Prophet of the Dead: Forgotten Realms

by Richard Lee Byers

  Orgurth grunted. “However you feel, we won’t know how to get to your fortress until we figure out where we are now.”

  “I was just about to work on that.”

  Aoth studied the constellations with blue Karpri and green-brown Chandos wandering among the starry pictures. Then he reached out for Jet and felt that the griffon was asleep.

  Aoth resisted the temptation to wake him and ask if Cera and Jhesrhi had turned up. The wounded familiar still needed his rest, and all his master truly required at the moment was a sense of direction.

  “I think,” he said, “that if Tymora gave us even the hint of a smile, the gate tossed us in the right direction, just not far enough. If so, we may be in a part of Rashemen called the Running Rocks.”

  “So what do we do, Captain?”

  “We hike north.”

  * * * * *

  Tangled helmthorn shrouded the base of the dead tree, and Nyevarra touched her fingertip to one of the long black stickers that gave the shrub its name. Even though she hadn’t applied any pressure at all, a bead of blood welled forth, and she laughed. It was wonderful that the thorn could be so sharp!

  The tiny wound healed instantly, and she wandered on toward a stand of shadowtop trees looming against the night sky. Their strength and wordless, inhuman wisdom made her lightheaded.

  Simply seeing Immilmar had delighted her, but that joy was nothing compared to the rapture of walking in the Urlingwood again. She felt like she could drift on forever, deeper and deeper into the forest and the green heart of the sacred.

  But that, of course, was nonsense. The spirits intended her for greater responsibilities and a more complicated existence than those of a common witch, and even had it been otherwise, vampirism came with its own perspective and imperatives.

  To work, then. Shaking her head to rid it of the residue of the dreamlike state that had briefly overtaken her, she headed east.

  She soon spied a clearing, a fire—built only of deadwood, she was certain—and the masked, robed women gathered around it. Such circles tended to attract the same celebrants ritual after ritual but generally welcomed any hathran who cared to take part.

  This one proved to be no exception, and once the other witches had greeted a wandering sister, they returned to the business of minor blessings, consecrations, and offerings to the fey. Nyevarra, meanwhile, studied them.

  Who commanded powerful magic, and who would be easy to overcome? Who could be enslaved, and who should be removed and impersonated? She mostly had it figured out when Yhelbruna walked out of the trees and into the firelight.

  Nyevarra had to hold herself steady. She believed that even without the Stag King’s antler staff in her hand, she could defeat Yhelbruna in a fair fight. But that was scarcely what would ensue if the newcomer revealed an undead durthan’s true identity to all these other hathrans.

  Fortunately, Nyevarra told herself, it wasn’t going to come to that. She’d hidden herself behind a new wooden mask, clean new garments, and charms of deception, and clever and powerful though Yhelbruna was, she had no reason to suspect the presence of an enemy here at the fire.

  So Nyevarra joined the other witches as they gathered around their famous elder sister to welcome her. And, in fact, Yhelbruna treated Nyevarra like just another member of the coven.

  When the amenities concluded, Yhelbruna pulled off her brown leather mask to reveal a youthful, heart-shaped face with a prominent nose. The apple cheeks and a general impish quality were at odds with her reputation for severity, but her frown was not.

  “Sisters,” she said, “I’m sure you have your own purposes and your own workings to undertake tonight, and I apologize for diverting you. But I need your help.”

  Two fools spoke at once to say that the circle would like nothing better than to aid her.

  Yhelbruna smiled. “Thank you. I assume you’ve all heard what’s going on in Immilmar. There’s reason to doubt that the mercenary Mario Bez has truly ended the threat of the undead marauders as he claims, and Mangan Uruk asked me to determine the truth through divination.” She took a breath. “Unfortunately, so far, the signs have been ambiguous if not nonsensical.”

  Yes, thought Nyevarra, because my allies and I have gone to considerable trouble to muddy the mystical waters.

  “But until now,” Yhelbruna continued, “I’ve only tried in Immilmar. Tonight, I’m going to try here with your power and wisdom buttressing my own. I’m also going to approach my task by a different path. Together, we’ll summon one of the winds that sweep across the North Country and ask it what happened on the day when Bez claims to have taken the Fortress of the Half-Demon.”

