and forget all about it.”

  “Well,” said the legionnaire, sounding a little dazed, “in that case …” He put the saddle back on the stoop, saluted, and strolled away.

  “Someone made a list of all the griffons to be collected,” Bareris said to Aoth. “I happened to glance at it, saw that Brightwing was included, and came as fast as I could.”

  Aoth grunted. Courtesy indicated that he ought to say thank you, but he’d have preferred to stick a dagger in his own guts.

  Bareris frowned. “You didn’t think I’d send someone to take her, did you?”

  The question made Aoth’s muscles clench. “Is that a reproach? Why in the name of every god wouldn’t I believe that, considering how you betrayed me before?”

  “As the soldier said, the tharchion gave the order. I assume she did because she knew I wouldn’t. Even if you don’t believe that.” Bareris frowned. “Although, valuable as griffons are, there’s something odd about her concerning herself with a single mount.”

  It seemed strange to Aoth as well, but he didn’t want to prolong the conversation to speculate. “I’m going back inside.”

  Bareris’s mouth tightened. “Fine.” He turned away.

  Aoth felt moisture on his face. He supposed it was blood from the needle pricks, beading and dripping. He resisted the impulse to wipe it away for fear of marring the tattooist’s work.

  As the army of Pyarados prepared to march, dozens of tasks and details demanded Bareris’s attention. He had to see to his own gear and mount as well as those of his entire company. Procure provisions in a hungry land at winter’s end. And review the intelligence Malark’s agents provided, and plot strategy with Nymia, Tammith, and the rest of the officers.

  It left him precious few moments even to eat and sleep, but from time to time, late at night, he prowled through the house where he’d taken up temporary residence, looking for Mirror and periodically calling his name. The members of the household—a draper, his wife, three children, and a pair of apprentices—made themselves scarce at such moments, and were leery of him in general.

  But he didn’t care if they thought he was crazy. He just wanted to find the ghost.

  Even more than Aoth, Mirror had been Bareris’s constant companion for the past ten years. Often, the ghost faded so close to the brink of nonexistence that no one else could detect him. Even cats failed to bristle and hiss at his presence. But Bareris had always been able to feel him as a sort of cold, aching void hovering nearby.

  Lately, he couldn’t. Mirror had abandoned him shortly after his falling out with the newly blinded Aoth, and had not yet returned.

  On the eve of the army’s departure, he began hunting in the attic and finished in the cellar, where cobwebs drooped from the ceiling, mice had nested in the filthy, shredded remains of a stray bolt of cloth, and the shadows were black beyond the reach of his candle. It looked like a fine location for a haunting, but if Mirror was lurking there, he chose to ignore Bareris’s call.

  “Nymia wanted to take Brightwing,” Bareris persisted. “I made sure she’ll stay with Aoth. He has a tattoo sorcerer working to heal his eyes. It’s possible he’ll see again.”

  Still, no reply came, and abruptly Bareris felt ridiculous, babbling to what was, in all likelihood, an empty space.

  “To the Abyss with you, then,” he said. “I don’t care what’s become of you. I don’t need you.” He wheeled and tramped up the groaning stairs.

  The conjuration chamber shook. Grimoires fell from their shelves, racks of jars and bottles clattered, and the piece of red chalk that was attempting to inscribe an intricate magic circle on the floor hitched sideways, spoiling the geometric precision the sigil demanded.

  Szass Tam sighed. The earth tremors jolting all Faerûn had turned out to be particularly potent and persistent in High Thay with its volcanic peaks. The entire castle had been rocking and shuddering ever since his return from the Keep of Sorrows, and although the inconvenience was the least of the ills Mystra’s death had engendered, it vexed him nonetheless.

  He waved a skeletal hand, and the half-completed figure vanished as if it had never been. He animated a different stick of chalk and set it to recreating the drawing.

  This time, the chalk managed to complete the circle without the earth playing pranks. Szass Tam took his place in the center, summoned one of his favorite staves into his hand, and recited a lengthy incantation.

  A magical structure, invisible to normal sight but manifest to an archmage, took shape before him, then started to slump and deform. He froze it in its proper shape by speaking certain words of power with extra emphasis, and through the sheer insistence of his will.

  At the end, his construct wavered into overt existence as a murky oval suspended in midair. Szass Tam said, “You are my window. Show me the Weave.”

  Had he given the same command before the advent of the blue fires, the oval would have revealed an endless iridescent web reflective of the magic that infused and connected all things, and the interplay of forces that held it all in equilibrium. Now he beheld scraps of burning crystal tumbling through an endless void. Even for a lich, the sight was nauseating, although Szass Tam couldn’t define exactly why.

  What he did know was that the Weave showed no sign of reforming. Perhaps it would eventually, if a new deity of magic arose, but since Szass Tam had no idea how or when such an ascension might occur, the possibility failed to ease his mind.

  “You are my window,” he said. “Show me the Shadow Weave.”

  As its name suggested, the Shadow Weave was the dark reflection and antithesis of its counterpart. It hadn’t partaken of Mystra’s life in the same way the Weave had, and Szass Tam had conjectured that it might reconstitute more quickly in the wake of her passing.

  If so, it could serve as a source of power. For certain practitioners of an alternative form of sorcery called shadow magic, it always had. Despite his erudition and curiosity, Szass Tam had never learned a great deal about the mysteries of shadow. Conventional thaumaturgy had proved such an inexhaustibl
e well of precious and fascinating secrets that he simply hadn’t gotten around to it. But he was willing to learn now if it would ameliorate the current crisis.

  But it didn’t appear that there was anything left to learn. The Shadow Weave, too, remained in pieces, the fragments falling endlessly through darkness and burning with a dim flame whose radiance was somehow a mockery of true light.

  He grimaced. With both structures annihilated, it was no wonder wizardry was crippled.

  Yet it was hardly useless. It could still evoke and transform, summon and bind—some of the time. If he could figure out why it worked when it did, and why it failed on other occasions, perhaps he’d know how to make it reliable again.

  “You are my window,” rasped an unfamiliar voice, startling him from his musings. “Show me the one peeping at magic’s corpse. I wish to know if he laughs or weeps.”

  The interior of the oval rippled and flowed, and an entity appeared. In certain respects, Szass Tam might almost have been gazing at his own reflection, for the creature, too, possessed a grinning skull face and naked bones for hands. But instead of a handsome red velvet robe, it wore dark, rotting cerements, and in place of a staff, it carried a scythe.

  The weapon enabled Szass Tam to identify the creature, for its blade was blacker than anything made of matter—a long, curved, movable wound in the fabric of reality. Only entropic reapers, undead destroyers in the service of primordial chaos, carried scythes like that.

  Formidable as they were, no reaper should have sensed Szass Tam’s ritual in progress, let alone been able to subvert the magic to its own ends. It was another disquieting indication of just how diminished his powers actually were.

  But diminished or not, he needed to reestablish control. “You are my window,” he said, “and I now close you.”

  Nothing happened.

  “Do you see the beauty?” the reaper asked, and even though it was speaking from another universe, Szass Tam caught a whiff of its cold, stinking breath. “It’s the beginning of the end of all structure, all limitation, or so we pray.”