Unholy

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

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

The sun had set, but the enemy seemed to be waiting for the last traces of its crimson light to fade from the western sky. After that, they'd attack.

Gaedynn used the time to work his way through the patch of woods, making sure everyone was ready, joking with the men to set them at ease. He had to be more offhand when approaching the zulkirs' soldiers. He didn't want their officers to feel he was usurping their authority. But he was willing to risk their resentment to shore up the defense.

Red Wizards and Burning Braziers evoked light in the open area beyond the trees. When the battle started, the necromancers on the other side would try to drown the illumination in darkness, so their troops could advance unseen. Patches of glow would bloom and go out unpredictably as the opposing spellcasters vied for dominance.

"They're coming!" someone shouted. Off to the right, on the clear, slightly higher ground where Khouryn's armored spearmen stood in their lines, horns blew to convey the same message.

Gaedynn had been talking to a young, nervous-looking legionnaire. He clapped the fellow on the shoulder and dashed back to the spot from which he intended to shoot. It was centrally located enough to offer some hope of keeping track of what everyone else was doing, and the mossy oak rising there was thick enough to provide decent cover.

He'd already stuck a selection of arrows in the ground. Sadly, only two of them held spells stored inside them. He'd used most of his enchanted shafts fighting to take the Dread Ring-as it turned out, what a waste! — and while the army was on the march, Jhesrhi hadn't had the leisure to make any more.

Ah, well, at least he'd found a nice supply of the more common sort of enchanted arrow cached inside the fortress. They too would slay a vampire or wraith if he shot them straight enough.

A sort of querulous rasp sounded from the hollow in the ground where Eider lay hidden. The griffon sensed the fight beginning and was eager to take part. "Patience," Gaedynn told her. "You'll get your chance."

Then he stepped from behind the oak and started loosing arrows.

Most of the charging creatures were dread warriors, a fact that Gaedynn found annoying. It generally took several ordinary arrows to dispatch one of the yellow-eyed corpses; yet even so, it would be a mistake to use enchanted shafts. He needed to save them for foes more fearsome still.

Fortunately, the priests of Kossuth aided the efforts of the archers and crossbowmen. They chanted and whirled their chains, and the rattling links burst into flame. So did many of the arrows and quarrels arcing over the field, and when they pierced the body of a dread warrior, the zombie too burned as if it were made of paper.

Impervious to fear and constrained to obedience, the living corpses kept coming no matter how many of their fellows perished. But none made it to the tree line.

Even so, a few yards to Gaedynn's left, a sellsword lay on the ground and screamed. Someone on the other side had hit him with an arrow or a spell; the gloom prevented Gaedynn from determining which. "Help that man!" he shouted, and, keeping low, a Burning Brazier scrambled in the appropriate direction.

Then another charge exploded from the dark mass of the enemy army, this one made of howling blood orcs. Gaedynn grinned because living targets died more easily. He plucked another arrow from the ground.

At one point, pure instinct prompted him to jump back behind the oak. An arrow or crossbow bolt whizzed through the space he'd just vacated. He stepped back into the open and kept loosing arrows until the last orc dropped.

More shrieks sounded from among the trees. No doubt they'd been doing so for a while, but he rarely heard such things when fighting.

He stooped and picked up the leather waterskin he'd laid between two of the oak's gnarled roots. By the time he finished swigging down his drink, the enemy ranks were opening, clearing a corridor for something to emerge. Gaedynn suspected it would be the first truly serious threat, and in another moment, he saw how right he was.

The shadowy, long-armed giants were as tall as some of the trees, so tall that it was difficult to understand why he hadn't noticed them before, towering over the soldiers and creatures around them. Their murky forms must have blended in with the dark. "Nightwalkers!" a priest of Kossuth cried.

Seeming to move without haste, but their long strides eating up the distance, the nightwalkers strode forward, and at their approach, the patches of glow illuminating the field went out. The men in the trees stood frozen, appalled, doing nothing to stop them, and that, Gaedynn suddenly realized, included himself.

A surge of self-disgust washed away his inertia. "Kill them!" he bellowed. He nocked a shaft, drew the fletchings back to his ear, and released the string.

