Unclean

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