Undead hl-2

by Richard Lee Byers

  Bareris drew breath to say, Go without me.

  But Mirror spoke first. "I thought we were winning."

  "We were," said Aoth, "but then Szass Tam unleashed the dream vestige, and for all their theorizing and preparations, the Red Wizards can't stop it. I thought I'd discovered something that would help them, but it was no use, either."

  "What was it?" Mirror asked.

  Aoth made a sour face. "The souls that make up the cloud are in torment, tangled together as they are, trapped in a kind of perpetual nightmare, and they hate one another even more than they hate the rest of the world. Much as they hunger to eat the living, they're even more eager to lash out at their fellows, but something about their condition-some binding Szass Tam created, perhaps-prevents it. I hoped knowing that would give the Red Wizards an opening, but…" He shrugged.

  Bareris wasn't making any effort to attend to Aoth's explanation. The dream vestige no longer interested him, or so he imagined. Yet even so, his friend's words evoked an idea, and an urge to do something more than "stand here and grieve."

  "It might be a weakness we can exploit," he said. "I'm going to try."

  Aoth scowled. "I told you, Lallara and her circle had the same information, and they couldn't slay the thing. Neither can Iphegor Nath and the other high priests."

  "That may be," said Bareris. "But no one weaves magic to spark or twist emotion better than a bard." And he believed at that moment, he understood suffering and hatred as well as any singer ever born.

  "Is this just a fancy way of committing suicide?" Aoth demanded. "I ask because it won't end your pain, or send you to rejoin Tammith. You'll be stuck inside that thing, sharing its agony, forever."

  "I promise, my goal is to destroy it."

  "Let him try," said Mirror to Aoth. "You'd do the same if you believed you had any chance of succeeding."

  Aoth snorted. "After watching Lallara abandon the fleet to its fate? Don't count on it." He turned his head toward Bareris. "But all right. I won't stand in your way."

  "Thank you." Bareris looked around at some of the surviving sailors and called for them to lower a dinghy. Since the dream vestige wasn't far away, he saw no reason to take Winddancer close enough for the cloud-thing to grab.

  "I'll come with you," Mirror said.

  "No, you won't. You can't sing spells or row a boat, so you truly would be risking your existence for no reason whatsoever, and that would trouble me."

  The ghost lowered his head in acquiescence.

  It didn't take the mariners long to put the dinghy in the water, or for Bareris to climb into it. He nodded to his comrades, then rowed toward the dream vestige.

  Nothing molested him. Except for mindless things like zombies and their ilk, even Szass Tam's other minions were trying to stay clear of the fog-thing, and so they made no effort to intercept a boat headed toward it.

  When he was close enough, he started to sing.

  He sang of loving Tammith more than life itself and losing her over and over again. Of hating the world that inflicted such infinite cruelty, and despising himself still more for his failure to shield his beloved from its malice. Of the insupportable need to attain an end. He took rage and grief, guilt and self-loathing, and sought to forge them into a sword to strike a blow against Szass Tam and to aid his friends.

  The dream vestige extended a murky arm. He kept singing. The groaning, whispering swirl of shadowy figures engulfed him and hoisted him into the air.

  The phantoms slithered around him like pythons trying to crush him. Their jagged fingers scratched and gouged. Shocks of fear and cold jolted him, and he felt some fundamental quality-the boundary that made him a separate entity, perhaps, as opposed to just one more helpless, crazed component of the fog-rotting and dissolving.

  Rotting and dissolving as Tammith had, turning to scum and nothingness in his embrace. He focused on that and it gave him the strength to force out another note and another after that, to keep trying to enflame the dream vestige's wrath and self-hatred until they were strong enough to burst any constraint.

  Samas Kul decided it was time to go. But he didn't share his conclusion with the transmuters who'd had the honor of journeying with him aboard his own ship, and they kept hurling spells at the enemy.

  They were useful followers. He was genuinely fond of some of them. But they weren't made of gems and gold, and it was their bad luck that a spell of translocation could shift only so much weight.

