The pearly, seemingly sourceless glow of enchantment gleamed on swords, spears, shields, staves, wands, and crystal. The fine workmanship would have been apparent to anyone, but Aoth’s fire-kissed eyes could also discern the force of enchantment pent inside the articles.
Orgurth peered around the spacious, high-ceilinged cave, part forge, part conjuring chamber, and part armory, and said, “Well, all this should help, shouldn’t it?”
“It might,” Aoth replied.
After a round of introductions and explanations, Shaugar—the older cave dweller in the three-eyed wooden mask who’d helped haul Aoth and Orgurth to safety—and Kanilak had taken their new allies on a tour of their cavern home. The older man didn’t seem to resent the lack of gushing optimism in Aoth’s reply. But the youth glared like the owl whose visage he wore.
“No one crafts more powerful talismans than the Silverbloods!” he said.
Aoth supposed that within the borders of Rashemen, that might be true. As it turned out, the Wychlaran reserved all the mystic arts to their own sex except for the creation of magical weapons and tools. Males with a talent for wizardry or commerce with the divine could use their skills in that arena, but only if willing to join one of the groups of “Old Ones” sequestered in the Running Rocks. The Silverbloods were one such group.
It seemed like a dismal sort of life to Aoth, but so far, he hadn’t noticed any indication that the male spellcasters chafed at their subservience to the hathrans or their obligatory seclusion. Of course, the undead Raumvirans outside their granite gates had given them other things to think about.
And unfortunately, despite Kanilak’s touchy pride in the potency of Silverblood magic, the contents of the armory weren’t likely to solve the problem. Not by themselves, at any rate. Aoth took a moment to frame an explanation that, he hoped, would avoid giving further offense.
“I see the quality of your craftsmanship,” he said. “But many of these articles aren’t finished.” And thus, not as formidable as they ought to be. “If they were, you would have shipped them off to the hathrans and the Iron Lord’s warriors already.”
“We may have time to finish some,” Shaugar said. “If the siege drags on.”
“It won’t,” Aoth replied. “We slowed the enemy down when we destroyed their stone thrower. But it won’t keep them out for long.”
As though to validate his assertion, a boom reverberated through the caves, and the floor shivered. An undead mage had cast destructive magic at one of the stone seals.
“We also,” Aoth continued once the echoes died away, “have to face the fact that we don’t even have enough fighters to use all the weapons at the same time.”
The Silverbloods were apparently one of the largest enclaves of Old Ones. That, combined with their level of expertise, was likely why the Raumvirans had decided to attack them. But even so, there were only a few dozen of them.
“Then each of us,” Kanilak said, “will empty one talisman of power, then switch to another.”
Aoth nodded as he might have to a raw recruit on the training field, where even painfully obvious thinking warranted encouragement. “That’s exactly what we’ll do. Still, we’ll have the problem that constructs are sometimes resistant to spells. I’m an accomplished war mage, but if you were watching, you saw I couldn’t just dissolve the stone thrower. I had to chuck it over a cliff and let the violence of the fall destroy it.”
Orgurth grinned an ugly grin. “Then it’s hopeless.”
“No,” Aoth said. “Because useful as they are, automatons have their limitations too, and we’re going to exploit them.”
“Hold on!” Kanilak said. “You aren’t the leader here! You’re just a stranger we took in for kindness’s sake when you were running for your life!”
“That’s true,” Aoth replied. “But even if you’ve never heard of me, I’ve been commanding armies for a hundred years. I know how to be a war leader. Do you need one?”
The young man hesitated. “At moments when all Rashemen was in danger, the hathrans called the Old Ones forth. And we fought well!”
“I believe it,” Aoth replied. “But did Old Ones plan strategy and direct the battles, or did you simply play the roles the witches and lodge masters assigned to you?”
Shaugar put his hand on Kanilak’s shoulder. “Go easy, son. Captain Fezim’s not belittling the Silverbloods, and obviously, if we don’t like his plan, we won’t follow it. But considering that we haven’t even managed to come up with one of our own, it makes sense to at least hear his thoughts.”
“Thank you,” said Aoth. “One of a golem’s weaknesses is that it’s a made thing. That’s never helped me much because I’m not a maker. I can turn a weapon stronger and sharper and store power inside it, but that’s all. You fellows, though, are master enchanters, and I assume those who make can unmake.”
Now it was Shaugar’s turn to hesitate. “It’s an interesting notion,” he said at length, “but no Old One has ever crafted anything like those metal beasts outside.”
“You must animate something,” Aoth replied. “The underlying principles will be the same. And you don’t even have to disable the automatons permanently. If you can just cripple or confuse them for a few heartbeats, that should be good enough.”
“How’s that?” Orgurth asked.
“Because most of the enemy are constructs. I don’t know why it’s that way. There wasn’t any shortage of actual ghouls and such garrisoning the Fortress of the Half-Demon or raiding elsewhere in Rashemen, for that matter. But still, we don’t have that many reanimated Raumvirans to contend with, especially because the tumbling boulders squashed some.”
“And without the Raumvirans to control them,” Kanilak said, “the golems don’t count for anything!” The possibilities inherent in the notion had finally purged the belligerence from his tone.
“That’s right,” said Aoth. “It will work if we can control the timing and flow of the action so that, when the automatons fail, the undead are where we can get at them.” He looked to Shaugar. “What do you think?”
“I think,” said the man in the three-eyed mask, “you should come tell the others what you just told us.”
The wordless psychic call came midway through Dai Shan’s watch, and so eagerly had he awaited it that he nearly responded straightaway. But his father had taught him—sometimes with his fist or his cane—that a Shou merchant lord always thought before he acted, and a moment’s reflection sufficed to convince him he shouldn’t simply abandon sentry duty. As the grisly detritus throughout the fortress attested, the North Country was full of trolls and similar dangers, and he, Vandar, and Jet had no way of sealing up the Fortress of the Half-Demon to prevent incursions from the benighted wilderness outside.
And even had it been otherwise, he didn’t want his companions in adversity to decide he was behaving suspiciously.
Thus, he waited for Jet to lumber up the steps to the battlements above the gate to relieve him. As he’d half expected, the surly beast ignored his greeting. Nothing made the griffon resent his current inability to fly more keenly that having to negotiate the often cramped and narrow castle stairways.
Dai Shan descended to the courtyard with its litter of broken golems and frozen corpses, an assortment of the latter missing their heads for a reason he had yet to understand. Glancing upward to make sure Jet wasn’t watching him instead of the snowy wasteland beyond the walls, he slipped into what had once been a stable. The enclosure had a couple of mangled corpses of its own, both, by the look of them, zombies before Aoth and Vandar’s warriors hacked and battered them to pieces.
The Shou slipped into one of the stalls, where neither Jet nor Vandar would see him simply by peering through the doorway. Then he sat down cross-legged on the frozen dirt floor with its scatter of ancient rotten straw, breathed slowly and deeply, and emptied his mind of everything but his purpose.
When he felt himself centered, poised, his consciousness leaped from his body to hurtle south like an arrow. After an instant of exhilarating, almost dizzying lightness, he suddenly stood between a whitewashed longhouse with the heads of dragons, unicorns, and hounds carved into the eaves and a smallish amphitheater dug out of the ground.
His return to Immilmar was possible because he’d previously created a shadow and sent it on ahead of him. He’d initially told Jet and Vandar the truth when he’d said he’d exhausted the capacity to spawn such servants, but he’d lied when claiming it had yet to renew itself. For why should his rivals share in whatever knowledge he garnered?
