Unclean

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

13–14 Kythorn, the Year of Risen Elfkin

Borrowing Brightwing's eyes to combat the darkness, Aoth rode the griffon above the mountainsides on the northern edge of the valley. It was a necessary chore. As far as the Thayans could tell, after they'd chased the undead up the pass, the creatures had retreated into the Keep of Thazar, but it was possible they hadn't all done so. Even if they had, with flying wraiths and ghouls possessing a preternatural ability to dig tunnels among their company, it was by no means a certainty that they'd all remain inside the walls. Ergo, someone had to make sure no enemy was slinking through the night.

"It didn't have to be you," Brightwing said, catching the tenor of his thoughts. "You're an officer now, remember? You could have sent a common soldier and stayed in camp to guzzle beer and rut with your female."

"I know." Maybe he hadn't been a captain long enough to delegate such tasks as he ought. He'd so often served as a scout, advance guard, or outrider that he still felt a need to observe things for himself whenever possible. "But you're getting fat. We need to work some of the lard off your furry arse."

Brightwing clashed her beak shut in feigned irritation at the jibe then exclaimed, "Look there!"

Two beings were descending a slope. One was a living man-a Mulan, to judge from his lanky physique, though his head and chin weren't properly shaved-wearing a sword. Evidently he was a refugee who'd somehow avoided death at the hands of the undead infesting the valley. Gliding along behind him, perceptible primarily as a mote of cold, aching wrongness, was some sort of ghost. No doubt it was stalking him and would attack when ready, though Aoth couldn't imagine what it was waiting on.

Lady Luck must love you, the war mage silently told the refugee, to keep you alive until Brightwing and I arrived. With a thought, he sent the griffon swooping lower then flourished his spear and rattled off an incantation.

Darts of blue light hurtled from the head of the lance to pierce the phantom through. The punishment made it more visible, though it was just a pale shadow with a hint of armor in its shape and the suggestion of a blade extending from its hand. It rose into the air as Aoth had hoped it would. He wanted to draw it away from the man on the ground.

"Run!" Aoth shouted.

Instead, the stranger called, "Don't attack him! He's my guide! Mirror, don't fight! Come back to me!"

Aoth hesitated. Was the man a necromancer and "Mirror" his familiar?

Maybe not, because the ghost kept on flying at Aoth and his mount, and after his recent experiences with the undead, he had no intention of giving it the benefit of the doubt. He wheeled Brightwing in an attempt of keep away from the spirit and chanted words of power. For a moment, Mirror wavered into a short, broad, better-defined figure not unlike himself, then melted into blur once more.

"Stop!" the refugee roared, and his voice echoed from the mountainsides like thunder.

A palpable jolt made Brightwing screech and spoiled the mystic gesture necessary for the completion of Aoth's spell. Mirror's misty substance rippled like water, and then it-or he-floated back down toward the stranger like a hound called to heel.

With their psyches linked, Aoth could taste Brightwing's anger almost as if it were his own. She believed the man they'd been seeking to rescue had treacherously attacked them, but striving for clarity of thought despite the flare of emotion, Aoth discerned that the magical cry hadn't actually injured her, and the stranger had targeted both her and Mirror. Maybe he'd just been trying to halt the confrontation without harm to any of the parties involved.

"Calm yourself," he told the griffon. "Let's land and talk to him."

"I'd rather land and tear him apart," Brightwing snarled, but once she'd furled her wings and glided to the ground, she held her position several paces away from Mirror and the stranger.

Not so sure of the peculiar duo's benign intentions that he cared to dismount, Aoth remained in the saddle. "I'm Aoth Fezim, captain and battle wizard in the Griffon Legion of Pyarados. Who are you, and what are you doing wandering in this region?"

"My name is Bareris Anskuld," the stranger replied, and when Aoth viewed him up close, his haggard weariness was apparent. Weariness and something more. He had a bleakness about him, as if something of vital importance to him had gone horribly, irreparably awry. "A bard and sellsword. I've been lost in the mountains and trying to find my way out. I met Mirror, and he chose to lead me. Is that the Pass of Thazar below us?"

"Yes."

"Good. Thank you for the information and for trying to help when you thought I was in danger. Mirror and I will move on now, if it's all right with you."

Aoth snorted. "No, musician, it's not 'all right.' You need to give a better account of yourself than that, considering that my comrades and I are fighting a war of sorts in the vale."

"A war? With whom?"

"Undead that came out of the mountains to the north, the same as you and your ghost friend."

The bard's eyes narrowed, and though he seemed no less despondent than before, his taut expression now bespoke a bitter resolve. "In that case, Captain, you should hear my tale in its entirety."

It had taken most of the night to put the little meeting together while making sure none of the necromancers learned of it, and eyes smarting, nerves raw with tension and lack of sleep, Nymia Focar looked around the shadowy tent at the other three folk in attendance and found something to dislike in each of them.

Though evidently a Mulan of sorts and gifted with a facility for one of the lesser forms of magic, Bareris Anskuld was essentially a filthy, ragged vagabond. It was preposterous to imagine he had anything of importance to relate.

Despite his advanced years and the forfeiture of his rest, Milsantos Daramos, Tharchion of Thazalhar, looked fresh and alert and stood straight as a spear shaft. He'd even taken the trouble to put on his armor. That was reason enough to dislike the old man with his seamed face and shaggy white brows even if she hadn't resented the necessity of begging his aid to salvage her province and the fact that everyone considered him a better commander than herself.

She found, however, that Aoth vexed her most of all. The half-breed had his uses, but she never should have promoted him. The pressures of command had evidently disposed him to absurd apprehensions and fancies. Rather to her embarrassment, he'd already blathered about them in one council of war, and here he was, making a fool of himself again, and dressing her in motley and bells as well.

For he'd somehow managed to persuade her to give Bareris a hearing in the covert manner he desired, and she winced to think what might happen if the Red Wizards learned she'd gone behind their backs.

She supposed that meant it behooved her to get this nonsense over with as rapidly as possible, to minimize the possibility of anyone else finding out about it. "Let's hear it," she rapped.

Aoth had already given her the gist of the story in terse summation, but Bareris told it in detail and was more persuasive than she'd expected. Perhaps the very strangeness of the tale made it seem more credible, for how-to say nothing of why-would anyone make such things up?

But she wanted the story to be false. Since her audience with the zulkirs and Iphegor Nath, everything had gone splendidly, until she was ready to retake the Keep of Thazar itself. The lack of siege equipment shouldn't prove an insurmountable obstacle if the Burning Braziers performed as promised. She didn't need complications arising at the last moment.

So she did her best to pick holes in Bareris's story. "If you wanted to take slaves into the mountains, why not just march them there directly? Why bother with Delhumide and a portal?"

"Because they didn't want anyone to see the thralls going east," Bareris answered, "lest he draw a connection between them and the raiders."

"Also," said Milsantos, idly fingering a raised gilded rune on his breastplate, "it would be easier. The Sunrise Mountains are difficult terrain to negotiate and swarming with wild goblin and kobold tribes to boot."

"Still," she said, "where's the proof this story is true?"

"The proof," Aoth said, "is that Bareris's report illuminates matters we couldn't understand before. The enemy was able to overcome the priest in Thazar Keep, send lacedons swimming downriver, and reanimate the folk they slaughtered in such quantities because they aren't all undead. Some are living necromancers."

"That isn't proof," she snapped, "it's speculation."

She realized she craved a drink, and despite a suspicion that, tired and upset as she was, it would do her more harm than good, she picked up a half-finished bottle of wine. The cork made a popping sound as she pulled it out.

"Tharchion," Bareris said, "if my word isn't good enough, let me tell my story to one of the Burning Braziers. He can use clerical magic to verify that I'm speaking the truth."

Nymia had no desire to involve another person in their deliberations. Besides, she abruptly discerned that, much as she'd struggled to deny the perception, her instincts told her the bard was being honest.

She looked around for a clean cup, couldn't find one-she'd allowed her orderly to retire earlier-and swigged sweet white wine from the neck of the bottle. The stuff immediately roiled her stomach.

"For purposes of argument," she said, "let's say you are telling the truth as best you understand it. Your story suggests we're facing a cartel of rogue necromancers, traitors to their order."

"Maybe," said Milsantos, "and maybe not. I have informants in Eltabbar. I'm sure you do too, but have you heard from yours in the past couple days? Mine got a letter to me."

"And they said something pertinent to our situation here on the eastern border of the realm?"

