Prophet of the Dead: Forgotten Realms

by Richard Lee Byers

  “Yes,” Yhelbruna said.

  Bez smiled a crooked smile. “It seems I have little choice.” He blew on the forte of his rapier blade, and the coating of frost melted in a puff of steam.

  * * * * *

  A populous town stood around the base of the ancient fortress called the Citadel to serve the needs of those who dwelled therein, but the cobbled streets, slippery with filthy slush, seemed half-deserted after sundown. That was because sentient undead, an accepted element of society in the Thay of Aoth’s early years but the true elite in the realm that had arisen in the wake of the Spellplague, stalked the night in plenitude while mortals with weak nerves or good sense stayed behind closed doors.

  Still, it wasn’t passing within a few paces of the creatures’ withered, linen-wrapped, or alabaster faces that made Aoth edgy. He’d grown grimly accustomed to the undead in all their eeriness fighting the War of the Zulkirs, and he’d slipped incognito into a fair number of enemy towns and strongholds in his time. It was the proximity of the Citadel itself—its tallest spire stabbing the night sky like a blade—that wore on his nerves.

  He scowled and told himself to calm down. He didn’t even know that Szass Tam was in residence. The lich could be anywhere in Thay or in all of Faerûn, for that matter, and even if he was nearby, he surely had better things to do than cast around for an enemy who shouldn’t have been anywhere near his dominions in the first place.

  Still, one of Faerûn’s preeminent wizards might possess occult means of sensing all sorts of things. And when Szass Tam had set about the final slaughter of his foes, Aoth was the one fish who’d slipped the net.

  The blurry, luminous ghost of a young woman silently sauntered toward Aoth and Orgurth. At first, like a sleepwalker, the phantom seemed oblivious to their presence. Then, suddenly, she rounded on them, and her transparent face brightened with an exaggerated smile of surprise and delight. She opened her arms, inviting an embrace.

  Aoth felt a lustful urge to kiss her. He touched one of his tattoos through his mail, and the resulting tingle of protective magic cleared his head. Orgurth, however, started forward.

  For want of a subtler remedy, Aoth grabbed the orc and shook him. Orgurth struggled for a moment and then relaxed in his grip.

  That still left the problem of the ghost, who, in this new Thay even more than in the old, was free to chastise commoners who refused her attentions in any way she liked. Fortunately, though, she simply laughed—her mirth was silent, but Aoth could feel it chiming in his head—and drifted on her way.

  “By the Black Hand,” Orgurth growled. “What was it going to do to me?”

  Aoth shrugged. “Age you a thousand years? Eat your soul? Something unpleasant. Keep moving.”

  They prowled onward, and then he felt Jet’s mind reaching out across the hundreds of miles separating them. It wasn’t an ideal time for a palaver, but he was eager for one anyway. Because of his injuries, the griffon had recently spent so much time sleeping that their communication had been infrequent.

  Dividing his attention, still watching the street for danger, Aoth answered, I’m here. How are you?

  As I’ve told you. The burns are healing slowly. In their way.

  Aoth frowned at the sense of despondency underlying the words. Weeping Ilmater, what’s the matter with you? You’ve been wounded before.

  Not like this, and when it was bad, I always reached a healer quickly. If it turns out I’m never going to fly—

  Curse it, just stop! We’ll get you healed, and meanwhile, you just have to put up with the pain and be my eyes, ears, and voice in Rashemen. Now stop whining and tell me what’s going on.

  It took Jet a moment to answer, but when he did, he sounded a little more like himself. Vandar and Dai Shan go into the maze twice a day. They still haven’t found any trace of Jhesrhi or Cera. I need to start searching too.

  Only when you’re ready.

  If Jhesrhi and your mate need me—

  I know how you feel. But they can take care of themselves, and you can’t do anybody any good by setting back your recovery.

  You don’t know what it’s like to just lie here—

  Yes, I do. From back when the Blue Fire blinded me, before my eyes adjusted. So I’ll say it again: stop whining. Tell me about Dai Shan. Has he raised a shadow and sent it running back to Immilmar?

