Prophet of the Dead Read online

  The pale creature chuckled. “A fair touch, sun priestess. I did, and I do.” He glanced around, found a black marble sarcophagus with a lid carved in the form of a sleeping lady holding a lily to her chest, and perched on the edge. Then he waved the humans to the stone coffin opposite it. “So make yourselves comfortable and ask your questions.”

  Jhesrhi seated herself, and after a moment’s hesitation, Cera did the same, although it felt strange and wrong to flop down casually across from the demon when, in any sane world or set of circumstances, she’d be scourging it with the radiance of the Yellow Sun and a chant of exorcism.

  “I want to know three things,” Jhesrhi said. “What is this place, what are you, and who are our mutual enemies?”

  Sarshethrian nodded. “Let me tell you a story that will explain all of that by the time it’s through.

  “At the beginning—my beginning,” the creature continued, “I came into being in this place. Perhaps it came into existence at the same instant, or perhaps it existed before me. I can’t be certain. All I can say is that so far as I’ve ever been able to determine, no one ever heard of it before I appeared to claim it for my own.

  “I also don’t know how long I’ve wandered here. How could I? At first, nothing changed to mark the passage of time, and I didn’t even know what time was. But gradually, language and knowledge formed inside me like a pearl accreting in an oyster.

  “Eventually, they prompted me to attempt to define myself. Was I perhaps a devil, or maybe a demon? It didn’t appear so, not in the technical sense, anyway, for although I still didn’t fully comprehend the nature of my home—it’s difficult to take the true measure of a place when you’ve only ever seen it from the inside—it didn’t seem to be a part of the Hells or the Abyss either.”

  “Get to the point,” Cera said.

  Sarshethrian snorted. “A priestess should be more interested in mysteries. Don’t you realize you’re receiving a bona fide myth no cleric of the light has ever heard before? But never mind. I promise, I am coming ‘to the point.’

  “Although I might not have been precisely a baatezu or a tanar’ri, I had quite a bit in common with them, both in terms of my abilities and my awakening desires. And because the latter were cravings I could never satisfy in isolation, I strived ever harder to understand the nature of my home and how it could be made to connect to the greater universe I sensed around it.”

  “And eventually, you found out it could connect through tombs and crypts,” Jhesrhi said.

  Sarshethrian nodded. “Exactly. Perhaps because it’s a kind of reflection or echo those places strike in Shadow. Or maybe because it’s the perfect, reified idea that every vault and mausoleum in the mortal world expresses in its own limited way … but I’m forgetting that the sunlady is impatient with metaphysics.”

  Or you want to make sure you don’t let slip anything that might help us escape, Cera thought.

  “Suffice it to say,” the pale fiend continued, “in time, I learned how to step from my world into the funerary places of yours, only to discover I could venture no farther. A realm so full of life was inhospitable to me and would remain so unless I persuaded some of the indigenous creatures to worship me and so provide me with a foothold.”

  “And because you could only make your presence felt in tombs,” Cera said, “the only ‘indigenous creatures’ you could talk to were undead.”

  Sarshethrian inclined his head. “Exactly so. At first, no one was particularly interested. The lowliest lacked the wit to understand me. Others were content with their existences or skeptical of my ability to improve their circumstances, and perhaps reasonably so. I soon realized it’s fairly common for fiends to try to entice ghouls and wraiths into their service.

  “But I persevered and eventually stumbled on a being so desperate for companionship that he was willing to listen to anything and everything I had to say. His name was Lod. Once, he was one of the serpent folk called nagas, and in undeath, he retained all the vast intelligence he’d enjoyed in life. That intellect notwithstanding, the necromancer who reanimated him could think of no better use for him than to seal him up alone in a crypt to guard the grave goods for eternity, and he found the solitude and tedium hellish. He would have done anything to escape them.”

  “And so you had your first disciple,” Jhesrhi said. The flames dancing on the head of her staff further gilded her blond hair and tawny skin.

  “Yes,” Sarshethrian said, “and I made good on all my promises. Together, we devised magic to break the mystical chains that held him to his endless task, and then to help achieve his grander dreams.”

