Undead (30 page)

Bareris quashed his own terror by sheer force of will, then started singing a battle anthem to purge the emotion from the minds of his comrades and their steeds. Even then, Winddancer still wouldn’t fly nearer to the deathshrieker, as such wailing phantoms were called, until Bareris crooned words of encouragement directed specifically at him.

As they hurtled toward it, the deathshrieker oriented on them, and its cry focused on them as well. It stabbed pain in Bareris’s ears, beat at him like a hammer, and triggered a fresh spasm of terror and confusion. He defended with his own voice, singing a shield to block raw violence and pain, adding steadiness and clarity to counter fear and madness.

After what seemed an eternity, the deathshrieker’s wail faded, leaving Bareris and his mount unharmed. He sang a charm to cloak Winddancer and himself in a deceptive blur, and then another spell that made the roar of the battle fall silent.

He rarely considered casting an enchantment of silence on

himself, because it would prevent him from using any more magic. But over the past ten years, he’d learned a good deal about Szass Tam’s more exotic undead servants, including the fact that silence wounded a deathshrieker.

Winddancer carried him close enough to strike, and Bareris pierced his foe with the point of his spear. While the enchanted weapon likely hurt the phantom, it was the absolute quiet that made it convulse.

It tried to flee from the excruciating silence, but Winddancer stayed with it. The griffon had shaken off his dread, and now his savage nature ruled him. He wanted revenge on the adversary that had hurt and discomfited him.

Bareris kept thrusting with the spear. Finally the deathshrieker turned to fight and plunged the intangible fingertips of one raking hand into Winddancer’s beak. The griffon froze and began to fall, but at the same instant, Bareris drove his spear into the spirit’s torso again. The deathshrieker withered from existence. Its jaws gaped wide as if it was voicing a final virulent wail, but if so, the silence warded its foes from the effect. Winddancer lashed her wings and arrested her fall.

Twisting in the saddle, Bareris looked around and didn’t see any immediate threats. Good. He and Winddancer could use a few moments to catch their breath, and if his aura of quiet dropped away during the respite, so much the better. It was only a hindrance now.

He urged his mount higher for a better look at the progress of the battle. At first, he liked what he saw. Despite everyone’s best efforts, some of the High Thayans on the road were reaching the field at the base of it, but only to encounter overwhelming resistance when they did. Meanwhile, the legionnaires from the Keep of Sorrows assailed the southerners’ formation but had failed to break it. Rather, they were beating themselves to death against it like surf smashing to foam on a line of rocks.

Its leathery wings flapping, a sword in one hand and a whip in the other, a gigantic horned demon flew up from the ground. A halo of scarlet flame seethed around its body.

The balor’s sudden appearance didn’t alarm Bareris. He assumed that a conjuror had summoned it to fight on the council’s side, and indeed, the tanar’ri maneuvered close to the crags as though seeking adversaries worthy of its lethal capabilities.

But as it considered where to attack, the wavering red light emanating from it illuminated sections of the road. As a result, Bareris realized for the first time just what a gigantic host of undead was swarming down from the heights.

With wizardry undependable, how had the necromancers created so many new servants? Where had they obtained the corpses? Had they butchered every living person left in High Thay?

This is how it starts, Bareris thought. This is how Szass Tam has always liked to fight. He makes you think you’re winning, gets you fully committed, and then the surprises start.

So-Kehur and Muthoth had armored themselves in enchantments of protection, and their personal dread-warrior guards stood in front of them in a little semicircular wall of shields, mail, and withered, malodorous flesh. Yet even so, an arrow droned down from on high to stick in the ground a finger-length from the pudgy necromancer’s foot.

“We’re too close,” So-Kehur said. He heard the craven whine in his voice and hated it.

His wand gripped in his good hand, Muthoth, predictably, responded with a sneer. “We have to be this close, or our spells won’t reach the enemy.”

“What spells?” So-Kehur said, although it wasn’t a reasonable

comment. After Mystra’s death, he’d scarcely been able to turn ale into piss, but when Szass Tam forcefed his followers insights into the changing nature of the arcane, he’d more or less recovered the use of his powers.

