Unholy hl-3

by Richard Lee Byers

Shaking, Bareris closed his eyes and struggled to dampen his hatred and rage at least a little. Tried to think of something besides Tammith crumbling in his embrace as the Alamber Sea dissolved her flesh like acid.

  "I'll go back," he managed.

  Aoth posted more sentries and rousted Lallara and her subordinate wizards to cast additional defensive enchantments, just in case Tsagoth tried to sneak back. Then he returned to the center of the camp, where Bareris was still addressing the rebels and brandishing his naked sword for emphasis. The red light made the blade look bloody.

  If Aoth was any judge-and after a century of commanding men, he'd better be-the bard's oration was having the desired effect. The rebels no longer regarded the blood fiend's incursion as a terrifying guarantee of horrors to come. Now it seemed an infuriating provocation.

  Aoth made his way to Mirror's side. "Thank the gods for that golden tongue," he murmured from the corner of his mouth.

  "It's bad that Tsagoth's here," replied the ghost. "We'll have to watch over our brother to make sure the old grudge doesn't goad him into folly."

  "In case you didn't notice, I just promoted myself to acting zulkir a little while ago. I have this whole army to 'watch over.' Bareris knows what's at stake. I'm sure he'll be fine."

  Standing atop the battlements above the Dread Ring's primary gate, Malark-for it was easier to think of himself that way than as the original Malark's magically created surrogate, especially now that they were no longer in proximity-gazed south. The council's army was out there somewhere in the night, probably within a day's march of the fortress. The scouts and diviners had given him a good idea of its size and composition, but even so, he looked forward to seeing such a mighty host of killers for himself and to watching it and the castle's defenders slaughter one another.

  A dark, looming form appeared before him. He reflexively shifted his feet just a little-though most observers wouldn't even notice, the change in his stance prepared him tor combat-even as he perceived that the new arrival was Tsagoth, come to report as expected.

  "How did it go?" Malark asked.

  "Anskuld and many others saw me make the kills. One of my victims was a young, dark-haired Rashemi girl, pretty as you humans reckon such things."

  "Excellent. Are you thirsty? Would you like me to conjure an imp for you to feast on?" Although, bound as he was into Szass Tam's service, Tsagoth generally had to make do with the blood of mortals, he much preferred to prey on other creatures native to the higher worlds.

  The blood fiend glared, his crimson eyes blazing. "I'm not a dog for you to reward with treats."

  Malark decided not to observe that when Tsagoth, with his lupine muzzle, bared his fangs that way. there was a certain resemblance. "Of course not. You're my valued comrade, and I was trying to show you courtesy."

  Tsagoth grunted.

  "Why so touchy, if your errand went well?"

  "When I arrived, the bard was addressing the rebels. He told them Szass Tam has some demented scheme to kill the entire world."

  "Ah."

  "Is it true?"

  Malark considered denial but decided a lie was unlikely to allay the blood fiend's suspicions. "I wouldn't call it 'demented,' but otherwise, yes. Please tell no one else." Many of the Dread Ring's garrison wouldn't believe or understand Tsagoth even if he did tattle, and, like the undead demon himself, they bore enchantments that would oblige them to perform their functions no matter what they knew. Still, it would be pointlessly cruel to frighten them.

  Tsagoth twitched as he felt Malark's mild-sounding request impose irresistible compulsion.

  "Have I served well these past hundred years?" the blood fiend asked.

  "I assume that's a rhetorical question. You're one of our master's greatest champions."

  "I've done all I have in the hope that one day he would return me to my own plane. If you want my very best, one last time, promise me that after we preserve the Dread Ring, you'll send me home."

  Malark sighed. "You think you'll be safe if you simply escape Faerun, don't you? In all honesty, I have to tell you, you won't."

  Tsagoth snorted. "I know Szass Tam is capable of making a great mess, but I doubt he'll even destroy this one squalid little excuse for a world. His magic surely won't reach into all the worlds there are."

  "The Spellplague did."

  "So people say, but I still like my chances."

  "Have it your way, then. Once we eliminate the threat to the castle, I'll return you to the Abyss. Now, is it clear what I need from you next?"

