Unclean

CHAPTER ELEVEN

7 Kythorn, the Year of Risen Elfkin

Bareris crept down the trail, a narrow, crumbling path that ran along a sheer drop, and then the moonlight dimmed. Heart hammering, he crouched low and cast about until he discerned that it was only a cloud veiling Selыne's face.

Flying with wings or without, as bats or insubstantial wraiths, the hunters prowled by night, and as often as not, Bareris found that required him to flee through the dark as well. At first he'd hoped he could simply find good hiding places and lie up until dawn, but close calls two nights in succession convinced him no refuge was safe enough. Perhaps, wearing the forms of wolves or rats, his foes could track him by scent. In any case, it seemed the better option was to keep moving and try to stay ahead of them.

Even with magic sharpening his vision, it was exhausting, dangerous work to negotiate mountain terrain in the dark. It made foraging more difficult as well. His throat seemed perpetually dry, and his belly, hollow.

Often, he wondered why he was even bothering with this forlorn, foredoomed attempt to escape. He'd promised to save Tammith, but truly, what were the chances? In all the lore he'd collected, from the soberest historical annals to the most fanciful tales, there was nothing even to hint that a vampire could recover her humanity.

And what was the point of going on without her? How could he endure the knowledge that she blamed him for what had befallen her or the suspicion that she was right to do so? He'd failed her at least twice, hadn't he, once when he'd left her behind in Bezantur, and again when he'd bungled his attempt to rescue her.

If the future held nothing but misery, wouldn't it be better to put an end to the ordeal of running? A shout or two would draw the undead to him, then he could fight them as they arrived. With luck, he might have the satisfaction of destroying a couple before they slew him in his turn.

He felt the urge repeatedly, but as of yet he hadn't acted on it. Maybe, in defiance of all reason, a part of him hadn't abandoned hope that Tammith could still be saved, or perhaps the raw animal instinct to survive was stronger even than despair.

He skulked onward and came to a saddleback connecting one peak with the next, a wide, flat ridge that promised easier, faster trekking for a while. Hoping to find water as well, he quickened his stride, and then he felt a coldness, or perhaps simply an indefinable but sickening wrongness, above his head.

He threw himself onto his stomach, and hands outstretched to grab, rend, or both, the misty form of his attacker streaked over him. He rolled to his feet and drew his sword. The phantom lit on the rocky ground, or nearly so. Its form flickered and jumped so as to suspend its feet slightly above the earth one instant and sink them partly into it the next. Blighted by the entity's mere proximity, the little gnarled trees and bushes in the immediate area dropped their leaves and withered.

Bareris took his first good look at the spirit then gasped. He never would have expected to encounter a creature uglier than Xingax, yet here it was. Indeed, despite their vague, flowing inconstancy, its features somehow embodied the idea, the very essence, of hideousness in a way that even their twisted, hooknosed, pop-eyed asymmetry couldn't wholly explain. The mere sight of them ripped at something inside of him.

For an instant, he was afraid his heart would stop, his mind would shatter, and he'd collapse retching helplessly, or faint. But then he bellowed a war cry, and though the spirit remained as ghastly looking as before, its ugliness no longer had claws sunk in his spirit-a fact that wasn't likely to matter in the long run. Now that he could think more clearly, he recognized the undead as a banshee, an entity so powerful he had little hope of defeating it.

The banshee began to moan, and like the sight of its face, the noise pierced him to chill and stab something essential at his core. Steeling himself against the pain, he drew breath and sang, and the magic in his voice countered the lethal malignancy in the phantom's.

Still wailing, the banshee stretched out its long fingers and flew at him. He started chanting his charm of haste, waited until his foe was nearly upon him, then sidestepped. The undead hurtled past, and he cut at it. Though it passed through the banshee's wavering form, his sword encountered no tangible resistance, and he had no way of telling if he'd actually hurt the spirit. Since he was wielding an enchanted blade, it was possible but by no means a certainty.

His muscles jumped as the spell of quickness infused him. The banshee wheeled and rushed him anew, and his accelerated condition made it seem to fly more slowly. He bellowed, a blast of noise that might well have broken a tangible adversary's bones. Maybe it wounded the spirit as well, but as before, he could see no indication of it. The attack certainly didn't slow the banshee down, not even for a heartbeat.

Grimly aware his brigandine was no protection against the entity's ghostly touch, he dodged and cut, sang and shrouded himself in a field of blur that might make it more difficult for the banshee to target him. He kept himself alive for a few more heartbeats.