"Perhaps. Two days ago, Szass Tam tried and failed to persuade the other zulkirs to proclaim him regent. In light of that, let's consider recent events."

"To have any hope of winning the council to his way of thinking," said Aoth, "the lich had to seem a successful if not triumphant figure, so he manufactured a threat to the eastern tharchs then played a crucial role in combating it. That means it isn't 'rogue' mages standing against us. It's conceivable the entire order of Necromancy is involved, including the Red Wizards in our own army."

"Impossible," Nymia said. "No one could keep such a huge conspiracy secret."

"He could," Bareris said, "if he silenced his underlings with enchantment. I told you about the guard who died when I tried to question it."

"That was an orc. No one would dare to lay such a binding on a Red Wizard."

"A higher-ranking and more powerful Red Wizard would."

"Curse it!" she exclaimed. "Even if all these crazy guesses are correct, don't you see, it's none of our business what games the zulkirs play with one another. All we need to know is that an undead host threatens Pyarados, and the council, Szass Tam included, wants us to destroy it."

"What," said Milsantos, "if Szass Tam has stopped wanting it? He desired our victories to advance a particular strategy, which has now failed. In the aftermath, what remains? A siege in which his followers and creatures are fighting on both sides. Can we be absolutely certain he's still backing us?"

"Why would he stop?" she demanded.

"To create the impression that when Szass Tam is honored as is his due, things go well, but when the other zulkirs deny him, they go disastrously awry? Truly, Nymia, I can't guess, but I shrink from the thought of what will happen if the necromancers and zombies in our own ranks suddenly turn on us in the midst of battle. Better, I think, to try our luck without them."

"So we send them away? Restrain them? Insult Szass Tam and the entire order of Necromancy?"

The old warrior smiled a crooked smile. "When you put it like that, it's not an appealing prospect, is it? We'd certainly need to win and hope our success would motivate the other zulkirs to shield us from the lich's displeasure."

"I don't know if we even have the authority to deal with Red Wizards in such a manner."

"You're tharchions," said Aoth. "This is an army in the field. The Burning Braziers will support you. They hate the necromancers condescending to them. Take the authority."

She considered it for several heartbeats then shook her head. "No. Not without proof, and I mean something I can see with my own eyes, not just a wanderer's tale, even should a cleric vouch for him."

"Then I'll interrogate one of your Red Wizards," Bareris said. "He'll tell the truth or die in a fit like the orc. Either way, you can be certain."

Nymia hesitated. "Neither Tharchion Daramos nor I could consent to such an outrage. You'd have to act alone, without our aid or intercession, and if you failed to extort the proof you promise, we'd order your execution. It would be the only way to make sure the stink of your treason didn't attach itself to us."

Bareris shrugged as if the prospect of a slow death under torture was of no concern. "Fine."

"Except," said Aoth, "that you won't have to do it alone. I'll help, and I know a fire priestess who will too." He grinned. "Now that I think of it, I can steer you to the perfect Red Wizard as well."

Bareris crooned his charm of silence, each note softer than the one before. He centered the charm on the sword sheathed at this side. It seemed as good an anchor point as any.

With the final note, the camp, quiet already here in the dregs of the night, fell absolutely silent. He, Aoth, Chathi, and Mirror, only perceptible as the vaguest hint of visual distortion, sneaked up to the rear of Urhur Hahpet's spacious, sigil-embroidered tent a few breaths later.

Aoth gave Chathi an inquiring look. Even without benefit of words, his meaning was plain. He was asking if she was certain she wanted to risk this particular venture. She responded with an expression that expressed assurance, impatience, and affection all at once.

The lovers' interplay gave Bareris a fresh pang of heartache. He turned away and peered about to make certain no one was looking in their direction. Nobody was, so he drew his dagger, cut a peephole in the tent, and looked inside.

No lamps or candles burned within. Evidently even necromancers, who worked so much of their wizardry at night, had to sleep sometime. But Bareris had sharpened his sight with magic, and he could make out a figure wrapped in blankets lying on the cot.

He gave his comrades a nod, then reinserted his dagger in the hole and pulled it downward, cutting a slit large enough for a man to squirm through, as he proceeded to do.

With the tent now enveloped in silence, he had no need to tiptoe, so he simply strode toward the man in the camp bed. But before he could cross the intervening space, something small and gray leaped onto Urhur Hahpet's chest, then, eyes burning with greenish phosphorescence, immediately launched itself at Bareris's face.

It was a zombie or mummified cat, evidently reanimated to watch over its master as he slept. Bareris swung his arm and batted it out of the air. It scrambled up and charged him.

Though the shriveled, stinking thing wasn't large enough to seem all that dire a threat, Bareris suspected its darkened fangs and claws might well be poisonous, either innately or because Urhur painted them with venom. Accordingly, he felt he had to deal with the cat at once. He shifted the knife to his off hand, whipped out his sword, and drove the point into the undead animal's back, nailing it to the earth. It made a final frenzied scrabbling attempt to reach his foot then stopped moving. The sheen in its eyes faded.

By then, though, Urhur had cast off his covers and was rearing up from the bed. The silence would keep him from reciting incantations, and since he didn't sleep in his clothes, he didn't have his spell foci ready to hand, but he was wearing a presumably enchanted necklace of small bones and grasping a crooked blackwood wand he'd apparently stashed beneath his blankets or pillow. He extended the arcane weapon in the intruders' direction.

Bareris yanked his sword out of the feline carcass, sprang forward, and poised the weapon to strike at the wand. At the same instant, a gout of dark fire, or something like it, leaped from the end of the wand to chill him. Refusing to let the freezing anguish stop him, he delivered the beat, and the wand flew from Urhur's grasp.

Bareris and his comrades had observed two withered, yellow-eyed dread warriors standing guard in front of the tent, and now the sentries pushed through the flap of cloth covering the doorway. He'd hoped the magical silence would keep them from discerning that their master needed them, but perhaps they were responding to a psychic summons.

Though Bareris hadn't taken his eyes off his foes to glance around and check, he assumed Aoth, Mirror, and Chathi were likewise inside the tent by now, and he'd depend on them to deal with the dread warriors. He had to stay focused on Urhur, because the Red Wizard merely needed to scurry into the open air, dart beyond the confines of the zone of silence, and scream for help to ruin his plan.

He tried to lame Urhur with a slash to the leg. The necromancer flung himself backward into the taut canvas wall of the tent, rebounded, and landed on the ground behind the cot. Fearful that Urhur would squirm out under the bottom of the cloth barrier, Bareris dropped his dagger, grabbed the camp bed, and jerked it out of his way.

Meanwhile, Urhur gripped one of the bones strung around his neck, and a seething dimness shrouded his form. Still aiming for the leg, Bareris thrust. Urhur tried to snatch his limb out of the way, but the blade grazed him even so.

Malignancy burned up the sword and into Bareris's hand, chilling and stinging him like the blast from the wand. Urhur scrambled up and reached for him. A tattoo on the back of the necromancer's hand gleamed, releasing its power, whereupon his nails grew long and jagged as the claws of a ghoul.

By the time Bareris recovered from the shock of the hurt he'd just sustained, Urhur had already lunged near enough to rend and grab, too close for the sword to be of use. Bareris dropped the weapon and caught the mage by the wrists.

They wrestled, shoving and staggering back and forth, and as they did so, the bard caught glimpses of the rest of the fight. Aoth swung his falchion, its heavy blade shining blue with enchantment, and buried it in a dread warrior's chest. The creature stumbled, and Mirror, somewhat more visible now, his shadow weapon currently shaped like Aoth's, struck it as well. Meanwhile, Chathi brandished a hand wreathed in fire, and the other undead guard collapsed before her, breaking and crumbling in the process.

Bareris thought he should be faring as well or better than his comrades. He was stronger than Urhur and a superior brawler, but he didn't dare risk even a single scratch from the wizard's nails for fear it would incapacitate him, and every time he landed a head butt or stamp to the toes, his adversary's protective aura caused the impact to pain him as well.

Urhur abruptly opened his mouth wide, revealing that his teeth, too, had grown long and pointed. He yanked Bareris close and bit at his neck. Caught by surprise, the bard just barely managed to jerk his upper body backward in time. Drops of saliva spattered him as the crooked fangs gnashed shut.