Unfortunately, it had taken the phantom a while to make the trek, for, tireless as it was, it hadn’t been able to travel by day. Nor had that been its only deficiency. Its thoughts murky and inhuman—stupid, if the truth be told—it hadn’t known any better than to lurk near the Witches’ Hall, the one place in the capital where someone was most likely to detect it.
But apparently, nobody had, and now that Dai Shan had inhabited it, obliterating its own identity in the process, he wouldn’t linger. He whispered a charm to cloak himself in darkness, then skulked away.
As he neared a little stand of oaks, he caught rhyming words and registered a sort of rhythmic pressure impinging on his arcane sensitivities. He paused and peered because he recognized the voice. It was Yhelbruna herself working magic alone in the freezing night.
Or trying, anyway. Dai Shan couldn’t identify the language she was speaking. Some tongue of the Feywild, perhaps. But as a mage of sorts in his own specialized fashion, he recognized the strident insistence in her tone. It was the way ritual casters sounded when their magic was failing, when the spirits ignored them and reality balked at bending to their will.
Yet this was the most celebrated hathran in Rashemen struggling to exert power in what was surely a consecrated and thus conducive spot. Her current lack of success was accordingly strange, so strange Dai Shan felt tempted to continue spying.
He wouldn’t, though, because time was short. He needed to stick to his plan, and besides, even if she was having an off night, no one was more likely to take notice of him than the witch in the leather mask.
He prowled on to Blackstone House, a shabby excuse for an inn but the best the Rashemi capital had to offer and the establishment where he’d secured accommodations for himself and his retainers. He surveyed what the rough exterior timber wall afforded in the way of hand- and toeholds, and then he clambered upward.
Halfway to the shuttered window that was his destination, he realized he didn’t actually know if his followers still occupied the rooms on the other side. They might have gone home to Thesk after his disappearance, especially if Bez had reported him dead.
Oh, well, if someone other than a Shou responded to his tapping, Dai Shan could likely still elicit information somehow and ensure his informant’s silence afterward as well.
As it turned out, though, it was moon-faced, round-shouldered Cheng Lin who hesitantly opened the shutters and goggled out. “Master!” he yelped.
Inwardly, Dai Shan winced at the volume of his retainer’s voice, the naked astonishment in his expression, and, well, everything raucous and raw. With attendants of this caliber, was it any wonder he had to do everything himself?
“My dutiful helper,” he said. “It gladdens me to find you and the others faithfully awaiting my return.” The gods forbid they should actually have gotten up off their arses and come looking for him. “Perhaps you’ll do me the profound favor of stepping back from the window.”
“Yes, Master!” the other Shou answered, and Dai Shan climbed inside.
As his master’s major domo on the road, Cheng Lin had his own little private room. A couple of Shou voices murmured on the other side of the door, but they didn’t sound excited. Apparently no one else had heard the functionary squawk.
“Captain Bez told everyone you died in the fighting,” Cheng Lin said.
“How kind of the illustrious soldier to mention me. I imagine it was in the course of laying claim to the griffons.”
Dai Shan pulled the shutters closed, making the room darker, so dark, in fact, that the shroud of shadow that still clung to him all but smothered the glow of the little oil lamp altogether. The scant light remaining just barely gleamed on the tusks and glass eyes of the stuffed boar’s head on the wall.
“He didn’t,” Cheng Lin said. “I mean, he tried to take the griffons, but the main witch, that Yhelbruna, wouldn’t let him.”
Dai Shan felt a surge of excitement potent enough that habit alone might prove insufficient to preserve his composure. He took a breath and made a deliberate effort to steady himself.
“Then, if I understand my loyal assistant correctly, the beasts remain unclaimed in their invisible birdcage.”
Cheng Lin nodded, his double chin wobbling. “Yes.”
“In that case, please relate all that’s occurred hereabouts since the brave captain was generous enough to grant me passage aboard his skyship.”
Cheng Lin obeyed in a somewhat disjointed, backfilling fashion, but still, the tale of Bez’s disappointment, botched assassination attempt, and subsequent flight emerged clearly enough. At the end, the pudgy servant said, “I wrote to your father to tell him of your death. I mean, your supposed death. I had no reason to doubt what the southerner said.”
Dai Shan’s thoughts turned to three of the dozens of empty-hand techniques he’d mastered—the first, a blow with the heel of the palm to the base of the nose; the second, a chop to the throat; and the third, a stab to the solar plexus with stiffened fingers. Any one of them would kill Cheng Lin instantly.
“That was exactly the right thing to do,” he said. “I commend my retainer on the diligence with which he attends to his responsibilities. Has my lord father’s answer arrived?”
“Not yet, Master.”
“When it does, you will of course understand that because he wrote based on false information, we can only truly serve him by disregarding instructions to return home or do anything else that would preclude the completion of our errand. And to avoid confusing those less discerning than yourself, you won’t disclose that such invalid orders even exist.”
Cheng Lin hesitated. “Master, our lord, your father, has always said that when he gives a command—”
“He expects unconditional obedience. As well he might, given that for longer than either you or I have been alive, he’s been the most frightening man in Thesk. Still, he is in Thesk, while duty has led you to a land less civilized. Perhaps, paragon of prudence that you are, you should ask yourself who’s the most frightening man in Rashemen.”
Cheng Lin swallowed. “Master, naturally, as always, I depend on you for guidance as to how I may best serve our house.”
“Which is why I trust my wise aide above all others and will always reward his fidelity as it deserves.”
“Thank you, Master.” Cheng Lin paused in the manner of one deliberating whether to speak further or hold his peace. In the end, reticence yielded to curiosity. “May I ask, then, if we’re aren’t going home even if our lord orders us back, what are we going to do?”
What, indeed? If not for the indignity implicit in acknowledging perplexity to someone as lowly and lacking in grace as Cheng Lin, Dai Shan might have conceded that his was an excellent question.
Dai Shan had to obtain the wild griffons to pull ahead of his brothers in their lifelong competition to be proclaimed their father’s heir. And at least now he’d learned the beasts were still outside Immilmar and discovered what else was going on.
Still, what could he do? If he revealed himself and laid claim to the griffons, Yhelbruna would be no more inclined to believe him than she had Bez. Less, considering that Dai Shan hadn’t even led a war party of his own into the north. Falconer and the rest of his undead confederates, who’d promised him the winged creatures in exchange for his treachery, were gone. And without such formidable assistance, he and his handful of Shou had no hope of making off with the beasts either by stealth or force of arms.
What, then, did that leave? Dai Shan didn’t know—yet—so he supposed that for the moment, he’d do well to focus on the one aspect of the situation that was already clear.
After the victory at the Fortress of the Half-Demon, Vandar Cherlinka did have a legitimate claim on the wild griffons. So did Aoth Fezim. The latter had apparently emerged from the dark maze somewhere far away. Jet, who sensibly still didn’t trust Dai Shan, declined to divulge his master’s precise whereabouts, but the familiar could speak for the war mage by virtue of their mystical bond.
It followed, then, that Dai Shan could allow neither Vandar nor Jet to return to Immilmar. He thanked his patrons in shadow that, never injured as badly as the griffon to begin with, he’d recovered more quickly.
Still, even impaired, the beast was dangerous. So, in his dense barbarian way, was Vandar, and he’d never been seriously hurt in the first place.
Plainly, the killings would take some doing, but Dai Shan could manage them. He simply needed to take each of his victims by surprise at a time and place that would preclude the others noticing any subsequent commotion.
