Текст книги "Prophet of the Dead"

Автор книги: Richard Lee Byers

Соавторы: Richard Lee Byers
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Aoth turned to Shaugar. “I see the problem!” the Old One snapped.

“Then fix it!”

“I’m trying!” With the tip of his staff, Shaugar drew a glowing blue pentagram on the air. “But the spells have already held longer than I expected!”

For a moment, Aoth had no idea what to do about that. Then he spotted the ghoul with the pearl in her eye socket again.

She was standing behind a brass and steel centaur that was shuddering in the middle of one of the fading magical figures. Surely to quicken its return to functionality, she was chanting and tapping the automaton with her wand.

Recalling how she’d brandished the same arcane implement to send the stone thrower after him, Aoth pointed with his spear. “I think that creature’s wand helps her direct and repair the golems,” he said to Shaugar. “If you had it, would that help you?”

“How should I know?” the Rashemi replied. “Maybe.”

“Keep working!” Aoth scrambled to the top of makeshift parapet and jumped.

For one instant, swallowed by the cold darkness of the maze, betrayed by a comrade whom, despite his better judgment, he’d started to trust, held in place with dozens of undead rushing up the passage at him, Vandar froze. Then a flash of the anger that was the source of a berserker’s prowess jolted his mind into motion once again.

When it did, he realized the thing gripping his ankle could only be the hand of the zombie he’d crippled previously. The creature had crawled over and grabbed him.

Guessing at how it lay on the floor, he hacked at it, then tried to yank his leg loose. After a moment of resistance, it came free all at once, sending him staggering off balance to bang the backs of his thighs into Jergal’s pedestal. He could still feel leathery fingers wrapped around his ankle, though. The zombie’s forearm must have pulled apart at the point where the fey sword had cut it. Vandar kicked and shook the severed hand loose.

Then, praying he wouldn’t slam into a wall or trip over something, he ran at the spot where, he believed, the entrance to the side passage containing his torch ought to be. He seemed to take too many strides and had nearly decided he’d somehow gone wrong when he plunged through Dai Shan’s conjured curtain of shadow. Although the wavering amber light was guttering, the brand was still burning.

All right. Grab it and … then what?

Vandar thought he had two advantages that might, if the spirits favored him, allow him to make it back to the Fortress of the Half-Demon alive. He was a fast runner and, after days of exploration, knew this part of the maze well. But he’d never shake pursuers off his tail if he carried a light to draw them after him.

Yet if he couldn’t see, his plight would be even more hopeless. With a curse and a pang of bitterness not far short of despair, he stooped and reached for the torch. But just before he could grasp it, his awareness fixed on the sword he carried in his other hand.

The fey weapons never spoke to him with language. But from time to time, they communicated in their own fashion, and now, prompted, he realized, by the blade, he remembered how they’d sometimes sensed things he didn’t and shared that awareness with him.

The sword conveyed that it could do so again, only in a more constant and detailed way. It could serve as his eyes in the darkness if he permitted it.

Yes, he thought, I permit it, and the grotesque stonework of the maze flowed into view around him.

And as his bond with the red sword deepened, new thoughts sprang into his head. Now that he could see, he didn’t even need to flee. He could go back, slaughter the filthy things that were coming after him, and win the greatest victory of his or any Rashemi’s life. The desire to do so was entirely consonant with the swaggering pride and contempt for danger that defined being a berserker.

But did they really? Vandar remembered wise old Raumevik urging him not to throw his life away when he still had his lodge brothers to avenge. He remembered too, how the need to be deemed a great warrior worthy of the wild griffons had led him to ignore Cera’s cries.

Curse it, no! he thought. I’m notgoing to go berserk, fight a fight I can’t win, and die for nothing! I’m the master of my rage and, sword, the master of you too!

A feeling of insistenceinside his head abated. He felt free to run ifthat was what he truly wanted. But plainly, he couldn’t leave a weapon as precious as the spear behind. He turned and started back toward Jergal.

Then he heard the telltale clinking of armor as the creatures wearing it trotted forward. The rest of the undead were now so close that he likely couldn’t go back for the spear without coming face-to-face with them.

Still, without consciously willing it, he advanced another step.

I’ll drop you, he silently promised the sword. I’ll take my chances with the torch, and nobody will ever use you to fight anything ever again. You’ll lie here alone in the dark forever!

His mind trulycleared, or at least he thought so. He had a sense of the sword yielding like a stubborn and misbehaving dog finally cowering in the face of its master’s anger.

