Prophet of the Dead botg-5

by Richard Lee Byers

  I’m fine! snarled Jet across their psychic link. Clearly, the bond had enabled him to perceive Aoth’s concern in the same way Aoth had registered his pain. Exercise is what I need to recover the last little bit of my strength. I only wish I was exerting myself for a sensible reason.

  Do you want to win or not? Aoth replied.

  Jet gave a disgusted rasp. It was a noise he made when he recognized his rider was right but was unwilling to admit it straight out. If you think I’m unhappy, wait until you see Vandar.

  Vandar disagrees with one of my ideas? How surprising.

  Jet laughed a screeching laugh, and they flew onward.

  The trees grew thickly in the Ashenwood, and Aoth assumed those he sought knew something about how to hide. But fortunately, the ashes and aspens had shed their leaves, and he had his fire-kissed eyes and Jet’s sharp senses to foil attempts at concealment. He was confident they’d find their quarry if they simply kept looking, and toward twilight, he spotted a man with black side whiskers and grubby red and yellow clothing trying to dig and chop roots from the frozen earth while a skinny, shivering fellow dressed in the same colors stood watch with a crossbow cradled in his hands.

  Unfortunately, the sentry was looking around at ground level, but not higher. Perched in the branches above him and his comrade, three rusty brown ettercaps, their forms an angular mix of human and spider, were drawing glistening white strands from their spinnerets. When they had enough webbing, they’d drop it to snare their prey.

  Aoth was still pondering how best to handle the situation when Jet furled his wings and dived. Maybe he wanted to prove he was as capable of maneuvering among and, when necessary, smashing right through branches as he’d ever been.

  Thanks to their mystical connection, Aoth knew which ettercap Jet was targeting. He pointed his spear, spoke a word of command, and hurled darts of blue light at the other two.

  Then he and Jet were plunging through the canopy, branches cracking beneath them like a drumroll. The ettercap the griffon had chosen looked up in reaction to the noise, then flexed its four hind limbs and tried to spring aside.

  With a flick of his wings, Jet compensated and crashed down on the spidery hunter anyway. His talons punched through shell into the flesh beneath, and the branch on which the ettercap had been perching snapped as well.

  They all plunged on earthward together. Jet lashed his wings to slow their descent and landed without giving his master much of a jolt. His weight drove his eagle claws even deeper into the ettercap, though, and through their bond, Aoth felt the creature convulse and then stop moving as its body squashed.

  Aoth glanced up. His magic hadn’t killed either of the other ettercaps, but they were fleeing, scurrying and leaping from branch to branch and tree to tree.

  He then pointed his spear at the foragers, both of whom were frozen with shock, and set the point of the weapon aglow with an intimidating display of power.

  “Hello,” he said. “Do you know me? If not, you surely remember my steed. Which of you vermin shot him out of the sky?”

  “Not me!” babbled the man who’d been digging the roots. “Not either of us!”

  “No matter,” said Jet. “You were all trying. That’s why I couldn’t let the ettercaps have you.” Making a show of it, he pulled his gory talons from the carcass beneath him.

  “Please!” said the root digger. “It wasn’t personal. Our captain ordered us to shoot, and we obeyed. You’re sellswords. You know how it is!”

  “We do,” said Aoth. “Just like we know it’s bad for a mercenary company’s reputation to let anybody attack it without reprisal. But fortunately for you, the man we really came to see is Mario Bez. If you take us to him, you just might live to see the moon rise.”

  Both foragers seemed cowed and eager to cooperate. Still, Aoth made sure the failed sentry pointed his crossbow away from his captors and uncocked it slowly.

  Meanwhile, he dismounted. Jet was always happy to carry him through the air, but not when they were on the ground. It was beneath his dignity to perform the function of a common beast of burden.

  They ordered their captives to walk in front and watched them for signs of mischief. But the foragers led them straight to their camp and without trying to warn their comrades that enemies were approaching. That, however, didn’t keep the other sellswords from snatching for their weapons when Aoth and Jet came into view.

