Aoth felt a mad impulse to laugh, for, given that he was a lone attacker, his situation was so hopeless as to be ludicrous. Instead, he rattled off the rest of his incantation. Though it seemed clear that Aoth was about to die, maybe Malark could go first.
Alas, no. A dark blaze of power leaped from the spear, but it frayed to nothingness when it touched Malark's haze of protection.
The spell Aoth had cast would enable him to make more such attacks, but unfortunately, no two at the same foe. As he scrambled sideways to make himself a moving target, he weighed whether to turn the magic on one of the guardians or try to blast Malark with something else.
His foes all pivoted with him. "Where are your allies?" the spymaster asked.
Apparently he did want to talk, and Aoth judged that conversation might well stall him longer than continuing a fight that would likely last only another heartbeat or two.
"As far as I know, everybody else died when the cliffs smashed together. Well, except for my griffon. He got hit by a falling boulder, but he was able to carry me this far before the wound killed him."
Malark smiled. "I'm not certain I believe you."
"The way I hear it, you're supposed to be a mighty wizard now. If anyone else were still alive, wouldn't you have found him with your scrying?"
"Perhaps, but after I shifted the mountains, I didn't try. I don't know if you can tell, but the Unmaking is close to flowering. It's possible I'm only a few breaths away. So I thought it would be a good gamble just to try to finish before any survivors reached the mountain. It still seems like a sensible strategy, once I dispose of you."
"So this is the way our friendship ends."
Malark shrugged. "It doesn't have to be. Throw your spear over the edge, submit to a binding, and you can watch the ritual unfold. You've grown into one of the finest soldiers in the East. A master killer. A true disciple of Death, even if you don't think of it that way. I'd like to believe that if you only give yourself the chance, you'll perceive the glory of what's about to happen."
"Sorry, no."
"I understand. You'd rather go down fighting, and of course it's a proper end for a man like you." Malark lifted his hand as though to signal for the guardians to attack.
Aoth groped for something, anything, to say to keep the other man talking. "Curse it, your idiotic ceremony isn't even going to work! The zulkirs say it can't!"
"I'll wager Szass Tam didn't say it, and he's the wisest of them all, as well as the only one who's actually read Fastrin's book."
"He's also crazy, and so are you."
"It no doubt looks that way, but the reality is that he and I are idealists. We both aspire to purity and perfection, although, sadly, he doesn't understand what they truly are."
"I'm telling you, the most the magic will do is kill you and everyone else in Thay and maybe in the realms on our borders."
"I don't think so, but even if you're right, that alone will be wonderful. And now, since it's clear I can't open your eyes, I'll bid you good-bye." Malark waved his hand, and the plague spewers took a stride toward Aoth. Phosphorescence glimmered in the death tyrants' eyes.
The last of the dread warriors dropped, and So-Kehur peered across the open ground between the two armies to see what the living corpses had accomplished prior to their destruction. Lenses shifted inside his various eyes to magnify the view.
The invaders were hauling bodies back to the rear of their formation and trying to fill the new breaches in their battle lines. That didn't work until a dwarf officer dissolved the back rank and ordered its members forward into the two lines in front of it.
So-Kehur turned toward Chumed and the other officers assembled beside him. In his eagerness, he wasn't particularly careful, and one pinch-faced old necromancer had to forfeit his dignity and scurry to keep a pair of his master's pincers from braining him. Well, no matter. The man was all right.
"Do you see that?" So-Kehur asked. "Bit by bit, we're breaking them apart."
To his annoyance, no one echoed his enthusiasm. In fact, for a moment, everyone hesitated to say anything at all.
Then Chumed drew himself up straighter. "Milord, I respectfully suggest that we consider what we're doing to our own army as well."
"I know we're taking casualties, but that's inevitable in war."
"Master, it appears to me that we might indeed annihilate the enemy, but only if we're willing to grind our own host down to nothing in the process. I ask you, is that a desirable outcome when our primary responsibility is the defense of Anhaurz? I recommend withdrawing. We've hurt the invaders badly enough that they no longer pose a threat. If they have any sense at all, they'll run for the border. If not, Thay has other armies to finish them off."
