Undead

CHAPTER FIVE

29 Mirtul-2 Kythorn, the Year of Blue Fire

Like many orcs, Neske Horthor would have taken offense at the suggestion that she'd ever felt "pity." But it took only a dash of brains to recognize that the prisoners had it hard, marching on short rations day after day with whips slicing into their backs and fear gnawing at their nerves. It was no wonder that one occasionally dropped dead, succumbing to exhaustion, fever, or pure despair.

Such a child had keeled over that day, whereupon Neske halted the march long enough to dress the corpse. It was wrong of her, she supposed. She should have carried the body on to Xingax. But he'd never know about it unless somebody tattled, and Khazisk wouldn't. She and the necromancer had worked together long enough to come to an understanding.

She pulled her skewer back from the campfire, inspected the chunks of fragrant, blackened meat impaled on it, and offered it to Khazisk, sitting cross-legged beside her with the sweep of his red robe pooled around him. "Try it. It's good."

The wizard's narrow, supercilious face screwed up as she'd known it would. "Thank you, no."

She laughed. "You do all sorts of nasty things with rotten bodies. I've watched you. But your stomach rolls over at the prospect of fresh meat, just because it happens to come from your own kind. If you had any sense, you'd realize that's the most nourishing kind of food."

"You're saying you eat orc?"

"Every chance I get." She bit the top piece of juicy meat from the skewer. It was too hot, and seared the roof of her mouth, but she wolfed it down anyway. "You know, it's a puzzle."

"What is?"

"Our real enemies, the ones we're at war with, are in the south. Yet our masters have us sneaking in and out of Thesk, raiding villages and capturing the peasants."

"You mean paradox, not puzzle."

She rolled her eyes. He loved to correct her speech. "Whatever it is, it's stupid."

"Not really. Xingax will turn our captives into potent weapons of war. The result is a net gain in the strength of our legions."

"Maybe." Neske tore another bite of child flesh off the stick. "But when Szass Tam is king, will anyone remember that this chore was important and we did it well? Or will all the rewards go to the warriors who stormed Bezantur and chopped off Nevron and Dmitra Flass's heads?"

"As far as I'm concerned," Khazisk said, "our fellow soldiers are welcome to such opportunities. You and I are better off here in the north. If I never see one of the council's warriors-"

A rams-horn bugle bleated. On the western edge of the camp, a sentry was sounding the alarm.

Trained reflex made Neske snatch for the targe that lay beside her and leap to her feet. But though her body knew what to do, her mind lagged a step behind, mired in perplexity. It would have made sense if an attack had come while she and her comrades were across the border in Thesk, or even during the trek through Surthay and Eltabbar. But once the slave takers finished the climb up the Third Escarpment into High Thay, they should have been safe.

"Look up!" someone shouted. Neske did, and made out winged shadows sweeping across the sky.

"Griffon riders," Khazisk said. He stood up and brandished his staff over his head. The pole was a gleaming white, whittled down from a dragon's leg bone, or so he claimed. He chanted words that, even though she couldn't understand them, filled Neske with an instinctual revulsion. A carrion stink filled the air.

But that was all that happened. The magic failed.

Khazisk cursed and began again. Four syllables into the spell, an arrow punched into the center of his forehead. He toppled backward.

Neske decided she needed her bow and quiver, not her scimitar and shield. She pivoted toward the place where she'd set the rest of her gear. Then the world seemed to skip somehow, and she was lying on her belly. When she tried to stand, and pain ripped through her back, she understood that an arrow had found her, too.

Griffon riders were trained to hit their targets even when their mounts were swooping through the air, and the first flights of arrows did an admirable job of softening up the enemy on the ground. Then the orcs started shooting back.

Bareris was confident his troops would prevail in a duel of archery. But possibly not before the orcs managed to kill a griffon or two, and their masters with them when the stricken beasts plummeted to earth. Better to prevent that by ending the battle quickly.

"Dive!" he said, projecting his voice so every legionnaire would hear. He nudged the back of Murder's feathery neck, and the griffon hurtled toward the ground.

An arrow streaked past Bareris's head. Then Murder slammed down on top of an orc, his momentum snapping its bones, his talons piercing it. The sudden stop jolted Bareris, but his tack was designed to cushion such shocks, and a decade of aerial combat had taught him how to brace himself.

