Unholy hl-3

by Richard Lee Byers

  Bareris watched for a moment to make sure it wouldn't start moving again, then pivoted to survey the battlefield. To his surprise, it appeared to him that he and his allies were holding their own. The last remaining bodyguard was gone, and so were a number of Nevron's demons. Severed pieces of their grotesque anatomies littered the canyon floor. But, hanging like vines from the cliffs or, in their immensity, all but blocking the defile, several nightcrawlers were dead as well, while the archmages, Aoth, Jet, and Mirror all survived.

  Yet Bareris had a feeling that something was wrong, and after another moment, he realized why. The earth was quaking.

  No one else appeared to notice, probably because, with the gigantic nightcrawlers tunneling and heaving themselves around, it had been shaking for a while. But this was different: more constant and growing steadily more intense.

  He looked skyward just in time to see the cliffs start falling.

  Aoth's fire-infected eyes abruptly saw a new murkiness in the air. Mystical power was at work, and it was something apart from all the combat magic he and his companions were evoking to destroy the nightcrawlers.

  He cast about. Chunks of stone were tumbling from the canyon walls, but that was far from the worst of it. The cliffs were lurching toward one another.

  He remembered Szass Tam's claim that Malark had shifted the mountains. It stood to reason that if the traitorous whoreson could do that, he could also smash them together.

  Aoth looked around for Bareris and found him too. Unfortunately, the bard stood where the stones were raining down the thickest and at the epicenter of the impending collision. If Aoth tried to retrieve him, they'd both be crushed.

  Even so, left to his own devices, he might have tried or at least hesitated in dismay. But, unfurling his wings, Jet raced to carry him out of the deathtrap by the shortest possible path.

  Aoth looked for someone he actually might be able to save. He spotted Lallara, tottering in an effort to keep her feet. Moving with her, a disk of crimson light floated above her head. Failing stones bounced off it.

  He willed Jet to change course and felt the griffon's resulting pang of annoyance as if it were his own. Neither of them truly wanted to spend an extra instant in the danger zone. But he needed Lallara. Needed all of them, truly, but she was the one within reach.

  He leaned sideways and snatched the old woman to him. At once, Jet spread his wings, lashed them, leaped, and flew.

  More boulders fell. A big one shattered against the hovering disk, which then winked out of existence, subjecting Aoth, Lallara, and Jet to a shower of gravel. The converging sections of wall accelerated, springing toward one another like clapping hands. Lallara gasped as she finally perceived the true magnitude of the peril.

  Aoth doubted they were going to make it, then felt Jet's savage determination. The griffon put on a final burst of speed and kept it up until the passage became so narrow that he could no longer spread his wings.

  But by that time, they were close enough to safety that sheer momentum threw them clear into a wider section of canyon. Aoth automatically cast about for new threats. Everything was still.

  Jet glided down to the ground. Scowling, Lallara shoved at Aoth to extricate herself from their awkward embrace.

  He turned to study the cloud of dust behind him and the mass of stone sealing the passage he'd just escaped. Nothing was moving in that direction, either.

  Bareris sang a song intended to shift him to safety, and a nightcrawler turned its head in his direction. Pain and dizziness stabbed through him, and he fell to his knees. The worm had attacked him with some sort of supernatural ability. After a moment, the fierce pangs diminished, but not before he fumbled the next phrase of his spell. The power he'd raised dissipated in a useless sizzle.

  He floundered to his knees, took a breath raw with rock dust, and tried to focus his thoughts for another effort even though he sensed that, his charm of acceleration notwithstanding, he wouldn't have time.

  Fingers squeezed his shoulder. "Allow me," Szass Tam said. Seemingly standing without effort despite the upheavals, he touched the butt of his shadow staff to the quaking ground.

  He and Bareris shot down into the earth, which parted for them as if their bodies were made of dense, sharp metal. Startled, sightless, Bareris had the mad, random thought that here at last was burial, ninety years late. Then he and Szass Tam abruptly came to rest in a bending tubular tunnel. The lich had to crouch too, or he wouldn't have fit.

