Chapter three
12 Mirtul, the Year ofRisen Elfkin
D mitra believed she possessed a larger and more effective network of spies than anyone else in Thay. Still, she'd found that when one wished to gauge the mood of the mob—and every person of consequence, even a zulkir, was well-advised to keep track of it if he or she wished to remain in power—there was no substitute for doing some spying oneself.
Happily, for a Red Wizard of Illusion, the task was simple. She merely cloaked herself in the appearance of a commoner, slipped out of the palace via one of the secret exits, and wandered the taverns and markets of Eltabbar eavesdropping.
She generally wore the guise of a pretty Rashemi lass. It was less complicated to maintain an effective disguise if appearance didn't differ too radically from the underlying reality. It was easier to carry oneself as the semblance ought to move and speak as it ought to speak. The illusion had an additional advantage as well. When she cared to join a conversation, most
men were happy to allow it.
But by the same token, a comely girl roaming around unescorted sometimes attracted male attention of a type she didn't want. It was happening now, as she stood jammed in with the rest of the crowd. A hand brushed her bottom—it could have been inadvertent, so she waited—then returned to give her a pinch.
She didn't jerk or whirl around. She turned without haste. It gave her time to whisper a charm.
The leer would have made it easy to identify the lout who'd touched her even if he hadn't been standing directly behind het. He was tall for a commoner, and his overshot chin and protruding lower canines betrayed orcish blood. She stared into his eyes and breathed the final word of her incantation.
The half-ore screamed and blundered backward, flailing at the illusion of nightmarish assailants she'd planted in his mind. The press was such that he inevitably collided with other rough characters, who took exception to the jostling. A burly man carrying a wooden box of carpenter's tools booted the half-ore's legs out from under him then went on kicking and stamping when the oaf hit the ground. Other men clustered around and joined in.
Smiling, hoping they'd cripple or kill the half-ore, Dmitra turned back around to watch the play unfolding atop a stage built of crates at the center of the plaza. The theme was Thay's recent triumph in the Gorge of Gauros. A clash of armies seemed a difficult subject for a dozen ragtag actors to address, but changing their rudimentary costumes quickly and repeatedly as they assumed various roles, they managed to limn the story in broad strokes.
It was no surprise that a troupe of players had turned the battle into a melodrama. Such folk often mined contemporary events for story material, sometimes risking arrest when the results mocked or criticized their betters. What impressed Dmitra was the enthusiasm this particular play engendered.
The audience cheered on the heroic tharchions and legionnaires, booed and hissed the bestial Rashemi, and groaned whenever the latter seemed to gain the upper hand.
Dmitra supposed it was understandable. Thayans had craved a victory over Rashemen for a long time, and perhaps Druxus Rhym's murder made them appreciate it all the more. Even folk who claimed to loathe the zulkirs—and the Black Lord knew, there were many—might secretly welcome a sign that the established order was still strong and unlikely to dissolve into anarchy anytime soon.
Still, something about the mob's reaction troubled her, even if she couldn't say why.
One of the lead actors ducked behind a curtain. He sprang back out just a moment later, but that had been enough time to doff the bear-claw necklace and long, tangled wig that had marked him as a Rashemi chieftain and don a pink—he couldn't dress in actual red under penalty of law—skull-emblazoned tabard in their place. He flourished his hands as if casting a spell, and the audience cheered even louder than before to see Szass Tam magically materialize on the scene just when it seemed the day was lost.
Dmitra knew the reaction ought to please her, for after all, the lich was her patron. If the rabble loved him, it could only strengthen her own position. Still, her nagging disquiet persisted.
She decided not to linger until the end of the play. She'd assimilated what it had to teach her, and to say the least, the quality of the performance was insufficient to detain her. She made her way through Eltabbar's tangled streets to what appeared to be a derelict cobbler's shop, glanced around to make sure no one was watching, unlocked the door with a word of command, and slipped inside. A concealed trapdoor at the rear of the shop granted access to the tunnels below.
Dmitra reflected that she'd traversed the maze so often, she
could probably do it blind. It might even be amusing to try sometime, but not today. Too many matters demanded her attention. She conjured a floating orb of silvery glow to light her way then climbed down the ladder.
In no time at all, she was back in her study, a cozy, unassuming room enlivened by fragrant, fresh-cut tulips and lilies and the preserved heads of two of her old rivals gazing morosely down from the wall. She dissolved her disguise with a thought, cleaned the muck from her shoes and the hem of her gown with a murmured charm, then waved her hand. The sonorous note of a gong shivered through the air, and a page scurried in to find out what she wanted.
"Get me Malark Springhill," she said.
By marriage, Dmitra was the princess of Mulmaster, even if she didn't spend much time there, or in the company of her husband, for that matter, and she'd imported some of her most useful servants from that distant city-state. Her hope was that their lack of ties to anyone else in Thay would help ensute their loyalty. Despite the fact that he now shaved his head and sported tattoos like a Mulan born, Malark was one of these expatriates. Compactly built with a small wine red birthmatk on his chin, he didn't look particularly impressive, certainly not unusually dangerous, until one noticed the deft economy of his movements or the cool calculation in his pale green eyes.
"Tharchion," he said, kneeling.
"Rise," she said, "and tell me how you're getting along."
"We're making progress. One of Samas Kul's opponents has withdrawn from the election. Another is being made to appear petty and inept."
"So Kul will be the next zulkir of Transmutation." Malark hesitated. "I'm not prepared to promise that as yet. It's not easy manipulating a brotherhood of wizards. Something could still go wrong."
She sighed. "I would have preferred a guarantee. Still, we'll have to trust your agents to complete the work successfully. I have another task for you, one you must undertake unassisted." She told him what it was.
Her orders brought a frown to his face. "May I speak candidly?"
"If you must," she said, her tone grudging.
Actually, she valued his counsel. It had spared her a costly misstep, or provided the solution to a thorny problem, on more than one occasion, but it wouldn't do to permit him or any of her servants to develop an inflated sense of his importance.
"This could be dangerous, not just for me but for both of us."
"I'm sending you because I trust you not to get caught."
"The tharchion knows I'm willing to take risks in pursuit of sensible ends—"
She laughed. "Are you saying I've lost my sense?"
He peered at her as if trying to gauge whether he had in fact given offense. Good. Let him wondet.
"Of course not, High Lady," he said at length, "but I don't understand what you're trying to achieve. Whatever I learn, whar will it gain you?"
"I can't say, but knowledge is strength. I became 'First Princess of Thay' by understanding all sorts of things, and I mean to comprehend this as well."
"Then, if I have your leave to withdraw, I'll go and pack my saddlebags."
Bareris doggedly jerked the rope, and the brass bell mounted beside the door clanged over and over again. Eventually the door opened partway, revealing a stout man with a coiled whip
and a ring of iron keys hanging from his belt. For a moment, his expression seemed welcoming enough, but when he saw who was seeking admittance, it hardened into a glare.
"Go away," he growled, "we're closed."
"I'm sorry to disturb the household," Bareris answered, "but my business can't wait."
It was less than two hundred miles from Bezantur to the city of Tyraturos, but the road snaked up the First Escarpment, an ascending series of sheer cliffs dividing the Thayan lowlands from the central plateau. Bareris had nearly killed a fine horse making as good a time as he had then spent a long, frustrating day trying to locate one particular slave trader in a teeming commercial center he'd never visited before. Having reached his destination at last, he had no intention of meekly going away and returning in the morning. He'd shove his way in if he had to.
But perhaps softer methods would suffice. "How would you like to earn a gold piece?" "Doing what?"
"The same thing you do during the day. Show me the slaves."
The watchman hesitated. "That's all?" "Yes."
"Give me the coin."
Batetis handed over the coin. The guard bit it, pocketed it, then led him into the barracoon, a shadowy, echoing place that smelled of unwashed bodies. The bard felt as if he were all but vibrating with impatience. It took an effort to keep from demanding that his guide quicken the pace.
In fact, they reached the long open room where the slaves slept soon enough. The wan yellow light of a single lantern just barely alleviated the gloom. The watchman called for his charges to wake and stand, kicking those who were slow to obey.
Confident of his ability to recognize Tammith even after six years, even in the dark, Bareris scrutinized the women.
Then his guts twisted, because she wasn't here. Tracking her, he'd discovered that since becoming a slave, she'd passed in and out of the custody of multiple owners. The merchant who'd bought her originally had passed her on to a caravan master, a middleman who made his living moving goods inland from the port. He then handed her off to one of the many slave traders of Tyraturos.
Who had obviously sold her in his turn, with Bareris once again arriving too late to buy her out of bondage. He closed his eyes, took a deep bteath, and reminded himself he hadn't failed. He simply had to follow the trail a little farther.
He turned towatd the watchman. "I'm looking for a particular woman. Her name is Tammith Iltazyarra, and I know you had her here within the past several days, maybe even earlier today. She's young, small, and slim, with bright blue eyes. She hasn't been a slave for very long: Her black hair is still short, and she doesn't have old whip scars on her back. You almost certainly sold her to a buyer who wanted a skilled potter. Or ... or to someone looking to purchase an uncommonly pretty girl."
The watchman sneered. Maybe he discerned how frantic Bareris was to find Tammith, and as was often the case with bullies, another person's need stirred his contempt.
"Sorry, friend. The wench was never here. I wish she had been. Sounds like I could have had a good time with her before we moved her out."
Bareris felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of icy water over his head. "This is the house of Kanithar Chergoba?"
"Yes," said the guard, "and now that you see your trollop isn't here, I'll show you the way out of it."
Indeed, Bareris could see no reason to linger. He'd evidently deviated from Tammith s trail at some point, though he didn't
understand how that was possible. Had someone lied to him along the way, and if so, why? What possible reason could there be?
All he knew was his only option was to backtrack. Too sick at heart to speak, he waved his hand, signaling his willingness for the watchman to conduct him to the exit, and then a realization struck him.
"Wait," he said.
"Why? You've had your look."
"I paid gold for your time. You can spare me a few more moments. I've heard your master is one of the busiest slave traders in the city, and it must be true. This room can house hundreds of slaves, yet I only see a handful."
The watchman shrugged. "Sometimes we sell them off faster rhan they come in."
"I believe you," Bareris said, "and I suspect your stock is depleted because someone bought a great many slaves at once. That could be why you don't remember Tammith. You never had a reason or a chance to give her any individual attention."
The watchman shook his head. "You're wrong. It's been months since we sold more than two or three at a time."
Bareris studied his face and was somehow certain he was lying, but what did he have to gain by dissembling? By the silver harp, had they sold Tammith to a festhall or into some other circumstance so foul that he feared to admit it to a man who obviously cared about her?
The bard struggled to erase any trace of rancor from his features. "Friend, I know I don't look it in these worn, dusty clothes with my hair grown out like an outlander's, but I'm a wealthy man. I have plenty more gold to exchange for the truth, and I give you my word that however much it upsets me, I won't take my anger out on you."
The guard screwed up his features in an almost comical expression of deliberation, then said, "Sorry. The girl wasn't here.
We didn't sell off a bunch of slaves all at once. You're just wrong about everything."
"I doubt it. You paused to consider before you spoke. If you don't have anything to tell me, what was there to think about? You were weighing greed against caution, and caution came out the winner. Well, that's all right. I can appeal to your sense of self-preservation if necessary." With one smooth, sudden, practiced motion intended to demonstrate his facility with a blade, Bareris whipped his sword from its scabbard. The guard jumped back, and a couple of the slaves gasped.
"Are you crazy?" stammered the guard, his hand easing toward the whip on his belt. "You can't murder me just because I didn't tell you what you want to hear!"
"I admit," Bareris replied, advancing with a duelist's catlike steps, "my conscience will trouble me later, but you're standing between me and everything I've wanted for the past six years. Or since I was eight, really. That's enough to make me set aside my scruples. Oh, and snatch for the whip if you must, but in all my wanderings, I never once saw rawhide prevail against steel."
"If you hurt me, the watch will hang you."
"I'll be out of the city before anyone knows you're dead, except these slaves, and I doubt they love you well enough to raise the alarm."
"I'll shout for help."
"It won't arrive in time. I'm almost within sword's reach already."
The watchman whirled and lunged for the door. Bareris sang a quick phrase, sketched an arcane figure in the air with his off hand, and expelled the air from his lungs. Engulfed in a plume of noxious vapor, the guard stumbled and doubled over retching. Holding his breath to avoid a similar reaction, Bareris grabbed the man and pulled him out of the invisible but malodorous fumes. He then dumped the guard on his back, poised his sword
at his breast, and waited for his nausea to subside.
When it did, he said, "This is your last chance. Tell me now, or I'll kill you and look for someone else to question. You're not the only lout on the premises."
"All right," said the slaver, "but please, you can't tell anyone who told you. They said we weren't to talk about their business."
"I swear by the Binder and his Hand," Bareris said. "Now who in the name of the Abyss are you talking about?" "Red Wizards."
At last Bareris understood the watchman's reluctance to divulge the truth. Everyone with even a shred of prudence feared offending members of the scarlet orders. "Tell me exactly what happened."
"They—the mages and their servants—came in the middle of the night, just like you. They bought all the stock we had, just the way you figured. They told Chergoba that if we kept our mouths shut, they'd be back to buy more, but if we prattled about them, they'd know, and return to punish us."
"What were the wizards' names?"
"They didn't say."
"Where did they mean to take the slaves?"
"I don't know."
"Why did they want them?"
"I don't know! They didn't say and we had better sense than to ask. We took their gold and thought ourselves lucky they paid the asking price. But if they'd offered only a pittance, or nothing at all, what could we have done about it?"
Bareris stepped away from the watchman and tossed him another gold piece. "I'll let myself out. Don't tell anyone I was here, or that you told me what you have, and you'll be all right." He started to slide his sword back into its worn leather scabbard then realized there was one more question he should ask. "To
which order did the wizards belong?"
"Necromancy, I think. They had black trim on their robes and jewelry in the shapes of skulls and things."
Red Wizards of Necromancy! Bareris pondered the matter as he prowled onward through the dark, for Milil knew, he couldn't make any sense of it.
It was the most ordinary thing in the world for wealthy folk to buy slaves, but why in the middle of the night? Why the secrecy?
It suggested there was something illicit about the transaction or the purchasers' intent, but how could there be? By law, slaves were property, with no rights whatsoever. Even commoners could buy, sell, exploit, and abuse them however they chose, and Red Wizards were Thay's ruling elite, answerable to no one but their superiors.
Bareris sighed. Maybe the watchman was right; maybe it was something ordinary folk were better off not understanding. After all, his objective hadn't changed. He simply wanted to find Tammith.
Evidently hoping to avoid notice, the necromancers had marched her and the other slaves away under cover of darkness, but someone had seen where they went. A whore. A drunk. A beggar. A cutpurse. One of the night people who dwell in every city.
Exhausted as he was, eyes burning, an acid taste searing his mouth, Bareris cringed at the prospect of commencing yet another search, this one through squalid stews and taverns, yet he could no more have slept than he could have sung Selune down from the sky. He arranged his features into a smile and headed for a painted, half-clad woman lounging in a doorway.
The fighter was beaten but too stubborn to admit it, as he demonstrated by struggling back onto his feet.
Calmevik grinned. If the smaller pugilist wanted more punishment, he was happy to oblige. He lowered his guard and stepped in, inviting his opponent to swing. Dazed, the other fighter responded with slow, clumsy haymakers, easily dodged. The spectators laughed when Calmevik ducked and twisted out of the way.
It was amusing to make his adversary reel and stumble uselessly around, but Calmevik couldn't continue the game for long. The urge to beat and break the other man was too powerful. He froze him with a punch to the solar plexus, shifted in, and drove an elbow strike into his jaw. Bone crunched. Calmevik then hooked his opponent's leg with his own, grabbed'the back of his head, and smashed him face first to the plank floor where he lay inert, blood seeping out from around his head like the petals of a flower.
The onlookers cheered. Calmevik laughed and raised his fists, acknowledging their acclaim, feeling strong, dauntless, invincible—
Then he spotted the child, if that was the right word for it, peeking in the tavern doorway, one puffy, pasty hand pushing the bead curtain aside, the hood of its shabby cloak shadowing its features. The creature had the frame of a little girl and he was the biggest man in the tavern, indeed, one of the biggest in all Tyraturos, and he had no reason to believe the newcomer meant him any harm. Still, when it crooked its finger, his elation gave way to a pang of trepidation.
Had he known what it would involve, he never would have taken the job, no matter how good the pay, but he hadn't, and now he was stuck taking orders from the ghastly representative his client had left behind. There was nothing to do but finish the chore, pocket the coin, and hope that in time he'd stop dreaming about the child's face.
Striving to make sure no one could tell he was rattled, he made his excuses to his sycophants, pulled on his tunic, belted on his broadsword and dirks, and departed the tavern. Presumably because it was the way in which an adult and little girl might be expected to walk the benighted streets, the child intertwined its soft, clammy fingers with his. He had to fight to keep himself from wrenching his hand away.
"He's here," she said in a high, lisping voice.
Calmevik wondered who "he" was and what he'd done to deserve the fate that was about to overtake him, but no one had volunteered the information, and he suspected he was safer not knowing. "Just one man?"
"Yes."
"I won't need help, then." Which meant he wouldn't have to share the gold.
"Are you sure? My master doesn't want any mistakes."
She might be a horror loathsome enough to turn his bowels to water, but even so, professional pride demanded that he respond to her doubts with the hauteur they deserved. "Of course I'm sure! Aren't I the deadliest assassin in the city?"
She giggled. "You say so, and I am what I am, so I suppose we can kill one bard by ourselves."
Tired as he was, for a moment Bareris wasn't certain he was actually hearing the crying or only imagining it. But it was real. Somewhere down the crooked alleyway, someone—a little girl, perhaps, by the sound of it—was sobbing.
He thought of simply walking on. After all, it was none of his affair. He had his own problems, but he'd feel callous and mean if he ignored a child's distress.
Besides, if he helped someone else in need, maybe help would
come to him in turn. He realized it was scarcely a Thayan way to think. His countrymen believed the gods sent luck to the strong and resolute, not the gentle and compassionate, but some of the friends he'd found on his travels believed such superstitions.
He started down the alley. By the harp, it was dark, without a trace of candlelight leaking through doors or windows, and the high, peaked rooftops blocking all but a few of the stars. He sang a floating orb of silvery glow into being to light his way.
Even then, it was difficult to make out the little girl. Slumped in her dark cloak at the end of the cul-de-sac, she was just one small shadow amid the gloom. Her shoulders shook as she wept.
"Little girl," Bareris said, "are you lost? Whatever's wrong, I'll help you."
The child didn't respond, just kept on crying.
She must be utterly distraught. He walked to her, dropped to one knee, and laid a hand on one of her heaving shoulders.
Even through the wool of her cloak, her body felt cold, and more than that, wrong in some indefinable but noisome way. Moreover, a stink hung in the air around her.
Surprise made him falter, and in that instant, she—or rather, it—whirled to face him. Its puffy face was ashen, its eyes, black and sunken. Pus and foam oozed around the stained, crooked teeth in their rotting gums.
Its grip tight as a full-grown man's, the creature grabbed hold of Bareris's extended arm, snapped its teeth shut on his wrist, and then, when the leather sleeve of his brigandine failed to yield immediately, began to gnaw, snarling like a hound.
Bareris flailed his arm and succeeded in shaking the child-thing loose. It hissed and rushed in again, and he whipped out a dagger and poised it to rip the creature's belly.
At that moment, he would have vowed that every iota of his attention was on the implike thing in front of him, but during his time as a mercenary, fighting dragon worshipers, hobgoblins,
and reavers of every stripe, he'd learned to register any flicker of motion in his field of vision. For as often as not, it wasn't the foe you were actually trying to fight who killed you. It was his comrade, slipping in a strike from the flank or rear.
Thus, he noticed a shift in the shadows cast by his floating light. It seemed impossible—the alley had been empty except for the child-thing, hadn't it?—but somehow, someone or something had crept up behind him while the creature kept his attention riveted on it.
Still on one knee, Bareris jerked himself around to confront the new threat. The lower half of his face masked by a scarf, a huge man in dark clothing stood poised to cut down at him with a broadsword. The weapon had a slimy look, as if its owner had smeared it with something other than the usual rust-resisting oil. Poison, like as not.
With only a knife in his hand, and his new assailant manifestly a man of exceptional strength, Bareris very much doubted his ability to parry the heavier blade. The stroke flashed at him, and he twisted aside, simultaneously thrusting with the dagger.
He was aiming for the big man's groin. He missed, but at least the knife drove into his adversary's thigh, and the masked man froze with the shock of it. The bard pulled the weapon free for a second attack, then something slammed into his back. Arms and legs wrapped around him. Teeth tore at the high collar of his brigandine, and cold white fingers groped for his eyes.
The child-thing had jumped onto his shoulders. He reared halfway up then immediately threw himself on his back. The jolt loosened the little horrors grip. He wrenched partially free of it and pounded elbow strikes into its torso, snapping ribs. The punishment made it falter, and he heaved himself entirely clear.
By then, though blood soaked the leg of his breeches, the big man was rushing in again. Bareris bellowed a battle cry infused with the magic of his voice. Vitality surged through his limbs,
and his mind grew calm and clear. Even more importantly, the masked ruffian hesitated, giving him time to spring to his feet, switch his dagger to his left hand, and draw his sword.
"I'm not the easy mark you expected, am I?" he panted. "Why don't you go waylay someone else?"
He thought they might heed him. He'd hurt them, after all, but instead, apparently confident that the advantages conferred by superior numbers and a poisoned blade would prevail, they spread out to flank him. The masked man whispered words of power and sketched a mystic figure with his off hand. For a moment, an acrid smell stung Bareris's nose, and a prickling danced across his skin, warning signs of some magical effect coming into being.
Wonderful. On top of everything else, the whoreson was a spellcaster. That explained how he'd concealed himself until he was ready to strike.
