The Haunted Lands: Book III - Unholy

by Richard Lee Byers

  Why is it up to me? Aoth wondered. We have a zulkir here. But he’d insisted the archmages treat him as an equal, and, maybe because she was all out of cunning ideas, Lallara seemed content to let him take the lead.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d chafed under the weight of the responsibility that came with command. Although it was the first in a while and stood an excellent chance of being the last.

  “I’m going back up there,” he said. “Malark’s intent on the ritual, and I’m invisible to him and his watchdogs. Maybe I can kill him.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Lallara said. “Hostile intent will tear the veil.”

  “I still might hit him before he or his creatures can react.”

  “The creatures, perhaps,” Mirror said, “but Malark himself?”

  Aoth sighed. “I admit it doesn’t seem likely.”

  “Am I understanding you correctly?” demanded Jet. “You want to go back up there by yourself?”

  “Yes. Let’s say I take a shot at Malark and fail to put him down. If I’m alone, there are a couple of things that might happen next. He might decide to fight me by himself, without involving the guardians. His love of death always did include a fondness for killing with his own hands. If it goes that way, maybe you’ll see a chance to rush in and take him unaware.

  “He might even decide to exchange a few words before he strikes back at me. We were friends, once upon a time. Whatever happens, every moment he spends dealing with me is a moment when he isn’t advancing the ritual. Another moment for reinforcements to turn up. And if he kills me and only me, you won’t have lost all that much of your strength, at least, not if the others are still alive. You’ll still have a decent chance of winning.”

  Mirror scowled. “I don’t like it, but I follow your reasoning. And I promise, we can be on top of the mountain in an instant.”

  “Only if it’s the right move,” Aoth said. “Not just to stick by a friend, but to stop the Unmaking.”

  “Don’t worry,” Lallara said. “Everyone understands that you’re expendable.”

  Aoth smiled crookedly. “I knew I could count on you for that, Your Omnipotence. Jet will tell you what’s happening to me, so you can react accordingly.” He gripped a handhold and started back up the escarpment.

  Some of the spearmen laid down their weapons and shields. Some sat on the ground. Khouryn didn’t begrudge them their temporary ease, but neither did he partake of it, though a secret part of him wished he could. Instead, he prowled around the formation, overseeing the removal of the dead and wounded, the adjustments to fill the gaps they had left behind, and the distribution of water, hardtack, and dried apple. He realized he’d lost count of how many times the enemy had charged, and he absently tried to work it out.

  He was still figuring when one of Samas Kul’s younger officers approached him. The human wore fancy gilded armor consistent with his master’s love of ostentation. It looked especially silly with the crest knocked off the helmet.

  But give the lad credit. He’d actually traded blows with one of the foe, unlike some of his peers, who were careful to keep behind the frontlines.

  “I was just wondering,” the human said.

  “Yes?” Khouryn replied.

  “Are we winning?”

  “Of course.”

  It was a lie of sorts. Khouryn’s instincts told him the battle could go either way. But uncertainty would be thin gruel to offer a fellow hungry for reassurance.

  Nothing could deter So-Kehur’s undead troops from attacking ferociously as long as their master willed it. But Khouryn sensed a hesitance in the autharch’s living retainers whenever one of the imitation zulkirs revealed himself and seemingly worked some deadly feat of sorcery. He suspected their best hope of victory lay in focusing their attacks on those who felt such qualms. The problem was that, fighting in a defensive posture, he and his comrades had limited ability to choose. They had to fight whom- and whatever So-Kehur threw at them.

  But at least they had griffon riders in the sky. The aerial cavalry spent much of the time battling flyers from the opposing army but sometimes managed to shoot at prime targets on the ground.

  “How many more times do you think they’ll charge?” asked Samas’s officer.

  Khouryn glimpsed a stirring in the enemy host. “At least one. Better get back to your men. And don’t worry. You’re doing fine.”

  The human nodded and scurried away. Khouryn tramped back to his own company. No need to run. Were Samas’s retainer more experienced, he’d realize the necromancers needed a little more time to organize a fresh assault.