  "This is a nightcrawler burrow," Szass Tam said. "The way the brutes were popping up around us, I knew the ground had to be riddled with them." He crooked his fingers into a mystical sign, and sheets of dark fire crawled on the walls around them, burning away soil and rock and creating more open space. He then straightened up and stepped away from Bareris.

  A nightcrawler's head burst through the ceiling, showering them with dirt. It was gouged and dented, probably battered by falling boulders. Like its foes, it must have dived into the earth to remove itself from between the converging walls.

  The thing plunged into view directly above Szass Tam, and for once, even he appeared startled. The enormous jaws gaped, then snapped shut around him. Because the lich had enlarged this part of the burrow, it was high enough to admit not just the nightcrawler's head but a bit of its body. As a result, Bareris saw its throat swell as it swallowed.

  For a moment, he simply stared, too addled with contradictory emotions and impulses to act on any of them. Then he rose, lifted his sword, and took a stride in the creature's direction.

  Its head blew apart in a flash of scarlet light. The detonation rocked him back, even as it spattered him and the walls of the burrow with filth. Smeared with slime, Szass Tam squirmed feet-first out of what little remained of the nightcrawler's mouth.

  The necromancer inclined his head to Bareris. "Obviously, I didn't actually need your help. But it's good to see you have your priorities straight."

  Bareris wondered how Szass Tam knew he'd been coming to his aid. "You and I will settle our score after we deal with Malark."

  Szass Tam waved a shriveled hand, and the jellied filth vanished from his person. "If you insist. If you believe your devotion to a rather ordinary girl who died a century ago requires it. But it seems to me that what you truly love is your own misery. The Maiden of Pain possessed you in the moment of your despair, and you never managed to escape."

  Bareris took a steadying breath. "If you want our alliance to last until we stop Malark, then don't mention Tammith or speculate about my feelings anymore."

  "As you wish. Let's turn our attention to the task at hand."

  "Do we still have any hope of succeeding, even after what just happened?"

  "Oh, certainly. You weren't thinking you and I are the only survivors, were you? Getting caught between two masses of rock wouldn't hurt your friend Mirror. Captain Fezim scooped up Lallara and tried to carry her out of the affected area, and I suspect he succeeded. Unless they panicked-and that's unlikely-the other zulkirs were capable of saving themselves as well."

  "But we're scattered now, and we've expended a lot of our power."

  "The former has its advantages. We'll all take different paths to get to Malark. Even if he realizes we survived, he and his creatures will have difficulty spotting and intercepting all of us. As for your latter point, I assume that since your odd little troupe crept into the Citadel to assassinate me, the zulkirs are carrying as many arcane weapons and talismans as I am. We have plenty of tricks left, and let's not forget that our arrival goaded Malark into squandering a good deal of his own power. It's one thing to move the mountains with proper preparation. It's another to fling them around when you weren't expecting you'd have to, essentially by sheer force of will."

  Bareris scowled. "You almost sound glad that his creatures attacked us."

  Szass Tam shrugged. "I try to perceive the opportunities implicit in even awkward situations."

  "Have you considered that, now that they've seen just how str
ong and well-protected Malark is, the other zulkirs may 'perceive the opportunities implicit' in being apart from one another and free to act as they please? They may try to leave this place and flee beyond the reach of the Unmaking."

  "I understand why the possibility concerns you. They are supremely selfish, and no doubt you and Captain Fezim had to coax and bully them relentlessly to get them this far. But you know, they aren't cowards. Each had to perform acts of extraordinary daring to ascend to his current eminence. And consider what finally lies within their reach: Revenge on Malark and on me. Rulership of Thay. Given the stakes, this is one time they won't play it safe."

  "I hope you're right."

  Szass Tam smiled. "So do I. We'll see who joins us on Malark's mountaintop."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  19 Kythorn, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

  The sun had set, but the enemy seemed to be waiting for the last traces of its crimson light to fade from the western sky. After that, they'd attack.