For all Bareris knew, the masked man's next effort might kill or incapacitate him. He had to distupt the casting if possible, and so, even though it meant turning his back on the child-thing, he screamed and sprang at the larger of his adversaries.
He thought he had a good chance of scoring. He was using an indirect attack that, in his experience, few adversaries could parry, and with a wounded leg, the masked man ought not to be able to defend by retreating out of the distance.
Yet that was exactly what he did. Bareris's attack fell short by a finger length. The masked man beat his blade aside and lunged in his turn.
The riposte streaked at Bareris's torso, driving in with dazzling speed. Evidently the big man had cast an enchantment to quicken his next attack, and with Bareris still in the lunge, it only had a short distance to travel. The bard was sure, with that bleak certainty every fencer knows, that the stroke was going to hit him.
Yet even if his intellect had resigned itself, his reflexes, honed
in countless battles and skirmishes, had not. He recovered out of the lunge. It didn't carry him beyond the range of the big man's weapon, but it obliged it to travel a little farther, buying him the time and space at least to attempt a parry. He swept his blade across his body and somehow intercepted his adversary's sword. Steel rang, and the impact almost broke his grip on his hilt, but he kept the poisoned edge from slashing his flesh.
Eyes glaring above the scarf, the big man bulled forward, rendering both their swords useless at such close quarters, evidently intending to use his superior strength and size to shove Bareris down onto his back. Perhaps frustration or the pain of his leg wound had clouded his judgment, for the move was a blunder. He'd forgotten the dagger in the bard's left hand.
Bareris reminded him of its existence by plunging it into his kidney and intestines. Then the child-thing grabbed his legs from behind. Its teeth tore at his leg.
Grateful that his breeches were made of the same sturdy reinforced leather as his brigandine, Bareris wrenched himself around, breaking the creature's hold and turning the masked man with him like a dance partner He flung the ruffian down on top of his hideous little accomplice then hacked relentlessly with his sword. Both his foes stopped moving before either could disentangle him- or itself from the other.
His sword abruptly heavy in his hand, Bareris stood over the corpses gasping for breath. The fear he couldn't permit himself while the fight was in progress welled up in him, and he shuddered, because the fracas had come far too close to killing him and left too many disquieting questions in its wake.
Who was the masked ruffian, and what manner of creature was his companion? Even more importantly, why had they sought to kill Bareris?
Perhaps it wasn't all that difficult to figure out. As Bareris wandered the night asking his questions, he'd mentioned repeat-
edly that he could pay for the answers. Small wonder, then, if a thief targeted him for a robbery attempt. The masked man had been such a scoundrel, and as for the child-thing ... well, Thay was full of peculiar monstrosities. The Red Wizards created them in the course of their experiments. Perhaps one had escaped from its master's laboratory then allied itself with an outlaw as a means of surviving on the street.
Surely that was all there was to it. In Bareris's experience, the simplest explanation for an occurrence was generally the correct one.
In any case, the affair was over, and puzzling over it wasn't bringing him any closer to locating Tammith. He cleaned his weapons on his adversaries' garments, sheathed them, and headed out of the alley.
As he did so, his neck began to smart. He lifted his hand to his collar and felt the gnawed, perforated leather and the raw bloody flesh beneath. The girl-thing had managed to bite him after all. Just a nip, really, but he remembered the creature's filthy mouth, winced, and washed the wound with spirits at the first opportunity. Then it was back to the hunt.
It was nearly cock's crow when a pimp in a high plumed hat and gaudy parti-colored finery told him what he needed to know, though it was scarcely what he'd hoped to hear.
He'd prayed that Tammith was still in Tyraturos. Instead, the necromancers had marched the slaves they'd purchased out of the city. They'd headed north on the High Road, the same major artery of trade he'd followed up from Bezantur.
He reassured himself that the news wasn't really too bad. At least he knew what direction to take, and a procession of slaves on foot couldn't journey as fast as a horseman traveling hard.
He doubted the horse he'd ridden up from the coast could endure another such journey so soon. He'd have to buy anoth—
Weakness overwhelmed him and he reeled off balance, bumping his shoulder against a wall. His body suddenly felt icy cold, cold enough to make his teeth chatter, and he realized he was sick.

Chapter four
19-20 Mirtul, the Year of Risen Elfkin
Tsagoth heard the slaves when he and his fellow demons and devils were still some distance from the door. The mortals were banging on the other side of it and wailing, pleading for someone to let them out.
Their agitation was understandable, for in one respect at least, Aznar Thrul was a considerate master to the infernal guards the Red Wizards of Conjuration had given him. He'd ordered his human servants to determine the dietary preferences of each of the newcomers and to provide for each according to his desires.
Some of the nether spirits were happy to subsist on the same fare as the mortal contingent of the household. Others craved the raw flesh or blood of a fresh kill, preferably one they'd slaughtered themselves. A number even required the meat or gore of a human or other sentient being. Tsagoth currently stalked among the latter group as they headed in to supper.
Yes, he thought bitterly, everyone had exactly what he needed.
Everyone but him, as the nagging hollowness in his belly, grown wearisome as the smarting, itching mark on his brow, attested.
The abyssal realms were vast, and the entities that populated them almost infinite in their diversity. Even demons couldn't identify evety other type of demon, nor devils every othet sott of devil, thus no one had figuted out precisely what manner of being Tsagoth truly was. But had he explained or demonstrated what he actually wanted in the way of a meal, that would almost certainly have given the game away.
A hezrou—a demon like a man-sized toad with spikes running down its back and arms and hands in place of forelegs—turned the handle and threw open the door. The slaves screamed and recoiled.
The hezrou sprang on a man, drove its claws into his chest, and carried him down beneath it. Othet spirits seized their prey with the same brutal efficiency. Some, however, possessed a more refined sense of cruelty, and savoring their victims' terror, slowly backed them up against the walls. An erinyes, a devil resembling a beautiful woman with feathered wings, alabaster skin, and radiant crimson eyes, cast a charm of fascination on the man she'd chosen. Afterward, he stood paralyzed, trembling, desire and dread warring in his face, as she glided toward him.
Tsagoth didn't want to reveal his own psychic abilities, and in his present foul humor, tormenting the humans was a sport that held no interest for him. Like the toad demon and its ilk, he simply snatched up a woman and bit open her neck.
The slave's bland, thin blood eased the dryness in his throat and the ache in his belly, but only to a degree. He contemplated the erinyes, now crouching over the body of her prey, tearing chunks of his flesh away and stuffing them in her mouth. How easy it would be to leap onto het back—
Yes, easy and suicidal. With an effort, he averted his gaze.
After their meal, the demons and devils dispersed, most
returning to their duties, the rest wandering off in search of rest or amusement. Tsagoth prowled the chambers and corridors of the castle and tried to formulate a strategy that would carry him to his goal.
The dark powers knew, he needed a clever idea, because Aznar Thrul's palace had proved to be full of secrets, hidden passages, magical wards, and servants who neither knew nor desired to know anything of the zulkir's business except as it pertained to their own circumscribed responsibilities. How, then, was Tsagoth to ferret out the one particular secret that would allow him to satisfy his geas?
Somebody could tell him, of that he had no doubt, but he didn't dare just go around questioning lackeys at random. His hypnotic powers, though formidable, occasionally met their match in a will of exceptional strength, and if he interrogated enough people, it was all but inevitable that someone would recall the experience afterward.
Thus, he at least needed to concentrate his efforts on those most likely to know, but what group was that exactly? It was hard to be certain when the intricacies of life in the palace were so strange to him. He'd rarely visited the mortal plane before, and even in his own domain, he was a solitary haunter of the wastelands, not a creature of castles and communities.
Perhaps because he'd just come from his own meager and unsatisfying repast, it occurred to him that he did comprehend one thing: Everyone, demon or human, required nourishment.
Accordingly, Tsagoth made his way to the kitchen, or complex of kitchens, an extensive open area warm with the heat of its enormous ovens and brick hearths. There sweating cooks peeled onions and chopped up chickens with cleavers. Bakers rolled out dough. Pigs roasted on spits, pots steamed and bubbled, and scullions scrubbed trays.
Tsagoth had an immediate sense that the activity in this
precinct of the palace never stopped. It faltered, though, when a woman noticed him peering through the doorway. She squawked, jumped, and dropped a saucepan, which fell to the floor with a clank. Her coworkers turned to see what had startled her, and they blanched too.
The blood fiend realized he could scarcely question one of them with the others looking on. He stalked off but didn't go far. Just a few paces away was a cold, drafty pantry with a marble counter and shelves climbing the walls. He slipped inside, deepened the ambient shadows to help conceal himself, and squatted down to wait.
Soon enough, a lone cook with a stained white apron and a dusting of flour on her face and hands scurried past, plainly in a hurry to accomplish some errand or other. It was the work of an instant to lunge out after her, clap one of his hands over her mouth and immobilize her with the other three, and haul her into the cupboard.
He stared into her wide, rolling eyes and stabbed with his will. She stopped struggling.
"I'm your master, and you'll do as I command." He uncovered her mouth. "Tell me you understand."
"I understand." She didn't display a dazed, somnolent demeanor like that of the Red Wizard of Conjuration he'd controlled. Rathet, she was alert and composed, as if performing a routine part of her duties for a superior who had no reason to feel displeased with her.
Tsagoth set her on the floor and let go of her. "Tell me how to find Mari Agneh."
In her time, Mari Agneh had been tharchion of Priador, until Aznar Thrul decided to depose her and take the office for himself. Mari desperately wanted to retain her authority, and that, coupled with the fact that it was an unprecedented breach of custom for any one individual to be zulkir and tharchion
both, impelled her to a profoundly reckless act: She'd appealed to Szass Tam and his allies among the mage-lords to help her keep her position.
But the lich saw no advantage to be gained by involving himself in her struggle, or perhaps he found it outrageous that any tharchion should seek to defy the will of any zulkir, even his principal rival. Either way, he declined to help her, and when Thrul learned of her petition, he was no longer content merely to usurp her office. He made her disappear.
Rumor had it that he'd taken her prisoner to abuse as his slave and sexual plaything, that she was still alive somewhere within the walls of this very citadel. Tsagoth fervently hoped that it was so. Otherwise, it would be impossible for him to fulfill his instructions, which meant he'd be trapped here forever.
The cook spread her hands. "I'm sorry, Master. I've heard the stories. Everyone has, but I don't know anything."
"If she's here," Tsagoth said, "she has to eat. Someone in the kitchen has to prepare her meals, and someone has to carry them to her."
The cook frowned thoughtfully. "I suppose that's true, but we fix so much food and send it all over the palace, day and night—"
"This is one meal," Tsagoth said. "It's prepared on a regular basis, and it goes somewhere no other meal goes. It's likely the man who prepares it has never been told who ultimately receives it. If he does know, he hasn't shated the secret with anyone else in the kitchen. Does that suggest anything to you?"
She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Master, no."
Frustrated, he felt a sudden wayward urge to grab her again and yank the head off her shoulders, but tame demon that he supposedly was, he couldn't just slaughter whomever he wanted and leave the corpses lying around. Besides, she might still be useful.
"It's all right," he said, "but now that you know what to look for, you'll watch. You won't realize you're watching or remember talking to me, but you'll spy anyway, and if you discover anything, you'll find me and tell me."
"Yes, Master, anything you say."
He sent her on her way, then crouched down and waited for the next lone kitchen worker to bustle by.
Aoth swung himself down off Brightwing and took a final glance around, making sure there were no horses in the immediate vicinity.
Divining his concern, the griffon snorted. "I can control myself."
"Maybe, but the horses don't know that." He ruffled the feathers on her neck then tramped toward the big tent at the center of the camp. Cast in the stylized shape of a griffon, his shiny new gold medallion gleamed as it caught the light of the cook fites. The badge proclaimed him a newly minted officer, promoted for surviving the fall of Thazar Keep and carrying word of the disaster to his superiors.
The same accomplishment, if one was generous enough to call it that, made him the man of choice to scout the enemy's movements, and he'd spent some time doing precisely that. Now it was time to report to the tharchion. Aware of his business, the sentry standing watch in front of the tent admitted him without a challenge.
Currently clad in the sort of quilted tunic warriors employed to keep theit own metal armor from bruising their limbs, Nymia Focar, governor of Pyarados, was a handsome woman with a wide, sensuous mouth, several silver rings in each ear, and a stud in the left side of her nose. As he saluted, she said, "Griffon rider!
After your errand, you must be hungty, or thirsty at the least. Please, refresh yourself." She waved her hand at a folding camp table laden with bottles of wine, a loaf of bread, green grapes, white and yellow cheeses, and ham.
Her cordiality didn't surprise him. She was often friendly and informal with her underlings, even to the point of taking them into her bed, though Aoth had never received such a summons. Perhaps his blunt features and short, thick frame were to blame. In any case, he was just as happy to be excused. Nymia had a way of turning into a ferocious disciplinarian when she encountered a setback, sometimes even flogging soldiers who'd played no part in whatever had gone amiss. He'd noticed that in such instances, it was often her former lovers who wound up tied to the whipping post.
"Thank you, Tharchion." He was hungry, but not enough to essay the awkwardness of reporting and shoving food into his mouth at the same time. A drink seemed manageable, however, certainly safer than the risk of giving offense by spurning her hospitality, and he poured wine into one of the pewter goblets provided for the purpose. In the lamp-lit tent, the red vintage looked black. "I scouted the pass as ordered. Hundreds of undead are marching down the valley, in good order and on our side of the river."
It was what she'd expected to hear, and she nodded. "Why in the name of the all-devouring flame is this happening?"
"I can only repeat what others have speculated already. There are old Raumviran strongholds, and the ruins of a kingdom even older up in the mountains. Both peoples appatently ttafficked with abyssal powers, and such realms leave ghosts behind when they pass away."
As Thay with its hosts of wizards conducting esoteric experiments would leave its stain when it passed, he reflected, then wondered where the morbid thought had come from.
"Once in a while," he continued, "something skulks down from the ancient forts and tombs to trouble us, but we've never seen a horde the size of this, and I have no idea why it's occurring now. Perhaps a true scholar might, but I'm just a battle mage."
She smiled. "I wouldn't trade you. Destroying the foul things is more important than understanding precisely where they came from or what agitated them. Is it your opinion that they intend to march straight through to engage us?"
"Yes, Tharchion." He took a sip of his wine. It was sweeter than he liked but still drinkable. Probably it was costly and exquisite, if only he possessed the refined palate to appreciate it.
"Even though they can't reach us before dawn?"
"Yes."
"Good. In that case, we'll have the advantages of a well-established position, daylight, and the Thazarim protecting our right flank. Perhaps the creatures aren't as intelligent as we first thought."
Aoth hesitated. Wizard and griffon rider though he was, he was wary of seeming to contradict his capricious commander, but it was his duty to share his perspective. It was why they were talking, after all.
"They seemed intelligent when they took Thazar Keep."
"Essentially," Nymia said, "they had the advantage of surprise. Your warning came too late to do any good. Besides, the warriors of the garrison were the least able in the tharch. I sent them to that posting because no one expected anything to happen there."
He didn't much like hearing her disparage men who had, for the most part, fought biavely and died horrific deaths in her service, but he was prudent enough not to say so. "I understand what you're saying, Tharchion. I just think it's important we remember that the enemy has organization and leadership. I told you about the nighthaunt."
"The faceless thing with the horns and wings."
"Yes." Though he hadn't known what to call it until a mage more learned than himself had told him. "A form of powerful undead generally believed extinct. I had the feeling it was the leader, or an officer at least."
"If it impressed a griffon rider, I'm sure it's nasty, but I have all the warriors I could gather on short notice and every priest I could haul out of his shrine. We'll smash this foe, never doubt it."
"I don't, Tharchion." Truly he didn't, or at least he knew he shouldn't. Her analysis of the tactical situation appeared sound, and he trusted in the valor and competence of his comrades. Maybe it was simply fatigue or his memories of the massacre at Thazar Keep that had afflicted him with this edgy, uncharacteristic sense of foreboding. "What will you do if the undead decide to stop short of engaging us?"
"Then we'll advance and attack them. With any luck at all, we should be able to do it before sunset. I want this matter finished quickly, the pass cleared and Thazar Keep retaken. Until they are, no gems or ores can come down from the mines, and there won't be any treasure hunters heading up into the peaks for us to tax."
Nor safety or fresh provisions for any miners, trappers, and crofters who yet survive in the vale, Aoth thought. She's right; it is important to crush this enemy quickly.
"Do you have anything else to report?" Nymia asked.
He took a moment to consider "No, Tharchion."
"Go and rest then. I want you fresh when it's time to fight."
He saw to Brightwing's needs, then wrapped himself in his bedroll and attempted to do as his commander had suggested. After a time, he did doze, but he woke with the jangled nerves of one who'd dreamed unpleasant dreams.
It was the bustle of the camp that had roused him to a morning so thoroughly overcast as to mask any trace of the sun in the
eastern sky. Sergeants tramped about shouting. Warriors pulled and strapped on their armor, lined up before the cooks' cauldrons for a ladle full of porridge, kneeled to receive a cleric's blessing, or honed their swords and spears with whetstones. A blood ore, eager for the fight to come, howled its war cry, and donkeys hee-hawed, shied, and pulled at their tethers. A young human soldier attempting to tend the animals wheeled and cursed the ore, and it laughed and made a lewd gesture in response.
Aoth wondered whether an undead spellcaster had sealed away the sun and why no one on his side, a druid or warlock adept at weather-craft, had broken up the cloud cover. If no one could, it seemed a bad omen for the conflict to come.
He spat. He was no great hand at divination and wouldn't know a portent if it crawled up his nose. He was simply nervous, that was all, and the best cure for that was activity.
Accordingly, he procured his breakfast and Brightwing's, performed his meditations and prepared the day's allotment of spells, made sure his weapons and talismans were in perfect order, then roamed in search of the scouts who had flown out subsequent to his return. He wanted to find out what they'd observed.
As it turned out, nothing of consequence, but the effort kept him occupied until someone shouted that the undead were coming. Then it was time to hurry back to Brightwing, saddle her, and wait for his captain to order him and his comrades aloft.
When the command came, the griffons sprang into the air with a thunderous snapping and clattering of wings. As Brightwing climbed, Aoth studied the enemy. The light of morning, blighted though it was, afforded him a better look than he'd enjoyed hitherto, even when availing himself of his familiar's senses.
It didn't look as if the undead had the Thayan defenders
outnumbered. That at least was a relief. Aoth just wished he weren't seeing so many creatures that he, a reasonably well-trained warlock even if no one had ever seen fit to offer him a red robe, couldn't identify. It was easier to fight an adversary if you knew its weaknesses and capabilities.
A hulking, gray-skinned corpse-thing like a monstrously obese ghoul waddled in the front ranks of the undead host. From time to time, its jaw dropped halfway to its navel. It looked like, should it care to, it could stuff a whole human body into its mouth. Aoth scrutinized it, trying to associate it with something, any bit of lore, from his arcane studies, then realized he could no longer see it as clearly as he had a moment before.
The morning was growing darker instead of lighter. The clouds had already crippled the sunlight, and now some power was leeching away what remained. He thought of the night-haunt, a being seemingly made of darkness, and was somehow certain it was responsible. He tried not to shiver.
Every Thayan warrior was accustomed to sorcery and had at least some familiarity with the undead. Still, a murmur of dismay rose from the battle formation below. Officers and sergeants shouted, reassuring the common soldiers and commanding them to stand fast. Then the enemies on the ground began to lope, and dangerously difficult to discern against the darkened sky, the flying undead hurtled forward.
Its rotten wings so full of holes it was a wonder it could stay aloft, the animated corpse of a giant bat flew at Aoth and Brightwing. He decided not to waste a spell on it. He was likely to need every bit of his magic to deal with more formidable foes. Availing himself of their empathic link, he silently told Brightwing to destroy the bat. As the two closed, and at the last possible moment, the griffon lashed her wings, rose above the undead creature, and ripped it with her talons. The bat tumbled down the sky in pieces.
Meanwhile, Aoth cast about for other foes. They were easy enough to find. Brandishing his lance, shouting words of power, he conjured blasts of flame to burn wraiths and shadows from existence until he'd cleansed the air in his immediate vicinity. That afforded him a moment to look and see how the battle as a whole was progressing.
It appeared to him that he and his fellow griffon riders were at least holding their own in the air, while their comrades on the ground might even be gaining the upper hand. Archery had inflicted considerable harm on the advancing undead, and the efforts of the clerics were even more efficacious. Standing in relative safety behind ranks of soldiers, each in his or her own way invoking the power faith afforded, priests of Bane shook their black-gauntleted fists, priestesses of Loviatar scourged their naked shoulders or tore their cheeks with their nails, and servants of Kelemvor in somber gray vestments brandished their hand-and-a-half swords. As a result, some of the undead cringed, unable to advance any further, while others simply crumbled or melted away. Several even turned and attacked their own allies.
It's going to be all right, Aoth thought, smiling. I was a craven to imagine otherwise. But Brightwing, plainly sensing the tenor of Viis thougVit, rapped, "No. SometYung is about to happen."
She was tight. In the midst of the Thayan formation, wherever a group of priests stood assembled, patches of air seethed and rippled, then new figures exploded into view. They were diverse in their appearance, and in that first chaotic moment, Aoth couldn't sort them all out, but a number were mere shadows. Others appeared similarly spectral but with blazing emerald eyes, a murky suggestion of swirling robes, and bizarrely, luminous glyphs floating in the air around them. Swarms of insects—undead insects, the griffon rider supposed—hovered among them, along with clouds of sparks that wheeled and surged as if guided by a single will. Figures in hooded cloaks,
evidently the ones who'd magically transported their fellow creatures into the center of their enemies, immediately vanished again, perhaps to ferry a second batch.
