Prophet of the Dead: Forgotten Realms

by Richard Lee Byers

  Dai Shan’s thoughts turned to three of the dozens of empty-hand techniques he’d mastered—the first, a blow with the heel of the palm to the base of the nose; the second, a chop to the throat; and the third, a stab to the solar plexus with stiffened fingers. Any one of them would kill Cheng Lin instantly.

  “That was exactly the right thing to do,” he said. “I commend my retainer on the diligence with which he attends to his responsibilities. Has my lord father’s answer arrived?”

  “Not yet, Master.”

  “When it does, you will of course understand that because he wrote based on false information, we can only truly serve him by disregarding instructions to return home or do anything else that would preclude the completion of our errand. And to avoid confusing those less discerning than yourself, you won’t disclose that such invalid orders even exist.”

  Cheng Lin hesitated. “Master, our lord, your father, has always said that when he gives a command—”

  “He expects unconditional obedience. As well he might, given that for longer than either you or I have been alive, he’s been the most frightening man in Thesk. Still, he is in Thesk, while duty has led you to a land less civilized. Perhaps, paragon of prudence that you are, you should ask yourself who’s the most frightening man in Rashemen.”

  Cheng Lin swallowed. “Master, naturally, as always, I depend on you for guidance as to how I may best serve our house.”

  “Which is why I trust my wise aide above all others and will always reward his fidelity as it deserves.”

  “Thank you, Master.” Cheng Lin paused in the manner of one deliberating whether to speak further or hold his peace. In the end, reticence yielded to curiosity. “May I ask, then, if we’re aren’t going home even if our lord orders us back, what are we going to do?”

  What, indeed? If not for the indignity implicit in acknowledging perplexity to someone as lowly and lacking in grace as Cheng Lin, Dai Shan might have conceded that his was an excellent question.

  Dai Shan had to obtain the wild griffons to pull ahead of his brothers in their lifelong competition to be proclaimed their father’s heir. And at least now he’d learned the beasts were still outside Immilmar and discovered what else was going on.

  Still, what could he do? If he revealed himself and laid claim to the griffons, Yhelbruna would be no more inclined to believe him than she had Bez. Less, considering that Dai Shan hadn’t even led a war party of his own into the north. Falconer and the rest of his undead confederates, who’d promised him the winged creatures in exchange for his treachery, were gone. And without such formidable assistance, he and his handful of Shou had no hope of making off with the beasts either by stealth or force of arms.

  What, then, did that leave? Dai Shan didn’t know—yet—so he supposed that for the moment, he’d do well to focus on the one aspect of the situation that was already clear.

  After the victory at the Fortress of the Half-Demon, Vandar Cherlinka did have a legitimate claim on the wild griffons. So did Aoth Fezim. The latter had apparently emerged from the dark maze somewhere far away. Jet, who sensibly still didn’t trust Dai Shan, declined to divulge his master’s precise whereabouts, but the familiar could speak for the war mage by virtue of their mystical bond.

  It followed, then, that Dai Shan could allow neither Vandar nor Jet to return to Immilmar. He thanked his patrons in shadow that, never injured as badly as the griffon to begin with, he’d recovered more quickly.

  Still, even impaired, the beast was dangerous. So, in his dense barbarian way, was Vandar, and he’d never been seriously hurt in the first place.

  Plainly, the killings would take some doing, but Dai Shan could manage them. He simply needed to take each of his victims by surprise at a time and place that would preclude the others noticing any subsequent commotion.

  “Just bide here for now,” he told Cheng Lin, “and don’t tell anyone of my visit. My time in your company is drawing short, but I’ll return soon in a more permanent sort of way.”

  Cheng Lin grinned. “I thought I was talking to one of your shadows.”

  Dai Shan could only deplore the overt display of self-satisfaction. Still, perhaps the man wasn’t a complete idiot after all.

  Dai Shan bade him farewell and then separated himself from the vessel he’d inhabited as easily as he might have flipped off a loose mitten. And like a mitten that no longer had a hand inside it, what remained of the shadow collapsed into formlessness on its way to nonexistence.

