The Haunted Lands: Book III - Unholy

by Richard Lee Byers

  “That makes a certain amount of sense,” Lauzoril said. He wore a dagger on his belt, and now he loosened it in its sheath.

  Lallara and Nevron concurred with Lauzoril, and Samas grudgingly assented to the will of the majority. The intruders stalked in the direction the arrow pointed, past more dingy murals addressing the theme of a world devoid of people or beasts, with their guide’s malevolent scrutiny wearing at them every step of the way. Whenever they came to an intersection, the entity contracted from a general miasma of loathing to a localized node of it to lead them in the right direction.

  They found a pair of bodies, burned by some conflagration to clumps of half-melted armor, scraps of blackened bone, and ash. Then came a mural of an underwater scene without any fish in it. The haunt positioned itself in front of the painting as if to indicate they’d reached their destination.

  “I can see runes on the picture,” said Aoth, “but I’m not familiar with them.”

  “Describe them,” Lallara said, and he did so. “Hm. The ‘hand with an eye in the palm’ is only there to unleash some sort of unpleasantness. Point to the others as I call them out. The ‘triangle inside another triangle.’”

  Aoth indicated the proper spot, and she rapped it with the head of her staff. For a moment, the sign glowed red.

  So did the others as she touched them in their turns, and when she’d tapped them all, a latch clicked. The door concealed within the mural cracked open.

  “Let me,” said Aoth. He swung the panel a little wider and peered through. “It looks like a vault full of treasure.” Spear leveled, he crept through the opening, and Jet lunged forward to place himself at his master’s side. Everyone else followed.

  At first, Bareris saw nothing more than Aoth had indicated: a big, dark room full of old and no doubt precious articles, intriguing under other circumstances but irrelevant to the task at hand. Then Aoth rounded a gigantic dragon skull with an axe buried in the top of it, pointed his spear, and spoke a word of command. A bolt of lightning crackled from the spear to strike at the threat he’d evidently spotted.

  Bareris scrambled forward until he could see what his friend had seen, and then a shock of amazement, elation, and rage froze him in place. Szass Tam sat before them on a high-backed stone chair with arms carved in the shape of dragons and feet in the form of talons gripping orbs. Around it glittered a transparent, nine-sided pyramid composed of arcane energy.

  It didn’t look as though Aoth’s lightning had hurt the lich, but one way or another, Bareris meant to do better. He shouted a thunderous shout. It rattled the sarcophagi and statuary and brought grit drifting down from the ceiling but didn’t even appear to jolt the lich. Bareris drew breath to sing a killing song.

  Szass Tam chuckled and shook his head. “This is unexpected to say the least. I hoped the Watcher would fetch someone to rescue me, but I never dreamed it would be all of you. Well met.”

  “‘Well met’?” Bareris repeated. “‘Well met’?” His fingers clenched on the hilt of his sword, and he started toward the figure in the pyramid.

  “Easy,” said Lauzoril at his back. “We’re in no danger, nor is there a need for precipitous action. I daresay our vengeance can be as protracted as we care to make it.”

  Szass Tam nodded. “I assumed the former zulkir of Enchantment would recognize Thakorsil’s Seat. Perhaps if you expound on its properties, you’ll set your companions’ minds at ease. Then we can all enjoy a civil conversation.”

  Lauzoril hesitated as if it felt wrong to follow the suggestion of a hated enemy. But then he said, “The Seat is a prison originally designed to hold the archdevil Orlex, and the presence of the pyramid indicates that at least the first ward is active. Szass Tam can’t leave the chair or do anything to hurt us.”

  “Then … it’s over?” Samas asked, incredulity in his voice. “He’s helpless, and we can reclaim our dominions?”

  “Before you start planning the victory feast,” said the lich, “you might want to ask yourselves how I came to be in this predicament. Listen, and I’ll explain.”

  25–28 Mirtul, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

  When Szass Tam felt the backs of his calves slam against the hard stone edge, he realized that Malark’s kick had hurled him staggering into the same artifact in which he himself had once imprisoned Yaphyll. He made a frantic, floundering effort to arrest his momentum and landed in Thakorsil’s Seat anyway.

