Prophet of the Dead

4

The world exploded into meaningless flecks of light and shadow. Aoth had the sensation of falling but, assuming the feeling even corresponded to anything real, couldn’t tell whether he was plummeting headfirst, feet first, or some other way.

No wonder I never get around to learning how to do this, he thought. I always hate it.

Then, suddenly, up was up, down was down, and he had solidity beneath his feet. He didn’t have his balance, though, and had to stumble two steps through the snow before he caught it.

He looked around and was relieved to see Orgurth was with him. Unfortunately, that appeared to be the only thing that had worked out as intended.

The Fortress of the Half-Demon was nowhere in view. What was even more disheartening was that the ancient Nar stronghold sat in the relatively flat wasteland that was Rashemen’s North Country, whereas Aoth was standing in the mountains. Some mountains, somewhere. Somewhere that Jet and the entrance to the otherworldly trap that had swallowed Cera and Jhesrhi were not.

He gripped his spear and felt the power inside it stir in response to his urge to vent his frustration on a pine, an outcropping, or some other target within easy reach. Then he noticed Orgurth’s expression.

Like many orcs of Aoth’s acquaintance, the runaway slave seemed to make it a point of honor not to act impressed by much of anything, certainly anything a “puny” human being could do. But at the moment, he was regarding Aoth with a touch of awe in his brutish face.

“You really did it,” Orgurth said. “We’re out.”

Were they? Aoth looked around and registered that none of the surrounding peaks was sending up a plume of smoke, nor did the wintery air smell of fire and ash. They weren’t on the Thaymount anymore, which meant that for all practical purposes, they weren’t in Thay. The only other mountain range even partly in Szass Tam’s domain was the Sunrise Mountains on the eastern border, and it was virtually uninhabited.

“Yes,” Aoth said, the orc’s happiness slightly dulling the bite of his own disappointment, “we’re out. You’re free.”

“Thanks to you,” Orgurth said.

“Not really. We’re comrades, we helped each other, and that’s all that need be said. Except that if you want me to make you a soldier again, we can go ahead and formalize that.”

The orc made a show of looking around. “I like the sound of it, but I don’t see an army.”

“Sadly, neither do I. But my full name is Aoth Fezim-”

Orgurth’s eyes widened. “The sellsword?”

“That’s me. Do you want to join the Brotherhood of the Griffon? Will you obey orders and follow the rules?”

“Yes, I swear!”

“Then you’re in.” Aoth sighed. “It will mean more once we join the company back in Chessenta.”

“I’m guessing that will be a while. First, you need to get back to this ‘Fortress of the Half-Demon,’ your familiar, and all the rest of it.” Orgurth cocked his head. “Why aren’t we there already?”

Aoth shrugged. “Because the portal was damaged. Or I didn’t embellish the original incantation properly. Or we shouldn’t have had dread warriors standing inside the circle when we traveled. Or the mummy threw disruptive magic at us right there at the end. It could have been any of those things. Truly, we’re lucky we didn’t end up at the bottom of the sea or scattered in pieces across the length of the continent, although I’m having trouble feeling lucky at the moment.”

Orgurth grunted. “However you feel, we won’t know how to get to your fortress until we figure out where we are now.”

“I was just about to work on that.”

Aoth studied the constellations with blue Karpri and green-brown Chandos wandering among the starry pictures. Then he reached out for Jet and felt that the griffon was asleep.

Aoth resisted the temptation to wake him and ask if Cera and Jhesrhi had turned up. The wounded familiar still needed his rest, and all his master truly required at the moment was a sense of direction.

“I think,” he said, “that if Tymora gave us even the hint of a smile, the gate tossed us in the right direction, just not far enough. If so, we may be in a part of Rashemen called the Running Rocks.”

“So what do we do, Captain?”

“We hike north.”

Tangled helmthorn shrouded the base of the dead tree, and Nyevarra touched her fingertip to one of the long black stickers that gave the shrub its name. Even though she hadn’t applied any pressure at all, a bead of blood welled forth, and she laughed. It was wonderful that the thorn could be so sharp!

The tiny wound healed instantly, and she wandered on toward a stand of shadowtop trees looming against the night sky. Their strength and wordless, inhuman wisdom made her lightheaded.

Simply seeing Immilmar had delighted her, but that joy was nothing compared to the rapture of walking in the Urlingwood again. She felt like she could drift on forever, deeper and deeper into the forest and the green heart of the sacred.

But that, of course, was nonsense. The spirits intended her for greater responsibilities and a more complicated existence than those of a common witch, and even had it been otherwise, vampirism came with its own perspective and imperatives.

To work, then. Shaking her head to rid it of the residue of the dreamlike state that had briefly overtaken her, she headed east.

She soon spied a clearing, a fire-built only of deadwood, she was certain-and the masked, robed women gathered around it. Such circles tended to attract the same celebrants ritual after ritual but generally welcomed any hathran who cared to take part.

This one proved to be no exception, and once the other witches had greeted a wandering sister, they returned to the business of minor blessings, consecrations, and offerings to the fey. Nyevarra, meanwhile, studied them.

Who commanded powerful magic, and who would be easy to overcome? Who could be enslaved, and who should be removed and impersonated? She mostly had it figured out when Yhelbruna walked out of the trees and into the firelight.

Nyevarra had to hold herself steady. She believed that even without the Stag King’s antler staff in her hand, she could defeat Yhelbruna in a fair fight. But that was scarcely what would ensue if the newcomer revealed an undead durthan’s true identity to all these other hathrans.

