“But? You’ve already made it plain you have a grievance. You might as well go on and tell me what it is.”
Mangan took a breath. “As you wish. Before, I praised your wisdom. That was flattery, meant to quell any hard feelings that may have risen between us. The truth is, lately, you’ve been wrong at least as often as you’ve been right.”
“Tell me how.”
“I told you from the start that I could destroy the undead. It’s the Iron Lord’s responsibility, and the Wychlaran handed me the office, so your sisterhood must believe I can handle it. But you, hathran, insisted the spirits wanted me to sit by the fire while others, outlanders, mostly, fought my battles for me. And how did that work out? Folcoerr Dulsaer and his Aglarondans died. So, apparently, have Vandar Cherlinka and the Griffon Lodge, Aoth Fezim and his companions, and Dai Shan. The filthy Halruaans ended up trying to murder you and did kill others as they fled the city. Meanwhile, the undead are still roaming free, butchering folk who look to the Huhrong’s Citadel for protection!”
Yhelbruna didn’t know how to answer. It was an unaccustomed feeling and one she disliked. “I can’t deny the truth of any of that.”
“Then please, give me your blessing to go fight for Rashemen in the way I think best! Better still, come along and help!”
Well, why not?
As she’d just confessed, Mangan’s indictment of her was fair. Her plan for destroying the undead had failed. Indeed, now that none of her supposed champions remained, her scheme seemed not just wrongheaded but preposterous.
Perhaps the spirits no longer guided her decisions. Maybe she was simply imagining their promptings as she finally slipped into senescence, her mind and magic failing together.
But she didn’t feel senile. And no one could deny that the wild griffons and their golden telthor leader were a miracle, a gift from the Three intended for a special purpose, and she and Vandar were the ones who’d brought them down from the High Country.
Besides, Mangan’s decision to take every available warrior and rush south just felt rash and reckless. Unfortunately, Yhelbruna could see she had no hope of talking him out of it and knew she’d reached the point where she could no longer command him. Her judgment in this matter was no longer credible, and other witches, maybe the very hathrans at her back, would speak up to countermand her orders.
The only thing Yhelbruna could control was her own actions. “I’m sure many of my sisters will march with you,” she said. “But I have other matters to which I must attend.”
Mangan sighed, and she sensed his mingled disappointment and disgust. “I understand, and I certainly wouldn’t want to take you away from anything important.” He shifted his gaze to the witches behind her. “Learned sisters, if any of you intend to come south and help the brave men who fight in your name, I could use your advice and magic starting right now.”
Yhelbruna had in effect been dismissed. That feeling too, was both unfamiliar and unwelcome, but circumstances obliged her to tolerate the disrespect. Rebuking the Iron Lord when he was in the midst of readying his troops for war would only make her look petty and petulant, childish in the erratic, snappish way of an addled old woman.
Afterward, restless, she wandered the snowy streets of Immilmar. Even with all the warriors at the citadel, and the excited little boys peering in the gate to observe as much of the muster as they could, no one could honestly say the rest of the town seemed deserted. A dog barked, the smell of baking bread wafted from a kitchen window, and, his hammer tapping, a carpenter replaced a plank on one of the bridges. Still, under the surface, Yhelbruna’s surroundings felt strange, desolate, or even ominous for no reason she could define.
Is it really all just me, she wondered, then scowled and doggedly told herself it wasn’t. She turned back toward the Witches’ Hall to attempt what she already sensed would prove to be yet another opaque if not nonsensical divination.
Cera stumbled along in a blur of misery, chiefly aware of the ragged, slimy touch of the dead men supporting her and the even filthier feeling of contamination inside her.
Then, however, she felt a release, like someone had lifted a crushing weight off her or removed strangling hands from her neck. The relief was only partial if not marginal, but it sufficed to quicken her thoughts.
Not wanting her captors to realize she had in any measure recovered, she glanced around through half-lowered eyelids. By the feeble greenish luminosity of a phantom floating along ahead of her, she discerned that the endless profusion of tombs and sarcophagi had given way to a more normal sort of tunnel.
