Unholy

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

19 Kythorn, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

Jhesrhi looked at the several dozen assembled mages, most of them robed in scarlet, then glanced down at Khouryn.

"Ready?" asked the dwarf.

No, she thought. She was confident of her ability to cast spells, but leadership was a different matter. Most people didn't even enjoy her company, let alone look to her for guidance. True, she managed to direct her assistants in the Brotherhood, but there were only a couple of them, and they'd joined the company knowing and accepting that she was in charge. The Red Wizards weren't part of the same chain of command. They were strangers, and notoriously arrogant strangers at that.

She shifted her grip on her staff. "Yes."

Khouryn evidently didn't like something he detected in her expression or tone, for he frowned through his bushy mustache and beard. "They're used to taking orders from the zulkirs. Now, whether they realize it or not, they're looking for somebody else to order them around, and who better than you?"

"Someone dressed in red?"

"No, because while they have some experience of war, it isn't their trade but yours. Show them you believe that matters, and they will too, even if they don't like to admit it."

She took a breath. "All right."

He flashed her a grin. "Good! Then I'll leave you to it. I have to see to the folk who don't fling fire and frost around." By that, she knew, he meant that now that both Aoth and the zulkirs were gone, he intended to shuffle the battle lines. The least reliable or ably led of the archmages' troops would stand with seasoned sellswords to steady them if need be, and also stand in less critical positions. Fortunately, the past several tendays had given him time to assess which portions of the allied army were weak, and he'd done it just as automatically as he kept track of everything else on campaign.

His mail shirt rustling, he turned and tramped away. She walked toward the waiting wizards. "Sorry to keep you waiting," she said. "But Khouryn needed to speak to me."

"What I want to know," said a Red Wizard, "is why we need to speak to you." The dagger embroidered on his cloak indicated that he was one of Lauzoril's subordinates. "Do you think it's your place to command us?"

"Someone has to lead," she replied, "if we're to cast our spells to their best effect."

"But why you?" he demanded.

She gave them Khouryn's argument. "Because I spend the better part of every year at war, and our leader needs the wisdom that only comes from such experience."

A sharp-featured woman, the collar of her blood-colored cape bearing the chain-and-manacle patch that was one of Nevron's emblems, pushed to the front of the crowd. "Every Red Wizard learns how to fight," she said.

That set them all clamoring in agreement. Jhesrhi winced at the vehemence of their rejection.

It made her want to back down, especially since she had no particular desire to command them anyway. But she'd promised Khouryn, and even more important, despite herself, she suspected he was right: she likely was the best person for the job.

So she sought for a way to maintain her composure and inner calm, and as a means to that end, observed how very alike the Red Wizards were with their hairless heads, pasty Mulan faces, and voluminous scarlet garments flapping around on their lanky arms and legs. In fact, they reminded her of a flock of agitated flamingos.

Amused by the comparison, she let them squawk, and during the course of it, an idea came to her. She bowed her head and raised a hand as if in surrender, and, expecting words as submissive as her posture, the Red Wizards gradually fell silent.

She didn't disappoint them. "All right," she said. "I can't lead if you won't follow. But we all know someone must command. So who among you volunteers?"

Aoth had told her Red Wizards were ambitious, and as she'd hoped, nine of them spoke up and stepped forward as one. They kept right on talking at the same time too, louder and louder until they were shouting, and their supporters were yelling along with them.

This time, Jhesrhi wasn't the focus of the rancor, and so she had to resort to stronger measures to recapture everyone's attention. She tapped her toe, and the ground beneath her amplified that tiny bump into a jolt that sent the others staggering like vermilion insects crawling on a drumhead. A couple of wizards fell on their rumps.

"Sorry," she said, making no effort to sound sincere. "But maybe now you see the problem with one of you taking charge. None of you senior Red Wizards will allow one of your peers to claim the role. You're afraid he'll parlay it into some sort of permanent ascendancy. But with me, you don't have that problem. I'm not a member of your hierarchy or even a citizen of the Wizard's Reach. I'm just a sellsword, and when the zulkirs' contract with Captain Fezim expires, I'll vanish down the road."

"You know," said a man in the back of the crowd, "Nevron does seem to think well of her. I mean, to the extent that he thinks well of anyone."

"She's got power," said another wizard. "I've seen it before, and she just demonstrated it again. And we can't take all day arguing and politicking. We have to make a choice before Szass Tam's troops show up."

"That," said Jhesrhi, "is the most sensible thing anyone's said so far. So: let me be your leader for this one battle or at least until the zulkirs and Captain Fezim return."

The assembled mages stood silent for a moment. Then the one who'd spoken first glowered at her and said, "If that's the limit of your authority, then I can tolerate it."

"And I," said someone else. The rest either grumbled their assent or at least raised no further protest.

"Thank you for your trust," Jhesrhi said. "Now, we don't have a lot of time, so let's begin. As you all know, our army took a beating seizing the Dread Ring. The army of Anhaurz is fresh, and there are a lot of them. Still, we have one important advantage: we have four archmages on our side."

