Prophet of the Dead botg-5

by Richard Lee Byers

  “Tell me.”

  “Let’s say I’m a sunlady who allied herself with Sarshethrian because even that was better than letting the undead overrun Rashemen.”

  “You are, give or take.”

  Cera smiled for an instant. “Yes, but bear with me. I’m a sunlady. You, however, are a fire spirit Sarshethrian bound into his service, and when he died, you regained your freedom. Now you want to escape the deathways, and Lod’s the one who can let you out. In exchange, you’ll help him conquer Rashemen. Ordinary mortals, after all, are nothing to you. To prove your good faith, you’ll give him the prisoner you captured: me.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Why?”

  “For one thing, I’m plainly a human being, not an elemental.”

  Cera took a moment to choose her next words carefully. “Of course you’re human, but since you stole Tchazzar’s might, you’re also … special. Why do you think the stag men gave you their allegiance? Because they were fey, and you looked like a mighty fey or spirit to them.”

  “I … it doesn’t matter. Because the scheme would also require me to deceive Lod, and I’m a bad liar.”

  “How long did you keep Tchazzar beguiled?”

  “He was mad and blind with, well, lust.” Jhesrhi’s emphasis bespoke her revulsion. “The bone naga won’t be.”

  “But you have moments when you think a fire’s thoughts, and human concerns recede. I’ve seen it. And like any wizard, you know how to manipulate the state of your own consciousness. Be living fire when you approach Lod. Then he won’t see the emotions that would give you away.”

  “Like being upset at the prospect of what’s going to happen to you? Because it will be bad. Even if I can convince the undead to make common cause with a creature of fire, they won’t be kind to a cleric of the Yellow Sun.”

  “I’ll count on your glibness to convince them I’ll be more useful alive than dead.”

  “I already told you, I don’t have any glibness.”

  “Well, even if they kill me, it’s better for one of us to escape than neither. Someone has to find Aoth, stop the undead, and pay back that little turd Dai Shan. Don’t you think?”

  Jhesrhi sat in silence for a few breaths. Then: “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” It was the best chance, for Jhesrhi if not for her. “Just promise me one thing. If they don’t only kill me, if they turn me into one of them, burn me up if you possibly can.”

  “I’ll try to keep it from coming to that.”

  “I know you will.” Cera put her helmet back on. “We should hurry back and find them while we can. Amaunator grant they haven’t moved on already.”

  “They haven’t,” Jhesrhi answered, her garments rustling as, presumably, she too stood. “Unless it needs to run away, every war band, even an undead one, bides to rest and put itself back in order after a battle.”

  Threatened with a hand-and-a-half sword in the grip of one of Rashemen’s greatest warriors, Nyevarra reflexively sought to spring to her feet. But weakness made her flounder and nearly fall back down again.

  That was bad. But her vampiric strength would return, and in the meantime, maybe she could stall. Her sudden appearance in the Iron Lord’s personal chambers was understandably alarming, but even so, in her mask and vestments, she looked like an ordinary hathran.

  “Majesty,” she began.

  Mangan Uruk called up his rage without any of the shuddering, stamping, howling, gnawing on a shield rim, petty self-mutilation, or other tricks required by less accomplished berserkers. Only a sudden wild light in his eyes afforded even an instant’s warning as he sprang and slashed at Nyevarra’s neck.

  Somehow, she twisted out of the way of the cut, and as she did, she discerned the reason for the failure of her deception. Her right hand was as it ought to be, but the left had warped and darkened into a cloven stump like the terminus of a wasp’s leg. It was as if the ekolid had concluded it could never possess her and so had spitefully betrayed her to her foe.

  Reckless but preternaturally strong and fast, Mangan immediately pivoted and cut a second time. Nyevarra dodged, but less successfully. The blade sliced her shoulder, pulled free, and whirled down for a stroke to the guts.

  Instinct told her she wouldn’t be able to dodge that one either. Blocking out the belated flare of pain in her shoulder, she snarled a word of warding and made a pushing motion with her good hand. With a clang, the bastard sword rebounded from the invisible shield she’d conjured to deflect it.

