The Haunted Lands: Book III - Unholy

by Richard Lee Byers

  Szass Tam smashed down on the mountaintop, then immediately tried to rise. Bareris shouted, Aoth hurled a crackling lightningbolt from the point of his spear, and Mirror drew a pulse of searing light from his sword. One of the zulkirs caught the lich in a booming blast of flame, and another—Samas Kul, presumably, although Bareris would have had to look around to be certain—turned the ground under him into sucking liquid tar.

  Assailed by so much magic all at the same instant, Szass Tam nearly vanished in the flash. When it faded, his robes were charred and shredded, and so was his flesh, portions stripped entirely to reveal the bone beneath.

  Yet he still moved as though his muscles and organs had merely been a mask whose loss failed to hinder him in the slightest. He planted the butt of his shadowy staff on top of the tar, heaved his feet up out of the sticky mass just as if his prop were made of solid matter, then turned the ground to rocky earth again. He pulled off a scrap of loose, blackened flesh dangling over his left eye and raised his staff above his head.

  He surely meant to conjure with the staff, but a hyena-headed demon twice as tall as a man charged him and struck down at him with a greataxe, and he had to use the implement to parry. A floating thing like the shadow of a jellyfish followed just behind the brute with the axe, and then several other creatures, all of them equally grotesque, appeared. Plainly, Nevron had no intention of allowing Szass Tam to cast spells without interference.

  And Bareris couldn’t bear to let the familiars tear at the lich while he stood back. He sprinted toward the knot of struggling figures, and Mirror bounded after him. Aoth cursed as though he thought the two of them were doing something stupid, and maybe they were. But it was impossible to care.

  Moments later, something rustled over Bareris’s head. He glanced up and saw Aoth and Jet flying toward Szass Tam and the demons. The warmage evidently hoped height would give him a clear shot at their foe.

  Bareris and Mirror dashed up to the circle of roaring, flailing demons. The ghost’s lack of a solid form allowed him to slip through the press without so much as a pause. But Bareris had to halt mere strides away from the action.

  He shivered with the mad urge to cut down one of demons just to clear a path. Then the hyena-headed giant reeled backward. Its eyes were on fire, and snakes had grown out of its chest and were biting it repeatedly. Its huge axe floated in the air, hacking at those opponents who tried to come at Szass Tam from behind.

  Bareris lunged into the space the blinded demon had vacated. Singing a song of hate, he cut at Szass Tam’s chest.

  The blow glanced off. Szass Tam thrust his staff at his new attacker. Darkness stabbed from his eyes into Bareris’s head. For a moment, Bareris couldn’t see or think. But he still felt the exaltation of his rage, and when it ebbed, his battle anthem brought it surging back, and it broke the grip of the confusion.

  He cut again, and again failed to pierce Szass Tam’s armoring enchantments. The necromancer whispered words of power, and some of the demons pivoted to attack their fellows. He waved his hand, a ruby ring on a withered finger flashed, and a dozen wounds split the hulking body of a furry, gray-black, bat-winged creature as though invisible blades had hacked it from the inside. A flourish of the shadow staff made darkness seethe and divide into manlike silhouettes.

  Bareris felt a sudden pang of fear that, though it scarcely seemed possible, he and all his formidable allies were going to lose. Then Mirror lunged and plunged his insubstantial sword through Szass Tam’s body.

  At first Szass Tam scarcely seemed to feel the violation. Then both the blade and Mirror himself flared, bright as the sun, and the lich cried out.

  Bareris had seen his comrade channel the power of his god before, but never so much of it, because it was dangerous. No matter how worthy a champion Mirror might be, no matter how faithfully he adhered to his ancient code of chivalry, the divine light was inherently antithetical to his undead condition.

  And equally poisonous to Bareris. The radiance burned him even though he wasn’t the target. It might do worse if he dared step any closer.

  But he didn’t care about that, either. All that mattered was that Szass Tam stood transfixed and vulnerable. Singing, he hurled himself at the lich.

  The light was agony, but the pain didn’t balk him. Rather, it seemed to feed his fury. He cut and cut, and the strokes plunged deep into Szass Tam’s body, cleaving what remained of his flesh and splintering bone.

