Unholy

CHAPTER TWELVE

11–18 Kythorn, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

Bareris reached for the handle of the tavern door, then faltered.

He scowled at his own foolishness. Why should he feel timid about a trifle like this when he'd spent the past hundred years battling the worst horrors the necromancers could create? But perhaps that was the point. He was accustomed to war and vileness, whereas he'd long since abandoned the practice of entertaining, and he had no idea whether time, sorrow, and the passage into undeath had left the knack intact.

But he had to try. In the wake of Mirror's failure to penetrate the Citadel, it was the only idea that either he or the phantom had left. And so, masked in the appearance of a dark-haired little Rashemi, wishing he'd sung when Aoth and then the ghost asked him to-it might have knocked some of the rust off-he entered the ramshackle wooden building with the four hawks painted on its sign.

The common room was crowded. He'd hoped it would be, but now the size of the audience ratcheted up his anxiety another notch. The yarting, a musical instrument that Arizima had procured for him, made his intentions plain, and the buzz of conversation faded as he carried the instrument to the little platform where, no doubt, other minstrels had performed before him.

Nervous though he was, he remembered to set his upturned cap on the floor to catch coins. He tuned the yarting's six silk strings, then started to sing "Down, Down to Northkeep."

To his own critical ear, he didn't sing or play it particularly well, and since he hadn't practiced it in a century, he supposed it was no wonder. But when he finished, his audience applauded, cheered, and called out requests. Somebody wanted "Barley and Grapes," a tune he'd often performed during his years abroad, so he gave them that one next. And thought it sounded a little better.

The third song was better still. The glib banter-joking with the men, flirting with the women-came back more slowly than the music, but eventually it started to flow as well.

He sang sad songs and funny ones. Ballads of love, war, ribaldry, and loss. Memories of a Thay of green fields and blue skies, of cheer and abundance. And as the music visibly touched his audience, he found to his surprise that it moved him too.

Not to happiness. He was done with that. But to an awareness of something besides the urge for vengeance, in the same way that being with Aoth or Mirror occasionally could. And in that awareness was the suggestion of ease, a tiny diminution of the pressure that drove him ever onward.

I could have had this all along, he thought. Why didn't I?

Because hatred was his sword, and he had to keep it sharp.

Besides, even a hint of solace felt like a betrayal of Tammith's memory.

Still, perhaps it wasn't entirely unforgivable to appreciate this interlude as he'd appreciated riding a griffon again, and for the same reason. Because it was almost certainly the last time.

Before he was done, he even gave them Tammith's favorite, the tale of the starfish who aspired to be a star. His eyes ached, but undeath had robbed him of the capacity for tears, and no one had cause to wonder why a comical ditty would make him cry.

When he judged it was time for a break-he didn't need one, but a live man surely would have-his cap was full of copper with a sprinkling of silver mixed in, and his appreciative listeners were happy to drink with him. It was the latter he'd hoped to accomplish.

He offered tales and rumors to prompt them to do the same without feeling he was interrogating them. Gradually he drew out all they'd heard about the dungeons beneath Szass Tam's castle and strange creatures roaming the slopes of the mountain on which their city sat.

So-Kehur crawled on the outer face of the gate at the west end of the bridge. The structure was a barbican sufficiently high and massive to discourage any attacker, but that didn't necessarily mean every bit of stonework remained solid enough to withstand a pounding from the council's artillery and magic. So far, though, that did indeed appear to be the case.

It occurred to him that, clambering around the heights with various limbs extended to anchor him, he must look rather like a metal spider. It likewise crossed his mind that some folk might think it beneath the dignity of the autharch of Anhaurz to make this inspection.

But he fancied that any first-rate commander would understand his desire to see for himself. Aoth Fezim would understand.

And speaking of the sellsword captain, the troops he led, and the archmages they served, where in the name of the Black Hand were they? So-Kehur swiveled his various eyes to gaze at the highway running north. No one was there but the common sort of traveler, and, as was often the case in the bleak new Thay that Szass Tam had made, not many of those.

So-Kehur shivered in frustration. Patience, he told himself, patience. It was good that the enemy army was advancing slowly. It gave him that much more time to prepare for the siege to come.

A voice called from overhead: "Milord?"

He looked up at the battlements. His aquiline face tattooed with jagged black lightning bolts, Chumed Shapret, his seneschal, was standing there, along with a sweaty, tired-looking soldier in dusty leather armor.

