chapter two

16–29 Tarsakh, the Year of Blue Fire

The griffon rider came running to tell Bareris that some of the legionnaires were violating the patrol’s standing orders. The soldier found his immediate superior in consultation with Aoth.

When the two comrades investigated, they discovered a griffon crouching outside the hut in question. No doubt its master had stationed it there to keep anyone from interfering with the mischief inside. Aoth brandished his spear at the beast and it screeched, lowered its white-feathered aquiline head, and slunk to the side.

Bareris tried the door. It was latched, so he booted it open.

The round dwelling was all one room, with a stove in the center, a loom to one side, and a bed on the far end. Their faces pulped and bloody, a man and a woman sprawled on the rush-strewn earthen floor. Two of the soldiers responsible were holding a sobbing, thrashing girl—Bareris put her age at twelve or thirteen—spread-eagled atop a table. The third was tearing off her clothes.

The door banged against the wall and all three jerked around. Aoth could have simply snapped orders at the men, but he was too angry to settle for mere words. He lunged at one and struck with the butt of his spear. The ash haft cracked against bone and the man fell, tatters of skirt in his hand. The other two released the child and scrambled out of reach.

Aoth took a deep breath. “You know the rules. No looting except for what an officer gives you permission to confiscate, no beatings, and no rape.”

“But that’s provided the rustics are friendly,” said the soldier on the left. “Provided they cooperate. These didn’t.”

“What do you mean?” asked Aoth.

The warrior picked up a clay bowl from the table. Somehow, it remained unspilled and unbroken. The legionnaire overturned it, and a watery brown liquid spattered out.

“The villagers are supposed to give their best hospitality to the zulkirs’ troops,” he said. “Yet this is what they serve us. This slop! Isn’t it plain they’re holding the good food back?”

Aoth sighed. “No, idiot, it isn’t. Last year’s harvest was bad, the winter was long and harsh, and they’ve barely had time to begin the spring planting. They’ll go hungry tomorrow for want of the gruel they offered you tonight.”

The griffon rider blinked. “Well … I couldn’t know, could I? And anyway, I’m almost certain I heard one of them insult the First Princess.”

“Did you now?”

“Besides,” the soldier continued, “they’re just peasants. Just Rashe—” It dawned on him that he might not be taking a wise tactic in light of his commander’s suspect ancestry, and the words caught in his throat.

“The two of you,” said Aoth, “pick up your fellow imbecile and get out of here. I’ll deal with you shortly.” They did as instructed, and then Aoth turned to Bareris. “I trust you know songs to calm this girl, and to ease her parents’ hurts.”

“Yes,” Bareris said. He applied the remedies as best he could, even though charms of solace and healing no longer came to him as naturally as they once had.

With the parents back on their feet and the girl huddling in her mother’s arms, Aoth offered his apologies and a handful of silver. The father seemed to think the coins were some sort of trap, for he proved reluctant to accept them. Aoth left the money on the table on his way out.

“What’s the punishment?” Bareris asked. As the miscreants’ immediate superior, he was the one responsible for administering discipline.

“Hang the bastards,” Aoth replied.

“You don’t mean that.”

“They deserve it. But you’re right. Nymia would string me up if I executed two of her griffon riders just for mistreating a family of farmers, especially on the eve of a major battle. So five lashes each, but not yet. Let them sweat while you and I have a talk.”

“As you wish.” They’d already been talking when the soldier came to fetch them, but Bareris inferred that Aoth had something more private in mind. Sure enough, the war mage led him all the way through the cluster of huts and cottages. The men-at-arms watched as their officers tramped by.

Beyond the farmhouses were fields and pastures, which gave way to rolling grasslands that made up the greater part of Tyraturos. Bareris scrutinized the landscape stretched out beneath the evening sky, still banded with gold where the sun had made its farewell, and charcoal gray high above.

Earlier that day, they’d ascertained that the bulk of Szass Tam’s army was marching well to the northwest, and it was unlikely that even the lich’s scouts and outriders had strayed this far from the main column. Still, it paid to be cautious.

Aoth led his friend to a pen made of split rails. It held no animals, only a scattering of leprous-looking toadstools. The war mage heaved himself up to sit on the fence, and Bareris climbed up beside him.

“Well,” said Aoth. “Ten years since I discovered you and Mirror hiking out of the Sunrise Mountains.”

Responding to his name, Mirror wavered into view. Maybe he’d been with them all along. For a moment, the phantom resembled the bard, then Aoth, and then settled into a blurred gray shadow that scarcely possessed a face at all. His presence chilled the air.

Aoth acknowledged the ghost with a nod. “Ten years since we started fighting Szass Tam.”

“Yes,” Bareris said.

“Have you ever thought it might be time to stop?”

Bareris cocked his head. A strand of hair spilled across his eye and he pushed it up, noticing in passing just how matted and greasy it was. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“A griffon rider could be out of Thay before anyone even realized he’d decided to leave, and then, well, Faerûn’s a big place, with plenty of opportunities for a fellow who knows how to cast spells or swing a sword.”

“This is just blather. You’d never abandon your men.”

“We’ll invite them to come along. Think how much a foreign prince will pay to employ an entire company of griffon riders.”

“You must be tired if that unpleasantness back in the hut upset you as much as this.”

“It wasn’t that. At most, that was the last little weight that finally tipped the scale. Do you ever ask yourself why we’re fighting?”

“To destroy Szass Tam, or at least to keep him from making himself overlord.”

“And why is that important, when he has as much right to rule Thay as anyone? When the lords who oppose him are just as untrustworthy and indifferent to anything but their own interests?”

“Because they aren’t. Not quite, anyway. Don’t you remember? We made up our minds on the subject back in that grove, when the necromancer came to speak with us.”

“Yes, but over the course of a decade, a man can change his opinion. Consider this. Samas Kul cast his lot with the lich for a season or two. Yaphyll’s allied with him now. Half the tharchions jump back and forth like frogs. By the Abyss, I doubt that even Nymia would stay loyal if she thought she’d fare better on the other side, and then where would you and I be with our preferences and principles?”

“It’s more sensible,” Bareris said, “to consider where you actually are. Our mistress and the zulkirs have treated you well. They’ve given you command of the Griffon Legion and purses full of gold.”

“Things I never wanted. I was happy as I was. If they want to reward me, I wish it could be with their respect. Respect for my judgment and experience.” Aoth shifted slightly atop the fence.

“Now I see. They offended you by rejecting your advice. But I’ll be honest with you. It isn’t plain to me that you were right and they were wrong.”

“It isn’t plain to me, either, but I feel it, just as I’ve sensed such things once or twice before. We believe we’ve out-thought the enemy, but we haven’t. Something nasty is going to happen at the Keep of Sorrows, and I’d rather be far away when it does.”

