Unholy

CHAPTER SIX

10–14 Mirtul, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

Long before he was old enough to enlist, Aoth had yearned to join the Griffon Legion of Pyarados, because he'd been certain he'd love flying. As he had. And more than a hundred years later, he still relished it just as much as ever.

But this was the sort of morning that took the joy right out of it. The cold rain chilled him despite the magical tattoo and minor charms intended to keep him warm and dry. Maybe he was sensing Jet's discomfort across their psychic link, for his familiar was certainly drenched as well as vexed at winds that consistently blew in exactly the wrong direction to help him go where he intended.

With the sky lumpy with storm clouds promising even heavier rain later on, it was shaping up to be a foul day. As such, it provided the perfect backdrop for Aoth's first look at the Dread Ring of Lapendrar.

The place was black and immense, and something about the precise curve of its walls and shape of its fanglike towers screamed of arcane power, even though Aoth couldn't decipher the design. Maybe, as a warmage, his knowledge of wizardry was too specialized, or maybe no one could interpret it unless he'd first read Fastrin the Delver's book.

What Aoth could tell was that the walls were high and thick and laid out so that any attacking force would find itself shot at from at least two directions at once. And there were plenty of defenders to do the shooting. The battlements crawled with bellowing blood orcs, withered, yellow-eyed dread warriors, and red-robed necromancers all assembled to watch the besieging force march into view.

"Big castle," said Jet.

"Very," said Aoth.

"But I assume you've captured even bigger, over the course of your long and glorious career."

Aoth snorted. "Not so many as you might expect."

"Then we're doomed?"

"No. We have all the surviving members of the Council of Zulkirs on our side, whereas the Dread Ring doesn't have Szass Tam. He's in High Thay, getting ready for the Unmaking. That has to count for something."

Or at least he hoped so.

Bareris looked around the council of war and saw fatigue in every lanternlit mortal face. The work of the last two days, necessary preparation for the struggle to come, had been taxing. The army had needed to pitch tents, build corrals for the animals, and make sure of its water supply. Raise earthworks and dig trenches and latrines. Enlarge and assemble the siege engines carried from the Wizard's Reach in shrunken form. The effort ultimately took its toll even on officers and Red Wizards, who for the most part left the manual labor to their subordinates.

But it hadn't tired Bareris-since becoming undead, he seldom knew exhaustion in the way that mortals did-and he didn't feel inclined to lounge in the command tent. He wanted to prowl the night and catch Tsagoth the next time the blood drinker came creeping to abduct and drown another girl.

But now that Aoth had appointed Bareris liaison to the rebel contingent of the army, it was his duty to be here, and even if it weren't, the meeting was important, its purpose to devise a strategy to capture the Dread Ring and so foil Szass Tam's designs. But it was hard to care about even that when the creature who'd killed Tammith with his own four hands was finally within reach.

Slouched in a folding camp chair, his enchanted spear and crestless, plumeless, no-nonsense helmet resting on the ground beside him, Aoth cleared his throat. "All right. We've all had a chance to take a look at the nut we have to crack. What are your thoughts?"

Gaedynn grinned. "Ordinarily, I'd scout a stronghold like this and say, you know, I'm not in any hurry. Let's just starve them out. But from what I understand, zombies and such don't need food, and on top of that, we may only have a few tendays before Szass Tam performs his death ritual. Actually, for all we know, he could be starting it this very moment or could start bright and early tomorrow morning, but we simply have to hope not."

"So why talk about the possibility?" Jhesrhi said. She inspected her grimy hand, then picked at one of her fingernails.

Samas Kul belched. He tossed away a chicken bone, and a candied pomegranate appeared to take its place. "If we could make contact with someone inside the castle-someone alive, I mean-perhaps we could bribe him to open one of the gates."

"I doubt it," Bareris said. "Szass Tam started shackling the minds of his agents at the beginning of the war. Given that the Dread Rings are crucial to his plans, it's unlikely that he'd station anyone there who was still in possession of his free will."

