Undead (8 page)

As he stared dry-mouthed at the colossi, Malark wondered if Szass Tam and Xingax had created them or unearthed them from some forgotten menagerie of horrors, and wondered too how the enemy had managed to bury them in the field beforehand without anyone in the Keep of Sorrows noticing. Well, caverns riddled the earth hereabouts, and from the first days of the war, the necromancers had employed zombies with a supernatural ability to dig. So perhaps they’d tunneled up from underneath.

Not that it mattered. What did was that the squid-things were about to smash and crush their way into Dmitra’s soldiery like boulders rolling over ants, and that meant Malark’s place was at her side. He sprinted toward the spot where the standards of Eltabbar and the Order of Illusion, both infused with magical phosphorescence, glowed against the murky sky.

Since the day he’d first sat on griffon-back, Aoth had loved to fly, but now, for an instant, he hated it and the perspective it afforded. He wished he didn’t have such a perfect view of victory twisting into ruin.

Gigantic tentacles lashed and pounded, smashing the infantry and horsemen of Eltabbar to pulp. Those few warriors who

survived the first touch of the kraken-things’ arms collapsed moments later, flesh rotting and sloughing from their bones. Meanwhile, strengthened by the creatures that had emerged with the premature night, the army assembled before the Keep of Sorrows counterattacked ferociously and started to drive the southerners back.

By rights, the castle’s defenders should have fought to hinder that. They should have kept up a barrage of arrows and magic from the battlements, or attempted a sortie beyond the walls. But they’d stopped doing anything. Plainly, the necromancers had found a way to kill or incapacitate them.

Aoth felt a sudden surge of hope when the legions of Lapendrar appeared in the northwest. Maybe, driving in on the kraken-things’ flanks, Hezass Nymar’s men would have better luck fighting the behemoths than the soldiers they were pounding flat by the moment.

But it soon became clear from their maneuvering that they weren’t inclined to try. Rather, in a betrayal that seemed the crowning achievement of his life of opportunism and disloyalty, Nymar meant to attack the southern host.

The object of the zulkirs’ strategy had been to surround and trap Szass Tam. Now, with the lich’s soldiers on one side, the squid-things on another, and the legions of Lapendrar on a third, their army was the one boxed in.

“And I could have gorged on horseflesh every day,” Brightwing said.

Aoth managed a laugh, though it felt like something was grinding in his chest. “It sounds pretty good right now, doesn’t it?”

“The other riders are looking to you,” the griffon said. “They need orders.”

Why? Aoth thought. The day is lost whatever we do. Still, they had a duty to fight until Nymia Focar or one of the zulkirs gave them leave to retreat.

“We attack Nymar,” he said. “If we hit hard before his men can form up properly, maybe it will do some good.” He brandished his spear, waving his men in the proper direction, and they hurtled across the sky.

Szass Tam knew he’d won the battle, and that meant he’d as good as won Thay, but it was no reason to let up. Any zulkirs who escaped might cause trouble later, delaying the start of his real work, to which all this fighting and conquering was merely the necessary prelude.

Of course, if they realized their cause was lost, it was possible they’d all whisked themselves to safety already. They certainly wouldn’t tarry out of any misguided devotion to the doomed followers who lacked the same ability to make a magical retreat.

Still, he had nothing to lose by dropping his line in the water. He sent his magical eyes flying this way and that, swooping over the enemy army to locate his rivals.

And there was Dmitra, looking sweaty, pale, and exhausted. She’d wearied herself maintaining the shield of illusion that, she imagined, kept him from discerning the southern army’s approach, and had cast many more enchantments during the battle. Nor was she done yet. Reciting hoarsely and whirling a staff, she meant to hurl fire at the undead kraken crawling in her direction.

SzassJTam summoned the Death Moon Orb inro his hand. The jet and magenta sphere was the size of an apple this time, as small as it ever shrank, but fortunately, its potency didn’t vary with its size. He focused his will to wake its magic, then hesitated.

Because, at the end, the Death Moon Orb hadn’t worked on Yaphyll. And these days, Dmitra, too, was a zulkir.

He snorted his misgivings away. He still didn’t understand everything that had passed between Yaphyll and himself, but he didn’t regard her resistance to the orb as part of the mystery. No charm of domination succeeded every time. Still, in its way, the artifact was the most powerful weapon in all his arsenal, and he had nothing to lose by trying it. If Dmitra proved impervious to its magic, he’d simply change tactics.