  Instantly the nine-sided pyramid sprang into existence around him. It was still hazy; it looked as if it had been sculpted from fog instead of gleaming glass. It would hold a captive nonetheless but not for long. Not unless someone commenced the proper ritual.

  Szass Tam had never taught Malark the magic or anything else about the Seat. But he suspected his lieutenant had somehow obtained all the necessary information anyway.

  Malark murmured a charm to wash the acid from his body, then drank an elixir that partially healed his burns and blisters. Then he recited an incantation to send the mummies shambling back to their sarcophagi.

  Meanwhile the force holding Szass Tam in place and in check attenuated. If Malark didn’t start the ritual soon, he’d be able to act. And perhaps the spymaster wouldn’t. He needed a mage pledged to the gods of light, and no such prisoner was in evidence. If Malark imagined he had time to scurry to another part of the catacombs to retrieve one—

  But no. He didn’t. Malark plucked a glass bead from the pouch on his belt and dashed it to powder against the floor. A skinny, naked young woman, gagged and with her hands tied behind her, appeared in a flash of ruddy light. The bead had held her shrunken and in stasis until Malark required her.

  He thumped her on the back with the heel of his hand, paralyzing her, then lowered her to the floor. Employing his clawed yellow glove, he carved a pair of identical runes in her forehead, and the bloody symbols burst into flame. He chanted the opening words of the first of the rituals of twin burnings, and Szass Tam felt coercion clamp down hard. It would remain impossible for him to rise or cast a spell at the man before him.

  He could still talk, so he shouted at Malark. Insults. Threats. Obscenities. Nonsense. Anything to shake his concentration. For if Malark made even the slightest error in either his incantations or his cutting, the rite would fail.

  But that didn’t work out, either. Szass Tam had trained his student too well, and when the former monk of the Long Death carved the last double sigil on the sacrificial victim’s charred, torn corpse, and a rune briefly flared into visibility on one face of the pyramid, the lich knew the Seat could conceivably hold him forever.

  “Perhaps I deserve this,” he said, “for long ago, I resolved never to trust anyone, and I broke the vow with you. Still, I’d like to know why you’ve betrayed me.”

  “A moment,” Malark croaked. The dozens of lengthy incantations had dried out his throat, and since he no longer required precise intonation, he was letting the rawness show in his voice. He unstoppered a leather waterskin and took several swallows. “There, that’s better. Master, you do deserve an explanation. And I promise you, it’s not that I’ve forsaken the dream we share.”

  “Then why?” Szass Tam asked.

  “Well, for one thing …” Malark hesitated. “Your Omnipotence, ever since I joined your cause, you’ve been a generous friend and mentor to me. I’ve learned to admire your wisdom, courage, and vision. But you also embody the unnatural vileness of undeath. You’re the last creature who should undertake the task of recreating the world.”

  “I intend,” Szass Tam answered, “to make a universe unafflicted with suffering or death.”

  “I believe you.” Malark closed his eyes for a moment, and some of the remaining burns on his body faded. He was using a technique he’d learned as a monk to speed the healing process. “But it wouldn’t work out like that. It couldn’t. The new world would reflect your fundamental nature and come out worse than this one. That’s one of the reasons I’m going to perform the Unmaking in your place.”
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  “That’s absurd.”

  “Not really. You taught me most of your secrets—if you recall, you even let me read Fastrin’s book. And I am a spy. With ninety years to poke around, I uncovered the rest of them.

  “Which is to say, I’ve practiced the same preparatory meditations you have, and I can perform the ceremony. Confined to Thakorsil’s Seat, you won’t be able to interfere, and no one will turn up to release you. Not when you’re sealed in a hidden vault in a part of the dungeons everyone shuns. Not when people don’t even realize you’ve gone missing.” Malark swept his hand from his shaven crown down the length of his torso, and his form became Szass Tam’s, tall, gaunt frame, chin beard, shriveled fingers, and all.

