Unholy (26 page)

Something stabbed him in the back. He turned to see a corpse at the top of the stairs he hadn’t bothered to locate before. The gaunt thing wore a mage’s robe, and its sunken eyes glowed. Tattooed runes covered the exposed portions of its gray, rotting skin.

Mirror’s mind still seemed to grind like a damaged mechanism. It look him an instant to recognize the thing as a deathlock, an undead wizard less formidable than a lich but troublesome enough. And the spells inked into its body would give it additional power.

The deathlock extended its hand, and darts of ice hurtled from its long, jagged nails. Mirror tried to block them with his shield but moved too sluggishly. Fortunately, the attack, magical though it was, passed harmlessly though his spectral body.

He charged the undead sorcerer before it could try again. He cut it and cut it until it tumbled back down the stairs…

Where it collided into the foremost of the blood ores who were rushing up. Other figures were hurrying along the battlements. Atop one of the lesser keeps, a horn blew.

Plainly, it would be suicide to continue forward. Willing himself as invisible and intangible as possible—as close to utter emptiness as he dared—Mirror whirled, leaped off the wall, and sprinted back the way he’d come.

He didn’t know how to tell Bareris their scheme was impossible. For warriors of his forgotten brotherhood, it was shameful to say such things; it was an article of faith with them that righteousness would always find a way. But he didn’t know what else to say.

11-18 Kythorn, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

Bareris reached for the handle of the tavern door, then faltered.

He scowled at his own foolishness. Why should he feel timid about a trifle like this when he’d spent the past hundred years battling the worst horrors the necromancers could create? But perhaps that was the point. He was accustomed to war and vileness, whereas he’d long since abandoned the practice of entertaining, and he had no idea whether time, sorrow, and the passage into undeath had left the knack intact.

But he had to try. In the wake of Mirror’s failure to penetrate the Citadel, it was the only idea that either he or the phantom had left. And so, masked in the appearance of a dark-haired little Rashemi, wishing he’d sung when Aoth and then the ghost asked him to—it might have knocked some of the rust off—he entered the ramshackle wooden building with the four hawks painted on its sign.

The common room was crowded. He’d hoped it would be, but now the size of the audience ratcheted up his anxiety another notch. The yarting, a musical instrument that Arizima had procured for him, made his intentions plain, and the buzz of conversation faded as he carried the instrument to the little platform where, no doubt, other minstrels had performed before him.

Nervous though he was, he remembered to set his upturned cap on the floor to catch coins. He tuned the yarting’s six silk strings, then started to sing “Down, Down to Northkeep.”

To his own critical ear, he didn’t sing or play it particularly well, and since he hadn’t practiced it in a century, he supposed it was no wonder. But when he finished, his audience applauded, cheered, and called out requests. Somebody wanted “Barley and Grapes,” a tune he’d often performed during his years abroad, so he gave them that one next. And thought it sounded a little better.

The third song was better still. The glib banter—joking with the men, flirting with the women—came back more slowly than the music, but eventually it started to flow as well.

He sang sad songs and funny ones. Ballads of love, war, ribaldry, and loss. Memories of a Thay of green fields and blue skies, of cheer and abundance. And as the music visibly touched his audience, he found to his surprise that it moved him too.

Not to happiness. He was done with that. But to an awareness of something besides the urge for vengeance, in the same way that being with Aoth or Mirror occasionally could. And in that awareness was the suggestion of ease, a tiny diminution of the pressure that drove him ever onward.

I could have had this all along, he thought. Why didn’t I?

Because hatred was his sword, and he had to keep it sharp.

Besides, even a hint of solace felt like a betrayal of Tammith’s memory.

Still, perhaps it wasn’t entirely unforgivable to appreciate this interlude as he’d appreciated riding a griffon again, and for the same reason. Because it was almost certainly the last time.

Before he was done, he even gave them Tammith’s favorite, the tale of the starfish who aspired to be a star. His eyes ached, but undeath had robbed him of the capacity for tears, and no one had cause to wonder why a comical ditty would make him cry.