Hoping the blade hadn’t taken too long to capitulate, Vandar whirled and ran.

By thought alone, Aoth released the power pent in one of his tattoos, and as a result, he fell slowly, meanwhile rattling off an incantation.

Many of the Raumathari automatons were still either frozen or doing pointless things such as rolling over and over or trying to walk through walls, although probably not for much longer. And the majority of the constructs and undead that did constitute potential threats were too busy assailing their chosen targets on the ledges to notice Aoth drifting toward the floor. Still, three shriveled spearmen with foxfire eyes and flaking skin rushed at him, and a phantom in the form of crucified little girl floated in their wake. The cross and nails were absent, but the apparition had holes in her outstretched hands and crossed feet, and although her translucent face was a mask of uncomprehending anguish, her giggling echoed in Aoth’s head.

Until, just as his boots touched the floor, he finished his incantation and jabbed with his spear. Then spinning blades of blue light whirled into being to chop the zombies into chunks of rot and bone and her into wisps of phosphorescence.

Weaving his way past a frozen iron boar with textured bristles, a bronze squidlike thing with twitching tentacles, and even a gaudily painted wooden jester slumped like a marionette with cut strings, Aoth headed for Pearl-eye. Then he glimpsed motion at the periphery of his vision.

He spun to find a pair of shadows lunging at him straight through the body of an oversized bronze jackal. He met one with a thrust of his spear and positioned his targe to block the other’s outstretched hands.

The spear pierced the first, and it dissolved. The other splashed into shapelessness against the shield, its insubstantial form held back not by the steel but by the enchantments bound inside it.

At once, the apparition sent a dozen wispy lengths of itself curling around the rim of the targe like jellyfish tendrils. One brushed Aoth’s elbow, and a jolt of cold pain sent the muscles on either side into spasms.

He charged the point of his spear with chaotic power and simply slapped it against the shadow’s back. The undead vanished, and metal clanked when the weapon struck the shield.

He pushed on and came up behind a vampire wizard casting fire at some of the Old Ones. He killed the new blood drinker as he had the previous one, only by surprise, and as conjured daylight ate the undead from within, Aoth saw that the thing’s wand looked a lot like Pearl-eye’s. He grabbed the implement, tossed it up at the nearest ledge, and kept moving without waiting to see if any of the Rashemi caught it.

A metal manticore abruptly lurched into motion, and Aoth aimed his spear at it. But, maybe still not entirely free of the waning effect of the Old Ones’ snares, the leonine, bat-winged automaton simply paced across his path without seeming to perceive him.

When it moved on by, however, with its spike-tipped tail curled up off the floor, it became clear that at some point, Pearl-eye had become aware that Aoth was stalking her. At the moment when the manticore’s progress had hidden her from view, she’d appeared intent on reactivating golems and striking at the men on the ledges, but now the wand in her gray, outstretched hand pointed at him, and pale light seethed at the tip.

He dodged right, the same direction the manticore was going, and then a serpent made of sizzling lightning leaped from the end of the wand. Its strike missed, but not by much, and in the instant before it blinked out of existence, its mere proximity made his muscles burn and clench.

Fortunately, the restorative power of a tattoo quelled the pain, and then, once again, he had the manticore between him and the ghoul. Now what? It had to be a move she wasn’t expecting to offer any hope of ending the duel quickly.

Still moving with the manticore, using it for cover, he discarded his shield so he’d have at least one hand free. Then he ran at the golem, jumped, and tried to scramble over its hindquarters.

The automaton’s back stood as tall as he was. The surface was rounded and smooth, and just as he was clambering up, the razor-edged wings gave a clattering flap. He had to snatch his head sideways to keep one wing from slicing his face to the bone.

Then he had his balance, his feet under him, and he could tell Pearl-eye hadn’t spotted him. She was watching for him to reappear at one end of the manticore or the other, not over the top of it.

He hurled darts of emerald light. They were far from his most destructive spell effect, but they couldn’t possibly damage the wand, and when they pierced her withered, rotting form, she staggered. He jumped off the manticore’s back and charged her.

But she recovered and scrambled backward before he could close. Her retreat took her out of the foundry proper and back into the section of cavern that connected to the shattered gate.

For a moment, Aoth imagined that might work to his benefit because she was separating herself from her allies. Then, removed from the crippling influence of the Old Ones’ wards against constructs, the silver mites clinging to the folds of her robe seethed into motion.