Lauzoril pursed his lips, an expression that made him look even more like a priggish clerk than usual. "Working together, Lallara and I might be able to break some of those shackles. Of course, then you'd still have to identify exactly whom it was. You'd have to find a way to communicate with him and convince him it was in his best interests to switch sides…"

"In other words," said Nevron, sneering, "the idea's too complicated, and we can't pin our hopes on it. We have to take the Ring by force of arms." He shifted his glare to Aoth. "Your avowed area of expertise, our 'equal for the duration.' "

"I've given the problem some thought," the warmage said, "and even with a company of griffon riders at our disposal, I doubt we can get enough men on top of a wall, or inside the walls, to open the place up for the rest of us. We need to break down a gate or a section of wall, and then we'll have a chance."

Lallara frowned. "Those fortifications are massive. Even if the builders hadn't reinforced them with enchantment-which they did-it would take too much time to batter them down with mangonels and such."

"That's true, Your Omnipotence. But every wall, no matter how strongly built, needs something solid to stand on."

"You're talking about mining."

"Yes."

"Wouldn't that take too much time as well?"

"If we did it in the usual way. But I hope we have an alternative. Jhesrhi?"

Her golden eyes catching the lamplight, the wizard said, "I'm well-versed in elemental magic, and I've studied the patch of ground on which the Ring stands. I know where the soil is softest and where an underground stream runs. I believe that if I spoke to the earth and water, I could conceivably topple a section of the east wall. But the job would be a lot more feasible if I had help. Master Nevron, I've heard that you and your disciples are as adept at commanding elementals as you are demons and devils, even if you don't see fit to call on them as often. Would you join me in this effort?"

Nevron's scowl deepened as if it vexed him to have someone who wasn't a zulkir speak to him as an equal. But he simply said, "I'll do it if someone can convince me the plan is practical. It will take more than I've heard so far. Let's say the wall falls."

"By all means, let's say that," Gaedynn interrupted. "The collapse breaks the magical pattern, and our work is done. Right?"

"Wrong," Nevron spat. "If we merely inflict physical damage and march away, they can restore the symbol. We need to rake the Ring and then perform a ritual to render it harmless for all time. Now, as I was saying: The wall falls. Won't the army still have a great heap of rubble blocking the path into the fortress?"

"A heap of loose stones isn't the same thing as a solid wall," Jhesrhi said. "I'm confident that, with all the wizards in our army, we can clear it out of our way."

"Well, possibly so. But have you considered that when we strike to knock down the wall, the wizards inside the fortress will sense the attack and move to counter us: And no matter how skilled we are at elemental magic, inertia will be on their side."

Aoth scratched his chin. "Yes, that's the tricky part. We need to distract the bastards so thoroughly that they won't notice what you're up to."

"So we make what looks like a committed, furious assault," Bareris said.

"That's my thought," said Aoth.

Lauzoril put his hands together in front of his face, fingertip to fingertip, and peered into the space between his palms as if wisdom dwelled therein. "The feint will have to look convincing, which means it will give the enemy the opportunity to kill a good many of our troops. Breaching the wall won't help us if we end up too weak to exploit the opportunity."

"Well," said Aoth, "it would stop Szass Tam from using the castle as a giant talisman until his servants mend the hole. You're right, though: if the first battle cripples us, that delay wont save us in the long run. But I don't think the fight has to cripple us. We've been watching this place since we got here and have seen few flying warriors or steeds. Whereas we have griffon riders, so that's one advantage. Most if not all of their mages are necromancers, and they don't appear to have any priests at all. We have a greater diversity of magic at our command, so that's another."

"In fact," Khouryn said, "if I can get some ladders planted against the wall and a squad of my best men to the top of them, this 'feint' might just take the castle all by itself. Stranger things have happened."

Samas Kul shook his head. "I'm just not persuaded this ploy will work."

"Do you have a better idea?" Lallara waited a beat, as if to give the gluttonous transmuter a chance to respond. He didn't take it. "Because I don't, and we have to try something."

"I agree," Lauzoril said.

"As do I," Nevron said. He glowered at Jhesrhi. "But you'd better be as competent as you claim."

That seemed to settle it, for Samas pouted and held his peace thereafter. And, though no one said it outright, Bareris sensed that the zulkirs would expect the Brotherhood of the Griffon to do the hardest fighting and face the greatest peril, just as in the battle against the Aglarondans. He had a guilty sense that, as Aoth's friend, he ought to resent the unfairness, but he couldn't. Because if the sellswords were at the forefront and he was with them, it would maximize his chances of getting at Tsagoth.

