They scarcely had time to crouch before a dozen ghouls- hunched, withered, hairless things with mouths full of needle fangs-came loping down the trail. Szass Tam had plenty of patrols watching for signs of trouble, even this far down the mountain.
The creature in the lead-judging from the stomach-turning stench of it, it might be one of the especially nasty ghouls called ghasts-abruptly halted, raised its head, and sniffed, although how it could possibly smell anything but itself was a mystery. Mirror willed his sword into his hand. But then the ghast grunted and led its fellows on down the path.
Mirror waited for the patrol to trek farther away, then whispered, "It's a good thing neither of us sweats."
Bareris didn't answer. That wasn't unusual, but the reason was. Crooning to himself, he was already slipping back into his trance. He started to straighten up.
"Wait," Mirror said. "Give the ghouls another moment."
Bareris froze in a position that would have strained a living man.
"All right," continued the ghost, "that should be long enough."
Bareris finished rising and continued onward, straying from the trail as often as he walked on it, halting periodically to run his hand over a stone or a patch of earth. Prowling behind him. Mirror watched for danger and tried to believe this scheme might actually work.
He told himself he should believe. He had a century's worth of reasons to trust Bareris, and even were it otherwise, faith had been the foundation of his martial order and his life. Still, his friend's plan seemed like a long shot at best, partly because Mirror had never seen the bard do anything comparable before.
Rumor had it that the cellars of the Citadel connected to natural caverns below. Bareris reasoned that the caves might well let out somewhere on the mountainside, and Mirror agreed the notion was plausible.
It was his comrade's strategy for finding an opening that roused his skepticism. Bareris had collected stories concerning killings and uncanny happenings on the slopes. Some of those tales were surely false or had become confused as they passed from one teller to the next. Even the ones that were accurate didn't necessarily reflect the predations of creatures that emerged from the catacombs to hunt. The desolate peaks of the Thaymount were home to a great number of beasts likely to devour any lone hunter or prospector they happened across.
Still, Bareris had tossed all the dubious stories into his head like the ingredients of a stew. Somehow the mixture was supposed to cook down to a measure of truth, or perhaps a better word was inspiration. Then magic would lead the singer to the spot he needed to find.
Let it be so, Mirror silently prayed. I don't know how it can be, but let it be so.
Day gave way to night. Light flickered on the northern horizon as, somewhere in that direction, a volcano belched fire and lava. The ground rumbled and shivered, and loose pebbles clattered down the slopes.
Some time after, Bareris abruptly halted and sang the brief phrase necessary to give his song some semblance of a proper conclusion. "We're close." His voice and expression were keen, purged of the dreamy quality the trance had imparted.
Mirror cast about. "I don't see anything."
"I don't, either, but it's here." The slope above this narrow length of trail was steep enough that an ordinary man might well have hesitated to climb on it. But Bareris scuttled around on it quickly, with minimal concern for his own safety. Since a ghost couldn't fall, Mirror tried to examine the least accessible places and spare his comrade at least that much danger.
Neither found anything.
Mirror looked down at the bard. "Should we go higher?" he asked. "Or investigate the slope beneath the trail?"
"No," Bareris said. "It's here. It's right in front of us."
Or else, Mirror thought, you simply want it to be. But what he said was, "Good enough." They resumed picking over the same near-vertical stretch of escarpment they'd already checked,
Until Bareris said, "I found it."
He was standing-or clinging-beside what appeared to be just another basalt outcropping. Mirror floated down to hover directly in front of him and still couldn't see anything special about it. "You're certain?" he asked.
"Yes. Last year or the year before, this stone was higher up the mountain. Then a tremor shook it loose, and it tumbled down here to jam in the outlet like a cork in a bottle. For a moment, I could see it happening."
"Let's find out what I can see," Mirror said. He flew forward into the solid rock. For a phantom, it was like pushing through cobwebs.
Almost immediately, he emerged into empty air. A tunnel ran away before him, twisting into the heart of the mountain.
