chapter eight
19 Flamerule–14 Eleasias, the Year of Blue Fire
Wearing a murky, wavering semblance of his true face, Mirror trailed Bareris into the griffons’ aerie. Now that the bard had returned, the ghost meant to resume his practice of following him around.
Bareris saluted and stood at attention, and Aoth left him that way for a long breath. Eventually, he said, “I’m taking back command of the Griffon Legion.”
“Of course.” Bareris smiled. “If you recall, I predicted you would.”
“Cordial words can’t mend our friendship,” Aoth snapped. “Not even if you sweeten them with magic.”
Bareris’s mouth twisted. “I wasn’t. I won’t do that ever again. I was wrong to do it before, and I’m ready to leave the legion if that’s what you’d prefer.”
“Does anything remain for you to leave?” Aoth waved his spear at the many vacant cavelike stalls and the wounded griffons occupying others. The sharp smell of the salves used to treat the animals’ gashes and burns blended with the normal cat-and-bird stink of the aerie.
“Captain, it’s true I lost mounts and riders. But we succeeded in killing Xingax and destroying his manufactory.”
“Which is all that matters, isn’t it? Your revenge.”
“I won’t deny feeling that way. But destroying Xingax was the task our masters set me.”
Aoth sighed and felt a little of his anger seep out of him. “You’re right, it was. And fortunately, you didn’t take the whole of the legion with you to High Thay. Maybe, when the rest return from Delhumide, it will turn out there are enough left to lead. But considering the tidings of late, I wouldn’t count on it.”
Bareris frowned. “It is much worse than I thought it would be. I understood the hazards, but still, I never imagined the campaign would go so badly.”
“Has it occurred to you that there might be a reason? A reason beyond the obvious, I mean.”
“What are you talking about?”
Aoth took a breath. “When I was blind, I told you I occasionally glimpsed things invisible to normal sight. Now that I can see properly again, that’s even more true. I can see in the dark, or through a blindfold. When an illusionist casts a glamer, I see it, but I also see through it.”
“That … sounds useful.”
“Once in a while, I also see signs. After you tampered with my mind, I saw you dangling a puppet made in my image, and when the guards came to march me to my death—”
“Someone ordered your death?”
Aoth waved the interruption away. “I saw knives in their hands. Not long ago, I saw Malark’s face turn into a naked skull.”
Bareris hesitated. “And you thought, a skull to signify allegiance to Szass Tam, or that Malark’s a deadly menace to our cause? Mightn’t it simply mean that he’s a skilled fighter and assassin? You and I have seen the proof of that, time after time.”
“Yes. So this new sight of mine didn’t need to conjure a phantasm to tell me.”
“You’re assuming you understand how it works, and that it works efficiently. You could be mistaken.”
“Maybe.”
“Why would Malark, of all people, turn traitor ten years in? He stood with us when we defied Szass Tam himself. He kept the lich from taking Bezantur in the first tendays of the war.”
“I don’t know. I’ve always trusted him, and I’d like to go on doing it. I mentioned I was nearly killed. The zulkirs hit on the idea of vivisecting me to learn more about the blue fire. I wouldn’t be here if Malark hadn’t interceded. I feel like a filthy traitor myself just for suspecting him of treachery.”
“But you saw his face turn into a skull.”
“That’s only part of it. Short of a zulkir, who’s the one person who, if he turned traitor, could do the most to ruin our campaign? Our spymaster, the grand collector of information and disseminator of orders and intelligence. He could reveal all our plans and the disposition of our forces to Szass Tam. Steer our troops into ambuscades, or into the path of the blue fire. Sow rivalry and mistrust among our officers. Kossuth knows, they’re all jealous of their positions as it is.”
Bareris fingered his chin. “I’m still not convinced, but we did run into an interesting situation on the flight home.”
“What?”
“Some of Dimon’s troops expected to march over clear terrain, but instead found their way blocked by a new chasm and an abomination that climbed out of it. They assumed that the blue fire had passed by recently. But the griffon riders had spent the day flying high enough to see a long way, and we hadn’t spotted any blue flame.”
“So it’s possible Malark deliberately guided Dimon’s soldiers into difficulty.”
“I suppose. But why are you telling me this? Take your suspicions to the zulkirs.”
Aoth scowled. “I can’t. I mean, I won’t accuse a friend unless I’m certain. I especially don’t want to do it when it’s my sight that put my thoughts running in this direction.”
“I understand. You barely escaped being vivisected. If they learned that you’ve acquired extraordinary abilities, they might insist on slicing you up after all.”
“Yes. And if that weren’t bad enough, I also have to recognize that Dmitra Flass values Malark, trusts him as much as any zulkir ever trusts anyone. She has reason. He saved her life at the Keep of Sorrows.”
“So you can’t denounce Malark, at least not yet, but you can’t forget what you’ve seen, either. You’ll need proof, and you must be telling me because you want my help. Why? I mean, why me?”
