The Alabaster Staff

by Edward Bolme

  Kehrsyn drew in her breath between her teeth.

  “Yep,” said Demok, beside her in the shadows. “This’ll be tough.”

  Gilgeam moved toward Tiglath’s troops, eyeing the row of armored warriors arrayed against him.

  “Tiamat says you have no place in Faerûn,” called Tiglath, stressing the name of her goddess, “and we will ensure you obey!”

  So saying, she brandished the Alabaster Staff and focused her mind upon it.

  The words caused a visible reaction in the once-dead god-king. He stiffened and flexed his muscles so hard Kehrsyn could hear the tendons creaking and popping. Gilgeam wagged his jaw as if to say something, but he looked more like an animal trying to work something free from its craw. He continued his approach, slipping back and forth between an upright, martial posture and somewhat sideways, animal posture. Both gaits were still suffused with the shuffling, inelegant motions of the animate dead. But most striking were his eyes, which shone with fierce hatred and cunning, a look all the more horrid for the pale, magical glow that shone from them.

  “Looks like he’s beginning to reclaim himself,” warned Tiglath.

  “What?” asked Kehrsyn.

  “Getting his mind back,” clarified Demok.

  “He’s got the hunger and will of a god in there somewhere,” said Tiglath. “If we let him go, he may recover everything, and we’ll lose all our work. Look alive, people, and stay alive.”

  Tiglath drew a deep, focusing breath and let it back out slowly through rounded lips. She inclined the Alabaster Staff toward Gilgeam. She set her jaw and narrowed her eyes with concentration.

  Gilgeam hissed through his spasming mouth, a noise far juicier than anyone had expected. He approached Tiglath, his arms outstretched and his fingers hooked like claws, yet, for as much as his powerful legs strained, the pace of his approach slowed dramatically. Even though she wasn’t entirely familiar with the artifact, Tiglath’s willpower, channeled through the Alabaster Staff, held the creature at bay.

  From the shadows to the side of the Tiamatan line, Kehrsyn watched the confrontation. Tiglath showed strain. The side of her mouth pulled back into a rictus snarl, her eyes narrowed further, and sweat began to trickle down her face. Gilgeam leaned farther forward toward the priestess, his bare feet scrabbling on the slick cobbles. His muscles tensed and flexed beneath his golden skin, and his toes pried up a cobble from the sheer power of his body pushing forward against the magical resistance. He stumbled, but then his feet found extra hold, planted in the empty socket left by the paving stone. He inched closer to Tiglath and strained his arms to reach her.

  “Strike him,” growled Tiglath through clenched teeth.

  “This is your chance to prove you have the strength to lead us,” responded the high-browed, bulbous-nosed cultist to Tiglath’s right. “You’re doing well so far. Don’t throw it away by crying for help.”

  Kehrsyn blanched.

  With an irritated growl, Demok stalked out from the shadows beside Kehrsyn and moved behind Gilgeam.

  For just an instant, Tiglath glanced at the man who had spoken.

  With a victorious howl from the grave, Gilgeam leaped.

  Gilgeam’s leap seemed slow, as if seen in a dream, and Tiglath wasn’t sure if it was because she was in such a state of excitement or if the magical effects of the staff actually slowed Gilgeam’s flight through the air.

  He landed on the priestess, driving her to her knees. His eyes, inches from hers, had a strange look to them, like he saw nothing but sensed everything. Just as she recovered her balance, his right hand clubbed at her, a horse’s kick smashing her shield back against her chest. The shield buckled with the impact, and her entire arm went mercifully numb. His left hand grabbed her right forearm, squeezed, and twisted. She fought to hold onto the Alabaster Staff, but she felt the bones in her arm snap. Pain shot up her arm, and the staff tumbled from her nerveless hand and clattered on the rain-washed cobbles, its magical glow showing strangely blue in the firelit night.

  Gilgeam howled—a grotesque, burbling noise from a slack mouth that smelled of myrrh and mold—and used Tiglath’s broken arm to drive her to the ground.

  So this is it, she thought. After all this time, he finally kills me.

  She spat in the god-king’s lifeless face.

