The Haunted Lands: Book III - Unholy

by Richard Lee Byers

  Exerting his will, Aoth tried to seize it with the same magic that had failed to kill Malark. This time, he was more successful. Rotten hide splitting, muscles bursting and spattering slime, bones snapping, the plague spewer’s body crumpled in on itself. More rats—the bulges that had scuttled ceaselessly under its skin—sprang clear of the demolition but, without the giant’s will to guide them, made no move to attack.

  The stink of charred rat hung in the air along with drifting flecks of ash. Aoth cast about, surveying the battlefield. Malark was circling right, so he dodged left. The maneuver brought him in front of a death tyrant. The bulbous creatures floated slowly, but they didn’t need to close with an opponent to attack, only maintain a clear line of sight.

  A ragged burst of shadow leaped from one of the death tyrant’s eyestalks. Aoth dodged, but it washed over him anyway. He felt a stab of pain, but it faded after a moment. Most likely thanks to the wards Lallara had cast on him, the attack hadn’t done him any actual harm.

  He focused his will to strike back, then felt something else shaking the ground. He pivoted just in time to see the oncoming plague spewer flail at him with its fist.

  He avoided the blow by lunging between the giant’s legs, then drove his spear into its ankle and channeled power through the point. The joint exploded, half severing the spewer’s foot and sending it reeling. It toppled into the path of another blaze of power from one of the death tyrant’s eyes, and as it crashed to earth, the giant turned to stone.

  The petrified corpse blocked that undead beholder, but by now, another had maneuvered into position. Two of its rotting eyestalks bowed in Aoth’s direction. He reached for it with the pulverizing magic and managed to strike first. The pressure burst it like a boil, and viscera spilled from the ruptured husk.

  Unfortunately, at that point, the crushing magic ran out of power, and it was questionable whether Aoth would have a chance to cast that or any spell again. Despite his best attempts to outma-neuver them, a dozen of his enemies, Malark included, had moved into positions from which they could attack him simultaneously. The only hope of avoiding the assault would be to jump over the cliff, and then Malark would either rain destruction down on him or go back to his filthy ritual.

  Ah, well, Aoth had expected it would come to this. He’d needed a kiss from Lady Luck, as well as some of the best fighting of his life, to last as long as he had.

  He leveled his spear at Malark for one last strike. But Szass Tam’s protégé brandished his staff, and his power stabbed through Lallara’s wards. Nausea twisted Aoth’s guts, and his legs buckled. The strength drained out of him all at once, and the head of his spear clanked against the ground. A plague spewer lumbered forward and stretched out its hand to seize him.

  Then golden light flowered at his back. The radiance didn’t hurt him. In fact, it quelled his sickness and started his strength trickling back. But it seared the plague spewer, melted one of its eyes, and sent it stumbling backward.

  Aoth didn’t have to look around to realize that Mirror had flown up over the mountaintop and had invoked the power of his god, and at that moment, Aoth no longer cared whether the intervention was sound strategy. He was simply grateful for another chance at life.

  Malark smiled as if to acknowledge an opponent’s sound play in some trivial game, then aimed his staff at a target—Mirror, presumably—in the air. At that point Jet plunged down on the spymaster like a hawk killing a rabbit.

  The griffon dashed Malark to earth, but his talons didn’t penetrate the human’s armoring enchantments, nor did his plummeting mass snap the wizard’s spine or even stun him. Malark immediately hit back with a chop to the side of the familiar’s feathery neck.

  Perhaps because Malark was on his back, the blow didn’t land hard enough to kill. But it did jolt Jet to the side, which gave the former monk of the Long Death the chance to wrench himself out from under his attacker’s claws.

  Run! thought Aoth. You can’t handle him by yourself! Jet’s response was a pang of frustration and disgust, but as Malark rolled to his feet, the familiar lashed his wings and vaulted back into the air.

  Lallara floated down from above to alight beside Aoth. She jabbed the ferrule of her staff into his ribs, and a surge of vitality swept the last of his weakness away.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Get up,” she snapped. “You have work to do.”

  “I suppose I do.” He clambered to his feet and cast a thunderbolt.