  Still, it came soon enough. At first, Khouryn only saw dread warriors, amber eyes shining in their withered faces. Then he made out the creatures—if they were creatures—in the lead. Swords, axes, and hammers whirled around with no visible hands gripping them, only a swirl of dust and a scream of wind to suggest the presence of some controlling force or entity in the middle.

  “Sword spirits!” yelled someone at the back of the formation.

  “Ragewinds!” cried someone else.

  So now Khouryn had two names for the things. Wonderful. He wished one of the learned souls who’d recognized them had seen fit to call out something helpful, like the best way to kill them.

  One thing was likely. It would take an enchanted weapon to hurt the ragewinds. He dropped his spear and shield, pulled his urgrosh off his back, and strode forth to intercept one before its spinning blades reached the formation.

  The whirlwind buffeted him and made it hard to keep his footing. A broadsword streaked at him, and he ducked. A scimitar was next, and he batted it away. He stepped deeper into the storm and cut.

  To what effect, it was impossible to say. When the target was invisible and more or less made of air, how could a warrior know when he’d hit it? But common sense suggested that if the entity was vulnerable anywhere, it was probably weakest at its core.

  Khouryn attacked doggedly, mostly cutting with the axe head of his weapon but occasionally stabbing with the spear point at the end of it. He dodged and parried the endless barrage of weapons the sword spirit whipped at him.

  Hard-pressed though he was, he occasionally caught a glimpse of other soldiers who’d emerged from the battle lines to engage a ragewind as he had. Some still fought, but a disheartening number had already fallen.

  Meanwhile, the Burning Braziers and sorcerers assailed the undead with flashes of fire that momentarily lit up the night. One such blast roared close enough to Khouryn to dazzle him and make him flinch from the heat, but it didn’t slow the relentless onslaught of the spinning blades.

  He cut, and it seemed to him he finally felt a measure of resistance, though scarcely more than if the urgrosh had sheared through a piece of straw. He thought too that for just an instant, the stroke drew a scarlet line on the air. He wondered if it truly had, or if hope and the afterimages floating before his eyes were conspiring to trick him.

  Then a falchion leaped at him. It was already close by the time he spotted it, and when he tried to parry, he was too slow. It clanged against his chest, then skipped away as the sword spirit continued to spin it around the axis of rotation.

  Though the impact hurt, it wasn’t the crippling shock that would have come if the weapon had pierced Khouryn’s mail and the vital organs beneath. Still, it knocked him staggering, and the wind’s shoving kept him from regaining his balance. He now found it impossible to attack and brutally difficult to defend.

  A tumbling mace flew at him. He knocked it aside, saw the other weapons whirling right behind it, and jerked the urgrosh back into position to parry those as well. Then the wind stopped howling and mauling him, and its several blades fell to the ground. A figure made of gray vapor fumed into visibility in the center of the space the maelstrom had inhabited.

  Cheers rose from the battle lines. Panting, his heart pounding, Khouryn realized that something had balked all the sword spirits.

  It appeared to be Lallara, outlined by
the golden glow of her protective enchantments, standing at the front of the formation and brandishing her staff. But something about the crone’s posture told Khouryn it was actually Jhesrhi inside the illusory disguise.

  That made sense. The sword spirits were undead, but they needed to manifest as whirlwinds to wield their weapons. And Jhesrhi was adept at raising and quelling winds. In effect, she was grappling with the phantoms, gripping their wrists to keep them from using their hands.

  Breezes whistled and gusted back and forth. A flail lifted partway off the ground, then dropped back. Jhesrhi had arrested the ragewinds, but even with other wizards lending covert aid, she evidently couldn’t hold them for long.

  Khouryn croaked a battle cry and charged the misty apparition. He struck it repeatedly, every blow gashing it with a streak of crimson light. It started to come apart, but the wind was moaning louder, blowing harder, and he couldn’t tell if the phantom was dissolving because he was destroying it or because it was breaking free.