His arrow flew, and, to his relief, so did others. But when they pierced the nightwalkers' bodies, they looked small as slivers stuck in the flesh of a man, and the undead giants kept coming as if they didn't even feel them.

The wizards and priests of the Firelord fared somewhat better. They hurled gouts of flame and dazzling light, and nightwalkers jerked and staggered. One reeled and fell with its upper body ablaze.

But the rest continued marching forward, and as they did, they struck back. The one directly in front of Gaedynn glared; he couldn't actually see the eyes in its black smudge of a face, but he could feel the malevolence of their regard. His muscles jumped and clenched, and then relaxed again. He'd been hardy-or lucky-enough to shrug off the paralyzing effect.

Others weren't so lucky. To either side of him, men grunted or made little strangled sounds as their bodies locked in position.

Another giant shook its fist. Some of the soldiers in front of it recoiled in terror, others peered around as though dazed, and a couple even turned and discharged their crossbows into one another. A third nightwalker stretched out its hand, and men doubled over, whimpering and puking.

Fortunately, a fair number of the clerics and sorcerers weathered those first attacks. Some continued to blast the giants with their magic. Others chanted to less obvious effect. Gaedynn assumed the latter were working counterspells to free the afflicted bowmen from their various curses.

For his part, he decided it was time-past time-he used the last of his special arrows. He grabbed one, kissed the point for luck, and shot it into the chest of the nightwalker in front of him.

Strips of the giant's shadowy substance peeled away, not just where the arrow had penetrated but all over its body. It staggered a step, and then its hand lashed forward as if it were throwing a rock. Gaedynn wrenched himself behind the oak. Even so, the blast of frost chilled him to the marrow; if he hadn't taken cover, it might well have stopped his heart.

Forbidding himself to falter or his cold hands to shake, he shot Jhesrhi's last arrow. Midway to the target, it exploded into fog, and when the nightwalker strode into the corrosive vapors, its flesh sizzled and liquefied. It was a tattered, smoking vestige of its former self by the time it reached the tree line.

But it was still capable of doing harm. Agony ripped through Gaedynn's chest as though something were squeezing his heart. After a moment, the worst of the pain subsided, but by that time, the nightwalker's fist was hurtling down at him.

Spinning out of the way, he dropped his longbow and grabbed the falchion he'd stowed beneath the oak. He chopped the nightwalker across the knuckles before it could lift its fist again, then kept moving.

The giant pivoted with him, and Eider leaped up from her hollow. Gaedynn would have said she couldn't fly beneath the trees-their limbs hung too low-but she lashed her wings and managed somehow, breaking branches as she came. She slammed into the nightwalker's head and clung there, biting and clawing.

The nightwalker reached for her. Gaedynn ran in and hacked at its ankle. The giant toppled, snapping more tree limbs as it fell, and Eider sprang clear of it.

It didn't look as though the nightwalker were going to get back up again, and small wonder. The griffon had torn away a big piece of its already burned and mangled head. She spat foulness out of her beak, and Gaedynn turned to see how the rest of the battle was going.

Not well. Two other nightwalkers had fallen, but the rest-half a dozen in all-were stalking among the trees. He strained to think of a way to fight them at close range with the troops at his command. Meanwhile, sensing victory, the living men and orcs in the enemy host raised a cheer.

Then demons-hopping toad-men, slithering six-armed women whose bodies turned into serpentine tails at the waist, and a variety of others-burst from the trees behind him. They charged the nightwalkers and attacked ferociously. The sellswords and the zulkirs' troops scrambled back and left them to it.

The nightwalkers ripped a number of demons apart. If not for the damage Gaedynn and his comrades had inflicted, perhaps they would have destroyed them all. But they were wounded, and in time, the demons dragged the last of them down.

The giant was still struggling when Nevron-or a figure that looked exactly like him-strode past Gaedynn. Illuminated by the glimmer of his defensive enchantments, the newcomer advanced beyond the tree line, sneered at So-Kehur's army, and spat.

Then, still moving without haste, as if nothing on the battlefield posed any threat to him, he turned and tramped back the way he'd come. When he reached Gaedynn again, he stopped as though he wanted to talk, stepping behind the oak in the process.

