The fire answers back As they go through lives so bitter There are those who faith do lack Worship they may soon deem fitter When altar-fire answers back

Old folk saying of the Sword Coast

Two priests of Bane conversed in the temple courtyard in Zhentil Keep.

'Done so soon? They haven't much backbone, these priestesses of Sune! All that warm and all-conquering love a poor shield against true pain, eh?'

'Done, hah! The whip broke!' The Tyrant-har of Bane held up his ruined lash for inspection. What should have been its upper third dangled uselessly, hanging by the merest thread. 'A bare backside did that! Someone's been selling us shoddy work, to be sure!'

His superior frowned. 'You only brought one lash?'

'Far from it. I broke the other three earlier, one by one-and I'm not the strongest arm among us, by a long bowshor! These new 'holier lashes' are naed, utter naed, I tell you!'

The Watchful Hand of Bane nodded. 'We'll have to find out who made them, track them down, and exalt them with a fittingly slow and painful death for the greater glory of Bane.' He shook his head. 'Work, work… never ends, does it? Why, just last-'

No one customarily crossed that temple courtyard in Zhentil Keep except clergy of Bane, so neither of the priests was in the habit of paying much attention to movements around them there.

They never saw the long, gleaming blade racing through the air, all by itself and point-first like an arrow. Speeding out of the shadows, it sliced open their throats so deeply that their heads wobbled on their shoulders before their bodies toppled.

By then, the flying sword Armaukran was far across the square and climbing, trailing a thin ribbon of blood through the twilight, as Horaundoon hurried to find more Zhentarim ro slaughter.

Arrogant priests were easy prey. What was puzzling him was how he was going to manage the slaying of an eye tyrant. Or thirty.

The wall was cold, hard, and smooth behind her shoulder blades. Jhessail drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes, then cast one of the few spells she had left, carefully saying the Weave-words-gibberish, they would seem to most hearers-then the rhyme: 'So now let all beholding gazes upon me see, not one Jhessail, but rather three!'

She passed her hands, held vertically, back and forth in front of her so the forming mirror images would appear to shift through each other, and which Jhessail was the real one wouldn't be glaringly obvious to the lich.

Sidestepping back and forth to enhance the confusion, she willed the two false images to move to her righr, then raised her hands to sketch out the elaborate gestures of… a counterfeit, no spell at all. A false magic she hoped might give the lich pause for a moment, as three identical Jhessails worked an impressive-looking magic it couldn't recognize.

Instead, it grinned, brown-gray flesh crumbling away from its skull and falling past its jaws as it did so. 'Ah, up to your old tricks! How I love being overwhelmed byyour caresses! Come to me, Mara! Come to your Elmariel now!'

Not waiting for her to obey, it shuffled forward, right past Doust and Semoor. On either side of it but a few paces away, the two priests stood frowning at each other, at a loss as to what to do.

The lich steadily closed the gap between itself and the three anxiously spellweaving Jhessails.

Doust shrugged and soundlessly mouthed the word 'Breakbone!'

Semoor shrugged back 'why not?' agreement, and they both worked breakbone spells; magics probably far too feeble to affect a lich whose bones were animated and prorected by its own magic, but what else was left to them?

Doust gave the lich a hard-eyed glare and sent his spell at its head, while Semoor aimed for irs raised hand, aglow with all those rings.

They saw the brief, silent radiances of their spells striking those targets, glows that flared and died away again, having done nothing at all. The lich went right on ignoring them.

It also went right on shuffling forward and was now barely more than an arm's length from Jhessail. Her nonsense-chanting mouth was trembling on the verge of a scream.

Semoor took two swift steps and snatched up the snoring, hairy thing Florin had become, taking hold of it high on the legs, where they joined the body.

It was heavy-Watching Gods Above, it was heavy! — but he could… could…

Semoor staggered for a moment under the boar's weight, saw Doust staring at him with mouth agape, and started to run.

Semoor was bent over backward under the weight of the boar, making of his arms and chest a sloping shelf on which the snoring beast bounced as the priest rushed forward. Semoor prayed its hairy bulk would serve as a shield against any spells the lich might cast.

He was almost at the wall-where Jhessail was staring in horror at the lich, as its arms reached hungrily for her-when he caught up to the lich, planted his right foot, and used the staggering momentum he'd built up to swing around to face the lich and heave the hairy, snoring bulk in his arms right at the lich's hands.

The boar fell through them to the floor, crashing solidly down and awakening with an aggrieved and startled snort. In his wake he left tumbling pieces of bone. Magic rings bounced in all directions. Two splintered, broken-off pairs of forearm bones clattered to the floor.

The glittering points of light that served the lich for eyes blazed up into flames of fury. It roared in anger and turned to confront Semoor.

The Light of Lathander shrank back, just as terrified as Jhessail.

Doust's piglet, the sleeping Islif, hurled with all the grunting might the Jewel of Tymora could muster, smashed right into-and through-what was left of the lich's face. The falling boar took the head off the lich's shoulders. The skull struck the floor and exploded into bony, spraying shards. The reeling body was now topped by cracked, chipped shoulderblades and collar bones. As the two priests stared, one arm fell off.

Doust and Semoor looked at each other, shrugged a little more happily this time, and sprinted past what was left of the lich to pluck up the last piglet.

'Up, Pennae,' Semoor said, as they clawed the piglet up to their collective knees, staggered, and hefted it higher. 'You make a most fetching boarlet-or whatever these beasts are properly called!'

Trotting together this time, the two priests took careful aim at the lurching remnants of the lich, got the boar to almost the height of the skeleton's ribcage-and gave a little heave before letting go.

The third piglet crashed right through the lich, smashing the corpse's pelvis and legs to ruin.

With triumphant yells the two priests sprang in, beating at those bony shards with their maces, pulverizing bones down to grit and dust.

'Holy water!' Semoor snapped, plucking at one of the precious belt vials he and Doust had been given by the Royal Court in the wake of the now-infamous reception for the lady envoy of Silverymoon.

He and Doust kicked what was left of the bones together, mashing the few larger pieces down to grit with a few last mace-blows, then sprinkled their mace-heads and the heap of riven shards with holy water.

Smoke gouted up with loud hissings, as if they were dashing water on a fire. In the wake of those sounds, the heaped bone remnants glowed momentarily. A faint, eerie half-moan and half-sigh… and the bone grit melted away to nothing but a dark patch on the stone floor.

Doust knelt and plucked up the cobweblike, collapsing rag that had been the lich's robes. Crouching together, he and Semoor peered at it, watching its row of buttons slowly fall through the disintegrating fabric, one by one, to shatter as they struck the floor. The dyed bone domes bore alternating engravings: rhe dragon encircled by nine stars and then a circle of chain, which was the old sigil of the Wizards of War, and the old crossed hunting horns badge of a noble family Doust couldn't quite recall.

'Emmarask,' Jhessail said over their shoulders, her voice still thin and panting. 'That was once an Emmarask.'

'And a war wizard,' Semoor said grimly. 'Good to know what fate they can look forward to, eh?'

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