Richard Byers - Prophet of the Dead

“But you have moments when you think a fire’s thoughts, and human concerns recede. I’ve seen it. And like any wizard, you know how to manipulate the state of your own consciousness. Be living fire when you approach Lod. Then he won’t see the emotions that would give you away.”

“Like being upset at the prospect of what’s going to happen to you? Because it will be bad. Even if I can convince the undead to make common cause with a creature of fire, they won’t be kind to a cleric of the Yellow Sun.”

“I’ll count on your glibness to convince them I’ll be more useful alive than dead.”

“I already told you, I don’t have any glibness.”

“Well, even if they kill me, it’s better for one of us to escape than neither. Someone has to find Aoth, stop the undead, and pay back that little turd Dai Shan. Don’t you think?”

Jhesrhi sat in silence for a few breaths. Then: “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” It was the best chance, for Jhesrhi if not for her. “Just promise me one thing. If they don’t only kill me, if they turn me into one of them, burn me up if you possibly can.”

“I’ll try to keep it from coming to that.”

“I know you will.” Cera put her helmet back on. “We should hurry back and find them while we can. Amaunator grant they haven’t moved on already.”

“They haven’t,” Jhesrhi answered, her garments rustling as, presumably, she too stood. “Unless it needs to run away, every war band, even an undead one, bides to rest and put itself back in order after a battle.”

Threatened with a hand-and-a-half sword in the grip of one of Rashemen’s greatest warriors, Nyevarra reflexively sought to spring to her feet. But weakness made her flounder and nearly fall back down again.

That was bad. But her vampiric strength would return, and in the meantime, maybe she could stall. Her sudden appearance in the Iron Lord’s personal chambers was understandably alarming, but even so, in her mask and vestments, she looked like an ordinary hathran.

“Majesty,” she began.

Mangan Uruk called up his rage without any of the shuddering, stamping, howling, gnawing on a shield rim, petty self-mutilation, or other tricks required by less accomplished berserkers. Only a sudden wild light in his eyes afforded even an instant’s warning as he sprang and slashed at Nyevarra’s neck.

Somehow, she twisted out of the way of the cut, and as she did, she discerned the reason for the failure of her deception. Her right hand was as it ought to be, but the left had warped and darkened into a cloven stump like the terminus of a wasp’s leg. It was as if the ekolid had concluded it could never possess her and so had spitefully betrayed her to her foe.

Reckless but preternaturally strong and fast, Mangan immediately pivoted and cut a second time. Nyevarra dodged, but less successfully. The blade sliced her shoulder, pulled free, and whirled down for a stroke to the guts.

Instinct told her she wouldn’t be able to dodge that one either. Blocking out the belated flare of pain in her shoulder, she snarled a word of warding and made a pushing motion with her good hand. With a clang, the bastard sword rebounded from the invisible shield she’d conjured to deflect it.

This, she realized, was the way to survive. A physical assault stirred her predatory instincts and made her want to answer in kind, but she wouldn’t be a match for Mangan until her strength returned, and conceivably, not even then. She had to oppose him with witchcraft, one difficulty being that, while he was intent on slaughtering her, she couldn’t achieve her purpose if she killed him, visibly wounded him, or even made sufficient noise to alarm people elsewhere in the fortress.

Mangan sidestepped and cut at her head. She jumped back out of range without an inch or an instant to spare, kept on retreating, rattled off words of power, thrust her good hand at him, and simultaneously puffed out her breath at his face.

He faltered as the stream of noxious fumes engulfed him, but only for a heartbeat. Then, shaking off the nausea, he rushed her again.

Curse it! Another hastily conjured shield kept his blade from driving home, but she couldn’t count on that trick working every time, nor did she want anyone to take note of the recurring clash of steel. She chanted and swirled her hands in the air.

To her dismay, the ekolid hand, if it even could be described as such, turned out to be awkward. It was attached to a wrist of sorts, but the joint didn’t bend in precisely the way a human wrist did, and for a second, Nyevarra felt the pattern of force she was weaving threatening to dissolve. But she spoke her words of power even more insistently and made reinforcing flourishes with her human hand, and that compensated for the fumbling of the demon limb.

Like the curtains of soft, subtle lights that sometimes danced in the northern sky, color rippled into existence between her and the berserker. The flowing phosphorescence was beautiful, and despite his fury, Mangan hesitated to gawk at it.

But as before, it was plain the spell would hold him only for a moment. His jaw clenched, and his grip on his sword hilt tightened as he started to break free.

Risking an attack, one she almost certainly couldn’t avoid since she’d be moving right into it, Nyevarra stepped into the center of the luminous haze. To her relief, Mangan didn’t slash or stab at her. But he would in another instant unless she forestalled it.

She grabbed his head between her two hands and stared into his eyes. Her conjured light had muddled him. Perhaps, in so doing, it had opened a breach in his psychic defenses through which a vampire’s power of command could stab to more permanent effect.

For a moment, he shuddered. Then he let out his breath in a long sigh, and his sword arm relaxed and hung at his side.

Nyevarra had him, and the instant she knew it, she felt the urge to feed. It would pay him back for hurting her and help her heal more quickly too.

But it was one thing to drink the blood of common hathrans who went around muffled in robes and masks and were unlikely to attract undue attention even if their habits and demeanors changed a little. It would be a different matter to prey on the Iron Lord himself. If Mangan Uruk looked pale and started squinting and flinching at the sunlight, someone-such as Yhelbruna-might well notice.

And besides, Nyevarra didn’t need to turn the warlord into a genuine thrall, gratifying though that would have been. She only needed him to commit a single error in judgment when the occasion arose for him to do so.

She told him what she wanted and made sure he understood. Then she ordered him to forget ever meeting her.

Now all that remained was to head back to Beacon Cairn via the deathways and tell Uramar what he needed to do to make her scheme work out as planned. Smiling, she melted into mist and then put on solidity once more. Her smile widened when she saw that the last transformation had restored her altered hand to normal.

Jhesrhi cloaked herself in flame for the hike back to the cemetery. That way, Lod and his creatures wouldn’t think she was trying to sneak up on them, and Cera, looking cowed and fearful, her mace, shield, and helmet left behind, had light to see by.

Even after Jhesrhi’s previous exertions, calling the fire in her core to come out and dance had been relatively easy. What was difficult was maintaining the dual consciousness her masquerade required.

She needed to be as ruthless and uncaring as flame. Otherwise, her lies wouldn’t fool a creature as cunning as Lod must surely be. But underneath the mask of fire, the human Jhesrhi needed to remember she was lying and maintain ultimate control.

And while she was keeping the balance, neither allowing human worry and loathing for the undead to dampen the flame nor permitting the inner blaze to spread to her affection for Cera and her other friends and burn that loyalty away, she also had to scan the gloom ahead. It wouldn’t do for an undead to spring out of hiding and drive filthy, jagged talons or a blade forged of shadow and disease into her heart before she even had a chance to start talking.