Undead (13 page)

“Well,” said the legionnaire, sounding a little dazed, “in that case …” He put the saddle back on the stoop, saluted, and strolled away.

“Someone made a list of all the griffons to be collected,” Bareris said to Aoth. “I happened to glance at it, saw that Brightwing was included, and came as fast as I could.”

Aoth grunted. Courtesy indicated that he ought to say thank you, but he’d have preferred to stick a dagger in his own guts.

Bareris frowned. “You didn’t think I’d send someone to take her, did you?”

The question made Aoth’s muscles clench. “Is that a reproach? Why in the name of every god wouldn’t I believe that, considering how you betrayed me before?”

“As the soldier said, the tharchion gave the order. I assume she did because she knew I wouldn’t. Even if you don’t believe that.” Bareris frowned. “Although, valuable as griffons are, there’s something odd about her concerning herself with a single mount.”

It seemed strange to Aoth as well, but he didn’t want to prolong the conversation to speculate. “I’m going back inside.” Bareris’s mouth tightened. “Fine.” He turned away.

Aoth felt moisture on his face. He supposed it was blood from the needle pricks, beading and dripping. He resisted the impulse to wipe it away for fear of marring the tattooist’s work.

As the army of Pyarados prepared to march, dozens of tasks and details demanded Bareris’s attention. He had to see to his own gear and mount as well as those of his entire company. Procure provisions in a hungry land at winter’s end. And review the intelligence Malark’s agents provided, and plot strategy with Nymia, Tammith, and the rest of the officers.

It left him precious few moments even to eat and sleep, but from time to time, late at night, he prowled through the house where he’d taken up temporary residence, looking for Mirror and periodically calling his name. The members of the household—a draper, his wife, three children, and a pair of apprentices—made themselves scarce at such moments, and were leery of him in general.

But he didn’t care if they thought he was crazy. He just wanted to find the ghost.

Even more than Aoth, Mirror had been Bareris’s constant companion for the past ten years. Often, the ghost faded so close to the brink of nonexistence that no one else could detect him. Even cats failed to bristle and hiss at his presence. But Bareris had always been able to feel him as a sort of cold, aching void hovering nearby.

Lately, he couldn’t. Mirror had abandoned him shortly after his falling out with the newly blinded Aoth, and had not yet returned.

On the eve of the army’s departure, he began hunting in the attic and finished in the cellar, where cobwebs drooped from the ceiling, mice had nested in the filthy, shredded remains of a stray bolt of cloth, and the shadows were black beyond the reach of his

candle. It looked like a fine location for a haunting, but if Mirror was lurking there, he chose to ignore Bareris’s call.

“Nymia wanted to take Brightwing,” Bareris persisted. “I made sure she’ll stay with Aoth. He has a tattoo sorcerer working to heal his eyes. It’s possible he’ll see again.”

Still, no reply came, and abruptly Bareris felt ridiculous, babbling to what was, in all likelihood, an empty space.

“To the Abyss with you, then,” he said. “I don’t care what’s become of you. I don’t need you.” He wheeled and tramped up the groaning stairs.

The conjuration chamber shook. Grimoires fell from their shelves, racks of jars and bottles clattered, and the piece of red chalk that was attempting to inscribe an intricate magic circle on the floor hitched sideways, spoiling the geometric precision the sigil demanded.

Szass Tam sighed. The earth tremors jolting all Faerun had turned out to be particularly potent and persistent in High Thay with its volcanic peaks. The entire castle had been rocking and shuddering ever since his return from the Keep of Sorrows, and although the inconvenience was the least of the ills Mystra’s death had engendered, it vexed him nonetheless.

He waved a skeletal hand, and the half-completed figure vanished as if it had never been. He animated a different stick of chalk and set it to recreating the drawing.

This time, the chalk managed to complete the circle without the earth playing pranks. Szass Tam took his place in the center, summoned one of his favorite staves into his hand, and recited a lengthy incantation.

A magical structure, invisible to normal sight but manifest to an archmage, took shape before him, then started to slump and

deform. He froze it in its proper shape by speaking certain words of power with extra emphasis, and through the sheer insistence of his will.

