Prologue
12-13 Ches, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

Khouryn Skulldark patrolled the study. He picked up chairs and returned them to their proper places. Straightened sheaves of papers and arrangements of knickknacks. Shelved books. Checked surfaces for dust and brushed away a spiderweb in a corner of the ceiling. Since he was a dwarf tidying a room sized for humans, many of the tasks required him to climb up on the stool he'd brought along.
As he peered around seeking the spider that had spun the web—he'd catch it and carry it outside if he could—someone chuckled. Khouryn pivoted atop the stool without any fear of falling. Decades of martial training and warfare made him sure of his balance.
But he didn't turn quickly enough to catch the person who'd laughed at him. The doorway was empty.
He scowled. He was a thick-built warrior with a bristling black beard, who never went anywhere without his urgrosh—a weapon
combining the deadlier features of a war axe and a spear—strapped across his shoulders. Some folk found it comical to see such a grim-looking fellow fuss over the minutia of housekeeping. But that was because they didn't understand that on campaign, order was everything.
No one lost and mislaid articles like an army on the march, and that included items that could mean the difference between victory and defeat. The only way to guard against such a calamity was through order and organization. And the only way to make sure that one would maintain such habits amid the myriad distractions of the field was to practice them even when the Brotherhood of the Griffon was billeted in pleasant cities like Veltalar.
The night doorkeeper, one of the servants who came with the house, appeared in the entrance to the study. The stooped old fellow looked shaky and ill at ease, and Khouryn wondered for a moment if he was the one who'd snickered. But no, with his hangdog countenance, he scarcely seemed the type.
"Someone outside?" Khouryn asked.
The doorkeeper swallowed. "Yes, sir. Asking for the master." "Anybody we know?" "No, sir."
"Well, it's too late for strangers to come calling, and the captain's not here anyway. Tell the whoreson to make an appointment like everybody else."
The doorkeeper swallowed again. "I tried."
"What do you mean, you 'tried'?"
"I wanted to send him away. He wouldn't go. I... I don't think I can try again." "Why in the Hells not?"
"I don't know! I just... Please, sir, will you see him?"
Khouryn wondered if the doorkeeper had been tippling. It might explain his strange manner and why he suddenly seemed incapable of doing his job, mindlessly simple though it was.
"All right, show him in," Khouryn growled. Because somebody had to get rid of the intruder. After that, he'd sort the doorkeeper out.
"Thank you!" the elderly human said, almost as though Khouryn had just saved him from a dreadful fate. "Thank you! I'll fetch him at once!" He turned and scurried away. More perplexed than ever, the dwarf climbed off the stool.
The caller strode in a few moments later. Tall and gaunt, with a fair complexion and a mane of wheat blond hair, he had a face his fellow humans might have found handsome if it weren't so haggard and stern. He wore the brigandine and bastard sword of a warrior but also carried a small harp slung across his back.
Khouryn realized the stranger was alone. "Where's the doorman?"
"After he pointed out the proper room," the swordsman said, "I dismissed him." His baritone voice was as rich and expressive as his features were cold and forbidding.
"You dismissed a servant of this house."
"Yes. I need to speak to Aoth Fezim immediately. Do you know where he is?"
"Back up a step. Who in the Silverbeard's name are you?"
"Bareris Anskuld. Once upon a time, Aoth and I were comrades."
Khouryn shrugged. "I've never heard of you."
"Is Brightwing here? She'll know me."
Khouryn eyed the human quizzically. "I have heard of Bright-wing. Many of the griffons we ride today are from her bloodline. But she's been dead for forty years."
Something altered in Bareris's implacable expression. Some emotion revealed itself. But it disappeared before Khouryn could make out what it was.
"I had hoped," Bareris said, "she had attained longevity in the same way as her rider. But since she isn't here to vouch for me, you'll just have to take my word for it that I am what I say."
Khouryn snorted. "I don't have to do a damn thing except follow my orders. Which say nothing about helping you."
"Please. I've traveled a long way, and my business is urgent."
"Everybody's business is urgent. Get out of here now, and I might let you in to see the captain another time."
Bareris started to chant blaring, rhyming words that pierced the ear like the brassy notes of a glaur horn. That got inside a listener's head and echoed and echoed there.
Khouryn finally understood what ailed the doorkeeper. Bareris had cast a spell on him to addle him and make him compliant, and now the bard or warlock or whatever was trying the same trick again.
But Khouryn was a dwarf, not a weak-willed human. With one fast, smooth motion, he pulled the urgrosh from behind his back, sprang, and cut.
Still chanting, Bareris leaped backward, and the stroke fell short. Khouryn instantly renewed the attack, this time stabbing with the spearhead at the end of his weapon's haft.
Bareris sidestepped, grabbed the urgrosh by the handle, and he and Khouryn struggled for possession of it. Khouryn felt it start to pull free of his opponent's grip. Then Bareris let go with one hand to grab him by the throat.
The human's fingers were icy cold, and the chill spread through Khouryn's body. Meanwhile, Bareris's chant kept reverberating in his head, louder and louder, paining him and shaking his thoughts to pieces.
The combination was too much. Khouryn's legs buckled and dumped him onto the floor. Bareris crouched over him, maintaining his frigid grip on his neck, and stared into his eyes.
"Where's Aoth?" the human demanded, and though he wasn't declaiming words of power anymore, something of the bright, pitiless essence of the chant still infused his voice.
Khouryn still didn't want to tell, but he couldn't help himself. The words just spilled out. "Spending the night with Lady Quamara."
"Who lives where?"
"A mansion on Archer's Parade."
"All right." Bareris straightened up. "Rest now."
Khouryn didn't want to rest, either. He wanted to jump up and attack. But with magic leeching his strength and resolve, it really was easier just to lie still and let his eyelids droop.
As Bareris reached the doorway, a new voice asked, "Was that truly necessary? He's one of Aoth's men."
"We're either in a hurry or we're not."
The golden glow of dozens of lilac-scented candles revealed a chamber ideally suited for pleasure. Roast pheasant and beef, white and yellow cheeses, cherries, apricots, ginger cakes, and other viands along with a row of wine and liquor bottles, covered a tabletop. Somewhere—close enough to be heard but not to see or be seen—a trio of musicians played. An open casement admitted fresh air and provided a view of the stars. Mirrors gleamed around a bed heaped with pillows and covered with silks and furs.
It occurred to Aoth that the only discordant note was his own reflection, captured in one of the glasses. For with its squat, swarthy, extensively tattooed frame, coarse features, and weirdly luminous blue eyes, it scarcely looked as if it belonged in the middle of all this luxury.
But he did, curse it. These days, he did. He'd climbed to the top of his chosen profession, and if it was his renown and importance rather than any notable comeliness or grace that made a lovely, sophisticated, half-elf aristocrat like Quamara invite him into her arms, well, who but an idiot would care?
"Is everything all right?" asked the slim, auburn-haired servant, pretty in her own right, who'd conducted him into the room.
Aoth realized he was frowning and put on a smile instead. "Fine."
"My mistress will be with you shortly. May I pour you a drink while you wait?"
"A brandy would be good." He flopped down on a plush velvet chair, and she brought him a golden goblet a moment later.
He lifted the cup, but stopped short of bringing it to his lips. The dark liquid inside was bubbling and fuming. And while he realized it wasn't really happening, he also knew the vision was a warning.
More than ninety years ago, he'd suffered the touch of blue fire, one manifestation of the universal disaster called the Spellplague. Generally, the azure flames killed those they burned. Others, they warped into monstrosities.
Occasionally, however, someone actually benefited from their excruciating embrace, and Aoth belonged to that small and fortunate band. The fire had either entirely stopped him from aging or had slowed the process to a crawl. It had also seared its way inside his eyes and sharpened his vision. He could see in the dark and perceive the invisible. Sometimes he even glimpsed symbolic representations of other people's hidden thoughts and desires or portents of things to come.
The hallucination ended. He lifted his eyes from the poisoned cup to look at the servant. His altered sight didn't provide any supernatural insights into her motives or character, but he did belatedly realize that, even though he'd been calling at this house for nearly a month, he'd never seen her before. Neither her nor any of the other servants he'd glimpsed this evening.
Which meant impostors had usurped the places of the originals, quite possibly murdering them and Quamara, too, all to set a trap for him.
Something in his expression alerted the servant that he was on to her. Her eyes widened in dismay. She whirled and bolted for the door.
Aoth rattled off an incantation and stretched out his arms. A fan-shaped flare of yellow flame leaped from his fingertips to catch the servant at knee level. She cried out and fell, then floundered around and slapped at the patches of fire leaping on her skirt.
Aoth jumped out of his chair and strode toward her. It would be prudent to get out of the mansion before his enemies made a second attempt to kill him, but maybe he had time for a few questions first.
Or maybe not. A hideous figure heaved itself through the door. Tufts of coarse fur bristled from a body clothed in rolls of rotting flesh, and a pair of horns jutted from the sides of its head. It wheezed and gurgled as it breathed, and it gave off a nauseating stench. It tramped right over the servant as it advanced on Aoth, and the slime dripping from its myriad sores burned and blistered her like his blaze of conjured fire.
The thing was a vaporighu, a kind of demon. Nasty, but Aoth wouldn't have feared it—well, not too much—had the spear that served him as both soldier's weapon and warmage's talisman been ready to hand. But unfortunately, he'd witlessly given it to one of the false servants downstairs, and without it, his magic was weaker than it ought to be.
But at least he'd fought vaporighus before and knew what to expect. As it sucked in a deep breath, he recited words of power, and, when the creature spewed its murky, toxic exhalation, thrust out his hand. Wind blasted the poison back in the brute's simian face.
Alas, it wasn't susceptible to its own venom, but the conjured gale did slam it reeling backward. That bought him time to assail it with darts of emerald light.
Bellowing, snot flying from its mouth, it rushed Aoth, pawlike hands flailing. He dodged out of the way and began another spell as it lumbered past. When it lurched back around to face him, he pierced its torso with a brilliant, crackling bolt of lightning.
Though the attack charred and blackened a patch of gangrenous, blubbery flesh, the vaporighu still didn't falter. It charged again. Aoth dodged and ran for the open casement. It seemed the quickest way to his spear.
A second demon swung itself into the opening. This one was as emaciated as the vaporighu was bloated, and a corona of flame played around its dark blue body and the sword in its right hand. Pale, stunted wings protruded from its shoulder blades.
A vaporighu and a palrethee. Wonderful.
But the latter was still taking stock of the situation in the room as it clambered through the window. Aoth pivoted back around toward the vaporighu, bellowed a war cry, and raised his balled fists, just as if he were crazy enough to try fighting such a horror with his bare hands. The vaporighu rushed him, and he flung himself out of the way. It slammed into the palrethee and, tangled, they both toppled out the casement.
Aoth whirled and sprinted the other way.
As he raced down the broad, curving staircase, he heard motion above him and glanced around. Two of the false servants were aiming crossbows at him from the top of the risers. He vaulted the railing, and the weapons clacked.
He landed hard on the floor below the steps, but the quarrels missed him. The assassins tried to reload their weapons, but failed to do it as fast as he could jabber a spell. A booming explosion of fire tore them apart.
