Prophet of the Dead

3

A thunderstorm was blowing in from the west, and the first flickers of lightning, rumbles of thunder, and cold drops of rain were making the novices uneasy. Each of the little girls was supposed to be trying to commune with the spirit residing in a tree of her choice, but their focus was manifestly wavering as first one and then another glanced around at the shelter the row of lean-tos would afford. Finally, plump, apple-cheeked little Hulmith, who was always the most willful, started in that direction.

“Stop,” Yhelbruna said.

Hulmith froze. Willful she might be, but all the girls were at least a little in awe of their new teacher, the hundred-year-old hathran who figured in so many tales and rumors.

“Why are you giving up on the exercise?” Yhelbruna asked. “Are you afraid of getting wet?”

Hulmith hesitated. “I don’t want to get hit by lightning.”

A couple of the other girls nodded.

“You won’t,” Yhelbruna said, “not here.” She waved her hand in a gesture meant to encompass not just the clearing but the Urlingwood in its entirety. “This is the most sacred earth in all Rashemen. It protects us as we protect it. And to be worthy protectors, you must learn to rejoice in Nature in all its aspects. Everyone, come out from under the branches and lift your faces to the sky. Welcome the storm just as you offered your friendship to the souls of the trees.”

The girls obeyed. Some, however, did so with a trudging reluctance that irked Yhelbruna. She reminded herself that so long as she was young in body, she didn’t want to turn into a grumpy, impatient old crone in spirit, even though she occasionally found the pretense useful.

“Cheer up,” she coaxed, removing her brown leather mask. “This isn’t a punishment. If you give yourself over to it, it will lift up your hearts.”

Certainly, it had always lifted up hers. All her life, she’d loved the cleansing tumult of a storm, and as the lightning flared and the hammering rain stung her upturned face, she felt the old familiar exultation. It gratified her to peek around and see the same joy flowering in the faces of her charges.

Then the clearing blazed white and thunder boomed at the exact same instant. Dazzled, blinking, Yhelbruna saw Hulmith collapse in a steaming heap.

For an instant, she simply gaped at the sheer impossibility of what had just happened while the other girls goggled in horror. Then she started toward Hulmith and her students fled screaming toward the lean-tos.

As if the frantic scrambling had provoked the storm to further malice, more thunderbolts flared down from the clouds. Blasted, more girls burned and fell.

Yhelbruna raised her staff high and cried out to the spirits of the earth, trees, and air. Like much of a hathran’s magic, the spell blended prayer and subtle coercion into a spell capable of calming any entity a witch was likely to encounter within the borders of the holy forest.

But this time, it didn’t work. Raging and hateful, the fey to whom she spoke spurned her flattery and defied her commands with a vehemence that made her head throb. A numbing tingle surged up her legs.

With a gasp, she sat up in her bed. Twisted and tangled, her blankets lay on the floor, and she was cold. But cold was better than lightning-struck, or standing over the bodies of lightning-struck children, and she sighed and slumped to realize the ordeal had only been a nightmare.

Then something boomed, and the heart jolting in her chest, she jumped.

Scowling, she pulled on her mask, rose, moved to the window, and opened the shutters. Wings extended, red and yellow flags flapping, the Storm of Vengeance was flying in from the north. After another moment, one of the enchanted ballistae on its deck hurled a thunderbolt flashing and banging across the blue morning sky.

Mario Bez and his sellswords hadn’t raised such a commotion on the previous occasions when they’d flown into Immilmar. It was a display they’d likely reserved to proclaim themselves victorious.

Yhelbruna felt a twinge of regret. Although her office required impartiality, in her secret heart, she’d hoped Vandar would beat out Bez and his other rivals in the competition for the wild griffons.

But the thing that truly mattered was if someone had ended the threat the undead posed to Rashemen. So, laying her personal feelings aside, she dressed quickly, gripped her staff, and then took a moment to settle dignity and reserve about her like an extra cloak. With that accomplished, she left the whitewashed longhouse that was the Witches’ Hall.

She wasn’t the only one braving the early morning chill. Dozens of curious folk were heading for the spot on the lakeshore where the sellswords customarily set down. Their feet crunched in the snow, and their breath steamed, reminding Yhelbruna momentarily of Hulmith’s body smoking in the dream.

Maybe conversation would distract her from such unpleasant images. She cast around and found Fyazel tramping toward the frozen lake. For some reason, the priestess of Selune was wearing a different mask than usual, a full moon instead of a crescent, but after long years of acquaintanceship, Yhelbruna had no difficulty recognizing her from the way she carried herself.

“Good morning, Sister,” she said.

Fyazel turned. The brown eyes behind the white wooden mask blinked twice, almost as if she didn’t recognize the woman who’d addressed her.

“Are you all right?” Yhelbruna asked.

Fyazel’s eyes narrowed and appeared to focus. “Fine! It’s just that I was up all night communing with the Moonmaiden. Now I have this racket waking me with the dawn.”

They walked on together until they spied brawny, bearded Mangan Uruk striding along with his iron circlet on his head and a number of his warriors hurrying to keep up with him. It might have better befitted the dignity of the Iron Lord to wait for Bez to come to him, but curiosity had evidently superseded protocol.

With a trace of amusement, Yhelbruna realized the same could be said of her. She was likewise an important personage, yet she too, had proved too eager to learn what was happening to stand on ceremony.

She and Fyazel joined the Iron Lord’s party as was their due, and he and the other warriors bowed to them. Then they all continued onward and reached the frozen lake just in time to see the Storm of Vengeance float to earth. The wings folded against the hull as the crewmen cranked the windlasses, while other sellswords worked on deck to lower the sails.

A rope ladder tumbled over the side of the skyship. Mario Bez swarmed down it as nimbly as a squirrel. A middle-aged man who wore his graying hair pulled back in a ponytail, he had a strong, shrewd face marred by a bumpy beak of a nose. As usual, he’d dressed in the red and yellow that were his company colors and armed himself with a rapier and main gauche. The blades were enchanted; they were not only weapons but tools for conjuring as well.

Bez bowed low with a sweeping flourish of his arms that he’d likely learned in some southern court. “Majesty,” he said. “High Lady. I come with good news and a trophy or two as well.”

He waved to the ship. Some of his men lowered sacks on ropes. Others clambered down the ladder to catch the bags and carry them forward.

“If I may?” he asked, and when the Iron Lord inclined his head, the sellswords dumped the contents of the sacks in the snow.

People gasped and flinched, and Yhelbruna understood why. Many of the severed heads were hideous, decayed and deformed, but beyond that, in their plenitude, they radiated a sort of spiritual vileness sufficient to grate on the nerves of even the least sensitive.

Yet the trophies were harmless and inert, dead now in every sense of the word, and she wondered why the sight of them failed to move her to happiness, relief, gratitude, or any emotion Bez might reasonably have expected.

“I could have brought troll and hobgoblin heads too,” the outlander said. “But I figured these were the ones that mattered.”

Yhelbruna supposed they were, indeed. The sellswords had collected the putrescent heads of zombies; the fanged, vaguely canine heads of ghouls; and the naked skulls of animate skeletons, all festering with the lingering residue of undeath. The mercenaries also had the vulturine head of a vrock and the broad, scaly one of a hezrou.

Mangan stooped to inspect the demon heads more closely. It was likely that, despite a lifetime of combat, he’d never seen such entities before. As he straightened up again, he said, “Tell me the tale.”

Bez grinned. “Gladly, Majesty. With the resources at my disposal, I eventually tracked the raiding parties that have been plaguing Rashemen back to their secret stronghold. As it turned out, they’d established themselves in an old castle in the north. I believe your sagas call it the Fortress of the Half-Demon. There, as I mentioned, they were building a genuine army, with goblin-kin and their ilk rallying to their banner. Fortunately, their plans hadn’t progressed so far that the Storm couldn’t put a stop to them, and the creatures won’t bother you again.”

Mangan smiled, sincerely enough but with a hint of rue. “It must have been a glorious battle. I wish I’d been there. Congratulations.” He offered his hand, and Bez shook it.

“I congratulate you as well,” Yhelbruna said. “But why were the undead rising in the first place? What was behind it?”

The Halruaan shrugged. “I’m sorry, but I have no idea. My commission was to exterminate the creatures, and I did. Now that the crisis is over, perhaps you and the other wise women can look into the underlying cause.”

“I’m sure they can,” Mangan said. “But first, we’ll have feasting and games to celebrate your victory.”

“Thank you,” said Bez. “You honor us. But I hope that first before anything, I can claim my prize. This morning, if possible.”