Then, however, Urhur lurched forward, and his legs buckled beneath him. Employing the pommel of his falchion as a bludgeon, Aoth clubbed the necromancer's head a second time. Urhur slumped entirely limp. Sore and weak from the punishment he'd endured, Bareris tore away the necklace of bones, depriving the Red Wizard of his defensive aura, then threw him to the ground.

Aoth's falchion glowed brighter as he released the counter-spell he'd stored in the steel. Bareris abruptly heard the rasp of his own labored breathing as the spell of silence dissolved. Meanwhile, Urhur's claws and fangs melted away.

"Are you all right?" Aoth whispered.

"When this is over," Bareris replied, "I'll want the aid of a healer, but I can manage for now."

Chathi moved to the door of the tent, shifted the flap, and peeked out. "I don't think anyone's noticed anything amiss."

"Good," said Aoth. "Can you restore Urhur to his senses?"

"Most likely." She rooted in her belt pouch, produced a pewter vial, uncorked it, and held it under the Red Wizard's nose.

Urhur's eyes fluttered open, then he flailed, but to little effect. Bareris, Aoth, and Chathi were crouching all around him to hold him down and menace him with their daggers.

"Calm down," said Aoth. "You probably realize I don't like you, but my friends and I won't kill you if you answer our questions."

"You're insane," Urhur said. "You'll all die for this outrage."

Aoth smiled. "Yes, if it doesn't work out, which means we have nothing to lose. If I were you, I'd think about the implications of that."

Perhaps seeking to calm himself, Urhur took a deep breath. "Very well, I'll answer your questions. In all likelihood, I would have done so in any case. I have no secrets."

"If so," said Aoth, "you must be the only Red Wizard who can make that claim, but before we proceed, I want you to think about something. I just cast a counterspell. Bareris and Chathi are each going to do the same. I hope that if anyone has laid a magical binding on you, it will turn out that one of us has succeeded in breaking your fetters, and you can give us what we require without suffering for it."

"I have no idea what you're babbling about."

"I admit," Aoth continued, "if you do tell the truth, you'll be running a risk. We'll have no way of knowing in advance whether we've actually freed you, but I guarantee that if your responses fail to satisfy us, we'll kill you. Bareris, Chathi, do what you need to do."

Bareris sang his charm, and the priestess chanted her invocation to the Firelord.

"Now," said Aoth to the prisoner, "tell us who created the undead horde."

Urhur's eyes shifted left, then right, as if he was looking for succor. "How should I know? All anyone knows is that they came down out of the mountains."

"You're lying," said Aoth.

He clamped a hand over the necromancer's mouth, and Bareris and Chathi exerted their strength to hold him motionless. Mirror glided forward, bent down, and slid his shadowy fingertips into Urhur's torso.

It wasn't the sort of violation that broke the skin, shed blood, or made any sort of visible wound, but Urhur bucked and thrashed in agony. His body grew thinner, and new lines incised themselves on his face.

"Enough," Bareris said, and Mirror pulled his hand away.

"I'll wager," said Aoth to Urhur, "that you've unleashed ghosts and such on a good many victims in your time, but I wonder if you'd ever felt a phantom's touch yourself. It looked painful, and you look older. I wouldn't be surprised if Mirror has leeched years from your natural span. Now shall we have him tickle your guts again, or will you cooperate?"

"I don't deserve this," Urhur whimpered. "Szass Tam didn't give me a choice. When I tried to keep you from discovering too much or warning Tharchion Focar and the other captains, I didn't even understand what I was doing. I mean, not entirely. My memory's funny. It's like I'm split in two."

"Just tell us," said Aoth. "Where did the marauders come from?"

"Why do I have to say? It's plain you already know."

"We need to hear," the war mage said.

"All right, curse you. My peers made them."

"And helped them to their victories?"

"Yes!"

"What are your orders now that you and the other Red Wizards in this army are supposed to fight the nighthaunt and its primary host yourselves?"

"I-" Urhur's eyes rolled up in his head.

His back arched and his limbs jerked as the dying orc's had done. He jerked in a final great spasm that broke Chathi's grip on his arm then lay motionless with bloody foam oozing from the corner of his mouth.

The fire priestess placed her hand in front of Urhur's contorted features, feeling for his breath. After a moment, she said, "He's dead."

"Damn it," said Aoth. "I'd hoped we'd forestalled that. Obviously, we only delayed it. Still, he admitted some things. Enough, I hope, to spare us a meeting with the headsman." He looked back at the slit in the rear of the tent.

Clad in long, plain, hooded cloaks like many a common legionnaire, two figures pushed through the opening then threw back their cowls to reveal themselves as Nymia and Milsantos. The tharchions had trailed Bareris and his comrades up to the tent, then skulked outside to listen to the interrogation.

"You've done well," Milsantos said.

"They've made a filthy mess," Nymia growled. "They attacked and killed a Red Wizard, and we still don't know that the necromancers mean to betray us."

"If they don't," Bareris asked, "then why couldn't Urhur say so? Why was that the question that finally triggered the seizure?"

"I don't know," the female commander answered. "I don't pretend to comprehend all the ins and outs of wizardry, but if Szass Tam only changed his plans after the other zulkirs rebuffed him, how could he already have sent new orders to minions hundreds of miles away from Eltabbar?"

"The same way," said Milsantos, "my informants passed a message to me: magic."

"I suppose," Nymia said. "Still-"

"Still," Milsantos said, "you don't like it that we have, in effect, colluded in the murder of a Red Wizard, and you shrink from the thought of making a whole troupe of them our prisoners. So do I. I didn't come to be an old man, let alone retain my office for lo these many decades, by indulging in such practices. But we now have genuine reason to suspect the necromancers of treachery, and I won't send legionnaires into battle with such folk positioned to strike at their backs. They deserve better, and so do we. Remember, if we lose, the enemy is apt to kill us, too, and if they don't, the zulkirs might."

"Yet if we anger Szass Tam and the order of Necromancy…" Nymia threw up her hands. "Yes, all right, we'll do it your way, assuming we even have followers stupid enough to lay hands on Red Wizards."

Chathi smiled. "The Braziers will help you, Tharchion."

"And I," said Aoth, "know griffon riders who'll do the same."

Malark jumped, caught the top of the high wrought-iron fence with its row of sharp points, and swung himself over without cutting himself or even snagging his clothing. He then dropped to the grass on the other side, his knees flexing to absorb the jolt.

As one of Dmitra Flass's lieutenants, he actually had no need to enter in such a fashion. He could have presented himself at the gate and waited for the watchman to appear and admit him or procured his own key, but why bother? For a man trained as a Monk of the Long Death, hopping the fence was easy as climbing a flight of stairs.

Alert and silent by habit, not because he expected trouble, he strolled onward through Eltabbar's largest cemetery. The meadows with their stone and wooden markers were peaceful after dark.

He often came here where no one could find and interrupt him to mull over one problem or another.

But tonight he found the place less soothing than formerly. The air was pleasant, neither too hot nor too cool, and perfumed with the scent of flowers. A night bird sang, and the stars shone, but the sight of so many open graves, yawning like raw wounds in the earth, offended him. Death was supposed to be an ending, but for the poor wretches interred here, it had only been a brief respite. They'd toil and struggle on through the mortal world as zombie soldiers.

Yet much as Malark deplored Thay's practice of employing such warriors, he could do nothing about it. So he scowled and resolved to put the matter out of his mind and focus instead on the puzzle he needed to unravel.

Szass Tam had manipulated events to persuade the council of zulkirs to elect him regent. His efforts had failed, yet it was plain he was still maneuvering. To what end?

Malark had reviewed all the intelligence available to him, all the secrets his agents daily risked their lives to gather, and he still had no idea. It was almost enough to discourage him, to persuade him that Szass Tam was as transcendently brilliant as everyone maintained, so cunning and devious that no other being could hope to fathom his schemes.

But Malark refused to concede that. Though he was no wizard nor, thank the gods, a lich, he was as old as Szass Tam, and his extended span had afforded him the opportunity to develop a comparable subtlety of mind. No doubt the undead necromancer possessed the power to obliterate a mere excommunicant monk with a flick of his shriveled fingers, but that didn't mean he could outthink him.

The spymaster wandered by another pair of gaping graves, which still stank of carrion even though their former occupants were gone. He'd passed quite a few such cavities in just a short while, and he suddenly wondered if anyone except Szass Tam and his followers knew how many had been opened altogether or whether all the corpses really had gone to serve Tharchions Focar and Daramos, the commanders who'd marched up the Pass of Thazar to counter a threat in the east.