  Lallara too hurled attack spells but also conjured barriers of fire, stone, and spinning blades to hold back the enemy. Sometimes she even managed to drop such a wall right on top of one of Malark’s servants, imprisoning it or tearing it in two. Mirror, who currently resembled a smudged caricature of Aoth, alternated between evoking bursts of divine light and battling with sword and shield. Jet repeatedly dived, attacked, and climbed back up into the sky, circling until he saw another chance to strike by surprise.

  All in all, it was a fine display of fighting prowess, and yet it wasn’t good enough. No matter how many of Malark’s guardians Aoth and his companions destroyed, the creatures kept coming. Aoth never actually saw new ones popping into existence, but in time he decided that somehow the supply must be inexhaustible.

  What was even more discouraging was that no attack seemed to damage Malark himself. Once in a while, a barrage of ball lightning or a blast of frost rocked him back on his heels, but afterward, he quickly returned to working his own magic, methodically dissolving Lallara’s barriers.

  Until a flying blade made of absolute darkness streaked down at him from above. Malark sidestepped the cut, then tapped the conjured weapon with his staff. The black sword vanished.

  Then he looked up, and Aoth did too. Szass Tam was hovering above the mountaintop. Malark gestured and shouted a word of command, and a dozen death tyrants floated upward like bubbles to turn their virulent gazes on the lich.

  That should have helped clear a path from Aoth’s position near the drop to Malark’s at the center of the high place. But when Aoth looked for such a route, it seemed there were just as many guardians blocking the way as ever.

  He cursed, then sensed motion on his flank. He pivoted toward the onrushing plague spewer, and a thunderous shout blasted the head from its shoulders. As it toppled, rats swarmed from the stump of its neck. Meanwhile, Bareris finished hauling himself up onto the mountaintop.

  “I’m glad you made it,” said Aoth. The bard responded with a nod, drew his sword, and struck up a dirge. The eerie tones had no effect on Aoth but were apt to afflict a foe with weakness and confusion.

  Nevron swooped down in the midst of a throng of demons that immediately hurled themselves at Malark’s minions. Lauzoril arrived in a cloud of tiny floating daggers that darted from point to point like hummingbirds. Finally even Samas Kul, whom Aoth had judged the likeliest to flee, floated up into view with his quicksilver wand in his blubbery hand.

  The other council members positioned themselves near Lallara, no doubt in the hope that her wards would protect them as well. Then they attacked. Lauzoril recited an incantation in his dry, clerkish voice, and three plague spewers started mauling one another. Growling words of power, Nevron summoned a ghour, a huge, shaggy demon with bull-like horns and cloven hooves, and the thing spat poison smoke at the enemy. Samas daintily flourished his wand, and a death tyrant turned to snow, its eye-stalks and globular body crumbling into a shapeless mound when it thumped down on the ground.

  Surely now, Aoth thought, hurling darts of green light at Malark, surely now, he and his allies were strong enough to win. They had to be, because no more reinforcements were coming.

  Yet he could see they weren’t. Their combined might sufficed to off set Malark’s but nothing more, and in time that strength would fade, as even archmages ran out of magic. Whereas Malark, if he truly was a kind of god in this place, would likely remain as powerful as ever.

  “None of our spells are hurting Malark,” said Aoth. “Those of u
s who are warriors need to get over to him and see if we can do any better with our blades. And do it now, before the tide turns against us.”

  Lauzoril arched an eyebrow. “Are you proposing to charge straight through the middle of all these undead?”

  “Yes. You zulkirs will use your sorcery to keep the guardians off our backs, both while we advance and after we engage Malark.”

  Samas turned an onrushing plague spewer into mist. “Even with our help, I don’t see how you’re going to make it to Springhill. But you’re right, we need to try something.”

  “That’s the plan, then.” Aoth turned to Bareris and Mirror. “Ready?”

  The ghost flourished his sword, and warm light pulsed from the blade. Aoth felt a rush of confidence and vitality and inferred that he’d received some sort of blessing. “Now we are,” Mirror said.