He turned, flowed back through the stone, and told Bareris he was right.
Bareris sang a charm. He vanished, then instantly reappeared. "Damn it," he growled. "Even this far under the castle, I can't shift myself inside."
"But I can go in," Mirror said. "I'll explore the caves and find a second outlet. Then I'll come back here and fetch you."
Bareris shook his head. "If the stories are true, there are things lurking in the tunnels that could hurt even you. Things you might not be able to handle by yourself. Besides, what if there isn't another opening, or we run out of time while you're looking for it?"
"What's the alternative?"
"Yank the stopper out of the jug."
"I know you're strong, but that stone is bigger than you are, and you don't have any good place to plant your feet."
That made it sound as if Mirror's only worry was that the boulder wouldn't pull free. In truth, he was equally concerned that it would, suddenly, and carry Bareris with it as it tumbled onward. The bard knew a spell to soften a fall, but it wouldn't keep the rock from crushing, grinding, and tearing him to pieces against the mountainside.
"I can do it," Bareris said, "or rather, we can. You'll help me with your prayers."
Mirror saw that, as usual, there was no dissuading him. So he nodded his assent, and while Bareris sang a song to augment his strength, Mirror asked his patron to favor the bard. For an instant, the god's response warmed the cold, aching emptiness that was his essence even as the response manifested as a shimmer of golden light.
Still singing, Bareris positioned his feet on a small, uneven, somewhat horizontal spot unworthy of the term "ledge." He twisted at the waist, found handholds on the boulder, gripped them, and started straining.
At first, nothing happened, and small wonder. Standing as he was, Bareris couldn't even exert the full measure of his strength. Then the stone made a tiny grating sound. Then a louder one.
Then it jerked free, so abruptly that it threw Bareris off balance. The stone and the bard plummeted together, just as Mirror had envisioned.
For the first moment of the stone's fall, Bareris was more or less on top of it. Its rotation would spin him underneath an instant later, but he didn't wait for that to happen. He snatched at the mountainside, and his left hand closed on a lump of rock. He clung to it, and the boulder rolled on without him, bouncing and crashing to the floor of the gorge far below.
Mirror floated down to the place where Bareris dangled. "Are you all right?"
"Fine." Bareris reached for another outcropping with his free hand, revealing the tattered inner surface of his leather gauntlet and the shredded skin and muscle beneath.
The tunnels were lava tubes or splits in the stone, produced by earthquake and orogeny. Unlike limestone caverns, they had no stalactites or stalagmites to hinder Bareris's progress. But that was the only good thing about them. They were a maze of unpredictable twists and cul-de-sacs stretching on and on in the darkness, and, unsurprisingly, the stories that had enabled him to locate the entrance were of no use at all when it came to finding his way inside. He'd sung a song to locate worked stone-specifically, whatever archway was closest-and it gave him a sense that the nearest such feature lay to the northeast. But that didn't guarantee he'd be able to grope his way to it anytime soon.
Perhaps perceiving his impatience, Mirror said
, "You could try to bring Aoth and the zulkirs to us now. They might know magic to guide us all through."
"I thought of that," Bareris replied. "But what if these caves don't actually link up with the dungeons?"
"Then perhaps they can blast a way through."
"Perhaps, but I imagine that would ruin any hope of taking Szass Tam by surprise."
"by surprise."
"by surprise."
Startled, Bareris turned to Mirror and saw that the ghost, who currently resembled a smeared reflection of himself, looked just as surprised. He knew he hadn't truly repeated himself nor spoken loud enough to raise echoes in the sizable cavern he and the phantom were traversing. Yet he had an eerie sense that something-or everything-had repeated, as if the world itself were stuttering.
He and Mirror had hiked a long way without encountering any of the long-buried perils for which these depths were infamous, but he suspected their luck had just run out. He drew his sword, and the ghost's shadow-blade oozed outward from his fist. Pivoting, they looked for a threat. It might be difficult to spot. Too many fallen boulders littered the cave floor. Too many alcoves and tunnel mouths opened on blackness.