It was a good question. Aoth supposed it was because even though Bareris had betrayed him once, in the decade leading up to that moment of treachery, he’d been as faithful a comrade as anyone could want. No matter how grim and morose he became, how utterly indifferent to his own well-being, he’d always given his utmost when Aoth needed him.
But Aoth didn’t want to acknowledge that out loud. “I’m asking you because you owe me,” he said. And that was true as well.
“I do,” Bareris said, “and of course I’ll help you, even to spy on another friend. But I hope you turn out to be wrong.”
“So do I.” Aoth hesitated and tried to rein in his curiosity, but didn’t quite manage it. “You’re … different. This Tammith. Even changed, she’s what you need?”
Bareris smiled a smile that conveyed happiness and rue in equal measure. “In life, she was a river. Undeath has dried her to a trickle. But after ten years in the desert, a man will weep with gratitude at any taste of water.”
Pyras Autorian, tharchion of the Thaymount, had a meadow outside his castle walls. Working under Szass Tam’s supervision, twenty necromancers drew a broad and intricate pattern in yellow powder on the flat, grassy field, then set the stuff on fire to burn the design into the ground.
Long-necked and weak-chinned, Pyras watched the process from a chair his slaves had fetched. An awning protected his pasty skin from the feeble sunlight leaking through the cloud cover. He plainly wanted to ask what was going on, but couldn’t quite muster the nerve.
His restlessness amused Szass Tam, but that wasn’t the reason he opted not to explain. Though timid and dull-witted, Pyras had served him to the best of his ability for a long while. It would be shabby to repay him with an explanation that would only make him more uncomfortable.
The necromancers positioned and consecrated the altar stones inside the pattern with meticulous care. By the time they finished, the sun had set.
Szass Tam turned to Pyras. “Now,” he said, “we need the slaves.”
He focused his will, and after a moment, dread warriors marched a score of naked slaves out of the castle gate and over the drawbridge. The zombies’ amber eyes shone in the gloom.
When the thralls beheld the pentacle and altar stones, and realized what lay in store, some tried to run. Dread warriors clubbed them senseless and dragged them onward.
Pyras cleared his throat. “You know, Master, slaves are valuable.”
Szass Tam wished he could offer a reassuring smile, but he was still lacking a face capable of such nuances. “I promise that in days to come, you won’t regret the loss. Now I must ask you to excuse me. It’s time for me to take a more active role.”
He rose and walked to the center of the mystic figure, while dread warriors shackled weeping slaves on top of stones, and the necromancers took up their ritual daggers. When the zombies finished their task, they cleared out. The wizards looked to Szass Tam like a choir awaiting a downbeat from its conductor.
He called a staff of frigid petrified shadow into his bony hands, raised it high, and spoke the initial words of the lengthy incantation. Chanting in unison, the lesser Red Wizards supplied the counterpoint and made the first cuts.
The slaves screamed louder. Szass Tam amplified his voice to keep it audible above the din. His followers needed to synchronize their declarations with him. If the timing was off, the ritual could escape his control, with fatal consequences.
In fact, that could happen anyway. His powers were diminished, wizardry itself had become slippery and undependable, and he was undertaking something he’d never attempted before.
If even a zulkir felt a hint of apprehension, he could only imagine how nervous the lesser wizards must be. Since the ritual had nothing to do with necromancy, they must truly feel they were treading on alien, treacherous ground. Yet no one could have read it in their demeanors, and he was proud of their discipline.
Gradually, shadow flowed, and a sickly green shimmer danced in the air. Disembodied voices whispered and sniggered, and a vile metallic taste filled Szass Tam’s mouth. Invisible but perceptible to the wise, a metaphysical structure took form, a little at a time, like a stone hall constructed without mortar. Szass Tam could feel that the slightest misstep would bring it crashing down. But it didn’t fall—the elements were in perfect balance.
Perceiving what he perceived, his assistants smiled. Then triumph turned to puzzlement when the slaves expired, their killers recited the last lines they’d been schooled to say, and nothing happened. The power they’d raised was like a bow, bent but not released.
“Don’t worry,” Szass Tam said. “We simply haven’t finished. Unlock the fetters and push the corpses off the altars.”
The Red Wizards did as instructed, and when they were done, he concentrated fiercely, focusing every iota of his willpower. “Now, shackle yourselves to the stones and lie quietly. I’ll come around to lock down the hand you can’t secure for yourselves.”
He’d long ago laid enchantments of obedience on these particular followers. Yet the disorder arising from Mystra’s death could conceivably break those bonds, and if even one of the necromancers tried to fight or flee, his exertions would spoil the ritual.
Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. Some of the mages made choking sounds or flailed, others shuddered as if in the throes of a seizure as they tried to resist. But in the end, they all shackled themselves to the gory stones. Szass Tam completed the task of restraining them, then drew an athame into his hand and commenced butchering them.
By the time he finished, he had blood all over the front of his robe. He turned to Pyras, who looked on with goggling eyes.
“Come into the circle,” Szass Tam said.
Pyras stood and advanced, trembling and stumbling. He too was mind-bound, and had no choice.