  "Yes. The zulkirs will camp on the lake or near it. When practical, I'm to seize Rashemi maidens and drown them, so they die in water like Tammith Iltazyarra did."

  "Precisely."

  "What I don't understand is why it's so important to nettle Bareris Anskuld and undermine his judgment. He's just one soldier in an army."

  "In his way, he's as accomplished a champion as you are; I'm sure Aoth or the zulkirs will give him men to command, and in any case, this ploy is just one little element of my overall strategy. I'll give you tasks more worthy of your stature as the siege proceeds."

  "All right. Whatever you want." Tsagoth hesitated. "Tell me one more thing."

  "Surely."

  "If you know what's coming, why do you serve Szass Tam so willingly?"

  "The promise of perfect beauty and perfect peace."

  "I don't understand."

  Malark smiled. "No one does. It makes me feel lonely sometimes."

  CHAPTER SIX

  10–14 Mirtul, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

  Long before he was old enough to enlist, Aoth had yearned to join the Griffon Legion of Pyarados, because he'd been certain he'd love flying. As he had. And more than a hundred years later, he still relished it just as much as ever.

  But this was the sort of morning that took the joy right out of it. The cold rain chilled him despite the magical tattoo and minor charms intended to keep him warm and dry. Maybe he was sensing Jet's discomfort across their psychic link, for his familiar was certainly drenched as well as vexed at winds that consistently blew in exactly the wrong direction to help him go where he intended.

  With the sky lumpy with storm clouds promising even heavier rain later on, it was shaping up to be a foul day. As such, it provided the perfect backdrop for Aoth's first look at the Dread Ring of Lapendrar.

  The place was black and immense, and something about the precise curve of its walls and shape of its fanglike towers screamed of arcane power, even though Aoth couldn't decipher the design. Maybe, as a warmage, his knowledge of wizardry was too specialized, or maybe no one could interpret it unless he'd first read Fastrin the Delver's book.

  What Aoth could tell was that the walls were high and thick and laid out so that any attacking force would find itself shot at from at least two directions at once. And there were plenty of defenders to do the shooting. The battlements crawled with bellowing blood orcs, withered, yellow-eyed dread warriors, and red-robed necromancers all assembled to watch the besieging force march into view.

  "Big castle," said Jet.

  "Very," said Aoth.

  "But I assume you've captured even bigger, over the course of your long and glorious career."

  Aoth snorted. "Not so many as you might expect."

  "Then we're doomed?"

  "No. We have all the surviving members of the Council of Zulkirs on our side, whereas the Dread Ring doesn't have Szass Tam. He's in High Thay, getting ready for the Unmaking. That has to count for something."

  Or at least he hoped so.

  Bareris looked around the council of war and saw fatigue in every lanternlit mortal face. The work of the last two days, necessary preparation for the struggle to come, had been taxing. The army had needed to pitch tents, build corrals for the animals, and make sure of its water supply. Raise earthworks and dig trenches and latrines. Enlarge and assemble the siege engines carried from the Wizard's Reach in shrunken form. The effort ultimately took its toll even on
officers and Red Wizards, who for the most part left the manual labor to their subordinates.

  But it hadn't tired Bareris-since becoming undead, he seldom knew exhaustion in the way that mortals did-and he didn't feel inclined to lounge in the command tent. He wanted to prowl the night and catch Tsagoth the next time the blood drinker came creeping to abduct and drown another girl.

  But now that Aoth had appointed Bareris liaison to the rebel contingent of the army, it was his duty to be here, and even if it weren't, the meeting was important, its purpose to devise a strategy to capture the Dread Ring and so foil Szass Tam's designs. But it was hard to care about even that when the creature who'd killed Tammith with his own four hands was finally within reach.

  Slouched in a folding camp chair, his enchanted spear and crestless, plumeless, no-nonsense helmet resting on the ground beside him, Aoth cleared his throat. "All right. We've all had a chance to take a look at the nut we have to crack. What are your thoughts?"

