Unholy

CHAPTER FIVE

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

Over the years, Aoth had grown used to spotting things from far away that other people failed to notice even at short range, and this was evidently such an occasion. On a ridge a half mile distant, men in mottled green, tan, and brown clothing lay motionless on their bellies, watching the great column that was the zulkirs' army marching north with its mercenary contingent still in the lead. Griffon riders soared almost directly above the necromancers' spies but evidently hadn't seen them.

Aoth blew his horn to snag the riders' attention, then pointed at the watchers with his spear. His aerial scouts took another look at the ridge, then readied their bows and swooped lower.

"You and I could have killed those men ourselves," Jet grumbled.

"I'm a commander now," Aoth replied. "I'm not supposed to slaughter with my own hands every enemy who wanders into view. It would look peculiar."

Still, he wouldn't have minded the exercise. It might have taken his mind off the sad spectacle of the land spread out before him.

It didn't surprise him, exactly. During the ten years of the zulkirs' war, he'd watched the conflict steadily ruin the land. Blue skies gave way to gray. Green fields withered or fell to weeds and tares as relentlessly as estates and towns fell to besiegers and marauders. Contaminated by the residue of malign sorcery, the soil and rivers spawned blight, disease, and monstrosities even when no wizard was trying to call them forth. And Aoth had heard that, after driving his rivals out, Szass Tam hadn't exerted himself unduly to repair the damage, for reasons that were finally apparent. The lich had been too busy building Dread Rings and otherwise preparing for the Unmaking.

As a result, much of Lapendrar remained a wasteland, either barren or given over to pale, twisted scrub the like of which Aoth had never seen before. No one was maintaining the roads-vegetation encroached everywhere, and at certain points, sinkholes had swallowed the roads, or rain had washed the highways away-evidence that the great merchant caravans no longer traveled the length and breadth of the kingdom. Crumbling ruins dotted the rolling plain, which rose gradually as it ran up to the towering cliffs called the First Escarpment.

Although the province wasn't all desolation. Periodically, Aoth sighted a plantation still growing normal food for those Thayans who still required it. But even there, it was zombies, not living slaves, who toiled mindlessly in the fields when their masters, in all likelihood, had already fled the invaders' approach.

He'd told Bareris the truth. He hadn't missed Thay, not after the first few years in exile, anyway. He'd lived a better life elsewhere than he ever had here. But even so, the realm had been home in a way that no other place would ever be again, and a land of contentment and prosperity for many even if its neighbors thought it wicked to the core. It was… unpleasant to see it so corrupted and diminished.

"What's wrong?" asked Jet, sensing his sour mood.

"I left my kingdom behind, and it turned into this."

"Did you have a choice?"

"Not really."

"Could you have done anything about it if you'd stayed?"

"Almost certainly not."

"Then you're rebuking yourself over nothing. Stop it!"

Aoth smiled. "Your grandmother would have told me exactly the same thing."

"That's because griffons are wise, and humans have a talent for stupidity. Look! Are those more enemy scouts?"

Aoth peered and decided, no, the four men and two women probably weren't, because they were gaunt, haggard, and ragged. Three were poorly armed, and the others carried no weapons at all. Most tellingly of all, they made no effort to conceal themselves as they advanced on the column with its trail of hanging dust.

Outriders trotted to intercept them. Bareris swooped down on his griffon, perhaps to vouch for the newcomers and make sure the horsemen did them no harm.

"Those are rebels," said Aoth.

Over time, more such folk came to join the column. Flying high above the army, Aoth observed them all, but even his spell-scarred eyes failed to recognize their feverish excitement until he and Jet set down on the ground again.

Malark murmured the final words of the incantation, and magic whispered through the air. He considered casting the same spell yet again, then decided against it. It was important that no one stumble across the bare little room in which he'd stashed his supplies, but surely three layered charms of concealment were sufficient.

And if his refuge was secure, he might as well start hunting.

He drew on the scaly, yellow gauntlets with the barbed, black claws. He scarcely needed such weapons to kill in hand-to-hand combat, but some enchanter had flayed the hide from a demon's hands to make them, and the Abyssal taint still clinging to them should provide a different sort of obscurement.