Szass Tam met him halfway, took his arm, and conducted him to the center of the circle. “We won’t bother with fetters,”
he said, because Pyras was no Red Wizard, just a weak-willed wretch who had no hope of squirming free of his master’s psychic grip.
“Please,” Pyras whispered, tears sliding from his eyes, “I’m loyal. I always have been.”
“I know,” Szass Tam said. “I’m grateful for your fidelity, and I apologize. If it’s any consolation, your sacrifice will serve the best of causes, and I’ll make it go as quickly as I can.” He slit open Pyras’s gold-buttoned velvet doublet and silk shirt.
Szass Tam sensed it when the tharchion’s heart stopped beating, and felt the man’s anguished spirit fleeing his ruined body. The magic he’d worked so assiduously to create finally discharged an instant later.
A sudden sense of overwhelming wrongness and malice impressed itself on his mystical awareness and bashed his mind into momentary confusion.
Then the moon and stars disappeared, and Pyras’s castle, too. Darkness sealed the pentacle away from the rest of the world like a black fist closing around it.
And then Bane appeared. His form was murky, but Szass Tam could make out dark armor, the infamous jeweled gauntlet, and the glint of eyes.
On first inspection, the Lord of Darkness appeared no more terrible than some of the spectres Szass Tam had commanded in his time. Yet an aura of vast power and cruel intelligence emanated from him, and the lich felt a sudden urge to abase himself.
Annoyed, he quashed the impulse. Bane is simply a spirit, he told himself. I’ve trafficked with hundreds and this is just one more.
“How dare you summon me?” said the god. His bass voice was soft and mellifluous, but some hidden undertone pained the ears.
“I invited you,” Szass Tam replied, “by sacrificing twenty men and women in the prime of their lives, twenty accomplished necromancers I can ill spare, and one of Thay’s wealthiest and most powerful nobles.”
Bane sneered, although how Szass Tam knew that, he couldn’t say, for he couldn’t make out a twist of lip in the smudge of shadow that was the deity’s face. “Say, rather, twenty slaves, twenty charlatans whose magic had largely forsaken them, and a half-witted, cowardly toady.”
“That is another way of looking at it, but my perspective is as valid as yours. I tendered the gift at a moment when I had every reason to fear the magic would wriggle out of my grip and destroy me. I hoped that even a god would appreciate such a compliment.”
“I might,” said Bane, “if it came from one of my worshipers, but that you have never been.”
“Yet I’ve always supported the church of the Black Hand.”
“But no more than you’ve supported the churches of Kossuth, Mask, Umberlee, and even Cyric. You played each against the other, making sure that none ever achieved preeminence in Thay, and thus, that none will ever undermine the rule of the Red Wizards.”
“I concede the point. That is how it used to be. But now Thay is a different place, and I have more urgent concerns.”
“As do I. Far more urgent than chatting with an impudent magus with no claim on my consideration. With Mystra slain, the higher worlds are in turmoil. My place is there. Open the door to the Barrens.”
“As soon as we finish our talk.”
Bane didn’t lift his fist in its shell of gems and dark metal, nor did he grow any bigger than Szass Tam himself. Yet suddenly the Black Hand gave off a sense of profound and immediate menace, even as, in some indefinable but unmistakable fashion, he loomed taller than a giant. “Do you imagine,” he asked, “that your puny summoning can hold me here?”
“For a while.”
“Then die a true death,” said Bane. “Die and be nothing.”
Darkness seethed around Szass Tam and took the form of shadowy hands with long claws. Some gripped him, seeking to immobilize him, some pummeled him, and the rest hooked their talons in his body and ripped strips of flesh away.
The pain was excruciating. He forced himself to focus past it and speak the words of command to activate the talismans of protection concealed around his person.
The grip of the dark hands grew feeble. He wrenched himself away from them, and they faded into nothingness.
His now-tattered robe flapping around him, Szass Tam brandished his staff. Tendrils of gleaming ice coiled around Bane like vines climbing a tree. Spikes sprouted from them to push against the shadowstuff that was his body.
For a moment, the god seemed surprised, perhaps even slightly disconcerted, as a grown man might be if a child slapped him. Then he jerked the hand with the gauntlet over his head, shattering his bonds.
“You see how it is,” Szass Tam said. “Yes, you can break free, and quite possibly destroy me in the process. But you’ll have to work at it, and I might even bloody your nose before you finish. It will be less trouble and take less of your time to grant me the parley I seek.”
The Black Lord snorted. “What is it you want, dead man?”
“Help winning my war. My rivals currently hold the upper hand. I have a new aide who’s doing a brilliant job of keeping them from making the most of their opportunities, but he can’t turn the conflict around by himself.”
“I won’t lend you an army of devils. I wouldn’t even give them to the Zhentarim, or any of the other folk who have already rendered me their service. With the old order shattered, I’ll have my own wars to win.”
“I understand. That’s not what I’m asking for.”
“What, then?”
“First, teach me everything you can about the nature of magic as it exists today.”
“I’m not the god of wizardry, and the nature of the arcane has yet to stabilize. It continues to alter even as we speak.”