  Gaedynn grinned. "Ordinarily, I'd scout a stronghold like this and say, you know, I'm not in any hurry. Let's just starve them out. But from what I understand, zombies and such don't need food, and on top of that, we may only have a few tendays before Szass Tam performs his death ritual. Actually, for all we know, he could be starting it this very moment or could start bright and early tomorrow morning, but we simply have to hope not."

  "So why talk about the possibility?" Jhesrhi said. She inspected her grimy hand, then picked at one of her fingernails.

  Samas Kul belched. He tossed away a chicken bone, and a candied pomegranate appeared to take its place. "If we could make contact with someone inside the castle-someone alive, I mean-perhaps we could bribe him to open one of the gates."

  "I doubt it," Bareris said. "Szass Tam started shackling the minds of his agents at the beginning of the war. Given that the Dread Rings are crucial to his plans, it's unlikely that he'd station anyone there who was still in possession of his free will."

  Lauzoril pursed his lips, an expression that made him look even more like a priggish clerk than usual. "Working together, Lallara and I might be able to break some of those shackles. Of course, then you'd still have to identify exactly whom it was. You'd have to find a way to communicate with him and convince him it was in his best interests to switch sides…"

  "In other words," said Nevron, sneering, "the idea's too complicated, and we can't pin our hopes on it. We have to take the Ring by force of arms." He shifted his glare to Aoth. "Your avowed area of expertise, our 'equal for the duration.' "

  "I've given the problem some thought," the warmage said, "and even with a company of griffon riders at our disposal, I doubt we can get enough men on top of a wall, or inside the walls, to open the place up for the rest of us. We need to break down a gate or a section of wall, and then we'll have a chance."

  Lallara frowned. "Those fortifications are massive. Even if the builders hadn't reinforced them with enchantment-which they did-it would take too much time to batter them down with mangonels and such."

  "That's true, Your Omnipotence. But every wall, no matter how strongly built, needs something solid to stand on."

  "You're talking about mining."

  "Yes."

  "Wouldn't that take too much time as well?"

  "If we did it in the usual way. But I hope we have an alternative. Jhesrhi?"

  Her golden eyes catching the lamplight, the wizard said, "I'm well-versed in elemental magic, and I've studied the patch of ground on which the Ring stands. I know where the soil is softest and where an underground stream runs. I believe that if I spoke to the earth and water, I could conceivably topple a section of the east wall. But the job would be a lot more feasible if I had help. Master Nevron, I've heard that you and your disciples are as adept at commanding elementals as you are demons and devils, even if you don't see fit to call on them as often. Would you join me in this effort?"

  Nevron's scowl deepened as if it vexed him to have someone who wasn't a zulkir speak to him as an equal. But he simply said, "I'll do it if someone can convince me the plan is practical. It will take more than I've heard so far. Let's say the wall falls."

  "By all means, let's say that," Gaedynn interrupted. "The collapse breaks the magical pattern, and our work is done. Right?"

  "Wrong," Nevron spat. "If we merely inflict physical damage and march away, they can restore the symbol. We need to rake the Ring and then perform a ritual to render it harmless for all time. Now, as I was saying: The wall falls. Won't the army still have a great heap of rubble blocking the path into the fortress?"

  "A heap of loose stones isn't the same thing as a solid wall," Jhesrhi said. "I'm confident that, with all the wizards in our army, we can clear it out of our way."

  "Well, possibly so. But have you considered that when we strike to knock down the wall, the wizards inside the fortress will sense the attack and move to counter us: And no matter how skilled we are at elemental magic, inertia will be on their side."

  Aoth scratched his chin. "Yes, that's the tricky part. We need to distract the bastards so thoroughly that they won't notice what you're up to."

  "So we make what looks like a committed, furious assault," Bareris said.

  "That's my thought," said Aoth.

  Lauzoril put his hands together in front of his face, fingertip to fingertip, and peered into the space between his palms as if wisdom dwelled therein. "The feint will have to look convincing, which means it will give the enemy the opportunity to kill a good many of our troops. Breaching the wall won't help us if we end up too weak to exploit the opportunity."

