The Haunted Lands: Book III - Unholy Read online

  “Well,” said Aoth, “the real answer to that is that even if we six were the only ones left alive, we’d still have to continue, given what’s at stake. But I know what you mean. Nasty as today was, more men than not made it back alive. I think our legions have at least one more good fight left in them.” In fact, even the Brotherhood of the Griffon survived, although, battling at the forefront, its own aerial cavalry and Khouryn’s spearmen had suffered a worse mauling than any of the zulkirs’ household troops.

  “But how do we continue the fight?” Lauzoril asked, fussily tugging his red velvet cloak tighter around him. “We need a new strategy. A better one.”

  “I think,” Bareris said, “that when we conferred previously, His Omnipotence Samas Kul was right about at least two things. The only way to get a significant portion of our army into the Dread Ring is for someone who’s already inside to open a gate.”

  “So we’re back to trying to free some of the enemy from Szass Tam’s psychic bonds?” Nevron growled. “I thought we all agreed that scheme was unwieldy.”

  “We did,” Bareris said. “That’s why I intend to go inside the Ring and open the gate.”

  “How?” Lallara asked. “Invisibly? Masked in the appearance of a zombie? I guarantee you the necromancers are prepared for such tricks.”

  “I’m sure they are. I expect them to spot me almost immediately. However …” In a few terse sentences, Bareris explained his plan.

  When he finished, Lallara turned to Lauzoril. “Will it work?” she asked.

  The other zulkir fingered his chin. “It might.”

  “I think so too,” said Aoth, “but it’s damn risky.” Especially considering that the enemy commander had thus far anticipated his adversaries’ every move. For all they knew, he might be expecting this as well.

  “What concerns me,” Nevron said, glaring at Bareris, “is your hatred of Tsagoth. I’m told it overwhelmed you today. What if it does so again once you’re inside the fortress? What if you succumb to your obsession and forget all about your mission?”

  “It won’t,” Bareris said. “I don’t deny we have a history together, and when I saw him, I lost my head. But truly, it’s Szass Tam I hate, and Tsagoth is just his instrument. You can trust me to remember that from now on. But suppose I don’t. Or suppose the scheme fails for some other reason. What have you lost? One warrior.”

  I’ll have lost a friend, Aoth thought, but what he said was, “You can depend on Bareris, Your Omnipotences. When has he ever let you down?”

  Lallara gave a brusque nod. “All right. How soon can the legions be ready?”

  “A day or two,” said Aoth. Somewhere to the north, someone shrieked. Inside the tent, everyone’s head snapped around in the direction of the noise. “Assuming we can get them through the night.” He picked up his spear, planted the butt of it on the ground, and heaved himself to his feet.

  Shrouded in invisibility, Bareris stalked toward the huge, black castle. Lallara had expressed doubt that such a defense would get him very far, but he hoped it would keep him from being noticed until he at least reached the top of the wall.

  He made his approach shortly before the first gray insinuations of dawn could stain the black sky to the east. His timing might help him more than the magic. Undead entities and orcs could see in the dark, but not as far as a man could see by day. And creatures that couldn’t abide the touch of the sun or, like the goblin-kin, were simply nocturnal by nature might already be retiring to their vaults and barracks.

  He reached the foot of the west wall. If anyone had noticed him, there was no indication of it. He unclipped the coil of rope from his belt and sang a charm under his breath. The line warmed in his hands, then squirmed. He loosened his grip on it, permitting it to move freely, and one end writhed up and up until it reached the top of the black barrier before him. It looped around a merlon, tied itself off, and then he climbed it.

  At the top, he peeked over the parapet. There were no guards in his immediate vicinity—no visible ones, anyway—so he swung himself onto the wall-walk and prowled onward, looking for a stairway to the courtyard below.

  He was expecting to trigger some sort of enchantment, but also was tense enough that he still jumped when it happened. A mouth opened on the inner face of one of the merlons and cried, “Enemy! Enemy! Enemy!” A prickling chill danced over his body, and he didn’t even bother to look down to verify that countermagic had ripped his veil of invisibility away.