Jhesrhi thought that if she’d been at the head of the column, she might have done something. Somehow whisked Vandar out of sight before any of the undead spotted him, blasted Dai Shan as soon as he called out, and justified the precipitous action afterward.

But Lod traveled in the middle of the procession, and he’d wanted her company. Thus, when things started happening in the darkness up ahead, it caught her by surprise. And with the bone naga’s followers clogging the passage, she still had no way of aiding Vandar with her magic.

But maybe she could keep Dai Shan from exposing her masquerade. Once again bringing the uncaring savagery of her fiery self to the fore, she looked up at Lod, who, with his wagon slaves now dead, was slithering along with his skull nearly brushing the ceiling.

“I know the man who shouted,” she said. “He’s one of the foremost obstacles to your plans. Let me kill him.”

Swaying slightly, fleshless head tilted, Lod studied her. Then he said, “It sounds like the human wants to talk. If I draw him in close and then don’t like what he has to say, it will be easy to destroy him.”

“He’s a master of shadow and trickery. He might find it possible to escape even you. But let me burn him right now, before he realizes you’ve decided on his death, and-”

“You don’t really believe he could slip away from me and all our comrades too? You want to kill him immediately for some other reason. What is it? Do you hate him? Are you worried that if I don’t send you after him right now, it won’t be you who ends up taking his life?”

“Something like that.” Even as she spoke the words, Jhesrhi knew they weren’t a particularly useful lie. But she was at a loss for anything else to say.

Lod chuckled. “I promise that ifI order his death, you can slay him in the manner of your choosing. For now, though, let’s hear him out.” He looked down the passage, which was now less jammed with doomsepts, direhelms, and the like. Apparently, Vandar had fled, and a number of the undead had chased after him.

“I’m coming forward,” called Lod. “If you’re a friend, do the same.”

“Does the august lord,” Dai Shan replied, “pledge that neither he nor his stalwart warriors will harm me?”

“I do.” Lod glanced down at Jhesrhi. “Don’t worry. We of the Eminence don’t consider a promise to a living human binding.”

As they headed up the passage, Jhesrhi imagined lashing out with flame, freeing Cera, and fleeing with her. But such a desperate ploy would never work.

She had no idea if she was a match for Lod, and even if she was, it didn’t mean she could incapacitate him and all the other undead in the immediate vicinity with a single spell.

She likewise didn’t know Cera’s precise location, only that the sunlady was somewhere toward the rear of the procession. She didknow that when she’d last seen her, her comrade had been stumbling along white-faced between two zombies too weak and dazed even to walk without her captors holding her up.

But suppose, despite all those impediments, Jhesrhi and Cera did somehow manage to break away. Then they’d still be trapped in the deathways just as they were now, and it was worse than unlikely that anyone else would happen along to unlock the way out.

Thus, Jhesrhi saw no choice but to walk peacefully into a parley with Dai Shan and hope that, somehow, her lies came out more convincing than whatever the Shou had to say.

She, Lod, and the undead naga’s attendants soon arrived at an intersection of passageways where a statue of Jergal sat writing at a desk and two slain zombies lay on the floor. One of them had Vandar’s spear sticking through its knee. The red metal gleamed, reflecting the little fire burning atop her staff.

Lod cast around, then fixed his attention on the corridor to the left. “I assume when I see a blind made of shadow,” he said, “that someone is hiding behind it.”

Dai Shan stepped out of the darkness. His eyes widened ever so slightly, but otherwise, his face was the usual pleasant, imperturbable mask.

Jhesrhi’s fiery and human sides united in the wish to see him burn, and she had to clench herself to refrain from striking at him. She steadied herself with the reflection that, if things went considerably better than expected, she might be able to force him to tell her what had become of Aoth.

The Shou bowed and said, “The serpent lord is as majestic as he is unique to my experience. Is it possible he commands the entire fellowship of the undead that my poor departed friend Falconer served so ably?”

“The Eminence of Araunt has no commander,” Lod replied. “All who belong are equal. Still, someone had to create it, and someone has to guide the campaigns that will fulfill its destiny.”

“I have every confidence the visionary before me is equal to the task. How strange, then, to find him in the company of Jhesrhi Coldcreek, and she with her mouth ungagged and her staff in her unbound hands. Perhaps, for all his wisdom, he doesn’t realize she’s one of his most formidable and determined enemies.”

