Richard Byers - Prophet of the Dead

Yhelbruna had in effect been dismissed. That feeling too, was both unfamiliar and unwelcome, but circumstances obliged her to tolerate the disrespect. Rebuking the Iron Lord when he was in the midst of readying his troops for war would only make her look petty and petulant, childish in the erratic, snappish way of an addled old woman.

Afterward, restless, she wandered the snowy streets of Immilmar. Even with all the warriors at the citadel, and the excited little boys peering in the gate to observe as much of the muster as they could, no one could honestly say the rest of the town seemed deserted. A dog barked, the smell of baking bread wafted from a kitchen window, and, his hammer tapping, a carpenter replaced a plank on one of the bridges. Still, under the surface, Yhelbruna’s surroundings felt strange, desolate, or even ominous for no reason she could define.

Is it really all just me, she wondered, then scowled and doggedly told herself it wasn’t. She turned back toward the Witches’ Hall to attempt what she already sensed would prove to be yet another opaque if not nonsensical divination.

Cera stumbled along in a blur of misery, chiefly aware of the ragged, slimy touch of the dead men supporting her and the even filthier feeling of contamination inside her.

Then, however, she felt a release, like someone had lifted a crushing weight off her or removed strangling hands from her neck. The relief was only partial if not marginal, but it sufficed to quicken her thoughts.

Not wanting her captors to realize she had in any measure recovered, she glanced around through half-lowered eyelids. By the feeble greenish luminosity of a phantom floating along ahead of her, she discerned that the endless profusion of tombs and sarcophagi had given way to a more normal sort of tunnel.

Combined with the feeling of relief, the change in her surroundings revealed that she and her captors had just emerged from the deathways! And even through all the stone and earth that still separated her from its light, she could faintly sense the Yellow Sun above her. She felt like laughing and weeping at the same time and clenched herself lest she do either.

In due course, her captors marched her up to what she recognized as the entrance hall of the primary keep of the Fortress of the Half-Demon. The sooty opening where Jhesrhi had burned away the doors was unmistakable. So were the hacked and blasted bodies.

Some of the undead were outside in the courtyard amid a litter of those frozen corpses. Lod and Dai Shan were looking out the doorway and conversing, and Cera strained to eavesdrop on their conversation.

“How much of a problem are they likely to be?” the bone naga asked.

“I doubt the griffon can fly very far,” Dai Shan answered, “which means they won’t make it out of this wasteland quickly. Still, if the sagacious champion of the undead can see a way to complete his conquest expeditiously, it might be well to do so.”

“I can,” Lod replied, swaying. “The strategy Uramar devised is clever, and I came to Rashemen because I can move it along even faster. The Codex of Araunt contains magic germane to the purpose.”

“But has anyone set the scheme in motion in the first place?” With a slight wave of his hand, Dai Shan indicated the bodies sprawled in the snow outside. “The learned prophet sees that circumstances here are as I reported. Your enemies took the Fortress of the Half-Demon, and it may be that Uramar and all his lieutenants lie among the slain.”

“I doubt it,” Lod said, “considering they had the option to retreat into the deathways when it became necessary. My judgment and instincts alike tell me we’ll find Uramar at Beacon Cairn.”

“I fervently hope so. Shall we go there, then?”

Cera realized that to “go there” would mean a return to the deathways, and in her brittle state, the prospect nearly maddened her. She struggled against the urge to try to yank away from the zombies and run.

“Yes,” said Lod, “but not quite yet. My folk fought a hard battle before we encountered you, and though we don’t suffer fatigue or pain exactly as mortals do, a period of recovery is still advisable. We’ll move on at midnight.”

“And-if the mighty and honorable naga lord will forgive me for seeking absolute clarity on the point-if I continue making myself useful, when the Eminence of Araunt rules Rashemen, I can take the wild griffons and depart in peace?”

“Of course,” said Lod, “I promise.”

With that, the undead began to make themselves at home, although they didn’t all simply flop down and rest. Lod slithered forth with half a dozen followers to explore the castle, scavenge equipment, and see if he did recognize any of the mangled corpses littering the battleground. Ghouls set about lighting a fire in a cold hearth and dragging goblin bodies close to it to thaw.

At which point, Cera’s guards hauled her away through the keep until they found what they evidently considered a suitable chamber. There, they dumped her on the cold, hard, grimy floor and withdrew, pulling the door shut behind them.

She told herself that where securing prisoners was concerned, the mute, dull-witted things could have learned a precaution or two from Halonya’s wyrmkeepers. But when she struggled and failed to clamber to her feet, she realized weakness was likely to hold her every bit as well as locks and iron bars.

But she couldn’t let it. Her desperate plan had gotten Jhesrhi and her out of the deathways even if it had done so in about the most unfortunate way imaginable. Now they had to finish their escape.

On the far wall, stout shutters sealed windows scarcely wider than arrow loops. At a couple of points, lines of pale light showed where the ironbound wooden panels fit imperfectly against the stone.

Cera crawled forward. The trailing scraps of her torn mail scraped against the floor.

She couldn’t see precisely where the light shone down. There wasn’t enough of it to make a brighter spot amid the gloom. But she felt it when it touched her.

The sensation, however, was not what she’d anticipated. Ever since she was a little girl, even before she realized her calling, she’d loved the warm caress of sunlight. Now it stung, and she-or rather the pollution inside her-wanted to flinch from it like a parasitic grub squirming away from a healer’s forceps.

But she didn’t flinch. She stayed where she was and fixed her eyes on the luminous cracks, keeping them there even when her head began to throb.

I accept the pain, she thought. It’s like a cauterizing iron searing infection out of me. And while it does, I pray for my god to reveal himself.

The discomfort faded, and the gloom and the massive structure around her faded with it, until she was floating in a sky of flawless blue, gazing into the heart of the Yellow Sun. All around her, though she couldn’t actually see them, she had a sense of wheels meshing and turning one another with utter smoothness and regularity. It was like the world’s most accomplished dwarf artisans had assembled to build the largest, most intricate, and most finely crafted mill in all creation.

Gradually, Amaunator’s radiance warmed and cleansed her, and her perception of the perfect order that was as intrinsic to his nature as the daylight soothed her with the promise that all things, no matter how seemingly discordant, resolved themselves into harmony in the end. Her communion with him was so blissful that a part of her could have basked in it forevermore. But Jhesrhi needed her, and so, after a time, she mustered the will to abandon the rapture of pure contemplation for more practical concerns.

“I have to go back,” she breathed, “to bring more of your grace to the world, and for that, I need my magic. Please, help me.”