When he judged it was time for a break—he didn’t need one, but a live man surely would have—his cap was full of copper with a sprinkling of silver mixed in, and his appreciative listeners were happy to drink with him. It was the latter he’d hoped to accomplish.

He offered tales and rumors to prompt them to do the same without feeling he was interrogating them. Gradually he drew out all they’d heard about the dungeons beneath Szass Tarn’s castle and strange creatures roaming the slopes of the mountain on which their city sat.

So-Kehur crawled on the outer face of the gate at the west end of the bridge. The structure was a barbican sufficiently high and massive to discourage any attacker, but that didn’t necessarily mean every bit of stonework remained solid enough to withstand a pounding from the council’s artillery and magic. So far, though, that did indeed appear to be the case.

It occurred to him that, clambering around the heights with various limbs extended to anchor him, he must look rather like a metal spider. It likewise crossed his mind that some folk might think it beneath the dignity of the autharch of Anhaurz to make this inspection.

But he fancied that any first-rate commander would understand his desire to see for himself. Aoth Fezim would understand.

And speaking of the sellsword captain, the troops he led, and the archmages they served, where in the name of the Black Hand were they? So-Kehur swiveled his various eyes to gaze at the highway running north. No one was there but the common sort of traveler, and, as was often the case in the bleak new Thay that Szass Tam had made, not many of those.

So-Kehur shivered in frustration. Patience, he told himself, patience. It was good that the enemy army was advancing slowly. It gave him that much more time to prepare for the siege to come.

A voice called from overhead: “Milord?”

He looked up at the battlements. His aquiline face rattooed with jagged black lightning bolts, Churned Shapret, his seneschal, was standing there, along with a sweaty, tired-looking soldier in dusty leather armor.

So-Kehur felt a pang of excitement, because Churned’s companion was one of the scouts they’d sent forth to keep track of the council’s army. Apparently, intent on his examination of the higher reaches of the gate, he’d missed seeing the fellow arrive below him. He climbed toward his minions as fast as he could, and they each shrank back an involuntary step. Maybe they were afraid that in his haste, he’d close a set of serrated pincers on one of them or sweep them from their perch with a flailing tentacle.

If so, they needn’t have worried. He’d long since learned to handle a steel body better than he’d ever managed the form into which he’d been born. He swarmed over the parapet, retracted his various limbs to their shortest lengths, and the two soldiers dropped to their knees before him.

Though he generally enjoyed such deference, he was too eager to leave them that way for more than an instant. “Rise!” he said. “And tell me, when will the council arrive?”

The scout gave Churned an uncertain look. “Tell him,” the officer said.

The scout shifted his eyes back to So-Kehur. “I don’t think they’re going to, Master. Arrive, I mean.”

“What are you talking about?” So-Kehur demanded.

“They swung around the city and headed south. They’re looking for another way to cross the river.”

So-Kehur told himself it couldn’t be true, but obviously, it could. It made perfect sense that even zulkirs and one of the most respected captains in the East would hesitate to attack the stronghold he’d made of Anhaurz, especially considering how much of their strength they’d already expended taking the Dread Ring.

So-Kehur felt dizzy, and the tall towers rising from the sides of the gate and at intervals down the length of the bridge seemed to mock him. He’d labored long and hard to create an invincible weapon and had succeeded all too well. The result of all his work would be to deny him the slaughter he so craved.

But no. It didn’t have to be that way. Not if he refused to allow it.

He turned his eyes on Churned. “How soon can our troops be ready to march?”

Churned blinked. “March, Milord?”

“Yes, march! We’ll head west a little way, then hook around to pin the invaders against the river.”

The seneschal hesitated. Then: “Master, naturally we would have defended the city had the enemy chosen to attack. That’s our duty. But unless I’m mistaken, we haven’t received any orders to go forth and engage the council elsewhere.”

“No other force as large as ours is close enough to do it, and anyway, I’m in authority here. Do you think the regent would have given me my position if he didn’t trust me—indeed, expect me—to show initiative?”

“Master, I’m sure Szass Tam has complete confidence in you. But in light of the powers the rogue zulkirs command, maybe it would still be prudent to consult him before you act. I mean,

you’re a Red Wizard and have other mages under your command. Surely someone knows a way to communicate with High Thay quickly.”