With a gesture and a spell, he placed an image of himself, complete with the orb, before her. A lesser wizard couldn’t have used the sphere at such a distance, but Szass Tam believed he could, and while doing so, he’d be less vulnerable than if he’d moved his physical hody into the center of an enemy army, beleaguered and on the brink of rout though it was.

When she glimpsed his shadow from the corner of her eye, Dmitra pivoted to face him and continued her incantation. He, or his image, would be the target of the fire spell if he chose to let her complete it. He didn’t. He held out the Death Moon Orb, and she staggered. Her staff slipped from her spastic fingers.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I should punish you for your betrayal, but I always liked you, and you were always useful. I’ll make you a lich and then you can join the new circle of zulkirs I’m assembling to serve me. How does that sound?”

Her eyes rolled. Shuddering, she fumbled at her scarlet robe, seeking one of the hidden pockets and whatever talisman it contained. But she lacked the coordination to reach it.

Szass Tam concentrated, bearing down to crush what little capacity for defiance remained. “For now, you can help my leviathans slaughter your soldiers. Don’t worry, the brutes won’t strike at you if I don’t want them to.”

At that moment, squirming and shoving his way though the mass of panicky legionnaires, Malark Springhill lunged into view. Capitulating to Szass Tam’s orders, Dmitra oriented on the spymaster and started chanting. Realizing she meant him harm,

Malark dropped into a fighting stance. He obviously hoped he’d be able to dodge whatever magic she was about to conjure.

Then, despite her skill and the coercive power of the orb, she faltered, botching the spell. Szass Tam didn’t blame her. He, too, had frozen, as true wizards all across Faerun undoubtedly had. They sensed what had happened, if not how or why. Mystra, goddess of magic, had just perished, and with her death, the Weave, the universal structure of arcane forces, convulsed.

Corrupted by sudden chaos, the Death Moon Orb exploded in Szass Tam’s grasp.

Aoth felt a shock so profound that for an instant it obliterated thought. He assumed, when he was once again capable of assuming anything, that some hostile priest or wizard had cast a spell on him. Yet he seemed unharmed. “Are you all right?” he asked his mount.

“Yes,” Brightwing said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know.” But the whole world abruptly tasted wrong. He supposed it was because the combatants had unleashed too much magic that day, enough to scrape and chip at the fundamental underpinnings of matter, force, time, and space. Reality was sick with it, and a magic-user like himself could feel irs distress.

But reality and he would have to cope. The battle wasn’t over.

The ground rumbled, heaving up and down like the surface of the sea. Some powerful spellcaster had apparently decided to conjure an earthquake, and as far as Aoth was concerned, it was a good idea. The tremors knocked down many of Hezass Nymar’s warriors and threw their ranks into disarray. In flight, the griffon riders were unaffected.

“Kill them!” Aoth bellowed. Brightwing dived at Nymar. Aoth had been trying to get at the whoreson ever since their

two forces engaged, and now he saw his chance. His comrades plunged at other targets.

As Brightwing plummeted, talons outstretched, and Nymar scrambled to his feet and lifted his shield, Aoth noticed the scarf wrapped around the tharchion’s throat. Suddenly he had a hunch why Nymar had switched sides again. It cooled his hatred, but didn’t shake his resolve. The fire priest was still an enemy commander and still needed to die.

“Break off!” Bareris shouted, his voice magically amplified so everyone could hear. “Fly higher! High as you can!”

Brightwing flapped her wings and started to climb. Aoth turned this way and that, trying to determine what had alarmed his friend, then gasped.

A wall of azure fire, or something that resembled flame even though it burned without fuel, heat, or smoke, was sweeping across the ground, and across the army of Lapendrar, from the south. Aoth saw that it killed everyone it touched, but no two victims in the same way. Bones and organs erupted from a legionnaire’s mouth as he turned inside out. One of Kossuth’s monks dissolved in a puff of sparkling dust. A knight and his horse melted into a single screaming tangle of flesh. Nymar froze into a statue of cloudy crystal.

