Richard Byers - Prophet of the Dead

With a crash, the entire golem shattered, and Aoth averted his face and shielded his eyes to keep flying glass from blinding him. When he looked again, his foe was a litter of shards and grit on the floor.

With the certainty that the fight was over, pain woke in his forearm. For want of a better remedy-such as Cera’s healing touch-he tapped one of his tattoos. The throbbing ache subsided, and the bleeding slowed.

Orgurth waved his curved blade to indicate the remains of their opponent. “That was noisy.”

“Too noisy.” Aoth raised his spear and recited his augmented version of the spell on the wall.

Argent light shimmered along the curves of the magic circle. With a wizard’s sensibilities, he sensed the gate starting to open. But he also felt it stop an instant later, like a warped door jamming in its frame.

He cursed and then heard voices clamoring elsewhere in the building.

Orgurth pointed at the empty window frame. “We’re only on the second floor.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you jumped and ran,” Aoth replied. “But with some tinkering, I still might be able to make the portal work. Especially with a comrade to keep the enemy from interfering while I try.”

For a heartbeat, Orgurth looked at Aoth as if he were crazy. But then he laughed and said, “Why not? Is it any stupider than believing I could make it out of town alive or survive a hunt through the mountains?” Orgurth took a fresh grip on his scimitar.

Pevkalondra had stationed a skeleton to watch for Uramar’s return via the deathways. Thus, she knew to come and find him immediately after his arrival.

But as she peered in at him from the doorway of the vault he’d taken for his personal quarters, she wondered if impatience was leading her into a gaffe. The undead were mostly impervious to fatigue in the human sense, and she certainly wouldn’t have expected the hulking swordsman to fall prey to it. Yet he sat slumped, his big, mismatched hands with their old stitches, mottled skin, and crooked fingers massaging his temples. Perhaps casting the secret spells of the Codex of Araunt tired him in a way mere physical exertion couldn’t.

As she hovered, he looked up and saw her. So it was too late to go away and come back later. But at least he gave her a smile, a stained, lopsided leer that would likely have petrified a mortal.

“My lord,” she said, curtsying. The spreading of her skirt made the tiny silver scorpions clinging to the velvet scuttle around.

“My lady,” he said. “Come in.”

She did. “How are things in Immilmar?”

His smile widened. “Everything’s going perfectly. With every night that passes, Nyevarra and her sisters replace more of the living or enslave them. Meanwhile, no one suspects a thing.”

Pevkalondra smiled like she thought that was wonderful news. In a way, it was, but the current situation had undercurrents that a traveler from beyond the western ocean was ill equipped to recognize.

“If everything’s well in hand,” she said, “then I hope you can find the time to wake more Raumvirans into undeath. After you’ve had a chance to refresh yourself, of course.”

Uramar hesitated. From his manner, one might have inferred he was listening to a voice only he could hear, but Pevkalondra didn’t sense any ghostly or demonic presences lurking in the crypt.

At length, he said, “My friend, you have my word, I’ll attend to it as soon as possible. But you’ll recall we’ve decided we’re not going to seize Rashemen through open warfare. We’ll accomplish it through subversion and magic with the durthans taking the lead. So for now, it makes sense for me to concentrate on reanimating more of them. That way, the work can proceed even faster.”

“No matter how smoothly things are going at the moment, your Eminence of Araunt will never achieve its grand design for Faerun without an army like the one we Raumvirans can provide.”

“I understand, and your folk will rise. Please, just be patient a little longer.”

“Of course, my lord, and thank you. I’ll leave you to your rest.” She gave him another curtsy and withdrew.

Afterward, as she stalked through the vaults, she wished she had someone to rend with her claws or set on fire with her sorcery. She settled for kicking a construct in the shape of a chimera that, because no one had commanded it to do anything, was standing motionless as a steel statue. The resulting clang echoed away through the dark.

Curse Uramar, anyway!

He truly seemed to believe all undead would dwell as equals and friends in the Rashemen to come. But would the durthans share power if they were many and the Raumvirans few? If they were the ones who’d conquered the land while Pevkalondra and her folk stood idle? She wouldn’t do it in their place!

And as if the durthans weren’t problem enough, Uramar had reanimated filthy Nars as well. Pevkalondra had no doubt that in any internecine conflict, the eternal enemies of Raumathar would back the witches and hope to be rewarded for it afterward.

There was only one answer. Raumvirans had to contribute to the conquest of Rashemen, whether Uramar approved or not, and in so doing, increase their strength to the point where no “ally,” no matter how greedy or covertly inimical, would dare to deny them their due.

Fortunately, Pevkalondra knew where to go to achieve those goals. And while Uramar, for all his prating about fellowship and equality, had yet to share all the arcane wisdom of Lod, she had gleaned how to reach the proper vicinity via the deathways.

She spied a Raumathari soldier with phosphorescent yellow eyes and the long gash that had no doubt been his death wound splitting his withered chest. He sat honing his halberd with a whetstone until, noticing her as well, he rose and came to attention.

“Ready our troops and as many constructs as we can manage,” she told him. “We have an errand.”

Orgurth positioned himself in front of the double doors, just off center enough that, if Lady Luck smiled, a person pushing one open wouldn’t see him for an instant, and just far enough back that neither panel swinging inward would block his path to the foe. Then, swallowing away a dryness in his throat, he waited.

Meanwhile, Aoth moved into the corner, where no enemy could target or even see him before entering the room, which, of course, he was counting on Orgurth to prevent. There, the mage whispered rhymes and twirled his spear.

With a snort, Orgurth reflected that some things never changed. Orc warriors drew the hard, dangerous jobs, and human wizards pulled the easy ones. But he didn’t mind. However long the odds, he was facing them with a scimitar in his fist and a brigandine on his back, and he owed that to his fellow fugitive.

Footsteps thumped down the hallway, and it belatedly occurred to Orgurth that the searchers might pass right on by the portal room. After all, if no Red Wizard had been inside for the better part of a century, maybe no one remembered the window golem or would understand the significance of the crash of breaking glass.

But that didn’t turn out to be the case. The footsteps halted on the other side of the doors, and people whispered to one another. Somehow, perhaps because a wizard had turned his magic to the purpose, the newcomers were able to tell where the disturbance had originated.

Both doors suddenly swung inward. Orgurth bellowed the booming war cry of a blood orc, the roar that made lesser warriors falter and freeze on the battlefield, and rushed the figures clustered in the opening.

He slashed over the top of a shield and sliced the cheeks and nose of a fellow orc from ear to pointed ear. The warrior fell backward and into a comrade. Orgurth pivoted, feinted high, and cut low into a second target’s knee. The wounded leg buckled, and that guard, a human, dropped.