  "Well," said Aoth, "it would stop Szass Tam from using the castle as a giant talisman until his servants mend the hole. You're right, though: if the first battle cripples us, that delay wont save us in the long run. But I don't think the fight has to cripple us. We've been watching this place since we got here and have seen few flying warriors or steeds. Whereas we have griffon riders, so that's one advantage. Most if not all of their mages are necromancers, and they don't appear to have any priests at all. We have a greater diversity of magic at our command, so that's another."

  "In fact," Khouryn said, "if I can get some ladders planted against the wall and a squad of my best men to the top of them, this 'feint' might just take the castle all by itself. Stranger things have happened."

  Samas Kul shook his head. "I'm just not persuaded this ploy will work."

  "Do you have a better idea?" Lallara waited a beat, as if to give the gluttonous transmuter a chance to respond. He didn't take it. "Because I don't, and we have to try something."

  "I agree," Lauzoril said.

  "As do I," Nevron said. He glowered at Jhesrhi. "But you'd better be as competent as you claim."

  That seemed to settle it, for Samas pouted and held his peace thereafter. And, though no one said it outright, Bareris sensed that the zulkirs would expect the Brotherhood of the Griffon to do the hardest fighting and face the greatest peril, just as in the battle against the Aglarondans. He had a guilty sense that, as Aoth's friend, he ought to resent the unfairness, but he couldn't. Because if the sellswords were at the forefront and he was with them, it would maximize his chances of getting at Tsagoth.

  Jet carried Aoth soaring over the warriors of the Brotherhood of the Griffon who didn't ride the steeds from which the company took its name-ranks of armored foot soldiers, lines of bowmen, lancers on restless, prancing horses, and artillerymen making final, fussy adjustments to their trebuchets and ballistae. Viewing them, he wished, as he often did at such moments, that he could be with every component of his army simultaneously to oversee everything it did.

  "Well, you can't,"' said Jet. "So let's get on with it."

  Not the most inspirational words that ever hurled fighting men into the jaws of death, but Aoth supposed they'd do. He looked across the gray sky, caught Bareris's eye, and dipped the head of his spear to signal. The bard nodded, raised a horn to his lips, and blew a call amplified by magic. Scores of griffon
riders hurtled at the Dread Ring.

  Blood orcs on the battlements bellowed to see them coming, while their undead comrades, rotting cadavers and naked skeletons, stood stolidly and waited with weapons in hand. Bareris struck up a song that stabbed terror and confusion into the minds of some of the swine-faced living warriors, and they bolted and plummeted from the wall-walk. Aoth pointed his spear and hurled a dazzling flare of lightning that blasted both live and lifeless defenders to smoking fragments. Gaedynn loosed one of his special arrows, and in a heartbeat, brambles sprouted where it struck, growing and twisting outward from the shaft to catch Szass Tam's minions like a spiderweb. Those griffon riders who lacked a means of magical attack shot shaft after shaft from their short but powerful compound bows, and hit a target more often than not.

  The attackers focused their efforts on those portions of the south wall commanding the approach to the Ring's largest gate.

  But since they were wheeling and swooping above the castle, the foes on every stretch of battlement could shoot back. Volleys of arrows and quarrels arced up at them. Necromancers in scarlet-and-black regalia conjured blasts of chilling darkness and barrages of shadow-splinters.

  Pierced with half a dozen shafts, a griffon screeched and plummeted, carrying its rider with it. The warrior tossed his bow away, wrapped his arms around his mount's feathery neck, and they crashed to earth in one of the castle baileys. An instant later, another steed fell, both the griffon and the sellsword buckled in the saddle already slain and rotted by some necromantic curse.

  It was a nasty situation, but it would have been far worse if not for the griffons' agility and the armoring enchantments Lallara and her subordinates had cast on them immediately prior to taking off. As it was, Aoth judged that he and his companions could continue as they were for a while, providing essential cover for their comrades on the ground.

  A mental prompt sent Jet swinging to the right, toward three of the wizards who posed the greatest immediate threat. Aoth hammered them bloody with a downpour of conjured hail, then heard a vast muddled sound at his back that told him the charge had begun.