  This, she realized, was the way to survive. A physical assault stirred her predatory instincts and made her want to answer in kind, but she wouldn’t be a match for Mangan until her strength returned, and conceivably, not even then. She had to oppose him with witchcraft, one difficulty being that, while he was intent on slaughtering her, she couldn’t achieve her purpose if she killed him, visibly wounded him, or even made sufficient noise to alarm people elsewhere in the fortress.

  Mangan sidestepped and cut at her head. She jumped back out of range without an inch or an instant to spare, kept on retreating, rattled off words of power, thrust her good hand at him, and simultaneously puffed out her breath at his face.

  He faltered as the stream of noxious fumes engulfed him, but only for a heartbeat. Then, shaking off the nausea, he rushed her again.

  Curse it! Another hastily conjured shield kept his blade from driving home, but she couldn’t count on that trick working every time, nor did she want anyone to take note of the recurring clash of steel. She chanted and swirled her hands in the air.

  To her dismay, the ekolid hand, if it even could be described as such, turned out to be awkward. It was attached to a wrist of sorts, but the joint didn’t bend in precisely the way a human wrist did, and for a second, Nyevarra felt the pattern of force she was weaving threatening to dissolve. But she spoke her words of power even more insistently and made reinforcing flourishes with her human hand, and that compensated for the fumbling of the demon limb.

  Like the curtains of soft, subtle lights that sometimes danced in the northern sky, color rippled into existence between her and the berserker. The flowing phosphorescence was beautiful, and despite his fury, Mangan hesitated to gawk at it.

  But as before, it was plain the spell would hold him only for a moment. His jaw clenched, and his grip on his sword hilt tightened as he started to break free.

  Risking an attack, one she almost certainly couldn’t avoid since she’d be moving right into it, Nyevarra stepped into the center of the luminous haze. To her relief, Mangan didn’t slash or stab at her. But he would in another instant unless she forestalled it.

  She grabbed his head between her two hands and stared into his eyes. Her conjured light had muddled him. Perhaps, in so doing, it had opened a breach in his psychic defenses through which a vampire’s power of command could stab to more permanent effect.

  For a moment, he shuddered. Then he let out his breath in a long sigh, and his sword arm relaxed and hung at his side.

  Nyevarra had him, and the instant she knew it, she felt the urge to feed. It would pay him back for hurting her and help her heal more quickly too.

  But it was one thing to drink the blood of common hathrans who went around muffled in robes and masks and were unlikely to attract undue attention even if their habits and demeanors changed a little. It would be a different matter to prey on the Iron Lord himself. If Mangan Uruk looked pale and started squinting and flinching at the sunlight, someone-such as Yhelbruna-might well notice.

  And besides, Nyevarra didn’t need to turn the warlord into a genuine thrall, gratifying though that would have been. She only needed him to commit a single error in judgment when the occasion arose for him to do so.

  She told him what she wanted and made sure he understood. Then she ordered him to forget ever meeting her.

  Now all that remained was to head back to Beacon Cairn via the deathways and tell Uramar what he needed to do to make her scheme work out as planned. Smiling, she melted
into mist and then put on solidity once more. Her smile widened when she saw that the last transformation had restored her altered hand to normal.

  Jhesrhi cloaked herself in flame for the hike back to the cemetery. That way, Lod and his creatures wouldn’t think she was trying to sneak up on them, and Cera, looking cowed and fearful, her mace, shield, and helmet left behind, had light to see by.

  Even after Jhesrhi’s previous exertions, calling the fire in her core to come out and dance had been relatively easy. What was difficult was maintaining the dual consciousness her masquerade required.

  She needed to be as ruthless and uncaring as flame. Otherwise, her lies wouldn’t fool a creature as cunning as Lod must surely be. But underneath the mask of fire, the human Jhesrhi needed to remember she was lying and maintain ultimate control.

