Prophet of the Dead botg-5

by Richard Lee Byers

  “No one crafts more powerful talismans than the Silverbloods!” he said.

  Aoth supposed that within the borders of Rashemen, that might be true. As it turned out, the Wychlaran reserved all the mystic arts to their own sex except for the creation of magical weapons and tools. Males with a talent for wizardry or commerce with the divine could use their skills in that arena, but only if willing to join one of the groups of “Old Ones” sequestered in the Running Rocks. The Silverbloods were one such group.

  It seemed like a dismal sort of life to Aoth, but so far, he hadn’t noticed any indication that the male spellcasters chafed at their subservience to the hathrans or their obligatory seclusion. Of course, the undead Raumvirans outside their granite gates had given them other things to think about.

  And unfortunately, despite Kanilak’s touchy pride in the potency of Silverblood magic, the contents of the armory weren’t likely to solve the problem. Not by themselves, at any rate. Aoth took a moment to frame an explanation that, he hoped, would avoid giving further offense.

  “I see the quality of your craftsmanship,” he said. “But many of these articles aren’t finished.” And thus, not as formidable as they ought to be. “If they were, you would have shipped them off to the hathrans and the Iron Lord’s warriors already.”

  “We may have time to finish some,” Shaugar said. “If the siege drags on.”

  “It won’t,” Aoth replied. “We slowed the enemy down when we destroyed their stone thrower. But it won’t keep them out for long.”

  As though to validate his assertion, a boom reverberated through the caves, and the floor shivered. An undead mage had cast destructive magic at one of the stone seals.

  “We also,” Aoth continued once the echoes died away, “have to face the fact that we don’t even have enough fighters to use all the weapons at the same time.”

  The Silverbloods were apparently one of the largest enclaves of Old Ones. That, combined with their level of expertise, was likely why the Raumvirans had decided to attack them. But even so, there were only a few dozen of them.

  “Then each of us,” Kanilak said, “will empty one talisman of power, then switch to another.”

  Aoth nodded as he might have to a raw recruit on the training field, where even painfully obvious thinking warranted encouragement. “That’s exactly what we’ll do. Still, we’ll have the problem that constructs are sometimes resistant to spells. I’m an accomplished war mage, but if you were watching, you saw I couldn’t just dissolve the stone thrower. I had to chuck it over a cliff and let the violence of the fall destroy it.”

  Orgurth grinned an ugly grin. “Then it’s hopeless.”

  “No,” Aoth said. “Because useful as they are, automatons have their limitations too, and we’re going to exploit them.”

  “Hold on!” Kanilak said. “You aren’t the leader here! You’re just a stranger we took in for kindness’s sake when you were running for your life!”

  “That’s true,” Aoth replied. “But even if you’ve never heard of me, I’ve been commanding armies for a hundred years. I know how to be a war leader. Do you need one?”

  The young man hesitated. “At moments when all Rashemen was in danger, the hathrans called the Old Ones forth. And we fought well!”

  “I believe it,” Aoth replied. “But did Old Ones plan strategy and direct the battles, or did you simply play the roles the witches and lodge masters assigned to you?”

  Shaugar put his hand on Kanilak’s shoulder. “Go easy, son. Captain Fezim’s not belittling the Silverbloods, and obviously, if we don’t like his plan, we won’t follow it. But considering that we haven’t even managed to come up with one of our own, it makes sense to at least hear his thoughts.”

  “Thank you,” said Aoth. “One of a golem’s weaknesses is that it’s a made thing. That’s never helped me much because I’m not a maker. I can turn a weapon stronger and sharper and store power inside it, but that’s all. You fellows, though, are master enchanters, and I assume those who make can unmake.”

  Now it was Shaugar’s turn to hesitate. “It’s an interesting notion,” he said at length, “but no Old One has ever crafted anything like those metal beasts outside.”

  “You must animate something,” Aoth replied. “The underlying principles will be the same. And you don’t even have to disable the automatons permanently. If you can just cripple or confuse them for a few heartbeats, that should be good enough.”

  “How’s that?” Orgurth asked.