  He hit it once more in the chest, and it vanished. He pivoted to find himself again at the center of a vortex of blades lifting up off the ground. He felt a pang of despair, struggled to quell it, and then the whirlwind died. The spirit’s weapons dropped.

  Fresh cheering sounded. He looked around and saw that Jhesrhi’s intervention had likewise enabled his comrades to destroy the rest of the ragewinds in one manner or another.

  In a just world, Khouryn would now have had a moment to rejoice and catch his breath. But in this one, dozens of dread warriors were still poised at the front of the enemy formation. They hadn’t been able to advance with the sword spirits, or the spinning weapons would have chopped them to pieces. But now they charged, and Khouryn had to sprint back to his own battle lines to keep the undead from swarming over him. He grabbed and braced his spear just in time to spit an onrushing zombie.

  Aoth clambered onto the mountaintop. As far as he could tell, nothing had changed. It was possible—indeed, likely—that the confluence of forces overhead was even more hideous than before, but he had no intention of taking another look at it.

  His mouth dry, he stalked along the edge of the high place. If he could sneak behind Malark, maybe it wouldn’t matter that “hostile intent” would breach his invisibility. Maybe he could still attack by surprise.

  It irked him that even close up, he couldn’t see what waited in the patches of writhing distortion. He’d gotten used to seeing whatever existed to be seen, even when magic sought to conceal it. Smiling crookedly, he told himself that in this situation, he might be better off not seeing. Most likely, it would only be bad for his morale.

  To his surprise, he reached a point directly behind Malark without anything trying to stop him. He aimed his spear and whispered the first words of a death spell. If it worked, it would grip and crush the spymaster’s body like a piece of rotten fruit.

  Malark dropped back to earth, whirled, and ended up in a crouch, staff cocked back behind him in one hand. A dimness, evidence of a protective enchantment, flowed over his body. Meanwhile, the guardians exploded into view.

  Some were the floating spherical creatures called beholders, each with one great, orblike eye and other, smaller ones twisting around on stalks, and with mouths full of jagged fangs. Rotting, spotted with fungus, and riddled with gaping wounds, these particular specimens were plainly the undead variety called death tyrants.

  The rest of the guardians were gigantic corpses with snarling, demented faces and lumps scuttling around beneath their slimy, decaying skins. Xingax, who’d invented the things, had called them plague spewers, and they were one of his foulest creations.

  Aoth felt a mad impulse to laugh, for, given that he was a lone attacker, his situation was so hopeless as to be ludicrous. Instead, he rattled off the rest of his incantation. Though it seemed clear that Aoth was about to die, maybe Malark could go first.

  Alas, no. A dark blaze of power leaped from the spear, but it frayed to nothingness when it touched Malark’s haze of protection.

  The spell Aoth had cast would enable him to make more such attacks, but unfortunately, no two at the same foe. As he scrambled sideways to make himself a moving target, he weighed whether to turn the magic on one of the guardians or try to blast Malark with something else.

  His foes all pivoted with him. “Where are your allies?” the spymaster asked.

  Apparently he did want to talk, and Aoth judged that conversation might well stall him longer than continuing a fight that would likely last only another heartbeat or two.

  “As far as I know, everybody else died when the cliffs smashed together. Well, except for my griffon. He got hit by a falling boulder, but he was able to carry me this far before the wound killed him.”

  Malark smiled. “I’m not certain I believe you.”

  “The way I hear it, you’re supposed to be a mighty wizard now. If anyone else were still alive, wouldn’t you have found him with your scrying?”

  “Perhaps, but after I shifted the mountains, I didn’t try. I don’t know if you can tell, but the Unmaking is close to flowering. It’s possible I’m only a few breaths away. So I thought it would be a good gamble just to try to finish before any survivors reached the mountain. It still seems like a sensible strategy, once I dispose of you.”

  “So this is the way our friendship ends.”

  Malark shrugged. “It doesn’t have to be. Throw your spear over the edge, submit to a binding, and you can watch the ritual unfold. You’ve grown into one of the finest soldiers in the East. A master killer. A true disciple of Death, even if you don’t think of it that way. I’d like to believe that if you only give yourself the chance, you’ll perceive the glory of what’s about to happen.”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “I understand. You’d rather go down fighting, and of course it’s a proper end for a man like you.” Malark lifted his hand as though to signal for the guardians to attack.