  And while she was keeping the balance, neither allowing human worry and loathing for the undead to dampen the flame nor permitting the inner blaze to spread to her affection for Cera and her other friends and burn that loyalty away, she also had to scan the gloom ahead. It wouldn’t do for an undead to spring out of hiding and drive filthy, jagged talons or a blade forged of shadow and disease into her heart before she even had a chance to start talking.

  She fancied that she managed to stay vigilant. Still, several paces into the graveyard, it was Cera, a sworn foe of the undead possessed of a certain intuitive sensitivity to their presence, who suddenly stopped short. She didn’t cry a warning, though. That would have undercut the pretense that she and Jhesrhi were no longer on the same side.

  Their flowing, inconstant forms lending a deceptive appearance of slowness to their movements, seven luminous bluish phantoms sprang from the tombs nearest the two women to surround them. Jhesrhi spoke words of power, and a circle of flame leaped up around her and Cera.

  She sensed that if she chose, she could make the ring expand and sweep over the sentries. In fact, it took willpower to resist the impulse. Both sides of her nature wanted to succumb-the fire because it lived to burn whatever it could, and the human because the apparitions were menacing and vile.

  Still, resist she did. “I don’t want to fight. I want to talk to your leader. As a show of good faith, I brought you a present.”

  On the final word, she gave Cera a prod with her burning staff. With luck, it looked like she didn’t even care if she set the priestess on fire, although in reality, her control over the flames kept Cera’s garments from catching.

  The seven transparent, wavering sentries moaned and whispered an answer in unison. They must actually be a single entity, a doomsept. “Give her to us, then.”

  “I’ll hand her over when I talk to Lod. Is that all right? If not, I can burn you up like I already burned up many of your comrades, then vanish away to safety like before.”

  The doomsept thought it over for a moment. Then the seven phantoms said, “Come.”

  Jhesrhi dispelled the circle of flame with a sweep of her staff and gave Cera another jab in the back with it, and they followed the apparitions deeper into the graveyard.

  As they proceeded toward the central path, loping ghouls and skeletons with glowing eye sockets joined the procession. Maybe the stinking things were curious, or perhaps they wanted to be in striking distance in case it turned out that Jhesrhi had actually returned to renew hostilities. Either way, there were soon enough of them to make retreat problematic if not impossible.

  Still, peering around to assess the state of their expedition as best she could, Jhesrhi noted with satisfaction that there weren’t as many as there used to be. With her aid and Cera’s, Sarshethrian had done considerable harm to the Eminence’s forces even though he’d lost the battle in the end.

  Still, like mortal soldiers in the wake of a battle, some of the undead that had suffered harm were merely wounded, not destroyed. To facilitate their recovery, creatures with necromantic skills brought pools of black liquid malignancy bubbling up from the graveyard earth; their fellow horrors either drank from them or splashed the foulness on their injuries. Meanwhile, Lod had sacrificed the surviving cart slaves to restore burned and mangled vampires, and the gaunt, naked mortals shivered and twitched as two or three blood drinkers battened on each.

  Except for the damage to his charred and tattered robe, Lod himself was intact again already, every broken human-looking bone back in place and the burns and gashes in the long scaly tail erased. He sat coiled in the bed of his wagon, the better, perhaps, to oversee his company as it dealt with the aftermath of combat.

  He cocked his fleshless skull of a head as he peered down at Jhesrhi and Cera. “The two of you fought well today. Too well to expect anything but vengeance if you fell into our hands.”

  Jhesrhi gave Cera a poke with the staff. “This one deserves it. She fought of her own free will. I didn’t.” She proceeded to tell the tale the sunlady had concocted.

  When she finished, Lod simply stared down at her for a while. A wizard’s instincts warned her he was using some occult means of perception in an attempt to examine her essence. I’m fire, she told herself, fire, ready to incinerate any dead, filthy thing that displeases me, and she gazed back at him unflinchingly.

  At last he said, “You don’t look exactly like an elemental.” And all around her, anticipating that he was about to give the order to attack, direhelms, zombies, and wraiths gathered themselves to lunge and pounce.

