Bareris took hold of the sword he'd dropped when Malark had struck him, and clambered to his feet. He stood partly bent at the waist as though still in pain. But his voice was steady as he said, "Never in this world or any other."
"I'm inclined to concur," said Lauzoril, still at the center of his cloud of little darting knives. "You wouldn't suggest such a thing if you didn't recognize that we have you at a profound disadvantage."
"Don't be so sure," the necromancer replied. "In particular, don't be certain that it's all of you against the one of me." He shifted his gaze to Aoth.
Aoth took a breath. "Actually, it is."
"Even though your sellsword band and the friends who help you lead it are on the brink of destruction? I'd gladly order So-Kehur to break off the attack."
Aoth couldn't fathom how Szass Tam even knew about the battle by the Lapendrar, let alone that the invaders were in trouble, but his instincts told him the lich had spoken the truth. Still, he answered, "I trust the Brotherhood to pull through somehow. I mean to stick by the friends who need me here."
"You won't be doing them a favor. Have you forgotten they're undead, and I'm the world's preeminent necromancer? If obliged to fight, the first thing I'll do is turn them into my puppets and force them to kill you."
Bareris straightened up somewhat and smiled wolfishly. "Try."
"Yes," said Mirror, "do. I may perish in this place. A warrior runs that risk in any battle. But I have faith it won't be as your slave."
Szass Tam kept his eyes on Aoth. "Rancor is clouding their judgment," the necromancer said. "Don't let it cloud yours. Remember that your employers plan to kill you."
Aoth paused to give the zulkirs a chance to respond to the charge. None did, at least not in the moment he allowed them. It was sufficient time for an honest denial, just not enough to compose a convincing lie.
"I'll deal with that when the time comes," said Aoth. "You tried to murder the whole world. You have to answer for it."
Szass Tam sighed. "Do I? Well, if you all feel-"
Aoth abruptly saw that the undead wizard was making mystic gestures with his left hand. "Watch out!" he shouted.
Szass Tam flung out his arm, and a mass of shadow exploded into being, with vague demented faces appearing and dissolving in the murk. Growing longer and taller as it traveled, it hurtled at his foes.
Those who'd charged Malark were closest to the effect, and it was rushing at them so fast that even as Aoth leveled his spear, he felt a sick certainty that it would hit before he could cast a spell. But Mirror drew another burst of radiance from his sword, Lallara spat a word of forbiddance, and the wave shattered into nothingness as though it had smashed itself against an invisible mass of rock.
Meanwhile, Lauzoril hurled a dagger at a target too distant and high above the ground for even an expert knife thrower to hit.
Except that the blade flew like an arrow, not a dagger, and turned to crimson light an instant before piercing the lich's body. "Fall," Lauzoril said. And Szass Tam plummeted to earth.
Gaedynn often remarked that if the gods had meant for him to go within reach of his enemies' swords and axes-or in this case, tentacles, claws, and stinger-they wouldn't have made him the finest archer in the East. But his arrows weren't hurting So-Kehur, the scorpion-thing was dragging Khouryn around on the ground, and now Jhesrhi, still disguised as Lallara, was advancing entranced toward her adversary's pincers.
Gaedynn sent Eider diving toward So-Kehur, meanwhile switching out his bow for a falchion. The griffon slammed down on the autharch's head, above the human mask, and, wings extended for balance, managed to cling to the smooth, rounded steel. Up close, the scorpion-thing smelled of the gore of the men he'd slaughtered.
"Rip!" Gaedynn shouted. What he actually wanted was for Eider to break away So-Kehur's remaining eyestalks. She wouldn't have understood such a specific command, but she was in the right place for her raking talons to snag them. He leaned to the right and smashed at one himself.
Mainly, though, he watched for So-Kehur's counterattack. The arms supporting the pincers didn't look flexible enough to reach him, but after an instant, the gigantic stinger whipped up and over.
"Go!" Gaedynn touched his heels to Eider's flanks. The griffon leaped clear and lashed her wings. Behind her, metal clanged.
