The undead warrior inclined his head. "The autharch is wise."
"So this is where we'll stop them!"
In his youth, So-Kehur had been a coward, even if it never quite prevented him from doing his duty. But on the plain below Thralgard Keep, in the battle that broke the southern legions, he'd finally found his courage, and afterward, he'd vowed to make sure it never slipped away.
To that end, he'd started replacing parts of his body with grafts from the undead and, when even those began to seem insufficiently strong to protect him from any conceivable threat, with metal. He supposed that at some point afterward, he must have decided to dispense with an organic form entirely, to become a disembodied brain, charged with the energies of undeath to nourish and preserve it, encased in a steel shell, although oddly enough, he couldn't recall the exact moment when he'd made such a choice. Rather, when he looked back, it seemed to him as if the process had simply happened by degrees.
In any case, his transformation had mostly worked out all right. Much as he'd loved to eat, he no longer missed it, or the touch of a woman, either. The cravings faded after he divested himself of the organs with which a person gratified them. Strange abilities emerged to take their place, along with the desire to exert his newly developed strengths.
That last was the problem because the War of the Zulkirs was over, and afterward, Szass Tam proved unexpectedly reluctant to start any new ones. Instead, he devoted himself to erecting the Dread Rings, unnecessary defenses for a realm already impregnable, or, conceivably, monuments to overweening vanity. Either way, it left So-Kehur with no outlet for his aggression except hunting rebels, scarcely a challenge for the consummate killer he'd become.
Now, however, an enemy army was heading straight for Anhaurz, a slayer in its own right. Ninety years ago, the Spellplague had destroyed the town, and when Szass Tam appointed him autharch and gave him the task of rebuilding it, So-Kehur'd done so in a way that expressed his yearning for battle. The new Anhaurz was a true fortress city, constructed and garrisoned to break any force that dared to assault it. Even one led by the likes of Nevron and Lauzoril.
"Fetch me my maps!" So-Kehur called. One of the artisans scurried to relay the order.
The road south ran a few miles west of the towering cliffs the Thayans called the First Escarpment. Close, but not nearly close enough for anyone to menace the Brotherhood of the Griffon and the zulkirs' legions with missiles hurled from the top.
Or so Jhesrhi would have assumed, before the stones started showering down along with the cold drizzle from the overcast sky. They hammered the road with uncanny accuracy too.
It was plain that only folk who could fly had any hope of stopping the bombardment, so Aoth led griffon riders to the top of the crags, which appeared to be deserted. But the breeze whispered to Jhesrhi that her enemies were almost directly below her, shrouded in an invisibility that couldn't blind the tactile sight of the wind.
She drew breath to shout a warning, then saw that she needn't bother. The concealment hadn't fooled Aoth's spellscarred eyes, either. He pointed his spear, power glimmered around it, and a greenish cloud swirled into existence around the hidden men, revealing their forms to those who soared above them.
Some of the enemy doubled over, puking. Other, hardier crossbowmen shot a volley into the air, but the griffons veered, swooped, and dodged most of the quarrels. Their riders shot back, and Szass Tam's warriors fell.
With their bodyguards slain, the Red Wizards died almost as easily. Afterward, the griffon riders set down to loot and learn whatever they could.
The magical artillery used a scrying pool to provide a view of the highway. Beside the water was a flat piece of slate incised with a groove carved to mirror the slight curve of the road. One aimed and launched a barrage by placing a black pebble at a point along the depression. Then the rocks heaped on a slab of granite vanished to reappear above the designated spot.
Since Thay had been at peace for some time, it seemed likely the apparatus was relatively old. Jhesrhi wondered if someone had crafted it during the first War of the Zulkirs, and if so, which side the craftsman had been on.
"What do you think?" Gaedynn asked.
She turned to face him. As was so often the case, he seemed to be smirking at a joke that was opaque to everyone else, and his long red hair shined even on a gray, cheerless day.
"It's cleverly made," she said. "I've never seen anything exactly like it."
"It's good that you can appreciate such things," he said, "seeing as how we're likely to have them hurling death at us with some regularity."
She frowned. "You know we have no choice but to do what we're doing."
"Because two dead strangers and a funny old book said so, and then our captain suffered a hallucination."
"You know his visions come true."
"So far."
"Are you just babbling to hear yourself, the way you generally do, or are you actually thinking of running?"
He grinned. "If I did, honeycomb, would you go with me?"
"You know I owe Aoth everything."
"Whereas I don't. Honestly, I think he's lucky to have enjoyed the benefit of my services for as long as he has." Evidently glimpsing something from the corner of his eye, he turned. She looked where he was looking and saw Aoth straightening up from a red-robed corpse with a folded parchment in his hand. "Shall we go see what the old man's found?"
"You should sing," said Mirror, striding, flickering a little, effortlessly keeping pace with Bareris's steed. The ghost was merely a shadow in the deepening twilight, his form too indistinct to resemble anyone in particular.
Bareris's mouth tightened. He truly wished his friend well. He wished Mirror's mind could be clear every instant of every day. But it was at those times that the phantom became talkative, and the chatter sometimes grated on Bareris's nerves.
"I don't want anyone to take me for a bard," he said. That was why he'd left his harp behind when he and Mirror had split off from the army.
"There's no one but me to hear you," Mirror said, and he was indisputably right. The tableland atop the First Escarpment was even more blighted than the plains below. A traveler encountered hamlets and cultivated fields less frequently and saw even more gnarled, pallid flora and deformed wildlife. High Thay was bleaker still, as if Szass Tam's actual residence was a fountainhead of poison that lost a bit of virulence as it seeped down from the Citadel.
"Still," Bareris said, "I don't see a point."
"We're finally going to try to kill the creature you hate above all others, with the fate of the East-at a minimum-hanging in the balance. You must have feelings about that. Don't you want to express them?"
"I always feel the same, and singing doesn't help it."
That answer seemed to irk or discourage Mirror, and they traveled in silence for a time, the cantering gait of Bareris's steel gray mount eating up the miles. As best he could judge, the burly, misshapen beast was a cross between a horse and some infernal creature and seemed not to require sleep or rest.
In time, a crescent moon rose to reveal the black, rectangular shape of a tax station. It was no surprise to see it. Such bastions lined the Eastern Way. But Bareris scowled to behold the roadblock, even though they too were common. The soldiers garrisoning tax stations threw them up for any number of reasons, including extortion and simple boredom.
"It figures," said Mirror. "We passed through Nethwatch Keep without any trouble only to get stopped out here in the middle of nowhere. Unless you want to go around."