Nice to see that his magic could still kill something.
Praying his spear was still in the false porter's closet, he raced on through spacious rooms paneled and furnished in gleaming wood harvested from Aglarond's many forests. Then a pair of blood red lions, their fangs and claws longer than those of their terrestrial counterparts, bounded through the doorway ahead of him.
Jarliths. The coursing beasts of the princes of the Abyss. Aoth didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Considering how quickly jarliths could charge and spring, he doubted he'd have time to do either.
But the lions of the Abyss didn't attack. Rather, they glared and growled, and the room darkened as though the flames in the lamps were guttering out. The creatures imagined they could blind him.
Their mistake gave him time to bring his powers to bear. He surrounded himself with a circle of floating blades spinning like the spokes of a wheel.
Evidently hoping to clear the obstacle, a jarlith ran at him and sprang. He leaped backward, and the defense moved with him. The whirling blades tore into the cat's forelegs, stopping it before its claws could reach him. It screamed, recoiled, and the other jarlith charged him. He caught both of them in a rain of conjured hailstones that hammered them to the floor.
But, bloodied though they were, they got up again, and the next moment, the vaporighu and palrethee stalked into the room. It looked as though, tangled together, each had inflicted ugly burns on the other. Still, like the jarliths, they showed no signs of being on the brink of incapacitation.
Despair welled up inside of Aoth, and he struggled to push it down. He raised his hands to cast another spell, quite possibly his last. Then a song, a pounding battle anthem, rang out from somewhere behind the vaporighu and palrethee. The fierce sound of it washed away Aoth's fear and sent fresh vitality tingling through his limbs even as it made the demons falter and peer around in confusion.
Aoth laughed. Though he hadn't heard that voice in nearly a century, he recognized it nonetheless. And he was suddenly confident that he was going to survive this nightmare after all.
Whisked through space by the arcane power of bardic music, Bareris Anskuld appeared near Aoth—but just out of reach of the wheel of swords—with the warmage's spear in his hand. As he tossed the long, heavy spear to his former ally, the semblance of life departed from him like a cloak he'd discarded so it wouldn't hamper the action of his sword arm. Undeath had bleached his skin and hair white as bone and had turned his eyes to ink black pits.
Aoth caught the spear and felt whole again. "Thank you."
Bareris didn't answer. He just kept singing, pivoted toward the enemy, and came on guard. The vaporighu lumbered at him, and one note of his melody banged loud as a thunderclap. The noise ripped chunks of rotten flesh away from the demon's bones.
The palrethee sprang forward, then lost its balance and pitched forward. When it did, Aoth could make out the vague smoky figure who had just plunged his sword into its back. At first, the spectral swordsman resembled a smeared charcoal sketch of Bareris. Then he flowed into a murky semblance of the demon he'd just attacked.
The phantom could only be Mirror. Somehow he too had survived.
The astonishment of it all might have slowed a less-seasoned combatant, but the roar of one of the jarliths recalled Aoth to the business at hand. Time enough to marvel at this unexpected reunion when he and his friends were out of danger.
He leveled the spear, rattled off a tercet, and power groaned through the air. Seven rays of light, each a different color, blazed from the spear like a whip made of rainbows to lash the jarliths.
One jarlith turned to gray, unmoving stone. The other froze and jerked in spasms as arcs of lightning danced across its body. But when the sizzling, popping effect blinked out of existence, it charged.
Aoth braced the butt of the spear against the floor and impaled the cat as it sprang. The impact jolted him but failed to knock him over. The jarlith's razor-sharp talons slashed the air in front of his face, falling short by the length of his little finger. Meanwhile the wheel of blades sliced into its guts again and again and again, and he sent destructive power stored in the spear burning up the shaft and point and into the creature's body.
The jarlith screamed and then went limp. Aoth dumped the carcass on the floor, yanked the spear out of it, and turned to see which of his comrades needed help.
Neither of them.
Mirror and the palrethee were fighting sword against sword. The ghost had changed again, into something approximating the form he'd worn in life, or so his friends believed: the appearance of a thin warrior with a drooping mustache and a melancholy countenance, armored in a hauberk and carrying a targe on his arm. Sometimes he shifted the shield to catch the strokes of the blazing sword. At other moments, the demon's weapon seemed to whiz harmlessly through his insubstantial body.
Meanwhile, he landed cut after cut on the demon, his shadowy blade plunging deep into its starveling torso. Strangely, whenever he did, the palrethee jerked, but Mirror's form wavered, too, like a mirage threatening to flicker out of existence. It was as if he couldn't strike this creature shrouded in hellfire without hurting himself as well. But every time, his shape reasserted itself, reclaiming as much definition as it ever possessed.
Bareris was using his sword, too, but defensively, just to hold the vaporighu back while he attacked with his voice. Aoth could feel the fearful, disorienting power in the keening melody.
It was magic devised to rip a mind to pieces.
The vaporighu dropped to its knees, pawed at its head, and tore away pieces of its own decaying flesh. Bareris gripped his sword with both hands, stepped in, and decapitated the demon.
At virtually the same instant; Mirror plunged his sword into the palrethee's chest, and its halo of flame blinked out. Its already emaciated body shriveled still further, and then it pitched forward onto its face.
Bareris sang a final descending phrase that brought his battle anthem to a conclusion. Aoth took another look around for onrushing demons or slinking crossbowmen. He didn't see any, and his instincts told him the fight was over. All the demons were dead, and any surviving human assassins had fled the scene.
He realized how winded he was and drew a deep breath. "It's good to see the two of you. Better than good. But what are you doing here? Did you know someone was going to try to murder me?
"No," Mirror said. "We came in search of you because we need your help. It's the mercy of the gods that we tracked you down just in time to aid you. Who wanted you dead, do you know?"
"Nevron, almost certainly." The Spellplague had changed everything, including magic itself. The specialized disciplines that formed the basis of the old Thayan Orders of Red Wizardry had largely passed from the scene. But Aoth was certain that the former zulkir of Conjuration still commanded a veritable army of demons and devils.
"We have to talk," Bareris rapped.
"We will," said Aoth, "of course. But I have to finish figuring out what happened here. There's at least a chance Lady Quamara and some of the servants are still alive."
They weren't alive. Aoth and his comrades found the bloody corpses in the wine cellar.
Mirror recited a brief prayer for the fallen and swept his semi-transparent hand through a semicircular ritual pass. Millennia ago, he'd been a knight pledged to the service of a beneficent deity, almost a priest, in fact, and he still practiced his devotions despite the seeming paradox of an undead spirit invoking the holy. When he finished, he said, "I'm sorry. Were the two of you in love?"
Aoth sighed. "No. I was her amusement, and she was mine. But she was a sweet lass. She certainly didn't deserve to end like this. Nor did these others, I suppose."
"Now can we talk?" Bareris asked.
"No!" Aoth had half forgotten how the bard's grim single-mindedness used to annoy him. "I have to tell Quamara's brother and the city authorities what happened, and it's probably best that I do it without involving you. I know the undead are accepted in Thay, but Aglarond's a different matter. I'll meet you at my own house as soon as possible."
"As soon as possible" turned out to be dawn, but luckily, unlike many undead, both his rescuers could endure sunlight. He ushered them into his house and study and found Khouryn snoring on the floor with his urgrosh lying beside him.
"He's all right," said Mirror quickly. "He wouldn't tell us where you were, so Bareris forced him. At the time, I didn't approve, but since you were actually in danger, I'll concede that his instincts were on target."
"You're sure Khouryn's all right?" asked Aoth.
"Yes. I can rouse him if you like, but it might be better to let him wake naturally."
"That's what we'll do, then." After all, Mirror had a master healer's knowledge and discernment, even if his chill touch was poisonous except for those moments when he deliberately channeled the power of his unknown god. Aoth bent over, picked up Khouryn with a grunt—dwarf soldiers were damn heavy, considering their stature—and deposited him on a divan.
He then dropped into a chair. "Sit if you like," he said. And they did, although Mirror's shadowy, faceless form seemed to float in the general vicinity of the stool he'd chosen, as opposed to actually resting on it. His shape and the seat's even appeared to interpenetrate a little. "Now tell me what's going on."
Bareris smiled bitterly. "Perhaps the easiest way to explain is to tell a story."

Chapter one
Midwinter, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

His boots crunching in the snow, Bareris walked the tangled backstreets of Eltabbar and sang a spell under his breath. Over time, the enchantment altered his appearance. Filthy rags mended themselves and turned to shining silk and velvet. His hand-and-a-half sword became a short, slender blade with a jeweled hilt and scabbard, and his brigandine vanished altogether. All the hair on his head disappeared as well, his eyes displayed discernible whites and irises once more, and his canine teeth lengthened into fangs. But it all happened slowly enough that no passerby, glancing casually in his direction, would notice the transformation.
Not that there was anyone to see, no one but Mirror flowing along as an invisible sensation of hollowness and wrongness at his side. Once, no matter how cold the weather, the streets would have teemed with folk celebrating the Midwinter Festival. These days, ordinary people took care to conclude their revelry, or the open-air portion of it, anyway, before the sun went down. They
feared to encounter their masters when the latter were in a playful mood.
Bareris and Mirror emerged from a twisting lane too narrow to accommodate a wagon onro a broader, straighter thoroughfare. On the far side of an arching bridge spanning a frozen canal, their destination glowed with silvery phosphorescence. Sleighs, coaches, and litters waited in line to deposit their passengers under the porte cochere of a stone house with turrets at the four corners of the peaked slate roof. A luminous, runic emblem inlaid above the door, its shape and color in constant flux, revealed that at one time, the mansion had belonged to the extinct Order of Transmutation.
"I don't much like this," Mirror murmured. It was the first time he'd spoken in three days. Evidently he was coming out of his latest bout of ghostly disorientation or whatever it was, just in time to fret.
"My disguise will hold up," Bareris said. "You just remain as near to imperceptible as you can get."
"Even if they don't recognize us, there are plenty of other things that can go wrong."
"I don't care. This Muthoth bastard is one of Sylora Salm's chief deputies. There's a fair chance she'll put in an appearance. And even if she doesn't, there'll be other people to kill." He strode toward the bridge and felt Mirror glide along in his wake.
As Bareris spoke to one of the slaves minding the entryway, he infused his voice with magic. The enchantment persuaded the lackey that he saw an invitation in the newcomer's empty hand, and he and a fellow servant swung open the tall, arched double doors.
On the other side was a high-ceilinged marble foyer with several doorways opening off it. Bareris assumed that newly arrived guests were supposed to pass through the one directly opposite the entrance, where an usher waited to thump his staff on the floor and announce them.
But, disguised though he was, Bareris didn't want all eyes drawn to him or to have his false name and fraudulent title shouted aloud to give every listener the opportunity to reflect that he'd never heard of such a person. He led Mirror into one of the other doorways. If this structure was like other Thayan mansions of his experience, a series of interconnecting rooms and passages should provide a less conspicuous means of access to Muthoth's great hall.