Combined with the feeling of relief, the change in her surroundings revealed that she and her captors had just emerged from the deathways! And even through all the stone and earth that still separated her from its light, she could faintly sense the Yellow Sun above her. She felt like laughing and weeping at the same time and clenched herself lest she do either.
In due course, her captors marched her up to what she recognized as the entrance hall of the primary keep of the Fortress of the Half-Demon. The sooty opening where Jhesrhi had burned away the doors was unmistakable. So were the hacked and blasted bodies.
Some of the undead were outside in the courtyard amid a litter of those frozen corpses. Lod and Dai Shan were looking out the doorway and conversing, and Cera strained to eavesdrop on their conversation.
“How much of a problem are they likely to be?” the bone naga asked.
“I doubt the griffon can fly very far,” Dai Shan answered, “which means they won’t make it out of this wasteland quickly. Still, if the sagacious champion of the undead can see a way to complete his conquest expeditiously, it might be well to do so.”
“I can,” Lod replied, swaying. “The strategy Uramar devised is clever, and I came to Rashemen because I can move it along even faster. The Codex of Araunt contains magic germane to the purpose.”
“But has anyone set the scheme in motion in the first place?” With a slight wave of his hand, Dai Shan indicated the bodies sprawled in the snow outside. “The learned prophet sees that circumstances here are as I reported. Your enemies took the Fortress of the Half-Demon, and it may be that Uramar and all his lieutenants lie among the slain.”
“I doubt it,” Lod said, “considering they had the option to retreat into the deathways when it became necessary. My judgment and instincts alike tell me we’ll find Uramar at Beacon Cairn.”
“I fervently hope so. Shall we go there, then?”
Cera realized that to “go there” would mean a return to the deathways, and in her brittle state, the prospect nearly maddened her. She struggled against the urge to try to yank away from the zombies and run.
“Yes,” said Lod, “but not quite yet. My folk fought a hard battle before we encountered you, and though we don’t suffer fatigue or pain exactly as mortals do, a period of recovery is still advisable. We’ll move on at midnight.”
“And-if the mighty and honorable naga lord will forgive me for seeking absolute clarity on the point-if I continue making myself useful, when the Eminence of Araunt rules Rashemen, I can take the wild griffons and depart in peace?”
“Of course,” said Lod, “I promise.”
With that, the undead began to make themselves at home, although they didn’t all simply flop down and rest. Lod slithered forth with half a dozen followers to explore the castle, scavenge equipment, and see if he did recognize any of the mangled corpses littering the battleground. Ghouls set about lighting a fire in a cold hearth and dragging goblin bodies close to it to thaw.
At which point, Cera’s guards hauled her away through the keep until they found what they evidently considered a suitable chamber. There, they dumped her on the cold, hard, grimy floor and withdrew, pulling the door shut behind them.
She told herself that where securing prisoners was concerned, the mute, dull-witted things could have learned a precaution or two from Halonya’s wyrmkeepers. But when she struggled and failed to clamber to her feet, she realized wea
kness was likely to hold her every bit as well as locks and iron bars.
But she couldn’t let it. Her desperate plan had gotten Jhesrhi and her out of the deathways even if it had done so in about the most unfortunate way imaginable. Now they had to finish their escape.
On the far wall, stout shutters sealed windows scarcely wider than arrow loops. At a couple of points, lines of pale light showed where the ironbound wooden panels fit imperfectly against the stone.
Cera crawled forward. The trailing scraps of her torn mail scraped against the floor.
She couldn’t see precisely where the light shone down. There wasn’t enough of it to make a brighter spot amid the gloom. But she felt it when it touched her.
The sensation, however, was not what she’d anticipated. Ever since she was a little girl, even before she realized her calling, she’d loved the warm caress of sunlight. Now it stung, and she-or rather the pollution inside her-wanted to flinch from it like a parasitic grub squirming away from a healer’s forceps.