His leather-and-crystal headband enabling him to see in the darkness, he skulked from the room into the maze of chambers and tunnels beyond, moving warily even though he doubted anyone else was around. Not here. Below him, so rumor said, lurked fearsome creatures, some that had dwelled there since the dawn of time and some that Szass Tam had placed, perhaps to contain the others. Above were storerooms, conjuration chambers, dungeons, and vaults, excavated by the long-vanished builders of the Citadel, that the current inhabitants had turned to their own purposes. But this level was a sort of empty borderland, deep enough that no one had bothered to exploit it yet but higher than the lairs of the monstrosities.

Malark found a staircase and climbed.

After a time, a faint, wavering, greenish gleam, the unmistakable light of perpetual torches, warned him he was nearing the deepest of the occupied levels. He left the stairs and stalked onward. Soft chanting led him into an ossuary, where hand bones arranged in intricate floral designs adorned the walls of one room, foot bones another, and vertebrae a third.

A necromancer stood with staff raised and eyes closed in the final chamber, the one decorated with grinning skulls. Perhaps the wizard admired Szass Tam, for like the lich, and in defiance of the usual Mulan preference for heads as hairless as any naked skull, he'd grown a goatish little chin beard.

"Hello," Malark said.

The necromancer's eyes popped open, and he faltered in his chanting. Malark felt something, some invisible entity the conjuring had held in its grasp, wriggle free like a fish escaping a net.

"Your Omnipotence," the bearded wizard said. He started to lower himself to his knees.

"Please," Malark said, "don't do that. You don't want to abase yourself before a man who means to kill you."

Straightening up, the necromancer peered at Malark as if he assumed his fellow Red Wizard was joking, but he wasn't quite sure enough to laugh. "Master?"

"I have to start murdering people down here, and I'd much rather begin with you than a menial. It's more sporting and will make a bigger impression."

The necromancer swallowed. "I don't understand."

"All you need to understand is this: I'm not going to use my own sorcery. If you start right now, you might have time to generate one effect before I cross the space between us." Malark sprang forward.

The necromancer snarled a word of command and thrust out his hand. Darkness leaped from his fingertips, swelled, and formed itself into an object shaped somewhat like a greatsword but made of sets of gnashing jaws lined with multiple rows of jagged fangs. Howling and gibbering in some infernal tongue, the fang-blade flew at Malark.

Who dived underneath its raking, slavering stroke, straightened up again, and tore away the necromancer's eyes and throat with two gory sweeps of the clawed gloves. The wizard fell backward, dropping his staff, which clattered on the floor.

Malark spun back around to defend himself from the fang-sword, then saw he wouldn't have to. Without the focused will of its creator to guide it, the weapon simply floated in the air.

Still, Malark thought it wise to silence its caterwauling. Screams of various sorts were by no means uncommon in these crypts, but even so, the noise might attract attention. He rattled off a charm of dismissal, and the blade disappeared.

Then he dipped a clawed finger in the necromancer's blood and daubed symbols emblematic of Shar, Cyric, and Gruumsh, deities whose worship Szass Tam had forbidden in order to honor his pact with Bane, on the brows of some of the omnipresent skulls. It was yet another form of obfuscation.

Lallara gave Aoth a scowl. "What's the matter?" she snapped.

Actually, she supposed that from a certain perspective, it wasn't entirely bad that he'd insisted on a private palaver in the command tent with her, the other zulkirs, Bareris, and Mirror. Her back and thighs aching from another long day in the saddle, she'd rapidly grown sick of grubby, malodorous serfs and escaped slaves babbling praise and thanks and proffering shabby handicrafts and trinkets. It was a mark of just how far the world had fallen that such wretches even dared approach her.

But she didn't like having a man who'd once vowed to serve the Council of Zulkirs dictating to her, either.

Aoth answered her glower with one of his own. "The rebels obviously think you've come back to overthrow Szass Tam and restore the Thay that was. And you're encouraging them to think it."