He whirled and dashed back the way he'd come, meanwhile wondering if Dmitra was already asleep or amusing herself with a lover. If so, she wouldn't appreciate being disturbed, but Malark needed another flying horse, and he needed it now.

The sky above the mountains was blue, but as one pivoted toward the Keep of Thazar, it darkened by degrees, so that the castle seemed to stand in a private pocket of night.

As yet, Aoth hadn't seen the nighthaunt or any of the undead except for a few ghouls and skeletons on the battlements, but he had little doubt the winged creature was responsible for the shroud of darkness. He recalled the boundless malevolence of the nighthaunt's blank pearly eyes, the contemptuous way it had allowed him to escape-because Szass Tam wanted news of the attack to travel, evidently-and all the horrors he'd witnessed on the night the fortress fell, and despite himself, he shivered.

His reaction annoyed him and made him wish the battle would begin. Once the waiting ended, his jitters should end with it. They always had.

Unfortunately, it wasn't time yet. First, the Burning Braziers had to complete their ritual, and unless it succeeded, the legionnaires had no hope of a successful assault.

To better survey the castle and the army arrayed before it, Aoth had ascended a hillock with Brightwing and Bareris-and Mirror too, presumably, though the spirit was entirely imperceptible at present-and so he turned to the singer.

Though bards were generally garrulous to a fault, following their interrogation of Urhur Hahpet, Bareris had lapsed into sullen taciturnity. But perhaps Aoth could draw him into a conversation. He was still curious about the man, and it would be something to occupy his mind.

"It will be a tough fight," said Aoth, "but we can win. Even without our zombies, we have a sizable army, and even without the necromancers, we have wizardry. I'm not the only war mage in the host."

Bareris grunted.

"Of course," Aoth persisted, "we wouldn't have a chance if not for you. Makes me glad you asked to fight in my company."

"Don't be. My luck is bad."

Aoth snorted. "I'd say you were damn lucky to make it out of the mountains alive, and we were lucky you turned up here when you did."

Bareris shrugged. "The gravecrawler said I still had a path to walk, and maybe this is it. Revenge. As much as I can take, for as long as I'm able."

Aoth was still trying to decide how to answer that when the ground began to shake. The Burning Braziers had warned their comrades of what to expect, but some of the soldiers standing in formation in front of the castle cried out anyway.

"This is it," Aoth said.

He swung himself onto Brightwing's back, and the griffon beat her wings and soared into the air. Bareris trotted to join the axemen he intended to fight among.

The tremors intensified, and men-at-arms on the ground crouched to avoid being knocked down. Riders and grooms struggled to control frightened horses. Trees lashed back and forth, and stones rolled clattering down the mountainsides, until something huge and bright burst from the empty stretch of ground between the Keep of Thazar and the besieging army.

At first an observer could have mistaken it for a simple eruption of lava. Then, however, it heaved itself higher, and the contours of a lump of a head; a thick, flailing arm; and a hand with four stubby fingers became apparent.

Tall and massive as one of the castle towers, the searing heat of it perceptible even from far away, the colossal elemental finished dragging itself up out of the ground then clambered unsteadily onto its broad, toeless feet. Some of the legionnaires shrank from the terrifying spectacle. Others, remembering that this was supposed to happen, cheered.

Aoth thought the mystical feat deserved acclamation. Had the Burning Braziers summoned and bound a fire elemental big as a spire, that would have been impressive enough. But such an entity, formidable as it was, lacked the solidity required for the task at hand, so the clerics had opted for a spirit whose nature blended the hunger of flame with the weight of stone. That almost certainly made the magic more difficult for them, given that they lacked any special affinity for the element of earth, yet they'd managed nonetheless.

Its tread shaking the earth, the giant advanced to the castle wall, took hold of a row of merlons at the top, and ripped away a chunk of the battlements. It tossed the fragment of stone and masonry inside the fortress-to crush some of the enemy, Aoth hoped-and gripped the wall once more.

Ghouls came running and skin kites soared, to leap and plaster themselves onto the elemental like fleas and mosquitoes attaching themselves to a man. The colossus didn't even seem to notice, and the heat of its luminous body charred them to nothing.

Unfortunately, that didn't mean the behemoth would prove impervious to the efforts of ghosts and spellcasters. The former might be able to leech the life from it, and the latter to break the priests' control over it or send it back to its native level of existence. The Thayan archers and crossbowmen on the ground shot their missiles at any such foe that showed itself on the battlements. Aoth's fellow war mages hurled thunderbolts and fire.

No one with sense would position himself in front of such a barrage or anywhere close, but somebody needed to peer down inside the castle courtyards and counter whatever mischief was happening there. Aoth urged Brightwing higher, and other griffon riders followed his lead. He hoped that if they flew high enough, no stray attack from their own side would hit them.

"If I do catch an arrow in the guts," said Brightwing, discerning the essence of his thoughts, "you'll know when we both plummet to our deaths."

"Put your mind at ease," Aoth replied. "I have a spell of slow falling ready for the casting. Whatever awfulness happens to you, your beloved master will fare all right."

Brightwing laughed.

They raced into the pocket of darkness. Zombies shot crossbows at them, but the bolts flew wild. Brightwing streaked over the curtain wall, and as Aoth had anticipated, live wizards, gathered in circles, were chanting on the ground below. They'd forsaken red robes for nondescript garments, but they no doubt belonged to the order of Necromancy nonetheless.

Aoth prepared a blast of fire to keep them from interfering with the elemental, but wraiths flew up at him, and he had to use the magic to incinerate them instead. Fortunately, his fellow griffon riders, adept at hitting a mark even from the back of a flying steed, harried the necromancers with arrows. Meanwhile, stone crunched and crashed as the magma giant continued to demolish the exterior wall.

Aoth cast spell after spell, more than he liked with so much fighting still to come, but if he and his allies failed to protect the elemental until it completed its work, it wouldn't matter how much magic remained to him. Phantoms and necromancers perished, or abandoning their efforts to stop the giant, bolted for cover.

Brightwing wheeled and dived. Arrows loosed by their own allies streaked past her and Aoth, but he saw that she was right to risk that particular hazard in order to respond to a greater one. Possibly cloaked in enchantments that armored them against common missiles, two necromancers had ascended the battlements. Chanting and whirling their hands in mystic passes, they were glaring not at the elemental but at the war mage and his familiar.

Aoth doubted that he could have cast any of his own attack magic before they completed their incantations, but Brightwing reached them in time. Her outstretched talons punched into the torso of the necromancer on the left, while her wing knocked the one on the right off the wall-walk to drop, thud, and lay motionless on the ground below.

The griffon beat her wings, gaining altitude once more. "I guess he didn't have a charm of slow falling."

"Apparently not," Aoth said.

Then Brightwing lifted one wing, dipped the other, and turned, affording him a fresh view of the fortress, and he felt a reflexive pang of dread.

The nighthaunt had appeared atop the flat, rectangular roof of the central citadel, and despite its apparent lack of a mouth, was attempting magic of its own. Aoth couldn't understand the words of the incantation, but he could hear them inside his mind. Indeed, they pained him like throbs of headache. His fellow griffon riders, those who were still alive, assailed the creature with arrows, but the shafts glanced off its dead black form.

Meanwhile, the elemental was moving more slowly, as if in pain. Glowing chunks of it flaked and sheared away to shatter on the ground.

Aoth hurled lightning at the nighthaunt, but that didn't seem to bother it any more than the arrows. For a moment, he was grimly certain the demonic entity would succeed in destroying the elemental before the latter could break down enough wall to do any good.

But enraged by its agonies, perhaps, the disintegrating giant balled its hands into fists and hammered the stonework repeatedly, then flung its entire body at the barrier as if it were a battering ram. The entity and a broad section of wall smashed into fragments together.

Aoth scrutinized the breach then smiled. He and his allies had hoped the elemental would demolish the entire wall. Due to the nighthaunt's interference, that hadn't happened, but the opening was wide enough for an attacking army to enter in strength, not just a vulnerable few at a time.

The Thayan force cheered. Aoth and the other griffon riders wheeled their mounts and retreated to join their comrades. There was no longer any need to linger in a highly exposed and dangerous position directly above the castle.

It was Aoth's duty to return to his command, but he detoured to set down among the Burning Braziers and the monks who were their bodyguards. He cast about, spied Chathi sitting on the ground, slid off Brightwing, and strode to the fire priestess.