“Just bide here for now,” he told Cheng Lin, “and don’t tell anyone of my visit. My time in your company is drawing short, but I’ll return soon in a more permanent sort of way.”
Cheng Lin grinned. “I thought I was talking to one of your shadows.”
Dai Shan could only deplore the overt display of self-satisfaction. Still, perhaps the man wasn’t a complete idiot after all.
Dai Shan bade him farewell and then separated himself from the vessel he’d inhabited as easily as he might have flipped off a loose mitten. And like a mitten that no longer had a hand inside it, what remained of the shadow collapsed into formlessness on its way to nonexistence.
Dai Shan sensed but didn’t actually witness the final obliteration, even though the whole process only took a heartbeat. By then, he was back in the stable.
* * * * *
Graven with arcane sigils on the side facing inward, the granite slab could lock in place or swing like an ordinary gate on hinges, depending on the requirements of the moment. Aoth’s fire-kissed eyes could make out the silvery web of potentiality that accomplished those functions but not how it operated.
Fortunately, they could likewise discern the newer patterns of malignancy festering inside the rock like aneurysms waiting to rupture, and that magic he did understand. It fell within his field of expertise.
He motioned to the gate with the head of his spear. “The undead mean to come through here.”
“Are you sure?” Shaugar asked. “They’ve thrown thunderbolts and such at all the entries.”
“So would I in their place. Such a bombardment makes it harder for the defenders to decide where you really mean to breach, and if you do manage to knock something down, you can always adjust your plans accordingly. They didn’t blast through, though, and in the midst of all the distractions, someone has done a masterful job of rotting out this particular chunk of stone. It’ll crumble when the Raumvirans want it to.”
Shaugar hitched his three-eyed mask up slightly so he could scratch the gray-stubbled chin beneath. “They already did crumble the main gate, and according to your orc friend, we’re doing a miserable job of building barricades. He says drunken goblins could do better.”
“Some of the enemy will charge in that way, and we’ll need men in place to oppose them. Still, that will be a feint. The main assault will come here, where the dead think it will surprise us. But now that we know, we’re going to surprise them instead.
Right?”
Shaugar squared his shoulders. “Right. As long as we make our preparations in time. Now that we know where they need to work, I’ll round up the right people for the job.”
* * * * *
Once he turned his thoughts to the problem, Dai Shan realized one sure way to kill each of his intended victims without the other overhearing or chancing on the scene at an inopportune moment. He needed to begin with Vandar and dispose of the berserker while the two of them were wandering the dark maze.
As they were currently. Vandar was in the lead and, now that days of shared effort and hardship had dulled the edge of mistrust, didn’t appear to suspect anything amiss. Conditions were essentially ideal, and it only remained for Dai Shan to choose a method of execution.
His style of magic could confuse, hinder, or even harm a target, but the effects were variable. When a caster was particularly unlucky, his spell simply served to warn an adversary that he was under attack. Whereas one murderous blow, properly administered to an unsuspecting victim already conveniently within striking distance, would likely resolve the confrontation in an instant.
Dai Shan rolled his shoulders, inhaled through his nostrils, and exhaled through his mouth. He visualized himself lunging and driving his fist into the vertebrae at the top of Vandar’s spine.
Vandar halted abruptly, just before the spot where a weathered-looking statue of skeletal Jergal, depicted writing with a quill at his desk, sat at the intersection of two vault-lined passages. “Hold up,” he whispered.
“What is it?” Dai Shan answered just as softly, meanwhile setting aside his homicidal intent for at least a moment or two. It would be poor timing to strike down the berserker just as more hostile shadow creatures came scuttling out of the dark. The Rashemi’s back would still be there for the breaking after the skirmish was through.
“Something’s coming,” Vandar said, “something different or bigger than what we’ve grown accustomed to, or at least I think so. I can’t see or hear it, but my spear and sword sense it, and the knowledge is bleeding across to me.”
Dai Shan took that somewhat unlikely sounding assertion at face value. During their association in the fortress and the maze, he’d seen evidence that Vandar had a spiritual link to the red weapons somewhat like his own connection to the shadows he created to serve him.
“Take the torch,” Dai Shan said, “and fall back. Find a space to duck into. We don’t want whatever’s coming to spot the light.”
In normal, natural gloom, said creature or creatures might well have noticed it even so. But the murk in the labyrinth was thick and hungry enough to make hiding the torch feasible.
“What about you?” Vandar asked.
“Someone—specifically, the man who can see in darkness—needs to spy and find out what’s coming. Please, go. I’ll call out to the valorous warrior if I need him.”
Vandar retreated. Dai Shan evoked a curtain of his own kind of darkness between the two of them to further mask any trace of torchlight. Then he applied himself to peeking around the corner.
At the periphery of his vision, the Scribe of the Doomed twisted his skull face ever so slightly in his direction. At the same time, it occurred to Dai Shan that if he climbed up on the pedestal and examined the marble parchment, he’d find his own name inscribed thereon.
But all that, he insisted to himself, was only the labyrinth playing tricks on his mind. The morbid influence of the place was so pernicious that even a Shou gentleman versed in the ways of darkness occasionally fell prey to it. Only his patron spirits knew how a primitive clod like Vandar clung to sanity. Perhaps dullness was actually an advantage.
The murk in the distance seethed as something advanced. Voices murmured too faintly for Dai Shan to have any hope of making out the words. The maze muffled sound as relentlessly as it did light, seemingly seeking to impose both the deafness and the blindness of the tomb on those who ventured inside.
Still, voices! Dai Shan had only a limited understanding of the half-formed vermin that prowled the endless tunnels, crypts, and skyless graveyards of the labyrinth, but he would have wagered his chances of inheriting his father’s position that the filthy things couldn’t talk. That was one trait distinguishing them from a good many of the true undead.
Even though Dai Shan had watched a couple of the undead foes of Rashemen flee into the maze when the battle for the Fortress of the Half-Demon went against them, he’d assumed the vast majority had perished and their conspiracy was therefore at an end. But suppose that wasn’t true. What if the berserkers and stag men had only eradicated one contingent of a larger force? By the black mask, that might be part of the reason Bez had been unable to take the wild griffons. Not only had the Halruaan himself not ended the menace, no one had.
If so, then Dai Shan still had allies after all.
Or did he? He’d made his bargain with Falconer, and the reanimated Nar had unquestionably perished. Jet had shared the tale of his destruction on one of the infrequent occasions when he wasn’t too morose for conversation. And without the demonbinder to vouch for him, wouldn’t the undead slaughter Dai Shan out of hand?
Perhaps not. Not if he sent Vandar on ahead to face the creatures and then helped them strike the berserker down to demonstrate his true sympathies. Even if it didn’t work, the Rashemi would at least be dead, and Dai Shan would be far enough away from the ghouls and zombies to escape by leaping from shadow to shadow.
He turned and crept toward Vandar’s hiding place.
* * * * *
Stripped to the waist, Aoth finished his climb up the stairs to the ledge and, with a grunt, set the anvil he was carrying in a gap at the top of the makeshift rampart. Below him on the floor of a spacious, high-ceilinged cave the Old Ones used as a foundry, masked enchanters crooned incantations that made asymmetrical patterns of blue and silver light flow out around their feet. The designs then disappeared over the course of several heartbeats, seeming not to fade so much as to sink into the granite like water seeping into parched earth.
