The men closest to the undead newcomer stumbled, retched, and fell. Whatever was afflicting them, it rendered them incapable of defense, and, its bare fists striking with bone-shattering force, the creature had no difficulty breaking their backs and skulls. Two crossbow bolts plunged into its torso, but it didn't even seem to notice.
Tammith charged.
The haze surrounding the dead man was cold and wet, and as soon as she entered it, a burning tightness ripped through her chest. She couldn't breathe, as if her lungs were full of water and she was drowning.
But a vampire had no need to breathe. She clamped down on her irrational terror, raised her off hand to signal her comrades to stay away-she doubted she could speak coherently with the choking fullness in her mouth and lungs-and rushed the zombie.
The creature evidently hadn't realized she too was undead, because her immunity to its lethal aura seemed to take it by surprise. When she thrust her sword at its chest, it tried to parry with its forearm, but was too slow. The blade plunged through soft, rotten tissue, scraped a rib, and pierced the heart.
But it wasn't the mortal injury she'd hoped for. Without even faltering, the creature shoved itself farther onto the blade, closing the distance, then whipped a punch at her head. She ducked and scrambled backward, yanking the sword free as she retreated.
For the next few moments, she and the zombie traded attacks. The creature had yet to connect, but as strong as it was, it might only need to hit her once to incapacitate her, and then smash her bones while she was helpless. She cut and pierced it repeatedly, but the wounds weren't slowing it down. In fact, some were starting to close. Her foe possessed a gift of quick healing akin to her own.
It was also inching the duel toward the bow of the ship, and she thought she understood the reason. It wanted to engulf the other mortals in its drowning effect. Then she'd have to slay it quickly if she wanted her allies to survive. She'd need to fight more aggressively and take chances, and that might finally give the creature the opportunity to get its hands on her.
If you want aggression, Tammith thought, I'll give it to you. She exploded into a cloud of bats.
It hurt to transform so quickly, and hurt again when each of her creatures felt the strangling weight of water in its lungs. The bats were more primal, more creatures of instinct, than she was in human form, and a fresh surge of terror threatened to overwhelm them. But the part of her that was shadowy overmind, the guiding consciousness they shared, resisted.
The bats hurtled at the zombie. It caught one in each hand, squeezed and crushed them, and all the survivors felt the death agony, but that couldn't balk them either. Two others landed on the creature's face and clawed out its eyes.
Then all the surviving bats flew away and whirled into a single form again. That didn't quell the pain, but Tammith had to ignore it. Because, orienting on the rustle of wings, her foe lurched around to confront her with slime seething in the orbits of its deliquescing face. Its new eyes had nearly formed already.
She bellowed a battle cry and cut at its neck.
Its head tumbled free of its shoulders. The body collapsed, then crawled after its severed portion. Tammith ran to the head, snatched it up, and hurled it over the rail. The body stopped moving, and the cold, wet haze evaporated.
Tammith surveyed the deck. More men were alive than otherwise, but the survivors were simply standing and gawking. "Get back to your duties!" she rasped. "Sail the ship and watch for other enemies!"
Most of them scrambled to obey, but one youth stayed huddled on the deck, weeping and gasping as if he couldn't catch his breath.
Tammith strode over to him. "Get up. You're all right now."
He just stayed where he'd fallen, his shoulders shaking, and she experienced a spasm of contempt. He was a coward, and useless. Or rather, useful only as a source of blood. If she drained him, the throbbing pain inside her would ease more quickly.
She jerked him to his feet, tilted his head back to expose the throat, and in so doing, got a good look at his tear- and snot-streaked face. He was even younger than she'd imagined, and, judging from his lack of any uniform or insignia, not a member of the zulkirs' navy, just a fisherman's son or trader's cabin boy they'd pressed into service to help with their escape.
Shame rose inside her. It didn't extinguish her thirst, but it counterbalanced it. She stared into the youth's eyes and said, "Calm down. Everything's fine."
He blinked and smiled, then stiffened. A bat far larger than the ones she could become swooped over the deck and then melted into a towering, four-armed figure with crimson eyes and a lupine muzzle. "Good evening, Captain Iltazyarra," Tsagoth said. "I've been hunting you for a while."