So-Kehur felt a pang of excitement, because Chumed's companion was one of the scouts they'd sent forth to keep track of the council's army. Apparently, intent on his examination of the higher reaches of the gate, he'd missed seeing the fellow arrive below him. He climbed toward his minions as fast as he could, and they each shrank back an involuntary step. Maybe they were afraid that in his haste, he'd close a set of serrated pincers on one of them or sweep them from their perch with a flailing tentacle.

If so, they needn't have worried. He'd long since learned to handle a steel body better than he'd ever managed the form into which he'd been born. He swarmed over the parapet, retracted his various limbs to their shortest lengths, and the two soldiers dropped to their knees before him.

Though he generally enjoyed such deference, he was too eager to leave them that way for more than an instant. "Rise!" he said. "And tell me, when will the council arrive?"

The scout gave Chumed an uncertain look. "Tell him," the officer said.

The scout shifted his eyes back to So-Kehur. "I don't think they're going to, Master. Arrive, I mean."

"What are you talking about?" So-Kehur demanded.

"They swung around the city and headed south. They're looking for another way to cross the river."

So-Kehur told himself it couldn't be true, but obviously, it could. It made perfect sense that even zulkirs and one of the most respected captains in the East would hesitate to attack the stronghold he'd made of Anhaurz, especially considering how much of their strength they'd already expended taking the Dread Ring.

So-Kehur felt dizzy, and the tall towers rising from the sides of the gate and at intervals down the length of the bridge seemed to mock him. He'd labored long and hard to create an invincible weapon and had succeeded all too well. The result of all his work would be to deny him the slaughter he so craved.

But no. It didn't have to be that way. Not if he refused to allow it.

He turned his eyes on Chumed. "How soon can our troops be ready to march?"

Chumed blinked. "March, Milord?"

"Yes, march! We'll head west a little way, then hook around to pin the invaders against the river."

The seneschal hesitated. Then: "Master, naturally we would have defended the city had the enemy chosen to attack. That's our duty. But unless I'm mistaken, we haven't received any orders to go forth and engage the council elsewhere."

"No other force as large as ours is close enough to do it, and anyway, I'm in authority here. Do you think the regent would have given me my position if he didn't trust me-indeed, expect me-to show initiative?"

"Master, I'm sure Szass Tam has complete confidence in you. But in light of the powers the rogue zulkirs command, maybe it would still be prudent to consult him before you act. I mean, you're a Red Wizard and have other mages under your command. Surely someone knows a way to communicate with High Thay quickly."

Yes, surely. And if So-Kehur were to employ it, perhaps Szass Tam would opt to leave his old enemies unmolested in the hope they'd eventually leave Thay of their own volition. He never would have done so in the old days, but Szass Tam had changed since establishing the regency, and no one truly understood his priorities anymore.

Even if the lich did want the invaders pursued and destroyed, he might decide to dispatch a more seasoned general to command the effort, or even descend from the Thaymount to see to the task himself. So-Kehur could find himself consigned to a subordinate role or left behind to mind Anhaurz while the blood spilled elsewhere.

And all those possibilities were unacceptable.

He tried to frame an excuse to give Chumed, then suffered a spasm of irritation. He was thinking like the old So-Kehur, that plump, cringing, contemptible wretch. The new So-Kehur was a lord, and lords didn't have to justify their decisions to their subordinates. Rather, they disciplined them when they were insolent.

Drawing on one of the peculiar talents he'd developed after abandoning the external attributes of humanity, he lashed out with his thoughts. Chumed cried out, staggered, and nearly reeled off the wall-walk before collapsing onto his side, where he writhed and bled from his chewed tongue and his nostrils. Though not the target, the scout too caught a bit of the effect. Crouching, face contorted, he clutched his forehead in both hands.

For a moment, So-Kehur remembered his long association with Muthoth and how the other young necromancer had liked to bully him. He felt both squeamish and pleased to at last be the bully himself, but of the two emotions, pleasure was by far the stronger.

He delivered only a few restrained blows to Chumed's psyche; the seneschal was too useful a deputy to kill. Upon finishing, he said, "I trust we're done with questions and second-guessing."

Shaking, Chumed clambered to his knees. "Yes, Milord."

"Then get our army ready." Meanwhile, the artisans would transfer So-Kehur's brain into a body specifically intended for the battlefield.

Mirror thought he heard something that might have been a footfall, the faint sound almost covered by the whistling of the cold mountain wind. Or perhaps he simply sensed the advent of trouble. Either way, he didn't doubt his instincts. They'd saved him too many times, even if they hadn't helped on the terrible day when Fastrin killed his body and dealt his soul the spiritual wounds that had never truly healed.