“You say that, but I know you’re not a coward,” Bareris said.

“You’re right. I have my share of courage, or at least I hope I do. What I lack is a cause worth risking my life over. For a long while, I thought I was fighting to save the green, bountiful Thay of my boyhood, but look around you. That realm’s already dead, trampled by armies and poisoned by battle sorcery. I’m not a necromancer, and I don’t want to waste the rest of my days trying to animate the rotting husk that remains.”

“And neither should you,” Aoth continued. “I understand why you fight—to avenge Tammith. But from all you’ve told me, she’d weep to see what your compulsion has made of you—a bard who never sings except to kill. I think she’d want you to lay down your grief and hatred and start life anew.”

He’s made up his mind, Bareris realized. He’s going to saddle Brightwing and disappear into the sky, even if I refuse to go with him.

And that would be a disaster. Aoth had matured into one of the most formidable champions in the south. The cause could ill afford to lose him, and it certainly couldn’t manage without all the griffon riders, who might well follow where their captain led.

Bareris would have to stop him.

“You know me too well,” he said, infusing his speech with enchantment. “It is hate that drives me, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But your judgment is too pessimistic where our homeland is concerned. What sorcery has broken, it can mend. Given a chance, the old Thay will rise again, blue skies, thriving plantations, mile-long merchant caravans, and all.”

Aoth’s eyelids fluttered. He gave his head a shake as if it felt muddled and he needed to clear it. “Well, it’s possible, I suppose. But for it to flower again in our lifetime—”

“We need to win the war quickly,” Bareris said, “before it further fouls the earth, water, and air, and further depopulates the countryside. I agree, the zulkirs agree, and that’s why they intend to strike hard at the opening Szass Tam is giving them. You see the sense in it, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Aoth admitted, his speech ever so slightly slurred. “I do understand, just as I understand that they’re cunning, and mine is only one dissenting voice. It’s just …” He seemed unable to complete his thought.

“If you understand, then help! Keep your oath. Stand with me and the rest of your friends. If we win, you’ll share in the glory and all the good things that will follow. If we lose, at least you won’t live out your life wracked with a betrayer’s guilt, wondering whether your prowess might have meant the difference.”

“Fastrin the Delver went mad,” Mirror said in his hollow moan. Bareris jerked around, and Aoth did too, despite his light trance. Over the years, they’d grown used to the ghost hovering around, but he spoke so rarely that his utterances still tended to startle.

“He wanted to kill everyone,” Mirror continued. “Some folk fought, some ran, and either way, it didn’t matter. He got everyone in the end. But I’m glad I’m one who fought.”

Bareris’s mouth tightened in exasperation. The terse story agreed with the history Quickstrike the gravecrawler had once related, and almost certainly represented one of Mirror’s rare glimmers of authentic memory, but that wasn’t the point. Though the ghost appeared to be recommending courage, his story also implied that those who dared to cross archwizards like Szass Tam could anticipate only destruction. That moral seemed likely to bolster Aoth’s doubts and so disrupt the influence Bareris was weaving.

But Aoth sighed and said, “I suppose I’d feel the same way. Death gets us all eventually, doesn’t it? If not in the form of an ambitious lich or crazy warlock, then in some other guise. So you might as well stick by your comrades and follow the banner you’ve chosen no matter how ragged and faded it becomes.”

Bareris’s shoulders slumped with relief. Beneath that emotion was the hint of another—a vague, uncomfortable squirming that might have been shame—but it subsided quickly. “Now that’s the Aoth I’ve known for all these years.”

Aoth snorted. “Yes, Aoth the fool.” His mail clinking, he slid off the fence. “Let’s go back and get the flogging over with.”

Perched on a mound at the edge of the sheer drop that was the First Escarpment, girt with a double ring of walls, the Keep of Sorrows had never fallen, and wise men opined it never could. Still, as Nular Zurn, the castellan of the granite fortress, stood on the battlements and studied the advancing host through his spyglass, he felt tense anyway.

It wasn’t just the size of the besieging force, though it was huge, darkening the plain like a vast stain and flying the standards of every tharch and order of Wizardry, since Szass Tam claimed dominion over them all. Nor was it the knowledge that the lich himself was down there somewhere. What troubled him was the nature of the troops under his command.

Throughout its history, Thay had employed undead troops, the Zombie Legion, dread warriors, and the like. During his thirty-five years of soldiering, Nular had, of necessity, grown accustomed to such creatures. But he’d never seen so many gathered together, rank upon rank of withered and sometimes eyeless faces, and enclosed wagons shrouded in pockets of unnatural gloom carrying entities that could only move around between sunset and dawn. Although the host was still some distance away, the wind already carried its carrion stink, and he wondered how the lich’s companies of living warriors could stand marching in the thick of it.

Nular glanced up and down the walkway. Lacking spyglasses, his own soldiers couldn’t see the advancing army as well as he could, but they could discern enough to discomfit them. He could read it in their faces.

“Where’s our hospitality?” he said, raising his voice sufficiently to carry along the battlements. “Why do you stand mute when guests have come to call? Say hello!”

Its gray hide creased with scars and spittle flying from its mouth, a blood orc sergeant screamed an ear-splitting battle cry. In moments, all the orcs joined in and the human warriors too, although the latter couldn’t compete with their pig-faced comrades. Their shouts were all but lost in the din.

As the noise subsided, the company looked steadier. The sergeant turned to Nular. “Lord! The closest ones are in catapult range.”

“I believe so,” said Nular, “but wait.” The zulkirs promised a swift resolution to the siege, but in case they were mistaken, he intended to use catapult stones, ballista bolts, and all other resources with care.

“Look!” someone shouted.

Nular peered outward again. Riding in from the west, a dozen horsemen galloped into the open space between Szass Tam’s army and the keep. From their course, it was plain they rode for their lives, hoping to reach the latter.

Szass Tam’s archers reacted within a moment or two, and arrows arced through the air. Nular expected to see men and horses fall, but instead, they simply popped like soap bubbles until only a pair of riders remained. The others, Nular realized, had been illusions intended to draw the enemy’s attack.

More shafts flew at the real horsemen and their mounts, but glanced harmlessly away. The riders had a second defensive enchantment in place. Nular realized the fools might actually reach the keep. “Open a sally port!” he shouted.

Voices bellowed, relaying his command. Then a huge shadow soared up from a patch of darkness in the midst of the enemy host and flew toward the riders.

Nular had difficulty making out its shape, but it resembled a giant bat. “Shoot the thing!” he shouted. “Where are our spellcasters?”

Bows creaked, crossbows snapped, and arrows droned through the air. Several found their mark, but failed to penetrate the bat-thing’s hide. It raced ahead of the horsemen and whirled around to face them. Mystical energy, visible as ripplings in the air, streamed down at them from its head.