“But you are a god, and I’m sure you understand things I don’t. I’ll take whatever you can give me.”
“What else do you want?”
“I’ve emptied the tombs and graveyards of the north. I’ve slaughtered many of its slaves and peasants and even some of my own living soldiers. Which is to say, I’m running short of raw material on which my necromancers can practice their art.”
“What a shame.”
“Isn’t it? Yet it needn’t be a disaster. This ancient land is still full of dead bodies. It’s just that they’ve decayed so utterly as to be indistinguishable from the soil in which they lie. But a highly skilled necromancer could still call something forth—if he were capable of recognizing the exact patch of ground containing the remains.”
“And so you want me to give you that ability as well.”
“Yes, and I fear there’s more.”
Bane laughed. Though musical, the sound was even more hurtful than his speech, and Szass Tam stiffened. “You don’t lack for gall, necromancer.”
“So people often told me. When I was climbing up the hierarchy of my order, I mean. Once you become a zulkir, people stop critiquing your character to your face. Anyway, you’re probably aware that I share a psychic bond with many of the sorcerers under my command, and that I have a limited ability to be in multiple places simultaneously.”
“I need my powers augmented, so I can direct my wizards more efficiently. Otherwise, I won’t be able to turn a fresh supply of corpse dust into warriors fast enough to do me any good.”
“Anything else?”
“Just one thing, the obvious. Currently the Church of Bane supports my fellow zulkirs. It would help if you instructed your priests to back me instead.”
“Dead man, just for amusement’s sake, let’s imagine I might be willing to grant you all these extravagant favors. What could you possibly offer of comparable worth?”
“Thay. When I’m its sole sovereign, you’ll be the only god worshiped within its borders.”
“I’ve explained. With the higher worlds entering an era of strife and chaos, Faerûn, let alone this little piece of it, is of little concern to me.”
Szass Tam stared at the sheen of eyes in Bane’s murky face. “I don’t believe you. We inhabitants of the physical plane may seem like grubs and ants to the gods, but you need us. Our worship gives you strength.”
“Yet I reject your terms.”
Szass Tam sighed. “Then how about this? After I make myself master of Thay, give me one thousand years to enjoy the fruits of my victory, and then you can take my soul. I’ll be your bondsman forever after, in this world or wherever you decide to have me labor on your behalf.”
Bane laughed. “Do you think so highly of yourself as to imagine that appreciably sweetens the bargain? The addition of one tiny soul, due a millennium hence?”
“It’s not a prodigiously long time in the context of your eternal existence, and I am Szass Tam. Jeer and scoff at me all you like, but I know you’re wise enough to understand what that means. You could scour your ‘higher worlds’ from one end to the other without finding a vassal who will further your schemes half as well.”
Bane laughed again. “I’m tempted to accept this bargain. Then, in days to come, to make you the lowliest of my slaves, performing the most painful and degrading duties, just to punish your arrogance as it deserves.”
“If you want to waste my talents, that will be your prerogative. Now, will you make a pact with me or not?”
“Do you know … I believe I will, but the terms must change in one respect. My priests and other worshipers will continue to aid the council.”
“Because that way, no matter who wins, you and your creed will enjoy the favor of the victors. Very shrewd. All right, it’s a bargain. Give me knowledge and power and I’ll make do without your clerics.”
“I warn you, you’re asking for more than you were ever meant to hold, and jamming it inside you all at once will exacerbate the stress. Your mind may break apart.”
“That I doubt.”
“We’ll see.” His arm a blur of motion, Bane whipped the back of his jeweled gauntlet against Szass Tam’s face.
Bone cracked, but the initial numbing shock of impact didn’t give way to pain. That was because a sensation like a discordant scream stabbed into Szass Tam’s mind, and it was so intense as to eclipse mere physical distress.
It howled on and on until he began to fear that, as Bane had warned, he might not be able to bear it. Then it resolved from a grating shriek into harmony. His inner self seemed to vibrate to it, but no longer felt as if it might tear apart. Rather, the sensation was exhilarating.
He realized he’d fallen, and picked himself up off the ground. He looked around for Bane, but the Black Hand had taken his leave. The dark barrier had dissolved, and the stars shined overhead.
Szass Tam’s face gave him a belated twinge. Now confident of his ability to perform the delicate manipulations, he mended the bone, regenerated flesh and skin, and even regrew his beard. He started to heal the rest of his wounds as well, realized he could now rid his hands of any trace of blemish, but then, on a whim, left the fingers withered. He was used to them that way.
He could feel that, while the new knowledge was his to keep, the prodigious mystical strength Bane had lent him would gradually fade. He needed to exploit it immediately if it was to carry him to victory. Yet as he sent his thoughts soaring to link with the minds of his followers, he had time to grin at the reflection that even a so-called god with all his alleged omniscience could be gulled into making a disastrously bad bargain.
Perched on Brightwing’s back, Aoth surveyed an expanse of sky, and his preternaturally keen vision discerned all sorts of things. Subtle variations in the grayness of the clouds. Sparrows. Vultures circling. A white gull that had strayed too far north of the seashore. But no ravens.