Gaedynn climbed, turned his mount, and grinned to see what they'd accomplished. Most of the remaining eyestalks were gone. There was even a gap between two of the curved plates comprising So-Kehur's head. Either Eider's talons had caught in a crack and pulled them apart, or the autharch's own stinger had stabbed down and poked a hole.
Looking puny, almost vestigial, compared to the pincers, tentacles, and stinger, So-Kehur's manlike arms and hands swirled in a complex pattern. Gaedynn's momentary satisfaction soured into apprehension as he realized the necromancer was about to cast a spell. He hoped it would be something Eider could dodge.
Then So-Kehur lurched off balance, and Gaedynn saw that the tentacle that had gripped Khouryn no longer had anyone at the end of it. The dwarf had evidently come to, freed himself, scrambled back under the scorpion, and resumed chopping at the legs.
No longer mind-bound, Jhesrhi brandished her staff and cried words of power. The wind howled and threw stones. The big opal eyes in So-Kehur's mask shattered.
Spearmen shouted and advanced, weapons jabbing, and So-Kehur wheeled and scuttled away. Gaedynn started to pursue, but a zombie owl as big as Eider swooped down at him, and he had to fight it instead.
Szass Tam smashed down on the mountaintop, then immediately tried to rise. Bareris shouted, Aoth hurled a crackling lightningbolt from the point of his spear, and Mirror drew a pulse of searing light from his sword. One of the zulkirs caught the lich in a booming blast of flame, and another-Samas Kul, presumably, although Bareris would have had to look around to be certain- turned the ground under him into sucking liquid tar.
Assailed by so much magic all at the same instant, Szass Tam nearly vanished in the flash. When it faded, his robes were charred and shredded, and so was his flesh, portions stripped entirely to reveal the bone beneath.
Yet he still moved as though his muscles and organs had merely been a mask whose loss failed to hinder him in the slightest. He planted the butt of his shadowy staff on top of the tar, heaved his feet up out of the sticky mass just as if his prop were made of solid matter, then turned the ground to rocky earth again. He pulled off a scrap of loose, blackened flesh dangling over his left eye and raised his staff above his head.
He surely meant to conjure with the staff, but a hyena-headed demon twice as tall as a man charged him and struck down at him with a greataxe, and he had to use the implement to parry. A floating thing like the shadow of a jellyfish followed just behind the brute with the axe, and then several other creatures, all of them equally grotesque, appeared. Plainly, Nevron had no intention of allowing Szass Tam to cast spells without interference.
And Bareris couldn't bear to let the familiars tear at the lich while he stood back. He sprinted toward the knot of struggling figures, and Mirror bounded after him. Aoth cursed as though he thought the two of them were doing something stupid, and maybe they were. But it was impossible to care.
Moments later, something rustled over Bareris's head. He glanced up and saw Aoth and Jet flying toward Szass Tam and the demons. The warmage evidently hoped height would give him a clear shot at their foe.
Bareris and Mirror dashed up to the circle of roaring, flailing demons. The ghost's lack of a solid form allowed him to slip through the press without so much as a pause. But Bareris had to halt mere strides away from the action.
He shivered with the mad urge to cut down one of demons just to clear a path. Then the hyena-headed giant reeled backward. Its eyes were on fire, and snakes had grown out of its chest and were biting it repeatedly. Its huge axe floated in the air, hacking at those opponents who tried to come at Szass Tam from behind.
Bareris lunged into the space the blinded demon
had vacated. Singing a song of hate, he cut at Szass Tam's chest.
The blow glanced off. Szass Tam thrust his staff at his new attacker. Darkness stabbed from his eyes into Bareris's head. For a moment, Bareris couldn't see or think. But he still felt the exaltation of his rage, and when it ebbed, his battle anthem brought it surging back, and it broke the grip of the confusion.
He cut again, and again failed to pierce Szass Tam's armoring enchantments. The necromancer whispered words of power, and some of the demons pivoted to attack their fellows. He waved his hand, a ruby ring on a withered finger flashed, and a dozen wounds split the hulking body of a furry, gray-black, bat-winged creature as though invisible blades had hacked it from the inside. A flourish of the shadow staff made darkness seethe and divide into manlike silhouettes.