Fortunately, Nyevarra told herself, it wasn’t going to come to that. She’d hidden herself behind a new wooden mask, clean new garments, and charms of deception, and clever and powerful though Yhelbruna was, she had no reason to suspect the presence of an enemy here at the fire.

So Nyevarra joined the other witches as they gathered around their famous elder sister to welcome her. And, in fact, Yhelbruna treated Nyevarra like just another member of the coven.

When the amenities concluded, Yhelbruna pulled off her brown leather mask to reveal a youthful, heart-shaped face with a prominent nose. The apple cheeks and a general impish quality were at odds with her reputation for severity, but her frown was not.

“Sisters,” she said, “I’m sure you have your own purposes and your own workings to undertake tonight, and I apologize for diverting you. But I need your help.”

Two fools spoke at once to say that the circle would like nothing better than to aid her.

Yhelbruna smiled. “Thank you. I assume you’ve all heard what’s going on in Immilmar. There’s reason to doubt that the mercenary Mario Bez has truly ended the threat of the undead marauders as he claims, and Mangan Uruk asked me to determine the truth through divination.” She took a breath. “Unfortunately, so far, the signs have been ambiguous if not nonsensical.”

Yes, thought Nyevarra, because my allies and I have gone to considerable trouble to muddy the mystical waters.

“But until now,” Yhelbruna continued, “I’ve only tried in Immilmar. Tonight, I’m going to try here with your power and wisdom buttressing my own. I’m also going to approach my task by a different path. Together, we’ll summon one of the winds that sweep across the North Country and ask it what happened on the day when Bez claims to have taken the Fortress of the Half-Demon.”

Nyevarra’s fangs ached, trying to lengthen as they did in response to any threat. The Urlingwood was on its way to becoming a somewhat different place, but unfortunately, that process had just begun. Yhelbruna was quite correct that the sacred forest would still strengthen her magic, and in addition, questioning the proper spirit of the air might indeed garner information that straightforward augury had not. The durthans had no measures in place to protect against that.

And just to make the situation even worse, not one of the other witches in the circle was a disguised durthan or one of their mind-bound thralls. Nyevarra was going to have to subvert the ritual all by herself and do it without getting caught.

Well, so be it, then. As the witches took up positions around the crackling yellow fire, she made sure she placed herself between two of the youngest and least experienced. They were less likely to detect her exerting a corrupting influence.

Yhelbruna slipped her mask back on and then raised her staff. In response, the fire leaped higher. Spilling snow, a rustling ran through the branches overhead as small spirits and fey oriented on her. Even the towering oaks and shadowtops seemed to lean over slightly for a better view, although in a purely physical sense, that was an illusion.

“Hail Akadi!” Yhelbruna said.

“Hail Akadi!” the other witches echoed.

“Hail to the Queen of Sky Home, the Lady of the Winds!”

“Hail to the Queen of Sky Home, the Lady of the Winds!”

“In her name …”

Hastily considering tactics, Nyevarra decided the contrapuntal structure of the summoning could work to her advantage. If she wanted to maintain her masquerade, she had no choice but to give the responses. But when Yhelbruna was speaking, she could do the same, so long as she whispered softly enough that no one would overhear.

“Night winds,” she breathed. “Winter winds. Tempests and plague winds. All you restless wanderers who harry mortals for sport. Whichever of you can hear my words, in the names of the Destroyer and the Mistress of Disease, attend me!”

By the time she finished that much of her invocation, murmuring it a phrase at a time as the ceremony allowed, the forces everyone was raising for one purpose or another had set the air in the vicinity moaning, howling, and gusting crazily. The branches overhead rattled constantly, and cloaks and robes flapped and fluttered. The bonfire whipped back and forth, while flecks of snow blew off the ground.

With magic well and fully roused, this contest had now become a race, and even though Yhelbruna had all the other witches aiding her, Nyevarra thought she had a fair chance of winning it. The hathrans were trying to find one particular spirit and draw it miles to the south, whereas Nyevarra was willing to settle for any wind of a suitable temperament, and thanks to her and the other durthans, there were already more of such entities lurking in the forest than there used to be.

Suddenly, freezing air brushed her mouth like a kiss. She might have cried out and recoiled if she still had a living woman’s susceptibility to cold. Then the same breeze insinuated itself inside her hood to play around her ear.

“ ‘Restless wanderers who harry mortals for sport,’ ” whispered a husky feminine voice. “Perhaps I should continue the sport with you.”

“I’m no mortal,” Nyevarra whispered back. “In fact, if I’m perceiving you clearly, you and I are somewhat alike.”

“You flatter yourself. No woman of flesh and blood, even cold flesh and stolen blood, can claim to be more than a feeble mockery of me.”

“A ‘feeble mockery’ who pulled you to me like a fish on a line. Now that you’re here, I’d prefer to speak in terms of friendship and barter, as befits a witch treating with a spirit. But I’m prepared to resort to torment and compulsion if necessary.”

Beneath her robes, cold air slid over her skin like the elemental was assessing for itself just what punishments and coercions she might be capable of. Then, caressing Nyevarra’s ear again, she asked, “What do you want?”

“Yhelbruna, there, aims to summon a wind. I want to give her one and then make her sorry she asked.”

The spirit hesitated. “I’ve heard of Yhelbruna.”

