Malark murmured the opening words of an incantation and flicked the ebony wand through a star-shaped figure. Fangs bared, the vampire sprang in and made a head cut. The move was virtually a reflex for any seasoned warrior: If the wizard you're fighting starts reciting a spell, hit him before he can finish. Spoil the magic.
Malark shifted inside the arc of the cut, and the blade fell harmlessly behind him. Remembering that he mustn't shout-Szass Tam might well recognize his battle cry-he focused his strength, stiffened his fingers inside their clawed demon-hide glove, and drove them through the vampire's breastplate and ribs and into his chest. He gripped the creature's cold, motionless heart and ripped it out. The knight collapsed.
Malark dropped the heart, ran back the way he'd come, and held the hand with the ruby ring behind him. The gem dropped sparks as if they were caltrops, which then flowered into sheets of bright, crackling flame. The fires extended from wall to wall and might slow Szass Tam down a little. They might also keep him from getting a good look at his quarry and do so more reliably than any illusory disguise or charm of invisibility.
A wind howled down the passage, staggering Malark and blowing out his blazing barricades like candle flames. Recovering his balance, he dived into another branching passage a bare instant before a lightning bolt crackled down the one he'd just vacated.
When planning this chase, Malark had decided that if he were Szass Tam, this was the point at which he'd shift himself through space. Because if the lich had the layout of the catacombs memorized-and his protege was certain he did-then he knew that the twisting passage his quarry had just ducked down was supposed to be a cul-de-sac. So he'd want to advance far enough to bottle up the supposed demon before the marauder realized it had nowhere to go.
But Malark actually did. Yesterday, he'd employed a tunneling spell to connect the dead-end passage with another. He scurried on unimpeded, ultimately to what looked like just another section of painted wall, this mural a murky underwater view of a sea divested offish, shells, and coral.
He whispered words of release and touched the tip of his wand to the invisible sigils inscribed across the seascape, avoiding the one that only existed to spray a thief with freezing cold. The signs glowed like red-hot iron for a moment, each in its turn, and then the hidden door clicked as the latch released.
Malark swung it wide open and left it that way after he passed through. On the other side was a spacious, high-ceilinged chamber crammed with some of Szass Tam's greatest treasures. An axe with a diamond blade, still lodged in the skull of the colossal dragon it had slain at the conclusion of its final battle. Gold and silver vials, each containing the sole surviving dose of some exotic potion. Tapestries in which the figures moved if one watched long enough, and spoke if one listened hard enough, doorways to small artificial worlds created by a long-extinct order of mystic weavers. A plentitude of sarcophagi, canopic jars, and grave goods looted from the tombs of the Mulhorandi lords who had once ruled Thay.
Since he didn't want Szass Tam to hear breakage and come running prematurely, Malark had stamped flat a chalice crafted of some strange green metal and had snapped the head off an exquisite ivory carving of the goddess Nephthys on a previous visit. He grabbed the ruined items and set them outside in the passage as if they'd been tossed there, then crouched behind an enormous block of carnelian crawling with carved, spidery-looking symbols-some sort of drow altar, perhaps.
After that he had nothing to do but wait for Szass Tam to appear. Well, that and tolerate the spiteful scrutiny of the Watcher. He hoped the entity was enjoying the show.
He imagined Szass Tam creeping down the tunnel, proceeding warily since the constant bend kept him from seeing more than a pace or two ahead. He imagined the lich's annoyance when he discovered he didn't have his quarry cornered after all, and his further vexation when he beheld the secret door standing open and more of his treasures defiled.
What he would he do then? That was the question. Because, if one stopped to think about it, the view before him looked like it could be a baited trap, and he was more than wily enough to perceive it that way. He knew, moreover, that the contents of the vault were fated to perish in any case and had been training himself to regard them, like the rest of creation, with disdain.
So it was entirely possible that he'd seal the chamber up again, locking it so well that even his trusted apprentice couldn't breach the wards a second time, and fetch reinforcements.