But as far as he was concerned, it wasn’t worth it. He’d never liked knowing that the lich had constrained his will. It bothered him even though he’d always had better sense than to flout his zulkirs wishes and so rouse the magic. But having Szass Tam shove knowledge straight into his mind was a more overt violation, and thus considerably more odious. Along with a vague but sickening feeling that a wisp of the mage’s psyche remained in his head, spying on him and polluting his own fundamental identity, the new lore rode in his consciousness like a stone.

But the howling, crashing terror of the battlefield, with quarrels and arrows flying and men and ores falling dead on every side, was worse. I never wanted to be a necromancer in the first place, So-Kehur thought, or any kind of wizard. My family pushed me into it. I would have been happy to stay home and manage our estates.

Horns blared, sounding a distinctive six-note call. “It’s time,” Muthoth said. He sounded eager.

So-Kehur wasn’t, but he knew his fellow mage was right. No matter how frightened he was, he had to start fighting.

He shifted forward and the two guards directly in front of him started to step apart. He clutched their cold, slimy forearms to keep them from exposing him. “I only need a crack to peek through!” he said.

So that was what they gave him. He picked a spot along the enemy’s battle line and started chanting.

Stripped of the cunning shortcuts and enhancements that were the craft secrets of the Order of Necromancy, reduced to its most basic elements, the spell seemed an ugly, cumbersome thing. But it worked. A blaze of shadow leaped from his

fingertips to slice into two southerners in the front rank. They collapsed, and so did other men behind them.

Muthoth snarled words of fear, and several men in the enemy formation turned tail, shoving and flailing through the ranks of their companions. A sergeant, failing to understand that the afflicted men had fallen victim to a curse, cut one down for a coward and would-be deserter. Muthoth laughed and aimed his wand.

Other flares of power, some luminous, many bursts of shadow, blazed from the ranks of the legionnaires from the Keep of Sorrows, and from up and down the crooked length of the path that climbed to High Thay. When they realized their adversaries were casting more spells than they had before, the council’s sorcerers intensified their efforts as well. But as often as not, their magic failed to produce any useful effects, or yielded only feeble ones. Whereas nearly all the necromantic spells performed as they should, and many hit hard.

A pair of Red Wizards—conjurors, judging from the cut of their robes and the talismans they wore—appeared in the mass of soldiery opposite So-Kehur, Muthoth, and the troops surrounding them. They looked old enough to have sons So-Kehur’s age, and were likely genuine masters of their diabolical art. Reciting in unison, somehow clearly audible despite the din, they chanted words in some infernal tongue, and So-Kehur cringed at the grating sound and the power he felt gathering inside it.

Muthoth hurled flame from his wand. It burned down some of the council’s soldiers, but the conjurors stood unharmed at the center of the blast. They shouted the final syllables of their incantation.

Nothing happened. No entity answered their call, and the sense of massing power dwindled like water gurgling down a drain.

So-Kehur’s fear subsided a little, and he realized he’d better not permit the conjurors to try again. He jabbered an incantation of his own. A cloud of toxic vapor materialized around the southern wizards, and they staggered and crumpled to the ground.

I beat them, So-Kehur thought. I was sure they were going to kill me, but I was better than they were. Muthoth grinned at him and clapped him oh the shoulder without a trace of mockery or bullying condescension, as if, after all the years of shared danger and effort, they were truly friends at last.

So-Kehur decided the battlefield wasn’t quite as horrible a place as he’d imagined.

Perched on a round platform at the top of Thralgard Keep’s highest tower, Szass Tam peered into a scrying mirror to track the battle unfolding in the gulf below. Sometimes he simply beheld the combatants. At other moments, glowing red runes appeared as one or another of the ghosts bound to the looking glass offered commentary.

Lacking mystical talents of his own, Malark sat on a merlon with his feet dangling over the crags and peered down at what he could make out of the struggle. Szass Tam doubted that was a great deal. The night was too dark, and everything was too far away.

“I see more flickers and flashes,” Malark said, “than I did a while ago. It’s like looking at fireflies, shooting stars, and heat lightning all dancing in a black sky together.”

“My wizards,” Szass Tam said, “are showing the council what they can actually do.”