Then the banshee sprang backward. For a moment, he imagined that he'd wounded it badly enough that it feared to continue fighting him. Then he felt the chilling scrutiny of a new presence, whose advent the banshee had evidently perceived a moment before he had.

It could easily be a fatal error to take his eyes off his original foe, but he needed to understand what was happening, so he risked a glance around. At first, he saw nothing, but then phosphorescence oozed through the air like a brush stroke flowing downward.

The streak of glow gradually assumed a manlike shape. Bareris gasped, because though it was like looking into a poorly made mirror in a dark room, he could tell the murky form was supposed to mimic his own.

Only for a moment, though. Then the thing rejected or was unable to sustain the resemblance. It softened until it was simply a luminous shadow with the hint of some form of armor in its shape and a length of sheen extending from its hand.

Bareris didn't know what the newcomer was, nor could he see a point to its brief impersonation of him, but he could only assume it was another of Xingax's hunters. Against all probability, he'd seemed to be holding his own against the banshee, and now his achievement didn't matter a jot. Fighting in concert, the two spirits were certainly capable of slaying him, and he felt a crazy impulse to laugh at his dismal luck and the ongoing ruination of all his hopes.

Instead, he faced the newcomer, the nearer of his foes, and came on guard. He'd at least make the vile creatures work for their kill.

The phantom came on guard in its turn, hesitated, then turned to face the banshee, to all appearances taking Bareris for its ally and making plain its opposition to its fellow undead.

The banshee screamed, and Bareris sang to leech the poison from the sound. Then, even though it was apparently leery of the phantom, it raced forward to attack with its hands once more. Perhaps the will of its necromancer masters compelled it.

In the moments that followed, Bareris discerned that his new comrade, whatever else it might be, was a master swordsman, landing cunning strokes, retreating to avoid the banshee's snatching, clawing attacks, and scoring anew with stop cuts when the moaning ghost lunged after it. The newcomer likewise understood how best to exploit a numerical advantage and consistently maneuvered to insure that it and Bareris remained on opposite sides of their opponent.

The banshee pounced at the spectral swordsman. Bareris leaped after it and spun his blade through its head. The banshee frayed into tatters of glow, which then winked out of existence.

That left Bareris gasping for breath and peering at the remaining phantom through the empty space their foe had occupied a moment before. The entity shifted its sword to threaten him.

Wonderful, thought the bard. It didn't oppose the banshee because it wanted to help me. It just wanted to make sure it got to kill me itself. Probably I'm to be its supper in one fashion or another.

Yet the spirit didn't follow through and attack. It hesitated as though uncertain of what to do.

Doubtful that he could defeat the phantom in any case, Bareris decided to lower his sword. "Thank you for helping me," he said. "Unfortunately, I'm still in danger. Other enemies are seeking me, and the banshee and I made more than enough noise to draw them here. If you see fit to stand with me a second time, I'll be forever in your debt, or if you have a way we can hide or escape, that would be better still."

The spirit stared at him, then turned and started walking away. Bareris followed.

As the phantom strode, the sword melted from its hand, and its outline softened until it was just a luminous haze. Then that too faded away, though Bareris could still somehow sense it as an aching emptiness drifting on before him.

It led him into thick brush, and he had to shove and scramble to keep up. Then he took another step and found only empty air beneath his foot. He plummeted into darkness.

Samas Kul hadn't been sure he wanted to leave the banquet even temporarily. He'd eaten and drunk a considerable amount, enough to make even a fat man sluggish, enough to incline him to stay on his couch and sample all the courses and vintages still to come, no matter how enticing the reason to arise.

But he found the enclosed garden at the center of the mansion refreshing. The fountain gushed, the water glimmered in the moonlight, and the scent of jasmine filled the air. Best of all, the breeze cooled his hot, sweaty face. It made him hopeful that he'd be able to perform without recourse to magic, and that was always a relief.

"Girls!" he called. "Where are you?"

The women in question were gorgeous twin courtesans provided by his hostess. People exerted themselves mightily to entertain a man who was both zulkir of Transmutation and Master of the Guild of Foreign Trade, but perhaps not mightily enough, because the twins didn't answer.

He wondered if they'd thought a game of hide and seek amongst the flowerbeds and arbors would arouse him. If so, they'd mistaken their man. He'd abandoned such callow amusements many years and many pounds ago. These days, he preferred passion without an excess of exertion.

"Girls!" he repeated, this time putting the snap of command into his voice. "Show yourselves."

Still, no one replied, and abruptly he remembered that Druxus Rhym and Aznar Thrul were dead. Someone or something had caught them alone and murdered them. By all accounts, Thrul had even been preparing for coition, or a perverse alternative to it, when destruction overtook him.

