Unclean: The Haunted Lands

by Richard Lee Byers

  “We’re going to have a civil conversation,” said Malark. “The only question is, do I need to dislocate your arm to make it happen, or are you ready to cooperate now?”

  As best he was able, the legionnaire struggled, trying to break free. Malark applied more pressure, enough to paralyze the man.

  “I really will do it,” said the spy, “and then I’ll go on damaging you until you see reason.”

  “All right!” the soldier gasped.

  Malark released him. “Sit or stand as you prefer.”

  The bigger man chose to stand and rub his shoulder. “Who in the Nine Hells are you?”

  “My name is Malark Springhill. I do chores of various sorts for Tharchion Flass.”

  The legionnaire hesitated, his eyes narrowing. Perhaps he’d never risen in the ranks, but he was evidently more intelligent than that fact would seem to imply. “You … are you supposed to tell me that?”

  “Ordinarily, no,” Malark replied. Out on the street, a woman laughed, the sound strident as a raptor’s screech. “I’m a spy among other things, and generally I have to lie to people all the time, about … well, everything, really. It’s something of a luxury that I can be honest with you.”

  “Because you mean to kill me.”

  “Yes. I’m going to ask you what truly happened in the Gorge of Gauros, and I couldn’t let you survive to report that anyone was interested in that even if you didn’t know who sent me to inquire. But you get to decide how pleasant the next little while will be, and how you’ll die at the end of it.

  “You can try withholding the information I want,” Malark continued, “in which case, I’ll torture it out of you. Afterwards, your body will be broken, incapable of resistance when I snap your neck.

  “Or you can answer me freely, and I’ll have no reason to hurt you. Once you’ve given me what I need, I’ll return your blades, permit you to unsheathe them, and we’ll fight. You’re a legionnaire. Surely you’d prefer the honor of a warrior’s death, and I’d like to give it to you.”

  The legionnaire stared at him. “You’re crazy.”

  “People often say that, but they’re mistaken.” Malark decided to confide in the warrior. It was one technique for building trust between interrogator and prisoner, and besides, he rarely had the chance to tell his story. “I just see existence in a way others can’t.

  “A long, long while ago, I learned of a treasure. The sole surviving dose of a philter to keep a man from aging forever after.

  “I coveted it. So did others. In those days, I scarcely knew the rudiments of fighting, but I had a friend who was proficient, and together we bested our rivals and seized the prize. We’d agreed we’d each drink half the potion, and thus, though neither of us would become immortal, we’d both live a long time.”

  “But you betrayed him,” said the legionnaire, “and drank it all yourself.”

  Malark smiled. “Are you saying that because you’re a good judge of character, or because it’s what you would have done? Either way, you’re right. That’s exactly what I did, and later on, I started to regret it.

  “First, I watched everyone I loved, everyone I even knew, pass away. That’s hard. I wept when my former friend died a feeble old man, and he’d spent the past fifty years trying to revenge himself on me.

  “I attempted to move forward. I told myself there was a new generation of people to care about. The problem, of course, was that before long, in the wink of an eye, or so it seemed, they died, too.

  “When I grew tired of enduring that, I tried living with dwarves and later, elves, but it wasn’t the same as living with my own kind, and in time, they passed away just like humans. It simply took a little longer.”

  The soldier gaped at him. “How old are you?”

  “Older than Thay. I recall hearing the tidings that the Red Wizards had fomented a rebellion against Mulhorand, though I wasn’t in these parts to witness it myself. Anyway, over time, I pretty much lost the ability to feel an attachment to individual people, for what was the point? Instead, I tried to embrace causes and places, only to discover those die too. I lost count of the times I gave my affection to one or another town along the Moonsea, only to see the place sacked and the inhabitants massacred. I learned that as the centuries roll by, even gods change, or at least our conception of them does, which amounts to the same thing if you’re looking for some constancy to cling to.

  “But eventually I realized there was one constant, and that was death. In its countless variations, it was happening all around me, all the time. It befell everyone, or at least, everyone but me, and that made it fascinating.”