Nular winced in anticipation of the horsemen’s destruction, but they had another trick to play. Riders and mounts vanished and reappeared several yards closer to the castle. The leap whisked them out of the way of the creature’s blast, which covered the piece of ground they’d just vacated in ice.

The shadow bat wheeled, seeking its quarries once again. Twisting in the saddle, one of the riders pointed a wand. Fire streamed from the tip of the weapon and splashed against the creature’s wing. It convulsed and began to fall.

Then the beast spread its wings, arrested its plummet, and swooped toward the riders again. But by that time, the men were pounding through the sally port. Nular heard the small gate slam shut after them.

The bat flew high enough to peer over the outer wall of the keep. But if it thought to continue the chase, the sight of so many soldiers standying ready and the wizards and priests scurrying to aid them, must have discouraged it, for it wheeled and retreated toward the rest of Szass Tam’s army. Legionnaires cheered and howled derision after it.

Nular descended the stairs to the courtyard. By the time he arrived, the newcomers had already dismounted, thrown back their cloaks to reveal the crimson robes beneath, and started drinking the cups of wine the grooms had brought them. They set the goblets aside to greet Nular.

One rider was exceptionally pudgy for a Mulan, and a wand dangled from his belt. The other had sharp, haughty features and was missing the fingers on his right hand. Both were panting and sweat-soaked, with a gray cast to their skin.

“Masters,” Nular said, “are you all right?”

“We will be,” said the Red Wizard with the maimed hand. “The nightwing—the creature that chased us—moves in a kind of poison cloud, but now that it’s flown away, the sickness will pass. My companion is So-Kehur, and I’m Muthoth. We’re messengers from Hezass Nymar.”

“He sent two,” So-Kehur wheezed, “in the hope that at least one of us would make it past the enemy.”

“What is your message?” Nular asked.

“The tharchion and his army have crossed the Lapendrar safely,” Muthoth said, “less than a day’s march to the north, and without the necromancers knowing about it. The governor will move in and strike when the time is right, in concert with the forces closing in from the north and east.”

“I’m pleased to hear it,” Nular said. In fact, he was astonished that the infamously unreliable Nymar had actually decided to commit his troops and person to battle. “And also honored to have you as my guests. Unless you’re minded to try to slip past Szass Tam’s army a second time.”

“Thank you, no,” Muthoth said. “We’ll stay here where it’s safe.”

Dmitra Flass knew she wasn’t the most powerful illusionist in Thay. She had her skill at politics and intrigue and her primary role in the opposition to Szass Tam to thank for her election as zulkir in the wake of Mythrellan’s demise. Or perhaps, knowing that whomever succeeded Mythrellan would likewise receive the lich’s homicidal attentions, no one else with any brains had wanted the job.

In any case, Dmitra was zulkir whether her arcane capabilities justified it or not, and only the zulkir, by virtue of the rituals that had consecrated her ascension, could perform the task required of her now. Accordingly, she sat chanting in the dark, stuffy confines of the enormous rocking, creaking carriage—essentially a conjuration chamber on wheels—for bell after sleepless bell. A circle of her underlings recited with her, sending flickers of light, whispers and chiming, surges of heat and cold, baseless sensations and manifestations of unreality, dancing through the air. But those wizards were able to work in shifts. As the essential hub of a vast and intricate mechanism, Dmitra had to perform her function continuously.

That mechanism consisted of far more than the occupants of a single carriage. Other such coaches rolled among the marching legions of Eltabbar. Their positions would define a magical sigil if any flying creature gazing down from above had the knowledge and wit to connect them with imaginary lines. The entire fleet of wagons had its counterparts amid the armies of Tyraturos and Pyarados, all working as one to keep Szass Tam’s scouts and soothsayers from discerning the foes advancing on their flank and rear.

Dmitra reached the conclusion of one lengthy incantation and drew breath to start another. Then someone touched her on the shoulder. She turned and saw Malark. For a moment, a stray wisp of illusion painted iridescent scales across his brow.

Careful not to unbalance the forces at play, she uncoupled her power from the structure she’d created. It could manage without her, but only for a little while. “Is it midday?” she asked, her throat raw and dry.

“Yes,” Malark said, “just as you ordered.” He offered her a goblet of water.

It was cold, a pleasant surprise given the army’s current circumstances. Malark must have persuaded a wizard to chill it with conjured frost. She gulped it greedily.

“I also have food,” the spymaster said. “Raisins, dried apricots, bread and honey—”

“I’ll start with that.” He proffered a silver tray. “Do we know,” she continued after her initial bite, “whether all this effort is actually accomplishing anything?”

He shrugged. “My agents can’t see any indication that Szass Tam knows we’re creeping up on him, and the diviners say they can’t, either. Since I don’t practice their mysteries, I’ve little choice but to defer to their expertise. I imagine their opinion is reliable. After all, we have the entire Order of Illusion working in concert to do what you do best.”

“You’re right,” she said, “that should suffice, but you don’t know Szass Tam like I do. He’s a genius, and a master of every school of wizardry. So can we really hide whole armies from him, or was that Rashemi griffon rider correct? Is this a feckless plan?”

Malark smiled. “Captain Fezim would be gratified that you recall his opinion, though chagrined to hear you call him Rashemi. But in response to your question, I can only say that in war, nothing is certain, especially when facing an enemy like Szass Tam. But brilliant though he is, you’ve always proven his equal in guile whenever it truly counted. So I trust your judgment, and think you ought to trust it, too.”

“Thank you,” she said, and felt a swell of affection. Collecting and evaluating intelligence was a demanding task, especially in the midst of an army on the march. She hadn’t required that Malark attend to it and also ride alongside her coach to guard her while she was vulnerable, fetch her food and drink, and soothe her frazzled nerves. He’d volunteered for the latter duties, as he always did his utmost to assist her, and without wheedling for lands and lucrative sinecures like so many courtiers.

“Once we destroy Szass Tam,” she said, “I’ll make you a tharchion, or whatever else you want.”

“Some people might object to that, considering I’m not Mulan, nor even a Thayan.”

“Then they’ll just have to choke on it, because I mean it—whatever you want.”

He inclined his head. “You honor me, but let’s discuss it after the war is over. Right now, all I truly want is to kill a great many of your enemies.”

Aoth glanced around, making sure he knew where everyone was, as his command winged its way across a sky that was clear and blue for once. Bareris gave him a nod. Aoth felt a fleeting pang of hostility, and then wondered why.

“Because your eyes water every time he comes near,” Brightwing said.

Aoth snorted. “You’ve been known to stink yourself.”

“That’s different. I’m an animal. I’m allowed. Do you resent him for persuading you not to desert?”

