Unholy hl-3

by Richard Lee Byers

  They did and killed another nashrou. Other people had evidently figured out how to do it too, for the crab-things were dropping one by one. Crawling and clinging, nearly burying it beneath their bodies, zombies swarmed on one of the demons like ants and stabbed it repeatedly with their blades. A Red Wizard blasted another apart with a single stroke of lightning.

  It wasn't too bad, Chumed decided. They hadn't lost too many men, and only a few legionnaires had run. Winning this first skirmish might actually bolster everyone's confidence. And at least the damn wind was dying down.

  Then cries rang out behind him.

  Several dark, horned giants with batlike wings-devils called malebranches-were diving down out of the sky. Everyone had been too intent on the nashrou to see them coming.

  They thumped down among the enclosed wagons. All those conveyances had guards, but they floundered back in terror. The malebranches jabbed at the wagons with their iron tridents, breaking them open as if they were made of eggshells.

  It was a typical gray Thayan afternoon, the sky veiled with clouds, smoke, and ash. But enough sunlight filtered down to burn the entities riding in the wagons. One of the carriages rocked back and forth as the thing inside screamed and thrashed in its final agonies.

  As soon as a malebranche finished with one wagon, it turned its attention to another. From Chumed's vantage point, it looked as if they had smashed open ten or twelve before the wizards finally took effective action. Then, one by one, the devils froze in place and vanished as magic hurled them back to their native plane of existence.

  Chumed rode toward the spot where So-Kehur's steel form gleamed above the heads of his followers. When he got close, he saw that the autharch stood over the corpse of a nashrou like a self-satisfied hunter preening over the body of his kill. He'd evidently played an active part in the fighting, and not just with his sorcery and psychic talents. Spatters of ichor mottled his claws and stinger.

  "Well," said So-Kehur, "that went well enough."

  "I suppose you could say that," Chumed answered. "We did deal with the demons as efficiently as we had any right to expect. Considering that the dust kept us from seeing them until they were already on top of us."

  Chumed regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. But if So-Kehur even heard the implied criticism, combat had left him too exhilarated to make an issue of it. "How long to get the columns moving again?" the autharch asked.

  "Not too long. The healers have to tend the wounded, and everyone needs a chance to catch his breath."

  "Well, take care of it all as quickly as you can. I want to reach the battlefield by nightfall."

  I don't, Chumed thought. Not especially.

  It wasn't that he was afraid. He was no coward, and the army they were about to engage had all but crippled itself taking the huge fortress in the northern part of the tharch. But, So-Kehur's bloodlust aside, he still didn't see any compelling reason for this fight, and what was even worse was that the enemy had just demonstrated they could outthink the autharch. Chumed recognized it even if his master didn't.

  The round, flat roof of the keep provided a view of the city surrounding the Citadel and the mountains beyond. Columns of smoke rose from some of the latter, and a cold wind blew them toward the bloody sunset.

  Bareris looked for some indication that Szass Tam had cast potent enchantments on this place. He didn't see any. But both Aoth and Mirror faltered when they came up the stairs. Apparently the warmage's spellscarred eyes could discern the truth, and the ghost perceived the same "unholy" malignancy to which he'd reacted before.

  Szass Tam walked to the center of the rooftop, turned, and gave them all a smile that jabbed a fresh spasm of loathing into Bareris's guts. He stifled the feeling as best he could.

  "Well, here we are," said the lich. "Nothing remains but to unlock the door. So if you want to enhance your defenses or anything like that, now's the time."

  "So it really is going to be just us," said Samas Kul, his tone petulant. "Even though you have an entire army garrisoned here."

  "He already explained," Lallara said. "Springhill is in control of the realm beyond the gate. Since he created the place, Szass Tam can take us through even so, but we're about the limit. Any more and we'd simply lose people, much as we lost them translating ourselves into the dungeons. Now, if we could be certain of losing you-"

  "I understand!" the obese transmuter snapped. "I'm just amazed that a would-be god can't do a little better."

  "Perhaps the years have sapped my powers," Szass Tam said. "I suspect that the next little while will give you ample opportunity to judge."