Aoth had reported that the undead host included at least a few spellcasters, but even so, no one had expected any of their foes to possess the ability to teleport themselves and a group of allies through space, because, as a rule, the undead didn't, and they hadn't revealed it at Thazar Keep. Thus, the maneuver caught the Thayans by surprise.
Yet it didn't panic them. The priests wheeled and rattled off incantations or invoked the pure, simple power of belief to smite the newcomers.
Nothing happened. Nothing at all.
Shadows pounced at the priests, sparks and insects swarmed on them, and they went down. Warriors struggled to come to their aid, but there were stinging, burning clouds to engulf them as well, and phantoms to sear them with their touch, and in most cases, they failed even to save themselves. Meanwhile, the bulk of the undead host charged with renewed energy to crash into the shield wall of the living, which immediately began to deform before the pressure.
Perhaps, Aoth thought, he could aid the clerics. He bade Brightwing swoop lower, but instead of obeying, the griffon lashed her wings and flung herself straight ahead. A moment later, something huge as a dragon plunged through the space they'd just vacated. Aoth hadn't sensed the creature diving at them. He was grateful his familiar had.
The thing leveled out, turned, and climbed to attack again. It was yet another grotesquerie the likes of which Aoth had never encountered before, a creature resembling a giant minotaur with bat wings, fangs, and clawed feet instead of hooves, its whole body shrouded in mummy wrappings.
Brightwing proved more agile in the air and kept away from
the enormous thing while Aoth blasted it with bright, booming thunderbolts and darts of light. The punishment stabbed holes in it and burned patches of its body black, but it wouldn't stop coming.
Then Brightwing screeched and lurched in flight. Aoth cast about and couldn't see what ailed her. "My belly!" she cried.
He leaned far to the side, relying on the safety straps to keep him from slipping from the saddle. From that position, he could just make out the greenish misty form clinging to her like a leech, its insubstantial hands buried to the wrists in her body, her flesh blistering and suppurating around them.
The angle was as awkward as could be, and Aoth was afraid of striking her instead of his target, but he saw no choice except to try. He triggered the enchantment of accuracy bound in one of his tattoos, and his forearm stung as the glyph gave up its power. He charged his lance with power and thrust.
The point caught the phantom in the flank, and it shriveled from existence. Freed from its crippling, excruciating embrace, Brightwing instantly furled her wings and dived, seeking to evade as she had before.
She failed. The bandaged horror missed the killing strike to the body it had probably intended, but one of its claws pierced her wing.
The undead creature scrabbled at her, trying to achieve a better grip and rend her in the process. Beak snapping, she bit at it. Shouting in fury and terror, Aoth stabbed with his lance.
Finally the huge thing stopped moving. Unfortunately, that meant it fell with its talon still transfixing the griffon's wing, and she and her rider plummeted along with it. For a moment, they were all in danger of crashing to the ground together, but then Btightwing bit completely through the claw, freeing herself. Wings hammering, shaking the severed tip of the talon out of her wound in the process, she leveled off.
Aoth peered about. It was too late to help the priests. They were gone, yet the Thayans on the ground had at least succeeded in eliminating the undead from the midst of their formation, and mages and warriors, all battling furiously, had thus far held back the rest of the undead host. For the next little while, as he and his injured mount did their best to avoid danger, he dared to hope the legions might still carry the day.
Then the surface of the Thazarim churned, and hunched, gaunt shapes waded ashore. They charged the Thayan flank.
Aoth cursed. He knew of lacedons, as the aquatic ghouls were called. They were relatively common, but so far as he'd ever heard, they were sea creatures. It made no sense for them to come swimming down from the Sunrise Mountains.
Yet they had, without him or any of the other scouts spotting them in the water, and swarms of undead rats had swum along with them. Like a tide of filthy fur, rotting flesh, exposed bone, and gnashing teeth, the vermin streamed in among the legionnaires, and men who might have stood bravely against any one foe, or even a pair of them, panicked at the onslaught of five or ten or twenty small, scurrying horrors assailing them all at once.
It was the end. The formation began to disintegrate. Warriors turned to run, sometimes throwing away their weapons and shields. Their leaders bellowed commands, trying to make them retreat with some semblance of order. Slashing with his scimitar, a blood-orc sergeant cut down two members of his squad to frighten the rest sufficiently to heed him.
"Set me down," said Aoth.
"Don't be stupid," Brightwing replied.
"I won't take you back into the middle of that, hurt as you are, but none of the men on the ground is going to escape unless every wizard we have left does all he can to cover the retreat."
"We haven't fallen out of the sky, have we? I can still fly and fight. We'll do it together."
He discerned he had no hope of talking her out of it. "All right, have it your way."
Brightwing maneuvered, and when necessary, she battled with talon and beak to keep them both alive. He used every spell in his head and every trace of magic he carried bound in an amulet, scroll, or tattoo to hold the enemy back. To no avail, he suspected, because below him, moment by moment, men were dying anyway.
Then, however, the morning brightened. The clouds turned from slate to a milder gray, a luminous white spot appeared in the east, and at last the undead faltered in their harrying pursuit.
Ysval could bear the touch of daylight without actual harm, yet it made his skin crawl, and soaring above his host, the better to survey the battle, he stiffened in repugnance.
Some of his warriors froze or flinched, their reaction akin to his own. Specters faded to invisibility, to mere impotent memories of pain and hate. Still other creatures began to smolder and steam and hastily shrouded themselves in their graveclothes or scrambled for shade.
Ysval closed his pallid eyes and took stock of himself. His assessment, though it came as no surprise, was disappointing. For the moment, he lacked the mystical strength to darken the day a second time.
The nighthaunt called in his silent voice. He'd made a point of establishing a psychic bond with each of his lieutenants and so was confident they'd hear. Sure enough, the ones who were still functional immediately moved to call back those undead so avid to kill that they'd continued to chase Tharchion Focar's fleeing troops even when their comrades faltered.
Once Ysval was certain his minions were enacting his will, he swooped lower, the better to provide the direction the host would
require in the aftermath of battle. Several of his officers saw him descending and hurried to meet him where, with a final snap of his wings, he set down on the ground.
He gazed at Shex, inviting her to speak first, in part because he respected her. In fact, though blessedly incapable of affection in any weak mortal sense, he privately regarded her as something of a kindred spirit, but not because they particularly resembled one another.
Like himself, she had wings and claws, but she was taller, tall as an ogre in fact, and her entire body was a mass of peeling and deliquescent corruption. Slime oozed perpetually down her frame to pool at her feet, and even other undead were careful to stand clear of the corrosive filth.
No, Ysval felt a certain bond with her because each of them was more than just a formidable and genuinely sentient undead creatute. Each was the avatar, the embodiment, of a cosmic principle. As he was darkness, so she was decay.
At the moment, she was also unhappy. "Many of our warriors can function in the light," she said in her slurred, muddy voice. "Let those who are capable continue the pursuit. Why not? The legionnaires won't turn and fight."
They might, he replied, if they think it's the only alternative to being struck down from behind. He'd noticed that even many undead winced and shuddered when he shared his thoughts with them, but she bore the psychic intrusion without any sign of distress. We've won enough for one day. We've dealt a heavy blow to the enemy, and the pass, our highway onto the central plateau, lies open from end to end.
Which meant that for a time at least, the host would disperse to facilitate the process of laying waste to as much of eastern Thay as possible. In a way, it was a pity. It had been millennia since he'd commanded an army, and he realized now that he'd missed it.
Still, raiding, slaughtering helpless humans and putting their farms and villages to the torch, was satisfying in its own right, and he had reason for optimism that the army would join together again by and by. It was just that the decision didn't rest with him but with the master who'd summoned him back to the mortal realm after a sojourn of ages on the Plane of Shadow.
Shex inclined her head. Viscous matter dripped from her face as if she were weeping over his decision. "As you command," she said.
Her sullen tone amused him. I promise, he said, there's plenty more killing to come. Now, see to the corpses of the tharchion's soldiers. The ghouls and such can feed on half of them, but I want the rest intact for reanimation.

Chapter five
25 Mirtul, the Year ofRisen Elfkin
Surthay, capital of the tharch of the same name, was a crude sort of place compared to Eltabbar, and since the town lay outside the enchantments that managed the climate in central Thay, the weather was colder and rainier. Even murky Lake Mulsantir, the body of water on which it sat, suffered by comparison with the blue depths of Lake Thaylambar.
Yet Malark Springhill liked the place. At times the luxuries, splendors, and intricacies of life at Dmitra Flass's court grew wearisome for a man who'd spent much of his life in the rough-and-tumble settlements of the Moonsea. When he was in such a mood, the dirt streets, simple wooden houses, and thatch-roofed shacks of a town like Surthay felt more like home than Eltabbar ever could.
That didn't mean he could dawdle here. He didn't understand the urgency of his errand, but his mistress seemed to think it important and he didn't intend to keep her waiting any longer
than necessary. He'd finish his business and ride out tonight, and with luck he could complete the wearisome "Long Portage" back up the First Escarpment before the end of tomorrow.
He headed down the rutted, dung-littered street. This particular thoroughfare, a center for carnal entertainments, was busy even after dark, and he made way repeatedly for soldiers, hunters, fishermen, pimps, and tough-looking locals of every stripe—for anyone who looked more dangerous and intimidating than a smallish, neatly dressed, clerkish fellow armed only with a knife.
Only once did he resent stepping aside, and that was when everyone else did it too, clearing the way for a legionnaire marching a dozen skeleton warriors along. Malark detested the undead, which he supposed made it ironic that he owed his allegiance to a princess who in turn had pledged her fealty to a lich, but serving Dmitra Flass afforded him a pleasant life and plenty of opportunity to pursue his own preoccupations.
He stepped inside a crowded tavern, raucous with noise and stinking of beer and sweaty bodies. A legionnaire turned and gave him a sneer.
"This is a soldier's tavern," he said.
"I know," Malark replied. "I came to show my admiration for the heroes who saved Surthay from the Rashemi." He lifted a fat purse and shook it to make it clink. "I think this is enough to stand the house a few rounds."
He was welcome enough after that, and the soldiers were eager to spin tales of their valor. As he'd expected, much of what they told him was nonsense. They couldn't all have slain Rashemi chieftains or butchered half a dozen berserkers all by themselves, and he was reasonably certain no one had raped one of the infamous witches.
Yet it should be possible to sift through all the boasts and lies and discern the essence of what had happened buried beneath.
Malark listened, drew his inferences, and decided further inquiries were in order, inquiries best conducted elsewhere and by different methods.
Stiffening and swallowing, he feigned a sudden attack of nausea and stumbled outside, ostensibly to vomit. Since he left his pigskin pouch of silver and copper coins behind on the table, he was reasonably certain no one would bother to come looking for him when he failed to return.
He found a shadowy recessed doorway and settled himself to wait, placing himself in a light trance that would help him remain motionless. Warriors passed by his hiding place, sometimes in groups, sometimes in the company of painted whores, sometimes young, sometimes staggering drunk. He let them all drift on unmolested.
Finally a lone legionnaire came limping down the street. By the looks of it, an old wound or fracture in his leg had never healed properly. Though he was past his prime, with a frame that had once been athletic and was now running to fat, he wore no medallion, plume, or other insignia of rank, and was evidently still a common man-at-arms.
He didn't look intoxicated, either. Perhaps he'd just come off duty and was heading for the same soldier's tavern Malark had visited.
In any case, whatever his business, he appeared perfect for Malark's purposes. The spy waited until the legionnaire was just a few paces away, then stepped forth from the shadows.
Startled, the legionnaire jumped back, and his hand darted to the hilt of his broadsword. Then he hesitated, confused, perhaps, by the contradiction between the menace implicit in Malark's sudden emergence and the innocuous appearance of his empty hands and general demeanor. It gave the spy the opportunity to step closer.
"What do you want?" the soldier demanded.
"Answers," Malark replied.
That was apparently enough to convince the warrior he was in trouble. He started to snatch the sword out, but he'd waited too long. Before it could clear the scabbard, Malark sprang in and slammed the heel of his hand into the center of the other man's forehead. The legionnaire's leather helmet thudded, no doubt absorbing part of the force of the impact. Not enough of it, though, and his knees buckled. Malark caught him and dragged him into the narrow, lightless space between two houses.
When he judged he'd gone far enough from the street that he and his prisoner would remain unobserved, he set the legionnaire down on the ground, relieved him of his sword and dirk, and held a vial of smelling salts under his nose. Rousing, the warrior twisted away from the vapors.
"Are you all right?" Malark asked, straightening up. "It can be tricky to hit a man hard enough to stun him, but not so hard that you do any real harm. I like to think I have the knack, but armor makes it more difficult."
"I'll kill you," the soldier growled.
"Try if you like," Malark said and waited to see if the prisoner would dive for the sword or dagger now resting on the ground beyond his reach or attack with his bare hands.
He opted for the latter. Wishing the space between the buildings weren't quite so narrow, Malark nonetheless managed to shift to the side when the captive sutged up and hurled himself forward. He tripped the legionnaire then, while the other man was floundering off balance, caught hold of his arm and twisted, applying pressure to the shoulder socket. The warrior gasped at the pain.
"We're going to have a civil conversation," said Malark. "The only question is, do I need to dislocate your arm to make it happen, or are you ready to cooperate now?"
As best he was able, the legionnaire struggled, trying to break free. Malark applied more pressure, enough to paralyze the man.
"I really will do it," said the spy, "and then I'll go on damaging you until you see reason."
"All right!" the soldier gasped.
Malark released him. "Sit or stand as you prefer."
The bigger man chose to stand and rub his shoulder. "Who in the Nine Hells are you?"
"My name is Malark Springhill. I do chores of various sorts for Tharchion Flass."
The legionnaire hesitated, his eyes narrowing. Perhaps he'd never risen in the ranks, but he was evidently more intelligent than that fact would seem to imply. "You .. . are you supposed to tell me that?"
"Ordinarily, no," Malark replied. Out on the street, a woman laughed, the sound strident as a raptot's screech. "I'm a spy among othet things, and generally I have to lie to people all the time, about . . . well, evetything, really. It's something of a luxury that I can be honest with you."
"Because you mean to kill me."
"Yes. I'm going to ask you what truly happened in the Gorge of Gauros, and I couldn't let you survive to report that anyone was interested in that even if you didn't know who sent me to inquire. But you get to decide how pleasant the next little while will be, and how you'll die at the end of it.
"You can try withholding the information I want," Malark continued, "in which case, I'll torture it out of you. Afterwards, your body will be broken, incapable of resistance when I snap your neck.
"Ot you can answer me freely, and I'll have no reason to hurt you. Once you've given me what I need, I'll return yout blades, permit you to unsheathe them, and we'll fight. You're a
legionnaire. Surely you'd prefer the honor of a warrior's death, and I'd like to give it to you."
The legionnaire stared at him. "You're crazy."
"People often say that, but they're mistaken." Malark decided to confide in the warrior. It was one technique for building trust between interrogator and prisoner, and besides, he rarely had the chance to tell his story. "I just see existence in a way others can't.
"A long, long while ago, I learned of a treasure. The sole surviving dose of a philter to keep a man from aging forever after.
"I coveted it. So did others. In those days, I scarcely knew the rudiments of fighting, but I had a friend who was proficient, and together we bested our rivals and seized the prize. We'd agreed we'd each drink half the potion, and thus, though neither of us would become immortal, we'd both live a long time."
"But you betrayed him," said the legionnaire, "and drank it all yourself."
Malark smiled. "Are you saying that because you're a good judge of character, or because it's what you would have done? Either way, you're right. That's exactly what I did, and later on, I started to regret it.
"First, I watched everyone I loved, everyone I even knew, pass away. That's hard. I wept when my former friend died a feeble old man, and he'd spent the past fifty years trying to revenge himself on me.
"I attempted to move forward. I told myself there was a new generation of people to care about. The problem, of course, was that before long, in the wink of an eye, or so it seemed, they died, too.
"When I grew tired of enduring that, I tried living with dwarves and later, elves, but it wasn't the same as living with my own kind, and in time, they passed away just like humans. It simply took a little longer."
The soldier gaped at him. "How old are you?"
"Older than Thay. I recall hearing the tidings that the Red Wizards had fomented a rebellion against Mulhorand, though I wasn't in these parts to witness it myself. Anyway, over time, I pretty much lost the ability to feel an attachment to individual people, for what was the point? Instead, I tried to embrace causes and places, only to discover those die too. I lost count of the times I gave my affection to one or another town along the Moonsea, only to see the place sacked and the inhabitants massacred. I learned that as the centuries roll by, even gods change, or at least our conception of them does, which amounts to the same thing if you're looking for some constancy to cling to.
"But eventually I realized there was one constant, and that was death. In its countless variations, it was happening all around me, all the time. It befell everyone, or at least, everyone but me, and that made it fascinating."
"If you're saying you wanted to die, why didn't you just stick a dagger into your heart or jump off a tower? Staying young forever isn't the same thing as being unkillable, is it?"
"No, it isn't, and I've considered ending my life on many occasions, but something has always held me back. Early on, it was the same dread of death that prompted me to strive for the elixir and betray my poor friend in the first place. After I made a study of extinction, I shed the fear, but with enlightenment, suicide came to seem like cheating, or at the very least, bad manners. Death is a gift, and we aren't meant to reach out and snatch it. We're supposed to wait until the universe is generous enough to bestow it on us."
"I don't understand."
"Don't worry about it. Most people don't, but the Monks of the Long Death do, and there came a day when I was fortunate enough to stumble across one of their hidden enclaves and gain admission as a novice."
The legionnaire blanched. "You're one of those madmen?"
"It depends on your point of view. After a decade or two, paladins descended on the monastery and slaughtered my brothers and sisters. Only I escaped, and afterward, I didn't feel the need to search for another such stronghold. I'd already learned what I'd hoped to, and the rigors and abstentions of the ascetic life had begun to wear on me.
"According to the rules of the order, I'm an apostate, and if they evet tealize it, they'll likely try to kill me. But though I no longer hold a place in the hierarchy, I still adhere to the teachings. I still believe that while all deaths are desirable, some are better than others. The really good ones take a form appropriate to the victim's life and come to him in the proper season. I believe it's both a duty and the highest form of art to arrange such passings as opportunity allows.
"That's why I permitted younger, healthier, more successful men to pass by and accosted you instead. It's why I hope to give you a fighter's death."
"What are you talking about? It's not my 'season' to die!"
"Are you sure? Isn't it plain your best days are past? Doesn't your leg ache constantly? Don't you feel old age working its claws into you? Aren't you disappointed with the way your life has turned out? Why not let it go then? The priests and philosophers assure us that something better waits beyond."
"Shut up! You can't talk me into wanting to die."
"I'm not trying. Not exactly. I told you, I want you to go down fighting. I just don't want you to be afraid."
"I'm not! Or at least I won't be if you keep your promise and give back my sword."
"I will. I'll return your blades and fight you empty-handed."
"Ask your cursed questions, then, and I'll answer honestly. Why shouldn't I, when you'll never have a chance to repeat what I say to Dmitra Flass or anybody else?"
"Thank you." The inquisition didn't take long. At the end, though Malark had learned a good deal he hadn't comprehended before, he still wasn't sure why it was truly important, but he realized he'd come to share his mistress's suspicion that it was.
Now, however, was not the time to ponder the matter. He needed to focus on the duel to come. He backed up until the sword and dagget lay between the legionnaire and himself.
"Pick them up," he said.
The soldier sprang forward, crouched, and grabbed the weapons without taking his eyes off Malark. He then scuttled backward as he drew the blades, making it more difficult for his adversary to spring and prevent him had he cared to do so, and opening enough distance to use a sword to best effect.
Malark noticed the limp was no longer apparent. Evidently excitement, or the single-minded focus of a vetetan combatant, masked the pain, and when the bigger man came on guard, his stance was as impeccable as a woodcut in a manual of arms.
Given his level of skill, he deserved to be a drill instructor at the very least. Malark wondered whether it was a defect in his character or simple bad luck that had kept him in the ranks. He'd never know, of course, for the time for inquiry was past.
The legionnaire sidled left, hugging the wall on that side. He obviously remembered how Malark had shifted past him before and was positioning himself in such a way that, if his adversary attempted such a maneuver again, he could only dart in one direction. That would make it easier to defend against the move.
Then the warrior edged forward. Malark stood and waited. As soon as the distance was to the legionnaire's liking, when a sword stroke would span it but not a punch or a kick, he cut at Malark's head.
Or rather, he appeared to. He executed the feint with all the necessary aggression, yet even so, Malark perceived that a false
attack was all it was. He couldn't have said exactly how. Over the centuries, he'd simply developed an instinct for such things.
He lifted an arm as if to block the cut, in reality to convince the legionnaire his trick was working. The blade spun low ro chop at his flank.
Malark shifted inside the arc of the blow, a move that robbed the stroke of much of its force. When he swept his atm down to defend, the forte of the blade connected with his forearm but failed to shear through the sturdy leather bracer hidden under his sleeve.
At the same moment, he stiffened his other hand and drove his fingertips into the hard bulge of cartilage at the front of the warrior's throat. The legionnaire reeled backward. Malark took up the distance and hit him again, this time with a chop to the side of the neck. Bone cracked and, his head flopping, the soldier collapsed.
Malark regarded the body with the same mix of satisfaction and wistful envy he usually felt at such moments. Then he closed the legionnaire's eyes and walked away.
North of the Surag River, the road threaded its way up the narrow strip of land between Lake Thaylambar to the west and the Surague Escarpment, the cliffs at the base of the Sunrise Mountains, to the east. The land was wilder, heath interspersed with stands of pine and dotted with crumbling ruined towers, and sparsely settled. The slaves and their keepers marched an entire morning without seeing anyone, and when someone finally did appear, it was just a lone goatherd, who, wary of strangers, immediately scurried into a thicket. Even tax stations, the ubiquitous forttesses built to collect tolls and help preserve order throughout the realm, were few and far between.
