The Haunted Lands: Book III - Unholy Read online

  Malark realized he agreed with them. He tossed away the sword to clank on the ground, called his wand back into his grasp, swept it through a serpentine mystic pass, and recited the first words of a binding. He made an encouraging gesture with his free hand, and the other necromancers joined in.

  When the spell was done, Tsagoth appeared beside him to inspect the pale figure still twitching and shuddering on the ground. “Did you enjoy that?” the blood fiend asked.

  “For me,” Malark said, “destroying the undead isn’t sport. It’s a sacrament. But yes, I did enjoy it.”

  “But you didn’t destroy him.”

  For a heartbeat, Malark felt confused. Perhaps even uneasy. But then he frowned his formless misgivings away. “Well, no. At the last moment, I realized how useful he could be fighting on our side if the council attacks again. Imagine the effect on Aoth and the rebels’ morale when their faithful friend rides out to slaughter them.”

  Szass Tam snapped his shriveled fingers, and a rippling ran down from the top of the oval mirror. It looked like streaming water, and it washed the images of Malark, Tsagoth, and Bareris Anskuld away, so that the lich’s own keen, intellectual face looked back at him once more.

  It was good luck that he’d chosen to check on the Dread Ring in Lapendrar at this particular time, for he’d enjoyed watching Malark overcome the bard. Anskuld had never been more than a minor problem, but he’d been one for a hundred years, and after all the accumulated irritation, it was satisfying to see him neutralized at last.

  Someone tapped on the door softly enough that it took sharp ears to hear it. Szass Tam turned in his chair and called, “Come in.”

  Ludicrously for such an exemplar of his brutish kind, bred for generations solely to kill whenever and whomever Red Wizards commanded, the blood-orc captain appeared to creep into the divination chamber as hesitantly as a timid child. Perhaps he didn’t like the carrion stink and the litter of corpses and broken, filthy grave goods, for, insofar as he could without rendering the room incapable of its intended function, Szass Tam had filled it with such things. He’d done the same with many spaces reserved for his personal use. The ambience helped tune his mind for the Unmaking.

  But he suspected the orc seemed uneasy because he had bad news to report, and the warrior confirmed as much as soon as his master told him to get up off his knees. “Your Omnipotence, we lost another hunting party. They found the demon—or it found them—outside the vault with the blue metal door, in the tunnels with all the faces carved on the walls. And it killed them.”

  I’m served by imbeciles, Szass Tam told himself and conscientiously tried to despise them for their inadequacies. “I’m sorry to hear it. Make sure we provide for the families of the fallen.”

  The officer swallowed. “There’s more, Master. After the demon killed the hunters, it got the door to the vault open. It broke all the staves and wands you kept inside.”

  Szass Tam scowled. No stray predator from the Abyssal planes should have been capable of opening a door he’d sealed himself. And he’d spent the better part of four hundred years acquiring those rods across the length and breadth of Faerûn and even in lands beyond. To lose the entire collection, and not even to a thief—that at least would make sense—but to a creature who’d apparently destroyed it out of sheer random spite—

  Szass Tam belatedly realized that if his disgust was appropriate, his sense of attachment and attendant loss was counterproductive, and he did his best to quash it. The staves and wands were flawed, contemptible trash, just like the rest of creation. They would have passed from existence within the next few tendays anyway, when the Great Work erased all the world. Thus, they didn’t merit a second thought.

  But he supposed he ought to provide a display of pique even though he no longer felt it. The orc would expect no less, and, mind-bound though they were, Szass Tam would rather his minions not question their master’s sanity or true intentions. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, but it had the potential to make this final phase of his preparations a bit more difficult than it needed to be.

  So he scowled and snarled, “Kill the cursed thing! Take a whole legion into the crypts if you have to!”

  “Yes, Master. We will. Only …”

  “Only what?”

  “Considering the cunning wizards and mighty creatures we’ve already lost, people are saying that maybe this demon’s so nasty that only Szass Tam himself can slay it.”