The Iron Lord cocked his head. “Right now, in other words? Surely you and your warriors are tired.”

“Of course,” Bez replied. “But we traveled far in the dead of winter to obtain the griffons. Then we fought what turned out to be a challenging little campaign across the length and breadth of this land. In our place, wouldn’t you be eager for your reward, no matter how weary you were?”

“I suppose so,” Mangan said. He turned to Yhelbruna. “Are you prepared to work your part of the magic?”

She hesitated for a heartbeat without quite knowing why. Then she told him, “Yes.”

“Then I guess we’re all going to hike a little farther in the snow.”

Some of Bez’s sellswords joined the procession as it headed northeast. Yhelbruna recognized Melemer, a sly-looking little tiefling warlock with stubby horns, yellow eyes, and a cabalistic ring on every finger; Olthe, a priestess of Tempus the Foehammer as broad-shouldered and burly as many a berserker; and Sandrue, a plump, jolly-looking fellow with a scraggy, goatish beard, who, as his belt of pouches for spell components and the bronze sickle hanging from it attested, was versed in both arcane and druidic mysteries. He was the beast master Bez was counting on to control the griffons well enough to get them back to Yaulazna for proper training.

As they all left Immilmar behind, Yhelbruna asked, “Where’s Dai Shan? Didn’t he accompany you the last time you flew out of town?”

Perhaps, for an instant, a subtle tightening of Bez’s mouth bespoke irritation, but then his face was all affability again, a mask as effective in its way as any witch’s. “If we weren’t all friends here, I might almost wonder if you hathrans spy on your guests.”

“You can understand why we’d take an interest in those on whom we depended to perform a vital task.”

“Of course. And unfortunately, that’s the part of my news that isn’t joyous. The Shou perished during the battle. When I have a chance, I’ll inform his retainers and write a letter of condolence for them to take back to his kin.”

“What about Captain Fezim, the sun priestess, and the wizard? And Vandar Cherlinka and the Griffon Lodge? They all ventured forth to find and destroy the undead too, but they haven’t returned.”

Bez shook his head. “I wish I knew, but we saw no trace of them. It’s unfortunately possible the undead killed them before the Storm found and destroyed the creatures in their turn, but I hope not. I hope they’re simply wandering the countryside trying to pick up a trail and will turn up in due course.”

The rasping cry of a griffon split the frigid air. A number of the creatures were circling within their invisible cage, a weave of magical compulsions constraining them to a certain patch of hilly ground. The bell jar-like space was as huge as Yhelbruna and her sister witches had been able to make it, but it was still obvious the magnificent creatures hated their confinement, and even knowing that she’d acted in accordance with the will of the Three, seeing their restlessness gave her a twinge of guilt.

The hathran currently watching the beasts wore a white robe trimmed with green and a silver mask with a single short horn jutting from the center of the forehead to signify her devotion to the Forest Queen. Dispensing with decorum like everyone else this morning, she hurried to greet the procession with the several berserkers Mangan had assigned to attend her striding along behind.

“We all saw the skyship and heard the thunderclaps,” she said. “Is it time?”

Yhelbruna supposed that with Mario Bez right beside her, the only courteous answer was yes. Still, some grudging impulse made her say, “We’ll find out,” instead.

She glanced around, but as she’d expected, the particular griffon she sought wasn’t one of the few on the ground. She peered up at the creatures soaring and circling overhead until she made out one that gleamed like gold in the sun.

She pointed to it. “That one is the leader. Control him, and you control the pride. Well enough to take them south, anyway.”

The beast master nodded. “I understand.”

“I hope so. I imposed my will on him when Vandar and I found him in the High Country, and my magic has controlled him ever since. I’ll have to loosen my bonds so you can create yours.”

“That shouldn’t pose a problem.”

“One more thing. The golden griffon is a telthor-a spirit animal, and sacred to the goddesses. I understand the requirements when one lays an enchantment on any creature. Yet even so, it would be blasphemous for you to use a spell that inflicts pain or reflects a lack of reverence.”

Sandrue pulled the bronze sickle from the loop that attached it to his belt and hefted it for her inspection. “My lady, I understand that among your folk, the men don’t study spellcasting. But I wouldn’t have this instrument if I weren’t an initiate in mysteries comparable to your own.”

“So let’s get on with it,” said Bez.

With an effort of will, Yhelbruna thrust the nagging reluctance out of her mind and so achieved the pure intent magic demanded. She locked her gaze on the golden griffon and chanted while shifting her staff from side to side in choppy mystic passes.

As the incantation proceeded, the completion of each rhyme removed another bit of compulsion from the golden griffon’s mind like she was picking stitches out of a piece of sewing. The invisible cage would still confine the telthor because that was an enchantment she and other hathrans had laid on the ground itself, but in other respects, he was becoming increasingly free to act in accordance with his instincts.

Or rather, he would have if she were the only person working magic. But to give him his due, Sandrue started conjuring exactly when she would have chimed in herself, and brandishing the sickle, murmuring contrapuntally, he replaced her coercions with his own.

She finished her working, and he finished his own a few breaths later by slashing the sickle through the air, pressing the flat of the curved blade to his lips, and then touching it to his heart. Then he screeched like a griffon himself.

The pride leader answered, furled his wings, and swooped toward the ground.

People cringed or cried out, partly because a dangerous animal was plunging down at them, but also because, once he came close enough, it didn’t take a hathran to recognize how marvelous he was.

It wasn’t just the golden plumage, unique as that was among the brown- and bronze-feathered kindred. It was the blazing sapphire eyes and his hugeness. With the possible exception of Aoth Fezim’s steed-the product, Yhelbruna had gleaned, of arcane tampering over multiple generations-she’d never seen a griffon so manifestly graced with preternatural strength and vigor.

The telthor lit in the snow fifteen paces in front of Yhelbruna, Sandrue, and the people clustered behind them. The blue eyes glared, and for a moment, like mice frozen in front of a cat, no one moved or made a sound.

Then Sandrue smiled and said, “You honor us, hunter. What’s your name, I wonder?”

“Whatever I decide to call him,” said Mario Bez.

Sandrue hesitated, plainly torn between the wish to avoid irritating his commander and the need to assert his own esoteric expertise. “Such a special creature already has a true name-”

“Fine,” said Bez. “Puzzle it out and let me know. Meanwhile, is it safe to approach him?”

“It should be,” Sandrue replied.

“Good.” The sellsword captain eased forward. “Griffon, we’re going to have some wonderful times together. People tell me your kind relish horseflesh. Well, we’re going to lands where horses-”

The golden beast crouched as though poising himself to spring. At the same instant, Yhelbruna had a sudden sense of bonds slipping and dropping away. Overhead, other griffons called to one another.

Registering the change in the pride leader’s stance, Bez halted. “Is it still safe?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the beast.

“No,” Sandrue said. “Back away-”

With a snap of his wings, the golden griffon pounced.

Bez leaped to the side. Yhelbruna rattled off the first words of a spell.

Splashing up snow, the golden griffon thumped down beside the sellsword captain and spun toward him. Bez was snatching for his rapier but didn’t have it out yet and likely wouldn’t be able to dodge again with the huge beast right on top of him.

But as the golden griffon started to snatch with his talons, Yhelbruna finished her incantation and jabbed her staff at the beast.

Discernible even in the sunlight, seeming for an instant to set the snow on fire, glare burst into being around the griffon, and the telthor faltered and screeched. Likewise caught in the effect, Bez was probably just as dazzled but had the presence of mind to retreat, finish drawing his sword, and point it at the beast. A coating of frost flowed into existence from the base of the long, narrow blade to the point.

A second griffon hurtled toward the folk on the ground. Melemer snarled grating words of power in some demonic tongue, and a javelin made of red-hot iron shimmered into being in his hand. Gripping it without apparent discomfort, he cast it, and it streaked upward and completely through the plunging animal’s wing. The griffon screamed and leveled off.

Apparently Bez had recovered enough of his sight to make out what had just happened. “Curse it, no!” he bellowed. “Don’t hurt the beasts!” Meanwhile, though, he kept his rapier pointed at the golden griffon and drew his dagger as well. Little flares of lighting arched and crackled up and down the smaller blade.

Understandably, with more griffons orienting on the folk on the ground, folk they suddenly felt free to treat as enemies and prey, nobody else was much more inclined to heed Bez’s command than he was acting in accordance with it himself. The Iron Lord whipped out his sword, and his honor guard did the same. Homely, mannish Olthe lifted her battle-axe.