She rose to meet him. Her fire-scarred face was sweaty, with a gray cast to the skin.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Fine," she said. "It's just that the ritual was taxing, particularly once the nighthaunt tried to oppose us."

"If you aren't fit to fight, you've done plenty already." Even as the words left his mouth, he knew how she'd respond.

"I'm a Burning Brazier. I still have magic to cast, and there's a battle to be won. Of course I'm going to fight!"

"Of course. Just be careful." He wished she still served as a member of his company, where he could better keep an eye on her, but now that the army had reunited, the servants of Kossuth constituted their own unit.

Chathi rolled her eyes. "Yes, Mother. Now go do your job and I'll do mine."

He wanted to kiss her, but it would be inappropriate with others looking on. He touched her forearm in its covering of mail then returned to Brightwing.

As the griffon sprang into the air, she asked, "Are you worried about the priestess for any special reason?"

Aoth sighed. "I suppose not."

"Then that makes it all the more pathetic."

It didn't take Aoth, or any of the officers, long to arrange their companies to their satisfaction. The common legionnaires already knew their parts in the battle plan. Wizards conjured blasts of frost and showers of hail to cool the red-hot scatter of debris that would otherwise obstruct the way, and then the army advanced. Aoth and Brightwing took to the sky once more.

The Thayans proceeded warily. Archers shot at any foe that showed itself on the remaining battlements. Mages cast flares of fire and clerics, pulses of divine power through the breach, in hopes of smiting any creature lying in wait just out of sight on the other side.

Aoth and Brightwing flew over the wall, and spears leveled and shields locked, the first warriors passed through the breach. Rather to the mage's surprise, at first nothing appeared to oppose their progress, but once a substantial portion of their force had entered, undead exploded from the doors and windows of nearby buildings. Others came racing down the unnaturally benighted lanes leading to the central redoubt or rose over the rooftops. The invaders raised their weapons against the threat.

Surrounded by their floating, luminous runes, quells suddenly materialized among the largest formation of fire priests, but the guardian monks assailed the creatures with glowing batons and blazing swords and hammered, slashed, and burned the apparitions out of existence. With that threat eliminated, the senior cleric barked a command, and moving as one, the Braziers extended their scarlet metal torches.

Weapons, Aoth suddenly recalled, that Szass Tam had supplied. If the Red Wizards in their company had been poised to betray them, could they rely on these particular devices?

He shouted for the priests not to discharge the torches, but the cacophony of battle was already deafening. Bows groaned and flights of arrows thrummed. Shields crashed as animate corpses hurled themselves against them. Officers bellowed orders, and legionnaires yelled war cries, called for help, or screamed in agony. Nobody noticed one more voice clamoring from overhead.

The red rods exploded in their wielders' hands, flowering into orbs of flame big and hot enough to incinerate the clerics, the monks hovering protectively around them, and any legionnaire unlucky enough to be standing adjacent to the servants of Kossuth. Aoth picked out Chathi an instant before she attempted to use her weapon. She vanished in a flare of yellow, and when that faded a heartbeat later, nothing at all remained.

My fault, thought Aoth, abruptly sick to his stomach. I knew where the torches came from. Why didn't I think to suspect them before?

Startled, warriors pivoted in the direction of the bursts of flame, then stared aghast as they realized that the majority of the priests, invaluable allies against the undead and an integral part of the tharchions' strategy, were gone. The shadows and skeletons hurled themselves at the living with renewed fury.

Singing, the war chant audible even over the ambient din, Bareris sidestepped a blow from a zombie's flail, riposted with a thrust to the torso, and the gray, rot-speckled creature collapsed. Around him, Mirror-still just a gleaming shadow but more clearly visible than the bard had seen him hitherto-and Aoth's axemen hacked down their own opponents. Bareris knew his battle anthem was feeding vigor and courage to his mortal allies. Perhaps even the ghost derived some benefit.

The Binder knew, they could use all the magical help they could get. Half their troops were still outside the wall, and those who'd already entered were jammed together in a space too small for them to deploy to best advantage. Assuming they survived this initial counterattack, they'd need to battle their way up the relatively narrow streets before assaulting the actual keep at the center of the fortress. As Bareris knew from past experience, that sort of combat was always arduous and apt to exact a heavy toll in lives.

Still, he judged the tharchions were correct. Their plan could work, and the knowledge of that didn't so much assuage as counterbalance the guilt and despair that engulfed him whenever he thought of Tammith. Accordingly, he fought hard, thankful for those moments when the exigencies of combat focused his entire mind on the next cut or parry, more than willing to die to help wreck the necromancers' schemes.

Then yellow light flared behind him, painting the curtain wall and buildings with its glow. He glanced back and saw the empty space a good many of the Firelord's servants had occupied only a moment before. Nothing remained of them but scraps of hot, twisted metal and wisps of floating ash.

Farther away, another contingent of Burning Braziers aimed their torches at the phantoms flying down at them like owls diving at mice. Perhaps, their attention locked on the imminent threat, they hadn't even noticed what had just happened to their fellows. The red metal rods exploded and they perished instantly, slain by the same force to which they'd consecrated their existences.

Bareris suspected that with the priests lost, the battle was almost certainly lost. All he and his comrades could do was attempt to destroy as many of the enemy as possible before the creatures slaughtered them in their turn.

So he struck blow after blow, splintering skeletons and hacking shambling cadavers to pieces, until Aoth and Brightwing plunged to earth in front of him. The griffon's talons impaled the ghoul Bareris had been about to attack, and her weight crushed the false life out of it.

When he saw the war mage, Bareris realized that in all probability, he wasn't the only one who'd lost a woman he loved. "Chathi?" he asked.

Aoth scowled. "Never mind that. Get on."

"What-"

"Do it!"

Bareris clambered up behind the legionnaire. Brightwing instantly leaped back into the air, nearly unseating him. Mirror floated upward to soar alongside his living comrades.

"After the priests burned to death," said Aoth, "Tharchion Daramos waved me down. I'm a galloper now, a messenger. Nobody on the ground could push through this press, but Brightwing can carry me over it."

"What's that got to do with me?"

"I can reach the folk I need to reach, but it's hard to make them hear me over all the noise unless I waste time setting down, but you're a bard with magic in your voice. They'll hear you."

"Fine. Just tell me what to say."

Bareris soon discovered that hurtling back and forth above the battle was no less perilous than fighting on the ground. Skeletal archers loosed shafts at them, and necromancers hurled chilling blasts of shadow. Wraiths soared to intercept them. Brightwing veered, swooped, and climbed, dodging the attacks. Aoth struck back with darts of amber light evoked from the head of his lance. Bareris and Mirror slashed at any foe that flew within reach of their blades.

Meanwhile, they delivered the tharchion's orders: The legionnaires must protect the surviving priests-servants of gods other than Kossuth, mostly, who'd served with the armies of Pyarados and Thazalhar since before the Burning Braziers arrived to lend their strength-and wizards at all costs. Difficult though it would be, the soldiers also needed to push forward to make room for the rest of their comrades to enter the fortress. Archers were to find their way to upper-story windows and rooftops, where they could target the enemy without the ranks of their own comrades obscuring their lines of sight. Thayans with mystical capabilities, be they arcane, deity-granted, or arising simply from the possession of an enchanted weapon, must concentrate their efforts on the specters and any other enemy essentially immune to common steel.

To Bareris's surprise, their efforts made a difference. The startling destruction of the fire priests had thrown the army into confusion, if not to the brink of panic and collapse, but Milsantos's commands were sound. By degrees, they reestablished order and valid tactics. Even more importantly, perhaps, they rallied the legionnaires by reminding them that a highly competent war leader was still directing the assault. The battle wasn't over yet.

Bareris, though, still believed it was nearly over. His comrades, humans and screaming blood orcs alike, were fighting like devils, but they were also steadily dying, in some cases to rise mere moments later and join the enemy host.

The gallopers finished delivering Milsantos's current list of orders and flew back for a new one. Broadsword in hand, the gilt runes on his plate armor and kite shield glowing, affording him the benefit of their enchantments, the aged warrior had stationed himself atop a portion of the surviving walls, the better to oversee the battle. Nymia had joined him on his perch. Bareris winced to see both commanders occupying the same exposed position, but at least they had a fair number of guards and spellcasters clustered around to protect them, and there was little safety to be had anywhere in any case.