  Szass Tam realized that if he still cared about the security of his fortress home and the safety of cherished possessions, as he wanted his retainers to believe, that was exactly what he’d do. And perhaps he could use a diversion, a break from the days and nights of near-constant meditation.

  “All right,” he said. “Forget about sending any more hunters. I’ll go as soon as I get a chance.”

  Throughout the night, some vague impulse prompted Bareris to peer up at the sky. Eventually he observed that dawn wasn’t far distant, that it was, in fact, approximately the same time as when he’d invaded the Dread Ring. In the depths of his mind, something shifted.

  Once the necromancers were certain they’d enslaved him, Malark had assigned him duties appropriate to a seasoned officer. As the day dragged by, he’d performed them like a sleepwalker, feeling nothing except a dull, bitter anger he could no longer express or even comprehend.

  He was still numb and incapable of contemplating his situation. But he slipped away from the band of ghouls Malark had placed under his command and stalked to a shadowy corner in an empty courtyard. No mouths opened in the stonework to proclaim his whereabouts; he belonged to the garrison now.

  Once there, he sang softly. He couldn’t have said exactly what he was doing or why, but he exerted his bardic skills anyway, striking precisely the right notes, rhythm, and phrasing to spark magic flickering in the air around him like a cloud of fireflies.

  The spell picked at another power that, at this moment, seemed to cover his skin like a smothering coat of lacquer. The process stung, but the pain was a kind of relief, and by the time it ended, his mind was clear, his will, his own once more.

  When he’d nudged Malark and the other necromancers to enslave rather than destroy him, he’d fully expected the binding to take. That was why, prior to sneaking into the castle, he, working with Lauzoril and Lallara, had imposed a different geas on himself. At the proper moment, he would find himself compelled to cast countermagic that would, if Tymora smiled, break the enemy’s psychic shackles.

  Keeping to the shadows but, he hoped, not so blatantly that he’d look like a skulking footpad if someone noticed him anyway, he headed toward a sally-port in the west wall. Still, no enchanted mouths opened to denounce him. The defense wasn’t sophisticated enough to distinguish between the thrall he’d been a little while ago and the foe he was now. Some wizard had instructed it that he belonged in the stronghold, and as far as it was concerned, that was that.

  The four guards currently standing watch on the battlements above the postern were gaunt dread warriors with smoldering amber eyes. Bareris couldn’t muddle the minds of his fellow undead, and a thunderous shout or some other violent mystical attack was apt to draw unwanted attention.

  But that was all right. He didn’t mind doing things the hard way.

  He climbed a set of stairs to the top of the towering wall and strode on toward the living corpses. They glanced at him once, then resumed their scrutiny of the rolling plain beyond the gate. Dread warriors were more sentient than ordinary zombies, but that didn’t mean they were capable of casual curiosity.

  The wall-walk was plenty wide enough for him to make his way past the first two. When he was in the middle of the group, their corrupt stink foul in his nostrils, he drew his sword, pivoted right, and struck.

  The cut tumbled a dread warrior’s head from its shoulders to drop into the bailey below. He swept its toppling body out of his way, rushed the one behind it, and split its skull before it could aim the spear in its gray, flaking hands.<
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  He whirled and saw that slaying the guards on the right had given the ones on the left time to prepare themselves. The dead man in front held a scimitar in one hand and hurled its spear with the other.

  Bareris crouched, and the spear flew over his head. He straightened up again and charged.

  He cut a sizable chunk of the dread warrior’s left profile away, exposing a section of black, slimy brain, but that didn’t kill it. The corpse-thing tried to slash his leg out from under him, and steel rang when he parried. He shifted in close and hammered the heavy pommel of his sword into the breach in the dread warrior’s skull. Brain splashed his hand, and his foe dropped.

  He saw with a jolt of alarm that the last guard was raising a horn to its crumbling, oozing lips. He sprinted at it, slipped a cut from its scimitar, and struck the bugle from its grasp.

  That frantic action left him open, and the dread warrior hacked at his flank. He parried, an instant too late, but though he failed to stop the attack from landing, his defensive action at least blunted the force of it and kept it from biting deep. He thrust up under the sentry’s chin, and his sword punched all the way through the creature’s head and crunched out the top of it. The guard fell.