Swiping sweat from his face and arching his back to pop the threat of stiffness out of it, Aoth thought that the men working magic had it easy. But he didn’t know how to do what they were doing, and the important thing was that all the defenders appeared to be making acceptable progress at their tasks.
Such being the case, he judged the work could spare him for a moment. He reached out to commune with Jet.
The first impressions to jump across the psychic link were pain, frustration, and the fear of being earthbound, weak, and useless forevermore. Then, with a surge of irritation, the griffon sought to lock those feelings away where even his master couldn’t perceive them.
Jet lay on the battlements of the Fortress of the Half-Demon looking west at the gleaming frozen surface of Lake Ashane. The wind whistling out of the north chilled the burned, half-healed parts of him where feathers and fur had yet to grow back. Everything’s the same, he said, meaning Vandar and Dai Shan had still found no trace of Jhesrhi and Cera.
They’ll turn up, Aoth replied.
I should be in the maze searching, the familiar said. I’m ready, but Dai Shan claims I’m not. Remind me again why I’m still not supposed to kill the little snake.
Aoth responded: Because he’s the closest thing we’ve got to a healer to tend you, he’s supposed to send a shadow to Immilmar as soon as he recovers the strength, and when the time is right, I want to kill him. Now, before long, the undead are going to break in where I am, and the Old Ones and I are preparing. Look through my eyes as I walk the caves. Tell me what you think.
The griffon snorted. Trying to convince me I’m still useful?
I have a tough fight ahead of me, and you know as much about siege craft as I do. You could come up with a trick that hasn’t occurred to me. So are you going to help me, or would you rather just lie around and sulk? Aoth asked.
Jet answered: Sulk. But it would be bad for both our reputations if I let you die in a stupid little scrape in the middle of nowhere.
And as Aoth prowled through the caves, the familiar did indeed offer a worthwhile notion or two. Aoth ended his inspection in the chamber that already had a shattered gate. In charge of the mundane side of the preparations there, Orgurth shouted obscene insults at a couple of youths who’d failed to perform some task to his satisfaction.
I like the orc, said Jet.
Aoth smiled and replied, You would. But yes, he’s all right. He’ll make a good sergeant. So: I think we’ll be ready come tonight. Do you agree?
Jet did agree. Aoth felt it immediately, without the griffon even needing to articulate the words. But then came a flicker of doubt.
You’ll be ready, said Jet, if the other side waits until tonight.
They’re undead, Aoth replied.
Many of them are constructs. And as far as the undead ones are concerned, how much is the daylight going to bother them once they’re inside the mountain? Jet asked.
Scowling, Aoth hurried to the barricade of rubble the Old Ones had built across the mouth of the cave. Keeping low, he peered out at the saddle, the smashed golems and corpses the tumbling boulders had left in their wake, and the foes that had survived the unexpected barrage.
At first glance, the Raumvirans didn’t appear to be doing much of anything except holding their positions and enduring the wan winter sunlight as best they could. But far back from the front ranks, the ghoul with the pearl in her eye socket and the glittering mites crawling in the folds of her robe was conferring with a couple of her lieutenants while drawing in the snow at her feet with a staff. Moving without perceptible haste, animate corpses shambled around inspecting automatons, sometimes herding them a bit closer or a little farther from the next construct in line. They also spoke to other zombies that eventually then adjusted a shield on a withered arm or loosened a sword in its scabbard.
In short, the creatures were preparing to attack, but in so leisurely a fashion that the Old One’s sentry, who was of course well aware that up until now the attackers had been active by night and passive by day, didn’t even recognize the threat. In its essence, what was occurring was a tactic Aoth himself had used countless times: Lead the enemy to expect one thing, then do something different.
He felt an urge to snarl at the lookout beside him as viciously as Orgurth was still berating his workers. But that would be unfair. Of the two of them, he was the professional soldier who’d convinced the Old Ones to accept him as their commander, and if the Raumvirans were on the verge of outwitting their foes, it was his fault.
But thanks to Jet, maybe he could still turn things around. He spotted Kanilak brandishing a staff with a tuft of owl feathers on the end, grabbed him by the shoulder in mid-incantation, and hauled him over to Orgurth so he could talk to both of them at the same time.
“The undead aren’t going to wait for nightfall,” he said. “They could come at any moment, and we have to change our plans accordingly. Do whatever you can to finish quickly so we’ll have some defenses in place when they burst in.”
Orgurth gave a brusque nod. “Got it.” He pivoted and started shouting.
Kanilak’s brown eyes were wide inside his mask. “But the traps you wanted. It’s just not possible to set those quickly. The magic—”
“You’re an Old One of the Silverbloods!” Aoth snapped. “You told me that like it meant something. Well, here’s your chance to prove it.”
With that, he dashed on toward the foundry.
* * * * *
Vandar disliked skulking in the dark. Whatever was coming up the passage, he’d rather charge to meet it with his torch blazing in one hand and the red sword gleaming in the other.
Yes, the red sword. His mental picture of himself fearlessly confronting the foe served to remind him of his fey blade and spear’s particular qualities, and then he belatedly recognized their hunger for battle and glory fanning his impatience. Even after all this time, it could be difficult to discern that inner nudging. Maybe that was because it so often encouraged him to do what he was naturally inclined to do anyway.
Still, he thought, scowling, he had to keep his head, because he already had reason to regret succumbing to the sword and spear’s urgings. Not that he was sure good would have come of responding to Cera’s cry for help on the day they stormed the fortress. Indeed, it seemed more likely that he would simply have failed to find any trace of her. Yet it was possible everything could have been different. She, Jhesrhi, and even Aoth might have been present to help when the Storm of Vengeance attacked. The brothers of the Griffon Lodge might still be alive.
Dai Shan interrupted Vandar’s self-reproach by peering into the narrow space between two tombs, into which the Rashemi had wedged himself. “It’s a pair of zombies approaching,” the outlander said, “or possibly ghouls. Some sort of corporeal undead anyway.”
Vandar felt his pulse quicken. The warm tingle of excitement in his weapons quickened too. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Surely, survivors of the force your lodge and the Stag King’s retainers destroyed in the fortress.”
Vandar frowned. “They might know something about what became of Cera and Jhesrhi, and we might be able to make them tell us.”
“Indeed,” Dai Shan murmured, “ ‘make’ being the critical term in the mighty warrior’s formulation.”
“If it’s just a couple of walking corpses,” Vandar said, “you and I have bested worse since we started roaming around in here. We can take them by surprise when they reach the statue of Jergal.” He scowled. “No, curse it, the torchlight will still give me away.”
Dai Shan took a moment to think, then answered, “I can share my knack for seeing in the dark with you. Please close your eyes.”
With a twinge of reluctance, Vandar obeyed. Dai Shan whispered words that, although the berserker had no idea what they meant, made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. On the final syllable, the Shou touched a fingertip to each of his eyelids.
When that light pressure ended, Vandar opened his eyes and glanced around. “Nothing looks different.”
“It will when you leave the torch behind. Come. We should take our positions.”
Dai Shan turned out to be correct. The curtain of shadow the Shou had conjured blocked the firelight, and after the wavering yellow glow disappeared, Vandar could still see. In fact, he could see a little farther than before, although he’d lost every trace of color, with even his crimson weapons turning gray. The change made the maze’s riotous jumble of morbid carvings look even ghostlier, if such a thing was possible.
Bending low, Dai Shan scurried around Jergal’s statue. Presumably, he took up a position at the mouth of the passage on the other side, although, with the sculpture in the way, Vandar couldn’t actually see him anymore. The Rashemi occupied the corresponding position on his own side and peeked around the corner.
