Unclean (39 page)

“You’re telling us,” Milsantos said, “that since his fellow zulkirs refused to vote Szass Tam a throne, he means to seize it by force of arms.”

“Yes, and now your army, which includes the Burning Braziers, is on the wrong side of the realm to oppose him.”

Milsantos rose and gestured to a map of Thay spread on one of the trestles tables. “Show me the northerners’ route.”

Malark advanced to the table, and nerves taut as bowstrings,

Nymia reluctantly stood and approached for a better look as well.

Using his fingertip, the outlander traced a path along the vellum chart. “As best I can reconstruct it, they swung west through the sparsely inhabited part of Eltabbar and have now headed south into Lapendrar.”

Milsantos nodded. “In their place, I’d do the same. Pyras Autorian is loyal to Szass Tam, but it would still be arduous to drag an army up the Second Escarpment, across the peaks of the Thaymount, then down the cliffs once more. You’d be seen, too, by someone hostile to your intentions. Too many Red Wizards have estates in the highlands, and on the south half of the plateau, the fiefs and towns are packed in too close for a host to sneak through.”

“That’s true,” Nymia said, “but surely someone noticed them marching through Lapendrar. Hezass Nymar may not have a strong enough army to oppose them, but why didn’t he warn the council of their coming? Why did one of Dmitra’s agents have to venture forth and discover this for himself?”

“I can hazard a guess,” said Malark. “Hezass Nymar dances to Szass Tarn’s piping as well, though maybe not to the point of lending his own relatively meager forces to the lich’s scheme. That I simply couldn’t tell, and Szass Tam may not want them anyway. Someone has to hold the Aglarondan border. But at least to the extent of granting free passage to Tharchions Odesseiron and Kren and keeping their progress a secret.” He smiled. “The priest’s probably glad he chose to govern from Escalant instead of residing in Lapendrar proper. If the necromancers fail, he can claim afterward that he didn’t know what was going on.”

Milsantos grunted. “If we’re going to speculate, let’s do it about something important. Where are Kren and Odesseiron headed? It can’t be the capital, or they would have circled east instead of west. It has to be Bezantur. Take it and you pretty much control the whole south of the realm and all access to the

sea. You’ve taken a giant step toward winning your war almost before it’s begun.”

“Tharchion Flass agrees with you,” said Malark, “particularly since the city and all Priador are in a vulnerable condition. Their tharchion is dead and I’m informed that now the commander of his legion and city guard is too. Apparently the Shadowmasters assassinated him. Szass Tam must have hired them.”

“What I want to know,” Nymia said, “is why you, a servant of Dmitra Flass, have ridden all the way to the eastern edge of Thay to tell us these things. The last I heard, she too was Szass Tarn’s faithful follower.”

“Until recently, yes. She’s since decided the prudent course is to cast her lot with six zulkirs rather than one.”

“Still,” said Milsantos, “that doesn’t quite explain what you’re doing here.”

“If Priador can’t defend itself, someone else has to.”

“Meaning us?” Nymia asked. “You said it yourself: We’re on the wrong side of the country.”

“But you’re prepared to march and fight, seeing as how you’ve been doing it for tendays already. Your men know how to combat the undead. Your have the most formidable war priests in Thay at your disposal.

“In contrast, many another legion is still nestled in the garrison it’s occupied more or less peacefully ever since the new trade policy began. After all Szass Tam has done to win their regard, many a soldier reveres or fears him and is reluctant to take up arms against him. Indeed, at this point, it’s an open question just how many tharchions will stand with the council.”

Milsantos snorted. “Your argument isn’t as strong as you imagine. We fought hard to retake this fortress. We’d benefit greatly from a few more days of rest. On top of which, the fire priests are dead. The arms Szass Tam furnished turned against them.”

Malark smiled in apparent admiration. “Thus depriving us of perhaps our most potent weapon against specters and the like.”

“Still,” the old man said, “it may be that you’ve come to the right people. Let’s assume that in time the council can field a sufficient force to oppose the northerners. The immediate task, then, is to slow down the enemy advance and keep them from reaching Bezantur before that happens. Nymia, your griffon riders have the mobility and skills required.”

“Damn it!” Nymia exploded, then caught herself. It was neither dignified nor prudent for two tharchions to argue in front of an inferior, particularly one who’d no doubt report the discussion word for word to one of their compatriots. “Messenger, wait outside.”