  "Before we go in," said Aoth, his fingers scratching amid the feathers on Jet's neck, "I need to be clear on one thing. Is it enough to interrupt Malark? If we knock the breath out of him in the middle of an incantation, will that stop the Unmaking?"

  "Unfortunately, no," Szass Tam replied. "The ceremony involves a number of conditions and limitations, but that isn't one of them. He can pause, deal with an interruption, and then pick up where he left off."

  "So we have to kill him," Nevron growled. "Fine. We all want to kill him. Let's get on with it."

  "As you wish," Szass Tam said. He turned his back on them; Bareris shivered and clamped down on the urge to strike while the lich looked vulnerable.

  Szass Tam flourished his shadowy staff and whispered words that somehow made Bareris angrier still, that seemed to feed the hate and bitterness inside him like dry wood feeding a fire. Then a square of utter blackness, big as the entry to a rich man's house, painted itself on the air.

  Bareris assumed that they'd walk into it. Instead, it rushed forward, expanding as it came, first swallowing Szass Tam and then himself. And all the others too, presumably, although at that instant, he lost sight of them. He seemed to tumble through freezing darkness, then jolt down on his feet. A new world oozed into view.

  It was a place of towering crags and twisting canyons, without even a sprig of brush or speck of fungus growing anywhere on the dry earth and stone. Only a handful of faint stars gleamed in the black, moonless sky.

  He and his companions had arrived in one of the gorges. The others pivoted, peering around. "I assumed," Lauzoril said, "that you'd shift us into position to attack Springhill immediately."

  "It wasn't possible," Szass Tam said. "He has layers of protection. I couldn't pierce them all with a single spell."

  "But now that we're here?" Samas asked.

  "I hope so." Turning, the lich studied the peaks and cliffs, then chuckled.

  "What?" Nevron spat.

  "Malark's altered the geography," Szass Tam said. "Either to disorient me if I escaped Thakorsil's Seat and came after him or simply because he finds the new skyline more conducive to focusing his thoughts."

  Either way, Bareris didn't like hearing that their foe had shifted mountains like a child playing with blocks. Szass Tam had warned that Malark was a god in this realm, and that didn't seem like hyperbole anymore.

  "So I take it we have to find him," Lallara said. "I can cast a divination."

  "We might as well try the obvious way first," said Aoth. Jet shook out his wings, and the warmage swung himself into the saddle.

  "Be careful," Szass Tam said. "I put guardians in the sky as well as on the ground."

  "I under-" Aoth began, and then Jet leaped, lashed his wings, and carried the warmage aloft. Apparently, after all the time he'd spent underground, the griffon was eager to take to the sky, even the sky of a dismal place like this. Seemingly surprised by the abrupt departure, Mirror rose into the air a moment later.

  Bareris watched as they soared high overhead. If something attacked them up there, he'd have a difficult time helping them.

  But nothing did, and after a time, they swooped back down to earth. "Got him," Aoth said. "He's conjuring on a flat mountain-top about a mile in that direction." He pointed with his spear.

  "Did he notice you?" Lallara asked.

  "I didn't see any indication
of it."

  "Does he have a pack of guardians clustered around him?" Samas asked.

  "I didn't see those, either."

  "Still," said Szass Tam, "they're there. I guarantee it."

  "So we hit fast and hard and kill their master before they can react," Nevron said, "just as I've been advising all along." He glowered at Szass Tam. "Captain Fezim has given you your bearings. Now can you translate us to our quarry?"

  "Let's find out." The lich slipped his withered fingers into one of his many pockets, no doubt to remove a talisman or spell trigger. Then skeletal figures stalked out of the darkness ahead.

  Each was half again as tall as a man, with strips of ragged, desiccated flesh dangling from its frame. Their heads were hairless, and their ears, pointed. Tiny figures writhed inside their ribs like anguished prisoners jammed behind the bars of a cage.

