“Tharchion Flass agrees with you,” said Malark, “particularly since the city and all Priador are in a vulnerable condition. Their tharchion is dead and I’m informed that now the commander of his legion and city guard is too. Apparently the Shadowmasters assassinated him. Szass Tam must have hired them.”
“What I want to know,” Nymia said, “is why you, a servant of Dmitra Flass, have ridden all the way to the eastern edge of Thay to tell us these things. The last I heard, she too was Szass Tam’s faithful follower.”
“Until recently, yes. She’s since decided the prudent course is to cast her lot with six zulkirs rather than one.”
“Still,” said Milsantos, “that doesn’t quite explain what you’re doing here.”
“If Priador can’t defend itself, someone else has to.”
“Meaning us?” Nymia asked. “You said it yourself: We’re on the wrong side of the country.”
“But you’re prepared to march and fight, seeing as how you’ve been doing it for tendays already. Your men know how to combat the undead. Your have the most formidable war priests in Thay at your disposal.
“In contrast, many another legion is still nestled in the garrison it’s occupied more or less peacefully ever since the new trade policy began. After all Szass Tam has done to win their regard, many a soldier reveres or fears him and is reluctant to take up arms against him. Indeed, at this point, it’s an open question just how many tharchions will stand with the council.”
Milsantos snorted. “Your argument isn’t as strong as you imagine. We fought hard to retake this fortress. We’d benefit greatly from a few more days of rest. On top of which, the fire priests are dead. The arms Szass Tam furnished turned against them.”
Malark smiled in apparent admiration. “Thus depriving us of perhaps our most potent weapon against specters and the like.”
“Still,” the old man said, “it may be that you’ve come to the right people. Let’s assume that in time the council can field a sufficient force to oppose the northerners. The immediate task, then, is to slow down the enemy advance and keep them from reaching Bezantur before that happens. Nymia, your griffon riders have the mobility and skills required.”
“Damn it!” Nymia exploded, then caught herself. It was neither dignified nor prudent for two tharchions to argue in front of an inferior, particularly one who’d no doubt report the discussion word for word to one of their compatriots. “Messenger, wait outside.”
“Of course.” Malark bowed, withdrew, and closed the door behind him
“I take it,” Milsantos said, “that you don’t care for my suggestion.”
“How dare you assume,” she gritted, “without a word of discussion between us, that I have any intention of fighting Szass Tam?”
“Ah,” he said. “Perhaps that was presumptuous of me, and I apologize, but I think Dmitra Flass’s notion is sound: Six zulkirs are stronger than one.”
“Even when the one is Szass Tam?”
“Well, we can hope so.”
“Even when we know for certain he already controls Gauros, Surthay, High Thay, and Lapendrar, and we don’t know if any other tharchions except Dmitra—assuming we can even trust that duplicitous slut—mean to oppose him? What if we march against him, and it turns out we’re the only ones?”
Milsantos smiled. “It will be inconvenient to say the least. Still, we’ll have the other six zulkirs and the orders of wizardry they command.”
“Until some of them deem it advantageous to switch sides. You know what they’re like.”
“Yes. I do. So what’s your thought?”
“It’s not as if the outlander brought us actual orders from the council. Despite the airs she puts on, Dmitra is our peer, not our superior.”
“True. Apparently she begrudged the time it would have taken to palaver with the zulkirs.”
“That means we aren’t obligated to do anything. We can stay put here in the east and let everybody else slaughter one another in Priador.”
Milsantos pulled a wry face. “It’s tempting. You and I have survived a long while by keeping our noses out of the zulkirs’ squabbles, but I fear it’s not possible anymore. The old rivalries have flared into actual war, and if you don’t choose a side, both will regard you as an enemy.”
“Let’s say you’re right. In that case, I want to back the winning side. Just how certain are you it will be the council?”
“To be honest, not certain at all, but I’m willing to play my hunch. In addition to which, I’ve seen quite a bit of the undead of late, enough to sicken me. I don’t want a lich as sole ruler of my homeland.”