Tammith had never before ventured farther than a day's walk from Bezantur, but she'd heard that the northern half of Thay was almost all alike, empty, undeveloped land where even freemen found it difficult to eke out a living. How much more difficult, then, must it be to endure as a slave, particularly one accustomed to the teeming cities of the south?
Thus she understood why so many of her fellow thralls grew more sullen and despondent with each unwilling step they took, and why Yuldra, the girl she'd sought to comfort just before the Red Wizards came and bought the lot of them, kept sniffling and knuckling her reddened eyes. In her heart, Tammith felt just as dismayed and demoralized as rhey did.
But she also believed that if one surrendered to such emotions, they would only grow stronger, so she squeezed Yuldra's shoulder and said, "Come on, don't cry. It's not so bad."
Yuldra's face twisted. "It is."
"This country is strange to me, too, but I'm sure they have towns somewhere in the north, and remember, the men who bought us are Red Wizards. You don't think they live in a tent out in the wilderness, do you?"
"You don't know that they're taking us where they live," the adolescent retorted, "because they haven't said. I've had other masters, and they weren't so close-mouthed. I'm scared we're going somewhere horrible."
"I'm sure that isn't so." In reality, of course, Tammith had no way of being certain of any such thing, but it seemed the right thing to say. "Let's not allow our imaginings to get the best of us. Let's play another game."
Yuldra sighed. "All right."
The next phase of their journey began soon after, when they finally left the northernmost reaches of Lake Thaylambar behind, and rolling plains opened before them. To Tammith's surprise, the procession then left the road where, though she
eventually spotted signs that others had passed this way before them, there was no actual trail of any sort.
Nor did there appear to be anything ahead but rolling grassland, and beyond that, visible as a blurry line on the horizon, High Thay, the mountainous tharch that jutted upward from the central plateau as it in turn rose abruptly from the lowlands. From what she understood, many a Red Wizard maintained a private citadel ot estate among the peaks, no doubt with hordes of slaves to do his bidding, but her sense of geography, hazy though it was, suggested the procession wasn't heading there. If it was, the warlocks had taken about the most circuitous route imaginable.
Suddenly three slaves burst from among their fellows and ran, scattering as they fled. Tammith's immediate reflexive thought was that, unlike Yuldra and herself, the trio had figured out where they all were going.
Unfortunately, they had no hope of escaping that fate. The Red Wizards could have stopped them easily with spells, but they didn't bother. Like their masters, some of the guatds were mounted, and they pounded after the fugitives. One warrior flung a net as deftly as any fisherman she'd ever watched plying his trade in the waters off Bezantur, and a fugitive fell tangled in the mesh. Anothet guard reached out and down with his lance, slipped it between a thrall's legs, and tripped him. A third horseman leaned out of the saddle, snatched a handful of his target's streaming, bouncing mane of hair and simply jerked the runaway off his feet.
Once the guards herded the fugitives back to the procession, every slave had to suffer his masters' displeasure. The overseers screamed and spat in their faces, slapped, cuffed, and shoved them, and threatened savage punishments for all if anyone else misbehaved. Yuldra broke down sobbing the moment a warrior approached her. The Red Wizards looked vexed and impatient with the delay the exercise in discipline required.
The abuse was still in progress when Tammith caught sight of a horseman galloping steadily nearer. His wheat-blond hair gleamed dully in the late afternoon sunlight, and something about the set of his shoulders and the way he carried himself—
Yes! Perhaps she shouldn't jump to conclusions when he was still so far away, but in her heart she knew. It was Bareris, after she'd abandoned all hope of ever seeing him again.
She wanted to cry his name, run to meet him, until she realized, with a cold and sudden certainty, that what she really ought to do was warn him off.
Outside in the streets of Eltabbar, the celebration had an edge to it. The mob was happy enough to gobble free food, guzzle free ale and wine, and watch the parades, dancers, mummers, displays of transmutation, and other forms of entertainment, all of it provided to celebrate the election of Samas Kul to the office of zulkit. Yet Aoth had felt the underlying displeasure and dismay at the tidings that in the east, a Thayan army had met defeat, and in consequence, undead marauders were laying waste to the countryside. He suspected the festival would erupt into rioting after nightfall.
Still, he would rather have been outside in the gathering storm than tramping at Nymia Focar's side through the immense basalt ziggurat called the Flaming Brazier, reputedly the largest temple of Kossuth the Firelord in all the world. That was because it was entirely possible that the potentate who'd summoned the tharchion had done so with the intention of placing the blame for the recent debacle in Pyarados. Since she, the commander who'd lost to the undead, was the obvious candidate, perhaps she'd dragged Aoth along to be scapegoat in her place.
Maybe, he thought, he even deserved it. If only he'd spotted the lacedons—
He scowled the thought away. He hadn't been the only scout in the air, and nobody else had seen the creatures either. Nor could you justly condemn anyone for failing to anticipate an event that had never happened before.
Not that justice was a concept that automatically sprang to mind where zulkirs and Red Wizards were concerned.
Aoth and his superior strode in dour silence through yellow and orange high-ceilinged chambers lit by countless devotional fires. The heat of the flames became oppressive, and the wizard evoked the magic of a tattoo to cool himself. Nymia lacked the ability to do the same, and perspiration gleamed on her upper lip.
Eventually they arrived at high double doors adorned with a scene inlaid in jewels and precious metals: Kossuth, spiked chain in hand, smiting his great enemy Istishia, King of the Water Elementals. A pair of warrior monks stood guard at the sides of the portal and swung the leaves open to permit the new arrivals to enter the room beyond.
It was a chamber plainly intended for discussion and disputation, though it too had its whispering altar flames glinting on golden icons. Seated around a table in the center of the room was a more imposing gathering of dignitaries than Aoth had ever seen before even at a distance, let alone close up. Let alone taking any notice of his own humble existence. In fact, four of the five were zulkirs.
Gaunt, dark-eyed Szass Tam, his withered fingers folded, looked calm and composed.
Yaphyll, zulkir of Divination and by all accounts the lich's most reliable ally, was a slender woman, somewhat short for a Mulan, with, rather to Aoth's surprise, a humorous, impish cast of expression manifest even on this grave occasion. She looked
just a little older than he was, thirty or so, but she had actually held her office since before he was born with magic maintaining her youth.
In contrast, Lallara, zulkir of Abjuration, though still seemingly hale and vital, evidently disdained the cosmetic measures which might have kept time from etching lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth and softening the flesh beneath her chin. Scowling, she toyed with one of her several rings, twisting it around and around her forefinger.
Astonishingly obese, his begemmed robes the gaudiest and plainly the costliest of the all the princely raiment on display, Samas Kul likewise appeared restless. Perhaps he disliked being called away from the celebration of his rise to a zulkir's preeminence, or maybe the newly minted mage-lord was worried he wouldn't make a good impression here at the onset of his new responsibilities and so lose the respect of his peers.
Rounding out the assembly was Iphegor Nath. Few indeed were the folk who could treat with zulkirs on anything even approximating an equal footing, but the High Flamelord, primate of Kossuth's church, was one of them. Craggy and burly, he wore bright orange vestments, the predominant hue close enough to forbidden red that no man of humbler rank would have dared to put it on. His eyes were orange as well, with a fiery light inside them, and from moment to moment tiny flames crawled on his shoulders, arms, and shaven scalp without burning his garments or blistering his skin. His air of sardonic composure was a match for Szass Tarn's.
Nymia and Aoth dropped to their knees and lowered their gazes.
"Rise," said Szass Tam, "and seat yourselves at the table."
"Is that necessary?" Lallara rapped. "I'm not pleased with the tharchion, and her lieutenant doesn't even wear red. By the looks of him, he isn't even Mulan."
"It will make it easier for us all to converse," the lich replied, "and if we see fit to punish them later, I doubt that the fact that we allowed them to sit down first will dilute the effect." His black eyes shifted back to Nymia and Aoth, and he waved a shriveled hand at two vacant chairs. "Please."
Aoth didn't want to sit or do anything else that might elicit Lallara's displeasure, but neither, of course, could he disobey Szass Tam. Feeling trapped, he pulled the chair out and winced inwardly when the legs grated on the floor.
"Now, then," said Szass Tam, "with the gracious permission of His Omniscience"—he inclined his head to Iphegor Nath—"I called you all here to address the situation in Tharchion Focar's dominions. It's serious, or so I've been given to understand."
"Yet evidently not serious enough," the High Flamelord drawled, "to warrant an assembly of all eight zulkirs. To some, it might even appear that you, Your Omnipotence, wanted to meet here in the temple instead of your own citadel to avoid the notice of those you chose to exclude."
Yaphyll smiled a mischievous smile. "Perhaps it was purely out of respect for you, Your Omniscience. We came to you rather than put you to the inconvenience of coming to us."
Iphegor snorted. Blue flame oozed from his hand onto the tabletop, and he squashed it out with a fingertip before it could char the finish.
"You'te correct, of course," Szass Tam told the priest. "Regrettably, we zulkirs fall into two camps, divided by our differing perspectives on trade and other issues, and of late, our squabbles have grown particularly contentious, perhaps even to the point of assassination. That makes it slow going to accomplish anything when we all attempt to work together, and since this particular problem is urgent, I thought a more efficient approach was tequired."
"Besides which," Iphegor said, "if you resolve the problem
without involving your peers, you'll reap all the benefits of success. The nobles and such will be that much more inclined to give their support to you in preference to Aznar Thrul's cabal."
"Just so," said Samas Kul in a plummy, unctuous voice. "You've demonstrated you're a shrewd man, Your Omniscience, not that any of us ever imagined otherwise. The question is, if we score a hit in the game we're playing with our rivals, will that trouble or displease you?"
"It might," the primate said. "By convening here in the Flaming Brazier and including me among your company, you've made me your collaborator. Now it's possible I'll have to contend with the rancor of your opponents."
"Yet you agreed to meet with us," Lallara said.
Iphegor shrugged. "I was curious, I hoped something would come of it to benefit the faith, and I too understand that Pyarados needs immediate attention."
"Masters!" Nymia said. All eyes shifted to her, and she faltered as if abruptly doubting the wisdom of speaking unbidden, but now that she'd started, she had no choice but to continue. "With all respect, you speak as if Pyarados is lost, and that isn't so. The undead seized one minor fortress and won one additional battle."
"With the result," snapped Lallara, "that they're now devastating your tharch and could easily range farther west to trouble the entire plateau."
"The ghouls have overrun a few farms," Nymia insisted, the sweat on her face gleaming in the firelight. "I still hold Pyarados,"—Aoth realized she was referring specifically to the capital city of her province—"and I've sent to Tharchion Daramos for assistance. He's bringing fresh troops from Thazalhar."
Yaphyll smiled. "Milsantos Daramos is a fine soldier, a winning soldier, and Thazalhar is too small and sparsely populated for a proper tharch. I wonder if it might not be a good idea to
merge it and Pyarados into a single territory and give the old fellow authority over both."
Nymia blanched. "I beg you for one more chance—"
Szass Tam silenced her by holding up his hand. "Let's not rush ahead of ourselves. I'd like to hear a full account of the events in the east before we decide what to do about them."
"Aoth Fezim," Nymia said, "is the only man to survive the fall of Thazar Keep. For that reason, I brought him to tell the first part of the story."
Aoth related it as best he could, without trying to inflate his own valor or importance. He made sure, though, that the others understood he'd fled only when the castellan had otdered it and not out of cowardice.
Then Nymia told of the battle at the west end of the pass, justifying her defeat as best she could. That involved explaining that forms of undead had appeared whose existence Aoth had not reported and that neither he nor the other scouts had noticed the creatures swimming beneath the surface of the river. The griffon rider wasn't sure if she was actually implying that he was responsible for everything that had gone wrong or if it was simply his trepidation that made it seem that way.
When she finished, Szass Tam studied Aoth's face. "Do you have anything to add to your commander's account?" he asked.
Partly out of pride, partly because he was all but certain it would only move the zulkirs to scorn, Aoth resisted the urge to offer excuses. "No, Your Omnipotence. That's the way it happened."
The lich nodded. "Well, obviously, victorious soldiers inspire more trust than defeated ones, yet I wouldn't call either of you incompetent, and I don't see a benefit to replacing you with warriors who lack experience fighting this particular incursion. I'm inclined to keep you in your positions for the time being at least, provided, of course, that everyone else is in accord." He glanced about at the other zulkirs.
As Aoth expected, none of the others took exception to their faction leader's opinion, though Lallara's assent had a sullen quality to it. Rumor had it that, willful, erratic, and unpredictable, she was less firmly of the lich's party than the faithful Yaphyll and was something of a creative artist in the field of torture as well. Perhaps she'd been looking forward to inflicting some ingeniously gruesome chastisement on Nymia, her subordinate, or both.
"Now that I've heard Tharchion Focar's report," Iphegor said, "I understand what's happening but not why. I'd appreciate it if someone could enlighten me on that point." He turned his smoldering gaze on Yaphyll. "Perhaps you, Your Omnipotence, possess some useful insights."
Aoth understood why the high priest had singled her out. She was, after all, the zulkir of Divination. Uncovering secrets was her particular art.
She gave the High Flamelord a rueful, crooked smile. "You shame me, Your Omniscience. I can repeat the same speculations we've already passed back and forth until our tongues are numb: We're facing an unpleasantness that one of the vanished kingdoms of the Sunrise Mountains left behind. Despite the best efforts of my order, I can't tell you precisely where the undead horde originated or why it decided to strike at this particular time. You're probably aware that, for better or worse, it's difficult to use divination to find out about anything occurring in central Thay. Jealous of their privacy, too many wizards have cast enchantments to deflect such efforts. When my subordinates and I try to investigate the undead raiders, we meet with the same sort of resistance, as if they have similar wards in place."
Lallara sneered. "So far, this has all been wonderfully productive. Even a zulkir has nothing to offer beyond excuses for ineptitude."
If the barb stung Yaphyll, she opted not to show it. "I will say
I'm not astonished that ancient spirits are stirring. The omens indicate we live in an age of change and turmoil. The great Rage of Dragons two years ago was but one manifestation of a sort of universal ferment likely to continue for a while."
Iphegor nodded. "On that point, Your Omnipotence, your seers and mine agree." He smiled like a beast baring its fangs. "Let us give thanks that so much is to butn and likewise embrace our task, which is to make sure it's the corrupt and unworthy aspects of our existence which go to feed the purifying flames."
"Can we stay focused on killing this nighthaunt and its followers?" Lallara asked. "I assume they qualify as 'corrupt and unworthy.'"
"I would imagine so," said Szass Tam, "and that's our purpose here today: to formulate a strategy. Tharchion Focar has made a beginning by sending to Thazalhar for reinforcements. How can we augment her efforts?"
Samas Kul shrugged his blubbery shoulders. The motion made the tentlike expanse of his gorgeous robes glitter and flash with reflected firelight. "Give her some more troops, I suppose."
"Yes," said the lich, "we can provide some, but we must also recognize our limitations. We reduced the size of our armies after the new policy of trade and peace proved successful. The legions of the north just fought a costly engagement against the Rashemi. Tharchions Kren and Odesseiron need to rebuild their forces and to hold their positions in case of another incursion. I don't think it prudent to pull warriors away from the border we share with Aglarond either. For all we know, our neighbors to the north and west have conspired to unite against us."
"Then what do you suggest?" asked Iphegor Nath.
"We already use our own undead soldiers to fight for us," the lich replied. "The dread warriors, Skeleton Legion, and such. . . . I propose we manufacture more of them. We can disinter folk who died recently enough that the remains are still usable and
lay claim to the corpse of any commoner or thrall who dies from this point forward. I mean, of course, until such time as the crisis is resolved."
"People won't like that," Lallara said. "We Thayans put the dead to use in a way that less sophisticated peoples don't, but that doesn't mean the average person likes the things or wants to see his sweet old granny shuffling around as a zombie." She gave the lich a mocking smile. "No offense."
"None taken," Szass Tam replied blandly. "There are two answers to your objection. The first is that commoners have little choice but to do as we tell them, whether they like it or not. The second is that we'll pay for the cadavers we appropriate. Thanks to the Guild of Foreign Trade, we have plenty of gold."
Samas Kul smirked and preened.
"That may be," said Iphegor, "but it isn't just squeamish commoners who'll object to your scheme. I object. The Firelord objects. It's his will that the bodies of his worshipers be cremated."
"I'm not averse to granting your followers an exemption," said Szass Tam, "provided you're willing to help me in return."
The priest snorted. "At last we come to it. The reason you included me in your conclave."
"Yes," Szass Tam replied. "I intend to put the order of Necromancy in the forefront of the fight against the marauders. My subordinates won't just supply zombies and skeletons to Tharchion Focar. They'll stand in the battle lines themselves and use their magic to smite the foe. Dealing with the undead is their specialty, after all, so they should acquit themselves admirably, but our forces will prove more formidable still if the church of Kossuth commits itself to the struggle. Pyarados needs warrior priests to exert their special powers versus this sort of threat, and none are more capable than your Burning Braziers."
"According to Tharchion Focar," Iphegor said, "some of the
undead apparently possess the ability to strip clerics of their magic. You can understand my reluctance to send my followers into such a situation."
"Ah, yes," said Szass Tam, "the quells. Even the most learned necromancers believed that, like nighthaunts, the last of them perished eons ago, but now that we know of the threat, we can employ countermeasures. We'll guard the priests better—perhaps your orders of militant monks should undertake the task—and arm them better as well, so they're capable of defending themselves even under adverse circumstances."
"Arm them with what?" Iphegor asked.
"With this."
Suddenly a baton of crimson metal reposed in Szass Tarn's withered fingers. Though Aoth was looking straight at the zulkir of Necromancy, he had the odd feeling that somehow he'd just missed seeing the rod materialize. Startled, Samas Kul gave a little jerk that set his layers of flab jiggling. Yaphyll smiled at his discomfiture.
"Take it, please," Szass Tam said.
Iphegor accepted the baton which, Aoth now observed, had stylized tongues of flame etched on its sutface. As soon as the primate gripped it, the small flames dancing about his person poured hissing down his arm and over the weapon. The tip of it blazed up as if someone had soaked it in oil. Now it resembled a brightly burning torch, and despite the cooling enchantment of his tattoo, Aoth shrank back slightly from the fierce radiant heat.
"I feel the power in it." The primate rose and brandished the torch in an experimental manner. "What exactly does it do?"
"I'll show you," said Szass Tam, rising, "using these targets."
He waved his hand to indicate the entities now occupying one corner of the room. Aoth hadn't noticed them materializing either, nor had he sensed any telltale fluctuation of magical forces
in his vicinity. Nymia caught her breath in surprise, or alarm.
One of the creatures was a zombielike "dread warrior," an undead soldier still possessed of the martial skills it had mastered in life, its eyes aglow with yellow phosphorescence. The other was some sort of ghost, a bluish transparent shape that flowed and warped from one moment to the next. Its face flickered repeatedly from wholeness to raw, bleeding ruin, as if an invisible knife were cutting away the nose, lips, and eyes in turn. Aoth assumed the display reprised agonies the spirit had suffered while alive.
After his recent experiences, he felt an unreasoning urge to lash out at the undead things with his spells before they could strike at him, but in point of fact, they weren't moving to menace anyone. Szass Tarn's magic evidently caged them where they were.
Iphegor gave the lich a glower. "People aren't supposed to be able to translate anything in or out of the temple without my consent."
"I apologize if it seemed disrespectful," said Szass Tam. "Perhaps later on Lallara can help you improve your wards." As zulkir of Abjuration, as protective magic was called, she was presumably well suited to the task. "For now, though, shall we proceed with our demonstration?"
"All right." The high priest extended his arm, aiming the baton as if it were a wizard's wand or a handheld crossbow. "I assume I point the fiery end at the object of my displeasure."
"Yes. Now focus. Place yourself in the proper frame of mind to cast a spell or chastise undead through sheer force of faith, but you aren't actually going to expend any of your own power. You're simply going to release a measure of what's stored in the rod."
Iphegor snorted. "I do know how to employ a talisman." "Of course. When you're ready, the trigger word is 'Burn.'"
"Burn," Iphegor repeated.
Dazzling flame exploded from the end of the torch to engulf the captive undead. When the flare died a heartbeat later, they were gone as well. The burst had reduced the dread warrior to wisps of ash, while the phantom left no tangible residue whatsoever.
"Impressive," Iphegor conceded.
"Thank you," Szass Tam replied. "The discharge is a mixture of fire and that pure essence of light and life which is poison to undead creatures, and I guarantee you, the Burning Braziers will be able to invoke it as required, even if other magic fails."
"There will still be a significant element of danger, and you still need to give me an adequate reason to put Kossuth's servants in harm's way."
"Concern for the common folk who need your help?" Yaphyll suggested, grinning.
Judging from her scowl, Lallara found the high priest's recalcitrance less amusing. "Szass Tam already offered to exempt your followers from the mandate to surrender their dead."
"True, that's something," the fire priest said, "and so are these torches, which, I assume, the Braziers will keep even when the threat is past. Still, if I'm to throw in with you and earn the enmity of Thrul and his party, I need more."
"It seems to me," said Szass Tam, "that you're getting it. As we seek ascendancy over our fellow zulkirs, don't you aspire to make the worship of Kossuth the primary faith in the realm?"
"It already is," said Iphegor.
"Granted," said the lich, "but the churches of Bane, Cyric, and Shar are also strong, and in time, one of them could well supplant you. As you and Yaphyll agreed, this is a generation of 'change and turmoil.' We're offering you a chance to guarantee your continued dominance. If your faith receives special treatment from the zulkirs and plays a heroic part in destroying the
menace in Pyarados, new worshipers will flock to your altars.
"Surely that's sufficient incentive," Szass Tam continued. "Surely it's more important than anything else we could offer, so must you really haggle like a fishwife for additional concessions?"