“Whatever you’ve heard, surely she too is ‘feeble’ compared to a princess of Sky Home.”

“You mock me, but you’re right. Still, if I kill someone humans consider mighty, what will you give in return?”

“Soon, my sisters and I will rule Rashemen. Then I’ll sacrifice someone to you at the start of every tenday for a year.”

“I want them big and strong,” the spirit replied. “No children and no sick, old codgers either.”

“Done.”

The elemental rose into the air, and perhaps as a way of announcing itself, descended again as a screaming whirlwind that spun bits of snow and broken twigs around and around. Assuming they’d accomplished their purpose, the witches stopped chanting. Nyevarra grinned to see that even Yhelbruna was taken in.

“We thank you for answering our call,” the senior hathran said. “It’s urgent that we discover-”

The spirit gathered itself into the hazy, transparent shape of a floating woman. Suddenly, the eyes in its blur of a face flared red, and it struck at Yhelbruna with its open hand. The harmless-looking slap triggered another shriek of wind.

Caught by surprise, Yhelbruna still almost managed to speak a word of warding. But the elemental’s blow caught her and slammed her backward.

Other hathrans raised their wands and talismans and cried the opening words of spells of slaying and banishment. Spinning, the spirit raked them with its burning crimson gaze, and they froze in terror.

Ideally, the breathdrinker should then have gone after Yhelbruna without another instant of delay. But, succumbing to its urges in a way any vampire would recognize, it grabbed one of the paralyzed women, tore her brazen mask off, and kissed her.

The hathran flailed, struggling to break free, but not for long. It took her attacker only a few heartbeats to suck all the breath from her lungs.

Its thirst assuaged, the breathdrinker whirled back toward Yhelbruna, and Nyevarra was glad to see that the latter lay motionless on her back in a snowdrift. Apparently that initial blow had landed hard.

Amid another howl of wind, the breathdrinker sprang in Yhelbruna’s direction. Some of the other hathrans cried words of power to protect their fallen sister.

But those hathrans lacked Nyevarra’s extensive experience in battle, and when, still whispering, she rattled off a spell to counter their efforts, she finished ahead of them. Terror jolted them and in some cases made them recoil from the breathdrinker, while even those whose wills were strong stumbled over their incantations. Nyevarra could feel their half-made magic dissolve.

But as the breathdrinker plunged down at Yhelbruna, the hathran’s eyes popped open. Yhelbruna spoke a word of power and jabbed her staff at her foe.

A streamer of snow leaped up from the ground and in the process hardened from powder into ice. Pointed and straight, its base frozen to the ground, it jutted upward at the perfect angle to catch the elemental.

Stabbed through the torso, the breathdrinker slid partway down the icicle spear. Screaming in the way a wind screams, it thrashed but seemed unable to free itself. An ordinary spike wouldn’t have impaled a creature made only of air and malice, but the magic infusing this one accomplished what mere solid matter couldn’t.

Yhelbruna scrambled back from her foe. Its misty arm stretching, the breathdrinker struck another howling, openhanded blow. But the hathran did something to ward herself-even Nyevarra couldn’t tell what, though she felt power surge at the living witch’s behest-and the blast of air simply failed to find its target.

Chanting, Yhelbruna spun her staff and then jabbed with it. Darts of emerald light leaped from the head to riddle the spirit’s form, blinking out of existence as they hurtled through.

With another shriek, the breathdrinker resumed its whirlwind form as snow spiraled up from the earth. The frozen spike shattered, freeing it, and it gathered itself into its transparent, red-eyed feminine form once more.

Yhelbruna started reciting another spell and shifting her staff back and forth in time to the cadence. The breathdrinker shot forward and slapped.

The witch sidestepped, and once again, the spirit’s blow didn’t quite connect. But it did tear the staff from Yhelbruna’s hands, and Nyevarra grinned because that ought to be good enough. It should ruin the spell the hathran was attempting to cast, and with the enraged breathdrinker right on top of her, she didn’t have time for a second try.

Except that the loss of the staff didn’t spoil the casting. Yhelbruna didn’t stumble over the incantation, and she moved her empty hands like a weaver working at a loom, improvising a conclusion to the pattern the rod had begun.

Snow exploded up around the breathdrinker and, in that same instant, hardened into an enormous hand of ice. The clawed fingers grabbed the spirit and squeezed.

Shrieking, the breathdrinker became invisible. Perhaps that was an instinctive response, but the defense couldn’t help it when the hand already had it in its grasp.

Next, Nyevarra sensed the elemental trying to blow out through the cracks between the fingers, then seeking to become a whirlwind and shatter its prison, but the strength of Yhelbruna’s spell prevented either. The hand kept squeezing until the howling died, and the breathdrinker with it.

A hathran in a white unicorn mask hurried toward Yhelbruna. “Are you all right?” Mielikki’s servant asked.

“Yes.” Not even bothering to retrieve her staff, Yhelbruna strode past the other witch to the woman the spirit had drained of breath.

Kneeling, Yhelbruna held her hand in front of the fallen hathran’s nose and mouth and touched her fingertips to the side of her neck. Then she sighed and closed the corpse’s eyes. “Go to our mothers, Sister. Blessed be.”

As she rose again, the other witches clustered around. “What happened?” whined one of the younger ones.

“I don’t know,” Yhelbruna answered, and for once, a trace of distress compromised that steely voice. “I don’t understand why the wind was angry.”