  He jumped off the wall-walk, sang a word of power, and fell slowly enough to avoid injury when he landed in the courtyard. Looking for a doorway, he ran. Other mouths opened one by one in the stonework to cry out his current location.

  Blood orcs rushed out of the dark, then hesitated when they took in his ink black eyes and bone white skin. They wondered if a warrior so manifestly undead could truly be a foe, and under other circumstances, Bareris might have tried to bluff them. Now, however, he broke their bones and blasted them off their feet with a thunderous shout.

  “Tsagoth!” he called in a voice augmented to carry throughout the fortress. “Show yourself!” He sprinted to a door at the base of one of the Ring’s lesser towers and yanked it open.

  No one was on the other side. Not in this little antechamber, anyway. He sang a spell to seal both the door he’d just entered and the one on the far side of the room, then took a better look around.

  Even here, inside the fortress, the windows were mere arrow slits. He just had time to reflect that nothing solid and man-sized would have room to wriggle though when something else did, a flowing shadow with the murky, rippling suggestion of an anguished, silently wailing old man’s face. It reached for Bareris, and he felt the chill poison that comprised its essence. The malignancy was nowhere near as dangerous to him as it would have been to a mortal, but no doubt the wraith could hurt him.

  He sidestepped its scrabbling hands, drew his sword, and cut through the center of it. The phantom flickered, stumbled, then rounded on him. He cut down the middle of its head, and it disappeared.

  Bareris pivoted back to the nearest arrow slit. He pressed his eye to it just in time to see a necromancer thrust out a wand made from a mummified human forearm. A spark leaped from the instrument’s shriveled fingertips.

  Bareris dived away from the opening and threw himself flat. The spark streaked through the arrow slit and, with an echoing boom, exploded into a yellow burst of flame.

  Fortunately, only the fringe of the blast washed over Bareris. It stung and scorched him, but that was all. He scrambled back to the arrow slit, chanted a spell, and felt a throbbing in his eyes. He stared at the Red Wizard, and the necromancer cried out and doubled over, dropping the preserved forearm in the process. The blood orcs gathered around him gaped in consternation.

  “I want Tsagoth!” Bareris howled. “Tsagoth! Bring him to me, or I’ll curse you all!”

  Malark and Tsagoth stood on the wall-walk, high enough that Bareris couldn’t possibly see them, listening to the intruder shout and watching more and more guards gather in front of the minor bastion in which he’d taken refuge.

  Malark smiled. “Even after a century of undeath, even when he’s raving at the top of his lungs, you can tell he still has that magnificent voice.”

  His breath smelling of blood, Tsagoth snorted. “‘Raving’ is the word for it. When you decided to drive him mad with hate for me, I never imagined it would work as well as this.”

  “Well, since their first assault failed, the zulkirs haven’t dared make a move against us. In fact, there are signs they may even pack up and leave. If so, then sneaking into the Ring alone was Bareris’s only hope of getting his revenge.”

  “But it’s no hope at all. A sane man would have understood it couldn’t possibly work.”

  Malark twirled his ebony wand in his fingers, a habit the Monks of the Long Death had taught him to promote manual dexterity. “Well, you’ve got me there. Are you going to go down and give him the duel he so desires?”
>
  “If you tell me to. Otherwise, no. Obviously, I’m not afraid of him. Back aboard that roundship on the Alamber Sea, I held off him, his griffon, the ghost, and Tammith Iltazyarra, all attacking me together. But I don’t reciprocate his hatred, either. How could I, when I can barely tell you human vermin apart? So let the dogs”—Tsagoth waved his lower right hand at the orcs, ghouls, and necromancers assembled below—“dig the badger out of his hole. It’s what dogs are for, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose. It’s just that Bareris is an old friend of mine, and I’d like to give him the gift of a fitting death. If he perished fighting you, that would do the trick. But I consider you a friend as well, and I won’t compel you if you aren’t so inclined.”

  Tsagoth laughed, though his mirth sounded more like a lupine snarl. “You’re as crazy as he is.”

  “Perhaps. You’re far from the first to tell me so.”