“Can they do enough? Are you going to win?”

“It might be sufficient, but I’m not finished. The Black Hand lent me even more power than I expected, and I mean to use it.”

“Then you’re going to raise the force you told me about. Are you sure that’s wise?”

Szass Tam chuckled. “Sure? No. How can I be, when, to the best of my knowledge, no magus has ever roused such an entity before? It’s possible that Bane understands my ultimate intentions, and gave me the strength to try precisely so I’d overreach and destroy myself. He is a god, after all. I suppose we have to give him credit for a measure of subtlety and discernment.”

“Then maybe you should refrain.”

“No. Call me smug, but I like my chances. Besides, if I shrink from attempting this, how will I ever muster the courage to perform the greater works to come?”

“Fair enough. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Thank you, but no.”

“In that case …” Malark hesitated.

Szass Tam smiled. “You’d like my help to reach the battlefield quickly.”

“Yes, if you can spare the magic. So many interesting things are happening below that it would grieve me to stand aloof.”

Szass Tam plucked a little carved bone from one of his pockets, swept it through a mystic pass, and whispered an incantation. Shadow swirled in the air overhead and gathered into the form of a gigantic bat.

The beast’s rotting wings gave off a carrion stink. It furled them and landed on a merlon, its talons clutching the block of stone.

“It will obey your commands,” Szass Tam said, “and carry you wherever you want to go.”

“Thank you.” Malark swung onto the bat’s back and kicked it with his heels. It hopped off the merlon and glided over the battlefield.

Szass Tam hoped Malark would be all right. It was pleasant having a confidant again. At one time, Dmitra had played that part, but he hadn’t been able to confide his grandest scheme to

her. She wouldn’t have reacted well, and he’d assumed that no one ever could. He didn’t believe in fate, but even so, it almost seemed like destiny had brought a former monk of the Long Death into his orbit.

But Malark had served his purpose. He didn’t actually matter anymore. Szass Tam had far more urgent matters to concern him, and it was time to address them. He summoned one of his favorite staves and raised it over his head.

“What’s this?” Brightwing asked. Aoth looked where she was facing, then cried out in shock.

A prodigious mass of fog spilled down the cliffs like a slow waterfall. Anguished faces appeared—stretched, twisted, and dissolved amid the vapor. A chorus of faint voices, some moaning, some gibbering, others laughing, emanated from it.

It was some form of undead, though it was far more gigantic than any creation of necromancy Aoth had ever seen. But it wasn’t the size of it that dismayed him. It was the enormous might and insatiable hunger his fire-touched eyes saw burning inside it. “We’re in trouble,” he said.

Brightwing laughed. “No! Look! It’s all right.”

The fog hung over the crags like a curtain, and where the swirling vapor intersected the road, insubstantial tentacles writhed from the central mass to snatch for the ores and ghouls scrambling on the slopes. The creatures they engulfed convulsed and dissolved into nothingness.

If the mist-thing simply continued attacking Szass Tam’s army, all would be well. But then, though it continued to reach for the occasional luckless northerner like a man plucking berries from a bush, it floated lower.

It splashed at the foot of the crags and drifted outward. Its

path carried it across the clump of northerners who’d managed to reach the bottom and keep themselves alive once they got there, but straight at the southern army as well. Panicking, some of the council’s legionnaires threw down their weapons and turned to flee.

“Griffon riders!” Aoth bellowed. “Kill it!” He and Brightwing dived at the fog-thing. He pointed his spear and hurled a burst of flame into the heart of it. His men shot arrows.

The entity responded by snatching for them with lengths of its vaporous body. It hadn’t reached nearly so far before, and the attack caught Aoth by surprise. A frigid column of shadowy, babbling faces engulfed him.

His thoughts shattered into confusion. He suddenly knew without questioning that his psyche and flesh were about to crumble, and then his attacker would absorb the residue.

Screaming, Brightwing lashed her wings and carried them free of the fog. Gasping, peering around, Aoth saw that other griffon riders hadn’t been as lucky. Mired in writhing pillars of murk, they and their mounts disappeared. Meanwhile, as far as he could tell, their assault hadn’t injured the mist-entity in the slightest.