  Nyevarra’s fangs ached, trying to lengthen as they did in response to any threat. The Urlingwood was on its way to becoming a somewhat different place, but unfortunately, that process had just begun. Yhelbruna was quite correct that the sacred forest would still strengthen her magic, and in addition, questioning the proper spirit of the air might indeed garner information that straightforward augury had not. The durthans had no measures in place to protect against that.

  And just to make the situation even worse, not one of the other witches in the circle was a disguised durthan or one of their mind-bound thralls. Nyevarra was going to have to subvert the ritual all by herself and do it without getting caught.

  Well, so be it, then. As the witches took up positions around the crackling yellow fire, she made sure she placed herself between two of the youngest and least experienced. They were less likely to detect her exerting a corrupting influence.

  Yhelbruna slipped her mask back on and then raised her staff. In response, the fire leaped higher. Spilling snow, a rustling ran through the branches overhead as small spirits and fey oriented on her. Even the towering oaks and shadowtops seemed to lean over slightly for a better view, although in a purely physical sense, that was an illusion.

  “Hail Akadi!” Yhelbruna said.

  “Hail Akadi!” the other witches echoed.

  “Hail to the Queen of Sky Home, the Lady of the Winds!”

  “Hail to the Queen of Sky Home, the Lady of the Winds!”

  “In her name …”

  Hastily considering tactics, Nyevarra decided the contrapuntal structure of the summoning could work to her advantage. If she wanted to maintain her masquerade, she had no choice but to give the responses. But when Yhelbruna was speaking, she could do the same, so long as she whispered softly enough that no one would overhear.

  “Night winds,” she breathed. “Winter winds. Tempests and plague winds. All you restless wanderers who harry mortals for sport. Whichever of you can hear my words, in the names of the Destroyer and the Mistress of Disease, attend me!”

  By the time she finished that much of her invocation, murmuring it a phrase at a time as the ceremony allowed, the forces everyone was raising for one purpose or another had set the air in the vicinity moaning, howling, and gusting crazily. The branches overhead rattled constantly, and cloaks and robes flapped and fluttered. The bonfire whipped back and forth, while flecks of snow blew off the ground.

  With magic well and fully roused, this contest had now become a race, and even though Yhelbruna had all the other witches aiding her, Nyevarra thought she had a fair chance of winning it. The hathrans were trying to find one particular spirit and draw it miles to the south, whereas Nyevarra was willing to settle for any wind of a suitable temperament, and thanks to her and the other durthans, there were already more of such entities lurking in the forest than there used to be.

  Suddenly, freezing air brushed her mouth like a kiss. She might have cried out and recoiled if she still had a living woman’s susceptibility to cold. Then the same breeze insinuated itself inside her hood to play around her ear.

  “ ‘Restless wanderers who harry mortals for sport,’ ” whispered a husky feminine voice. “Perhaps I should continue the sport with you.”

  “I’m no mortal,” Nyevarra whispered back. “In fact, if I’m perceiving you clearly, y
ou and I are somewhat alike.”

  “You flatter yourself. No woman of flesh and blood, even cold flesh and stolen blood, can claim to be more than a feeble mockery of me.”

  “A ‘feeble mockery’ who pulled you to me like a fish on a line. Now that you’re here, I’d prefer to speak in terms of friendship and barter, as befits a witch treating with a spirit. But I’m prepared to resort to torment and compulsion if necessary.”

  Beneath her robes, cold air slid over her skin like the elemental was assessing for itself just what punishments and coercions she might be capable of. Then, caressing Nyevarra’s ear again, she asked, “What do you want?”

  “Yhelbruna, there, aims to summon a wind. I want to give her one and then make her sorry she asked.”

  The spirit hesitated. “I’ve heard of Yhelbruna.”

  “Whatever you’ve heard, surely she too is ‘feeble’ compared to a princess of Sky Home.”

  “You mock me, but you’re right. Still, if I kill someone humans consider mighty, what will you give in return?”

  “Soon, my sisters and I will rule Rashemen. Then I’ll sacrifice someone to you at the start of every tenday for a year.”

