The Haunted Lands: Book II - Undead Read online

  But reality and he would have to cope. The battle wasn’t over.

  The ground rumbled, heaving up and down like the surface of the sea. Some powerful spellcaster had apparently decided to conjure an earthquake, and as far as Aoth was concerned, it was a good idea. The tremors knocked down many of Hezass Nymar’s warriors and threw their ranks into disarray. In flight, the griffon riders were unaffected.

  “Kill them!” Aoth bellowed. Brightwing dived at Nymar. Aoth had been trying to get at the whoreson ever since their two forces engaged, and now he saw his chance. His comrades plunged at other targets.

  As Brightwing plummeted, talons outstretched, and Nymar scrambled to his feet and lifted his shield, Aoth noticed the scarf wrapped around the tharchion’s throat. Suddenly he had a hunch why Nymar had switched sides again. It cooled his hatred, but didn’t shake his resolve. The fire priest was still an enemy commander and still needed to die.

  “Break off!” Bareris shouted, his voice magically amplified so everyone could hear. “Fly higher! High as you can!”

  Brightwing flapped her wings and started to climb. Aoth turned this way and that, trying to determine what had alarmed his friend, then gasped.

  A wall of azure fire, or something that resembled flame even though it burned without fuel, heat, or smoke, was sweeping across the ground, and across the army of Lapendrar, from the south. Aoth saw that it killed everyone it touched, but no two victims in the same way. Bones and organs erupted from a legionnaire’s mouth as he turned inside out. One of Kossuth’s monks dissolved in a puff of sparkling dust. A knight and his horse melted into a single screaming tangle of flesh. Nymar froze into a statue of cloudy crystal.

  The blue flames towered high enough to engulf many of the griffon riders. They shredded one man and his mount and plucked the heads and limbs from another pair. Then, despite Brightwing’s desperate attempt to rise above it, the fire took her and Aoth as well. Pain stabbed into his eyes and he screamed.

  By sheer good luck, Xingax had wandered behind his hill-giant zombie when the blast flared and roared at the center of the northern army, and his hulking servant shielded him. It collapsed, a flayed and blackened ruin, and when he looked over the top of what remained of it, he wondered for a moment if the explosion had destroyed Szass Tam as well.

  But obviously not, for the lich clambered up from the ground. He was surely hurt, though. Previously, despite his withered fingers and the occasional whiff of decay emanating from him, he could have passed for a living man. Now, with all the flesh seared and scoured from his face and hands, his eyes melted in their sockets, his undead nature was plain for all to see. The hem of his tattered robe was on fire, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Master,” Xingax said, “what happened?”

  Szass Tam oriented on him without difficulty. A lich didn’t need eyes to see. “Can you still transport both of us through space?” he croaked.

  Xingax didn’t see why not. Such instantaneous travel was a natural ability for him. “Yes.”

  “Then take us inside the Keep of Sorrows. If So-Kehur and Muthoth accomplished their task, we should be as safe there as anywhere, and I don’t want to risk jumping any farther.”

  “As you command,” Xingax said. “But what in the name of the Abyss is happening?”

  “We don’t have time for an explanation,” the necromancer replied. “Suffice it to say, we need to employ your talents, because I can’t trust mine anymore. Not for the moment, anyway.”

  Szass Tam vanished, seemingly vaporized by some sort of explosion, although Malark assumed the archmage hadn’t really perished as easily as that. Dmitra had fainted, which was better than if she’d remained under the lich’s spell and kept trying to murder her own officer. The kraken-things had slowed their irresistible advance and weren’t smashing at the soldiers of Eltabbar as relentlessly as before. A few colossi were even pounding at one another.

  It all looked like good news, but Malark couldn’t rejoice because he didn’t understand any of it. Nor would he, so long as he was stuck amid the clamorous, milling confusion that was Dmitra’s army. He needed to oversee the situation from the air.

  But he couldn’t leave his liege lady stretched insensible on the ground. He picked her up, draped her over his shoulder, and trotted toward the place where he’d left his horse tied.