But Malark hoped the archmage would make a different choice. Szass Tam likely had some lingering attachment to the precious things he'd collected, and even if he didn't, the "demon's" desecration of them was an affront to his dignity, just like the rest of Malark's escalating series of provocations.
And perhaps the chase, with its violence and frustrations, had roused Szass Tam's passions and left him eager to make the kill. If so, it seemed likely that he'd enter even if he did suspect a trap. For he was, after all, the greatest wizard in the East, capable of defeating virtually any foe under almost any circumstances.
Szass Tam wasn't in sight yet, but his dry, pleasant voice recited a spell outside the door. A wave of chill swept over Malark, and for a heartbeat, his body felt heavy as lead. He recognized the enchantment. The lich had just made it impossible for anything lurking in the vault to escape by shifting itself through space.
Then Szass Tam stepped into the doorway. A red halo of protective power outlined his thin frame, and a blade blacker than night hovered before him. Malark recognized that magic as well. The flying sword was a sort of mobile wound in space, and its slightest touch would rip him-or a big piece of him-out of the mortal world.
Szass Tam's gaze raked the room and failed to catch on Malark's hiding place. That was something, anyway.
"I take it," said the lich, "that I'm supposed to grope my way through the clutter and give you a chance to pounce out at me. Please forgive me if I take another approach." He leveled his staff, slowly swept it from left to right, and spoke the first line of a spell of reanimation.
Reciting as quickly as he could, Malark whispered his own spell. Darts of green light leaped from his outstretched fingertips.
Their trajectory would give away his location, so, staying low, he immediately scurried from behind the carnelian block for another piece of cover. He'd rely on his ears to tell him whether the attack had disrupted Szass Tam's incantation.
It didn't. The archmage continued to speak with flawless cadence and inflection. It was likely the darts hadn't even stung him through his armor of light.
He snapped out a final word like the crack of a whip, and for an instant, the darkness boiled. Stone scraped on stone, and then the lids of the sarcophagi crashed to the floor. Smelling of embalmer's spice and dry rot, wrapped in linen, the Mulhorandi dead stood.
The nearest mummy was within easy reach of Malark. It gave a croaking call and, without even bothering to step out of its coffin, made a sort of toppling lunge at him, its withered, bandaged hands outstretched to grab.
Its touch would rot living flesh, but Malark's gauntlets would protect him, or at least he hoped so. He sidestepped the mummy's attack, sank the talons of one gloved hand into its temple, and yanked its head off.
It had only taken an instant, but that was an instant too long. The undead creature's groan and the ensuing scuffle had surely revealed Malark's location. He ran, and a blaze of shadow seethed through the air. He dived, but the fringe of the attack grazed him anyway.
That was enough to make his back arch in agony and flood his mind with terror. He fought against both. Held in a scream and brought his spasmodic muscles back under control. Scuttled onward.
Another mummy groaned and lurched at him. He parried its flailing fist with his cudgel, then bashed its chest in, at that same instant sensing danger. He sprang to the side, and the black sword slashed through the space he'd just vacated. He scrambled behind a gigantic dragonfly preserved in an even bigger lump of amber, the whole mounted on a bronze pedestal.
Power prickled across his body, which was no guarantee that the charm would actually protect him, considering that Szass Tam himself had animated the mummies. Malark supposed he'd know in a moment.
He slowed his breathing and sought to suppress what remained of his pain. Then he scrambled out from behind the dragonfly, again staying low in the hope that it would keep Szass Tam from spotting him. It might. The lich had taken only a few steps into the vault, and a number of sizable artifacts lay between the two of them.
The same precaution wouldn't throw off the mummies converging on his last position. Yet they took no notice as he darted between a pair of them. Thanks to his magic, they now mistook him for one of their own kind. And while they were seeking him in the back of the chamber, and Szass Tam waited for them to reveal his position, Malark had a few precious moments to try to steer this confrontation to the desired conclusion.
