Unholy

CHAPTER NINE

20 Mirtul, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

Aoth found Bareris and Mirror atop the east wall. He himself wore a hooded cloak fastened all the way down the front to ward off the cold rain spitting down from the bulbous gray clouds, but the bard stood exposed and seemingly indifferent to the elements. Maybe, now that he was undead, they had no power to vex him.

Mirror was certainly beyond their reach. During the battle, some injury or malediction had knocked the personality and coherent thought out of him, and now he was less a visible presence than a sudden pang of vertigo when a person happened to look in his direction. If not for his spellscarred eyes, Aoth doubted he would have seen anything hovering there at all.

Bareris was gazing out across the rolling plains. Any other man would have done so with apprehension, but Aoth suspected that his friend did so longingly. Because what did Bareris have when he wasn't killing?

"See anything?" asked Aoth.

His long, white hair whipping in the breeze, Bareris smiled ever so slightly. "If something was out there, you wouldn't need me to point it out to you."

"Well, probably not," replied Aoth. "You know, you don't have to stand watch constantly. We have other sentries, and Jhesrhi has made friends with the winds hereabouts. They'll whisper in her ear if some threat appears."

"I don't mind. Since we finished cleaning out the dungeons, I have nothing better to do."

"You could sing and play your harp. Tell stories. The men-the wounded, especially-would be grateful for the entertainment."

"I'll be more useful up here."

Aoth sighed, and a drop of rain blew inside his hood to splat against his cheek. "Well, do what you think best, of course. Either way, you won't have to do it much longer. Lallara tells me the ritual's tonight."

Bareris finally turned to face him. "Is everything ready?"

"I think everyone understands it has to be. We can't dawdle here forever, even with the fortress to protect us. Another of Szass Tam's armies will come looking for us eventually, and we don't want to fight another battle like the last one. We've lost too many men." Aoth's mouth twisted. "The Brotherhood of the Griffon, especially."

Bareris hesitated, as though he had to search his memory for the response that would come naturally to any living man. But eventually he said, "I'm sorry about that."

Aoth shrugged. "It had to be done. Still, they were good comrades. I'll miss them. More to the point, I'll need to replace them, and it may be difficult. Until you dropped this mess in my lap, I had a reputation for keeping my word and for winning without taking many casualties-that last comes from choosing your causes and fights carefully. Now, it's all tarnished. I turned on the simbarchs and all but beat the Brotherhood to pieces against these black walls. So it remains to be seen whether warriors will flock to my banner as they did before."

"I'm sorry," Bareris repeated.

"Truly, I don't blame you." Aoth grinned. "At least, not too much. In fact, I want you and Mirror to stay with the company when this is over. We're a motley band of knaves and orphans as it is, and the others have gotten used to you. They'll make you welcome, and they won't care that you're undead."

"Thank you for that," Bareris said. "But it won't be over. Not for me."

"Don't be stupid! Of course it will! You killed Xingax and Tsagoth. We're about to wreck Szass Tam's great scheme. That's as much revenge as you'll ever get. The lich himself-his person, his existence-is beyond your reach."

"You heard the speech I made to the rebels. I more or less promised I'd continue to help them."

"And we keep our pledges," Mirror whispered, his sepulchral tone as chilling as the wind and rain. "The rule of our order requires it."

Aoth scowled. "For the hundredth time, neither Bareris nor I belong to your extinct fellowship, and we don't care about its code. In fact, he's just using obligation as an excuse to put me off." He shifted his gaze back to the bard. "But all right. I can see there's no swaying you. Just tell me one thing. What if, someday, by some miracle, you actually do manage to slay Szass Tam, and his destruction doesn't ease you any more than Tsagoth's did?"

"However I feel, I'll go into the dark as the dead are meant to do and hope Tammith is waiting for me there."

The Dread Ring was an instrument built by an undead wizard to serve the unholiest of purposes, and to Jhesrhi's way of thinking, it would have made sense to try to break it in the purifying light of day. But Nevron had insisted they work at night, because the spirits he and his aides would invoke would be more powerful then.

He'd insisted on Jhesrhi's presence in the primary circle as well, perhaps because her escape from the trap under the wall had impressed him. Accordingly, she now stood with Aoth, Bareris, and the zulkirs on the same rooftop where Samas had melted the minaret.