  Scowling at the burning pain in his side, Bareris freed his blade and cast about. As far as he could tell, no one had noticed anything amiss, and he meant to keep it that way.

  He sang under his breath, and a shimmer curled like smoke through the air. First it hid the remains of the dread warriors, both the portions of them still on the wall-walk and those that had fallen to the ground. Then it painted semblances of them still standing at their posts.

  Bareris was all too keenly aware that both wizards and undead were notoriously difficult to fool with this particular sleight. But he trusted his own abilities and dared to hope the phantasm would at least convince any foe who merely happened to glance in this direction.

  Next he crooned a counterspell to obliterate any mouths that might otherwise have appeared and called out from the stone. When that was done, it was finally time to open the postern.

  In this colossal stronghold, even the secondary gates were massive, designed to be operated by two or more soldiers at a time. But with his unnatural strength, Bareris managed. It was odd to feel the heavy bars slide and the valves swing apart when, beguiled by the mirage he himselfhad conjured, his eyes insisted that the sally-port was still sealed up tight.

  chapter eight

  17 Mirtul, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

  Invisible to hostile eyes—or so they hoped—Aoth, his fellow commanders, and a goodly portion of their army lay behind a shallow rise on the western approach to the Dread Ring. Blessed with the sharpest vision in the company, Aoth peered at the sally-port they’d selected before Bareris sneaked into the enemy stronghold. He willed it to open.

  Crouching beside him, Jet grunted. “Yes. Wish for it. That’ll make a difference.”

  “It can’t hurt,” said Aoth, and then, finally, the two leaves of the gate swung inward, first one and then the other. He could make out a fleck of white that must be Bareris pulling them open.

  “By all the flames that burn in all the Hells,” said Nevron, for once sounding impressed instead of contemptuous, “the singer did it.”

  “Or else the necromancers forced him to divulge his intentions and are exploiting our own scheme to set a snare for us,” Lallara said, smiling maliciously. “Shall we go find out which it is?”

  “Yes,” said Aoth. “Let’s.” He drew himself up, the others followed suit, and for an instant, he thought again how odd it was to have zulkirs lying on their stomachs in the sparse grass at his direction. Even Samas Kul had grudgingly forsaken his floating throne, substituting a conjured armature of glowing white lines that wrapped around his bloated body and evidently enabled him to move without strain.

  Only Aoth intended to march in the vanguard, so he had to wait while the archmages retreated to the center of the company and their bodyguards formed protective ranks around them. “Are you sure you want to walk in?” he asked Jet. “You could wait and fly with the rest of the griffons.” He hadn’t included aerial cavalry in the first wave lest it double the chances of being spotted.

  Jet dismissed the suggestion with a toss of his black-feathered head. “I’ll go when and how you go. Just don’t think you can ride me in the same way you’d ride a damned horse.”

  “Perish the thought.” Aoth glanced around and judged that they were ready. He pointed with his spear, strode forward, and the others followed.

  As they advanced, Jhesrhi and other wizards whispered spells of concealment. Aoth could feel the power of them seething in the air, and, even with his fire-kissed eyes, he didn’t see any foes lurking on the battlements waiting to spring a trap. Still, his throat was dry. He couldn’t help imagining that when he and his comrades came close enough, flights of arrows and blasts of freezing, poisonous shadow would hammer down from the wall.

  Fortunately, it never happened, and when, spear leveled, he warily stepped through the open gate, only Bareris was waiting to meet him. He grinned and gripped the bard by the shoulder. Mirror, on this occasion looking like the ghost of his own living self and not somebody else’s, flitted in after him and saluted their friend with an elaborate flourish of his shadowy sword. Bareris acknowledged them both with a curt nod.

  Aoth looked around and found Khouryn already standing expectantly at his side. “Form ranks,” he told the dwarf. “Quietly. We don’t want the necromancers to know they have callers quite yet.”

