He looked around and realized that at last the battle had granted him and Brightwing a moment to catch their breaths. No new foes had yet appeared in their immediate vicinity. It gave him a chance to peer down and assess what was happening on the ground.
Ysval clawed. Milsantos caught the blow on his shield, but the impact knocked him out of the saddle. The nighthaunt virtually tore the old man’s war-horse out of his way as if it were a curtain and lunged after him, but in so doing, the undead captain exposed his flank to Bareris, who, chanting, slashed the creature’s night black body with his sword. As did Mirror, flitting around to attack from behind. Ysval faltered, and Milsantos clambered to his feet.
Ysval pivoted and drove his talons into Mirror’s chest. The ghost’s misty form writhed and boiled. Ysval raised his other hand for a follow-up blow. Bareris cut at him but failed to divert the nighthaunt from his fellow undead.
Then, however, a colossal spider, gnashing mandibles dripping venom, ring of eyes gleaming, materialized beside Ysval. One of Aoth’s fellow battle wizards had evidently summoned it. The spider pounced on the shadowy entity. The serrated jaws ripped him.
Ysval tore the creature off him and smashed it down on its back. As it started to heave itself upright, he thrust out his hand at it, malign power shivered through the air, and the arachnid stopped moving.
But Mirror’s form once more appeared as steady and stable as it ever did, and as Ysval finished with the spider, Nymia rode by him and bashed him with her mace.
We’re like a swarm of wasps attacking a man, Aoth thought. Individually, we’re puny in comparison, but it’s hard for him to defend himself against all of us at once.
Perhaps, his arrogance and manifest fury notwithstanding, Ysval also believed his foes might ultimately overwhelm him, for he brandished his fist, and ragged tendrils of shadow blazed outward from his body. His opponents stumbled and reeled. He lashed out with claw and tail, flinging them backward, giving himself room to spread his wings and spring into the air.
No, thought Aoth, you don’t get to break away and work your magic without interference. You have to stay on the ground where everyone can pound on you.
“Get him,” he said, and Brightwing dived.
Ysval heard or sensed them coming and turned to face them. When he met the gaze of the nighthaunt’s moon white eyes, Aoth felt a jolt of dread, and angry at his reaction, he promised himself it was the last time. One way or another, this filthy thing was never going to scare him again.
Then Brightwing froze. Thanks to their psychic bond, Aoth could tell his familiar was still alive and conscious. Indeed, she wasn’t even wounded, but Ysval had somehow paralyzed her, and now she wasn’t swooping but falling. The nighthaunt laughed.
Why shouldn’t he? Now that the griffon couldn’t shift her wings, her plummeting trajectory wouldn’t take her and Aoth within reach of him.
Aoth charged his lance with all the power it could hold then hurled it like a javelin. The long, heavy weapon wasn’t designed for use as a missile, but perhaps some god sharpened his eye and strengthened his arm, maybe Kossuth, avenging the treacherous murder of his Burning Braziers, because the spear plunged into Ysval’s shoulder.
To how much effect, it was impossible to say, because Aoth and Brightwing fell past him an instant later. The mage started rattling off a counterspell that might, if poor Chathi’s patron deity saw fit to grant a second boon, cleanse the griffon’s clenched muscles of their affliction.
Unfortunately, Aoth didn’t have time to finish. He and Brightwing slammed down hard on a rooftop, which crunched and buckled beneath them but didn’t give way entirely.
The impact spiked pain up the length of his body, but rather to his surprise, he survived it, and Brightwing did too. He could only assume that, despite her paralysis, her wings had caught enough air to keep them from falling at maximum speed.
Some yards away, Ysval crashed onto the street with the lance still sticking out of his body. He immediately sought to scramble to his feet, so obviously neither the spear nor the fall had killed him, but as Aoth had hoped, the injury to his shoulder had at least deprived him of the use of his wings.
Evidently recovered from the stunning effect of the burst of shadow, Bareris and Mirror rushed Ysval and cut at him relentlessly. The nighthaunt managed one more snatch with his talons and a final strike with his tail then toppled onto his side and lay motionless.