Brightwing furled her pinions and lit on the wall-walk, while Mirror simply hovered off to the side. Aoth saluted with a flourish of his lance and rattled off the messages from the officers on the ground.

His features grim inside his open helm, Milsantos acknowledged them with a brusque nod. "Based on what you've seen flying over the battle, what's your impression?"

"We're losing," said Aoth.

"Yes," said Milsantos, "I think so too."

"We could handle the ghouls and dread warriors," Nymia said. Slime caked her mace and weapon arm, proof that at some point, she'd needed to fight her way to the battlements. "It's the ghosts and such that are killing us, and they'd be powerless if the sun were shining." She gave one of the mages a glare.

The warlock spread hands stained and gritty with the liquids and powders he used to cast his spells. "Tharchion, we've tried our best to dispel the gloom."

"But the nighthaunt's magic is too strong," Bareris said. "What if we kill the thing? Would that weaken the enchantment?"

"It might," said the mage.

"Let's do it then."

Nymia sneered. "Obviously, we'd kill it if we could. It's what we came to do, but we lost sight of it just after the elemental broke the wall. It isn't fighting in the thick of the battle any more than Tharchion Daramos and I are."

"Then we draw it out," Milsantos said, "using ourselves as bait. You and I descend from these battlements, forsaking the wards the mages cast to protect us. We mount our horses, and with a relatively small band of followers, break through the ranks of the enemy. Then we charge toward the central keep as though in a final desperate, defiant attempt to challenge the power that holds it." He smiled crookedly. "You know, chivalry. The kind of idiocy that loses battles and gets warriors killed."

"As it would this time," Nymia said.

"Maybe yes, maybe no. We'll ride with our best fighters and battle mages. The wizards will enhance our capabilities with enchantment, and we'll hope that when the nighthaunt spies us looking vulnerable, cut off by virtue of our own stupidity from most of our followers, it will come to fight us itself. It's a demon, isn't it, or near enough. It must like killing with its own hands, and it must particularly hanker to slay us. Once it does, it's won.

"Of course," the old man continued, "even if it does reveal itself, it won't be alone, but we'll use every trick we know and every scroll and talisman we've hoarded over the years, and whatever else threatens us, we'll all do our utmost to strike it down."

Nymia shook her head. "Commit suicide if you like, but I won't join you."

"It needs to be both of us," Milsantos said, "to bait the trap as enticingly as possible. Consider that we're not likely to leave this place alive in any case. Would you rather stand before your god as victor or vanquished? Imagine, too, your fate if you did escape but abandoned the zulkirs' legions to perish. The council would punish you in ways that would make you wish a nighthaunt had merely torn you apart."

"All right," Nymia sighed. "We'll do it, with Aoth and a goodly number of the other griffon riders flying overhead to fend off threats from the air."

"I'm coming," said Bareris, and to his relief, neither of the tharchions objected.

He then had to scramble to commandeer a destrier. He knew how to fight on horseback and assumed he'd be of more use doing so than clinging to Brightwing's rump.

Once in the saddle, he crooned to his new mount, a chestnut gelding, establishing a rapport and buttressing its courage. Meanwhile, Aoth delivered orders. Soldiers and spellcasters shifted about, positioning themselves for the action to come.

Milsantos nodded to the aide riding beside him, and the young knight blew a signal on his horn. As one, bowmen shot whistling volleys of arrows into the mass of undead clogging one particular street. Wizards assailed the same creatures with blazes of flame and lightning, while the remaining priests hammered them with the palpable force of their faith.

The trumpeter sounded another call. The barrage ended. The men-at-arms holding the mouth of the street drew apart, clearing a path. Astride a black charger, its barding aglow with some of the same golden sigils adorning his plate, Milsantos dropped his lance into fighting position. Others in the company he'd assembled did the same, then they all charged up the corridor.

The barrage just concluded had thinned out the undead blocking the way and left the survivors reeling. The charge slammed into the creatures, and spears punched through their bodies. The horses knocked zombies and skeletons down, and their pounding hooves pulped and shattered them.

Still, foes remained, and undaunted by the annihilation of so many of their fellows, they attempted to drag the riders and their mounts down. No lancer-despite his career as a mercenary, he'd never had the opportunity to master that particular weapon- Bareris slashed at his decaying, skull-faced assailants with his sword and urged his horse onward. The riders had to keep moving or their plan would fail almost before it had begun.

A ghoul slashed Bareris's horse's shoulder with its long, dirty claws, and the animal lurched off balance. Fearful that the virulence of the undead creature's touch had paralyzed his steed, the bard riposted with a head cut. The ghoul fell, and not crippled after all, the destrier regained its footing and raced onward.

Overhead, griffons screeched, men shouted, and magic boomed and crackled. Plastered with writhing skin kites, a winged steed and its master crashed on a roof, tumbled down the pitch, and dropped in a heap in the street. Bareris looked to see if it was Aoth and Brightwing who'd fallen-it wasn't-but otherwise didn't even glance at the portion of the fight raging in the air. He didn't dare divert his attention from his own assailants.

He hacked a skeleton's skull off the top of its spine, felt more than saw a lunging shadow, and obliterated it with a thrust. Then, suddenly, no foes remained within reach of his blade. He peered about and saw that he and his companions had fought their way clear.

They galloped onward. Skillful enough to sound his instrument even astride a running horse, Milsantos's trumpeter blew more calls on his horn. His efforts were supposed to create the impression that the riders were signaling the bulk of the army they'd just left behind to enable the two forces to act in concert, to make the nighthaunt worry that the tharchions were well on the way to the culmination of some cunning strategy, even if it wasn't apparent what it was, and that their adversaries had better act swiftly to balk them.

In Bareris's judgment, it wasn't an entirely preposterous notion. Plainly their company could do some damage if left unopposed to maneuver and strike at the rear of the undead host, and even if the nighthaunt wasn't concerned about that, they could still hope their manifest vulnerability would draw it out into the open.

One of the griffon riders yelled, "There!"

Bareris looked up, saw the nighthaunt staring down at him from the battlements atop the gate of the central keep, and immediately comprehended why even a veteran war mage like Aoth feared the dead black, pale-eyed monstrosity. Though its mere presence didn't poison a man like Xingax's could-at least not at this distance-it nonetheless seemed the very embodiment of boundless power wed to unrelenting, all-encompassing hatred. A man could scarcely bear to look at it, and at the same time, transfixed with dread, he found it all but impossible to tear his gaze away. Wings ragged and peeling, body oozing slime, a larger and even more hideous creature stood beside the leader of the undead marauders, while luminous shades hovered in the air behind it, but in that first terrible moment, Bareris scarcely even registered their existence.

"Halt!" shouted Milsantos, and for the most part, the Thayan horsemen obeyed. They had no need to ride farther now that the nighthaunt had appeared, but two men, their nerve breaking, wheeled and fled back the way they'd come.

Tharchions, the nighthaunt said, his silent psychic voice beating at Bareris's mind like a bludgeon. My name is Ysval. You fight well but have no hope of winning. Yield and I'll spare you, not to continue precisely as you are, but you and your captains at least will retain your essential identities.

"No," Milsantos said. "The council of zulkirs ordered us to destroy you, and that's what we intend to do."

I hoped you'd answer thusly, Ysval said.

He lashed his wings and hurtled down into the midst of his foes. Trained war-horses screamed and shied. The nighthaunt tore one animal's head off with a swipe of his talons. Blood sprayed from the end of the shredded neck. The wraiths followed their captain toward their mortal foes.

In response, some of the battle mages aimed wands or rattled off incantations. Priests brandished the symbols of their faiths and cried the names of their gods. Flares of power, some visible, some not, flung some specters backward like leaves in a gale and seared others from existence.

Other spellcasters read the trigger phrases from scrolls. Walls of roaring fire and shimmering light sprang up around the horsemen, some at ground level, others floating in midair. Unfortunately, they weren't large and numerous enough to overlap and enclose the riders completely. Wraiths could and no doubt would slip through the gaps between barriers, but at least they'd no longer find it possible to overwhelm their opponents in a single onrushing, irresistible swarm.

In theory, that should leave the majority of the Thayans free to focus on Ysval and the relatively small number of lesser undead that had succeeded in closing before the magical barriers sprang into existence. No doubt recognizing that he'd blundered into a snare, the nighthaunt stopped lashing out with claw and tail and simply stood for a moment. Bareris surmised the creature was trying to shift himself to the safety of another level of existence, but nothing happened. Studying ancient texts, the enchanters had discovered that nighthaunts possessed that particular ability, and one of them had already cast a spell to keep him from exploiting it.