  Gaedynn used the time to work his way through the patch of woods, making sure everyone was ready, joking with the men to set them at ease. He had to be more offhand when approaching the zulkirs' soldiers. He didn't want their officers to feel he was usurping their authority. But he was willing to risk their resentment to shore up the defense.

  Red Wizards and Burning Braziers evoked light in the open area beyond the trees. When the battle started, the necromancers on the other side would try to drown the illumination in darkness, so their troops could advance unseen. Patches of glow would bloom and go out unpredictably as the opposing spellcasters vied for dominance.

  "They're coming!" someone shouted. Off to the right, on the clear, slightly higher ground where Khouryn's armored spearmen stood in their lines, horns blew to convey the same message.

  Gaedynn had been talking to a young, nervous-looking legionnaire. He clapped the fellow on the shoulder and dashed back to the spot from which he intended to shoot. It was centrally located enough to offer some hope of keeping track of what everyone else was doing, and the mossy oak rising there was thick enough to provide decent cover.

  He'd already stuck a selection of arrows in the ground. Sadly, only two of them held spells stored inside them. He'd used most of his enchanted shafts fighting to take the Dread Ring-as it turned out, what a waste! — and while the army was on the march, Jhesrhi hadn't had the leisure to make any more.

  Ah, well, at least he'd found a nice supply of the more common sort of enchanted arrow cached inside the fortress. They too would slay a vampire or wraith if he shot them straight enough.

  A sort of querulous rasp sounded from the hollow in the ground where Eider lay hidden. The griffon sensed the fight beginning and was eager to take part. "Patience," Gaedynn told her. "You'll get your chance."

  Then he stepped from behind the oak and started loosing arrows.

  Most of the charging creatures were dread warriors, a fact that Gaedynn found annoying. It generally took several ordinary arrows to dispatch one of the yellow-eyed corpses; yet even so, it would be a mistake to use enchanted shafts. He needed to save them for foes more fearsome still.

  Fortunately, the priests of Kossuth aided the efforts of the archers and crossbowmen. They chanted and whirled their chains, and the rattling links burst into flame. So did many of the arrows and quarrels arcing over the field, and when they pierced the body of a dread warrior, the zombie too burned as if it were made of paper.

  Impervious to fear and constrained to obedience, the living corpses kept coming no matter how many of their fellows perished. But none made it to the tree line.

  Even so, a few yards to Gaedynn's left, a sellsword lay on the ground and screamed. Someone on the other side had hit him with an arrow or a spell; the gloom prevented Gaedynn from determining which. "Help that man!" he shouted, and, keeping low, a Burning Brazier scrambled in the appropriate direction.

  Then another charge exploded from the dark mass of the enemy army, this one made of howling blood orcs. Gaedynn grinned because living targets died more easily. He plucked another arrow from the ground.

  At one point, pure instinct prompted him to jump back behind the oak. An arrow or crossbow bolt whizzed through the space he'd just vacated. He stepped back into the open and kept loosing arrows until the last orc dropped.

  More shrieks sounded from among the trees. No doubt they'd been doing so for a while, but he rarely heard such things when fighting.

  He stooped and picked up the leather waterskin he'd laid between two of the oak's gnarled roots. By the time he finished swigging down his drink, the enemy ranks were opening, clearing a corridor for something to emerge. Gaedynn suspected it would be the first truly serious threat, and in another moment, he saw how right he was.

  The shadowy, long-armed giants were as tall as some of the trees, so tall that it was difficult to understand why he hadn't noticed them before, towering over the soldiers and creatures around them. Their murky forms must have blended in with the dark. "Nightwalkers!" a priest of Kossuth cried.

  Seeming to move without haste, but their long strides eating up the distance, the nightwalkers strode forward, and at their approach, the patches of glow illuminating the field went out. The men in the trees stood frozen, appalled, doing nothing to stop them, and that, Gaedynn suddenly realized, included himself.

  A surge of self-disgust washed away his inertia. "Kill them!" he bellowed. He nocked a shaft, drew the fletchings back to his ear, and released the string.