"Do anything? You see," said Mirror, his voice rising at the end of the second word. "Bareris, I swear, I said that properly. Or at least, I didn't feel that I was jumbling the words."
"I believe you," Bareris said.
"What's happening to us?"
"us."
"I don't know, but maybe…"
"maybe"
"maybe"
"… we should keep moving."
"Way? Which."
Good question. More than one passage appeared to run northeast, and the magic pointing in the direction of the arch couldn't differentiate between them. Bareris chose at random.
"Let's try this one."
He took a stride, and the darkness deepened.
Only a supernatural manifestation could account for such a thing, because here in the heart of the mountain, the dark had already been absolute. The undead enjoyed a measure of vision even so, but now Bareris couldn't see as far as before, and even nearby objects looked hazy, as though he were viewing them through fog.
He sang the opening notes of a charm to conjure light. Perhaps it would reveal the location of the creature or creatures he suspected were hiding in the murk.
Something snatched him off his feet and hurled him ten paces backward into the cavern wall.
The shock of impact was enough to stun even him. He sensed rather than saw something looming over him, poised to attack again. He raised his sword, hoping the thing would impale itself when it struck. Though he doubted that would be enough to keep the blow from smashing home.
Light flared in the darkness. It stung Bareris, and he realized it was more than just a flash. It was the power of Mirror's god, invoked to smite an undead foe.
The radiance gave Bareris his first look at the thing. It was huge, a formless cloud of darkness with several ragged arms writhing and coiling from the central mass. Without turning-lacking a head, eyes, or an internal structure of bones and joints, it didn't need to-it shifted its tentacles away from Bareris to threaten the ghost on the other side of it. One arm struck at Mirror, and he caught the blow on his shield. But it still knocked him back, a sign that both he and the creature existed in the same non-corporeal state.
Mirror cut at the arm as it started to retract. "It's a vasuthant!" he shouted.
Unlike Mirror, evidently, Bareris had never encountered a vasuthant, but the undead horrors figured in a couple of the ancient tales he'd collected over the years. They were sentient wounds in the fabric of time itself, a condition that allowed them to play tricks with the march of the moments to destroy their prey.
If this entity truly was a vasuthant, even Mirror couldn't contend with it unaided. Bareris floundered to his feet, drew a deep breath, and shouted. The thunderous bellow shook the cave, brought stones showering from the ceiling, and blasted a bit of the vasuthant's blackness loose from the central body. The wisps instantly withered away to nothing.
The vasuthant turned its attention back to him, as the new tentacles squirming from its cloudy body attested. Gripping his sword with both hands, Bareris poised himself to dodge and cut.
With luck, his enchanted blade would hurt the creature, insubstantial though it was.
The vasuthant snatched for him. He sidestepped, swung at its arm, and slashed completely through it. He felt just a hint of resistance, as though the blade were severing gossamer threads. The end of the creature's limb boiled into nonexistence.
Time skipped backward.
The vasuthant snatched for him. He sidestepped, but it adjusted its aim, and the tentacle coiled around him anyway. It yanked tight as a noose encircling the neck of a man dropped through the trapdoor of a gallows, somehow exerting crushing pressure even though it had no solidity.
The vasuthant jerked Bareris into the center of its shifting darkness. Pain burned through him. The creature was trying to poison him with the energy of undeath. Since he was undead too, the effect wasn't as devastating as it would have been to a living man, but it might well prove lethal over time.
It was difficult even to see the arm gripping him now that the vasuthant had merged it with the central cloud. Bareris cut at the place where he judged it ought to be, but even if he was right this time, the stroke had no apparent effect. Another burst of agony jolted him, and the relentless constriction around his waist threatened to pinch him in two.
Just barely visible through the murk, Mirror called to his god and slashed his sword through a portion of the vasuthant's body. Its shadowy core seethed, and the ring of pressure around Bareris's torso loosened.