If not for the need to keep up her impersonation, Nyevarra might have slumped and heaved a sigh of relief. It was regrettable that the breathdrinker hadn’t succeeded in putting an end to Yhelbruna, but if the hathran didn’t comprehend what had gone awry, then things were still under control.

“I don’t know why a number of things aren’t happening as they should or just seem off,” Yhelbruna continued, and already she was all cold strength once more. “But I’m going to find out.”

And left to her own devices, she just might. She could conceivably have figured it out this very night, or at least taken one step closer to the truth, if she and Nyevarra hadn’t ended up in the same circle, and no one could count on that kind of luck all the time.

Which meant Yhelbruna still needed to die. But Nyevarra hesitated to make a second attempt on the foul woman’s life herself. Loath as she was to admit it, the most formidable hathran of them all might survive again and in the process discern who was attacking her.

Unfortunately for Yhelbruna, though, Nyevarra saw an alternative.

Aoth reflected that if he’d wanted to clamber up and down mountains in the cold wind and the snow, he wouldn’t have become a griffon rider.

Still, it would have shamed him to grouse aloud. He had tattoos to warm him, stave off fatigue, and blunt hunger pangs. Orgurth didn’t, yet the green-skinned warrior wasn’t complaining.

The orc did grunt in surprise, though, when the trail they were following took them to the crest of a ridge where the snow bore a plenitude of tracks. A number of folk-or a number of somethings-had marched along the trail from south to north.

“Well,” said the orc, “I guess we’re not the only people in these wretched peaks. Maybe they’ll share their rations and their fire …” His voice trailed off as he registered something in Aoth’s expression. “But you’re thinking they won’t.”

“I’m thinking they won’t.” Aoth led Orgurth forward and pointed with his spear to something few folk would have spotted at a glance but that his fire-kissed eyes had noted immediately. “Look at this pair of tracks. The one boot looks like it had a big hole in it, and the other foot, the unshod one, might have been left by partly naked bone. What leaves prints like that?”

“Zombies.”

“Right. And this wasn’t the only one.” He stooped, picked up a decayed, frozen, broken-off toe, proffered it for the orc’s inspection, and tossed it away.

“So has Thay sent troops over the border,” Orgurth asked, “or are these more of the undead you fought at your Fortress of the Half-Demon?”

“The latter.” Aoth indicated deep marks shaped like cloven hooves and the clawed feet of reptiles as well as a tiny spitter of oil. “Constructs made these tracks. Lots of constructs. There may have been more of them traveling in the column than there were undead.

“And some of our enemies in the castle used constructs against us,” he continued. “As wizards go, I’m a poor student of history, but I believe those particular ghouls and such were reanimated Raumvirans.”

“So you and your friends didn’t really end the threat to Rashemen.”

“Apparently not.” That might conceivably mean Mario Bez hadn’t managed to steal the wild griffons after all. But it might also mean Cera, Jhesrhi, and Jet were in even more danger than Aoth had imagined.

“But I wonder,” he said, “what the undead are doing here. As far as I know, the Running Rocks are pretty much uninhabited. I suppose the creatures could be maneuvering to attack Immilmar. But with the dark maze at their disposal, they shouldn’t need to pop out so far to the east and drag their war band through this terrain to accomplish that.”

“Unless you want to look for a different path north,” Orgurth said, “we’re going to be following them. Maybe we’ll see for ourselves what they’re up to.”

Keeping an eye out for rearguards, foragers, and the like, they did travel in the enemy’s footsteps. And before the sun reached its zenith, they started to hear a crashing at regular intervals, the noise echoing from somewhere up ahead.

“That’s a siege engine,” said Aoth, and Orgurth nodded. During his time as a legionnaire, the orc too, had likely heard a catapult or the equivalent battering relentlessly at a gate or section of wall. The slow but steady beat was the giveaway.

Later, well past midday, yet another impact triggered cries of excitement. Whatever barrier the undead had been assailing, it had just fallen.

As the sun disappeared behind the peaks to the west and the western sky turned red, Aoth reluctantly concluded that he and Orgurth weren’t likely to lay eyes on the battle before nightfall, and it would be stupid to push on after. They’d do better to focus on looking for a sheltered spot to camp, fuel for a fire, and something to eat.

Then, however, the trail curved around a mountainside to a place where a slope ran down to the long, broad saddle connecting the peak they were on to the one adjacent. Slipping and sliding, the undead and constructs had descended onto the ridge and taken up positions threatening the other mountain, or, more specifically, the cave mouths among the crags.

Granite panels or plugs sealed all the openings but one, and although Aoth had no difficulty recognizing the gates for what they were, they blended so well with the surrounding stone that he was impressed the undead had spotted them. They had, though, and over the course of the day, smashed one of the barriers to pieces.

Maybe hoping to undertake emergency repairs, men in masks appeared in the cave mouth. Undead archers drew their bows, and wizards lifted their wands and staves. A barrage of arrows and ragged shadow drove the defenders back.

“What do you see?” Orgurth asked. The action was too far away for even an orc to make out anything much with the light failing.

“Things I don’t understand,” Aoth replied. “I judged from the different styles of weapons, armor, and magic at the Fortress of the Half-Demon that my comrades and I were fighting a mixed force of reanimated Rashemi, Nars, and Raumvirans. The band below us is all Raumvirans.”

Orgurth shrugged. “Maybe after your victory, Raumvirans are all that are left.”

“I guess it’s possible. But here’s what’s really strange. The defenders up there in the caves are men in masks. Male hathrans. Except there’s no such thing.”