  “You know, I could promise him I’ll meet him in single combat. Then the men could loose a few dozen arrows into him as soon as he comes through the door. That’s a way to put him down before he kills any more of us.”

  Malark shook his head. “I won’t do that.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “But I will let you lure him out, and then I’ll duel him. After all, I betrayed him and the southern cause. He ought to hate me too, at least a little. If he meets his end fighting me, it’s not as perfect as if it happened battling you, but it’s still a death reflective of his fundamental nature.”

  Peering through an arrow slit, Bareris saw a column of mist spill down from on high. When it reached the ground, it thickened and took on definition until it became a dark, four-armed figure half again as tall as a man, with glowing crimson eyes and a head part human and part wolf.

  Bareris shuddered, and hatred like burning vomit welled up inside him. He closed his eyes to shut out the sight of the blood fiend. Struggled to remember his true purpose and his pledge to Aoth.

  “I’m here, minstrel!” Tsagoth shouted, a hint of a lupine howl in his voice. “What is it you want?”

  It seemed to Bareris that he had himself under control. He risked opening his eyes, and it was still all right. “Isn’t it obvious? I want to face you in single combat!”

  “Done. Come out and let’s get started.”

  The quick acceptance of the challenge brought a fresh surge of fury. Made Bareris want to leap up this instant, rush outside—

  He clamped down on the impulse. He needed to do more talking before permitting anything else to happen. “How do I know all your allies won’t attack me the instant I appear?”

  Tsagoth shrugged a peculiar-looking four-armed shrug. “You’ll just have to trust me.”

  “I have a better idea. You come in here, and that will ensure it’s just the two of us.”

  “The two of us and whatever snares you’ve prepared with your bardic tricks. I think not. Come out and take your chances, or all these soldiers and I will storm your pitiful little redoubt. It should take about ten heartbeats.”

  “All right,” Bareris answered, “I’ll come out.” He dissolved the locking charm he’d cast, opened the door, and, singing, stepped out into the open.

  No quarrels or flares of freezing shadow leaped at him. Arranged in a crescent-moon arc some distance from the door, Szass Tam’s servants were content to stand and stare, orcs and mages with malice and curiosity in their eyes, zombies with nothing at all in theirs. Tsagoth waited at the other end of the patch of clear ground, in reach at last after ninety years spent hunting him.

  Bareris felt his anger deepen until its weight threatened to crush everything else inside him. He told himself that Tsagoth was merely Szass Tam’s pawn and that sticking to his plan was the way to discomfit the lich. Reminded himself of every other consideration he’d counted on to help him maintain control. And at that moment, none of it mattered. How could it? He was a dead man, a ravening beast, capable of nothing but grief, self-loathing, and rage.

  He switched to a different song, raised his blade high, and took an eager stride.

  He closed half the distance, and then Tsagoth vanished. Bareris faltered, startled, anguished that the demonic vampire evidently intended to break his word. Then Malark, clad partly in crimson, a black wand or cudgel in his hand, floated down from the sky to stand where Tsagoth had been.

  Bareris realized a measure of calm had returned to him. Consternation had blunted his frenzy. “My business is with Tsagoth,” he said.

  “But Tsagoth isn’t as interested in you as you are in him,” Malark replied.

  “Has he turned coward?”

  “Most assuredly not. But our mortal conventions of honor mean very little to him. Now, I have a proposition for you. You can’t duel Tsagoth or retreat back into your bolt hole, either.” The former spymaster pointed with his wand. Bareris glanced over his shoulder and saw that some of the enemy had shifted to block the way back into the tower. “But you can still have a measure of satisfaction. You can fight me.”

  “Why would you offer that?”

  “For old times’ sake. Call it an apology if you like. So, do you want to, or would you rather have all these Red Wizards, dread warriors, and whatnot assail you forthwith?”

  “All right. I’ll fight you. I’ll kill you too.”

  “It’s possible. Give me your best.”

  Malark dropped into a deep stance and started to circle. Grateful to stop talking and resume singing, Bareris poised his broadsword in a low guard and sidled in the opposite direction.

