Nyevarra trailed along and watched with a jaundiced eye as Pevkalondra conducted a tour of the cold, echoing, and palely phosphorescent vaults and tunnels under Beacon Cairn. A pearl gleamed in the left orbit of the ghoul’s withered, flaking face, tiny silver scorpions crawled like fleas in the folds of her faded velvet gown, and she stank of rot. It all made her affecting the manner of a house-proud hostess particularly grotesque.
As the reanimated Raumviran clapped her hands, a metal arachnid fell from the hem of her sleeve and scuttled back toward the pointed toe of her shoe. Then a steaming, clinking bronze crayfish the size of a plow horse crawled through a doorway in the right-hand wall. It stank of oil, and its pincers opened and closed repeatedly with a smooth metallic noise like the sliding sound of scissors.
“Impressive,” Uramar said. Hulking, misshapen, and mottled, the patchwork warrior had a hole in his mail shirt that exposed the gray flesh beneath where Aoth Fezim’s spear had pierced him, but the wound didn’t appear to trouble him. Nyevarra felt renewed appreciation for his strength and wondered again how his cold blood tasted. Perhaps, once they’d conquered Rashemen, she could coax him out of his shyness and find out.
“There are dozens more,” Pevkalondra said. “You simply have to reanimate enough of my countrymen to control them to best effect. Then, my lord, I’ll give you the victory the idiot Nars threw away in the Fortress.”
Nyevarra chuckled. “Is that the story we’re telling now, since Falconer isn’t here to speak up for himself and his folk?” The Nar demonbinder was the one true leader of the conspiracy who’d fallen to the enemy.
The Raumviran glared with her single eye. Or perhaps the pearl glared too. It seemed to shine brighter than before.
“The Nar’s inability to defend himself,” she said, “simply proves my point.” She turned back to Uramar. “Raise Raumvirans. Raise all you can find. After the debacle in the Fortress, you need a new army, and I promise you one that will win.”
“When the war is over,” Nyevarra said, shifting her grip on the antler-axe she’d taken from the fallen Stag King, “and the realm is full of Raumvirans with only a sprinkling of durthans, Nars, and travelers from Uramar’s country, I wonder just who will actually rule. What sort of land it will be.”
Uramar frowned. Like every other expression that played across the blaspheme’s lopsided face, it had an uneven quality to it.
“Within the Eminence,” he said, “all undead are equal.”
He appeared to believe that lofty sentiment too. But Nyevarra had a more realistic perspective, and she intended to make sure that, although perhaps swearing abstract fealty to some distant authority, it was she and her sisters who would truly control Rashemen. It had always been a unique land of witches and fey, and so it must remain, even if the witches were ghosts and vampires, and the spirits were greedy and cruel. The thought of mechanical insects and other such unnatural contraptions infesting the lonely hills and sacred forests was loathsome to her.
“Of course,” she said. “You’ve explained as much, my friend. It’s just that old habits of thought die hard. Still, the truth is, we don’t need an army of the sort Lady Pevkalondra describes. What we need is all the durthans we can muster.”
The ghoul made a spitting sound. “You really think this feckless scheme will work?”
“It isn’t ‘feckless.’ It’s cunning. Although it doesn’t surprise me that a relic of a vanquished, vanished realm can’t tell the difference.”
“Enough!” Uramar said. It truly seemed to upset him when his allies bickered. Perhaps, in his distant homeland, the Eminence stood united in perfect amity, although given what Nyevarra knew of human-and undead-nature, she doubted it.
“We’ll proceed with the strategy we all agreed on,” the patchwork swordsman continued. “Despite any second thoughts you may be having, Lady Pevkalondra, I still think it’s a good one. But you’re right that we need to rebuild our force of arms in case the plan goes awry. We’ll be vulnerable until we do. So of course we’ll reanimate more of your folk, more durthans too, and everybody else who can be of use. And we’ll ask for fresh help from Nornglast.” He paused to survey them both. “Does that satisfy you?”
“Of course, my lord.” Pevkalondra gestured her companions onward. “Come this way, and I’ll show you one of the largest Raumathari war devices ever made. It slaughtered hundreds of Nars in its day.”
“That sounds fascinating,” Nyevarra drawled. “But I must go and prepare to begin the realwork of conquest.” She gave Uramar a smile, squeezed his forearm, and turned away.
As she walked along, the butt of the antler weapon clicking of the floor, she hoped she remembered her way out of the maze of tunnels. It would mar the insolent effect of her departure if she had to come back and ask for directions.
1
Aoth didn’t see anyone moving around the courtyard. He supposed he had the cold and the early hour to thank.
From his limited vantage point inside the tomb, he couldn’t see anybody on the walls either, but assumed there was probably a sentry or two up there somewhere, maybe sheltered in the corner turrets. With any luck at all, though, they’d be peering outward, not in.
Next, he looked for religious symbols in the ornate, soot-blackened stonework or any other sign that suggested the location of a chapel. For healing was the province of clerics even when, as was likely in the nightmarish land Szass Tam had made of Thay, the priests in question were dreadmasters of Bane, Lord of Darkness.
But Aoth failed to spot a shrine. A wry smile tugged at his lips when it occurred to him that, for a man whose vision was sharper than a griffon’s, he was doing a poor job of finding anything he looked for.
In fact, it would be unfortunate but not surprising if there were no shrine. Most of the lords with citadels in High Thay were Red Wizards, and in his experience, such folk, devoted as they were to esoteric knowledge, often had little use for faith.
He took a deep breath. The air smelled and tasted of burning sulfur, the taint of the volcanoes whose smoke also darkened the sky. He swung open the creaking iron gate and, trying to stay low, hobbled across the graveyard.
He didn’t like it that he was leaving tracks in the snow, but there was nothing he could do about it. He’d just have to hope nobody would take any notice of them.
By the time he reached the keep, the pain in his neck had spread across his shoulders, all the way down his back, and into his hips, making all the muscles ache and bunch. Struggling to block the clenching torment out, he tested one of the lesser doors.
It was unlocked, and when he cracked it open, there was no one in view on the other side, just a kind of vestibule with five doorways around the walls. Maybe, he told himself-unconvincingly-his luck was finally changing. The Smiling Lady knew it was past time.
It was somewhat warmer indoors, although still chilly and drafty in the part of the castle where its master likely never ventured and the humble folk who saw to his comforts lived and toiled. Those servants and slaves had risen with the dawn to take up their tasks, and Aoth scurried past doorways and crouched behind barrels to keep them from spotting him.
Eventually, he found a small storeroom containing only dusty, cobweb-shrouded crates that, plainly, no one cared about anymore. The space was beyond easy earshot of the chambers where yawning servants were starting the day’s baking, mending, and washing, yet not so distant that there was little hope of anyone wandering by. He limped inside and stood beside the door where no one would see him.