But neither Rhym nor Thrul had anticipated trouble, nor had either had his talismans and spell triggers ready to hand. Samas invoked the power pent in a ring, and a protective aura, invisible as air but strong as steel, radiated from his body. He gave his left arm a shake and a wand of congealed quicksilver dropped from his voluminous sleeve into his pudgy fingers. He whispered a word of power and the darkness seemed to brighten. Now he could see as clearly as an owl.

That made it possible to spot the figure slipping through a doorway on the far side of the garden. Samas pointed the wand at the newcomer. A single flare of power should suffice to turn the wretch into a snail, after which it would be simplicity itself to capture him, change him back, and put him to the question.

But the man didn't move to attack, nor believing himself unobserved, did he continue skulking either. Instead, he dropped to his knees.

"Your Omnipotence," he said. "Thank you for coming. I realize I'm not as appealing a sight as the whores who delivered my invitation, but you can dally with them later if you're still so inclined. They understand they're to await your pleasure."

"How is it they answer to you? Duma Zan is paying them."

"You assumed that, and Lady Zan believes you invited the twins to attend the feast as your guests. In reality, I hired them to serve as my go-betweens."

"Who in the name of the Abyss are you?"

"Malark Springhill. We've never met, but perhaps you've heard of me."

"Dmitra Flass's man."

"Yes. May I rise?"

Samas hesitated. "I suppose so. What's this all about?"

"As you've surely heard by now, Szass Tam is convening the council of zulkirs. Tharchion Flass requests the honor of a private conversation with you, Yaphyll, and Lallara prior to the conclave."

Samas blinked. "You mean, with the three of us alone? And Szass Tam none the wiser?"

"Yes."

"Everyone knows Dmitra is the lich's creature. Is he trying to test our loyalty?"

"If you believe so, Your Omnipotence, then may I suggest that you attend the meeting, then hurry to Szass Tam and tell him what was said."

Samas realized he'd been standing too long. His back was beginning to ache, and he felt a little short of breath. He cast about, spotted a marble bench, and lowered himself onto it. "What does Dmitra want to talk about?"

"I have no idea."

Oh, you know, Samas thought, it's just that the "First Princess of Thay" wants to tell us herself. "At least explain why you found it necessary to contact me in this melodramatic fashion."

Malark grinned. "If I may say so, Master, you don't know the half of it. To make it possible for me to reach all three of you zulkirs in time, my mistress conjured me a flying horse, and as I understand it, when an illusionist manufactures such a creature, it isn't altogether real. Recognizing its ephemeral nature yet still riding it high above the ground makes a man feel rather bold.

"But to answer the question," the outlander continued, "you are watched. I should know. Some of the watchers report to me, but there may be others who report directly to Szass Tam, and if so, I'd rather they not tell him you and I have spoken.

"Now then: What answer should I deliver to Tharchion Flass?"

Frowning, Samas pondered the question. Like any sane person, he had no desire to run afoul of Szass Tam, yet as Malark himself had pointed out, he could always claim afterward that he attended the secret meeting as the lich's loyal ally, to make sure no one was plotting against him. Meanwhile, his truest fealty was to himself, and he hadn't prospered to the extent he had by ignoring any opportunity to find out what the other grandees of the realm were scheming or to accrue every conceivable advantage.

"Where and when does she want to see us?"

Bareris saw that he'd stepped into an overgrown but open stone well. It was like the shaft he'd climbed out of days before, only narrower. Falling, he dropped his sword and grabbed at the curved wall beside him but failed to find a handhold.

Below him, metal rang, and an instant later he slammed down on a hard, uneven surface. Once the shock of the impact passed, and it was clear the short drop had merely bruised him, he discerned that he and his weapon had landed on a portion of a staircase spiraling into the depths. The disquieting vacancy that was his phantom guide hovered farther down.

He wondered if the spirit had just attempted to lure him into a fatal fall. If so, it would be crazy to continue following it.

But if it wanted him dead, it could have just attacked him with its sword, or let the banshee kill him. It seemed more likely that it had simply expected him to spot the shaft before blundering over the edge.

In any case, Bareris might have nowhere to go but down. By now, more of Xingax's hunters could easily have reached the ridge.

He rose, picked up his sword, and grumbled, "Warn me next time." The entity drifted onward, and he stalked after it.