  “Easy!” said Aoth. “If we wanted to kill you, we would have attacked from above in the dead of night. Half of you would have died in your sleep.”

  “And if one of you raises a weapon or starts jabbering a spell,” Jet rasped, “these two idiots we caught will die right now. Then Captain Fezim and I will slaughter the rest of you.”

  A bit of broken twig caught in the grizzled hair that now hung loose, not gathered in his customary ponytail, Mario Bez smiled. “I don’t take that threat lightly. The two of you wouldn’t be here now if you weren’t every bit as tough as the stories say. But if it is just the two of you dropping by, I’m fairly certain my crew and I can cope with you.”

  “Even if you’re right,” Aoth replied, “you wouldn’t all live through it. And those who did wouldn’t be any better off than they were before.”

  Bez raised an eyebrow. “Whereas …?”

  “The undead didn’t all perish in the Fortress of the Half-Demon. In fact, the ones that remain are a bigger problem than anybody realized. You’ll hear the details if we come to an agreement, but the nub of it all is that Rashemen still needs you to do the job you promised to do in the first place.”

  “In exchange for what? At this point, I assume Yhelbruna wouldn’t stand for Halruaans claiming any of the wild griffons, no matter how much we contributed to the solution of her problem.”

  “In exchange for safe passage out of the country.”

  Bez snorted. “Not exactly a generous offer for professionals of our caliber.”

  “Your other option is to go on hiding here like the common outlaws the Rashemi now consider you to be. How’s that working out?” Aoth waved his spear to indicate the haggard faces and crudely constructed lean-tos he saw before him. “Do you like sleeping rough in the cold of a northern winter? Anybody sick yet? Are you finding plenty to eat? Just how often do you run into ettercaps and trolls? I hear the Ashenwood is crawling with them.”

  Bez glowered. “I won’t insult your intelligence by saying we don’t find our situation challenging. But after what’s happened, it’s difficult to believe Yhelbruna and the Iron Lord would let us depart in peace no matter what.”

  Jet made a spitting noise that was half screech as well. “Liars always have trouble believing other folk are telling the truth.”

  “You’re right,” said Aoth. “But maybe Captain Bez senses there’s something I haven’t mentioned. And if we’re going to sneer at him for being the lying, traitorous turd he is, then maybe I shouldn’t hold any information back.”

  Bez’s hand had shifted to the hilt of his main gauche. Evidently, he didn’t appreciate being likened to dung. “By all means,” he said through gritted teeth, “enlighten me.”

  “You understand the locals have cause to dislike you,” Aoth replied, “but you don’t realize just how much of your treachery has come out. Vandar Cherlinka survived your attack to reveal you and your crew murdered his lodge brothers.”

  For a heartbeat, Bez looked taken aback. Then he chuckled. “I can see how that looks bad.”

  “Still, I told you the truth. Rashemen’s need is such that if you help now, Yhelbruna swears by the Three that each and every one of you will receive a pardon for his misdeeds. But for you, Captain, that won’t be quite the end of the matter. You and I may think of this land as backward, but it understands dueling as well as Chessenta, Impiltur, or any civilized realm you care to name. And before you take your leave, one of the folk you’ve wronged will call you out.”

  “Are you referring to yourself?”

  “I don’t know for certain,
but I hope so.”

  “Then perhaps it would be better to kill you here and now.”

  “Better for whom? It’s only you who will have to fight the extra fight. No one will bother your men.”

  A white-haired, sour-faced man with a wand tucked in his broad yellow belt cleared his throat.

  Bez’s eyes flicked to the side to see who’d spoken, then immediately returned to Aoth. “Uregaunt,” he said. “What is it?”

  “We’re sellswords,” the old mage said. “We follow a leader because it’s in our interest, not because he’s some halfwit inbred nobleman or somebody like that. Starving here in the snow is not in our interest.”

  Bez smiled a smile so crooked it fell just short of being a sneer. “So you’re telling me if I don’t accept Captain Fezim’s offer, you’ll desert.”