  Cera felt another twist of loathing down in her stomach. “ ‘Grander dreams’ that led to a menace nobody ever heard of attacking Rashemen?”

  “Yes,” Sarshethrian said. Then he broke off talking and sat up straight. It reminded her of a hound reacting to a noise its masters couldn’t hear.

  “What is it?” Jhesrhi asked.

  “I feel them,” the demon said, hopping down from the sarcophagus, “here inside the deathways, and that means the rest of the story can wait. You don’t have to know who they are to kill them.”

  * * * * *

  Vandar had no doubt that it was only the preternatural vitality he drew from the red weapons that had enabled him to pull himself from the frozen river, and he suspected it was all that was keeping him alive now. But the magic had its limits. Shivering, teeth chattering, he felt colder than ever in his life, and the pale sun in the gray sky seemed to mock him with its lying promise of warmth.

  But it did reveal the Fortress of the Half-Demon, visible as a dark nub on the northern horizon, and the sight helped to keep him trudging onward. In the castle, he’d surely find dry clothes, provisions, and a room where he could build a fire and rest out of the snow and the frigid, whistling wind for as long as it took to recover his strength.

  Then he’d run to Immilmar as fast as his legs and his rage could carry him, and if the Three truly cared about justice, he’d arrive in time to catch Mario Bez and his sellswords.

  Numb feet sliding, he labored to the top of the next rise. Half buried in snow, two more dark objects lay in the hollow before him.

  For a moment, in his weariness, he failed to recognize them as anything more noteworthy than the brush, evergreens, and other stunted trees dotting the snow. Then a long, mottled limb, some patches of hide charred black and others glistening raw with a few feathers still clinging to them, rose sluggishly and flopped back down.

  Startled, Vandar jumped and leveled the crimson spear. But neither the creature with the burned wing nor what he now recognized to be a man lying beside it moved any farther.

  By the rose and scythe, was Vandar looking at Jet and Aoth Fezim? How had they vanished from the Fortress only to reappear out here, and what disaster had befallen them?

  Vandar hurried down the slope. When it noticed his approach, the winged creature struggled to its feet, snow spilling from its back and flanks as it did. For an instant, the berserker still wasn’t sure he was looking at Jet. The griffon was too badly burned over too much of his body, and his halting, palsied movements in no way reflected the strength and speed of the beast that had accompanied Vandar and his brothers on the march north. But the smoldering blood-red eyes were still the same.

  “What happened?” Vandar asked.

  “Bez,” Jet rasped.

  “I suspected as much. He attacked the lodge too. I may be the only one left.” Vandar pivoted. “Is Aoth …?” He faltered when he saw that the burned man half hidden in snow wasn’t the Thayan after all but rather Dai Shan. Somehow, despite the lodge’s efforts at secrecy, every contender for the wild griffons had found his way north, not that the Shou had any reason to be glad he’d undertaken the journey.

  “Captain Fezim’s alive,” said Jet, “somewhere. I can feel him across our link. But he’s busy, and it could make the danger worse if I distract him. We’ll talk when he’s safe. Or if that imp”—the griffon
stabbed his beak in Dai Shan’s direction—“wakes up first, maybe he can tell me where Aoth is.”

  “I understand you want to find him,” Vandar said, “but once you do, you need to carry both of us back to Immilmar. It’s our best hope of reaching Bez before he claims his prize and disappears into the south.”

  Jet laughed. The sound had always been so bloodcurdlingly harsh that it had taken Vandar a while to realize what it was, but now it held a bitter note that was new.

  “I’ve always known that humans are blind and stupid,” the griffon said, “but you take the prize. Open your eyes and look.”

  With a grunt, he extended his wing as far as he evidently could, which was about halfway. It bent in places and at angles where it shouldn’t, and in two spots, jagged bone stuck out through the skin.

  “I can’t fly anybody anyplace,” the griffon said.

  “Curse it!” Vandar said. “But all right. I was going to trek back to Immilmar on foot, and if I still have to, I will. But first, I’m going to double back to the Fortress. You might want to follow and lay up there for the time being. Good luck.”