“No.” A new thought struck him. “Do you? If I left, you’d enjoy a safer, more luxurious life, too. You could gorge on horseflesh every day.”

The griffon laughed her screeching laugh. “Now you tell me! But no. You raised me to fight, and I wouldn’t want to miss a battle like this. Look at them down there.”

They were soaring high enough that Aoth had called upon the magic in one of his tattoos to ward off the chill. High enough that he could gaze down on them all—the legions of Pyarados, Eltabbar, and Tyraturos converging on the foe. They were visible to him because the same spell of concealment that cloaked them enshrouded him.

When he contemplated them, he reflected on how difficult it could be for even two companies to coordinate once separated by any distance. It seemed little short of miraculous that, marching through spring rain and mud, all the diverse elements of this great host had managed to assemble in the right place at the right time to close the trap on Szass Tam. And on top of that, there was still no indication the lich knew they were coming.

As anticipated, the shield of illusion failed at the end. Aoth knew it when horns started blowing and living men and orcs began shouting amid the necromancers’ army. That force had arranged itself to threaten the Keep of Sorrows, and now companies scrambled to defend against the enemies who’d suddenly appeared in the opposite direction.

The southerners meant to hit them before they had the chance to form ranks. Their own bugles blew, their blood orcs bellowed, and clouds of arrows blackened the air. Aoth brandished a spear, and the Griffon Legion hurtled forward.

A flat, leechlike undead known as a skin kite flew up at Aoth. Brightwing caught it in her talons and shredded it. Aoth rained lightning and flame on the massed foes on the ground, while Bareris sang noxious clouds of vapor and hypnotic patterns of light down into their midst. Their fellow riders shot arrows from the saddle.

“Beware!” Brightwing lifted one wing and dipped the other, turning, and then Aoth saw the danger—several yellowed, rattling horrors, reanimated skeletons of giant raptors, seeking to climb above them.

There were too many for the griffon to handle alone. Aoth pointed his spear at the closest and flung darts of emerald light from the point.

The knight was undead, its face a rotting skull inside its open helm. Its flying steed, with its night black coat, blazing eyes and breath, and hooves shrouded in flame looked demonic, but nonetheless alive.

If so, Bareris thought, it should be susceptible to enchantments that couldn’t affect its master. Murder, his new griffon, maneuvered to keep away from it while he sought to sing it blind.

When the horse balked, jolting the corpse-knight in the saddle, he knew he’d succeeded. He sent Murder streaking at it.

The undead knight spurred its mount and hauled on the reins, but couldn’t induce the sightless, panicked creature to move in any way useful for defense. Abandoning the effort, it braced its lance in both gauntleted hands and aimed to impale Murder as he closed.

Bareris leaned forward, swung his spear, and knocked his adversary’s weapon out of line. Murder’s talons stabbed deep into the black horse’s body, and for a moment, they all fell down the sky together. Then the griffon pulled his claws free, lashed his wings, and flew clear. The knight and his destrier smashed into the ground.

Bareris cast about to locate the next threat. He couldn’t find one. For the moment, the patch of air in which he and Murder had been fighting was clear of foes.

Good. He and Murder needed a chance to catch their breath. While they did so, perhaps he could figure out how the battle was progressing.

When he surveyed the battlefield, he decided it was going well. Hammered by flights of arrows and quarrels, by the devils and elementals of the conjurors and the firestorms and hailstones of the evokers, by sword and mace and spear, Szass Tam’s battle lines were buckling, and his warriors had nowhere to retreat. Yielding to the pressure only moved them closer to the walls of the Keep of Sorrows, where the defenders maintained their own barrages of missiles and spells.

Ten years we’ve been fighting, Bareris thought, and by dusk it could all be over.

It should have been cause for rejoicing, but he felt empty. He scowled and looked around for something else to kill.

To So-Kehur’s relief, the keep’s temple, with its altars to Kossuth, Bane, and an assortment of other deities, was empty of priests. No doubt they were all outside tending the wounded and casting maledictions on the undead.

Of course, even had the clerics been in attendance, it was unlikely they would have objected to So-Kehur visiting the shrine. When the defenders of the keep learned that a siege was imminent, they’d surely started watching for spies and scrying. But by entering the castle despite the northern army’s supposed efforts to stop them, and then delivering good news, he and Muthoth had diverted all suspicion from themselves. As the castellan had promised, they were honored guests.

Still, some busybody might have found it odd if one of the newcomers showed an interest in the crypts. So-Kehur appropriated a votive candle and hurried down the stone steps, getting himself out of sight before anyone wandered in.

The wavering yellow candlelight revealed massive sarcophagi, the lids sculpted into the likenesses of those who rested inside. Slabs of marble graven with names, titles, and dates, with mottos, coats-of-arms, and the sentiments of the bereaved were mortared into the surrounding walls. Apparently no aristocrat had died in a while, for dust lay thick and cobwebs choked the walkways. The air smelled of dampness and decay. So-Kehur extracted the scroll Szass Tam had given him, unrolled it, and hesitated.

He wasn’t afraid of the act he was about to perform for its own sake. He sometimes thought that his necromancy and the entities it summoned were the only things that didn’t frighten him. But once he cast the spells, everyone in the fortress would know him for the enemy he truly was. Everyone would do his or her utmost to slaughter him on sight.

But it didn’t matter that he was afraid. He was mind-bound, and had no choice. The enchantment might not poison a man if he made an honest effort to carry out Szass Tam’s orders and then gave up when the task proved impossible. The magic was subtler than that. But it would smite So-Kehur if he didn’t even try.

He read the first trigger phrase on the vellum, releasing the spell contained therein. Stone grated and crashed as coffin lids slid open and marker stones fell away from the vaults behind them. So-Kehur winced at the racket, but doubted anyone would actually hear it. The battle raging outside the castle was even noisier.

He recited the second trigger. A cold breeze gusted, nearly blowing out his candle. The smell of decay thickened, and the spiders skittered in their webs.

A dead man sat up in his coffin. Another stuck his head out of a newly opened hole in the wall.

Some of the dead, more recently deceased or artfully embalmed, retained a goodly portion of their flesh. Others had deteriorated to mere rickety-looking skeletons, but it didn’t matter. Infused with the power of necromancy, they could all fight, and many already carried swords and axes. As befitted knights and warriors, they’d been laid to rest with their weapons and armor.

Milky eyes fixed on So-Kehur. Empty, mold-encrusted orbits turned in his direction. The dead awaited his command.

“Range through the castle,” he said, “and kill everyone you find, except for me and a man with the fingers missing on his right hand.” The way Muthoth liked to insult and bully him, it would serve him right if the dead went after him as well. But however obnoxious, the other necromancer had been So-Kehur’s partner in desperate endeavors for a long time, and he was the only ally who could stand with him now.

