The Haunted Lands: Book II - Undead

by Richard Lee Byers

  He grinned at her, and for a moment she caught a glimpse of the youth who’d once taken delight in surprising her and making her laugh. “Then stand ready and watch this.” He raised his hand, swept it down, and started singing.

  Several Burning Braziers oriented on the walkway Bareris had pointed out. One read a final syllable from a scroll, which flared and burned to ash in his grip. The others brandished fists or rattled chains sheathed in flame, and Tammith’s skin crawled and stung at the sacred power gathering in the air. When it manifested, the dread warriors and ghouls in front of the giant zombie blew apart in a booming explosion.

  Bareris gave Tammith a gentle push, telling her it was her time to attack. As she dissolved into bats, he vanished.

  When she flew upward, she spied him again, barely visible behind the gray, hulking form of the giant zombie. He’d shifted himself through space to attack Xingax from behind. He swung his sword in a high arc, aiming for the unseen rider on the hideous steed’s back.

  Even above the din of battle, she heard Xingax scream like an infant in distress. It was the sweetest music Bareris had ever made.

  The giant zombie lurched around and swiped at Bareris, who retreated out of range. Wavering into visibility, Xingax hurled ice crystals from Ysval’s blackened, oversized hand. Bareris twisted, but couldn’t dodge all of the barrage.

  Yet when he sprang back, cut into the zombie’s knee, yanked his sword free, and whirled it upward for another slash at Xingax, Tammith could see it hadn’t hurt him much, nor had the poison haze that shrouded his opponent. He’d prepared for this confrontation, enhancing his natural capabilities with his songs, and for all she knew, talismans and potions. She felt a thrill of pride to see how well he was faring.

  It was a puny little flicker of emotion, an almost indiscernible fleck of flotsam in the torrent of hatred and rage she felt for Xingax. She whirled her bats together and set her human feet down amid the cinders and bits of blackened bone that were all that remained of the dread warriors. Even through her boots, the residue of divine power stung her soles.

  She jumped, caught Xingax by the neck, and dragged him from his perch. Bareris could destroy the giant zombie, and she’d slaughter its master. She pulled her sword back for a thrust.

  Twisting to face her, Xingax sneered, and she felt vibration through the fingers she held clamped in his putrid flesh. Then she couldn’t feel anything, and realized he meant to shift through space or between worlds to escape her.

  But an instant later, when his form congealed again, she realized he couldn’t. He’d temporarily lost the ability. His twisted little mouth dropped open in dismay, and she drove her blade into his guts.

  It didn’t finish him. It didn’t even stun him, stop him from floating weightless in the air, or keep him from clawing at her face. But that was all right. She wanted him to succumb slowly, because she’d relish every instant of his destruction. She twisted her head and his talons scored her cheek but missed her eyes. She jerked the sword free for another attack.

  “Stop!” a deep voice grated.

  Tammith froze, and she realized some enchantment had taken hold of her. She strained against it, and her sword arm twitched. She was breaking free.

  “Stop!” Xingax said. From the moment of her rebirth as a vampire, he’d been able to command her. She’d believed the blight on wizardry had set her free, but apparently her liberation wasn’t as complete as she’d imagined. Xingax was able to muster at least a shadow of his old coercive power, and it combined with the psychic assault she was already fighting to tilt the balance against her. Her body locked into complete rigidity, and Xingax clawed at her hand until flesh and bones came apart and he was able to pull free of her grip.

  Something snaked around her. When it lifted her off the balcony, it turned her, and she beheld the creature that had crept up behind her.

  Once it sat atop a giant’s shoulders. Now the severed head was a swollen, misshapen thing with rows of jagged fangs in its oversized mouth. Some of the guts and blood vessels protruding from the neck hole had wrapped around her. Others had plastered themselves to the wall above the doorways, allowing it to crawl along the vertical surface like a fly.

  “You’re a bad, ungrateful daughter!” Xingax shrilled. “I gave you everything!”