  “I admit,” Jhesrhi said. “My mother was human. But she burned to death giving birth to me, and afterward, my efreet father took me to raise. He taught me to hate the cold, wet, mortal part of me, and with his help, I reforged it into something stronger.”

  “Congratulations,” Lod replied, a note of irony in his slightly sibilant voice. “Undead too, occasionally have to work to slough off clinging vestiges of the lesser beings we started out as. But that doesn’t change the fact that fire and our kind are natural enemies.”

  “Sharp steel harms living warriors,” Jhesrhi answered. “That doesn’t stop them from wielding axes and swords, and in my time, I’ve known liches and the ghosts of mages to wield flame. I’d wager you yourself have a fire spell or two in reserve for when fire is exactly the right weapon for the occasion. If not, you’re a fool.”

  The bone naga chuckled. “Perhaps I do at that. Yet even if so, should I trust living, thinking fire not to betray me?”

  “I don’t deny I view your kind with distaste. But my current predicament obliges me to overlook that. Does my gift do nothing to prove my sincerity? The clerics of Amaunator stand in opposition to your kind more than any fire spirit ever could.”

  Lod’s lower body shifted position, the coils sliding. “It is a nice gesture. Under other circumstances, I’d punish the woman properly to avenge those who burned when she called the daylight. But important matters await my attention in Rashemen, so I suppose we only have time for a little torture before the kill.” Swaying, he leaned out over the edge of the cart to scrutinize Jhesrhi even more closely. “That is what you expected, isn’t it?”

  Be fire, Jhesrhi reminded herself, and when she replied, her voice was steady. “Do what you please. It doesn’t matter to me. But I don’t know how detailed your knowledge of affairs in Faerun is. Your prisoner is Cera Eurthos. She’s the lover of Aoth Fezim, a sellsword captain hired to fight your forces. She’s also one of the principal candidates for the head of the church of the Yellow Sun in the land of Chessenta. You might find she’s more useful to you alive.”

  “Hm. That does seem possible. And I confess, I know little about gods and divine magic and such, and I need to remedy that. Perhaps a priestess can instruct me.”

  “No,” Cera said. “I won’t help you in any way.”

  “Oh, I trust you will,” Lod said, “starting right now.” He turned to the vampires, who, Jhesrhi now observed, had at some point risen from the drained, lifeless bodies of the slaves. “Who’s still thirsty?”

  Leering, mouths smeared with red, three of the pallid undead started forward. Cera stepped b
ack, drew breath, and raised her hand to what, in a sane, living world, would have been a sky. She had, Jhesrhi knew, intended to play the helpless prisoner whatever transpired, but the threat of the vampires’ attentions was so repellent that instinct had taken over.

  Lod spoke a word of chastisement, and even though Jhesrhi wasn’t the target, it made her body feel as if it were vibrating. Cera cried out and fell to her knees.

  The vampires closed with her an instant later and threw her down on her back. Their white fingers ripped away mail and the leather underneath to expose flesh. Then the creatures bent down and bit.

  “Try not to kill her,” said Lod. Swaying, he alternated between watching his followers feed and watching Jhesrhi.

  Be fire, she thought, and anger and horror dwindled from her awareness as though they’d burned away.

  Apparently that was good enough for Lod. For after a while, he said, “I have had reports from Rashemen, of course. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be going there. But please, my new friend, tell me everything you know.”

  6

  The pearly, seemingly sourceless glow of enchantment gleamed on swords, spears, shields, staves, wands, and crystal. The fine workmanship would have been apparent to anyone, but Aoth’s fire-kissed eyes could also discern the force of enchantment pent inside the articles.

  Orgurth peered around the spacious, high-ceilinged cave, part forge, part conjuring chamber, and part armory, and said, “Well, all this should help, shouldn’t it?”

  “It might,” Aoth replied.

  After a round of introductions and explanations, Shaugar-the older cave dweller in the three-eyed wooden mask who’d helped haul Aoth and Orgurth to safety-and Kanilak had taken their new allies on a tour of their cavern home. The older man didn’t seem to resent the lack of gushing optimism in Aoth’s reply. But the youth glared like the owl whose visage he wore.