The Spectral Blaze botg-3

by Richard Lee Byers

  “I’ll stay a few more moments.” He started unbuckling the straps. There was no reason to make Eider bear his weight while they were on the ground, even though it wouldn’t actually trouble the sturdy beast.

  As he swung himself out of the saddle, Alasklerbanbastos took up a position at the far end of a flat stair step of a space partway up a wooded hillside. According to Meralaine, somebody had massacred somebody else on that very spot a long time ago. Even when he’d visited the place in the daylight, Gaedynn hadn’t noticed any sign of it, but he assumed the necromancer knew what she was talking about.

  Alasklerbanbastos growled rhythmic words of power. Gaedynn couldn’t understand them, but each was like a prod that made him want to flinch. Eider screeched and started to unfurl her wings. He stroked her head and told her everything was all right.

  Cera watched the dracolich with her golden mace dangling from the leather loop around her forearm and the phylactery cradled in her hands. Keeping an eye on Alasklerbanbastos was all that she could contribute. She had her own magic, and it was powerful stuff. But the cleansing light of the Keeper of the Yellow Sun was antithetical to the tainted power of necromancy.

  Meralaine drifted aimlessly, or so it seemed, across the level ground. She was a tiny, snub-nosed pixie of a girl, and even knowing her arcane specialty, Gaedynn rarely thought of her as sinister. But her expression, somehow intent and empty at the same time, made the small hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. And even though he could barely hear it, her murmuring made him feel bereft, like everyone he’d ever cared about had died.

  He grinned and shoved the irrational emotions out of his head. His friends were very much alive, and even if it had been otherwise, he’d learned early on to value those worth valuing but never to need anybody but himself.

  Meralaine extended her arms and twirled back and forth as she moved, commencing a languorous dance in time to her and Alasklerbanbastos’s interwoven incantations. Shadows shifted on the ground then boiled up into the air to glide with her for a moment, their murky fingers brushing hers. Some phantoms were simply near-formless silhouettes. Others showed a gleam of phosphorescent eyes or a glimmer of bare ribs or a naked skull.

  Gradually the shapes became more persistent, floating, seething, and flickering in the night air, even after Meralaine abandoned them for her next partner, until finally there were… dozens? It was hard to tell in the dark or to keep track of them all from one moment to the next.

  Her eyes all black pupil, wide and unblinking, her face a white mask, Meralaine danced a last measure, reciting the remaining words of her spell in time with the final steps. But the deep, steady drumbeat of Alasklerbanbastos’s incantation continued. Evidently it was his task to give the conjured spirits their marching orders.

  Suddenly Meralaine gave her head a shake, and animation and dismay flooded into her face. “That wasn’t the plan!” she said just as the phantoms raced away down the hill.

  Gaedynn didn’t understand all that was happening, but it was plain that Oraxes’s premonition hadn’t misled him. Things were going wrong. He reached for an arrow; then fingers so cold they burned grabbed him by the wrist.

  *****

  Jhesrhi recognized that Tchazzar was only pressing his lips lightly to her own. And, of course, nothing was covering her nostrils. Still, her heart pounding, her stomach churning, she felt as if she were choking.

  In another heartbeat or two, she’d absolutely have to push him away and pray he couldn’t tell how sick and fouled she felt. She would pray, too, that she could somehow hold him there a little longer, even though it would be obvious the kissing and fondling were over for the time being.

  Then she felt something cold and hungry gliding through the little orchard. Apples rotted and dropped as the dead passed underneath. With a crack that sounded strangely faint and dull, one tree split lengthwise, and the smaller part toppled to the ground.

  Jhesrhi was an adept and had fought Szass Tam’s legions. Still, she knew that under other circumstances, she would have felt a pang of dread at the advent of the phantoms. Now, however, she was grateful.

  Tchazzar let her go, pivoted, gasped, and froze. Thank Lady Luck for that. Jhesrhi had lured him away from his guards and into the dark to make it more likely that he’d succumb to panic, but she still hadn’t been certain it would happen. His terrors were a sometime thing, erratic and unpredictable as the rest of him.