  The crawling head’s trailing tendrils lifted Tammith toward its jaws. Change to mist, she told herself. Then it can’t hurt you or hold on to you. But she couldn’t transform.

  Her captor turned her body. She realized it was positioning her so it could nip her head off.

  Then Bareris sprang onto the balcony. He must have finished slaying the giant zombie, clearing away the obstacle that stood between him and the rest of the combat.

  He struck at Xingax before the maker of undead realized he was there. His sword crunched into the bulbous skull, and Xingax dropped from the air onto the gallery floor. Bareris instantly pivoted toward the crawling head and Tammith.

  But Xingax was still conscious. He grabbed Bareris’s leg with his nighthaunt hand, sinking the claws deep into his calf, and pointed with the stunted, withered one. Tammith felt malignant power burn through the air.

  Bareris cried out and arched his back, but he didn’t fall. After a moment, as the agony abated, he pivoted and cut until Xingax stopped moving, and he could pull free of the long bloody claws.

  He hobbled toward Tammith and the thing that clutched her tightly. The giant’s head howled, a shriek as full of murderous force as Xingax’s final attack, but Bareris sang a fierce, sustained, vibrating note that shielded him from harm.

  The crawling head lashed at him with lengths of artery and intestine. Hampered by his torn, bleeding leg, Bareris defended as best he could. At the same time, the creature positioned Tammith’s neck between its rows of teeth.

  Once more, she struggled against her intangible fetters. Perhaps Xingax’s death had weakened them, because her limbs jerked. Bonds of ropy flesh still held her, but nothing else did.

  But she was out of time to shapeshift. She strained with all her inhuman strength, heaved her arms free, and braced her sword to prop the head’s jaws open.

  Heedless of the grievous wound it thus inflicted in the roof of its mouth, the horror snapped its fangs shut. A fiery pain through her neck told Tammith her head had come loose from her body.

  She fought to defy terror’s grip, to remember that she’d survived this same mutilation before. Then a rippling peristalsis tumbled her head inside the creature, depositing it in some manner of sac. In the darkness, fleshy strands nudged at her scalp, brow, and cheeks, then, biting or stinging, anchored themselves like lampreys.

  Her consciousness faded. Despite the layers of bone and flesh around her, she heard Bareris bellow a thunderous battle cry, felt the crawling head jerk in reaction, and then her mind guttered out completely.

  chapter six

  2–21 Kythorn, the Year of Blue Fire

  Bareris’s shout tore flesh from the giant’s head and splintered the bone beneath. At instant later, a Burning Brazier blasted the creature with flame. It lost its grip on the wall and crashed down on the gallery, where it lay blackened, smoking, and still.

  Fast as he could, Bareris limped toward it, and a yellow-eyed dread warrior placed itself in his path. He had to slay it, and then the ghoul that took its place. It reminded him that, although all he truly cared about was breaking open the giant’s head, he still had a battle to win.

  In fact, it didn’t take long. When the crawling head perished, the defenders’ last hope of victory perished with it, and they began to turn and run.

  Bareris cast about, found a fallen battle-axe, and chopped the colossal skull apart. For a time, he was terrified that Tammith’s head had completely dissolved inside it, but he finally found it within a sac of leathery flesh.

  It didn’t move. Not the mouth, not the eyes. Even when he yanked loose the tendrils that had attached themselves to it and lifted it free, it looked as dead as the putrid mass that ha
d imprisoned it. Bareris shuddered and felt a howl building inside him.

  Behind him, someone cleared his throat. He turned to see one of the Burning Braziers. Though far advanced in the mysteries of his order, the priest was a relatively young man of Mulan stock.

  “Forgive me, Captain,” he said, “but you still have work to do.”

  Bareris took a breath. “Yes.” He proffered the head. “You’re the best healer we have. Help her.”

  The Brazier hesitated. “Captain …” “That’s an order!”

  The priest accepted the head. “I’ll try.”

  Limping, using a spear for a cane, Bareris oversaw the securing of the fortress. The chambers echoed with the chanted prayers of the priests. The flashes of fire they conjured gilded the walls. Their power would so purify the place that no one could ever practice necromancy there again.