Her audience looked at her in puzzlement. The sharp-featured woman in service to Nevron said, "No, we don't. As I understand it, they've abandoned us to go fight Szass Tam himself in the high mountains."

Jhesrhi smiled. "Yes, but the soldiers from Anhaurz don't know that. Apparently their autharch has no qualms about facing the likes of Lallara and Samas Kul, but I doubt that everyone who follows him is equally happy about the prospect.

"So we wizards," she continued, "are going to do everything we can to bolster the enemy's belief that the zulkirs are here and fighting to devastating effect, in the hope that it will shake their resolve. We'll accomplish that in two ways. First, coordinating our efforts, we'll strike as hard and cunningly as we can. Second, we'll employ illusion to give our foes an occasional glimpse of the archmages. I've always heard that some Thayans-in exile or otherwise-are clever at phantasms. If you're one of them, speak up."

For a heartbeat, no one did. Then an older man, also wearing Lauzoril's knife insignia, raised his hand with a seeming diffidence unexpected in a Red Wizard. "Mythrellan was the last truly great illusionist. Szass Tam killed her during the War of the Zulkirs, and the order she led dissolved not long after the Spellplague. Still, some of us have learned as many of its secrets as we could."

"Then I'm sure you can handle the job," Jhesrhi said. "So that's the general idea. Obviously, we need to make more detailed plans, and luckily, we do have a little time. The necromancers and their creatures won't attack before nightfall. But that doesn't mean we have to wait. Before we do anything else, I'd like to give the enemy a small taste of what we-excuse me, the great and terrible zulkirs-mean to do to them when the fight truly begins. A little something to think about as they march the last half mile to the battlefield."

Aoth supposed it had been inevitable that Szass Tam would cause a stir when he emerged from the catacombs with his erstwhile enemies striding along behind him. It seemed unlikely that any of the lich's retainers had ever actually seen a member of that motley band before, but anyone who'd heard tales of gross, waddling Samas Kul in his jeweled robes and burly, sneering Nevron with his tattooed demon faces probably recognized them. From that, it would be easy enough to guess the identities of Lauzoril and Lallara, while Bareris, Mirror, Jet, and Aoth himself looked sufficiently distinctive to attract notice whether an observer knew them or not.

Still, curious as people plainly were, they were even more deferential and scrambled to clear a path for their master. So the strange procession climbed up through the Citadel quickly, with whispered speculation murmuring in its wake.

"I could have shifted-"

Startled, Aoth jerked his head around. An instant ago, or so it seemed to him, Szass Tam had been walking at the front of the parade. Now, somehow, the lich was beside him.

"— us all to the top of the keep," Szass Tam continued, "but my sense is that a little more time won't matter one way or the other, and walking gives you and me a chance to talk." He smiled. "It's also the only chance you'll ever have to watch Samas climb a flight of stairs. Not that it's a pleasant spectacle, especially from the back."

Aoth looked around. None of his allies appeared to notice that Szass Tam was trying to engage him in conversation. Not even Jet, despite their mental link.

"I made what's happening seem inconsequential." The necromancer looked at his left hand. The rings vanished from his shriveled fingers, and others appeared a moment later. Evidently he was arming himself for battle. "The enchantment would fail if I tried to strike someone dead or attempted some other violent action, but it should enable us to have a private chat."

Aoth took a breath. "Frankly, Your Omnipotence, I can't imagine what you think we have to 'chat' about. You want to kill everyone, including me. At the moment, circumstances may require us to fight on the same side, but that doesn't mean I've forgotten."

Szass Tam sighed, and Aoth smelled a hint of old decay on the lich's breath. "Plainly, Captain, something prolonged your life. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here."

"The blue fire. Turns out it did more than just sharpen my eyes."

"Ah. Well, if you live as long as Malark and I have, you may come to see what a shabby, unsatisfactory place the world truly is." Szass Tam summoned a silver wand into his hand, considered it, and made it disappear again. "Nothing here is worth preserving, and that includes your current existence and mine. They're shot through with misery, and they're going to end in a little while regardless. Would you scruple to demolish a wretched hovel if you could erect a palace where it stood?"

Aoth snorted. "You can talk all you want about creating a better world, but to me, it looks like what you really crave is to be a god."

"Well, the two goals weren't mutually exclusive." Bracers made of intricately carved bone shimmered into existence on Szass Tam's wrists. "Sadly, however, they have both become unattainable."

"How so?"

"You're a warmage, but I'm sure you know enough about other forms of sorcery to grasp the principle that one must perform great rituals on prepared and purified ground. And that if the magic fails, the wizard must rededicate the circle before trying again."

"Right. I do know that."

"Well, the Unmaking is more powerful by many orders of magnitude than any other ceremony ever conceived, and thus its requirements are even more stringent. If you begin it and something stops you from finishing-as we intend to stop Malark-then no one can ever perform it in that place. It's not possible to dedicate the site a second time."

Aoth studied the lich through narrowed eyes. "And the 'site' is Thay itself? Because the circle defined by the Dread Rings takes in most of the realm?"

Szass Tam inclined his head. "Exactly. So you see, you no longer have to worry about me wiping you and the rest of the East from existence, and you may want to reconsider your allegiance."

