Undead hl-2

by Richard Lee Byers

Pain flared, and kept burning when she landed in a pool of the corrosive liquid, which immediately started eating through the soles of her boots and into her feet. Unfortunately, she had nowhere else to plant them if she wanted to remain within striking distance of her foe. She cut the evoker again, then Bareris floated down into view. He grabbed the railing at the foot of the steps, heaved himself onto the stairs behind the possessed woman, and drove his glowing sword into her spine.

  It took several more blows to finish the evoker, but at last she toppled forward onto her face. Bareris peered at Tammith. "Are you all right?"

  "Stop asking me that!" she snapped. "You cut my head off and chopped it to pieces. If that didn't destroy me-" Something shifted in his stony face. Perhaps it was the slightest suggestion of a wince. At any rate, it made her falter. "Never mind. We have to keep moving."

  "You're right." He looked to the top of the stairs and waved his arm, urging his men onward.

  The scouts made it almost to the ground level before anything else maneuvered into position to attack them. But then luminous blue shadows darted across the floor below, moving to block the door.

  Bareris shouted, "Everybody out! Get on your griffons and fly!" He sang five syllables and leaped like a grasshopper.

  The prodigious jump carried him out onto the floor to intercept the possessed wizards before they could cut off the patrol's escape. He plainly hoped to keep them occupied long enough for everyone else to flee into the courtyard.

  Tammith intended to do exactly that, for like any vampire, she cared first and always about her own well-being. Besides, even if she had felt the slightest twinge of regret at abandoning Bareris, he was commanding this venture, and she was supposed to follow his orders.

  Instead, she rushed down and positioned herself beside him.

  Another female evoker threw a blast of freezing cold from her outstretched hands, but even though it hit Tammith squarely, it wasn't more than she could bear. Snarling, she slashed at the possessed woman until she toppled.

  Next came a wizard with yellow flame hissing from his mouth and nostrils, the true fire leaping amid tongues of eerie blue. His hands were burning, too, and he grabbed hold of her sword arm long enough to brand the print of his fingers into her flesh. She pulled free and gutted him.

  The remaining evokers maneuvered to encircle their foes. Bareris shifted so he and Tammith could fight back to back. He started singing another spell.

  Tammith's arm ached. With her next opponents already edging in, she didn't have time to wait for it to mend. She shifted her sword to her left hand.

  She could see at least a dozen transformed evokers remaining, and experienced a cold, pragmatic urge to flee. If she dissolved into mist, it was doubtful her foes could do anything to detain her.

  But she stayed in her human body and made a cut at a creature with eyes like prisms.

  Bareris's voice soared through the concluding phrase of his spell. Vibrato throbbing, he held the final note, and then, to Tammith's surprise, his hand gripped her shoulder. She just had time to realize that he'd needed to turn his back on the enemy to do so, and then the world seemed to shatter and reform around them. A cool breeze blew, and above their heads, the night sky glittered with stars.

  She realized he'd shifted them a short distance through space, away from their foes and into the courtyard. He ran toward his griffon, and she split apart into bats.

  Brightwing liked the quarters-she refused to think of them as "stables"-that the zulkirs had reserved for griffons in the great Central Citadel of Bezantur. They were spacious, airy, and clean, with rough stonework and irregular arches intended to resemble the caverns her kind inhabited in the wild. The food was tasty and plentiful, too-a side of fresh horse carried in by two servants who kept a wary eye on her and moved slowly, to avoid arousing her predatory instincts, she assumed.

  But their presence darkened her mood. If all were well, Aoth would personally have made sure she had everything she needed. Unfortunately, that was impossible when he could only see what she saw.

  But only humans fretted over things they couldn't change. She pushed worry aside and tore into the bloody meat, bones snapping in her beak.

  When she'd devoured half of it, pain ripped through her guts. She screamed, and drops of blood flew out with the sound.

  Aoth reached to take hold of the bottle and bumped it off balance instead. He snatched and managed to grab it before it toppled over.