Swaying, lurching figures were now visible, although Vandar still couldn’t make out exactly what manner of creature he was about to ambush. Maybe Dai Shan’s magic granted a keener form of dark sight to a shadow adept than to an ordinary person. But whatever the approaching beings were, the fey weapons were eager to assail them. The sword hilt and the shaft of the spear seemed to shiver in his hands.
Although the undead moved quietly, the moment came when Vandar heard their footsteps scuffing on the floor. Then two withered corpses with foxfire in their sunken eyes shuffled into view.
Vandar stepped and thrust with the spear. The weapon punched through the knee of the nearer undead. The creature toppled, but it had a naked scimitar in its clawlike hand and slashed at its attacker at the same time. Vandar parried with the fey sword, spun the parry into a bind, and tore the blade from his opponent’s grip. The scimitar flew through the air to clank down on Jergal’s desktop.
There. That was one dread warrior crippled and disarmed for questioning. Letting go of the spear, Vandar turned to see if Dai Shan needed help dealing with the other and only then perceived the long-hafted war hammer sweeping down at his head.
The second zombie had had no difficulty rushing in on his flank because Dai Shan had never engaged it. In fact, Vandar still didn’t see the Shou trader at all.
Vandar leaped backward and, as the hammer stroke fell short, saw more shapes rushing up the passage. The undead he’d so confidently attacked had been forerunners scouting ahead of a larger band, and just as he was simultaneously comprehending that and cutting at the hammer-wielding zombie’s neck, Dai Shan called out from somewhere behind him.
“Noble undead, the barbarian is Vandar Cherlinka, a champion of Rashemen and your enemy! I’ll help you kill him!” The Shou rattled off an incantation.
The red sword tore the hammer zombie’s rotting head tumbling from its shoulders, and then the world went black. As Vandar realized Dai Shan had ripped away the gift of dark sight he’d bestowed previously, something clamped around his ankle.
* * * * *
Booms and crashes echoed through the caverns. So did crackling, thunderclaps, and screams.
Old Ones looked in the direction of the noises. On the other side of the foundry, one masked Rashemi jerked around and spoke to another. Aoth couldn’t catch the fellow’s words, but he didn’t need to.
“Hold your positions!” he called, not just to that particular mage but to everyone. “I know how all the commotion sounds, but I guarantee you, only a few of the enemy have come in the other way. Orgurth and our other friends can handle it. Most of the creatures will break in this way, and we need to be here to handle them.”
Standing beside Aoth, Shaugar called, “Captain Fezim knows what he’s talking about!” Then, in a voice so low that only the man next to him could hear, he added, “I hope.”
Aoth’s troops did stay where they were, although their restlessness grew increasingly apparent, and why wouldn’t it? Every reverberating cry could be a friend dying, a comrade reinforcements might have saved, and although the enchanters claimed they knew how to fight, they surely hadn’t learned to accept the occasional necessity of such losses as sellswords did. When the second gate finally crashed and clattered to rubble, Aoth felt a surge of relief that it had happened before his own plan could fall apart.
He slapped his arms and chest, activating the magic in his tattoos to enhance his strength, quickness, and endurance. Then, like huge living toys of hinged metal and stone, the first constructs charged into the foundry.
The layout of the caves was such that, having breached the gate they did, the enemy had to pass through this chamber, and in Aoth’s professional judgment, the space ought to serve for a killing box. Ledges partway up the walls afforded the defenders the advantage of height, and the carved stairs that ran up to them were steep, narrow, and thus easily defended.
At first, the scuttling golems, and then the undead rushing in behind them, didn’t even appear to notice the men crouching behind the improvised and uncompleted battlements. And despite their edginess, the Old Ones, the Pure Flame warm them, didn’t lash out as soon as the first foes came into view. As instructed, they awaited Aoth’s signal.
When the floor below was teeming with foes, Aoth leaped up, pointed his spear, and snarled a word of power. A red spark shot from the point down at the pale, robed figure of an undead wizard, and, if Tymora was smiling, one of the Raumvirans skilled at managing constructs. With a boom, the streaking point of light exploded into a flash of flame that tore the creature limb from limb. It half ripped the head from an articulated bronze panther too, and the golem froze. But other constructs engulfed by the blast weathered it unscathed.
Rising from behind the makeshift parapets to the extent necessary, Old Ones called words of command and lashed wands, staves, and orbs through mystic passes. The blue and argent figures they’d created previously glowed to life atop or just inside the floor.
A steel minotaur and a ceramic preying mantis lurched into immobility. A thick-bodied giant of stone with golden eyes pivoted ponderously and slammed its fist down on top of a skeleton, shattering the undead from the top of its skull all the way down to its pelvis. Yellow light flickered over a two-headed iron mastiff, and then its metal body burst into flame.
So, despite the frantic haste and improvisation with which the Rashemi had completed them, the snares were working, but not on every automaton. Some of the ones on the floor simply seemed impervious, while none of the flyers were falling out of the air. All the golems still capable of purposeful action turned to assail the ledges, and their undead masters were right behind them.
Aoth looked over his section of battlement and saw a man-sized, eight-legged contraption like a mix of rat and spider climbing the wall. It noticed him too, and spit dark liquid straight up at him. He recoiled and avoided the spew. The drops that splashed down on the parapet sizzled and smoked, and the fumes smelled hot and vile.
A moment later, the golem’s spidery front legs hooked the top of the barrier, and then the rat head appeared. Aoth drove his spear between its jaws and released some of the power stored in the weapon. The resulting white flash blew the steel skull apart, and what remained of the automaton lost its grip and fell away.
Toward the back of the attackers, the ghoul with the pearl in her eye socket aimed her wand at him. He dropped back down behind the parapet for a moment, and when he peeked over it again, she’d turned away to find another target.
That was her mistake. But before Aoth could take advantage of it, he sensed danger on his flank. He whirled to confront it and found himself looking into dark, lustrous eyes in a narrow bone-white face. Except that an instant later, that countenance was neither long and thin nor pallid, anymore. It was Cera’s round, mischievous face, bronzed by the sun she served and adored, and after all the time apart, all the days and nights anguishing over her fate, all he wanted in the world was to kiss her.
But a war mage, especially one whose fate it seemed to be to frequently battle undead, learned to defend against psychic intrusion, and Aoth spoke a word of liberation and visualized a symbol of clarity by pure trained reflex. And as the illusion fell away, he thrust his spear into the vampire’s chest and conjured sunlight from the head of the weapon. The creature screamed as holes opened in her flesh, beams of radiance leaped forth, and the magic ate her from the inside out.
Aoth turned and destroyed a swooping eagle-sized dragonish construct made of silver and leather by riddling it with darts of green light. And that, it appeared, had been the last foe striving to kill him. Most likely, something else would try in another moment, but meanwhile he could take a breath and assess the progress of the battle as a whole.
Along the ledges, Old Ones hurled power as savagely and relentlessly as possible. A few, using their affinity with the divine, scourged the undead with beams and bursts of holy light. More relied on the products of their particular arts, swapping one talisman for another when the first ran dry.
As Aoth had expected, some of the unfinished weapons failed to function properly even once. An Old One tried three inert wands in succession before simply throwing his weight against the section of rampart in front of him, toppling it and dumping the pieces on the brass centipede that had been on the verge of crawling over it. One of his fellows pointed a crystal-bladed dagger at something on the cavern floor, and instead of ice forming around the target, it surged backward from the cross guard and encased his arm to the elbow.