  “And so,” Szass Tam said, “in preference to a lich, a traitor will shape the world to come.”

  “No,” Malark said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I told you you’re unfit to ascend to godhood. It’s true and justification enough to meddle in your plans. But there’s a deeper reason. I worship Death, and I originally joined your cause because you told me your intent was to kill everything, including me. My desire for that perfect consummation hasn’t changed.

  “But I can’t leave it to you to bring it about, because if I did, it wouldn’t be perfect. One thing—you—would survive. I won’t commit that blasphemy.”

  “If the master of the ritual dies with everything else, than there’s no one left to spark a new creation.”

  Malark shrugged. “I only care about the moment of absolute and universal annihilation. Afterward, the void will either bring forth new forms or it won’t. Either way, I won’t be around to see, although truthfully, I rather hope it doesn’t.”

  “I don’t suppose I can dissuade you by pointing out that you’re insane.”

  “That’s like ice rebuking snow for being cold, don’t you think? Now, I regret having to cut our conversation short, particularly since this is the last time we’ll see one another—”

  “You’re mistaken about that.”

  “—but as you know better than anyone, I have matters to attend to. So I’ll bid you farewell. I realize I haven’t left you much of a vantage point, but I hope that even so, you’ll be able to perceive a portion of the spectacle to come.” Malark turned and walked away.

  Szass Tam believed that one should never lose one’s composure in the presence of an enemy, so he waited for the door to click shut and for another moment after that. Then he slammed his fist down on the arm of the Seat.

  He’d always prided himself on his ability to read people. In the old days, he’d often gleaned the tenor of his fellow council members’ unspoken thoughts, and they’d been as devious an assembly as the East had ever seen. How, then, had he been so disastrously wrong about Malark?

  Well, in a very real sense, he hadn’t been. He’d comprehended the essential nature of Malark’s obsession. That was what enabled him to turn the spymaster and led him to believe he could trust him. He just hadn’t realized how ambitious Malark would become in his efforts to serve the terrible object of his devotion.

  In any case, it was useless to fret over the error now. Szass Tam had to find a way to free himself. After all, Yaphyll had done it. True, she’d had a lucky combination of circumstances to help her, but Szass Tam had his intellect. He assured himself that it would serve just as well.

  First—as part of a methodical examination of all the possibilities, not because he thought it might actually work—he gripped the stone arms of the chair and tried to stand.

  The Seat stabbed forbiddance into his mind, sparking fear, jumbling his thoughts, and opposing the will to rise with the compulsion to remain as he was. Defying the psychic intrusion, he kept trying anyway, but it was as if something had fused his body to the stone surfaces behind and beneath it.

  He then tried to shift himself through space, off the Seat and beyond the confines of the pyramid. The chair attempted to deprive him of the will and the focus to do that as well. Once again, the psychic assault failed to shake him, and once again, it didn’t matter. He suffered a kind of mental jolt as his prison held him fast.

  He tried to speak to one of his captains up in the castle. He felt the magic, intended to carry the words like leaves on the wind, wither when it reached the inner surface of the pyramid.

  He attempted to summon a demon, but no such entity appeared.

  He sought to call the mummies forth from their coffins. They didn’t heed him, either.

  He hurled fire and lightning at the gleaming construct around him and at the massive stone chair beneath him, without so much as scratching either one.

  He’d sometimes flattered himself that fear was a weakness he’d left behind the day he discovered his gift for sorcery. But he realized he was afraid now. With a spasm of annoyance, he pushed the useless emotion out of his mind. There must be a way out of this. He simply had to think of it.

  With all his attention focused inward, he pondered for some time before the spiteful regard of the Watcher recaptured his notice. Even then, it took a while longer before it occurred to him that the entity could be anything more than a distraction.

  He’d verified repeatedly that even when he managed to overcome the Seat’s psychic interference and cast a spell, the pyramid dissipated the magic when it tried to pass through. That was why he hadn’t been able to wake the mummies or summon a demon.