Nymia sighed. “Nor do I. He unleashed his pet horrors on my tharch, ordered me to dispose of them, then betrayed and crippled our army at the worst possible moment. At this point, I hate and mistrust him too much to support him.”
“We’re agreed, then.”
“Yes, curse you. I can have the Griffon Legion in the air before dusk, but it’s going to be a nightmare getting the rest of the army ready for a forced march. We’ll be lucky if the wretches don’t mutiny.” A thought struck her. “We’re still holding all those necromancers prisoner. If we try to take them with us, they’ll slow us down, and if we leave them behind, lightly guarded, they’re apt to escape despite their bonds and gags.”
“Then we’ll have to kill them.”
She ran her hand over her scalp. “Just kill a band of Red Wizards.”
Milsantos grinned. “Don’t tell me you’ve never felt the urge.”
Squinting, Aoth scrutinized the mountainsides, but it was Brightwing who spotted the would-be travelers and pointed them out to him. Sword swinging at his side, bow slung across his back, Bareris was climbing a narrow, rocky trail. Diminished by sunlight and the absence of combat to the merest suggestion of murk, Mirror flowed along behind him.
Brightwing furled her wings, swooped, and landed in front of them, effectively blocking the path, though that wasn’t Aoth’s precise intention. At Bareris’s back on the valley floor, small as a dollhouse with distance, the Keep of Thazar and the surrounding encampment bustled with activity occasioned by the impending departure. The sight reminded Aoth of an anthill.
“I have men to oversee,” he said, “and my own packing to attend to. I don’t have time to chase you.”
Bareris shrugged. “Then you shouldn’t have.”
“Should I let you throw your life away? As soon as I realized your belongings were gone, I guessed what you intended, and it’s crazy. Even if you can find it again, you can’t attack a necromancers’ stronghold by yourself.”
“I’m not by myself. Mirror decided to stick with me.”
“It’s still crazy.”
“My quarrel is with Xingax and his confederates. If you legionnaires no longer mean to go after them, that’s my bad luck, but it doesn’t change what I need to do.”
“I understand why you want to destroy Xingax, but you should save your fiercest hatred for Szass Tam. He’s the one who bears ultimate responsibility for Tammith’s transformation. Xingax was simply carrying out his orders.”
Bareris’s mouth tightened. “I suppose that’s true.”
“Then come west with the army, idiot! If you want to punish Szass Tam in the only way that folk like us have any hope of hurting him, the time to do it is now. If we don’t keep him from taking Bezantur, there’ll be no stopping him later. You can hunt down Xingax another day.”
Bareris stood pondering for a heartbeat or two then said, “All right. Under one condition.”
Aoth snorted. “I go out of my way to keep a lunatic from committing suicide, and he wants to bargain with me. What is it you want?”
“A griffon. Surely there’s at least one that lost its master in the battle. Let me fly west with you.”
“Have you ever ridden a griffon?”
“No, but you can teach me, and I can use song to establish a bond with my steed. You’ve seen me do it before.”
Now it was Aoth’s t
urn to consider. Bareris—and Mirror—could prove invaluable in the actions to come, but those same skirmishes would be perilous for a novice rider.
“Please,” Bareris said. “A moment ago, you called me a madman. I know you were joking, but sometimes I truly do feel as if my mind is going to break. It’s not quite as bad when I’m striking blows against those who corrupted Tammith, and I’ll fare better fighting alongside you than trudging for days merely hoping for a battle at the end of the trek.”
“Very well,” said Aoth. “We’ll find a masterless griffon and see if you can charm it.”
“Which is more,” Brightwing said, “than you ever did for me.”
chapter fifteen
22–27 Kythorn, the Year of Risen Elfkin
The road to Priador ran roughly parallel to the First Escarpment, and the legions of the north straggled along it for miles. Bareris knew he and his comrades had no choice but to leave the body of the enemy host unmolested, at least while the sun burned in the sky. They didn’t dare risk attacking such a superior force.