"If their misapprehension inspires them to give us whatever help they can," said Samas Kul, "then why not take advantage of it?" He had a walnut pastry in one hand and a cup in the other, and as usual, he sprawled on his floating throne. The ungainly conveyance had snagged the edge of the tent door and nearly pulled down the shelter when he came in.

"Because as our allies," said Aoth, "they deserve to know the truth: that after we break the Dread Ring, we're going to leave."

Nevron sneered. "Allies."

"Yes," said Aoth, "allies. Not subjects. You can't claim to rule them when you fled this land before any of them were even born."

Lauzoril put his hands together, fingertip to opposing fingertip. "Whatever they believe, by aiding us, they'll be fighting for their only hope of survival. Isn't that what's truly important?"

"I suppose so," said Aoth. "And I think they're capable of understanding that if we explain it to them."

His pastry devoured, Samas sucked at the traces of sugar glaze on his fingers. "But where's the profit in risking it?"

Aoth took a deep breath. "Evidently I'm not making myself clear. I'm going to make sure they know the truth. I'm warning you so we can all speak it. That will be better for their morale than if they catch the mighty zulkirs in a lie."

"You'll do no such thing," Lauzoril said. "We forbid it."

Aoth said, "I don't care."

"But you took our coin!" said Samas.

"Yes," said the stocky warmage, his luminous azure eyes burning in the gloom. "You can well afford it, and my men deserve it. But this isn't our usual kind of war. We're fighting for our lives and perhaps the life of the world, not for pay, and you four wouldn't even know about the threat if not for Bareris, Mirror, and me. So I won't take your orders if I don't agree with them. In fact, you might as well consider me your equal for the duration."

Lallara felt a surge of wrath, and then, to her surprise, grudging amusement. The Rashemi bastard knew they needed him, and he was making the most of it. It wouldn't stop her or, certainly, any of the other zulkirs from punishing him in the end, but still, one could almost admire his boldness.

When they had found out the rebels wanted to pay homage to them, the zulkirs had raised a section of ground to serve as a makeshift dais, then lit it with a sourceless crimson glow.

The archmages were gone now, and so were their chairs, but the mound and light remained, and the ragged, starveling insurgents, apprised that Bareris wished to address them, were assembling before it once again. Standing with Mirror and Aoth, he watched them congregate.

"The zulkirs had a point," he said. "These folk might well have fought better with hearts full of hope."

"Maybe so," said Aoth.

"So why did you insist on giving them the truth?"

Aoth shrugged. "Who knows? I suspected that returning to Thay would be bad for me. Maybe it's clouded my judgment. Or maybe I spent too many years as the council's ignorant pawn."

Mirror, at the moment less a visible presence than a mere sense of vague threat and incipient headache, said, "Telling them the truth is the right thing to do."

Aoth grinned. "Is that what the holy warrior thinks? How unexpected." He fixed his lambent blue eyes on Bareris. "I fully understand we need these people to scout and forage and find clean water. They know the country, and they've kept watch on the Dread Ring since the necromancers started building it. But even so, I don't fear to give them the truth, because I know you can inspire them to stay and fight. You're eloquent, and you fought alongside their grandfathers and fathers after the rest of Szass Tam's opponents ran away. You're a hero to them."

Bareris had heard such praise before, and as usual, it felt like mockery. "I'm no hero. I've bungled everything that ever truly counted. But I'll do my best to hold them." Judging that most if not all of the rebels had gathered, he climbed onto the mound and started to speak.

As he did, he was tempted to try to hypnotize his audience. But it was possible he wouldn't snare every mind or that some folk would shake off the enchantment in a day or so, and then, feeling ill-used, the rebels would surely depart. Besides, he found he just couldn't bring himself to manipulate them as egregiously as he'd once manipulated Aoth, not with the latter actually looking on.

So he infused his voice with magic to help him appear a wiser and more commanding figure than he might have otherwise. But he stopped short of enslavement.

First, he gave the assembly the truth Aoth insisted they hear and watched it crush the joy out of them. Then he reiterated that it was still vital that they fight. Because, while victory wouldn't bring down their oppressors, it would save their lives.