  Meanwhile, the southern wizards plundered the necromancers’ libraries and stores of mystical equipment. The warriors of the Griffon Legion hunted down and killed the enemies cowering in dark corners. Finally it was done, and Bareris rushed to find out what had become of Tammith.

  The Burning Brazier had taken her to a small room so he could work undisturbed. There she lay atop a table, her form—white skin, black clothing and armor, raven hair, and dark dried gore—ghostly and vague in the glow of a single oil lamp. But even the feeble light revealed the ragged discontinuity that circled her neck like a choker and the mottling of ugly wounds on her face.

  Bareris could tell by looking at her that nothing had changed. Still, he turned to the cleric and asked, “How is she?”

  The fire priest hesitated, then said, “She’s dead, sir. She was dead when you last saw her and she’s still dead now.”

  “She can’t be. She survived decapitation before.”

  “If so, then I surmise that when the giant thing bit off her head and began the process of combining it with its own substance, the injury was qualitatively different. At any rate, she hasn’t moved, and the two … pieces of her don’t show any signs of growing together.”

  “Did you try to encourage the healing with your magic?”

  “Yes, Captain, just as you ordered. Even though healing prayers, which channel the cosmic principles of health and vitality, are unlikely to help a being whose existence embodied malignancy and a perversion of the natural order.”

  You’re glad she’s dead, Bareris thought, and trembled with the urge to knock the Burning Brazier down. Instead, he said, “Thank you for trying. Go help the other priests with their tasks.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring her back. But I can perform the rites to cremate the body with the proper reverence and commend her spirit to Kossuth.”

  “Perhaps later.”

  “I can also tend you. Your leg needs attention, and unless I’m very much mistaken, you’re still feeling sick and weak from Xingax’s mystical attack. Let me—”

  “Are you deaf? I told you to get out!”

  The Brazier studied Bareris’s face, then nodded, turned on his heel, and left Bareris alone with Tammith’s body and the gloom.

  Bareris sang his own charms of healing, even though they were no more effective than the spells the priests employed for the same purpose. He sang until he exhausted his magic, and she didn’t stir.

  Then he sang the tale of the starfish that aspired to be a star, and other songs she’d loved when they were young. Perhaps he hoped they’d entice her spirit back from the void where even magic had failed, but she still didn’t move.

  That’s it, then, he thought. I tried, but all I could do was say good-bye. The music was my farewell.

  Perhaps her destruction was for the best, for truly, she’d perished ten years ago. The cold, implacable killer that remained was a mockery of the Tammith he’d loved. She’d known it herself. She’d wanted to die, even if she never quite said it.

  Perhaps it was even better for him. He’d pined for her every day, but when she miraculously returned to him, it had only initiated a different kind of torment. Then he had to contemplate what his failure had made of her, and hold back from touching her and pouring out his heart.

  Yes. Perhaps. But how could he stand to lose her again?

  Maybe he didn’t have to, because there was one measure he had not tried. For a vampire, blood was life, and many tales told that they particularly craved the blood of those they loved, or had loved prior to their rebirths.

  He unbuckled his sword belt, pulled off his armor, and rolled up the sleeve of his shirt. He drew his knife and poised the blade at his wrist.

  I’m mad to do this, he thought. I have no reason to think it will work, and the Brazier was right. I’m still weak from Xingax’s death magic, and I’ve already lost a good deal of blood. Shedding more is apt to kill me.

  Yet still he sliced into the vein.

  The blood welled forth. It looked black in the dim light. He poised his wrist over Tammith’s mouth and let it drip in.

  Nothing happened. For a moment he felt she was actively resisting him, and even though he knew the idea was crazy, it evoked a spasm of anger nonetheless.

  He smeared gore across his own lips, then decided that wasn’t good enough. He scratched them with the point of the knife so fresh blood would keep trickling forth. Then he bent down and kissed Tammith, moving with exquisite care to make sure he didn’t jostle her head away from her body.