Bareris bellowed a war cry and swung his sword. The tentacle frayed from existence, dropping him to the cavern floor. Still inside the animate darkness, he cut at it repeatedly until it flowed away and uncovered him.
Without taking his eyes off the thing, Bareris asked, "Are we winning?"
"I don't…"
"don't"
"… know," Mirror replied. "I only ever fought one vasuthant, and this one's bigger and more powerful."
So they really had precious little idea what they were facing. But Bareris surmised he needed some mystical defense in place to counter the creature's manifest ability to revisit a moment that hadn't worked out as it would have preferred. He sang, and eight more Barerises sprang into existence around him, each with a stance and facial expression identical to his own.
Just in time too, for an instant later the vasuthant surged forward like a towering black wave.
A tentacle flailed, and one of the illusory doubles burst like a soap bubble at its touch. Bareris stepped in and cut the vasuthant.
A tentacle flailed, and a different illusory double burst like a soap bubble at its touch. Bareris stepped in and cut the vasuthant.
He grinned a wolfish grin. Perhaps he'd hit on a winning tactic.
Then one of his duplicates vanished without the vasuthant snagging it with one of its limbs or making any other form of visible attack. It was a pointed reminder that the entity still possessed capabilities he didn't understand.
Still, he liked his and Mirror's chances better than he had before, partly because when the vasuthant obliterated all his illusory doubles, he could always sing up another batch.
He and his companion battled on, often with sword strokes, sometimes with their mystical abilities. Bareris chanted to leech the strength out of the vasuthant much as it had tried to do to him. Mirror hammered it with flares of celestial power. Meanwhile, time lurched and stuttered.
The latter effect was disorienting and obliged them to defend themselves from many of the vasuthant's most cunning attacks not once but twice. Still, they kept the living darkness from doing grievous harm to them, while their attacks withered bits of it.
Bareris could only hope they were cutting and burning away enough to matter. Since the thing was merely churning blackness floating
in blackness, he still couldn't tell.
But it seemed a good sign when the creature abruptly flowed back beyond the reach of its opponents' swords. Bareris wondered if it had finally had enough, if it might ooze into some hole and let him and Mirror pass. Then he felt a frigid prickling on his skin. Power was accumulating in the air, as if an adept like Lallara or Lauzoril were working a particularly potent spell.
Mirror apparently felt it too, for he charged. Flanked by a pair of duplicates, the remnants of the third group he'd conjured, Bareris drew breath to shout.
Neither he nor the ghost managed to act in time to balk the vasuthant. Something exploded from it, a force neither visible, audible, nor tangible, but delivering a psychic shock so overwhelming that it froze both its adversaries in place.
Or perhaps it was simply the realization of what the vasuthant had wrought that paralyzed them. For Bareris once again had a beating heart in his chest and a glow of warmth in his flesh. He was once again the Mulan youth growing up in the slums of Bezantur.
Which meant Tammith was waiting for him there. He had yet to make the disastrous choice that led to her destruction.
He told himself it was nonsense. Though he sensed his transformation was more than mere deception, reason said it couldn't last or change the past even if it did. Still, he was slow to move, his two minds, his two realities, pulling him in opposite directions.
Beside him, Mirror, now a figure of solid flesh, looked just as stupefied. He had no guilt or anguish over an abused and murdered lover to transfix him, or if he did, he'd never told Bareris about her. But no doubt the sudden restoration of his maimed mind and memory and deliverance from the endless hollow ache of undeath were equally overpowering. That, or the excruciating comprehension that his resurrection was only temporary.
Churning and coiling, the vasuthant rushed forward. Retreating, Bareris sang to raise a curtain of fire, or at least a semblance of it, between his foe and himself.
He stumbled over the phrasing, perhaps because it was a powerful, difficult spell, and the boy whose form he now wore and whose intrusive thoughts were addling his own had yet to master it.
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