Another orc charged with an axe raised over its head. Murder twisted his neck and snapped at the warrior, biting through boiled-leather armor and tearing its chest apart before it could strike. Bareris looked around but couldn't find another foe within reach of his sword.

In fact, opponents were in short supply all across the battlefield. Orcs were no match for griffons, and the animals were quickly ripping them apart.

That didn't mean everything was under control. Some of the prisoners were cowering amid the carnage, but others were scrambling into the darkness.

Bareris kicked Murder's flanks, and the griffon lashed his wings and sprang into the air. Bareris flew the beast over several fleeing Theskians, then plunged down to block their path. They froze.

"You can't run away," he said. He'd never had the opportunity to learn Damaran, the language of Thesk, but bardic magic would make it sound as if he had. "My comrades and I will kill you if you try. Turn around and go back to the campfires."

The gaunt, haggard folk with their rags and whip scars stared at him. Were they so desperate for freedom that they'd attempt a dash past a griffon and the swordsman astride his back?

A huge wolf padded out of the darkness and stationed itself at Murder's side. It bared its fangs and growled at the captives.

The two beasts made an uncanny pair. Murder was terrible in his ferocity, but his was the clean savagery of nature's predators. The wolf, on the other hand, gave off a palpable feel of the uncanny, of corruption and destruction fouler than death, and perhaps it was the sheer horror of its presence that made the Theskians quail, then turn and scurry back the way they'd come.

Bareris kicked Murder into the air to look for other escapees. He and his companions couldn't be certain they'd collected them all, but they rounded up most of them. Afterward, he set down and dismounted, and the wolf melted back into Tammith.

"So far, so good," she said.

"Thanks to you," he said, and it was true. In times past, even a flying company couldn't foray onto the Plateau of Ruthammar without encountering swift and overwhelming resistance. But Tammith knew how to evade the scrutiny of the watchers overseeing the approaches.

Someone would discover their intrusion soon enough. But if they finished their business quickly and withdrew, they might be all right.

She gave him a smile. "You're too kind."

Bareris lifted his hand to stroke her cheek, then caught himself. Something knotted in his chest.

Ever since they'd agreed to treat one another cordially, as comrades, the same thing had happened to him over and over again. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to have her at his side. It warmed him as nothing had in ten years.

Then he would remember that nothing was really the same. He'd lost her and could never have her again. In truth, she'd even lost herself. By her own admission, she was only a husk, a vile parody of the sweet, generous girl he'd loved. And the realization brought a stab of anguish.

Perhaps she noticed the aborted caress, and perhaps it made her uncomfortable. She turned away, toward the huddled captives.

"Looking for your supper?" he asked. Even as he spoke, he felt shame at the spite in his tone. He had no right to be angry with her. Her condition was his fault, not hers.

"No," she said. "I'm all right for now. I was just thinking. For all these wretches know, they've simply passed from the hands of one band of marauders to those of another."

"Haven't they?"

"Well, at least we don't mean to turn them into zombies. It might comfort them to know that."

He shook his head. "If we tried to make them our willing collaborators, they'd be actors playing a role, and perhaps not convincingly. It's better if they don't think anything has changed."

"I suppose. They're likely to die anyway, aren't they, even if they survive in Xingax's fortress. Because they'll still be stuck in the center of Szass Tam's domain. We certainly aren't going to fly them home."

"Would you, if you could?"

She sneered, whether at the suggestion or herself, he wasn't sure. "I doubt it. What are they to me? It's just… seeing them reminds me of when I was one of the slaves being marched into Xingax's clutches, and you were the gallant young fool striving to rescue me. Now we're the drovers flogging the thralls along. It makes you think, is all."

"What are you thinking?"

"Oh, I suppose that the wrongs that the world inflicts on us all can never be set right. They can only be avenged. Perhaps I will slake my thirst after all." She strode away.

The stronghold stood among the desolate foothills of the Thaymount. It presented the facade of an imposing keep, with massive gates at ground level and little round windows and arrow loops above. But it had no other walls, or at least none visible from the outside, because its builder had carved it into the face of a cliff.