Aoth opened his mouth to scorn the suggestion. But then something made him ask, "Why?" instead.

"Isn't it obvious? You deserted from the council's army and took your griffon riders with you. You were actually going to attack the Wizard's Reach at Aglarond's behest until word of my intentions persuaded you to change your plans. You then made common cause with the zulkirs and found you had to demand they treat you as an equal to have any hope of succeeding at your own objectives."

The regent replaced his blackwood staff with one that looked made of the same insubstantial shadowstuff as Mirror. Unlike the solid staff, it didn't tap or thump when the butt came in contact with the floor. "They won't stand for such 'treason' and 'insolence,' Captain. They wouldn't stand for the tenth part of it. They mean to kill you when this is over. If you ever learned to know them at all-or simply caught the look in Nevron's eyes when you dared lay hands on him-you must realize I'm speaking the truth."

From the start, Aoth had feared the zulkirs would ultimately turn on him, but he had seen no choice but to ally with them even so. "Whereas you, on the other hand, were never one to hold a grudge."

Szass Tam chuckled. "You have me there. I've taken my share of revenge. It's satisfying and one of the means by which a person gains and holds power. Yet I think you have a sense that I'm not so petty as these others. I can forgive when it serves my purposes and when a foe has won my respect. Malark is a case in point. He balked me for ten years before switching sides, and I could have punished him after I finally took southern Thay. Instead, I gave him my friendship and raised him high."

"I don't want to be a lord in Thay. I'm happy leading the Brotherhood of the Griffon."

"Then heed me now. I overheard what you whispered to Anskuld, and you're right. Assuming we all survive our clash with Malark, the council will then strike to destroy me. Stand with me, and I'll see to it that you return to your sellswords safely, with enough gold to make every one of them rich. Side with Nevron and the others, and I guarantee that even if I don't kill you, one of them eventually will."

The wind blew out of the east, which meant it was blowing straight in the faces of the advancing soldiers. At first, it was only an annoyance, but it gained strength by the moment and in so doing, picked up stinging, blinding, choking dust.

That last proved magic had raised the gale, not that Chumed Shapret had doubted it before. Generally speaking, Thay was a dry country, but the past few tendays had seen a fair amount of rain. The ground was too muddy for even a powerful wind to strip away so much soil.

A seasoned campaigner, Chumed had long ago learned to carry a kerchief in his saddlebag for situations such as this. He knotted it around the lower half of his face, wished he had a way to keep flying grit out of his eyes as well, turned his destrier, and cantered in search of So-Kehur.

Scuttling along in the vanguard in the form of a huge steel scorpion, the autharch wasn't difficult to locate, even with the streaming brown haze in the air. "Master!" Chumed called.

So-Kehur turned to regard him with the opalescent eyes set in his mask of a face and with others that waved around on tendrils. Chumed suppressed a grimace of distaste. He never liked it when the autharch donned a body with features intended to suggest the essential humanity of what was inside. He suspected that in truth, the grotesque circumstances of So-Kehur's existence had long ago altered him into a being as alien as any devil or ghoul.

"What is it?" So-Kehur asked.

"The enemy raised this wind," Chumed answered.

"Well, obviously. But don't worry. They can't keep it up for long. Especially since I have our own wizards working to quell it."

"That's good to hear. But until they succeed, perhaps we ought to hold our position."

The metal mask didn't change expression, but Chumed could feel his master's displeasure gather like the threat of a storm in the air. Because of his psychic abilities, So-Kehur's emotions were often directly perceptible to others. "That's a bad idea," the autharch said. "The invaders may be trying to slow us down so they can slip away."

"With all respect, Milord, they have nowhere to go. Their backs are to the Lapendrar. The river's high, and they have no boats."

"But if we give them time, they might still find a way to cross. Remember, their leaders are zulkirs, with all the power that implies."

Chumed had by no means forgotten, but to him the fact suggested a need for caution, not for haste. Unfortunately, So-Kehur's ambition to prove himself a master general was coloring his judgment.

That meant it would likely be pointless to argue any further. So-Kehur might even sear Chumed's mind with a burst of psychic fire if he tried. So he simply bowed his head and said, "As you command."

The army trudged onward. The wind howled. Horses neighed in protest, soldiers coughed and complained, and their sergeants and officers bellowed at them to keep moving. When the first screams sounded, Chumed wasn't sure he'd actually heard them over the general din.

The next moment resolved his uncertainty.

Hitherto concealed by the blowing dust and the blur of tears in everyone's eyes, demons abruptly scuttled into view. Big as ogres, armored in chitin and spikes and possessed of enormous pincers, they looked vaguely like huge crabs, and they tore into the front ranks of the marching columns with appalling speed. Their claws nipped men in two. Their horns slashed and pierced.

Chumed was a soldier, not a wizard, but he'd read a book or two concerning demons in the hope of knowing what he was facing when an enemy mage conjured entities like these onto the battlefield. Thus, he recognized the attacking brutes as nashrou. "You can kill them!" he shouted. "Strike for the gaps in their armor!"