Or at least the only one who thought and spoke and breathed.

Muthoth sat cross-legged on the floor of the bedchamber. He breathed slowly and deeply, from the belly. He sank deeper and deeper into his trance, deeper and deeper into himself, until he reached the cell or psychic cyst that caged the thing within.

So-Kehur had smuggled death into the Keep of Sorrows on a roll of parchment. Recognizing Muthoth as a more powerful necromancer and a stronger will, Szass Tam had chosen him to bring an even more terrible weapon to bear, and to carry it entombed in his own mind. At times the oppressive weight and the whisper of alien thought had nearly driven him mad, and he was eager to put an end to the torment.

Which didn’t mean he could afford to rush. The entity was inimical to all life, but since it hadn’t enjoyed being imprisoned any more than he’d enjoyed containing it, it now hated him more than anything else in the world. Accordingly, he recited the incantation of release, or rather, of transfer from one form of binding to another, with the utmost care.

The caller in darkness, as such abominations were known, howled up around him in that realm of concept and image they both occupied. The entity was a vortex of dark mist with anguished faces forming and dissolving inside it. Their shrieks pounded at him. They’d blast his mind apart if he let them, then tear the pieces out to add to the collective agony that was their source.

Steeling himself against the onslaught, Muthoth repeated the words of command he’d just recited. The caller recoiled from him, then vanished.

For an instant, Muthoth was confused, then he realized it had transferred itself to the physical plane. It hoped the surface of his mind would prove vulnerable to assault while his awareness was focused deep inside.

He hastily roused himself, suffered a fleeting illusion of extreme heaviness as his psyche fully meshed with his corporeal form. The demented ghost—or amalgam of ghosts—raved around him. It looked just as it had inside its quasi-imaginary dungeon, but its howls were silent now, albeit as palpable and hurtful as before.

He recited the spell a third time, and the caller flinched from him. Its power stopped beating at him, although the psychic howling didn’t abate.

“Go forth,” he panted, “and kill every living person you meet, unless I tell you otherwise.” He intended to trail along behind the caller, where he’d be safe. He hoped that if the entity encountered So-Kehur, he’d spot his fellow necromancer in time to keep the thing from attacking. If not, well, the fat fool wouldn’t be much of a loss.

Still, So-Kehur had a role to play. As the dead men he’d already roused proceeded with the work of slaughtering the garrison, he’d make new zombies of the fallen, just as Muthoth intended to reanimate the caller’s victims. As the defenders’ numbers dwindled, the ranks of their enemies would swell.

Xingax liked to ride on the shoulders of a hill-giant zombie. It made folk assume that a being who resembled an oversized, leprous, and grossly deformed fetus couldn’t get around by himself, and he liked being underestimated in that way. It gave him an edge when ill wishers sought to kill him.

Or rather, it had worked that way in the past, but he’d discovered that in the midst of a battle like this, his mount was a liability. Even at the center of the northern host, sticking up higher than the heads of the people around him increased the likelihood of being pierced by arrows or fried by flares of arcane energy. So now he simply floated in the air beside Szass Tam.

Xingax disliked the roaring, dangerous chaos that was warfare, and privately felt that he shouldn’t have to endure it. He was an inventor, sage, and artist, not a brute. Thus, it galled him to recognize that he himself was responsible for his presence at the battle. After Bareris Anskuld had mutilated him, he’d repaired the damage with a hand and eye harvested from the body of the fallen nighthaunt Ysval, then learned to wield the abilities the grafts conferred. As a result, Szass Tam had incorporated him into his battle strategy.

The lich had created half a dozen hovering eyes, then sent them soaring up into the sky. Periodically he opened his mind to the sights the disembodied orbs beheld. It allowed him to oversee the progress of the battle as a whole. He signaled the end of such an interlude by pivoting toward Xingax.

“Is it time?” Xingax asked.

The lich smiled. “It is, indeed. Our enemies smell victory. They’re pushing in hard, and that means they won’t be able to disentangle themselves from us later on. So remember what I taught you, and use your power.”

Xingax closed his natural, myopic eye so only Ysval’s round white orb could see. He raised the nighthaunt’s oversized, shadow black hand to the heavens, clenched the clawed fingers into a fist, and strained with all the considerable force of his will.

Responding to his summons, darkness streamed across the sky. For the Keep of Sorrows, night fell early, and across the length and breadth of Szass Tam’s army, wraiths and other fearsome entities exploded from the wagons, tents, and pools of shadow used to shield them from the light of day.

Tammith looked around. The horses stood ready, but she couldn’t see any clear path along which she and her command might ride to engage the enemy.

Fortunately, the vampires of the Silent Company, made up largely of progeny Tammith had created over the years, had other ways of reaching the foe.

“We fly!” she called, then dissolved into bats. Her warriors each transformed into a single such creature. None of them had inherited her trick of breaking apart into an entire swarm.

She led her spawn over clusters and lines of combatants to a company of mounted knights. By the looks of it, they’d just finished butchering a band of ghouls.

The Silent Company dived at the southerners. Midway through her plummet, Tammith yanked her bats back into a single human body. It was a difficult trick and it hurt, but it was necessary, because her target wore plate armor and had his visor down. The bats wouldn’t be able to hurt him.

She crashed into the knight, swept him from the saddle, and hurled him to the ground beneath her. The impact probably killed or at least crippled him, but she ripped the visor off his helm and drove her stiffened, mail-clad fingers deep into his head to be sure.

She sprang to her feet, found another target, and stared at his face. Addled by her hypnotic power, he faltered, giving her time to draw her sword. As she leaped up at him, his wits returned, and he swung his shield to fend her off. He was too slow, though, and the point of her sword punched through his breastplate into his vitals.

Meanwhile, the other vampires attacked like lethal shadows, until all the riders were dead. Tammith looked around for new foes and saw the griffon riders wheeling and swooping overhead.

Since the Silent Company could fly, it could engage the zulkirs’ aerial warriors—but no. By all accounts, Bareris was still alive, and had joined the Griffon Legion.

Of course, she didn’t love him anymore. The predator she’d become was incapable of loving anyone. Sometimes she even hated him for failing her as he had.

But still: no. Now that the battlefield was dark, Szass Tam had other warriors capable of fighting in the air, and the Silent Company could find plenty of work to do on the ground.

Malark considered himself as able a combatant as any in Thay. He had, after all, had centuries of life to perfect his disciplines. But he couldn’t use them to best effect standing in a shield wall or charging in a line. The philosopher-assassins of the Monks of the Long Death hadn’t modeled themselves with those sorts of group endeavors in mind.

Thus he preferred to fight on the fringes of the battle, and found plenty of enemies to occupy him—skirmishers, warriors separated from their companies, and undead horrors so savage and erratic that even the necromancers mistrusted their ability to control them. Accordingly, they didn’t even try, just shooed them off in the general direction of the zulkirs’ army to rampage as they would.