The blue flames towered high enough to engulf many of the griffon riders. They shredded one man and his mount and plucked the heads and limbs from another pair. Then, despite Brightwing’s desperate attempt to rise above it, the fire took her and Aoth as well. Pain stabbed into his eyes and he screamed.

By sheer good luck, Xingax had wandered behind his hill-giant zombie when the blast flared and roared at the center of the northern army, and his hulking servant shielded him. It

collapsed, a flayed and blackened ruin, and when he looked over the top of what remained of it, he wondered for a moment if the explosion had destroyed Szass Tam as well.

But obviously not, for the lich clambered up from the ground. He was surely hurt, though. Previously, despite his withered fingers and the occasional whiff of decay emanating from him, he could have passed for a living man. Now, with all the flesh seared and scoured from his face and hands, his eyes melted in their sockets, his undead nature was plain for all to see. The hem of his tattered robe was on fire, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Master,” Xingax said, “what happened?”

Szass Tam oriented on him without difficulty. A lich didn’t need eyes to see. “Can you still transport both of us through space?” he croaked.

Xingax didn’t see why not. Such instantaneous travel was a natural ability for him. “Yes.”

“Then take us inside the Keep of Sorrows. If So-Kehur and Muthoth accomplished their task, we should be as safe there as anywhere, and I don’t want to risk jumping any farther.”

“As you command,” Xingax said. “But what in the name of the Abyss is happening?”

“We don’t have time for an explanation,” the necromancer replied. “Suffice it to say, we need to employ your talents, because I can’t trust mine anymore. Not for the moment, anyway.”

Szass Tam vanished, seemingly vaporized by some sort of explosion, although Malark assumed the archmage hadn’t really perished as easily as that. Dmitra had fainted, which was better than if she’d remained under the lich’s spell and kept trying to murder her own officer. The kraken-things had slowed their

irresistible advance and weren’t smashing at the soldiers of Eltabbar as relentlessly as before. A few colossi were even pounding at one another.

It all looked like good news, but Malark couldn’t rejoice because he didn’t understand any of it. Nor would he, so long as he was stuck amid the clamorous, milling confusion that was Dmitra’s army. He needed to oversee the situation from the air.

But he couldn’t leave his liege lady stretched insensible on the ground. He picked her up, draped her over his shoulder, and trotted toward the place where he’d left his horse tied.

Another tremor shook the earth. He staggered, caught his balance, and scurried on.

The agony in Aoth’s face abated, and he felt the steady bunching and releasing of Brightwing’s muscles beneath him. Somehow both he and the griffon had survived the power that had killed so many others.

He realized that in response to the pain, he’d reflexively shut his eyes. He opened them, then cried out in dismay.

“What’s wrong?” Brightwing asked. When he was slow to answer, she joined her mind to his to determine for herself. Then she hastily broke the link again. She had to if she was to see where she was going, because her master had gone blind.

But it wasn’t ordinary blindness. He could still see something. In fact, he had the muddled impression he could see a great deal. But he couldn’t make sense of it, and the effort was painful, like looking at the sun. His head throbbed, and, straining to hold in a whimper, he shut his eyes once more.

“I’ll carry you to a healer,” Brightwing said.

“Wait! The legion. Look around. Did anyone else survive?”

“Some.”

“Bareris?”

“Yes.”

“Then I need to put him in charge before—” Brightwing’s pinions cracked like whips and her body rolled. Aoth realized she was maneuvering to contend with an adversary or dodging an actual attack. An instant later, the air turned deathly cold, as if a blast of frost were streaking by. “What is it?” asked Aoth.

“One of those big shadow-bats,” the griffon said. “I’ll see if I can tear up its wing bad enough that it can’t fly.” She hurtled forward, jolting Aoth back against the high cantle of his saddle.

If their assailant was a nightwing, she had no hope of defeating it by herself. Aoth had to help. But how could he, when he couldn’t see?

By borrowing her senses, of course, just as he had many times. He should have thought of it immediately, but the inexplicable onslaught of the blue flame and his sudden blindness had robbed him of his wits.

By the time he tapped into Brightwing’s consciousness, she’d nearly closed on her opponent. At the last possible instant, the bat-thing whirled itself away from her talons and struck with its fangs. The griffon dodged in her turn, but only by plunging lower, ceding the nightwing the advantage of height. Brightwing streaked through the air at top speed to get away from it.