Some of the lesser chambers were occupied. In one, a withered husk of a creature robed in red, still the color reserved for the realm's most powerful wizards, sat talking with another malodorous corpse wearing the silver skull-and-crossed-swords badge of an order of undead knights. In another, the hulking, red-eyed undead called boneclaws, Muthoth's household guards of choice, gripped naked prisoners in their enormous, jointed talons. Several guests hovered around the captives, shouting in their ears, pinching them, or jabbing at their eyes with stiffened fingers. Bareris gathered that the object of the game was to make a victim flinch and gash himself against a boneclaw's razor-sharp fingers, and that this was a sport on which the players had decided to gamble.
One captive had already severed an artery, and his lifeless body sprawled discarded on the floor. The remaining ones wept and pleaded, with blood trickling down their torsos and legs. A lithe female vampire knelt, licked gore off a taut, quivering stomach, and won a silver coin thereby.
Bareris could feel Mirror's wrath building as if the air at his side were growing colder and colder. "No," he whispered. "We didn't come here to rescue anyone."
"Perhaps we should have."
"But we didn't, and without a plan, we'd surely fail. Look, we've both been spared all these years for a reason; isn't that what you keep telling me? So we can't throw ourselves away. We have to pick our battles and fight intelligently."
"Move on, then. I don't promise to hold back if I watch any more of this."
Another two dozen paces brought them to a doorway opening on the great hall. An orchestra on a dais along the far wall played a pavane, and Bareris felt the old familiar urge, still alive in him when so much else had withered, to immerse himself in the music. He shook it off and surveyed the company instead.
He spotted a reasonable number of living revelers, mostly clad in red, proof that even after a century, Szass Tarn hadn't completely transfigured the aristocracy. But the majority of celebrants were undead, shadowy specters, vampires with alabaster skin and chatoyant eyes, crumbling corpses, fleshless skeletons, and things so misshapen and grotesque they bewildered the eye, perhaps experiments created in the laboratories of the necromancers but granted positions of authority even so.
Good host that he evidently was, Muthoth had provided refreshments for all his guests. Some of the trestle tables proffered food and drink fit for mortals, but prisoners lay chained spread-eagled across others for the undead to devour.
A specter slid his fingers into a boy's face. The child screamed loud enough to drown out the orchestra as he grew old and died in a matter of moments. An undead ogre, its rotting body armored or perhaps simply held together by a framework of black iron rings and bands, ripped off a woman's head, then reached up inside her neck to claw out meat and stuff it in his mouth. More thralls waited caged in the corner to replenish the buffet.
Bareris procured a goblet of blood and pretended to sip from it as he sauntered around, eavesdropping, hoping to hear something tonight that would enable him to strike a blow against Szass Tarn's government tomorrow. He might as well. It wasn't time to start murdering people yet. That would come later, when the revel grew wilder, and excitement and overindulgence left the attendees vulnerable. When more of them wandered from the
great hall to other portions of the mansion to pursue intimate pleasures in private, purge themselves, or pass out.
The usher at the primary doorway knocked the butt of his staff on the floor. "Sylora Salm, tharchion of Eltabbar!" Bareris turned and bowed like all the other gentlemen, then lifted his eyes to inspect this foe he'd never seen before.
His first thought was that she was very like Dmitra Flass, who'd held the same office one hundred years before, a perfect example of a great Thayan lady. She was tall and slender, without a trace of hair on her head, and wore a shimmering scarlet gown that was a triumph of the dressmaker's art. Her ivory complexion was flawless, her smile deceptively warm, and a quick intelligence shined in her bright green eyes.
Perhaps she reflected Szass Tarn's ideal of womanhood. Maybe the lich was genuinely fond of her, as supposedly had been the case with Dmitra. Bareris hoped so. He wanted to believe Szass Tarn might actually feel at least a little bereft when she died.
And it should be possible to kill her, her sorcery and bodyguards notwithstanding. The gossips said she possessed a lickerish nature and enjoyed the attentions of vampires. He was disguised as such a creature and could exploit his bardic skills to seduce and beguile. When the opportunity presented itself, he'd lure her away to some private spot, then strike her down before she realized anything was amiss.
Or so he thought until Muthoth hurried out of the crowd to greet the new arrival.
His skinny frame robed in crimson, Sylora's lieutenant had clearly become a vampire at some point during the past century, but it didn't matter. Bareris still recognized the sharp, arrogant features, a face made to sneer and spit, and even if he hadn't, there was no mistaking the maimed right hand with its missing fingers.
"Stop staring!" Mirror whispered.
The phantom was right. Bareris mustn't make himself conspicuous. With an effort, he turned away.
"What's wrong?" asked Mirror, barely visible as little more than a man-sized column of blur and ache.
"I told you," Bareris said, "about the necromancers who took Tammith to Xingax. How I caught up with them on the trail, but they wouldn't give her back to me."
"Yes."
"Well, this Muthoth is one of them. I never knew his name or that he was still around. But now that I do, he's going to pay."
"Killing Sylora Salm would better serve the cause."
"To the Abyss with 'the cause.' Muthoth is our target, and he alone."
Tammith Iltazyarra had been Bareris's first and only love. And if Muthoth and his pudgy, timid partner had just taken the princely bribe he'd offered and set her free, everything would have been different. Xingax never would have transformed her into a vampire, and Tsagoth wouldn't have destroyed her. She and Bareris would have shared a long, joyful mortal life together.
Bitter though it was, he'd resigned himself that he almost certainly would never slay Szass Tam, the overlord who controlled all his lesser enemies and was the ultimate source of all his sorrows. Despite decades of scheming, he'd never even managed to kill Tsagoth. But by every melody ever sung, every note ever played, he could take revenge on Muthoth, and he would.
But it wouldn't prove to be easy. As the revelers danced to song after song, and one by one, the prisoners shrieked, thrashed, and died, Muthoth remained at the heart of the festivities. He seemed to be enjoying the celebration too much, or to be too concerned with the obligations of hospitality, for even the persuasions of a bard to draw him away.
Finally the slaves stopped setting out fresh food, living or otherwise, and the weary musicians switched to tunes less suitable
for dancing. Taking the hint, or simply sensing the imminence of sunrise, the guests began to depart.
"What now?" Mirror asked.
"We hide," Bareris answered.
They stalked back into the lesser rooms. Shredded corpses, the occasional dismembered limb, and pools and spatters of blood now defaced the gorgeous carpets and handsome furnishings, and in some spaces, slaves had already made a start at trying to clean up the mess.
But the cozy room in which the undead sorcerer and knight had sat and chatted was empty. Mirror faded until he was entirely invisible once more. Bareris sang a spell under his breath to achieve the same effect.
Then they waited for the rest of the revelers to leave and the house to settle down. Occasionally slaves trudged or boneclaws prowled past them, but without so much as a suspicious glance in their direction. Finally Bareris said, "It's time to move."
"Where?" Mirror asked.
"Whatever Muthoth sleeps in, it's a reasonable guess that he keeps it in a bedchamber upstairs."
Still invisible, they made their way to a marble staircase. As they climbed, Bareris felt feverish with eagerness.
At the top of the steps, archways led in three directions. From what he could see, it appeared to Bareris that Muthoth had furnished the rooms directly opposite the stairs with grander, more ostentatious pieces than those visible to the right and left. Which suggested that those chambers comprised his personal suite.
The intruders headed into the more luxurious area and soon entered a large, square room. Bareris just had time to notice that it was strangely empty compared to the two they'd just traversed when the air flared fiery yellow. His head throbbed, reacting to the sudden release of arcane energy.
Looking like a reflection of himself cast in cloudy, rippling
water, Mirror popped into view. Bareris looked down at his hands and saw that he was visible, too, and that the charm that had given him the appearance of a vampiric nobleman had dissolved.
Concealed doors flew open. Four boneclaws sprang from the closets in which they'd waited with the mindless patience of lesser undead for someone to come along and trigger this particular trap.
Bareris supposed he'd stepped on a rigged floorboard, an unseen rune, or something similar. He tried to tell Mirror to engage the two boneclaws on the right, but found he had no voice. The blaze of magic he'd unwittingly evoked had both deprived him of his invisibility and shrouded the room in an enchantment of silence.
As a defense, it made sense. Red Wizards had reason to fear rivals in their own hierarchy as much or more than any other foe, and quiet deprived a mage of the greater part of his magic.
As it divested a bard of every last bit of his. Bareris would have ro rely on his sword.
Mirror, however, had other options. He raised his blade above his head, and it gave off a golden glow like sunlight. He'd summoned the divine light that was anathema to undead, anathema in theory even to Bareris and himself, but somehow he managed to wield it without annihilating himself or hurting his comrade.
One of the boneclaws on the right cringed, unable to continue its advance. The others kept charging forward. It was about as good a result as Mirror could expect, given that he was trying to evoke the sacred on the home ground of a vampiric necromancer.
Bareris lunged at the two boneclaws on the left. They snatched for him, and their already enormous talons shot out, stretching instantaneously to more than twice their normal length. They likely would have speared a less canny opponent, but he'd seen the trick before. He dived underneath the attack, plunged on
between the two crimson-eyed creatures, whirled, and hacked at the back of a knee.
The boneclaw he'd cut pitched forward, but the other, star-tlingly quick for something so large, was already whirling around. It raked with both hands, talons elongating into blades like scythes, filling the space between itself and its foe.
Bareris leaped backward. It was the only way to avoid being sliced and impaled. He sensed the wall behind him and realized he wouldn't be able to retreat again.
The boneclaw scrambled after him, and he instantly sprang to meet it. The move surprised it, threw off its aim, and when it slashed downward, the attack arrived harmlessly behind him. He cut into its midsection and tore away chunks of wormy, desiccated muscle and gut.
The boneclaw toppled. Glimpsing motion from the corner of his eye, Bareris spun. The creature he'd merely crippled had come crawling after him. Its talons shot out at him, and he wrenched himself out of the way. Then Mirror, who currently resembled an undersized boneclaw himself, rushed in on the creature's flank and sheared into its neck. Its body jerked into rigidity, then collapsed.
Bareris glanced around, making certain the ghost had destroyed the other two boneclaws before coming to his aid. He had, but new foes appeared in the doorway leading deeper into the apartments: another pair of boneclaws and Muthoth himself, clad in a nightshirt but with a jet black staff clasped in his intact hand and several amulets dangling around his neck. Apparently Bareris had also activated an alarm that roused the vampire from his rest.
The fresh boneclaws advanced. Muthoth stayed behind them in the doorway and surveyed the situation. Then he swirled his maimed hand through a serpentine mystic pass, and the unnatural silence ended. Bareris could hear the slap of the boneclaws' feet on the floor, and the minute creak of their leathery sinews.
He realized Muthoth had scrutinized him, observed that
he looked like a warrior, not a mage, and drawn the erroneous conclusion that he couldn't work magic. The necromancer thought to dispel the unnatural quiet and so regain the use of his own spells.
If he didn't realize Bareris was a bard, that meant he didn't know him at all, didn't even recognize the man whose life he'd devastated. For some reason, the thought was maddening.
Muthoth chanted, and a carrion stench filled the air. Bareris stepped back, leaving Mirror to engage both boneclaws, and quickly sang his own charm of silence, each descending note softer than the one before. Muthoth's voice cut off abruptly, leaving his incantation unfinished and the spell wasted. The lustrous eyes in his pale face widened in surprise.