“I’ve explained,” Jhesrhi said, “that I served the cause of Rashemen under magical duress. How, merchant, do you justify yourself? Moments ago, you said you’d kill Vandar Cherlinka. Well, if your word is any good, where is he?”

Dai Shan gave a slight nod. “Although her motives are suspect, the clever mage poses a fair question. I believed I could render Vandar helpless, but somehow-”

“Liar!” Jhesrhi snarled. “You let him escape because the two of you together are attempting some sort of trick. Lod, the man before you is Dai Shan. He and Vandar are two of the four champions who promised the hathrans they’d do their utmost to slaughter your people. I was there. I witnessed it.”

“Is this true?” asked Lod, swaying. “ Areyou Dai Shan?”

The merchant bowed. “I am, and please, accept my apologies. It appears that sojourning in a backward land has had a deleterious effect on my manners. I should have introduced myself to the noble prophet straightaway.”

Lod looked down at Jhesrhi. “Despite Sarshethrian’s interference, messages did travel back and forth between Nornglast and Rashemen, and thus I recognize the name Dai Shan. He made possible the strategy that will break the witches, and for that reason among others, I consider his claims more credible than yours.”

Jhesrhi had no idea what it was that Dai Shan had supposedly done to aid the undead, but now that it was too late, she realized she’d never had any hope of emerging from this parley with Lod still trusting her. She raised her staff and drew breath to call for an expanding circle of flame.

Something slammed into the back of her head, smashing her thoughts into incoherence and pitching her onto her knees. Then other blows pummeled her. The brazen staff slipped from her hand to clank on the floor, and the flames on the end went out. Her mind followed them into darkness.

The silver mites poured off Pearl-eye’s robes like water. Though he was still a dozen strides away, Aoth’s spellscarred eyes discerned that the tiny things were metal scorpions. Then several of them started swelling larger.

Aoth had no idea how big they might grow and didn’t want to find out. Nor did he care to spar with them while the ghoul sorceress stood back and cast spells at him. He set the whole length of his spear aglow with power and kept right on charging.

A scorpion the size of a dog scuttled at him, and he thrust the spear through its head. A cat-sized one arched its stinger to drive it into his leg, and he slammed the butt of his weapon down on its back and smashed it. Grown large as a donkey, pincers scissoring, a third rushed in on his flank, and triggering one of the spells stored in the spear, he blasted it apart with a flare of lightning.

He raced on toward his true foe over a glinting carpet of the scorpions that were still tiny. Then pains like stabs from red-hot needles assailed his legs, and staggering, he belatedly realized the little golems might well be more dangerous than the big ones.

A moment after the pain came a wave of dizziness and weakness. He thumped his chest, rousing a tattoo that warded him against poison. That helped him catch his balance, but now the relentless fiery jabbing was torturing his torso as well as his legs.

The ghoul snarled an incantation, pointed her wand at him, and the desperation in his mind threatened to balloon into utter panic. She threw a fear spell! he told himself, and understanding what was happening inside his head helped him cling to the ability to think.

Despite the ongoing torment, he managed to gasp out a spell of his own, and a halo of whispering yellow flame cloaked him from head to toe. It didn’t hurt him-he only felt a pleasant warmth-or his gear and clothing either. But the stabbing stopped as the blaze destroyed the tiny automatons that had been skittering under his garments like fleas.

He still hadn’t entirely shaken off the effect of the venom but knew he couldn’t let that slow him down. He rushed on toward Pearl-eye.

She still had the wand aimed, and tatters of darkness leaped from the tip to lash at him. He wrenched himself to the side, and they missed.

Then, finally, the ghoul was in reach of his spear. Still luminous with power, the weapon punched deep into her midsection.

She screeched and convulsed. He used the spear to heave her down on her back, then spoke the first of the words that would make sunlight shine from the head of the weapon to burn her guts. She was tough-otherwise, the first spear thrust would have finished her-but even so, a trick that could destroy a vampire would likely dispose of her as well.

And he wanted to. But then the war leader part of him-the part he’d trained always to deliberate and make the results of its deliberations heard no matter how the anger and fear that combat engendered distracted him-suggested that bringing her wand to Shaugar would take precious time, and then the Rashemi would need more to figure out how to use it. It might well be more time than the defenders had left.

But Pearl-eye was right here at Aoth’s feet, and she already knew how to employ the wand.

He spoke the next word of the daylight spell and sensed the magic accumulating and eager for release. The ghoul plainly felt it too, and clenched herself against the flare of agony to come.