  “I’m saying I’ve watched you win plenty of fights. I’ll wager you can win one more.”

  “Or,” Aoth said, “I suppose that if you’re afraid, you could even refuse to duel. But I wish you luck commanding sellswords or attracting contracts when word of that gets around.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Bez said, “just examining all possibilities. You’d do the same in my place.”

  “So is that a yes?” asked Aoth.

  Bez snorted. “It is, curse you to the Hells. I assume you understand that to fight to best advantage, my crew and I will need the Storm of Vengeance.”

  “I do,” said Aoth. He paused, giving the Halruaan a breath to examine what he must imagine to be the possibilities of that. Then: “That’s why Jhesrhi and Yhelbruna are busy carving runes in the hull. If you attack us once you’re in the air, or try to fly away without meeting your obligations, it will be your turn to burst into flame and fall out of the sky.”

  The tent still held the heat of Cera’s conjured sunlight long after the glow had died away. She supposed it retained the heat of the three bouts of lovemaking too. At any rate, she was warm enough, but a mix of tenderness and worry still prompted her to snuggle even closer to Aoth’s naked body.

  She hadn’t meant to wake him, but his luminous blue eyes opened in the gloom, and then he kissed her. “Ready for another tumble?” he asked.

  “That would be lovely if you can manage it. One more. After that, it will be dawn and my time to pray.”

  “Then let’s have at it. I know you can’t keep Amaunator waiting, and I don’t want him interrupting me in the middle.” He caressed her breast and made it tingle.

  Good as it felt, she put her hand on his to stop it moving. “We’ve been too hungry for one another’s touch to talk much. Before we start in again, and then have to get up and be about our business, I just … well, I want you to know the deathways were bad for me, worse, even, than for Jhesrhi, because they all but cut me off from the Yellow Sun. It was partly the hope of finding you again that kept me from breaking down.”

  “Only partly?”

  “Be grateful an impious cutthroat rates even that high.”

  “That sounded witchy. Yhelbruna and her kind are a bad influence … But, darling lass, if you insist on talking seriously, then I guess I should take a turn. I missed you too. Enough that I realized something.

  “You can’t turn down being sunlady of Chessenta if your peers elect you to the office,” he continued. “Being a priestess is your calling. And I can’t give up being a wandering sellsword. That’s mine. But I swear by the Pure Flame, we won’t lose one another. At the moment, I have no idea how to make things work, but we’ll find a way.”

  “I want that too. Perhaps we can figure it out after we defeat the undead.”

  She’d intended to sound confident, but his lambent eyes narrowed. “Are you scared we won’t? Mario Bez has the scruples of a starving rat, but he has no play except to deliver on his promise. Neither he and his men, the Old Ones, nor I have gone into Immilmar, so Lod’s agents in town haven’t seen us and can’t have sent word to him that we’re lurking about. If Lady Luck smiles, we’ll catch the undead by surprise.”

  “I’m more worried about Jet’s part of the plan.”

  “Because he hasn’t healed?”

  She sighed. “It’s difficult to answer that. He’s done all the healing the Keeper’s light could promote, given that I wasn’t able to tend him until days after he was injured. But he should take more time to rest. Are we sure this is a wise idea?”

  Aoth grunted. “It’s difficult to answer that. Taking on undead and dark fey, we’re likely to need all the strength we can muster.”

  “But will it even work? Yhelbruna said the Three would incline the wild griffons to serve those who defeat the undead. So far, no one truly has.”

  “Which means that at this point, goddesses and spirits don’t figure in, and in the absence of their prompting, the griffons will act in accordance with their nature. That’s to follow the leader of the pride, and if Jet defeats the golden beast, he’ll be the leader.”

  “But the golden beast’s no ordinary griffon. It’s a telthor.”

  “And Jet’s the product of enchantments I cast not just on him but his bloodline going back for generations.”

  “I’m not concerned because I underestimate him. It’s because I care about him and know you love him.”