She grasped the core idea of the ritual the zulkirs had devised, but not precisely how it worked. Fortunately, she didn't have to. During the initial phase, her job would be to raise power for others to direct. Still, though in most circumstances she was confident of her own abilities, she felt nervous as she waited to begin. What if, somehow, she spoiled the ceremony? Then Szass Tam would murder everyone in the East, everyone in all of Faerun, conceivably, and it would be her fault!

Gaedynn was one of the spectators sitting on the parapet. He wasn't as much of a dandy on campaign as he was when idling in town, but with the siege won, he'd done his best to burnish his appearance. His new, jeweled rings and cloak pin, plunder seized in the wake of the castle's fall, helped considerably.

Perhaps he sensed that Jhesrhi was tense, for he gave her a wink and a grin. His attention evoked the usual awkward tangle of emotions. But on this occasion, gratitude predominated, and she managed a twitch of a smile in return.

In the courtyard below, yellow flame boomed into existence, at this moment of its birth leaping higher than the roof of the keep. The Burning Braziers had lit the bonfire that was key to their own ritual. Mirror, she knew, was down there with them. The ghost was no servant of Kossuth, but, paradoxical as it seemed, he evidently channeled some sort of divine power and believed he could be of more use standing with the priests of fire than among arcane practitioners.

The Braziers would use their magic to support the zulkirs' efforts. Scattered throughout the fortress, secondary circles of wizards would do the same. Every surviving spellcaster who'd marched from the Wizard's Reach was taking part in one fashion or another, and Jhesrhi told herself that all of them, working together, must surely have a reasonable hope of destroying the Ring, even if an infamous lich had built it.

However grudgingly, Lallara's fellow zulkirs had agreed that, as an expert in countermagic, she was best suited to lead the ritual. She thumped the butt of her staff on the rooftop and produced a bang like the slamming of a massive door. "All right," she said, "let's do this."

She chanted the first incantation, and one at a time, the other members of the circle joined in, either reciting in unison with her or offering contrapuntal responses. Down in the bailey, the Burning Braziers prayed, and the bonfire hissed and crackled, a hint of cadence and pattern, conceivably of language, in the noise. Farther away, the lesser wizards called out words of power until the whole gigantic fortress droned and echoed with the sounds of invocation.

Power gathered in the air, alternately caressing and scraping, searing and chilling, but whatever the sensation, it was never truly painful. To the contrary, a swell of exaltation swept Jhesrhi's lingering anxiety away.

Her consciousness expanded. Her thoughts brushed the cognition of those around her, and it was a touch she could bear without panic or loathing, an intimacy that verged on the seductive. She'd have to take care lest some other mind impress its shape on hers and compromise her identity.

She perceived the demons and devils Nevron had invoked, but only vaguely, as shadows hovering at the borders of physical reality. The vast, ancient entities evidently didn't need to manifest fully to lend their aid to this particular endeavor, and that was just as well. Otherwise, their knowledge and commitment notwithstanding, some of the spellcasters might have fled in terror. Many of the common soldiers surely would.

Last but most clearly of all, she discerned the Dread Ring itself like a festering wound in the earth. Like a well of unnatural and inexhaustible power. Arcing away from it were lines of force linking it to other such talismans, defining an immense dark circle of death on the face of the land.

That was the Dread Ring that Jhesrhi and her allies had to destroy. Not the stone walls and bastions, although some of those might crack and crumble as an incidental effect of their assault, for battlements and towers could be rebuilt. They had to attack the concept, the potential of the Ring. If they could obliterate that, it would spoil the whole pattern, and none of the similar castles scattered across Thay would serve its intended purpose anymore.

Jhesrhi realized that since she now perceived the true, transcendent form of the Ring, it stood to reason that her partners in the circle must see it too. Lallara glanced around as though gauging whether everyone was ready, then raised her staff and rammed it down with all the strength in her deceptively frail-looking arms. Jhesrhi expected a louder bang than before, and perhaps that was exactly what happened, but if so, she didn't hear it.

That was because, as the rod plunged down, she felt the power they'd all raised plunge with it. The magic both stabbed a hole to a different level of reality and thrust her-or perhaps just her spirit- into it, as if she were an ant clinging to the flat of a blade.