A cold drizzle started falling, further souring his mood. “Will ravens fly in this?” he asked.
“They might,” Brightwing said, “if it doesn’t get any harder.”
“Wonderful.” That meant he and the griffon had to keep flying in it, too.
Proving Malark’s treachery, if in fact he was a traitor, seemed simple enough in principle. One need only show a discrepancy between the intelligence the spymaster received and the information he supplied to the zulkirs or the commanders in the field. Or between the orders the council gave him to transmit and those he actually sent along.
The trick was identifying those contradictions. Aoth was a high-ranking officer, and Bareris likewise occupied a position of trust, but even so, they had no right or apparent reason to review every secret message that found its way to Malark, or that he sent in turn. Nor were they informed of the outcome every time the zulkirs conferred, or when one of the archmages acted unilaterally.
Since they doubted their ability to spy on Malark and remain undetected while he waited on his superiors and read and prepared his scrolls, that left Aoth and his fellow conspirators to hunt messenger birds on the wing, but not near the Central Citadel or anywhere over Bezantur, where they might have had some reasonable hope of finding them. They had to seek them in the vastness of the countryside, and hope that if they did manage to kill one, its message would prove duplicitous, and they’d know enough to recognize the treason when they saw it.
“Curse it, anyway,” Aoth growled. “I’m working with the false friend who betrayed me to trip up the true one who saved my life, and I’m doing it to serve the masters who wanted to cut me to pieces. What in Kossuth’s name is wrong with me?”
“I’ve been wondering that for years,” Brightwing said. “We can still desert if you’d rather.”
Aoth sighed. “No, I’ve lost the inclination. Walking away from a long, slow grind of a stalemate is one thing, because what does it matter if you’re there or not? But for a little while, after the blue fires came, it seemed the south might actually win, and now it looks as if Szass Tam might defeat us for good and all. Either way, the war feels different, and running off would seem more cowardly.”
“Is that supposed to be an example of human reason at work? Because to a griffon, it makes no sense.”
Aoth tried to frame a retort, then sat up straight in the saddle when he spotted a fleck of black in the distance. Before the blue flame infected his eyes, he wouldn’t have been able to see it at all. Now he thought he could discern a brown wrapping bound to a yellow foot.
“There,” he said.
“Where?” Brightwing asked.
He married his mind to hers, sharing his vision. “To the right, above the abandoned vineyard.”
“Got it.” She raised one wing, dipped the other, turned, and hurtled in the proper direction.
The raven saw them coming and fled. Perhaps, in its animal way, it wondered why they were troubling it, for such a small bird should have been beneath the notice of such a large predator.
A war mage would have no trouble bringing a raven down, but Aoth had to make sure he did it in a way that wouldn’t destroy the message it carried. He recited a spell, brandished his spear, and a cloud of greenish vapor materialized around the bird. It convulsed, fell, and smashed against the ground.
Brightwing landed beside it. Aoth dismounted and picked up the broken carcass. For a moment, he felt like a bully, using powerful sorcery to kill such a fragile, defenseless creature.
He opened the tiny scroll case and it swelled to its full size. He shook out the document inside, unfurled it, and read it. A chill oozed up his spine.
“Is it anything?” Brightwing asked.
“Yes.” He rolled up the parchment again. “We need to get back to the city.”
Dmitra Flass kept a garden in the heart of the grim black fortress that was the Central Citadel, and the rosebuds blazed in voluptuous shades of crimson and gold despite the droughts, tainted rains, and plant-killing pests of the past ten years. Perhaps, Malark thought, it was illusion that kept the flowers bright and the grass thick and verdant at all times.
Whatever the truth of the matter, when his schedule allowed, as it did that evening, he liked to stroll and meditate here. He headed for a favorite bower, and then Aoth stepped onto the path ahead of him.
Aoth was carrying his spear, had his falchion strapped across his back, and wore mail, but none of that was unusual. It was the deliberate way he moved and the grim set of his square, tattooed face that betrayed his intentions.
A pity. Malark had known someone would discover his treason eventually, but he’d hoped for more time.
Had Aoth come alone? It was possible, but Malark doubted it. It seemed more likely that someone else was sneaking through the trees and bushes to strike him down from behind if he resisted arrest. He listened, trying to pinpoint the location of that hypothetical threat, meanwhile giving the war mage a smile. “Good evening. How are your eyes?”
“I know about your treason,” Aoth said. “I got my hands on one of the scrolls you wrote.”
“This is some sort of misunderstanding.”
“Don’t insult my intelligence.”
“You’re right. I should know better, and I apologize.” Malark had never had any reason to doubt the acuity of his hearing, but he still couldn’t detect anyone creeping up on him. Maybe no one was. On the other hand, if Aoth had enlisted Mirror’s aid, the ghost wouldn’t make any noise unless he wanted to. “Can I appeal to friendship and gratitude instead?”