  “Because most of the enemy are constructs. I don’t know why it’s that way. There wasn’t any shortage of actual ghouls and such garrisoning the Fortress of the Half-Demon or raiding elsewhere in Rashemen, for that matter. But still, we don’t have that many reanimated Raumvirans to contend with, especially because the tumbling boulders squashed some.”

  “And without the Raumvirans to control them,” Kanilak said, “the golems don’t count for anything!” The possibilities inherent in the notion had finally purged the belligerence from his tone.

  “That’s right,” said Aoth. “It will work if we can control the timing and flow of the action so that, when the automatons fail, the undead are where we can get at them.” He looked to Shaugar. “What do you think?”

  “I think,” said the man in the three-eyed mask, “you should come tell the others what you just told us.”

  The wordless psychic call came midway through Dai Shan’s watch, and so eagerly had he awaited it that he nearly responded straightaway. But his father had taught him-sometimes with his fist or his cane-that a Shou merchant lord always thought before he acted, and a moment’s reflection sufficed to convince him he shouldn’t simply abandon sentry duty. As the grisly detritus throughout the fortress attested, the North Country was full of trolls and similar dangers, and he, Vandar, and Jet had no way of sealing up the Fortress of the Half-Demon to prevent incursions from the benighted wilderness outside.

  And even had it been otherwise, he didn’t want his companions in adversity to decide he was behaving suspiciously.

  Thus, he waited for Jet to lumber up the steps to the battlements above the gate to relieve him. As he’d half expected, the surly beast ignored his greeting. Nothing made the griffon resent his current inability to fly more keenly that having to negotiate the often cramped and narrow castle stairways.

  Dai Shan descended to the courtyard with its litter of broken golems and frozen corpses, an assortment of the latter missing their heads for a reason he had yet to understand. Glancing upward to make sure Jet wasn’t watching him instead of the snowy wasteland beyond the walls, he slipped into what had once been a stable. The enclosure had a couple of mangled corpses of its own, both, by the look of them, zombies before Aoth and Vandar’s warriors hacked and battered them to pieces.

  The Shou slipped into one of the stalls, where neither Jet nor Vandar would see him simply by peering through the doorway. Then he sat down cross-legged on the frozen dirt floor with its scatter of ancient rotten straw, breathed slowly and deeply, and emptied his mind of everything but his purpose.

  When he felt himself centered, poised, his consciousness leaped from his body to hurtle south like an arrow. After an instant of exhilarating, almost dizzying lightness, he suddenly stood between a whitewashed longhouse with the heads of dragons, unicorns, and hounds carved into the eaves and a smallish amphitheater dug out of the ground.

  His return to Immilmar was possible because he’d previously created a shadow and sent it on ahead of him. He’d initially told Jet and Vandar the truth when he’d said he’d exhausted the capacity to spawn such servants, but he’d lied when claiming it had yet to renew itself. For why should his rivals share in whatever knowledge he garnered?

  Unfortunately, it had taken the phantom a while to make the trek, for, tireless as it was, it hadn’t been able to travel by day. Nor had that been its only deficiency. Its thoughts murky and inhuman-stupid, if the truth be told-it hadn’t known any better than to lurk near the Witches
’ Hall, the one place in the capital where someone was most likely to detect it.

  But apparently, nobody had, and now that Dai Shan had inhabited it, obliterating its own identity in the process, he wouldn’t linger. He whispered a charm to cloak himself in darkness, then skulked away.

  As he neared a little stand of oaks, he caught rhyming words and registered a sort of rhythmic pressure impinging on his arcane sensitivities. He paused and peered because he recognized the voice. It was Yhelbruna herself working magic alone in the freezing night.

  Or trying, anyway. Dai Shan couldn’t identify the language she was speaking. Some tongue of the Feywild, perhaps. But as a mage of sorts in his own specialized fashion, he recognized the strident insistence in her tone. It was the way ritual casters sounded when their magic was failing, when the spirits ignored them and reality balked at bending to their will.

  Yet this was the most celebrated hathran in Rashemen struggling to exert power in what was surely a consecrated and thus conducive spot. Her current lack of success was accordingly strange, so strange Dai Shan felt tempted to continue spying.