She cast about. Previously, she'd seen the essence of the Dread Ring as a well. Now she and the rest of the circle seemed to float deep inside it. The curved walls weren't solid, though, but made up of crisscrossed bands of shadow. Beyond them lay nothing but a sort of twilight, extending as far as the eye could see.

Bareris was the first to attack. He shouted, and his thunderous voice chipped away blackness where one length of shadow overlapped another. Then Aoth hurled fire from his spear and burned away a little more.

Lauzoril spoke in a gentle voice like a father coaxing a child, and a section of well dissolved into dark vapor. Lallara snarled a spell, and a kite shield made of crimson light appeared in one portion of the cylindrical, weblike structure, withering the strands that occupied the same space. Nevron fingered an amulet dangling on his burly chest, and a huge winged devil with long, extravagantly curved horns appeared to stab at the black lattice with an iron trident. Samas brandished his baton, and a section of the construct turned to gold. Jhesrhi could feel that the transmutation compromised it as much as any of the other assaults.

She needed to start her own assault. She couldn't detect any fire, water, or earth ready to hand. If she wanted to use them, she'd have to produce them. But air was here, or at least the notion of it, for everyone could breathe and talk. She conjured a howling whirlwind that tore away chunks of blackness like a thousand raking claws.

She smiled at the thought that things were working out. Breaking the Ring would be a big, arduous job, but the important thing was that plainly, they could damage it. Now they just had to persevere.

Then their attack roused the defensive enchantments.

Ragged, flapping things like bats-or their shadows-erupted from the dark construct in a blinding cloud. They engulfed Jhesrhi in an instant, and pain danced across her body, although she couldn't tell precisely how her assailants were hurting her-biting, clawing, or doing something stranger.

In any case, they were touching her, and she flailed at the vileness of it with her staff. Perhaps she hit one or two of the creatures, but that was of little use when she had dozens clinging to her and whirling all around her.

Fortunately, responding to her need, her conjured whirlwind struck to greater effect. It roared to her, snatched up the bat-things in its spin, and tore them into what resembled scraps of black paper.

Panting and trembling, she cast about and saw that her comrades too had managed to defend themselves. Lallara wore a corona of rosy light, and when the flying shadows touched it, they blinked out of existence, although each such contact dimmed it an iota. Hideous demons hovered around Nevron in a protective sphere. Samas flicked his quicksilver wand through a star-shaped pattern, and a dozen pieces of living darkness turned into mice, which, bereft of wings, plummeted down the well.

Still, Jhesrhi judged that her optimism had been premature, and events soon proved her right. No matter how many bat-things she and her allies destroyed, the well birthed more, and it was only during those precious moments when they'd cleared every immediate threat away that they were free to strike at the construct itself.

Then she noticed she was growing short-winded. Wheezing. Fighting for breath as if someone were holding a pillow over her face. Or as if the whirlwind she'd conjured to serve as her weapon were laying claim to all the air around her.

Something comparable was befalling her allies. Nevron plainly bore several wounds beneath his scarlet robes; blood soaked patches of silk and velvet above them and stained the cloth a darker red. He summoned another demon, a hairless, somewhat manlike creature with claws and feathered wings, and instead of simply appearing before him, the spirit burst forth from a tattoo on his wrist, taking the ink with it and leaving raw, shredded flesh behind.

Meanwhile, Bareris sang, and his bone white mouth and the tissue around it cracked and rotted. Samas brandished his wand, and pieces of his own corpulent form altered. Bumps of gold jutted from his skin like warts, and fishy scales encrusted the left side of his face. Lauzoril gripped a dagger in his fist, and as he recited his spells, flailed his arm repeatedly as though trying to cast the blade away. As though he feared that if he didn't get rid of it, he'd use the weapon to harm himself. But his fingers wouldn't open.

The attackers could all still use their magic. But every time they did, the well turned a portion of it against them.

Jhesrhi looked to Aoth, who was hovering a short distance above her. Bat-things flew at him; he pierced them with darts of azure light from the point of his spear, then jerked and grunted as though something had stabbed him as well.

"We're not going to make it," she whispered. There was no air left for anything louder. Not in her lungs, anyway.

But Aoth heard, and he glared with his lambent blue eyes. "Yes, we will! All of you, remember, we're not alone! Our comrades are still feeding us strength! Reach out and take it!"