Bareris felt a sudden pang of fear that, though it scarcely seemed possible, he and all his formidable allies were going to lose. Then Mirror lunged and plunged his insubstantial sword through Szass Tam's body.
At first Szass Tam scarcely seemed to feel the violation. Then both the blade and Mirror himself flared, bright as the sun, and the lich cried out.
Bareris had seen his comrade channel the power of his god before, but never so much of it, because it was dangerous. No matter how worthy a champion Mirror might be, no matter how faithfully he adhered to his ancient code of chivalry, the divine light was inherently antithetical to his undead condition.
And equally poisonous to Bareris. The radiance burned him even though he wasn't the target. It might do worse if he dared step any closer.
But he didn't care about that, either. All that mattered was that Szass Tam stood transfixed and vulnerable. Singing, he hurled himself at the lich.
The light was agony, but the pain didn't balk him. Rather, it seemed to feed his fury. He cut and cut, and the strokes plunged deep into Szass Tam's body, cleaving what remained of his flesh and splintering bone.
Until the radiance died. Bareris looked and saw that Mirror had simply disappeared, like a flame that had burned out.
Bareris felt a pang of grief. Then skeletal fingers grabbed him by the neck.
"He's gone to his god," Szass Tam croaked. "You go to your woman."
The lich's fingers simultaneously cut and pulled. Bareris felt tearing pain, a nauseating whirl of vertigo as his head tumbled free of his body, and then nothing more.
His tongue smarting because he'd chewed it during his seizure, Chumed put his foot in the stirrup. But before he could hoist himself onto his charger, he spotted So-Kehur scuttling toward him though the confusion of other warriors in retreat and the reserves trying to push their way forward against the tide.
From the looks of it, So-Kehur's scorpion body had taken a considerable beating. Chumed tried not to feel too pleased about it. That sort of spite could be dangerous, given that the lord he served possessed psychic sensitivities.
"Did you see?" So-Kehur cried. He spoke as if he no longer even remembered striking Chumed down.
"No, Milord. I was… indisposed until just a few moments ago."
"I almost killed Lallara herself! I had her in my grip!"
Almost. The boast of the weak and stupid.
"I wish I had seen it," Chumed said. "But I have tried to assess the overall progress of the battle, and it appears to me that our assault isn't breaking the stalemate. For that reason, I still advise-"
"Where are my artisans? I need new eyes, a patch, and any other repairs they can make quickly. Artisans!" So-Kehur lowered himself onto his belly, no doubt so the craftsmen could reach his upper surfaces. He had a breach between two of the plates on the back of his head.
"Do I take it that you plan to rush back into battle?" Chumed asked.
"Of course!" So-Kehur said.
"Of course." Chumed clambered onto the autharch's back.
One of So-Kehur's remaining eyestalks twisted its optic in his direction. "What in the name of the Black Hand are you doing?" the necromancer asked.
"I see a broken piece dangling. If I pull it free, that will save the artisans a moment."
"Oh. Well, in that case-"
Chumed whipped his sword from its scabbard and thrust the point into the gap between the plates. The blade punched into the silver egg housing So-Kehur's brain.
The scorpion-thing convulsed. Chumed leaped off its back. A flailing tentacle missed him by a hair, and then he landed. Awkwardly. Momentum hurled him to one knee.
He sensed the huge steel body rolling toward him. He scrambled up, ran, lunged out from under it just in time to avoid being crushed, then turned to see what it would do next.
It gave a rattling, clattering shudder, then lay inert.
Other officers had come hurrying to attend So-Kehur. Now they stood frozen, gaping at their master's body and his killer.
Chumed raked them with a glower. "I'm in command now," he said. "Does anyone dispute that?"
Apparently, no one did.
"Then pull our men back! Move!"
For a heartbeat or two, Aoth clung to hope. After all, he'd more than once seen Mirror wither to the verge of nonexistence only to reappear. And after becoming undead, Tammith had twice survived decapitation.
But this time the ghost had vanished so utterly that not even spellscarred eyes could spot a trace of him, and dark wet patches cut through the bone white flesh of Bareris's severed head and body as ninety years' worth of deferred corruption flowered in an instant.