Jet carried Aoth soaring over the warriors of the Brotherhood of the Griffon who didn't ride the steeds from which the company took its name-ranks of armored foot soldiers, lines of bowmen, lancers on restless, prancing horses, and artillerymen making final, fussy adjustments to their trebuchets and ballistae. Viewing them, he wished, as he often did at such moments, that he could be with every component of his army simultaneously to oversee everything it did.

"Well, you can't,"' said Jet. "So let's get on with it."

Not the most inspirational words that ever hurled fighting men into the jaws of death, but Aoth supposed they'd do. He looked across the gray sky, caught Bareris's eye, and dipped the head of his spear to signal. The bard nodded, raised a horn to his lips, and blew a call amplified by magic. Scores of griffon riders hurtled at the Dread Ring.

Blood orcs on the battlements bellowed to see them coming, while their undead comrades, rotting cadavers and naked skeletons, stood stolidly and waited with weapons in hand. Bareris struck up a song that stabbed terror and confusion into the minds of some of the swine-faced living warriors, and they bolted and plummeted from the wall-walk. Aoth pointed his spear and hurled a dazzling flare of lightning that blasted both live and lifeless defenders to smoking fragments. Gaedynn loosed one of his special arrows, and in a heartbeat, brambles sprouted where it struck, growing and twisting outward from the shaft to catch Szass Tam's minions like a spiderweb. Those griffon riders who lacked a means of magical attack shot shaft after shaft from their short but powerful compound bows, and hit a target more often than not.

The attackers focused their efforts on those portions of the south wall commanding the approach to the Ring's largest gate.

But since they were wheeling and swooping above the castle, the foes on every stretch of battlement could shoot back. Volleys of arrows and quarrels arced up at them. Necromancers in scarlet-and-black regalia conjured blasts of chilling darkness and barrages of shadow-splinters.

Pierced with half a dozen shafts, a griffon screeched and plummeted, carrying its rider with it. The warrior tossed his bow away, wrapped his arms around his mount's feathery neck, and they crashed to earth in one of the castle baileys. An instant later, another steed fell, both the griffon and the sellsword buckled in the saddle already slain and rotted by some necromantic curse.

It was a nasty situation, but it would have been far worse if not for the griffons' agility and the armoring enchantments Lallara and her subordinates had cast on them immediately prior to taking off. As it was, Aoth judged that he and his companions could continue as they were for a while, providing essential cover for their comrades on the ground.

A mental prompt sent Jet swinging to the right, toward three of the wizards who posed the greatest immediate threat. Aoth hammered them bloody with a downpour of conjured hail, then heard a vast muddled sound at his back that told him the charge had begun.

Khouryn had claimed that if Lady Luck favored them, a ferocious but more or less witless frontal assault might actually take the fortress. He'd judged that his bold assertion might help convince the zulkirs to endorse Aoth's plan. But he understood war far too well to believe what he was saying.

Still, he meant to attack as if he imagined he truly could get over the towering black wall and kill everything on the other side.

The feint had to look real, and if he balked, his men would too.

Besides, he'd told the truth about one thing: in battle, the unlikeliest things sometimes happened.

He kissed his truesilver ring through his steel-and-leather gauntlet. His wife had given it to him on their betrothal day. At the same time, he studied the battlements above the gate. When it seemed to him that there were fewer defenders up there and that a goodly portion of those who remained were busy loosing arrows at griffon riders, he drew a deep breath and bellowed a command. At once other officers and sergeants shouted, relaying his order. Bugles blew, transmitting it still farther.

Then he started to run, and the horde of men arrayed at his back pounded after him. He had no difficulty staying in the front rank. His legs might be shorter than human ones, but he fancied he carried the weight of armor more lightly than most.

Behind him, he knew, some men were carrying ladders or rolling the huge battering ram called Tempus's Boot along. Not part of the charge itself, acting more or less in concert with the griffon riders, archers and wizards sought to slay any creature that showed itself on the battlements. Squads of horsemen watched and waited to intercept any threat that might emerge from the fortress and try to drive in on the flanks of the running infantrymen.

No doubt it all helped, but none of it helped enough to make the charge anything but a desperate, dangerous endeavor. Arrows whined down from on high, slipped past the shields raised to catch them, and men fell. And even if the men weren't badly hurt when they hit the ground, sometimes their comrades trampled them.