Supposedly, he'd been a conjuror, and Tammith winced to think how much trouble someone must have had evicting him from this seemingly impregnable redoubt after Szass Tam and the council went to war. But the lich's servants had managed it, and afterward, Xingax moved in. Now that his existence and endeavors were no longer a secret, he could work more effectively in the center of the realm than in a remote fastness in the Sunrise Mountains.

The conjuror had made efforts to cultivate the approaches to his private retreat, but now the hillsides were going to brush and scrub-pallid, twisted plants altered by the spillover of necromantic energies from within the citadel. Tammith wished the wizard had left the land barren, because she had a nagging sense that something was shadowing her, her comrades, and the captives through the thick and tangled growth. But, her keen senses notwithstanding, she couldn't tell exactly where or what it was.

Maybe it was just an animal, or one of Xingax's escaped or discarded experiments, and perhaps it didn't matter anyway. If it was a sentinel, the impostors had fooled it, or it would have acted already. If it was anything else, it was unlikely to slink too close to the pale stone gates looming dead ahead.

"We have captives," Bareris called, his face shadowed and his long hair covered by the cowl of his cloak. Tammith tugged the scarf she'd wrapped around the lower portion of her face up another fraction, because it was possible the sentries knew the captain of the Silent Company had deserted.

"What's the sign?" someone shouted back. Tammith couldn't see him, but knew he was speaking from a hidden observation port above the gate.

"Mother love," Bareris answered, and Tammith waited to see if the sign was still valid, or if their luck was so foul that Xingax had changed it. She doubted he had. He claimed to be an aborted demigod, and certainly looked like an aborted something. The password was his sardonic jape at the parent who'd torn him prematurely from her womb, or permitted someone else to do the deed.

The white stone gates groaned open to reveal what amounted to a barbican, even though it didn't project out from the body of the citadel. It was a passageway with murder holes in the ceiling, arrow loops in the walls, and a single exit at the far end.

In other words, the passage was a killing box, but only if soldiers had positioned themselves to do the killing. The orc and human warriors inside the torchlit space didn't look as if they suspected anything amiss. The valves at the end stood open, and the portcullis was up.

The Theskians balked at entering, and Bareris's men shoved and whipped them onward. An orc, its left profile tattooed with jagged black thunderbolts and its jutting tusks banded with gold, swaggered around inspecting the captives. Tammith wondered if it was looking for someone to rape, like the guard who'd accosted Yuldra and her when they were prisoners.

Whatever was in its mind, it abruptly pivoted and peered at her. "Hey," it said, "I know you."

She met its gaze and sought to smother its will with her own. "No, you don't."

The orc blinked and stumbled back a step. "No," it mumbled, "I don't." It started to wander off, and she turned away from it.

At once it bawled, "This is the vampire that ran off!" She pivoted around to see the creature pointing at her. She hadn't succeeded in clouding its mind after all. It had only pretended she had.

Well, perhaps the memory of that little victory would warm its spirit in the afterlife. She sprang at it, punched it in the face, and felt its skull shatter. The blow hurled it backward and down. Tammith whirled and cast about, trying to assess the situation.

The orc's comrades had no doubt heard it yell, but they were slow to react. Bareris's warriors were not, and cut down Xingax's guards before the latter could even draw weapons.

The problem was the captives, terrified and confused by the outbreak of hostilities, scurrying to stay clear of leaping blades or bolting back the way they'd come. They clogged the passageway and made it difficult for the invading force to reach the far end.

Tammith dissolved into bats and flew over the heads of battling warriors and panicky Theskians. Meanwhile, the gates ahead of her swung inward. She hurtled through the remaining space and discovered zombies pushing the panels shut.

Bat bites had little effect on animated corpses, so, as fast as she could, she pulled herself into human guise, suffering a flash of pain for her haste. She drew her sword and started cutting.

As the last zombie collapsed, she glimpsed motion from the corner of her eye. Two more dead men, gray skin flaking, jaws slack, were fumbling to release the brake on the windlass and drop the portcullis. She charged and slashed them to pieces. Then she looked around, seeking the person who'd commanded them, but he'd retreated.

