discovered the apparition had disappeared. I don t care about your stinking spirit, he said.
Enough! Cera said. Both of you, be quiet and let me work.
She whispered a prayer, and her hands glowed as she laid them on Jet s flank. She moved them to his neck specifically, to another spot where a shadow beast had bitten the griffon, Aoth surmised, although he didn t know how she could tell and did the same thing there. Then she infused the tip of a wing with Amaunator s healing light.
Gradually, the magic did its work. Aoth could feel the change in Jet as the oblivion of near-death gave way to ordinary sleep.
Aoth took a deep breath, then let it out again. You did it, he said. He s going to be all right.
I know, Cera replied, stroking Jet s head. Grunting, she tried to stand. Aoth helped her. She looked at Vandar and said, I have a little power left. Enough to tend you, too.
Do that, said Aoth. Then the two of you stay with Jet. Jhesrhi and I are going to go and check on something.
As he led her into the trees, the wizard said, I m glad Jet s going to live.
He s too cantankerous to die, Aoth replied. Do you ever wonder why no matter where we go anymore, we end up fighting the undead?
The bare hint of a smile tugged at the corners of Jhesrhi s mouth for a moment, then vanished. I take it we re going to see if they crawled out of the tomb you and Cera found, she said. Or if we can figure out where else they came from.
Yes, Aoth replied. Once again, some footprints would be helpful.
Jhesrhi shrugged. Undead, even the ones that still have a physical form, tend to be good at sneaking around, she said.
Werewolves, too, I imagine. They may not even have needed a spell to avoid making tracks.
That still doesn t explain why, if they came from outside the grove, Jet and I didn t see them when we were flying around above the treetops. Aoth said.
They reached the spot where the hole led into the tomb. Aoth crawled in, the gnarled roots catching on his clothing and in the links of his mail. Jhesrhi followed and set the head of her brass staff burning like a torch. They stalked on down the stairs, only to find the same vacant, echoing passages he and Cera had explored before.
And as before, he and his companion ended up in the hub by the sarcophagus when their search was done. He resisted a childish impulse to kick it.
Uramar studied the stocky, tattooed war mage with the luminous blue eyes and the tall, golden-haired elementalist with the fiery staff. It wasn t difficult. As people commonly reckoned distance, they were only a couple of paces away. In another, equally valid sense, they and their frustration occupied a completely different world.
From their remarks to one another, Uramar gathered that the frustration stemmed partly from the fact that the tattooed man was accustomed to seeing whatever existed to be seen. But at the moment, it was his misfortune to be looking for something invisible to any form of vision, even truesight.
Uramar s invisibility gave him an advantage. He could spring forth and strike by surprise. As his hands clenched on the hilt of his greatsword, an assortment of his broken souls whispered to him.
Kill them
It will be easy
Kill them, reanimate them, and then they can serve our cause
But as was often the case, other voices disagreed.
No. You saw how formidable they are
If there was only one, yes, but there are two
Don t risk giving away our secrets. A better opportunity will surely come along
For a moment, the clamor set pain throbbing in Uramar s temples, and he staggered a step and groaned. Then the contradiction resolved itself, and he knew that he should indeed wait.
Such being the case, there was no point in letting proximity to the mortals tantalize the more bloodthirsty parts of his nature any further. He turned and crept away. Instinct made him silent even though he knew that really, the folk behind him wouldn t notice even if he shouted at the top of his mismatched lungs.
THREE
Jhesrhi had noticed that few structures in Immilmar looked particularly new. Apparently Rashemi saw little reason to put up a new building until an old one had rotted out and fallen down. But even by local standards, the whitewashed longhouse called the Witches Hall had an air of antiquity about it. It was easy to believe that the dragons, unicorns, and hounds carved under the eaves had glared their forbiddance at the first Iron Lord to walk the city s muddy, unpaved streets.
And forbiddance it would surely have been, for as the summons had made clear, even when the Wychlaran saw fit to call nonhathrans to their sanctuary, that didn t mean they were invited into the sacred precincts of the hall. As Jhesrhi, Aoth, and Cera approached, a masked woman stepped forward from her post before the front entrance and gestured for the newcomers to follow her.
She led them around to the south side of the longhouse, where someone had either dug out a small amphitheater or had taken advantage of a natural depression in the ground to fashion one. Somebody had removed some of the snow, too, but Jhesrhi suspected the plank benches would still make cold, damp seating for those who, unlike her, didn t have fire flowing in their veins.
By the Pure Flame, Aoth muttered.
When Jhesrhi glanced around, she saw what had annoyed him. She knew he d hoped the summons was for him and his comrades alone, or at worst for them, Vandar, and other representatives of the Griffon Lodge. Plainly that wasn t the case, for Dai Shan, the leader of the Shou, and Mario Bez were approaching, each accompanied by several of his men. The skyship captain shot Aoth a grin as he made a point of claiming a seat right beside him.
The heroes of the day, Bez said. Congratulations.
We were ready for them, Aoth replied with a shrug.
Still, even for dragon slayers, it can t have been easy to contend with undead spellcasters and superior numbers, the captain said. You should have told me what you intended. I could have spared a few men to stay and lie in wait with you.
And win the Storm of Vengeance a share of the credit if the killers actually did show up? Cera asked.
Bez spread his hands in mock dismay. Sunlady, you wound me, he said. Naturally, my concern would have been your safety, and Lady Jhesrhi s.
Jhesrhi decided there was no reason to pay further attention to what Bez had to say. He was more than likely sniffing for information which Aoth and Cera were too wary to give him and his was the sort of oblique, bantering conversation that made her feel tongue-tied and dull. Well, except sometimes, when it was Gaedynn
With a scowl, Jhesrhi pushed the archer s face with its shrewd eyes and flippant smirk out of her mind. In search of distraction, she watched Mangan Uruk, Vandar, and Folcoerr Dulsaer arrive. The berserker wore his beadwork regalia, and the half-elf had a sneer for each of his rivals.
Almost as soon as everyone had found a seat, they all had to stand up again as masked witches filed out of the longhouse.
They were not alone. Ghostly telthors flew, padded, bounded, scurried, or crawled along with them. In that first moment, Jhesrhi made out a hawk, a vulture, two bears, a squirrel, an otter, and a snake. Many of the creatures flickered, visible one instant and gone the next. None left any tracks in the snow. Their profusion reminded Jhesri that Rashemen was filled with nature spirits.
A number of the smaller familiars accompanied their mistresses to their seats on the benches. The others looked down on the assembled humans from the top of the amphitheater, or perched on the limbs of nearby trees.