Nevron's features dissolved into those of an older-looking man with fewer tattoos and a skinnier frame. He wore Lauzoril's dagger insignia. "I deemed it best to cut that short," he said. "I could feel the necromancers studying me, probing for weaknesses. Eventually, they might have seen through my mask."

"That would have been unfortunate," Gaedynn said. "Thanks for coming to our aid."

"It was your comrade Jhesrhi who sensed the need. You should thank her too." The Red Wizard looked deeper into the trees, where other robed figures awaited him. He'd tried to create the impression that Nevron alone had unleashed the mob of demons, but in reality, it had taken a number of lesser conjurors to command them. "And my colleagues and I should get back. You may think the enemy is pushing hard here, but it's nothing compared to what the main body of our army is facing."

"Oh, I'm sure," Gaedynn said. "I was just thinking of lying down and taking a little nap."

Lallara seemed accustomed to winged steeds, for she rode without clutching Aoth around the waist or any other sign of anxiety. Mirror, who'd found them not long after the cliffs smashed together, flew several yards to the right of Jet. The ghost was currently a glimmering shadow of the knight he'd been in life.

They all had to fly because it turned out that Malark had enchantments in place to keep anyone from shifting through space to his mountaintop. So they used other peaks to shield their approach and kept a wary eye out as they traveled. At one point, Aoth saw a pair of the huge, batlike undead called nightwings gliding in the distance, but the creatures didn't seem to notice them. He didn't see Bareris, Szass Tam, or any of the other zulkirs. Not along the way, and not when he and his companions set down on a ledge thirty yards below the site of the ritual.

"Try again to find the others," he said, swinging himself off Jet's back.

Lallara extracted a luminous blue crystal cube from one of her pockets, peered into it, and muttered under her breath. "Still nothing. Perhaps they really are dead. Or perhaps they warded themselves lest Springhill locate and attack them again."

"Well, we're here," Mirror said, "and our enemy is just above us. I'm willing to go up and fight him."

"Szass Tam seemed to think it would take all of us to win," Aoth replied. "And when I remember how tough Malark was a century ago in the normal world, before the bastard even learned sorcery, I can believe it."

"I see your point," said the ghost. "But on the other hand, the Unmaking is happening right now. For all we know, Malark is only moments away from the end. How long do we wait for reinforcements that might never come?"

"I don't know. Look, I'll climb up and see what's happening. Then we'll decide what to do."

"Not a bad idea, but let me go. I can be invisible and be certain I won't make any noise."

"But we can't count on you seeing everything that I'd see." Aoth grinned. "Remember, I've done a lot of scouting. You can worry about everything else that's happening in this nightmare-the gods know, I am-but trust in my ability to sneak."

"And in my ability to shield a man," Lallara quavered. Murmuring words of power, she swirled her twisted, arthritic-looking hands in circular patterns, and a cold stinging danced over Aoth's body. "With luck, that will keep even Szass Tam's prized pupil from spotting you, and if it doesn't, I've also cast other enchantments to armor you and disperse harmful spells before they strike home. They ought to keep you alive for a few heartbeats, anyway."

"That's reassuring." Aoth stowed his spear in the harness a saddler had made for it, strapped it to his back, and started to climb.

At this point, the mountainside was steep but not so sheer that a man needed to be an expert equipped with climbing gear to scale it. That was why Aoth and his comrades had landed where they did. Yet it still seemed to take an eternity to reach the top, as he worried every moment that Malark would sense his coming despite his and Lallara's best efforts to prevent it, peer over the edge at him, and blast him from his perch with a flare of magic.

Or maybe just drop a stone on his head.

But it didn't happen, and finally, he gripped a last pair of handholds and pulled himself just high enough to peer out across the flat, rocky expanse on the summit.

Malark floated in the center of the space. He wore a jagged diadem formed of murky crystal and held a staff made of the same material over his head.

When Aoth had spotted the spymaster before, he'd been brandishing the staff and chanting, but now he didn't seem to be doing much of anything. That appearance was almost certainly deceptive. He'd simply reached a phase of the Unmaking that required pure concentration as opposed to a more conventional sort of conjuring.