He then cast about and saw that it didn't look as though anyone had heard him. Everything was too noisy and confused.

He cursed. He was no more eager to venture within reach of one of the demons than any of the wretches they were currently tearing apart, but apparently someone needed to demonstrate how to kill them, and sooner rather than later if he hoped to avert a panic.

Off to his right, a nashrou fought a company of blood orcs. The soldiers were game. Roaring their deafening battle cries, they stood their ground and hacked savagely but to no avail. The demon was still ripping them apart.

Chumed couched his lance and spurred his mount into a charge. His steed was a pure-blood horse, not one of the unnatural hybrids many Thayan warriors preferred, but it raced at their hideous target without hesitation.

He wondered if he'd have to knock orcs aside or even trample them to reach the nashrou, but they sensed him coming and scrambled out of his way. Unfortunately, the crab-thing noticed him too, and its four legs scurrying, rushed to meet him. A set of pincers spread wide, then shot forward.

His lance, however, was a little longer than the nashrou's limb. It struck first, and punched deep into the fissure between two plates of chitin.

The claw plunged down an instant later. He shifted his shield to block, and the pincers snapped shut on the edges. The metal groaned and buckled.

But it didn't crumple completely, because at that point, the nashrou's legs gave way, and it fell. Its grip on the shield nearly yanked Chumed out of the saddle, but then the armor jerked free.

Chumed studied the motionless creature, trying to make sure it truly was dead. It looked like it to him, and judging from the cacophonous cheers of the surviving orcs, they thought so too.

He tried to pull his lance out of the carcass, but it was stuck fast. He let go of the butt and raised his hand to quiet the orcs. "Strike for the cracks in the shell!" he told them.

They did and killed another nashrou. Other people had evidently figured out how to do it too, for the crab-things were dropping one by one. Crawling and clinging, nearly burying it beneath their bodies, zombies swarmed on one of the demons like ants and stabbed it repeatedly with their blades. A Red Wizard blasted another apart with a single stroke of lightning.

It wasn't too bad, Chumed decided. They hadn't lost too many men, and only a few legionnaires had run. Winning this first skirmish might actually bolster everyone's confidence. And at least the damn wind was dying down.

Then cries rang out behind him.

Several dark, horned giants with batlike wings-devils called malebranches-were diving down out of the sky. Everyone had been too intent on the nashrou to see them coming.

They thumped down among the enclosed wagons. All those conveyances had guards, but they floundered back in terror. The malebranches jabbed at the wagons with their iron tridents, breaking them open as if they were made of eggshells.

It was a typical gray Thayan afternoon, the sky veiled with clouds, smoke, and ash. But enough sunlight filtered down to burn the entities riding in the wagons. One of the carriages rocked back and forth as the thing inside screamed and thrashed in its final agonies.

As soon as a malebranche finished with one wagon, it turned its attention to another. From Chumed's vantage point, it looked as if they had smashed open ten or twelve before the wizards finally took effective action. Then, one by one, the devils froze in place and vanished as magic hurled them back to their native plane of existence.

Chumed rode toward the spot where So-Kehur's steel form gleamed above the heads of his followers. When he got close, he saw that the autharch stood over the corpse of a nashrou like a self-satisfied hunter preening over the body of his kill. He'd evidently played an active part in the fighting, and not just with his sorcery and psychic talents. Spatters of ichor mottled his claws and stinger.

"Well," said So-Kehur, "that went well enough."

"I suppose you could say that," Chumed answered. "We did deal with the demons as efficiently as we had any right to expect. Considering that the dust kept us from seeing them until they were already on top of us."

Chumed regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. But if So-Kehur even heard the implied criticism, combat had left him too exhilarated to make an issue of it. "How long to get the columns moving again?" the autharch asked.

"Not too long. The healers have to tend the wounded, and everyone needs a chance to catch his breath."

"Well, take care of it all as quickly as you can. I want to reach the battlefield by nightfall."

I don't, Chumed thought. Not especially.

It wasn't that he was afraid. He was no coward, and the army they were about to engage had all but crippled itself taking the huge fortress in the northern part of the tharch. But, So-Kehur's bloodlust aside, he still didn't see any compelling reason for this fight, and what was even worse was that the enemy had just demonstrated they could outthink the autharch. Chumed recognized it even if his master didn't.

The round, flat roof of the keep provided a view of the city surrounding the Citadel and the mountains beyond. Columns of smoke rose from some of the latter, and a cold wind blew them toward the bloody sunset.

Bareris looked for some indication that Szass Tam had cast potent enchantments on this place. He didn't see any. But both Aoth and Mirror faltered when they came up the stairs. Apparently the warmage's spellscarred eyes could discern the truth, and the ghost perceived the same "unholy" malignancy to which he'd reacted before.

Szass Tam walked to the center of the rooftop, turned, and gave them all a smile that jabbed a fresh spasm of loathing into Bareris's guts. He stifled the feeling as best he could.

"Well, here we are," said the lich. "Nothing remains but to unlock the door. So if you want to enhance your defenses or anything like that, now's the time."