  “I remember the plan,” Khouryn said. He turned and waved a group of spearmen forward.

  “Now where are the mages?” said Aoth.

  “Here,” said Jhesrhi, striding forward. The golden runes on her staff glowed. Silvery phosphorescence, the visible manifestation of some armoring enchantment, outlined her body. Her blonde tresses, cloak, and robe stirred as through brushed by a wind that wasn’t blowing on anyone else. Several tattooed, shaven-headed Red Wizards trailed along behind her. “I assume it’s time?”

  “Yes,” said Aoth. “Do it.”

  The wizards formed a circle and raised their instruments—two staves, four wands, and a clear crystal orb wrapped in a silvery web of filigree—above their heads. The mages chanted in unison, power warmed the air, and then a rattle ran from their immediate vicinity down the length of the fortress. It was the sound of doors banging shut in quick succession as they jumped and jerked in their frames.

  The magic had sealed them. In some cases, those trapped inside the various towers and bastions would break them open again and rush out into the cool, moist dawn air. In others, the attackers would breach the doors themselves when they were ready, and pass through to kill whoever waited on the other side. Either way, the object was to fight the garrison a piece at a time instead of all at once.

  “There’s something you should know,” Bareris said. “Malark’s here, commanding the defense.”

  “I’m not entirely surprised. We knew we were up against someone clever.”

  “Be wary of him. He’s spent the past ninety years learning sorcery from Szass Tam himself. He’s even more dangerous than he was before.”

  “So are we.” Aoth nodded to Khouryn, who relayed the command to the soldiers under his command. As the first hint of sunrise turned the sky above the postern gray, the spearmen stalked forward.

  Despite the howling, surging press of battle, the corpse moved in its own little bubble of clear space, as if even its allies were taking care not to come too close. It wore filthy bandages, but if someone had tried to mummify and so preserve it in the usual way, the process had failed. Putrescence leaked from between the loops of linen, and the thing smelled as foul as anything Bareris had encountered in a century of battling undead. As it shambled toward three of Aoth’s sellswords, the miasma overwhelmed them. One actually doubled over and puked. The other two reeled.

  It made them easy prey. The plague blight, as such horrors
were called, grabbed the man who was vomiting and hoisted him off his feet. Streaks of gangrene ran through the man’s flesh.

  “Leave it to me!” Bareris shouted. Obnoxious though it was, the stink wasn’t making him sick, and it was even possible his undead body was immune to the blight’s corrupting touch, though he hoped to avoid putting it to the test. He ran up behind the creature and plunged his sword into its back.

  It dropped the already lifeless body of its previous opponent and lurched around to face him. He slashed it twice more, then retreated and cut its hand when it pawed for him.

  The plague blight kept coming as though its wounds were inconsequential. He shifted out of its path and shouted. The blast of sound smashed it into wisps of bandage, bone chips, and spatters of rot.

  He pivoted, looking for whatever foe was rushing or creeping up on him now. None was, so he took a moment to try to take stock of the battle, difficult as that could be when a warrior was in the thick of it.

  Aoth’s plan to isolate the various components of the garrison had worked for a while. Long enough, one could hope, to give the attackers a significant edge. But then all the sealed doors opened virtually at once when some master wizard obliterated the locking enchantment. Now all of Szass Tam’s minions could join the fight, and it became a desperate, chaotic affair.

  The tide of battle carried Bareris to the main gate. Scores of his allies were fighting like madmen to gain control of it, so they could open it and bring the rest of the zulkirs’ army streaming in. But enemy axemen and spearmen were struggling just as furiously to hold them back, while up on the battlements, archers loosed arrows and scarlet-robed necromancers hurled flares of fire and shadow. Confiscated after the besiegers abandoned it and animated by magic, Tempus’s Boot rolled itself back and forth to bash at its former masters.

  Hoping to see some griffon riders in the immediate vicinity, Bareris looked higher still. Aoth’s aerial cavalry had entered the fight some time ago, and some of them ought to be here now, harrying the men on the wall-walk from the air. But they weren’t. Evidently the enemy had them tied up elsewhere.