Iphegor grinned. "It seemed worth a try, but perhaps it is beneath our dignity. All right, I agree to your terms. When the tharchions and your zombies and necromancers march out, the Burning Braziers, Black Flame Zealots, Brothers and Sisters of the Pure Flame, and the Order of the Salamander will march with them."
Szass Tam returned the smile. "I'm glad to hear it."
The council of war broke up a short time later, and left Aoth feeling both relieved and a little dazed. As he and Nymia retraced their steps through the temple, he murmured, "They spoke so freely."
"Because the High Flamelord insisted on candor," the tharchion replied.
"Yes, but they did it in front of us. They could have sent us out of the room when they started talking about their rivalries and politics and all the rest of it, and I wish they had." He chuckled without mirth. "A man who 'doesn't even wear red' doesn't need to know about such things."
"They didn't bother," Nymia said, her sweaty face set and hard, "because we're insignificant to them. You'd do well to remember it."
The slaves, guards, and masters were just ahead. The setting sun stretched their shadows in Bareris's direction like dark fingers reaching to gather him in.
Though why that ominous simile flickered through his mind,
he couldn't imagine, because this was a joyous if not miraculous moment. He'd lost precious days to the virulent fever the child-thing's bite had induced. It had been only by the grace of Lady Luck that he'd spotted the tracks that told him the thralls and their captors had left the road. Yet he hadn't fallen so far behind he could never catch up, nor lost the trail either, and his search had come to an end. He kicked his weary horse into a gallop.
A small woman, her dark hair just beginning to grow out, scrambled forth from the ranks of the slaves. It was Tammith. Even at a distance, even after six years, he knew her instantly, as it was plain she'd recognized him despite his outlander's clothing and the sweaty unshaven locks flopping around his head. Crisscrossing her arms, she waved her hands over her head until an ore grabbed her and shoved her back in among the other thralls.
Seeing her subjected to rough treatment made Bareris all the more frantic to close the distance. Still, he forced himself to rein in his mare, because it had looked as if she was waving him off, and some of the guards were maneuvering to intercept him if he came any closer.
It was the final inexplicable oddity in a whole string of them. First he'd learned that necromancers had purchased Tammith and the other slaves in the middle of the night and marched them out of Tyraturos under cover of darkness. Then, bribing and questioning folk along the way, he'd gradually realized that over the course of the last several tendays, people—some recognizably Red Wizards, others possibly their agents—had marched a considerable number of slaves into the sparsely populated north, where the demand for such chattels was ordinarily limited. After that came the discovery that Tammith s owners didn't appear to be taking her to a town, fief, or farm but rather into open country.
Bareris didn't need to know what it all meant. He only wanted
to extricate Tammith from the middle of it, but it came to him that, eager as he was to be reunited with the woman he loved, it might be prudent to approach the caravan with caution.
He reviewed the list of all the spells he knew, imagining how he might use them if things went awry, then sang a charm to augment his force of personality. While the enchantment endured, people would see him a shade taller and handsomer than he actually was. They'd find themselves more inclined to like, trust, and oblige him.
That accomplished, he walked his horse forward, sang, and accompanied himself on the yarting, like any wandering minstrel seeking a cordial welcome. On the surface, the song was simply the familiar ditty "The Eagle and the Mouse," but he wove magic through the lines. Enough, he hoped, to beguile the guards and keep them from loosing arrows at him before he drew close enough for conversation.
He paced the tune to conclude just as he reached the mass of people clustered in front of him. By then, charmed, perhaps, by his music, two Red Wizards had stepped forth to meet him. Both were young, which he supposed made sense: Their seniors were surely above the mundane chore of transporting slaves across country. It likewise gave him reason for hope. Older Red Wizards were wealthy almost without exception, but neophytes might still be striving to make their fortunes, hence that much more susceptible to bribery.
Bareris crooned words that would keep his steed from wandering or getting into mischief, swung himself down from the saddle, and dropped to one knee in front of the Red Wizards. The show of respect was arguably excessive. By custom, a bow would have sufficed, but he wanted to flatter them.
"You can stand up," said the one on the right. He had jam stains on his robe and a bulge of paunch beneath it, though his spindly Mulan frame was still lean elsewhere. In time, that was
likely to change if he didn't master his love of sweets. "That was a fine song."
" 'That was a fine song,' " mimicked the other mage, his face tattooed in black and white to make it resemble a naked skull, and the fellow with the soiled robe winced at the sneer in his voice. "Who are you, sirrah?"
As a Mulan, Bareris was entitled to a more respectful mode of address, even from a Red Wizard, but he chose not to make an issue of it. "Bareris Anskuld, sir."
"Apparently," said the skull-faced wizard, "you've been following us."
"Yes, sir, all the way from Tyraturos."
The leaner mage sneered at his partner. "So much for your promise to cover our tracks. Have you ever done anything right?"
The jam lover flinched. "I reanimated the child just the way our master taught us, and Calmevik was supposed to be one of the best assassins in the city. Everybody said so."
Bareris's mouth turned dry as dust, and a chill oozed up his back. The trap in the alley hadn't been an essentially random misfortune after all. The Red Wizards were so determined on secrecy that they'd left minions behind to kill anyone inquiring into their business, and now he, idiot that he was, had delivered himself into their murderous clutches.
Yet he still had his enchantment heightening his powers of persuasion and other tricks held in reserve. Perhaps, unlikely as it seemed, he could still steer this confrontation where he wanted it to go. It was either that or try to run, and with Tammith's desperate, yearning eyes on him, the latter was a choice he simply couldn't make.
Feigning perplexity, he said, "Are you joking with me, Masters? I didn't meet this Calmevik or anyone who tried to hurt me. I'm just... do you see that pretty lass over there?" He pointed.
The skull-faced necromancer nodded. "The one who's been staring at you. Of course."
"Well, just as I followed you all the way north from Tyraturos, I tracked her all the way from Bezantur, where she sold herself into slavery just tendays ago as the result of a tragic misunderstanding. She thought her family needed the gold, but they didn't. She had no way of knowing I was already bound for home after years abroad, coming back to marry her with enough gold in my purse to support her and her kin forever after."
The black- and bone-colored face sneered. "How terribly sad, but it's no concern of ours."
"I understand that," Bareris said, "but I'm begging for your help." He couldn't break into actual song, or the Red Wizards would likely realize he was casting a spell, but he pitched and cadenced his voice in such a way as to imply melody in an effort to render himself still more charismatic and persuasive. "I've loved Tammith ever since we were children growing up in the gutters of Bezantur. It wasn't an easy life for a Mulan child whose family had fallen in poverty. Older boys bullied and beat me, and one day, even though she was of Rashemi descent herself, Tammith came to my aid. We both wound up with bruises and black eyes, on that day and others subsequent, but she never once regretted befriending me. That's the kind of loyal, courageous spirit she possesses. The spirit of someone who deserves a better life that slavery."
The wizard with the flabby belly looked caught up in the story, perhaps even touched by it. Bareris wasn't surprised. The mage had the air or someone who'd likewise been bullied in his time, but if his partner was mellowing, it wasn't apparent from his demeanor.
Still, if a tale of love couldn't move him, maybe baser considerations would. "So I've come to buy her out of bondage," Bareris continued, "and I'll pay well, more than she can possibly
be worth to anyone but the man who loves her." He opened one of the hidden pockets in his sword belt, extracted three of the diamonds he and his former comrades had found cached in a dragon-worshiper stronghold, and proffered them in his palm for everyone to see. Even in the failing light, the stones gleamed, and impressed, warriors cursed or murmured to one another. "One jewel for each of you wizards, another for your retainers."
The pudgy mage swallowed as if greed had dried his throat. "Perhaps we could make some sort of arrangement," he said, then stiffened as if expecting his colleague to rebuke him.
But the other necromancer simply smirked and said, "Yes, why not? As the troubadour said, it's a great deal of coin, and what's a single slave one way or the other?" He stretched out his hand, and Bareris gave him the diamonds. "It's a bargain then. The wench is yours. Take her and ride away."
Tammith cried Bareris's name and ran toward him. He turned to catch her in his arms. It should have been a moment of supreme exultation, but he realized that all he felt was fear.
Because it was too easy. Yes, he'd cast glamours that predisposed others to indulge him, sometimes even in defiance of their own best interests or common sense, and had offered treasure in addition, but the mage with the tattooed face had never appeared to fall under the influence of the spells, and the grim truth was he and his fellow necromancer were obviously supposed to keep their mission a secret, which would seem to preclude permitting Bareris and Tammith to depart to talk of what they'd seen.
Had Bareris been in the necromancer's position, and had he, like so many Red Wizards, felt scant obligation to honor a pledge given to an inferior, he might well have pretended to accede to his petitioner's pleas just to put him off his guard. Then he'd attack as soon as a good opportunity presented itself.
Yet Bareris couldn't simply assume treachery and strike first. He didn't dare start an unnecessary fight when, outnumbeted as
he was, he had so little hope of winning it. Weeping, Tammith flung herself into his embrace, kissed him, and babbled endearments. He hugged her but couldn't reply in kind. He was busy listening.
Yet even so, the necromancer with the tattooed face whispered so softly that for a moment, Bareris wasn't sure if he was actually hearing his voice or only imagining it. Then he felt a subtle prickling on his skin that warned of magic coming into being.
He whirled, dragging the startled Tammith around with him, and shouted. Bardic power amplified the cry into a thunderous boom capable of bruising flesh and cracking bone. The sound smashed the Red Wizard off his feet, and for an instant, Bareris dared to hope he'd killed him, but no, for he started to get up again.
Still, at least Bareris had disrupted the other man's spellcast-ing, and in so doing, he bought himself a moment he hoped to use to good effect. He beckoned to his horse. Ordinarily, the mare wouldn't have responded to such a gesture, but steed and rider still shared the empathic bond he'd sung into being just before he'd dismounted, and she came running.
He poised himself to leap onto the horse's back and haul Tammith up behind him, but having drawn himself to one knee, his black-and-white skull face now streaked with blood, the lean necromancer brandished a talisman. A bolt of crackling darkness leaped from the charm to spear the mare from behind. She shriveled as though starving past the point of emaciation in a single heartbeat, and her legs gave way beneath her. She crashed to the ground, shuddered, and lay still.
The injured wizard lurched to his feet but evidently couldn't stand straight. Rather, he held himself doubled over as if his midsection was particularly painful. He looked about, no doubt taking in the fact that neither his fellow necromancer nor any
of their servants had yet moved to attack or otherwise hinder Bareris. Perhaps the enchantments the bard had cast still influenced them even now, or maybe hostilities had simply erupted too suddenly.
"Get him!" the Red Wizard screamed. "Get him, and we'll divide up all his jewels! But take him alive! A true bard will be useful!"
The guards readied their weapons and closed in from all sides. Bareris whipped out his sword and struggled to hold back panic and think. If they hoped to take him alive, that would hamper them a little. If he could somehow seize another horse—
Why then, he thought, the wizards would simply blast the animal out from under Tammith and him as they tried to ride away, or else the guards would shoot it full of arrows. Before the enemy readied themselves for battle, there had existed a slim chance of fleeing successfully on horseback, but it was gone now.
"Give me a knife," Tammith said. He could hear the fear in her voice, but only because he knew her so well. He handed her a blade and she positioned herself so they could protect one another's backs. "I'm sorry you came for me, sorry this is happening, but glad I got to kiss you one last time."
"It wasn't the last time."
In fact, he knew it very likely had been, but he wouldn't abandon hope even in his private thoughts, wouldn't defeat himself and save the enemy the trouble. Maybe he and Tammith could at least kill a few of the bastards before the remainder overwhelmed them.
Blood ores shrieked their harrowing cry and charged. Bareris chanted, and power stung and shivered down his limbs. Tammith gasped as she experienced the same sensation.
The world, including the onrushing ores, slowed down, or at least that was how it appeared. In reality, Bareris knew, he and
Tammith were moving more quickly. The enchantment had given him a critical advantage in other combats, and he could only pray it would again.
A whip whirled at his calves. Had it connected, it would have wrapped around his legs and bound them together, but he leaped over the arc of the stroke and slashed the eyes of an ore armed with a cudgel. That put another guard behind him, in position to bash his head with the pommel of its scimitar. It was too sluggish, though, compared to his unnatural celerity. He pivoted, sliced its belly, turned, stepped, and hacked open the throat of the brute with the whip while it was still drawing the rawhide lash back for a second stroke.
That finished all the foes immediately in front of him, and it was then that he heard Tammith half cry, half gasp his name. It was possible she'd been screaming for a moment or two, and he'd been too intent on the blood ores to hear.
He turned. Another guard, a human on horseback, had looped a whip around Tammith's neck and was lifting her off her feet, essentially garroting her in the process. She flailed with her knife but couldn't connect. Neither her bravery nor the charm of speed sufficed to counter the warrior's advantages of superior strength and skill.
Bareris sprang in and cut at the guard's left wrist, and his blade bit to the bone. The horseman dropped the whip and Tammith with it. Blood spurting from his gashed extremity, features as bestial with rage and pain as the tusked, piggish face of any of the ores, he prompted his mount—a trained war-horse, evidently—to rear and try to batter Bareris with its front hooves.
Bareris sidestepped and thrust his point into the animal's side. The destrier fell sideways, carrying its rider with it. They hit the ground hard and lay motionless thereafter.
Bareris cast about and found Tammith, a raw red welt now
striping her neck, standing just behind him. "I'm sorry," she said.
He realized she meant she was sorry she hadn't managed to kill the rider with the whip, sorry Bareris had needed to save her. "It's all right." It occurred to him that the two dead horses sprawled on the ground constituted obstacles of sorts. If he and Tammith stood between them, it would make it difficult for very many of their foes to come at them at once. "Come on." He scrambled to the proper position, and she followed.
There he began another song. It would strengthen and steady them, and he could weave specific spells through the melody as needed. Pivoting, he peered to see who meant to attack him next.
A rider with a net spurred his mount into a canter. Crouching, blood ores circled as if they hoped to clamber over the top of one of the dead horses and take their adversaries by surprise.
Then the wizard with the tattooed face shouted, "Stop! You imbeciles are next to useless, but I can't afford to lose all of you. Forget about taking the minstrel alive, and don't go within reach of his sword, either. Shoot him and his whore, and So-Kehur and I will smite them with spells." He gave Bareris a vicious smile. "Unless, of course, you prefer to surrender."
"Don't," Tammith whispered. "I don't know what they'll do to us if we give up, but I'm sure it will be terrible."
Bareris suspected she was right, yet what was the alternative? To condemn her to die here and now? For while the two of them had evaded capture and injury thus far, it was obvious they no longer had any chance of getting away. It was only the Red Wizard's order to take them alive that had provided even the illusion of hope, and that was no longer in effect.
"We have to surrender," he said, "and hope we can escape later on. Set the knife on the ground." He stooped to do the same with his sword, and then someone gave a startled yell.
Bareris looked around to see slaves scrambling in all directions. Evidently they shared Tammith's conviction that some ghastly fate awaited them at the end of their trek, and they'd decided to take advantage of their keepers' distraction to make a break for freedom.
"Stop them!" the necromancer with the flabby midsection— evidently his name was So-Kehur—wailed.
Some of the guards obeyed. Horsemen galloped and wheeled to cut the thralls off. A blood ore dashed after a group of fleeing men and started slashing them down from behind, evidently on the assumption that if it killed enough of them, the slaughter would cow the rest into giving up.
Of course, not every warrior turned his back on Tammith and Bareris, but as best the bard could judge, even those who hadn't seemed momentarily flummoxed. So, for that matter, did the necromancers. Perhaps he had a hope left after all.
"Follow me!" he said to Tammith. He bellowed a battle cry and charged.
For an instant, he considered running at So-Kehur. Evidently worthless in a crisis, the round-bellied mage had yet to cast a spell and was surely an easier mark than the skull-faced warlock. He must possess an extraordinary aptitude for some aspect of sorcery, or else exceptionally good family connections, to account for his induction into an order of Red Wizards despite the lack of iron in his soul.
The problem was that even if they were of equivalent rank, it was plainly the necromancer with the tattooed face who'd taken charge of the caravan. Should they find themselves at odds, he was the one the warriors would obey, and just to make matters worse, he obviously held his fellow mage in contempt. Bareris could easily imagine himself grabbing So-Kehur, using him as a shield, threatening him with his sword, and having the tattooed wizard laugh and order his underlings to go ahead and shoot them both.
No, if Bareris was going to take a hostage, it had to be the skull-faced mage himself, and so he ran straight at him. He prayed Tammith was still following close behind him but didn't dare waste the instant it would take to glance back and find out.
An arrow whistled past his head. An ore scrambled to block his path, and he split its skull. For a moment, his sword stuck in the wound, but then he managed to yank it free, flinging drops of blood through the air in the process.
Realizing his peril, the skull-faced necromancer brandished the talisman that had killed Bareris's horse, a round medallion, the bard now observed, fashioned of ebony and bone. He wrenched himself to the side, and the jagged blaze of shadow missed him by a finger length.
He raced onward. Just a few more strides would carry him within striking distance of his foe, and with enchantment quickening his actions, he had reason for hope that his adversary didn't have time to attempt any more magic.
But the necromancer had a trick in reserve. Even as his body backed away, his face seemed to spring forward like a striking snake. In reality, Bareris perceived, it was the tattooed skull mask that had torn free of his skin, and as it did, it rounded itself into a snarling head, and a gaunt, decaying body materialized beneath it. It had, in fact, become a ghoul, a slave creature or familiar the Red Wizard had carried inside his own body to evoke in a moment of ultimate need.
Startled by the vile-smelling thing's unexpected materialization, Bareris faltered. The ghoul leaped, its jagged, filthy nails ripping at his face. They nearly snagged him, but then trained reflex twisted him out of the way. He hacked at the bumpy ridge of spine in the corpse eater's withered back, and the undead's legs buckled beneath it.
Bareris sprinted on. Looking unexpectedly soft-featured and callow with his macabre mask stripped away, the Red Wizard
lifted his talisman for another blast. Bareris had believed he was already running his fastest, but somehow he achieved an extra iota of speed to close the distance. He cut at the necromancer's hand, and the medallion and severed fingers tumbled through the air.
At that instant, Bareris hated the wizard, relished hurting him, and had to remind himself that he needed him alive. He shoved the necromancer down onto the grass, lifted his sword to threaten him—
A voice chanted rhyming words, and the ambient temperature fluctuated wildly. Bareris realized So-Kehur wasn't entirely useless after all. He'd finally found the presence of mind to cast a spell.
Something stabbed into the middle of Bareris's back. It didn't hurt, precisely, but weakness streamed outward from the site like ink diffusing through water. His sword suddenly felt too heavy to support. The blade dropped, and the hilt nearly pulled itself from his grasp. He collapsed to his knees.
He told himself he didn't need his stolen strength. He could hold a hostage down with his weight, and menace him with the lethal sharpness of his blade. He floundered after the necromancer with the maimed hand, but now the mage was the quicker and stayed beyond his reach.
Until a mesh of sticky cable abtuptly materialized on top of Bareris, binding and gluing him to the ground. "I did it!" So-Kehur crowed. "I took him alive, just like you wanted."
"So you did," the other wizard gasped, rising unsteadily, "and now I'm going to kill the wretch." Using his intact hand, he fumbled in one of his scarlet robe's many pockets, no doubt seeking the talisman required to facilitate some sort of death magic.
Enfeebled as he was, it was difficult for Bareris even to turn his head. Still, praying she could help him somehow, he peered around for Tammith, only to see her slumped on the ground
clutching at a bloody wound in her leg. An ore stood over her, spear aimed to stab her again if she attempted further resistance. Elsewhere, the creature's fellow guards had all but completed the task of catching and subduing the rest of the slaves.
Bareris would have taken any risk to rescue or protect Tammith, but those things were no longer even remotely possible. He had to escape alone now in the hope of returning for her later, if, indeed, he could even manage that.
Rapidly as he dared—too much haste and he might botch the casting—he started singing. Weak as he was, he felt short of breath and had to struggle to achieve the precise intonation and cadence the magic required.
His would-be killer seemed clumsy with his offhand and was possibly on the verge of sinking into shock from the amputation of his fingers. He was slow producing his talisman, but when he realized Bareris was attempting magic, he managed to snatch it forth, flourish it, and jabber hissing, clacking syllables in some foul abyssal tongue.
A thing of tattered darkness, with a vague, twisted face and elongated fingers, swirled into existence between the necromancer and the prisoner caught beneath the sticky net. The wizard pointed, and the shadow pounced.
At the same instant, Bareris completed his spell-song. The world seemed to shatter into motes of light and remake itself an instant later.
The greatest spellcasters could work magic to whisk themselves and a band of comrades hundreds of miles in a heartbeat. Bareris had seen it done. He himself had no such abilities, or he would have employed them to carry Tammith to safety as soon as he clasped het in his atms, but he had mastered a song to translate a single person several yards in a random direction. A desperation ploy that could, with luck, save a man's life after other measures failed.
Thus, he now sprawled on his belly a short distance away from his enemies and the slaves. As best he could judge, no one had spotted him yet, but somebody unquestionably would if he couldn't conceal himself within the next few moments. He tried to crawl, and with the curse of weakness still afflicting him, the effort was so difficult it made him sob.
Crouching low, the shadow-thing started to pivot in his direction. Then something grabbed him by the sword belt and yanked him backward.

Chapter six
26Mirtul, the Year of Risen Elfkin
N'tari Agneh rarely had much of an appetite, and this morning was no exception. She scraped the eggs, fried bread, and peach slices off her dish into the chamber pot then performed what had come to be a ritual.
First, she slid the edge of the knife that had arrived with breakfast across her forearm. The blade appeared sharp but failed to slice her skin. In fact, the length of steel deformed with the pressure, as if forged of a material soft as wax.
Next she gripped the spoon. It too was made of metal and had an edge of sorts. A trained warrior, striking in fury and desperation, should be able to hurt someone with it, but when she thrust it at her outstretched limb, she felt only a painless prod, and the utensil bent double.