  Until the radiance died. Bareris looked and saw that Mirror had simply disappeared, like a flame that had burned out.

  Bareris felt a pang of grief. Then skeletal fingers grabbed him by the neck.

  “He’s gone to his god,” Szass Tam croaked. “You go to your woman.”

  The lich’s fingers simultaneously cut and pulled. Bareris felt tearing pain, a nauseating whirl of vertigo as his head tumbled free of his body, and then nothing more.

  His tongue smarting because he’d chewed it during his seizure, Chumed put his foot in the stirrup. But before he could hoist himself onto his charger, he spotted So-Kehur scuttling toward him though the confusion of other warriors in retreat and the reserves trying to push their way forward against the tide.

  From the looks of it, So-Kehur’s scorpion body had taken a considerable beating. Chumed tried not to feel too pleased about it. That sort of spite could be dangerous, given that the lord he served possessed psychic sensitivities.

  “Did you see?” So-Kehur cried. He spoke as if he no longer even remembered striking Chumed down.

  “No, Milord. I was … indisposed until just a few moments ago.”

  “I almost killed Lallara herself! I had her in my grip!”

  Almost. The boast of the weak and stupid.

  “I wish I had seen it,” Chumed said. “But I have tried to assess the overall progress of the battle, and it appears to me that our assault isn’t breaking the stalemate. For that reason, I still advise—”

  “Where are my artisans? I need new eyes, a patch, and any other repairs they can make quickly. Artisans!” So-Kehur lowered himself onto his belly, no doubt so the craftsmen could reach his upper surfaces. He had a breach between two of the plates on the back of his head.

  “Do I take it that you plan to rush back into battle?” Chumed asked.

  “Of course!” So-Kehur said.

  “Of course.” Chumed clambered onto the autharch’s back.

  One of So-Kehur’s remaining eyestalks twisted its optic in his direction. “What in the name of the Black Hand are you doing?” the necromancer asked.

  “I see a broken piece dangling. If I pull it free, that will save the artisans a moment.”

  “Oh. Well, in that case—”

  Chumed whipped his sword from its scabbard and thrust the point into the gap between the plates. The blade punched into the silver egg housing So-Kehur’s brain.

  The scorpion-thing convulsed. Chumed leaped off its back. A flailing tentacle missed him by a hair, and then he landed. Awkwardly. Momentum hurled him to one knee.

  He sensed the huge steel body rolling toward him. He scrambled up, ran, lunged out from under it just in time to avoid being crushed, then turned to see what it would do next.

  It gave a rattling, clattering shudder, then lay inert.

  Other officers had come hurrying to attend So-Kehur. Now they stood frozen, gaping at their master’s body and his killer.

  Chumed raked them with a glower. “I’m in command now,” he said. “Does anyone dispute that?”

  Apparently, no one did.

  “Then pull our men back! Move!”

  For a heartbeat or two, Aoth clung to hope. After all, he’d more than once seen Mirror wither to the verge of nonexistence only to reappear. And after becoming undead, Tammith had twice survived decapitation.

  But this time the ghost had vanished so utterly that not even spellscarred eyes could spot a trace of him, and dark wet patches cut through the bone white flesh of Bareris’s severed head and body as ninety years’ worth o
f deferred corruption flowered in an instant.

  Anguished, Aoth realized that at least his friends’ deaths freed him to hurl his most potent spells at Szass Tam without fear of hitting them as well. He didn’t care about Nevron’s remaining demons, because they no longer posed a threat to the lich. It was all they could do to fight the fiends that had fallen under Szass Tam’s control and the phantoms he’d shaped from the fabric of the night.

  Aoth aimed his spear and rained gouts of fire down on the necromancer’s head. The zulkirs hurled flares of their own power.

  The magic tore the demons apart and seared the shadows from existence. It reduced Szass Tam to little more than a blackened skeleton, but a skeleton who kept his balance at the heart of the blast.

  His rings, amulets, and other talismans glowing with crimson light, Szass Tam turned his empty orbits on Samas Kul. The lich brandished the shadow staff, and a huge pair of fanged jaws appeared in the air in front of his former ally. The apparition shot forward, caught Samas in its jagged teeth, and chewed him to bloody pieces, all so quickly that the fat transmuter only had time for a single, truncated squeal.

