The Archmage Unbound (45 page)

I glanced around and stared back at the
men staring at me. After a moment I grinned and yelled, “And that’s what
happens when you wake me up in the middle of the gods-be-damned night!”

Silence reigned for awkward seconds
around me before finally men began chuckling. Once they started it was
infectious and soon most of those that could, were laughing. I headed back to
my tent. Harold found me there several minutes later.

“What do we do now?” he asked simply.

“Clear out any bodies inside the camp,
ours and theirs. Make sure the men are careful not to touch them directly.
They’re still dangerous. Set new watches and reform the picket. Once that is
done put everyone not on duty back in their bedrolls,” I told him.

“Shouldn’t we burn the bodies?” he asked
worriedly.

I sighed wearily, “Yes, in the morning,
not tonight in the dark. That light up there won’t burn for more than twenty
minutes or so.” I pointed upward at the brightly glowing light I had created.
I had placed it extremely high to keep the undead from nullifying it, but now
that I considered it I realized it was a good idea for any nighttime battle.

“But what about the ones that turn…,” he
started to ask.

“The men on watch can keep an eye on
them. If any of the corpses get up and start walking have them cut them into
pieces. We’ll burn them in the daytime. The men need sleep.” I was already
climbing into my bedroll as I relayed my instructions. I was exhausted from my
own use of magic, though Walter seemed to be much worse off.

“But…” he protested.

I closed my eyes, “Ask James. Don’t
wake me up unless we get attacked again.” He left after that and I was asleep
not long after he had gone.

I rose early the next morning but I had
pity on Walter and let him sleep longer. The poor man seemed to have been
truly exhausted by his efforts the night before.

I found James and Harold supervising the
collection of bodies and body parts. It appeared that neither of them had
slept at all after the attack. They both appeared worn and weary.

“How many did we lose?” I asked James.

“Slightly more than a hundred and fifty
men,” he answered immediately. “They wiped out the men guarding the cave last
night before they assaulted the camp.”

I grimaced. We couldn’t afford to lose
men that quickly. The shiggreth could replace their numbers much more easily
than we could. “At least there’s one bright side,” I noted.

“What’s that?” asked Harold.

“If they wiped out the detail guarding
the cave first then it means they’re desperate and that opening is their only
means of ingress or egress. If we assume that the ones remaining last night
didn’t skulk off somewhere then we have most of them cornered,” I explained.

“They might have wiped the guard detail
out to give us that impression falsely,” suggested James.

I sighed, “If they’re that clever then
we may be in trouble. Let’s hope they aren’t.”

James nodded, but spoke up anyway,
“Hoping and wishing are good ways to get men killed.”

“You sound a lot like Dorian,” I said
with a sour grin.

“It’s more likely that he sounds like
Gram Thornbear, which is where I heard that originally,” he corrected me.

Sir Harold spoke up, “Alright, let’s
assume that they want us to think it is the only entrance. Why would they do
it? What are the advantages to them?”

James responded first, “The obvious
conclusion would be that all or part of their forces would take us from the
rear. Then they could either bring the caverns down and trap us, or slaughter
us between them.”

“The real question is how many of them
are left down there,” I pointed out.

“We accounted for over a thousand of the
bastards last night,” said Harold. “Well Mordecai did anyway,” he amended.

“Let’s not start counting notches, Harold,”
I admonished him.

“We can’t do anything until tomorrow at
least, no matter what we decide,” James said, drawing us back to the proper
reason for our discussion. “It will take the rest of the day just to collect all
of the bodies.”

“They need to be burned,” I added.

“I agree,” he said, “but that will take
even more time. Collecting the wood necessary to burn that mountain of flesh
will take a lot of men and labor.”

“I’m not entirely certain how useful an
army will be once we get past the entrance to those caverns,” I said at last.

“It isn’t as if we can starve them out,”
James answered bitterly.

That set me to thinking and I put my
hand out to forestall further discussion for a moment. “We don’t actually know
that. In fact we know next to nothing about them. Those bodies may decay and
become useless after a certain period of time, or they may require some form of
sustenance.”

Harold snorted, “You mean us.”

“That might be true, or not. We don’t
really know,” I clarified. “James I’d like you to keep one of the cut up
shiggreth bodies quarantined, rather than burning it with the others. We can
take it back to Lancaster when we’re done. I’d be very curious to know if it
will eventually lose its animation, or whether it will decay.”

James looked thoughtful. “We need one
that hasn’t been cut to pieces as well then. They might last longer if they
haven’t been cut up, if indeed they can starve at all.”

Sir Harold spoke up, “This might be
beside the point, but how do you plan on capturing a creature whose very touch
is anathema to us?”

James smiled, “Ha! We use nets. Once
we have one trapped we bind it carefully with ropes. After that we can put it
on a litter and drag it back to Lancaster, the dungeon and a couple of guards
should be sufficient then.”

“Actually I’d like to construct a
special holding cell for it James, but we can keep it in your dungeon for a
while at least,” I added.

“So back to the point, what are we going
to do today?” asked Harold.

We all fell silent for a moment, and
even the normally decisive duke looked to me first to see what I might say.
“Keep most of the men at clean up and burn duty. I’ll take Harold and a small
contingent into the entrance. If we can clear out whatever defenses they have
in there we’ll scout a bit further in. If we can’t we’ll pull back and wait
until the clean-up is finished.”