Hard to focus on that when she was suffocating, with black spots swimming in her vision and raw animal desperation yammering in her mind. But she was a wizard, with a wizard's disciplined mind, and after a moment, she succeeded in shifting her perception to the Ring of stone and timber.

But she didn't see it as she would have if she'd reoccupied her corporeal form. Rather, she floated high above the stronghold and somehow perceived an abundance of information all at once. Though still chanting, she and the other members of the primary circle had fallen to their knees or onto their sides. Gaedynn and the other spectators watched them helplessly. Down in the courtyard, Burning Braziers whirled flaming chains and danced in and out of the bonfire. Sometimes they emerged with their clothing ablaze, but even then, they continued to whirl and leap. Glowing as if his body were made of sunlight, Mirror stood with his sword upraised. Elsewhere, Red Wizards recited rhyming spells and flourished their wands, orbs, and staves. Some bled from the eyes or nostrils, spat out teeth that had suddenly slipped from their gums, or collapsed thrashing and foaming in epileptic seizures. Szass Tam's wards were afflicting them as well.

Still, Aoth was right. Power floated above the castle in an opalescent haze. Jhesrhi immersed herself in it, drew it into her, and then she could breathe again. She lingered for another moment, bracing herself, refocusing her mind, then leaped back into the well.

From that point onward, it was a little easier, although the bats never stopped hurtling at her, and the well never stopped trying to steal her breath. Not until glowing red cracks sheared up and down the length of it, zigzagging through every section all at once. An instant later, the entire structure shattered into a million tumbling shards.

And a heartbeat after that, she was back inside her body on the rooftop. She prayed it was because the place her spirit had just visited no longer existed.

She was sore from head to toe but particularly in her chest. She was also soaked with clammy sweat, and when she tried to stand, she found she barely had the strength. Gaedynn started toward her, then stopped when he remembered she wouldn't want his help.

The other members of the circle floundered up as well. From the looks of it, they all felt as spent and achy as she did, but none displayed any of the bizarre injuries that had so disfigured their discarnate souls.

Nevron glowered at Lallara. "Did we really do it?" he demanded. "Can you tell?"

"Give me a moment," Lallara snapped. She closed her eyes, took several long, deep breaths, and murmured an incantation.

Then the first smile Jhesrhi had ever seen on that wrinkled, haglike countenance pulled the corners of the pale lips upward.

Jhesrhi felt her own lips stretch into a grin. Sensed the joy bursting forth across the rooftop as her companions observed Lallara's expression. In another moment, someone would let out a cheer.

Except that then, the crone's smile twisted into a scowl. "Wait," she said.

"Wait," said Szass Tam, and the trio of vampiric knights he'd brought with him halted at the intersection of five tunnels. Narrowed eyes slightly luminous in the gloom, alert for any sign of their quarry, the blood-drinkers peered down the shadowy passages.

Szass Tam dropped to one knee and sketched a triangle on the floor with a withered fingertip. His digit left a trail of red phosphorescence behind. When completed, the glowing arrowhead spun around. And kept on spinning, endlessly, until its maker snorted in mingled annoyance and amusement and wiped it from existence.

"Did you pick up the demon's trail?" a vampire asked.

"No," said Szass Tam, rising. "Whatever it is, it knows enough sorcery to cover its tracks."

"Well, don't worry, Your Omnipotence, we'll find it."

In another time, the warrior's expression of loyalty and confidence might have elicited Szass Tam's favor. But now that he'd trained himself in scorn, he nearly sneered at the vampire's sycophancy. But there was no need to show his disdain and several good reasons not to, so he simply chose a corridor at random and headed down it. His bodyguards prowled along behind him.

After a while, they came to an alcove containing a shrine to a minor godling, a psychopomp and guardian of tombs, who'd died thousands of years before. Something had smashed the statue's avian head and the inscription on the pedestal beneath.

"Has anyone reported this?" Szass Tam asked.

"No, Master," the same vampire told him.

"It's recent damage, then." Which meant the demon might still be in this part of the subterranean complex. Perhaps where divination had failed, luck had succeeded.

Szass Tam touched the topaz set in one of his rings and wrapped himself in an almost invisible haze that would deflect a blow like plate armor. Then something jolted him and sent him staggering.

"Master!" said the talkative vampire. "Are you all right?"