At a few spots, other automatons and undead had succeeded in flying or climbing onto the ledges like the vampire Aoth had destroyed, and there, Old Ones threw down wands and staves and snatched up blades. A broadsword burned like dry wood, only without being consumed, and a pair of hand-axes roared like bears as their wielder chopped at a hovering wraith.
Despite failing talismans and foes that managed to make it to the high ground, Aoth judged that he and his comrades might actually be winning, if only gradually and by the slimmest of margins. Then, however, a glowing line or glyph at a time, the figures on the floor began to dim, and as they deteriorated, inert constructs started to stir, while others that had been acting erratically remembered their proper functions.
Aoth turned to Shaugar. “I see the problem!” the Old One snapped.
“Then fix it!”
“I’m trying!” With the tip of his staff, Shaugar drew a glowing blue pentagram on the air. “But the spells have already held longer than I expected!”
For a moment, Aoth had no idea what to do about that. Then he spotted the ghoul with the pearl in her eye socket again.
She was standing behind a brass and steel centaur that was shuddering in the middle of one of the fading magical figures. Surely to quicken its return to functionality, she was chanting and tapping the automaton with her wand.
Recalling how she’d brandished the same arcane implement to send the stone thrower after him, Aoth pointed with his spear. “I think that creature’s wand helps her direct and repair the golems,” he said to Shaugar. “If you had it, would that help you?”
“How should I know?” the Rashemi replied. “Maybe.”
“Keep working!” Aoth scrambled to the top of makeshift parapet and jumped.
* * * * *
For one instant, swallowed by the cold darkness of the maze, betrayed by a comrade whom, despite his better judgment, he’d started to trust, held in place with dozens of undead rushing up the passage at him, Vandar froze. Then a flash of the anger that was the source of a berserker’s prowess jolted his mind into motion once again.
When it did, he realized the thing gripping his ankle could only be the hand of the zombie he’d crippled previously. The creature had crawled over and grabbed him.
Guessing at how it lay on the floor, he hacked at it, then tried to yank his leg loose. After a moment of resistance, it came free all at once, sending him staggering off balance to bang the backs of his thighs into Jergal’s pedestal. He could still feel leathery fingers wrapped around his ankle, though. The zombie’s forearm must have pulled apart at the point where the fey sword had cut it. Vandar kicked and shook the severed hand loose.
Then, praying he wouldn’t slam into a wall or trip over something, he ran at the spot where, he believed, the entrance to the side passage containing his torch ought to be. He seemed to take too many strides and had nearly decided he’d somehow gone wrong when he plunged through Dai Shan’s conjured curtain of shadow. Although the wavering amber light was guttering, the brand was still burning.
All right. Grab it and … then what?
Vandar thought he had two advantages that might, if the spirits favored him, allow him to make it back to the Fortress of the Half-Demon alive. He was a fast runner and, after days of exploration, knew this part of the maze well. But he’d never shake pursuers off his tail if he carried a light to draw them after him.
Yet if he couldn’t see, his plight would be even more hopeless. With a curse and a pang of bitterness not far short of despair, he stooped and reached for the torch. But just before he could grasp it, his awareness fixed on the sword he carried in his other hand.
The fey weapons never spoke to him with language. But from time to time, they communicated in their own fashion, and now, prompted, he realized, by the blade, he remembered how they’d sometimes sensed things he didn’t and shared that awareness with him.
The sword conveyed that it could do so again, only in a more constant and detailed way. It could serve as his eyes in the darkness if he permitted it.
Yes, he thought, I permit it, and the grotesque stonework of the maze flowed into view around him.
And as his bond with the red sword deepened, new thoughts sprang into his head. Now that he could see, he didn’t even need to flee. He could go back, slaughter the filthy things that were coming after him, and win the greatest victory of his or any Rashemi’s life. The desire to do so was entirely consonant with the swaggering pride and contempt for danger that defined being a berserker.
But did they really? Vandar remembered wise old Raumevik urging him not to throw his life away when he still had his lodge brothers to avenge. He remembered too, how the need to be deemed a great warrior worthy of the wild griffons had led him to ignore Cera’s cries.
Curse it, no! he thought. I’m not going to go berserk, fight a fight I can’t win, and die for nothing! I’m the master of my rage and, sword, the master of you too!
A feeling of insistence inside his head abated. He felt free to run if that was what he truly wanted. But plainly, he couldn’t leave a weapon as precious as the spear behind. He turned and started back toward Jergal.
Then he heard the telltale clinking of armor as the creatures wearing it trotted forward. The rest of the undead were now so close that he likely couldn’t go back for the spear without coming face-to-face with them.
Still, without consciously willing it, he advanced another step.
I’ll drop you, he silently promised the sword. I’ll take my chances with the torch, and nobody will ever use you to fight anything ever again. You’ll lie here alone in the dark forever!
His mind truly cleared, or at least he thought so. He had a sense of the sword yielding like a stubborn and misbehaving dog finally cowering in the face of its master’s anger.
Hoping the blade hadn’t taken too long to capitulate, Vandar whirled and ran.
* * * * *
By thought alone, Aoth released the power pent in one of his tattoos, and as a result, he fell slowly, meanwhile rattling off an incantation.
Many of the Raumathari automatons were still either frozen or doing pointless things such as rolling over and over or trying to walk through walls, although probably not for much longer. And the majority of the constructs and undead that did constitute potential threats were too busy assailing their chosen targets on the ledges to notice Aoth drifting toward the floor. Still, three shriveled spearmen with foxfire eyes and flaking skin rushed at him, and a phantom in the form of crucified little girl floated in their wake. The cross and nails were absent, but the apparition had holes in her outstretched hands and crossed feet, and although her translucent face was a mask of uncomprehending anguish, her giggling echoed in Aoth’s head.
Until, just as his boots touched the floor, he finished his incantation and jabbed with his spear. Then spinning blades of blue light whirled into being to chop the zombies into chunks of rot and bone and her into wisps of phosphorescence.
Weaving his way past a frozen iron boar with textured bristles, a bronze squidlike thing with twitching tentacles, and even a gaudily painted wooden jester slumped like a marionette with cut strings, Aoth headed for Pearl-eye. Then he glimpsed motion at the periphery of his vision.
He spun to find a pair of shadows lunging at him straight through the body of an oversized bronze jackal. He met one with a thrust of his spear and positioned his targe to block the other’s outstretched hands.
The spear pierced the first, and it dissolved. The other splashed into shapelessness against the shield, its insubstantial form held back not by the steel but by the enchantments bound inside it.
At once, the apparition sent a dozen wispy lengths of itself curling around the rim of the targe like jellyfish tendrils. One brushed Aoth’s elbow, and a jolt of cold pain sent the muscles on either side into spasms.
He charged the point of his spear with chaotic power and simply slapped it against the shadow’s back. The undead vanished, and metal clanked when the weapon struck the shield.
He pushed on and came up behind a vampire wizard casting fire at some of the Old Ones. He killed the new blood drinker as he had the previous one, only by surprise, and as conjured daylight ate the undead from within, Aoth saw that the thing’s wand looked a lot like Pearl-eye’s. He grabbed the implement, tossed it up at the nearest ledge, and kept moving without waiting to see if any of the Rashemi caught it.
A metal manticore abruptly lurched into motion, and Aoth aimed his spear at it. But, maybe still not entirely free of the waning effect of the Old Ones’ snares, the leonine, bat-winged automaton simply paced across his path without seeming to perceive him.