At first, that was all Aoth observed. Then patches of seemingly empty space flickered and oozed in a way that made his head throb and his stomach turn. He assumed he'd located more of Szass Tam's guardians, concealed so well that even his spellscarred eyes couldn't make out what they were. But they were big and plentiful.

He decided it was time to return to his comrades. But before he could start his descent, he glimpsed something else.

Also imperceptible to normal sight, a great wheel or sphere or tangled knot of something hung and turned above the mountaintop. Aoth couldn't see it clearly either, or maybe his mind instinctively cringed from the attempt. He was no surer of its substance than its shape. He thought it might be akin to the blasts of shadow that necromancers hurled to kill the living.

But somehow he knew it was infinitely more poisonous than any such spell effect, as well as profoundly if indefinably hideous. He could imagine the virulence exploding out of it to shred the sky and shatter the earth. He could imagine a man gouging out his own eyes so he wouldn't have to see it anymore. Yet he found that he couldn't look away.

He whimpered, realized he'd done so, and a more practical kind of alarm cut through his trance of horror. What if Malark or one of the guardian creatures had heard him? He wrenched his gaze away from the ghastly object above him.

It didn't look as if they'd heard. He took a deep breath, then invoked the magic of one of his tattoos. The enchantment enabled him to fall slowly and harmlessly down the mountainside.

As he lit on the ledge, Jet said, "I looked through your eyes. I wish I hadn't. But I already told these two what you saw."

"So what do we do?" asked Mirror.

Why is it up to me? Aoth wondered. We have a zulkir here. But he'd insisted the archmages treat him as an equal, and, maybe because she was all out of cunning ideas, Lallara seemed content to let him take the lead.

It wasn't the first time he'd chafed under the weight of the responsibility that came with command. Although it was the first in a while and stood an excellent chance of being the last.

"I'm going back up there," he said. "Malark's intent on the ritual, and I'm invisible to him and his watchdogs. Maybe I can kill him."

"Don't count on it," Lallara said. "Hostile intent will tear the veil."

"I still might hit him before he or his creatures can react."

"The creatures, perhaps," Mirror said, "but Malark himself?"

Aoth sighed. "I admit it doesn't seem likely."

"Am I understanding you correctly?" demanded Jet. "You want to go back up there by yourself?"

"Yes. Let's say I take a shot at Malark and fail to put him down. If I'm alone, there are a couple of things that might happen next. He might decide to fight me by himself, without involving the guardians. His love of death always did include a fondness for killing with his own hands. If it goes that way, maybe you'll see a chance to rush in and take him unaware.

"He might even decide to exchange a few words before he strikes back at me. We were friends, once upon a time. Whatever happens, every moment he spends dealing with me is a moment when he isn't advancing the ritual. Another moment for reinforcements to turn up. And if he kills me and only me, you won't have lost all that much of your strength, at least, not if the others are still alive. You'll still have a decent chance of winning."

Mirror scowled. "I don't like it, but I follow your reasoning. And I promise, we can be on top of the mountain in an instant."

"Only if it's the right move," Aoth said. "Not just to stick by a friend, but to stop the Unmaking."

"Don't worry," Lallara said. "Everyone understands that you're expendable."

Aoth smiled crookedly. "I knew I could count on you for that, Your Omnipotence. Jet will tell you what's happening to me, so you can react accordingly." He gripped a handhold and started back up the escarpment.

Some of the spearmen laid down their weapons and shields. Some sat on the ground. Khouryn didn't begrudge them their temporary ease, but neither did he partake of it, though a secret part of him wished he could. Instead, he prowled around the formation, overseeing the removal of the dead and wounded, the adjustments to fill the gaps they had left behind, and the distribution of water, hardtack, and dried apple. He realized he'd lost count of how many times the enemy had charged, and he absently tried to work it out.

He was still figuring when one of Samas Kul's younger officers approached him. The human wore fancy gilded armor consistent with his master's love of ostentation. It looked especially silly with the crest knocked off the helmet.

But give the lad credit. He'd actually traded blows with one of the foe, unlike some of his peers, who were careful to keep behind the frontlines.