Anguished, Aoth realized that at least his friends' deaths freed him to hurl his most potent spells at Szass Tam without fear of hitting them as well. He didn't care about Nevron's remaining demons, because they no longer posed a threat to the lich. It was all they could do to fight the fiends that had fallen under Szass Tam's control and the phantoms he'd shaped from the fabric of the night.
Aoth aimed his spear and rained gouts of fire down on the necromancer's head. The zulkirs hurled flares of their own power.
The magic tore the demons apart and seared the shadows from existence. It reduced Szass Tam to little more than a blackened skeleton, but a skeleton who kept his balance at the heart of the blast.
His rings, amulets, and other talismans glowing with crimson light, Szass Tam turned his empty orbits on Samas Kul. The lich brandished the shadow staff, and a huge pair of fanged jaws appeared in the air in front of his former ally. The apparition shot forward, caught Samas in its jagged teeth, and chewed him to bloody pieces, all so quickly that the fat transmuter only had time for a single, truncated squeal.
Aoth conjured a flying sword to hurtle down at Szass Tam, who somehow sensed it coming, parried it with his staff, and dissolved it without even bothering to glance upward. An instant later, another fiery blast cast by one of the zulkirs rocked the lich. It tore away some of his ribs, but that didn't seem to trouble him, either.
He stared at Lauzoril. "You fall," he said, the words clear even though his lips had burned away. "All the way to the bottom."
Lauzoril's face twisted, and he shuddered. Then he turned, ran, and hurled himself over the edge of the cliff.
Nevron finished snarling an incantation. A goristro, a demon somewhat resembling a colossal minotaur, appeared in front of him. Running on its hind feet and the knuckles of its hands, it instantly charged Szass Tam.
The lich pointed his staff and spoke a word of power. The demon turned to glass and, off balance, toppled. It shattered with a prodigious crash.
Nevron started another incantation. Szass Tam turned his fleshless hand palm up and made a clutching gesture. The demon master fell, and a second Nevron, made of insubstantial phosphorescence, appeared standing over the body. For once, he didn't look angry or contemptuous but astonished.
Szass Tam recited rhyming words, and Nevron's ghost shrank into a pudgy creature only half as tall, with grubs wriggling in its open sores. Aoth just had time to recognize it as a mane, the weakest and lowliest form of demon, slave to every other. Then it vanished, probably to the Abyss.
Lallara
whispered, and a wall of rainbows shimmered into being between Szass Tam and herself. "On further consideration," she panted, "I do wish to take advantage of the truce you offered."
Szass Tam laughed. "Sorry, Your Omnipotence. But you and your allies insisted on this fight, and now I intend to finish it. There aren't going to be any more zulkirs in exile to plot against me."
He hurled a ragged burst of shadow. The rippling colors in Lallara's barrier grayed when it splashed against them, and then their brightness blazed anew.
Grimly aware that there was hardly any power left in it, or in him, for that matter, Aoth aimed his spear to hurl a lightningbolt. Lallara glanced up at him. "Come here," she said.
"My attack spells won't pass through your wall," he said.
"Now!" she snapped.
Maybe she had a plan. He sent Jet winging in her direction. Meanwhile, Szass Tam hurled another murky blast against the shield. This time, it took longer for the colors to reassert themselves, and when they did, they were softer than before.
Jet and Aoth swooped over the failing defense and landed by Lallara. Despite its sagging wrinkles, her crone's face looked taut with strain.
"What do we do?" asked Aoth.
She reached in a pocket, extracted a silver ring, and tossed it to him. As soon as he caught it, he felt the nature of the spell stored inside it. Under normal circumstances, it would enable the user to translate himself and a companion or two through space.
"Will this work now?" he asked. Maybe she'd figured out that with Malark's crystal diadem and staff broken, it would.
"We couldn't win," Lallara gritted, "even if it did. But I've spent my life afflicted with idiots and incompetents, and you were never either. Go live if you can." Szass Tam threw his power at the wall of light, staining and muting the colors, and cracks of inky darkness snaked through them. Lallara cried out as though she herself were breaking and stamped the butt of her staff against the ground.
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