"Come on," he whispered. He started toward an extrusion of basalt large enough to serve as cover, then saw that Bareris wasn't following. The bard was still singing under his breath, still casting about with wide, black eyes and a dazed expression on his pallid face.

Even after centuries as a phantom, Mirror almost reached to grab his friend and drag him behind the rock before remembering that his hand would simply pass through Bareris's body. Instead, he planted himself right in front of the bard and said, "Brother, come with me now." Insofar as his sepulchral tone allowed, he infused his voice with all the force of command that had once made younger warriors jump to obey.

Bareris blinked. "Yes. All right." Mirror led him into the patch of shadow behind the basalt outcrop.

They scarcely had time to crouch before a dozen ghouls- hunched, withered, hairless things with mouths full of needle fangs-came loping down the trail. Szass Tam had plenty of patrols watching for signs of trouble, even this far down the mountain.

The creature in the lead-judging from the stomach-turning stench of it, it might be one of the especially nasty ghouls called ghasts-abruptly halted, raised its head, and sniffed, although how it could possibly smell anything but itself was a mystery. Mirror willed his sword into his hand. But then the ghast grunted and led its fellows on down the path.

Mirror waited for the patrol to trek farther away, then whispered, "It's a good thing neither of us sweats."

Bareris didn't answer. That wasn't unusual, but the reason was. Crooning to himself, he was already slipping back into his trance. He started to straighten up.

"Wait," Mirror said. "Give the ghouls another moment."

Bareris froze in a position that would have strained a living man.

"All right," continued the ghost, "that should be long enough."

Bareris finished rising and continued onward, straying from the trail as often as he walked on it, halting periodically to run his hand over a stone or a patch of earth. Prowling behind him. Mirror watched for danger and tried to believe this scheme might actually work.

He told himself he should believe. He had a century's worth of reasons to trust Bareris, and even were it otherwise, faith had been the foundation of his martial order and his life. Still, his friend's plan seemed like a long shot at best, partly because Mirror had never seen the bard do anything comparable before.

Rumor had it that the cellars of the Citadel connected to natural caverns below. Bareris reasoned that the caves might well let out somewhere on the mountainside, and Mirror agreed the notion was plausible.

It was his comrade's strategy for finding an opening that roused his skepticism. Bareris had collected stories concerning killings and uncanny happenings on the slopes. Some of those tales were surely false or had become confused as they passed from one teller to the next. Even the ones that were accurate didn't necessarily reflect the predations of creatures that emerged from the catacombs to hunt. The desolate peaks of the Thaymount were home to a great number of beasts likely to devour any lone hunter or prospector they happened across.

Still, Bareris had tossed all the dubious stories into his head like the ingredients of a stew. Somehow the mixture was supposed to cook down to a measure of truth, or perhaps a better word was inspiration. Then magic would lead the singer to the spot he needed to find.

Let it be so, Mirror silently prayed. I don't know how it can be, but let it be so.

Day gave way to night. Light flickered on the northern horizon as, somewhere in that direction, a volcano belched fire and lava. The ground rumbled and shivered, and loose pebbles clattered down the slopes.

Some time after, Bareris abruptly halted and sang the brief phrase necessary to give his song some semblance of a proper conclusion. "We're close." His voice and expression were keen, purged of the dreamy quality the trance had imparted.

Mirror cast about. "I don't see anything."

"I don't, either, but it's here." The slope above this narrow length of trail was steep enough that an ordinary man might well have hesitated to climb on it. But Bareris scuttled around on it quickly, with minimal concern for his own safety. Since a ghost couldn't fall, Mirror tried to examine the least accessible places and spare his comrade at least that much danger.

Neither found anything.

Mirror looked down at the bard. "Should we go higher?" he asked. "Or investigate the slope beneath the trail?"

"No," Bareris said. "It's here. It's right in front of us."

Or else, Mirror thought, you simply want it to be. But what he said was, "Good enough." They resumed picking over the same near-vertical stretch of escarpment they'd already checked,

Until Bareris said, "I found it."

He was standing-or clinging-beside what appeared to be just another basalt outcropping. Mirror floated down to hover directly in front of him and still couldn't see anything special about it. "You're certain?" he asked.

"Yes. Last year or the year before, this stone was higher up the mountain. Then a tremor shook it loose, and it tumbled down here to jam in the outlet like a cork in a bottle. For a moment, I could see it happening."

"Let's find out what I can see," Mirror said. He flew forward into the solid rock. For a phantom, it was like pushing through cobwebs.

Almost immediately, he emerged into empty air. A tunnel ran away before him, twisting into the heart of the mountain.

He turned, flowed back through the stone, and told Bareris he was right.