Not that any of it was likely to matter very much. Mangan and his warriors were formidable, and Yhelbruna assumed that Bez and his underlings were too. But they hadn’t been prepared for this, and the griffons had them considerably outnumbered.

The golden griffon pivoted in her direction, and she chanted another spell. The creature crouched and spread his wings, but before he could spring, she reached the end of her incantation, jabbed with her staff, and a huge spider web flickered into existence to cover the beast and hold it to the ground. The mesh appeared a strand at a time but all in the blink of an eye, as though an invisible arachnid were weaving it fast as lightning.

Yhelbruna immediately began another incantation, this one intended to begin reinstating the coercions she’d removed only moments before. Meanwhile, the golden griffon strained, biting, lashing his wings, and heaving back and forth, and his sharp beak and prodigious might snapped the sticky strands of webbing two and three at a time.

She could tell the telthor would break free before she completed even a frantic, abbreviated version of the first of the spells that had bound it before. But as the last of the webbing parted, Fyazel extended an oaken wand and shouted words of command.

Despite her desperate circumstances, Yhelbruna felt a flicker of surprise. Every spellcaster had a unique style, and over the course of many years and group workings, she’d become familiar with Fyazel’s. Although she couldn’t say precisely what, something about the other hathran’s delivery seemed different.

But then again, she and Fyazel had never been together in a life-or-death emergency before, and the important thing was that the priestess of the moon was trying to help. Yhelbruna wrenched her thoughts back to the matter at hand.

On the final syllable of Fyazel’s spell, gray vapor puffed into being around the golden griffon. The mist dispersed instantly, but, stunned, the telthor faltered long enough for Yhelbruna to complete her own magic. The golden griffon let out a screech and stood rigid and shuddering.

She restored her original coercions one at a time, linking and layering them as though she were weaving another sort of web. It was only when she felt the strands draw tightly that she dared to look away and see what else was going on.

To her relief, the other griffons had broken off the attack. But three of the curious folk who’d wandered forth from Immilmar to witness the claiming of the beasts lay in pieces in patches of bloody snow. So did a griffon, at Mangan’s feet. All of it was a waste, a tragedy, and an affront to the deities who’d given the winged creatures to Rashemen in anticipation of its hour of need.

Bez peered around the same way Yhelbruna was, making sure the fight was really over. Then, scowling, his face a mottled crimson, he advanced on Sandrue.

“Captain!” the beast master said. “Please! I’m sorry!”

The sellsword captain took a long breath. Sparks danced and crackled on the main gauche.

Then he said, “The hathran, prompted by a very proper regard for the griffon and all he represents, instructed you to be gentle with him. But what if you’re less gentle? Will you then be able to do your job?”

If Sandrue hesitated, it was only for an instant. “Yes, Captain.”

Bez turned to Mangan and gave him an apologetic smile. “Well, then, Majesty, it seems the course is clear.”

“No,” Yhelbruna said.

The sellsword frowned. “Lady, with respect, you were the one who set the price for the griffons, and my men and I have paid it. I’m sure neither the Wychlaran nor the Iron Lord are so dishonorable that they’d try to renege on the agreement, no matter what measures are required to fulfill it.”

“You misunderstand,” she said. “There was nothing wrong with Sandrue’s magic. It failed because the spirits wouldn’t allow it to succeed. And that can only be because the threat to Rashemen isn’t over.”

“That’s preposterous,” Bez replied. He shifted his gaze back to Mangan. “I brought you proof of my victory. Surely a warrior found it convincing even if a priestess doesn’t.”

Mangan scowled and scratched at his close-cropped black beard with its sprinkling of white. “Hathran, do you actually hear the spirits telling you the danger isn’t over? Or are you guessing?”

Yhelbruna hesitated. “I’m interpreting what we all just experienced.”

“Then … you know I respect you, and where this matter is concerned, I’ve done what you wanted at every step along the way. But now, Captain Bez has a point. Perhaps fair dealing requires us to release the griffons even if it requires some rough handling for our guests to take possession.”

“ ‘Rough handling’ or no, the druid will fail as he failed before.”

“Maybe not if you don’t use your own magic to thwart him,” Bez said, and then, before she could respond: “I apologize. That was a rude and, I’m sure, baseless thing to say. But, Iron Lord, all I ask is that Sandrue be allowed another try.”

“If he is,” Yhelbruna said, “it’s likely more people and griffons will die, and we’ll be flouting what we now discern to be the will of the Three.”

“What you claim to ‘discern,’ ” little Melemer murmured, just loud enough to make himself heard while still pretending he didn’t mean to be.

Frowning, Mangan wiped the blood from his broadsword. It was his way of giving himself a moment to ponder, and Yhelbruna had an unpleasant feeling she knew where his deliberations were leading.

She supposed she could simply order him to do what she wanted. She was a Witch of Rashemen, and generally deemed one of the wisest and most powerful. In theory, she stood above any male.

But in practice, matters weren’t always that simple. Every Rashemi, including herself, respected Mangan, and in the matter of the griffons and the menace of the undead, she’d consistently overruled his seemingly sensible advice. She didn’t want to appear unreasonable and high-handed yet again. She needed his respect if they were to work together to protect the land.

So she too, pondered, and then something occurred to her, or perhaps some kindly spirit whispered in her ear. “I just realized something curious,” she said.

“What?” the Iron Lord replied.

“Captain Bez told us about the great battle he fought. But I don’t see any wounds on him or any of these sellswords. I didn’t notice any on those we left back in town either. Or scars on the hull of the skyship.”

Mangan’s brow furrowed. “Now that you mention it, neither did I.”

Bez smiled. “You can attribute that to the advantages afforded by a flying vessel with enchanted artillery and a complement of spellcasters. We can rain destruction on foes who often have no way of striking back. It’s not a particularly sporting way to fight, but as I’m sure Your Majesty will agree, war isn’t a game.”

“I’ve been to war myself,” Yhelbruna said, “so I certainly agree. Just as I’m sure the Iron Lord will agree that creatures ensconced in a castle like the Fortress of the Half-Demon would, if bombarded from above, take shelter inside the donjons and dungeons. Even the crew of a skyship would have to come down to earth and fight them at close quarters to really clean them out.”

Bez shrugged. “My men are good at their work, and I remind you again, High Lady, you’re the one who told everybody else your goddesses and spirits wanted this chore attended to. Perhaps they graced us with their blessings.”

Mangan sheathed his sword, and the cross guard clicked against the gold at the mouth of the scabbard. “We’ll do this. Captain, you and your men will take the rest you acknowledge you need. Yhelbruna will further inquire into the will of the spirits through prayer and ritual. I’ll find out if any reports come in from the countryside to indicate that there are still undead running loose. And we’ll see where we are a few days hence. Agreed?”

“Yes,” Yhelbruna said.

Bez smiled a crooked smile. “It seems I have little choice.” He blew on the forte of his rapier blade, and the coating of frost melted in a puff of steam.

A populous town stood around the base of the ancient fortress called the Citadel to serve the needs of those who dwelled therein, but the cobbled streets, slippery with filthy slush, seemed half-deserted after sundown. That was because sentient undead, an accepted element of society in the Thay of Aoth’s early years but the true elite in the realm that had arisen in the wake of the Spellplague, stalked the night in plenitude while mortals with weak nerves or good sense stayed behind closed doors.

Still, it wasn’t passing within a few paces of the creatures’ withered, linen-wrapped, or alabaster faces that made Aoth edgy. He’d grown grimly accustomed to the undead in all their eeriness fighting the War of the Zulkirs, and he’d slipped incognito into a fair number of enemy towns and strongholds in his time. It was the proximity of the Citadel itself-its tallest spire stabbing the night sky like a blade-that wore on his nerves.

He scowled and told himself to calm down. He didn’t even know that Szass Tam was in residence. The lich could be anywhere in Thay or in all of Faerun, for that matter, and even if he was nearby, he surely had better things to do than cast around for an enemy who shouldn’t have been anywhere near his dominions in the first place.

Still, one of Faerun’s preeminent wizards might possess occult means of sensing all sorts of things. And when Szass Tam had set about the final slaughter of his foes, Aoth was the one fish who’d slipped the net.

The blurry, luminous ghost of a young woman silently sauntered toward Aoth and Orgurth. At first, like a sleepwalker, the phantom seemed oblivious to their presence. Then, suddenly, she rounded on them, and her transparent face brightened with an exaggerated smile of surprise and delight. She opened her arms, inviting an embrace.