"So it really is going to be just us," said Samas Kul, his tone petulant. "Even though you have an entire army garrisoned here."

"He already explained," Lallara said. "Springhill is in control of the realm beyond the gate. Since he created the place, Szass Tam can take us through even so, but we're about the limit. Any more and we'd simply lose people, much as we lost them translating ourselves into the dungeons. Now, if we could be certain of losing you-"

"I understand!" the obese transmuter snapped. "I'm just amazed that a would-be god can't do a little better."

"Perhaps the years have sapped my powers," Szass Tam said. "I suspect that the next little while will give you ample opportunity to judge."

"Before we go in," said Aoth, his fingers scratching amid the feathers on Jet's neck, "I need to be clear on one thing. Is it enough to interrupt Malark? If we knock the breath out of him in the middle of an incantation, will that stop the Unmaking?"

"Unfortunately, no," Szass Tam replied. "The ceremony involves a number of conditions and limitations, but that isn't one of them. He can pause, deal with an interruption, and then pick up where he left off."

"So we have to kill him," Nevron growled. "Fine. We all want to kill him. Let's get on with it."

"As you wish," Szass Tam said. He turned his back on them; Bareris shivered and clamped down on the urge to strike while the lich looked vulnerable.

Szass Tam flourished his shadowy staff and whispered words that somehow made Bareris angrier still, that seemed to feed the hate and bitterness inside him like dry wood feeding a fire. Then a square of utter blackness, big as the entry to a rich man's house, painted itself on the air.

Bareris assumed that they'd walk into it. Instead, it rushed forward, expanding as it came, first swallowing Szass Tam and then himself. And all the others too, presumably, although at that instant, he lost sight of them. He seemed to tumble through freezing darkness, then jolt down on his feet. A new world oozed into view.

It was a place of towering crags and twisting canyons, without even a sprig of brush or speck of fungus growing anywhere on the dry earth and stone. Only a handful of faint stars gleamed in the black, moonless sky.

He and his companions had arrived in one of the gorges. The others pivoted, peering around. "I assumed," Lauzoril said, "that you'd shift us into position to attack Springhill immediately."

"It wasn't possible," Szass Tam said. "He has layers of protection. I couldn't pierce them all with a single spell."

"But now that we're here?" Samas asked.

"I hope so." Turning, the lich studied the peaks and cliffs, then chuckled.

"What?" Nevron spat.

"Malark's altered the geography," Szass Tam said. "Either to disorient me if I escaped Thakorsil's Seat and came after him or simply because he finds the new skyline more conducive to focusing his thoughts."

Either way, Bareris didn't like hearing that their foe had shifted mountains like a child playing with blocks. Szass Tam had warned that Malark was a god in this realm, and that didn't seem like hyperbole anymore.

"So I take it we have to find him," Lallara said. "I can cast a divination."

"We might as well try the obvious way first," said Aoth. Jet shook out his wings, and the warmage swung himself into the saddle.

"Be careful," Szass Tam said. "I put guardians in the sky as well as on the ground."

"I under-" Aoth began, and then Jet leaped, lashed his wings, and carried the warmage aloft. Apparently, after all the time he'd spent underground, the griffon was eager to take to the sky, even the sky of a dismal place like this. Seemingly surprised by the abrupt departure, Mirror rose into the air a moment later.

Bareris watched as they soared high overhead. If something attacked them up there, he'd have a difficult time helping them.

But nothing did, and after a time, they swooped back down to earth. "Got him," Aoth said. "He's conjuring on a flat mountain-top about a mile in that direction." He pointed with his spear.

"Did he notice you?" Lallara asked.

"I didn't see any indication of it."

"Does he have a pack of guardians clustered around him?" Samas asked.

"I didn't see those, either."

"Still," said Szass Tam, "they're there. I guarantee it."

"So we hit fast and hard and kill their master before they can react," Nevron said, "just as I've been advising all along." He glowered at Szass Tam. "Captain Fezim has given you your bearings. Now can you translate us to our quarry?"

"Let's find out." The lich slipped his withered fingers into one of his many pockets, no doubt to remove a talisman or spell trigger. Then skeletal figures stalked out of the darkness ahead.

Each was half again as tall as a man, with strips of ragged, desiccated flesh dangling from its frame. Their heads were hairless, and their ears, pointed. Tiny figures writhed inside their ribs like anguished prisoners jammed behind the bars of a cage.

One of the zulkirs' surviving soldiers happened to be closest to the oncoming horrors. He wailed and raised his sword and shield to fend them off. The creature in the lead pounced. The legionnaire's blade bit into its torso, but it didn't seem to notice. It grabbed him in its jagged talons, and the man screamed, convulsed, then dangled limp as string. A new prisoner-the soldier's soul, evidently-squirmed into existence behind the skeletal entity's ribs. The creature dropped the corpse and kept coming.

"They're devourers!" Szass Tam called. Perhaps the term meant something to the zulkirs, but Bareris had never heard it before.

But if he had to fight in ignorance, so be it. He shouted, and the thunderous bellow ripped flesh from the lead devourer's frame and broke a number of its bones, even as the cry echoed down the gorge and brought pebbles showering from overhead.