He could have fled in a number of directions. Half a dozen arches opened on this spacious central hall. Stairs ascended to a gallery, where other doorways granted access to the chambers beyond.

Yellow eyes gleaming, several dread warriors ran out onto the balcony and laid arrows on their bows. Even from her distance, she felt the magical virulence seething in the barbed points. She could have made herself impervious to the shafts by turning to mist, but mist couldn't keep the gates open and the portcullis raised. She poised herself to dodge.

Then a Burning Brazier armed with a chain peered warily through the half-open gate. He spotted the dread warriors and brandished his weapon at them. The links clattered and burst into flames. The dead men exploded into a roaring blaze that burned them to ash in an instant.

The brassy notes of a glaur horn echoed down the passageway at Tammith's back. The attacking force had secured the gate, and Bareris was calling the griffons, and the riders who'd stayed with them, down from the sky.

Squirming on his padded chair, the cushions, though recently replaced, already stained and stinking with the effluvia of his decaying body, Xingax squinted down at the Red Wizard laboring in the conjuration chamber below the balcony. Squinting didn't bring the scene below into sharper focus, so he closed the myopic eye he'd possessed since birth and looked through the one he'd appropriated from Ysval's corpse. That was better.

It would have been better still if he could have hovered at his assistant's side, but that wasn't practical. His mere proximity was toxic to the living. Although perhaps the idiot chanting and flourishing his athame deserved a dose of poison, because he was useless.

But no, that wasn't fair. Much as Xingax wished he could blame the human for botching the ritual, the fellow had performed each successive revision competently enough. The problem was that the laws of magic were changing, and as a result, Xingax found himself unable to exploit them as cunningly as before.

The fact distressed him. He lacked the natural aptitude to practice necromancy to any great effect, but he deemed himself Faerыn's greatest inventor of necromantic spells, greater in that regard than even Szass Tam, though he had more discretion than to tell his master so. It was his pride and his passion, the deepest delight of a being forever barred from many of the joys natural creatures took for granted.

What if he couldn't work out the new rules? Or what if the balance of mystical forces never stabilized, and therefore no constant, reliable principles ever crystallized? Then he would never again be the sage and brilliant creator. The possibility was terrible to contemplate. So much so that, while he understood he ought to be concerned about more tangible misfortunes-with magic crippled, Szass Tam could lose the war, or cast him off as useless, or blue fire could destroy all Thay and him with it-he could scarcely find it within himself to care about them.

The wizard shouted the climactic words of the incantation. He gashed his forehead with the ritual dagger, swiped at the welling blood with his fingertips, and spattered scarlet droplets across the object of his spell.

For a moment, nothing happened, and Xingax felt his mood sour even further. Then glazed eyes rolled from side to side. A leathery tongue slid over rows of jagged fangs to lick gray, withered lips, but couldn't moisten them.

Something writhed beneath trailing whiskers the color of tarnished brass. Protruding from the rigged neck, tangled guts and veins slithered and clutched to heave the entity across the floor.

The colossal severed head had belonged to a cloud giant sorcerer, and if the reanimation had worked properly, it should still possess arcane powers akin to those it wielded in life. Xingax was suddenly confident that it had worked. By all the lords in shadow, he was still a master of his particular art and always would be, no matter how many deities assassinated one another.

Elsewhere in the fortress, a glaur blared. The unexpected sound extinguished Xingax's jubilation like a splash of water snuffing a candle. His retainers didn't use horns.

An instant later, the door to the chamber below him banged open, and a hunched, shriveled ghoul with foxfire eyes lunged through. The creature faltered when it saw the swollen disembodied head shifting around, but only for a moment.

"Enemies!" it cried, in a voice like a jackal's snarl.

Xingax scowled. He'd believed he'd escaped the battlefields of Szass Tam's war, but it seemed that somehow, conflict had followed him home. "Outside the gates?" he asked.

"No, Master, already inside! I think they tricked the guards!"

That was unexpected, and serious enough to give Xingax a pang of genuine apprehension, because the fortress was lightly garrisoned. It didn't require an abundance of soldiers to control the prisoners awaiting transformation, and no one had expected it would need to repel a siege.