  Another tremor shook the earth. He staggered, caught his balance, and scurried on.

  The agony in Aoth’s face abated, and he felt the steady bunching and releasing of Brightwing’s muscles beneath him. Somehow both he and the griffon had survived the power that had killed so many others.

  He realized that in response to the pain, he’d reflexively shut his eyes. He opened them, then cried out in dismay.

  “What’s wrong?” Brightwing asked. When he was slow to answer, she joined her mind to his to determine for herself. Then she hastily broke the link again. She had to if she was to see where she was going, because her master had gone blind.

  But it wasn’t ordinary blindness. He could still see something. In fact, he had the muddled impression he could see a great deal. But he couldn’t make sense of it, and the effort was painful, like looking at the sun. His head throbbed, and, straining to hold in a whimper, he shut his eyes once more.

  “I’ll carry you to a healer,” Brightwing said.

  “Wait! The legion. Look around. Did anyone else survive?”

  “Some.”

  “Bareris?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I need to put him in charge before—”

  Brightwing’s pinions cracked like whips and her body rolled. Aoth realized she was maneuvering to contend with an adversary or dodging an actual attack. An instant later, the air turned deathly cold, as if a blast of frost were streaking by.

  “What is it?” asked Aoth.

  “One of those big shadow-bats,” the griffon said. “I’ll see if I can tear up its wing bad enough that it can’t fly.” She hurtled forward, jolting Aoth back against the high cantle of his saddle.

  If their assailant was a nightwing, she had no hope of defeating it by herself. Aoth had to help. But how could he, when he couldn’t see?

  By borrowing her senses, of course, just as he had many times. He should have thought of it immediately, but the inexplicable onslaught of the blue flame and his sudden blindness had robbed him of his wits.

  By the time he tapped into Brightwing’s consciousness, she’d nearly closed on her opponent. At the last possible instant, the bat-thing whirled itself away from her talons and struck with its fangs. The griffon dodged in her turn, but only by plunging lower, ceding the nightwing the advantage of height. Brightwing streaked through the air at top speed to get away from it.

  “Turn around as soon as you can,” Aoth said. “I can’t target it unless you’re looking at it.”

  “You won’t be able to target it if it bites your head off,” Brightwing growled, but she wheeled just heartbeats later.

  He saw the nightwing was close, and swooping closer. He aimed his spear at it and rattled off an incantation. As he did, he could tell that something else was wrong.

  When he cast a spell, he could sense the elements meshing like machinery in a mill, and feel the power leap from their interaction. But though he’d recited the words of command with the necessary precision, the magic’s structure was out of balance. The components were tangling, jamming, and producing nothing but a useless stink and shimmer. Meanwhile, the bat-thing had nearly closed the distance. Brightwing waited as long as she dared, then swooped in an attempt to pass safely beneath it.

  Aoth had emptied his spear’s reservoir of stored spells over the course of the day’s fighting. But he could still charge the weapon with destructive force. Or he hoped he could. For all he knew, even that simple operation had become impossible.

  He spoke the proper word, and to his relief, he felt power flow and collect in the point of the spear. Then Brightwing hurtled under the shadow creature, and he couldn’t
see it anymore. He thrust blindly, and the spear bit into its target. The magic discharged in a crackle.

  “Did I kill it?” he asked.

  Before Brightwing could answer, agony ripped through her body, beginning in her chest. Linked to her mind, Aoth endured a measure of it as well. His muscles clenched and his mouth stretched into a snarl. Brightwing floundered in flight, and for a moment, Aoth feared she was about to die. Then the pain abated as her extraordinary hardiness shook off the effect of the supernatural attack.

  “Does that answer your question?” she rasped.

  She turned, and he could see the nightwing for himself. The thing wasn’t flying as fast or as deftly as before. But it was still pursuing.

  For want of a better plan, he tried another spell, and felt it taking something like the proper form. But he was straining against a resistance, as if he were forcing together puzzle pieces that weren’t truly mates.

  It worked, though. A cloud of vapor sprang into existence directly in front of the bat-thing, so close that the creature couldn’t avoid it. It hurtled in and the corrosive mist burned its murky substance ragged, in some places searing holes completely through.