  Vandar turned away and took five crunching steps in the snow. Then Jet said, “Berserker.”

  Vandar looked around. “Yes?”

  “I don’t know if you think of us of the Brotherhood as your rivals or your comrades. You humans have a way of complicating everything that should be simple. If we’re your rivals, then leave. But if we’re your friends …” The familiar faltered in the manner of a proud creature unaccustomed to needing to ask for anything. “I told you I can’t fly. Truly, I’m so weak, I can barely stand, and without my feathers, I’m nearly frozen through. If you go, I’ll die, and the merchant too, not that he matters.”

  Inside, Vandar flinched. “The warriors of the lodge were my brothers. The Halruaans murdered them.”

  Jet nodded. “Go get your revenge, then.” He lowered himself back down into the snow.

  Vandar tried to turn away once more. Plainly, avenging the lodge was the honorable course. Even Jet realized it and had just acknowledged as much.

  And yet …

  Jet was a griffon, the lodge’s totem in the flesh.

  And believing himself justified, Vandar had turned his back on the outlanders once already, and it was possible that if he’d chosen otherwise, his brothers would still be alive.

  Moreover, if he focused his attention inward, he could feel the wordless nudging of the fey spear and sword, strangely warm in his hand and on his hip, urging him on toward the possibility of battle, vengeance, and, perhaps still, even glory. The effect was subtle because it merely reinforced his own innate desires. Yet it was an influence nonetheless, and though he prized the virtues of the weapons as much as ever, he was learning to question the inclinations of the strange sentience that had tangled itself with his own like ivy wrapped around a post.

  He heaved a sigh. “I have flint and steel, and there’s wood about. We can make a fire and find something to eat, and then, when you’re up to it, we’ll hike back to the fortress together.”

  * * * * *

  Aoth leveled his spear, and even that simple action made his neck, shoulders, and back spasm. He rattled off words of command, and the shriveled mage in the nightcap and nightshirt did the same, meanwhile sketching isosceles triangles with his wand. The ebony rod left streaks of amber phosphorescence in the air.

  Aoth finished first, only because he’d opted for a simpler spell. Darts of blue light hurtled from the spear and pierced the undead wizard’s scrawny torso. Lord So-Remas cried out and flailed, his casting ruined short of completion.

  Running footsteps pounded. All but certain he was moving too slowly to keep the two onrushing guards from driving their weapons into his body, Aoth blundered around to face them.

  He was right. If he’d had to protect himself, he would have been too late. But the orc had picked up a small table, and now he heaved it at the soldiers. The improvised missile bashed one guard and made him stumble. Startled, his comrade balked too.

  Aoth pulled his short, heavy sword from its scabbard and tossed it to the orc, who caught it deftly by the hilt. It wasn’t much to hold off two armored spearmen, but it was better than nothing, and handing it off was all Aoth had time to do. He had to use his magic—or what was left of it—to fight the most dangerous foe.

  He wrenched himself back toward the doorway to the bedchamber and found the Red Wizard had already shaken off the effects of the darts of light. Worse, he was already chanting a new incantation, one that made a sickly green glow flower in the depths of his sunken eyes and branch out through the veins in his temples to his hairless crown.

  Aoth started a spell of his own, but this time, So-Remas finished first. He flicked the ebony wand in an arc that ended with it pointing straight at his opponent. Shedding its clattering pieces, the lanceboard table leaped into the air and flew at Aoth.

  He tried to dodge and gasped at the resulting stab of agony. The table slammed into him and knocked him onto the floor, and that double jolt was just as excruciating.

  He curled up and tucked his head as, prompted by So-Remas’s wand, more objects flew at him. Struggling to keep to the proper cadence despite the punishment, Aoth gritted out another spell and jabbed with his spear on the final syllable.

  A red spark shot from the point to strike at the undead mage’s feet. There, it exploded into a fiery blast that knocked the wizard backward and filled the doorway with a hissing sheet of flame.

  Gasping, Aoth hoped that was the end of it, and for a heartbeat, it appeared to be. He was about to turn and see how the orc was faring when So-Remas strode back through the fire. Either he was innately impervious to it, or he carried some talisman that made him so.