That left the pewter plate. She slammed it against her arm, and it didn't even sting. It was like swiping herself with a sheet of parchment.
It was always thus. Every item that entered her prison immediately fell under the same enchantment, a charm that made it impossible for her to use it to hurt anyone, herself included. Strips of bed sheet and portions of the skimpy whorish costumes that were all she was given to wear unraveled as soon as she twisted them around her neck and pulled. Even the walls turned soft as eiderdown when she bashed her head against them.
She wondered how many more times she could perform her tests before accepting the obvious truth that her captor's precautions would never ever fail, before abandoning hope.
What would happen to her then? Would she let go of the last shreds of her pride? Of sanity itself? The prospect was terrifying yet perversely tempting too, for if she broke or went mad, perhaps the torments would be easier to bear. Perhaps Aznar Thrul would even grow bored with her. Maybe he'd kill her or simply forget about her.
She struggled to quash the weak, craven urge to yield and be done with it, then noticed the vapor seething through the crack beneath the door.
Maris first thought was that some malevolent god had seen fit to grant the prayer implicit in her moment of despair, that Thrul, or one of his servants, was blowing a poisonous mist into the room to murder her. She didn't actually believe it. The zulkir hadn't shown any sign of growing tired of his toy, and she was certain that if he ever did decide to dispose of her, he'd at least want to watch her die. No, this was something else, which didn't make it any less alarming.
The vapor swirled together and congealed into a towering creature with purple-black hide, four arms, a vaguely lupine countenance, and a brand on its brow. Mari retreated and picked up a chair. Like every other article in her prison, the seat would fall to useless pieces if she tried to strike a blow with it, but perhaps the demon, if that was what the thing was, didn't know that.
Of course, it was ludicrous to imagine that such a horror might fear a nearly naked woman brandishing a chair in any case, but it was all she could think of to do.
The demon either smiled or snarled at her. The shape of its jaws was sufficiently unlike the structure of a human mouth that she couldn't tell which.
"Greetings, Tharchion," it rumbled. "My name is Tsagoth, and I've been hunting you for a while."
"I don't believe Aznar Thrul sent you," she said, struggling to keep her voice steady. "If he wanted you to molest me, he'd also want to be here when you did it. If I were you, I'd think twice about bothering me without his consent."
Tsagoth snorted. "You're right. I am here without the zulkir's permission, so scream for help if you think anyone will come. Let's get that out of the way."
It—or rather, he, for the hulking creature was plainly male— was right. She could try calling for help, but she wouldn't.
"No. No matter how bad it gets, I never beg the swine for anything."
Tsagoth's hideous grin strerched wider. "I like that."
His attitude didn't actually seem threatening. Rather, it was . .. well, something else, something anomalous.
Still wary, but increasingly puzzled as well, she asked, "You like what?"
"Your toughness. I know something of what you've endured, and I expected to find you ruined, but you're not. That will make our task easier."
"What task?"
"Killing Thrul, of course. Attaining your revenge."
She shook her head. "You don't look like you need help to kill anybody you take a mind to kill."
"You flatter me, Tharchion. I'm more than a match for most ptey, but I'm not capable of destroying one of the most powerful
wizards of your world. Nor, perhaps, is anyone, so long as he's on his guard and armored with his talismans, enchanted robes, and whatnot. But what about those occasions when he lays aside his staff, divests himself of his garments, and is enflamed and heedless with passion? Don't you think he might be vulnerable then?"
"You mean, you want to hide here and attack while he's ... busy with me?"
"No, we can't do it that way, not when we don't know how many days or tendays it will be before he next visits you. I'm supposedly a slave here in the palace. If I go missing, people will search for me, and even if they didn't, I imagine Thrul would sense a third party—a denizen of the Abyss, no less—lurking in your chamber. You'll have to be the one to kill him, and though I know little of humans, I suspect you'll prefer it that way."
"I would if it would work," Mari said, "but I don't see how it can. His magic prevents any object that enters the room from serving me as a weapon and limits me in other ways as well. If he gives me a direct order, I have no choice but to follow it." No matter how degrading. She felt nauseated at the memory of the laughter of the sycophants he'd brought to watch her perform.
"You won't need a weapon if you are the weapon," Tsagoth said, "and your puppet strings will break if you cease to be the sort of creature they were fashioned to control."
"You want to ... change me?"
"Yes." Evidently the mark on his forehead itched, for he scratched at it with the claws on his upper left hand. "I'm a blood fiend. An undead. As vampires prey on humans, so does my kind prey on demons, and like vampires, we can, when we see fit, share our gifts and essential nature with others."
"But you normally transform other creatures from the netherworld, don't you?"
"Yes," Tsagoth said, "and to be honest, I don't know if it
will work the same on you. You mortals are fragile vessels to contain the power I hope to give you. I can only tell you that he who summoned me cast spells to increase the likelihood of our success."
"Who are you talking about?"
"I'm forbidden to say. Someone who wants to help you avenge yourself. Does anything else truly matter?"
Mari frowned. "It may. I'm willing to risk my life. As a warrior, I did it more times than I can remember, but if I change into something like you, will I still be the same person inside? Will I keep my soul?"
The blood fiend shrugged. The gesture looked peculiar with four arms performing it. "I can't say. I'm a hunter, not a scholar of such esoterica, but ask yourself if this spark you mortals prize •so highly is truly of any use to you. Does it make your punishments and humiliations any less excruciating? If not, what good is it compared to a chance for retribution?"
Maybe he was right, and even if not, it abruptly came to her that in all probability, he was going to transform her whether she consented or not. Ultimately, he was as much a slave as she was and had no choice but to carry out his master's commands. He was offering her the opportunity to agree because .. . she wasn't sure why. It seemed preposterous to imagine that such a being could like her or consider her a kindred spirit, but perhaps her initial defiance had elicited a measure of respect.
If so, she was glad to have it. It had been a long while since anyone, even the servant who brought her meals, had shown her anything but contempt. She didn't want to forfeit that regard by showing fear, by obliging him to treat her as victim and pawn instead of accomplice, and perhaps that was what ultimately tipped the balance in her mind.
"Yes," she said. "Make me strong again."
Tsagoth grinned. "You were never truly strong, human, but
you will be." He clawed a gash into the palm of his lower left hand and held it out to her. "Drink."
His blood was like fire in her mouth, but she forced herself to suck and lap it anyway.
Bareris wasn't sure if he was a guest or a prisoner of the gnolls, and at first he was nearly too sick to care. So-Kehur's curse of weakness was to blame. Ordinarily such afflictions passed quickly, but the effects of arcane magic, partaking as it did of primordial chaos, were never entirely predictable, and maybe some lingering vestige of the illness from which Bareris had only recently recovered rendered him particularly susceptible. In any event, it had taken him well into the next day to start feeling any stronger at all.
Thus, when, guards shouting and cracking their whips, the caravan resumed its trek, he'd had no choice but to simply lie and watch, not that he could have prevented it in any case. Lie and watch as Tammith's captors marched her away into the gathering darkness.
Once the procession vanished, the gnoll who'd dragged him back into the low place in the earth, thus hiding him from the Red Wizards and their minions, rose, hoisted him onto its back, and headed north. A head taller than even a lanky Mulan, the creature with its hyenalike head, coarse mane, and rank-smelling spotted fur manifestly possessed remarkable strength and stamina, for its long stride ate up the miles without flagging, until it reached the rude camp—three lean-tos and a shallow pit for a fire—it had established with several others of its kind.
Evidently they were all out hunting and foraging, for as the night wore on, they returned one or two at a time with rabbit,
edible roots, and the like, which they grilled all together in an iron skillet. Bareris's rescuer—or was it captor?—insisted that he receive a share of the meal, and while some of its comrades snarled and bared their fangs, none was as big or powerful-looking, and their display of displeasure stopped short of actual resistance.
When the sun rose, they mostly lay down to sleep, though one stood watch. When Bareris's strength started to trickle back, he wondered if he could take the sentry by surprise, kill it or club it unconscious, and flee while the other gnolls slumbered on oblivious.
If so, it might be prudent to try. Gnolls had a savage reputation, and it was by no means ridiculous to conjecture that eventually the hyenafolk meant to fry some bard meat in their skillet.
Yet he was reluctant to strike out at anyone who, thus far at least, had done him more good than harm, and his lingering weakness, coupled with his frustration over his failure to liberate Tammith, nurtured a bleak passivity. He simply lay and rested until sunset, when the sleeping gnolls began to rouse.
The big one walked over and peered down at him. "You better," he said. As his form was half man and half hyena, so was his speech half voice and half growl. If he hadn't possessed the trained ear of a bard, Bareris doubted he would have understood.
"I am better," he agreed, rising. "The curse is finally fading. My name is Bareris Anskuld."
The gnoll slapped his chest. "Wesk Backbreaker, me."
"Thank you for hiding me from my enemies."
"Hide easy. Sneak around humans and stinking blood ores all the time. They never see." Wesk laughed, and though it sounded different, sharper and more bestial than human laughter, Bareris heard the bitterness in it. "Or else they kill. Not enough gnolls
to fight them. Not enough singer, either. Crazy to bother them like you did."
Bareris sighed. "Probably."
"But brave. And fight good. Like gnoll."
"That's high praise. I've seen your people fight." No need to mention that he'd witnessed it during his wanderings and had been fighting on the opposing side. "Was that the reason you rescued me?"
"Help you because you chop ringers of Red Wizard."
"Did he wrong you somehow?"
Wesk snorted. "Not just that one. All Red Wizards. Gnoll clan fight in legion. Wesk's father. Father's father. Always. Until Red Wizards say, no more war. Trade now. Then they make blood ores and say blood ores better than gnolls."
Bareris thought he understood: "To save coin, someone decided to reduce the size of the army, and you and your clan brothers were discharged."
"Yes. Just hunters now. Robbers when we can. Not fair!"
"On the ride north, I heard that Thay's at war with Rashemen again. The legions of Gauros and Surthay are looking for recruits."
"Recruits?" Wesk snarled. "Crawl back to take orders from blood ores? No!"
"I understand. It's a matter of pride." A mad thought came to him. "If you won't serve a tharchion, what about working for me?"
Wesk cocked his head. "You?"
"Why not? I can pay." In theory, anyway. In fact, most of his wealth was in his sword belt and purse, which the gnolls had already confiscated, but he'd worry about that detail when the time came.
"To kill Red Wizards? Want to, but no. Told you, gnolls too few."
"I understand we can't wage all-out war on them, but we can make fools of them, and maybe it will involve bleeding an ore or two along the way."
Wesk grunted. "Everyone needs to hear, but some not talk your talk. I..." He hesitated, evidently groping for the proper word.
"Translate? No need." Bareris sang softly, and the growling, yipping conversations of the other gnolls abruptly became intelligible to him. While the enchantment lasted, he would likewise be able to speak to them in their own language. "Let's gather everyone up."
The impromptu assembly convened around the ashes of last night's cook fire, and Bareris found that the unwashed-dog smell of gnoll was markedly worse when several of the creatures gathered together. Some of the hyenafolk glared at him with overt scorn and hostility, some seemed merely curious, but with the possible exception of Wesk, none appeared cordial or sympathetic.
But a bard had the power to make good will flower where none had existed before, and as he introduced himself and spun his tale, he infused his voice with subtle magic to accomplish that very purpose.
Yet even so, he wondered if a story of a loved one in peril could possibly move them. If gnolls were even capable of love, they'd never, so far as he knew, permitted a member of another race to glimpse any evidence of it. On the other hand, they were tribal by nature. That suggested something approximating a capacity for affection, didn't it?
In the end, perhaps the person he moved the most was himself. Spinning the story made everything he'd experienced acutely, painfully real, and when he told of seeing and touching Tammith only to lose her again immediately thereafter, it was all he could do to keep from weeping, but he couldn't allow the gnolls to think him a weakling.
He ended on a note of bitter anger akin to their own: "So you see how it's been for me. I undertook what should have been a simple task, especially considering that I was willing, nay, eager, to reward anyone able to help me, but I met contempt, betrayal, and bared blades every step of the way. Now I'm done with the mild and reasonable approach. I'm going to recover Tammith by force, and I want you lads to help me."
The gnolls stared at him for another moment, and then one, with a ruddy tinge to his fur and longer ears than the rest, laughed his piercing, crazy-sounding cackle. "Sorry, human. It can't be done."
"Why not?"Bareris demanded.
"Because the slaves go to Delhumide."
For a moment, Bareris didn't understand. They were all in Delhumide, and what of it? Then he realized the gnoll wasn't speaking of the tharch but of the abandoned city of the same name.
Twenty-three centuries before, when Thay had been a Mulhorandi colony, Delhumide had been one of its greatest cities and bastions of power, and when the Red Wizards rebelled, they'd deemed it necessary to destroy the place. They'd evidently used the darkest sort of sorcery to accomplish their purpose, for by all accounts, the ground was still unclean today. Demons walked there, and a man could contract madness or leprosy just by venturing down the wrong street. No one visited Delhumide except the most reckless sort of treasure hunter, and few of those ever returned.
"Areyou sure?"Bareris asked. It was, of course, a stupid question, born of surprise, and he didn't wait for an answer. "Why?"
"We don't know," said the gnoll. "We have better sense than to go into Delhumide ourselves."
"Even if we could," said Wesk. After listening to his broken Mulhorandi, Bareris found it odd to hear him speak fluently,
but he naturally had no difficulty conversing in his own racial language. "Soldiers guard the place by day, and at night, f/v things come out. I don't know if they're the fiends that have always haunted the place or pets of the Red Wizards—maybe some of Both—and it doesn't matter anyway. They're there, and they're nasty."
"I understand," Bareris said, "but you fellows are experts at going unseen. You told me so yourself, and I witnessed your skill firsthand when you hid the both of us. I'll wager your legion used you as expert scouts and skirmishers."
"Sometimes," said Wesk.
"Well, I'm a fair hand at creeping and skulking myself, so long as I'm not crippled. With luck, we could sneak in and out of Delhumide without having to fight every warrior or lurking horror in the ruins."
"To steal back your mate," said the gnoll who'd jeered at him before.
"Yes. I've never seen Delhumide, but you've scouted it from the outside anyway. You can figure out the safest path in. Together, we can rescue Tammith, and in gratitude for your help, I'll make you rich enough to live in luxury in Eltabbar or Bezantur until the end of your days. Just give me back my pouch and sword belt."
The gnolls exchanged looks, then one of them fetched the articles he'd requested from the shade beneath one of the lean-tos. As he'd expected, the gnoll removed his sword from its scabbard first, and when he looked inside the pigskin bag, the coins were gone.
But the gnolls hadn't discovered the secret pocket in the bottom of the purse. He lifted the bag to his mouth and exhaled into it. His breath activated a petty enchantment, and the hidden seam separated. He removed the sheets of parchment, unfolded them, and held them up for the gnolls to see. "Letters of credit from the merchant houses ofTurmish andlmpiltur. A little the worse for wear, but still valid."
Wesk snorted. "None of us can read, singer, nor has any idea how such papers are supposed to look. Maybe you guessed that and decided to try and fool us."
"No, but I can offer you a differentform ofwealth ifthat's what you prefer." He started opening the concealed pockets in the sword belt and was relieved to find that the gnolls hadn't found those either.
He brought out rubies, sapphires, and clear, smooth tapered kings tears. It was an absurd amount of wealth to purchase the services of half a dozen gnolls, yet for this moment anyway, he felt a sudden, unexpected spasm of loathing for the stones. If he'd never departed Bezantur to win them, he could have prevented Tammith from selling herself into slavery, and what good had they done him since? He had to resist a wild impulse to empty the belt entirely.
He spread the jewels on the ground with a flourish, like a juggler performing a trick. "Here. Take them if you're willing to help me."
The gnoll with the prominent ears laughed. "What's to stop us from taking them without helping you, then cutting up that pouch and belt and all your belongings to see if anything else is stashed inside? Wesk liked seeing you lop a Red Wizard's fingers off. It made him curious enough to haul you back here and find out who you are, but we're not yourfriends, orfriends to any human. We rob and eat hairless runts like you."
Bareris wondered if Wesk would take exception to his clan brother's assertion. He didn't, though, and perhaps it wasn't surprising. Bareris had claimed he was capable of leading the gnolls in a dangerous enterprise. If so, he should be competent to stand up for himself when a member of the band sought to intimidate him.
Or maybe the whim that had moved Wesk to rescue him originally had simply been a transient aberration, and now the
towering creature was all gnoll again, feral and murderous as the foulest of his kin.
Either way, it scarcely mattered. Bareris had known that displaying the jewels was likely to provoke a crisis, and now he had to cope as best he could. "Take the stones and give nothing in return?"he sneered. "Strange, that's just what the Red Wizards and blood ores tried to do, and I thought you deemed yourselves better than they are."
The gnoll with the long ears bared his fangs. "We are better. They couldn't kill you and take your treasure, but we can."
"No, "said Bareris, "you can't. It doesn't matter that you withheld my sword or that you outnumber me. "In reality, it almost certainly would, but he did his best to project utter self-confidence. "I'm a bard, a spellcaster, and my powers are what will enable us to make jackasses of the Red Wizards. I'll show you."
He picked up one of the king's tears and sang words of power. Tiny sparks flared and died within the crystal, and a sweet smell like incense suffused the air. Alarmed, some of the gnolls jumped up and snatched for their weapons or else lunged and grabbed for Bareris with their empty hands.
None of them acted in time, and light burned from within the jewel. It had no power to injure the gnolls. That would inevitably have resulted in a genuine battle, which was the last thing he wanted, but the hyenafolk were essentially nocturnal by nature, and the sudden flare dazzled and balked them. Coupled with the charms of influence Bareris had already spun, it might, with luck, even impress them more than it actually deserved to.
At once, while they were still recoiling, the bard sprang to his feet and punched as hard as ever in his life. The uppercut caught the gnoll with the long ears under the jaw. His teeth clicked together, and he stumbled backward.
"That, "Bareris rapped, "was for impudence. Threaten me again and I'll tear you apart."
He then brandished the luminous king's tear as if it were a talisman of extraordinary power, and as he spoke on, he infused his words with additional magic—not a spell of coercion, precisely, but an enchantment to bolster the courage and confidence of all who heard it.
"It comes down to this," he said. "Even if you could kill me and steal the gems, it wouldn't matter. You'd still be a legion's castoffs, worthless in everyone's eyes includingyour own, but I'm offeringyou a chance to take revenge on the sort of folk who shamed you, and more than that, to regain your honor. Don't you see, if you join me in this venture, then you're not mere contemptible scavengers anymore. You're mercenaries, soldiers once again.
"Or perhaps you don't care about honor, "he continued. "Maybe you never bad it in the first place. That's what people say about gnolls, that in their hearts and minds, they're vile as rats. You tell me if it's true."
Pupils shrunk small by the magical glare, Wesk glowered for a moment. Then he growled, "Put out the light and we'll talk some more."
Bareris's muscles went limp with relief, because while he still had little confidence that the gnolls would prove reliable if things became difficult, he discerned that, for the present at least, they meant to follow him.

Chapter seven
29Mirtul, the Year of Risen Elfhin
Aoth and Brightwing studied Dulos, the hamlet far below. For a moment, the place looked ordinary enough, the usual collection of sod-roofed huts and barns, but then the griffon rider observed that no one was working the fields and that sheep, pigs, and oxen lay torn and rotting in their pens. Then, his senses linked to his familiar's, he caught the carrion stink.
"The undead have been here," he said.
"No, really?" Brightwing replied.
Aoth was too intent on the work at hand, and perhaps too full of memories of the massacres at Thazar Keep and beside the river, to respond to the sarcasm in kind. "The question is, are they still here, or have they moved on?"
"I can't tell from up here."
"Neither can I. Perhaps the Burning Braziers can. Or the necromancers. Let's return to the company."
The griffon wheeled, and her wings, shining gold in the
sunlight, swept up and down. Soon Aoth's patrol appeared below.
The force was considerably smaller than the army that had met disaster in the mouth of the Pass of Thazar. Supposedly, once the undead horde gained access to the central plateau, they'd dispersed into smaller bands. Thus, Nymia Focar's host had no choice but to do the same if they hoped to eradicate the creatures as rapidly as possible.
When Brightwing landed, Aoth's lieutenants were waiting to confer with him, or at least they were supposed to be his lieutenants. Nymia had declared him in charge, but Red Wizards had little inclination to recognize the authority of anyone not robed in scarlet, while the militant priests of Kossuth had somehow acquired the notion that Szass Tam and the other zulkirs had all but begged Iphegor Nath to dispatch them on this mission and accordingly believed everyone ought to defer to them.
Aoth tried to diminish the potential for dissension by making sure to solicit everyone's opinions before making a decision and by pretending to weigh them seriously even when they betrayed complete ignorance of the craft of war. It seemed to be working so far.
"The enemy," he said, swinging himself off Brightwing's back, "attacked the village."
Her red metal torch weapon dangling in her hand, the scent of smoke clinging to her, Chathi Oandem frowned. The hazel-eyed priestess of Kossuth had old burn scars stippling her left cheek, the result, perhaps, of some devotion gone awry, but Aoth found her rather comely nonetheless, partly because of her air of energy and quick intelligence.
"They've come this far west then, this close to Eltabbar."
"Yes," said Aoth. "It makes me wonder if they might even have been bold enough to attack Surag and Thazrumaros." They were larger towns that might have had some hope of fending off an
assault. "But for the time being, our concern is here. Can someone cast a divination to see if the settlement is still infested?"
Chathi opened her mouth, no doubt to say that she'd do it, but Urhur Hahpet jumped in ahead of her. Evidently not content with a single garment denoting his status, the sallow, pinch-faced necromancer wore a robe, cape, and shoulder-length overcape, all dyed and lined with various shades of red, as well as a clinking necklace of human vertebrae and finger bones.
"If it will help," he said, with the air of a lord granting a boon to a petitioner, "but we need to move up within sight of the place."