  The creature fell, then flapped its tattered wings and climbed at Aoth and Brightwing.

  But then Bareris and Mirror dived in on the entity’s flank. The bard ripped the nightwing’s head with a thunderous shout. The ghost closed and slashed with his phosphorescent blade. The bat-thing plummeted once more, and this time unraveled into wisps of darkness.

  Bareris and Mirror ascended to reach Aoth, who tried to look at them with his own eyes. Maybe his blindness had been temporary. Maybe it was gone.

  Then he clamped his eyes shut again as though flinching from overwhelming glare. Although, beneath the unnaturally darkened sky, glare couldn’t possibly be the problem.

  Bareris’s face had become a lean, hard mask over the years, betraying little except a hunger to kill his enemies. Yet now he gaped in surprise.

  “What?” Aoth asked. “What did you see?”

  “The blue flame,” Bareris answered. “It’s in your eyes.”

  Terrified and disoriented, Dmitra thrashed. A steely arm wrapped around her chest and immobilized her.

  “Easy,” Malark said. “You’re safe now, but you don’t want to flail around and fall.”

  When she looked around, she saw that he was right. She was sitting in front of him on his flying horse, high in the air. His other arm encircled her waist to hold her in the saddle.

  “I apologize if this seems unduly familiar,” Malark said, “but I had no other way of carrying you out of the thick of battle. Do you remember what happened?”

  The question brought memory flooding back. She gasped.

  “Szass Tam disappeared in a blaze of fire,” Malark said. “He isn’t controlling you anymore.”

  “That’s not it,” she said. “His influence was … unpleasant, but it’s over. I’m unsettled because the Lady of Mysteries is dead.”

  “Do you mean the goddess of magic?” he asked, sounding more intrigued than alarmed. But then, he wasn’t a magic-user, and didn’t understand the implications.

  “Yes. And for the moment, her destruction taints the well from which all mages draw their power.”

  “Your enchantments made this horse,” Malark said. “It isn’t going to dissolve out from underneath us, is it?”

  She smiled, appreciating his unruffled practicality. It steadied her in moments of stress, not that she would ever admit such a thing. “It seems to be all right.”

  “I’m glad. If we’re not in imminent danger of falling, may I suggest you take advantage of our elevation to look at what the goddess’s death has done to our battle?”

  It was a sound suggestion. But the charm that enabled her to see like an owl, cast when Szass Tam shrouded the field in darkness, had run its course. She murmured the incantation once again.

  It was a petty spell for an illusionist of her abilities, and she was accustomed to casting it with unthinking ease, the way a master carpenter would hammer a nail. But she felt the forces twisting out of her control. She had to concentrate to bind them into the proper pattern.

  When her vision sharpened, a secret, timid part of her wished it hadn’t, for now she could see how Mystra’s death had infected the world. Dislodged by recurring earth tremors, avalanches thundered down the sheer cliffs on the First Escarpment. In the distance, curtains of blue fire swept across the landscape, sometimes cutting crevasses, sometimes lifting and sculpting the plain into hills and ridges.

  The upheaval was vast and bizarre enough to transfix any observer with terror and awe, but Dmitra could afford neither. She had an army to salvage, if she could. With effort, she narrowed her focus from the widespread devastation to the chaos directly below.

  Before Mystra’s death and the mayhem that followed, Szass Tam had been on the verge of victory. Now Dmitra doubted that any living creature on either side even cared about winning. Combatants of all kinds were simply struggling to survive, for the wounding of magic had smashed a conflict in which thau-maturgy had played a dominant role into deadly confusion.

  Some of Szass Tam’s undead warriors remained under the control of the necromancers, and, with their living comrades, were attempting to withdraw into the Keep of Sorrows. But others had slipped their leashes. Mindless zombies and skeletons stood motionless. Gibbering and baying to one another, a pack of hunchbacked ghouls loped away into the darkness. Gigantic hounds, composed of corpses fused together and three times as tall as a man, lunged and snapped at the wizards who chanted desperately to reestablish dominance. Each bite tore a mage to shreds, and when swallowed, a wizard’s mangled substance was added to his slayer’s body.

