Prophet of the Dead

Aoth was matter of fact when he continued speaking:

I was hoping you would fly me out of here. But apparently that couldn’t happen for a while.

I’m sorry.

It’s all right. I’ll find another way north. You concentrate on recovering.

If I can. The statement slipped out seemingly of its own accord, before Jet knew he was going to say it.

Of course you can! You’re stronger than any ordinary griffon. I know. I enchanted you to be that way when you were still in your mother’s womb.

I hope so.

Besides, Cera’s magic will heal you if she’s there. Is she? Jet could feel the anxiety underlying the question.

No. Delivering the bad news felt like another failure. I’d better tell you everything I know about what happened after you passed through the arch into the dark. He did so with a combination of language and flashes of images from his memory.

By the time he finished, Aoth’s worry had warped into anger. And Dai Shan is there with you, right now?

Yes. Jet turned his head so that Aoth could see the Shou through his eyes. Singed, blistered, and stinking of combustion and blood, portions of his garments burned away, Dai Shan looked far different than the dapper emissary to the Iron Lord’s court, but his self-possession remained intact. Apparently engaged in the practice humans called meditation, he sat with legs crossed, palms up, and eyes closed.

Your suspicions were correct, said Aoth. He-or his avatar-tricked Jhesrhi, Cera, and me into going into the shadow maze so he could get rid of us. He tried to murder me, he stranded the others, and maybe he knows how to get them back. You have to question him right away.

Jet found that his own anger gave him the strength to heave his aching body up off the ground. He lunged, shoved Dai Shan onto his back, and held him there by pressing an eagle-clawed forefoot down on his chest.

“Ah,” Dai Shan wheezed, breathless with a griffon’s weight squashing him. “I infer that the fierce prince of the skies wishes to resume the conversation that Captain Bez’s fireball cut short.”

Red spear in hand, Vandar rose heavily. “I guess it’s time.”

“I defer to your judgment,” the merchant said. “Yet I fear the results will prove disappointing. As I was about to explain previously, by chance, I discovered some of the more formidable undead fleeing into a hidden labyrinth. I likewise discerned how to pursue them. I shared the information with Captain Fezim and his friends, and we gave chase. Unfortunately, the creatures realized someone was on their trail and set a trap. In the battle that ensued-”

Jet silenced him by pressing down harder. “Don’t lie. Captain Fezim is here. He’s in my head.”

“Then he must have found a way to return to the mortal plane.” Dai Shan smiled up into the griffon’s eyes. “Congratulations, sagacious warlord. I should have expected nothing less. Yet I’m perplexed. If you’re already in communication with your steed, why does he need to hear the tale of our adventure from me?”

We need to know how you really unlock the magical arches, said Aoth.

Jet relayed the question.

“Of course,” said Dai Shan. “I pray my friends will forgive both my obtuseness and my decision to reserve that information a little while longer. Until the desire for retaliation has lost its primacy.”

Jet pressed harder. “Now.”

“Please consider,” Dai Shan wheezed, “that until we make our way back to the Fortress of the Half-Demon, we won’t have access to any magical arches, anyway. Consider too, that if you kill me, you’ll forfeit the other forms of assistance I can provide.”

“Meaning what?” Vandar asked.

“I have some training in the chirurgeon’s art, even though I’ve always employed it to conduct interrogations not unlike this one rather than to heal. Moreover, when my father told me he was sending me to Rashemen to procure griffons, I learned what I could on that subject. My inquiries included having a sage instruct me on their anatomy.”

Jet realized an instant after the fact that he’d stopped pressing down so hard.

Dai Shan gave him a little nod. “I see the valiant lord of the clouds understands. In the absence of priestly healing, some skilled and knowledgeable soul must set that broken wing. Should that occur, and Tymora smiles, you may eventually fly again. Whereas if it heals as it is, such an outcome is precluded.”

“I want to see you strong and hale,” said Vandar to Jet. “I want to bring Cera and Jhesrhi back too. But how can we trust this dastard?”

“It will be a pity if you can’t, lodge master,” Dai Shan replied. “For I have something to offer you as well.”

Vandar scowled. “What’s that?”

“As Captain Fezim learned and his shrewd familiar now understands, I have the ability to create surrogates for myself. Regrettably, not at the moment. My injuries diminish my mystical capabilities. But when I’m sufficiently recovered, I can conjure such an entity, and it can race to Immilmar more quickly than we three invalids could hope to make the journey. And we need a messenger to go to the Wychlaran and the Iron Lord, do we not, to warn that the most dangerous undead escaped and to denounce Mario Bez.”

What do you think? asked Jet, trying not to let his desperate, selfish hope communicate itself from mind to mind.

Aoth’s answer came with a tinge of bitter frustration, but it also came at once. What choice do we have? Let the little weasel live for now.

Nyevarra led her sisters through the arch with a certain sense of relief. Under Uramar’s tutelage, she’d learned that so long as they knew their route, undead could traverse the deathways without incident more often than not. Yet it was also true that the maze had its perils, and some who entered never emerged.

Glancing around, she found herself in a vault behind a wrought-iron gate. Stone sarcophagi rose from the floor, and cobweb-shrouded jars and urns reposed in niches in the walls. For another moment, the arched doorway opened on the deathways with their crawling, smothering gloom and mad profusion of morbid sculpture. Then the charm of opening ran its course, and space on the other side of the arched doorway wavered into a somewhat more ordinary sort of place, filled with gloom but only the natural kind, and with painted hathran symbols defacing the pentacle mosaic on the floor.

It was the symbols that proved beyond doubt that Nyevarra and her sisters had reached their proper destination. She whispered a cantrip. The lock in the gate made a crunching sound, and, with a squeal, the grille swung open.

Nyevarra and the other durthans swung wide to avoid the pentacle. She had no doubt the sigils would hold their prisoner as they had for centuries, but still, why rouse the demon, especially when stealth was essential? They didn’t want the fiend’s agitation to communicate itself to some sensitive soul in the castle above.

After several turns, a staircase rose to a wall of sandstone blocks. Nyevarra murmured a charm, tapped the barrier with her staff of oak-the antler weapon was too unusual an instrument for someone who wished to be inconspicuous-and, scraping against one another, three loose stones floated free of the matrix. They hovered while the witches clambered through the hole, and then the stones replaced themselves.

Now that Nyevarra and her companions had reached the storerooms, her inhumanly keen hearing could hear drunken male voices roaring out an obscene song somewhere on the ground floor of the citadel. Despite herself, she hesitated, then noticed some of the others doing the same.

“Don’t worry,” she told them-and herself too, she supposed. “This will work. Because the hathrans have no idea that Falconer’s accomplice opened a path for us.”

And it turned out she was right. As she and the others strode through the ground floor of the massive keep, berserkers and lesser folk cleared out of their way and stood respectfully until they passed. Even when they encountered a hathran, the other wise woman simply gave them a casual nod. Aided by enchantment and the natural tendency of folk to see what they expected to see, the masks and voluminous robes of witches concealed