First, he needed to maneuver Szass Tam to the proper spot. Kneeling behind what appeared to be a common alchemist's oven but was no doubt something infinitely more valuable, he murmured sibilant words of command.
Szass Tam peered this way and that, then stiffened when he felt the magic bite. He appeared to sneer the unpleasant sensation away.
Malark had been certain the elder wizard would shrug off the effects of the spell, but that wasn't the point. If he'd succeeded in annoying the lich before, then surely it was more irksome still for someone to try to use necromancy against him, the greatest practitioner of that dark science, as if he were no more than a common zombie or ghoul.
Malark rapped his cudgel against the side of the kiln, then ran. An instant later, jagged shadows spun around the device in a maelstrom of conjured fangs and claws.
Then Szass Tam drew the flying blade back to float in front of him. As he advanced on the kiln, the weapon leaped this way and that in an unpredictable pattern of defense. Meanwhile, Malark circled.
Szass Tam stepped around the oven and scowled to discover that it didn't have a mangled corpse sprawled behind it. He raised his staff and began another incantation.
This one would conjure a flying eye that he would no doubt send to the ceiling. There, it would survey the entire vault from above, allowing its maker to see it too. Then he wouldn't need the mummies or any other spotters to pinpoint the whereabouts of his quarry.
He'd likely cripple or kill Malark the instant after. In light of Malark's previous failure to hinder Szass Tam's spellcasting, the spymaster decided he needed to close now, even though the lich hadn't positioned himself precisely as he'd hoped.
He charged.
He had some semblance of cover part of the way, but none for the last few feet. As he burst out into the open, he hoped that astonishment might paralyze his opponent for a critical instant. After all, Malark Springhill had supposedly died in Lapendrar and was supposedly Szass Tam's faithful disciple as well.
He should have known better. The lich hadn't existed as long as he had and hadn't achieved supremacy in Thay by freezing in the midst of combat. The black blade leaped at Malark.
He hurled himself underneath the stroke, slid forward on the dusty floor, and sprang upright again. Now the flying sword was behind him, the worst place for it, but he ignored the peril to concentrate on pivoting and driving a thrust kick into Szass Tam's midsection.
As intended, the attack knocked the lich stumbling backward, but it also jolted Malark as if he'd kicked a granite column. For an instant, he feared he'd broken his leg.
When he set it down, it was plain he hadn't, but there was worse to come. His stomach turned over, and the room tilted and spun. Another effect of Szass Tam's armoring enchantments, perhaps, or simply the result of touching the undead creature's poisonous flesh.
Whatever it was, he couldn't let it slow him down. He was certain the shadow blade was making another attack. Instinct prompted him to fake left, then shift right, and the stroke missed.
But at the same time, Szass Tam snarled a rhyme and thrust out a shriveled hand. A splash of liquid appeared in midair, and, nauseated and dizzy as he was, Malark couldn't dodge it and the sword too. He flung up his arm and shielded his eyes, but the acid spattered the rest of him, burned him, and kept on burning.
He knew a spell to wash the vitriol away, and another to purge himself of sickness, but had no time for either. Now that he'd knocked Szass Tam backward to the proper spot, he had something else to do, something that neither the lich nor the philosopher-assassins of the Long Death had taught him.
Rather, he'd learned it as a boy growing up in a long-vanished city beside the Moonsea, before he'd betrayed his best friend for the elixir of perpetual youth, suffered the despair of endless life, or discovered the consolations of devoting himself to death. In that bygone age, he and the other children had played kickball in a field near the purplish waters, with a tree at each end to serve as a goal. He'd gotten pretty good at scoring points once he learned to take an instant to line up his shot.