“Of course.” Malark bowed, withdrew, and closed the door behind him

“I take it,” Milsantos said, “that you don’t care for my suggestion.”

“How dare you assume,” she gritted, “without a word of discussion between us, that I have any intention of fighting Szass Tam?”

“Ah,” he said. “Perhaps that was presumptuous of me, and I apologize, but I think Dmitra Flass’s notion is sound: Six zulkirs are stronger than one.”

“Even when the one is Szass Tam?”

“Well, we can hope so.”

“Even when we know for certain he already controls Gauros, Surthay, High Thay, and Lapendrar, and we don’t know if any other tharchions except Dmitra—assuming we can even trust that duplicitous slut—mean to oppose him? What if we march against him, and it turns out we’re the only ones?”

Milsantos smiled. “It will be inconvenient to say the least. Still, we’ll have the other six zulkirs and the orders of wizardry they command.”

“Until some of them deem it advantageous to switch sides. You know what they’re like.”

“Yes. I do. So what’s your thought?”

“It’s not as if the outlander brought us actual orders from the council. Despite the airs she puts on, Dmitra is our peer, not our superior.”

“True. Apparently she begrudged the time it would have taken to palaver with the zulkirs.”

“That means we aren’t obligated to do anything. We can stay put here in the east and let everybody else slaughter one another in Priador.”

Milsantos pulled a wry face. “It’s tempting. You and I have survived a long while by keeping our noses out of the zulkirs’ squabbles, but I fear it’s not possible anymore. The old rivalries have flared into actual war, and if you don’t choose a side, both will regard you as an enemy.”

“Let’s say you’re right. In that case, I want to back the winning side. Just how certain are you it will be the council?”

“To be honest, not certain at all, but I’m willing to play my hunch. In addition to which, I’ve seen quite a bit of the undead of late, enough to-sicken me. I don’t want a lich as sole ruler of my homeland.”

Nymia sighed. “Nor do I. He unleashed his pet horrors on my tharch, ordered me to dispose of them, then betrayed and crippled our army at the worst possible moment. At this point, I hate and mistrust him too much to support him.”

“We’re agreed, then.”

“Yes, curse you. I can have the Griffon Legion in the air before dusk, but it’s going to be a nightmare getting the rest of the army ready for a forced march. We’ll be lucky if the wretches don’t mutiny.” A thought struck her. “We’re still holding all those necromancers prisoner. If we try to take them with us, they’ll slow us down, and if we leave them behind, lightly guarded,

they’re apt to escape despite their bonds and gags.” “Then we’ll have to kill them.”

She ran her hand over her scalp. “Just kill a band of Red Wizards.”

Milsantos grinned. “Don’t tell me you’ve never felt the urge.”

Squinting, Aoth scrutinized the mountainsides, but it was Brightwing who spotted the would-be travelers and pointed them out to him. Sword swinging at his side, bow slung across his back, Bareris was climbing a narrow, rocky trail. Diminished by sunlight and the absence of combat to the merest suggestion of murk, Mirror flowed along behind him.

Brightwing furled her wings, swooped, and landed in front of them, effectively blocking the path, though that wasn’t Aoth’s precise intention. At Bareris’s back on the valley floor, small as a dollhouse with distance, the Keep of Thazar and the surrounding encampment bustled with activity occasioned by the impending departure. The sight reminded Aoth of an anthill.

“I have men to oversee,” he said, “and my own packing to attend to. I don’t have time to chase you.”

Bareris shrugged. “Then you shouldn’t have.”

“Should I let you throw your life away? As soon as I realized your belongings were gone, I guessed what you intended, and it’s crazy. Even if you can find it again, you can’t attack a necromancers’ stronghold by yourself.”

“I’m not by myself. Mirror decided to stick with me.”

“It’s still crazy.”

“My quarrel is with Xingax and his confederates. If you legionnaires no longer mean to go after them, that’s my bad luck, but it doesn’t change what I need to do.”

“I understand why you want to destroy Xingax, but you

should save your fiercest hatred for Szass Tam. He’s the one who bears ultimate responsibility for Tammith’s transformation. Xingax was simply carrying out his orders.”

Bareris’s mouth tightened. “I suppose that’s true.”