Bareris sang a charm. He vanished, then instantly reappeared. "Damn it," he growled. "Even this far under the castle, I can't shift myself inside."

"But I can go in," Mirror said. "I'll explore the caves and find a second outlet. Then I'll come back here and fetch you."

Bareris shook his head. "If the stories are true, there are things lurking in the tunnels that could hurt even you. Things you might not be able to handle by yourself. Besides, what if there isn't another opening, or we run out of time while you're looking for it?"

"What's the alternative?"

"Yank the stopper out of the jug."

"I know you're strong, but that stone is bigger than you are, and you don't have any good place to plant your feet."

That made it sound as if Mirror's only worry was that the boulder wouldn't pull free. In truth, he was equally concerned that it would, suddenly, and carry Bareris with it as it tumbled onward. The bard knew a spell to soften a fall, but it wouldn't keep the rock from crushing, grinding, and tearing him to pieces against the mountainside.

"I can do it," Bareris said, "or rather, we can. You'll help me with your prayers."

Mirror saw that, as usual, there was no dissuading him. So he nodded his assent, and while Bareris sang a song to augment his strength, Mirror asked his patron to favor the bard. For an instant, the god's response warmed the cold, aching emptiness that was his essence even as the response manifested as a shimmer of golden light.

Still singing, Bareris positioned his feet on a small, uneven, somewhat horizontal spot unworthy of the term "ledge." He twisted at the waist, found handholds on the boulder, gripped them, and started straining.

At first, nothing happened, and small wonder. Standing as he was, Bareris couldn't even exert the full measure of his strength. Then the stone made a tiny grating sound. Then a louder one.

Then it jerked free, so abruptly that it threw Bareris off balance. The stone and the bard plummeted together, just as Mirror had envisioned.

For the first moment of the stone's fall, Bareris was more or less on top of it. Its rotation would spin him underneath an instant later, but he didn't wait for that to happen. He snatched at the mountainside, and his left hand closed on a lump of rock. He clung to it, and the boulder rolled on without him, bouncing and crashing to the floor of the gorge far below.

Mirror floated down to the place where Bareris dangled. "Are you all right?"

"Fine." Bareris reached for another outcropping with his free hand, revealing the tattered inner surface of his leather gauntlet and the shredded skin and muscle beneath.

The tunnels were lava tubes or splits in the stone, produced by earthquake and orogeny. Unlike limestone caverns, they had no stalactites or stalagmites to hinder Bareris's progress. But that was the only good thing about them. They were a maze of unpredictable twists and cul-de-sacs stretching on and on in the darkness, and, unsurprisingly, the stories that had enabled him to locate the entrance were of no use at all when it came to finding his way inside. He'd sung a song to locate worked stone-specifically, whatever archway was closest-and it gave him a sense that the nearest such feature lay to the northeast. But that didn't guarantee he'd be able to grope his way to it anytime soon.

Perhaps perceiving his impatience, Mirror said, "You could try to bring Aoth and the zulkirs to us now. They might know magic to guide us all through."

"I thought of that," Bareris replied. "But what if these caves don't actually link up with the dungeons?"

"Then perhaps they can blast a way through."

"Perhaps, but I imagine that would ruin any hope of taking Szass Tam by surprise."

"by surprise."

"by surprise."

Startled, Bareris turned to Mirror and saw that the ghost, who currently resembled a smeared reflection of himself, looked just as surprised. He knew he hadn't truly repeated himself nor spoken loud enough to raise echoes in the sizable cavern he and the phantom were traversing. Yet he had an eerie sense that something-or everything-had repeated, as if the world itself were stuttering.

He and Mirror had hiked a long way without encountering any of the long-buried perils for which these depths were infamous, but he suspected their luck had just run out. He drew his sword, and the ghost's shadow-blade oozed outward from his fist. Pivoting, they looked for a threat. It might be difficult to spot. Too many fallen boulders littered the cave floor. Too many alcoves and tunnel mouths opened on blackness.

"Do anything? You see," said Mirror, his voice rising at the end of the second word. "Bareris, I swear, I said that properly. Or at least, I didn't feel that I was jumbling the words."

"I believe you," Bareris said.

"What's happening to us?"

"us."

"I don't know, but maybe…"

"maybe"

"maybe"

"… we should keep moving."

"Way? Which."

Good question. More than one passage appeared to run northeast, and the magic pointing in the direction of the arch couldn't differentiate between them. Bareris chose at random.

"Let's try this one."

He took a stride, and the darkness deepened.