  The undead noble flicked his wand up and down. The animated game table hammered Aoth like a boot stamping repeatedly on an insect.

  Aoth struggled to think of a counterstroke he might conceivably accomplish despite the ongoing torment and his depleted powers. The drawn curtains with the shuttered windows behind them caught his eye.

  The orc had said that on rare occasions, he’d seen his master when the sun was out. But that wasn’t the same as saying that he’d seen the undead creature in the sunlight, and Aoth was going to gamble that the thrall had meant the former but not the latter, and that there was a reason for it.

  He thrust his spear at a window and shouted a word of command. Raw force leaped from the weapon to tear down the drapes, shatter the greenish panes behind them, and smash open the shutters on the other side of those.

  A shaft of daylight shined in and caught So-Remas in its center. The undead shrieked and burned, his desiccated skin and the withered flesh inside charring like paper, the purifying power of the sun achieving what Aoth’s burst of arcane fire hadn’t.

  Aoth dredged up the concentration for a little more magic. It helped that, now that So-Remas had lost his focus, the lanceboard table had stopped battering him. Aoth cast more glowing darts, and they and the sunlight together were enough. The Red Wizard pitched forward onto his face. By now, he was mostly bare bone, which burned to coals and then to ash like the rest of him.

  It occurred to Aoth that if Cera were here, she’d say her god had looked out for him. That in turn made him remember that, as far as he knew, she and Jhesrhi were still trapped in the dark maze. Somehow, he had to get them out!

  But he couldn’t think about that now. Aoth twisted around and saw that the spearmen had backed the orc against a wall.

  Fortunately, they’d turned their backs on Aoth to do it. With his teeth gritted, he crawled close enough to drive his spear up between one soldier’s legs.

  The gelded man whimpered and, knees buckling, collapsed. The other warrior’s head jerked in his wounded comrade’s direction. Risking everything on an all-out attack, the orc lunged and slashed. The remaining guard fell backward with blood pumping from a gaping wound in his neck.

  Aoth looked around to make sure there were no other
immediate threats. He noticed the orc doing the same.

  “Thanks,” Aoth gasped.

  The slave shrugged. “I had to fight, or they would have tortured me to death for helping you. It wouldn’t have mattered that you forced me.” He leered a crooked leer. “Although there was more to it. I wanted to kill them.”

  “You need to break open the secret panel. Fast, before more guards show up. I’d do it, but I’m not sure I can stand back up.”

  The orc attacked So-Remas’s hiding place. The enchanted sword cracked and crunched through the wood in what Aoth knew to be a matter of moments even though it felt like a cruelly long time to him.

  The thrall handed him a silver bottle. “This is the stuff.”

  Clumsy with pain and eagerness, Aoth fumbled out the stopper and took a long pull of the tasteless, lukewarm elixir inside. He felt the vertebrae in his neck shift, but without discomfort. In fact, all the cramping, throbbing soreness was fading away from his neck all the way down to his rump. He let out a long sigh of relief.

  He would have been happy to sit and savor his liberation from torment. But he and the orc weren’t out of danger yet, and although he’d recovered his physical strength, his mystical power would return only with rest. He jammed the stopper back in the bottle, scrambled up, and hurried to So-Remas’s hiding place.

  “What else have we got?” he murmured to himself.

  Fortunately, there was something, a long, thin, golden-hilted poniard of an athame. He snatched the ritual dagger from its sheath, and knowledge of its attributes poured into his mind. So-Remas had bound spells in it just as Aoth himself was accustomed to store magic in his spear.

  He judged that it would do. In fact, it should do nicely. When more of So-Remas’s soldiers charged into the room, he met them with a nasty smile and a shriek of focused, bone-shattering sound.

  * * * * *

  The ambush started well. Sarshethrian, his newfound human and stag-man allies, and his shadowy slaves had caught the undead wayfarers by surprise and slaughtered several in the first few moments. Then, however, the creatures of the Eminence of Araunt started fighting back and maneuvering through the darkness, until Jhesrhi suddenly caught a whiff of something putrid.