When it moved on by, however, with its spike-tipped tail curled up off the floor, it became clear that at some point, Pearl-eye had become aware that Aoth was stalking her. At the moment when the manticore’s progress had hidden her from view, she’d appeared intent on reactivating golems and striking at the men on the ledges, but now the wand in her gray, outstretched hand pointed at him, and pale light seethed at the tip.
He dodged right, the same direction the manticore was going, and then a serpent made of sizzling lightning leaped from the end of the wand. Its strike missed, but not by much, and in the instant before it blinked out of existence, its mere proximity made his muscles burn and clench.
Fortunately, the restorative power of a tattoo quelled the pain, and then, once again, he had the manticore between him and the ghoul. Now what? It had to be a move she wasn’t expecting to offer any hope of ending the duel quickly.
Still moving with the manticore, using it for cover, he discarded his shield so he’d have at least one hand free. Then he ran at the golem, jumped, and tried to scramble over its hindquarters.
The automaton’s back stood as tall as he was. The surface was rounded and smooth, and just as he was clambering up, the razor-edged wings gave a clattering flap. He had to snatch his head sideways to keep one wing from slicing his face to the bone.
Then he had his balance, his feet under him, and he could tell Pearl-eye hadn’t spotted him. She was watching for him to reappear at one end of the manticore or the other, not over the top of it.
He hurled darts of emerald light. They were far from his most destructive spell effect, but they couldn’t possibly damage the wand, and when they pierced her withered, rotting form, she staggered. He jumped off the manticore’s back and charged her.
But she recovered and scrambled backward before he could close. Her retreat took her out of the foundry proper and back into the section of cavern that connected to the shattered gate.
For a moment, Aoth imagined that might work to his benefit because she was separating herself from her allies. Then, removed from the crippling influence of the Old Ones’ wards against constructs, the silver mites clinging to the folds of her robe seethed into motion.
* * * * *
Jhesrhi thought that if she’d been at the head of the column, she might have done something. Somehow whisked Vandar out of sight before any of the undead spotted him, blasted Dai Shan as soon as he called out, and justified the precipitous action afterward.
But Lod traveled in the middle of the procession, and he’d wanted her company. Thus, when things started happening in the darkness up ahead, it caught her by surprise. And with the bone naga’s followers clogging the passage, she still had no way of aiding Vandar with her magic.
But maybe she could keep Dai Shan from exposing her masquerade. Once again bringing the uncaring savagery of her fiery self to the fore, she looked up at Lod, who, with his wagon slaves now dead, was slithering along with his skull nearly brushing the ceiling.
“I know the man who shouted,” she said. “He’s one of the foremost obstacles to your plans. Let me kill him.”
Swaying slightly, fleshless head tilted, Lod studied her. Then he said, “It sounds like the human wants to talk. If I draw him in close and then don’t like what he has to say, it will be easy to destroy him.”
“He’s a master of shadow and trickery. He might find it possible to escape even you. But let me burn him right now, before he realizes you’ve decided on his death, and—”
“You don’t really believe he could slip away from me and all our comrades too? You want to kill him immediately for some other reason. What is it? Do you hate him? Are you worried that if I don’t send you after him right now, it won’t be you who ends up taking his life?”
“Something like that.” Even as she spoke the words, Jhesrhi knew they weren’t a particularly useful lie. But she was at a loss for anything else to say.
Lod chuckled. “I promise that if I order his death, you can slay him in the manner of your choosing. For now, though, let’s hear him out.” He looked down the passage, which was now less jammed with doomsepts, direhelms, and the like. Apparently, Vandar had fled, and a number of the undead had chased after him.
“I’m coming forward,” called Lod. “If you’re a friend, do the same.”
“Does the august lord,” Dai Shan replied, “pledge that neither he nor his stalwart warriors will harm me?”
“I do.” Lod glanced down at Jhesrhi. “Don’t worry. We of the Eminence don’t consider a promise to a living human binding.”
As they headed up the passage, Jhesrhi imagined lashing out with flame, freeing Cera, and fleeing with her. But such a desperate ploy would never work.
She had no idea if she was a match for Lod, and even if she was, it didn’t mean she could incapacitate him and all the other undead in the immediate vicinity with a single spell.
She likewise didn’t know Cera’s precise location, only that the sunlady was somewhere toward the rear of the procession. She did know that when she’d last seen her, her comrade had been stumbling along white-faced between two zombies too weak and dazed even to walk without her captors holding her up.
But suppose, despite all those impediments, Jhesrhi and Cera did somehow manage to break away. Then they’d still be trapped in the deathways just as they were now, and it was worse than unlikely that anyone else would happen along to unlock the way out.
Thus, Jhesrhi saw no choice but to walk peacefully into a parley with Dai Shan and hope that, somehow, her lies came out more convincing than whatever the Shou had to say.
She, Lod, and the undead naga’s attendants soon arrived at an intersection of passageways where a statue of Jergal sat writing at a desk and two slain zombies lay on the floor. One of them had Vandar’s spear sticking through its knee. The red metal gleamed, reflecting the little fire burning atop her staff.
Lod cast around, then fixed his attention on the corridor to the left. “I assume when I see a blind made of shadow,” he said, “that someone is hiding behind it.”
Dai Shan stepped out of the darkness. His eyes widened ever so slightly, but otherwise, his face was the usual pleasant, imperturbable mask.
Jhesrhi’s fiery and human sides united in the wish to see him burn, and she had to clench herself to refrain from striking at him. She steadied herself with the reflection that, if things went considerably better than expected, she might be able to force him to tell her what had become of Aoth.
The Shou bowed and said, “The serpent lord is as majestic as he is unique to my experience. Is it possible he commands the entire fellowship of the undead that my poor departed friend Falconer served so ably?”
“The Eminence of Araunt has no commander,” Lod replied. “All who belong are equal. Still, someone had to create it, and someone has to guide the campaigns that will fulfill its destiny.”
“I have every confidence the visionary before me is equal to the task. How strange, then, to find him in the company of Jhesrhi Coldcreek, and she with her mouth ungagged and her staff in her unbound hands. Perhaps, for all his wisdom, he doesn’t realize she’s one of his most formidable and determined enemies.”
“I’ve explained,” Jhesrhi said, “that I served the cause of Rashemen under magical duress. How, merchant, do you justify yourself? Moments ago, you said you’d kill Vandar Cherlinka. Well, if your word is any good, where is he?”
Dai Shan gave a slight nod. “Although her motives are suspect, the clever mage poses a fair question. I believed I could render Vandar helpless, but somehow—”
“Liar!” Jhesrhi snarled. “You let him escape because the two of you together are attempting some sort of trick. Lod, the man before you is Dai Shan. He and Vandar are two of the four champions who promised the hathrans they’d do their utmost to slaughter your people. I was there. I witnessed it.”
“Is this true?” asked Lod, swaying. “Are you Dai Shan?”
The merchant bowed. “I am, and please, accept my apologies. It appears that sojourning in a backward land has had a deleterious effect on my manners. I should have introduced myself to the noble prophet straightaway.”
Lod looked down at Jhesrhi. “Despite Sarshethrian’s interference, messages did travel back and forth between Nornglast and Rashemen, and thus I recognize the name Dai Shan. He made possible the strategy that will break the witches, and for that reason among others, I consider his claims more credible than yours.”
Jhesrhi had no idea what it was that Dai Shan had supposedly done to aid the undead, but now that it was too late, she realized she’d never had any hope of emerging from this parley with Lod still trusting her. She raised her staff and drew breath to call for an expanding circle of flame.