Bareris ran forward, trying to maneuver around the boneclaw on his left. Despite Mirror's efforts to hold its attention, it pivoted and slashed at him, and though he dodged, one of its talons sheared through his ribs. The stroke would have killed a living man, but he was undead and enraged and scarcely broke stride.
Muthoth retreated before him, back into the next room. As he did so, he thrust out his staff, no doubt a repository of magic he could employ even in the absence of sound. Shadows leaped and whirled, and suddenly Bareris felt numb and confused, his hatred dulled and meaningless.
Muthoth was trying to control his mind. Bareris forced himself to take another racing stride and another after that, clinging to anger and purpose, and the dazed, bewildered feeling fell away.
The vampire pressed his mutilated hand to an iron amulet, and a gray, vaporous thing with a lunatic's twitching face hurtled out of it. Bareris sidestepped the spirit's frenzied, scrabbling attack and cut through the middle of it. It broke into floating, vile-smelling wisps.
He closed the distance to Muthoth. Cut to the head. The vampire dropped under the stroke as his body reshaped itself,
flowing from human form into the guise of a huge, black wolf.
Muthoth sprang. His forepaws hit Bareris in the chest and knocked him onto his back. Eyes blazing, icy foam flying from his muzzle, the vampire lunged to seize his adversary's throat in his fangs.
Bareris just managed to interpose his forearm, and Muthoth's jaws clamped shut on it instead. The lupine teeth cut deep, and Muthoth jerked his head back and forth. Bareris felt the jolting agony as the limb started to tear apart.
His sword was too long to use in such close quarters. He let go of it, drew up his leg, and groped for the secondary weapon he kept tucked is his boot. He drew forth the hawthorn stake and drove it into Muthoth's body.
The vampire flopped down on top of him and lay motionless. Evidently Bareris had pierced the heart.
He rolled Muthoth off him and clambered to his feet. He felt the hot itch as his wounds began to heal. Peering back the way he'd come, he saw that Mirror had already destroyed one boneclaw and, by the looks of it, was about to dispatch the other.
Bareris stooped, gripped Muthoth by the throat, and dragged him farther into the suite, until they passed beyond the magical silence. By that time, the vampire had reverted to human shape, give or take pointed ears positioned too high on his head and a few patches of fur.
Bareris knelt down, positioning his face in front of Muthoth's unblinking eyes. "Do you know me now?" he asked. "I'm Bareris Anskuld, the bard who overtook you on the way to Delhumide. And now I'm going to destroy you as you destroyed me."
He raised his sword and struck Muthoth's head off. Then he watched the two pieces of the necromancer's body rot and realized he didn't feel anything at all.
Mirror found Bareris standing over Muthoth's crumbling, stinking remains. "Well done," he said.
Bareris frowned. "We fought this battle in silence. With luck, no one else knows it happened. Maybe we have time to look around a little."
"And carry away something useful," Mirror said. "Let's do it."
Bareris hung Muthoth's amulets around his own neck and picked up his black, gleaming staff. Then they prowled farther into the vampire's apartments.
They soon came to a portrait of a Red Wizard whose cool, crafty eyes and thin-lipped, resolute mouth seemed a mismatch with a rather weak chin. And when they saw the same face depicted again in a painting above the fireplace in a library, Bareris said, "I know where we are."
"What do you mean?" Mirror asked.
"A hundred years ago, this was more than a Chapterhouse of the Order of Transmutation. It was the residence of Druxus Rhym himself, or one of them, anyway. I never knew the man, but when I was a boy, I saw him once or twice, riding in a procession, and that's him."
Mirror, of course, had never known Druxus Rhym. He'd been a broken, essentially mindless thing wandering the Sunrise Mountains when Druxus had been alive. But he'd heard his comrades speak of the zulkir whom Szass Tam had assassinated at the very start of the lich's long campaign to become sole ruler of Thay.
"If these books belonged to an archmage," he said, "there may be some powerful grimoires here."
"Let's hope I have the wit to recognize them," Bareris said. "You stand watch while I flip through them." He pulled a volume from a shelf.
And several books later, he whispered, "By the silver harp!"

Chapter two
13 Ches, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

Well?" demanded Aoth. "Don't stop now. What did you find?" Across the study, Khouryn mumbled and rolled over in his sleep.
"This," Bareris replied. He opened the pouch strapped to his belt and brought out a small volume bound in crimson. It didn't look old or in any way special, nor could Aoth feel any arcane power smoldering inside it.
"All right," said Aoth. "Do you expect me to sit and read the cursed thing, or are you going to tell me what's in it?"
"I'll tell you," Bareris said. "It's just... it's strange, crazy even, and I need you to understand and believe."
Aoth frowned in perplexity. Never before had he seen his old friend fumble for words. Even after despair and the lust for vengeance ruined him, Bareris had retained the facile tongue of a bard.
"Just spit it out. After all the weird and terrible things the three
of us have survived together, of course I'll believe you."
"Very well. Do you remember the question Malark always used to ask?"
Aoth felt a pang of anger at the thought of the spymaster and false friend who'd betrayed the southern cause. "Why did Szass Tarn murder Druxus Rhym, his own ally on the Council?"
"Yes. After reading this book, I finally know."
"That's nice, I suppose, but does it really matter at this late date, more than ninety years after the lich pushed us and the rest of his opponents out of Thay?"
"It matters. Do you also recall the story Quickstrike the grave-crawler told me?"
For a moment, Aoth had no idea what Bareris was talking about, and even when he did remember, the question seemed so bizarre that he wondered if decades of loneliness, anguish, and undeath had finally driven his friend completely mad.
"Dimly. Thousands of years ago, there was a kingdom in the Sunrise Mountains. Its greatest wizard and hero was a fellow named... something about digging..."
"Fastrin the Delver."
"Right. Somebody stole something from this Fastrin, and the loss deranged him. He slaughtered his own people and even mangled the psyches of their ghosts—Mirror here was one such victim—and when he'd destroyed the realm, he committed suicide."
"That's right," Mirror said, "and now I can add to the tale. Recent events have stimulated my memory, even though much is still lost to me.
"My friend Fastrin spent much of his time exploring ancient ruins," the ghost continued, "and his stolen treasure was an article he had unearthed on one such expedition: a book from the dawn of time. He claimed it contained 'the death of the world,' and after it disappeared, he was terrified the thief would unleash the power inside it. In his frenzy, he saw only one solution: kill everyone,
just to be sure of getting anybody who'd learned the secret, and strip our spirits of reason and memory."
"It's a sad story," said Aoth, "and I don't mean to sound indifferent to your misfortune, but how can it possibly be relevant to anything that's going on today? You're not going to tell me that this volume you brought me is Fastrin's book? If that thing is thousands of years old, I'll eat it with pickle relish!"
"It isn't," Bareris said. "Two months ago, we stumbled across a collection of books that belonged to Druxus Rhym. This is one of them, written by Druxus himself. It's a series of scholarly notes and musings on a different volume, which, unfortunately, was missing."
Aoth shook his head. "Not the same book Fastrin found?"
"Yes," Bareris said, "with Fastrin's own notes appended to the back of it. Somehow it survived to the present day and fell into Druxus's hands. He doesn't say how, and we'll likely never know."
"What does he say?"
"The original book contains instructions for destroying everything. All life. The land, sea, and sky. The gods themselves." Aoth snorted. "That sounds useful."
"It could be, because you wouldn't just obliterate them. You'd change them from essence to the pure potential that existed before anything else, even time and space. And then you—"
"I take it that the ritual contains a cheat that allows 'you' to survive unharmed amid all the annihilation."
"Yes, your soul, at least, if not your body. And then you could seize all that potential and build a new cosmos exactly to your liking, with yourself as master."
"Ah! And here I thought we were discussing something silly."
Bareris scowled. "Druxus saw the ritual as the greatest imaginable work of transmutation, and for that reason, it intrigued him.
But he also believed the practical difficulties were insurmountable, and that no wizard could ever perform the experiment even if he was crazy enough to want to try. He regarded the treatise as purely theoretical, an intellectual game, one that Szass Tarn too might find interesting. And so, at the end, his notes indicate his intention to pass the book along to the necromancer."
"And you think Szass Tam read it and decided that he wanted to work the magic."
"Yes. It explains things that have always puzzled us. Why did Szass Tam finally strike for supreme authority in Thay after sharing power with his fellow zulkirs for centuries? Because he needed a completely free hand to make the realm over into a place where his 'Great Work' would be possible. Why did he kill Druxus? Because no one could know of his intent. Nobody would serve him knowing he plans to murder us all in the end."
"I suppose not. But still, this is all just speculation on your part."
"No. In his notes, Druxus tells us what the magic requires. It requires what Szass Tam has spent the last century creating. Hordes of undead and wizards mindbound to a single master so they can perform ritual tasks in concert even when miles apart. Huge circular monuments to raise the necessary power."
"You're talking about those new fortresses I've heard about."
"Yes. Dread Rings, the people call them. Mirror and I have seen a couple, and they look exactly like this." Bareris opened the book and held it out for Aoth to examine. On the exposed pages, Druxus had sketched a black, circular structure with spires rising above the walls in a jagged, asymmetrical pattern.
Aoth realized that at some point and for some reason, the discussion had stopped seeming as ludicrous as it should. He swallowed away a dryness in his throat. "But still, the fundamental idea... it's just not possible."
"Fastrin," Mirror said, "was as great a mage as any you have
known. And he took this threat so seriously that it unhinged him and drove him to commit unspeakable crimes."
"I don't say the untried magic would achieve the promised result," Bareris said. "I have no way of knowing. Even if I got a look at Fastrin's book itself, I don't have the understanding of wizardry it would take to evaluate the contents. But based on what Druxus wrote and Szass Tarn's manifest interest, I do believe the rite will do something. If it merely unleashes another cataclysm like the Spellplague, that's bad enough, wouldn't you say?"
"I guess," said Aoth. "But it's hard to believe that even Szass Tam would dare so reckless a gamble."
"Hard, perhaps, but impossible? You knew him, first as one of your masters and then as your enemy. You have experience of his limitless self-assurance, the grandiosity of his vision, and his ruthlessness. And I tell you again: he's built the rings. The last one was nearly finished when Mirror and I slipped out of Thay. It may be completed by now."
"All right. But why did you seek me out?"
Bareris frowned. "Surely it's obvious. The only way to stop Szass Tam is by force of arms, and you have an army. Even hiding in Thay, Mirror and I heard tales of your campaigns."
"What I have is a mercenary company, and I like to think it's the finest in the East. But do you think it could stop Szass Tam from doing anything he wants when all the council's legions failed before?"
Mirror said, "We have to try."
"No," Aoth said, "I don't. I won't lead the Brotherhood into certain ruin. I worked too hard to build it, and the men deserve better."
"If the whole world burns—"
"But you don't know that it will. All you have is a few jottings and a cartload of conjecture. Even if you're right about Szass Tarn's intentions, maybe this mad scheme won't accomplish anything.
Or maybe somebody with a realistic hope of stopping it will intervene."
"Don't you see," Bareris said, "we thought we lost the war. But in truth, it's still going on, and if we stop Szass Tam from getting what he wants, then we win."