He kicked an orc in the chest and burst its heart, then used his batons to shatter the skull of a yellow-eyed dread warrior. He dispatched foe after foe, all the while exulting in the slaughter. Until the ground began to shake.

The first jolt knocked some warriors to the ground. Malark took a quick step to keep his balance, then glanced around to see what was happening.

On the plain to the north, entities huge as dragons heaved up out of the earth. Dirt showered away to reveal forms akin to those of octopi, but shrouded in moldy cerements. Vast black eyes glaring, tentacles clutching and churning the soil, they dragged themselves toward the rear of the legions of Eltabbar.

As he stared dry-mouthed at the colossi, Malark wondered if Szass Tam and Xingax had created them or unearthed them from some forgotten menagerie of horrors, and wondered too how the enemy had managed to bury them in the field beforehand without anyone in the Keep of Sorrows noticing. Well, caverns riddled the earth hereabouts, and from the first days of the war, the necromancers had employed zombies with a supernatural ability to dig. So perhaps they’d tunneled up from underneath.

Not that it mattered. What did was that the squid-things were about to smash and crush their way into Dmitra’s soldiery like boulders rolling over ants, and that meant Malark’s place was at her side. He sprinted toward the spot where the standards of Eltabbar and the Order of Illusion, both infused with magical phosphorescence, glowed against the murky sky.

Since the day he’d first sat on griffon-back, Aoth had loved to fly, but now, for an instant, he hated it and the perspective it afforded. He wished he didn’t have such a perfect view of victory twisting into ruin.

Gigantic tentacles lashed and pounded, smashing the infantry and horsemen of Eltabbar to pulp. Those few warriors who survived the first touch of the kraken-things’ arms collapsed moments later, flesh rotting and sloughing from their bones. Meanwhile, strengthened by the creatures that had emerged with the premature night, the army assembled before the Keep of Sorrows counterattacked ferociously and started to drive the southerners back.

By rights, the castle’s defenders should have fought to hinder that. They should have kept up a barrage of arrows and magic from the battlements, or attempted a sortie beyond the walls. But they’d stopped doing anything. Plainly, the necromancers had found a way to kill or incapacitate them.

Aoth felt a sudden surge of hope when the legions of Lapendrar appeared in the northwest. Maybe, driving in on the kraken-things’ flanks, Hezass Nymar’s men would have better luck fighting the behemoths than the soldiers they were pounding flat by the moment.

But it soon became clear from their maneuvering that they weren’t inclined to try. Rather, in a betrayal that seemed the crowning achievement of his life of opportunism and disloyalty, Nymar meant to attack the southern host.

The object of the zulkirs’ strategy had been to surround and trap Szass Tam. Now, with the lich’s soldiers on one side, the squid-things on another, and the legions of Lapendrar on a third, their army was the one boxed in.

“And I could have gorged on horseflesh every day,” Brightwing said.

Aoth managed a laugh, though it felt like something was grinding in his chest. “It sounds pretty good right now, doesn’t it?”

“The other riders are looking to you,” the griffon said. “They need orders.”

Why? Aoth thought. The day is lost whatever we do. Still, they had a duty to fight until Nymia Focar or one of the zulkirs gave them leave to retreat.

“We attack Nymar,” he said. “If we hit hard before his men can form up properly, maybe it will do some good.” He brandished his spear, waving his men in the proper direction, and they hurtled across the sky.

Szass Tam knew he’d won the battle, and that meant he’d as good as won Thay, but it was no reason to let up. Any zulkirs who escaped might cause trouble later, delaying the start of his real work, to which all this fighting and conquering was merely the necessary prelude.

Of course, if they realized their cause was lost, it was possible they’d all whisked themselves to safety already. They certainly wouldn’t tarry out of any misguided devotion to the doomed followers who lacked the same ability to make a magical retreat.

Still, he had nothing to lose by dropping his line in the water. He sent his magical eyes flying this way and that, swooping over the enemy army to locate his rivals.

And there was Dmitra, looking sweaty, pale, and exhausted. She’d wearied herself maintaining the shield of illusion that, she imagined, kept him from discerning the southern army’s approach, and had cast many more enchantments during the battle. Nor was she done yet. Reciting hoarsely and whirling a staff, she meant to hurl fire at the undead kraken crawling in her direction.

Szass Tam summoned the Death Moon Orb into his hand. The jet and magenta sphere was the size of an apple this time, as small as it ever shrank, but fortunately, its potency didn’t vary with its size. He focused his will to wake its magic, then hesitated.

Because, at the end, the Death Moon Orb hadn’t worked on Yaphyll. And these days, Dmitra, too, was a zulkir.

He snorted his misgivings away. He still didn’t understand everything that had passed between Yaphyll and himself, but he didn’t regard her resistance to the orb as part of the mystery. No charm of domination succeeded every time. Still, in its way, the artifact was the most powerful weapon in all his arsenal, and he had nothing to lose by trying it. If Dmitra proved impervious to its magic, he’d simply change tactics.

With a gesture and a spell, he placed an image of himself, complete with the orb, before her. A lesser wizard couldn’t have used the sphere at such a distance, but Szass Tam believed he could, and while doing so, he’d be less vulnerable than if he’d moved his physical body into the center of an enemy army, beleaguered and on the brink of rout though it was.

When she glimpsed his shadow from the corner of her eye, Dmitra pivoted to face him and continued her incantation. He, or his image, would be the target of the fire spell if he chose to let her complete it. He didn’t. He held out the Death Moon Orb, and she staggered. Her staff slipped from her spastic fingers.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I should punish you for your betrayal, but I always liked you, and you were always useful. I’ll make you a lich and then you can join the new circle of zulkirs I’m assembling to serve me. How does that sound?”

Her eyes rolled. Shuddering, she fumbled at her scarlet robe, seeking one of the hidden pockets and whatever talisman it contained. But she lacked the coordination to reach it.

Szass Tam concentrated, bearing down to crush what little capacity for defiance remained. “For now, you can help my leviathans slaughter your soldiers. Don’t worry, the brutes won’t strike at you if I don’t want them to.”

At that moment, squirming and shoving his way though the mass of panicky legionnaires, Malark Springhill lunged into view. Capitulating to Szass Tam’s orders, Dmitra oriented on the spymaster and started chanting. Realizing she meant him harm, Malark dropped into a fighting stance. He obviously hoped he’d be able to dodge whatever magic she was about to conjure.

Then, despite her skill and the coercive power of the orb, she faltered, botching the spell. Szass Tam didn’t blame her. He, too, had frozen, as true wizards all across Faerûn undoubtedly had. They sensed what had happened, if not how or why. Mystra, goddess of magic, had just perished, and with her death, the Weave, the universal structure of arcane forces, convulsed.