So-Kehur couldn't believe what he'd heard. Withdraw? Let some other commander steal his victory over the infamous zulkirs-in-exile themselves, and the renown that would accompany it? He felt a surge of fury, and Chumed fell, thrashed, and frothed at the mouth.
So-Kehur realized he'd lashed out at the seneschal with his psychic abilities. He hadn't consciously intended it but decided he wasn't sorry, either. Nor would he be even if the coward strangled on his own tongue.
He glared at his other officers. They cringed, either because the raw force of his anger was exerting pressure on their minds or simply because they were intimidated. "Does anyone else want to run away?" he asked.
If anybody did, he kept it to himself,
"Good," So-Kehur continued. "Now, I think we can break the enemy if we throw everything we have into one final assault, and this time, I'll lead the charge myself."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
19 Kythorn, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)
Dangerous as plague spewers were, in Aoth's judgment, they were less so than beholders and far less so than Malark. So he lunged in front of one of the rotting giants with its twitching, snarling face, using the corpse as a wall to separate him from the rest of his foes.
Unfortunately, it was a wall that was just as intent on killing him as everything else on the mountaintop. It doubled over, opened its mouth impossibly wide, and puked up dozens of rats. Chittering and squealing, the rodents charged.
Aoth incinerated them with a flare of fire from his spear. Heedless of the blast, the plague spewer pounded forward right behind them. It had its enormous hands raised to grab, crush, and infect him, and its strides shook the ground.
Exerting his will, Aoth tried to seize it with the same magic that had failed to kill Malark. This time, he was more successful. Rotten hide splitting, muscles bursting and spattering slime, bones snapping, the plague spewer's body crumpled in on itself. More rats-the bulges that had scuttled ceaselessly under its skin-sprang clear of the demolition but, without the giant's will to guide them, made no move to attack.
The stink of charred rat hung in the air along with drifting flecks of ash. Aoth cast about, surveying the battlefield. Malark was circling right, so he dodged left. The maneuver brought him in front of a death tyrant. The bulbous creatures floated slowly, but they didn't need to close with an opponent to attack, only maintain a clear line of sight.
A ragged burst of shadow leaped from one of the death tyrant's eyestalks. Aoth dodged, but it washed over him anyway. He felt a stab of pain, but it faded after a moment. Most likely thanks to the wards Lallara had cast on him, the attack hadn't done him any actual harm.
He focused his will to strike back, then felt something else shaking the ground. He pivoted just in time to see the oncoming plague spewer flail at him with its fist.
He avoided the blow by lunging between the giant's legs, then drove his spear into its ankle and channeled power through the point. The joint exploded, half severing the spewer's foot and sending it reeling. It toppled into the path of another blaze of power from one of the death tyrant's eyes, and as it crashed to earth, the giant turned to stone.
The petrified corpse blocked that undead beholder, but by now, another had maneuvered into position. Two of its rottin
g eyestalks bowed in Aoth's direction. He reached for it with the pulverizing magic and managed to strike first. The pressure burst it like a boil, and viscera spilled from the ruptured husk.
Unfortunately, at that point, the crushing magic ran out of power, and it was questionable whether Aoth would have a chance to cast that or any spell again. Despite his best attempts to outmaneuver them, a dozen of his enemies, Malark included, had moved into positions from which they could attack him simultaneously. The only hope of avoiding the assault would be to jump over the cliff, and then Malark would either rain destruction down on him or go back to his filthy ritual.
Ah, well, Aoth had expected it would come to this. He'd needed a kiss from Lady Luck, as well as some of the best fighting of his life, to last as long as he had.
He leveled his spear at Malark for one last strike. But Szass Tam's protege brandished his staff, and his power stabbed through Lallara's wards. Nausea twisted Aoth's guts, and his legs buckled. The strength drained out of him all at once, and the head of his spear clanked against the ground. A plague spewer lumbered forward and stretched out its hand to seize him.