“That you’ve heard of.”

“Right. That I’ve heard of.” For a moment, Aoth felt profoundly tired of this backward land and its secrets.

“Well, whoever and whatever they are, what do we do now?”

Aoth wanted to say they’d keep heading north. He was as eager as ever to reach the Fortress of the Half-Demon, and with the undead down on the saddle conducting their siege, the way lay open.

But was that the right move?

He was no healer to aid in Jet’s recovery. Vandar and even Dai Shan were already venturing into the dark maze at regular intervals to search for Cera and Jhesrhi. If Aoth did reach the ruin, it would only be after tendays of travel, and once there, what was he likely to accomplish?

But suppose he took a hand in the confrontation fate had placed before him. He’d be doing what he’d promised the Wychlaran and the Iron Lord he’d do and in the process might uncover some genuine answers at last. And if the masked men were some sort of hathran, they might have magic to speed him on his way.

“We’re going to help break the siege,” he said, “and hope the folk in the caves make it worth our while.”

The berserker of the Owlbear Lodge scowled and jumped up from the bench. His thoughts sluggish with ale and firewine, Mario Bez tried to puzzle out how he might have given offense, then realized he’d already forgotten what he’d just said.

He also realized he didn’t care. He supposed the barbarians had been friendly to invite men of the Storm of Vengeance into their hall to drink with them, but as far as he was concerned, this oaf was being friendlier still by offering him the chance to vent his frustration with all things Rashemi.

He rose in his turn, and other men on both sides leaped up as well. Hands reached for sword hilts and axe handles, and, starting to invoke the rage that was their gift, berserkers gave the unmistakable cry, half hoot and half roar, of their totem animal.

The imminence of a general melee jolted Bez’s thinking into a belated clarity. Once someone spilled blood, there’d be no stopping it; he and his crewmen were outnumbered, and even had it been otherwise, he had nothing to gain and much to lose by falling out with his hosts.

“Stop!” he bellowed. “This is between this lad and me!” Then he removed his rapier and main gauche and laid them on the table amid the tankards, goblets, pitchers, and bottles.

The fellow he’d evidently insulted-a typical Rashemi warrior, dark-haired, scarred, burly, and of no more than medium height-set his hand-axe and dirk aside as well. Then the two of them moved to a clear space while other people turned to watch.

Bez started to circle, but the berserker apparently wasn’t a believer in taking one’s time and feeling out the opponent before attacking in earnest. No doubt hoping to overwhelm Bez in an instant, he bellowed and rushed in.

That kind of explosive aggression could be effective, but it couldn’t startle a seasoned sellsword into passivity. Bez twisted out of the way and drove a fist into the Rashemi’s kidney as he blundered past.

The berserker grunted, spun, and flung out his arm. The backhand blow clipped Bez in the temple but not quite hard enough to make him falter. He stepped in close and whipped his elbow into the Rashemi’s face. The man stumbled back a step.

Bez then punched him in the jaw, and that stung worse than the blow he’d taken to the head. His knuckles throbbed. But the Rashemi went down.

Bez almost succumbed to the urge to kick and stamp on him, but that too, might have had unfortunate consequences. Instead, he waited for the berserker to shake off his daze, then offered him a hand up.

The Rashemi smiled ruefully and accepted the gesture of renewed good fellowship, and the spectators cheered. Bez acknowledged their approval by grinning, waving, and clapping his erstwhile adversary on the shoulder.

Then the door at the end of the lodge hall opened, and as the assembled warriors noticed the figure framed in the opening, they fell quiet.

The new arrival was a hathran with staff in hand and layers of robe and mantle shrouding her form. Her polished wooden mask was a bland abstraction of the female face, expressionless except, perhaps, for the hint of an ambiguous smile at the corners of the mouth.

Which was to say, she looked little different than the other witches Bez had seen since landing in Rashemen. He couldn’t make out why, as he regarded her, he felt a chill. Maybe just because of the cold night air blowing in around her.

She met his gaze and crooked her finger.

Still uneasy, wondering what this portended, he grabbed his weapons and buckled them on. Melemer and Olthe looked up at him, asking without words if he wanted them to accompany him or do anything in his absence. He shook his head and then followed the masked woman out the door.

It was late, and a whistling wind tumbled fresh snow out of the north. As he and his companion strolled south toward the little river that wound through the center of town, they appeared to have the night to themselves.

“You blundered your way into that predicament back there,” the witch said after a while, “but you extricated yourself deftly too.”

He snorted. “Were you peeking in the window?”

“I see that despite the excitement,” she said, “you’re still a little drunk. Otherwise, I trust, you wouldn’t speak to a hathran disrespectfully. Give me your hand.”

Wondering if she intended to rap his knuckles like he was a naughty child, he obeyed, and she clasped his hand in her own. Her touch was so cold, it startled him, though once again, he supposed he could attribute that to the general chill in the air. Her skin was nearly as white as the snow spilling from the heavens and blanketing the town.

She murmured a charm, and his thoughts quickened, while a hint of numbness fell away from his limbs. He had still been a little tipsy, even if he hadn’t realized.

Releasing his hand, she asked, “Better?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then we can confer like intelligent folk.”

“About what? Who are you?”

“Someone who hates seeing the champion of Rashemen cheated of his just reward.” They rounded a huddle of trees, sacred, in all likelihood, to some spirit or fey, and one of the old wooden bridges arching over the river came into view. She pointed with her staff and said, “Let’s talk in the center of that. The view is so pretty.”