Before long they came to the first of the vaults opening onto the well. The chamber was a sort of crypt, with supine, somewhat withered-looking figures of pale stone, their arms crossed, laid out in rows on the floor. They could have been sculptures, but Bareris' intuition told him they were corpses, coated with rock or ceramic or somehow petrified entirely. That suggested the ancients hadn't excavated this place to serve as a village or fortress either. It was a warren of tombs.

The dead bodies brought the phantom wavering in and out of visibility as it took on the semblance of first one and then another, but it didn't cling to any of them for long.

The crypts grew larger as Bareris and his guide descended. Stone sarcophagi, in some cases carved with the images of the dead, hid their occupants from view. Faded, flaking murals on the walls proclaimed their achievements and their adoration of their gods. The phantom borrowed faces from some of the carved and painted images as well, only to relinquish them just as quickly.

The bottom of the well was in view when the phantom led Bareris off the steps and into one of the vaults. A moment later, a gray, plump, segmented creature half as long as the bard was tall crawled from behind a bier. It raised its hairless, eyeless, but nonetheless manlike head and swiveled it in his direction.

Bareris's body clenched into rigidity, and pain burned through his limbs. He struggled to fill his lungs then chanted a charm of vitality.

The agony and near-paralysis faded. Intending to dispatch the sluglike creature before it could afflict him a second time, he lifted his sword and took an initial stride, but the spirit stepped to block the way, and a shadow blade extended from its murky hand.

Meanwhile, the crawling thing turned, retreated deeper into the crypt, and called out in a language Bareris had never heard before.

He hesitated. Despite the unpleasantness he'd suffered a moment before, it now seemed as if the worm-creature wanted to talk, not fight, and he certainly didn't want to battle it and the wraith at the same time if it wasn't necessary.

He sang to grant himself the gift of tongues then called, "I couldn't understand you before, but I will now."

"I said to keep your distance," the eyeless being replied. "I don't want to turn you to stone-not unless you mean me harm-but I can't stop the force emanating from my body any more than you can stop the flow of blood through your veins."

"I didn't come to hurt you," Bareris said. "I asked your… companion here to take me somewhere safe because other undead creatures are hunting me. I should warn you, they might track me into the well. They've sniffed out some of my other hiding places."

"I doubt they'll find this one," the creature said. "Those who built it had a fear of necromancers tampering with their remains, so they took precautions to prevent such indignities. They laid their dead to rest in a secret place far from their habitations and also arranged for me to dwell here, to petrify the corpses and make them impossible to reanimate. Most importantly from your perspective, they laid down wards to keep a wizard's undead servants from locating the tombs."

Bareris felt the tension flow out of him, leaving a profound weariness in its place. "That's good to hear."

"Sit. Mirror and I can offer no other comforts fit for a mortal man, but you can at least rest."

The bard flopped down with his back against a wall. "Mirror is an apt name for your friend, I suppose. Mine is Bareris Anskuld."

"I'm Quickstrike. A gravecrawler, as you can see."

Bareris shook his head. "I have to take your word for it. I've never met or even heard of a creature like you before."

"Truly? I wonder if the rest of my kind have vanished from the world." Quickstrike sounded more intrigued than dismayed by the possibility. "Men also called us ancestor worms."

"Interesting," Bareris said, and it was, a little. Despite the despair that had consumed him of late, he couldn't help feeling somewhat curious about his new companions. Curiosity was a fundamental aspect of the character of any bard. "Are gravecrawlers undead?"

"Of a sort, but not the sort that was ever human or preys on humans, not as long as they behave themselves."

"I assure you, I intend to. And Mirror is a ghost?"

"Of a particularly brave and accomplished warrior, I believe. As you will have guessed, Mirror is simply the nickname I gave him, based on his habit of filching an appearance. He doesn't remember his true name or face any longer, or much of anything really."

"Why not?"

Quickstrike's body rippled from head to tail in a manner that suggested a man stretching. "He fell victim to the power that destroyed his entire people. It's a sad story, but one I can relate if you want to hear."

Bareris had the feeling that, after centuries with only the mute, nearly mindless Mirror for company, Quickstrike enjoyed having someone to talk to, while for his part, he had nothing better to do than listen.

"Please do. I've spent much of my life collecting tales and songs."

"Well, then. In its time, not so very long after the fall of Netheril, a splendid kingdom ruled these mountains. It owed much of its greatness to a single man, Fastrin the Delver, a wizard as clever and powerful as any who ever lived.

"For much of his life, Fastrin worked wonders to benefit his people and gave sage counsel to their lords. Eventually, however, he withdrew from the world, and those few who saw him thereafter said he was troubled but couldn't or wouldn't explain why, which kept anyone from realizing just how dire the situation was. Fastrin wasn't just morose, he was going mad.

