Undead hl-2

by Richard Lee Byers

  But Brightwing possessed enhanced intelligence and a psychic link with her master, and Bareris had used his music to forge a comparable bond with Winddancer. No doubt for those reasons, the two officers had succeeded in preparing their steeds for battle in advance of the soldiers under their command. Now they stood in the bow gazing west, where the sky was still red with the last traces of sunset. Looking like the champion he'd been in life, Mirror hovered behind them.

  Tammith judged that it would be easier to float over the mass of irritable griffons and their riders than to squirm her way through them, so she dissolved into mist. The transformation dulled her senses, but not so much as to rob her of her orientation, particularly with the forbidding pressure of the sea defining the perimeter of the deck as plainly as a set of walls. She flowed over the heads of beasts and legionnaires and congealed into flesh and bone at Bareris's side. He smiled and kissed her, and she resisted the impulse to extend her fangs, nibble his lips, and draw blood to suck.

  "I thought I might wake to find you fighting," she said, "or even that the battle was already over."

  Bareris grinned. "That's because you haven't fought at sea. It takes at least as long for fleets to maneuver for position as it does with armies on land."

  "But it won't be long now," Mirror said. The sword in his scabbard disappeared, then reformed in his hand, the blade lengthening like an icicle. A round shield wavered into existence on his other arm.

  Aoth nodded and hefted his spear. "It's time to get into the air."

  "I wish I could fly with you," said Tammith to Bareris. "It bothers me that we won't be together."

  "That would be my preference, too," he said. "But I'll be most useful riding Winddancer, and we all need to do our best if we're going to smash through Szass Tam's fleet. So-one last fight, and then it's on to the Wizard's Reach and safety."

  She smiled. "Yes, on to Escalant. Just be careful."

  "I will." He squeezed her hands, and then he and Aoth strode back to their steeds.

  The survivors of the Griffon Legion leaped into the sky with a prodigious clatter and snapping of wings. Mirror floated upward to join them on their flight.

  Night could blind an army or a fleet, sometimes with fatal consequences. Accordingly, the council's spellcasters sought to illuminate the black, heaving surface of the sea by casting enchantments of illumination onto floats, then tossing them overboard. But the results were only intermittently useful. As often as not, the glowing domes revealed only empty stretches of water, and when they showed more, the necromancers were apt to cast counterspells to extinguish them. Nevron donned a horned, red-lacquered devil mask invested with every charm of augmented vision known to the Order of Divination, and it gave him a far superior view of what was transpiring.

  It wasn't an especially encouraging view, consisting as it did of dozens of black ships crewed by rotting corpses, gleaming wraiths soaring above the masts, and skeletal leviathans swimming before the bows, all rushing to annihilate the council and its servants. Despite himself, he felt a twinge of fear.

  But a true zulkir-as opposed to useless pretenders like Kumed Hahpret and Zola Sethrakt-learned not merely to conceal such weakness but to expunge it as soon as it appeared. Nevron quashed the feeling by reminding himself that it was his destiny to reign as a prince in one of the higher worlds. This little skirmish was merely practice for the infinitely grander battles he would one day fight to win and keep his throne.

  When he was certain he was his true self, all foxy cunning and steely resolve, he pivoted toward the other conjurors on the deck. "Now," he said. "Bring forth your servants."

  His minions hastened to obey him-some by chanting incantations, some by twisting a ring or gripping an amulet-and demons, devils, and elemental spirits shimmered into view until the deck and the air overhead were thick with them, and the warship reeked of sulfur. An apelike barluga slipped free of its summoner's control long enough to grab a sailor and tear his head off.

  Most of Nevron's followers had called the entities with whom they'd dealt most frequently-the same spirits they would have summoned on land, and that was all right. Most of the creatures could reach the enemy by flying or translating themselves through space. But Nevron knew how to bring forth and control every extradimensional creature the Order of Conjuration had ever catalogued, and he suspected that denizens of the infernal oceans might prove even more useful in this particular confrontation.

  He chanted and, infuriatingly, nothing happened. The blight afflicting magic had ruined his spell. Some of the entities caged in the talismans he carried laughed or shouted taunts. He gave them pain enough to turn their mockery to screams, then repeated the incantation.