Still, he assured himself, he could cope if he kept a clear head. "Tell everyone to contain the intruders in the central hall," he said to the ghoul, then shifted his gaze to the bloody-faced necromancer. "You woke the giant's head, and it will obey you. Get it into battle."

As his minions scurried to obey him, Xingax sought to enter a light trance. Anxiety made it more difficult than usual, but he managed. He sent his awareness soaring outside the fortress to find his watchdog.

It was hard to imagine that his foes could have slain the creature, let alone have done so without making enough commotion to rouse the citadel, and in fact, it was still creeping through the brush. Evidently, the southerners' "trick," whatever it had been, had fooled it as completely as the legionnaires protecting the gate.

Well, it wasn't too late for the beast to avert calamity, for it was one of the most formidable beings Xingax had ever created, so much so that he'd almost felt guilty withholding it from the legions. But he hadn't survived as long as he had without giving some thought to his own personal protection. Besides, an artist was entitled to retain possession of one or two masterpieces, wasn't he?

He touched the entity's mind, and it bounded toward the fortress.

Bareris stood in the gate and waved the griffons and their riders into the entryway. In that enclosed space, the distinctive smell of the beasts, half fur and half feathers, was enough to make his eyes water.

Murder furled his wings and touched down on the ground. Bareris hadn't expected any harm to befall his mount while they were apart. Still, it was good to see the animal hale and ready to fight.

So far, he thought, everything was going well. Then a huge shape crashed out of the brush.

At that moment, Bareris could see in the dark like an orc. It was one of several charms he'd laid on himself just prior to approaching the fortress. Thus, he beheld the oncoming beast clearly. It resembled a dead and rotting dragon, with a saurian head, four legs, and a tail. But the neck was too short, and it had no wings. Tentacles writhed from its shoulders, and weeping sores the size of saucers dotted its mottled, charcoal-colored body. Frozen with shock, Bareris wondered how such an immense creature had managed to conceal itself.

His paralysis lasted only a heartbeat, but as fast as the behemoth was charging, that could have doomed him and his companions. But as it happened, a dozen fleeing Theskians were between the lizard-thing and the cliff face, and it paused to slaughter them. Tentacles picked them up and squeezed, and the flesh of those so grappled flowed like molten wax. Clawed feet stamped others to pulp, and gnashing jaws chewed the rest to pieces.

Bareris saw that all the soldiers couldn't squeeze into the passage in time to escape the behemoth, nor did this disorganized clump of men and griffons have any hope of turning and fighting it effectively. "You!" he shouted, gesturing to everyone still outside, "get in the air and shoot the thing! Everyone else, stand clear of the gates and push them shut!"

The legionnaires scrambled to obey. To his relief, the heavy stone leaves swung easily on their hinges, and the bar slid just as readily in its greased brackets.

As soon as it was in position, the gates boomed and jolted. A few moments later, the same thing happened, and a crack appeared in the bar.

"It won't hold!" a griffon rider cried.

"No," Bareris said, "it won't. Everyone-through the corridor and out the other end!" They pounded down the entry way and he brought up the rear.

When he emerged into the central hall, he found what he expected. Xingax's guards had positioned themselves to keep the attackers from advancing any farther. A motley assortment of orc, goblin, gnoll, and human soldiers, Red Wizards, zombies, and more formidable undead blocked every doorway and threw missiles and spells from the gallery overhead.

In other words, the intruders were encircled and the defenders held the high ground, but the southerners had such a significant advantage in numbers that it ought not to have mattered. But the monstrosity outside changed everything.

"Shut these gates!" he shouted to the men who'd sprinted in ahead of him. "Drop the portcullis!"

With blood smeared down the length of her sword and on her lips and chin, Tammith hurried up to him. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"The creature Xingax kept outside is coming for us," he replied. "Why didn't you warn me about it?"

"I didn't know about it," she said. "I haven't been here in three years. He must have animated it since my last visit. What is it?"

"I don't know. But it's bad, and we won't be able to keep it out. Most of us will have to turn and fight it, but not everyone can, or the rest of Xingax's servants will tear us apart from behind. I want you to take charge of holding them in check."

"I will," she said.

The interior gates rumbled shut, and the portcullis clanged down. "Something big is coming up behind us!" Bareris shouted. "I need all our spellcasters to hit it as soon as it comes into sight, and all our griffons to swarm on it the instant it knocks down the portcullis. We're going to destroy it while it's still in the entryway, with the walls confining it."