“No. I hate this, but I mean to do my duty. Curse it all, why would you turn traitor now, when we actually had a chance of winning? What can Szass Tam give you that Dmitra Flass wouldn’t?”
Malark sighed. “It’s complicated.”
“Have it your way. I’m sure it will all come out during your interrogation. Will you accompany me peacefully? It might go a little easier for you if you cooperate.”
“All right. Take me to Dmitra.”
“No. She’s fond of you. Of course, she’s also a zulkir, and I doubt mere sentiment would cloud her judgment sufficiently for you to talk your way out of trouble, but I figured, why risk it? I showed the proof of your guilt to Nevron, and he’s the one who ordered your arrest. He’ll question you first, and involve the rest of the council when he sees fit.”
“All right.” Malark took a step forward. “But indulge my curiosity. Tell me what aroused your suspicions.” Sometimes people had trouble talking and focusing on an opponent at the same time, and if he could distract Aoth, maybe he could spring and attack without provoking a blaze of arcane power from the head of the spear.
Or maybe not. Malark rarely met a warrior whose prowess he truly respected, but the commander of the Griffon Legion was one of the few.
Which meant this confrontation could quite possibly end in a fitting death for one of them. But the prospect made Malark feel an unaccustomed ambivalence. He still wanted to die, but he also wanted to share in what was to come.
“Sorry,” Aoth said. “I don’t care to answer that question.” He leveled the spear and stepped off the path, making way for his prisoner to move in front of him, and then, off to Malark’s right, something brushed in the grass.
At last Malark knew the approximate position of another adversary, and this one might be less formidable than Aoth. He pivoted and charged toward the faint noise.
He felt a pang of surprise when he saw Bareris. He’d thought the bard and war mage had had a falling out, but apparently they’d patched things up. From a certain perspective, that was unfortunate, for Bareris too was a fighter to be reckoned with.
Happily though, Malark’s sudden move caught both griffon riders by surprise. Aoth hurled a blast of flame from his spear, but it only roared through the space his target had just vacated. Bareris extended his sword, but his timing was off. Malark brushed the blade aside with one hand, stepped in, and struck at Bareris’s chest with the heel of the other.
Bareris jerked back from the blow, which kept it from landing with full force. Instead of smashing splinters of rib into his lung and heart, it simply sent him staggering backward.
Malark sprinted to the door in the garden’s east wall, then glanced back. The closest foes were Mirror, who looked like a wavering semblance of Bareris, and a huge wolf that could only be Tammith Iltazyarra. Aoth and the bard were farther back, the former circling, trying to reach a position from which he could cast another spell without a tree or his allies blocking the line to the target, and the latter still doubled over, gasping and pressing a hand to his chest.
The odds against Malark were even longer than he’d initially guessed. Still, since he’d broken out of the noose that had been closing around him, maybe he had a chance. Szass Tam had given him a charm to use when the moment came to make his escape, but had also made it clear that he must be particular as to how he employed it. Otherwise, the effect could prove as deadly to him as to his pursuers.
Now, he judged, was the moment. He opened a hidden pocket on his belt, snatched forth a black pearl, threw it, and spun around. He jerked the handle of the door and found it locked. He kicked it off its hinges and dashed onward.
Tammith understood that Bareris and Aoth hoped to take their friend into custody without hurting him or depriving him of his dignity. That was why they hadn’t blasted him with spells the instant they found him, or brought a squad of legionnaires along. The part of her that still remembered fondness and compassion made her feel that she might have done the same, even as her vampire side scorned her comrades as fools.
Now she no longer felt any such ambivalence. Malark’s break for freedom had suppressed what passed for her humanity and fired her predatory instincts. As she raced after him, all she wanted in the world was to rip his legs out from under him, tear him with her fangs, and guzzle his blood. Indeed, it was going to take all the self-control she could muster to stop short of killing him, but Nevron wanted him alive.
Certain the barrier would delay him long enough for her to close with him, she grinned a lupine grin when he scrambled to the locked door. Then he threw a dark bead or stone.
Since it landed in grass, it shouldn’t have shattered. It did anyway, and shadow boiled out of it, separating into ragged, floating figures that moaned and gibbered as they advanced.
Tammith felt a dullness numbing her mind and exerted her will to banish it. Only after she succeeded could she think coherently enough to recognize the entities: allips, the mad, vengeful spirits of suicides. A particularly nasty rearguard to cover Malark’s retreat.
She melted from she-wolf to woman, because the touch of an allip was venomous. If she had to fight the things, she preferred to do it with the superior reach her sword afforded.
Bareris started singing, probably to counter the hypnotic effect of the allips’ babble. Tammith drew her blade, and then a pair of the spirits closed with her.
Fangs bared, she slashed at one and the sword whizzed all the way through it without any tangible resistance. The weapon was enchanted, but she sensed that the stroke hadn’t hurt her foe. Well, perhaps the next one would.
The allips whirled around her, groaning and keening. She cut and thrust, and perhaps their murky forms began to fray, but it was difficult to tell for certain. She dodged and ducked to avoid their scrabbling, raking fingers.