And nobody, thought Bez, would be able to sneak up on them and eavesdrop.

The butt of her staff clicked on the planks, and the frozen river gleamed gray with Selune’s light. They stood at the railing and looked west, toward the point where the watercourse emptied into the lake, although Bez couldn’t quite see that far in the dark.

“Now you can introduce yourself properly,” he said.

“Unfortunately, no,” she replied. “That would be unwise.”

He cocked his head. “You’ll pardon a soldier’s bluntness if I say secrecy doesn’t inspire trust.”

“How much do you know about the history of Rashemen, Captain? The last time the learned sisterhood split into factions, the consequences were grim. No witch would want to be accused of fomenting another such schism.”

“And yet you are?”

The masked woman hesitated in the manner of one choosing her words judiciously. “You’ll have heard tell that Yhelbruna is well over a hundred years old.”

“Yes, although not the reason for it.”

“A gift from some fey, I believe. She doesn’t talk about it. But all you need to know is that long-lived isn’t the same as immortal. Her powers and judgment are finally failing.”

“What a shame. But how can you tell?”

“You know the Iron Lord told her to perform divinations to establish the truth of your report. Has she reported back?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Because she can’t make the rituals work. In fact, when she tried in the Urlingwood, the magic went horribly wrong, and another hathran died as a result.”

“Again, I offer my regrets.”

“As far as her judgment is concerned,” the priestess continued, “surely you don’t need me to convince you she’s grown peculiar and obdurate, as old people sometimes do. There was no sane reason to hold up your reward.”

Bez turned toward her, brushed snow off the railing, and rested one elbow on the spot he’d cleared. “If others think the way you do, then why not divest the old girl of her responsibilities-gently and respectfully, of course-and pack her off to enjoy a well-earned retirement?”

“Some would not agree with me. Yhelbruna’s past achievements blind them to the current sad reality. And even if everyone did …” The hathran sighed. “An outlander like you once told me we Rashemi are slaves to our traditions, and I see now there’s truth in that. Yet it’s dangerous for the land to have a failing mind in charge. And you, Captain, will never have your due now that, by whatever perverse, suspicious reasoning, she has decided you don’t deserve it. Whereas if the ‘old girl’ no longer stood in your way …”

Bez shook his head in amazement. “You’re asking me to kill her?”

“It’s your trade, isn’t it?”

“War is my trade, and as a general rule, it’s neither good for business nor particularly safe for sellswords to turn on their employers. Besides, mightn’t Mangan and the other hathrans take Yhelbruna’s bloody corpse as evidence the undead aren’t really gone?”

“Then don’t bloody it. Make it look like her tired old heart simply stopped beating, or she broke her neck in a fall. Or make sure the body’s never found. My friends and I can put about the suggestion that, upset over what happened in the Urlingwood, she went into seclusion to pray. The point is that when she’s no longer around to object, Mangan will give you the griffons.”

Bez grinned. “And some other hathran will have to rise from the ranks and take command.”

“I told you, my concern is for my country, not my personal ambitions.”

“Certainly.” Standing up straight again, he pondered her proposal.

Obviously, it carried an element of risk, but so did simply waiting around in Immilmar. The berserkers of the Griffon Lodge, their deer-man allies, Dai Shan, and Aoth Fezim’s familiar were all safely dead, but he couldn’t be quite as certain about the Thayan himself, or Jhesrhi Coldcreek and Cera Eurthos. Unlikely as it seemed, they could conceivably still turn up, or some busybody could discover by some other means that Mario Bez wasn’t really the savior of Rashemen but rather the man who’d slaughtered its true benefactors to steal the credit.

He drew breath to give his companion his answer, and then his eyes widened in surprise.

Apparently, as he’d deliberated, he’d briefly lost track of anything other than his own musings. In that moment, the witch had disappeared.

He looked at both ends of the bridge and all around. He still couldn’t see any cloaked and hooded figures, just a stray wisp of mist curling over the ice.

He snorted, mildly amused but annoyed as well. He preferred being the trickster, not the dupe, and it nettled him that the witch believed she could read him so well that she needn’t wait for a verbal reply.

Still, it wasn’t worth fretting over. Especially when there was work to be done, or rather, assigned.

He tramped back to the Owlbear Lodge, where all was now raucous conviviality, with some men booming out a song and other stamping, whirling, and tossing their blades back and forth in a sword dance. Looking in the doorway, he beckoned Melemer and Olthe forth as the witch had beckoned him.

The little warlock possessed a deviousness that lent itself well to assassination. The battleguard was a more forthright personality, but she’d follow Melemer’s lead if Bez told her to, and to say the least, it seemed unlikely that Yhelbruna could withstand both of them.

One of the constructs was a long-armed, short-legged giant with a bestial face that reminded Aoth of demons he’d fought in the past. Leaning forward on its knuckles, it had been standing motionless ever since he and Orgurth had first peered down at the Raumathari war band. But now, abruptly, gleaming in the starlight, it stood up straight and held out an upturned hand. Something black began to accumulate there either created in every sense of the word or drawn from elsewhere.

“There we go,” Aoth murmured.

“What?” Orgurth replied.

“I’ve identified their siege engine. Apparently, it needed to renew its power, but now it’s ready to resume the bombardment.”

“The undead already made one breach. I expected them to charge it already.”