So they did, and Aoth made sure everyone advanced in formation, weapons at the ready, despite the fact that he and Brightwing had just surveyed the approach to the hamlet from the air and hadn't observed any potential threats. After seeing the lacedons rise from the river, he didn't intend to leave anything to chance.
Nothing molested them, and when he was ready, Urhur whispered a sibilant incantation and spun his staff, a rod of femurs fused end to end, through a mystic pass. The air darkened around him as if a cloud had drifted in front of the sun, reminding Aoth unpleasantly of the nighthaunt's ability to smother light.
"There are undead," the wizard said. "A fair number of them."
"Then we'll have to root them out," said Aoth.
Urhur smiled a condescending smile. "I think you mean burn them out. Surely that's the safest, easiest course, and it will give out cleric friends a chance to play with their new toys."
The Burning Braziers bristled. Aoth, however, did his best to mask his own annoyance. "Safest and easiest, perhaps, but it's possible there are still people alive in there."
"Unlikely, and in any case, you're talking about peasants."
"Destroying the village would also make it impossible to gather additional intelligence about our foes."
"What do you think there is to learn?"
"We'll know when we find it." Aoth remembered his resolve to lead by consensus, or at least to give the appearance, and looked around at the other officers in the circle. "What do the rest of you think?"
As expected, the other necromancers sided with Urhur, but rather to Aoth's relief, the Burning Braziers stood with him, perhaps because Urhur so plainly considered himself their superior as well. It gave the griffon rider the leeway to choose as he wanted to choose without unduly provoking the Red Wizards, or at least he hoped it did.
"Much as I respect your opinions," he said to Urhur, "I think that this time we need to do it the hard way. We'll divide the company into squads who will search house to house. We need at least one necromancer or priest in every group, and we want the monks and Black Flame Zealots sticking close to the Burning Braziers in case a quell or something similar appears. Clear?"
Apparently it was. Though after he turned away, he heard Urhur murmur to one of his fellows that it was a crime that a jumped-up little toad of a Rashemi should be permitted to risk Mulan lives merely to pursue a forlorn hope of rescuing others of his kind.
The nature of the battle to come required fighting on the ground, and as the company advanced, Aoth and Brightwing strode side by side.
"You should have punished Urhur Hahpet for his disrespect," the griffon said.
"And wound up chained in a dungeon for my temerity," Aoth replied, "if not now, then when the campaign is over."
"Not if you frightened him properly."
"His specialty is manipulating the forces of undeath. How easily do you think he scares?"
Still, maybe Brightwing was right. The Firelord knew, Aoth
had never aspired to be a leader of men—he only needed good food, strong drink, women, magic, and flying to make him happy—and he still found it ironic that he'd ascended to a position of authority essentially by surviving a pair of military disasters. Contributing to a victory or two struck him as a far more legitimate qualification.
Which was to say, he was certain of his competence as a griffon rider and battle mage but less so of his ability as a captain. Still, here he was, with no option but to try his best.
"Maybe Urhur won't survive the battle," Brightwing said. "Maybe that would be better all around." It was one of those moments when the griffon revealed that, for all her augmented intelligence and immersion in the human world, she remained a beast of prey at heart.
"No," Aoth said. "It would be too risky, and wasteful besides, to murder one of our most valuable allies when we still have a war to fight. Anyway, it wouldn't sit right with me."
The griffon gave her wings a shake, a gesture denoting impatience. Her plumage rattled. "This squeamishness is why they never gave you a red robe."
"And here I thought I was just too short."
As the company neared the village, Aoth heard the flies buzzing over the carcasses in the corral, and the stink of spilled gore and decay grew thicker and fouler. The sound and smell clashed with the warmth and clear blue sky of a fine late-spring day, a day when lurking undead constituted a preposterous incongruity.
It occurred to him that if he could only expose them to the light of the sun shining brightly overhead, they might not lurk for long. He pointed his spear at the barn he and his squad were approaching, a structure sufficiently large that it seemed likely two or more families had owned it in common.
"Can you tear holes in the roof?"
Brightwing didn't ask why. She was intelligent enough to
comprehend and might well have discerned the reason through their psychic link even if she weren't. "Yes." She unfurled her wings.
He stepped away to give her room to flap them. "Just be careful."
She screeched—derisively, he thought—and leaped into the
air.
Aoth led his remaining companions to the door. He started through then hesitated. Should a captain take the lead going into danger or send common and presumably more expendable warriors in ahead? After a moment's hesitation, he proceeded. He'd rather be thought reckless than timid.
Inside, the mangled bodies of plow horses and goats lay where they'd dropped. The buzzing of the flies seemed louder and the stench more nauseating, as if the stale, hot, trapped air amplified them. Overhead, the roof cracked and crunched, and a first sunbeam stabbed down into the shadowy interior. Particles of dust floated in the light.
For a moment, nothing stirred except the swarming flies and the drifting motes. Then a thing that had once been a man floundered up from underneath a pile of hay. Clutching a saw as if it hoped to use the tool as a makeshift sword, it shuffled forward.
The zombie wore homespun peasant garb and showed little sign of decay, but no one who observed the glassy eyes and slack features could have mistaken it for a living thing. It made a wordless croaking sound, and its fellows reared up from their places of concealment.
Aoth leveled his spear to thrust at any foe that came within reach and considered the spells he carried ready for the casting. Before he could select one, however, Chathi stepped to the front line. Not bothering with her torch, she simply glared at the zombies and rattled off an invocation to her god. Blue and yellow fire danced on her upper body, and Aoth stepped back from the sudden
heat. All but one of the zombies burst into flame and burned to ash in an instant. His face contorted with rage and loathing, a soldier armed with a battle-axe confronted the one remaining, first sidestepping the clumsy stroke of a cudgel and lopping off the gray hand that gripped it then smashing the undead creatures skull.
Was that it? Aoth wondered. Had they cleared the barn? Then Brightwing screeched, "Watch out! Above you!"
A hayloft hung over the earthen, straw-strewn floor, and now darkness poured over the edge of it like a waterfall. In that first instant, it looked like a single undifferentiated torrent of shadow. It was only when it splashed down and the entities comprising it sprang apart, launching themselves at one foe or another, that Aoth could make out the vague, inconstant semblances of men and hounds. Even then, the phantoms were difficult to see.
Brightwing's cry had no doubt served as a warning of sorts even to those who couldn't understand her voice. Still, the dark things were fast, and some of Aoth's men failed to orient on them quickly enough. The shadows snatched and bit, and though their touch shed no blood and left no visible marks, warriors gasped and staggered or collapsed entirely. The soldier who'd destroyed the zombie bellowed and swept his axe through the spindly waist of the creature facing him. By rights, the stroke should have cut the spirit entirely in two, but manifestly unharmed, the phantom drove its insubstantial fingers into its opponent's face. He fell backward with the undead entity clinging like a leech on top of him.
"You need some form of magic to hurt them!" Aoth shouted. "If you don't have it, stay behind those who do!" He pivoted to tell Chathi to use her torch.
Unfortunately, she'd dropped it, probably when one of the ghostly hounds charged in and bit her. The same murky shape was lunging and snapping at her now. She might have destroyed or repelled it with a spell or by the simple exertion of faith that
had annihilated the zombies, but perhaps the debilitating effect of her invisible wound or simple agitation was hampering her concentration. Meanwhile, the monk assigned as her bodyguard was busy with two shadows, one man-shaped and one canine, of his own.
Aoth charged the point of his lance with additional power and drove it down at the shadow-beast assailing Chathi. The thrust drove into the center of the phantom's back and on through into the floor. The spirit withered away to nothing.
"Thank you," the priestess stammered, teeth chattering as if she'd taken a chill.
"Pick up the torch and use it," Aoth snapped then glimpsed motion from the corner of his eye. He pivoted toward it.
The shadow gripped the semblance of a battle-axe in its fists, and despite its vagueness, Aoth could make out hints of a legionnaire's trappings in its silhouetted form. The warrior who'd slain the zombie had risen as a shadow to menace his former comrades, and the transformation had occurred mere moments after his own demise.
Aoth tried to swing his spear into position to pierce his foe, but he'd driven it too deep into the earth. It took an instant too long to jerk it free, and the phantom warrior rushed into the distance and swung its axe.
Had the axe been a weapon of steel and wood and not, in effect, simply the ghost of one, the blow would have sheared off his right arm at the shoulder. As it was, the limb went numb. Cold and weakness stabbed through his entire body, and his knees buckled. He stumbled, and the shade lifted the axe for another blow.
Before it could strike, a flare of flame engulfed it, and it burned away to nothing. As close as they'd been, the blast could easily have burned Aoth as well, but he wasn't inclined to complain.
"Thanks," he gasped to Chathi.
"Now we're even," she replied, grinning. Torch extended, she turned to seek another target.
Striving to control his breathing, Aoth invoked the magic bound in his tattoos to alleviate his weakness and the chill still searing his insides. He then rattled off a spell. Darts of blue light hurtled from his fingertips, diverging to streak at shadows at various points around the barn. Some saw the attack coming and sought to dodge, but the missiles veered to compensate. It was one of the virtues of this particular spell that in most situations it simply couldn't miss.
Next he conjured a crackling, forking flare of lightning. Like his previous effort and Chathi's attacks, it blasted more shades out of existence, but plenty remained, or so it seemed to him, reinforced by the tainted essences of those they'd already managed to slay, and he wondered if he and the Burning Brazier could eradicate them in time to keep them from annihilating the squad.
Then a crash sounded overhead. Scraps of wood and shingle showered down, and Brightwing plunged after them through the breach she'd created into the midst of several shadows. Her talons and snapping beak flashed right and left.
Her entry into the battle helped considerably. It only took a few more breaths to clear the remaining shades away.
The griffon tossed her head. "Stick me on the roof to punch holes. What a clever idea."
"It would have been useful," said Aoth, "if it had been a different sort of undead, vampires maybe, or certain types of wraith, hiding inside here." Something about his own words nagged at him, but he wasn't sure what and didn't have time to puzzle it out. He turned to Chathi. "Can you tend to those who are hurt?"
"You're first," she said.
She murmured a prayer, and a corona of blue flame rippled across her hand. She lifted her fingers to his face, and this time he, who'd experienced the healing touch of a cleric of the Firelord on previous occasions, had little difficulty resisting the natural urge to flinch away.
As he'd anticipated, the heat of the flames was mild enough to be pleasant as it flowed through him to melt chill and debility away. Her caress was pleasurable in a different way. Her fingers were hard with callus like his own, the digits of a woman who'd trained to fight the enemies of her faith with mundane weapons as well as magic, but there was softness in the way they stroked his cheek, and they lingered for a moment after the healing was done.
It gave him something else to think about, but not now, not when he didn't know what else was lying in wait in the hamlet or how the other squads were faring. He waited for her to minister to anyone else who'd suffered but survived the shadows' touch, then formed up his troops and moved on.
As it turned out, the undead had congregated in four sites altogether, whether for mutual defense or simply out of some instinct to flock, Aoth wasn't knowledgeable enough to guess. It wasn't easy to clean out any of the three remaining locations, but none proved as difficult as the barn. The Thayans purged the village with acceptable losses on their own side, or so Nymia Focar would certainly have said.
As he glumly surveyed the several dead men laid out on the ground, Aoth found he had difficulty achieving a similar perspective. Over the years, he'd grown accustomed to watching fellow legionnaires die, but never before had it been because he himself had ordered them into peril.
Necklace rattling, bony staff sweating a greenish film, perhaps the residual effect of some spell he'd cast with it in the heat of battle, Urhur Hahpet sauntered up to view the corpses.
"Well," he said, "it appears there were no survivors for you to rescue."
"No," Aoth said.
"I assume, then, that you gleaned some critical piece of information to justify our casualties."
Aoth hesitated, fishing inside himself for the insight that had nearly come to him after Chathi burned the zombies. It continued to elude him. "I don't know. Probably not."
Urhur sneered. "By the Dark Sun! If you claim to be a wizard, act like it. Stop moping. You blundered, but you're lucky. You have necromancers to shield you from the consequences of your poor judgment. Just stand back and let me work."
Aoth did as the Red Wizard wished. Urhur cast handfuls of black powder over the bodies then whirled his staff through complex figures. He chanted in a grating language that even his fellow mage couldn't comprehend, though the mere sound of it made his stomach queasy. The ground rumbled.
Aoth felt a sudden urge to stop the ritual, but of course he didn't act on it. Szass Tam himself had decreed that his minions were to exploit the fallen in this manner. Besides, Aoth had served with zombies and such since his stint in the legions began. Indeed, thanks to the Red Wizards who'd brought them along, he already included a fair number in the company he currently commanded, so above and beyond any normal person's instinctive distaste for necromancy and its products, he didn't understand his own reaction.
The dead rose, not with the lethargic awkwardness of common zombies, but with the same agility they'd exhibited in life. The amber eyes of dread warriors gleaming from their sockets, they came to attention and saluted Urhur.
"You see?" the Red Wizard asked. "Here they stand to serve once more, only now stronger, more difficult to destroy, and incapable of cowardice or disobedience. Improved in every way."
Responsive to Xingax's will, the hill-giant zombie fumbled with the array of lenses on their swiveling steel arms. The hulking creature was trying to give its shortsighted master with his mismatched eyes a clear, close view of the work in progress on the floor below the balcony, but it couldn't align the glasses properly no matter how it tried. Finally Xingax waved it back, shifted forward on his seat, and pulled at the rods with the small, rotting fingers at the ends of his twisted, stubby arms.
There, that was better. The activity below flowed into focus just as the two scarlet-robed wizards completed their intricate contrapuntal incantation.
Clinking, the heap of bones in the center of the pentacle stirred and shifted. It was, of course, no feat to animate the intact skeleton of a single man or beast. A spellcaster didn't even need to be a true necromancer to master the technique. But if the ritual worked, the bones below, the jumbled remains of several creatures, would become something new and considerably more interesting.
Despite the presumed protection of the pentacle boundary separating them from Xingax's creation, each of the Red Wizards took a cautious step backward. The bone pile lifted a portion of itself—a temporary limb, if one chose to see it that way—and groped toward the mage on the left. Then, however, it collapsed with a rattle, and Xingax felt the power inside it dissipate. The wizard it had sought to menace cursed.
Xingax didn't share his assistant's vexation. The entity's failure to thrive simply meant he hadn't solved the puzzle yet, but he would. It just took patience.
Perhaps the problem lay in the third and fourth stanzas of the incantation. He'd had a feeling they weren't entirely right. He twisted around to his writing desk with its litter of parchments,
took up his quill, and dipped it in the inkwell. Meanwhile, below him, zombies shuffled and stooped, picking up bones and carrying them away, while the Red Wizards began the task of purifying the chamber. Everything had to be fresh, unsullied by the lingering taint of the ritual just concluded, if the next one was to have any hope of success.
Xingax lost himself in his ponderings, until the wooden stairs ascending to his perch creaked and groaned, and the undead giant grunted for his attention.
Now Xingax felt a pang of irritation. Unsuccessful trials didn't bother him, but interruptions did. Glowering, he heaved himself around toward the top of the steps.
A pair of wizards climbed into view. They knew enough to ward themselves against the aura of malign energy emanating from Xingax's body and had surely done so, but potbellied So-Kehur with his food-spotted robe appeared queasy and ill at ease even so.
The mage's nervousness stirred Xingax's contempt. He knew what he looked like to human eyes: an oversized, freakishly deformed stillborn or aborted fetus. Pure ugliness, and never mind that, if his mother had carried him to term, he would have been a demigod, but a necromancer should be inured to phenomena that filled ordinary folk with horror.
At least Muthoth didn't show any overt signs of revulsion, which was not to suggest that he looked well. Bandages shrouded his right hand, and bloodstains dappled his robe; even dry, they had an enticing, unmistakable coppery smell. The ghoul familiar he'd worn like a mask of ink was gone.
Muthoth regarded Xingax with a blend of arrogance and wariness. The undead entity supposed it was understandable. Muthoth and So-Kehur were Red Wizards, schooled to hold themselves above everyone except their superiors in the hierarchy, yet they were also young, little more than apprentices, and
Xingax manifestly occupied a position of authority in the current endeavor. Thus, they weren't sure if they needed to defer to him or could get away with ordering him around.
One day, Xingax supposed, he'd likely have to settle the question of who was subordinate to whom, but for now, he just wanted to deal with the interruption quickly and return to his computations.
"What happened to the two of you?" he asked.
"We had some trouble on the trail," Muthoth said. "A man attacked us."
Xingax cocked his head. "A man? As in, one?"
Muthoth colored. "He was a bard, with magic of his own."
"And here I thought it was an article of faith with you Red Wizards that your arts are superior to all others," Xingax drawled. "At any rate, I assume you made him pay for his audacity."
Muthoth hesitated. "No. He translated himself elsewhere."
"By Velsharoon's staff! You couriers have one simple task, to acquire and transport slaves without attracting undue attention— never mind. Just tell me exactly what happened."
Muthoth did, while So-Kehur stood and fidgeted. Impatient as Xingax was to return to his experiments, he had to admit it was a tale worth hearing if only because it seemed so peculiar. He was incapable of love in both the spiritual and anatomical senses, but in the course of dealing with beings less rational than himself, he'd acquired some abstract understanding of what those conditions entailed. Still, it was ultimately unfathomable that a man could so crave the society of one particular woman that he'd risk near-certain destruction on her behalf.
Of course, from a practical perspective, the enigmas of human psychology were beside the point, and Xingax supposed he ought to focus on what was pertinent. "You didn't tell this Bareris Anskuld you were heading into Delhumide, did you?" he asked.
"Of course not!" Muthoth snapped.
"It's conceivable," said Xingax, "that he's inferred it, but even if he has, I don't see what he can do about it. Follow? If so, our sentinels will kill him. Tell others what he's discovered? We'd prefer that he not, and we'll try to find and silence him, but really, he doesn't know enough to pose a problem. He may not dare to confide in anyone anyway. After all, the will of a Red Wizard is law, and by running afoul of the two of you, he automatically made himself a felon."
Muthoth nodded. "That's the way I see it."
"We're just sorry," said So-Kehur, "that the bard killed some of our warriors, and the ores had to kill a few of the slaves."
Muthoth shot his partner a glare, and Xingax understood why. While telling their story, Muthoth had opted to omit that particular detail.
"Did you reanimate the dead?" Xingax asked.
"Yes," Muthoth said.
"Then I suppose that in all likelihood, it didn't do any extraordinary harm." Xingax started to turn back to his papers then realized the wizards were still regarding him expectantly. "Was there more?"
"We assumed," said Muthoth, "that you'd want to divide up the shipment, or would you rather I do it?"
Xingax screwed up his asymmetrical features, pondering. He didn't want to forsake his creative work for a mundane chore. He could feel the answer to the puzzle teasing him, promising to reveal itself if he pushed just a little longer. On the other hand, the slaves were a precious resource, one he'd occasionally come near to exhausting despite the best efforts of the couriers to keep him supplied, and he wasn't certain he could trust anyone but himself to determine how to exploit them to best effect.
"I'll do it," he sighed.
He beckoned to the giant zombie, and the creature picked
him up to ride on its shoulders as if he were a toddler, and the mindless brute with its low forehead and gnarled apish arms, his father. His frayed, greasy length of umbilicus dangled over the zombie's chest.
In reality, it wasn't necessary that anyone or anything carry Xingax. If he chose, he could move about quite adequately on his own, but it suited him that folk should think him as physically helpless as his ravaged fetal form appeared. For the time being, he and his associates were all on the same side, but an existence spent primarily in the Abyss had taught him just how quickly such situations could alter, and a time might come when he'd want to give one of his compatriots a lethal surprise.
His balcony was one of a number of such vantage points overlooking the warren of catacombs below. Despite the extensive labor required, he'd ordered the construction of a system of catwalks to connect one perch to the next and only descended to mingle with his living associates when necessary. Even necromancers couldn't maintain their mystical defenses against his proximity every moment of every day, nor could they work efficiently if vomiting, suffering blinding headaches, or collapsing in convulsions.
As his undead giant lumbered along with Muthoth and So-Kehur trailing at its heels, it pleased Xingax to see the complex bustling with activity, each of his minions busy at his—or its—job. That was as it must be, if he was to make progress in his investigations and earn his ultimate reward.
One of the Red Wizards had conjured a perpetual gloom to shroud the platform overlooking the enormous vault where the couriers caged newly arrived slaves. The prisoners' eyes couldn't penetrate the shadows, but an observer experienced no difficulty looking out of them. Thus, Xingax could study the thralls without agitating them.
He didn't scrutinize any one individual for long. He trusted
his first impressions, his myopia notwithstanding. "Food," he said, pointing. "Basic. Basic. Advanced. Food. Basic." Then he noticed the wizards simply standing and listening. "Why aren't you writing this down?"
"No need," said Muthoth. "So-Kehur will remember."
"He'd better," Xingax said. He continued assigning the slaves to their respective categories until only two remained.
They were young women who'd found a corner in which to settle. Likely aghast at what she'd glimpsed on the walk to her current place of confinement, the one with long hair appeared to have withdrawn deep inside herself. Her companion was coaxing her to sample the porridge their captors had provided.
"Food and food," Xingax concluded, feeling a renewed eagerness to return to the problem of the defective ritual. "Is there anything else?"
Maddeningly, it appeared there was. "My hand," said Muthoth, lifting the bandaged one. "I've heard about your skill with grafts, and I was hoping you could do something to repair it."
"Why, of course," Xingax said. "I have a thousand vital tasks to occupy me, but I'll gladly defer them to help a mage so incompetent that he couldn't defend himself against a lone madman even with a second wizard and bodyguards to help. Because that's exactly the sort of ally I want owing me a favor."
Muthoth glared, looking so furious that Xingax wondered if he was in danger of losing control. So-Kehur evidently thought so. He took a step backward, lest a sorcerous attack strike him by accident.