A man at the front of the crowd spat on the ground. At some point, a necromancer or necromancer's minion had sliced off his nose, and he wore a grimy kerchief tied around the lower portion of his face to hide his deformity. The cloth fluttered as his breath whistled in and out of the hole.

"My life isn't worth the trouble!" he called.

"I know that feeling," Bareris answered. "I've had it myself for a hundred years, so who am I to tell you you're wrong? But look around at your comrades who risked torture and execution to stand here with you tonight. Aren't their lives worth fighting for?

"And if they aren't reason enough," Bareris continued, "I'll give you another: revenge! When we take the Dread Ring, we'll butcher every necromancer, blood orc, and ghoul inside. I admit, we won't get Szass Tam himself, but we'll deprive him of his heart's desire, balk him, and gall him as no one ever has before.

"And one day, we rebels will drag him down off his throne and slay him. As it turns out, it won't be this year or the next, and the Council of Zulkirs may not be there to help us when we do, but it will happen. This siege is the beginning. Imagine what we can do with the arms and magic we'll plunder from the Dread Ring. Imagine how word of our victory will draw new recruits to our ranks. We'll finally be a true army all by ourselves."

He looked out at the crowd and saw resolve returning in the set of their jaws and the way they stood straighter. He drew breath to continue on in the same vein, then froze when a hulking shape abruptly appeared at the back of the throng.

It was tall as an ogre and had four arms. Red eyes blazed from a head also possessed of a muzzle full of needle fangs. Bareris knew its scaly hide was actually dark purple like the duskiest of grapes, but it looked black in the night.

"I can see you're all brave little lambs," said Tsagoth, a sneer in his tone. "But this is your one warning: the Dread Ring is full of wolves."

He snatched up a young Rashemi woman and beheaded her with a single snap of his jaws. Blood gushed from the stump of her neck. He pivoted and disemboweled a man with a sweep of his claws. Short sword in hand, a third rebel charged the blood fiend from behind, and Tsagoth turned again and locked eyes with him. The swordsman jammed the point of his blade into his own neck.

Aoth ran into the crowd, while Mirror and Jet flew over it. Off to the side of it, Gaedynn, moving with almost preternatural speed, strung his bow and nocked an arrow. Meanwhile, Bareris drew his sword and sang. The world seemed to shatter and mend itself in an instant, and then, magically whisked across the intervening distance, Bareris was standing directly in front of Tsagoth.

The vampiric demon laughed down at him with gory jaws. "Too slow, singer," he said as he disappeared.

Bareris lunged. His blade encountered no resistance, proof that Tsagoth hadn't merely turned invisible. He'd employed his own innate ability to translate himself through space. Gaedynn's arrow streaked through the spot the creature's head had occupied an instant before.

Bareris stalked onward, pivoting, sword at the ready. He crooned a charm to give himself owl eyes.

A hand gripped his forearm. Startled, he wrenched himself around, trying both to break free and to bring his blade to bear before he saw that it was Aoth who'd taken hold of him.

"It's over for now," the sellsword captain said.

"You don't know that. Just because he ran, it doesn't mean he ran far."

"Of course it does. Think. No lone warrior, not even Tsagoth, would linger for long in the midst of an enemy army."

"Well, I'll make sure."

"No," said Aoth, his voice soft but steely, "you won't. You climbed up on that pile of dirt to motivate these folk, and it was working, but now Tsagoth's rattled them. You have to go back and talk some more. Otherwise, the blood drinker's undone your good work, and he wins. Is that what you want?"

Shaking, Bareris closed his eyes and struggled to dampen his hatred and rage at least a little. Tried to think of something besides Tammith crumbling in his embrace as the Alamber Sea dissolved her flesh like acid.

"I'll go back," he managed.

Aoth posted more sentries and rousted Lallara and her subordinate wizards to cast additional defensive enchantments, just in case Tsagoth tried to sneak back. Then he returned to the center of the camp, where Bareris was still addressing the rebels and brandishing his naked sword for emphasis. The red light made the blade look bloody.

If Aoth was any judge-and after a century of commanding men, he'd better be-the bard's oration was having the desired effect. The rebels no longer regarded the blood fiend's incursion as a terrifying guarantee of horrors to come. Now it seemed an infuriating provocation.