Long, thick veins pulsing and bulging beneath their skins, bloated, hulking creatures heaved themselves over the parapet above the gate. The festering things looked like they might have been hill giants in life, before the necromancers got hold of them.

The drop from the lofty battlements didn't appear to harm them. They picked themselves up and lumbered toward the head of the charge. Khouryn aimed himself and his spear at the nearest.

Jhesrhi, Nevron, and eleven of the latter's subordinates had prepared a patch of ground near the animal pens and baggage carts, close enough to the Dread Ring to monitor the progress of the attack but far enough away, they hoped, to make them inconspicuous.

Smelling of sulfur and sweat, Nevron scowled at the fight as he seemed to scowl at everything, "If the necromancers aren't distracted now, I doubt they ever will be. Let's get started."

Standing in a circle, reciting in unison, the wizards chanted words of power. At first, the only effect was to make Jhesrhi's entire body feel as numb as a foot that had fallen asleep. Then, abruptly, she seemed to float up through the top of her own head, to gaze down on the corporeal self she'd left behind. Her body was still speaking the incantation and would continue to do so until she took possession of it again, but it wasn't capable of doing anything else. That was why a squad of Nevron's guards was standing watch.

She looked around and found a single, silvery, translucent form floating beside her. Only Nevron, the infamous zulkir himself, had exited his body more quickly than she. She felt a twinge of satisfaction.

It took only a few moments for the rest of the assembly to rise like butterflies from cocoons. Then Nevron gestured, turned, and flew north, and everyone else followed.

They didn't go far before the zulkir dived and led them into the ground, where, attuned to the elements of earth and water, they could see as well as before. They beheld soil and rock but peered through them too, both at the same time.

That made it easy to swim like fish to their destination, the soft ground and subterranean stream they intended to command. Nevron and the other Red Wizards recited new spells, and elementals took on vaguely manlike forms, each in the midst of whatever substance was its essence. Whether they were merely revealing themselves or the magic was actually creating them was a question that had been debated since the dawn of time.

Either way, Jhesrhi had no need of such intermediaries. Not for this task. She whispered to the earth and moisture surrounding and interpenetrating her spirit form, and she felt them stir in response.

Malark watched the battle unfold from the apex of one of the castle's fanglike towers. The elevation, coupled with the six arched windows placed at regular intervals around the minaret, provided a reasonably good view.

Which, though useful, had the unfortunate effect of feeding his frustration. The spectacle of so much slaughter made him itch to kill someone himself. But alas, there were times when a commander had to hold himself back from the fray to make sure he gave the proper orders at the proper time.

He tried to tell himself that, in fact, he was killing, that his were the guiding will and intelligence, and the Ring's garrison was simply his weapon. But that perspective only helped a little.

Suddenly, with a puff of displaced air, Tsagoth appeared beside him. The blood fiend's innate ability to translate himself through space made him an ideal choice to carry messages.

Tsagoth said, "Frikhesp reports that Nevron and his assistants are trying to undermine the wall."

"Good." Malark took another look out a window. "And the griffon riders are fully committed. Let's close the trap. Tell Frikhesp… no, wait." He strode to Tsagoth and gripped the scaly wrist of one of the demon's lower arms. "To the Abyss with commanding from the rear. Take me with you."

Aoth glimpsed a flicker of motion below. He looked down. All around the inside of the Ring, doors-big ones, like the doors of a barn-were swinging open.

The first creatures to emerge looked like dozens of twisting, writhing scraps of parchment dancing in the hot air rising from a fire, but Aoth recognized them as skin kites. Behind them hopped gigantic eagles, their eyes milky or rotted away entirely, their flesh withered and decayed, skeletons in armor riding on their backs. The undead birds spread ragged, leprous wings.

Aoth realized that the master of the castle, whoever the whoreson was, had meant for the besieging force to believe he had no aerial cavalry to counter their own. To that end, he'd hidden his flyers in what must be extensive vaults underground. Living avians couldn't have tolerated such confinement, but undead could.

Aoth rained fire on the new additions to the battle, trying to destroy as many as possible while he and his comrades still had the advantage of height. He yelled to everyone within earshot to do likewise, and Gaedynn loosed an arrow that became a lightning-bolt in flight.

It wasn't going to be enough. The griffon riders situation had abruptly become untenable, and they needed to disengage.