Aoth felt a lustful urge to kiss her. He touched one of his tattoos through his mail, and the resulting tingle of protective magic cleared his head. Orgurth, however, started forward.

For want of a subtler remedy, Aoth grabbed the orc and shook him. Orgurth struggled for a moment and then relaxed in his grip.

That still left the problem of the ghost, who, in this new Thay even more than in the old, was free to chastise commoners who refused her attentions in any way she liked. Fortunately, though, she simply laughed-her mirth was silent, but Aoth could feel it chiming in his head-and drifted on her way.

“By the Black Hand,” Orgurth growled. “What was it going to do to me?”

Aoth shrugged. “Age you a thousand years? Eat your soul? Something unpleasant. Keep moving.”

They prowled onward, and then he felt Jet’s mind reaching out across the hundreds of miles separating them. It wasn’t an ideal time for a palaver, but he was eager for one anyway. Because of his injuries, the griffon had recently spent so much time sleeping that their communication had been infrequent.

Dividing his attention, still watching the street for danger, Aoth answered, I’m here. How are you?

As I’ve told you. The burns are healing slowly. In their way.

Aoth frowned at the sense of despondency underlying the words. Weeping Ilmater, what’s the matter with you? You’ve been wounded before.

Not like this, and when it was bad, I always reached a healer quickly. If it turns out I’m never going to fly-

Curse it, just stop! We’ll get you healed, and meanwhile, you just have to put up with the pain and be my eyes, ears, and voice in Rashemen. Now stop whining and tell me what’s going on.

It took Jet a moment to answer, but when he did, he sounded a little more like himself. Vandar and Dai Shan go into the maze twice a day. They still haven’t found any trace of Jhesrhi or Cera. I need to start searching too.

Only when you’re ready.

If Jhesrhi and your mate need me-

I know how you feel. But they can take care of themselves, and you can’t do anybody any good by setting back your recovery.

You don’t know what it’s like to just lie here-

Yes, I do. From back when the Blue Fire blinded me, before my eyes adjusted. So I’ll say it again: stop whining. Tell me about Dai Shan. Has he raised a shadow and sent it running back to Immilmar?

Not yet, Jet answered. He claims that even before we were wounded, he stretched that particular talent to the breaking point. He says that if he tried to use it again right now, he might become one of the “Shadowless,” whatever that means.

A patrol of zombie warriors with glowing amber eyes came marching down the street. Aoth and Orgurth ceded them the center of the street, and the creatures only gave them a cursory glance before continuing on their way.

At the same time, Aoth continued his psychic conversation: Well, Dai Shan’s messenger likely doesn’t matter anymore anyway. By now, Bez has probably taken charge of the griffons and flown south, in which case, our revenge will have to wait. Maybe, come spring, we can find out who the Storm of Vengeance is fighting for and sell the Brotherhood’s services to the other side. Then we’ll kill the treacherous son of a dog on the battlefield.

If I hadn’t provoked him into casting fire at me, or done a better job of dodging-

Stop it! You haven’t done anything idiotic, and neither have I. We’ve just had rotten luck. But I’ll be with you soon-in fact, I’m working on it now-and then we’ll put everything right. Understand?

Jet hesitated, and Aoth could feel the griffon’s urge to make a sardonic reply. But what he said was, Yes.

Good. Rest now, and we’ll talk again later.

He and Jet allowed their psychic linkage to attenuate, although it didn’t break entirely, as it never could so long as they were both alive and in the same world. He could still sense the griffon’s presence in somewhat the same way that, if he chose to pay attention to it, he could feel his right hand at the end of his arm.

“Bad news?” Orgurth murmured. He’d learned to recognize when Aoth was communing with his distant familiar, and apparently he’d also marked a grim cast to his companion’s expression.

Aoth had avoided confiding much information or even his full name to Orgurth lest even a runaway slave succumb to the temptation to betray a notorious enemy of the realm to the authorities in hopes of a lavish reward. Still, the colloquy with Jet had left him with feelings that needed to come out somehow.

“One of my best friends,” he growled, “is so badly hurt he fears being crippled forevermore, and he’s coping with the prospect about as well as you or I would in his place. My foster daughter and the woman I love are caught in a magical trap. A foe is making off with a treasure that’s rightfully mine. So yes, I think you could fairly say the news is bad.”

Orgurth grunted. “Well, then, we’d better go set it all to rights.”

It was the same confident attitude-indeed, couched in almost the same words-that Aoth had sought to convey for the sake of Jet’s morale, and being on the receiving end of the same treatment tugged a smile out of him. “True enough. Or at least I’d better. You’re still free to go your own way.”

The orc snorted. “And where would that way lead, I wonder, the whipping post, the rack, or the gallows? Maybe all three!”

“Well, there is that. And for what it’s worth, when we’re clear of Thay, you’ll be better than free. I can make you a soldier again. If that’s what you want.”

Orgurth grinned. “In that case, why are we dawdling?”

In fact, they weren’t. But while still trying to look like innocent folk abroad on legitimate business, they were approaching the chapterhouse, a four-story stone structure at the end of a dead-end street, with a certain circumspection. It would have been foolish to approach a structure full of Red Wizards in any other way.

The chapterhouses of Aoth’s youth had served the needs of one or another of the orders of Red Wizardry. The one ahead had been the property to the Order of Conjuration, as the reaching and beckoning hand symbols carved above the arched front entrance attested.

And the summoners, creators, and their brothers would no doubt claim exclusive rights to it still, except that the orders and the specialized studies that supported them had passed into memory when the Spellplague changed the nature of magic itself. Now all Red Wizards held all chapterhouses in common as sanctuaries where they could fraternize with their own kind, collaborate on projects of mutual interest, or secure accommodations free of charge when traveling from one place to another.

Steady magical illumination shined through the translucent horn windows to gleam on snow gray from a fall of ash. Hoping any observer would take them for some Red Wizard’s bodyguards, Aoth and Orgurth tramped across the little yard but veered off from the high bronze door with its stylized representations of flame, cold, wind, and other fundamental forces. No one would think it odd if mere men-at-arms who weren’t presently attending their master used the servants’ entrance around back.

Somebody was likely watching that door to make sure no one came in who wasn’t supposed to. But a person had to move through the darkness along the side of the house to pass from the front to the back, and like the facade, the side had a row of windows in it.

Some of those glowed as well, and muffled snatches of conversation, laughter, and even a mournful song with harp accompaniment leaked through from the other side. Two windows, though, had only gloom and silence behind them.

But unfortunately, as Aoth and Orgurth drew near, intricate designs of scarlet phosphorescence abruptly shined from the light and dark casements alike. The phenomenon looked like threads of fire had started burning inside the horn panes themselves.

Oblivious to the radiant sigils, Orgurth raised a hand to the first of the dark windows. “Don’t touch it!” whispered Aoth. “There’s a glyph.”

Orgurth snatched his hand back, then spit in the snow. “Here’s an idea. How about if you and your truesight don’t wait till the last instant to warn me next time?”

“I spoke up the moment it appeared.”

“If you say so. So what about the glyph? Can you get us past it?”

Aoth grunted. “You’ve already seen this isn’t my specialty. But I recognize the ward. I’ve breached it before. We’ll see what happens.”

He released a bit of the power he’d recently restored to his spear, murmured words of negation, and scratched a sign of his own on the casement Orgurth had nearly touched. The razor-sharp enchanted spearhead marked the horn as easily as a quill writing on parchment, and the red glyph deformed as the lines composing it writhed like spasmodic snakes, then vanished entirely.

“That wiped it away,” he said. “Now I just need a second charm to make the casement unlatch itself.”

Orgurth frowned. “That didn’t work so well on So-Remas’s secret cupboard.”

“True. But your former master’s approach to foiling thieves was to hide and lock up his valuables very well. The mage who enchanted these windows thought it would be more amusing to burn a burglar’s hands off. Now that we’ve eliminated that snare, we could probably just pry the casement open. But why risk the noise?” He whispered a charm, spun his hand in a flourish that ended with a twist like he was turning an invisible key, and the window popped open just a little.

Aoth put his eye to the crack and peered into a dark, unoccupied room containing a stained table with built-in manacles, a cold hearth with a rack of pokers and branding irons next to it, and shelves laden with thumbscrews, flaying knives, choke pears, and similar implements. Faded paintings of Loviatar, the Maiden of Pain, smiled from the walls.

Aoth glanced back at Orgurth. “It looks like you get that trip to the torture chamber after all. But if Lady Luck smiles, only for as long as it takes to cross the room.”