Its legs shattered, the devourer fell but crawled onward. Mirror stepped up beside Bareris, brandished his sword, and light flared from the blade. The crawling devourer and the one behind it burned away to nothing in an instant.

It was encouraging to see that the things could perish, and it was good, too, that they had to come down the relatively narrow passage to reach their intended victims. It meant they couldn't spread out and surround them, and that spells like thunderbolts, blasts of fire, and Bareris's own battle cries generally hammered more than one at a time.

Offsetting that advantage, however, was the devourers' resilience and their numbers. New ones kept streaming down the defile like a rushing river, the husks of their predecessors crunching and cracking beneath their feet.

Samas pointed his quicksilver wand and turned a devourer to gold. It toppled forward. Someone else felled one of the creatures with darts of scarlet light. His tone cold and demanding, Szass Tam rattled off an incantation. It must have returned two of the devourers to his control, because they halted abruptly, turned, and lashed out at their fellows.

Bareris saw that it wasn't enough. In another moment, unless the warriors in their band prevented it, the devourers would overrun everyone, zulkirs included. And even archmages would have trouble conjuring with such creatures ripping at them.

"Wall!" Bareris yelled, and then heard Aoth and Mirror yelling the same thing. Though white-faced with fear, the last surviving bodyguard heeded the call, and Nevron sent a miscellany of demons and devils to answer it too. The one that came to stand on Bareris's right was a barbed devil, a somewhat manlike figure with a lashing tail, its body covered with spines and quills.

They just had time to form their line, and then the devourers crashed into it. Bareris cut, parried, and sang a spell to make himself a blur. The point of his spear ablaze with blue light like the fire in his eyes, Aoth thrust and thrust and thrust again. Fighting alongside him, Jet reared, slashed with his talons, and screeched when he tore off a devourer's head.

Meanwhile, flares of multicolored light and ragged blasts of shadow crackled over the defenders' heads to sear and wither the massed devourers. Bareris assumed that one or more of the wizards must have floated into the air-or simply clambered onto a rock-to evoke such magic without fear of hitting his allies. He couldn't actually look around to verify his guess, because he didn't dare take his eyes off the creatures in front of him.

A devourer's black, sunken eyes glared down at him, and for a moment, he couldn't remember where he was, what the creature was, or how he was supposed to react to it. But training made him sing the next note of his battle anthem, and his magic shattered his confusion. He cut into the devourer's torso, and its legs buckled.

"I see the end of them!" Samas called. Bareris felt a surge of renewed determination, then noticed a shiver in the ground beneath his feet.

A moment after that, someone behind him cried out, something inhuman roared, and stone rumbled and crashed. The earth heaved, and he almost lost his balance.

Now he truly wanted to turn and see what was happening at his back. His nerves sang with the fear that if he didn't, something looming there would strike him down. But it would still be suicidal to look away from the last devourers.

He hacked the leg out from under one such brute, then gutted it when it dropped. A second scrambled over the corpse of its fellow and grabbed him by the shoulder. He felt a pull through the point of contact; the devourer was leeching his spirit from his body.

He cut the devourer with all his waning strength. His sword ruined an eye and buried itself in the creature's skull, but the incorporeal pull didn't abate. He tried to yank his sword free, and it wouldn't come out of the wound.

He sang a charge of malice and loathing into his eyes, then discharged it by glaring at the devourer. The creature stiffened in pain and fumbled its grip on his shoulder. The pull abated, and he felt stronger. He jerked his blade free and drove the point into the devourer's heart, or at least the spot where a human carried such an organ. The vile thing fell.

At last, nothing else was running to attack him. Not from the front, anyway. He spun around, then faltered.

His first impression was of a corpse swarming with maggots. But in this case, the body was the ground itself and the cliffs rising on each side of the gorge, while the maggots were creatures that, except for the unrelieved blackness of their bodies, resembled the snakelike behemoths called purple worms.

It had been more than ninety years since Bareris had seen one of these monstrosities, but that occasion had been a slaughter he'd never forget. The worms were nightcrawlers. Undead fearsome enough to give even an archmage pause.

Two of the worms bursting from the ground spread their jaws wide and spewed blasts of frost. Lallara raised her staff and cried a word of forbiddance, and the pale jets split like a river streaming around a rock, spattering the sides of the cliffs instead of the people on the ground.

At the same instant, a nightcrawler that had burrowed out of a rocky wall struck straight down at her. It was huge enough to swallow her whole, and she didn't even seem to notice the threat. But Samas screamed-no incantation to it, just a noise of pure desperation and resolve-and pointed his wand at the creature's plunging head. The lead section of the nightcrawler dissolved in a puff of smoke. The rest of it convulsed, the length that still protruded from the burrow slamming repeatedly against the cliff.

Lauzoril produced illusory duplicates of himself to confuse his foes, then snapped his fingers to strike a spark that expanded into a giant made of flame. Nevron brandished his staff, and spiders fell from the ends of his voluminous sleeves. When they touched the ground, they too grew to enormous size, then scuttled to attack the nightcrawlers, spitting webs to bind them, then crawling on their ink black bodies and biting.