  “I want them big and strong,” the spirit replied. “No children and no sick, old codgers either.”

  “Done.”

  The elemental rose into the air, and perhaps as a way of announcing itself, descended again as a screaming whirlwind that spun bits of snow and broken twigs around and around. Assuming they’d accomplished their purpose, the witches stopped chanting. Nyevarra grinned to see that even Yhelbruna was taken in.

  “We thank you for answering our call,” the senior hathran said. “It’s urgent that we discover—”

  The spirit gathered itself into the hazy, transparent shape of a floating woman. Suddenly, the eyes in its blur of a face flared red, and it struck at Yhelbruna with its open hand. The harmless-looking slap triggered another shriek of wind.

  Caught by surprise, Yhelbruna still almost managed to speak a word of warding. But the elemental’s blow caught her and slammed her backward.

  Other hathrans raised their wands and talismans and cried the opening words of spells of slaying and banishment. Spinning, the spirit raked them with its burning crimson gaze, and they froze in terror.

  Ideally, the breathdrinker should then have gone after Yhelbruna without another instant of delay. But, succumbing to its urges in a way any vampire would recognize, it grabbed one of the paralyzed women, tore her brazen mask off, and kissed her.

  The hathran flailed, struggling to break free, but not for long. It took her attacker only a few heartbeats to suck all the breath from her lungs.

  Its thirst assuaged, the breathdrinker whirled back toward Yhelbruna, and Nyevarra was glad to see that the latter lay motionless on her back in a snowdrift. Apparently that initial blow had landed hard.

  Amid another howl of wind, the breathdrinker sprang in Yhelbruna’s direction. Some of the other hathrans cried words of power to protect their fallen sister.

  But those hathrans lacked Nyevarra’s extensive experience in battle, and when, still whispering, she rattled off a spell to counter their efforts, she finished ahead of them. Terror jolted them and in some cases made them recoil from the breathdrinker, while even those whose wills were strong stumbled over their incantations. Nyevarra could feel their half-made magic dissolve.

  But as the breathdrinker plunged down at Yhelbruna, the hathran’s eyes popped open. Yhelbruna spoke a word of power and jabbed her staff at her foe.

  A streamer of snow leaped up from the ground and in the process hardened from powder into ice. Pointed and straight, its base frozen to the ground, it jutted upward at the perfect angle to catch the elemental.

  Stabbed through the torso, the breathdrinker slid partway down the icicle spear. Screaming in the way a wind screams, it thrashed but seemed unable to free itself. An ordinary spike wouldn’t have impaled a creature made only of air and malice, but the magic infusing this one accomplished what mere solid matter couldn’t.

  Yhelbruna scrambled back from her foe. Its misty arm stretching, the breathdrinker struck another howling, openhanded blow. But the hathran did something to ward herself—even Nyevarra couldn’t tell what, though she felt power surge at the living witch’s behest—and the blast of air simply failed to find its target.

  Chanting, Yhelbruna spun her staff and then jabbed with it. Darts of emerald light leaped from the head to riddle the spirit’s form, blinking out of existence as they hurtled through.

  With another shriek, the breathdrinker resumed its whirlwind form as snow spiraled up from the earth. The frozen spike shattered, freeing it, and it gathered itself into its transparent, red-eyed feminine form once more.

  Yhelbruna started reciting another spell and shifting her staff back and forth in time to the cadence. The breathdrinker shot forward and slapped.

  The witch sidestepped, and once again, the spirit’s blow didn’t quite connect. But it did tear the staff from Yhelbruna’s hands, and Nyevarra grinned because that ought to be good enough. It should ruin the spell the hathran was attempting to cast, and with the enraged breathdrinker right on top of her, she didn’t have time for a second try.

  Except that the loss of the staff didn’t spoil the casting. Yhelbruna didn’t stumble over the incantation, and she moved her empty hands like a weaver working at a loom, improvising a conclusion to the pattern the rod had begun.

  Snow exploded up around the breathdrinker and, in that same instant, hardened into an enormous hand of ice. The clawed fingers grabbed the spirit and squeezed.

