It sounds like you have it all figured out, Grontaix growled. So why not go away and leave me in peace?
I told you, said Aoth. We re going to keep you hostage until you and you alone have accompanied us back aboveground. Unfortunately, I need to keep a weapon at your throat, so you ll have to put up with me riding on your shoulder. That is, unless you d rather crawl.
SIX
It wasn t much of a village, just a cluster of huts in the rugged hills between Lake Ashane and the Urlingwood. In such a backwater, there were relatively few people to kill, and even fewer who could put up a fight against the dead. By the time Dai Shan s shadow arrived, the massacre was nearly over, but not quite. It felt the survivors before it actually saw them, as points of warmth in the cold and dark. It sensed its peers, too, as something colder than cold and emptier than empty.
As the shadow came loping down the slope, one grinning corpse gripped a little boy s ankles, and another, his wrists. They pulled in opposite directions, and if they were hoping to rip him in two, they were disappointed. But he screamed as his arms and legs came out of their sockets.
A ghoul clawed a woman to rags, and then, when the victim stopped struggling, took an experimental bite out of her shoulder. It spat the bloody flesh out again, dumped the body on the ground, and, swinging itself along on its knuckles, scuttled toward the tiny graveyard.
A man drove a spear into a thing so decayed that the shadow couldn t tell if it had originally been male or female. Though it had no eyes left in the dark and mushy wreckage for a head, the creature looked down at the weapon, then grabbed its attacker by the neck.
The shadow needed to decide how best to approach the killers. It was still pondering in its murky way when a hathran in a white tabard, cloak, and single-horned mask and a unicorn suddenly appeared among the carnage.
Together, they shed a silvery glow that burned and dazzled the dead like sunlight. While the creatures were still reeling from that, the unicorn whipped its head and tore the mushy thing in two with its horn. The hathran chanted a prayer that turned the left half of a ghoul s body to dust. After the part that was left fell down, it tried feebly and futilely to crawl.
Perhaps because the shadow hadn t hurt anyone, the priestess and the unicorn didn t appear to notice it. It realized it had an opportunity to win the trust and attention of its fellow undead. It circled around behind the unicorn and the hathran. Then it charged.
When it got close enough, the pale light seared it, too, but the pain was bearable. It pounced like a cat, landing on the unicorn s back, and plunging its freezing, insubstantial hands into the sacred animal s flesh. The unicorn jerked and screamed.
Raising her scimitar, the witch pivoted toward her ally. But before she could strike or cast a spell at the shadow, an imp the size of a hawk, with beating batlike wings, pointed ears, and a mouth full of needle fangs, appeared in the air directly behind her. It whipped its tail, and the stinger at the end of it, at the back of her head.
The sting didn t seem to penetrate her woolen cowl. But she whirled to defend herself from the hovering devil and left the unicorn to look after itself.
The shadow pummeled the sacred beast repeatedly, as fast as it could. But the animal simply vanished out from underneath its attacker.
The shadow spilled to the ground like water. The unicorn popped back into view on its flank and instantly leaped, its shining horn leveled.
The shadow threw itself to the side, and the thrust missed. The unicorn pivoted, reared, and battered at it with its front hooves. One blow plunged through its arm, and it felt a shock of pain.
A burst of dark red, somehow filthy-looking flame splashed across the unicorn s side. The animal screamed and staggered, dropping back onto all fours. As it struggled to recover its balance, an undead stepped in and clubbed it in the head with a war hammer. Blood splashed and bone crunched. The unicorn collapsed and lay motionless. The haze of silvery glow surrounding it and the hathran dimmed.
The animal s slayer was a walking corpse with three fleshless skulls on his shoulders instead of one. Judging from his mail, his faded, rotting, but ornately embroidered surcoat, and his manifest power, he was almost certainly the captain of the raiding party.
With the unicorn slain, the undead leader rounded on the hathran, but needlessly so. The holy woman was collapsing under the stinging, biting onslaught of half a dozen imps. In another moment, the pale ambient glow blinked out of existence entirely, extinguished along with her life.
The leader looked around, and darkness seethed in the eye sockets of the middle skull. The entity s fallen minions stirred as an infusion of strength repaired the harm the unicorn and the witch had done to them.
The leader whistled and raised a hand that wore a bulky gauntlet resembling a falconer s glove. Snarling and gibbering, bloody-mouthed, the imps rose from the hathran s corpse and flew to their master. As each swooped close to the gauntlet, it disappeared.
The three-headed creature then turned to peer at the shadow.
You re not one of mine, said the middle skull. But you can be. You can join us.
But the shadow knew that wasn t so, because its will wasn t its own. It was a bound thing, made for one specific purpose, and it was time to fulfill it.
The shadow took all its strength and turned that power to a final purpose. By so doing, it perished, and Dai Shan appeared in its place.
Well, not really, the Shou thought as he offered the three-headed undead a deep and courtly bow. He was still a shadow, or perhaps at that point it was more apt to call himself a reflection. Either way, he too would cease to be when the magic that had created him ran its course. Until then, though, he could think and speak like the original, and the original would know what he accomplished thereby.
I take it, said the leader, his tone less cordial than before, that you fancied yourself the master of the shadow that just sacrificed itself so you could appear before me.
Yes, said Dai Shan, taking care not to risk giving offense by reacting to the stinks of corruption and burnt unicorn fouling the cold night air. I created and commanded it. I m Dai Shan of the House of Shan in Telflamm, if those names mean anything to one so venerable as the august magus I see before me.
It s a crime for any of the living to seek to control an undead, the leader said.
Dai Shan arched an eyebrow. Even one that would never have existed in the first place had the living man not shaped it from a wisp of himself? he asked. I m not sure that s incontrovertibly rational or incontestably fair. Still, I humbly apologize for inadvertently offending against your customs.
It s not a custom. It s a law, the creature replied.
As you say, Dai Shan said. It really was cold here, and the Shou instructed himself not to shiver. Not only would it disgrace him, but it might lead the thing with three heads to imagine he was afraid, and that in turn might elicit aggression.
But sadly, it s too late for the enforcement of any law to benefit the shadow, Dai Shan continued. As you so astutely observed, it s already gone beyond recall, and the actual person who made and directed it is beyond your reach. Might it not be more productive, then, for you and his proxy to discuss matters of mutual import in the time remaining before I, too, disappear?
The undead leader grunted, or perhaps it was a single grudging beat of laughter. What do you want, Dai Shan of the House of Shan in Telflamm? it said.
The valiant captain s name, for a start, if you see fit to honor me with it, replied the Shou.