And, ignoring his vertigo, churning guts, and the searing pain of the sizzling, smoking acid, twisting out of the path of a sword stroke that slashed close enough to catch his sleeve and make it disappear, that was what he did now. Then he launched himself into a flying kick.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
27 Mirtul-9 Kythorn, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)
When the scout arrived, the artisans were giving So-Kehur's everyday body a second pair of hands, human-looking except for being made of sculpted steel. He'd long since learned to manipulate four crablike claws, tentacles, or what have you at the same time. Now he wanted to see if he could make the precise gestures required for spellcasting with four hands simultaneously, and whether that would enhance the effect of the magic.
He waved the artisans away with the flick of a tentacle and, using his eight arachnoid legs, turned his cylindrical body in the scout's direction. He extended several of his eyes at the ends of their flexible antennae to view the newcomer from multiple angles at once.
Because he'd taken the trouble to do so, he saw the kneeling scout tremble ever so slightly. The creature was an undead soldier with a gray withered face and glazed, sunken eyes, but even so, he feared his lord. So-Kehur found it gratifying.
But it was detrimental to morale to terrorize underlings who'd done nothing to deserve it-he'd learned that observing Szass Tam-so he'd try to make the scout feel at ease. "Please, get up," he said. His voice was indistinguishable from that produced by a normal larynx and mouth, for that was necessary for his conjuring. "Would you like some refreshment?"
"No, thank you, Master," said the scout. His leather trappings creaked as he straightened up. "One of the grooms offered me a prisoner as I was climbing off my eagle."
"Good. Then tell me what you've seen."
"The invaders abandoned the Dread Ring and marched south again. I thought they'd go back into the Umber Marshes and on home to the Wizard's Reach, but they didn't make the turn."
So-Kehur felt a surge of excitement. If he'd still possessed a pulse, no doubt it would have quickened. "You mean they're heading toward Anhaurz."
"It looks that way."
"The lunatics must actually believe they can reach and destroy another Ring-the one in Tyraturos." So-Kehur had no idea why the archmages of the council were so fixated on the gigantic strongholds, but it seemed evident they were. "They mean to take the High Road up the First Escarpment. Of the three likely ascents, it's the only one without a fortress guarding the top. But to get to the High Road, they need to use the bridge here at Anhaurz to cross the Lapendrar."
The undead warrior inclined his head. "The autharch is wise."
"So this is where we'll stop them!"
In his youth, So-Kehur had been a coward, even if it never quite prevented him
from doing his duty. But on the plain below Thralgard Keep, in the battle that broke the southern legions, he'd finally found his courage, and afterward, he'd vowed to make sure it never slipped away.
To that end, he'd started replacing parts of his body with grafts from the undead and, when even those began to seem insufficiently strong to protect him from any conceivable threat, with metal. He supposed that at some point afterward, he must have decided to dispense with an organic form entirely, to become a disembodied brain, charged with the energies of undeath to nourish and preserve it, encased in a steel shell, although oddly enough, he couldn't recall the exact moment when he'd made such a choice. Rather, when he looked back, it seemed to him as if the process had simply happened by degrees.
In any case, his transformation had mostly worked out all right. Much as he'd loved to eat, he no longer missed it, or the touch of a woman, either. The cravings faded after he divested himself of the organs with which a person gratified them. Strange abilities emerged to take their place, along with the desire to exert his newly developed strengths.
That last was the problem because the War of the Zulkirs was over, and afterward, Szass Tam proved unexpectedly reluctant to start any new ones. Instead, he devoted himself to erecting the Dread Rings, unnecessary defenses for a realm already impregnable, or, conceivably, monuments to overweening vanity. Either way, it left So-Kehur with no outlet for his aggression except hunting rebels, scarcely a challenge for the consummate killer he'd become.
Now, however, an enemy army was heading straight for Anhaurz, a slayer in its own right. Ninety years ago, the Spellplague had destroyed the town, and when Szass Tam appointed him autharch and gave him the task of rebuilding it, So-Kehur'd done so in a way that expressed his yearning for battle. The new Anhaurz was a true fortress city, constructed and garrisoned to break any force that dared to assault it. Even one led by the likes of Nevron and Lauzoril.
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