Outriders, however, were a different matter, and when an army lost those, it was reduced to creeping blind. Accordingly, the Griffon Legion, or what remained of it after the campaign through Pyarados and up the Pass of Thazar, had divided into smaller bands to hunt enemy scouts.
Aoth whistled and pointed with his lance. Following the gesture, Bareris saw the horsemen on the plain. The griffon riders dived, Bareris’s eager mount furling its wings before he even gave the signal.
The northerners spotted them descending. A couple fled, perhaps because their horses panicked. The rest, evidently realizing they couldn’t outrun griffons, scrambled to ready their bows.
An arrow streaked upward, and Bareris’s steed veered to dodge it. He was slow shifting his weight to facilitate the maneuver, and the griffon screeched in annoyance.
The shaft still missed them, though, and an instant later, the griffon plunged down atop the archer and his piebald horse, driving its claws into their bodies and smashing them to the ground.
Bareris cast about. On all sides, griffons, the warriors on their backs essentially superfluous, shredded their shrieking targets with beak and talon. They hadn’t gotten all the outriders, though. A necromancer with a scarlet robe peeking out from under his cloak howled words of power and swept his arms through mystic passes. His hands left smears of darkness on the air.
Bareris shouted at him. Striking hard as a hammer, the sound knocked the Red Wizard out of the saddle and ruined his spellcasting. Brightwing sprang, and Aoth thrust his lance into the warlock’s chest.
“We need to catch the ones who ran,” said Aoth.
Bareris bumped his mount’s flanks with his heels, and the griffon lashed its wings and leaped into the air. They raced in pursuit of the surviving scouts then saw there was no need to hurry. A shadow in the sunlight, eyes and other features barely discernible in his smear of a face, Mirror stood over the bodies of the northerners and their horses.
Bareris realized he ought to strip the corpses. Riding his flying steed, Malark Springhill had accompanied the griffon riders west, and though he’d eventually split off to attend to some project of his own, he’d first urged them to obtain the trappings of warriors from Gauros and Surthay whenever possible. These should do nicely. Thanks to the way Mirror’s spectral sword dispatched its victims, they weren’t even bloody or torn.
Malark cleared his throat. It seemed a gentler away of announcing his presence than abruptly casting his reflection into a lady’s mirror.
It still startled her, though. Seated at her dressing table, one bright blue eye painted, the other not and therefore looking smaller than its mate, Nephis Sepret lurched around, then sighed and pressed a hand to her bosom when she saw who’d interrupted her at her toilet.
“Someday,” she said, “you must tell me how you sneak in here without the servants knowing.”
He waved his hand to indicate the glittering gold-and-sapphire jewelry she’d laid out for herself. “That’s a lot of finery, considering that the autharch is otherwise engaged.”
She smiled. “His fickleness doesn’t mean I have to be lonely.”
Charmed despite himself as usual by her beauty and brazenness, Malark smiled back. “You play a dangerous game, Saer.”
“As opposed to spying for you and Dmitra Flass?” Nephis turned back to the mirror and brushed blue pigment across the remaining eyelid. “From time to time, I need the touch of a young man, and I can handle Ramas. That’s what makes me valuable, isn’t it?”
“In fact, it makes you important. I assume you’ve kept abreast of recent events, the murders of two zulkirs, Szass Tam’s failed bid for a regency, and all the rest of it, but what you don’t know is that the lich is marching legions south to gain himself a throne by force of arms. Their intended route leads through Anhaurz on the way to Bezantur.”
She twisted back around. “You aren’t serious.”
“Yes, I am. The question is, how fast will His Omnipotence’s host cover the distance? Fast enough to reach the coast all but unopposed, or slowly enough for his rivals to field an adequate force to intercept him?”
“The new bridge,” she said.
Malark nodded. “Very good. If the autharch allows it to stand, Szass Tam’s warriors can cross the Lapendrar quickly. If he knocks it down, they’ll still get across eventually, but it will cost them precious time. From what you’ve told me of Ramas Ankhalab, I assume that once he learns of the northerners’ approach, his inclination will be to demolish the span.”
