Richard Byers - Prophet of the Dead

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

Sarshethrian nodded. “I realize that.”

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

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

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

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

“So we ambush him,” Jhesrhi said.

Sarshethrian smiled. “My very thought.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know enough words to understand the joke.”

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

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

“No.”

“Then why waste time on them?”

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

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

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

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

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

“What?” whispered the orc.

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

“Is this a good idea?” Orgurth murmured.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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