Prophet of the Dead

Unfortunately, to no effect. The steel figure, if steel was indeed what the giant was made of, should have crumbled into particles finer than the finest dust, but instead it stood unscathed.

Still, someone noticed the momentary flare of emerald light. Several figures stood around the feet of the construct, and despite the intervening distance, one of them, a female ghoul with a glimmering pearl in one eye socket and something tiny-lice? maggots? — crawling in the folds of her gown, oriented on Aoth. Her clawed, withered hand snatched a wand from a sheath on her belt.

Aoth pointed his spear and, still whispering in the increasingly forlorn hope that he wouldn’t rouse foes closer to hand, rattled off words of power.

Whirling blades of silvery light shimmered into existence in the air around the ghoul sorceress and her companions. They didn’t even scratch the construct’s legs, but they repeatedly chopped undead flesh and bone. The punishment might not suffice to destroy the Raumvirans, but it should at least prevent them from taking offensive action while they floundered clear of the effect.

Once again, Aoth hurled the pure chaotic essence of destruction at the construct. Meanwhile, Orgurth lunged into the path of an onrushing skeleton that had spotted the source of the green ray and hacked its skull off the top of its spinal column.

As before, the construct took no harm from Aoth’s attack. Now safely beyond the spinning blades, the ghoul sorceress brandished her wand and snarled words in a language Aoth didn’t recognize.

The meaning became clear, though, when the metal giant pivoted in his direction and charged, swinging itself on its long arms like a man on crutches. It picked up speed with every stride.

Aoth considered his options. Cold? Flame? A thunderbolt? Any of them might work. None was a good bet considering that the construct had already proved impervious to one of the most devastating attacks in his arsenal.

He turned and ran.

Orgurth sprinted after him. “The slope’s that way!” the orc cried, pointing with his scimitar.

“I know.”

More undead scrambled to intercept them as they neared the drop at the eastern edge of the saddle. Orgurth hacked the legs out from under another skeleton. Aoth drove his spear into a dread warrior’s chest, sent power surging through the weapon, and blasted its torso to scraps of rot and bone.

He spun around a few paces from the drop-off. “Keep the undead away from me,” he said.

“Fair enough.” The orc brandished his scimitar at the oncoming construct. “As long as you keep that thing away from me.”

“I’m working on it.” Aoth started an incantation, whipped his spear up and down like a drumstick in time to the cadence, and for an instant wondered once again how Jhesrhi was faring. She could cast this particular spell better than he could. But in her absence, he’d have to make do.

Orgurth cut to the chest, and a zombie dropped. Then, three times as tall as a man, the construct caught up to the sellswords.

Still reciting his incantation, Aoth dodged out of its way and was disappointed but unsurprised when it blundered past him but then managed to stop instead of charging right over the edge of the cliff. It was reasonably nimble for something so huge and heavy, and besides, when was anything ever that easy?

The construct turned and swiped at him with one of those long arms, and he leaped back just in time to keep its open hand from smashing him to pulp. As he recited the final words of his spell, he raised his spear over his head, reversed his grip on it, and stabbed it down through the snow into the frozen, rocky earth beneath.

Heaving the ground up and down, waves swept out from the point of penetration as if the saddle were a pool of water and Aoth had just dropped a boulder into it. Even knowing what was coming, he staggered and barely managed to keep his footing. Orgurth snarled a startled obscenity as he did fall down.

Meanwhile, poised at the very brink of the drop-off, towering, ponderous, the construct tottered back and forth, back and forth … but didn’t topple over.

As the jolting in the ground subsided, Aoth could see the automaton settling and recovering its balance. It raised its arm for another blow.

Aoth stepped back into the distance so the steel giant wouldn’t have to move away from the edge. As, still not quite balanced, it started its swing, he thrust his spear at the ground under its feet and shouted a word of destruction.

The word roared forth as a blast of focused sound that shattered the dirt and rock under the construct and splashed the rubble out into empty space. The steel giant reeled backward and plummeted out of sight.

Aoth resisted an impish desire to stand and listen to it crash and clang its way down the mountainside. Wasting even a moment was inadvisable.

Although, he didn’t think he and Orgurth were in insurmountable trouble. Everything had happened so quickly that many of the Raumvirans likely still didn’t realize they had foes in their midst, and the unexpected earthquake should have thrown those who did understand into disarray.

Whereas Aoth had more magic already selected for the casting. With luck, he and the orc should be able to retreat unharmed and lose themselves in the darkness.

Then, however, the saddle shook again. Stumbling, Aoth peered around but didn’t see the ghoul sorceress or anyone else casting the same spell he had. Apparently, his original magic had further weakened preexisting faults in the bedrock.

Rumbling, more snow and earth crumbled over the edge. Worse-much worse-it also poured down into a crack that started opening at the brink and knifed its way inward, cutting across Aoth’s intended line of retreat.

Standing where he was, even he couldn’t see how deep the new crevasse was, but it was plainly deeper than a ditch. Deep enough that he and Orgurth couldn’t just hop in and scramble right out the other side. He turned, taking stock of where the enemy was and what the enemy was doing, and realized he and his comrade had only one recourse.

“This way!” he said. He ran toward the caves, and Orgurth followed. Arrows rained down around them, and blue and scarlet rays stabbed in their direction.

Halting and turning when necessary, Aoth cast spells of his own. A burst of conjured sunlight seared and dazzled powerful undead and burned common zombies and skeletons to ash. A wall of fire leaped up to hold back other foes.

Flames didn’t stop the constructs, though. Either leaping over the luminous yellow barrier or simply plunging straight through, they raced after the fugitives like hounds coursing after a pair of stags.

By the time Aoth and Orgurth ran into the clear space the Raumvirans had left between their front ranks and the mountain fastness, the automatons were closing fast. Aoth wondered if he should stop, turn, and throw another spell. It might cost him his life, but maybe the orc at least would reach the open cave mouth.

Then, however, his fire-kissed eyes saw a sudden glimmer of power run through the peak before him. It looked like water flowing through a network of tiny cracks, and when it finished defining itself, he also discerned the first infinitesimal shifting in the bulging masses of stone it had outlined.

The constructs swept toward Aoth and Orgurth in a converging wave of sculpted blades, fangs, talons, pincers, and stingers, of jointed metal, wood, ceramic, and even stone. Then the face of the Rashemi’s mountain refuge, or a fair portion of it, anyway, dropped away from the granite underneath. Banging and crashing, enormous and unnaturally smooth and round-to make them roll better, no doubt-the dislodged boulders cascaded onto the saddle and tumbled onward.

Aoth and Orgurth stopped running toward the stones and poised themselves to dodge. But Aoth couldn’t see any spaces to dodge into. The boulders were like an onrushing wall.

He drew breath for another magical bellow. Maybe the blast would bump one or two of the boulders off course and make a space.

Then, however, one stone veered sharply to the left, and the one beside it flew off the ground in an arc that would take it safely over the warriors in front of it, in each case, for no apparent reason. Aoth wondered if an earth spirit was steering the boulders.

It was a night for cacophonies, and the crashing as the tumbling stones slammed into the constructs was the most deafening yet. When Aoth yelled for Orgurth to start running again, he could barely hear himself for the