  Aoth snorted. “If I ever said such a thing to him, he’d mock me forever after. But you’re right, I do, and I argued when he broached his scheme on the journey back from the Ashenwood. But maybe he needs this fight to test himself. He doesn’t want to go on living except in the knowledge that he’s still as strong as ever.”

  Cera frowned. “That’s foolish and arrogant too.”

  “For a human being, maybe, but that’s not what he is.”

  “No,” she said, trying to banish worry from her tone, “he’s the mighty, fearless creature who fought Tchazzar and Alasklerbanbastos, and obviously, he’ll be fine. So we’ll stop fretting over him and conclude our reunion properly.” She lifted her hand from his and glided her fingertips down his stomach.

  The golden griffon was soaring high above the hilly ground north of Immilmar. Jet flew in at a higher altitude still. It would be foolish to cede the advantage of the high air before the duel had even begun.

  As he made his approach, he felt an impulse to take stock of his wings and see if they were aching even a little, but he thrust the urge away. Whether he was hale or still impaired, it was too late to worry about it now.

  A prickly sensation, almost stinging but not quite, danced over his body, and the blueness of the sky brightened and darkened from one moment to the next. He’d experienced the same phenomena on his previous visit. He was crossing the intangible barrier the hathrans had established to contain the feral griffons. Fortunately, because the original spell hadn’t targeted him, it had no power to keep him out.

  Their feathers bronze and brown in the sunlight, common griffons flew toward him. They might well remember seeing him before, and on that occasion, he’d fled from them, or so they would have believed. They likely expected him either to do the same again or set down on the ground in submission.

  Instead, he shrieked a challenge that caused the wild griffons to assess his attitude, size, and manifest strength anew. Then they all veered off in various directions, declining a confrontation and in the process clearing an expanse of empty air between him and their golden leader.

  The king griffon was even larger than Jet, and no scarring or bald patches marred his plumage and pelt as they gleamed like polished metal in the sun. Now that his followers had failed to dominate the newcomer, he deigned to take notice of Jet himself. Opening his beak, he gave a piercing scream of his own to demand deference.

  Jet simultaneously circled right and climbed even higher, the start of a corkscrew path that might allow him to plunge down at the golden griffon from above and with the wind at his back. His actions conveyed his defiance as clearly as any cry, and, pinions beating, blue eyes glaring, the other beast began maneuvering too.

  Perhaps because he’d been restl
essly flying around and around his invisible cage for so long and knew the space inside so intimately, the gold beast almost immediately found a fast-flowing updraft. The vertical current flung him upward, and in a moment, he possessed the high air. Jet realized he had little hope of reaching the same height swiftly enough for it to matter even if he exerted himself to the utmost.

  But it might serve him well to pretend that was what he was doing. So he beat his wings and climbed like a dunce while the king griffon made a lazy-looking circle and positioned himself to dive.

  The gold then hurtled downward. Jet kept climbing as if he had yet to perceive the threat or as if he were suicidal.

  When the telthor had nearly plunged into striking distance, he gave a scream intended to petrify his prey. Jet, however, took the shriek as his cue to raise one wing, dip the other, and, with the agility Aoth’s prenatal enchantments and a lifetime of aerial combat had produced, dodge out from underneath the gold’s talons.

  The gold plummeted through the space he’d just vacated, and now Jet was the one who held the high air and had his talons positioned to stab and seize. He furled his wings and dived after his foe.

  The griffon chieftain zigzagged, trying to evade. Steadily closing the distance, Jet compensated as necessary and reached to catch the muscles bunching between the gold’s wings.

  An instant before Jet’s talons could strike home, the telthor dodged a final time. Instead of plunging down on his foe’s back, Jet caught the middle of his right wing. Well, that ought to be good enough.

  Jet’s aquiline claws clenched in flesh. He raked with his leonine hind legs and lowered his beak to bite. Then the pinion to which he clung lashed with startling violence and flung him off.

  Jet snapped his own wings in an effort to close and grab hold once more. But he was too eager, lunging before he’d quite recovered full control of his body. Jet couldn’t dodge when, flinging blood, his foe’s faintly striped golden wing flapped and struck the side of his head.