His troops scurried to prepare to attack as he'd ordered. Across the chamber and overhead, blood orc sergeants bellowed, exhorting their own men to greater efforts now that so many of the foe had turned their backs.

The secondary gates crashed three times, then shattered into shards. At once the southern mages and priests hurled their power at the horror lurching from the wreckage. Thanks to the gaps between the steel bars, the portcullis didn't stop flares or beams of mystical energy.

Blasts of Kossuth's fire charred patches of the creature's reptilian mask. Darts of blue light pierced it. A dazzling, sizzling lightning bolt stabbed into its breast, but failed even to leave a mark. Bareris hammered it with a shout. The Red Wizard of Evocation beside him pointed an ivory wand, spat a word of command, then cursed when nothing happened.

The lizard-thing kept coming, and smashed through the portcullis as though that barrier were as flimsy as a cobweb. But the twisted remains of the grillwork tangled around its feet, hampering it, and at that moment, while the back half of its body still lay inside the entryway, the griffons and their riders launched themselves at it. Bareris swung himself onto Murder's back and rushed to join the fray.

Beaks, talons, spears, and swords tore oozing, reeking undead flesh. A tentacle snaked past Bareris and Murder to wrap around another griffon and its master. It squeezed so hard that the legionnaire's body all but flattened with a crackle of snapping bone, and some of the beast's insides popped out of its gaping maw.

Murder bit and clawed the tentacle, severing it. Bareris turned his steed toward the lizard-thing's flank. The seeping chancres scarring the behemoth's hide shuddered and bubbled, and then something exploded out of them to darken the air like smoke.

The discharge was all around Bareris before he could make out what it was-a cloud of locusts, or something like them. The vermin crawled on him, biting and stinging. The pain was excruciating, and was surely worse for Murder, who lacked the protection of armor. The griffon snapped a few of his tormentors out of the air, but that could bring no relief when dozens of the vile things were clinging to his plumage and fur.

It wouldn't help Bareris to flail with his sword, either. He struggled to resist the panicky impulse, focus past his pain, and muster the concentration necessary for magic. When he started singing the spell, a locust sought to clamber into his mouth, but he swiped it away.

Power chimed through the air, and coolness tingled over his body. The locusts sprang away, repelled by the ward he'd conjured.

Murder was bloody all over, but still ambulatory and game to fight. Bareris peered around and saw that not everyone had fared as well. Some griffons and their masters had fallen. Another mount, mad with agony, rolled over and over to crush the locusts clinging to it. In the process, it crushed the man in the saddle as well.

But the flying vermin weren't unstoppable. Burning Braziers threw fan-shaped blasts of fire that charred swarms of the things from the air. Meanwhile, the lizard-thing had taken so many grievous wounds that its decaying, cadaverous form appeared on the verge of collapse. Its hide rippled and oozed, trying to seal a breach that revealed splintered bone beneath.

Bareris resolved that it wouldn't get the time it needed to heal. It was going to perish right now, before it could hurt anybody else. He urged Murder forward, and with a sweep of his wings, the griffon leaped high into the air, aiming for the creature's head. Other southerners, possessed of the same furious resolve, rushed the behemoth.

Suffusing the air all around it almost as completely as the insects had, slime sprayed from the lizard-thing's sores. Men and griffons shrieked as the effluvia spattered them.

Murder had jumped above the behemoth's head, and his body shielded Bareris from the stinking barrage. The globs ate holes in his armor and boots and blistered the flesh beneath, but it was nothing compared to what befell the griffon, who melted into smoking grease and bone.

The corrosive pus also dissolved the cinch securing Murder's saddle. It tumbled off the dead mount's back, and Bareris tumbled with it. He sang a word of command and his plummet slowed. He and the saddle landed with a bump.

He kicked his feet out of the stirrups, clambered to his feet, and charged. A few others did the same, and he wondered how they'd survived the acidic spray.

A huge foot stamped down, and he dodged out from underneath. The lizard-thing's jaws hurtled at him, and he jumped to avoid those as well. That put him close to his adversary's putrid breast, and he thrust his sword in again and again, seeking its heart.