  He scowled and wondered why he was bothering to pour the tart wine into a goblet anyway. Easier to just hang onto the bottle and swig from that. He tossed the cup away. It clanked twice-once, he assumed, against the wall, and a second time when it hit the floor. It made a smooth rumbling sound as it rolled.

  Then Brightwing shrieked. He was too far away to hear the anguished cry with his ears, but it stabbed through his mind. His belly cramped.

  The griffon was hurt or ill, and the problem was in her guts. He recited a charm to purge himself of the befuddlements of intoxication. His wits sharpened, and for a moment, his limbs felt almost painfully sensitive. He groped for his spear, rose, and started for the door.

  The latch clicked and the hinges squealed before he made it across the room. "Captain Fezim," said a baritone voice. "Our orders are to escort you to Lauzoril."

  Aoth felt a surge of hope. Because the blue fire had afflicted him with a kind of curse, the zulkir of Enchantment might be the best person to cure him. Indeed, Nymia Focar had said she was ordering him to Bezantur instead of sending him home to Pyarados precisely so wise and powerful folk like Lauzoril and Iphegor Nath could try to help him. But until that moment, they hadn't taken any notice of him.

  Still, he couldn't neglect Brightwing's distress. "I've been waiting for this for days," he said, "but I can't meet with His Omnipotence right now. Something has happened to my griffon."

  "I'm sorry, Captain," the other man said, "but we must all do as the zulkir commands."

  "Lauzoril doesn't know the situation. He wouldn't want us to let such a valuable creature come to harm. I don't know precisely what ails her, but it's serious. We need to find a healer skilled in ministering to animals. Then I'll go to His Omnipotence."

  "I'm sorry, sir, but you need to go now. Tell Lauzoril about the beast. That might be the fastest way to get help for it, anyway."

  As the man spoke, the floorboards creaked almost inaudibly, and metal clinked. Aoth caught a whiff of the oil soldiers used to preserve their mail and weapons. His imagination conjured up the image of armed men creeping into the room.

  It didn't make sense. Aoth was a loyal servant of the council of zulkirs. Why would anyone believe that force might be required to bring him into Lauzoril's presence? Yet he was all but certain that several armed men had come for him.

  Curse it, he had to know what was really happening! He opened his eyes.

  As usual, the black bandage wrapped around his head proved scarcely any impediment to his altered sight. Five legionnaires had entered the room, a human speaking from the doorway and four blood orcs creeping up on him. One of the latter held a set of manacles.

  The other three held their empty hands poised to grab him. But for a heartbeat, something painted the semblance of knives into their grips, just as he had seen Bareris dangling a marionette.

  Though he couldn't understand the reason, the message seemed clear. If he allowed them to take him, he was as good as dead.

  Vision turned to pressure. Soon it would be agony, but he could bear it for another heartbeat. The tattoos had produced that much benefit, anyway. He made note of the exact positions of the orcs, then closed his eyes.

  He pivoted and thrust the butt of the spear at the midsection of the orc farthest to the right. Mail clashed as the spear jammed into something solid. Aoth whirled, swung his weapon, and bashed the orc on his left flank.

  With luck, that at least balked the two that had been on the verge of seizing him. He reversed the spear, presenting the point, and retreated, meanwh
ile thrusting and sweeping the weapon through a defensive pattern.

  "Why are you doing this?" he asked.

  "Please stop fighting," said the soldier in the doorway. "I give you my word, you're panicking over nothing. We only want to help you."

  If he wouldn't tell the truth, he was of no use. In fact, Aoth realized, he was dangerous. His babble could mask the sound of the orcs sneaking up on their quarry once again.

  Aoth spoke a word of command and discharged magic from the spear. He'd emptied the weapon's reservoir of spells at the Keep of Sorrows, but even though his magic failed as often as not, he had recharged it since. It had given him something to do while he waited for healing, and kept him from feeling quite so helpless.

  Now he just had to hope the spell would manifest properly, and when he heard the legionnaires thump down on the floor, a couple of them snoring, it was clear that it had.

  He listened intently, just in case the spell hadn't put all his foes to sleep, and probed with the spear as he made his way to the door. Nothing tried to interfere with him, and in due course, he reached the threshold.