Yes, surely. And if So-Kehur were to employ it, perhaps Szass Tam would opt to leave his old enemies unmolested in the hope they’d eventually leave Thay of their own volition. He never would have done so in the old days, but Szass Tam had changed since establishing the regency, and no one truly understood his priorities anymore.

Even if the lich did want the invaders pursued and destroyed, he might decide to dispatch a more seasoned general to command the effort, or even descend from the Thaymount to see to the task himself. So-Kehur could find himself consigned to a subordinate role or left behind to mind Anhaurz while the blood spilled elsewhere.

And all those possibilities were unacceptable.

He tried to frame an excuse to give Churned, then suffered a spasm of irritation. He was thinking like the old So-Kehur, that plump, cringing, contemptible wretch. The new So-Kehur was a lord, and lords didn’t have to justify their decisions to their subordinates. Rather, they disciplined them when they were insolent.

Drawing on one of the peculiar talents he’d developed after abandoning the external attributes of humanity, he lashed out with his thoughts. Churned cried out, staggered, and nearly reeled off the wall-walk before collapsing onto his side, where he writhed and bled from his chewed tongue and his nostrils. Though not the target, the scout too caught a bit of the effect. Crouching, face contorted, he clutched his forehead in both hands.

For a moment, So-Kehur remembered his long association with Muthoth and how the other young necromancer had liked to bully him. He felt both squeamish and pleased to at last be the Dully himself, but of the two emotions, pleasure was by far the itronger.

He delivered only a few restrained blows to Churned’s psyche; the seneschal was too useful a deputy to kill. Upon finishing, he said, “I trust we’re done with questions and second-guessing.”

Shaking, Churned clambered to his knees. “Yes, Milord.”

“Then get our army ready.” Meanwhile, the artisans would transfer So-Kehur’s brain into a body specifically intended for the battlefield.

Mirror thought he heard something that might have been a footfall, the faint sound almost covered by the whistling of the cold mountain wind. Or perhaps he simply sensed the advent of trouble. Either way, he didn’t doubt his instincts. They’d saved him too many times, even if they hadn’t helped on the terrible day when Fastrin killed his body and dealt his soul the spiritual wounds that had never truly healed.

“Come on,” he whispered. He started toward an extrusion of basalt large enough to serve as cover, then saw that Bareris wasn’t following. The bard was still singing under his breath, still casting about with wide, black eyes and a dazed expression on his pallid face.

Even after centuries as a phantom, Mirror almost reached to grab his friend and drag him behind the rock before remembering that his hand would simply pass through Bareris’s body. Instead, he planted himself right in front of the bard and said, “Brother, come with me now.” Insofar as his sepulchral tone allowed, he infused his voice with all the force of command that had once made younger warriors jump to obey.

Bareris blinked. “Yes. All right.” Mirror led him into the patch of shadow behind the basalt outcrop.

They scarcely had time to crouch before a dozen ghouls— hunched, withered, hairless things with mouths full of needle

fangs—came loping down the trail. Szass Tam had plenty of patrols watching for signs of trouble, even this far down the mountain.

The creature in the lead—judging from the stomach-turning stench of it, it might be one of the especially nasty ghouls called ghasts—abruptly halted, raised its head, and sniffed, although how it could possibly smell anything but itself was a mystery. Mirror willed his sword into his hand. But then the ghast grunted and led its fellows on down the path.

Mirror waited for the patrol to trek farther away, then whispered, “It’s a good thing neither of us sweats.”

Bareris didn’t answer. That wasn’t unusual, but the reason was. Crooning to himself, he was already slipping back into his trance. He started to straighten up.

“Wait,” Mirror said. “Give the ghouls another moment.”

Bareris froze in a position that would have strained a living man.

“All right,” continued the ghost, “that should be long enough.”

Bareris finished rising and continued onward, straying from the trail as often as he walked on it, halting periodically to run his hand over a stone or a patch of earth. Prowling behind him, Mirror watched for danger and tried to believe this scheme might actually work.