Only a supernatural manifestation could account for such a thing, because here in the heart of the mountain, the dark had already been absolute. The undead enjoyed a measure of vision even so, but now Bareris couldn't see as far as before, and even nearby objects looked hazy, as though he were viewing them through fog.

He sang the opening notes of a charm to conjure light. Perhaps it would reveal the location of the creature or creatures he suspected were hiding in the murk.

Something snatched him off his feet and hurled him ten paces backward into the cavern wall.

The shock of impact was enough to stun even him. He sensed rather than saw something looming over him, poised to attack again. He raised his sword, hoping the thing would impale itself when it struck. Though he doubted that would be enough to keep the blow from smashing home.

Light flared in the darkness. It stung Bareris, and he realized it was more than just a flash. It was the power of Mirror's god, invoked to smite an undead foe.

The radiance gave Bareris his first look at the thing. It was huge, a formless cloud of darkness with several ragged arms writhing and coiling from the central mass. Without turning-lacking a head, eyes, or an internal structure of bones and joints, it didn't need to-it shifted its tentacles away from Bareris to threaten the ghost on the other side of it. One arm struck at Mirror, and he caught the blow on his shield. But it still knocked him back, a sign that both he and the creature existed in the same non-corporeal state.

Mirror cut at the arm as it started to retract. "It's a vasuthant!" he shouted.

Unlike Mirror, evidently, Bareris had never encountered a vasuthant, but the undead horrors figured in a couple of the ancient tales he'd collected over the years. They were sentient wounds in the fabric of time itself, a condition that allowed them to play tricks with the march of the moments to destroy their prey.

If this entity truly was a vasuthant, even Mirror couldn't contend with it unaided. Bareris floundered to his feet, drew a deep breath, and shouted. The thunderous bellow shook the cave, brought stones showering from the ceiling, and blasted a bit of the vasuthant's blackness loose from the central body. The wisps instantly withered away to nothing.

The vasuthant turned its attention back to him, as the new tentacles squirming from its cloudy body attested. Gripping his sword with both hands, Bareris poised himself to dodge and cut.

With luck, his enchanted blade would hurt the creature, insubstantial though it was.

The vasuthant snatched for him. He sidestepped, swung at its arm, and slashed completely through it. He felt just a hint of resistance, as though the blade were severing gossamer threads. The end of the creature's limb boiled into nonexistence.

Time skipped backward.

The vasuthant snatched for him. He sidestepped, but it adjusted its aim, and the tentacle coiled around him anyway. It yanked tight as a noose encircling the neck of a man dropped through the trapdoor of a gallows, somehow exerting crushing pressure even though it had no solidity.

The vasuthant jerked Bareris into the center of its shifting darkness. Pain burned through him. The creature was trying to poison him with the energy of undeath. Since he was undead too, the effect wasn't as devastating as it would have been to a living man, but it might well prove lethal over time.

It was difficult even to see the arm gripping him now that the vasuthant had merged it with the central cloud. Bareris cut at the place where he judged it ought to be, but even if he was right this time, the stroke had no apparent effect. Another burst of agony jolted him, and the relentless constriction around his waist threatened to pinch him in two.

Just barely visible through the murk, Mirror called to his god and slashed his sword through a portion of the vasuthant's body. Its shadowy core seethed, and the ring of pressure around Bareris's torso loosened.

Bareris bellowed a war cry and swung his sword. The tentacle frayed from existence, dropping him to the cavern floor. Still inside the animate darkness, he cut at it repeatedly until it flowed away and uncovered him.

Without taking his eyes off the thing, Bareris asked, "Are we winning?"

"I don't…"

"don't"

"… know," Mirror replied. "I only ever fought one vasuthant, and this one's bigger and more powerful."

So they really had precious little idea what they were facing. But Bareris surmised he needed some mystical defense in place to counter the creature's manifest ability to revisit a moment that hadn't worked out as it would have preferred. He sang, and eight more Barerises sprang into existence around him, each with a stance and facial expression identical to his own.

Just in time too, for an instant later the vasuthant surged forward like a towering black wave.

A tentacle flailed, and one of the illusory doubles burst like a soap bubble at its touch. Bareris stepped in and cut the vasuthant.

A tentacle flailed, and a different illusory double burst like a soap bubble at its touch. Bareris stepped in and cut the vasuthant.

He grinned a wolfish grin. Perhaps he'd hit on a winning tactic.

Then one of his duplicates vanished without the vasuthant snagging it with one of its limbs or making any other form of visible attack. It was a pointed reminder that the entity still possessed capabilities he didn't understand.

Still, he liked his and Mirror's chances better than he had before, partly because when the vasuthant obliterated all his illusory doubles, he could always sing up another batch.