  He wouldn’t, though, because time was short. He needed to stick to his plan, and besides, even if she was having an off night, no one was more likely to take notice of him than the witch in the leather mask.

  He prowled on to Blackstone House, a shabby excuse for an inn but the best the Rashemi capital had to offer and the establishment where he’d secured accommodations for himself and his retainers. He surveyed what the rough exterior timber wall afforded in the way of hand- and toeholds, and then he clambered upward.

  Halfway to the shuttered window that was his destination, he realized he didn’t actually know if his followers still occupied the rooms on the other side. They might have gone home to Thesk after his disappearance, especially if Bez had reported him dead.

  Oh, well, if someone other than a Shou responded to his tapping, Dai Shan could likely still elicit information somehow and ensure his informant’s silence afterward as well.

  As it turned out, though, it was moon-faced, round-shouldered Cheng Lin who hesitantly opened the shutters and goggled out. “Master!” he yelped.

  Inwardly, Dai Shan winced at the volume of his retainer’s voice, the naked astonishment in his expression, and, well, everything raucous and raw. With attendants of this caliber, was it any wonder he had to do everything himself?

  “My dutiful helper,” he said. “It gladdens me to find you and the others faithfully awaiting my return.” The gods forbid they should actually have gotten up off their arses and come looking for him. “Perhaps you’ll do me the profound favor of stepping back from the window.”

  “Yes, Master!” the other Shou answered, and Dai Shan climbed inside.

  As his master’s major domo on the road, Cheng Lin had his own little private room. A couple of Shou voices murmured on the other side of the door, but they didn’t sound excited. Apparently no one else had heard the functionary squawk.

  “Captain Bez told everyone you died in the fighting,” Cheng Lin said.

  “How kind of the illustrious soldier to mention me. I imagine it was in the course of laying claim to the griffons.”

  Dai Shan pulled the shutters closed, making the room darker, so dark, in fact, that the shroud of shadow that still clung to him all but smothered the glow of the little oil lamp altogether. The scant light remaining just barely gleamed on the tusks and glass eyes of the stuffed boar’s head on the wall.

  “He didn’t,” Cheng Lin said. “I mean, he tried to take the griffons, but the main witch, that Yhelbruna, wouldn’t let him.”

  Dai Shan felt a surge of excitement potent enough that habit alone might prove insufficient to preserve his composure. He took a breath and made a deliberate effort to steady himself.

  “Then, if I understand my loyal assistant correctly, the beasts remain unclaimed in their invisible birdcage.”

  Cheng Lin nodded, his double chin wobbling. “Yes.”

  “In that case, please relate all that’s occurred hereabouts since the brave captain was generous enough to grant me passage aboard his skyship.”

  Cheng Lin obeyed in a somewhat disjointed, backfilling fashion, but still, the tale of Bez’s disappointment, botched assassination attempt, and subsequent flight emerged clearly enough. At the end, the pudgy servant said, “I wrote to your father to tell him of your death. I mean, your supposed death. I had no reason to doubt what the southerner said.”

  Dai Shan’s thoughts turned to three of the dozens of empty-hand techniques he’d mastered-the first, a blow with the heel of the palm to the base of the nose; the second, a chop to the throat; and the third, a stab to the solar plexus with stiffened fingers. Any one of them would kill Cheng Lin instantly.

  “That was exactly the right thing to do,” he said. “I commend my retainer on the diligence with which he attends to his responsibilities. Has my lord father’s answer arrived?”

  “Not yet, Master.”

  “When it does, you will of course understand that because he wrote based on false information, we can only truly serve him by disregarding instructions to return home or do anything else that would preclude the completion of our errand. And to avoid confusing those less discerning than yourself, you won’t disclose that such invalid orders even exist.”

  Cheng Lin hesitated. “Master, our lord, your father, has always said that when he gives a command-”

  “He expects unconditional obedience. As well he might, given that for longer than either you or I have been alive, he’s been the most frightening man in Thesk. Still, he is in Thesk, while duty has led you to a land less civilized. Perhaps, paragon of prudence that you are, you should ask yourself who’s the most frightening man in Rashemen.”