Xingax called on the poisonous power inside him. He stared into Muthoth s eyes and released an iota of it, hoping to suggest its full devastating potential in the same way that a mere flick of a whip reminds a slave of the shearing, smashing force of which the lash is capable.
Muthoth flinched and averted his eyes. "All right! If you're too busy, I understand."
"Good," Xingax rapped. He started to direct his servant to carry him away then noticed that the confrontation had delayed him long enough for another little drama to start playing itself out in the hall below.
Specifically, one of the blood ores had entered the makeshift barracoon. The warrior was somewhat reckless to enter alone. It must assume the slaves were too cowed to try to hurt it, and to all appearances, it was right. They shrank from it as it prowled about.
The ore's gaze fell on the two women sitting on the floor in the corner. It leered at them, started unfastening its leather breeches, and waved for the slave with the short hair to move away from her companion.
The ore's actions were neither unusual nor illicit. The wizards and guards had permission to amuse themselves with the slaves provided they didn't damage them to any significant degree. Still, despite the lure of his work, Xingax lingered to watch for another moment. Though he would never have admitted it to another, he sometimes found the alien matter of sexuality intriguing as well as repugnant.
To his astonishment, the short-haired slave stood up and positioned herself between the ore and her friend. "Find someone else," she said.
The ore grabbed her, perhaps with the intention of flinging her out of its way. She hit it in the face with the bowl of gruel. The earthenware vessel shattered, and the warrior stumbled backward. The slave lunged after it, trying to land a second attack, but the guard recovered its balance and knocked her staggering with a backhand blow to the face. Her momentary incapacity gave it time to draw its scimitar.
It stalked after the thrall, and she retreated. "Help me!" she
called. "If we all try, we can kill at least one of them before the end! That's better than nothing!"
Apparently the other slaves were too demoralized to agree, because none of them moved to help her. Knowing then that she stood alone, pale with fright but resolute, the short-haired woman shifted her grip on the shard of bowl remaining in her hand to make it easier to slash with the broken edge.
"She has courage," Xingax said.
"That's the one the bard wanted to buy," So-Kehur said.
"Really? Well, perhaps his obsession does make at least a tiny bit of sense. In any case, I was wrong about her." Xingax waved his hand, dissolving the unnatural gloom so the ore could see him. "Leave her alone!"
Surprised, the warrior looked up to find out who was shouting at it. It hesitated for a moment, seemingly torn between the prudence of unquestioning obedience and the urgency of anger, then howled, "But she hit me!"
"And she'll suffer for it, never fear." Xingax turned to So-Kehur. "The woman comes to me."
After Aoth's company destroyed the creatures occupying Dulos, he opted to stop there for the night. His weary warriors could use the rest.
So could he, for that matter, but he proved incapable of sitting or lying still. Eventually he abandoned the effort, left the house he'd commandeered, and started prowling along the perimeter of the settlement.
It was a pointless thing to do. Shortly before dusk, he and Brightwing had flown over the immediate area and found it clear of potential threats. On top of that, he already had sentries posted.
Yet he couldn't shake a nagging unease. Maybe it was simply because the undead were more powerful in the dark. If any remained in the region and aspired to avenge their fellows, this was the time when they would strike.
Abruptly a shape appeared in the pool of shadow beneath an elm, and though Aoth could barely see it, its tilted, knock-kneed stance revealed it to be undead. No living man would choose to assume such an awkward position, but a zombie, incapable of discomfort, its range of motion altered by its death wounds, very well might.
Aoth leveled his spear and drew breath to raise the alarm, then noticed the gleam of yellow eyes in the creature's head. The thing was a dread warrior, one of his own command. As it still possessed sufficient intelligence to fight as it had in life, so too could it stand watch, and apparently Urhur Hahpet or one of his fellow Red Wizards had stationed it here to do so. Maybe the whoreson believed Aoth's security arrangements were inadequate, or perhaps it was simply that the necromancer, too, felt ill at ease.
"Don't blast it," said a feminine voice. "It's one of ours."
Startled, heart banging in his chest, Aoth jerked around to see Chathi Oandem smiling at him from several paces away. He tried to compose himself and smile back.
"I wasn't going to," he said. "I recognized it just in time to avoid making a fool of myself."
The priestess strolled nearer. Though she still carried her torch weapon, she wasn't wearing her mail and helmet anymore, just flame-patterned vestments that molded themselves to her willowy form at those moments when the cool breeze gusted.
"I thought all wizards had owl eyes and could see in the dark."
Aoth shrugged. "I know the spell, but I haven't been preparing it lately. I'd rather concentrate on combat magic, especially
considering that I can look through Brightwing's eyes when I need to."
"Except that the poor tired creature is asleep at the moment."
If Chathi had observed that, it meant she'd passed by his quarters. He felt a rush of excitement at the thought that perhaps she'd gone there intentionally, looking for him, and kept on seeking him after.
"Good. She's earned her rest."
"So have you and I, yet here we are, up wandering the night. Is something troubling you?"
He wondered if a captain ought to confide any sort of anxiety or misgivings to someone at least theoretically under his command, then decided he didn't care. "There shouldn't be, should there? We won our battle and received word this afternoon that other companies are winning theirs. Everything's quiet, yet..." He snorted. "Maybe I'm just timid."
"Then we both are. I've trained since I was a little girl to fight the enemies of Kossuth, and I've destroyed my share, but these things! Is it the mere fact they're undead or that we have no idea why they came down from the mountains that makes them so troubling we can't relax and celebrate even after a victory?"
"A bit of both, I suppose." And something more as well, though he still wasn't sure what.
She smiled and touched his cheek as she had to heal him. Even without a corona of flame, her hardened fingertips felt feverishly warm. "I wonder—if you and I tried very hard, do you think we could manage a celebration despite our trepidations?"
He wanted her as urgently as he could recall ever wanting a woman, but he also wondered if he'd be crossing a line he shouldn't, for all that Nymia did it constantly. She was a tharchion and he but a newly minted captain.
"If this is about my having saved your life," he said, playing for time until he was sure of his own mind, "remember you saved
mine, too. You said it yourself, we're even."
"It's not about gratitude but about discovering a fire inside me, and when a priestess of Kossuth finds such a flame, she doesn't seek to dowse it." Chathi grinned. "That would be blasphemy. She stokes it and lets it burn what it will, so shall we walk back to your quarters?"
He swallowed. "I imagine one of these huts right in front of us is empty."
"Good thinking. No wonder you're the leader."
When she unpinned her vestments and dropped them to pool around her feet, he saw that her god had scarred portions of her body as well as her face, but those marks didn't repel him either. In fact, he kissed them with a special fervor.
Each gripping one of her arms, the two blood ores marched Tammith toward the doorway, and she offered no resistance. Perhaps she'd used up her capacity for defiance seeking to protect Yuldra, or maybe it was simply that she realized the two gray-skinned warriors with their swinish tusks were on their guard. She had little hope of breaking away and wouldn't know which way to run if she did.
The spacious vault beyond the door proved to be a necromancer's conjuring chamber lit, like the rest of the catacombs, by everburning torches burning with cold greenish flame. Though Tammith had never seen such a place before, the complex designs chalked on the floor, the shelves of bottled liquids and jars of powders, the racks of staves and wands, and the scent of bitter incense overlying the stink of decay were familiar to her from stories.
Two Red Wizards currently occupied the room, along with half a dozen zombies. A couple of the latter shuffled forward and reached out to collect Tammith.
The gods had been cruel to make her believe that she might still have Bareris and freedom only to snatch them away. Her spirit had nearly shattered then, and she still didn't understand why it hadn't. Perhaps it was the knowledge that her love had escaped. He could still have a life even if she couldn't.
In any case, she hadn't yet succumbed to utter crippling terror and had vowed to meet her end, whatever it proved to be, with as much bravery as she could muster. Still, the prospect of the enduring the touch of the zombies' cold, slimy fingers, of inhaling the fetor of their rotten bodies close up, filled her with revulsion.
"Please!" she said. "You don't need those creatures to hold me. I know I can't get away."
The Red Wizards ignored her plea, and the zombies, with their slack mouths and empty eyes, trudged a step closer, but then a voice spoke from overhead.
"That sounds all right. Just position a couple of the zombies to block the exit, in case she's not as sensible as she seems."
Tammith looked up and observed the loft above the chamber for the first time. The giant zombie was there and its master, too. A number of round lenses attached to a branching metal framework hung before the fetus-thing like apples on a tree. From her vantage point, the effect was to break his body into distorted sections and make it even more hideous, if such a thing was possible.
Since the creature had decreed that she was to come to him, she'd expected to encounter him wherever she ended up. Still, the actual sight of him dried her mouth and made her shudder. How could anything so resemble a baby yet look so ghastly and radiate such a palpable feeling of malevolence? She struggled again to cling to what remained of her courage.
She didn't hear either of the Red Wizards give a verbal command or notice a hand signal either, but the zombies stopped
advancing as the fetus-thing had indicated they should. The ores looked to one of the necromancers, and he waved a hairless, tattooed hand in dismissal. The guards wasted no time departing, as if even they found the chamber a disturbing place.
Tammith forced herself to gaze up at the baby-thing without flinching. "Thank you for that anyway. I'm tired of being manhandled."
"And corpse-handled is even worse, I imagine." The creature smirked at its own feeble play on words. "Think nothing of it. This could be the beginning of a long and fruitful association, and we might as well start off in a friendly sort of way. My name is Xingax. What's yours?"
She told him. " 'A long and fruitful association?' Then ... you don't mean to kill me?"
"Actually, I do, but death needn't be the end of an entity's existence. Lucky for me! Otherwise I wouldn't have fared very well after my mother's cuckold husband tore me from the womb."
"I... I won't be one of those." She gestured to indicate the zombies. "I'll make your servants tear me to pieces first."
Xingax chuckled. "Do you imagine I'd have no use for the fragments? If so, you're mistaken, but please, calm yourself. I don't intend to turn you into a zombie. You have a much more interesting opportunity in store.
"You've seen enough," continued the fetus-thing, "to discern what this place is: an undead manufactory. Given sufficient resources, we'd create only powerful, sentient specimens, since those are the most useful for our purposes. Alas, the reality is that it takes considerably more magic to evoke a ghost or something similar than it does to make a mindless automaton like my giant or my helpers' helpers.
"So we function as we best we can, given our limitations. Many of the slaves who come here end up as zombies or at best
ghouls. Others go to feed newly created undead in need of such sustenance, and afterward we animate their skeletons. Only a relative few have the chance to attain a more advanced state of being."
Tammith shook her head. "I can tell you think that's a boon. Why would you offer it to me when I've raised my hand to your servants more than once?"
"For that very reason. You have a boldness we can put to good use. Assuming the transformation takes. That's the other thing I should explain. I recreate types of undead that became extinct long ago and breed others altogether new. It's a part of my mandate, and more than that, my passion. My art. The closest I'll ever come to fatherhood. The problem is that we have to refine the magic by trial and error, and well, obviously, it isn't right until it's right."
She imagined what might befall a captive when the magic was still wrong. She pictured herself shrieking in endless anguish, her body mangled like an apprentice potter's first botched attempt at shaping a vessel on the wheel. Hard on that image came the realization that she'd been a fool to cringe from the prospect of becoming a zombie. It was the best fate that could befall her. Her body would remain a thrall but her soul would fly free to await Bareris in the afterlife.
She lunged at the nearer of the Red Wizards. He had a dagger with a curved blade sheathed on his belt. She'd snatch it, slash the artery in the side of her neck, and all fear and misery would spurt away with her blood.
The necromancer had obviously been waiting for her to attempt some sort of violence. He barked a word she didn't understand, swept his left hand through a mystic figure, and black motes swirled around it to form a spiral.
The flecks of darkness didn't hurt her, but they fascinated her. She had no choice but to pause and stare at them, even though
a part of her, now disconnected from her will, screamed that she mustn't.
The wizard stepped back and the zombies shambled forward, closing in on her. Their clammy hands grabbed her and held tight. The spiral faded, allowing her to struggle, but writhe as she might, she couldn't break free, and when she stamped on her captors' feet, snapped her head backward to bash a zombie's jaw, and even sank her teeth into spongy, putrid flesh, it didn't matter. Since the creatures didn't feel pain, the punishment couldn't make them fumble their grips.
"I rather expected that," said Xingax, "but it's still a shame. You were doing so well."
"Shall I subdue her?" asked the mage with the dagger.
"I suppose it would be best," Xingax replied.
The Red Wizard extracted a pewter vial from a hidden pocket in his robe, and holding it at arm's length, he uncorked it. He then moved to stick it under Tammith's nose. She strained to twist her face away, but with the zombies immobilizing her, it was futile.
The fumes had a nasty metallic tang she tasted as well as smelled. Her limbs went slack, and wouldn't so much as twitch no matter how she struggled. She might as well have been asleep.
"Put her in the pentacle," Xingax said.
The zombies laid her on her back, spread her arms wide, and crossed her legs at the ankle. Then, for a considerable time, the Red Wizards chanted rhymes in an unknown tongue while brandishing smoking censers; slender, gleaming swords; and a black chalice carved from a single piece of jet.
At first it was sinister but ultimately incomprehensible. Eventually, however, the necromancer with the dagger—she had the impression he was the senior of the pair—crouched down beside her and dipped his forefinger in the black cup. It came out
red. He rubbed her lips with it, then her gums, then worked it past her teeth to dab at her tongue. She tasted the salty, coppery tang of blood.
After that, she could somehow perceive the power gathering in the air and conceived the crazy, terrifying notion that the chanted incantations were a thing unto themselves, a living malignancy that was simply employing the mages to further the purposes implicit in the tercets and quatrains. She still couldn't comprehend them, but she felt the meaning was on the very brink of revealing itself to her and that when it did, she wouldn't be able to bear it.
A mass of shadow seethed into existence above her, thickening until she could barely see the ceiling or Xingax peering avidly down at her through a pair of lenses positioned one before the other. The clot of darkness took on a suggestion of texture, of bulges, hollows, and edges, as if it had become a solid object. Then it shattered.
Into an explosion of enormous bats. The rustling of their countless wings echoing from the stone walls, they flew in all directions. Xingax cried out in excitement. The Red Wizards, for all that they'd conjured the flock and were presumably in control of it, retreated to stand with their backs against a wall.
A bat lit on a zombie's shoulder and plunged its fangs into its throat. The animated corpse showed no reaction to the bite, but despite its passivity, the bat fluttered its wings and took flight again only a heartbeat later.
Three bats settled on a second zombie, bit it, and abandoned it immediately thereafter. Because they crave the blood of a living person, Tammith thought, her heart hammering. Because they want me.
She made a supreme effort to roll over onto her belly. If she could only move a little, she could crawl away from the middle of the floor, then . . . why, then nothing, she supposed. The part
of her that was still rational realized it wasn't likely to matter, but she needed to try. It was better than simply accepting her fate, no matter how inescapable it was.
Her limbs trembled. The effect of the vapor was wearing off. She felt a thrill of excitement, of lunatic hope, and then the first bat found her. Cold as the zombies' fingers, its claws dug into her chest for purchase as its fangs sought her throat.
As it sucked the wounds it had inflicted, the rest of the flock descended on her, covering her like a shifting, frigid blanket, the bats that couldn't reach her shoving at the ones who had like piglets jostling for their mother's teats. Scores of icy needles pierced her flesh.
Had she ever imagined such a fate, she might have assumed that so much cold would numb her. Somehow, it didn't. The assault was agony.
The bats tore at her lips, nose, cheeks, and forehead. Not my eyes, she silently begged, not my eyes, but they ripped those too, and then she finally passed out.
Tammith woke to pain, weakness, searing thirst, and utter darkness. At first she couldn't remember what had happened to her, but then the memory leaped at her like a cat pouncing on a mouse.
When it did, she decided Xingax couldn't possibly have intended to create the crippled, sightless creature she'd become. The experiment had failed as he'd warned it might.
"So kill me!" she croaked. "I'm no use to you!"
No one answered. She wondered if she actually was alone or if Xingax and the Red Wizards were still present, silently studying her, preparing to put her out of her misery, or—gods forbid!—readying a new torment.
Suddenly she was frantic to know, which made her blindness intolerable. She felt a flowing, a budding, in the raw orbits of her skull, and then smears of light and shadow wavered into existence before her. Over the course of several moments, the world sharpened into focus. She realized she'd healed her ruined eyes, or if the bats had destroyed them entirely, grown new ones.
It suggested that Xingax's experiment hadn't been a complete failure after all, but she appeared to be alone nonetheless. Her captors had deposited her in a different chamber, a bare little room with a matchboarded door. Up near the ceiling, someone had cut a hole, probably connecting to the ubiquitous system of catwalks, but if the aborted monstrosity was up there peeping at her, she couldn't see it.
Which, she recalled, didn't necessarily mean he wasn't. He'd concealed himself easily enough when taking stock of the new supply of slaves. She wheezed his name but received no reply.
She supposed that if she did constitute some sort of glorious success, and he wasn't here to witness it, the joke was on him. But in fact, she doubted it. The Red Wizards had managed to stuff a little magic into her, enough to preserve her existence and restore her vision, but accomplishing the latter had left her even weaker and more parched than before. She stared at the myriad puncture wounds on her hands and forearms, willing them to close, and nothing happened.
At that point, misery overwhelmed her. She curled up into a ball and wept, though her new eyes seemed incapable of shedding actual tears, until a key grated in the lock of the door. It creaked open, and an ore shoved Yuldra through and slammed it after her. The lock clacked once again.
Tammith extended a trembling hand. She knew the other captive couldn't do anything substantive to ease her distress, but Yuldra could at least talk to her, clasp her fingers, or cradle her, perhaps. Any crumb of comfort, of simple human contact
with someone who wasn't a pitiless torturer, would be better than nothing.
Yuldra flinched from the sight of her ravaged body, let out a sob of her own, wheeled, and scrambled into a corner. There she crouched down and held her face averted, attempting to shut out the world as she had before.
"How many times did I take care of you?" Tammith cried. "And now you turn your back on me?"
Nor was Yuldra the only person who'd so betrayed her. She'd spent her life looking after other people. Her father the drunkard and gambler. Her brother the imbecile. And what had anyone ever done for her in return? Even Bareris, who claimed to love her with all his heart, had abandoned her to chase his dreams of gold and excitement in foreign lands.
She realized she was on her feet. She was still thirsty, it was a fire burning in her throat, but she'd shaken off weakness for the moment, anyway. Anger lent her strength.
"Look at me," she snapped.
Her voice was sharp as the crack of a whip, and like a whip, it tangled something inside of Yuldra and tugged at her. The slave started to turn around but then shook off the coercion.
"Fine," Tammith said, stalking forward, "we'll do it the hard way."
She didn't know precisely what it was. Everything was happening too quickly, with impulse and fury sweeping her along, but when her upper canines stung and lengthened into fangs, their points pressing into her lower lip, she understood.
The realization brought a horror that somewhat dampened her rage if not her thirst. I can't do this, she thought. I can't be this. Yuldra is my friend.
She stood and fought against her need. It seemed to her that she was winning. Then her body burst apart into a cloud of bats much like the conjured entities that had attacked her, and that
made the world a different place. The sense of sight she'd so missed became secondary to her ability to hear and comprehend the import of her own echoing cries, but the fragmentation of her consciousness was an even more fundamental change. She retained her ultimate sense of self and managed her dozens of bodies as easily as she had one, yet something was lost in the diffusion: conscience, perhaps, or the capacities for empathy and self-denial. She was purely a predator now, and her bats hurtled at Yuldra like a flight of arrows.
Rather to Tammith's surprise, given Yuldra's usual habit of cringing helplessness, the other slave fought back. She flailed at the bats, sought to grab them, and when successful, squeezed them hard enough to crush an ordinary animal, wrung them like washcloths, or pounded them against the wall. The punishment stung, but only for an instant, and without doing any real harm.
Meanwhile, Tammith clung to the other thrall and jabbed her various sets of fangs into her veins and arteries. When the hot blood gushed into her mouths, she felt a pleasure intense as the fulfillment of passion, and as it assuaged her thirst, the relief was a keener ecstasy still.
Before long, Yuldra weakened and then stopped struggling altogether. Once Tammith drank the last of her, the bats took flight. They swirled around one another, dissolved, and instantly reformed into a single body, now cleansed of all the wounds that had disfigured it before.
That didn't make the remorse that came with the restoration of her original form any easier to bear. The guilt fell on her like a hammer stroke, and she felt a howl of anguish welling up inside.
"Excellent," Xingax said.
She looked up. The fetus-thing had been watching through the hole high in the wall, just as she'd suspected, and had now dissolved the charm that had hidden him from view.
"I believe that with practice," he continued, "you'll find you can remain divided for extended periods of time. I'm confident you'll discover other uncommon abilities as well, talents that set you above the common sort of vampire."
"Why didn't you answer me when I called to you before? Why didn't you warn me?"
"I wanted to see how far instinct would carry you. It's quite a promising sign that you managed to manifest a number of your abilities and take down your first prey without any mentoring at all."
"I'm going to kill you," she told him, and with the resolve came the abrupt instinctive realization that she didn't even need to shapeshift to do it. His elevated position afforded no protection. She dashed to the wall and scrambled upward like a fly. It was as easy as negotiating a horizontal surface.
Partway up, dizziness and nausea assailed her. Her feet and hands lost their ability to adhere to the wall, and she plunged back to the floor. She landed awkwardly, with a jolt that might well have broken the old Tammith's bones, though the new version wasn't even stunned.
As the sick feeling began to pass, Xingax said, "You didn't really think we'd give you so much power without insuring that you'd use it as we intend, did you? I'm afraid, my daughter, that you're still a thrall, or at best, a vassal. If it's any comfort to you, so am I, and so are the Red Wizards you've encountered here, but so long as we behave ourselves, our service is congenial, and we can hope for splendid rewards in the decades to come."