Ever since she was a little girl, Cera had liked staring into a fire and looking for pictures in the flames. Perhaps it reflected her affinity for that greatest of fires, the sun itself.

Even under normal circumstances, the pastime could produce a sort of trance. And when a twinge in her thigh, the result of sitting cross-legged for too long on cold, hard stone, recalled her to her senses, she realized she’d lost all track of how long she’d been watching the halo of blue and yellow flames flickering around Jhesrhi’s body.

That was worrisome-no sane person would want to lose awareness of her surroundings in an environment as dangerous as the deathways-but more worrisome still was the fact that when she grunted and stretched out her leg, Jhesrhi, sitting with her back against an intricately carved marble bier and her brazen staff cradled in her fiery hands, didn’t react in any way.

“Jhesrhi?” Cera asked.

The wizard still didn’t respond, although her corona of flame nearly gave the illusion of movement even as it set shadows dancing.

“Jhesrhi, please, talk to me.”

But the tall woman didn’t speak, and Cera abruptly recalled another childhood memory. When she was eight, she and her friends had stood and watched a merchant’s house burn down. One of the things that had impressed her was the way the blaze devoured it more or less from the inside out, leaving the hollowed-out shell that was the exterior for last.

She wondered if she was looking at a similar process now.

No, surely not! But still, it suddenly felt imperative to rouse Jhesrhi without further delay, and as an alternative to sticking her hand into the other woman’s corona of flame, she poked her in the ribs with the butt of her gilded mace.

Jhesrhi didn’t react.

Truly worried now, Cera pulled the cork from her water bottle and dashed the contents into Jhesrhi’s stern but lovely face. The liquid sizzled and puffed into steam.

Awareness surged back into the mage’s expression. Unfortunately, rage arrived with it and she bared her teeth in a snarl. She raised her staff, and flame roared up from the head of it.

Cera scrambled backward. Alarmed by the sudden motion, the bells in their antlers chiming, stag men scrambled up and then hesitated, uncertain what to do next.

Jhesrhi floated to her feet like a wisp of ash wafting up from a bonfire. She drew breath, perhaps to begin an incantation.

“Don’t!” Cera said. “It’s me!”

Jhesrhi’s golden eyes widened. Then the flame on the end of her staff burned lower, while those cloaking her body went out entirely. The dwindling of the light made the darkness draw in like a fist closing.

“I’m sorry,” Jhesrhi said. “For a moment, I … did you throw water on me? You shouldn’t have. The fire didn’t like it.”

“You were in a daze-for a while, we both were-and I couldn’t wake you. I was worried.”

“Then I don’t blame you, but … never mind.”

“We need light”-by the Keeper, how they needed it! — “but I don’t want you to squander all your strength making it. I can do my share.”

“When you conjure sunlight, it truly does use up some of your magic. Whereas when I just let the fire come out of me, it makes me feel better.”

“So would wine, but you wouldn’t drink yourself insensible with enemies nearby, and this maze is as dangerous as any battlefield. If we don’t keep our wits about us, it will hurt us.”

“Why, sunlady, what a distressing thing for an honored guest to say about my home.”

Startled by the new voice, Cera jerked around. Sarshethrian sauntered out of the darkness.

As always, his vileness set her teeth on edge, and her separation from the Yellow Sun, barely discernible even as a spiritual presence, made his proximity even harder to bear. But on this occasion, curiosity distracted her somewhat from her reflexive loathing. That was because he had a prisoner tangled in the cloud of his writhing shadow tentacles, which were apparently capable of hauling such a burden along without slowing or otherwise inconveniencing him.

The captive was a ghoul, with the gaunt, stooped frame; gray, rotting flesh; and protuberant, fanged jaws of his kind. But unlike the average graveyard scavenger, he wore a clean leather jerkin, breeches, and boots fit for a courtier. A curved line of oblong silver studs defined a reversed S shape above his heart.

“This,” Sarshethrian said, “is Gosnorn, an old acquaintance of mine who joined the Eminence of Araunt early on, long before Lod decided to betray me. He’s a resourceful fellow, and so his master uses him to carry messages.”

“Messages to and from Rashemen?” Cera asked.

“It’s a distinct possibility,” Sarshethrian said. “We’ll know when he sees fit to enlighten us.”

Gosnorn made a savage, snapping, flailing attempt to rip his captor with fang and claw, but the shadow bonds kept him from even getting close. “I won’t tell you anything!” he snarled.

“Oh, I think you might,” Sarshethrian answered. “You must have noticed that my new allies here differ considerably from the vermin who caught you. The woman with the mace is a servant of one of those ‘gods’ you’ve surely heard tell of. She can make holy sunlight shine anywhere, even here. Her friend with the staff has a similar connection to fire. All of which is my roundabout way of saying that if you thought your numb, dead flesh could withstand any excruciation I could bring to bear, you were mistaken.”

Cera glowered at the fiend. “Hold on. Jhesrhi and I aren’t torturers. That was never part of the bargain.”

Sarshethrian sighed. “Must I argue with you about every little thing? If you encountered a ghoul wandering around in your own world, you’d smite it without a second thought.”

“I’d lay it to rest as quickly as possible. I wouldn’t cause it needless suffering.”

“Well, then, let me put it to you this way. How badly do you want to help Rashemen? Or return there before your bond to Amaunator rots away entirely, and your mind and spirit rot along with it? Because actually, you were right before. Mortals don’t belong in the deathways and can’t afford to bide here for long.”

Jhesrhi stepped forward with flame dancing on her hand and flowing on up her staff. “You don’t have to do it, Cera. I will.”

She probably could too, and perhaps without it troubling her conscience. Aoth commanded the Brotherhood of the Griffon with a disdain for gratuitous cruelty that he chose to think of as “professionalism.” Still, Cera was certain that, first as the child slave of marauding giants and then as a sellsword, Jhesrhi had watched if not conducted torture before.

Yet eager as she was to be excused, Cera didn’t want Jhesrhi tormenting the ghoul in her place, especially if it wouldn’t bother Jhesrhi. The thought of the wizard feeling nothing as Gosnorn shrieked and thrashed, or perhaps if she even enjoying the dance of the flames, was disquieting.

“Thank you,” Cera said, “truly. But if it must be done, I’ll do it. Maybe divine magic will get it done faster.”

Sarshethrian leered. “Excellent. Then perhaps the fey can hold Gosnorn while we question him.” He likely didn’t want to be close to the ghoul while Cera evoked the Keeper’s light lest it sear him as well.

Jhesrhi spoke to the stag men in Elvish. They gingerly approached the pale demon in his haze of writhing, ragged shadow; gripped Gosnorn; wrestled him down on top of a sarcophagus; and held him spread-eagled.

Cera told herself she had to do what she was about to undertake for the sake of countless decent, living people, and had to do it too, to be reunited with Aoth. She silently asked the Keeper’s forgiveness, anyway then poised her mace over Gosnorn’s body.

“Please,” she said. “Just tell us. Spare yourself the pain.”

The undead messenger spit at her, but thick and brown in the wavering light of Jhesrhi’s fire, the spittle fell short.

“Do your worst, sunlady,” Gosnorn said, and sarcasm turned the title into a jibe. “By all means, do it to oblige one who’s more of a foe to your kind and your god than I’ll ever be.”

Cera took a breath, then reached out through what felt like an infinity of frigid darkness for the warmth and light of the Yellow Sun. It was difficult to draw down even a modest amount, but in this grim circumstance, maybe that was good. She didn’t want to unleash too much power at once and burn the prisoner to ash.

The spiky gilded head of the mace glowed from within, and even that was enough to make Gosnorn avert his face and close his sunken eyes. When she sent the magic blazing down at him, he howled and bucked, and the stag men nearly lost their grips on him. Mottled with spots of rot and mold, his skin smoked and charred.

He cursed and reviled her afterward, though, and for several flares after that, until his hide was riddled with black-edged holes, the air stank of burned flesh, and she felt too sick to her stomach and full of self-hatred to continue. Then she realized he’d finally stopped straining to break free of the stag men and spit sludge onto her vestments. Instead, he was simply shuddering.

“Now then,” Sarshethrian said as, his withered arm cradled to his chest, he approached the prisoner, “tell us all about it.”

Gosnorn hesitated. “Promise to set me free.”

The pale man gave Cera a crooked smile. “I thought you had him convinced, but I see I’m too impatient. Please, continue your ministrations.”

“No!” Gosnorn said. “I’ll tell! It’s Lod! I’m supposed to tell Uramar the prophet is coming to Rashemen!”