Corrupted by sudden chaos, the Death Moon Orb exploded in Szass Tam’s grasp.

Aoth felt a shock so profound that for an instant it obliterated thought. He assumed, when he was once again capable of assuming anything, that some hostile priest or wizard had cast a spell on him. Yet he seemed unharmed. “Are you all right?” he asked his mount.

“Yes,” Brightwing said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know.” But the whole world abruptly tasted wrong. He supposed it was because the combatants had unleashed too much magic that day, enough to scrape and chip at the fundamental underpinnings of matter, force, time, and space. Reality was sick with it, and a magic-user like himself could feel its distress.

But reality and he would have to cope. The battle wasn’t over.

The ground rumbled, heaving up and down like the surface of the sea. Some powerful spellcaster had apparently decided to conjure an earthquake, and as far as Aoth was concerned, it was a good idea. The tremors knocked down many of Hezass Nymar’s warriors and threw their ranks into disarray. In flight, the griffon riders were unaffected.

“Kill them!” Aoth bellowed. Brightwing dived at Nymar. Aoth had been trying to get at the whoreson ever since their two forces engaged, and now he saw his chance. His comrades plunged at other targets.

As Brightwing plummeted, talons outstretched, and Nymar scrambled to his feet and lifted his shield, Aoth noticed the scarf wrapped around the tharchion’s throat. Suddenly he had a hunch why Nymar had switched sides again. It cooled his hatred, but didn’t shake his resolve. The fire priest was still an enemy commander and still needed to die.

“Break off!” Bareris shouted, his voice magically amplified so everyone could hear. “Fly higher! High as you can!”

Brightwing flapped her wings and started to climb. Aoth turned this way and that, trying to determine what had alarmed his friend, then gasped.

A wall of azure fire, or something that resembled flame even though it burned without fuel, heat, or smoke, was sweeping across the ground, and across the army of Lapendrar, from the south. Aoth saw that it killed everyone it touched, but no two victims in the same way. Bones and organs erupted from a legionnaire’s mouth as he turned inside out. One of Kossuth’s monks dissolved in a puff of sparkling dust. A knight and his horse melted into a single screaming tangle of flesh. Nymar froze into a statue of cloudy crystal.

The blue flames towered high enough to engulf many of the griffon riders. They shredded one man and his mount and plucked the heads and limbs from another pair. Then, despite Brightwing’s desperate attempt to rise above it, the fire took her and Aoth as well. Pain stabbed into his eyes and he screamed.

By sheer good luck, Xingax had wandered behind his hill-giant zombie when the blast flared and roared at the center of the northern army, and his hulking servant shielded him. It collapsed, a flayed and blackened ruin, and when he looked over the top of what remained of it, he wondered for a moment if the explosion had destroyed Szass Tam as well.

But obviously not, for the lich clambered up from the ground. He was surely hurt, though. Previously, despite his withered fingers and the occasional whiff of decay emanating from him, he could have passed for a living man. Now, with all the flesh seared and scoured from his face and hands, his eyes melted in their sockets, his undead nature was plain for all to see. The hem of his tattered robe was on fire, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Master,” Xingax said, “what happened?”

Szass Tam oriented on him without difficulty. A lich didn’t need eyes to see. “Can you still transport both of us through space?” he croaked.

Xingax didn’t see why not. Such instantaneous travel was a natural ability for him. “Yes.”

“Then take us inside the Keep of Sorrows. If So-Kehur and Muthoth accomplished their task, we should be as safe there as anywhere, and I don’t want to risk jumping any farther.”

“As you command,” Xingax said. “But what in the name of the Abyss is happening?”

“We don’t have time for an explanation,” the necromancer replied. “Suffice it to say, we need to employ your talents, because I can’t trust mine anymore. Not for the moment, anyway.”

Szass Tam vanished, seemingly vaporized by some sort of explosion, although Malark assumed the archmage hadn’t really perished as easily as that. Dmitra had fainted, which was better than if she’d remained under the lich’s spell and kept trying to murder her own officer. The kraken-things had slowed their irresistible advance and weren’t smashing at the soldiers of Eltabbar as relentlessly as before. A few colossi were even pounding at one another.

It all looked like good news, but Malark couldn’t rejoice because he didn’t understand any of it. Nor would he, so long as he was stuck amid the clamorous, milling confusion that was Dmitra’s army. He needed to oversee the situation from the air.

But he couldn’t leave his liege lady stretched insensible on the ground. He picked her up, draped her over his shoulder, and trotted toward the place where he’d left his horse tied.

Another tremor shook the earth. He staggered, caught his balance, and scurried on.

The agony in Aoth’s face abated, and he felt the steady bunching and releasing of Brightwing’s muscles beneath him. Somehow both he and the griffon had survived the power that had killed so many others.

He realized that in response to the pain, he’d reflexively shut his eyes. He opened them, then cried out in dismay.

“What’s wrong?” Brightwing asked. When he was slow to answer, she joined her mind to his to determine for herself. Then she hastily broke the link again. She had to if she was to see where she was going, because her master had gone blind.

But it wasn’t ordinary blindness. He could still see something. In fact, he had the muddled impression he could see a great deal. But he couldn’t make sense of it, and the effort was painful, like looking at the sun. His head throbbed, and, straining to hold in a whimper, he shut his eyes once more.

“I’ll carry you to a healer,” Brightwing said.

“Wait! The legion. Look around. Did anyone else survive?”

“Some.”

“Bareris?”

“Yes.”

“Then I need to put him in charge before—”

Brightwing’s pinions cracked like whips and her body rolled. Aoth realized she was maneuvering to contend with an adversary or dodging an actual attack. An instant later, the air turned deathly cold, as if a blast of frost were streaking by.

“What is it?” asked Aoth.

“One of those big shadow-bats,” the griffon said. “I’ll see if I can tear up its wing bad enough that it can’t fly.” She hurtled forward, jolting Aoth back against the high cantle of his saddle.

If their assailant was a nightwing, she had no hope of defeating it by herself. Aoth had to help. But how could he, when he couldn’t see?

By borrowing her senses, of course, just as he had many times. He should have thought of it immediately, but the inexplicable onslaught of the blue flame and his sudden blindness had robbed him of his wits.

By the time he tapped into Brightwing’s consciousness, she’d nearly closed on her opponent. At the last possible instant, the bat-thing whirled itself away from her talons and struck with its fangs. The griffon dodged in her turn, but only by plunging lower, ceding the nightwing the advantage of height. Brightwing streaked through the air at top speed to get away from it.

“Turn around as soon as you can,” Aoth said. “I can’t target it unless you’re looking at it.”