"I was just wondering," the human said.

"Yes?" Khouryn replied.

"Are we winning?"

"Of course."

It was a lie of sorts. Khouryn's instincts told him the battle could go either way. But uncertainty would be thin gruel to offer a fellow hungry for reassurance.

Nothing could deter So-Kehur's undead troops from attacking ferociously as long as their master willed it. But Khouryn sensed a hesitance in the autharch's living retainers whenever one of the imitation zulkirs revealed himself and seemingly worked some deadly feat of sorcery. He suspected their best hope of victory lay in focusing their attacks on those who felt such qualms. The problem was that, fighting in a defensive posture, he and his comrades had limited ability to choose. They had to fight whom- and whatever So-Kehur threw at them.

But at least they had griffon riders in the sky. The aerial cavalry spent much of the time battling flyers from the opposing army but sometimes managed to shoot at prime targets on the ground.

"How many more times do you think they'll charge?" asked Samas's officer.

Khouryn glimpsed a stirring in the enemy host. "At least one. Better get back to your men. And don't worry. You're doing fine."

The human nodded and scurried away. Khouryn tramped back to his own company. No need to run. Were Samas's retainer more experienced, he'd realize the necromancers needed a little more time to organize a fresh assault.

Still, it came soon enough. At first, Khouryn only saw dread warriors, amber eyes shining in their withered faces. Then he made out the creatures-if they were creatures-in the lead. Swords, axes, and hammers whirled around with no visible hands gripping them, only a swirl of dust and a scream of wind to suggest the presence of some controlling force or entity in the middle.

"Sword spirits!" yelled someone at the back of the formation.

"Ragewinds!" cried someone else.

So now Khouryn had two names for the things. Wonderful. He wished one of the learned souls who'd recognized them had seen fit to call out something helpful, like the best way to kill them.

One thing was likely. It would take an enchanted weapon to hurt the ragewinds. He dropped his spear and shield, pulled his urgrosh off his back, and strode forth to intercept one before its spinning blades reached the formation.

The whirlwind buffeted him and made it hard to keep his footing. A broadsword streaked at him, and he ducked. A scimitar was next, and he batted it away. He stepped deeper into the storm and cut.

To what effect, it was impossible to say. When the target was invisible and more or less made of air, how could a warrior know when he'd hit it? But common sense suggested that if the entity was vulnerable anywhere, it was probably weakest at its core.

Khouryn attacked doggedly, mostly cutting with the axe head of his weapon but occasionally stabbing with the spear point at the end of it. He dodged and parried the endless barrage of weapons the sword spirit whipped at him.

Hard-pressed though he was, he occasionally caught a glimpse of other soldiers who'd emerged from the battle lines to engage a ragewind as he had. Some still fought, but a disheartening number had already fallen.

Meanwhile, the Burning Braziers and sorcerers assailed the undead with flashes of fire that momentarily lit up the night. One such blast roared close enough to Khouryn to dazzle him and make him flinch from the heat, but it didn't slow the relentless onslaught of the spinning blades.

He cut, and it seemed to him he finally felt a measure of resistance, though scarcely more than if the urgrosh had sheared through a piece of straw. He thought too that for just an instant, the stroke drew a scarlet line on the air. He wondered if it truly had, or if hope and the afterimages floating before his eyes were conspiring to trick him.

Then a falchion leaped at him. It was already close by the time he spotted it, and when he tried to parry, he was too slow. It clanged against his chest, then skipped away as the sword spirit continued to spin it around the axis of rotation.

Though the impact hurt, it wasn't the crippling shock that would have come if the weapon had pierced Khouryn's mail and the vital organs beneath. Still, it knocked him staggering, and the wind's shoving kept him from regaining his balance. He now found it impossible to attack and brutally difficult to defend.

A tumbling mace flew at him. He knocked it aside, saw the other weapons whirling right behind it, and jerked the urgrosh back into position to parry those as well. Then the wind stopped howling and mauling him, and its several blades fell to the ground. A figure made of gray vapor fumed into visibility in the center of the space the maelstrom had inhabited.