  One of the zulkirs' surviving soldiers happened to be closest to the oncoming horrors. He wailed and raised his sword and shield to fend them off. The creature in the lead pounced. The legionnaire's blade bit into its torso, but it didn't seem to notice. It grabbed him in its jagged talons, and the man screamed, convulsed, then dangled limp as string. A new prisoner-the soldier's soul, evidently-squirmed into existence behind the skeletal entity's ribs. The creature dropped the corpse and kept coming.

  "They're devourers!" Szass Tam called. Perhaps the term meant something to the zulkirs, but Bareris had never heard it before.

  But if he had to fight in ignorance, so be it. He shouted, and the thunderous bellow ripped flesh from the lead devourer's frame and broke a number of its bones, even as the cry echoed down the gorge and brought pebbles showering from overhead.

  Its legs shattered, the devourer fell but crawled onward. Mirror stepped up beside Bareris, brandished his sword, and light flared from the blade. The crawling devourer and the one behind it burned away to nothing in an instant.

  It was encouraging to see that the things could perish, and it was good, too, that they had to come down the relatively narrow passage to reach their intended victims. It meant they couldn't spread out and surround them, and that spells like thunderbolts, blasts of fire, and Bareris's own battle cries generally hammered more than one at a time.

  Offsetting that advantage, however, was the devourers' resilience and their numbers. New ones kept streaming down the defile like a rushing river, the husks of their predecessors crunching and cracking beneath their feet.

  Samas pointed his quicksilver wand and turned a devourer to gold. It toppled forward. Someone else felled one of the creatures with darts of scarlet light. His tone cold and demanding, Szass Tam rattled off an incantation. It must have returned two of the devourers to his control, because they halted abruptly, turned, and lashed out at their fellows.

  Bareris saw that it wasn't enough. In another moment, unless the warriors in their band prevented it, the devourers would overrun everyone, zulkirs included. And even archmages would have trouble conjuring with such creatures ripping at them.

  "Wall!" Bareris yelled, and then heard Aoth and Mirror yelling the same thing. Though white-faced with fear, the last surviving bodyguard heeded the call, and Nevron sent a miscellany of demons and devils to answer it too. The one that came to stand on Bareris's right was a barbed devil, a somewhat manlike figure with a lashing tail, its body covered with spines and quills.

  They just had time to form their line, and then the devourers crashed into it. Bareris cut, parried, and sang a spell to make himself a blur. The point of his spear ablaze with blue light like the fire in his eyes, Aoth thrust and thrust and thrust again. Fighting alongside him, Jet reared, slashed with his talons, and screeched when he tore off a devourer's head.

  Meanwhile, flares of multicolored light and ragged blasts of shadow crackled over the defenders' heads to sear and wither the massed devourers. Bareris assumed that one or more of the wizards must have floated into the air-or simply clambered onto a rock-to evoke such magic without fear of hitting his allies. He couldn't actually look around to verify his guess, because he didn't dare take his eyes off the creatures in front of him.

  A devourer's black, sunken eyes glared down at him, and for a moment, he couldn't remember where he was, what the creature was, or how he was supposed to react to it. But training made him sing the next note of his battle anthem, and his magic shattered his confusion. He cut into the devourer's torso, and its legs buckled.

  "I see the end of them!" Samas called. Bareris felt a surge of renewed determination, then noticed a shiver in the ground beneath his feet.

  A moment after that, someone behind him cried out, something inhuman roared, and stone rumbled and crashed. The earth heaved, and he almost lost his balance.

  Now he truly wanted to turn and see what was happening at his back. His nerves sang with the fear that if he didn't, something looming there would strike him down. But it would still be suicidal to look away from the last devourers.

  He hacked the leg out from under one such brute, then gutted it when it dropped. A second scrambled over the corpse of its fellow and grabbed him by the shoulder. He felt a pull through the point of contact; the devourer was leeching his spirit from his body.

  He cut the devourer with all his waning strength. His sword ruined an eye and buried itself in the creature's skull, but the incorporeal pull didn't abate. He tried to yank his sword free, and it wouldn't come out of the wound.

  He sang a charge of malice and loathing into his eyes, then discharged it by glaring at the devourer. The creature stiffened in pain and fumbled its grip on his shoulder. The pull abated, and he felt stronger. He jerked his blade free and drove the point into the devourer's heart, or at least the spot where a human carried such an organ. The vile thing fell.