His companions struck at other portions of the behemoth's body. Bursts of holy flame danced on its back. Finally, it slumped over sideways.

Bareris drove in his blade several more times, making sure the mammoth carcass was truly inert. Then he pivoted to survey the battle.

The lizard-thing had slaughtered a good many soldiers and griffons, but not enough to cripple the attack. Nor had the rest of Xingax's minions succeeded in destroying their enemies. Tammith and the handful of legionnaires under her direction had prevented it.

In fact, the furious efforts of the resistance were flagging as Xingax's living, sentient servants paused to gawk. Bareris realized that they'd believed the lizard-thing invincible, and were amazed and terrified to see it perish.

He grinned, struck up a song to spark courage in his allies and plant dread in the hearts of his adversaries, and picked up a dead man's bow and quiver. His own had burned to uselessness along with Murder's tack. He shot at enemies up on the gallery until he spotted something that made his guts clench in hatred.

When the undead reptile-thing fell, its slayers turned to engage the rest of their foes, which absolved Tammith of the obligation to defend their rear. That was a relief, for she much preferred to attack. She gathered some legionnaires into a wedge, charged one of the doorways, and smashed through the shield wall erected by Xingax's warriors. After that, it was easy to cut them down.

Where next? she wondered. Then fingers gripped her shoulder.

Baring her fangs, she whirled, dislodging the hand, then saw it was Bareris who'd had the poor judgment to slip up from behind and surprise her. His burns, visible through the gaps where something had dissolved portions of his armor, looked nasty, but they didn't appear to bother him. Maybe he was so full of battled rage that it blocked the pain.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I know where Xingax is," he said. "In a doorway in the center of the eastern galley."

Trying not to be obvious about it, she glanced in that direction. "I see one of those giant zombies he likes to ride, but not him. You think he's on top of it, but invisible?"

"Yes. It's just standing there. What other reason could there be for withholding such a strong fighter from the battle? And look. Along every other section of the gallery, the enemy has undead and living soldiers jumbled together. There, it's all dread warriors and their ilk. Why? Because proximity to Xingax sickens live men, and he can't afford to weaken his own defenders.

"I'm going to deal with him before he screws up the courage to take an active role in this battle. I assume you want to help me."

She smiled. "Oh, yes."

He grinned at her, and for a moment she caught a glimpse of the youth who'd once taken delight in surprising her and making her laugh. "Then stand ready and watch this." He raised his hand, swept it down, and started singing.

Several Burning Braziers oriented on the walkway Bareris had pointed out. One read a final syllable from a scroll, which flared and burned to ash in his grip. The others brandished fists or rattled chains sheathed in flame, and Tammith's skin crawled and stung at the sacred power gathering in the air. When it manifested, the dread warriors and ghouls in front of the giant zombie blew apart in a booming explosion.

Bareris gave Tammith a gentle push, telling her it was her time to attack. As she dissolved into bats, he vanished.

When she flew upward, she spied him again, barely visible behind the gray, hulking form of the giant zombie. He'd shifted himself through space to attack Xingax from behind. He swung his sword in a high arc, aiming for the unseen rider on the hideous steed's back.

Even above the din of battle, she heard Xingax scream like an infant in distress. It was the sweetest music Bareris had ever made.

The giant zombie lurched around and swiped at Bareris, who retreated out of range. Wavering into visibility, Xingax hurled ice crystals from Ysval's blackened, oversized hand. Bareris twisted, but couldn't dodge all of the barrage.

Yet when he sprang back, cut into the zombie's knee, yanked his sword free, and whirled it upward for another slash at Xingax, Tammith could see it hadn't hurt him much, nor had the poison haze that shrouded his opponent. He'd prepared for this confrontation, enhancing his natural capabilities with his songs, and for all she knew, talismans and potions. She felt a thrill of pride to see how well he was faring.

It was a puny little flicker of emotion, an almost indiscernible fleck of flotsam in the torrent of hatred and rage she felt for Xingax. She whirled her bats together and set her human feet down amid the cinders and bits of blackened bone that were all that remained of the dread warriors. Even through her boots, the residue of divine power stung her soles.