“You won’t be able to target it if it bites your head off,” Brightwing growled, but she wheeled just heartbeats later.

He saw the nightwing was close, and swooping closer. He aimed his spear at it and rattled off an incantation. As he did, he could tell that something else was wrong.

When he cast a spell, he could sense the elements meshing like machinery in a mill, and feel the power leap from their interaction. But though he’d recited the words of command with the necessary precision, the magic’s structure was out of balance. The components were tangling, jamming, and producing nothing but a useless stink and shimmer. Meanwhile, the bat-thing had nearly closed the distance. Brightwing waited as long as she dared, then swooped in an attempt to pass safely beneath it.

Aoth had emptied his spear’s reservoir of stored spells over the course of the day’s fighting. But he could still charge the weapon with destructive force. Or he hoped he could. For all he knew, even that simple operation had become impossible.

He spoke the proper word, and to his relief, he felt power flow and collect in the point of the spear. Then Brightwing hurtled under the shadow creature, and he couldn’t see it anymore. He thrust blindly, and the spear bit into its target. The magic discharged in a crackle.

“Did I kill it?” he asked.

Before Brightwing could answer, agony ripped through her body, beginning in her chest. Linked to her mind, Aoth endured a measure of it as well. His muscles clenched and his mouth stretched into a snarl. Brightwing floundered in flight, and for a moment, Aoth feared she was about to die. Then the pain abated as her extraordinary hardiness shook off the effect of the supernatural attack.

“Does that answer your question?” she rasped.

She turned, and he could see the nightwing for himself. The thing wasn’t flying as fast or as deftly as before. But it was still pursuing.

For want of a better plan, he tried another spell, and felt it taking something like the proper form. But he was straining against a resistance, as if he were forcing together puzzle pieces that weren’t truly mates.

It worked, though. A cloud of vapor sprang into existence directly in front of the bat-thing, so close that the creature couldn’t avoid it. It hurtled in and the corrosive mist burned its murky substance ragged, in some places searing holes completely through.

The creature fell, then flapped its tattered wings and climbed at Aoth and Brightwing.

But then Bareris and Mirror dived in on the entity’s flank. The bard ripped the nightwing’s head with a thunderous shout. The ghost closed and slashed with his phosphorescent blade. The bat-thing plummeted once more, and this time unraveled into wisps of darkness.

Bareris and Mirror ascended to reach Aoth, who tried to look at them with his own eyes. Maybe his blindness had been temporary. Maybe it was gone.

Then he clamped his eyes shut again as though flinching from overwhelming glare. Although, beneath the unnaturally darkened sky, glare couldn’t possibly be the problem.

Bareris’s face had become a lean, hard mask over the years, betraying little except a hunger to kill his enemies. Yet now he gaped in surprise.

“What?” Aoth asked. “What did you see?”

“The blue flame,” Bareris answered. “It’s in your eyes.”

Terrified and disoriented, Dmitra thrashed. A steely arm wrapped around her chest and immobilized her.

“Easy,” Malark said. “You’re safe now, but you don’t want to flail around and fall.”

When she looked around, she saw that he was right. She was sitting in front of him on his flying horse, high in the air. His other arm encircled her waist to hold her in the saddle.

“I apologize if this seems unduly familiar,” Malark said, “but I had no other way of carrying you out of the thick of battle. Do you remember what happened?”

The question brought memory flooding back. She gasped.

“Szass Tam disappeared in a blaze of fire,” Malark said. “He isn’t controlling you anymore.”

“That’s not it,” she said. “His influence was … unpleasant, but it’s over. I’m unsettled because the Lady of Mysteries is dead.”

“Do you mean the goddess of magic?” he asked, sounding more intrigued than alarmed. But then, he wasn’t a magic-user, and didn’t understand the implications.

“Yes. And for the moment, her destruction taints the well from which all mages draw their power.”

“Your enchantments made this horse,” Malark said. “It isn’t going to dissolve out from underneath us, is it?”

She smiled, appreciating his unruffled practicality. It steadied her in moments of stress, not that she would ever admit such a thing. “It seems to be all right.”

“I’m glad. If we’re not in imminent danger of falling, may I suggest you take advantage of our elevation to look at what the goddess’s death has done to our battle?”

It was a sound suggestion. But the charm that enabled her to see like an owl, cast when Szass Tam shrouded the field in darkness, had run its course. She murmured the incantation once again.

It was a petty spell for an illusionist of her abilities, and she was accustomed to casting it with unthinking ease, the way a master carpenter would hammer a nail. But she felt the forces twisting out of her control. She had to concentrate to bind them into the proper pattern.

When her vision sharpened, a secret, timid part of her wished it hadn’t, for now she could see how Mystra’s death had infected the world. Dislodged by recurring earth tremors, avalanches thundered down the sheer cliffs on the First Escarpment. In the distance, curtains of blue fire swept across the landscape, sometimes cutting crevasses, sometimes lifting and sculpting the plain into hills and ridges.

The upheaval was vast and bizarre enough to transfix any observer with terror and awe, but Dmitra could afford neither. She had an army to salvage, if she could. With effort, she narrowed her focus from the widespread devastation to the chaos directly below.

Before Mystra’s death and the mayhem that followed, Szass Tam had been on the verge of victory. Now Dmitra doubted that any living creature on either side even cared about winning. Combatants of all kinds were simply struggling to survive, for the wounding of magic had smashed a conflict in which thau-maturgy had played a dominant role into deadly confusion.

Some of Szass Tam’s undead warriors remained under the control of the necromancers, and, with their living comrades, were attempting to withdraw into the Keep of Sorrows. But others had slipped their leashes. Mindless zombies and skeletons stood motionless. Gibbering and baying to one another, a pack of hunchbacked ghouls loped away into the darkness. Gigantic hounds, composed of corpses fused together and three times as tall as a man, lunged and snapped at the wizards who chanted desperately to reestablish dominance. Each bite tore a mage to shreds, and when swallowed, a wizard’s mangled substance was added to his slayer’s body.

Meanwhile, the southerners faced the same sort of chaos. Demonic archers—gaunt, hairless, and gray, possessed of four arms and drawing two bows each—abruptly turned and shot their shafts into three of Nevron’s conjurors. An entity with scarlet skin and black-feathered wings swung its greatsword thrice and killed an orc with every stroke.

Half the kraken-things sprawled motionless. The others dragged themselves erratically around, striking at southerner and northerner, at the living, the undead, and devils, indiscriminately.

“We have to try to disengage at least some of our troops from this mess,” Dmitra said. And for such a withdrawal to have any chance of success, she would have to command it. She was reasonably certain her fellow zulkirs had already fled.

“We’ll try to find Dimon and Nymia Focar,” Malark said. Responding to his unspoken will, his horse galloped toward the ground as if running down an invisible ramp.