  Hoping that no one would notice his absence for at least a little while, he descended a companionway, murmured a word of opening, and entered his luxurious cabin inside the sterncastle.

  A stack of chests stood in the center of the space. They couldn't contain the whole of Samas's liquid assets-the entire ship scarcely sufficed for that. But they did represent a significant portion of them, holding as they did, rare mystical artifacts and his finest gems.

  He regretted it bitterly that henceforth, he wouldn't be any sort of sovereign lord. But at least he'd still be the richest man in the East and perhaps all Faerыn.

  He removed a scroll from within his robe, unrolled it, and drew breath to read the trigger phrase of the magic bound in the ink and parchment. Then voices clamored overhead.

  In itself, that wasn't unusual. People had been yelling all night when some threat or target drew near. But this time, the noise had an excited, almost exuberant quality that piqued his curiosity. He decided it wouldn't hurt to delay his departure long enough to determine what all the fuss was about.

  He slipped out of the compartment and felt the locking ward seal it behind him. He walked to the rail to peer across the waves at whatever had manifestly riveted everyone else's attention.

  It was the dream vestige. The cloud was churning, thinning, shrinking, drawing in on itself. He recited a rhyme to enhance his vision, and then he could see why. The shadows that comprised it were clawing at one another. To some degree, they always had, but now it mattered. They were ripping each other to bits.

  Samas murmured an incantation that would allow him to communicate with Thessaloni Canos aboard her war galley. For a moment, he actually glimpsed her, breathing hard with a bloody cut just beneath her left eye. "Do you see what's happening to the dream vestige?" he asked.

  If his voice, sounding from the empty air, startled her, he couldn't tell. She answered immediately, and her manner was crisp. "Yes, Your Omnipotence."

  "If the entity shrivels up and dies, can we salvage this situation?"

  "Yes."

  Feeling like a dauntless warrior in a ballad, Samas squared his shoulders. "All right, then, Tharchion. Let's do it."

  The fleets battled through the night, and for most of it, Malark couldn't tell who was winning. It was too dark, the conflict was unfolding over too wide an area, and too many of the combatants were entities whose capabilities he didn't understand.

  But he realized the truth when Szass Tam stopped brandishing his staff and chanting words of power to flop down atop a coil of rope and slump forward. The lich looked as spent as any mortal laborer after a hard day's toil.

  Malark squatted down on the ink black deck beside him. Up close, he noticed that the lich stank of decay more than on any occasion he could recall. "They beat us, didn't they?" he whispered, making sure that no one else would overhear the question.

  Szass Tam smiled. "Yes." He nodded toward the east, where the strip of sky just above the horizon was gray instead of black. "Dawn is coming to exert its usual deleterious effect on our troops. I've expended all the power Bane gave me, and my own magic, too. Of course, I could still call any number of arcane weapons and talismans into my hands, but none of them would change the outcome."

  "So what do we do?" Malark asked.

  "Precisely what you in your wisdom suggested earlier. We withdraw our remaining ships while our swimming and flying warriors cover the retreat." Szass Tam struggled to his feet. Suddenly he held a scroll in his withered fingers. "I'll send shadows of myself to the various captains t
o inform them of the plan."

  "We can communicate with bugle calls," Malark said. "You don't have to strain yourself any further."

  "I suppose not," Szass Tam answered. "But I'm their leader and I'd prefer they hear the bad news directly from me, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof."

  Aoth, Brightwing, and Mirror flew back and forth across the slate gray sea, edged with silver where the wan sunlight caught the crests of the waves. Corpses, arrows, and scraps of charred and shattered timber, the detritus of the battle just concluded, floated everywhere. The council's ships were dots dwindling in the west.

  Aoth knew he should give up and return to his own vessel before it sailed farther away. He was exhausted, and through their empathic link, he could feel that Brightwing was wearier still. How could it be otherwise, considering that she was wounded and had carried him around all night?