Aoth watched in dismay as the dream vestige came streaming and boiling from empty air. He could hear its myriad voices moaning and whimpering even from high above.
"You didn't think we were going to get through the fight without seeing that thing again, did you?" Brightwing asked. The undertone of stress in her voice revealed that the wound she'd received from the ghost was still paining her.
"I hoped so, but maybe the zulkirs can handle it this time. I know they talked about how to do it. Our job is to keep our troops away from it." He flew around bellowing a warning, and other griffon riders took up the call in turn.
Although perhaps it wasn't necessary. The dream vestige had manifested just above the water and there it floated still, either because that was where Szass Tam wanted it or because it judged it would catch more prey there. Tentaclelike extrusions groping for any sentient swimming or flying creature unfortunate enough to be within reach, it streamed forward and engulfed one of the council's war galleys. When it flowed on, no one was left on deck.
The Red Wizards and the priests of Bezantur counterattacked with every form of magic at their disposal. Hurtling sparks exploded into blasts of flame at the center of the cloud. Thunderbolts pierced it, and howling winds shoved at it. Two of the largest conjured entities Aoth had ever seen, both eel-like with vaguely human upper bodies, spat their breath weapons, then swam in to rip with fang, claw, and scythe before dissolving in the dream vestige's misty embrace.
Aoth told himself that his allies must be hurting the thing. Whether alive or undead, no being was entirely impervious to harm. But they weren't causing enough damage to stop it.
It devoured the crew of a second ship.
"Take me nearer," said Aoth.
"Are you joking?" Brightwing replied. "If the thing doesn't grab us and eat us, a stray lightning bolt will fry us."
"I trust you to dodge the dangers."
"Thanks so much."
"I need to look at the fog up close. If I do, I might see something nobody else can see."
"I think I liked you better blind." Brightwing furled her wings and dived.
They swooped over Szass Tam's servant with the height of a tall ship's mainmast separating them from the top of the billowing vapor. It wasn't nearly enough separation to keep them safe. Composed of writhing, mewling shadows all ragged and intertwined, columns of mist shot up and lashed at them. Angled upward, a lightning bolt stabbed out of the cloud just in front of them and burned an afterimage across Aoth's vision. An elemental in the form of a towering, roaring waterspout, a rudimentary face repeatedly forming and disappearing in the swirl, rushed toward them. Brightwing veered constantly, striving to evade whatever threat was closest without running straight into another.
When they finished running the gauntlet, they were above the necromancers' fleet, but the threat implicit in that seemed almost trivial compared to what they'd just endured. "Did you get what you wanted?" the griffon asked.
"No," Aoth said. "Do it again, but fly lower."
Brightwing laughed. "Of course. Why not?"
As they skimmed just above its surface, the fog-thing tried even harder to seize them, and since its extrusions didn't have to shoot far, the griffon had less time to dodge. Blasts of flame seared and dazzled them, and Aoth's thoughts threatened to
shatter into panic and confusion. The latter resulted from too much magic unleashed in too small a space and in too short a time, straining the foundations of reality itself.
He struggled to ignore the distractions and look, although the cloud streaking by just under Brightwing's talons and paws was so palpably vile that he wanted to cringe and avert his gaze. Murky, tangled, inconstant figures crawled over and over one another like a nest of snakes. Mouths gaped and twisted, and shredded fingers clutched and scrabbled.
One of the dream vestige's arms leaped up directly in front of Brightwing. She veered, but Aoth saw that she had little chance of avoiding it. Then an ammizu, a squat, bat-winged devil with a face like a boar, dived at the necromancers' servant and the misty tentacle twisted away from the griffon to snatch for the baatezu.
The shadowy vapor below gave way to black water. In another moment, Aoth and Brightwing hurtled beyond the dream vestige's reach.
"I'm not doing it a third time," Brightwing rasped.
"I wasn't going to ask. Take me back to Lallara."
"It seems," Tammith said, "that you're a bad loser."