At the end, his construct wavered into overt existence as a murky oval suspended in midair. Szass Tam said, “You are my window. Show me the Weave.”

Had he given the same command before the advent of the blue fires, the oval would have revealed an endless iridescent web reflective of the magic that infused and connected all things, and the interplay of forces that held it all in equilibrium. Now he beheld scraps of burning crystal tumbling through an endless void. Even for a lich, the sight was nauseating, although Szass Tam couldn’t define exactly why.

What he did know was that the Weave showed no sign of reforming. Perhaps it would eventually, if a new deity of magic arose, but since Szass Tam had no idea how or when such an ascension might occur, the possibility failed to ease his mind.

“You are my window,” he said. “Show me the Shadow Weave.”

As its name suggested, the Shadow Weave was the dark reflection and antithesis of its counterpart. It hadn’t partaken of Mystra’s life in the same way the Weave had, and Szass Tam had conjectured that it might reconstitute more quickly in the wake of her passing.

If so, it could serve as a source of power. For certain practitioners of an alternative form of sorcery called shadow magic, it always had. Despite his erudition and curiosity, Szass Tam had never learned a great deal about the mysteries of shadow. Conventional thaumaturgy had proved such an inexhaustible well of precious and fascinating secrets that he simply hadn’t gotten around to it. But he was willing to learn now if it would ameliorate the current crisis.

But ir didn’t appear that there was anything left to learn. The Shadow Weave, too, remained in pieces, the fragments falling

endlessly through darkness and burning with a dim flame whose radiance was somehow a mockery of true light.

He grimaced. With both structures annihilated, it was no wonder wizardry was crippled.

Yet it was hardly useless. It could still evoke and transform, summon and bind—some of the time. If he could figure out why it worked when it did, and why it failed on other occasions, perhaps he’d know how to make it reliable again.

“You are my window,” rasped an unfamiliar voice, startling him from his musings. “Show me the one peeping at magic’s corpse. I wish to know if he laughs or weeps.”

The interior of the oval rippled and flowed, and an entity appeared. In certain respects, Szass Tam might almost have been gazing at his own reflection, for the creature, too, possessed a grinning skull face and naked bones for hands. But instead of a handsome red velvet robe, it wore dark, rotting cerements, and in place of a staff, it carried a scythe.

The weapon enabled Szass Tam to identify the creature, for its blade was blacker than anything made of matter—a long, curved, movable wound in the fabric of reality. Only entropic reapers, undead destroyers in the service of primordial chaos, carried scythes like that.

Formidable as they were, no reaper should have sensed Szass Tam’s ritual in progress, let alone been able to subvert the magic to its own ends. It was another disquieting indication of just how diminished his powers actually were.

But diminished or not, he needed to reestablish control. “You are my window,” he said, “and I now close you.”

Nothing happened.

“Do you see the beauty?” the reaper asked, and even though it was speaking from another universe, Szass Tam caught a whiff of its cold, stinking breath. “It’s the beginning of the end of all structure, all limitation, or so we pray.”

Ironically, Szass Tam did see, but he wasn’t inclined to chat about it. “I am Szass Tam, whose name inspires fear in every world, and I don’t tolerate interlopers in my sanctum. Will you leave, or must I punish you?”

“I see you’re a great wizard,” said the reaper, “but are you great on behalf of chaos, or great in the service of order?”

“It isn’t your place to try to take my measure.”

“You’re mistaken. It’s exactly my place, although I admit, the task is difficult. You sow chaos with every move you make, and yet I sense the goal of all your scheming is law transcendent.”

Szass Tam felt an unaccustomed pang of genuine alarm. Exactly how much did the reaper perceive? Too much, he feared, for him to rest easy if he merely drove it from his presence. “You are my window,” Szass Tam said, “and you will open wide. Wide enough to pass my enemy through.”

The reaper took a stride and entered the mortal realm. Having made up its mind that Szass Tam was a considerable force for order, it had no choice but to try to slay him.

But now that Szass Tam had drawn it within range of his most potent magic, he had no intention of giving it a fair chance to do so. He flourished his staff and spoke a word of command.