  Tammith woke to fiery pain in her neck, gentle nuzzling pressure on her lips, and the coppery tang of blood in her mouth. She couldn’t see, or remember where she was or what had happened.

  She only knew her thirst was overwhelming, and whatever was feeding her blood was doing it too slowly to suit her. She tried to grab it, but her arms refused to obey her. In fact, she realized, she couldn’t feel them, or anything else below the agony in her neck.

  Because, she abruptly recalled, Xingax’s creation had bitten her head off. She wondered if her body was nearby, and experienced a pang of fear that it wasn’t, or that even if it was, this time, she wouldn’t fuse back together. Then, as if to soothe her anxiety, she felt flesh and bone growing and flowing to reassemble her neck. Her body announced itself with a stab of agony in the mangled hand Xingax had clawed apart.

  Absolute blackness flowered into blurry patches of light and shadow as the infusion of blood returned the use of her eyes. As her vision sharpened, she saw Bareris restoring her. Resurrecting her with bloody kisses.

  She returned the next one, and he drew back to regard her with joyous incredulity. His smile stabbed shame and sorrow into her. Don’t be happy, she thought. I ruined you. I’m going to be the death of you. Then another surge of thirst washed such notions away.

  She pulled him down to her and sucked and licked at his lips. They still weren’t yielding enough blood, and she felt as if he were teasing her. As soon as she was sure she’d regained sufficient strength, and that vigorous motion wouldn’t break her into two pieces again, she sought a better source.

  When she cast about, she saw that he’d slashed his wrist, and it had bled copiously enough to spatter gore all over him, her, and the table on which she lay. But she realized his arm wouldn’t satisfy her either. She wanted a more intimate connection. Because this time, the thirst wasn’t just a craving for blood, but rather a melding of passions.

  She shifted her mouth to the side of his neck, slipped her fangs into the pulsing vein, and tore at his garments. When he realized what she was doing, he ripped at hers as well.

  Fiercely, they ground their bodies together. Excitement carried her higher and higher, and after a time, she felt the frantic hammering of his heart, struggling to keep him alive despite the extreme demands he was placing on it.

  Good. Let it burst. Let him die. His death was a part of the exultation she sought.

  Yet at the same time, the prospect of destroying him was intolerable.

  Once, her vampiric instincts would have ruled her in any such situation. They were no less potent now, but she’d had a dec
ade to learn self-control. Though it was as difficult as anything she’d ever done, she withdrew her fangs from his neck, licked the double wound to close it, and contented herself with a lesser consummation.

  He blacked out at the same moment, and sprawled atop her like a dead man. She squirmed out from under him, dashed to the door, and screamed for a healer.

  When Bareris’s eyes fluttered open, he found that someone had carried him to a proper bed. Tammith sat beside him, holding his hand, her fingers cool as usual. She was fully clad again.

  “Water,” he croaked.

  “I knew you’d want it.” Easily as a mother shifting a small child, she lifted him up and held a cup to his lips. The cold liquid tasted of iron.

  “Thank you.”

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “Weak, but all right, I think.”

  “I fetched a healer as soon as we … finished.” She lowered her eyes and it occurred to him that he hadn’t expected her to look shy ever again.

  Bareris chuckled and it made him cough. “I must have presented an interesting tableau for his inspection—clothing in disarray, cut wrist, cut lips, blood everywhere.”

  Tammith smiled back. “Especially since I was half naked and bloody, too, and I still have this.” She held up her left hand for his inspection. It had begun to regenerate, but was still bone, tendon, and little else.

  It hurt him to see it. “By the Harp!”

  “Don’t worry about it. It will likely finish healing the next time I drink blood.”

  “I should probably hold off on that for a little while.”

  She frowned. “I don’t mean yours.”

  “Well, I realize it can’t be me every time. Sometimes it will just be supper.”

  “You saved me, and I’m grateful. But what we did together is an abomination.”

  “It didn’t feel abominable.”

  “I drank too much. I nearly killed you.”

  “I know.”

  “It would be like that every time, the thirst pushing me, infecting me with a pure cruel wish to see you die.”