  Dai Shan sensed but didn’t actually witness the final obliteration, even though the whole process only took a heartbeat. By then, he was back in the stable.

  * * * * *

  Graven with arcane sigils on the side facing inward, the granite slab could lock in place or swing like an ordinary gate on hinges, depending on the requirements of the moment. Aoth’s fire-kissed eyes could make out the silvery web of potentiality that accomplished those functions but not how it operated.

  Fortunately, they could likewise discern the newer patterns of malignancy festering inside the rock like aneurysms waiting to rupture, and that magic he did understand. It fell within his field of expertise.

  He motioned to the gate with the head of his spear. “The undead mean to come through here.”

  “Are you sure?” Shaugar asked. “They’ve thrown thunderbolts and such at all the entries.”

  “So would I in their place. Such a bombardment makes it harder for the defenders to decide where you really mean to breach, and if you do manage to knock something down, you can always adjust your plans accordingly. They didn’t blast through, though, and in the midst of all the distractions, someone has done a masterful job of rotting out this particular chunk of stone. It’ll crumble when the Raumvirans want it to.”

  Shaugar hitched his three-eyed mask up slightly so he could scratch the gray-stubbled chin beneath. “They already did crumble the main gate, and according to your orc friend, we’re doing a miserable job of building barricades. He says drunken goblins could do better.”

  “Some of the enemy will charge in that way, and we’ll need men in place to oppose them. Still, that will be a feint. The main assault will come here, where the dead think it will surprise us. But now that we know, we’re going to surprise them instead.

  Right?”

  Shaugar squared his shoulders. “Right. As long as we make our preparations in time. Now that we know where they need to work, I’ll round up the right people for the job.”

  * * * * *

  Once he turned his thoughts to the problem, Dai Shan realized one sure way to kill each of his intended victims without the other overhearing or chancing on the scene at an inopportune moment. He needed to begin with Vandar and dispose of the berserker while the two of them were wandering the dark maze.

  As they were currently. Vandar was in the lead and, now that days of shared effort and hardship had dulled the edge of mistrust, didn’t appear to suspect anything amiss. Conditions were essentially ideal, and it only remained for Dai Shan to choose a method of execution.

  His style of magic could confuse, hinder, or even harm a target, but the effects were variable. When a caster was particularly unlucky, his spell simply served to warn an adversary that he was under attack. Whereas one murderous blow, properly administered to an unsuspecting victim already conveniently within striking distance, would likely resolve the confrontation in an instant.

  Dai Shan rolled his shoulders, inhaled through his nostrils, and exhaled through his mouth. He visualized himself lunging and driving his fist into the vertebrae at the top of Vandar’s spine.

  Vandar halted abruptly, just before the spot where a weathered-looking statue of skeletal Jergal, depicted writing with a quill at his desk, sat at the intersection of two vault-lined passages. “Hold up,” he whispered.

  “What is it?” Dai Shan answered just as softly, meanwhile setting aside his homicidal intent for at least a moment or two. It would be poor timing to strike down the berserker just as more host
ile shadow creatures came scuttling out of the dark. The Rashemi’s back would still be there for the breaking after the skirmish was through.

  “Something’s coming,” Vandar said, “something different or bigger than what we’ve grown accustomed to, or at least I think so. I can’t see or hear it, but my spear and sword sense it, and the knowledge is bleeding across to me.”

  Dai Shan took that somewhat unlikely sounding assertion at face value. During their association in the fortress and the maze, he’d seen evidence that Vandar had a spiritual link to the red weapons somewhat like his own connection to the shadows he created to serve him.

  “Take the torch,” Dai Shan said, “and fall back. Find a space to duck into. We don’t want whatever’s coming to spot the light.”

  In normal, natural gloom, said creature or creatures might well have noticed it even so. But the murk in the labyrinth was thick and hungry enough to make hiding the torch feasible.

  “What about you?” Vandar asked.