  Not yet, Jet answered. He claims that even before we were wounded, he stretched that particular talent to the breaking point. He says that if he tried to use it again right now, he might become one of the “Shadowless,” whatever that means.

  A patrol of zombie warriors with glowing amber eyes came marching down the street. Aoth and Orgurth ceded them the center of the street, and the creatures only gave them a cursory glance before continuing on their way.

  At the same time, Aoth continued his psychic conversation: Well, Dai Shan’s messenger likely doesn’t matter anymore anyway. By now, Bez has probably taken charge of the griffons and flown south, in which case, our revenge will have to wait. Maybe, come spring, we can find out who the Storm of Vengeance is fighting for and sell the Brotherhood’s services to the other side. Then we’ll kill the treacherous son of a dog on the battlefield.

  If I hadn’t provoked him into casting fire at me, or done a better job of dodging—

  Stop it! You haven’t done anything idiotic, and neither have I. We’ve just had rotten luck. But I’ll be with you soon—in fact, I’m working on it now—and then we’ll put everything right. Understand?

  Jet hesitated, and Aoth could feel the griffon’s urge to make a sardonic reply. But what he said was, Yes.

  Good. Rest now, and we’ll talk again later.

  He and Jet allowed their psychic linkage to attenuate, although it didn’t break entirely, as it never could so long as they were both alive and in the same world. He could still sense the griffon’s presence in somewhat the same way that, if he chose to pay attention to it, he could feel his right hand at the end of his arm.

  “Bad news?” Orgurth murmured. He’d learned to recognize when Aoth was communing with his distant familiar, and apparently he’d also marked a grim cast to his companion’s expression.

  Aoth had avoided confiding much information or even his full name to Orgurth lest even a runaway slave succumb to the temptation to betray a notorious enemy of the realm to the authorities in hopes of a lavish reward. Still, the colloquy with Jet had left him with feelings that needed to come out somehow.

  “One of my best friends,” he growled, “is so badly hurt he fears being crippled forevermore, and he’s coping with the prospect about as well as you or I would in his place. My foster daughter and the woman I love are caught in a magical trap. A foe is making off with a treasure that’s rightfully mine. So yes, I think you could fairly say the news is bad.”

  Orgurth grunted. “Well, then, we’d better go set it all to rights.”

  It was the same confident attitude—indeed, couched in almost the same words—that Aoth had sought to convey for the sake of Jet’s morale, and being on the receiving end of the same treatment tugged a smile out of him. “True enough. Or at least I’d better. You’re still free to go your own way.”

  The orc snorted. “And where would that way lead, I wonder, the whipping post, the rack, or the gallows? Maybe all three!”

  “Well, there is that. And for what it’s worth, when we’re clear of Thay, you’ll be better than free. I can make you a soldier again. If that’s what you want.”

  Orgurth grinned. “In that case, why are we dawdling?”

  In fact, they weren’t. But while still trying to look like innocent folk abroad on legitimate business, they were approaching the chapterhouse, a four-story stone structure at the end of a dead-end street, with a certain circumspection. It would have been foolish to approach a structure full of Red Wizards in any other way.

  The chapterhouses of Aoth’s youth had served the needs of one or another of the orders of Red Wizardry. The one ahead had been the propert
y to the Order of Conjuration, as the reaching and beckoning hand symbols carved above the arched front entrance attested.

  And the summoners, creators, and their brothers would no doubt claim exclusive rights to it still, except that the orders and the specialized studies that supported them had passed into memory when the Spellplague changed the nature of magic itself. Now all Red Wizards held all chapterhouses in common as sanctuaries where they could fraternize with their own kind, collaborate on projects of mutual interest, or secure accommodations free of charge when traveling from one place to another.

  Steady magical illumination shined through the translucent horn windows to gleam on snow gray from a fall of ash. Hoping any observer would take them for some Red Wizard’s bodyguards, Aoth and Orgurth tramped across the little yard but veered off from the high bronze door with its stylized representations of flame, cold, wind, and other fundamental forces. No one would think it odd if mere men-at-arms who weren’t presently attending their master used the servants’ entrance around back.