His single eye widening, Sarshethrian hesitated. For the first time since he’d accosted Cera and Jhesrhi, the fiend seemed genuinely surprised, if not astonished.

After a moment, he said, “You can’t mean across the ocean by ship and then overland. That would take forever. If he wanted to come, Lod too, would journey via the deathways.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s how I know you’re lying! He hasn’t entered my domain since the night I escaped his death trap. He’ll send fools like you to sneak and scurry through, run his errands, and perish when their luck runs out, but he’s too cowardly to come himself.”

Despite the agonies he’d undergone and the pain that surely lingered, Gosnorn managed another snarl. “He’s not a coward! He’s our champion! Our liberator!”

“What a sad misreading of history. But I don’t suppose it’s worth the time to rebut it. We should stick to the business at hand. Convince me that Lod is on his way. Otherwise, this lady will bring back the sunlight.”

The ghoul hesitated, then said, “He doesn’t tell me everything.”

Sarshethrian nodded. “I realize that.”

“Still, some of it’s not hard to figure out. Faerun is a whole new continent for the Eminence to conquer, and the way I understand it, Rashemen is a special part of Faerun. The fey are stronger there, and if we take control of the place and combine its magic with our own, we’ll have a mighty weapon.”

“In other words,” Jhesrhi said, “Lod has decided the mission there is so important that he ought to oversee it in person.” Consideration of a would-be conqueror’s strategy appeared to have focused her mind. Her speech was as quick and her manner as brusque as they’d been during the campaign to conquer Thesk.

Cera looked to Sarshethrian. “What do you think now?” she asked. “Does it sound any more plausible?”

The lord of the deathways cocked his head and stroked his chin in contemplation while his corona of ragged shadow whipped and coiled. At length, he said, “You know, I believe it does. Rashemen surely is important to Lod, and if I must be honest, his agents like Gosnorn slip through the deathways safely more often than not. I can imagine him deciding to run the risk.”

“So we ambush him,” Jhesrhi said.

Sarshethrian smiled. “My very thought.”

Stretched human skins decorated the walls of the game room, and someone had covered each with elegant calligraphy. Reading one, Aoth discovered the biography of a clerk who’d sought to embezzle funds from the quarrying business owned by a certain Red Wizard. The account was full of extravagant praise for the thief’s cleverness and audacity.

A second skin related the tale of a smith who’d maintained a secret shrine to Kossuth in his home. Here, the ironic expressions of admiration centered on the martyr’s piety and courageous determination to follow the faith of his forefathers.

Aoth too, offered to the Lord of Flames on occasion, and the mockery made him scowl. Then Orgurth, who was watching the door, murmured, “A wizard’s coming.”

Aoth turned, bowed, and kept his hooded head lowered thereafter. In Thay, a land where a fair number of folk bore a trace of inhuman blood, his luminous blue eyes were less noteworthy than in many another realm. Still, it was far from impossible that some observant and well-informed mage would recognize the notorious “traitor” Captain Fezim, especially if allowed a good look at his tattooed face.

The creature in the doorway was a shriveled mummy whose pungent cologne couldn’t quite mask the underlying smells of embalmer’s spice and dry rot. His frayed, stained wrappings made an odd contrast to the gaudiness of his bejeweled crimson robes.

“What are you doing?” the mummy asked, his voice an uninflected croak.

Aoth gestured with his spear to indicate the skins. “These are funny, Master.”

The dead mage cocked his head, and his neck creaked. “You can read the epitaphs?”

“I know enough words to understand the joke.”

“Hm.” The mummy turned and proceeded down the hallway.

Orgurth waited until he judged that the undead had shambled out of earshot. Then he whispered, “I take it the skins won’t help us.”

“No.”

“Then why waste time on them?”

“The writing could have been spells, like on a scroll. I couldn’t know until I checked. Now we can move on.”

When they did, their explorations proved as nerve-wracking and frustrating as before. They kept running into Red Wizards and their underlings. So far, everyone had either ignored them or given them a casual nod, but it might only take one busybody asking which particular mage they served to reveal they were intruders.

Meanwhile, they were often unable to search the most promising chambers. A well-stocked library was a case in point. Aoth was all but certain that if he only could spend sufficient time perusing the volumes on the shelves, he’d find a solution to his problem. But that was out of the question so long as a red-clad, shaven-headed man and woman were busy reading and scratching notes.

Another chamber, this one considerably smaller than the library, contained a faceless mannequin standing on a pedestal. The figure wore faded vermillion garments that might once have belonged to some eminent Conjuror. A harness of crossed belts secured folded silvery, batlike wings to its back.

Wings. But only a single set. Not intending for Orgurth to notice, Aoth gave him a wry sidelong glance.

“What?” whispered the orc.

“Nothing. Come on.” He led the way out of the memorial and toward a staircase.

“Is this a good idea?” Orgurth murmured.

Aoth shrugged. “That depends on what you mean by ‘good.’ We’ve searched all the promising-looking parts of the ground floor that we can get at. But we can hope one of the Reds left magic that will help us in his room. If someone catches us rummaging around, though, we likely won’t be able to bluff our way out of it.”

“Maybe we should just grab a mage, put a blade to his throat, and force him to help us.”

Aoth smiled. “I thought of that. But not every wizard knows the secret of instantaneous travel. Otherwise, I’d know, and we wouldn’t be in this fix. So if we’re reduced to making that move, pray we guess correctly.”

He felt exposed climbing the stairs. But he’d previously noted various sorts of folk, not just Red Wizards, ascending them, and he and Orgurth did the same without anybody accosting them.

On the second floor as on the first, hallways lined with doors ran away from the central staircase in four directions. But unlike the ground floor, no one was in sight, and only a few pearly, fist-sized orbs in sconces glowed to relieve the gloom. As far as Aoth was concerned, both changes were improvements. The dimness was no hindrance to his fire-kissed eyes and shouldn’t bother an orc either. But it might keep a Red Wizard or servant from spotting the interlopers at a distance.

He picked a hallway at random, and he and Orgurth prowled along, testing doors. About half were locked, and some of the unlocked ones granted admittance to rooms that were manifestly vacant. But other open chambers contained signs of occupancy such as trunks; rumpled bedclothes; or a naked, unconscious slave sprawled on the floor with puckered fang marks on her neck. Perhaps the wizards in residence were making the declaration that no thief would be foolish enough to pilfer from them.

Aoth hoped to prove them mistaken. But he left stray coins and baubles where they lay and noted with approval that Orgurth did the same, although the runaway slave did guzzle the last mouthfuls of wine from any dirty goblets he came across.

In one room, the searchers discovered a wooden sarcophagus inlaid with gold that looked ancient enough to date back to the days when the Mulhorandi had ruled Thay. Aoth’s truesight immediately spotted a hidden drawer built into the base.

He slid it out to reveal a book bound in musty-smelling purple leather. His pulse quickened, and he whispered a spell of comprehension and riffled through the pages.

Then he scowled. Because the volume was the grimoire he’d anticipated but didn’t contain the magic he needed. He dropped it back in the drawer and resisted an urge to slam the compartment shut.

“Don’t wizards usually carry all their really good magic on their persons?” Orgurth asked.

Aoth likewise reined in the impulse to answer sharply. “Sometimes. Not always. Don’t give up hope yet.”

They finished investigating the open rooms in that hallway and proceeded to the next. Midway down, they found ironbound double doors with the words KEEP OUT scratched on them in sloppy characters and a sigil made of linked triangles inscribed with more exactitude underneath. To Aoth’s eyes, the figure glimmered green with the power it held.

“Interesting,” he said. “Everything else in the house is as handsomely and carefully made as one would expect. But someone in a hurry both sealed and defaced this door, and no one since has seen fit either to breach the seal or even repair the damage to the finish. I wonder why.”

Orgurth grunted. “Break in and find out. At least it’ll make a change from ransacking bedchambers.”

Aoth recited his spell of opening. The glow of the ward didn’t so much as flicker, and when he pushed on the doors, they didn’t budge.

Footsteps thumped and voices echoed up the stairwell. When the folk ascending reached the second floor, they could easily glance down the hallway and see two figures lurking in front of a forbidden room where humble soldiers had no business.

The prudent course might be to hide and come back later. But Aoth suspected he might finally be on the brink of gaining access to something useful, and he was reluctant to turn away.

For after all, even hiding was no guarantee of safety. The chapterhouse was crawling with enemies who could stumble across him and Orgurth at any moment, no matter where they went to ground.