  But the Watcher was inside the pyramid with him, and outside too. That was its peculiar nature, to be omnipresent within the gloomy crypts and passages that constituted its domain.

  He spoke a spell of binding. His swirling hands left trailing wisps of scarlet light as he made the necessary gestures.

  Perhaps the influence of Thakorsil’s Seat kept him from casting as powerful a spell as he would have under normal circumstances. Or maybe the Watcher’s diffuse and ambiguous nature made it particularly difficult to compel. Either way, when he spoke the final word, he sensed that he’d failed to hook his fish.

  No matter. He was the greatest necromancer in all Faerûn, and he would catch it. He took a breath and began again.

  He soon lost count of how many times he repeated the spell. But at last, when even he had nearly depleted his powers, he felt the spell seize its prey and the ghost thrashing like a hare in the jaws of a fox.

  “Enough,” he said. “Whether you realize it or not, you crave oblivion, and I’m willing to give it to you. But only if you serve me to the best of your ability.”

  The spirit quieted. Its regard conveyed as much hatred as ever, yet even so, it had a different quality. Szass Tam sensed a sullen acquiescence.

  The Watcher’s submission allowed him to probe its essence and examine its qualities. In most respects, they were disappointing. The entity was incapable of leaving its haunts even under magical duress. It was too mindless ever to recover the power of speech, either to articulate the words that would dissolve the first rune or to communicate with someone who could.

  But it still might be able to interact with the physical world to a limited degree. Szass Tam focused his will on it, reinvigorating the decayed capacity and reminding the ghost of its existence.

  The process evidently hurt, for the spirit writhed. But he had it in his grip now, too firmly for it to escape.

  “Now,” he said, “you can make a mark.” Leaning forward, he drew an arrow in the dust at his feet. “You can make this one to guide people here. Do you understand?”

  He sensed that it did. Probably its people had used arrows to point directions when it was alive.

  “If the arrow isn’t enough to bring them, draw these.” Szass Tam wrote his initials.

  He assumed two letters were just about all the Watcher could manage. Even if the phantom had been literate during its mortal existence, it hadn’t been in Mulhorandi, and it was unlikely that its tattered mind could retain as many unfamiliar symbols as would be required to spell out his entire name, let alone an even lengthier message.

  H
e made the Watcher write the letters until it got them right about nine times out of ten. When further practice failed to improve on that, he told it, “All right. Use what I taught you, and fetch someone. Anyone.”

  The Watcher didn’t leave. It was still glaring at him. But presumably its awareness also pervaded the rest of its environs and was ready to obey his commands.

  Which left nothing for Szass Tam to do but try to believe that before time ran out, someone would come to this all-but-forsaken area and heed the promptings of an entity that knowledgeable visitors had long since learned to ignore.

  19 Kythorn, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

  “And my faith was not misplaced,” the lich concluded, “for here you are.”

  Bareris laughed. It was the first time he’d done so in ninety years, and it hurt his chest. “Yes, here we are. But unfortunately for you, we’re not as credulous as you hoped. Even if we were, we wouldn’t believe your story, because some of us watched Malark die.”

  Unruffled by his foe’s jeering attitude, the lich said, “I assume you mean during your siege of the Dread Ring in Lapendrar.”

  “Yes,” Samas said, satisfaction in his tone. “I killed the wretch myself.”

  “Bravo,” said Szass Tam dryly. “I’m not terribly surprised, for I ordered him to Lapendrar. But we all know of magic that allows a person to be in two places at the same time. As you likely recall, if I make the proper preparations, I can appear in several places simultaneously.”

  “Still,” Bareris said, “your story’s ridiculous. Malark’s immortal and wants to murder the whole world, himself included, just because he loves Death and thinks it will bring him a moment of ultimate joy? I knew him for ten years and never saw a hint of any of that.”

  Aoth frowned. “But you know, I always sensed that he had his secrets, didn’t you? And wild as it is, this story does explain why he would betray the southern cause, even though we were winning at the time.”