  Forces wailed and shimmered through the air, and then the patch of sea directly beneath him churned as a school of skulvyns materialized. Lizardlike with black bulging eyes and four whipping tails, the demons raised their heads and looked to him for instructions. Other Red Wizards, sailors, and even spirits started drawling their words and moving with languid slowness as the hindering aura emanating from the swimming creatures took them in its grip.

  Nevron told the skulvyns who and what to destroy, then recited a second incantation. A gigantic wastrilith appeared in the sea, its mass displacing enough water to rock the ship. The demon resembled an immense eel with a vaguely humanoid upper body, round amber eyes, and a mouth full of fangs. Nevron didn't have to speak to it out loud, because wastriliths could communicate mind to mind. When it learned what he required of it, it roared with glee and hurtled toward one of the black ships. It reared, spewed, and raked the enemy vessel's main deck with a stream of seawater heated hot enough to scald. Blood orcs screamed.

  All right, Nevron thought. It appeared that his wizardry was working properly again, so perhaps it was time to attempt something challenging. His grating words of command cracked the planks under his feet and made the people around him cringe, even though they couldn't understand them. A sailor's nose dripped blood. The spirits locked in Nevron's rings and amulets howled and gibbered in fear.

  The myrmixicus's arrival triggered a sort of purely spiritual shock that staggered nearly everyone, as if the mortal world itself were screaming in protest at having to contain such an abomination. Like the wastrilith, the demon resembled an enormous eel but was even bigger. Its head was reptilian. Beneath that were four arms, each wielding a scythe, and below those, six tentacles. Its tail terminated in a lamprey mouth.

  Nevron sent it at the black ships, and a zombie kraken swam to intercept it. The undead creature threw its tentacles around the tanar'ri and dragged it toward its beak. Except for making sure that its arms didn't become entangled, the myrmixicus didn't resist. It wanted to close, and when they came together, it hacked savagely, shredding its foe into lumps of carrion.

  Then it resumed its swim toward the enemy fleet. A ghostly dragon, a vague shape made of sickly phosphorescence, rose from the depths to challenge it.

  Nevron realized the wizards around him had fallen quiet. He looked around and discovered his followers watching the myrmixicus in awe and fascination.

  So had he, for a moment, but that wasn't the point. "What's the matter with you?" he shouted. "Do you think this is a pageant being staged for your amusement? Keep conjuring, or you're all going to die!"

  The ghost of a woman, slain by torture from the look of her, flew at Aoth and Brightwing. The mouth in the phantom's eyeless face gaped as if the hapless soul had died screaming, and burns and puncture wounds mottled the gaunt, naked form from neck to toe. Its limbs flopped as though suspension or the rack had separated the joints.

  Aoth tried to throw flame from the head of his spear. Nothing happened.

  The ghost reached out to plunge its tattered fingers into his body. Brightwing swooped and passed under the insubstantial figure.

  Certain the ghost would give chase, Aoth twisted around in the saddle and tried again to summon flame. To his relief, a fan-shaped blaze of yellow fire leaped from his weapon
to sear the spirit.

  But though its entire form contorted like a sketch on a sheet of crumpling parchment, it wasn't destroyed by the fire. It kept hurtling forward and thrust its hand into Brightwing's backside just above the leonine tail. She screamed, convulsed, and fell. Anchored to the griffon's body, the ghost snatched at Aoth, its skinny arm stretching like dough.

  Aoth jerked his upper body away, leaning over Brightwing's neck, and although it came so near he felt the sickening chill of it, the ghost's hand fell short. He drove his spear into its chest, snarled a word of power, and channeled destructive force into the weapon.

  The ghost dissolved. Brightwing spread her wings and arrested her plummet.

  "Are you all right?" Aoth asked.

  "Yes," Brightwing croaked, her voice more crow than eagle.

  He studied the black, suppurating sore where the phantom had wounded her. "Are you sure?"

  "I said yes!"

  "All right, but let's take a moment to catch our breaths."