  Malark suddenly sprang into the air and thrust-kicked at Bareris’s head. Bareris ducked, retreated a half step, and extended his sword. The point should have caught Malark in the groin, but despite his forward momentum, the smaller man somehow contrived to snap his foot sideways into the threatening blade, knocking it out of line.

  Malark touched down, pivoted, and slammed a back kick into Bareris’s torso. Bareris felt a stab of pain as his ribs snapped. The attack sent him reeling backward, and Malark turned again and rushed him. Still singing, Bareris waited another moment, then planted his feet, regained his balance, and extended his sword a second time. Malark stopped short and once again avoided impaling himself, but not by much. Bareris’s point was half a finger-length from his chest.

  Bareris lunged, and Malark spun to the side. The sword missed his vitals but sliced a bloody gash in his forearm.

  Malark grinned and inclined his head. “Good. Really good.” He threatened with his black club, and then, when Bareris tried to parry, tossed the weapon into his other hand and spun it to bind his opponent’s blade. Bareris sprang in closer, altering the relative positions of the blades so that he and not the spymaster was able to exert leverage. He heaved with all his inhuman strength and tore the club from Malark’s grip.

  At once he continued with a drawing cut to the knee. Malark hopped over it and hit him in the forehead with the heel of his palm. Bareris’s skull crunched, and a bolt of agony blinded him. He hacked at the spot where instinct told him Malark must have gone, and evidently he guessed correctly. He didn’t hit anything, but neither did any follow-up attack hit him, and when his vision cleared an instant later, the man in red was three paces away, where he must have leaped to dodge the cut. Malark whistled, and the black club flew up off the ground and into his hand like a dog obeying its master’s call.

  The duel went on that way for a while, each combatant hurting the other occasionally, but not badly enough to incapacitate. Bareris wondered how much longer he needed to stall. Because that was the problem with the spell he’d been weaving ever since making contact with the enemy, threading the incantation through his seemingly mundane speech and shouts as well as performing it in his song. The effect he hoped to create was subtle, so much so that he himself had no way of knowing whether he’d succeeded. Or at least, none that didn’t require betting his existence on it.

  He was still wondering when Malark took the decision out of his hands.

  Bareris
advanced, lunged, and made a head cut. Malark stepped into the attack and should have ended up with a cleft skull as a result. But as he moved, he swiveled his upper body ever so slightly to the side, and somehow, the stroke missed. He dropped his cudgel, grabbed Bareris’s forearm, and twisted.

  Bareris resisted, refusing to drop his sword or let his adversary tear apart his elbow. Whereupon Malark let go of his limb, and, straining when there was no longer any opposing force, Bareris lurched off balance. Only for an instant, but that was all the time his foe needed to snap a kick into his knee.

  Bareris staggered, and the smaller man kicked his other knee. Neither leg would support Bareris now, and he fell prone in the dirt. He tried to roll over onto his back and raise his sword, but he was too slow. Something—a stamp kick, probably—smashed into the center of his spine, and then another cracked his neck. Pain blasted through him, and afterward, he couldn’t move anymore. He tried to croak out the next syllable of his song, but even that had become impossible.

  Malark looked down at Bareris, who was squirming feebly and uselessly at his feet, and judged he hadn’t done enough. The twice-broken spine would finish any mortal man, but given a little time, the undead bard might well recover even from that.

  But he was unlikely to rise up if someone cut off his head, pulled the heart from his chest, and burned him. Malark plucked the sword from his hand to begin the process.

  “Sleep in peace,” Malark said. “I’m glad I was finally able to free you.” He gripped the blade with both hands and raised it high.

  A sort of groan sounded from the living members of the audience he’d nearly forgotten, particularly his fellow Red Wizards. They weren’t protesting what a zulkir chose to do. None of them would dare. But plainly, they regretted it.

  At first Malark couldn’t imagine why. Then, abruptly, as if a key had unlocked a portion of his mind, he understood. Like himself, the other mages were necromancers. Their special art was to master the undead, and Bareris was a particularly powerful specimen. Thus, they deplored the waste implicit in destroying him when they could enslave him instead.