Meaning, you finally achieve a measure of revenge, thought Aoth. Whatever Szass Tarn's planning, that's all you truly care about.
"I'm sorry," he said aloud. "The Brotherhood of the Griffon already has a contract for the coming season. Now, it goes without saying that you're welcome to stay here as long as you like..."
It took a while longer to bring the conversation to an end. But finally, by pleading fatigue and promising to continue arguing later, Aoth managed it. He installed Bareris and Mirror in a vacant room and then retired to his own bedchamber.
Only to find that, even though he truly was tired, sleep eluded him. After tossing and turning for a time, he rose, dressed, and tramped out to the stable behind the house in the hope that flying would relax him.
When he opened the door, Jet sprang down from the hayloft in which he'd taken up residence. The griffon's plumage and fur were both black as midnight. Even in the shadowy interior of the building, his scarlet eyes glittered in his aquiline head.
Jet screeched. "You fought a battle without me!"
Aoth didn't bother asking how his familiar knew. He could have smelled the scent of battle on his person or glimpsed a memory of the recent combat across the psychic link they shared.
"It wasn't by choice." He lifted Jet's saddle off its rack and slung it over his back. "Would you condescend to try a less violent form of exercise?"
Jet tossed his head. "Better than nothing, I suppose."
The morning sun was bright, but the air was cold. The seasons were just turning, and winter hadn't wholly surrendered its grip. Aoth activated the enchantment bound in one of his tattoos, and warmth flowed through his body. He then surveyed the clouds, looking, as was his unthinking habit, for signs of how and when the weather meant to change.
"I think we've seen the last of the snow," said Jet.
Aoth grunted.
"You're in a cheery mood."
"The zulkirs' assassins killed Quamara to clear a path to me." "That's annoying."
"That's one word for it. Then two old friends turned up just in time to save my life. It turned out they'd come to ask for my help, and I said no."
Jet beat his sable wings and climbed higher. "I'm not surprised. You always say no to me."
"Because you always ask to eat horses that don't belong to us. But Bareris and Mirror—" His words caught in his throat as death appeared in the east.
He thought immediately of the curtains of blue fire the Spell-plague had sent sweeping through the land, but this was different and worse. This force was invisible, but he could tell from the swath of devastation that it stretched at least as far as the eye could see. And it left nothing but dust in its wake.
The brown, snow-capped peaks of the Tannath Mountains crumbled. The countless trees of the Yuirwood bowed as a great wind caught them and stripped them of their leaves, and then they dissolved. To the north, the advancing line of obliteration drank the waters of rhe Sea of Dlurg. The water that had yet to disappear surged as though eager to meet its end.
But strangely, all the annihilation happened quietly. The raging winds didn't tumble Jet across the sky, nor did Aoth choke on
billowing dust. Because, he realized, this wasn't really happening. Not yet.
"What's the matter?" asked Jet.
"Take a look." Employing their mental link, Aoth allowed his mount to see what he was seeing.
Just in time to witness the destruction of Veltalar. The decaying slums of the old city, the wide boulevards and lofty towers of the new, and the green stone Palace of the Simbul itself broke apart with as little fuss as the mountains and forest had.
A second wave of destruction swept out of the east, cutting deeper into the ground that the first one had already scoured to bedrock. Aoth thought of concentric ripples spreading out from a pebble tossed in a pond, and then the vision ended as suddenly as it began.
"Wind and sky!" said Jet. It was the first time that Aoth had ever heard him sound shaken. "What was that?"
"The call to arms," said Aoth. "Damn it to the deepest Hell!"
Some of the members of the Simbarch Council were human; some, slender elves with pointed ears, vivid green eyes, and a lack of facial hair; and some, mixtures of the two. All were proud aristocrats and accomplished spellcasters, which didn't keep them from eyeing a pair of undead strangers with a certain wariness. They tried to hide it, but every bard learned to size up an audience.
Oneof the elves, her long tresses shimmering black and her skin nearly as white as Bareris's own, gave Aoth a cool stare. "Captain, when you asked for a meeting, we didn't realize you intended to bring such... unconventional companions along with you."
"I know, Lady Seriadne," Aoth replied, "just as I know that
here in Aglarond, you mistrust the undead. To tell you the truth, my life has given me abundant reason to mistrust most of them myself. But Bareris Anskuld and Mirror are old comrades of mine. I vouch for them, and you need to hear them. They've come to warn us all of a terrible danger."
"All right," said a human with a neatly trimmed gray goatee, who wore mystic sigils subtly incorporated into the complex beadwork pattern adorning his doublet. "Let's hear it."
Peering up at the simbarchs seated along the two tiers of their gleaming oak dais, Bareris told his tale with all the eloquence he could muster; but even so, skepticism congealed in every face. He felt a desperate urge to use magic to sway his listeners, but he knew the attempt could only lead to disaster. It was inconceivable that fifteen strong-willed folk wise in the ways of sorcery would all succumb to his spell, and those who retained clear heads would likely realize what he'd tried to do.
Maybe, he thought, Aoth can convince them. He's a living man with a good reputation, and they evidently trust him. They wouldn't have hired him otherwise.
But in fact, the warmage's testimony didn't help. Indeed, when he described the vision that had overtaken him while he was flying above the city, it paradoxically seemed to reinforce the simbarchs' judgment that Bareris's story was nonsense. Bareris gathered that Aoth had never before told them about his augmented sight and, glowing eyes or no, it seemed suspicious that he claimed such a miraculous ability only now, when necessary to buttress his argument.
"So that's how it is," Aoth finished. The flat note in his voice revealed that he, too, realized they'd failed to convince. "Bareris and Mirror asked me to commit the Brotherhood of the Griffon to their cause, but we all know that one company of sellswords has no hope of stopping Szass Tarn's scheme. The armed might of Aglarond, however, is a different matter."
The mage with the gray beard—whose name, Bareris gathered, was Ertrel—made a spitting sound. "When the lich made himself sole ruler of Thay, the East trembled. Everyone expected him to launch wars of conquest against his neighbors. But it never happened. Instead, he contented himself with making his own people's lives miserable and with building gigantic monuments to himself, and thank Sune for it. I can't think of anything stupider than provoking him now that he's finally lost interest in plaguing us."
"Lord Ertrel," said Bareris, "with respect, I explained: those 'monuments' are the structures Druxus Rhym sketched in the book."
"Yes," Ertrel said, "you did. But I fancy I'm a reasonably learned mage, and the ideas in your odd little book seem like so much gibberish to me."
Other simbarchs murmured in agreement.
"You just skimmed a few lines," Bareris said, "while you listened to me talk at the same time. Perhaps if you truly studied the volume, you'd feel differently."
Ertrel shrugged. "I doubt it."
"My lords," said Aoth, "I share your skepticism that any mortal, or any creature born mortal, could bring about the end of all things. It's a ridiculous notion on the face of it. But unlike you, I know Szass Tam—"
"Knew him a hundred years ago, you mean," another human simbarch interjected.
"—and I promise you, he's the one person in Faerun arrogant and selfish enough to try, if he believed he'd emerge from the holocaust greater than the greatest god. And even if his experiment fails utterly, what will that matter to us if it kills us all in the process?"
"As you prophesy it will," Seriadne purred.
"Yes. I told you: I saw it happen."
"That must have been quite a spectacle."
Aoth took a deep breath. "You don't believe me?"
"Here's what I believe: The rivals Szass Tam drove out of Thay settled in the Wizard's Reach, territory that rightfully belongs to Aglarond. We of the council think it's time to reclaim it and have hired you to help us.
"But perhaps," the black-haired elf continued, "we should have looked elsewhere for additional swords and spears. Because you too are a Thayan in exile, aren't you, Captain? In fact, if the stories are true, the zulkirs would never even have reached their new home if you and Bareris Anskuld here hadn't played a crucial role in defeating the armada that pursued them over the sea."
"Our old loyalties," said Aoth, "have nothing to do with the current situation. We both left the service of the zulkirs a long time ago."
"But what if you're feeling nostalgic," Seriadne asked, "or the zulkirs simply promised you more gold than we did? Then you might concoct a tale to convince us to change our plans. If it worked, it would be an elegant solution. After we smashed our army to pieces against the rock that is Thay, we wouldn't be able to mount an invasion of the Reach for a good long while."
"I give you my word," said Aoth, " it's not like that."
"I hope not," Ertrel said. "As sellswords go—which isn't far in this regard—you have a reputation for honest dealing. Can we take it, then, that you still intend to abide by the pledge you gave us?"
Aoth hesitated, but only for a heartbeat. "Yes, my lord."
"You'll go where we send you and fight those we tell you to fight?"
"Yes, my lord."
"Then however you came by these absurd worries, put them aside. We simbarchs give you our word: no wizard could raise the kind of power you describe, and if Szass Tam truly imagines otherwise, we should all rejoice that the Terror of the East has gone senile."

Chapter three
13 Ches-4 Tarsakh, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

Bareris shrouded himself, Aoth, and Mirror in invisibility before they slipped from the house. Unfortunately, that didn't stop the watchers from shooting crossbows at them. Evidently, mindful of Aoth's considerable reputation as a warmage, the simbarchs had equipped their agents with charms that allowed them to see the invisible.
Aoth shifted his truesilver targe, and a quarrel glanced off it. Bareris sidestepped with preternatural quickness, and another bolt streaked past him. The bard drew breath, and Aoth saw the lethal intent in the set of his pallid features.
"Don't kill them!" said Aoth.
Bareris shrugged, then sang a melody soft and mild as any lullaby. The men in the shadows of the neighboring house collapsed. One snored.
Currently resembling a smeared caricature of Aoth wrought in glimmering smoke, Mirror bounded to the fallen spies. "One
ran," he said and rose into the air, no doubt to hunt the man like a hawk seeking earthbound prey.
Bareris and Aoth trotted on toward the stable. "There was no need to kill them," said Aoth. "I knew you could stop them without it."
"If that is the way you prefer it, fine. But the fellow Mirror is running down won't be so lucky."
Smelling of feathers and fur, Jet waited beside his tack. "So I'm supposed to carry you and that, too," the griffon said.
"If you will," Bareris said. To Aoth's surprise, his friend's voice momentarily conveyed a hint of warmth or, conceivably, wistful-ness. "I haven't flown on griffon-back in a long while."
Jet grunted. "Just make sure your touch doesn't poison me."
Aoth saddled his familiar with the unthinking deftness of long practice. He swung himself onto the griffon's back, Bareris mounted up behind him, and then Jet sprang forward, his aquiline forelegs and leonine hind ones thumping out the unique, uneven rhythm that every griffon rider knew. As soon as Jet cleared the doors, he leaped high, lashed his wings, and soared up over the rooftops toward the stars.
Mirror came flying to join them. Aoth didn't ask whether the ghost had actually needed to kill the fleeing crossbowman. He didn't particularly want to know.
Looking smaller astride a griffon than he did planted on his own two feet, Khouryn was the next to arrive. Then, one by one, the rest of Aoth's officers fell in behind their commander, forming a loose procession that stretched across the sky.