Some part of Bareris realized Ysval was dead. Nonetheless, he couldn’t stop hacking at the corpse, not until a phantom streaked across his field of vision and tore a knight from the saddle.
Bareris looked up. Having existed for their allotted span, the floating barriers had begun to wink out of existence, and the ghosts were rushing through the openings, swarming on the griffon riders like soft, gleaming leeches attacking a party of swimmers.
The plan indicated that as soon as Ysval died, someone who possessed the necessary magic was supposed to dispel the unnatural gloom enveloping the fortress. It didn’t seem to be happening. Was any of that select group of spellcasters still alive? If so, immersed in the chaos of battle, struggling to fend off the foes assailing him, had he even perceived that the moment for action had arrived?
Bareris drew a deep breath and bellowed loudly as only a bard could. “Break the darkness! Now! Now! Now!” On the other side of the battlefield, Milsantos’s trumpeter blew the call intended to communicate the same message.
For several heartbeats, it appeared no one heard, at least no one with the power to respond in the appropriate manner. Then, however, the sky brightened from black to blue in an instant. Bareris flinched and squinted at the sudden blaze of sunlight that scoured the wraiths from the air.
He wasn’t certain they’d all perished. Perhaps some endured as mere disembodied awareness or potential, like Mirror at his most ethereal, but even if so, they lacked the power to manifest until night returned.
Of course, the Keep of Thazar still harbored ghouls and animate corpses, creatures able to tolerate daylight even if it pained them, so the battle was far from over. Still, Bareris was now certain he and his allies were going to win. Considered as revenge, it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough, but it was a start, and weary to the bone though he was, he strode back toward the breached wall and the muddled din of the fight still raging there in search of something else to kill. For some reason impervious to the purifying sun, Mirror fell into step beside him.
chapter fourteen
17 Kythorn, the Year of Risen Elfkin
Aoth took a swallow of beer, belched, and said, “One nice thing about the undead: When they occupy a fortress, they don’t drink up all the ale.”
In truth, he had good reason to be glad of it. So many priests had died when Szass Tam’s torches exploded that after the battle, healing magic had been in short supply. As a captain and war mage, he hadn’t had any difficulty or qualms about commandeering the services of a cleric to knit his broken bones and Brightwing’s too, but bruises, however painful, were a different matter. Nymia and many other officers he’d known wouldn’t have hesitated to order up a second dose of healing to ease them, but he couldn’t, not when there were legionnaires likely to die for want of a priest’s attention. He simply bore the discomfort as best he could, and alcohol helped, as it helped so many things in life.
Seated on the other side of the shabby little parlor that comprised the greater portion of their billet, methodically honing a dagger, Bareris raised his head and asked, “How soon, do you think, will we head up into the mountains?”
Aoth sighed. His new friend’s response had nothing to do with what he himself had said, but at least he’d answered. Half the time, when someone spoke to him, he didn’t.
“It’s hard to say. You know as well as I do, an army needs time to put itself back in order after a big, hard fight, and when the tharchions are ready to attack this underground fortress you tell of, it might be easier to reach it through the portal in Delhumide.”
“No.” The dagger whispered against the whetstone. “The necromancers know an intruder found and used it already. I doubt it’s there anymore.”
“Well, you could be right.” In actuality, Aoth wasn’t certain Nymia and Milsantos would decide to go hunting “Xingax” and his cohorts by any route. The zulkirs hadn’t ordered them to, a march over the Sunrise Mountains would be difficult, and who knew if Bareris could even find the wizards’ lair again? But he had a hunch the bard wasn’t ready to hear that.
Bareris glowered. “You sound as if you don’t even want to go.”
“I won’t want to go anywhere for the next couple of days. You wouldn’t either, if you’d come out of the battle banged up like me. Anyway, I’m a legionnaire. I go where my tharchion sends me.”
“What about Chathi?”
“I liked her. I miss her, but it won’t keep me from living the rest of my life. She wouldn’t want that. I doubt your Tammith would have wanted it for you, either.”
“You don’t understand. You can’t. You were only with Chathi a short time. My whole life centered on Tammith.”