Assuming they could. Aoth needed Bareris to sound a retreat that everyone would hear even amid the howling chaos of combat, then wield his music to help hold the undead flyers back. He cast about for the bard, then cursed. Tsagoth was riding an especially large eagle, and Bareris was flying straight at him. Judging from the snarl contorting his face, Aoth doubted his friend was aware of anything else.

Tempus's Boot, a massive, iron-capped, soth-wood log, swung back and forth in its cradle of rope, smashing at the crack where the two halves of the Ring's gate interlocked. Khouryn had somehow ended up in proximity to the ram without intending to but couldn't honestly say he was sorry, because the device had a roof of wood covered in wet hide. It shielded the operators from the stones and burning oil showering down from above.

Its relative immunity to those forms of attack made it a prime target for the undead monstrosities the enemy had sent over the wall. Creatures somewhat resembling the big goblin-kin called bugbears, but with gaunt bodies covered in oozing sores and a tentacle lashing beneath each arm, rushed toward the ram, leaped high, and bore some of the engine's defenders down beneath them. They wrapped the sellswords in their tentacles, plunged their jagged tangs into their bodies, and guzzled. The shrieking soldiers' bodies started to flatten as though their vampiric assailants were leeching bone instead of blood.

Khouryn charged, swung his urgrosh-his spear was long gone, stuck deep in the body of his first opponent-and struck off a bonedrinker's head before it even noticed the danger. But the next one wouldn't be so easy, it jumped up from its kill and sprang at him, tentacles whirling like whips and clawed hands poised to rake.

Khouryn ducked and sidestepped at the same time. He chopped, and the urgrosh's axe blade crunched through the bonedrinker's ribs and into the dry, leathery tissue beneath. The undead bugbear staggered a pace but didn't go down. Khouryn yanked his weapon free and sidestepped again, trying to get behind the brute-

Something that felt like a noose but could only be a tentacle wrapped tight around his ankle and jerked his leg out from under him. The bonedrinker whirled, pounced, and carried him down. It gripped and entangled him with all its various limbs, immobilizing his right arm and pulling him close enough to make it impossible to swing the urgrosh. It lowered its head and bit at his throat. The pressure was excruciating and nearly cut off his air, even though his assailant's fangs had yet to penetrate his dwarf-forged mail. He suspected they'd worry their way through in another heartbeat or so.

He took the urgrosh in his left hand, reversed his grip, and stabbed the spike into the side of the bonedrinker's head. Bone cracked, and the creature went limp.

Khouryn's impulse was to stay on the ground at least until he caught his breath, but impulse evidently didn't understand that it would be a bad idea to let another foe catch him supine. He crawled out from under the altered bugbear's corpse, clambered to his feet, cast about, and saw that other warriors had dispatched the rest of the bonedrinkers.

But now a dog the size of a house, its form made of mangled, rotting bodies fused together, was loping toward the Boot. Near it, a pale flash of wizardry froze in ice a ladder and the men struggling to climb it. After a moment, the trapped forms, whether made of wood or flesh and bone, broke apart under their own weight.

When is that damned wall going to fall? Khouryn wondered. Were getting massacred down here. He strove to control his breathing, took a fresh grip on his weapon, and moved to place himself in the path of the charnel hound.

A shock of cold and carrion stink ran through the ground. It jolted Jhesrhi, and for an instant the packed soil around her became black, opaque, as if she still occupied her physical body and had been buried alive.

When vision returned, she kept on trying to make earth and water flow as she desired, but now she met resistance. The stuff crawled back at her, or, if not the matter itself, some hostile power infusing it did so. The chill and fetid reek intensified, nauseating her, making her dizzy. Meanwhile, the elementals turned and advanced on those who'd summoned them.

Jhesrhi realized the necromancers had expected an attack at this site and had set a trap. They'd tainted the soil with graveyard dirt, and the stream with water that had drowned men and in which their bodies had lain. The desecration had turned this whole buried area into a weapon they could use at will.

And unfortunately, mere comprehension was no defense, not when she felt so weak and sick. Frigid, slimy hands congealed and clutched at her, while at the periphery of her vision, an earth elemental-warped into a necromental now-grabbed a Red Wizard's astral form in three-fingered hands and ripped it in two, putting out its silvery light forever.