He and his companion battled on, often with sword strokes, sometimes with their mystical abilities. Bareris chanted to leech the strength out of the vasuthant much as it had tried to do to him. Mirror hammered it with flares of celestial power. Meanwhile, time lurched and stuttered.

The latter effect was disorienting and obliged them to defend themselves from many of the vasuthant's most cunning attacks not once but twice. Still, they kept the living darkness from doing grievous harm to them, while their attacks withered bits of it.

Bareris could only hope they were cutting and burning away enough to matter. Since the thing was merely churning blackness floating in blackness, he still couldn't tell.

But it seemed a good sign when the creature abruptly flowed back beyond the reach of its opponents' swords. Bareris wondered if it had finally had enough, if it might ooze into some hole and let him and Mirror pass. Then he felt a frigid prickling on his skin. Power was accumulating in the air, as if an adept like Lallara or Lauzoril were working a particularly potent spell.

Mirror apparently felt it too, for he charged. Flanked by a pair of duplicates, the remnants of the third group he'd conjured, Bareris drew breath to shout.

Neither he nor the ghost managed to act in time to balk the vasuthant. Something exploded from it, a force neither visible, audible, nor tangible, but delivering a psychic shock so overwhelming that it froze both its adversaries in place.

Or perhaps it was simply the realization of what the vasuthant had wrought that paralyzed them. For Bareris once again had a beating heart in his chest and a glow of warmth in his flesh. He was once again the Mulan youth growing up in the slums of Bezantur.

Which meant Tammith was waiting for him there. He had yet to make the disastrous choice that led to her destruction.

He told himself it was nonsense. Though he sensed his transformation was more than mere deception, reason said it couldn't last or change the past even if it did. Still, he was slow to move, his two minds, his two realities, pulling him in opposite directions.

Beside him, Mirror, now a figure of solid flesh, looked just as stupefied. He had no guilt or anguish over an abused and murdered lover to transfix him, or if he did, he'd never told Bareris about her. But no doubt the sudden restoration of his maimed mind and memory and deliverance from the endless hollow ache of undeath were equally overpowering. That, or the excruciating comprehension that his resurrection was only temporary.

Churning and coiling, the vasuthant rushed forward. Retreating, Bareris sang to raise a curtain of fire, or at least a semblance of it, between his foe and himself.

He stumbled over the phrasing, perhaps because it was a powerful, difficult spell, and the boy whose form he now wore and whose intrusive thoughts were addling his own had yet to master it.

The vasuthant reached for him, and he felt a sick near-certainty that its power had diminished his martial skills as well, that he could no longer wield his sword well enough to fend it off. He was about to perish with Szass Tam unpunished and Tammith unavenged.

Then the vasuthant's arms whirled past him to reach for Mirror instead, and when Bareris followed the motion, he understood why. Mirror had already turned back into a ghost, which meant that at the moment, he posed a greater threat to their adversary.

Mirror rattled off an invocation, and his murky blade shined so brightly that Bareris had to squint to look at it. The phantom charged the vasuthant with the weapon extended like a lance.

Power groaned through the air. With a snapping sound, several jagged cracks opened in the section of cavern floor between Mirror and the vasuthant. Then shadow swirled around the ghost, almost obscuring his running form, dimming the light of his sword, and enclosing him in a sphere of gloom. Mirror froze midstride, immobile as a statue.

The vasuthant swung its tentacles back toward Bareris. He retreated, and the creature snatched and destroyed one of the remaining duplicates.

Then Bareris's heart stopped pounding, and for an instant, he felt horribly cold. He was undead once more and suffered an irrational pang of loss, even though he needed all his abilities to have any hope of survival. Without Mirror fighting beside him, that hope was slim enough as it was.

The last of his doubles vanished.

Power sizzled around him, and invisible needles jabbed across his body. Then an unseen agency threw him straight up into the air. Aping his every move, voluntary or otherwise, the last of his illusory duplicates hurtled up beside him.

Bareris just had time to fling up his arms to protect his head before he crashed into the cavern ceiling. The collision hurt but didn't cripple or stun him, and he sang the word that would slow his fall and spare him a second impact.

But unfortunately, the charm didn't allow him to control where he landed. The vasuthant flowed underneath him, and he dropped into its black, fuming core. At once pain stabbed him, and as the nearly invisible arms snaked at him from every side, wrapping around him, the torment intensified, even as it did him serious harm.

He spun, dodged, and struck. Each successful evasion or cut bought him another moment of existence but nothing more, because the vasuthant formed new arms as fast as he destroyed them. Meanwhile, the passing instants shuffled and repeated themselves until he thought the confusion of that alone might break his mind.