Ysval laughed. Well done, but it won't save you. I could kill the lot of you all by myself if necessary. He shook his fist and enormous hailstones hammered from the air, ringing on the armor of the foes in front of him.

Bareris sang a charm and urged his reluctant mount closer to Ysval. Then the horse thrashed and toppled. Bareris kicked his feet from the stirrups, flung himself out of the saddle, and though he landed hard, just managed to keep the animals weight from smashing down on top of his leg.

He scrambled to his feet and found himself facing Tammith across the steed's still-shuddering carcass.

Tammith felt as if she'd been split into two creatures. One had struggled with all her strength to turn away from Bareris, and if she couldn't flee the battle altogether at least kill other people instead. But the other, demonic and perverse, lusted to destroy him precisely because she'd loved him her whole life long, and that Tammith proved the stronger. Reveling in her newly acquired strength, she leaped from the rooftop where she'd been lurking, hoping to drop on a horseman as he rode by, rushed Bareris's mount, and bit a chunk of flesh from the underside of its neck, all before he even realized she was there. The charger fell, and she hoped he'd wind up stuck underneath it. If so, he'd be helpless. Easy prey.

But he threw himself clear, rose, and his eyes widened at the sight of her. She spat out the wad of gory horseflesh in her mouth, and that made his dear, handsome features twist. To her, with her divided psyche, his horror and grief were simultaneously excruciating and the funniest thing she'd ever seen.

"Are you still going to rescue me?" she asked, grinning.

"Yes," he said. "If it can be done, I'll do it. Just give me the chance. Don't make me hurt you."

"You're right," she said, "we mustn't fight. No matter what happens or what I've become, we mustn't hurt one another." She turned away from him, then instantly spun back around and leaped over the body of the horse.

Though she'd believed her deception persuasive, he was ready to receive her attack. Even so, her outstretched hands nearly grabbed him, but with a quickness that suggested he was employing his charm of speed, he sidestepped and slashed open her belly in almost the same place where he'd wounded her before.

It hurt. Her guts started to slide through the rent, and doubling over, she clutched at herself to hold them in. She swayed and fell onto her side.

This time, her pretense was evidently more convincing, for with a seasoned warrior's caution, Bareris then looked about, checking for any foes that might have crept up on him while he was busy with her. He believed her incapacitated, and why shouldn't he? The same sort of injury had neutralized her before.

But as Xingax had promised, she grew stronger every day, and as a result, she healed more rapidly. As soon as Bareris turned his head, she flowed to her feet and pounced at him.

Darts of golden light streaked down from overhead to stab into her body and make her falter. A deep male voice bellowed, "Behind you!" Bareris pivoted, and as she lunged, he extended his sword. She stopped just short of the point, sprang back, and started shifting back and forth, trying to confuse him and create an opening. Her predatory instincts instructed her in the proper way to feint and glide.

She wasn't fooling Bareris. He was too canny. She stood still, stared into his eyes, and tried to catch and crush his will, but that didn't work either. In fact, as soon as she made herself a stationary target, he ran at her and slashed her leg out from underneath her.

She fell. He stopped, turned, and hesitated. When he cut at her spine, she understood that he'd been trying to calculate how best to incapacitate her without destroying her. The slight pause gave her time to explode into a flock of bats.

With her consciousness divided among her various bodies, her humanity, or what remained of it, diffused along with it, and her need to kill Bareris became as pure as it was profound. She nearly succumbed to the urge to attack.

Nearly, but not quite, because though conscience and mercy were gone, memory remained, and she recalled that he knew a song to repel her in this guise. The bats flew several yards beyond his reach, swirled around one another, and coalesced into her womanly form once more. Her gashed leg throbbed as it took her weight but didn't give way. It was mostly healed already.

She hobbled toward him, trying to make it appear that her damaged limb was weaker than it was. He swung his sword into a low guard, and she noticed he wasn't singing. Just as he was too averse to fighting her to attempt a killing blow, so too was he neglecting to exploit his magic to best advantage.

In effect, that meant he'd already surrendered, for half measures couldn't save him. He was forcing her to murder him, to carry the resulting anguish through all the years of her endless undead existence, and his weakness and selfishness enraged her. She rushed him, his sword whirled up to threaten her, and she sprang at him anyway. The blade sheared into her side, but not enough to balk her. She slammed into him and carried him to the ground beneath her.

He gasped at the grip of her hands, cold and poisonous as any specter's touch. She could have leeched the life from him through that contact, but it wouldn't be as satisfying as draining his blood. Grappling, seeking to immobilize him, she opened her mouth to bite.

Bareris bellowed up into her face, and the thunderous sound seared her like a blast of fire. The world went black, and the sudden pain made her fumble her grip on her prey. Bareris shoved her and heaved himself out from underneath her.

Her sight began to restore itself after a moment, but the world remained a blurry, murky place. Still, she could make out Bareris scrambling to his feet, and her ruined face hanging in tatters from her skull, she jumped up to attack him once again.

He started chanting, and she laughed to hear it. Good, she thought, you understand now. I'm not your beloved anymore.

I'm unclean, foul, and a slave to creatures fouler still. Please, please, destroy me if you can.

Meanwhile, she strove to strike, seize, and bite him as relentlessly as ever. Her throat burned with thirst.

His magic shrouded him in a misty vagueness that made it even more difficult for her half-blind eyes to pick him out. Still, she thought she'd judged where he was and sprang to grab hold of him.

He twisted away, avoiding her touch and leaving her floundering off balance for just an instant, time enough for his sword to leap at her neck. He bellowed a war cry as it sheared into her flesh and the bone underneath.

The world seemed to jump, and then she was on the ground, her right profile pressed against the dirt. She tried to rise but couldn't move. A long shape sprawled in front of her, and after a moment she recognized her own decapitated body.

The realization stunned her. It was so quick, she thought. After she and Bareris had fought so hard, so intimately, it didn't seem real that a single sudden cut had ended everything.

Looming over her like a giant, weeping, Bareris stepped between her and her body. He raised his sword over his head.

Mirror had a sense that he was supposed to engage Ysval if possible. Had someone so instructed him? He couldn't recall, but it seemed right. He strode toward the ink-black creature and the legionnaires who were fighting the thing already. A different warrior called out to him, but like so many things, the words simply failed to convey any meaning.

In another moment, however, a second voice, a soft, insinuating baritone, snagged him and pulled him around to face a man wrapped in a hooded gray mantle. The speaker was alive, but even so, Mirror discerned without knowing or wondering how he knew that he was one of the enemy, likely a warlock who'd employed magic to avoid detection hitherto.

The mage swirled his hands through mystic passes. "You're undead," he crooned. "You belong on our side."

Mirror felt something changing inside him. Like any sensation, it was seductive, simply because it filled the emptiness, but even so, it seemed to him that he shouldn't allow it to continue. He sprang at the wizard, closing the distance with one prodigious leap, and drove his sword into the man's chest. To his vague disappointment, the weapon didn't cleave flesh or spill blood like a proper blade, but it did stop the mage's heart.

Mirror pivoted back toward Ysval and observed another horror battling its way toward the nighthaunt. Tall as an ogre, approximately female in form, the winged, leprous entity ravaged men and horses with her talons, shredding them and rotting their flesh with gangrene all in an instant. Even the liquid filth streaming from her open sores was dangerous, blistering any living creature it touched.

Mirror abruptly recalled that such abominations were known as angels of decay. He thought he might have encountered one on a different battleground but couldn't actually remember.

In any case, the sight of her sharpened his awareness of the battle as a whole, and he recognized what a mistake it would be to allow her and Ysval to stand together. The nighthaunt was already holding his own against the men-at-arms and battle mages assailing him from all sides. If such a formidable comrade came to his aid, the mortals would have no chance at all.

Fortunately, Mirror thought he could prevent that. Though he dimly recalled someone calling him "undead" at some point in the past, he didn't know if he truly was or not, but instinct whispered that neither the angel's infectious touch nor her slather of corrosive muck had any power to harm him.

He flew at her and cut at her flank. Lightning-quick, she twisted out of the way and slashed with her talons. The first blow somehow streaked harmlessly through him, but he sensed that the next one would smash and tear, and he raised his arm to intercept it. As he started the motion, he wore no shield, but by the time he finished, there it was, round and affixed to his forearm by three sturdy straps. He knew it should have a coat-of-arms painted on the front and momentarily longed to view it.