  Then she saw Demok loom over him, his sword raised high. He struck Gilgeam in the shoulder with a mighty blow of his long sword, but the edge hardly bit the flesh. Gilgeam wildly swung one arm backward, catching Demok in the ribs and sending him tumbling away.

  Finally seeing his opportunity to supplant Tiglath as the leader of the Tiamatans, Horat snatched up the Alabaster Staff from where it lay. He felt the raw power of the wand, the weight of its age, and the surge of potential.

  “Kill him!” he cried to the others, gesturing at Gilgeam.

  The assembled Tiamatans obeyed his command. They encircled Gilgeam and lay into him with picks and swords and maces. It was a peculiar sound, more like a mining crew than a battle. A battle had a lot of screams and yelling, but here one side only rarely made noise, and the mortal soldiers, when struck by Gilgeam, often had no voice left.

  With the others doing his bidding, Horat stepped back and aimed the slender wand at the body of Gibbur where he had been felled. Magical streams of energy curled from the carved runes and Gibbur began to twitch. He climbed back to his feet and stared at Horat with vacant, obedient eyes.

  Horat laughed, a loud, glorious peal—he knew the power of the staff, a far greater power than he had imagined, and it felt good to let it channel through his soul. He’d been aide to a sodden cow of a priestess long enough. No more gutless decisions. He ruled the Tiamatans. And with this staff, come morning, the Tiamatans would rule Unther!

  Kehrsyn, hoping the Tiamatan assault could bring the god-king down, scuttled over to Demok’s side.

  “That’s not meat,” he grunted as he staggered to his feet. “Feels like clay.”

  “He’s made of clay?” gasped Kehrsyn.

  Demok gave her a wearying look and said, “He’s made of god!”

  Kehrsyn looked over at the melee and saw one of the Tiamatans surge upward two feet in the air, his head thrown way back on his broken neck. There was another animal roar and a metal impact, and Kehrsyn saw several of the Tiamatans along one side stagger back from the force of Gilgeam’s strength.

  The man with the wand aimed it in the direction of Gilgeam and began chanting a prayer to Tiamat. Beyond him, Kehrsyn saw Gibbur, gripping his sword inexpertly and shuffling toward the melee.

  “In the name of Tiamat, the all-powerful Dragon Queen,” Tiglath’s rebellious lieutenant shouted, “I command you, Gilgeam, to cease your resistance and obey your new master!”

  Gilgeam roared his displeasure and struck one of the Tiamatans so forcibly that his fellows behind were knocked off their feet, creating a breach in the circle of armored warriors, a breach that led straight to the one with the Alabaster Staff. Gilgeam stepped out of that gap, stomping one foot upon the throat of a fallen cultist, killing him.

  As Gilgeam stepped forward, the circle of Tiamatans moved with him, though for the moment they did not engage. They left behind a number of mangled bodies, most of which did not move. Demok and Kehrsyn ran over to where Tiglath had fallen.

  Tiglath cursed the usurper Horat for a fool, dividing their forces at that crucial moment against an enemy far more important than his own designs for power. She cursed herself, as well, for letting his ill-timed ploy distract her from her true duty.

  She lay on the ground, holding her shield up with her numb left arm while using her feet and her right elbow to try to crawl out of the melee. She felt Gilgeam strike her shield again, but then a veritable stampede of metal-shod feet surrounded them both. She winced, her eyes almost closed, as the cleated boots scrabbled for traction a hair’s breadth from her face.

  She heard scuffling, impacts, and a non-stop stream of grunts and curses as her people—if indeed she could ca
ll them that anymore—battled the monster. The sounds were punctuated by fierce impacts as Gilgeam claimed victim after victim. One of the unfortunates fell across her legs. His angry face landed nose-first on the pavement beside her, bouncing none too gently. Drool and blood flowed slowly from his open mouth.

  With one arm numb and encumbered by a shield in the midst of a tight melee and the other broken outright, she could not shove the armored corpse off her, so she resorted to keeping as small as possible and using her shield to protect her head from being stepped upon or struck by an errant blow.

  After what seemed an eternity of stomping feet and meaty blows, the melee moved away from Tiglath, leaving her gasping in pain on the cold, wet cobbles. Her tiny dragonet alighted on her helmet and began licking her face.

  Through the flaring haze of pain, she saw two silhouettes kneel beside her.