But she didn’t flinch. She stayed where she was and fixed her eyes on the luminous cracks, keeping them there even when her head began to throb.
I accept the pain, she thought. It’s like a cauterizing iron searing infection out of me. And while it does, I pray for my god to reveal himself.
The discomfort faded, and the gloom and the massive structure around her faded with it, until she was floating in a sky of flawless blue, gazing into the heart of the Yellow Sun. All around her, though she couldn’t actually see them, she had a sense of wheels meshing and turning one another with utter smoothness and regularity. It was like the world’s most accomplished dwarf artisans had assembled to build the largest, most intricate, and most finely crafted mill in all creation.
Gradually, Amaunator’s radiance warmed and cleansed her, and her perception of the perfect order that was as intrinsic to his nature as the daylight soothed her with the promise that all things, no matter how seemingly discordant, resolved themselves into harmony in the end. Her communion with him was so blissful that a part of her could have basked in it forevermore. But Jhesrhi needed her, and so, after a time, she mustered the will to abandon the rapture of pure contemplation for more practical concerns.
“I have to go back,” she breathed, “to bring more of your grace to the world, and for that, I need my magic. Please, help me.”
She felt a pulse of reassurance that, now that she was out of the dark maze and purged of the taint of incipient vampirism as well, she could channel the god’s power as readily as ever. Then she was back on the floor.
For a moment, she lay relaxed and almost mindlessly serene in the afterglow of her meditation. Then she realized the light leaking through the cracks was dimmer than before.
She didn’t know how long her trance had lasted, but obviously, long enough for the westering sun to travel some distance across the sky. It would be dark soon, and once it was, the undead would be more active and alert.
She tried to rise, and as before, found herself clumsy and feeble. Her communion with the Keeper had revitalized her spiritually but hadn’t restored the physical vigor exsanguination had cost her.
Because, she supposed, she could attend to that herself. She murmured a prayer and felt a warm tingling as light poured into the core of her and made her body glow from within. Inside the blood-spotted rents in her mail and the padding beneath, the fang marks dwindled and disappeared.
She tried again to stand and did so without difficulty. She crept to the door, pressed her ear against the panel, listened, and heard nothing. Unfortunately, that was no guarantee of safety. The undead were notoriously quiet. She took a breath, gripped the handle, and jerked the door open.
As she’d feared, one of the zombies that had tossed her into the room was still standing and staring at nothing just outside. She supposed she was lucky it wasn’t both of them, although she would have felt luckier still if she had a weapon, a shield, and intact armor, or, as long as she was wishing, Aoth and twenty stalwart Brothers of the Griffon surrounding her.
Because she didn’t, she hopped back as the dead man lurched around to face her and slashed with his sword. The cut fell short, and she swept her hand in an arc that evoked the sun’s path from horizon to horizon. “The Keeper grant you peace,” she said.
Golden light shone through the air, and the living corpse crumbled into dust. A bit of it wafted into Cera’s nose and made her want to sneeze. The creature’s blade clanked on the floor, and its brigandine thumped down with it.
Well, Cera thought, that worked out. Especially if no other creature had noticed the holy light flashing out the doorway or the noise the falling sword and leather armor had made.
Deeming it better than nothing even though her clerical training had only encompassed the use of a mace, she picked up the blade. Then she peeked out the door. To her relief, no other undead horror was shambling or floating in her direction. Not yet, anyway.
Now, where was Jhesrhi? Was it possible Lod’s followers had taken the same casual approach to imprisoning the mage that they had to containing Cera?
Perhaps. They’d apparently assumed Cera’s vampire bites rendered her helpless, and from listening to them talk, she knew they’d beaten Jhesrhi senseless after Dai Shan exposed her deception. They’d also placed the wizard in some sort of restraints. They might well believe she was helpless too.
If so, Jhesrhi might be nearby. The undead might not have felt the need to haul her back down to the dungeons and lock her up properly either.