  Shrieking, the breathdrinker became invisible. Perhaps that was an instinctive response, but the defense couldn’t help it when the hand already had it in its grasp.

  Next, Nyevarra sensed the elemental trying to blow out through the cracks between the fingers, then seeking to become a whirlwind and shatter its prison, but the strength of Yhelbruna’s spell prevented either. The hand kept squeezing until the howling died, and the breathdrinker with it.

  A hathran in a white unicorn mask hurried toward Yhelbruna. “Are you all right?” Mielikki’s servant asked.

  “Yes.” Not even bothering to retrieve her staff, Yhelbruna strode past the other witch to the woman the spirit had drained of breath.

  Kneeling, Yhelbruna held her hand in front of the fallen hathran’s nose and mouth and touched her fingertips to the side of her neck. Then she sighed and closed the corpse’s eyes. “Go to our mothers, Sister. Blessed be.”

  As she rose again, the other witches clustered around. “What happened?” whined one of the younger ones.

  “I don’t know,” Yhelbruna answered, and for once, a trace of distress compromised that steely voice. “I don’t understand why the wind was angry.”

  If not for the need to keep up her impersonation, Nyevarra might have slumped and heaved a sigh of relief. It was regrettable that the breathdrinker hadn’t succeeded in putting an end to Yhelbruna, but if the hathran didn’t comprehend what had gone awry, then things were still under control.

  “I don’t know why a number of things aren’t happening as they should or just seem off,” Yhelbruna continued, and already she was all cold strength once more. “But I’m going to find out.”

  And left to her own devices, she just might. She could conceivably have figured it out this very night, or at least taken one step closer to the truth, if she and Nyevarra hadn’t ended up in the same circle, and no one could count on that kind of luck all the time.

  Which meant Yhelbruna still needed to die. But Nyevarra hesitated to make a second attempt on the foul woman’s life herself. Loath as she was to admit it, the most formidable hathran of them all might survive again and in the process discern who was attacking her.

  Unfortunately for Yhelbruna, though, Nyevarra saw an alternative.

  * * * * *

  Aoth reflected that if he’d wanted to clamber up and down mountains in the cold wind and the snow, he wouldn�
�t have become a griffon rider.

  Still, it would have shamed him to grouse aloud. He had tattoos to warm him, stave off fatigue, and blunt hunger pangs. Orgurth didn’t, yet the green-skinned warrior wasn’t complaining.

  The orc did grunt in surprise, though, when the trail they were following took them to the crest of a ridge where the snow bore a plenitude of tracks. A number of folk—or a number of somethings—had marched along the trail from south to north.

  “Well,” said the orc, “I guess we’re not the only people in these wretched peaks. Maybe they’ll share their rations and their fire …” His voice trailed off as he registered something in Aoth’s expression. “But you’re thinking they won’t.”

  “I’m thinking they won’t.” Aoth led Orgurth forward and pointed with his spear to something few folk would have spotted at a glance but that his fire-kissed eyes had noted immediately. “Look at this pair of tracks. The one boot looks like it had a big hole in it, and the other foot, the unshod one, might have been left by partly naked bone. What leaves prints like that?”

  “Zombies.”

  “Right. And this wasn’t the only one.” He stooped, picked up a decayed, frozen, broken-off toe, proffered it for the orc’s inspection, and tossed it away.

  “So has Thay sent troops over the border,” Orgurth asked, “or are these more of the undead you fought at your Fortress of the Half-Demon?”

  “The latter.” Aoth indicated deep marks shaped like cloven hooves and the clawed feet of reptiles as well as a tiny spitter of oil. “Constructs made these tracks. Lots of constructs. There may have been more of them traveling in the column than there were undead.

  “And some of our enemies in the castle used constructs against us,” he continued. “As wizards go, I’m a poor student of history, but I believe those particular ghouls and such were reanimated Raumvirans.”

  “So you and your friends didn’t really end the threat to Rashemen.”

  “Apparently not.” That might conceivably mean Mario Bez hadn’t managed to steal the wild griffons after all. But it might also mean Cera, Jhesrhi, and Jet were in even more danger than Aoth had imagined.