Cheers rose from the battle lines. Panting, his heart pounding, Khouryn realized that something had balked all the sword spirits.

It appeared to be Lallara, outlined by the golden glow of her protective enchantments, standing at the front of the formation and brandishing her staff. But something about the crone's posture told Khouryn it was actually Jhesrhi inside the illusory disguise.

That made sense. The sword spirits were undead, but they needed to manifest as whirlwinds to wield their weapons. And Jhesrhi was adept at raising and quelling winds. In effect, she was grappling with the phantoms, gripping their wrists to keep them from using their hands.

Breezes whistled and gusted back and forth. A flail lifted partway off the ground, then dropped back. Jhesrhi had arrested the ragewinds, but even with other wizards lending covert aid, she evidently couldn't hold them for long.

Khouryn croaked a battle cry and charged the misty apparition. He struck it repeatedly, every blow gashing it with a streak of crimson light. It started to come apart, but the wind was moaning louder, blowing harder, and he couldn't tell if the phantom was dissolving because he was destroying it or because it was breaking free.

He hit it once more in the chest, and it vanished. He pivoted to find himself again at the center of a vortex of blades lifting up off the ground. He felt a pang of despair, struggled to quell it, and then the whirlwind died. The spirit's weapons dropped.

Fresh cheering sounded. He looked around and saw that Jhesrhi's intervention had likewise enabled his comrades to destroy the rest of the ragewinds in one manner or another.

In a just world, Khouryn would now have had a moment to rejoice and catch his breath. But in this one, dozens of dread warriors were still poised at the front of the enemy formation. They hadn't been able to advance with the sword spirits, or the spinning weapons would have chopped them to pieces. But now they charged, and Khouryn had to sprint back to his own battle lines to keep the undead from swarming over him. He grabbed and braced his spear just in time to spit an onrushing zombie.

Aoth clambered onto the mountaintop. As far as he could tell, nothing had changed. It was possible-indeed, likely-that the confluence of forces overhead was even more hideous than before, but he had no intention of taking another look at it.

His mouth dry, he stalked along the edge of the high place. If he could sneak behind Malark, maybe it wouldn't matter that "hostile intent" would breach his invisibility. Maybe he could still attack by surprise.

It irked him that even close up, he couldn't see what waited in the patches of writhing distortion. He'd gotten used to seeing whatever existed to be seen, even when magic sought to conceal it. Smiling crookedly, he told himself that in this situation, he might be better off not seeing. Most likely, it would only be bad for his morale.

To his surprise, he reached a point directly behind Malark without anything trying to stop him. He aimed his spear and whispered the first words of a death spell. If it worked, it would grip and crush the spymaster's body like a piece of rotten fruit.

Malark dropped back to earth, whirled, and ended up in a crouch, staff cocked back behind him in one hand. A dimness, evidence of a protective enchantment, flowed over his body. Meanwhile, the guardians exploded into view.

Some were the floating spherical creatures called beholders, each with one great, orblike eye and other, smaller ones twisting around on stalks, and with mouths full of jagged fangs. Rotting, spotted with fungus, and riddled with gaping wounds, these particular specimens were plainly the undead variety called death tyrants.

The rest of the guardians were gigantic corpses with snarling, demented faces and lumps scuttling around beneath their slimy, decaying skins. Xingax, who'd invented the things, had called them plague spewers, and they were one of his foulest creations.

Aoth felt a mad impulse to laugh, for, given that he was a lone attacker, his situation was so hopeless as to be ludicrous. Instead, he rattled off the rest of his incantation. Though it seemed clear that Aoth was about to die, maybe Malark could go first.

Alas, no. A dark blaze of power leaped from the spear, but it frayed to nothingness when it touched Malark's haze of protection.

The spell Aoth had cast would enable him to make more such attacks, but unfortunately, no two at the same foe. As he scrambled sideways to make himself a moving target, he weighed whether to turn the magic on one of the guardians or try to blast Malark with something else.

His foes all pivoted with him. "Where are your allies?" the spymaster asked.

Apparently he did want to talk, and Aoth judged that conversation might well stall him longer than continuing a fight that would likely last only another heartbeat or two.

