Chapter 4: Infiltration
"Are you all right? I'm Shazzo Alayne, captain of the Fang Company. How's your foot?" The man pulled Taudet upright as he spoke.
"Thank you, Mr. Alayne. Without you and your companions I'd be dead." Taudet steadied himself and let out a long breath. Whatever else the castle had done to him, it had taught him how to conduct himself. Even with everything he'd suffered under Nicholas Andrew, he kept his composure.
"Don't mention it. I'm more interested in how you ended up out here."
Taudet quickly learned the names of the others. The mage was Boniface Willi. The red-haired woman was Joanna Sunoo, the company's ranged support. The man with the twin hand-axes was Colin Poruge, a vicious fighter at close range. Two more were not present — a thief named Dyna Kite who specialized in gathering information, and a strategist of sorts, a traveling bard named Devon Gale, neither of them fighters of particular note. Those two were back at the camp, several li away.
Joanna had already bandaged Taudet's foot. The wolf had bitten down on his ankle, but it had only been dragging him — not trying to kill him cleanly — and the wound wasn't deep. Once he was patched up, Taudet told them everything. He was convinced Evan had sent them away to be silenced. The poor man had no idea his master had been trying to protect him.
The group exchanged looks. Colin said, "So he tried to have his own servants killed to cover his tracks? That Nicholas Andrew's a nasty piece of work. We ought to give him a taste of what's coming."
Boniface frowned. "Is this the same Nicholas Andrew who attacked several Creationist churches? If so, this isn't straightforward."
"He was badly wounded. He's transformed into a lich," Taudet said.
"A lich — forbidden by the Creationist Church." Boniface's expression shifted with interest. "What level was he as a mage?"
"Ninth level. I think." Taudet wasn't entirely certain.
"A ninth-level necromancer transforming into a lich has very low odds of success. If he went through with it anyway, the wounds must have been beyond recovery — he had no other choice. That kind of lich won't be at his full strength. And Nicholas Andrew has a castle." Boniface looked at the captain. "Captain, it might be worth paying him a visit. If the opportunity presents itself, we put him down. The only question is where he keeps his soul vessel."
That was enough to light a fire in everyone present. A castle meant wealth. As for the lich eventually resurrecting — that was his problem, not theirs. They would go in, strip the place, and be long gone before he came back. And if they were lucky enough to find the soul vessel, the matter would be settled for good. Either way, the Creationist Church had posted a substantial reward. One action, two gains.
Shazzo thought it over. Taudet watched him with obvious eagerness, and the three veterans were barely containing their own. "Let's go back to camp," Shazzo said, "and plan this properly."
Back at camp, all six of them worked through the details. Taudet supplied everything he knew about Nicholas Andrew — layout of the castle, the man's habits, his known weaknesses. None of them had any reason to suspect that Nicholas Andrew was already dead and buried, and so every piece of their planning was built around a man who no longer existed.
When the plan was drafted, Devon Gale looked it over and said, "Captain, we're going in to kill a lich and take whatever's in that castle. This plan is based on what Taudet has told us about Nicholas Andrew's vulnerabilities — but Taudet is a servant, not a mage. There will be gaps. Before we move, I'd recommend we spend a few days keeping quiet watch near the castle, observing his movements and filling in what we don't know."
Shazzo nodded. "Sound thinking. A lich is still a dangerous opponent, whatever condition he's in. Caution costs us nothing. Dyna — go take a look at what he's doing."
"Sure, Captain. He's only a ninth-level mage — and we've got Boniface at level ten. Do we really need to be this careful?"
"He's a lich," Boniface said flatly. "Not a ninth-level mage anymore. Even if the transformation left him weaker than he should be, he'll still be stronger than he was."
Shazzo let out a slow breath. "If we'd just backed the right man from the start, we wouldn't be in this situation."
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No one answered that. After a moment, Boniface spoke again. "The road ahead is dark regardless. Earl Edward's scheme fell apart, and he came through it fine — we're the ones left holding the consequences. We made an enemy of Count Laine and had to disappear into this forest. At least the Liya Demon Forest keeps most people away. But that thing we hid — I still don't know where it's ended up."
"This is our opening," Shazzo said. "Kill Nicholas Andrew, perform a service for the Holy Eton Curia, and suddenly the blood feud with the Count becomes someone else's problem. The Curia will look favorably on us. And once they're on our side, we can search openly."