  Aoth conjured a flying sword to hurtle down at Szass Tam, who somehow sensed it coming, parried it with his staff, and dissolved it without even bothering to glance upward. An instant later, another fiery blast cast by one of the zulkirs rocked the lich. It tore away some of his ribs, but that didn’t seem to trouble him, either.

  He stared at Lauzoril. “You fall,” he said, the words clear even though his lips had burned away. “All the way to the bottom.”

  Lauzoril’s face twisted, and he shuddered. Then he turned, ran, and hurled himself over the edge of the cliff.

  Nevron finished snarling an incantation. A goristro, a demon somewhat resembling a colossal minotaur, appeared in front of him. Running on its hind feet and the knuckles of its hands, it instantly charged Szass Tam.

  The lich pointed his staff and spoke a word of power. The demon turned to glass and, off balance, toppled. It shattered with a prodigious crash.

  Nevron started another incantation. Szass Tam turned his fleshless hand palm up and made a clutching gesture. The demon master fell, and a second Nevron, made of insubstantial phosphorescence, appeared standing over the body. For once, he didn’t look angry or contemptuous but astonished.

  Szass Tam recited rhyming words, and Nevron’s ghost shrank into a pudgy creature only half as tall, with grubs wriggling in its open sores. Aoth just had time to recognize it as a mane, the weakest and lowliest form of demon, slave to every other. Then it vanished, probably to the Abyss.

  Lallara whispered, and a wall of rainbows shimmered into being between Szass Tam and herself. “On further consideration,” she panted, “I do wish to take advantage of the truce you offered.”

  Szass Tam laughed. “Sorry, Your Omnipotence. But you and your allies insisted on this fight, and now I intend to finish it. There aren’t going to be any more zulkirs in exile to plot against me.”

  He hurled a ragged burst of shadow. The rippling colors in Lallara’s barrier grayed when it splashed against them, and then their brightness blazed anew.

  Grimly aware that there was hardly any power left in it, or in him, for that matter, Aoth aimed his spear to hurl a lightning bolt. Lallara glanced up at him. “Come here,” she said.

  “My attack spells won’t pass through your wall,” he said.

  “Now!” she snapped.

  Maybe she had a plan. He sent Jet winging in her direction. Meanwhile, Szass Tam hurled another murky blast against the shield. This time, it took longer for the colors to reassert themselves, and when they did, they were softer than before.

  Jet and Aoth swooped over the failing defense and landed by Lallara. Despite its sagging wrinkles, her crone’s face looked taut with strain.

  “What do we do?” asked Aoth.

  She reached in a pocket, extracted a silver ring, and tossed it to him. As soon as he caught it, he felt the nature of the spell stored inside it. Under normal circumstances, it would enable the user to translate himself and a companion or two through space.

  “Will this work now?” he asked. Maybe she’d figured out that with Malark’s crystal diadem and staff broken, it would.

  “We couldn’t win,” Lallara gritted, “even if it did. But I’ve spent my life afflicted with idiots and incompetents, and you were never either. Go live if you can.” Szass Tam threw his power at the wall of light, staining and muting the colors, and cracks of inky darkness snaked through them. Lallara cried out as though she herself were breaking and stamped the butt of her staff against the ground.

  The world seemed to fly apart, then instantly reform. Aoth and Jet found themselves still under a black sky, but one with more stars shining in it. They still perched on a high place, but a smaller one, with merlons running along the edge and other towers rising beyond. Lallara had evidently observed how to open the door between realities when Szass Tam did it, and she used the knowledge to return her surviving allies to the roof of the Citadel’s central keep.

  Aoth felt a clench of anger. Given the choice, he wouldn’t have abandoned her.

  Yet underlying the anger was a guilty relief that he had no idea how to return himself to the battlefield, for after all, she was right. They had no hope of beating Szass Tam. Maybe at the start of the fight it had been otherwise, but then the scales tipped against them.

  “What now?” asked Jet.