“It’s grand to love and be loved, but a man needs to stand at the center of his own life.”
“I only wanted to make her happy, yet I failed her in everything.” Bareris laughed. “By the Harp, that’s a mild way of putting it, isn’t it? Failed her. I destroyed her.”
“A priest would say you set her soul free. Certainly, you did everything you could for her. It’s a miracle you were even able to track her.”
“If I’d never left Bezantur—”
“And if I’d figured out the torches were dangerous a few breaths sooner, Chathi might still be alive. Whenever things go wrong, you can always find an if, but what’s the point of brooding over it? You’re only torturing yourself.”
Bareris stood up and reached for his sword belt, which hung on a peg on the wall with Aoth’s lance leaning beside it. “I’m going for a walk.”
“My friend, if I’ve said anything to offend you, I’m sorry.”
Bareris shook his head. “It isn’t that. It’s just …” He slid the newly sharpened knife into its sheath then buckled on his weapons. “I just need to be alone.”
Malark was as tired as he could recall ever being, even during the first months of his monastic training, and accordingly eager to reach his destination. Even so, he brought his flying horse down to the trail for the final leg of the journey up the valley. If the undead were still in possession of the Keep of Thazar, he’d be at least slightly less conspicuous approaching at ground level, and if the legionnaires had succeeded in retaking the place, he didn’t want them mistaking him for a wraith. By now, they were likely wary of most anything that flew.
His steed snorted, expressing its displeasure at descending. When first created, it hadn’t displayed emotion, nor had its black coat felt so much like actual horsehair. Malark wondered if, over time, simply by virtue of being perceived and employed, an illusory creature could become more real.
The question intrigued him, but now was not the time to ponder it. He’d do better to focus his attention on his surroundings, lest some skeleton or dread warrior notice him before he spotted it.
He crested a rise and the castle came into view, with a portion of the curtain wall demolished and an army, or the overflow of one, camped around it. He smiled, for the force was plainly composed of living men and orcs. Minute with distance though they were, he could see them moving freely about in the sunlight, and downwind, he could smell their cook fires and latrines. In addition to which, the banners of Thay, Pyarados, and Thazalhar flew from spires inside the fortress.
He cantered on into the encampment, where, it seemed to him, a general air of lethargic exhaustion prevailed. Still, it wasn’t long before someone realized he was a stranger and came to ask his business.
“I’m an emissary from Tharchion Flass,” he answered, “and I need to see Nymia Focar and Milsantos Daramos immediately.”
Nymia had heard reports of Dmitra Flass’s outlander lieutenant but had never met him before, so she studied him curiously. Despite what had evidently been a wearisome journey, he kneeled without any show of stiffness or soreness, and the regard of his striking green eyes bespoke intellect and self-possession. Her initial impression was that he appeared as competent as his reputation indicated.
“Rise,” said Milsantos, “and tell us your business.” He and Nymia had taken a room near the top of the central keep to serve as their command center, and weather permitting, threw open the casements to admit fresh air and illumination. This afternoon the old man sat in a chair near one of the west windows, and the golden sigils on his breastplate—Nymia wondered fleetingly if, when on campaign, he ever dispensed entirely with the weight, heat, and general discomfort of plate armor—gleamed in a shaft of sunlight.
“Thank you,” said Malark. “I understand you’ve been busy retaking the valley and castle. May I ask how much you know about what’s been happening elsewhere in Thay?”
“Szass Tam,” said Milsantos, “asked his fellow zulkirs to make him regent, but they declined.”
Malark smiled. “I’m glad to find you so well informed. It will save us at least a little time, and we don’t have much to spare, but I imagine there are facts you haven’t had the opportunity to learn. Szass Tam manipulated recent events to increase the likelihood of the other zulkirs acceding to his request. Among other machinations, he murdered Druxus Rhym and Aznar Thrul, tampered with the transmuters’ election, betrayed a Thayan army to the Rashemi, and fomented riots in the major cities. All deeds that furthered his plan in one way or another.”