  The griffon veered, climbed, and carried him to a clear section of sky. Aoth took the opportunity to study the battle raging around and beneath them.

  His fire-touched eyes could see nearly everything clearly, even at a distance and in the dark, but at first he wasn't sure he'd be able to make sense of it all. So much was going on.

  Swimming devils and zombie leviathans tore at one another.

  Archers and crossbowmen shot their shafts. Ballistae threw enormous bolts, and mangonels, stones. Wizards hurled bright, crackling thunderbolts and called down hailstones.

  Galleys and cogs maneuvered, seeking the weather gage or some comparable advantage. One vessel drove its ram into the hull of another. Dread warriors flung grappling irons, seeking to catch hold of a nearby ship and drag it close enough to board. Aquatic ghouls tried to clamber onto what had been a fishing boat, with nets still lying around the deck, while legionnaires jabbed at them with spears.

  Fighting from one of the largest warships, Iphegor Nath and some of the Burning Braziers alternately hurled holy fire at enemy vessels and at any particularly dangerous undead that wandered within range. Suddenly, quells appeared among them, shifted through space by the wizards in their midst.

  Shadowy figures in swirling robes, glowing mystic sigils floating in the air around them, the apparitions were capable of sundering a priest from the source of his power. Warrior monks, the Braziers' protectors, charged the quells with burning chains whirling in their hands.

  Aerial combatants soared, wheeled, and swooped around the sky. A balor struck at spectres with its fiery sword and whip. Half a dozen griffon riders loosed arrow after arrow at a skirr, one of the huge, mummified, batlike undead, while dodging and veering to keep clear of fangs and talons.

  Gradually, Aoth sorted it all out, or at least he thought he had. It seemed to him that up in the air, neither side had gained the advantage, which meant that the flyers stayed busy with one another. They couldn't do much to exploit their elevated position to threaten the ships below.

  The same was true of the swimming horrors. They seemed equally matched, and as long as that held true, they wouldn't pose much danger to either fleet.

  But happily, not every part of the battle reflected the same furious, lethal stalemate, with men, orcs, and conjured creatures struggling and perishing without tipping the balance one way or the other. In the ship-to-ship combats, the true heart of the conflict, the council was faring better than its foes.

  Szass Tam had as many ships as his rivals, vessels filled with formidable undead monstrosities, but as Thessaloni Canos had predicted, their crews didn't handle them well. The council's vessels came at the enemy ships from behind or amidships, and only grappled them when it was to their advantage.

  The necromancers' thaumaturgy was more reliable than that of their fellow Red Wizards, but combined, the powers of the other orders were more versatile. In addition, they had all the priests they'd evacuated from Bezantur-servants of Kossuth, Mask, Cyric, Umberlee, and every other Thayan god except Bane-backing them up with their own kind of magic.

  By the Great Flame, Aoth thought, am I truly seeing this? Has Szass Tam overreached at last? He remembered all the times when the zulkir of Necromancy had feigned weakness to lure his foes, then snapped a trap shut around them, and was afraid to believe what he was seeing.

  Then one of the black ships faded into a vague shadow of itself. Another abruptly went flat, like a paper cutout standing upright on the surface of the sea.

  At first Aoth surmised that the necromancers aboard the two vessels had activated some sort of defensive enchantments. But then Brightwing said, "What are you peering at?"

  "Two of Szass Tam's ships look different. Can't you see it?"

  "No."

  After another moment, Aoth couldn't, either. The two vessels appeared normal.

  But that didn't matter. He suddenly thought he understood the meaning of what he'd observed, and if so, perhaps the council could maintain its edge no matter what tricks Szass Tam held in store.

  "Find Lallara," he said.

  The zulkir of Abjuration rated an even larger and more formidable ship than Iphegor Nath, and was accordingly easy to locate. When Brightwing dived out of the night sky, voices cried the alarm. Crossbowmen in the high sterncastle raised their weapons, and Red Wizards, their wands and staves. For an instant, Aoth was sure that his eagerness to share his discovery would be the death of him.

  Fortunately, Lallara screamed, "Stop, you idiots!" Her minions froze.