A thought sufficed to send Jet hurtling after Bareris and his griffon. Maybe Aoth could persuade the bard to break off. Failing that, perhaps the two of them fighting in concert could kill Tsagoth quickly.

Aoth glimpsed motion at the corner of his vision and snapped his head around. Armored in black metal and mounted, like Tsagoth, on a particularly large eagle-thing, a huge, undead warrior was driving in on his flank. It wore no helm, perhaps because its gray, earless, hairless head, the eyelids and lips sewn shut with blue thread, often terrified its opponents. It held a javelin with a point carved from green crystal raised and ready to throw.

But first it gestured with its offhand. A sudden spasm made Aoth cry out and go rigid, while Jet's wings flailed out of time with one another. Then the deathbringer-as Aoth belatedly remembered the fearsome things were called-threw the javelin.

Still wracked with pain, Aoth could do nothing to protect himself. But Jet screeched, denying his own agony, and brought his convulsing body under control. He veered, and the javelin missed. The deathbringer immediately pulled two flails, one for each hand, from the tubular cases buckled to its saddle.

To the Abyss with that. Given a choice, Aoth knew better than to fight a deathbringer hand-to-hand even if he'd had the time. He drew a deep breath, chanted, and hurled fire from the head of his spear. The blast tore the eagle out from under its rider and ripped it into burning scraps.

Unless Aoth was lucky, neither the explosion nor the fall that came after would slay the deathbringer. But maybe he and the other griffon riders could get away before the undead champion procured another mount.

Aoth cast about, seeking Bareris again. His friend and Tsagoth were wheeling around one another in the usual manner of seasoned aerial combatants, each seeking the high air or some comparable advantage. Meanwhile, one of the bizarre creatures called skirrs, things like gigantic, mummified bats right down to the decayed wrappings, had climbed higher still for a plunge at the pallid target below. Blind with hate, Bareris evidently hadn't noticed it.

So Aoth and Jet had to dispose of the skirr as well. By the time they finished, half a dozen skeletal riders had flown to Tsagoth's aid. Having surrounded Bareris, they too were maneuvering, looking for a good opportunity to strike.

And Aoth hesitated. A warmage's most potent magic tended to produce big, messy flares of destructive power, and at first glance, he couldn't see how to scour Bareris's opponents out of the sky without hitting the bard and his steed, also.

Then Mirror, currently a murky parody of an orc, floated up into the midst of the fight, brandished his scimitar, and released a dazzling burst of his own sacred power. The undead eagles and their skeleton riders fell burning from the air. Tsagoth appeared unharmed, but, his mount destroyed, disappeared, translating himself through space to spare himself a fall.

The divine light, an expression of life and health, hadn't hurt Bareris's griffon, either, but the bard himself slumped on its back, part of his white mane charred away, his alabaster skin blistered and smoking. As Aoth flew closer, he wondered if the ghost couldn't have wielded his magic with more finesse and spared his friend, and then, abruptly, he understood. Mirror had deliberately included Bareris in the effect, willing to risk his existence if that was what it took to slap the crazy fury out of him.

Bareris straightened up and groggily peered about. Judging that he'd approached near enough to make himself heard, Aoth shouted, "Blow the retreat! Help me get our people out of here!"

Bareris shook his head, perhaps in negation, perhaps to clear it. "Tsagoth…"

"Gone! And if you stay to look for him, you'll just get yourself killed, and Tsagoth and Szass Tam will win! That's not any kind of revenge!"

Bareris peered about, jerked his head in a nod, and raised his horn to his lips.

The wizard in scarlet and maroon-a lean man of middling height for a human, with a mark on his chin-brandished an unusually thick and sturdy-looking black wand. Shadowy tentacles burst from the ground under the feet of four of Khouryn's spearmen, whipped around them, and dragged them down.

Khouryn couldn't imagine what had possessed the fellow to descend from the relative safety of the battlements into the thick of the melee. To say the least, it was uncharacteristic behavior for a Red Wizard. But whatever he was thinking, his spells were doing considerable damage. Fortunately, Khouryn expected he could put a stop to it if he could only close with him. In his experience, it was a rare mage who could throw spells and dodge an urgrosh at the same time. In fact, it was a rare mage who could dodge an urgrosh at all.