  “Are you all right?” asked Kehrsyn.

  Tiglath nodded. She knew it was not convincing.

  Demok kicked the corpse off her, and she rolled onto her back with a sigh of relief and exhaustion. He kneeled by her head.

  “My blade,” he ordered. “Enchant it!”

  Enchant his blade? thought Tiglath. That would take a season or more … No, she corrected herself, he means bless it. Confer upon it the divine prowess of Tiamat, Queen of Dragons, that, imbued with her divine wrath, his bare steel might cleave the useless flesh of the god-king. There was just one problem …

  “You don’t serve Tiamat,” gasped Tiglath.

  “I don’t care,” said Demok.

  Tiglath tried to ponder whether it might work, whether it might be sacrilege for her to do that, but her pain was too great.

  “Good enough,” she muttered.

  She shucked the shield from her left arm with a few careless flailings and reached for the chain around her neck. She felt along the length of the chain for the holy symbol that dangled there. She held it forth and touched Demok’s blade.

  “May Tiamat,” she slurred, trying to keep her voice steady, “as well as whichever deity you follow, guide thy blade that we might smite our mutual foe. May the strength of the dragon be yours.”

  As Tiglath prayed, Kehrsyn looked over to where the remaining Tiamatans fought against Gilgeam. She saw the god-king grab the one with the Alabaster Staff by the hips. The Tiamatan screamed in terror as he looked into Gilgeam’s undead face. Gilgeam lifted him up and slung him down, crushing him headfirst onto the cobbles, abruptly ending his scream. She closed her eyes, glad that the sound of crunching metal drowned out the other, more visceral noises.

  The Tiamatan closest to Gilgeam took a step back. His show of fear spread quickly, and the other Tiamatans who still had their feet all began giving ground. Gilgeam grinned at them, and, though his flesh was pockmarked by numerous dents and gashes from the Tiamatan weapons, he seemed to have no discomfort.

  “We’re running out of time and allies,” said Kehrsyn, deeply worried.

  Even as she spoke, Demok moved forward, waving his sword, gripping it with both hands for extra power. As the blade moved, Kehrsyn saw tracers of divine energy glittering in its wake.

  Gilgeam moved toward the Tiamatans, who fell back before him. Demok circled in behind and delivered a heavy, double-handed blow, striking the god-king in the side, just below the floating rib. The blade bit deep, though by no means as deep as it would have any ordinary man.

  Thus wounded, Gilgeam screamed, a noise that sounded more alive than any utterance he had yet made, and Demok jerked the blade free of the undead creature’s body, trailing a strand of viscous black blood behind it.

  Gilgeam turned to face Demok, a new anger on his face, and to Kehrsyn it looked like Demok had succeeded in finally awakening the intellect within the undead casing. Her heart caved in fear for Demok’s life.

  Demok circled around Gilgeam, while the god-king turned in place, one hand over the oozing wound in his side.

  The swordsman moved easily, swinging the glistening blade back and forth in easy arcs. He launched himself at Gilgeam again, striking a pair of vicious blows, one of which struck Gilgeam’s knee and the other of which the undead god-king blocked with his bare arm. The momentum of Demok’s attack had brought him in close to Gilgeam, too close, in Kehrsyn’s opinion, for him to fight effectively with his sword.

  But that wasn’t his intent. With a nimble flick of his foot, he flipped the Alabaster Staff from the dead lieutenant’s hand over toward Tiglath. Though he executed the maneuver almost perfectly, he paid for the shift in his attention as Gilgeam punched him hard, one arm striking his ribs from the right, the other striking his stomach from the left. The impact flipped Demok completely over, and he fell to the ground, his sword clattering away.

  Kehrsyn, kneeling by Tiglath’s head, tried to pull the heavy priestess up to a sitting position.

  “The staff!” she yelled. “Use it!”

  “I can’t,” gasped Tiglath through clenched teeth, her eyelids fluttering. “Too … run, Kehrsyn,” she added, panting. “Don’t let him wreck your life … like he wrecked mine.”

