Richard Byers - Prophet of the Dead

“What about you?” Vandar asked.

“Someone-specifically, the man who can see in darkness-needs to spy and find out what’s coming. Please, go. I’ll call out to the valorous warrior if I need him.”

Vandar retreated. Dai Shan evoked a curtain of his own kind of darkness between the two of them to further mask any trace of torchlight. Then he applied himself to peeking around the corner.

At the periphery of his vision, the Scribe of the Doomed twisted his skull face ever so slightly in his direction. At the same time, it occurred to Dai Shan that if he climbed up on the pedestal and examined the marble parchment, he’d find his own name inscribed thereon.

But all that, he insisted to himself, was only the labyrinth playing tricks on his mind. The morbid influence of the place was so pernicious that even a Shou gentleman versed in the ways of darkness occasionally fell prey to it. Only his patron spirits knew how a primitive clod like Vandar clung to sanity. Perhaps dullness was actually an advantage.

The murk in the distance seethed as something advanced. Voices murmured too faintly for Dai Shan to have any hope of making out the words. The maze muffled sound as relentlessly as it did light, seemingly seeking to impose both the deafness and the blindness of the tomb on those who ventured inside.

Still, voices! Dai Shan had only a limited understanding of the half-formed vermin that prowled the endless tunnels, crypts, and skyless graveyards of the labyrinth, but he would have wagered his chances of inheriting his father’s position that the filthy things couldn’t talk. That was one trait distinguishing them from a good many of the true undead.

Even though Dai Shan had watched a couple of the undead foes of Rashemen flee into the maze when the battle for the Fortress of the Half-Demon went against them, he’d assumed the vast majority had perished and their conspiracy was therefore at an end. But suppose that wasn’t true. What if the berserkers and stag men had only eradicated one contingent of a larger force? By the black mask, that might be part of the reason Bez had been unable to take the wild griffons. Not only had the Halruaan himself not ended the menace, no one had .

If so, then Dai Shan still had allies after all.

Or did he? He’d made his bargain with Falconer, and the reanimated Nar had unquestionably perished. Jet had shared the tale of his destruction on one of the infrequent occasions when he wasn’t too morose for conversation. And without the demonbinder to vouch for him, wouldn’t the undead slaughter Dai Shan out of hand?

Perhaps not. Not if he sent Vandar on ahead to face the creatures and then helped them strike the berserker down to demonstrate his true sympathies. Even if it didn’t work, the Rashemi would at least be dead, and Dai Shan would be far enough away from the ghouls and zombies to escape by leaping from shadow to shadow.

He turned and crept toward Vandar’s hiding place.

Stripped to the waist, Aoth finished his climb up the stairs to the ledge and, with a grunt, set the anvil he was carrying in a gap at the top of the makeshift rampart. Below him on the floor of a spacious, high-ceilinged cave the Old Ones used as a foundry, masked enchanters crooned incantations that made asymmetrical patterns of blue and silver light flow out around their feet. The designs then disappeared over the course of several heartbeats, seeming not to fade so much as to sink into the granite like water seeping into parched earth.

Swiping sweat from his face and arching his back to pop the threat of stiffness out of it, Aoth thought that the men working magic had it easy. But he didn’t know how to do what they were doing, and the important thing was that all the defenders appeared to be making acceptable progress at their tasks.

Such being the case, he judged the work could spare him for a moment. He reached out to commune with Jet.

The first impressions to jump across the psychic link were pain, frustration, and the fear of being earthbound, weak, and useless forevermore. Then, with a surge of irritation, the griffon sought to lock those feelings away where even his master couldn’t perceive them.

Jet lay on the battlements of the Fortress of the Half-Demon looking west at the gleaming frozen surface of Lake Ashane. The wind whistling out of the north chilled the burned, half-healed parts of him where feathers and fur had yet to grow back. Everything’s the same , he said, meaning Vandar and Dai Shan had still found no trace of Jhesrhi and Cera.

They’ll turn up , Aoth replied.

I should be in the maze searching , the familiar said. I’m ready, but Dai Shan claims I’m not. Remind me again why I’m still not supposed to kill the little snake .

Aoth responded: Because he’s the closest thing we’ve got to a healer to tend you, he’s supposed to send a shadow to Immilmar as soon as he recovers the strength, and when the time is right, I want to kill him. Now, before long, the undead are going to break in where I am, and the Old Ones and I are preparing. Look through my eyes as I walk the caves. Tell me what you think .

The griffon snorted. Trying to convince me I’m still useful?

I have a tough fight ahead of me, and you know as much about siege craft as I do. You could come up with a trick that hasn’t occurred to me. So are you going to help me, or would you rather just lie around and sulk? Aoth asked.

Jet answered: Sulk. But it would be bad for both our reputations if I let you die in a stupid little scrape in the middle of nowhere .

And as Aoth prowled through the caves, the familiar did indeed offer a worthwhile notion or two. Aoth ended his inspection in the chamber that already had a shattered gate. In charge of the mundane side of the preparations there, Orgurth shouted obscene insults at a couple of youths who’d failed to perform some task to his satisfaction.

I like the orc , said Jet.

Aoth smiled and replied, You would. But yes, he’s all right. He’ll make a good sergeant. So: I think we’ll be ready come tonight. Do you agree?

Jet did agree. Aoth felt it immediately, without the griffon even needing to articulate the words. But then came a flicker of doubt.

What is it? Aoth asked.

You’ll be ready , said Jet, if the other side waits until tonight .

They’re undead , Aoth replied.

Many of them are constructs. And as far as the undead ones are concerned, how much is the daylight going to bother them once they’re inside the mountain? Jet asked.

Scowling, Aoth hurried to the barricade of rubble the Old Ones had built across the mouth of the cave. Keeping low, he peered out at the saddle, the smashed golems and corpses the tumbling boulders had left in their wake, and the foes that had survived the unexpected barrage.

At first glance, the Raumvirans didn’t appear to be doing much of anything except holding their positions and enduring the wan winter sunlight as best they could. But far back from the front ranks, the ghoul with the pearl in her eye socket and the glittering mites crawling in the folds of her robe was conferring with a couple of her lieutenants while drawing in the snow at her feet with a staff. Moving without perceptible haste, animate corpses shambled around inspecting automatons, sometimes herding them a bit closer or a little farther from the next construct in line. They also spoke to other zombies that eventually then adjusted a shield on a withered arm or loosened a sword in its scabbard.

In short, the creatures were preparing to attack, but in so leisurely a fashion that the Old One’s sentry, who was of course well aware that up until now the attackers had been active by night and passive by day, didn’t even recognize the threat. In its essence, what was occurring was a tactic Aoth himself had used countless times: Lead the enemy to expect one thing, then do something different.