Szass Tam chanted in the same imperious fashion as before, and one of the nightcrawlers swiveled its head, struck, and seized a fellow worm in its jaws. Snapping and gnawing, twisting around one another, the creatures thrashed in a struggle that threatened to crush anyone within reach and sent new shocks jolting through the ground.

Bareris sang a song that made the frenzy before him appear to slow, although in reality, his own perceptions and reactions had accelerated. Then he ran at a nightcrawler that had tunneled up out of the canyon floor. The thing was twisting in Aoth's direction. The warmage was still on the ground, but at some point during the last few moments, he'd climbed onto Jet's back.

Bareris drew breath to batter the nightcrawler with a war cry, then glimpsed motion from the corner of his eye. He pivoted; a leftover devourer was lunging at him. He sidestepped its raking claws, let it blunder past, then cut at its spine. The creature toppled.

Bareris spun back around. He was too late to distract the nightcrawler from attacking Aoth, but fortunately, the sellsword commander had noticed the threat. When the worm spat frost, Jet beat his wings and bounded like a grasshopper to carry his master out of the way. Aoth hurled lightning from the point of his spear, and the nightcrawler jerked at its searing touch.

Bareris charged the snakelike undead and cut at its flank. He knew it was dangerous to fight such a colossal creature close up. Without even intending it, the nightcrawler could shift its bulk on top of him and crush him. But he trusted his heightened reflexes to protect him.

For a while, they did, and he slashed a portion of the nightcrawler's body into a Crosshatch of oozing gashes. Then the creature swiveled its head in his direction and hissed.

Sensing danger at his back, he whirled just in time to see a dozen shadowy figures, all but invisible in the gloom that prevailed at the bottom of the gorge, flicker into existence. Their presence chilled the air, and they charged Bareris like a pack of famished wolves.

In an instant, they were all around him, scrabbling and clutching with their freezing though insubstantial hands, and he feared they might overwhelm him with sheer numbers. Then a blaze of light withered them. It spiked pain through his body as well but didn't actually seem to injure him. He nodded to Mirror-who currently resembled Samas Kul, of all people, except that he had a sword instead of a wand-to indicate as much.

Bareris pivoted back toward the nightcrawler and thrust his sword into its body. Mirror flew into the air and cut at its head. Aoth slashed chunks of it away with a conjured wheel of spinning blades. The worm screamed, and then the top half of it plummeted to the ground like a felled tree.

Bareris watched for a moment to make sure it wouldn't start moving again, then pivoted to survey the battlefield. To his surprise, it appeared to him that he and his allies were holding their own. The last remaining bodyguard was gone, and so were a number of Nevron's demons. Severed pieces of their grotesque anatomies littered the canyon floor. But, hanging like vines from the cliffs or, in their immensity, all but blocking the defile, several nightcrawlers were dead as well, while the archmages, Aoth, Jet, and Mirror all survived.

Yet Bareris had a feeling that something was wrong, and after another moment, he realized why. The earth was quaking.

No one else appeared to notice, probably because, with the gigantic nightcrawlers tunneling and heaving themselves around, it had been shaking for a while. But this was different: more constant and growing steadily more intense.

He looked skyward just in time to see the cliffs start falling.

Aoth's fire-infected eyes abruptly saw a new murkiness in the air. Mystical power was at work, and it was something apart from all the combat magic he and his companions were evoking to destroy the nightcrawlers.

He cast about. Chunks of stone were tumbling from the canyon walls, but that was far from the worst of it. The cliffs were lurching toward one another.

He remembered Szass Tam's claim that Malark had shifted the mountains. It stood to reason that if the traitorous whoreson could do that, he could also smash them together.

Aoth looked around for Bareris and found him too. Unfortunately, the bard stood where the stones were raining down the thickest and at the epicenter of the impending collision. If Aoth tried to retrieve him, they'd both be crushed.

Even so, left to his own devices, he might have tried or at least hesitated in dismay. But, unfurling his wings, Jet raced to carry him out of the deathtrap by the shortest possible path.

Aoth looked for someone he actually might be able to save. He spotted Lallara, tottering in an effort to keep her feet. Moving with her, a disk of crimson light floated above her head. Failing stones bounced off it.

He willed Jet to change course and felt the griffon's resulting pang of annoyance as if it were his own. Neither of them truly wanted to spend an extra instant in the danger zone. But he needed Lallara. Needed all of them, truly, but she was the one within reach.

He leaned sideways and snatched the old woman to him. At once, Jet spread his wings, lashed them, leaped, and flew.

More boulders fell. A big one shattered against the hovering disk, which then winked out of existence, subjecting Aoth, Lallara, and Jet to a shower of gravel. The converging sections of wall accelerated, springing toward one another like clapping hands. Lallara gasped as she finally perceived the true magnitude of the peril.

Aoth doubted they were going to make it, then felt Jet's savage determination. The griffon put on a final burst of speed and kept it up until the passage became so narrow that he could no longer spread his wings.