But it was hard to avoid every strike when the entities were attacking from two sides, and eventually, one landed a blow from behind. Or so she assumed, for she didn’t see it, nor did she feel localized pain or a shock of impact as such. Rather, she experienced a sudden disruption of thought, followed by confusion, fear, and a sense of filthy violation.
It was like having Xingax in her head again, and it drove her to fury. Screaming, she laid around her until her attackers dissolved into nothingness and their ghastly voices fell silent.
She turned, surveying the battle. Malark had broken the locked door and fled. Still singing, Bareris was holding his own against two remaining allips, and Mirror was exchanging blows with another.
Aoth, however, was having problems. Half a dozen of the crazed, vicious spirits had swarmed on him, and, plainly hurt, he was stumbling around in the middle of them jabbing desperately with his spear. A spell would likely have served him better, but perhaps he was already too addled to cast one.
It occurred to her that Aoth was Bareris’s friend, and that she could rush to his aid. But he was nothing to her, and the prey responsible for fouling her own mind was getting away. She dissolved into bats and flew in pursuit.
Though Mirror hadn’t consciously tried to summon his targe when the allip engaged him, it had materialized on his arm anyway, and served him well. A wooden or steel shield would likely have proved all but useless, but he, his ethereal opponent, and his armor were all made of the same refined essence of darkness and pain.
He thrust his blade into his adversary’s murky, demented features, and it gave a last mad gabble and withered from existence. That freed him to help Aoth.
But when he turned toward the war mage, he saw that it might already be too late to succor him. Aoth staggered and fell, the spear flying from his grip. The allips sprang on top of him and clawed like famished ghouls ripping at a corpse.
Mirror could leap to Aoth in an instant, but he couldn’t strike half a dozen blows quickly enough to keep one of the allips from giving the griffon rider his death. But he could attempt something else, because communion with his god had partly restored him. At times, he thought more clearly, and he could now invoke the holy powers he’d wielded in life.
That didn’t mean he was eager to do so, because as he’d discovered when healing Aoth’s eyes, there was a fundamental discrepancy between the divine champion he’d once been and the tainted shadow that remained of him. When he channeled the power of his deity, he was like a snowman trying to handle fire.
Yet if his faith was strong, his master would protect him. He raised his sword and called to that which he no longer understood or could even name, but which he loved and trusted nonetheless.
A radiance like daylight blazed from his blade. The allips cringed from it, floating away from the fallen Aoth.
Mirror charged them and cut at the nearest. Now shrouded in blur to hamper an opponent’s aim, Bareris rushed to stand beside him. Fighting in concert, the two companions slashed the remaining allips into evaporating wisps of murk, then hurried over to Aoth.
Mirror didn’t trust himself to examine the war mage. After repelling the allips, he felt too hollow, too close to dissolving into mindless ache and malice, and in such a condition, his touch or even proximity might further injure a wounded man. “How is he?” he asked.
Bareris kneeled, stripped off his leather gauntlet, and worked his fingertips under the mail to feel for Aoth’s pulse. “At least his heart is beating.”
Malark sprinted through the labyrinth of corridors, chambers, and courtyards that was the Central Citadel. He was reasonably hopeful of escaping. Even if it didn’t kill his adversaries, Szass Tam’s gift would at least provide him a fair head start, and thanks to his training in the monastery, he could run faster and longer than most anyone he’d ever known.
The question was, where should he run? His horse offered the fastest way out of the city, but he suspected Aoth and Bareris had posted guards at the stable should he elude them in the garden.
Better, he thought, to procure a cloak and hood to throw on over his expensive courtier’s clothing, then slip out of the fortress. He’d worry about a quick way north later. If worse came to worst, he could run the entire distance about as fast as an ordinary horse could carry him.
He plunged into another area open to the sky, an octagonal paved yard with a phosphorescent statue of the late Aznar Thrul, staff raised high, the bronze folds of his robe streaming as if windblown, towering in the center. Then something fluttered overhead.
Malark surmised it was a bat’s wing—Tammith Iltazyarra’s wing. He tried to spring aside, but to no avail. Something furry bumped down on top of his head.
The bat was so light that the impact didn’t hurt. It did sting, however, when the creature hooked its claws into his scalp and ripped at his forehead with its fangs.
The bite sent an icy shock of sickness through his frame. He lifted a hand to tear his attacker away, and a second bat lit on the extremity and sank its teeth into his index finger. A third landed on his back, and, clinging to his doublet, climbed toward his neck.
He threw himself down on his back and crushed the creature before it could reach its goal, then whipped his arm and smashed the bat on his hand against the paving stones, dislodging it. He grabbed the one on his head, yanked it free, and wrung it like a washcloth.
Others descended on him. He rolled out from underneath them, sprang to his feet, and when they wheeled in pursuit, met them with stabs of his stiffened fingers. He hit one, and then they flew away from him, swirled together, and became a pallid woman in black armor, a sword extended in her hand. Despite the harm he’d inflicted on the bats, Malark couldn’t see any sign of it in the way she carried herself. Still, it was possible she’d been injured.