  Aoth groped for something, anything, to say to keep the other man talking. “Curse it, your idiotic ceremony isn’t even going to work! The zulkirs say it can’t!”

  “I’ll wager Szass Tam didn’t say it, and he’s the wisest of them all, as well as the only one who’s actually read Fastrin’s book.”

  “He’s also crazy, and so are you.”

  “It no doubt looks that way, but the reality is that he and I are idealists. We both aspire to purity and perfection, although, sadly, he doesn’t understand what they truly are.”

  “I’m telling you, the most the magic will do is kill you and everyone else in Thay and maybe in the realms on our borders.”

  “I don’t think so, but even if you’re right, that alone will be wonderful. And now, since it’s clear I can’t open your eyes, I’ll bid you good-bye.” Malark waved his hand, and the plague spewers took a stride toward Aoth. Phosphorescence glimmered in the death tyrants’ eyes.

  The last of the dread warriors dropped, and So-Kehur peered across the open ground between the two armies to see what the living corpses had accomplished prior to their destruction. Lenses shifted inside his various eyes to magnify the view.

  The invaders were hauling bodies back to the rear of their formation and trying to fill the new breaches in their battle lines. That didn’t work until a dwarf officer dissolved the back rank and ordered its members forward into the two lines in front of it.

  So-Kehur turned toward Chumed and the other officers assembled beside him. In his eagerness, he wasn’t particularly careful, and one pinch-faced old necromancer had to forfeit his dignity and scurry to keep a pair of his master’s pincers from braining him. Well, no matter. The man was all right.

  “Do you see that?” So-Kehur asked. “Bit by bit, we’re breaking them apart.”

  To his annoyance, no one echoed his enthusiasm. In fact, for a moment, everyone hesitated to say anything at all.

  Then Chumed drew himself up straighter. “Milord, I respectfully suggest that we consider what we’re doing to our own army as wel
l.”

  “I know we’re taking casualties, but that’s inevitable in war.”

  “Master, it appears to me that we might indeed annihilate the enemy, but only if we’re willing to grind our own host down to nothing in the process. I ask you, is that a desirable outcome when our primary responsibility is the defense of Anhaurz? I recommend withdrawing. We’ve hurt the invaders badly enough that they no longer pose a threat. If they have any sense at all, they’ll run for the border. If not, Thay has other armies to finish them off.”

  So-Kehur couldn’t believe what he’d heard. Withdraw? Let some other commander steal his victory over the infamous zulkirs-in-exile themselves, and the renown that would accompany it? He felt a surge of fury, and Chumed fell, thrashed, and frothed at the mouth.

  So-Kehur realized he’d lashed out at the seneschal with his psychic abilities. He hadn’t consciously intended it but decided he wasn’t sorry, either. Nor would he be even if the coward strangled on his own tongue.

  He glared at his other officers. They cringed, either because the raw force of his anger was exerting pressure on their minds or simply because they were intimidated. “Does anyone else want to run away?” he asked.

  If anybody did, he kept it to himself.

  “Good,” So-Kehur continued. “Now, I think we can break the enemy if we throw everything we have into one final assault, and this time, I’ll lead the charge myself.”

  chapter sixteen

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

  Dangerous as plague spewers were, in Aoth’s judgment, they were less so than beholders and far less so than Malark. So he lunged in front of one of the rotting giants with its twitching, snarling face, using the corpse as a wall to separate him from the rest of his foes.

  Unfortunately, it was a wall that was just as intent on killing him as everything else on the mountaintop. It doubled over, opened its mouth impossibly wide, and puked up dozens of rats. Chittering and squealing, the rodents charged.

  Aoth incinerated them with a flare of fire from his spear. Heedless of the blast, the plague spewer pounded forward right behind them. It had its enormous hands raised to grab, crush, and infect him, and its strides shook the ground.