But by that time, they were close enough to safety that sheer momentum threw them clear into a wider section of canyon. Aoth automatically cast about for new threats. Everything was still.

Jet glided down to the ground. Scowling, Lallara shoved at Aoth to extricate herself from their awkward embrace.

He turned to study the cloud of dust behind him and the mass of stone sealing the passage he'd just escaped. Nothing was moving in that direction, either.

Bareris sang a song intended to shift him to safety, and a nightcrawler turned its head in his direction. Pain and dizziness stabbed through him, and he fell to his knees. The worm had attacked him with some sort of supernatural ability. After a moment, the fierce pangs diminished, but not before he fumbled the next phrase of his spell. The power he'd raised dissipated in a useless sizzle.

He floundered to his knees, took a breath raw with rock dust, and tried to focus his thoughts for another effort even though he sensed that, his charm of acceleration notwithstanding, he wouldn't have time.

Fingers squeezed his shoulder. "Allow me," Szass Tam said. Seemingly standing without effort despite the upheavals, he touched the butt of his shadow staff to the quaking ground.

He and Bareris shot down into the earth, which parted for them as if their bodies were made of dense, sharp metal. Startled, sightless, Bareris had the mad, random thought that here at last was burial, ninety years late. Then he and Szass Tam abruptly came to rest in a bending tubular tunnel. The lich had to crouch too, or he wouldn't have fit.

"This is a nightcrawler burrow," Szass Tam said. "The way the brutes were popping up around us, I knew the ground had to be riddled with them." He crooked his fingers into a mystical sign, and sheets of dark fire crawled on the walls around them, burning away soil and rock and creating more open space. He then straightened up and stepped away from Bareris.

A nightcrawler's head burst through the ceiling, showering them with dirt. It was gouged and dented, probably battered by falling boulders. Like its foes, it must have dived into the earth to remove itself from between the converging walls.

The thing plunged into view directly above Szass Tam, and for once, even he appeared startled. The enormous jaws gaped, then snapped shut around him. Because the lich had enlarged this part of the burrow, it was high enough to admit not just the nightcrawler's head but a bit of its body. As a result, Bareris saw its throat swell as it swallowed.

For a moment, he simply stared, too addled with contradictory emotions and impulses to act on any of them. Then he rose, lifted his sword, and took a stride in the creature's direction.

Its head blew apart in a flash of scarlet light. The detonation rocked him back, even as it spattered him and the walls of the burrow with filth. Smeared with slime, Szass Tam squirmed feet-first out of what little remained of the nightcrawler's mouth.

The necromancer inclined his head to Bareris. "Obviously, I didn't actually need your help. But it's good to see you have your priorities straight."

Bareris wondered how Szass Tam knew he'd been coming to his aid. "You and I will settle our score after we deal with Malark."

Szass Tam waved a shriveled hand, and the jellied filth vanished from his person. "If you insist. If you believe your devotion to a rather ordinary girl who died a century ago requires it. But it seems to me that what you truly love is your own misery. The Maiden of Pain possessed you in the moment of your despair, and you never managed to escape."

Bareris took a steadying breath. "If you want our alliance to last until we stop Malark, then don't mention Tammith or speculate about my feelings anymore."

"As you wish. Let's turn our attention to the task at hand."

"Do we still have any hope of succeeding, even after what just happened?"

"Oh, certainly. You weren't thinking you and I are the only survivors, were you? Getting caught between two masses of rock wouldn't hurt your friend Mirror. Captain Fezim scooped up Lallara and tried to carry her out of the affected area, and I suspect he succeeded. Unless they panicked-and that's unlikely-the other zulkirs were capable of saving themselves as well."

"But we're scattered now, and we've expended a lot of our power."

"The former has its advantages. We'll all take different paths to get to Malark. Even if he realizes we survived, he and his creatures will have difficulty spotting and intercepting all of us. As for your latter point, I assume that since your odd little troupe crept into the Citadel to assassinate me, the zulkirs are carrying as many arcane weapons and talismans as I am. We have plenty of tricks left, and let's not forget that our arrival goaded Malark into squandering a good deal of his own power. It's one thing to move the mountains with proper preparation. It's another to fling them around when you weren't expecting you'd have to, essentially by sheer force of will."

Bareris scowled. "You almost sound glad that his creatures attacked us."

Szass Tam shrugged. "I try to perceive the opportunities implicit in even awkward situations."

"Have you considered that, now that they've seen just how strong and well-protected Malark is, the other zulkirs may 'perceive the opportunities implicit' in being apart from one another and free to act as they please? They may try to leave this place and flee beyond the reach of the Unmaking."

"I understand why the possibility concerns you. They are supremely selfish, and no doubt you and Captain Fezim had to coax and bully them relentlessly to get them this far. But you know, they aren't cowards. Each had to perform acts of extraordinary daring to ascend to his current eminence. And consider what finally lies within their reach: Revenge on Malark and on me. Rulership of Thay. Given the stakes, this is one time they won't play it safe."

"I hope you're right."

Szass Tam smiled. "So do I. We'll see who joins us on Malark's mountaintop."