“Then come west with the army, idiot! If you want to punish Szass Tam in the only way that folk like us have any hope of hurting him, the time to do it is now. If we don’t keep him from taking Bezantur, there’ll be no stopping him later. You can hunt down Xingax another day.”

Bareris stood pondering for a heartbeat or two then said, “All right. Under one condition.”

Aoth snorted. “I go out of my way to keep a lunatic from committing suicide, and he wants to bargain with me. What is it you want?”

“A griffon. Surely there’s at least one that lost its master in the battle. Let me fly west with you.” “Have you ever ridden a griffon?”

“No, but you can teach me, and I can use song to establish a bond with my steed. You’ve seen me do it before.”

Now it was Aoth’s turn to consider. Bareris—and Mirror— could prove invaluable in the actions to come, but those same skirmishes would be perilous for a novice rider.

“Please,” Bareris said. “A moment ago, you called me a madman. I know you were joking, but sometimes I truly do feel as if my mind is going to break. It’s not quite as bad when I’m striking blows against those who corrupted Tammith, and I’ll fare better fighting alongside you than trudging for days merely hoping for a battle at the end of the trek.”

“Very well,” said Aoth. “We’ll find a masterless griffon and see if you can charm it.”

“Which is more,” Brightwing said, “than you ever did for me.”

22-27 Kythorn, the Year of Risen El/kin

The road to Priador ran roughly parallel to the First Escarpment, and the legions of the north straggled along it for miles. Bareris knew he and his comrades had no choice but to leave the body of the enemy host unmolested, at least while the sun burned in the sky. They didn’t dare risk attacking such a superior force.

Outriders, however, were a different matter, and when an army lost those, it was reduced to creeping blind. Accordingly, the Griffon Legion, or what remained of it after the campaign through Pyarados and up the Pass of Thazar, had divided into smaller bands to hunt enemy scouts.

Aoth whistled and pointed with his lance. Following the gesture, Bareris saw the horsemen on the plain. The griffon riders dived, Bareris’s eager mount furling its wings before he even gave the signal.

The northerners spotted them descending. A couple fled, perhaps because their horses panicked. The rest, evidendy realizing

they couldn’t outrun griffons, scrambled to ready their bows.

An arrow streaked upward, and Bareris’s steed veered to dodge it. He was slow shifting his weight to facilitate the maneuver, and the griffon screeched in annoyance.

The shaft still missed them, though, and an instant later, the griffon plunged down atop the archer and his piebald horse, driving its claws into their bodies and smashing them to the ground.

Bareris cast about. On all sides, griffons, the warriors on their backs essentially superfluous, shredded their shrieking targets with beak and talon. They hadn’t gotten all the outriders, though. A necromancer with a scarlet robe peeking out from under his cloak howled words of power and swept his arms through mystic passes. His hands left smears of darkness on the air.

Bareris shouted at him. Striking hard as a hammer, the sound knocked the Red Wizard out of the saddle and ruined his spellcasting. Brightwing sprang, and Aoth thrust his lance into the warlock’s chest.

“We need to catch the ones who ran,” said Aoth.

Bareris bumped his mount’s flanks with his heels, and the griffon lashed its wings and leaped into the air. They raced in pursuit of the surviving scouts then saw there was no need to hurry. A shadow in the sunlight, eyes and other features barely discernible in his smear of a face, Mirror stood over the bodies of the northerners and their horses.

Bareris realized he ought to strip the corpses. Riding his flying steed, Malark Springhill had accompanied the griffon riders west, and though he’d eventually split off to attend to some project of his own, he’d first urged them to obtain the trappings of warriors from Gauros and Surthay whenever possible. These should do nicely. Thanks to the way Mirror’s spectral sword dispatched its victims, they weren’t even bloody or torn.

Malark cleared his throat. It seemed a gentler away of announcing his presence than abruptly casting his reflection into a lady’s mirror.

It still startled her, though. Seated at her dressing table, one bright blue eye painted, the other not and therefore looking smaller than its mate, Nephis Septet lurched around, then sighed and pressed a hand to her bosom when she saw who’d interrupted her at her toilet.

“Someday,” she said, “you must tell me how you sneak in here without the servants knowing.”

He waved his hand to indicate the glittering gold-and-sapphire jewelry she’d laid out for herself. “That’s a lot of finery, considering that the autharch is otherwise engaged.”