After his meeting with the Simbarch Council, Aoth had convened a meeting of his lieutenants in the back room of a seedy tavern in the heart of "old Velprintalar," the impoverished, decaying part of the city. In times past, the establishment sat on the harbor, as the dilapidated dock projecting out from it attested, but, thanks to the Spellplague, the retreating waters of the Sea
of Dlurg had left it high and dry.
Goblets and tankards in hand, Aoth's lieutenants crowded into one side of the grubby room with its rickety chairs and smell of stale beer, puke, and piss and left the other half to the two undead strangers. That meant Aoth could see the embodiments of his present and those of his past arranged in two neat parcels. He felt a pang of resentment toward the latter and, knowing it was unfair, stifled it as best he could.
Lounging in a cloud of sweet cologne, one stocking orange and the other blue in the latest foppish style, auburn hair worn shoulder length, Gaedynn Ulraes took a sip of red wine, grimaced with exaggerated distaste, and set his cup aside. "Why does the emergency meeting spot always have to be somewhere disgusting?" he asked.
"I'm more interested in knowing why we're meeting," said Jhesrhi Coldcreek, her wizard's staff propped against her chair. The gold runes inlaid down its blackwood length complemented her tousled blonde curls, tawny skin, and amber eyes. "I thought the simbarchs liked us."
Aoth sighed. "They did, until I convinced them I'm not trustworthy."
Gaedynn arched an eyebrow his barber had sculpted into a fine line. "And how did you do that?"
Aided by Bareris, Aoth told the tale. His fellow sellswords reacted with astonishment but, to his relief, not overt disbelief. He supposed it was because they knew him better than the simbarchs did.
"In one respect," he concluded, "I guess I'm lucky. Our employers found my story so outrageous, it flummoxed them. Otherwise, they might have arrested me on the spot."
"Because," Jhesrhi said, "they think you intend to break our contract."
Aoth nodded. "And they're right."
Khouryn scowled. "You told me you never break a compact. That's what separates us from the scum. That's why I joined the Brotherhood of the Griffon in the first place."
Gaedynn grinned. "I thought it was to avoid having to stay home with that... remarkably articulate wife of yours." Jhesrhi shot him an irritated glance.
"I don't like it, either," said Aoth to the dwarf, "but I don't see a choice."
"Because these two dead men claim another dead man is going to lay waste to the whole world. Or our corner of it, anyway."
"I don't blame you if you can't believe it. You're all too young to have suffered through the Spellplague. But those of us who did know that at times, the world can be fragile as an eggshell. And I tell you again, I saw the devastation. In all our years together, have my visions ever turned out to be lies?"
"Not that I recall," Gaedynn said. "So it seems to me that, now that the Aglarondans have refused to heed your warning, the only sensible course of action is to flee west as fast as the wings of our steeds will carry us. But something tells me that's not what you have in mind."
"You're right," said Aoth. "With the simbarchs or without them, someone needs to try to stop Szass Tam."
"Possibly so," the foppish archer replied, "but even if it were feasible, I fight for coin, not noble causes."
"Would you fight for your life?" Jhesrhi asked. "Because that's what this is about. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around it, too, but there it is."
"For what it's worth," said Aoth, "I'll do my best to make sure we collect pay and plunder for our efforts. Still, I won't blame anyone who opts to leave the Brotherhood. Fighting Szass Tam was a daunting undertaking when Bareris, Mirror, and I did it before. Considering that he's had a century to consolidate his hold on Thay, it can only be harder now."
Everyone sat and thought about it for a moment. Then Khouryn said, "I can't claim I truly understand any of this crazi-ness, or to be happy about abandoning a nice, profitable, winnable campaign to go risk our lives in the foulest Hell-pit in Faerun. But you've always led us well, Captain. I'll stick with you and make sure the men who serve under me do the same."
"So will I," said Jhesrhi, and one by one, the other officers expressed the same resolve. Even Gaedynn, though he was last to commit. Aoth swallowed away a thickness in his throat and silently prayed to Kossuth that he wouldn't lead them all to their deaths.
"So what's the plan?" Gaedynn asked.
"The first step," said Aoth, "is to get away from here, before the simbarchs move to arrest me and detain the rest of you..."
Which was what they were attempting now.
The mercenaries had worked through the day and into the night, readying themselves for departure while trying to conceal their preparations from any outsider who might be watching. The next step was to reunite the men billeted in the city with the bulk of the company encamped outside, still without raising the alarm.
"I'm sorry," Bareris said abruptly.
"About what?" Aoth replied.
"I don't know how to behave like your friend anymore. Undeath withered that part of me."
Aoth sighed. "It started withering long before that, on the day you found out Xingax had turned Tammith into a vampire. If undeath changed who you are inside, it simply finished the job, and I'm sorry about that. Because I tried to help you grieve and move on, but I never found the right words or the right way."
"You hate being pulled back into this, don't you?"
"Yes. In Thay, my Rashemi looks made other Mulans view me with contempt. Out here in the rest of the world, they don't matter. In Thay, I was the servant of masters who cared nothing
for my welfare. Here, I grovel to no one. In Thay, I lost my war, but I haven't lost one since, and my victories made me rich and respected.
"I think of all that," Aoth continued, "and I remember the horrors the necromancers sent to kill us, horrors that still trouble my sleep one night in three. You're damned right I don't want to go back."
"I hope you'll feel differently when we finally settle the score."
Aoth decided it would accomplish nothing to say that he never even thought in terms of there being "a score."
"Maybe so," Aoth said. "Now get ready. That's the west gate up ahead."
Veltalar wasn't a walled city, but it did have fortifications straddling the major roads into the city to control the flow of traffic. The west gate was one such barrier, perfectly positioned to keep an eye on the rows of tents comprising the Brotherhood's encampment.
It looked to Aoth as if there were extra sentries manning the battlements tonight, surely for that very purpose. He kindled silvery light in the point of his spear to make sure the other riders would know when Jet dived, then sent the griffon hurtling down at the gate.
Bareris sang, and though the magic wasn't aimed at him, Aoth's eyelids drooped and his limbs felt heavy. He gave his head a shake to rid himself of the lethargy, and some of the soldiers on top of the gate collapsed.
Jhesrhi swooped low, and her sleep spell picked off the warriors who'd resisted Bareris's enchantment. Still other men-at-arms ran from the base of the fortification, and Gaedynn and his mount plunged to earth to block their path. The archer shot an arrow imbued with a charm of slumber into the dirt at their feet, and they too dropped.
The other sellswords in the city, the ones who didn't have flying steeds, erupted from their hiding places and poured through the gate. The griffon riders flew over the portal, and they all rushed on to join their comrades in the camp.
Aoth was pleased to see the latter were ready to move. Everyone had his armor on, the griffons and horses were saddled, and the foot soldiers had their packs stuffed and ready to sling across their backs. Unfortunately, the company was leaving much of its baggage behind, but that couldn't be helped if they were to travel at maximum speed. In the paddock, a mule brayed as though protesting its abandonment.
Working in concert, Jhesrhi and Bareris cloaked the camp in illusion. For a time, the magic would make it look as if people were still moving around inside and would conceal the tracks the column left when it set forth.
Afterward, the master of griffons found a mount for Bareris, and he overcame its instinctual distrust of the undead by beguiling it with a song. Then the officers of the company convened for a final palaver.
"Are you sure," asked Aoth, "that you can lose a pursuing force in the Yuirwood?"
Gaedynn spread his hands as though amazed anyone would even ask. "Of course."
Jhesrhi scowled. "The Aglarondans will have elves to guide them."
Gaedynn was human. But he'd grown up among the elves of the Yuirwood, a hostage seized in a futile attempt to ensure his father's good behavior.
Gaedynn grinned. "That's fine, Buttercup. We'll play Foxes and Rabbits through the circles." He shifted his gaze back to Aoth. "Frankly, Captain, the person we ought to worry about is you. Are you sure you want to do this?"
"I'm sure I don't," said Aoth, "but it's the only thing ft? do. Get
the men moving, and if Tymora smiles, I'll see you in a tenday or two."
Sensing that he was ready to go, Jet sprang back into the air. Bareris followed, and Mirror, a faceless blot of aching wrongness more felt than seen in the dark, brought up the rear.
When Bareris had last seen Escalant, it had been a city in distress, crammed to overflowing with refugees and fearful that either Szass Tam or the Spellplague would destroy it. But as he surveyed the port from the air, it was plain the place had prospered in the intervening decades. Stevedores scurried to load or unload the dozens of merchant ships moored at the docks, while elsewhere, the sawmills, furniture manufactories, and slave markets were equally busy. It was no wonder the simbarchs wanted to add the town, along with the rest of the Wizard's Reach, to their own dominions.
He looked over at Aoth, flying on his left. "What now?" he asked.
The warmage smiled crookedly. "Look for the gaudiest, most ostentatious palace in town. It should be easy enough to spot."
With its high, gilded minarets and jeweled scarlet banners gleaming in the sunlight, it was. The travelers set down on the expanse of verdant lawn in front of the primary entrance. The high arched double doors were sheathed in gold as well. Unless they were gold through and through. Considering who lived here, anything was possible.
Bareris had given himself the appearance of life, and for a moment, the slaves who came to greet them didn't sense anything amiss. Then they noticed the shadow that was Mirror and faltered in alarm.
"It's all right," said Bareris, charging his voice with the power to calm and command. "We don't mean any harm. Simply tell your master that Aoth Fezim, Mirror, and Bareris Anskuld request an audience."
One of the servants scurried to deliver the message, and in time a dozen guards appeared to demand that the travelers surrender their weapons. They did, and the warriors escorted them into the presence of Samas Kul.
The archmage looked no older, but if possible was even more obese than Bareris remembered him, a heap of a man whose begemmed ornaments and gorgeous crimson robes failed utterly to render him any less repulsive. A small semicircular table sat just in front of his throne as if he were an infant or an invalid, while a bigger one farther away held enough food and drink to supply a banquet. Most likely, as in days of yore, he used magic to float viands from one surface to the other.
Statues—a dragon, a spider, a bear—wrought of various metals stood in alcoves along the walls: golems ready to spring to life if required. Despite these formidable protectors and the human guards who still surrounded Bareris, Aoth, and Mirror, Samas held a wand of congealed quicksilver in his pink, blubbery hand. Bareris supposed he could take the precaution as a sort of compliment.
The zulkir said, "You must be insane to come here."
"That," Aoth replied, "is a cold greeting for the legionnaires who saved your fleet and possibly even your life on the Alamber Sea."
Samas sneered. "You did render good service that night. But any gratitude you earned thereby, you forfeited when you deserted and took the whole of the Griffon Legion with you."
"Maybe that's fair. But when I discovered I was going to live a long time, I realized I didn't want to spend all those years bowing and scraping. And when I told the men of my intent, they agreed there was a better life to be had."
"A 'better life' that involved siding with the enemies of your own people!" Droplets of spittle flew from Samas's lips. "Of conspiring to overthrow all that remains of the Thay that was!"
"Yes, an offense for which you zulkirs tried to kill me. Nevertheless, here I stand before you, because none of that matters anymore. With your permission, we'll show you what does."
Bareris removed the red book from its pouch. "This belonged to Druxus Rhym. The simbarchs, for all their claims to arcane knowledge, considered it nonsense. But I trust that you, who presided over the Order of Transmutation, will see deeper."
