Prophet of the Dead

grace as Cheng Lin, Dai Shan might have conceded that his was an excellent question.

Dai Shan had to obtain the wild griffons to pull ahead of his brothers in their lifelong competition to be proclaimed their father’s heir. And at least now he’d learned the beasts were still outside Immilmar and discovered what else was going on.

Still, what could he do? If he revealed himself and laid claim to the griffons, Yhelbruna would be no more inclined to believe him than she had Bez. Less, considering that Dai Shan hadn’t even led a war party of his own into the north. Falconer and the rest of his undead confederates, who’d promised him the winged creatures in exchange for his treachery, were gone. And without such formidable assistance, he and his handful of Shou had no hope of making off with the beasts either by stealth or force of arms.

What, then, did that leave? Dai Shan didn’t know-yet-so he supposed that for the moment, he’d do well to focus on the one aspect of the situation that was already clear.

After the victory at the Fortress of the Half-Demon, Vandar Cherlinka did have a legitimate claim on the wild griffons. So did Aoth Fezim. The latter had apparently emerged from the dark maze somewhere far away. Jet, who sensibly still didn’t trust Dai Shan, declined to divulge his master’s precise whereabouts, but the familiar could speak for the war mage by virtue of their mystical bond.

It followed, then, that Dai Shan could allow neither Vandar nor Jet to return to Immilmar. He thanked his patrons in shadow that, never injured as badly as the griffon to begin with, he’d recovered more quickly.

Still, even impaired, the beast was dangerous. So, in his dense barbarian way, was Vandar, and he’d never been seriously hurt in the first place.

Plainly, the killings would take some doing, but Dai Shan could manage them. He simply needed to take each of his victims by surprise at a time and place that would preclude the others noticing any subsequent commotion.

“Just bide here for now,” he told Cheng Lin, “and don’t tell anyone of my visit. My time in your company is drawing short, but I’ll return soon in a more permanent sort of way.”

Cheng Lin grinned. “I thought I was talking to one of your shadows.”

Dai Shan could only deplore the overt display of self-satisfaction. Still, perhaps the man wasn’t a complete idiot after all.

Dai Shan bade him farewell and then separated himself from the vessel he’d inhabited as easily as he might have flipped off a loose mitten. And like a mitten that no longer had a hand inside it, what remained of the shadow collapsed into formlessness on its way to nonexistence.

Dai Shan sensed but didn’t actually witness the final obliteration, even though the whole process only took a heartbeat. By then, he was back in the stable.

Graven with arcane sigils on the side facing inward, the granite slab could lock in place or swing like an ordinary gate on hinges, depending on the requirements of the moment. Aoth’s fire-kissed eyes could make out the silvery web of potentiality that accomplished those functions but not how it operated.

Fortunately, they could likewise discern the newer patterns of malignancy festering inside the rock like aneurysms waiting to rupture, and that magic he did understand. It fell within his field of expertise.

He motioned to the gate with the head of his spear. “The undead mean to come through here.”

“Are you sure?” Shaugar asked. “They’ve thrown thunderbolts and such at all the entries.”

“So would I in their place. Such a bombardment makes it harder for the defenders to decide where you really mean to breach, and if you do manage to knock something down, you can always adjust your plans accordingly. They didn’t blast through, though, and in the midst of all the distractions, someone has done a masterful job of rotting out this particular chunk of stone. It’ll crumble when the Raumvirans want it to.”

Shaugar hitched his three-eyed mask up slightly so he could scratch the gray-stubbled chin beneath. “They already did crumble the main gate, and according to your orc friend, we’re doing a miserable job of building barricades. He says drunken goblins could do better.”

“Some of the enemy will charge in that way, and we’ll need men in place to oppose them. Still, that will be a feint. The main assault will come here, where the dead think it will surprise us. But now that we know, we’re going to surprise them instead.

Right?”

Shaugar squared his shoulders. “Right. As long as we make our preparations in time. Now that we know where they need to work, I’ll round up the right people for the job.”

Once he turned his thoughts to the problem, Dai Shan realized one sure way to kill each of his intended victims without the other overhearing or chancing on the scene at an inopportune moment. He needed to begin with Vandar and dispose of the berserker while the two of them were wandering the dark maze.

As they were currently. Vandar was in the lead and, now that days of shared effort and hardship had dulled the edge of mistrust, didn’t appear to suspect anything amiss. Conditions were essentially ideal, and it only remained for Dai Shan to choose a method of execution.

His style of magic could confuse, hinder, or even harm a target, but the effects were variable. When a caster was particularly unlucky, his spell simply served to warn an adversary that he was under attack. Whereas one murderous blow, properly administered to an unsuspecting victim already conveniently within striking distance, would likely resolve the confrontation in an instant.

Dai Shan rolled his shoulders, inhaled through his nostrils, and exhaled through his mouth. He visualized himself lunging and driving his fist into the vertebrae at the top of Vandar’s spine.

Vandar halted abruptly, just before the spot where a weathered-looking statue of skeletal Jergal, depicted writing with a quill at his desk, sat at the intersection of two vault-lined passages. “Hold up,” he whispered.

“What is it?” Dai Shan answered just as softly, meanwhile setting aside his homicidal intent for at least a moment or two. It would be poor timing to strike down the berserker just as more hostile shadow creatures came scuttling out of the dark. The Rashemi’s back would still be there for the breaking after the skirmish was through.

“Something’s coming,” Vandar said, “something different or bigger than what we’ve grown accustomed to, or at least I think so. I can’t see or hear it, but my spear and sword sense it, and the knowledge is bleeding across to me.”

Dai Shan took that somewhat unlikely sounding assertion at face value. During their association in the fortress and the maze, he’d seen evidence that Vandar had a spiritual link to the red weapons somewhat like his own connection to the shadows he created to serve him.

“Take the torch,” Dai Shan said, “and fall back. Find a space to duck into. We don’t want whatever’s coming to spot the light.”

In normal, natural gloom, said creature or creatures might well have noticed it even so. But the murk in the labyrinth was thick and hungry enough to make hiding the torch feasible.

“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