"As far as I know, everybody else died when the cliffs smashed together. Well, except for my griffon. He got hit by a falling boulder, but he was able to carry me this far before the wound killed him."

Malark smiled. "I'm not certain I believe you."

"The way I hear it, you're supposed to be a mighty wizard now. If anyone else were still alive, wouldn't you have found him with your scrying?"

"Perhaps, but after I shifted the mountains, I didn't try. I don't know if you can tell, but the Unmaking is close to flowering. It's possible I'm only a few breaths away. So I thought it would be a good gamble just to try to finish before any survivors reached the mountain. It still seems like a sensible strategy, once I dispose of you."

"So this is the way our friendship ends."

Malark shrugged. "It doesn't have to be. Throw your spear over the edge, submit to a binding, and you can watch the ritual unfold. You've grown into one of the finest soldiers in the East. A master killer. A true disciple of Death, even if you don't think of it that way. I'd like to believe that if you only give yourself the chance, you'll perceive the glory of what's about to happen."

"Sorry, no."

"I understand. You'd rather go down fighting, and of course it's a proper end for a man like you." Malark lifted his hand as though to signal for the guardians to attack.

Aoth groped for something, anything, to say to keep the other man talking. "Curse it, your idiotic ceremony isn't even going to work! The zulkirs say it can't!"

"I'll wager Szass Tam didn't say it, and he's the wisest of them all, as well as the only one who's actually read Fastrin's book."

"He's also crazy, and so are you."

"It no doubt looks that way, but the reality is that he and I are idealists. We both aspire to purity and perfection, although, sadly, he doesn't understand what they truly are."

"I'm telling you, the most the magic will do is kill you and everyone else in Thay and maybe in the realms on our borders."

"I don't think so, but even if you're right, that alone will be wonderful. And now, since it's clear I can't open your eyes, I'll bid you good-bye." Malark waved his hand, and the plague spewers took a stride toward Aoth. Phosphorescence glimmered in the death tyrants' eyes.

The last of the dread warriors dropped, and So-Kehur peered across the open ground between the two armies to see what the living corpses had accomplished prior to their destruction. Lenses shifted inside his various eyes to magnify the view.

The invaders were hauling bodies back to the rear of their formation and trying to fill the new breaches in their battle lines. That didn't work until a dwarf officer dissolved the back rank and ordered its members forward into the two lines in front of it.

So-Kehur turned toward Chumed and the other officers assembled beside him. In his eagerness, he wasn't particularly careful, and one pinch-faced old necromancer had to forfeit his dignity and scurry to keep a pair of his master's pincers from braining him. Well, no matter. The man was all right.

"Do you see that?" So-Kehur asked. "Bit by bit, we're breaking them apart."

To his annoyance, no one echoed his enthusiasm. In fact, for a moment, everyone hesitated to say anything at all.

Then Chumed drew himself up straighter. "Milord, I respectfully suggest that we consider what we're doing to our own army as well."

"I know we're taking casualties, but that's inevitable in war."

"Master, it appears to me that we might indeed annihilate the enemy, but only if we're willing to grind our own host down to nothing in the process. I ask you, is that a desirable outcome when our primary responsibility is the defense of Anhaurz? I recommend withdrawing. We've hurt the invaders badly enough that they no longer pose a threat. If they have any sense at all, they'll run for the border. If not, Thay has other armies to finish them off."

So-Kehur couldn't believe what he'd heard. Withdraw? Let some other commander steal his victory over the infamous zulkirs-in-exile themselves, and the renown that would accompany it? He felt a surge of fury, and Chumed fell, thrashed, and frothed at the mouth.

So-Kehur realized he'd lashed out at the seneschal with his psychic abilities. He hadn't consciously intended it but decided he wasn't sorry, either. Nor would he be even if the coward strangled on his own tongue.

He glared at his other officers. They cringed, either because the raw force of his anger was exerting pressure on their minds or simply because they were intimidated. "Does anyone else want to run away?" he asked.

If anybody did, he kept it to himself,

"Good," So-Kehur continued. "Now, I think we can break the enemy if we throw everything we have into one final assault, and this time, I'll lead the charge myself."