Prophet of the Dead

Aoth raised the spear a hair to remind the thrall of the threat it represented. “I think you at least have a guess, and I recommend you share it. As soon as you stop helping me, you become a problem with an obvious solution.”

The orc sneered. “But maybe not an easy one. Not for a human standing funny and sweating rivers even in this cold, a human who tells me straight out that he needs a healer.”

Aoth stared his captive in the face. “If you want to try me, go ahead.”

After a long moment, the orc broke eye contact. “What for? Out of loyalty to the master who treats me so well?” He spit.

“Then stop posturing and tell me where he keeps his treasure.”

“In his chambers, I guess. I don’t know where else it would be.”

“Does he sleep during the day?”

“Mostly. I think. I mean, he doesn’t have to. I’ve seen him when the sun is up. But not very often.”

Aoth frowned. “I guess that will have to do. Take me to his quarters. Choose a route where people won’t see us this time of day.”

As they climbed a steep, narrow set of back stairs, and his neck and back fairly screamed with the punishing exertion, Aoth said through gritted teeth, “Exactly what kind of undead is So-Remas?”

The orc shrugged. “I’m not a necromancer. I don’t know all the different kinds.”

“Is he solid or shadowy? Man-shaped or otherwise? What does he eat or drink?”

“He looks like a white-faced, shriveled-up, dead old man. He eats and drinks the same things as living people do. Just, not much.”

Not a vampire or a specter, then. That was good as far as it went, but it left plenty of other nasty creatures that So-Remas could be.

“Quiet, now,” the orc continued. “We’re almost there.”

They stepped from the stairs onto a landing on one of the uppermost floors of the keep. Ornately carved with scenes of a handsome young wizard slaying cloud giants, raising a tempest, and commanding the obedience of groveling pit fiends-a highly embellished depiction of So-Remas’s early career, most likely-the double doors to the master’s apartments were locked.

Drawing on his dwindling store of arcane power, Aoth inserted the tip of his spear into the keyhole and whispered a charm. The point pulsed with green light, and the lock clicked open.

He cracked the door and peeked in at a chamber with drawn curtains and closed shutters behind them. The space would have been entirely dark if not for the red embers glowing in the hearth. But he didn’t need good light-or any light-to discern the high-backed leather chairs, lanceboard table, and collection of ancient Mulhorandi coins, curios, and sculpture. The air smelled of both dry rot and the floral perfume the undead nobleman apparently used in an effort to mask his stink.

There was a bookshelf built into the wall. It didn’t hold enough volumes to fill it, and that was by design. A square of minute cracks outlined the empty section and a hint of silvery phosphorescence crawled on top of it.

Tiptoeing, Aoth led the orc inside, eased the door shut behind them, and then crossed to the hidden panel. He tried to slide and then push it open, but it wouldn’t budge.

The slave was plainly nervous with his owner sleeping in the next chamber, but even so, curiosity or skepticism prompted him to whisper, “How do you know anything’s there?”

Aoth pointed to his lambent eyes. His truesight would have found a mundane lock as easily as the cracks if there had been one. Unfortunately, though, So-Remas had secured the panel with enchantment. That was the source of the argent glimmer.

Maybe Aoth’s charm of unlocking would work as it had before, but maybe not. He’d match his thunderbolts and showers of acid against those of any wizard short of Szass Tam, but the spell of opening wasn’t a part of the potent system of battle magic he’d mastered as a youthful legionnaire. It was just a trick he’d picked up in the years since, and he wasn’t proficient with it.

Still, he’d have to pit it against So-Remas’s ward. He couldn’t simply smash through the panel for fear of waking the mage.

He whispered the words and touched his spear to the surface much as he had before. The panel didn’t move.

Maybe pain was interfering with his concentration. He took several long, slow breaths and tried to exhale it from his body, then focused his will anew and made sure to murmur the words with the exact cadence and pronunciation they required.

The panel still wouldn’t move.

“Come on!” whispered the orc.

Aoth tried again. And thrice more.

Then the double doors to the landing crashed open, and two spearmen in mail and crested helmets rushed into the room. An instant later, So-Remas, withered, bone-white, and milky-eyed, his mostly bald skull sporting white hair like dandelion fluff, stepped to the threshold of his bedchamber. The nightshirt and nightcap lent a grotesque and even comical note to his appearance, but there was nothing funny about the slim ebony wand in his clawlike hand.

Cera felt taut as a bowstring while Sarshethrian stood motionless-well, except for the constant stirring of his ragged corona of shadow-and seemingly entranced. For the moment, eager hope trumped the loathing the demon’s proximity engendered.

“The darkness is responding to him,” murmured Jhesrhi, standing at her side with the top of her brazen staff burning like a torch and the stag men hovering close. “I see the ripples, and I hear the voices.”

“Good,” Cera said, and in her thoughts, she prayed to Amaunator even though she could barely sense him.

For her, that, not the gloom, the cold, or even the knowledge of being lost and trapped, was the greatest horror of this place: It attenuated her link to the god to whom she’d pledged her life and soul. If it frayed away entirely, it was hard to imagine she could withstand the loss.

Sarshethrian turned his gaze on the mortals. “Your friend Aoth is gone.”

Cera felt a jolt of alarm. “What do you mean?”

The creature shrugged. The shoulder of the uninjured arm hitched up and down normally while the other barely twitched. “He may have found a way out of the deathways by himself, although I very much doubt it. Someone else may have removed him. He may have been alive or dead when it happened. All I know is, he isn’t here anymore.”

Jhesrhi scowled. “You’re sure?”

“Well, admittedly, my kingdom is extensive. In theory, if the man traveled a very long way in just a short time … I’ll tell you what. I want us all to be friends, so I’ll keep checking from time to time as we move about. But for now, let’s tentatively agree that one provision of our bargain has been fulfilled.”

“Not by you,” Cera said. “You didn’t help him.”

“And as yet,” the fiend replied, an edge coming into his voice, “you haven’t done anything to help me either. So be happy you got what you wanted and let it go at that.”

“We’ll honor our contract,” Jhesrhi said. “And the more we know about what’s going on, the better we can help you.”

Sarshethrian smirked. “And the more likely it is that you can find your own way home?”

“I thought you claimed we’d never figure it out, no matter what,” Cera said.

The pale creature chuckled. “A fair touch, sun priestess. I did, and I do.” He glanced around, found a black marble sarcophagus with a lid carved in the form of a sleeping lady holding a lily to her chest, and perched on the edge. Then he waved the humans to the stone coffin opposite it. “So make yourselves comfortable and ask your questions.”

Jhesrhi seated herself, and after a moment’s hesitation, Cera did the same, although it felt strange and wrong to flop down casually across from the demon when, in any sane world or set of circumstances, she’d be scourging it with the radiance of the Yellow Sun and a chant of exorcism.

“I want to know three things,” Jhesrhi said. “What is this place, what are you, and who are our mutual enemies?”