“Perhaps you assumed,” he said, playing for a little more time to steady his breathing, “that I couldn’t hurt you without an enchanted weapon.” He had the monks’ esoteric disciplines to thank for it that he could. “Otherwise you might not have come at me as a flock of bats. You would have opted for something less delicate.”
She glided closer. “That was the only mistake I’m going to make.”
“Everything you’ve done since the Keep of Sorrows has been a mistake. You know Szass Tam, and now you’ve had a chance to take the measure of his rivals. Surely you recognize that none of them is a match for him. He may have encountered setbacks of late, but he’s still going to win.” He edged sideways and she turned to compensate.
“So help me escape and come back with me,” Malark continued. “If I plead your case, the lich will forgive you. You’ll command your followers just as you did before.”
She glared and showed him her fangs. “I don’t want anything to be as it was before, because I was a slave, with my mind in chains. Maybe you don’t know what that’s like, spymaster, but you will. With the Silent Company lost to me, I need some new progeny to do my bidding, and I’m going to start with you.”
His mouth tightened. “Captain, it’s conceivable you may kill me, but I swear by everything I hold sacred that I will never allow you to make me undead.”
“It’s always either funny or sad when people make vows they have no hope of keeping. In your case, I’d have to say funny.” She sprang at him.
He twisted aside, hooked her ankle with his foot, and jerked her leg out from underneath her. She lurched forward. He snapped a kick into her kidney and chopped at the nape of her neck with the blade of his hand.
She planted her front foot and recovered her balance, but her upper body was still canted forward. That should have kept her from even perceiving the strike at her neck, let alone reacting quickly enough to counter it. But she twisted at the waist, grabbed Malark’s wrist, and ripped the back of his hand with her fangs.
Her bite was frigid poison, and another wave of lightheaded weakness almost buckled his knees. He shouted to focus his strength, and she thrust the point of her sword at his midsection.
Fortunately, she was still in her awkward crouch, and they were too close together for her to use the long blade easily. It gave him just enough time to twist his arm free of her grip and her fangs and fling himself backward. Her thrust fell short by the length of a finger.
Tammith Iltazyarra straightened up and returned to a conventional swordsman’s stance. She had his blood smeared across her mouth. More of it ran down from his torn hand, and dripped from the wounds in his brow to sting his eyes and blind them. He wiped them and willed the bleeding to stop. It didn’t quite, but at least it diminished.
Tammith stared into his eyes and stabbed with her will, trying to hypnotize him. But his psyche proved too strong, and he struck back with a kick to her knee. She snatched her leg out of the way and cut at his torso. He dropped low, and the stroke whizzed over his head.
The combatants resumed circling, exchanged another set of attacks and then another. Still, neither could land a decisive blow.
It was plain to Malark that he was more skillful. Unfortunately, Tammith’s preternatural strength helped to make up the difference, as did her sword, armor, indefatigability, and resilience. In theory, the naked hands of a monk could hurt her, but it was difficult to strike to great effect when mere pain appeared unable to slow her for more than an instant, and she no longer required the use of most of her internal organs.
Yet Malark had to finish the duel quickly. He couldn’t linger, sparring, until her allies caught up or until someone came to investigate the commotion. It was time to take a chance.
She stepped forward, then back, or at least it was supposed to look that way. In reality, her lead foot hitched backward, but the other stayed in place. She was trying to throw off his sense of distance, to make him perceive her as farther away than she actually was.
He advanced as if the trick had deceived him. She lunged, her sword extended to pierce his guts.
Using both hands, he grabbed the blade. It cut him instantly. With her inhuman strength, his adversary needed only to yank it backward to slice him to the bone, sever tendons, and possibly even shear his fingers off.
He hammered a kick into her midsection. The shock locked her up and weakened her grip. He jerked the weapon free.
By doing so, he cut himself more deeply, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t care about the pain—wouldn’t even really feel it until he chose to allow it—and his fingers were still able to clasp the hilt.
Employing both hands, he seized it in an overhand grip like a dagger, swung it over his head, lunged, bellowed, and struck. It was a clumsy way to wield a sword, but the only way to attack with the point and achieve the forceful downward arc he required.
The point crunched through her mail, pierced her heart, popped out her back, and stabbed into the pavement beneath her toppling form, nailing her to the ground.
A wooden stake would have been better. It would have paralyzed her. But at least the enchanted sword had her shrieking, thrashing, and fumbling impotently at the blade. In another moment, she might collect herself sufficiently to realize she could free herself by dissolving into mist, but he didn’t give her the chance. He gouged her eyes from their sockets, then drove in bone-shattering blows until her neck broke and her head was lopsided.
He stepped back, regarded his handiwork, and felt a pang of loathing that had nothing to do with the harm she’d done to him. She was an abomination, an affront to Death, and he ought to do his utmost to slay her, not leave her to recover as she unquestionably would. But it wasn’t practical. In fact, considering that she’d survived repeated beheadings, it might not even be possible.
He’d cleared her out of his way, and that would have to do. He turned and ran on.