Tsagoth laughed. "Not really. I rather admire the way you tricked me. I'm here because Szass Tam ordered me to seek you whenever my other duties permitted. You could consider it a compliment of sorts that he took special notice of your departure." He vanished.
Tammith had been expecting such a trick. She whirled and swung her sword in a horizontal cut at the level of Tsagoth's belly.
But the attack fell short. She assumed he'd position himself close enough to attack instantly, without the necessity of stepping in, but she'd been mistaken.
He sprang at her before she could recover. She flung herself to one side, and three of his snatching hands closed on empty air. The fourth, however, grabbed her shoulder, yanked, and came away with flesh, leather, and lengths of rattling chain clutched in the talons.
She cried out at the burst of pain but couldn't allow it to slow her. Tsagoth pivoted toward her, and she heaved her blade into line. He halted rather than risk impaling himself on her point, and she retreated farther away from him.
She'd kept herself alive for at least another moment, but that was all. She had no hope of winning. She still carried the hurt the zombie had given her, Tsagoth had just injured her a second time, and he overmatched her in any case.
But if she couldn't prevail, she might still survive. She couldn't turn into bats and flee over open water, but he wouldn't be able to harm her if she melted into mist, and so, although the savage part of her protested, she willed the transformation.
Pain stabbed into her back. She lost control of the change, and her form locked into solidity again.
In fact, she lost control of everything and couldn't move at all. Her legs buckled beneath her, dropping her to her knees. She would have fallen farther, but something was holding her up. Her head lolled backward, and then she could see it. At some point, Tsagoth had used his hypnotic powers on one of the sailors, who now crept forward and thrust a spear into her back.
The mortal had done a good job of it, to penetrate her mail and plunge the lance in deeply enough that the wooden shaft transfixed her heart. That was why she couldn't move, and likely never would again.
Tsagoth advanced and reached for her head, probably to tear or twist it off. Then a thunderous shout staggered the blood fiend and flayed flesh from the upper part of his body. Winddancer and Bareris plunged down on top of him. The griffon's talons impaled Tsagoth, and his momentum smashed him down onto the deck.
Tsagoth heaved himself onto his knees, tumbling his attackers off of him. He scrambled upright, and gathered himself to spring before Winddancer found his footing or Bareris could shift his sword to threaten him. Then Mirror, resembling a sketch of Bareris wrought in smoke and starlight, flew down on his flank. The ghost cut, and his intangible blade sheared into Tsagoth's torso. The blood fiend staggered.
Attacking relentlessly, the newcomers pushed Tsagoth down the deck toward the stern. Bareris slipped off Winddancer's back, ran to Tammith, shoved the unresisting sailor away from her, and, grunting, pulled the spear out of her back.
As soon as he did, her mobility returned. She felt an itching across her body and realized that, with a length of wood jammed in her heart, she'd already started to rot. Now the process was reversing.
Bareris threw the spear over the side. "I have to fight."
She bared her fangs and stood up. "So do I."
She expected him to protest that she ought to keep away from Tsagoth, at least until her wounds closed, but he didn't. Something in her manner must have told him he couldn't dissuade her. He simply turned and advanced on their foe, and she glided after him.
Bareris didn't try to climb on Winddancer's back, nor, biting and clawing, did the griffon need a rider to encourage him to fight. Battling in concert, the four of them-bard, beast, ghost, and vampire-harried Tsagoth, each defending when the blood fiend oriented on him and attacking from the side or rear when their adversary sought to rend a comrade.
By degrees, they slashed Szass Tam's agent into a patchwork of gaping wounds, and dark sores erupted where Mirror's sword had penetrated. The fiend couldn't heal them fast enough, and Tammith prayed that he was too lost to battle rage to realize that his only hope was to translate himself through space to safety.
His wolfish muzzle partly sliced from the rest of his head, he leered at her as if he'd read her mind, as if to promise that he wouldn't leave with the matter between them unresolved. Then he charged her.