“Yes,” Nephis said. “The fool long ago gave his loyalty to Aznar Thrul and his faction and hasn’t wavered since, but don’t worry. He may spend the occasional night with another trollop—and thank Sune for that, or when would I scratch my own itches?—but he’s still besotted with me. I can persuade him to do whatever I want.”
Malark hesitated for a heartbeat. “I haven’t instructed you to take any particular action as of yet.”
She snorted. “Did you think you had to? Szass Tam saved my father’s life and restored his honor. He helped my brother gain entry to the order of Necromancy and shielded So-Kehur when the other apprentices wanted to hurt him. I’d do anything to help him.”
He sighed. “I knew you’d say that.” And it was a pity Szass Tam and Dmitra Flass no longer shared a common purpose. “I’ll say farewell then. Just be ready to counsel the autharch when he receives word of the northern army.”
She pouted. “Must you go so soon? Why not linger a while and help me scratch my itches?”
“I wish I could, but I have another message to deliver. Good-bye, my friend.”
He crept back to her music room with its harp and lutes, then climbed out a window and down the wall. He slipped into a shadowy bower where he could stand and ponder unobserved.
The note he carried inside his tunic read:
Milord Autharch,
Your mistress Lady Nephis is untrue. She intends a tryst with a lover in the Carnelian Suite this very night. She employs a talisman of invisibility to keep such assignations, so those who go to catch her in the act should deploy the appropriate countermagic.
If the lord of the city was as jealous and choleric as Nephis had always claimed, the message should serve to end her influence over him for good and all. The only question was how to deliver it without being noticed. Fortunately, such problems rarely stymied Malark for long, and after a few more breaths, the solution came to him.
The inn stood midway between two tax stations. Aoth suspected the proprietor had liked it that way, liked not having a publican looking over his shoulder every time he rented bed space or sold a mug of ale.
Cowering before armed intruders in the caravanserai’s common room, doing his inadequate best to shield his wife and three children with his pudgy body, he didn’t look as if he liked it anymore. To all appearances, he would have given almost anything for a garrison of legionnaire protectors close at hand.
The family
’s manifest terror gave Aoth a pang of guilt, for after all, they weren’t enemy warriors and had nothing to do with Szass Tam and his ambitions. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But war was made of such injustices.
“You have to clear out,” he said, “and stay gone for a while.”
The innkeeper, whose round, dark face seemed made for jollity rather than dread, swallowed. “Sir, please, I don’t understand. This place is our home, and our living, too. It’s all we have.”
A griffon rider lifted his sword and stepped forward. “Fine, imbecile, you had your chance.”
“Halt!” Aoth snapped, and then, when the soldier obeyed, returned his attention to the innkeeper. “You see how it is. You can take your coin with you, and anything else you can carry, but you must leave, and keep away till the end of the summer anyway. Believe me, you’ll be safer that way.”
The innkeeper’s wife whispered in his ear, and then he said, “All right. We’ll get our things.”
“Just be quick about it,” Aoth replied.
They were, and before long, they slunk out into the pounding rain that was almost unheard of in Thay, except for late at night. Aoth assumed the council’s weather wizards were responsible. It was yet another ploy to slow the northerners’ advance, in part by turning Lapendrar’s roads to muck.
Unfortunately, the rain also made for cold flying with diminished visibility, but the Griffon Legion would simply have to cope. Aoth turned to his men and said, “Let’s get to it. Poison the beer barrels, and the well, too.”
The warrior who’d threatened the innkeeper cocked his head. “You don’t think finding the inn deserted will make the bastards suspicious?”
“Common folk often flee the approach of an army,” Aoth replied. “If it makes the northerners leery enough to refrain from pilfering an unattended keg of ale, they’re not like any soldiers I ever knew.”
Unclean: The Haunted Lands Page 31