  With a thought, she set the head of her staff ablaze, raised it high, and took a step toward the oncoming apparitions. She shouted three words in one of the languages of Elemental Chaos and swept her weapon down parallel to the ground.

  A blast of yellow flame leaped out at the phantoms. Or more accurately, in their general direction. They were no actual threat, and if she appeared to defeat them too easily, Tchazzar might not come away as alarmed as she and the other plotters wanted him to be.

  So the blast simply set a tree trunk on fire and made the dead recoil, moan, and howl. The chorus was almost inaudibly faint, yet somehow loud and chilling as it echoed inside her head.

  Then the phantoms charged, and startled, she was the one who froze.

  *****

  Gaedynn twisted and found himself gazing into a leering face that was mold and decay one moment and just a blur of shadow the next. The spirit’s hold on his wrist leeched strength from his body. The entity cocked its other hand back to plunge it into his chest.

  Gaedynn dropped his bow, snatched out one of his two short swords, and struck first. His gods, old Keen-Eye and the other powers the elf bow masters had taught him to venerate, favored him. It was sometimes difficult for even an enchanted blade to cut the immaterial body of a wraith, but his attacker convulsed and frayed to nothing.

  Another apparition darted in on his flank. Screeching, Eider sprang to meet it, reared high on her leonine hind paws, and raked with a double sweep of her aquiline talons. The shadowy thing shredded and melted into something resembling cobweb, and the griffon clawed in the carpet of old, fallen leaves to clean the stickiness off her feet.

  Jabbering, but with the precise cadence and intonation wizardry required, Oraxes recited a spell. Gaedynn made sure nothing else was about to strike at him, then swung around in the direction of the sound.

  Backing away from more of the undead, the young magus had evidently tripped over a tree root. He’d fallen on his rump, and the leather helmet he’d taken to wearing over his oily black hair had tumbled off his head. Two phantoms were rushing him, white eyes shining, long-fingered hands posed to snatch and clutch.

  But they were an instant too slow. As they reached for him, the boy snarled the final word of the incantation. His hands glowed green, and he plunged them into the torsos of his two intangible assailants. Emerald light pulsed outward and washed the phantoms from existence.

  Gaedynn sheathed his sword, retrieved his bow, and hauled Oraxes to his feet. “Meralaine!” the wizard gasped.

  The necromancer stood at the center of a whirl of shadows. Perhaps because he wasn’t frantic with young love, or maybe simply because he was by far the more experienced combatant, Gaedynn immediately perceived what Oraxes apparently couldn’t. The innermost phantoms were fighting to protect her from their fellows.

  One murky form pounced through her circle of defenders. But, barking a cruel laugh quite unlike her usual girlish chortle, Meralaine simply tore the apparition in two like a piece of flimsy cloth. She wrapped what remained around her knuckles like a pugilist preparing for a bout.

  “She’s fine!” Gaedynn snapped. “Look past her!”

  Oraxes did then spit an obscenity.

  Like Meralaine, Cera was under attack, and also like the necromancer, she had her defenses. Her body glowed with a golden radiance that seemed to sting and dazzle the undead. And whenever she flicked her gilded mace, miming a sharp tap, a flying mace, seemingly made of the same yellow light, flashed into solidity and struck at one of her foes.

  Amaunator’s sunlight was hurting
Alasklerbanbastos as well. He was facing Cera, and bits of the remaining flesh on his head melted and dripped like candle wax. But unfazed by the punishment, he was snarling an incantation, and the priestess was apparently unable to use her magic to fend off the spirits and stab into the phylactery at the same time.

  Oraxes swept his clenched fist over his head, lashed it down, and screamed another, even viler epithet. Apparently at that moment, infused with all his force of will, it served as a word of power because a big, translucent fist made of blue shimmer appeared above Alasklerbanbastos and slammed down on his spine.

  Meanwhile, Gaedynn plucked a stone arrow from his quiver. In an effort to win the loyalty of the Threskelans, Tchazzar had forbidden his troops to loot the possessions of their defeated foes. But Gaedynn had located a few enchanted shafts in the royal arsenal in Mordulkin and appropriated them when everyone’s back was turned. He’d known he was likely to need them, and Jhesrhi was too busy attending the war hero to make any more.