Then golden light flowered at his back. The radiance didn't hurt him. In fact, it quelled his sickness and started his strength trickling back. But it seared the plague spewer, melted one of its eyes, and sent it stumbling backward.
Aoth didn't have to look around to realize that Mirror had flown up over the mountaintop and had invoked the power of his god, and at that moment, Aoth no longer cared whether the intervention was sound strategy. He was simply grateful for another chance at life.
Malark smiled as if to acknowledge an opponent's sound play in some trivial game, then aimed his staff at a target-Mirror, presumably-in the air. At that point Jet plunged down on the spymaster like a hawk killing a rabbit.
The griffon dashed Malark to earth, but his talons didn't penetrate the human's armoring enchantments, nor did his plummeting mass snap the wizard's spine or even stun him. Malark immediately hit back with a chop to the side of the familiar's feathery neck.
Perhaps because Malark was on his back, the blow didn't land hard enough to kill. But it did jolt Jet to the side, which gave the former monk of the Long Death the chance to wrench himself out from under his attacker's claws.
Run! thought Aoth. You can't handle him by yourself. Jet's response was a pang of frustration and disgust, but as Malark rolled to his feet, the familiar lashed his wings and vaulted back into the air.
Lallara floated down from above to alight beside Aoth. She jabbed the ferrule of her staff into his ribs, and a surge of vitality swept the last of his weakness away.
"Thanks," he said.
"Get up," she snapped. "You have work to do."
"I suppose I do." He clambered to his feet and cast a thunderbolt.
Lallara too hurled attack spells but also conjured barriers of fire, stone, and spinning blades to hold back the enemy. Sometimes she even managed to drop such a wall right on top of one of Malark's servants, imprisoning it or tearing it in two. Mirror, who currently resembled a smudged caricature of Aoth, alternated between evoking bursts of divine light and battling with sword and shield. Jet repeatedly dived, attacked, and climbed back up into the sky, circling until he saw another chance to strike by surprise.
All in all, it was a fine display of fighting prowess, and yet it wasn't good enough. No matter how many of Malark's guardians Aoth and his companions destroyed, the creatures kept coming. Aoth never actually saw new ones popping into existence, but in time he decided that somehow the supply must be inexhaustible.
What was even more discouraging was that no attack seemed to damage Malark himself. Once in a while, a barrage of ball lightning or a blast of frost rocked him back on his heels, but afterward, he quickly returned to working his own magic, methodically dissolving Lallara's barriers.
Until a flying blade made of absolute darkness streaked down at him from above. Malark sidestepped the cut, then tapped the conjured weapon with his staff. The black sword vanished.
Then he looked up, and Aoth did too. Szass Tam was hovering above the mountaintop. Malark gestured and shouted a word of command, and a dozen death tyrants floated upward like bubbles to turn their virulent gazes on the lich.
That should have helped clear a path from Aoth's position near the drop to Malark's at the center of the high place. But when Aoth looked for such a route, it seemed there were just as many guardians blocking the way as ever.
He cursed, then sensed motion on his flank. He pivoted toward the onrushing plague spewer, and a thunderous shout blasted the head from its shoulders. As it toppled, rats swarmed from the stump of its neck. Meanwhile, Bareris finished hauling himself up onto the mountaintop.
"I'm glad you made it," said Aoth. The bard responded with a nod, drew his sword, and struck up a dirge. The eerie tones had no effect on Aoth but were apt to afflict a foe with weakness and confusion.
Nevron swooped down in the midst of a throng of demons that immediately hurled themselves at Malark's minions. Lauzoril arrived in a cloud of tiny floating daggers that darted from point to point like hummingbirds. Finally even Samas Kul, whom Aoth had judged the likeliest to flee, floated up into view with his quicksilver wand in his blubbery hand.
The other council members positioned themselves near Lallara, no doubt in the hope that her wards would protect them as well. Then they attacked. Lauzoril recited an incantation in his dry, clerkish voice, and three plague spewers started mauling one another. Growling words of power, Nevron summoned a ghour, a huge, shaggy demon with bull-like horns and cloven hooves, and the thing spat poison smoke at the enemy. Samas daintily flourished his wand, and a death tyrant turned to snow, its eye-stalks and globular body crumbling into a shapeless mound when it thumped down on the ground.