He couldn't, of course, not while he was fighting. The angel's talons slammed into the targe and knocked him backward. Seeking to deny him time to recover, the creature lunged after him. Flinging spatters of slime, her flaking wing swatted him and sent him reeling farther.

He thought that would likely prove the end of him, but strangely, a simple exertion of will served to halt his flailing stagger and restore his equilibrium, as if he had no weight at all. He thrust at the angel, caught her by surprise, and his shadowy blade slid deep into her cankerous torso.

She cried out in her rasping voice, stumbled, but she didn't fall. He pulled his sword back, and they traded blows. Sometimes she evaded his strokes and sometimes they sheared into her, albeit without leaving a mark thereafter. At certain moments, her talons whizzed harmlessly through him, at others, his shield or plate defected them, and occasionally, they slashed him. Then he experienced a shock that was less pain than an upheaval of the elements of his being. The aching hollow at his core yawned wide, threatening to swallow everything else.

It was difficult to tell how many times the angel needed to wound him before that would actually happen, just as it was hard to judge how badly he was hurting her. He truly had no idea who was winning until she suddenly pitched forward. Her corpse liquefied completely almost before it splashed facedown in the street.

Victory over such a formidable foe filled him with triumph, and intense emotion sharpened and deepened his thoughts. He sensed that he'd fought many times, and war remained his proper occupation. It might not ever make him remember, but at least while embroiled in the midst of it he comprehended there was something he'd forgotten.

He flew at Ysval.

Bareris's hand was steady as he hacked open Tammith's severed head to cut the brain within, then he slid his enchanted blade into her heart. He felt as numb and empty of feeling as any of the zombies he'd faced this day.

As soon as he finished, however, he started to shake, and anguish and self-loathing welled up inside him.

At the end, he'd had no choice but to slay Tammith. Otherwise, she would certainly have killed him, and as it turned out, it simply hadn't been in him to surrender to that.

He'd likewise deemed it necessary to desecrate Tammith's remains, lest she rise to fight anew. Yet he now understood that such an act, however essential, could be unbearable and unforgivable as well.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to run his sword into his own heart.

But that would mean abandoning the fight to defeat Xingax, Ysval, and the necromancers, and that was unacceptable. The wretches had to be punished. They had to lose and suffer and die.

Singing a pledge of vengeance, he cast about to see where Ysval was.

Aoth thrust the point of his lance into a shadow. The phantom frayed into tatters of darkness.

The ghosts were coming faster now, more and more of them finding their way through the gaps in the sheets of flame and planes of radiance the wizards had conjured to hold them back. Aoth and his fellow griffon riders fought doggedly to keep the spirits in the air from flying down to aid their commander.

He looked around and realized that at last the battle had granted him and Brightwing a moment to catch their breaths. No new foes had yet appeared in their immediate vicinity. It gave him a chance to peer down and assess what was happening on the ground.

Ysval clawed. Milsantos caught the blow on his shield, but the impact knocked him out of the saddle. The nighthaunt virtually tore the old man's war-horse out of his way as if it were a curtain and lunged after him, but in so doing, the undead captain exposed his flank to Bareris, who, chanting, slashed the creature's night black body with his sword. As did Mirror, flitting around to attack from behind. Ysval faltered, and Milsantos clambered to his feet.

Ysval pivoted and drove his talons into Mirror's chest. The ghost's misty form writhed and boiled. Ysval raised his other hand for a follow-up blow. Bareris cut at him but failed to divert the nighthaunt from his fellow undead.

Then, however, a colossal spider, gnashing mandibles dripping venom, ring of eyes gleaming, materialized beside Ysval. One of Aoth's fellow battle wizards had evidently summoned it. The spider pounced on the shadowy entity. The serrated jaws ripped him.

Ysval tore the creature off him and smashed it down on its back. As it started to heave itself upright, he thrust out his hand at it, malign power shivered through the air, and the arachnid stopped moving.

But Mirror's form once more appeared as steady and stable as it ever did, and as Ysval finished with the spider, Nymia rode by him and bashed him with her mace.

We're like a swarm of wasps attacking a man, Aoth thought. Individually, we're puny in comparison, but it's hard for him to defend himself against all of us at once.

Perhaps, his arrogance and manifest fury notwithstanding, Ysval also believed his foes might ultimately overwhelm him, for he brandished his fist, and ragged tendrils of shadow blazed outward from his body. His opponents stumbled and reeled. He lashed out with claw and tail, flinging them backward, giving himself room to spread his wings and spring into the air.

No, thought Aoth, you don't get to break away and work your magic without interference. You have to stay on the ground where everyone can pound on you.

"Get him," he said, and Brightwing dived.

Ysval heard or sensed them coming and turned to face them. When he met the gaze of the nighthaunt's moon white eyes, Aoth felt a jolt of dread, and angry at his reaction, he promised himself it was the last time. One way or another, this filthy thing was never going to scare him again.

Then Brightwing froze. Thanks to their psychic bond, Aoth could tell his familiar was still alive and conscious. Indeed, she wasn't even wounded, but Ysval had somehow paralyzed her, and now she wasn't swooping but falling. The nighthaunt laughed.

Why shouldn't he? Now that the griffon couldn't shift her wings, her plummeting trajectory wouldn't take her and Aoth within reach of him.

Aoth charged his lance with all the power it could hold then hurled it like a javelin. The long, heavy weapon wasn't designed for use as a missile, but perhaps some god sharpened his eye and strengthened his arm, maybe Kossuth, avenging the treacherous murder of his Burning Braziers, because the spear plunged into Ysval's shoulder.

To how much effect, it was impossible to say, because Aoth and Brightwing fell past him an instant later. The mage started rattling off a counterspell that might, if poor Chathi's patron deity saw fit to grant a second boon, cleanse the griffon's clenched muscles of their affliction.

Unfortunately, Aoth didn't have time to finish. He and Brightwing slammed down hard on a rooftop, which crunched and buckled beneath them but didn't give way entirely.

The impact spiked pain up the length of his body, but rather to his surprise, he survived it, and Brightwing did too. He could only assume that, despite her paralysis, her wings had caught enough air to keep them from falling at maximum speed.

Some yards away, Ysval crashed onto the street with the lance still sticking out of his body. He immediately sought to scramble to his feet, so obviously neither the spear nor the fall had killed him, but as Aoth had hoped, the injury to his shoulder had at least deprived him of the use of his wings.

Evidently recovered from the stunning effect of the burst of shadow, Bareris and Mirror rushed Ysval and cut at him relentlessly. The nighthaunt managed one more snatch with his talons and a final strike with his tail then toppled onto his side and lay motionless.

Some part of Bareris realized Ysval was dead. Nonetheless, he couldn't stop hacking at the corpse, not until a phantom streaked across his field of vision and tore a knight from the saddle.

Bareris looked up. Having existed for their allotted span, the floating barriers had begun to wink out of existence, and the ghosts were rushing through the openings, swarming on the griffon riders like soft, gleaming leeches attacking a party of swimmers.

The plan indicated that as soon as Ysval died, someone who possessed the necessary magic was supposed to dispel the unnatural gloom enveloping the fortress. It didn't seem to be happening. Was any of that select group of spellcasters still alive? If so, immersed in the chaos of battle, struggling to fend off the foes assailing him, had he even perceived that the moment for action had arrived?

Bareris drew a deep breath and bellowed loudly as only a bard could. "Break the darkness! Now! Now! Now!" On the other side of the battlefield, Milsantos's trumpeter blew the call intended to communicate the same message.

For several heartbeats, it appeared no one heard, at least no one with the power to respond in the appropriate manner. Then, however, the sky brightened from black to blue in an instant. Bareris flinched and squinted at the sudden blaze of sunlight that scoured the wraiths from the air.

He wasn't certain they'd all perished. Perhaps some endured as mere disembodied awareness or potential, like Mirror at his most ethereal, but even if so, they lacked the power to manifest until night returned.

Of course, the Keep of Thazar still harbored ghouls and animate corpses, creatures able to tolerate daylight even if it pained them, so the battle was far from over. Still, Bareris was now certain he and his allies were going to win. Considered as revenge, it wasn't enough. It could never be enough, but it was a start, and weary to the bone though he was, he strode back toward the breached wall and the muddled din of the fight still raging there in search of something else to kill. For some reason impervious to the purifying sun, Mirror fell into step beside him.