  Cheng Lin swallowed. “Master, naturally, as always, I depend on you for guidance as to how I may best serve our house.”

  “Which is why I trust my wise aide above all others and will always reward his fidelity as it deserves.”

  “Thank you, Master.” Cheng Lin paused in the manner of one deliberating whether to speak further or hold his peace. In the end, reticence yielded to curiosity. “May I ask, then, if we’re aren’t going home even if our lord orders us back, what are we going to do?”

  What, indeed? If not for the indignity implicit in acknowledging perplexity to someone as lowly and lacking in grace as Cheng Lin, Dai Shan might have conceded that his was an excellent question.

  Dai Shan had to obtain the wild griffons to pull ahead of his brothers in their lifelong competition to be proclaimed their father’s heir. And at least now he’d learned the beasts were still outside Immilmar and discovered what else was going on.

  Still, what could he do? If he revealed himself and laid claim to the griffons, Yhelbruna would be no more inclined to believe him than she had Bez. Less, considering that Dai Shan hadn’t even led a war party of his own into the north. Falconer and the rest of his undead confederates, who’d promised him the winged creatures in exchange for his treachery, were gone. And without such formidable assistance, he and his handful of Shou had no hope of making off with the beasts either by stealth or force of arms.

  What, then, did that leave? Dai Shan didn’t know-yet-so he supposed that for the moment, he’d do well to focus on the one aspect of the situation that was already clear.

  After the victory at the Fortress of the Half-Demon, Vandar Cherlinka did have a legitimate claim on the wild griffons. So did Aoth Fezim. The latter had apparently emerged from the dark maze somewhere far away. Jet, who sensibly still didn’t trust Dai Shan, declined to divulge his master’s precise whereabouts, but the familiar could speak for the war mage by virtue of their mystical bond.

  It followed, then, that Dai Shan could allow neither Vandar nor Jet to return to Immilmar. He thanked his patrons in shadow that, never injured as badly as the griffon to begin with, he’d recovered more quickly.

  Still, even impaired, the beast was dangerous. So, in his dense barbarian wa
y, was Vandar, and he’d never been seriously hurt in the first place.

  Plainly, the killings would take some doing, but Dai Shan could manage them. He simply needed to take each of his victims by surprise at a time and place that would preclude the others noticing any subsequent commotion.

  “Just bide here for now,” he told Cheng Lin, “and don’t tell anyone of my visit. My time in your company is drawing short, but I’ll return soon in a more permanent sort of way.”

  Cheng Lin grinned. “I thought I was talking to one of your shadows.”

  Dai Shan could only deplore the overt display of self-satisfaction. Still, perhaps the man wasn’t a complete idiot after all.

  Dai Shan bade him farewell and then separated himself from the vessel he’d inhabited as easily as he might have flipped off a loose mitten. And like a mitten that no longer had a hand inside it, what remained of the shadow collapsed into formlessness on its way to nonexistence.

  Dai Shan sensed but didn’t actually witness the final obliteration, even though the whole process only took a heartbeat. By then, he was back in the stable.

  Graven with arcane sigils on the side facing inward, the granite slab could lock in place or swing like an ordinary gate on hinges, depending on the requirements of the moment. Aoth’s fire-kissed eyes could make out the silvery web of potentiality that accomplished those functions but not how it operated.

  Fortunately, they could likewise discern the newer patterns of malignancy festering inside the rock like aneurysms waiting to rupture, and that magic he did understand. It fell within his field of expertise.

  He motioned to the gate with the head of his spear. “The undead mean to come through here.”

  “Are you sure?” Shaugar asked. “They’ve thrown thunderbolts and such at all the entries.”

  “So would I in their place. Such a bombardment makes it harder for the defenders to decide where you really mean to breach, and if you do manage to knock something down, you can always adjust your plans accordingly. They didn’t blast through, though, and in the midst of all the distractions, someone has done a masterful job of rotting out this particular chunk of stone. It’ll crumble when the Raumvirans want it to.”