Standing in the center of the living darkness, he was also standing at the heart of the wound in time, and the more the creature exerted its powers, the more grievous that injury became. When he realized that, something-instinct, perhaps, certainly not a fully formed idea-prompted him to sing.

Since he couldn't call anything that could fight as well as he could with sword and magic, he generally had little use for summoning spells. Nor was he currently attempting any of the several such melodies in his arsenal. Rather, this song was an improvisation devised to take advantage of the vasuthant's own chaotic essence.

Just beyond the periphery of the creature's vaporous form, other Barerises-this time, by no means identical-wavered into being. One was the young man who'd adventured with the Black Badger Company, seeking wealth to buy Tammith and himself a life of ease. Another was the griffon rider who'd fought in the first War of the Zulkirs. The rest were versions of the undead fugitive who'd skulked about Thay in the ninety years after.

The pallid outlaws attacked. The youthful wanderer and the legionnaire faltered, and Bareris realized they couldn't see in the dark. He conjured light to reveal the cave and the creature it contained, and they too advanced on the entity with slashing blades.

The vasuthant couldn't form and direct enough arms to hold them all off at the same time, and, perhaps because Bareris and Mirror had already hurt it severely, or because it had already expended so much of its power, it quickly withered under the onslaught. It boiled, thrashed, then shattered into nothingness. Bareris felt a sort of intangible thump as the insult to time repaired itself.

With the breach closed, his counterparts couldn't remain. Most faded instantly, but for some reason, the youngest lingered another moment. He seemed to gaze at his older self with consternation, pity, or conceivably a mixture of the two.

It made Bareris want to say something. But he had no idea what, and his younger self dimmed to nothingness before anything came to mind.

Bareris felt inexplicably ashamed, strangely bereft, and scowled the emotions away. Surely his inner turmoil was just a transient and meaningless aberration, an aftereffect of the psychic punishment he'd endured.

He needed to focus his attention on Mirror. The vasuthant might be gone, but the bubble of gloom it had created remained, with the ghost still a motionless prisoner inside.

Bareris walked to the sphere, took a moment to center himself and regulate his breathing, than sang a song of liberation. The dark globe withstood the spell without so much as a quiver.

"Are they sure?" asked Samas Kul. A stray crumb dropped from his ruddy lower lip.

Lallara sneered at him. "Do you actually think Captain Fezim's scouts could be mistaken about observing an entire army on the march?"

Nevron's attendant demons and devils didn't think so. They whispered, hissed, and snarled in voices only he could hear, begging him to take them into another battle.

The invaders had been working their way down the Lapendrar when a patrol led by Gaedynn returned mid-afternoon. Upon hearing the redheaded archer's report, Aoth immediately summoned the zulkirs to a council of war in the shade of a stand of gnarled, fungus-spotted oaks on the riverbank. Lallara conjured a dome of silence to keep anyone from eavesdropping, and as a result, the world had a strange, hushed quality. Nevron could no longer hear the cheeping birds in the branches overhead or the gurgle of the current.

"Gaedynn and the other griffon riders are certain of what they saw," said Aoth. Unlike Nevron, Lallara, and Lauzoril, he hadn't bothered to tell an underling to fetch a camp chair. He sat crosslegged on the ground, his back against one of the tree trunks and his spear on the ground beside him.

His immense floating throne ludicrous in the wan sunlight and open air, Samas made a sour face. "You said that if we avoided Anhaurz, we wouldn't have to fight another battle."

"I said I hoped we wouldn't," Aoth replied. "But either Szass Tam ordered the autharch of the city to chase us, or else the bastard simply wants a fight. The rebels claim he's some sort of intelligent golem or living metal monstrosity, so Kossuth only knows what's in his mind. Anyway, he's maneuvering to come at us from the west and pin us against the river."

"Could we march faster and keep away from him?" Samas asked.

"Conceivably," said Aoth, "but it would destroy any illusion that we're serious about reaching the Dread Ring in Tyraturos."

Lauzoril laced his fingers together. "What if we actually did cross the Lapendrar? Then this metal man's army and ours would be on opposite sides of it. I understand that we couldn't ford without the aid of magic, but we have magic."

"That too might work," said Aoth, "but at the cost of putting us exactly where we don't want to be: deeper inside Thay, where the river that shielded us from Anhaurz's army might cut off our escape when an even bigger force descends on us later."

"So you recommend we stand and fight," Lallara said.

"Yes," said Aoth.

"I agree," the old woman said.