Aoth made his way to Mirror's side. "Thank the gods for that golden tongue," he murmured from the corner of his mouth.

"It's bad that Tsagoth's here," replied the ghost. "We'll have to watch over our brother to make sure the old grudge doesn't goad him into folly."

"In case you didn't notice, I just promoted myself to acting zulkir a little while ago. I have this whole army to 'watch over.' Bareris knows what's at stake. I'm sure he'll be fine."

Standing atop the battlements above the Dread Ring's primary gate, Malark-for it was easier to think of himself that way than as the original Malark's magically created surrogate, especially now that they were no longer in proximity-gazed south. The council's army was out there somewhere in the night, probably within a day's march of the fortress. The scouts and diviners had given him a good idea of its size and composition, but even so, he looked forward to seeing such a mighty host of killers for himself and to watching it and the castle's defenders slaughter one another.

A dark, looming form appeared before him. He reflexively shifted his feet just a little-though most observers wouldn't even notice, the change in his stance prepared him tor combat-even as he perceived that the new arrival was Tsagoth, come to report as expected.

"How did it go?" Malark asked.

"Anskuld and many others saw me make the kills. One of my victims was a young, dark-haired Rashemi girl, pretty as you humans reckon such things."

"Excellent. Are you thirsty? Would you like me to conjure an imp for you to feast on?" Although, bound as he was into Szass Tam's service, Tsagoth generally had to make do with the blood of mortals, he much preferred to prey on other creatures native to the higher worlds.

The blood fiend glared, his crimson eyes blazing. "I'm not a dog for you to reward with treats."

Malark decided not to observe that when Tsagoth, with his lupine muzzle, bared his fangs that way. there was a certain resemblance. "Of course not. You're my valued comrade, and I was trying to show you courtesy."

Tsagoth grunted.

"Why so touchy, if your errand went well?"

"When I arrived, the bard was addressing the rebels. He told them Szass Tam has some demented scheme to kill the entire world."

"Ah."

"Is it true?"

Malark considered denial but decided a lie was unlikely to allay the blood fiend's suspicions. "I wouldn't call it 'demented,' but otherwise, yes. Please tell no one else." Many of the Dread Ring's garrison wouldn't believe or understand Tsagoth even if he did tattle, and, like the undead demon himself, they bore enchantments that would oblige them to perform their functions no matter what they knew. Still, it would be pointlessly cruel to frighten them.

Tsagoth twitched as he felt Malark's mild-sounding request impose irresistible compulsion.

"Have I served well these past hundred years?" the blood fiend asked.

"I assume that's a rhetorical question. You're one of our master's greatest champions."

"I've done all I have in the hope that one day he would return me to my own plane. If you want my very best, one last time, promise me that after we preserve the Dread Ring, you'll send me home."

Malark sighed. "You think you'll be safe if you simply escape Faerun, don't you? In all honesty, I have to tell you, you won't."

Tsagoth snorted. "I know Szass Tam is capable of making a great mess, but I doubt he'll even destroy this one squalid little excuse for a world. His magic surely won't reach into all the worlds there are."

"The Spellplague did."

"So people say, but I still like my chances."

"Have it your way, then. Once we eliminate the threat to the castle, I'll return you to the Abyss. Now, is it clear what I need from you next?"

"Yes. The zulkirs will camp on the lake or near it. When practical, I'm to seize Rashemi maidens and drown them, so they die in water like Tammith Iltazyarra did."

"Precisely."

"What I don't understand is why it's so important to nettle Bareris Anskuld and undermine his judgment. He's just one soldier in an army."

"In his way, he's as accomplished a champion as you are; I'm sure Aoth or the zulkirs will give him men to command, and in any case, this ploy is just one little element of my overall strategy. I'll give you tasks more worthy of your stature as the siege proceeds."

"All right. Whatever you want." Tsagoth hesitated. "Tell me one more thing."

"Surely."

"If you know what's coming, why do you serve Szass Tam so willingly?"

"The promise of perfect beauty and perfect peace."

"I don't understand."

Malark smiled. "No one does. It makes me feel lonely sometimes."