She jumped, caught Xingax by the neck, and dragged him from his perch. Bareris could destroy the giant zombie, and she'd slaughter its master. She pulled her sword back for a thrust.

Twisting to face her, Xingax sneered, and she felt vibration through the fingers she held clamped in his putrid flesh. Then she couldn't feel anything, and realized he meant to shift through space or between worlds to escape her.

But an instant later, when his form congealed again, she realized he couldn't. He'd temporarily lost the ability. His twisted little mouth dropped open in dismay, and she drove her blade into his guts.

It didn't finish him. It didn't even stun him, stop him from floating weightless in the air, or keep him from clawing at her face. But that was all right. She wanted him to succumb slowly, because she'd relish every instant of his destruction. She twisted her head and his talons scored her cheek but missed her eyes. She jerked the sword free for another attack.

"Stop!" a deep voice grated.

Tammith froze, and she realized some enchantment had taken hold of her. She strained against it, and her sword arm twitched. She was breaking free.

"Stop!" Xingax said. From the moment of her rebirth as a vampire, he'd been able to command her. She'd believed the blight on wizardry had set her free, but apparently her liberation wasn't as complete as she'd imagined. Xingax was able to muster at least a shadow of his old coercive power, and it combined with the psychic assault she was already fighting to tilt the balance against her. Her body locked into complete rigidity, and Xingax clawed at her hand until flesh and bones came apart and he was able to pull free of her grip.

Something snaked around her. When it lifted her off the balcony, it turned her, and she beheld the creature that had crept up behind her.

Once it sat atop a giant's shoulders. Now the severed head was a swollen, misshapen thing with rows of jagged fangs in its oversized mouth. Some of the guts and blood vessels protruding from the neck hole had wrapped around her. Others had plastered themselves to the wall above the doorways, allowing it to crawl along the vertical surface like a fly.

"You're a bad, ungrateful daughter!" Xingax shrilled. "I gave you everything!"

The crawling head's trailing tendrils lifted Tammith toward its jaws. Change to mist, she told herself. Then it can't hurt you or hold on to you. But she couldn't transform.

Her captor turned her body. She realized it was positioning her so it could nip her head off.

Then Bareris sprang onto the balcony. He must have finished slaying the giant zombie, clearing away the obstacle that stood between him and the rest of the combat.

He struck at Xingax before the maker of undead realized he was there. His sword crunched into the bulbous skull, and Xingax dropped from the air onto the gallery floor. Bareris instantly pivoted toward the crawling head and Tammith.

But Xingax was still conscious. He grabbed Bareris's leg with his nighthaunt hand, sinking the claws deep into his calf, and pointed with the stunted, withered one. Tammith felt malignant power burn through the air.

Bareris cried out and arched his back, but he didn't fall. After a moment, as the agony abated, he pivoted and cut until Xingax stopped moving, and he could pull free of the long bloody claws.

He hobbled toward Tammith and the thing that clutched her tightly. The giant's head howled, a shriek as full of murderous force as Xingax's final attack, but Bareris sang a fierce, sustained, vibrating note that shielded him from harm.

The crawling head lashed at him with lengths of artery and intestine. Hampered by his torn, bleeding leg, Bareris defended as best he could. At the same time, the creature positioned Tammith's neck between its rows of teeth.

Once more, she struggled against her intangible fetters. Perhaps Xingax's death had weakened them, because her limbs jerked. Bonds of ropy flesh still held her, but nothing else did.

But she was out of time to shapeshift. She strained with all her inhuman strength, heaved her arms free, and braced her sword to prop the head's jaws open.

Heedless of the grievous wound it thus inflicted in the roof of its mouth, the horror snapped its fangs shut. A fiery pain through her neck told Tammith her head had come loose from her body.

She fought to defy terror's grip, to remember that she'd survived this same mutilation before. Then a rippling peristalsis tumbled her head inside the creature, depositing it in some manner of sac. In the darkness, fleshy strands nudged at her scalp, brow, and cheeks, then, biting or stinging, anchored themselves like lampreys.

Her consciousness faded. Despite the layers of bone and flesh around her, she heard Bareris bellow a thunderous battle cry, felt the crawling head jerk in reaction, and then her mind guttered out completely.