Samas held out his hand. The book leaped out of Bareris's grasp and flew to the zulkir. Samas murmured a charm over it, perhaps checking to see if it was some sort of magical trap, then opened the cover.
"Where," Lauzoril asked, "are Aoth Fezim and his companions now?"
Seated on the other side of the red maple table, a piece of roast duck in one hand, a cup of apple-flavored liqueur in the other, and his several chins gleaming with grease, Samas had to swallow before he could answer. "I locked them up, but I haven't punished them in any way. I would have liked to, but under the circumstances..." He shrugged, and his rolls of fat flapped in a way that made his fellow zulkir think of avalanches sliding down a mountain.
A shrewish glint in her eye, Lallara rasped, "Why did we need a dead bard and knight to stumble across this wretched book a hundred years after Druxus's death? You were his successor. Didn't you have the sense to take an inventory of his possessions?" She looked wizened and frail, but Laurozil knew the appearance was deceptive. Like all of them, she'd used magic
both to extend her life and to ward off the genuine disabilities of old age.
Samas's round, sweary, hairless face turned a deeper, mottled red. "If you recall, those were tempestuous times. Naturally, I made some effort to take stock of what he'd left behind—"
"But if it wasn't made of gold, ablaze with magic, or edible, you assumed it couldn't be important."
Inwardly, Lauzoril sighed. Once again, it was time to intervene. It made him miss Dmitra Flass, who, though he'd resented her pretensions to leadership, had likewise exerted her influence to keep their deliberations from descending into useless acrimony.
"We all wish we'd uncovered this information earlier," he said, -'but what matters is that we have it now. We need to focus on what to do about it."
"I suppose so," Nevron said. Like the other male zulkirs, he'd maintained the appearance of relative youth and had strong, ugly features that sneered more often than not. Most of his tattoos were portraits of demons and devils bound to his service, and the scent of brimstone clung to him. "If we're agreed that the book is anything to worry about. Are we?"
"It's difficult to evaluate whether the ritual could actually destroy one world and allow the mage to mold a new one from the ashes," Samas said. "To say the least, it seems unlikely. But I see little reason to doubt that it would kill everything for hundreds of miles around."
Nevron scowled. "I think so too."
"As do I," Lallara said.
"Then it's unanimous," Lauzoril said. "Still, just because Szass Tam could attempt the rite, with dire consequences, doesn't mean he necessarily will."
"Our spies," Nevron said, "confirm Anskuld's report. The lich built his new castles in the same shape as Druxus's drawing."
"But perhaps," Lauzoril said, "he's found a way to raise this
particular form of power and turn it to some less ambitious project. He wouldn't be the first wizard who simply"—simply!—"aspired to claim a place among the gods."
Lallara cackled. "The Szass Tam I remember already thought he was a god, or as good as."
"True enough," Nevron said, "and let's not forget that gods can subjugate one another and even die. I've lost count of how many did so in the past century. No, it makes perfect sense that Szass Tam, arrogant, merciless whoreson that he is, would seek to become something greater."
Lauzoril reflected that in different circumstances, he might have needed to suppress a smile at hearing Nevron refer to anyone else as "arrogant" or "merciless." But nothing seemed very funny at the moment.
Samas guzzled from his cup. "But I wonder if the actual gods wouldn't stop him."
"Like they stopped the Spellplague?" Lallara asked.
"She'sright," Nevron said. "No mortal understands the ways of the gods, no mortal can command them, and that means you can't depend on them."
"Then you're saying Captain Fezim and his friends are right," Samas said. "Other people need to stop Szass Tam, and since we're the only ones who know of the threat and take it seriously, it will have to be us."
"How?" Lallara asked. "The necromancers already defeated us once, when we commanded far greater resources than we do now. I know we've always prattled about reconquering Thay, but we never actually set about organizing an invasion, did we? Because we knew we wouldn't stand a chance."
"Maybe we don't have to retake Thay," Samas said. "The so-called 'Dread Rings' define a mystic pattern with the Citadel, where Szass Tam will perform the conjuration, at the center. And we can assume that, gigantic though it is, it's like any pentacle.
Break any part of it, and the whole becomes useless. So all we need to do is seize a single fortress, neutralize its arcane properties with our own countermagic, and that will make the ritual impossible." He smiled smugly, and Lauzoril surmised that he'd enjoyed playing schoolmaster to the woman who so often mocked and fleered at him.
"Interesting," Lallara said. "I assume this is Captain Fezim's idea that you're passing along to us."
Samas glared.
"Wherever it originated," Lauzoril said, "it seems the most practical way—perhaps the only way—of addressing the problem."
"It does," Nevron said, "but it ignores one important point. The Aglarondans are coming to drive us out of the Wizard's Reach, and if we take most of our troops and wander off to Thay, they'll succeed."
"Given what's at stake," Lauzoril said, "perhaps even that doesn't matter."
Nevron scowled. "It matters to me. I'm a zulkir, a lord among men, and I intend to remain one so long as I walk the mortal plane. The East can burn, the whole world can crumble, if that's what it takes for me to keep my lands and titles until the end."
Her eyes flinty, Lallara nodded. Samas said, "The Reach is all we have left."
Lauzoril realized he agreed with them. Their perspective was a subtle kind of madness, perhaps, but whatever it was, he shared it. "All right. First we push back the simbarchs, then we deal with Szass Tam. Maybe the former will be good practice for the latter. As far as I can see, that just leaves one more minor matter to decide here and now. Whar shall we do with Captain Fezim and his comrades?"
"What do you generally do with deserters?" said Nevron. "Execute them."
"They are the people who warned us of Szass Tarn's scheme," Samas said.
Nevron smiled. "Which is to say, they've served their purpose."
"Perhaps not their entire purpose," Lallara said. "Remember the old days. When we scored a victory against Szass Tam, these warriors played a part as often as not. And from what I understand, Captain Fezim's mercenary company—the army he built around our old Griffon Legion—is on its way here. They're coming to help us invade Thay, but they may have second thoughts if they arrive to learn we tortured their commander to death."
"I suppose we would be stupid to cast away such a weapon," Nevron said, "but it galls to me to think of that insolent Rashemi going unpunished."
Lauzoril fingered his chin.."Well, how about this? Someone will have to bear the brunt of it when Aglarond attacks. Let it be the Brotherhood of the Griffon. If Fezim and his company perish, that's his punishment. If they survive, they can serve as our vanguard in Thay. And if they make it through that, then we can always butcher the traitor when we come home again."
As Aoth had anticipated, a substantial force of Aglarondans had chased the Brotherhood some distance into the Yuirwood before Gaedynn's maneuvering shook them off the trail. But even with elves and druids to aid their passage, the simbarchs had balked at the arduous task of bringing the whole of their armed might south through the dense forest with its dangerous patches of plagueland. Instead, they'd marched their forces east, to emerge from the fortified city of Glarondar onto the plains north of Escalant.
Aoth flew high above the field to inspect the Aglarondans in their battle array and the zulkirs' troops in their own formation. Bareris and Mirror accompanied him, but none of the other flyers. There was no reason to tire the griffons prematurely or to show
the enemy just how many aerial cavalry there were, even though they'd had ample opportunity to learn before the Brotherhood switched sides.
Switched sides. Aoth tried to spit the unpalatable thought away.
He glanced over at Bareris, an uncanny ivory apparition astride his own griffon, its tawny wings gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. The bard's scowl suggested that his thoughts were bitterer than Aoth's.
"Cheer up," called Aoth. "The situation doesn't look all that bad."
"This is a waste of time," the bard replied. "We should already be in Thay." He nudged his mount with his knee and sent it winging to the left.
"It would be futile to go by ourselves," Aoth said, even though his fellow griffon rider was already out of earshot. "I'm doing the best I can, damn you."
Mirror floated closer. For Aoth, it was one of those moments when regarding the ghost actually was like peering into a warped and murky looking glass. "He knows that. But you have to admit, you would feel silly if, while we were busy fighting the simbarchs, Szass Tam performed his 'Great Work' and killed us all."
Aoth snorted. "Is that supposed to be funny? I don't think I've ever heard you try to joke before. You've come a long way."
"Some days are good, some, I'm as mad and empty as the day Bareris met me. But yes, I've emerged partway into the light, even as he's slipped farther and farther into darkness. At times I feel like some sort of vampire. As if I'm leeching his soul from him without even realizing it."
"I never knew you to fall prey to poetic fancies before, either." Aoth senr Jet swooping for a better look at some of the enemy's archers. "I'm sure your company has been as good for him as his has been for you. I suspect it's the thing that's kept him at least a little sane."
"I suppose it could be so." Mirror hesitated. "You were always a shrewd soldier. You do realize that, the way our side is formed up, a good many of the Aglarondans are going to end up hammering away at your Brotherhood. More than your fair share, I'd have to say."
Aoth snorted. "Nothing new about that. Lords don't pay good coin to sellswords only to hand the most dangerous jobs to their own vassals. And at least we are getting paid. I told the zulkirs the Brotherhood wouldn't fight otherwise."
Jet screeched. "It's starting."
Arrows rose from ranks of Aglarondan archers like a dark cloud. Gaedynn scrutinized the arc of the shafts as they reached the apogee of their flight. The enemy bowmen were reasonably competent. Of course, one would expect as much, considering how many of them had some measure of elf blood flowing in their veins.
Strong hands grabbed him by the arm and jerked him onto his knees. "Down!" Khouryn snarled.
I was getting around to it, Gaedynn thought.
The sellswords equipped with tower shields or targes raised them to ward themselves and their more lightly armored comrades. The arrows whined as they fell, then clattered against the defensive barrier. Here and there, a man screamed where a missile found a gap.
Behind the foot soldiers and archers, wings snapped and rustled as the griffon riders took to the air. Gaedynn wouldn't have minded going with them, but Aoth had decided that in this particular combat, he'd be more useful directing the archers on the ground.
So he supposed he'd better get to it. "Archers!" he bellowed.
"Remember who you're supposed to kill, and shoot them!"
His bowmen stood upright. Some of them loosed at their counterparts on the other side of the battlefield. Jhesrhi, who had a particular knack for elemental magic, augmented their efforts with an explosion of flame that tore a dozen Aglarondans apart.
The remaining Brotherhood archers shot at enemy knights and officers, equestrian figures armored from head to toe, wherever they spotted them. Gaedynn took aim at a chestnut destrier and drove an arrow into its neck. It fell, catching its rider's leg between its bulk and the ground and, with any luck, crippling him. Not a chivalrous tactic, Gaedynn reflected, but then, he wasn't a chivalrous fellow.
Nevron smiled, savoring the sight of thousands of warriors striving to spill one another's blood, the deafening racket of the bellowed war cries and the shrieks of agony. Unlike his fellow zulkirs, he relished the perilous tumult of the battlefield. Indeed, it was still his dream to abandon the dreary mortal plane and, unlike any living human being before him, conquer an empire in the higher worlds. Regrettably, the chaos of the past century, as magic and the very structure of the cosmos redefined themselves, had persuaded him to bide his time.