Something slammed into the back of her head, smashing her thoughts into incoherence and pitching her onto her knees. Then other blows pummeled her. The brazen staff slipped from her hand to clank on the floor, and the flames on the end went out. Her mind followed them into darkness.
* * * * *
The silver mites poured off Pearl-eye’s robes like water. Though he was still a dozen strides away, Aoth’s spellscarred eyes discerned that the tiny things were metal scorpions. Then several of them started swelling larger.
Aoth had no idea how big they might grow and didn’t want to find out. Nor did he care to spar with them while the ghoul sorceress stood back and cast spells at him. He set the whole length of his spear aglow with power and kept right on charging.
A scorpion the size of a dog scuttled at him, and he thrust the spear through its head. A cat-sized one arched its stinger to drive it into his leg, and he slammed the butt of his weapon down on its back and smashed it. Grown large as a donkey, pincers scissoring, a third rushed in on his flank, and triggering one of the spells stored in the spear, he blasted it apart with a flare of lightning.
He raced on toward his true foe over a glinting carpet of the scorpions that were still tiny. Then pains like stabs from red-hot needles assailed his legs, and staggering, he belatedly realized the little golems might well be more dangerous than the big ones.
A moment after the pain came a wave of dizziness and weakness. He thumped his chest, rousing a tattoo that warded him against poison. That helped him catch his balance, but now the relentless fiery jabbing was torturing his torso as well as his legs.
The ghoul snarled an incantation, pointed her wand at him, and the desperation in his mind threatened to balloon into utter panic. She threw a fear spell! he told himself, and understanding what was happening inside his head helped him cling to the ability to think.
Despite the ongoing torment, he managed to gasp out a spell of his own, and a halo of whispering yellow flame cloaked him from head to toe. It didn’t hurt him—he only felt a pleasant warmth—or his gear and clothing either. But the stabbing stopped as the blaze destroyed the tiny automatons that had been skittering under his garments like fleas.
He still hadn’t entirely shaken off the effect of the venom but knew he couldn’t let that slow him down. He rushed on toward Pearl-eye.
She still had the wand aimed, and tatters of darkness leaped from the tip to lash at him. He wrenched himself to the side, and they missed.
Then, finally, the ghoul was in reach of his spear. Still luminous with power, the weapon punched deep into her midsection.
She screeched and convulsed. He used the spear to heave her down on her back, then spoke the first of the words that would make sunlight shine from the head of the weapon to burn her guts. She was tough—otherwise, the first spear thrust would have finished her—but even so, a trick that could destroy a vampire would likely dispose of her as well.
And he wanted to. But then the war leader part of him—the part he’d trained always to deliberate and make the results of its deliberations heard no matter how the anger and fear that combat engendered distracted him—suggested that bringing her wand to Shaugar would take precious time, and then the Rashemi would need more to figure out how to use it. It might well be more time than the defenders had left.
But Pearl-eye was right here at Aoth’s feet, and she already knew how to employ the wand.
He spoke the next word of the daylight spell and sensed the magic accumulating and eager for release. The ghoul plainly felt it too, and clenched herself against the flare of agony to come.
“Do you want to go on existing?” asked Aoth.
Surprised, she peered up at him, then asked, “What do I have to do?”
“Turn all the golems inert.”
“Without them, the rest of my band will die!”
“It’s them or you. Choose. Now.”
She shuddered. With anger, he sensed, not pain or fear. “Curse you. I need to be within sight of the devices.”
“Then get up.”
“Your spear is still in my belly!”
“Where it will stay. We’ll sidle along like crabs.”
* * * * *
Jet watched Aoth chase down a ghoul through the midst of a larger battle and yearned to help. But he seemed to be paralyzed like many of the automatons caught in the glowing pentacles. Or perhaps he was some sort of ghost, bodiless, capable of perception but nothing more.
Ultimately, he saw with relief—albeit relief tinged with an underlying bitterness—that his master didn’t need his help. He captured the ghoul with the pearl in her eye socket and forced her to deactivate all the golems. After that, the masked men on the ledges made short work of the rest of the undead attackers, and their victorious cheers echoed through the caverns.
The shouting woke Jet, or so it seemed, woke him to the ache of his wounds and the winter sunlight shining down on the section of the wall-walk he’d chosen for his nap. Then he realized the dream had been a bit muddled but essentially true, a vision of Aoth’s recent struggle slipping across their psychic bond.
He prepared to reach out with his thoughts, make absolutely sure Aoth was all right, and ask what the war mage meant to do next. Then a shout rang up from the courtyard. This, he realized, was the noise that had actually woken him.
He peered down. Red sword in hand, Vandar was running toward the steps that ran up to his location. Something was manifestly wrong, but for another moment, Jet couldn’t tell what it was.
Then undead erupted from the doorway into the central keep. Some were loping ghouls and running skeletons. Others were entities unlike any Jet had ever seen, animate suits of half plate floating through the air. All were in pursuit of the berserker.
What had the idiot human done? How had he managed to go looking for Jhesrhi and Cera and come back with dozens of angry phantoms and living corpses chasing after him?
Shaking off his astonishment, Jet realized that at the moment, how didn’t matter. What did matter was that there were too many foes for him and Vandar to fight by themselves, and no refuge in the ruined castle that, even if they could reach it, would keep the creatures out for long.
That left only one recourse. Straining because his injuries had made him stiff and the angle was awkward, Jet clawed and bit at his splint and the bindings holding it in place.
Dai Shan had said that despite a month of recuperation, his wing wasn’t ready. If so, would trying to use it prematurely cripple it for all time?
No, no need to worry about that, because if Jet couldn’t use it now either the undead or a second fall would kill him, and by all the winds that blew, if that happened, so be it. At least the waiting and fretting would be over!
Using his beak, he ripped away the last strip of cloth and shook his wing out. It throbbed and stank too. Pus seeped from raw spots where feathers had yet to grow back. But at least he could move it.
Panting and soaked in sweat, Vandar scrambled onto the wall-walk, whirled, and slashed the fey broadsword in a horizontal arc. The ghoul that had been about to cut him down from behind toppled off the steps and out of sight with its mold-spotted head half severed.
“Get on my back!” Jet rasped.
Vandar glanced around. “You’re sure?”
“Do you have a better plan? Move!”
The Rashemi ran to him and clambered on. Even the paltry weight of a human being produced a fresh pang of pain.
But Jet didn’t let that slow him down. He lunged at the parapet, leaped atop a crenel, and bounded on out into space.
And his outstretched pinions transformed what would otherwise have been a plummet into a level glide. He lashed them and began to climb.
Every wing beat hurt, and flight was a labored, awkward progress. But he was flying, and he rejoiced.
He wheeled and beheld a couple of the animate suits of half-plate floating after him. Uselessly. Despite his weakened condition, they weren’t flying fast enough to catch him.
Still, he wheeled, lashed his wings, and hurled himself at the closest. It attempted to swing a broadsword at him, and he caught its weapon arm in one set of talons and its helmet head in the other.
The armored phantom pulled apart in his grasp. He dropped the pieces to clatter on the ground, turned to avoid flying over the courtyard—there might be archers and spellcasters down there by now—and drove onward.
“Another man might ask what the point was of pausing to kill that one creature,” Vandar said, still breathing heavily. “But I’m a berserker. I understand.”
Jet didn’t bother answering. He was busy peering ahead for a place of concealment he could reach before his strength gave out.