“So did I. They generally don’t hesitate to make a run at the living. But their tactics are sound. The more holes they poke, the harder it becomes for the defenders to block them all.”

The orc grunted. “So you want to stop the statue?”

“Yes.”

Ever since Aoth had decided to intervene in the siege, he’d been looking for a way to make a difference. For all his toughness, Orgurth was just one warrior, and while Aoth wielded potent magic, he was just one war mage against a small army no doubt made up in part of others with comparable skills. He would, moreover, have only one chance to attack by surprise. Afterward, attempting any sort of aggressive action without falling victim to an overwhelming reprisal would be more difficult.

It made sense to use that chance to destroy the enemy’s most powerful weapon. If Tymora smiled, he might even surprise the Raumvirans controlling the construct and destroy them as well.

“How are you at walking like a dead man?” he asked.

Orgurth eyed him. “Are you joking?”

“I’ll need to use a more powerful spell than I can throw from this far away, and truly, the trick should work. This is an empty wasteland. The Raumvirans have no reason to expect any foes to come sneaking up behind them, and even if they do have lookouts posted, the average dread warrior isn’t all that observant.”

“You never told me what being a Brother of the Griffon pays. I hope it’s a lot.”

Orgurth tugged his cowl down to shadow as much of his face as possible. Then he practiced a stiff-legged walk and gave an experimental moan.

Aoth winced. “Don’t make noise. You don’t sound right. Sway and lurch a little, but don’t overdo it.”

He adjusted his own hood as the orc had. Then he and Orgurth clambered down the slope and trudged on toward the ranks of the enemy.

As he’d hoped, none of the foe paid the newcomers any attention. All the Raumvirans, or at least all the common zombies and walking skeletons, were watching the Rashemi stronghold with the single-minded patience of the dead.

While he and Orgurth made their approach, the black substance finished congealing in the metal giant’s palm, forming a ball so round and smooth that any artilleryman would have gladly loaded it into an onager or mangonel. The construct cocked its arm, whipped it forward, and stepped, just like a human being would, to put all his strength behind a throw.

The missile flew not at one of the sealed cave mouths but at the breached one where, no doubt hoping darkness would afford a measure of protection, masked Rashemi were stacking pieces of stone. Their half-finished barricade shattered, and those struck by flying rock cried out.

The construct resumed its previous stance. Another orb began to form in its palm.

But, Aoth resolved, it was never going to get the chance to throw it. Judging that he and Orgurth had sneaked close enough, he whispered an incantation.

The head of his spear glowed green. He extended his arm, and power leaped forth in a thin beam that caught the construct in the center of its back.

Unfortunately, to no effect. The steel figure, if steel was indeed what the giant was made of, should have crumbled into particles finer than the finest dust, but instead it stood unscathed.

Still, someone noticed the momentary flare of emerald light. Several figures stood around the feet of the construct, and despite the intervening distance, one of them, a female ghoul with a glimmering pearl in one eye socket and something tiny-lice? maggots? — crawling in the folds of her gown, oriented on Aoth. Her clawed, withered hand snatched a wand from a sheath on her belt.

Aoth pointed his spear and, still whispering in the increasingly forlorn hope that he wouldn’t rouse foes closer to hand, rattled off words of power.

Whirling blades of silvery light shimmered into existence in the air around the ghoul sorceress and her companions. They didn’t even scratch the construct’s legs, but they repeatedly chopped undead flesh and bone. The punishment might not suffice to destroy the Raumvirans, but it should at least prevent them from taking offensive action while they floundered clear of the effect.

Once again, Aoth hurled the pure chaotic essence of destruction at the construct. Meanwhile, Orgurth lunged into the path of an onrushing skeleton that had spotted the source of the green ray and hacked its skull off the top of its spinal column.

As before, the construct took no harm from Aoth’s attack. Now safely beyond the spinning blades, the ghoul sorceress brandished her wand and snarled words in a language Aoth didn’t recognize.

The meaning became clear, though, when the metal giant pivoted in his direction and charged, swinging itself on its long arms like a man on crutches. It picked up speed with every stride.

Aoth considered his options. Cold? Flame? A thunderbolt? Any of them might work. None was a good bet considering that the construct had already proved impervious to one of the most devastating attacks in his arsenal.

He turned and ran.

Orgurth sprinted after him. “The slope’s that way!” the orc cried, pointing with his scimitar.

“I know.”

More undead scrambled to intercept them as they neared the drop at the eastern edge of the saddle. Orgurth hacked the legs out from under another skeleton. Aoth drove his spear into a dread warrior’s chest, sent power surging through the weapon, and blasted its torso to scraps of rot and bone.

He spun around a few paces from the drop-off. “Keep the undead away from me,” he said.

“Fair enough.” The orc brandished his scimitar at the oncoming construct. “As long as you keep that thing away from me.”

“I’m working on it.” Aoth started an incantation, whipped his spear up and down like a drumstick in time to the cadence, and for an instant wondered once again how Jhesrhi was faring. She could cast this particular spell better than he could. But in her absence, he’d have to make do.

Orgurth cut to the chest, and a zombie dropped. Then, three times as tall as a man, the construct caught up to the sellswords.

Still reciting his incantation, Aoth dodged out of its way and was disappointed but unsurprised when it blundered past him but then managed to stop instead of charging right over the edge of the cliff. It was reasonably nimble for something so huge and heavy, and besides, when was anything ever that easy?