  At last, nothing else was running to attack him. Not from the front, anyway. He spun around, then faltered.

  His first impression was of a corpse swarming with maggots. But in this case, the body was the ground itself and the cliffs rising on each side of the gorge, while the maggots were creatures that, except for the unrelieved blackness of their bodies, resembled the snakelike behemoths called purple worms.

  It had been more than ninety years since Bareris had seen one of these monstrosities, but that occasion had been a slaughter he'd never forget. The worms were nightcrawlers. Undead fearsome enough to give even an archmage pause.

  Two of the worms bursting from the ground spread their jaws wide and spewed blasts of frost. Lallara raised her staff and cried a word of forbiddance, and the pale jets split like a river streaming around a rock, spattering the sides of the cliffs instead of the people on the ground.

  At the same instant, a nightcrawler that had burrowed out of a rocky wall struck straight down at her. It was huge enough to swallow her whole, and she didn't even seem to notice the threat. But Samas screamed-no incantation to it, just a noise of pure desperation and resolve-and pointed his wand at the creature's plunging head. The lead section of the nightcrawler dissolved in a puff of smoke. The rest of it convulsed, the length that still protruded from the burrow slamming repeatedly against the cliff.

  Lauzoril produced illusory duplicates of himself to confuse his foes, then snapped his fingers to strike a spark that expanded into a giant made of flame. Nevron brandished his staff, and spiders fell from the ends of his voluminous sleeves. When they touched the ground, they too grew to enormous size, then scuttled to attack the nightcrawlers, spitting webs to bind them, then crawling on their ink black bodies and biting.

  Szass Tam chanted in the same imperious fashion as before, and one of the nightcrawlers swiveled its head, struck, and seized a fellow worm in its jaws. Snapping and gnawing, twisting around one another, the creatures thrashed in a struggle that threatened to crush anyone within reach and sent new shocks jolting through the ground.

  Bareris sang a song that made the frenzy before him appear to slow, although in reality, his own perceptions and reactions had accelerated. Then he ran at a nightcrawler that had tunneled u
p out of the canyon floor. The thing was twisting in Aoth's direction. The warmage was still on the ground, but at some point during the last few moments, he'd climbed onto Jet's back.

  Bareris drew breath to batter the nightcrawler with a war cry, then glimpsed motion from the corner of his eye. He pivoted; a leftover devourer was lunging at him. He sidestepped its raking claws, let it blunder past, then cut at its spine. The creature toppled.

  Bareris spun back around. He was too late to distract the nightcrawler from attacking Aoth, but fortunately, the sellsword commander had noticed the threat. When the worm spat frost, Jet beat his wings and bounded like a grasshopper to carry his master out of the way. Aoth hurled lightning from the point of his spear, and the nightcrawler jerked at its searing touch.

  Bareris charged the snakelike undead and cut at its flank. He knew it was dangerous to fight such a colossal creature close up. Without even intending it, the nightcrawler could shift its bulk on top of him and crush him. But he trusted his heightened reflexes to protect him.

  For a while, they did, and he slashed a portion of the nightcrawler's body into a Crosshatch of oozing gashes. Then the creature swiveled its head in his direction and hissed.

  Sensing danger at his back, he whirled just in time to see a dozen shadowy figures, all but invisible in the gloom that prevailed at the bottom of the gorge, flicker into existence. Their presence chilled the air, and they charged Bareris like a pack of famished wolves.

  In an instant, they were all around him, scrabbling and clutching with their freezing though insubstantial hands, and he feared they might overwhelm him with sheer numbers. Then a blaze of light withered them. It spiked pain through his body as well but didn't actually seem to injure him. He nodded to Mirror-who currently resembled Samas Kul, of all people, except that he had a sword instead of a wand-to indicate as much.

  Bareris pivoted back toward the nightcrawler and thrust his sword into its body. Mirror flew into the air and cut at its head. Aoth slashed chunks of it away with a conjured wheel of spinning blades. The worm screamed, and then the top half of it plummeted to the ground like a felled tree.