  He stepped over the man lying there, wondered what to do next, and felt his anxiety ratchet up. What could he do when he didn't understand what was happening? When he was a blind man trapped in a sprawling fortress garrisoned with hundreds of men-at-arms?

  Then he realized his course was clear. He'd defied the guards to help Brightwing, and that was still what he had to attempt. Spear extended to feel his way, he headed for the griffons' aerie.

  Sensing a presence, Bareris turned. Tammith was looking down at him. The light of the campfire tinged her ivory face with gold and caught in her dark eyes.

  "You aren't sleeping," she said.

  "No."

  "What did the tharchions say? Will the army march straight through Solzepar?"

  "They were still talking about it when they dismissed me, but my sense was, probably so."

  "I imagine it will be all right. For all we know, it's safer to go somewhere the blue flame's already been than someplace it hasn't yet visited." She hesitated. "May I share your fire?"

  "If you like."

  She sat down across from him. Wrapped in a blanket on the ground not far behind her, a legionnaire shifted restlessly and mumbled, as though he sensed the presence of something predatory and unnatural lurking close.

  "I want to ask you something," Tammith said.

  "Go on, then," Bareris replied.

  "In the chapterhouse, you meant to sacrifice yourself so everyone else could escape."

  He shrugged. "I just played rearguard. I hoped to keep myself alive until everyone else was clear, then sing myself to safety. Which is how it worked out."

  It occurred to him that if he'd been capable of playing the same trick on the trail to the cursed ruins of Delhumide a decade before, he might well have succeeded in rescuing her. But the spell was one of many he'd mastered in the years since.

  "But you're the commander of the Griffon Legion now, and so your life is more important than that of a common soldier. In your position, many officers would have ordered some of their underlings to hold back the evokers, and never mind that ordinary legionnaires wouldn't have had any hope of survival."

  "Not all folk see things as clearly as Thayan captains and patricians. Maybe I picked up some foolish habits of thought while I was away."

  In fact, he knew he had-from Eurid, Storik, and the other mercenaries of the Black Badger Company. It was the first time he'd thought of them in a while, for he tried not to. They'd been his faithful friends, and at the time, he'd cherished them and reveled in the exploits they shared. But ultimately he'd learned that his sojourn with them had destroyed his life and Tammith's, too, and that made it impossible to remember them without regret. He realized the vampire's presence was stirring up all sorts of emotions and recollections he generally sought to bury.

  "I was harsh that night we talked in the garden," she said, "and I snapped at you after we killed the wizard who'd merged with the acid magic. I wondered if…"

  He peered at her in surprise. "If I was so distraught that I was trying to commit suicide?"

  "Well, yes."

  "No. I've never done such a thing. It doesn't seem to be in my nature. Otherwise, I would have let you kill me back in Thazar Keep."

  "I'm glad to hear it."

  He shook his head. "Does it even matter to you?"

  "I fought beside you in that chapterhouse, didn't I, at some risk to myself. I'm harder to slay than a mortal, but not indestructible."

  "Is that why you're here? Are you waiting for me to thank you?"

  "No! I just wanted you to understand. When I pushed you away before… I told you, I want things to be easy. If you craved cherries but they made you sick, would it be easier to live under the cherry tree or a day's ride away from it?"

  He sighed. "I understand, and you were right. I don't know how you could tell, but I'm not the same Bareris you knew." He thought of his attempt to control Aoth and what had come of it, and it seemed to him only the latest in an endless chain of failures and shameful acts.

  She glanced to the east, watchful for signs of dawn. "I may have been right," she said, "but I now see that what I said wasn't the whole truth. Because, while it's painful to see you and talk to you, it's another kind of torment to keep my distance, too."

  His throat was dry, and he swallowed. "What's the answer, then?"

  "We're not the young sweethearts anymore, nor will we ever again be. Vampires can't love anyone or anything. But I believe we share a common thirst for revenge, even now, at what feels like the end of the world."

  "Yes." Indeed, as he contemplated the bleak, fierce thing the necromancers had made of her, his anger was like a hot stone inside him.