The construct turned and swiped at him with one of those long arms, and he leaped back just in time to keep its open hand from smashing him to pulp. As he recited the final words of his spell, he raised his spear over his head, reversed his grip on it, and stabbed it down through the snow into the frozen, rocky earth beneath.

Heaving the ground up and down, waves swept out from the point of penetration as if the saddle were a pool of water and Aoth had just dropped a boulder into it. Even knowing what was coming, he staggered and barely managed to keep his footing. Orgurth snarled a startled obscenity as he did fall down.

Meanwhile, poised at the very brink of the drop-off, towering, ponderous, the construct tottered back and forth, back and forth … but didn’t topple over.

As the jolting in the ground subsided, Aoth could see the automaton settling and recovering its balance. It raised its arm for another blow.

Aoth stepped back into the distance so the steel giant wouldn’t have to move away from the edge. As, still not quite balanced, it started its swing, he thrust his spear at the ground under its feet and shouted a word of destruction.

The word roared forth as a blast of focused sound that shattered the dirt and rock under the construct and splashed the rubble out into empty space. The steel giant reeled backward and plummeted out of sight.

Aoth resisted an impish desire to stand and listen to it crash and clang its way down the mountainside. Wasting even a moment was inadvisable.

Although, he didn’t think he and Orgurth were in insurmountable trouble. Everything had happened so quickly that many of the Raumvirans likely still didn’t realize they had foes in their midst, and the unexpected earthquake should have thrown those who did understand into disarray.

Whereas Aoth had more magic already selected for the casting. With luck, he and the orc should be able to retreat unharmed and lose themselves in the darkness.

Then, however, the saddle shook again. Stumbling, Aoth peered around but didn’t see the ghoul sorceress or anyone else casting the same spell he had. Apparently, his original magic had further weakened preexisting faults in the bedrock.

Rumbling, more snow and earth crumbled over the edge. Worse-much worse-it also poured down into a crack that started opening at the brink and knifed its way inward, cutting across Aoth’s intended line of retreat.

Standing where he was, even he couldn’t see how deep the new crevasse was, but it was plainly deeper than a ditch. Deep enough that he and Orgurth couldn’t just hop in and scramble right out the other side. He turned, taking stock of where the enemy was and what the enemy was doing, and realized he and his comrade had only one recourse.

“This way!” he said. He ran toward the caves, and Orgurth followed. Arrows rained down around them, and blue and scarlet rays stabbed in their direction.

Halting and turning when necessary, Aoth cast spells of his own. A burst of conjured sunlight seared and dazzled powerful undead and burned common zombies and skeletons to ash. A wall of fire leaped up to hold back other foes.

Flames didn’t stop the constructs, though. Either leaping over the luminous yellow barrier or simply plunging straight through, they raced after the fugitives like hounds coursing after a pair of stags.

By the time Aoth and Orgurth ran into the clear space the Raumvirans had left between their front ranks and the mountain fastness, the automatons were closing fast. Aoth wondered if he should stop, turn, and throw another spell. It might cost him his life, but maybe the orc at least would reach the open cave mouth.

Then, however, his fire-kissed eyes saw a sudden glimmer of power run through the peak before him. It looked like water flowing through a network of tiny cracks, and when it finished defining itself, he also discerned the first infinitesimal shifting in the bulging masses of stone it had outlined.

The constructs swept toward Aoth and Orgurth in a converging wave of sculpted blades, fangs, talons, pincers, and stingers, of jointed metal, wood, ceramic, and even stone. Then the face of the Rashemi’s mountain refuge, or a fair portion of it, anyway, dropped away from the granite underneath. Banging and crashing, enormous and unnaturally smooth and round-to make them roll better, no doubt-the dislodged boulders cascaded onto the saddle and tumbled onward.

Aoth and Orgurth stopped running toward the stones and poised themselves to dodge. But Aoth couldn’t see any spaces to dodge into. The boulders were like an onrushing wall.

He drew breath for another magical bellow. Maybe the blast would bump one or two of the boulders off course and make a space.

Then, however, one stone veered sharply to the left, and the one beside it flew off the ground in an arc that would take it safely over the warriors in front of it, in each case, for no apparent reason. Aoth wondered if an earth spirit was steering the boulders.

It was a night for cacophonies, and the crashing as the tumbling stones slammed into the constructs was the most deafening yet. When Aoth yelled for Orgurth to start running again, he could barely hear himself for the din.

As they clambered up the steep slope that led to the open gate, masked men appeared in the opening and brandished wands and staves. Other portals opened, and similar figures appeared in those as well. Thunderbolts and orbs of flame blazed from the ends of the magical weapons. Fortunately, like the leaping boulder, the attacks passed over Aoth and Orgurth’s heads to strike at the Raumvirans.

Hands grabbed the sellswords and hauled them into the cave mouth and to safety. A cave dweller in a leather owl mask trimmed with real feathers regarded the newcomers and said, “The avalanche was our best defense, and we were saving it for just the right moment.” His tenor voice sounded young and pugnacious, but maybe he was just afraid.

“Easy, Kanilak,” said a Rashemi in a wooden mask carved to put a third eye in the center of his forehead. His voice was deeper and older. “We likely weren’t going to get a better moment than when all those constructs charged within range.”

“Still,” Kanilak said, “these two had better be worth it.”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Orgurth said, “seeing as how now we’re trapped in this hole with the rest of you.” He gave Aoth a sour look to convey that he knew whose fault that was.