  “Someone—specifically, the man who can see in darkness—needs to spy and find out what’s coming. Please, go. I’ll call out to the valorous warrior if I need him.”

  Vandar retreated. Dai Shan evoked a curtain of his own kind of darkness between the two of them to further mask any trace of torchlight. Then he applied himself to peeking around the corner.

  At the periphery of his vision, the Scribe of the Doomed twisted his skull face ever so slightly in his direction. At the same time, it occurred to Dai Shan that if he climbed up on the pedestal and examined the marble parchment, he’d find his own name inscribed thereon.

  But all that, he insisted to himself, was only the labyrinth playing tricks on his mind. The morbid influence of the place was so pernicious that even a Shou gentleman versed in the ways of darkness occasionally fell prey to it. Only his patron spirits knew how a primitive clod like Vandar clung to sanity. Perhaps dullness was actually an advantage.

  The murk in the distance seethed as something advanced. Voices murmured too faintly for Dai Shan to have any hope of making out the words. The maze muffled sound as relentlessly as it did light, seemingly seeking to impose both the deafness and the blindness of the tomb on those who ventured inside.

  Still, voices! Dai Shan had only a limited understanding of the half-formed vermin that prowled the endless tunnels, crypts, and skyless graveyards of the labyrinth, but he would have wagered his chances of inheriting his father’s position that the filthy things couldn’t talk. That was one trait distinguishing them from a good many of the true undead.

  Even though Dai Shan had watched a couple of the undead foes of Rashemen flee into the maze when the battle for the Fortress of the Half-Demon went against them, he’d assumed the vast majority had perished and their conspiracy was therefore at an end. But suppose that wasn’t true. What if the berserkers and stag men had only eradicated one contingent of a larger force? By the black mask, that might be part of the reason Bez had been unable to take the wild griffons. Not only had the Halruaan himself not ended the menace, no one had.

  If so, then Dai Shan still had allies after all.

  Or did he? He’d made his bargain with Falconer, and the reanimated Nar had unquestionably perished. Jet had shared the tale of his destruction on one of the infrequent occasions when he wasn’t too morose for conversation. And without the demonbinder to vouch for him, wouldn’t the undead slaughter Dai Shan out of hand?

  Perhaps not. Not if he sent Vandar on ahead to face the creatures and then helped them strike the berserker down to demonstrate his true sympathies. Even if it didn’t work, the Rashemi would at least be dead, and Dai Shan would be far enough away from the ghouls and zombies to escape by leaping from shadow to shadow.

  He turned and crept toward Vandar’s hiding place.

  * * * * *

  Stripped to the waist, Aoth finished his climb up the stairs to the ledge and, with a grunt, set the anvil he was carrying in a gap at the top of the makeshift rampart. Below him on the floor of a spacious, high-ceilinged cave the Old Ones used as a foundry, masked enchanters crooned incantations that made asymmetrical patterns of blue and silver light flow out around their feet. The designs then disappeared over the course of several heartbeats, seeming not to fade so much as to sink into the granite like water seeping into parched earth.

  Swiping sweat from his face and arching his back to pop the threat of stiffness out of it, Aoth thought that the men working magic had it easy. But he didn’t know how to do what they were doing, and the important thing was that all the defenders appeared to be making acceptable progress at their tasks.

  Such being the case, he judged the work could spare him for a moment. He reached out to commune with Jet.

  The first impressions to jump across the psychic link were pain, frustration, and the fear of being earthbound, weak, and useless forevermore. Then, with a surge of irritation, the griffon sought to lock those feelings away where even his master couldn’t perceive them.

  Jet lay on the battlements of the Fortress of the Half-Demon looking west at the gleaming frozen surface of Lake Ashane. The wind whistling out of the north chilled the burned, half-healed parts of him where feathers and fur had yet to grow back. Everything’s the same, he said, meaning Vandar and Dai Shan had still found no trace of Jhesrhi and Cera.

  They’ll turn up, Aoth replied.

  I should be in the maze searching, the familiar said. I’m ready, but Dai Shan claims I’m not. Remind me again why I’m still not supposed to kill the little snake.