  Yet for once she performed her task without grousing, even though he sensed she considered it futile. Bareris had destroyed the dream vestige, but had almost certainly perished in so doing. It was doubtful his friends could even recover his body. It could have dissolved in the fog-thing's grip, or sunk to the bottom, or a current could have swept it far away.

  Aoth was just about to abandon the search when he spied a pale form bobbing in the chop. Responsive to his unspoken will, Brightwing swooped lower. Bareris was floating face down, but Aoth recognized him anyway, perhaps by the uncommon combination of a lanky Mulan frame and longish hair.

  Aoth rattled off an incantation. Bareris floated up out of the water. Brightwing flew past him as slowly as she could, and Aoth snatched hold of him and hauled him onto the griffon's back.

  Bareris's ordeal had dissolved his armor and clothing and bleached his skin and hair chalk white. It had also stopped him breathing and stilled his heart.

  All his friends could do was carry him back to the roundship and then make ready to give him to the sea all over again, this time with the proper observances and prayers. Aoth couldn't find a priest of Milil, god of song, so one of the Burning Braziers agreed to officiate.

  They packed a dingy with inflammables to make a floating pyre, then laid Bareris inside it. They were just about to light it and set it adrift when the bard opened eyes turned black as midnight.

  EPILOGUE

  18–19 Marpenoth, the Year of Blue Fire

  Aoth swallowed a first mouthful of sweet red Sembian wine, sighed, and closed his eyes in appreciation. As far as he was concerned, Escalant wasn't much of a city compared to Bezantur, Eltabbar, or even Pyarados, especially now that it was overrun with refugees. But it had taverns and strong drink, and after a day of trying to help the town accommodate the needs of all the newcomers without exploding into riots, and striving to shore up the port's defenses in case Szass Tam showed up to attack it, those were the amenities he craved.

  The common room suddenly fell silent. Aoth opened his eyes. Bareris and Mirror, the latter currently too vague a shadow to resemble anyone in particular, were standing in the doorway, and everyone else was edging away from them.

  Aoth didn't share the crowd's instinctive antipathy for walking corpses and ghosts, but he couldn't help wishing that his friends hadn't come looking for him just then. He'd hoped for some time alone to relax. Still, a decent fellow didn't duck his comrades, so he called out to them, rose, grabbed the bottle, and led them outside. Better that than to shroud the whole tavern in gloom and apprehension.

  The Wizard's Reach hadn't suffered the filthy weather Szass Tam had inflicted on Thay proper. That was one nice thing about the place. Still, the air was chilly. Autumn had started in earnest. Aoth touched a fingertip to one of his tattoos, and warmth flowed through his limbs.

  He and his companions strolled in silence for a time. Other pedestrians gawked but kept their distance. Aoth swigged from the bottle, then offered it to Bareris, who declined it. Maybe he wasn't capable of enjoying wine anymore.

  "I owe you an apology," Bareris said at last.

  Aoth cocked his head. "You do?"

  "You warned me that I was too puny a creature to fancy myself Szass Tam's special enemy, but I resisted the notion. I kept on, even after Mystra died and the blue fires and earthquakes started scourging the world and making our entire war look petty by comparison. That would have convinced any sensible person of his own insignificance, but not me. You were right, and I was wrong."

  Aoth grunted. "I never meant to imply that you're anything less than a worthy, capable man." He hesitated. "Or maybe I did. I was angry. But the truth is, you're a good soldier and a good friend, and maybe people like you and me make more of a difference than I thought. We stopped the dream vestige and saved the fleet."

  Bareris shook his head. "I failed every time it truly mattered."

  "I understand why you think that, but I disagree."

  "When she came back to me, she said she hadn't really returned. That the girl I loved was long dead. But it wasn't so. Every night, the old Tammith grew a little stronger, and the vampire, weaker. I could see it even if she was afraid to believe it. But now…"

  Aoth didn't know what else to say.

  After three more paces, Bareris said, "I'm leaving Escalant."