A yellow-eyed dread warrior delayed him for a heartbeat. He had to chop its sword hand off and one leg out from under it, before he could get around it and advance. Then he heard a horn sounding the retreat, the high, blaring notes somehow cutting through the crashing, howling din of combat.

An instant later, the griffon riders winged away from the Dread Ring with other flyers in pursuit. The sight gave Khouryn a jolt of surprise. The castle wasn't supposed to have any aerial cavalry worth mentioning, and, caught up in the carnage in front of the gate, he hadn't noticed them until now.

Flying at the back of their company, Aoth, Bareris, and other spellcasters hurled great blasts of magic, seemingly expending every iota of their power to hold the undead back. The warmage painted a wall made of rainbows across the sky. The undead singer bellowed and shattered the bones of three cadaverous birds and the skeletal archers on their backs.

Khouryn wondered if Aoth was running because it was death to stay any longer, or because the east wall was down. But if Jhesrhi and Nevron had succeeded at the latter, surely Khouryn would have noticed some sign of that. He felt a sick near-certainty that this costly gambit had failed.

But now was not the time to think about it. If the griffon riders were fleeing, the infantry had to do the same, and it was up to him to make sure that as many as possible got away safely. He just prayed to the Lord of the Twin Axes that the run away from the fortress wouldn't prove as difficult as the charge up to it.

At first, the grip of the phantom hands chilled and dulled Jhesrhi. Her mind seemed to soften and run, as if it were rotting away.

Then, however, revulsion stabbed through the crippling fog. Under the best of circumstances, she disliked being touched, and the poisonous clutch of the dead, here in solid, claustrophobic darkness, was unbearable.

Loathing threatened to explode into panic, and she strained for self-control. She had to think. Find the way out of this.

She couldn't call on earth or water for succor. The necromancers had corrupted them. Another power would have to liberate her. Air, itself emblematic of freedom. There was none here in this frigid quicksand snare, but she could will it here.

She shouted words of power. Dead men's hands tried to cover her mouth, but they were too slow. Wind screamed from elsewhere, forcing the poisonous earth back, making a bubble of pressure and emptiness in the midst of it. Jhesrhi floated at the center of the hollow.

It was a start, but she still needed a way out that wouldn't require swimming through tainted ground. She spoke to the wind, and, alternately whirling like a drill and pounding like a hammer, it cut a shaft to the surface. The circle of gray sky at the top seemed as beautiful as anything she'd ever seen.

It was only as she flew toward it that she remembered her colleagues and looked to see how they were faring. More of the luminous soul-forms had vanished, slain by the necromancers' curse. But some remained, and she wondered if she could do anything to help them.

Then new entities, grotesque as the necromentals but far more varied in shape, exploded into view. They roared and hurled themselves at the necromancers' servants, and their intervention allowed Nevron and his subordinates to break away. They fled into the vertical tunnel, and Jhesrhi led them up into the sky.

Afterward, they scurried back to their bodies as fast as they could. It only made sense. They'd failed in their mission, the enemy's assault had shaken them, and it was possible the necromancers had other tricks to play.

Jhesrhi plunged into her corporeal form in much the same way she'd exited it. For a moment, her flesh felt heavy as lead. As she halted her droning repetition of the ritual incantation, she caught a foul smell and peered around.

Six of her Red Wizard collaborators sprawled on the ground, their bodies so decayed that it looked as if they'd been dead for days.

The next instant, demons and devils appeared, their various blades and claws poised to strike. It was plain that their controller's will had snatched them out of combat unexpectedly, and, hideous as they were, their surprise might have seemed comical had the situation been less grim.

Or at least Jhesrhi found it droll, but, like most mages, she had some familiarity with such entities. Nevron's human bodyguards cried out and lifted their weapons, and the spirits, evidently happy they still had something to fight, rounded on them.

"Enough!" Nevron barked, and all his servants, mortal and infernal, froze.

The zulkir looked at the dead men on the ground and sneered as though their failure to survive made them contemptible. Then, his crimson robes flapping around his legs, he strode in the direction of the Dread Ring, no doubt to see how the rest of the battle was going. Jhesrhi followed.

It soon became apparent that the men who'd attacked the south face of the stronghold were retreating. When she saw how many of their number they were leaving behind, torn, tangled, and trampled on the ground, Jhesrhi felt sick all over again.