  He drew and released, and the arrow punched into Alasklerbanbastos’s face just below the eye. The dracolich stiffened, and waves of grayness rippled through charred, torn hide and exposed bone as the magic in the weapon sought to turn him to stone.

  It didn’t. But the combined harassment of the hammering disembodied fist and the arrow’s power made him stumble over his chanting. Blackness pulsed in the air around him like flowers blooming and withering in an instant as the mystical power he’d been gathering discharged itself prematurely.

  He spun around, knocked the arrow out of his face with a swipe of his foreclaws, and glared at his attackers. His neck cocked back, his jaws opened, and white light shone inside his mouth.

  Gaedynn lunged at Oraxes, caught hold of him, and shoved him to the side and down to the ground. Thunder boomed and glare erased the world. But the dragon’s breath missed.

  Instantly, though, the ground shook. Blinking, Gaedynn looked up to see Alasklerbanbastos bounding toward him and Oraxes. As he scrambled to his feet and grabbed another arrow, he judged that at most, he had time for one more shot. And just one more was unlikely to be enough.

  Eider plunged down, caught hold of one of Alasklerbanbastos’s wings, and clung and slashed until the dracolich shook her off. The phantoms under Meralaine’s control swarmed around him, and he took another moment to roar a word that popped them like inky bubbles.

  Then bright yellow flame erupted down the length of his body. He bellowed, roared, and thrashed.

  As he laid an arrow on his bow and backed away from Alasklerbanbastos’s convulsions, Gaedynn took a look around. As far as he could tell, there were no phantoms left on the hillside. He and his companions had accounted for them all.

  Giving the dracolich plenty of room, Oraxes circled around toward Meralaine. “Burn him up!” he called to Cera.

  “No!” Gaedynn said. “We still have use for him.”

  “He just tried to kill us!” Oraxes said.

  “Which is simply what you expected. So why complain?”

  Cera gazed into the phylactery, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Her body stopped glowing, and the crackling flames leaping up from Alasklerbanbastos died. With all the light sources suddenly doused, the hillside seemed very dark.

  “Everyone all right?” Gaedynn asked.

  “Yes,” Cera panted.

  “Good,” he said. “Meralaine, what did you mean when you said, ‘That wasn’t the plan’?”

  “In addition to telling some of the dead to attack us,” the necromancer said, “the wyrm gave the wrong orders to the rest. They aren’t just going to make a show of menacing Tchazzar. They’re really going to try to kill him.”

  His body still smoking and reeking of combustion, Alasklerbanbastos struggled to his feet. “Is that so terrible?” he asked, a hint of mockery in his voice. “Tchazzar’s the enemy, isn’t he? That’s why you want to trick him.”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Gaedynn said. Aoth’s professional ethics might allow him to trick and manipulate an employer, but he balked at assassination. And far more importantly, if everything had gone as planned, Jhesrhi and Tchazzar were wandering around in the night together. “Call them back.”

  “I can no more do that,” the dragon said, “than you can call back an arrow after you let go of the string.”

  “It’s true,” said Meralaine. “But Jhesrhi is powerful. She’ll be all right.”

  Gaedynn stared Alasklerbanbastos in the eye. “She’d better be,” he said.

  *****

  Astonishment made Jhesrhi falter but only for a heartbeat; then the combat instincts honed on many a battlefield spurred her into motion once again. Those and the staff, crowing with excitement inside her head.

  Most of the phantoms were rushing Tchazzar. Of course, that was more or less what they were supposed to do. But they were closing the distance too quickly, and she could feel their malice like a frigid winter wind. They were really out to kill him.

  He had only to transform to become an entity so mighty as to make their intentions laughable. Or perhaps-no one really knew-he need only call on powers he possessed even in his human guise. But he did neither. He simply stumbled backward.