The demons and devils that accompanied him everywhere, caged in rings, amulets, or tattoos, shared his exhilaration. They roared and threatened, begged and wheedled, in voices only he could hear, urging him to unleash them to join the slaughter.
Although the zulkirs had arranged their formation with the Brotherhood of the Griffon at the center, the natural focus for the Aglarondans' greatest efforts, there were plenty of the enemy to go around, and they were making a creditable attempt to strike at every target within reach. Thunderclaps boomed in a ragged
volley, and five flares of lightning leaped forth at the zulkirs' right wing, where Nevron stood amid a circle of lesser Red Wizards.
The thunderbolts winked out of existence short of their targets. Standing some distance away, Lallara gave a brusque, self-satisfied nod that flapped the loose flesh dangling under her chin. The old hag might be abrasive and disagreeable in every conceivable way, but Nevron had to concede that, despite the appearance of decrepitude she'd allowed to overtake her, her command of abjuration, the magic of protection, remained as formidable as ever.
Something similar might be said of Lauzoril. He looked like a priggish clerk or bloodless functionary someone had dressed in the scarlet robes of an archmage as a joke. But when he murmured a spell and swirled his hands, enchantment, the magic of the mind, plunged a cantering troop of enemy horse archers into terror, and they wheeled and galloped back the way they'd come.
Golden greatswords clasped in their fists, a dozen crimson-skinned angelic warriors abruptly appeared more or less in the same place from which the thunderbolts had stabbed. Nevron surmised that, invisible behind the spear-and-shield fighters assigned to protect them, the same wizards who'd evoked the lightning were trying a different tactic.
In so doing, they'd strayed into Nevron's area of expertise. He decided it was his turn to demonstrate that the wizardry of Aglarond, its vaunted elven secrets notwithstanding, was no match for the darker arts of Thay.
As the angels charged, he snapped his fingers. Three obese figures shimmered into material existence around him, each twice as tall as a man, with a pair of horns jutting from its head and anguished faces pressing out against the skin from inside its distended belly. Nevron heard the faces wailing even over the ambient din of the battlefield.
Careless of the humans they trampled or knocked aside, the solamiths lumbered forward to intercept the archons. The demons
tore hunks of flesh from their own bodies and threw them. The missiles exploded when they struck the ground, engulfing the angels in blasts of dark, somehow filthy-looking flame.
Aoth, Bareris, and Mirror waited for rhe rest of the griffon riders to join them in the air. Then Aoth swept his spear forward, signaling the attack.
His men shot arrows from the saddle. He rained down fire, lightning, hail, and acid, the spells of destruction that were a warmage's stock-in-trade. For an instant he remembered how, ashamed of breaking his pledge to the simbarchs, he'd done his best to sneak away from Veltalar without shedding Aglarondan blood. Well, the time for such squeamishness was past.
A long javelin-cast across the sky, Bareris rode singing, his long white fingers plucking the strings of a black harp. He was high enough above the ground that, were his music not infused with magic, no one below would even have heard him. But as it was, a company of enemy crossbowmen clutched at their ears, reeled, and fell. A couple tried to stab quarrels into their ears, while another drew his dagger and slashed his own throat.
Then Bareris oriented on a dead elf knight, a wealthy lord or mighty champion judging from the gore-stained magnificence of his trappings. The bard's song brought the corpse scrambling to its feet to drive its slender gleaming sword into another elf s back.
Meanwhile, the Aglarondans shot arrows and flares of magic at the foes harrying them from overhead. Trained to veer and dodge, the griffons avoided many such attacks, and their boiled-leather armor and natural hardiness protected them from others. When none of those defenses sufficed, a steed and its rider plummeted to smash against the ground.
Jet swerved suddenly. Aoth knew his familiar was evading and, since he himself hadn't detected an imminent threat, looked into the griffon's mind to find out where it was.
Above and to the right. He jerked around to see a trio of wasps as big as Jet himself diving at them, their wings a buzzing blur.
Jet couldn't wheel in time to bring his beak and talons to bear. It was up to Aoth. He burned one wasp to ash with a fan-shaped blaze of flame, but by then the other two were right on top of him. He drove his spear into one creature's midsection, channeled lethal force through the weapon, and the impaled wasp began to smoke and char. It clung to life, however, and jabbed its stinger at him repeatedly. He blocked the strokes with his mithral targe—each one slammed his shield arm back against his torso—but that left him with no hands or gear to ward off the third wasp hurtling at his head.
The third insect convulsed and, patches of its body withering and rotting, dropped. Still swinging his shadow-sword, Mirror chased the dying wasp toward the ground.
Though she never would have admitted it to any of her fellow officers—particularly Gaedynn—Jhesrhi lacked the almost preternatural ability to predict the surge and ebb of combat that Aoth and certain others sometimes displayed. Thus, even though she and her allies were expecting a great charge, she had no idea it was about to begin until the enemy bellowed and all plunged forward at once. Their running footsteps and galloping hoofbeats shook the ground beneath her boots.
Up until now, although skirmisher had traded blows with skirmisher, and some eager warriors had forayed back and forth, it had mostly been archers, crossbowmen, and spellcasters fighting the battle. Throughout this preliminary phase, the zulkirs'
forces had labored to degrade the Aglarondans' ability to attack at range, and to harass the knights and lords waiting idly on their mounts. The goal was to goad them into the charge they had just now launched.
From the enemy perspective, the move no doubt made sense. They outnumbered the zulkirs' troops by a comfortable margin, and they had considerably more horsemen. They should be able to smash the Thayan formation.
But they assumed that because they didn't know that Jhesrhi, fat Samas Kul, and some of his underlings had arrived at the field before them and prepared the ground. They didn't know what magic their foes intended to unleash.
Or else they do know, Jhesrhi thought wryly, and they think they have a trick that trumps ours. If she'd learned anything since Aoth delivered her from servitude and gave her a place in the Brotherhood, it was that in war, nothing was certain.
She peered through the gap between the shields two warriors held to protect her. When she judged that the enemy lancers, pounding along in advance of a horde of foot soldiers, had come far enough, she chanted words of power.
Elsewhere in the zulkirs' formation, Samas Kul and the Red Wizards he commanded did the same. She could tell because so much magic, discharged at the same time and to the same end, darkened the air and made it smell like swamps and rot. The golden runes on her staff blazed like little pieces of the sun, and nearby, one of Gaedynn's archers doubled over and puked.
Then patches of earth turned to soft, sucking muck beneath the charging Aglarondans' feet.
Warhorses tripped and fell, pitching their riders over their heads or crushing them beneath their bodies. Even when a steed managed to keep its footing, it broke stride, which meant that an animal running behind it was likely to slam right into it. Rushing spearmen and axemen sank in ooze to their knees
or waists, as though they'd blundered into quicksand. A few dropped completely out of sight. In just a few moments, the fearsome momentum of the charge disintegrated into agony and confusion.
For an instant, Jhesrhi felt a pang of something that might almost have been pity, but you didn't pity the enemy. You couldn't afford to. She flourished her staff and rained acid on three of the nearest Aglarondans. The knights and their mired horses screamed and thrashed.
Red Wizards hammered the foe with their own attacks. "Down in front!" Gaedynn shouted to anyone who wasn't an archer, and as soon as they had a clear shot, his men loosed shaft after shaft. Wheeling and swooping above the Aglarondans like vultures keeping watch on a dying animal, the griffon riders also wielded their bows to deadly effect.
By rights, that should have been the end of the battle. But perhaps the simbarchs' wizards cast countermagic that kept the trap from being as effective as expected. Or maybe sheer heroic determination was to blame. Either way, muddy figures floundered out of the ooze and ran onward.
Of course, the snare had done some good. It had killed some of the enemy and deprived the charge of whatever order it originally possessed. But there were still a lot of Aglarondans, their features were still contorted with rage, and if they overran the zulkirs' formation, they could still carry the day.
My turn at last, Khouryn thought. "Wall!" he bellowed. "Wall!"
His foot soldiers scrambled to form three ranks with himself in the center of the first. Everyone gripped a shield in one hand and a leveled spear in the other. The spears of the men in the back
rows were longer than those of the fellows in front, so everyone could stab at once.
Khouryn had time to glance at the human faces to each side of him, and he felt satisfaction at what he saw: fear—that was natural—but not a hint of panic. They'd stand fast as he'd trained them to, as dwarves themselves would hold the line.
Howling, the first Aglarondans lunged into striking distance.
For a few heartbeats, the defense worked as theory said it should. Overlapping shields protected those who carried them and protected their neighbors, too. The bristling hedge of spears pierced foes reckless enough to come within reach, often before those warriors could even strike a blow.
But then, as so often happened, the work got harder. Aglarondans somehow sprang past the spear points, struck past the shields, and killed defenders, tearing gaps in the formation, even as the relentless pressure of their onslaught buckled the lines. Meanwhile, spears broke or stuck fast in corpses, and sellswords snatched frantically for their secondary weapons.
Khouryn was one of those whose spear stuck fast. He dropped it and his shield, too, and pulled his urgrosh off his back.
A white warhorse, its legs black with muck, cantered at him, turning so the half-elf on its back could cut down at him with his sword. Khouryn parried hard enough to knock the blade out of its owner's grip, then, with a single stroke, chopped the rider's leg in two and sheared into the destrier's flank. Rider and mount shrieked as one, and the steed recoiled.
Khouryn glanced around, making sure he was still more or less even with the soldiers to each side. To anyone but a seasoned warrior, it might have seemed that any semblance of order had dissolved into a chaos of slaughter, into the deafening racket of weapons smashing against shields and armor and the wails of the wounded and dying. But in fact, there was still a formation
of sorts, and it was vital to preserve it.
He killed another Aglarondan, and more after that, until the gory urgrosh grew heavy in his hands, and his breath burned and rasped. The man on his left went down, and Gaedynn, who'd traded his bow for a sword and kite shield, darted forward to take his place.
Sometime after that, the enemy stopped coming. Peering out across the corpses heaped two and three deep in front of him, Khouryn saw the survivors fleeing north toward the safety of Glarondar. The Brotherhood's horsemen harried them along.
The last Khouryn knew, Aoth had been holding the cavalry in reserve. At some point, he must have ordered them forward, possibly to play a crucial role in foiling the Aglarondans' attack.
If so, Khouryn supposed he'd hear all about it later. For now, he was simply grateful for the chance to lower his weapon.
Nevron studied the fleeing Aglarondans for a time, making sure they had no fight left in them. Then he drew a deep, steadying breath. He'd need a clear mind and a forceful will to compel his demons and devils back into their various prisons. They were having a jolly time of it hunting enemy stragglers, torturing and killing Aglarondan wounded, and devouring elf and human flesh.
He was just about to start when Samas floated up in the huge, padded throne that spared him the strain of having to waddle around on his own two feet. "Should we chase the Aglarondans and finish them off?" the transmuter asked.
"No," Nevron said. "A wounded bear can still bite, and we need to conserve our strength if we're going to Thay. The simbarchs won't try to take the Reach again for a while. That will have to do."
"But if we don't come back to protect it, they'll take it eventually."
Nevron spat. "I realize the name of Samas Kul is synonymous with greed. But if you're dead, I doubt that even you will care what becomes of your dominions."