Surprisingly they both agreed with me.
“How many men?” asked Harold.

“About fifty I think. Make sure they
are among the better armored of our men. No one in anything less than full
chain, the less exposed skin the better,” I told him.

***

Two hours later we were ready and we
were staring into the yawning mouth of the cavern. The entrance was fully
fifteen feet in height and more than twice that in width. The morning sun illuminated
the first twenty feet or so, but beyond that it was shadowed in darkness. From
outside it was impossible to see more than that, if you were relying on normal
eyesight.

Thankfully I was not. The contingent
assigned with guarding the entrance had pulled back to allow us to enter. They
would resume their duty after we were inside. I made note that James had
supplied them with onagers and barrels of oil. If the shiggreth tried to break
free of the caverns again they were prepared to set fire to the entire cave
entrance. I just hoped they didn’t panic when we made our exit later.

Harold nudged me, “What do you see?”

I glared at him, “I see a lot more when
I’m left undisturbed. Let me finish.” Closing my eyes again I resumed my
search of the caves. I had already discovered that the main tunnel went back
for over a hundred yards, and it was mostly straight from that point. I had
difficulty locating the shiggreth along the way, but I could tell that there
were quite a few about fifty yards back. They were standing next to some
wooden contraptions that looked suspiciously like…

“Ballistae!” I exclaimed.

“They are called ‘onagers’ your
Lordship,” Harold corrected me, thinking I was referring to the Duke’s
catapults.

Harold really got on my nerves sometimes,
though he did mean well. “I know that, I’m talking about in the caves.”

“What?”

Walter nodded in agreement, “You’re
right. The shiggreth have ballistae back there. It looks like they are ready
to give anyone that enters a greeting with four foot of wood and steel.”

I was surprised for a moment. I had
never had another wizard around before, but it was nice to have someone else
that could share my unique perspective. “I count two of them,” I replied.

“I agree,” said Walter, “and at least
twenty of them hiding in the recesses behind the ballistae.”

I could tell there were quite a few back
there, but I wasn’t quite sure how many there were. It surprised me that he
seemed to be able to pick them out more easily. “How far away can you see
things with your magesight?” I asked him.

He glanced at me in surprise but he
answered readily, “About six hundred yards or so.”

That was significantly less than my own
range, and yet he was able to perceive the shiggreth more easily.
“Interesting,” I replied. “I can see further than that, but I can’t pick them
out well enough to count them in there.”

He laughed easily, “It’s probably
because I’m a Prathion. We’re known for being a little different than the
other families.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Well you have already seen me use my
invisibility,” he answered. “Or rather you have ‘not’ seen me while using it.”

“I was planning to get you to teach me
that,” I said.

He shook his head negatively, “I can
try, but the odds are you won’t be able to manage it. Very few wizards have
been able to do it outside of the Prathion family.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, the Prathions were famous for
their ability to pass unseen, or so I was taught. It’s kind of like how the
Illeniels were known for their devilish enchanting skills,” he explained, “that
and their freakish strength.”

His off-hand comments were providing me
with a window onto a world of lore and common knowledge I had never been
fortunate enough to witness. Not for the first time I lamented the fact that I
had never known my birth father. I pushed those thoughts aside and returned to
the present. “How does your ability to become invisible relate to sensing the
shiggreth?”

“Their magic drain ability renders them
essentially ‘black’ to mage-sight, if you think of magic as a sort of ‘color’.
My invisibility is different in that it redirects light, and sometimes even
magic around me but still I can relate to what they are doing. I suppose I
could use my ability to emulate what they are doing, or at least how they
appear,” he replied.

I was enthralled by his idea. “Show
me,” I said.

“Alright,” he said. “Here, this is what
I look like when I become invisible.” His visible form vanished but I could
still ‘see’ him in my magesight.

“Shit!” Harold exclaimed. “Warn a
fellow before you do that!” I had to laugh at Harold’s discomfiture.

Walter’s disembodied voice answered,
“We’ve been talking about it all this time. I thought you expected it.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him,
“please continue.”

“This is what it looks like when I
become invisible to magesight,” he added and his body vanished even to my
arcane vision.

“That is why I could not find you when
you were spying on me at my home. Why don’t you use it all the time?” I asked.

“Because I am currently blind,” he
said. “When I am invisible I cannot see, but I can still use my magesight.
When I do this I can no longer see in any capacity. I am left stumbling along
in the darkness with only my sense of touch and my hearing to guide me.”

“Can you become visible but remain unseen
to magesight?” I queried him.

He paused for a moment. “I don’t know,”
he said at last. “I never thought to try that. I haven’t ever really had a
reason to do that before.”

“Try,” I said. A moment later his body
reappeared but I still couldn’t sense him with my magical vision. “I think you
have it right,” I told him. “I wonder if they would think you were one of them
like that.”

He shook his head negatively, “Of course
not, this isn’t what they look like. It would be more like this.”

He did something and I could sense a
change. I could still see him with my eyes but he registered differently to my
magical senses. He had become more like them, a place that wasn’t there,
before he hadn’t created an empty space. Now he was like a void. “You’re right,
but I don’t understand why.”

He released his spell. “Look at me with
your eyes and I’ll show you why.”

I did and nodded at him.

“Ok this is what a normal person looks
like,” he said, remaining perfectly visible. “Now pretend that visible light
is magic, and you are seeing me with your magesight. This is what the
shiggreth look like,” his face and body turned black.