  "Don't. Now that the zulkirs are here, the place will become more and more like the real Thay, which means that folk will get used to the undead. You'll be better off here than you would be anywhere else."

  "I'm going back to the real Thay."

  "Damn it, why? To hunt down Tsagoth and hope that somehow, one day, you might be able to inconvenience Szass Tam himself in some minor fashion? To devote another ten years to revenge? I thought you just told me you'd realized you were wasting your life."

  Bareris smiled a smile that sent a chill oozing up Aoth's spine. "But since the touch of the dream vestige changed me, I no longer have life to waste."

  Aoth took a deep breath. He felt like a traitor, but he had to speak his heart. "If you go, I'm not coming with you. It's been ten years for me, too, ten years of risking my life, and while we may have done some notable deeds, I'll be honest with you. Here at the end, I'm not really sure there was a point. All I know is that the fight took my youth, and I don't want it to steal the rest of my days as well. If Szass Tam leaves me alone, I'll leave him alone."

  "But I'll accompany you," said Mirror.

  "Thank you," Bareris replied, "but I can't ask that. You followed me out of the mountains in the hope that contact with living people would heal your mind. It hasn't, entirely, but it's helped, and if you go back to Thay, you won't have that anymore. We'll have to hide in the shadows and the wilderness, and I'm afraid that everything you've regained will slip away from you."

  "Then you'll just have to talk to me and give me things to think about," Mirror said, "because I refuse to let you go alone."

  When Malark entered Szass Tam's apartments, the lich was frowning at his reflection in a full-length mirror enclosed in a golden frame. From high collar to dragging train, sparkling gems encrusted his robe so thickly that it was hard to discern the crimson velvet beneath.

  Malark realized it must be a coronation robe. The lich had proclaimed himself regent long ago, but now that he'd driven his rivals into exile, a second ceremony was in order.

  As Malark bowed, Szass Tam asked, "What do you think?"

  "Samas Kul himself would envy it."

  "Voices of the Abyss, as hideous as that? I'll ask the tailors to attempt something a trifle less gaudy."

  Malark proffered a sheaf of papers. "I don't promise this is a comprehensive inventory of every seaworthy vessel and able-bodied mariner on the coast. But it's close."

  Szass Tam accepted the parchments and set them on a chair. "Thank you. It's important information, and we'll put it to good use. But I've decided that I'm not going to try to take the Alaor or the Wizard's Reach. Why should I, when I already have all the territory I need?"

  "To keep the other zulkirs from starting a new war?"

  "Upon further consideration, I've con
cluded that's unlikely. Their remaining dominions lack the resources, and when we construct our own fleet and build up our coastal defenses, they'll recognize that their prospects have become even more hopeless."

  "I still think you'd be safer to kill them."

  "Theoretically speaking, you might be right, but after ten long years of playing chess with them, I begrudge them any more of my time. My instincts tell me the blue fires and earth tremors will subside by the end of the year, and then my real work can begin. Speaking of which, I thought you might appreciate a look at this." Malark somehow missed the instant it appeared, but the lich held a thick, musty-smelling book bound in flaking black leather.

  Malark swallowed. "Is that really it?"

  Szass Tam smiled. "Yes. The boldest, most brilliant arcane treatise ever written, penned by an unknown genius at the dawn of time and unearthed by Fastrin the Delver when Netheril was young."

  PERSONAGES OF THAY

  Lords, Captains, and Other Notables of the Courts of the North

  The Regent

  Szass Tam, zulkir of the Order of Necromancy and pretender to the regency of Thay

  The Tharchions

  Azhir Kren (Gauros)

  Hezass Nymar (Lapendrar), also Eternal Flame of the temple of Kossuth in Escalant

  Homen Odesseiron (Surthay)

  Invarri Metron (Delhumide)

  Pyras Autorian (Thaymount)

  Others

  Tammith Iltazyarra, captain of the Silent Company

  Xingax, a maker of undead

  Lords, Captains, and Other Notables of the Courts of the South