The others' eyes brightened at that. Taudet's held something different — hatred, cold and directed, fixed on the idea of the lich.
Across the grey landscape, a figure moved between the trees. The forest here was thinning out, the remaining trees gnarled and misshapen, twisted by years of exposure to the aura radiating from the castle. Nicholas Andrew had spent long enough summoning the undead and animating skeletons that the land around him had grown heavy with death energy, and it showed in the vegetation. Dyna moved through it like a shadow that couldn't quite decide whether to exist. He couldn't fully vanish — true invisibility was beyond his skill — but his outline was exceptionally faint, and he shifted constantly, blending into his surroundings in a way that was almost instinctive.
Evan's inexperience showed here. It hadn't occurred to him that someone might come to observe him so soon, within a single day. He had spells for exactly this situation — Wraith Eye and its kind, early warning systems that would have flagged any approach — but they required a continuous drain on his magic and his attention, and he hadn't bothered to cast them.
Even so, the castle's gates were shut and Evan was absorbed in his training, which meant Dyna had no way to get inside. He settled behind a tree at a distance and watched.
The castle showed nothing. No movement, no light, no sound. The place looked abandoned, a dead bulk of stone surrounded by warped trees. Even in daylight the area had an oppressive quality — the lingering traces of undead energy drifting through the undergrowth, the silence broken only by wind. As far as Dyna could tell, he was the only living thing within ten li.
He didn't relax. He grew more careful. The death energy still hanging in the air was clearly a residue of Nicholas Andrew's work, but there was something strange about the absence of skeleton sentinels, the complete lack of magical wards. Had he already fled?
It was a reasonable concern. Nicholas Andrew had made enemies of the Creationist Church, dismissed his servants, and had every reason to run. But Dyna wasn't willing to take that chance. He stayed behind his tree and watched without moving.
The sun went down. In the gathering dusk, the castle looked stranger than ever. Then a thin curl of smoke rose from somewhere inside. Dyna's attention sharpened. Someone was in there. He exhaled slowly without noticing he'd been holding his breath — and overlooked the obvious fact that a lich has no need to cook.
Evan had remembered food toward evening, bothered by the peculiar sensation of hunger that had no business troubling a lich. He went to the kitchen and found bread, cured meat, eggs, and some dried vegetables. He put bread and meat over the fire and promptly burned both. He shook his head. He should have kept at least one servant around.
What he didn't notice was that as he ate, his organs cycled through their strange efficiency again, the unnamed technique working steadily through him, and his body grew slightly less withered than it had been that morning. Everything proceeding quietly, without his awareness.
Dyna slipped back to camp and reported what he'd seen. The group had questions, and decided on a more thorough observation before committing. They spent eight full days on it — mapping every inch of the castle's exterior, every tree and stone in its surroundings — and with Taudet's help built up a working picture of the interior layout as well.
On the eighth night, Dyna decided to take a risk. He would go in alone and see the lich for himself. Under normal circumstances a lich preferred stillness — he'd been told — sitting motionless for long stretches, barely aware of the world around it. He didn't know that Evan was not a normal lich.
The front gate was out of the question. He went over the wall instead.
A figure in dark grey pressed flat against stone ten yards up, fingertips and boot-tips trailing faint moisture that seeped into the rock and held. Dyna could do this — a thief's technique that used absorbed water to cling to vertical surfaces, one of the fundamentals of his trade. He moved slowly upward in an odd undulating motion. With only one person in the castle he felt confident enough to use it openly, though he would never have dared otherwise.
He picked his angle carefully. The roofline was guarded by several gargoyles crouched in the corners — not decorations, but magical constructs, and he knew it. The slightest noise would bring them all at once, and they would take him apart. He navigated around their sightlines with painstaking care, and when the angle was right he threw himself sideways through the opening of the arrow-slit tower in one clean movement. He didn't stop moving — the moment he was inside he rolled, carrying his momentum down the staircase and compressing himself into the shadow at the bottom, his outline fading to almost nothing.
He held his breath. Outside, wings beat. One of the gargoyles passed the tower twice in slow circuits, found nothing in the upper chamber, and returned to its perch.
Dyna let the breath out. First obstacle cleared. He crept downward, step by careful step, until he reached the bottom of the tower and found a door. He drew his dagger — a blade nearly a foot long, thin-edged — and eased the door open.
A shadow stood directly in the doorway.
His hand moved before his mind did, driving the dagger forward without thought.