"As do I," said Lauzoril.

"And I," Nevron said. His familiars roared and cackled to hear it.

"Can we win?" Samas asked. "Even after the losses we sustained taking the first Ring?"

"The enemy is fresh, and there are a lot of them," said Aoth. "But the four of you are zulkirs. That should tip the scale in our direction."

Heedless of the risk that it would draw Szass Tam's sentinels or other dangerous creatures, Bareris sang as loud as possible. He also sustained the final piercing note longer than anyone but an undead bard could, expelling every trace of breath from his lungs, pouring all the force of his trained will into the tone.

Mirror's prison weathered the assault just as it had resisted all of Bareris's previous attempts at countermagic.

In desperation, he drew his sword, grasped the hilt with both hands, and tried to smash the shadowy sphere as if it were an orb of cloudy glass. No matter how hard he struck, the blade glanced away without leaving a mark.

This was bad. He thought he understood what had befallen Mirror. The vasuthant had snared him in a petrified moment where the ghost could take no action, because nothing could happen without even a slight progression of time for it to happen in.

But unfortunately, inferring that much didn't enable Bareris to break the enchantment. The songs he ordinarily employed for such tasks hadn't done the job, and he no longer had any hope of improvising a new spell to manipulate time itself. The conditions that made that possible ceased when the vasuthant perished.

If he called to the zulkirs and they succeeded in translating themselves into the caverns, it was possible that one of them- Lallara, perhaps-could liberate Mirror. But as he'd explained to the ghost, he had his reasons for not wanting to summon the archmages prematurely. These particular caves might not connect to the Citadel's dungeons, and even if they did, the longer the zulkirs wandered around on Szass Tam's home ground, the likelier it was that the lich would detect such a concentration of arcane power and prepare a deadly reception for them. Better, therefore, to wait to call them until it looked as if they might be able to sneak up on their supreme foe relatively quickly.

Perhaps Bareris could wait until he found a way into the dungeons, and then he could perform the summoning. Then he and his allies could backtrack to this cave-

But no. Even as he conceived the idea, he knew it wouldn't happen that way. The archmages would never spend precious time and brave additional perils just to rescue Mirror. It wasn't in their natures.

So that left two alternatives. Bareris could press on alone and trust that whatever danger arose from this point forward, he'd be able to contend with it unaided. Or he could stay here and continue to assail the bubble of frozen time with countermagic, resting when he exhausted his power and hoping that eventually, somehow, one of his spells would breach Mirror's prison. Knowing all the while that Szass Tam could start the Unmaking at any moment.

Bareris looked at Mirror, a shadow locked in shadow with a blade that glowed like moonlight in his hand. "With so many lives at stake," he said, "I have to go on. And I know you'd want me to."

That last part was plainly true. If he were able, Mirror would tell him to leave him behind. But Bareris suspected he'd just lied about his own motives-that in truth, it was the possibility of revenge compelling him onward, as it had once prompted him to break faith with Aoth-and it made him feel even more like a traitor.

Still, he'd made his decision. He turned his back on Mirror, chose one of the exits opening to the northeast, and strode toward it. Once he rounded the first bend in the tunnel on the other side, it was impossible to look back and see the ghost even had he wished to do so. Which he didn't. He needed to focus on whatever lay ahead.

He told himself that if he survived, he'd come back for Mirror. Told himself too, that it was absurd to imagine that one could truly save a man already dead. Mirror's existence was a cold, hollow mockery of life, misery without end, as a fellow undead knew only too well. The phantom was probably better off suspended as he was.

Bareris stopped and raked his fingers through his hair. Then he turned and retraced his steps.

"I know this isn't what you'd want," he said to Mirror. "It's not what I want, either. But apparently it's what I'm going to do."

He sang until no magic remained to him, and the dark bubble stayed intact. He waited until his power replenished itself, then began again.

He chanted one incantation, sang another, then started a third. And as the music hammered it, the bubble sheared apart and crumbled like a wasp's nest burning in an unseen flame. It was hard to say why, for he'd cast the identical spell several times before. Perhaps all his attempts at countermagic had exercised a cumulative effect, or maybe it was just that he'd finally gotten lucky.

Mirror bounded out of the disintegrating sphere, then stopped and cast wildly about when he perceived the vasuthant was no longer in front of him.

"It caught you in a kind of trap," Bareris said. "I killed it, then set you free."

"Thank you," Mirror said. Then, perhaps struck by something in his comrade's manner, he peered at him more closely. "How long did it take to free me?"

Bareris shrugged. "Buried in these tunnels, it's hard to know. But too long. We have to get moving."