Of course, Aoth said, I agree with you. And I mean to give chase as soon as we re able. But we ve had this talk before. You don t want to lead your brothers into more fighting before they re ready.
No, said Vandar. But what if the durthans are getting away?
We have a way of checking on that, remember? said Aoth. I ll do it now. He reached out to Jet, and, through the familiar s eyes, saw the night sky. Sel ne was rising in the east and trailing her haze of shimmering tears behind her. Fresh white snowflakes drifted on the frigid, moaning wind.
There s still nobody coming up out of any tunnels, said Jet. You should have taken me along with you. You could have used me when the patchwork man was tearing you apart.
You may be right, but it s too late now. Stay on watch.
I will. But I m going to kill a wild hog, too. I saw some awhile ago, and I m hungry.
Aoth fixed his gaze on Vandar. Jet says there s no sign of undead and such aboveground, he said. So they must still be down here with us. He smiled. Come on, relax. Surely the master of the Griffon Lodge trusts the word of his totem.
Vandar didn t smile back, but said, Be ready as soon as you can. Then he turned and strode off toward some of his lodge brothers.
I don t like this, Jhesrhi said. He was always headstrong and touchy, and he never liked you much. But now he s different.
I agree, said Aoth, and I don t like it, either. But in spite of everything, we ve got the foe on the run. Let s finish this, collect our reward, and go home to the Brotherhood.
Dai Shan stood at the bow of the Storm of Vengeance and gazed out at the vague black face of the benighted land below. It was an interesting sight, simultaneously majestic and mysterious, but it still afforded no sign of the Fortress of the Half-Demon.
Leaning on the rail beside him, Mario Bez said, We re almost there.
Are you sure? Dai Shan asked.
The sellsword arched an eyebrow.
Dai Shan bowed. A thousand apologies, most sagacious of navigators, he added. Of course you are.
Right, said the captain. And because I am, it s time for you to do some more spirit traveling and figure out what we re going to find when we arrive.
Inwardly, the Shou sighed. Perhaps it had been a mistake to let Bez know that he in any sense possessed that capability. Certainly there was an element of risk attendant upon entering a trance in the mercenary s presence. What if Bez had inferred that, his assurances to the contrary notwithstanding, Dai Shan still intended to claim the wild griffons for himself? What if the Halruaan decided to take advantage of a rival s diminished capacity by sticking his rapier in him or tossing him over the side? It was, after all, what Dai Shan might well have done in Bez s place.
But only after said rival had outlived his usefulness. Dai Shan hadn t, and he judged that his companion was shrewd enough to realize it.
So he said, I have every confidence that your timing is impeccable, my valiant ally, and it will be my privilege to glean whatever information I can.
He moved to the center of the forecastle, sat down on the deck with his legs crossed, closed his eyes, and breathed slowly and deeply. When he felt centered, he reached out to the shadow that, tendays before, he d cast to spy on the Griffon Lodge. Unless something had happened to it, it had followed the berserkers north to the Fortress of the Half-Demon and was stalking them still.
Yes. It still existed. He could feel the ache of emptiness, the strange mix of malice, cunning, and dullness, and the absolute need to serve him that passed for its mind. He told it to give up everything it had and was, identity and existence themselves, and become him.
Perhaps the shadow resisted or regretted, but if so, only for an instant. Then it was gone, and Dai Shan stood in its place.
Of course, he was still sitting in the bow of the Storm as well. But for the moment, the original Dai Shan was content to empty his mind and vicariously experience what his counterpart experienced.
The active Dai Shan found himself in a tunnel whose darkness was, of course, no impediment to his sight. Peering about to make certain no one was in his immediate vicinity, he inferred that he was in the notorious tangle of dungeons beneath the Fortress of the Half-Demon. Off in the distance, the wavering yellow lights of torches moved to and fro, men called out to one another, and, to his surprise, sleigh bells, or something like them, chimed.
He surmised that Aoth Fezim, Vandar Cherlinka, and their allies must have won an initial battle with Falconer, his fellow undead, and their servants. That seemed to be the only way the living humans could have gained access to the vaults. But what else was happening?
There was one way to find out, and Dai Shan supposed he needed to get on with it before the impermanent incarnation of himself ran out of life. He whispered a charm, and a cool tingle ran over his skin as he became invisible. Then he skulked toward the nearest source of torchlight.
Keeping a safe distance, he watched creatures like gaunt stags that walked on two legs and fought with weapons. They destroyed a steel bull that snorted jets of scalding steam from its nostrils. The bells bound to the warriors antlers made the jingling he d been hearing.
From there, he skulked on to a spot where a dozen howling, screeching Rashemi had cornered a durthan and some goblins and were hacking them to bits. The goblins screamed for the masked witch to cast a spell, but she didn t, not even when the berserkers cut her down in her turn. Perhaps she d already expended all her power.
Such scenes gave Dai Shan more insight into the situation unfolding all around him. Since there was still fighting going on, it might be premature to call the attackers victorious, but their victory appeared inevitable. They were hunting their foes and driving them before them, deeper and deeper into the vaults.
And where was Falconer? Destroyed? Trapped? Escaped via some secret exit? It was impossible to say.
But perhaps it didn t matter. It scarcely seemed like a propitious moment to make a stand with the undead. No, if Dai Shan revealed himself at all, it had better be as the honest merchant who d promised to help save Rashemen. Yet there didn t seem to be much point in announcing himself in that guise, either. The attackers didn t need his help and were unlikely to welcome a competitor trying to attach himself to them at the moment of their triumph. So he simply renewed his shroud of invisibility and prowled onward. He might as well learn everything he could.
He headed for the echoing shouts and clamor of what sounded like a nearby skirmish. But before he reached it, he spotted an archway capped with three relatively inconspicuous vertical notches like the ones he himself had chiseled beneath the Iron Lord s castle. But something about those grooves looked different.
Well, no, actually not. They looked identical, but they felt different. Dai Shan was at a loss to account for it until he remembered he wasn t his normal self. Rather, he was a shadow reshaped into human form, and some such phantoms possessed modes of perception mortals didn t: tropisms and instincts that enabled them to fix on the energies of life and undeath.
He was still trying to guess what it all meant when he heard hushed but urgent voices whispering down the passageway. Averse to trusting magic alone to hide him at close quarters, he retreated into the mouth of a branching tunnel.
Radiating an unnatural chill and a sickening feeling of wrongness, the blurry, wavering, and all but faceless form of a ghost came into view. Dai Shan couldn t quite tell if it was striding, flying, or moving in some even stranger way. The thought of looking closely enough to figure it out made his stomach churn.
With many a glance back over their shoulders, a trio of masked, hooded durthans scurried after their spectral guide. Their flickering, semitransparent familiars hurried with them: a peregrine, a wildcat, and a swarm of bees.