  “If you’re saying you wanted to die, why didn’t you just stick a dagger into your heart or jump off a tower? Staying young forever isn’t the same thing as being unkillable, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t, and I’ve considered ending my life on many occasions, but something has always held me back. Early on, it was the same dread of death that prompted me to strive for the elixir and betray my poor friend in the first place. After I made a study of extinction, I shed the fear, but with enlightenment, suicide came to seem like cheating, or at the very least, bad manners. Death is a gift, and we aren’t meant to reach out and snatch it. We’re supposed to wait until the universe is generous enough to bestow it on us.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Most people don’t, but the Monks of the Long Death do, and there came a day when I was fortunate enough to stumble across one of their hidden enclaves and gain admission as a novice.”

  The legionnaire blanched. “You’re one of those madmen?”

  “It depends on your point of view. After a decade or two, paladins descended on the monastery and slaughtered my brothers and sisters. Only I escaped, and afterward, I didn’t feel the need to search for another such stronghold. I’d already learned what I’d hoped to, and the rigors and abstentions of the ascetic life had begun to wear on me.

  “According to the rules of the order, I’m an apostate, and if they ever realize it, they’ll likely try to kill me. But though I no longer hold a place in the hierarchy, I still adhere to the teachings. I still believe that while all deaths are desirable, some are better than others. The really good ones take a form appropriate to the victim’s life and come to him in the proper season. I believe it’s both a duty and the highest form of art to arrange such passings as opportunity allows.

  “That’s why I permitted younger, healthier, more successful men to pass by and accosted you instead. It’s why I hope to give you a fighter’s death.”

  “What are you talking about? It’s not my ‘season’ to die!”

  “Are you sure? Isn’t it plain your best days are past? Doesn’t your leg ache constantly? Don’t you feel old age working its claws into you? Aren’t you disappointed with the way your life has turned out? Why not let it go then? The priests and philosophers assure us that something better waits beyond.”

  “Shut up! You can’t talk me into wanting to die.”

  “I’m not trying. Not exactly. I told you, I want you to go down fighting. I just don’t want you to be afraid.”

  “I’m not! Or at least I won’t be if you keep your promise and give back my sword.”

  “I will. I’ll return your blades and fight you empty-handed.”

  “Ask your cursed questions, then, and I’ll answer honestly. Why shouldn’t I, when you’ll never have a chance to repeat what I say to Dmitra Flass or anybody else?”

  “Thank you.” The inquisition didn’t take long. At the end, though Malark had learned a good deal he hadn’t comprehended before, he still wasn’t sure why it was truly important, but he realized he’d come to share his mistress’s suspicion that it was.

  Now, however, was not the time to ponder the matter. He needed to focus on the duel to come. He backed up until the sword and dagger lay between the legionnaire and himself.

  “Pick them up,” he said.

  The soldier sprang forwa
rd, crouched, and grabbed the weapons without taking his eyes off Malark. He then scuttled backward as he drew the blades, making it more difficult for his adversary to spring and prevent him had he cared to do so, and opening enough distance to use a sword to best effect.

  Malark noticed the limp was no longer apparent. Evidently excitement, or the single-minded focus of a veteran combatant, masked the pain, and when the bigger man came on guard, his stance was as impeccable as a woodcut in a manual of arms.

  Given his level of skill, he deserved to be a drill instructor at the very least. Malark wondered whether it was a defect in his character or simple bad luck that had kept him in the ranks. He’d never know, of course, for the time for inquiry was past.

  The legionnaire sidled left, hugging the wall on that side. He obviously remembered how Malark had shifted past him before and was positioning himself in such a way that, if his adversary attempted such a maneuver again, he could only dart in one direction. That would make it easier to defend against the move.

  Then the warrior edged forward. Malark stood and waited. As soon as the distance was to the legionnaire’s liking, when a sword stroke would span it but not a punch or a kick, he cut at Malark’s head.