Surely now, Aoth thought, hurling darts of green light at Malark, surely now, he and his allies were strong enough to win. They had to be, because no more reinforcements were coming.
Yet he could see they weren't. Their combined might sufficed to offset Malark's but nothing more, and in time that strength would fade, as even archmages ran out of magic. Whereas Malark, if he truly was a kind of god in this place, would likely remain as powerful as ever.
"None of our spells are hurting Malark," said Aoth. "Those of us who are warriors need to get over to him and see if we can do any better with our blades. And do it now, before the tide turns against us."
Lauzoril arched an eyebrow. "Are you proposing to charge straight through the middle of all these undead?"
"Yes. You zulkirs will use your sorcery to keep the guardians off our backs, both while we advance and after we engage Malark."
Samas turned an onrushing plague spewer into mist. "Even with our help, I don't see how you're going to make it to Springhill. But you're right, we need to try something."
"That's the plan, then." Aoth turned to Bareris and Mirror. "Ready?"
The ghost flourished his sword, and warm light pulsed from the blade. Aoth felt a rush of confidence and vitality and inferred that he'd received some sort of blessing. "Now we are," Mirror said.
The enemy still had men positioned to flank the council's army. No doubt if given the opportunity, they'd make another attempt to advance into the trees. But they hadn't tried for a while, and Gaedynn had glimpsed motion behind the front ranks as their officers redirected a number of warriors elsewhere.
From that, he inferred that henceforth, his archers and skirmishers could probably hold this position without him. He set down his longbow and headed for Eider. Crouched back down in her hollow, the griffon was grooming herself, biting at the feathers she'd damaged flapping her wings among the low-hanging branches.
She jumped up when she realized her master meant to ride her. He swung himself into the saddle, strapped himself in, strung the shorter compound bow he used for aerial combat, then turned her away from the enemy, so no one would shoot her as she took off.
Picking up speed with every pace, Eider
ran toward the riverbank, leaped, and soared over the black water. Gaedynn took a moment to savor the exhilaration of flight, then urged her higher. They wheeled and glided over the treetops so he could survey the battle as a whole.
Flashes of light-attack spells-leaped between the dark masses that were the opposing hosts. Then a chorus of battle cries howled from the one in the west, and the greater part of So-Kehur's army hurtled forward in what looked like an all-out effort to overwhelm the zulkirs' forces.
"Forward," Gaedynn said. He snatched arrows from one of the quivers buckled to his tack and loosed them at the charge as Eider dived into range. A skin kite flapped at him, and the griffon beat her wings, rose above the membranous undead, and ripped it to pieces with her talons.
The charge crashed into the defenders' spears and shields. As he nocked another shaft, Gaedynn peered, trying to determine if his sides formation was holding.
Some of it was. But, pincers snapping, tentacles lashing, and tail stabbing, a thing like a gigantic steel scorpion was tearing into the battle lines. Supposedly So-Kehur was a necromancer, fully capable of casting lightningbolts and the like, but Gaedynn supposed that a man didn't put on the shape of a beast unless he had a craving to kill like one.
He also supposed that it was up to him to keep the autharch from breaking the formation. It certainly didn't look as though anyone on the ground was having any luck. Touching a finger to the back of Eider's neck, he sent the griffon swooping lower.
Bareris sang to shield Aoth, Mirror, and himself behind barriers of fear. If it worked, even the undead should hesitate for an instant before striking at them, and an instant might be all they needed to dash on by.
The magic seemed to protect them for a few strides. Or perhaps it was the zulkirs' sorcery, blasting guardians out of their way or sending snarling demons to rend them with flaming halberds or jagged claws. Or Szass Tam's wizardry. So many death tyrants had drifted upward to surround the lich that it was almost impossible to catch a glimpse of him. Power flashed and crackled as they hammered him with their malignant gazes again and again and again. Still, hard-pressed as he was, he realized what his allies on the ground were attempting and hurled lightning and beams of searing radiance to aid them.
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