  “Fly out over the city,” said Aoth. “The direction doesn’t matter.”

  Once they passed beyond the confines of the castle and its wards, he invoked the magic of the ring.

  The world shattered and reassembled itself yet again, and then he and the griffon were soaring above the gleaming black expanse of the Lapendrar. They flew west, over the ranks of their own army, and saw that the autharch’s host was withdrawing.

  Aoth felt some of the tension drain out of his body. This battle at least appeared to have gone about as well as anyone could have expected. Now, if only Szass Tam didn’t come after him!

  And in fact, when he peered around, he couldn’t see any sign of such a pursuit. He supposed it made sense. He and his companions hadn’t succeeded in destroying the lich, but surely they’d hurt him badly enough to make him think twice about starting a new fight with an entire army, spent and bloodied though it was. Especially considering that, as he’d made plain, it was the zulkirs he chiefly wanted to kill.

  Aoth surveyed the ground and spotted Jhesrhi, Khouryn, and Gaedynn standing together. Responding to his unspoken desire, Jet furled his wings to land beside them.

  Gaedynn grinned at the new arrivals. “You missed all the excitement.”

  Aoth dredged up a smile of his own. “Well, maybe not all of it.”

  epilogue

  The Feast of the Moon

  28 Nightal, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

  Earlier that night, processions had wound through the streets of Lyrabar, the participants singing hymns as they went to visit their dead. But when Aoth pushed open the squeaking wrought-iron gate to the dilapidated little graveyard, he saw that here at least, people had already said their prayers, cried their tears, left their offerings, and departed. Some of the votive candles were still flickering, although a chill autumn breeze was blowing them out one and two at a time.

  Aoth spotted a weather-stained limestone bench and flopped on top of it. He pulled the cork from the jug he’d brought with him, took a swig, and savored the burn as the cheap brandy went down.

  He’d succeeded in extricating what remained of the Brotherhood and the council’s legions from Thay without the necessity of another battle, only to find that it didn’t earn him an excess of gratitude back in the Wizard’s Reach. He supposed he understood. If one chose to look at it uncharitably, he’d gotten all four zulkirs killed and the expeditionary force decimated. And aside from some plunder, all anyone had to show for it was his assurance that the venture had neutralized a threat many people never
credited or comprehended in the first place.

  In truth, he wouldn’t have wanted to stay in the Reach even if the remaining Red Wizards had offered to extend his contract. With the zulkirs dead, a struggle for supremacy began, and that, combined with the damage to the legions, was likely to deliver the realm into the hands of Aglarond within a year or two. He saw little point in trying to stem the tide.

  So, by dint of threat, he’d extracted as much money from the archmages’ heirs as he could—about half of what Lallara and her peers had promised—and accepted an offer of employment from the Grand Council of Impiltur, where even a sadly diminished sellsword company could earn its keep by chasing brigands and covens of demon-worshippers.

  And the seasons turned, and the Feast of the Moon arrived. The Brothers of the Griffon couldn’t visit the resting places of their dead—the graves and pyres were scattered across the East—so they sat around their campfires trading memories of the fallen and drinking to them too.

  Aoth remained with the celebration for a while. But gradually he realized he wanted to remember comrades whom, he imagined, only he mourned. Accordingly, he took his leave and, weaving a trifle, wandered in search of a place where he could be alone. The graveyard looked like it would do.

  By the Black Flame, he missed Bareris and Mirror! He could only pray that true death was treating them more kindly than undeath ever had.

  To his surprise, he realized he even missed the zulkirs. They’d been heartless and tyrannical, but his service to them had made him the man he was, and in the end, they’d given their lives to foil the designs of a far greater monster than themselves.

  He likewise mourned the Thay of his youth, so green and rich and proud. Now, though towns and farms remained, it was in large measure a haunted wasteland, and the vilest haunters were the very lords Szass Tam had raised up to rule over the living. These masters oppressed them mercilessly and tortured and killed them merely for their sport.

  A hand settled gingerly on Aoth’s shoulder. Startled, he looked around. Jhesrhi had come up behind him, and Khouryn, Gaedynn, and Jet stood behind her. The griffon’s crimson eyes gleamed in the dark.