He jammed the point of his spear into the crack between the doors and, with a muttered word of command, charged the weapon with raw, destructive force. Then, using the spear like a pry bar, he threw his weight against the shaft.

Overwhelmed by the opposing power, the glow in the carved ward winked out of existence, and the doors lurched apart. Unfortunately, they did so with a cracking sound.

Aoth and Orgurth scrambled through, pulled the doors shut after them, and stood with weapons ready to attack anyone who followed them in. But nobody did, nor did Aoth detect voices raised in alarm. If the folk on the staircase had even heard the doors snap open, they must not have thought anything about it.

When he was satisfied such was the case, he turned to see what was behind him. His eyes widened.

Inlaid in the center of the floor was a detailed map of Faerun surrounded by a complex circular design. Their maker had no doubt fashioned each precisely, but later on, the floor had rippled and flowed, stretching, bending, and breaking the shapes and lines.

By the looks of it, the distorting effect had originated in the center of the map and spread outward. It hadn’t quite reached the painted text on the left wall or the stained-glass window in the back one. Dull with night, the latter depicted a Red Wizard flying with the aid of silver wings.

“Do you know what we’re looking at?” Orgurth asked.

“I think so,” Aoth replied. “In its day, the discipline of conjuration encompassed shifting oneself through space, and the Conjurors who occupied this chapterhouse created a portal for the purpose. But when the Spellplague struck, Blue Fire must have erupted through this gate, as it did so many-I recognize the warping effect-and someone sealed the room for safety’s sake. Later, folk saw the hurried warning he scratched as a piece of history, and that’s why-”

“Why they left it. I understand. But are you saying we found what we need?”

“Maybe. The Blue Fire isn’t burning in here anymore, the system of battle magic I studied involves quite a bit of conjuration, and the instructions for using the gate are there on the wall. All those things are good.

“But I was never a Conjuror or privy to the craft secrets of any order of Red Wizardry,” Aoth continued. “Magic itself has changed since the time the portal was made, the geography of Faerun has changed, and you can see for yourself how the Blue Fire damaged the design. Those things are bad.”

Orgurth grunted. “But you’re going to try to take us through, anyway.”

“It’s the best chance we’ve found so far. Keep watch.”

The triggering incantation seemed relatively straightforward. Unfortunately, the instructions for the mystic passes meant to accompany the recitation were vaguer, although it was possible a member of the Order of Conjuration wouldn’t have found them so.

Aoth made his best guess at what the author had intended to convey. He considered too, what embellishments he might add to reinforce the spell and so compensate for the damage to the design. Such improvisation added to the risk that translation might not just fail to work at all but go somehow horribly awry, but in his judgment, it was necessary.

When he felt ready, Aoth faced the portal. He thrust his spear at the ceiling and said, “The world is thought. I turn it in my mind and bring the Fortress of the Half-Demon-”

Clinking and chiming, the stained-glass window climbed down from its frame. In the process, its component pieces shifted, turning it into a flat but roughly manlike shape by the time it reached the bumpy floor. It raised hands with the fingers aligned for cutting and slicing and, still tinkling, started forward.

Aoth had never encountered such a creation before but took it for some manner of golem. Presumably the Conjurors had stationed it here to keep intruders like him from using their precious portal, and one had to give a password or some such to keep it quiescent.

He wished he’d noticed it before. But in its previous shape, it had looked exactly like any ordinary stained-glass window, and perhaps because it had stood dormant for so long, it hadn’t had even a hint of power gleaming inside it. In the face of such perfect camouflage, even truesight sometimes failed.

Hoping to melt the oncoming construct without making too much noise, Aoth hurled a burst of fire from his spear point that made Orgurth cry out and jump away. The golem, however, advanced through the flare without even faltering. For the moment it lasted, the fire simply brought the colors of the figure’s component pieces to vivid, glittering life.

The golem raked with a spindly arm, and Aoth caught the stroke on his targe. The impact made a cracking noise, but to his disappointment, the claws didn’t break off.

Meanwhile, Orgurth circled behind the golem and swung his scimitar at its leg. That produced a similar glassy clashing sound but didn’t damage the guardian either.

Aoth blocked another slash of the figure’s talons and riposted with a jab to its torso. His spear popped a trapezoidal piece of crimson glass out of the matrix. But when he snatched the weapon back from the hole he’d made, the surrounding segments shifted to seal it, and the golem kept attacking as relentlessly as before.

Aoth faked left, dodged right, and retreated toward the empty window frame, which had cold air blowing through it. The maneuver flummoxed the golem for only an instant before it turned and pursued, but it gained him enough time and distance to attempt another spell.

He rattled off words of power, and a whine shrilled from the head of his spear. Orgurth’s face twisted in discomfort even though he wasn’t the target of the focused noise.

The golem’s body rattled, and it staggered. Some of its component pieces cracked, while others shattered. When the howl died, though, it was still standing, and more motion ran through it as, once again, the remaining bits drew together to close its wounds.

Orgurth cut at the golem’s flank. Still indifferent if not oblivious to the orc’s attacks, the glass figure kept pursuing the mage who’d roused it. When it caught up, it raked with both hands at the same time.

Aoth caught one attack on his shield and sent it glancing harmlessly away. He also sought to simultaneously deflect the golem’s other set of talons with his spear arm and drive home a thrust.

The glass claws skipped along the links of his mail shirt, snagged, tore through, and sliced into his forearm. But at the same instant, the spear punched through what might by default be deemed the construct’s face.

With a crash, the entire golem shattered, and Aoth averted his face and shielded his eyes to keep flying glass from blinding him. When he looked again, his foe was a litter of shards and grit on the floor.

With the certainty that the fight was over, pain woke in his forearm. For want of a better remedy-such as Cera’s healing touch-he tapped one of his tattoos. The throbbing ache subsided, and the bleeding slowed.

Orgurth waved his curved blade to indicate the remains of their opponent. “That was noisy.”

“Too noisy.” Aoth raised his spear and recited his augmented version of the spell on the wall.

Argent light shimmered along the curves of the magic circle. With a wizard’s sensibilities, he sensed the gate starting to open. But he also felt it stop an instant later, like a warped door jamming in its frame.

He cursed and then heard voices clamoring elsewhere in the building.

Orgurth pointed at the empty window frame. “We’re only on the second floor.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you jumped and ran,” Aoth replied. “But with some tinkering, I still might be able to make the portal work. Especially with a comrade to keep the enemy from interfering while I try.”

For a heartbeat, Orgurth looked at Aoth as if he were crazy. But then he laughed and said, “Why not? Is it any stupider than believing I could make it out of town alive or survive a hunt through the mountains?” Orgurth took a fresh grip on his scimitar.

Pevkalondra had stationed a skeleton to watch for Uramar’s return via the deathways. Thus, she knew to come and find him immediately after his arrival.

But as she peered in at him from the doorway of the vault he’d taken for his personal quarters, she wondered if impatience was leading her into a gaffe. The undead were mostly impervious to fatigue in the human sense, and she certainly wouldn’t have expected the hulking swordsman to fall prey to it. Yet he sat slumped, his big, mismatched hands with their old stitches, mottled skin, and crooked fingers massaging his temples. Perhaps casting the secret spells of the Codex of Araunt tired him in a way mere physical exertion couldn’t.

As she hovered, he looked up and saw her. So it was too late to go away and come back later. But at least he gave her a smile, a stained, lopsided leer that would likely have petrified a mortal.

“My lord,” she said, curtsying. The spreading of her skirt made the tiny silver scorpions clinging to the velvet scuttle around.

“My lady,” he said. “Come in.”

She did. “How are things in Immilmar?”

His smile widened. “Everything’s going perfectly. With every night that passes, Nyevarra and her sisters replace more of the living or enslave them. Meanwhile, no one suspects a thing.”

Pevkalondra smiled like she thought that was wonderful news. In a way, it was, but the current situation had undercurrents that a traveler from beyond the western ocean was ill equipped to recognize.

“If everything’s well in hand,” she said, “then I hope you can find the time to wake more Raumvirans into undeath. After you’ve had a chance to refresh yourself, of course.”

Uramar hesitated. From his manner, one might have inferred he was listening to a voice only he could hear, but Pevkalondra didn’t sense any ghostly or demonic presences lurking in the crypt.

At length, he said, “My friend, you have my word, I’ll attend to it as soon as possible. But you’ll recall we’ve decided we’re not going to seize Rashemen through open warfare. We’ll accomplish it through subversion and magic with the durthans taking the lead. So for now, it makes sense for me to concentrate on reanimating more of them. That way, the work can proceed even faster.”