That action required him to abandon any attempt at defense, and Bareris, Mirror, and Winddancer all cut deep. But Tsagoth didn't drop, the reckless tactic caught Tammith by surprise, and she couldn't dodge in time. The blood fiend grabbed her and bulled her onward. They smashed through the rail and plummeted into the sea.
The circle of abjurers recited the final line of their incantation, and power whined through the air. Some of the shrouds attached to the foremast snapped. But the cloud-thing across the water continued devouring every sentient being it could seize, exactly the same as before.
Aoth was disappointed, but not surprised. Lallara and her subordinates had tried thrice before with the same lack of success.
The zulkir pivoted and lashed the back of her hand across a female Red Wizard's mouth. Her rings cut, and the younger woman flinched back with bloody lips.
"Useless imbeciles!" Lallara snarled. Then she looked at Aoth, and, to his amazement, gave him a fleeting hint of a smile. It was the first such moment in all his years of service. "There. That made me feel a trifle better, but it didn't help our situation, did it?"
"No, Your Omnipotence. I guess it didn't."
"Then it's time to go. Would you care to accompany us? Perhaps you've earned it, even if this last piece of information-or alleged information-you brought me is worthless, too."
"Mistress, is it possible that if you and the other zulkirs all combined your powers-"
"I think not, and for all we know, the others have already transported themselves to safety."
"Surely it wouldn't take long to find out for certain."
She scowled. "The dream vestige has turned the tide in Szass Tam's favor, and our fleet is going to lose. I don't like it either, but that's the way it is. Now, do you want to live?"
"Yes, Mistress, very much. But I have griffon riders in the sky."
She looked up, then snorted. "By my estimation, not many, not anymore."
"Still." He swung his leg over Brightwing's back.
Tammith and Tsagoth splashed down into the dark water, and it paralyzed her as completely as the spear, even as it ate at her like acid. As they sank deeper, the blood fiend clawed and bit at her eroding flesh.
Something else plunged into the sea. Her eyes were burning like the rest of her, but she could make out Winddancer's talons ripping at Tsagoth, and Bareris's sword stabbing repeatedly.
The blood fiend vanished.
The weight of Tammith's
mail dragged what was left of her deeper amid a cloud of corruption. Now she was beyond Winddancer's reach. Her fingers corroded to nothing, and her sword fell away.
Bareris dived after her, seized her, and struggled to swim upward. She herself wasn't weighing him down. She scarcely had any weight left. Her mail and his brigandine were the hindrances.
She felt relieved when her chain shirt slipped off the wisp of mush she'd become, and he finally started to make headway toward the air above. She couldn't have borne it if he'd drowned.
But it was too late for her, and probably that was for the best. Now she couldn't hurt him anymore. She wished she could tell him so, and then blackness seemed to rise like a great fish from the gulf beneath her and swallowed everything.
Sopping wet, the wind chilling him, Bareris stood at the rail and stared out at the night. Illuminated by the flickering glow of burning ships and flares of mystic force, the battle raged before him on the sea and in the sky, and he knew he could make sense of it if he wanted. But he couldn't muster any interest.
Why did I swim to the surface? he wondered. What was the point? Why can't I find the courage to dive back in?
Wings snapped and fluttered behind him. He assumed it was Winddancer trying to dry her feathers until Aoth's voice said, "I expected to find you aloft directing the men."
Bareris took a breath, then reluctantly turned to face his comrade. "I was. Then I saw Tsagoth fighting Tammith. He was pressing her hard."
Aoth closed his smoldering eyes as if in pain. Perhaps he'd just realized that Tammith was nowhere to be seen, or maybe he surmised her fate from Bareris's manner. "My friend, I'm truly sorry."
"So am I," Mirror said.
For some reason, their sympathy infuriated Bareris, but he realized in a dim way that he ought not to let his anger show. "Thank you," he said, his voice catching in his throat.
"If I were you," Aoth said, "I'd just want to stand here and grieve. But you can't. The battle's going against us. Lallara's fled already, and maybe the other zulkirs, too. I don't know how many griffon riders are still alive, but we need to collect them and try to lead them to safety. On the wing, if we think land is close enough, and aboard this vessel otherwise."
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