“Well done,” he said. “But I need your help with a special task.”
“Anything,” she replied.
“We need to pull the breach wider. Let Shadow
Nyevarra hesitated. Then: “I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Of course you can! You’re powerful, and so is the staff you carry. And I’m going to help.”
“You don’t understand. Adjusting the balance with a measure of care is one thing. But we don’t dare just unleash death and decay on the Urlingwood to do absolutely anything they want. There needs to be a living forest when our conquest is over.”
“There probably will be, and even if there isn’t, Rashemen will still hold power for the Eminence to harness.”
“We can win this fight without risking the soul of the land!”
“You led troops during your mortal existence. You should know how to assess the progress of a battle. Take a look at this one and then tell me you’re certain of victory.” He gestured toward the frenzied confusion of griffons screeching, berserkers shouting, blades clashing on shields and the stone and metal flanks of golems, and flares of magic banging and shrilling.
Nyevarra hesitated again, and then Uramar, who must at some point have finished palavering with the lich, diffidently rested a big, mottled hand, all crooked, ill-matched fingers and old but still prominent suture scars, on her shoulder.
“I know you didn’t want to,” the blaspheme said, “but you need to choose. What are you first and foremost, a witch of Rashemen or an undead of the Eminence? If the answer is witch, then put the survival of the forest ahead of all else. Just don’t expect any mercy for your forbearance if the hathrans defeat you yet again. They’ll slay you just like they did the first time.
“But if the answer is an adherent of the Eminence,” Uramar continued, “then do whatever it takes to ensure our victory. You’ll crush your old enemies and rule as one of the great powers of Rashemen forever after, beloved by all who matter for what you gave to our cause.”
Nyevarra stood and pondered for a moment. Then she shifted her grip of the antler-staff and drew herself up straight.
“It seems,” she said, grim humor in her voice, “that my innermost self is a vampire. And you can’t get blood from trees.”
The skeletal wizard in the rotting, tattered robes reminded Aoth unpleasantly of Szass Tam, but fortunately, wasn’t proving to be nearly as strong a combatant. When the lich cast a flare of jagged shadow, Jet veered and dodged it, and when Aoth riposted with a thunderbolt, the twisting shaft of radiance tore the undead apart.
His legs clamped around Jet-by the Black Flame, he missed his saddle-Aoth cast around for another target and spied wraiths and direhelms rising through the air, likely to attack the
Aoth decided to blast the ghostly boarding party before they could reach their objective, and discerning his intent through their psychic bond, Jet lashed his wings and climbed. Then, however, a jab of pain in the pinion he’d broken made the familiar falter. Aoth started to ask if Jet was all right, but a cramp in his guts and a surge of irrational fear turned the question into a gasp.
In a paradoxical way, Aoth’s sudden distress was actually reassuring. Jet’s old injuries weren’t troubling him because they’d healed imperfectly. Rather, both he and his master were experiencing a mystical assault.
But the unfortunate thing was that, as Aoth realized when he slapped a tattoo to release its bracing magic and then looked around, everyone else on the hathrans’ side was suffering it too. A griffon screamed and veered away from the vulturine thing it had been swooping to seize in its talons. Kanilak froze until Shaugar grabbed him by the shoulder and gave him a shake. Even berserkers balked.
Aoth realized that must be so. He looked at the patch of ground at the center of the stand of weir trees and saw the gloom there had grown even deeper, so murky and festering-foul, it reminded him of the deathways, although it still offered no bar to his fire-kissed sight. The female durthan with the Stag King’s antler-axe- Nyevarra-was in the middle of it, as were a couple other undead witches and, rearing above creatures of merely human stature, Lod himself.
Standing a little closer to the thick of the battle, his gore-streaked two-handed sword canted on his shoulder, the patchwork man-Uramar-was shouting. Aoth had no hope of making out what the blaspheme was saying over the general din. But he was likely ordering any ally who could hear him to fall back and form up to protect the spellcasters behind him. At any rate, that was what various undead were doing.
Aoth scowled at his failure to secure the cursed area straightaway. But he knew little about the kind of ritual magic that had sullied it, and even Yhelbruna, who claimed to understand it, hadn’t anticipated that if they so desired, the undead witches could accelerate the ongoing contamination.
But maybe Jhesrhi and Cera had sensed the danger, for they and their squads of protectors were already headed for the weirs. But they’d never punch through the ranks of the enemy without support.
Responding to his master’s thoughts, Jet abandoned his pursuit of the phantoms rising toward the skyship and hurtled toward the towering sacred trees. He likewise gave a rasping cry that brought wild griffons streaking after him.
Meanwhile, Aoth cast a charm to amplify his voice. “Push for the weirs!” he bellowed to his soldiers on the ground, and an enormous mink looked up and nodded to show it understood.
Cera had long since discovered she’d been too optimistic at the start of the battle. Although Orgurth and her other defenders were fighting savagely to hold back the foe, she’d still needed to wield her mace as a warrior would, often enough that scraps of rotting flesh and strands of greasy hair clung to the stubby spikes.
Swaying, an animate corpse with its nose and most of its left profile rotted away stumbled between two golems busy with other foes. Reluctant to expend any of the Keeper’s light on a single such brutish creature, Cera waited for the zombie to swing its war hammer, then sidestepped and blocked with her shield.
The blow banged on the hide-and-wooden targe and jolted her arm but didn’t hurt her. She swung low and smashed the zombie’s knee, and it pitched forward. She then bashed it in the nape of the neck, and it fell on its ruined face in the snow.
At the same instant, she glimpsed motion at the corner of her vision. She turned. Just a stride away, a ghoul was rushing her with jagged claws outstretched. Fortunately, Orgurth lunged to intercept it, cut, and split its skull. The ghoul dropped.
The orc grinned at Cera. “Are you close enough yet?” he shouted, making himself heard over the din of battle.
“A little farther!” Her answer made her feel guilty. People were dying to help her push forward.
Orgurth’s leer stretched wider. “Why not?” He turned back toward the enemies still separating them from the weir trees and then snarled an obscenity. Because Uramar himself was leading a dozen floating direhelms right at them.
In a sudden surging confusion, two of the flying suits of half-plate assailed Orgurth, and to dodge the initial slashes of their swords, he sprang to the side. Other direhelms engaged golems and berserkers. Somehow, in an instant, all Cera’s protectors were busy fighting for their own lives, and Uramar had a clear path to her.
Fine, she thought. A blaspheme
Then, however, her focus shattered into terror and bewilderment, and her half-finished invocation forgotten, she recoiled. Only for a moment, and then a cleric’s trained will allowed her to shed the effects of what had no doubt been an adversary’s spell. But that was time enough for Uramar to lumber into striking distance.
As he did, bitter cold, fiercer by far than the natural chill of this winter day, stabbed into Cera like a knife. She gasped, and her whole body clenched, rendering her incapable of prayer, raising her targe, or offering any other sort of defense. Uramar swung his greatsword high to split her head.
Then, missing her by no more than a finger length, Jet swooped over her head, and his talons punched into