  Somebody was likely watching that door to make sure no one came in who wasn’t supposed to. But a person had to move through the darkness along the side of the house to pass from the front to the back, and like the facade, the side had a row of windows in it.

  Some of those glowed as well, and muffled snatches of conversation, laughter, and even a mournful song with harp accompaniment leaked through from the other side. Two windows, though, had only gloom and silence behind them.

  But unfortunately, as Aoth and Orgurth drew near, intricate designs of scarlet phosphorescence abruptly shined from the light and dark casements alike. The phenomenon looked like threads of fire had started burning inside the horn panes themselves.

  Oblivious to the radiant sigils, Orgurth raised a hand to the first of the dark windows. “Don’t touch it!” whispered Aoth. “There’s a glyph.”

  Orgurth snatched his hand back, then spit in the snow. “Here’s an idea. How about if you and your truesight don’t wait till the last instant to warn me next time?”

  “I spoke up the moment it appeared.”

  “If you say so. So what about the glyph? Can you get us past it?”

  Aoth grunted. “You’ve already seen this isn’t my specialty. But I recognize the ward. I’ve breached it before. We’ll see what happens.”

  He released a bit of the power he’d recently restored to his spear, murmured words of negation, and scratched a sign of his own on the casement Orgurth had nearly touched. The razor-sharp enchanted spearhead marked the horn as easily as a quill writing on parchment, and the red glyph deformed as the lines composing it writhed like spasmodic snakes, then vanished entirely.

  “That wiped it away,” he said. “Now I just need a second charm to make the casement unlatch itself.”

  Orgurth frowned. “That didn’t work so well on So-Remas’s secret cupboard.”

  “True. But your former master’s approach to foiling thieves was to hide and lock up his valuables very well. The mage who enchanted these windows thought it would be more amusing to burn a burglar’s hands off. Now that we’ve eliminated that snare, we could probably just pry the casement open. But why risk the noise?” He whispered a charm, spun his hand in a flourish that ended with a twist like he was turning an invisible key, and the window popped open just a little.

  Aoth put his eye to the crack and peered into a dark, unoccupied room containing a stained table with built-in manacles, a cold hearth with a rack of pokers and branding irons next to it, and shelves laden with thumbscrews, flaying knives, choke pears, and similar implements. Faded paintings of Loviatar, the Maiden of Pain, smiled from the walls.

  Aoth glanced back at Orgurth. “It looks like you get that trip to the torture chamber after all. But if Lady Luck smiles, only for as long as it takes to cross the room.”

  * * * * *

  Ever since she was a little girl, Cera had liked staring into a fire and looking for pictures in the flames. Perhaps it reflected her affinity for that greatest of fires, the sun itself.

  Even under normal circumstances, the pastime could produce a sort of trance. And when a twinge in her thigh, the result of sitting cross-legged for too long on cold, hard stone, recalled her to her senses, she realized she’d lost all track of how long she’d been watching the halo of blue and yellow flames flickering around Jhesrhi’s body.

  That was worrisome—no sane person would want to lose awareness of her surroundings in an environment as dangerous as the deathways—but more worrisome still was the fact that when she grunted and stretched out her leg, Jhesrhi, sitting with her back against an intricately carved marble bier and her brazen staff cradled in her fiery hands, didn’t react in any way.

  “Jhesrhi?” Cera asked.

  The wizard still didn’t respond, although her corona of flame nearly gave the illusion of movement even as it set shadows dancing.

  “Jhesrhi, please, talk to me.”

  But the tall woman didn’t speak, and Cera abruptly recalled another childhood memory. When she was eight, she and her friends had stood and watched a merchant’s house burn down. One of the things that had impressed her was the way the blaze devoured it more or less from the inside out, leaving the hollowed-out shell that was the exterior for last.

  She wondered if she was looking at a similar process now.

  No, surely not! But still, it suddenly felt imperative to rouse Jhesrhi without further delay, and as an alternative to sticking her hand into the other woman’s corona of flame, she poked her in the ribs with the butt of her gilded mace.

  Jhesrhi didn’t react.

