He was easygoing by nature, and there was a time when he might simply have stepped aside, but he'd learned that, looking as he did, he sometimes had to insist on niggling matters of precedence lest he forfeit respect. He summoned a flare of silvery light from the head of his lance to reveal the badges of a rider of the elite Griffon Legion and the intricate tattooing and manifest power of a wizard.
Not a Red Wizard. Probably because the purity of his bloodline was suspect, none of the orders had ever sought to recruit him, but in Thay, any true scholar of magic commanded respect, and the other warrior stammered an apology and scurried out of the way. Aoth gave him a nod and tramped onward.
The masters of Thazar Keep housed visiting griffons in an airy, doorless stone hall that was a vague approximation of the caverns in which the species often laired in the wild. At present, Brightwing-so named because, even as a cub, her feathers had been a lighter shade of gold than average-was the only one in residence. Her tack hung from pegs on the wall, and fragments of broken bone and flecks of bloody flesh and fat-all that remained of the side of beef Aoth had requisitioned for her supper-befouled a shallow trough.
Brightwing herself was nine feet long, with a lion's body and the pinions, forelegs, and head of an eagle. Her tail switched restlessly, and her round scarlet eyes opened wide when her master came into view.
"It's about time," she said.
Her beak and throat weren't made for articulating human speech, and most people wouldn't have understood the clacks and squawks. But thanks to the bond they shared, Aoth had no difficulty.
"It's scarcely been any time at all," he replied. "What ails you?"
"I have a feeling," the griffon said. "Something's moving in the night."
He grinned. "Could you be a little less specific?"
"It's not a joke."
"If you say so." He respected her instincts. Heeding them had saved his life on more than one occasion. Still, at the moment, he suspected, she was simply in a mood. Maybe the beef hadn't been as fresh as it looked. "Is 'something' inside the walls or outside?"
Brightwing cocked her head and took a moment to answer. "Outside, I believe."
"Then who cares? The Sunrise Mountains are full of unpleasant beasts. That's why Tharchion Focar still keeps troops here, to keep them from wandering down the pass and harming folk at the bottom. But if something dangerous is prowling around outside the fortress, that's not an emergency. Somebody can hunt it down in the morning."
"Morning may be too late."
"We aren't even part of the garrison here. We just deliver dispatches, remember? Besides which, there are sentries walking the battlements."
"We can see more than they can and see it sooner. I mean, if you'll consent to move your lazy arse."
"What if I find you more meat? Maybe even horseflesh."
"That would be nice. Later."
Aoth sighed and moved to lift her saddle off the wall. "I could have chosen an ordinary familiar. A nice tabby, toad, or owl that would never have given me a moment's trouble, but no, not me. I wanted something special."
Despite his grumbling and near-certainty that Brightwing was dragging him away from his pleasures on a fool's errand, he had to admit, if only to himself, that once the griffon lashed her wings and carried him into the air, he didn't mind so very much. He loved to fly. Indeed, even though the slight still rankled sometimes, in his secret heart, he was glad the Red Wizards had never come for him. He wasn't made for their viciousness and intrigues. He was born for this, which didn't make the high mountain air any less frigid. He focused his attention on one of the tattoos on his chest, activating its magic. Warmth flowed through his limbs, making him more comfortable.
"Which way?" he asked. "Up the pass?"
"Yes," Brightwing answered. She climbed higher then wheeled eastward. Below them, quick and swollen with the spring thaw, the Thazarim River hissed and gurgled, reflecting the stars like an obsidian mirror.
The griffon's avian head shifted back and forth, looking for movement on the ground. Aoth peered as well, though his night vision was inferior to hers. He might have enhanced it with an enchantment, except that having no notion this excursion was in the offing, he hadn't prepared that particular spell.
Not that it mattered, for there was nothing to see. "I humored you," he said. "Now let's turn back before all the tavern maids choose other companions for the night."
Brightwing hissed in annoyance. "I know all humans have dull senses, but this is pathetic. Use mine instead."
Employing their psychic link, he did as she'd suggested, and the night brightened around him. Nonetheless, at first he didn't see anything so very different. He certainly smelled it, though, a putrid reek that churned his belly.
"Carrion," he said. "Something big died. Or a lot of little things."
"Maybe." She beat her way onward. He considered pointing out that rotting carcasses didn't constitute a threat to Thazar Keep, then decided that particular sensible observation was no more likely to sway her than any of the others had.
At which point the undead came shambling out of the dark, appearing so suddenly that it was as if a charm of concealment had shrouded them until the griffon and her rider were almost directly over their heads. Hunched, withered ghouls, sunken eyes shining like foxfire in their sockets, loped in the lead. Skeletons with spears and bows came after, and shuffling, lurching corpses bearing axes. Inconstant, translucent figures drifted among the horde as well, some shining like mist in moonlight, others inky shadows all but indistinguishable in the gloom.
Aoth stared in astonishment. Like goblins and kobolds, undead creatures sometimes ventured down from the mountains into the pass, but at worst, five or six of them at a time. There were scores, maybe hundreds, of the vile things advancing below, manifestly united by a common purpose. Just like an army on the march.
"Turn around," the wizard said. "We have to warn the keep."
"Do you really think so," Brightwing answered, "or are you just humoring me?" She dipped one wing, raised the other, and began to wheel. Then something flickered, a blink of blackness against the lesser murk of the night.
Aoth intuited more than truly saw the threat streaking up at them. "Dodge!" he said, and Brightwing veered.
The attack, a jagged streak of shadow erupting from somewhere on the ground, grazed the griffon anyway. Perhaps she'd have fared even worse had it hit her dead on, but as it was, she shrieked and convulsed, plummeting down through the sky for a heart-stopping moment before she spread her wings and arrested her fall.
"Are you all right?" asked Aoth.
"What do you think? It hurt, but I can still fly. What happened?"
"I assume one of those creatures was a sorcerer in life and still remembers some of its magic. Move out before it takes another shot at you."
"Right."
Brightwing turned then cursed. Ragged, mottled sheets of some flexible material floated against the sky like kites carried aloft by the wind. Still relying in part on the griffon's senses, Aoth caught their stink of decay and noticed the subtle, serpentine manner in which they writhed. Though he'd never encountered anything like them before, he assumed they must be undead as well, animated pieces of skin that had taken advantage of Brightwing's momentary incapacity to soar up into the air and bar the way back to the castle.
The skin kites shot forward like a school of predatory fish. Brightwing veered, seeking to keep them from all converging on her at once. Aoth brandished his spear and rattled off an incantation.
A floating wall of violet flame shimmered and hissed into existence. The onrushing skin kites couldn't stop or maneuver quickly enough to avoid it, and the heat seared them as they hurtled through. They emerged burning like paper and floundered spastically as they charred to ash.