  Or rather, he appeared to. He executed the feint with all the necessary aggression, yet even so, Malark perceived that a false attack was all it was. He couldn’t have said exactly how. Over the centuries, he’d simply developed an instinct for such things.

  He lifted an arm as if to block the cut, in reality to convince the legionnaire his trick was working. The blade spun low to chop at his flank.

  Malark shifted inside the arc of the blow, a move that robbed the stroke of much of its force. When he swept his arm down to defend, the forte of the blade connected with his forearm but failed to shear through the sturdy leather bracer hidden under his sleeve.

  At the same moment, he stiffened his other hand and drove his fingertips into the hard bulge of cartilage at the front of the warrior’s throat. The legionnaire reeled backward. Malark took up the distance and hit him again, this time with a chop to the side of the neck. Bone cracked and, his head flopping, the soldier collapsed.

  Malark regarded the body with the same mix of satisfaction and wistful envy he usually felt at such moments. Then he closed the legionnaire’s eyes and walked away.

  North of the Surag River, the road threaded its way up the narrow strip of land between Lake Thaylambar to the west and the Surague Escarpment, the cliffs at the base of the Sunrise Mountains, to the east. The land was wilder, heath interspersed with stands of pine and dotted with crumbling ruined towers, and sparsely settled. The slaves and their keepers marched an entire morning without seeing anyone, and when someone finally did appear, it was just a lone goatherd, who, wary of strangers, immediately scurried into a thicket. Even tax stations, the ubiquitous fortresses built to collect tolls and help preserve order throughout the realm, were few and far between.

  Tammith had never before ventured farther than a day’s walk from Bezantur, but she’d heard that the northern half of Thay was almost all alike, empty, undeveloped land where even freemen found it difficult to eke out a living. How much more difficult, then, must it be to endure as a slave, particularly one accustomed to the teeming cities of the south?

  Thus she understood why so many of her fellow thralls grew more sullen and despondent with each unwilling step they took, and why Yuldra, the girl she’d sought to comfort just before the Red Wizards came and bought the lot of them, kept sniffling and knuckling her reddened eyes. In her heart, Tammith felt just as dismayed and demoralized as they did.

  But she also believed that if one surrendered to such emotions, they would only grow stronger, so she squeezed Yuldra’s shoulder and said, “Come on, don’t cry. It’s not so bad.”

  Yuldra’s face twisted. “It is.”

  “This country is strange to me, too, but I’m sure they have towns somewhere in the north, and remember, the men who bought us are Red Wizards. You don’t think they live in a tent out in the wilderness, do you?”

  “You don’t know that they’re taking us where they live,” the adolescent retorted, “because they haven’t said. I’ve had other masters, and they weren’t so close-mouthed. I’m scared we’re going somewhere horrible.”

  “I’m sure that isn’t so.” In reality, of course, Tammith had no way of being certain of any such thing, but it seemed the right thing to say. “Let’s not allow our imaginings to get the best of us. Let’s play another game.”

  Yuldra sighed. “All right.”

  The next phase of their journey began soon after, when they finally left the northernmost reaches of Lake Thaylambar behind, and rolling plains opened before them. To Tammith’s surprise, the procession then left the road where, though she eventually spotted signs that others had passed this way before them, there was no actual trail of any sort.

  Nor did there appear to be anything ahead but rolling grassland, and beyond that, visible as a blurry line on the horizon, High Thay, the mountainous tharch that jutted upward from the central plateau as it in turn rose abruptly from the lowlands. From what she understood, many a Red Wizard maintained a private citadel or estate among the peaks, no doubt with hordes of slaves to do his bidding, but her sense of geography, hazy though it was, suggested the procession wasn’t heading there. If it was, the warlocks had taken about the most circuitous route imaginable.

  Suddenly three slaves burst from among their fellows and ran, scattering as they fled. Tammith’s immediate reflexive thought was that, unlike Yuldra and herself, the trio had figured out where they all were going.