  Truly worried now, Cera pulled the cork from her water bottle and dashed the contents into Jhesrhi’s stern but lovely face. The liquid sizzled and puffed into steam.

  Awareness surged back into the mage’s expression. Unfortunately, rage arrived with it and she bared her teeth in a snarl. She raised her staff, and flame roared up from the head of it.

  Cera scrambled backward. Alarmed by the sudden motion, the bells in their antlers chiming, stag men scrambled up and then hesitated, uncertain what to do next.

  Jhesrhi floated to her feet like a wisp of ash wafting up from a bonfire. She drew breath, perhaps to begin an incantation.

  “Don’t!” Cera said. “It’s me!”

  Jhesrhi’s golden eyes widened. Then the flame on the end of her staff burned lower, while those cloaking her body went out entirely. The dwindling of the light made the darkness draw in like a fist closing.

  “I’m sorry,” Jhesrhi said. “For a moment, I … did you throw water on me? You shouldn’t have. The fire didn’t like it.”

  “You were in a daze—for a while, we both were—and I couldn’t wake you. I was worried.”

  “Then I don’t blame you, but … never mind.”

  “We need light”—by the Keeper, how they needed it!—“but I don’t want you to squander all your strength making it. I can do my share.”

  “When you conjure sunlight, it truly does use up some of your magic. Whereas when I just let the fire come out of me, it makes me feel better.”

  “So would wine, but you wouldn’t drink yourself insensible with enemies nearby, and this maze is as dangerous as any battlefield. If we don’t keep our wits about us, it will hurt us.”

  “Why, sunlady, what a distressing thing for an honored guest to say about my home.”

  Startled by the new voice, Cera jerked around. Sarshethrian sauntered out of the darkness.

  As always, his vileness set her teeth on edge, and her separation from the Yellow Sun, barely discernible even as a spiritual presence, made his proximity even harder to bear. But on this occasion, curiosity distracted her somewhat from her reflexive loathing. That was because he had a prisoner tangled in the cloud of his writhing shadow tentacles, which were apparently capable of hauling such a burden along without slowing or otherwise inconveniencing him.

  The captive was a ghoul, with the gaunt, stooped frame; gray, rotting flesh; and prot
uberant, fanged jaws of his kind. But unlike the average graveyard scavenger, he wore a clean leather jerkin, breeches, and boots fit for a courtier. A curved line of oblong silver studs defined a reversed S shape above his heart.

  “This,” Sarshethrian said, “is Gosnorn, an old acquaintance of mine who joined the Eminence of Araunt early on, long before Lod decided to betray me. He’s a resourceful fellow, and so his master uses him to carry messages.”

  “Messages to and from Rashemen?” Cera asked.

  “It’s a distinct possibility,” Sarshethrian said. “We’ll know when he sees fit to enlighten us.”

  Gosnorn made a savage, snapping, flailing attempt to rip his captor with fang and claw, but the shadow bonds kept him from even getting close. “I won’t tell you anything!” he snarled.

  “Oh, I think you might,” Sarshethrian answered. “You must have noticed that my new allies here differ considerably from the vermin who caught you. The woman with the mace is a servant of one of those ‘gods’ you’ve surely heard tell of. She can make holy sunlight shine anywhere, even here. Her friend with the staff has a similar connection to fire. All of which is my roundabout way of saying that if you thought your numb, dead flesh could withstand any excruciation I could bring to bear, you were mistaken.”

  Cera glowered at the fiend. “Hold on. Jhesrhi and I aren’t torturers. That was never part of the bargain.”

  Sarshethrian sighed. “Must I argue with you about every little thing? If you encountered a ghoul wandering around in your own world, you’d smite it without a second thought.”

  “I’d lay it to rest as quickly as possible. I wouldn’t cause it needless suffering.”

  “Well, then, let me put it to you this way. How badly do you want to help Rashemen? Or return there before your bond to Amaunator rots away entirely, and your mind and spirit rot along with it? Because actually, you were right before. Mortals don’t belong in the deathways and can’t afford to bide here for long.”

  Jhesrhi stepped forward with flame dancing on her hand and flowing on up her staff. “You don’t have to do it, Cera. I will.”