A form like an eagle made of dazzling white light leaped from the end of the staff, the visible manifestation of a spell crafted specifically to annihilate undead. The blazing raptor plunged its talons into the reaper’s naked rib cage and disappeared, leaving the skeletal assassin unharmed. Like so many spells that Szass Tam had attempted of late, the magic had twisted awry.

Its ragged black cerements swirling around it, the reaper swung its scythe. Szass Tam leaped out of range and the dark blade streaked by him, leaving ripples of distortion in its wake.

Szass Tam spun his staff through another pass. Eight orbs of blue-white light flew from the weapon, accompanied by the

smell of thunderstorms. The spheres struck the reaper in quick succession, each discharging its power with a blinding flash and a crackle.

The servant of chaos stumbled backward, and portions of its filthy cerements caught fire. But the barrage didn’t blast it to splinters as it should have. As soon as it ended, the thing rushed in for another strike.

Szass Tam attempted another retreat and backed into a worktable. The scythe spun at him and he hurled himself to the side. The black blade sheared through a bronze statuette of Set, a serpent-headed Mulhorandi god of magic. The stroke liquefied it, and it splashed into droplets and spatters.

As he scrambled backward, distancing himself from the reaper, Szass Tam could only infer that the random fluctuations in mystical forces had rendered his staff and its stored magic useless. He had no way of knowing if any of his other spells would work any better, or even if he’d have the chance of find out. Evoking an effect from the ether required more time and precision than releasing one already stored, and an aggressive attacker like the reaper could make it impossible for a wizard to conjure successfully.

As the creature rounded on him, he focused his thoughts on the red chalk. It was still enchanted, and still responsive to his unspoken will. He bade it hurtle at the reaper to scribble on its bony face and crown.

With luck, the unexpected harassment would distract the reaper for a precious moment, until it decided that the chalk was insignificant. Without waiting to see if the trick would work, Szass Tam reached for one of his many pockets. He snatched out a tiny ball of compressed bat droppings and sulfur, flourished it, and rattled off the first words of an incantation.

The reaper stopped swiping at the chalk and charged its animator. That was unfortunate. It meant Szass Tam wouldn’t be able to

smite the creature with the crude magic he was creating without catching himself in the effect. But he didn’t abandon the effort. He had to put the reaper down before it hit him with its scythe.

A spark streaked from his outstretched hand and hit the reaper’s sternum. It exploded into a blast of crimson fire.

The detonation threw Szass Tam backward and the heat seared his body, particularly the parts that still had flesh. But liches were preternaturally resistant to harm, and he also carried a ward against flames. Thus, though the blast tore much of his robe away, it left his limbs in place. In fact, it didn’t even stun him.

He reeled, caught his balance, and came on guard in a wizard’s fighting stance, staff gripped to conjure, strike, or parry as needed. As it turned out, he didn’t need to do anything. When the blaze subsided, scraps of bone and tatters of burning garments littered the floor. Only the scythe remained intact, its blade warping and melting the granite on which it rested.

Szass Tam drew a deep breath. Without actually needing to breathe, he couldn’t truly feel winded, but even after centuries of undeath, the old, useless habits of mortality sometimes manifested.

That had been too close, and it infuriated him. An archmage should have little trouble coping with an entropic reaper, fearsome as the creatures were to lesser folk, and yet the entity might easily have slain him.

But there was no point in bemoaning his weakness. He’d do better to ponder what he’d discovered.

When intricate magic had failed, his instincts had prompted him to resort to a basic evocation of elemental force. That succeeded, and he thought he knew why. The Red Wizards had developed their art to a level lesser mages could scarcely imagine. Their spells incorporated all sorts of sophisticated shortcuts and enhancements. But those features achieved their efficacy by exploiting the subtle interplay of the forces comprising the Weave.

With the Weave annihilated, those same mechanisms had become a hindrance. Szass Tam’s spells could no longet tap into all the elements they required to work. Trying to perform magic that way was like attempting to carry water in a bucket with a hole in the bottom.

Of course, most enchantments took advantage of the Weave to one degree or another, and until the realm of magic stabilized, even a basic spell might run afoul of the same problem. But it wouldn’t happen as often.