And what could the exhausted warriors on the ground do about it? Men who d been riding in litters or limping along using their spears for crutches struggled to stand on their own two feet. Others screeched hoarsely, struggling to raise the fury one more time, and hefted the javelins they surely realized could never reach the enemy in the sky. The stag men with their longbows might do a little better, but not enough for it to matter.
Vandar gripped his spear and the hilt of his sword. You re magical, he silently pleaded. With the wizards and the sunlady gone, you re the only magic we have left. Do something! Tell me what to do!
But the weapons didn t answer, at least not in any way he could perceive. And he realized that, powerful though they were, they couldn t grow wings on his back.
The Storm of Vengeance swooped in at an angle to the road, and the travelers strung out along it. A round object arced over the ship s side. When it hit the ground, it exploded into a cloud of green vapor. Those touched by the fumes fell, retched and thrashed for a moment, and then lay still.
A deafening sound knocked down other warriors. Bleeding from their ears and noses, some of them did try to get up again, but only a single stag warrior succeeded.
Javelins and arrows flew up from the ground, but as impotently as Vandar had expected.
He remembered his fantasies of just a few moments before and despised himself for them. Because he was never going to lead his brothers to glory. By the time the pale sun reached its zenith in the gray winter sky, the Griffon Lodge would be extinct.
He reached down inside himself to find his own rage. For after all, what else was there to do?
EPILOGUE
Aoth didn t know how long he d wandered through the dark, silent labyrinth of tombs, graveyards, and funerary sculpture. Long enough for thirst to dry his throat. Long enough, maybe, for the struggle beneath the Fortress of the Half-Demon to grind to an end in one way or another.
Long enough for Cera and Jhesrhi to come to grief?
At the thought of them trapped in the cold, dead maze like he was, maybe fighting for their lives against creatures like the ones Dai Shan had hinted at, his jaw clenched. Suddenly, he couldn t believe he d resigned himself to losing Cera if her calling led her to a high priestess s throne. Surely they could still find a way to be together, even if it was only for part of the year. Nor could he credit that he d proceeded so gingerly when looking into Jhesrhi s transformation. True, she hated talking about intimate matters, but he couldn t just watch and wait if something truly bad had happened to her, especially if it wasn t over.
Things got away from me, he thought. Because the last couple of years were hard. There d been the mad schemes of necromancers and dragons to thwart, and the Brotherhood to haul back from the edge of ruin. But it was a poor excuse, and he promised himself he d do better when the three of them were free of this wretched place.
First of all, he needed to free himself. As Dai Shan had observed, he lacked the specialized sort of esoteric knowledge that might have told him how, so all he could do was to explore and examine his surroundings with his fire-kissed eyes. They hadn t observed anything helpful yet, but he had to believe that eventually, they would.
Whenever he happened upon an arch crowned with three notches, he looked long and hard before moving on. And in time, he came to one that opened on an ossuary, an octagonal chamber with a vaulted ceiling. Intricate floral patterns, each made of a particular human bone, decorated the walls.
He studied the entry for a time, then sighed and started to turn away. But before he could, the view beyond the threshold flickered. It became a more modest vault, with six stone sarcophagi on pedestals. And the space was only dark for want of light, not choked with the cold, vile murk through which he d been moving. But it stayed for only an instant before reverting to the crypt of bones.
Aoth s hand tightened on his spear. He d heard of such a thing. It generally took the right trigger, the right magic, to open a doorway where two worlds touched. But occasionally it happened spontaneously, or in response to some cosmic phenomenon like a particular phase of the moon. Such an event had trapped Gaedynn and Jhesrhi in the Shadowfell, and, unless he was mistaken, another one had just occurred in front of him.
He resolved that when the arch changed again, he was going through.
He realized there were two potential problems with that idea. The first was that, for all he knew, the gate might not reopen anytime soon. The other was that when it did, it only stayed open for a heartbeat. If he couldn t make it all the way through before it snapped shut again, it would cut him to pieces.
But to the Abyss with defeatist thoughts like that, he thought. He poised himself in front of the arch like a runner waiting for the starting bugle. And then he waited.
He waited until his muscles ached from standing still, and, despite the urgency of his task, his attention tried to wander like a dog tugging at the leash. He stretched, used the magic of his tattoos to refresh his body and mind, and locked his focus where it needed to be.
Suddenly, the six sarcophagi reappeared.
Aoth lunged forward so explosively that he couldn t stop in time to keep himself from banging his knee on one of the sarcophagi, and a bolt of fiercer pain told him he d somehow stressed his sore neck. But he was through. He looked back and saw that the arch now opened on a corridor that was simply dark, not filled with the festering gloom of the maze.
As he prowled down the passage, spear and targe at the ready, he listened for sounds of those he d left behind in the mortal world, for talk, shouts, screams, the clash of blades on shields, the boom and crackle of battle magic, or the chiming of the stag men s bells. But there was none of that, and after he had passed several other vaults and rounded a corner, he spotted sunlight up ahead.
It was spilling through the bars of a wrought-iron gate. Aoth charged his spear with power and used it as a pry bar to break open the lock. He warily stepped out of the mausoleum into a graveyard for humbler folk.
The snow here was gray with ash, and, although imposing, the castle surrounding the graveyard had the same sooty appearance.
As was only natural. Aoth couldn t see much of the surrounding mountains. The walls of the citadel blocked them out. But the red glow of the volcanoes reflected off the leaden clouds.
Appalled, he now understood why he hadn t heard any trace of his comrades or their enemies. It was because he was nowhere near the Fortress of the Half-Demon. He wasn t even in Rashemen anymore.
He was back in Thay.