  The enemy still had men positioned to flank the council’s army. No doubt if given the opportunity, they’d make another attempt to advance into the trees. But they hadn’t tried for a while, and Gaedynn had glimpsed motion behind the front ranks as their officers redirected a number of warriors elsewhere.

  From that, he inferred that henceforth, his archers and skirmishers could probably hold this position without him. He set down his longbow and headed for Eider. Crouched back down in her hollow, the griffon was grooming herself, biting at the feathers she’d damaged flapping her wings among the low-hanging branches.

  She jumped up when she realized her master meant to ride her. He swung himself into the saddle, strapped himself in, strung the shorter compound bow he used for aerial combat, then turned her away from the enemy, so no one would shoot her as she took off.

  Picking up speed with every pace, Eider ran toward the riverbank, leaped, and soared over the black water. Gaedynn took a moment to savor the exhilaration of flight, then urged her higher. They wheeled and glided over the treetops so he could survey the battle as a whole.

  Flashes of light—attack spells—leaped between the dark masses that were the opposing hosts. Then a chorus of battle cries howled from the one in the west, and the greater part of So-Kehur’s army hurtled forward in what looked like an all-out effort to overwhelm the zulkirs’ forces.

  “Forward,” Gaedynn said. He snatched arrows from one of the quivers buckled to his tack and loosed them at the charge as Eider dived into range. A skin kite flapped at him, and the griffon beat her wings, rose above the membranous undead, and ripped it to pieces with her talons.

  The charge crashed into the defenders’ spears and shields. As he nocked another shaft, Gaedynn peered, trying to determine if his side’s formation was holding.

  Some of it was. But, pincers snapping, tentacles lashing, and tail stabbing, a thing like a gigantic steel scorpion was tearing into the battle lines. Supposedly So-Kehur was a necromancer, fully capable of casting lightningbolts and the like, but Gaedynn supposed that a man didn’t put on the shape of a beast unless he had a craving to kill like one.

  He also supposed that it was up to him to keep the autharch from breaking the formation. It certainly didn’t look as though anyone on the ground was having any luck. Touching a finger to the back of Eider’s neck, he sent the griffon swooping lower.

  Bareris sang to shield Aoth, Mirror, and himself behind barriers of fear. If it worked, even the undead should hesitate for an instant before striking at them, and an instant might be all they needed to dash on by.

  The magic seemed to protect them for a few strides. Or perhaps it was the zulkirs’ sorcery, blasting guardians out of their way or sending snarling demons to rend them with flaming halberds or jagged claws. Or Szass Tam’s wizardry. So many death tyrants had drifted upward to surround the lich that it was almost impossible to catch a glimpse of him. Power flashed and crackled as they hammered him with their malignant gazes again and again and again. Still, hard-pressed as he was, he realized what his allies on the ground were attempting and hurled lightning and beams of searing radiance to aid them.

  Then another undead beholder floated out in front of Bareris. Dripping slime, the big glazed eye in the middle of its body shimmered, and suddenly he couldn’t remember why he was running.

  He faltered, and the death tyrant jumped at him. Its jagged fangs snapped shut on his sword arm.

  If not for his brigandine and the unnatural strength of his undead flesh, the bite surely would have severed the limb. As it was, the agonizing pressure nearly paralyzed him. But the pain cut through his confusion as well, and he used his off hand to yank his dagger from its sheath and stab his foe repeatedly in the central eye. He punched holes in it, splashing himself with cold jelly in the process, but the fangs kept clamping down relentlessly.

  Mirror burned away a portion of the creature’s body with a flash of holy light, but unfortunately, did not affect the mouth. Aoth lunged and thrust his spear into it, sparked a blast of power from the point, and the death tyrant burst into pieces.

  Bareris cast about and saw that other guardians were already right on top of them. The things would almost certainly have overwhelmed them too, except that the next moment, one plague spewer turned into an iron statue, and a second simply vanished. Hunched creatures with hairless red hides and massive upper bodies pounced on a death tyrant, pressed their mouths against it as if to kiss it, and roared. The cries blasted craters in its body, and it fell.

  Mirror turned to Bareris. “Are you all right?”

  Bareris flexed his perforated sword arm. It ached but seemed to work. “Yes. Keep running!”