  Brightwing landed in the sterncastle between the archwizard and the parapet. She did so lightly, but even so, the planking groaned beneath her weight. "Thank you, Mistress," said Aoth.

  "What do you want?" Lallara said.

  "I've observed something. We wondered where Szass Tam got a fleet, and now I know. He created the black ships with illusion magic. They aren't entirely real."

  Lallara spat. "Nonsense. If that were true, I'd be able to tell. Or the diviners would. Or the illusionists. But no one else has discerned such a thing."

  Aoth took a breath. "Your Omnipotence, there's something I haven't told you. The blue fire in my eyes gives me absolute clarity of vision. So if I've ever accomplished anything of note in the service of the council, if I've ever given sound advice, then please, heed me now. Because if the black ships are made of illusion-"

  "Then a circle of abjurers should be able to cast counterspells to expunge them from existence," Lallara snapped. "I don't need you to instruct me in basic magical theory." She called for several lesser wizards to attend her, and they came scurrying.

  Lallara arranged them in a circle with herself at the center, directed their attention to the nearest black ship, and started a long incantation with an intricate structure and rhyme. Her assistants chimed in on the refrain. Aoth, whose system of battle magic concentrated on attacks and was mostly devoid of feats of abjuration, felt lost immediately.

  But he had no trouble comprehending the results of their effort. The dark ship abruptly vanished, dumping the dread warriors and necromancers aboard into the sea.

  He knew the abjurers wouldn't be able to make all the enemy vessels disappear. Some would prove impervious to their magic, especially if Szass Tam himself had taken part in their creation. Still, Aoth had given his allies a potent new weapon.

  "Well done," he said.

  Lallara turned and glared at him. "Why are you still here? Your place is with your men, if you're not trying to shirk the fight."

  He sighed. "I'm on my way."

  "No, wait. Fly to the senior illusionists and tell them what you told me. They may be able to unmake the black ships as well."

  Standing in the prow of his flagship, his staff of drowned men's bones in his hand, Szass Tam gazed over the water and smiled. "I should have made a greater effort to win Thessaloni Canos over to my side. Or had her assassinated."

  "If it's hopeless," Malark said, "I recommend you pull your ships out of combat before you lose any
more soldiers. The skeleton sea serpents and their fellows can cover our retreat."

  "I think not."

  "You've already won the war."

  "But if I kill my fellow zulkirs tonight, or failing that, send their treasure and followers to the bottom of the sea, I can rest secure in the knowledge I won't have to fight another. And the battle is far from lost. I'm sure you haven't forgotten the trump up my sleeve."

  "Are you still strong enough to use it?"

  "Let's find out." Szass Tam focused his awareness on the air above an empty stretch of water and murmured words of power. Frost crept across the railing in front of him, and the remaining flesh on a dread warrior's frame liquefied all at once, leaving it a figure of dripping bone.

  The roundship's task had been to transport the Griffon Legion, and now that Aoth and his command were in the air, not many soldiers were left aboard. Thus, although the crossbowmen shot at any target of opportunity, the sailors were doing their best to keep the vessel out of the thick of combat.

  It was only prudent, but it frustrated Tammith. The smell of blood hung on the wind, enticing her, drying her throat, and causing her fangs to extend. She longed to be on one of the pairs of grappled ships, where she could fight, kill, and drink until her appetites were satisfied.

  In lieu of that, she'd obtained her own crossbow, but killing someone at range was a poor substitute for tearing him apart with her sword or fangs, not that she often hit her mark in any case. She possessed preternatural senses and physical prowess, but no training in the use of that particular weapon.

  She pulled the trigger, the crossbow clacked, and the bolt flew too low, imbedding itself in the ebony hull of an enemy galley. She hissed and reached for another. Then someone shouted.

  Tammith pivoted. A dead man was climbing out of the water onto the stern. A haze hung in the air around it.

  She grinned. The zombie had no blood to slake her thirst, but at least she'd have the satisfaction of cutting it up. Or she would if her shipmates didn't dispatch it first, for a single animated corpse shouldn't pose much of a threat. She dropped her crossbow and drew her blade.