  His arrow flew, and, to his relief, so did others. But when they pierced the nightwalkers' bodies, they looked small as slivers stuck in the flesh of a man, and the undead giants kept coming as if they didn't even feel them.

  The wizards and priests of the Firelord fared somewhat better. They hurled gouts of flame and dazzling light, and nightwalkers jerked and staggered. One reeled and fell with its upper body ablaze.

  But the rest continued marching forward, and as they did, they struck back. The one directly in front of Gaedynn glared; he couldn't actually see the eyes in its black smudge of a face, but he could feel the malevolence of their regard. His muscles jumped and clenched, and then relaxed again. He'd been hardy-or lucky-enough to shrug off the paralyzing effect.

  Others weren't so lucky. To either side of him, men grunted or made little strangled sounds as their bodies locked in position.

  Another giant shook its fist. Some of the soldiers in front of it recoiled in terror, others peered around as though dazed, and a couple even turned and discharged their crossbows into one another. A third nightwalker stretched out its hand, and men doubled over, whimpering and puking.

  Fortunately, a fair number of the clerics and sorcerers weathered those first attacks. Some continued to blast the giants with their magic. Others chanted to less obvious effect. Gaedynn assumed the latter were working counterspells to free the afflicted bowmen from their various curses.

  For his part, he decided it was time-past time-he used the last of his special arrows. He grabbed one, kissed the point for luck, and shot it into the chest of the nightwalker in front of him.

  Strips of the giant's shadowy substance peeled away, not just where the arrow had penetrated but all over its body. It staggered a step, and then its hand lashed forward as if it were throwing a rock. Gaedynn wrenched himself behind the oak. Even so, the blast of frost chilled him to the marrow; if he hadn't taken cover, it might well have stopped his heart.

  Forbidding himself to falter or his cold hands to shake, he shot Jhesrhi's last arrow. Midway to the target, it exploded into fog, and when the nightwalker strode into the corrosive vapors, its flesh sizzled and liquefied. It was a tattered, smoking vestige of its former self by the time it reached the tree line.

  But it was still capable of doing harm. Agony ripped through Gaedynn's chest as though something were squeezing his heart. After a moment, the worst of the pain subsided, but by that time, the nightwalker's fist was hurtling down at him.

  Spinning out
of the way, he dropped his longbow and grabbed the falchion he'd stowed beneath the oak. He chopped the nightwalker across the knuckles before it could lift its fist again, then kept moving.

  The giant pivoted with him, and Eider leaped up from her hollow. Gaedynn would have said she couldn't fly beneath the trees-their limbs hung too low-but she lashed her wings and managed somehow, breaking branches as she came. She slammed into the nightwalker's head and clung there, biting and clawing.

  The nightwalker reached for her. Gaedynn ran in and hacked at its ankle. The giant toppled, snapping more tree limbs as it fell, and Eider sprang clear of it.

  It didn't look as though the nightwalker were going to get back up again, and small wonder. The griffon had torn away a big piece of its already burned and mangled head. She spat foulness out of her beak, and Gaedynn turned to see how the rest of the battle was going.

  Not well. Two other nightwalkers had fallen, but the rest-half a dozen in all-were stalking among the trees. He strained to think of a way to fight them at close range with the troops at his command. Meanwhile, sensing victory, the living men and orcs in the enemy host raised a cheer.

  Then demons-hopping toad-men, slithering six-armed women whose bodies turned into serpentine tails at the waist, and a variety of others-burst from the trees behind him. They charged the nightwalkers and attacked ferociously. The sellswords and the zulkirs' troops scrambled back and left them to it.

  The nightwalkers ripped a number of demons apart. If not for the damage Gaedynn and his comrades had inflicted, perhaps they would have destroyed them all. But they were wounded, and in time, the demons dragged the last of them down.

  The giant was still struggling when Nevron-or a figure that looked exactly like him-strode past Gaedynn. Illuminated by the glimmer of his defensive enchantments, the newcomer advanced beyond the tree line, sneered at So-Kehur's army, and spat.