  They did. A plague spewer scrambled in front of them and opened its mouth, no doubt to vomit rats. Jet plummeted down on top of the giant and clawed its head to shreds. The griffon then sprang back into the air and flew along above them, likewise racing in Malark’s direction.

  Eyes glittering, two more death tyrants floated toward them. Some invisible force exerted by one of the archmages slapped the creatures out of the way as if they weighed no more than puffballs. And then—to Bareris’s surprise, actually—the way to Malark was clear.

  The spymaster smiled at them with what looked like genuine fondness. “Nicely done.” He raised his staff in a middle guard.

  As Khouryn ran toward So-Kehur, a burst of fire splashed the arcing, stabbing metal stinger. One of the wizards had targeted a part he could hit without burning the soldiers trying to hold the autharch back with their jabbing spears.

  Sadly, neither the magic, nor the spears, nor the arrows that griffon riders loosed from on high appeared to hurt So-Kehur. The gigantic scorpion-thing kept pressing forward, tentacles whipping to smash men’s bones, pincers snipping them to pieces, stinger plunging to pierce them through. He would have broken the formation already, except that, like Khouryn, other warriors—sellswords, mostly—kept leaving their assigned positions to reinforce the point in danger of giving way, scrambling over the corpses of the men the necromancer had already killed as they rushed to take their places.

  That mustn’t continue, or the enemy would breach the weakened battle lines somewhere else. The defenders had to kill or at least repel So-Kehur and do it fast.

  Khouryn pushed between two soldiers and charged the autharch. A tentacle whirled at his head. He ducked it and ran on underneath the scorpion body. Then he took a firm grip on his urgrosh and chopped at one of So-Kehur’s eight legs.

  The spindly limb wasn’t as heavily armored as the massive steel body, and the axe blade dented it. Grinning, he chopped it again.

  A tentacle slithered into view. But though So-Kehur had plenty of eyes, none were in his belly, and the arm had to grope for its quarry. Khouryn scurried to a different leg on the same side and bashed that one.

  Then pain ripped through his skull. He gasped and fell to his knees. He told himself he had to get back up, to keep moving, but his head hurt so badly he could barely see. The tentacle found his ankle, coiled around it, jerked tight, and dragged him into the open.

  A dozen illusory Malarks sprang into being around the genuine immort
al. Bareris peered in a futile attempt to determine where he should actually strike.

  “Follow my lead!” Aoth shouted. “I can pick out the real one!” He lunged and stabbed with his spear.

  Malark sidestepped the thrust, and his counterparts copied the motion. He whirled his staff at Aoth’s head, and the war-mage caught it on the shaft of his own weapon. The impact produced a flash of dark, malignant power and knocked Aoth off balance. Malark spun the staff into position for a follow-up attack.

  Flowing from a parody of Aoth to his own true image as he lunged, Mirror cut and shattered one of the phantasms into nothingness. Despite Aoth’s guidance, which by rights should have pinpointed the real Malark, the illusions were maddeningly deceptive. Bareris slashed and merely burst another.

  It was Jet, with his ability to look through his master’s eyes, who wasn’t fooled. He dived from on high, and Malark had to give up his second strike at Aoth to leap out of the way.

  Jet slammed on the ground between Aoth and Malark. Beak gaping, he lunged. Malark shifted to the side and jabbed his staff at the griffon’s flank. Blackness seethed around the tip.

  Mirror sprang in and, despite the confusion engendered by the doubles, somehow managed to catch the stroke on his shield. Power discharged itself with a bang. The ghost swung his sword in a low cut, and Malark and his likenesses leaped above the arc of the blow. The traitor spun his staff through the center of Mirror’s body. Mirror shredded into wisps of shadow. Malark poised his weapon for another strike at the tatters, which didn’t even constitute a recognizable human shape anymore.

  Bareris shouted to jolt everything in a certain area, the real Malark and his illusions alike. Darts of turquoise light leaped from Aoth’s spear, diverging in flight to strike multiple targets. He obviously realized that even if the phantasms couldn’t fool him or Jet, he needed to get rid of them so his allies could fight effectively.