"One sunny summer morning," Quickstrike continued, "he emerged from his seclusion and started methodically slaughtering people, laying waste to one community after another, but he wasn't content with simply ending the lives of his victims. His magic mangled their minds and souls. In many cases, it may have obliterated their spirits entirely. Even when it didn't, it stripped them of memory and reason."

"Like Mirror," Bareris said.

"Yes. He was one of many who tried to stand against Fastrin. Sadly, their valor accomplished nothing. I suppose a few people must have escaped by taking flight, but at the end of the wizard's rampage, the kingdom he'd done so much to build no longer existed. He then turned that same lethal, psyche-rending power on himself."

"What was it all about? Even lunatics have reasons, though they may not make sense to the rest of us. Did anyone try to parley with him?"

"Yes," said the ancestor worm. "Fastrin said he'd been robbed, and since he was unable to identify the thief, everyone must die. It was the only way to be safe."

Bareris shook his head. "I don't understand."

"No one did, and Fastrin refused to elaborate."

"May I ask how you learned all this?"

"When I was buried in this place? Well, even Fastrin couldn't kill an entire realm in a day, or a tenday, and as the massacre continued, folk sought my counsel. Ancestor worms were accounted wise, you see. When I ate the flesh of the dead, before I grew beyond the need of such provender, I absorbed their wisdom. Alas, nothing I'd ever learned offered any remedy to the disaster.

"Later, when people stopped coming here, I ventured forth to discover if anyone remained alive. I didn't find any humans, but by good fortune, I encountered a hunting party of orcs, who then attacked me."

Bareris smiled crookedly. " 'Good fortune,' you say."

"Very much so, because they didn't all turn to stone. One simply bled out after I pierced it with my fangs, and when I ate some of it, it turned out that it had witnessed Fastrin's suicide from a safe distance. Either the wizard didn't notice, or since the or hadn't been a subject of the kingdom, it didn't figure in his delusions and he saw no reason to attack it. Either way, at least I now knew what had happened, grim though it was, so I returned home.

"Now tell me your tale."

Bareris winced. For a moment, Quickstrike's story had distracted him from his sorrows, and he had no desire to return to them. "It's not worth telling."

"When it involves you fleeing the undead? Don't be ridiculous."

Bareris reflected that the gravecrawler was, in fact, his host, so he owed the creature some accounting of himself. "As you wish. I don't know how much you know about the kingdoms of men as they exist today. I hail from a realm called Thay…"

He tried to relate the tale as tersely as possible, without any of the embellishments he would have employed if he'd been enjoying himself or striving to tease applause and coins from an audience. Still, it took a while. Long enough to dry his throat.

He drank the last swig from one of his water bottles. "And that's it," he concluded. "I warned you it wasn't much of a story. A good one has a shape to it. Even if it makes you feel sadness or pity, it somehow lifts you up as well, but mine's just bungling, futility, and horror."

Quickstrike cocked his eyeless head. "You speak as if the story's over."

"It is. It doesn't matter if I make it out of these mountains and live another hundred years. I've already lost everything I cherished and the only fight worth fighting."

"My existence and mind are different from yours. I don't love, and long solitude that no human could endure suits me. All my knowledge of mortal thoughts and feelings is secondhand, and it's possible that on the deepest level, I cannot understand, but I think you still have a path to walk, and Mirror will help you on your way."

"What do you mean?"

"He wanders, and despite the damage to his mind, he knows these peaks and valleys, these Sunrise Mountains, as your people name them. He can keep you hidden from your pursuers while he guides you back to your own country."

"Does he want to? Why?"

"Because he's empty. He needs something to reflect, to fill and define him, and you, the first live man we've seen since he manifested in these vaults centuries ago, can do so in a way that lifeless paintings and carvings and I, an undead, inhuman creature, cannot."

"You make it sound as if he'll drain sustenance from me like a leech."

"No more than your reflection in any other glass."

Bareris still didn't like the sound of it. "Won't you miss him?"

"No. I wish him well, but I told you, my needs and feelings aren't like yours."

Bareris decided it wasn't worth further argument. The truth was, if he meant to go on living, he did need help, besides which, if Mirror insisted on accompanying him, he probably couldn't stop him anyway. But if they were to be companions, he ought to stop talking about the ghost as if he weren't there, even though he barely was.

He cast about and found a streak of blur hanging in the air. "Thank you," he said. "I'm grateful for your aid."

As he'd expected, Mirror made no reply.