“Do you want to go on existing?” asked Aoth.

Surprised, she peered up at him, then asked, “What do I have to do?”

“Turn all the golems inert.”

“Without them, the rest of my band will die!”

“It’s them or you. Choose. Now.”

She shuddered. With anger, he sensed, not pain or fear. “Curse you. I need to be within sight of the devices.”

“Then get up.”

“Your spear is still in my belly!”

“Where it will stay. We’ll sidle along like crabs.”

Jet watched Aoth chase down a ghoul through the midst of a larger battle and yearned to help. But he seemed to be paralyzed like many of the automatons caught in the glowing pentacles. Or perhaps he was some sort of ghost, bodiless, capable of perception but nothing more.

Ultimately, he saw with relief-albeit relief tinged with an underlying bitterness-that his master didn’t need his help. He captured the ghoul with the pearl in her eye socket and forced her to deactivate all the golems. After that, the masked men on the ledges made short work of the rest of the undead attackers, and their victorious cheers echoed through the caverns.

The shouting woke Jet, or so it seemed, woke him to the ache of his wounds and the winter sunlight shining down on the section of the wall-walk he’d chosen for his nap. Then he realized the dream had been a bit muddled but essentially true, a vision of Aoth’s recent struggle slipping across their psychic bond.

He prepared to reach out with his thoughts, make absolutely sure Aoth was all right, and ask what the war mage meant to do next. Then a shout rang up from the courtyard. This, he realized, was the noise that had actually woken him.

He peered down. Red sword in hand, Vandar was running toward the steps that ran up to his location. Something was manifestly wrong, but for another moment, Jet couldn’t tell what it was.

Then undead erupted from the doorway into the central keep. Some were loping ghouls and running skeletons. Others were entities unlike any Jet had ever seen, animate suits of half plate floating through the air. All were in pursuit of the berserker.

What had the idiot human done? How had he managed to go looking for Jhesrhi and Cera and come back with dozens of angry phantoms and living corpses chasing after him?

Shaking off his astonishment, Jet realized that at the moment, howdidn’t matter. What did matter was that there were too many foes for him and Vandar to fight by themselves, and no refuge in the ruined castle that, even if they could reach it, would keep the creatures out for long.

That left only one recourse. Straining because his injuries had made him stiff and the angle was awkward, Jet clawed and bit at his splint and the bindings holding it in place.

Dai Shan had said that despite a month of recuperation, his wing wasn’t ready. If so, would trying to use it prematurely cripple it for all time?

No, no need to worry about that, because if Jet couldn’t use it now either the undead or a second fall would kill him, and by all the winds that blew, if that happened, so be it. At least the waiting and fretting would be over!

Using his beak, he ripped away the last strip of cloth and shook his wing out. It throbbed and stank too. Pus seeped from raw spots where feathers had yet to grow back. But at least he could move it.

Panting and soaked in sweat, Vandar scrambled onto the wall-walk, whirled, and slashed the fey broadsword in a horizontal arc. The ghoul that had been about to cut him down from behind toppled off the steps and out of sight with its mold-spotted head half severed.

“Get on my back!” Jet rasped.

Vandar glanced around. “You’re sure?”

“Do you have a better plan? Move!”

The Rashemi ran to him and clambered on. Even the paltry weight of a human being produced a fresh pang of pain.

But Jet didn’t let that slow him down. He lunged at the parapet, leaped atop a crenel, and bounded on out into space.

And his outstretched pinions transformed what would otherwise have been a plummet into a level glide. He lashed them and began to climb.

Every wing beat hurt, and flight was a labored, awkward progress. But he wasflying, and he rejoiced.

He wheeled and beheld a couple of the animate suits of half-plate floating after him. Uselessly. Despite his weakened condition, they weren’t flying fast enough to catch him.

Still, he wheeled, lashed his wings, and hurled himself at the closest. It attempted to swing a broadsword at him, and he caught its weapon arm in one set of talons and its helmet head in the other.

The armored phantom pulled apart in his grasp. He dropped the pieces to clatter on the ground, turned to avoid flying over the courtyard-there might be archers and spellcasters down there by now-and drove onward.

“Another man might ask what the point was of pausing to kill that one creature,” Vandar said, still breathing heavily. “But I’m a berserker. I understand.”

Jet didn’t bother answering. He was busy peering ahead for a place of concealment he could reach before his strength gave out.