  "Then it makes sense for us to stand together. Perhaps, if we try, we can learn to be easy with one another and esteem one another as comrades."

  Comrades. It seemed like the bitterest word ever spoken, but he nodded, shook her hand when she offered it, and tried not to wince at the corpselike chill of her flesh.

  "If we're to be friends," he said, "then you must tell me something. How did you decide just by looking at me that I'd changed so completely? Do you have the power to peer into my soul?"

  She smiled. "Not so much. But when was the last time you looked at yourself in a mirror, or better still, caught a whiff of yourself? The boy I remember tried hard to look like a Mulan noble. You managed to keep yourself clean and your head shaved even growing up in the middle of a shanty town."

  "I can't imagine going back to shaving my scalp. Once you give it up, you realize it's a lot of trouble." But maybe he'd find a comb.

  Mirror dimly recalled that one of his companions had given him that name, but no longer understood why. In fact, he wasn't even certain who they were. He couldn't remember their names or their faces.

  That was because he was wearing away to nothing.

  Yet he knew he had to persevere, even if he'd entirely forgotten the reason. The sense of obligation endured.

  So he walked on through a void devoid of both light and darkness. Either would have defined it, and it rejected definition. He trudged until he forgot how it felt to have legs striding beneath him. With that memory forfeit, he melted into a formless point of view drifting onward, impelled by nothing more than the will to proceed.

  I'm almost gone, he thought. I'm not strong enough, and I'm not going to make it. But if that was true, so be it. Defeat couldn't strip a man of his honor. Surrender could. Someone wise and kind had told him that, someone he'd loved like a second father. He could almost see the old man's face.

  He suddenly realized he was thinking more clearly, and possessed limbs and a shape once again. Then a torch-lit hall sprang into existence around him, appearing from left to right as though a colossal artist had created it with a single stroke of his paintbrush. In the center of the floor was a huge round table with high-backed chairs, each seat inlaid with a name and coat o
f arms.

  Mirror realized that if he looked, he'd find his own true name and device. With luck, he might even recognize them. Then he glimpsed a towering figure from the corner of his eye. He pivoted, looked at it straight on, and realized he had something infinitely more important to discover.

  Half again as tall as Mirror himself, the figure was a golden statue of a handsome, smiling man brandishing a mace in one hand and cradling an orb in the other. Rubies studded the sculpted folds of his clothing. Mirror ran forward and threw himself to his knees before the sacred image.

  Warmth, fond as a mother's touch, enfolded him. You found your way back, said a voice in his mind.

  Tears spilled from Mirror's eyes. "Lord, I'm ashamed. I can't remember your name."

  And maybe you never will. It doesn't matter. You're still my true and faithful knight.

  Since coming to the Central Citadel, Aoth had visited the griffons' aerie at least twice a day. He'd made a point of learning the way so he could walk there by himself, without needing a guide.

  Yet in his haste, he'd gone wrong. He should have reached Brightwing by now, but he hadn't, and as he groped his way along a wall, his surroundings seemed completely unfamiliar.

  He opened his eyes, but had to close them again immediately. Despite his resolve to use them sparingly, he'd overtaxed them, and for the moment vision was unbearable and useless. He couldn't even tell whether he was indoors or out.

  Somewhere nearby, somebody shouted, the noise echoing through the hollow stone spaces of the fortress. Aoth couldn't quite make out the words. He wondered if the legionnaires he'd put to sleep had awakened. If so, maybe the manhunt had begun.

  I'm sorry, my friend, Aoth thought. I couldn't even reach you to sit with you while you die.

  "Captain," said a voice.

  Startled, Aoth whirled toward the sound and aimed his spear at it. On the verge of hurling fire from the point, he belatedly recognized Mirror, as much by the chill and intimation of sickness radiating from him as the hollow timbre of his speech.

  The ghost's disquieting nature notwithstanding, he and Aoth had been comrades for ten years, and the war mage was loath to lash out at him without cause. But neither could he simply assume that Mirror, who generally functioned as an agent of the zulkirs, hadn't come to kill or detain him. "What do you want?" he panted.