  Aoth responded: Because he’s the closest thing we’ve got to a healer to tend you, he’s supposed to send a shadow to Immilmar as soon as he recovers the strength, and when the time is right, I want to kill him. Now, before long, the undead are going to break in where I am, and the Old Ones and I are preparing. Look through my eyes as I walk the caves. Tell me what you think.

  The griffon snorted. Trying to convince me I’m still useful?

  I have a tough fight ahead of me, and you know as much about siege craft as I do. You could come up with a trick that hasn’t occurred to me. So are you going to help me, or would you rather just lie around and sulk? Aoth asked.

  Jet answered: Sulk. But it would be bad for both our reputations if I let you die in a stupid little scrape in the middle of nowhere.

  And as Aoth prowled through the caves, the familiar did indeed offer a worthwhile notion or two. Aoth ended his inspection in the chamber that already had a shattered gate. In charge of the mundane side of the preparations there, Orgurth shouted obscene insults at a couple of youths who’d failed to perform some task to his satisfaction.

  I like the orc, said Jet.

  Aoth smiled and replied, You would. But yes, he’s all right. He’ll make a good sergeant. So: I think we’ll be ready come tonight. Do you agree?

  Jet did agree. Aoth felt it immediately, without the griffon even needing to articulate the words. But then came a flicker of doubt.

  What is it? Aoth asked.

  You’ll be ready, said Jet, if the other side waits until tonight.

  They’re undead, Aoth replied.

  Many of them are constructs. And as far as the undead ones are concerned, how much is the daylight going to bother them once they’re inside the mountain? Jet asked.

  Scowling, Aoth hurried to the barricade of rubble the Old Ones had built across the mouth of the cave. Keeping low, he peered out at the saddle, the smashed golems and corpses the tumbling boulders had left in their wake, and the foes that had survived the unexpected barrage.

  At first glance, the Raumvirans didn’t appear to be doing much of anything except holding their positions and enduring the wan winter sunlight as best they could. But far back from the front ranks, the ghoul with the pearl in her eye socket and the glittering mites crawling in the folds of her robe was conferring with a couple of her lieutenants while drawing in the snow at her feet with a staff. Moving without perceptible haste, animate corpses shambled around inspecting automatons, some
times herding them a bit closer or a little farther from the next construct in line. They also spoke to other zombies that eventually then adjusted a shield on a withered arm or loosened a sword in its scabbard.

  In short, the creatures were preparing to attack, but in so leisurely a fashion that the Old One’s sentry, who was of course well aware that up until now the attackers had been active by night and passive by day, didn’t even recognize the threat. In its essence, what was occurring was a tactic Aoth himself had used countless times: Lead the enemy to expect one thing, then do something different.

  He felt an urge to snarl at the lookout beside him as viciously as Orgurth was still berating his workers. But that would be unfair. Of the two of them, he was the professional soldier who’d convinced the Old Ones to accept him as their commander, and if the Raumvirans were on the verge of outwitting their foes, it was his fault.

  But thanks to Jet, maybe he could still turn things around. He spotted Kanilak brandishing a staff with a tuft of owl feathers on the end, grabbed him by the shoulder in mid-incantation, and hauled him over to Orgurth so he could talk to both of them at the same time.

  “The undead aren’t going to wait for nightfall,” he said. “They could come at any moment, and we have to change our plans accordingly. Do whatever you can to finish quickly so we’ll have some defenses in place when they burst in.”

  Orgurth gave a brusque nod. “Got it.” He pivoted and started shouting.

  Kanilak’s brown eyes were wide inside his mask. “But the traps you wanted. It’s just not possible to set those quickly. The magic—”

  “You’re an Old One of the Silverbloods!” Aoth snapped. “You told me that like it meant something. Well, here’s your chance to prove it.”

  With that, he dashed on toward the foundry.

  * * * * *

  Vandar disliked skulking in the dark. Whatever was coming up the passage, he’d rather charge to meet it with his torch blazing in one hand and the red sword gleaming in the other.