Szass Tam regained his balance. "Yes." For an instant, he'd wondered if the demon had leaped out of nowhere and struck him, wondered, too, if an earthquake had rocked the Citadel and the mountain and catacombs beneath, but now he could tell that neither was the case. Rather, he'd experienced a purely psychic shock.

Unfortunately, that didn't make the situation any better. Indeed, it was nearly as bad as it could be.

He brandished his staff. "I have to leave you."

"Should we-," began the knights' spokesman. Then magic whined through the air, enfolded Szass Tam in its grip, and translated him to the apex of the keep.

Attuned as he was to the gigantic instrument he'd created, he'd felt it when one of the Dread Rings broke. Now that he was on the roof, at the very hub and linchpin of the dark circle, he could tell with certainty that, as he'd guessed, it was the fortress in Lapendrar that had surrendered its essential nature. Impossible as it seemed, his enemies must have prevailed against Malark, Tsagoth, and all the castle's other defenders. Now the symbol Szass Tam had defined on the face of Thay was warping, collapsing like a spiderweb with a critical anchoring strand severed.

The terrible irony was that Szass Tam had elaborated on the pattern in Fastrin's book and had built more Dread Rings than its ancient author suggested. He'd judged that in an endeavor like the Unmaking, one couldn't have too much power. But now, the loss of one perhaps unnecessary castle threatened to render all the others useless.

At first, no matter how he strained, he couldn't think of a thing in the world to do about it. Finally he closed his eyes. Centered himself and fought for calm. He was Szass Tam, and he didn't panic. He wouldn't panic now.

When he felt ready, he considered the problem anew with all the cold objectivity he could muster. And saw something he hadn't realized before.

The sigil the Dread Rings defined could never exist again-not in the conventional, three-dimensional world. But there were many more dimensions than that, even if people couldn't ordinarily perceive them. Were it otherwise, the mortal plane and all the higher and lower worlds wouldn't be able to coexist.

He dropped his staff to clatter on the roof and summoned a different one, fashioned of clear crystal, into his hand. Once, it had belonged to Yaphyll, the greatest seer he'd ever known; he'd found it sealed in a secret vault in the Tower of Vision after the zulkirs had abandoned Bezantur. It was the best tool he possessed for what he had in mind, which was no guarantee that it was powerful enough.

He brandished the glittering staff and recited words of power, and an image of the realm's plains, plateaus, and mountains, the rivers, lakes, and seashore appeared floating in the air before him. Black dots designated the Dread Rings and the Citadel.

He spoke again, and the map shifted, although no one else would have seen it alter. That was because Szass Tam now viewed it in four dimensions, in a manner foreign to normal human perception.

And the experience was all but intolerable, like looking directly at the sun. As a necromancer, Szass Tam was used to contemplating the bizarre, the hideous, and the paradoxical, but even so, this view spiked pain through his eyes and deep into his head.

He forced himself to keep peering anyway, until he had the information to make his calculations. Which revealed that four dimensions were not enough.

So he called for five and let out an involuntary groan. Five were much worse than four, exponentially worse, perhaps. And five weren't sufficient, either.

So it was on to six, and then seven. Whimpering, shuddering, and jerking uncontrollably, he wondered if the mere act of observation could kill a man, even if the fellow was already dead. Given what he was suffering, he suspected it could, but even so, he refused to relent. He'd always known he was risking his existence by undertaking the Great Work, and if he perished now, so be it.

Eight dimensions. Then nine. And nine were enough. When he took the proper two-dimensional cross section of that curved and infinitely complex space, the surviving Dread Rings and his present location fell into the proper positions relative to one another.

He raised all his personal power and likewise tapped the reservoirs of mystic energy that were the Rings themselves. He wielded the magic like a scalpel, first cutting the tainted bonds that linked the healthy Rings to the ruined one. Then he destroyed the remaining ties.

The Dread Rings immediately threatened to fall out of harmony, to lose their fundamental relationship with one another. Szass Tam locked them in temporary correspondence through sheer force of will. Next, using his power as if it were an etcher's diamond-tipped stylus, he inscribed new paths between them, connections that ran through nine dimensions and the empty places between the worlds.

When he finished the new pattern, it demonstrated its viability by flaring to life, not with light but with pure power, perceptible as such to a mage's senses. Szass Tam immediately willed the nine-dimensional map to vanish, then, his strength spent, collapsed. His eyes and head blazed with agony, but he smiled anyway.