Cera stepped out into the corridor and headed in the opposite direction from the spaces near the primary entrance where many of the undead were taking their ease. To her relief, most of the doors she came to were open, which made checking the various rooms easier, and the traces of light leaking in from outdoors at various points alleviated the gloom just enough for her to grope her way along.
But the feeble illumination didn’t reveal everything, and it was a sunlady’s instincts, not Cera’s eyes, that abruptly gave her a sense of insatiable hunger and boundless hatred rushing out of the dark.
She jumped back and said, “Amaunator!” The Keeper’s power flowed into the core of her, then streamed down her arm to set her stolen sword aglow.
The brightness revealed a ragged shadow with a twisted smudge of a face. The Keeper’s light balked it, but Cera suspected the magic would hold it back for only an instant. Then it would either come back on the attack or raise the alarm.
She hurriedly recited a prayer and tapped the shining sword against the floor. Some of the holy light leaped from the steel to the stone, surging outward from the point of contact to form first a circle and then rays emanating from it.
In an instant, the rays shot out far enough that the wraith was floating just above them. Assailed by the sun symbol’s power, the phantom convulsed and frayed away to nothing.
All right, Cera thought, panting, I had a guard outside my cell. Let’s see if the ghost was lurking here because it was keeping an eye on Jhesrhi.
She cautiously opened a closed door. Gagged with a metal contraption bolted around her head, her hands shackled behind her, the wizard lay on the floor.
Cera smiled with a jubilation that immediately gave way to concern when Jhesrhi failed to react to her appearance. The priestess hurried over to her friend and knelt down beside her.
Thanks be to the Keeper and all the kindly powers, Jhesrhi was still breathing, but that was about all that could be said. She was too profoundly unconscious to stir even when Cera spoke to her, and when the priestess gently lifted the lids of her amber eyes, the pupils were different sizes. Blood matted her hair, and her tawny skin was a patchwork of bruises, scrapes, and scratches. One leg bent between the knee and ankle, and, not content merely to shackle a mage’s wonder-working hands, the undead had broken every one of her fingers.
Cera recited a healing prayer, reached out to Amaunator for all the power she could draw, laid her hand on Jhesrhi’s shoulder, and se
nt the pure essence of life and health streaming into her stricken comrade’s body. A few of Jhesrhi’s contusions faded, and her leg shifted and clicked as it sought to mend the break. But the wizard didn’t wake.
Cera prayed a second time. Cuts closed and, with a soft but wince-inducing grinding, the fingers of Jhesrhi’s left hand straightened. But she still didn’t rouse.
Like every practitioner of the healing arts, Cera had learned early in her career that some hurts were beyond remedy, but by the Yellow Sun, these hurts were not going to be among them! She took several deep, slow breaths to center herself.
Then Dai Shan said, “I admire both the sunlady’s resilience and her devotion to her friend.”
Cera jerked around. The little Shou was standing in the doorway.
“Nonetheless,” he continued, “I must regretfully request that she distance herself from Lady Sir Jhesrhi and the sword as well.”
Instead, Cera snatched up the blade and scrambled to her feet. “Stay back,” she said.
“I wish I could, but such forbearance would be contrary to my interests. It’s beneficial for the sapient prophet of the dead to hear from others that I was of service, but it can only enhance his gratitude to observe my diligence on behalf of his cause firsthand. That’s why I came to check on you, and I trust he’ll be happy I did.”
“He won’t be grateful no matter what you do.”
Dai Shan slightly inclined his head. “That sad possibility has occurred to me. Still, at the moment, the mighty king of serpents represents the only possible path to the wild griffons. What can a sensible man do but walk it, at least until a better course reveals itself?”
Cera shook her head. “But you’ve seen the undead up close. You’ve felt how they poison the world just by being in it. How can you bring yourself to side with them?”
“The virtuous sunlady deems them wicked and unnatural, and who could refute her assessment? Yet dividing all things into good or evil, salubrious or abominable, is but one way of considering the world. I classify things according to whether they aid or hinder the interests of the House of Shan and my advancement within it.”
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