pitched forward. Her corpse liquefied completely almost before it splashed facedown in the street.
Victory over such a formidable foe filled him with triumph, and intense emotion sharpened and deepened his thoughts. He sensed that he'd fought many times, and war remained his proper occupation. It might not ever make him remember, but at least while embroiled in the midst of it he comprehended there was something he'd forgotten.
He flew at Ysval.
Bareris's hand was steady as he hacked open Tammith's severed head to cut the brain within, then he slid his enchanted blade into her heart. He felt as numb and empty of feeling as any of the zombies he'd faced this day.
As soon as he finished, however, he started to shake, and anguish and self-loathing welled up inside him.
At the end, he'd had no choice but to slay Tammith. Otherwise, she would certainly have killed him, and as it turned out, it simply hadn't been in him to surrender to that.
He'd likewise deemed it necessary to desecrate Tammith's remains, lest she rise to fight anew. Yet he now understood that such an act, however essential, could be unbearable and unforgivable as well.
It would be the easiest thing in the world to run his sword into his own heart.
But that would mean abandoning the fight to defeat Xingax, Ysval, and the necromancers, and that was unacceptable. The wretches had to be punished. They had to lose and suffer and die.
Singing a pledge of vengeance, he cast about to see where Ysval was.
Aoth thrust the point of his lance into a shadow. The phantom frayed into tatters of darkness.
The ghosts were coming faster now, more and more of them finding their way through the gaps in the sheets of flame and planes of radiance the wizards had conjured to hold them back. Aoth and his fellow griffon riders fought doggedly to keep the spirits in the air from flying down to aid their commander.
He looked around and realized that at last the battle had granted him and Brightwing a moment to catch their breaths. No new foes had yet appeared in their immediate vicinity. It gave him a chance to peer down and assess what was happening on the ground.
Ysval clawed. Milsantos caught the blow on his shield, but the impact knocked him out of the saddle. The nighthaunt virtually tore the old man's war-horse out of his way as if it were a curtain and lunged after him, but in so doing, the undead captain exposed his flank to Bareris, who, chanting, slashed the creature's night black body with his sword. As did Mirror, flitting around to attack from behind. Ysval faltered, and Milsantos clambered to his feet.
Ysval pivoted and drove his talons into Mirror's chest. The ghost's misty form writhed and boiled. Ysval raised his other hand for a follow-up blow. Bareris cut at him but failed to divert the nighthaunt from his fellow undead.
Then, however, a colossal spider, gnashing mandibles dripping venom, ring of eyes gleaming, materialized beside Ysval. One of Aoth's fellow battle wizards had evidently summoned it. The spider pounced on the shadowy entity. The serrated jaws ripped him.
Ysval tore the creature off him and smashed it down on its back. As it started to heave itself upright, he thrust out his hand at it, malign power shivered through the air, and the arachnid stopped moving.
But Mirror's form once more appeared as steady and stable as it ever did, and as Ysval finished with the spider, Nymia rode by him and bashed him with her mace.
We're like a swarm of wasps attacking a man, Aoth thought. Individually, we're puny in comparison, but it's hard for him to defend himself against all of us at once.
Perhaps, his arrogance and manifest fury notwithstanding, Ysval also believed his foes might ultimately overwhelm him, for he brandished his fist, and ragged tendrils of shadow blazed outward from his body. His opponents stumbled and reeled. He lashed out with claw and tail, flinging them backward, giving himself room to spread his wings and spring into the air.
No, thought Aoth, you don't get to break away and work your magic without interference. You have to stay on the ground where everyone can pound on you.
'Get him,' he said, and Brightwing dived.
Ysval heard or sensed them coming and turned to face them. When he met the gaze of the nighthaunt's moon white eyes, Aoth felt a jolt of dread, and angry at his reaction, he promised himself it was the last time. One way or another, this filthy thing was never going to scare him again.
Then Brightwing froze. Thanks to their psychic bond, Aoth could tell his familiar was still alive and conscious. Indeed, she wasn't even wounded, but Ysval had somehow paralyzed her, and now she wasn't swooping but falling. The nighthaunt laughed.
Why shouldn't he? Now that the griffon couldn't shift her wings, her plummeting trajectory wouldn't take her and Aoth within reach of him.
Aoth charged his lance with all the power it could hold then hurled it like a javelin. The long, heavy weapon wasn't designed for use as a missile, but perhaps some god sharpened his eye and strengthened his arm, maybe Kossuth, avenging the treacherous murder of his Burning Braziers, because the spear plunged into Ysval's shoulder.
To how much effect, it was impossible to say, because Aoth and Brightwing fell past him an instant later. The mage started rattling off a counterspell that might, if poor Chathi's patron deity saw fit to grant a second boon, cleanse the griffon's clenched muscles of their affliction.
Unfortunately, Aoth didn't have time to finish. He and Brightwing slammed down hard on a rooftop, which crunched and buckled beneath them but didn't give way entirely.
The impact spiked pain up the length of his body, but rather to his surprise, he survived it, and Brightwing did too. He could only assume that, despite her paralysis, her wings had caught enough air to keep them from falling at maximum speed.
Some yards away, Ysval crashed onto the street with the lance still sticking out of his body. He immediately sought to scramble to his feet, so obviously neither the spear nor the fall had killed him, but as Aoth had hoped, the injury to his shoulder had at least deprived him of the use of his wings.
Evidently recovered from the stunning effect of the burst of shadow, Bareris and Mirror rushed Ysval and cut at him relentlessly. The nighthaunt managed one more snatch with his talons and a final strike with his tail then toppled onto his side and lay motionless.
Some part of Bareris realized Ysval was dead. Nonetheless, he couldn't stop hacking at the corpse, not until a phantom streaked across his field of vision and tore a knight from the saddle.
Bareris looked up. Having existed for their allotted span, the floating barriers had begun to wink out of existence, and the ghosts were rushing through the openings, swarming on the griffon riders like soft, gleaming leeches attacking a party of swimmers.
The plan indicated that as soon as Ysval died, someone who possessed the necessary magic was supposed to dispel the unnatural gloom enveloping the fortress. It didn't seem to be happening. Was any of that select group of spellcasters still alive? If so, immersed in the chaos of battle, struggling to fend off the foes assailing him, had he even perceived that the moment for action had arrived?
Bareris drew a deep breath and bellowed loudly as only a bard could. 'Break the darkness! Now! Now! Now!' On the other side of the battlefield, Milsantos's trumpeter blew the call intended to communicate the same message.
For several heartbeats, it appeared no one heard, at least no one with the power to respond in the appropriate manner. Then, however, the sky brightened from black to blue in an instant. Bareris flinched and squinted at the sudden blaze of sunlight that scoured the wraiths from the air.
He wasn't certain they'd all perished. Perhaps some endured as mere disembodied awareness or potential, like Mirror at his most ethereal, but even if so, they lacked the power to manifest until night returned.
Of course, the Keep of Thazar still harbored ghouls and animate corpses, creatures able to tolerate daylight even if it pained them, so the battle was far from over. Still, Bareris was now certain he and his allies were going to win. Considered as revenge, it wasn't enough. It could never be enough, but it was a start, and weary to the bone