No, Nymia thought, I don’t want to hear this. She and Milsantos had defeated the undead marauders Szass Tam’s followers had created as the lich himself had charged her to do, even though it meant taking necromancers captive and destroying their dread-warrior servants. But in the aftermath, everything had seemed to be all right. Though Szass Tam almost certainly knew what the armies of Pyarados and Thazalhar had accomplished, he hadn’t come rushing to exact retribution. She’d dared to hope she might actually emerge from this mad, paradoxical situation unscathed.
Yet here was the small man with the spot on his chin telling her secrets she was better off not knowing and almost certainly with the intent of enmeshing her in new dangers and ambiguities. She could have joyfully bashed in his skull with her mace and chucked the corpse out one of the casements.
Frowning, Milsantos fingered a rune on his armor. “We didn’t know all that, but it doesn’t surprise me, because we have discovered that Red Wizards of Necromancy created and directed the raiders we’ve been fighting.”
Nymia wanted to bash him too. Why did you tell him that? she thought. It’s bad enough that we know, worse to prattle about it to one of Dmitra’s agents.
“That makes sense,” said Malark. “Initially, it gave him another opportunity to play the savior, and after his fellow zulkirs rejected his proposal, it likewise served the next phase of his scheme.”
“You speak,” said Milsantos, “as if you know what that is.”
“I do,” said Malark. “After the vote, when it became clear Szass Tam was still playing his games, Tharchion Flass gave me the task of figuring out what his new purpose is. In time, it occurred to me that in the wake of their botched invasion of Rashemen, he likely commands the complete loyalty of Tharchions Kren and Odesseiron, and that reflection led to a rather alarming supposition. Employing an unnaturally swift steed, I rode far to learn if it could possibly be true. It is. I discovered the legions of Gauros and Surthay, newly augmented by a massive infusion of undead warriors, marching south.”
“You’re telling us,” Milsantos said, “that since his fellow zulkirs refused to vote Szass Tam a throne, he means to seize it by force of arms.”
“Yes, and now your army, which includes the Burning Braziers, is on the wrong side of the realm to oppose him.”
Milsantos rose and gestured to a map of Thay spread on o
ne of the trestles tables. “Show me the northerners’ route.”
Malark advanced to the table, and nerves taut as bowstrings, Nymia reluctantly stood and approached for a better look as well.
Using his fingertip, the outlander traced a path along the vellum chart. “As best I can reconstruct it, they swung west through the sparsely inhabited part of Eltabbar and have now headed south into Lapendrar.”
Milsantos nodded. “In their place, I’d do the same. Pyras Autorian is loyal to Szass Tam, but it would still be arduous to drag an army up the Second Escarpment, across the peaks of the Thaymount, then down the cliffs once more. You’d be seen, too, by someone hostile to your intentions. Too many Red Wizards have estates in the highlands, and on the south half of the plateau, the fiefs and towns are packed in too close for a host to sneak through.”
“That’s true,” Nymia said, “but surely someone noticed them marching through Lapendrar. Hezass Nymar may not have a strong enough army to oppose them, but why didn’t he warn the council of their coming? Why did one of Dmitra’s agents have to venture forth and discover this for himself?”
“I can hazard a guess,” said Malark. “Hezass Nymar dances to Szass Tam’s piping as well, though maybe not to the point of lending his own relatively meager forces to the lich’s scheme. That I simply couldn’t tell, and Szass Tam may not want them anyway. Someone has to hold the Aglarondan border. But at least to the extent of granting free passage to Tharchions Odesseiron and Kren and keeping their progress a secret.” He smiled. “The priest’s probably glad he chose to govern from Escalant instead of residing in Lapendrar proper. If the necromancers fail, he can claim afterward that he didn’t know what was going on.”
Milsantos grunted. “If we’re going to speculate, let’s do it about something important. Where are Kren and Odesseiron headed? It can’t be the capital, or they would have circled east instead of west. It has to be Bezantur. Take it and you pretty much control the whole south of the realm and all access to the sea. You’ve taken a giant step toward winning your war almost before it’s begun.”
Unclean: The Haunted Lands Page 30