  Meanwhile, the southerners faced the same sort of chaos. Demonic archers—gaunt, hairless, and gray, possessed of four arms and drawing two bows each—abruptly turned and shot their shafts into three of Nevron’s conjurors. An entity with scarlet skin and black-feathered wings swung its greatsword thrice and killed an orc with every stroke.

  Half the kraken-things sprawled motionless. The others dragged themselves erratically around, striking at southerner and northerner, at the living, the undead, and devils, indiscriminately.

  “We have to try to disengage at least some of our troops from this mess,” Dmitra said. And for such a withdrawal to have any chance of success, she would have to command it. She was reasonably certain her fellow zulkirs had already fled.

  “We’ll try to find Dimon and Nymia Focar,” Malark said. Responding to his unspoken will, his horse galloped toward the ground as if running down an invisible ramp.

  chapter three

  30 Tarsakh–8 Mirtul, the Year of Blue Fire

  The door squeaked open, and Szass Tam turned in his chair. Azhir Kren and Homen Odesseiron faltered, their eyes widening. Their consternation was silly, really. As tharchions, they were accustomed to eyeless skull faces and skeletal extremities. They commanded entire legions of soldiers of that sort. But their master had always presented himself in the semblance of a living man, and though they knew better, perhaps they’d preferred to think of him that way. If so, it was their misfortune, because the truth of his condition was suddenly unavoidable.

  “It’s nothing,” Szass Tam said. “I’ll reconstitute the flesh when it’s convenient.” And when he was sure he could perform the delicate process without the magic slipping out of his control. “Don’t bother kneeling. Sit by the fire, and help yourselves to the wine.”

  “Thank you, Your Omnipotence,” Azhir said. Skinny and sharp-featured, the governor of Gauros had doffed her plate armor, but still wore the sweat-stained quilted under-padding.

  “We’re crowded,” Homen said, “but all the troops have a place to sleep.” An eccentric fellow with a perpetually glum and skeptical expression, trained as both soldier and mage, he wore the broadsword appropriate for a tharchion of Surthay, and also a wand sheathed on the opposite hip. “The healers are tending to the
wounded, and we can feed everyone for a while. Nular Zurn stocked sufficient food for the living, and the ghouls can scavenge corpses off the battlefield.”

  “Good,” Szass Tam said.

  Homen took a breath. “Master, if I may ask, what happened? We were winning, and then …” He waved his hand as if he didn’t know how to describe the immolation that had overtaken them.

  Szass Tam wasn’t sure he could, either. He disliked admitting that all sorcery, including his own, was crippled. But Azhir and Homen were two of his ablest generals, and they needed to comprehend in order to give good advice and make sound decisions.

  But because it would do no good and might shake their faith in him, he didn’t admit that he should have known what was coming—that Yaphyll’s prophecy had revealed the event, if only he’d had the wit to interpret it. The white queen had been Mystra, the black one, Shar, goddess of the night, and the assassin, Cyric, god of murder. The fall of the city, the collapse of the cavern, and the agonies of the tree referred to the ordered structures of magic crumbling into chaos.

  Now that he’d had a chance to reflect, he thought he might even understand how Yaphyll’s initial prediction of victory had so resoundingly failed to come true. It would have, if the world to which it pertained had endured. But Mystra’s demise was a discontinuity, the birth of a new reality, where the rules were different and certainties were warped.

  In touch with that terrible tomorrow, Yaphyll had seized some of the blue fire—enough to break the hold of Thakorsil’s Seat and negate the power of the Death Moon Orb. Szass Tam supposed he was lucky it hadn’t empowered her to do worse.

  By the time he finished his abridged explanation, Azhir and Homen were gawking at him. He felt a twinge of disappointment. He understood that since they were mortal and not archmages, he could scarcely have expected them to share his own perspective, but it was still irksome to see two of his chief lieutenants looking so flummoxed and dismayed.