“No matter how smoothly things are going at the moment, your Eminence of Araunt will never achieve its grand design for Faerun without an army like the one we Raumvirans can provide.”

“I understand, and your folk will rise. Please, just be patient a little longer.”

“Of course, my lord, and thank you. I’ll leave you to your rest.” She gave him another curtsy and withdrew.

Afterward, as she stalked through the vaults, she wished she had someone to rend with her claws or set on fire with her sorcery. She settled for kicking a construct in the shape of a chimera that, because no one had commanded it to do anything, was standing motionless as a steel statue. The resulting clang echoed away through the dark.

Curse Uramar, anyway!

He truly seemed to believe all undead would dwell as equals and friends in the Rashemen to come. But would the durthans share power if they were many and the Raumvirans few? If they were the ones who’d conquered the land while Pevkalondra and her folk stood idle? She wouldn’t do it in their place!

And as if the durthans weren’t problem enough, Uramar had reanimated filthy Nars as well. Pevkalondra had no doubt that in any internecine conflict, the eternal enemies of Raumathar would back the witches and hope to be rewarded for it afterward.

There was only one answer. Raumvirans had to contribute to the conquest of Rashemen, whether Uramar approved or not, and in so doing, increase their strength to the point where no “ally,” no matter how greedy or covertly inimical, would dare to deny them their due.

Fortunately, Pevkalondra knew where to go to achieve those goals. And while Uramar, for all his prating about fellowship and equality, had yet to share all the arcane wisdom of Lod, she had gleaned how to reach the proper vicinity via the deathways.

She spied a Raumathari soldier with phosphorescent yellow eyes and the long gash that had no doubt been his death wound splitting his withered chest. He sat honing his halberd with a whetstone until, noticing her as well, he rose and came to attention.

“Ready our troops and as many constructs as we can manage,” she told him. “We have an errand.”

Orgurth positioned himself in front of the double doors, just off center enough that, if Lady Luck smiled, a person pushing one open wouldn’t see him for an instant, and just far enough back that neither panel swinging inward would block his path to the foe. Then, swallowing away a dryness in his throat, he waited.

Meanwhile, Aoth moved into the corner, where no enemy could target or even see him before entering the room, which, of course, he was counting on Orgurth to prevent. There, the mage whispered rhymes and twirled his spear.

With a snort, Orgurth reflected that some things never changed. Orc warriors drew the hard, dangerous jobs, and human wizards pulled the easy ones. But he didn’t mind. However long the odds, he was facing them with a scimitar in his fist and a brigandine on his back, and he owed that to his fellow fugitive.

Footsteps thumped down the hallway, and it belatedly occurred to Orgurth that the searchers might pass right on by the portal room. After all, if no Red Wizard had been inside for the better part of a century, maybe no one remembered the window golem or would understand the significance of the crash of breaking glass.

But that didn’t turn out to be the case. The footsteps halted on the other side of the doors, and people whispered to one another. Somehow, perhaps because a wizard had turned his magic to the purpose, the newcomers were able to tell where the disturbance had originated.

Both doors suddenly swung inward. Orgurth bellowed the booming war cry of a blood orc, the roar that made lesser warriors falter and freeze on the battlefield, and rushed the figures clustered in the opening.

He slashed over the top of a shield and sliced the cheeks and nose of a fellow orc from ear to pointed ear. The warrior fell backward and into a comrade. Orgurth pivoted, feinted high, and cut low into a second target’s knee. The wounded leg buckled, and that guard, a human, dropped.

Unfortunately, Orgurth couldn’t take everybody by surprise. The two remaining guards-more humans, one male and one female-came on guard. The man feinted repeatedly to hold Orgurth’s attention while the woman sidled to flank him.

They were no doubt competent and dangerous in their own right, but more dangerous still was the hairless, scarlet-robed man hastily backing away behind them. Orgurth couldn’t afford to let the mage stay beyond the reach of his scimitar and cast spells with impunity.

He sprang forward and caught the female warrior’s sword stroke on his shield. The other guard’s blade thumped his shoulder. It hurt, but his sudden move had thrown off the male warrior’s aim, and the clumsy cut failed to penetrate the reinforced leather of his armor.

Still charging, Orgurth slammed his shield into the woman, knocked her down, and ran on without paying any attention to whether he was trampling her or not. The only thing that mattered was that he now had a clear path to the mage.

The stoop-shouldered, slightly paunchy Red Wizard, however, was already chanting a spell, and when Orgurth rushed him, he lashed a talismanic orb of mottled brownish crystal back and forth and recited faster. A whip made of crimson light crackled into being in his free hand, and he snapped it at Orgurth’s ankles.

Orgurth leaped over the stroke. The mage released the conjured whip, and floating, it whirled, preparing to make a second attack all by itself.

Ignoring it, Orgurth charged on and cut at its maker. The Red Wizard dodged with surprising nimbleness and grabbed for his attacker’s throat. A fanged mouth opened in the palm of his pale, ink-stained hand.

Orgurth twisted out of the way and lopped the hand off. His blood spurting from the stump, the wizard gasped and froze. Orgurth followed up with a cut to the chest, and his adversary toppled backward.

Orgurth whirled. The red whip had vanished, but the remaining guards were nearly on top of him. He lifted his shield to block a head cut from the woman and slashed at the man’s arm at the same time the guard was hacking at him.

Orgurth’s stop cut landed, and perhaps for that reason, the human’s attack flashed harmlessly past him. He split the man’s skull, pivoted in time to block when the woman tried a thrust, and leered at the fear flowering in her face. He feinted to the outside, cut to the inside, and she too, went down.

By the Unsleeping Eye, it felt good to kill! So good that it was hard to imagine he’d endured the years of slavery without his spirit starving away to nothing inside him.

But there was no time to stand and relish the recovery of his true self. Down by the stairwell, likely drawn by the noise of the fight, another group of enemies emerged from a different corridor. The half dozen guards were gaunt corpses with lambent amber eyes, and the wizard striding stiff-legged behind them was the mummy who’d spoken to Aoth about the flayed skins.

Without the advantage of surprise, Orgurth had no hope whatsoever of charging all the way down the hall and cutting his way through six undead bodyguards to reach their master without giving the mummy abundant opportunity to throw spell after spell at him. Instead, he whirled and dashed for the room with the map. Behind him, the wizard croaked a rhyme.

Orgurth scrambled through the double doors. An instant later, thunder boomed, brightness flashed through the opening behind him, and a crash announced the damage when the conjured lightning bolt blasted the wall at the far end of the corridor.

Aoth was still murmuring and spinning and jabbing his spear around. The only change Orgurth could see was that the point of the weapon was now glowing blue, just like the human’s eyes in their mask of tattooing.

Orgurth wanted to ask if that meant Aoth was making headway but feared to distract him. So he simply faced the doorway, steadied himself, and caught his breath.

The thump of hurrying footsteps announced the dread warriors. As soon as they advanced into view, Orgurth sprang at them. He had to hold the doorway, and if he didn’t let them push him back, maybe their shriveled, stinking bodies would shield him from their master’s magic.

He cut into a zombie’s chest. The resulting injury would have finished any living opponent, but the walking corpse cut back at him, and he blocked the stroke with his shield.

A second dread warrior moved to flank him. Bellowing, Orgurth split its skull, and it dropped.

But at the same time, his first foe came at him hard, trying to push him back. Its fellows maneuvered to do the same.

Even so, slashing furiously, defending frantically, he held his ground for another moment or two. Then, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a mace hurtling at his head.

It was too late to swing his shield into position to catch the blow. He had to parry with his scimitar, and the resulting jolt loosened his grip on the hilt. He didn’t quite drop the weapon, but as he fumbled to regain a proper hold, the enemy’s onslaught drove him backward, and the dead men pursued him into the chamber.

Then Aoth appeared beside him. The head of his spear burning like a torch, he lashed the weapon from right to left and hurled an arc of flame into the dread warriors’ withered faces, balking them.

“Get on the map!” said Aoth. “Put at least one foot on Rashemen!”

Slashing and jabbing, the two fugitives retreated, and the zombies followed. Orgurth was too busy fending them off to look down and see where Rashemen was, but Aoth somehow found an instant to grab him by the shoulder and jerk him to what was presumably the right spot.

Meanwhile, the mummy stalked into the room behind his guards. He pointed the slender ebony wand in his brown, gnarled hand.

“We go to the Fortress of the Half-Demon!” said Aoth, and at the same instant, a jagged darkness leaped from the tip of the undead wizard’s weapon.