  Much as his attentions had repelled Jhesrhi mere moments before, his manifest terror filled her with guilt and a need to protect him. She scrambled to interpose herself between him and the dead. Then, rattling off an incantation, she sketched a line on the ground with the still-burning head of her staff. Fire roared upward, making a barrier to hold the dead at bay. The staff exulted.

  She didn’t, because she suspected the wall of fire would only delay the undead for a few heartbeats at most. Without turning away from the foe, she called, “Majesty! Become the dragon! You’ll be safe!”

  “Yes,” said Tchazzar in a thin voice unlike his usual exuberant tone. “I will.”

  But he didn’t. Enormous wings didn’t snap as they unfurled, and nothing swelled up from the ground to rustle and break the branches overhead. Apparently he couldn’t muster the willpower to initiate the change.

  A murky thing with elongated limbs and a head that was all glimmering needle fangs and gaping mouth leaped over the wall of flame. Its feet caught fire, but it didn’t seem to notice as it plunged down at Jhesrhi. She rammed her staff through its torso, and it burned away to nothing in an instant.

  By then, though, other apparitions were leaping the blazing barrier or simply pouncing through. Those that attempted the latter perished within moments, but apparently their hatred of the living was so fierce that they were willing to trade existence for the chance to strike a blow.

  Jhesrhi whirled, blocking, clubbing, and jabbing with her weapon. It was scarcely her preferred mode of fighting. She liked to throw spells at her foes from far away. But in the first years of her training, Aoth had insisted that she master the quarterstaff. He’d assured her there would be moments like this, and he’d turned out to be correct.

  And fortunately, even in a melee, it was possible to use some magic, especially when a wizard was as closely attuned to an arcane implement as she was to hers. With a thought, she released a bit of the power stored inside the staff, and the entire length of it burst into flame. The blaze didn’t pain or otherwise inconvenience her, but provided a searing, blinding shield to hinder the undead.

  Finally the phantoms’ attack flagged, as every assault must if the defender could only wait it out. That gave her time to rattle off a charm, and flame sheathed her entire body, affording her even more protection.

  She sprang at three more phantoms, taking the fight to them. Shrieking war cries, she spun the staff and struck. Bursts of flame incinerated a dead thing every time she connected.

  When the three were gone, she looked around, making sure no more were creeping up on her. Then she cast her eye over a wider area and scowled in dismay.

  She’d preserved only her own life, not Tchazzar’s. While she’d fought her fight, other phantoms had simply dashed around the ends of
the wall of the flame. Once again, they were rushing at Tchazzar, who still hadn’t changed into a dragon or done anything else that might have saved his neck.

  Then Aoth and Jet plunged down into the midst of the bounding, gliding shadows. The familiar’s talons and momentum crushed one phantom to mist and smears of ectoplasmic jelly. A snap of his beak annihilated another.

  Aoth pointed his spear to the right. A hedge of whirling blades made of green light appeared on top of the phantoms on that side, slicing them to wisps and tatters of gloom.

  At once he swung the spear to the left. Bright, crackling lightning sprang from the head, leaping to one dead thing, and from that murky, shriveling figure to another, then on to another after that.

  It was potent battle magic, but even so, he didn’t get them all. A dozen remained, still racing toward Tchazzar.

  Then, however, the red dragon finally transformed. His clothing and jewels melted away, and his body expanded to prodigious size. A serpentine tail and batlike wings sprouted from his torso, and layered scales rippled into existence across his skin. The lower part of his face jutted into a reptilian snout and jaws.

  He opened those jaws, swept his head from right to left, and spewed fire. Jhesrhi saw that the flame was going to fall on Aoth as well as the phantoms. She sucked in a breath to shout a warning.

  It would have come too late, but Aoth or Jet had already recognized the danger for himself. The griffon lashed his wings and sprang, and his leap carried him and his master out of harm’s way.

  The phantoms failed to do the same, and Tchazzar’s breath obliterated them in an instant. Still, he spit fire three more times, scourging the ground before him with the blasts. When he finished, he stayed in his crouch and kept staring in the same direction. The membranes of his leathery wings rattled softly.

  Jhesrhi was reluctant to speak or move. She had the feeling that if she attracted his attention, he might lash out at her before he realized who she really was.