  Kehrsyn glanced up. The few remaining Tiamatans were fleeing the area. A company of guards had appeared at some point during the fight and had taken up position across the courtyard. They seemed to be awaiting Gilgeam’s victory. Demok was moving slowly on his hands and knees, trying to recover his breath. Gilgeam stalked over, roaring in his ghastly, flat voice, balling his fists for the final strike.

  Desperate, Kehrsyn let Tiglath go and lunged for the Alabaster Staff. She dived and tumbled, snatching up the slender wand in one hand without losing her momentum, and ran toward Gilgeam. She knew she could not wield the wand, not without years of arcane discipline. Her only hope was more direct action. All she had to do was cross fifteen yards. Gilgeam raised his fists, and she saw that she would be about five yards too late.

  A small shadow darted past her with the sound of fluttering parchment. Tremor swept in on its tiny wings and fired a gout of bright flame across Gilgeam’s eyes just as he was flexing his arms to kill Demok. Gilgeam roared again, stumbling with surprise, yielding to Kehrsyn the extra sliver of time she needed.

  She ran up behind the god-king as he stared down at Demok. She plunged the Alabaster Staff into Gilgeam, narrow end first, driving it upward between the ribs, aiming for the heart. It slid in much more easily than she had expected, every bit as easily as if it had been her rapier and he no more than a straw man. She had put everything she had into the blow, and it plunged the staff almost entirely into Gilgeam’s body, leaving only the carved top still in her grip.

  The undead thing roared and arched his back. Kehrsyn, in fear and surprise, tried to pull the wand back out, but between her haste and his motion, the wand caught between his ribs. She panicked, yanked, and felt the wand bend, levered against Gilgeam’s bones.

  There was the sound of a small crack.

  There was a flash so bright the whole world seemed white.

  Then there was nothing.

  Demok walked stiffly, trying not to strain his rib cage. Despite the bandages that tightly bound his broken ribs together, the freedom of motion he needed to breathe was motion enough to cause himself pain. The magic of the healers had helped knit the bones back together—in all likelihood they had saved his life—but he was still an injured man.

  It was closing on high noon, and the sun shone weakly in the winter sky. It was nice to see it again, to know that indeed it had been lurking behind the clouds the past few tendays. His skin felt warm where the sun hit it, if only for a moment before the chilly breeze swept the sensation away again.

  He walked outside Messemprar, his boots making small squishing noises in the muddy cart track that led from the city to the Hill of the River. The hill’s name did not refer to the River of Metals, which flowed behind him, slowly and gracefully heading toward the Alamber Sea, heedless of the small, short, squabbling lives of the mortals who encamped by its shores. The name instead spoke of the river that was said to se
parate life from afterlife.

  To his mind, the only such river the Untherites ought to believe in was the river of blood that had marked Gilgeam’s rule for the past two and a half millennia.

  The Hill of the River was far enough from the city that it had no strategic value. It had been chosen so that the dead could see their beloved city and also so that the tombs and graves would not be too close, which in summer could be problematic. A fence encompassed the lower slopes of the hill, a thin line of sticks and reed work that kept only the most incurious or overfed vermin out. The cats that lived and hunted on those grounds were far more effective at maintaining the sanctity of the place.

  The top of the hill was also surrounded by a fence, a well-built wall of stone. Behind those walls stood the tombs of the city’s wealthy and important. The lower slopes were for the rest of the city.

  Demok passed through the gate in the lower fence and turned, circling the hill toward the back, where the unmarked graves were.

  After a long, quiet walk through the tall, brown stalks of grass, he stepped up to the side of a familiar, if bulky, figure.

  “Knew you’d find me here, did you?” asked Tiglath.

  Demok said nothing.

  “Such a waste,” said Tiglath, looking over the graves covered with freshly turned dirt. “So many good people fell. So many more lives ruined and sacrificed to Gilgeam even after he was dead.”

  “You?” Demok asked.

  “I still have nightmares,” she said. Then she chuckled. “Smelling fifteen-year-old morning breath is not something you get over easily.”

  “Your arm?” he asked.

  Tiglath looked down at the sling and wrappings that held her arm across her chest and said, “It’ll heal with time, but I don’t think I’ll ever have full use of it again. The chirurgeon set it as well as he could, but I can feel the broken chips in there. Gilgeam didn’t just break my arm; he crushed it like a shell.”