  Unfortunately, they had no hope of escaping that fate. The Red Wizards could have stopped them easily with spells, but they didn’t bother. Like their masters, some of the guards were mounted, and they pounded after the fugitives. One warrior flung a net as deftly as any fisherman she’d ever watched plying his trade in the waters off Bezantur, and a fugitive fell tangled in the mesh. Another guard reached out and down with his lance, slipped it between a thrall’s legs, and tripped him. A third horseman leaned out of the saddle, snatched a handful of his target’s streaming, bouncing mane of hair and simply jerked the runaway off his feet.

  Once the guards herded the fugitives back to the procession, every slave had to suffer his masters’ displeasure. The overseers screamed and spat in their faces, slapped, cuffed, and shoved them, and threatened savage punishments for all if anyone else misbehaved. Yuldra broke down sobbing the moment a warrior approached her. The Red Wizards looked vexed and impatient with the delay the exercise in discipline required.

  The abuse was still in progress when Tammith caught sight of a horseman galloping steadily nearer. His wheat-blond hair gleamed dully in the late afternoon sunlight, and something about the set of his shoulders and the way he carried himself—

  Yes! Perhaps she shouldn’t jump to conclusions when he was still so far away, but in her heart she knew. It was Bareris, after she’d abandoned all hope of ever seeing him again.

  She wanted to cry his name, run to meet him, until she realized, with a cold and sudden certainty, that what she really ought to do was warn him off.

  Outside in the streets of Eltabbar, the celebration had an edge to it. The mob was happy enough to gobble free food, guzzle free ale and wine, and watch the parades, dancers, mummers, displays of transmutation, and other forms of entertainment, all of it provided to celebrate the election of Samas Kul to the office of zulkir. Yet Aoth had felt the underlying displeasure and dismay at the tidings that in the east, a Thayan army had met defeat, and in consequence, undead marauders were laying waste to the countryside. He suspected the festival would erupt into rioting after nightfall.

  Still, he would rather have been outside in the gathering storm than tramping at Nymia Focar’s side through the immense basalt ziggurat called the Flaming Brazier, reputedly the largest temple of Kossuth the Firelord in all the world. That was because it was entirely possible that the potentat
e who’d summoned the tharchion had done so with the intention of placing the blame for the recent debacle in Pyarados. Since she, the commander who’d lost to the undead, was the obvious candidate, perhaps she’d dragged Aoth along to be scapegoat in her place.

  Maybe, he thought, he even deserved it. If only he’d spotted the lacedons—

  He scowled the thought away. He hadn’t been the only scout in the air, and nobody else had seen the creatures either. Nor could you justly condemn anyone for failing to anticipate an event that had never happened before.

  Not that justice was a concept that automatically sprang to mind where zulkirs and Red Wizards were concerned.

  Aoth and his superior strode in dour silence through yellow and orange high-ceilinged chambers lit by countless devotional fires. The heat of the flames became oppressive, and the wizard evoked the magic of a tattoo to cool himself. Nymia lacked the ability to do the same, and perspiration gleamed on her upper lip.

  Eventually they arrived at high double doors adorned with a scene inlaid in jewels and precious metals: Kossuth, spiked chain in hand, smiting his great enemy Istishia, King of the Water Elementals. A pair of warrior monks stood guard at the sides of the portal and swung the leaves open to permit the new arrivals to enter the room beyond.

  It was a chamber plainly intended for discussion and disputation, though it too had its whispering altar flames glinting on golden icons. Seated around a table in the center of the room was a more imposing gathering of dignitaries than Aoth had ever seen before even at a distance, let alone close up. Let alone taking any notice of his own humble existence. In fact, four of the five were zulkirs.

  Gaunt, dark-eyed Szass Tam, his withered fingers folded, looked calm and composed.

  Yaphyll, zulkir of Divination and by all accounts the lich’s most reliable ally, was a slender woman, somewhat short for a Mulan, with, rather to Aoth’s surprise, a humorous, impish cast of expression manifest even on this grave occasion. She looked just a little older than he was, thirty or so, but she had actually held her office since before he was born with magic maintaining her youth.