I'm sorry, my friend, Aoth thought. I couldn't even reach you to sit with you while you die.
"Captain," said a voice.
Startled, Aoth whirled toward the sound and aimed his spear at it. On the verge of hurling fire from the point, he belatedly recognized Mirror, as much by the chill and intimation of sickness radiating from him as the hollow timbre of his speech.
The ghost's disquieting nature notwithstanding, he and Aoth had been comrades for ten years, and the war mage was loath to lash out at him without cause. But neither could he simply assume that Mirror, who generally functioned as an agent of the zulkirs, hadn't come to kill or detain him. "What do you want?" he panted.
"To help you," Mirror said.
Aoth hesitated. Then, scowling, he decided to take the ghost at his word. "Then take me to Brightwing. We may have to dodge legionnaires along the way. For some reason, Lauzoril wants to kill me. I think he had Brightwing poisoned so I couldn't summon her to protect me."
"Your steed will have to wait. I need to help you now, while I still remember what to do."
"The way to help is to get me to Brightwing."
"I need to heal your eyes first."
Aoth felt a jolt of astonishment. "Can you do that?"
"I think so. After Bareris betrayed our bonds of fellowship, I had to set things right. And I sensed that I could, if I could only remember more of who and what I was."
"Did you?"
"Yes, when I went into the emptiness. I remembered I was a knight pledged to a god, who blessed me with special gifts."
"A paladin, you mean?" Thay had no such champions, because it didn't worship the deities who raised them up. But Aoth had heard about them.
Mirror hesitated as if he didn't recognize the term. "Perhaps. The important thing is that my touch could heal, and I believe it still can. Let me use it to cure your sight."
Aoth shook his head. Maybe the ghost with his addled, broken mind had remembered something real. Maybe he truly had possessed a talent for healing. That didn't mean he still had it. Every wizard knew that undead creatures partook of the very essence of blight and ill, and Aoth had witnessed many times how Mirror's mere touch could wither and corrupt. The sword with which he wrought such havoc in battle wasn't even a weapon as such, just a conduit for the cancerous power inside him.
Yet even so, and rather to his own surprise, Aoth felt a sudden inclination to trust Mirror. Perhaps it was because his plight was so hopeless that, if the spirit's suggestion didn't work, it was scarcely likely to matter anyway.
"All right. Let's do it." Aoth pulled off the bandage, then felt the ambient sense of malaise thicken as Mirror came closer. Freezing cold, excruciating as the touch of a white-hot iron, stabbed down on each of his eyelids. He bore it for a heartbeat or two, then screamed, recoiled, and clapped his hands to his face.
"Damn you!" he croaked. He wondered if he looked older, the way Urhur Hahpet had after the ghost slid his insubstantial fingers into his torso.
"Try your eyes now," Mirror said, unfazed by his anguished reproach.
The suggestion seemed so ridiculous that it left Aoth at a loss for words. He was still trying to frame a suitably bitter retort when he realized that his eyes didn't hurt anymore.
And since they didn't, he supposed he could muster the fortitude to test them. He warily cracked them open, then gasped. Seeing wasn't the least bit painful, and somehow he could already tell it never would be again.
Indeed, vision was a richer experience than ever before.
Wandering blind, he'd blundered into the covered walkway connecting two baileys. No lamps or torches burned in the passage, yet the gloom didn't obscure his vision. He could make out subtle variations of blackness in the painted stone wall beside him and complex patterns in the dusty cobbles beneath his feet. He could only liken the experience to borrowing Brightwing's keen aquiline eyes, but in truth, he was seeing even better now than he had then.
He realized he'd been seeing in this godlike fashion ever since the blue fire swept over him, but the torrent of sheer detail had overwhelmed him. Now he could assimilate it with the same unthinking ease that ordinary people processed normal perceptions.
He turned to the wavering shadow that was Mirror. "You did it!"
"My brothers always said I had a considerable gift. Sometimes I could help the sick when even the wisest priests had failed. Or I think I could." Mirror's voice trailed off as if his memory was crumbling away, and his murky form became vaguer still.
Aoth wondered if the act of healing, so contrary to the normal attributes of a ghost, had drained his benefactor of strength. He prayed not. "Don't disappear! Stay with me! If you can cure blindness, you should be able to cure a poisoning, too. We're going to Brightwing."
This late at night, no one was working in the griffons' aerie. Aoth felt a surge of anguish to see his familiar crumpled on her side, eyes glazed and oblivious, blood and vomit pooled around her beak. He reached out with his mind but found no trace of hers. She was still breathing, though.
"Hurry!" he said, but Mirror just stood in place. "Please!"
"I'm trying to remember," Mirror said, and still he didn't move. Finally, when Aoth felt he was on the brink of screaming, the ghost flowed forward, kneeled beside the griffon, whispered, and stroked her head and neck. His intangible hand sank ever so slightly into her plumage.
Brightwing thrashed, then leaped to her feet and swiped with her talons. Thanks to spells Aoth had cast long ago, her claws were capable of shredding a spirit, but Mirror avoided them with a leap backward.
"Easy!" Aoth cried. "Mirror just saved your life, or at least I hope so. How are you?"
"My belly hurts." Brightwing took a breath. "So does my head, and my mouth burns." She spat. "But I think I'll be all right."
Aoth's eyes brimmed with tears. He hoped he wouldn't shed them, because the griffon would only jeer if he did.
"We're going to find the vermin who poisoned me," she continued, "and then I'm going to eat them."
The vengeful declaration served to remind Aoth that they were still in trouble. "I'd like to watch you do it, but we can't fight the whole Central Citadel."
"Would we have to?" Brightwing's voice took on an unaccustomed querulous note. "What's happening?"
"People suddenly want to kill me, and they knew it would be easier if you were out of the way. So they tried to separate us back in Zolum, and when that didn't work, they fed you tainted meat."
Brightwing snorted. "I should have realized that, as usual, you're to blame for any unpleasantness that comes my way. All right, if it's like that, saddle me and we'll flee the city."
It was good advice, especially considering that Aoth had intended to run off anyway, until Bareris tampered with his mind. So it surprised him to realize just how reluctant he was to go.
Deserting because he wanted to was one thing. Fleeing because he feared for his life would leave him feeling baffled and defeated. It would also mean he could never command the Griffon Legion again. He'd never aspired to do so, and in the years since his elevation, he'd honestly believed he didn't enjoy the responsibility. But after blindness rendered him unfit to lead, he discovered he missed it. Indeed, he'd felt guilty and worthless because he couldn't look out for his men anymore.
"Besides… since I don't understand why this is happening," he said, "I don't know how just badly people want to kill me. It may be badly enough to hunt us down if we try to run. I also have misgivings about fleeing when earthquakes and tides of blue fire are ripping the world apart. It doesn't seem a promising time to try to build a new life in some foreign land."
"Then what will we do?" Brightwing asked.
"You'll stay here with Mirror and be quiet. I'll talk to Lauzoril and try to straighten things out."