once separated by any distance. It seemed little short of miraculous that, marching through spring rain and mud, all the diverse elements of this great host had managed to assemble in the right place at the right time to close the trap on Szass Tam. And on top of that, there was still no indication the lich knew they were coming.
As anticipated, the shield of illusion failed at the end. Aoth knew it when horns started blowing and living men and orcs began shouting amid the necromancers' army. That force had arranged itself to threaten the Keep of Sorrows, and now companies scrambled to defend against the enemies who'd suddenly appeared in the opposite direction.
The southerners meant to hit them before they had the chance to form ranks. Their own bugles blew, their blood orcs bellowed, and clouds of arrows blackened the air. Aoth brandished a spear, and the Griffon Legion hurtled forward.
A flat, leechlike undead known as a skin kite flew up at Aoth. Brightwing caught it in her talons and shredded it. Aoth rained lightning and flame on the massed foes on the ground, while Bareris sang noxious clouds of vapor and hypnotic patterns of light down into their midst. Their fellow riders shot arrows from the saddle.
'Beware!' Brightwing lifted one wing and dipped the other, turning, and then Aoth saw the danger-several yellowed, rattling horrors, reanimated skeletons of giant raptors, seeking to climb above them.
There were too many for the griffon to handle alone. Aoth pointed his spear at the closest and flung darts of emerald light from the point.
The knight was undead, its face a rotting skull inside its open helm. Its flying steed, with its night black coat, blazing eyes and breath, and hooves shrouded in flame looked demonic, but nonetheless alive.
If so, Bareris thought, it should be susceptible to enchantments that couldn't affect its master. Murder, his new griffon, maneuvered to keep away from it while he sought to sing it blind.
When the horse balked, jolting the corpse-knight in the saddle, he knew he'd succeeded. He sent Murder streaking at it.
The undead knight spurred its mount and hauled on the reins, but couldn't induce the sightless, panicked creature to move in any way useful for defense. Abandoning the effort, it braced its lance in both gauntleted hands and aimed to impale Murder as he closed.
Bareris leaned forward, swung his spear, and knocked his adversary's weapon out of line. Murder's talons stabbed deep into the black horse's body, and for a moment, they all fell down the sky together. Then the griffon pulled his claws free, lashed his wings, and flew clear. The knight and his destrier smashed into the ground.
Bareris cast about to locate the next threat. He couldn't find one. For the moment, the patch of air in which he and Murder had been fighting was clear of foes.
Good. He and Murder needed a chance to catch their breath. While they did so, perhaps he could figure out how the battle was progressing.
When he surveyed the battlefield, he decided it was going well. Hammered by flights of arrows and quarrels, by the devils and elementals of the conjurors and the firestorms and hailstones of the evokers, by sword and mace and spear, Szass Tam's battle lines were buckling, and his warriors had nowhere to retreat. Yielding to the pressure only moved them closer to the walls of the Keep of Sorrows, where the defenders maintained their own barrages of missiles and spells.
Ten years we've been fighting, Bareris thought, and by dusk it could all be over.
It should have been cause for rejoicing, but he felt empty. He scowled and looked around for something else to kill.
To So-Kehur's relief, the keep's temple, with its altars to Kossuth, Bane, and an assortment of other deities, was empty of priests. No doubt they were all outside tending the wounded and casting maledictions on the undead.
Of course, even had the clerics been in attendance, it was unlikely they would have objected to So-Kehur visiting the shrine. When the defenders of the keep learned that a siege was imminent, they'd surely started watching for spies and scrying. But by entering the castle despite the northern army's supposed efforts to stop them, and then delivering good news, he and Muthoth had diverted all suspicion from themselves. As the castellan had promised, they were honored guests.
Still, some busybody might have found it odd if one of the newcomers showed an interest in the crypts. So- Kehur appropriated a votive candle and hurried down the stone steps, getting himself out of sight before anyone wandered in.
The wavering yellow candlelight revealed massive sarcophagi, the lids sculpted into the likenesses of those who rested inside. Slabs of marble graven with names, titles, and dates, with mottos, coats-of-arms, and the sentiments of the bereaved were mortared into the surrounding walls. Apparently no aristocrat had died in a while, for dust lay thick and cobwebs choked the walkways. The air smelled of dampness and decay. So-Kehur extracted the scroll Szass Tam had given him, unrolled it, and hesitated.
He wasn't afraid of the act he was about to perform for its own sake. He sometimes thought that his necromancy and the entities it summoned were the only things that
But it didn't matter that he was afraid. He was mind-bound, and had no choice. The enchantment might not poison a man if he made an honest effort to carry out Szass Tam's orders and then gave up when the task proved impossible. The magic was subtler than that. But it would smite So-Kehur if he didn't even try.
He read the first trigger phrase on the vellum, releasing the spell contained therein. Stone grated and crashed as coffin lids slid open and marker stones fell away from the vaults behind them. So-Kehur winced at the racket, but doubted anyone would actually hear it. The battle raging outside the castle was even noisier.
He recited the second trigg er. A cold breeze gusted, nearly blowing out his candle. The smell of decay thickened, and the spiders skittered in their webs.
A dead man sat up in his coffin. Another stuck his head out of a newly opened hole in the wall.
Some of the dead, more recently deceased or artfully embalmed, retained a goodly portion of their flesh. Others had deteriorated to mere rickety-looking skeletons, but it didn't matter. Infused with the power of necromancy, they could all fight, and many already carried swords and axes. As befitted knights and warriors, they'd been laid to rest with their weapons and armor.
Milky eyes fixed on So-Kehur. Empty, mold-encrusted orbits turned in his direction. The dead awaited his command.
'Range through the castle,' he said, 'and kill everyone you find, except for me and a man with the fingers missing on his right hand.' The way Muthoth liked to insult and bully him, it would serve him right if the dead went after him as well. But however obnoxious, the other necromancer had been So-Kehur's partner in desperate endeavors for a long time, and he was the only ally who could stand with him now.
Or at least the only one who thought and spoke and breathed.
Muthoth sat cross-legged on the floor of the bedchamber. He breathed slowly and deeply, from the belly. He sank deeper and deeper into his trance, deeper and deeper into himself, until he reached the cell or psychic cyst that caged the thing within.
So-Kehur had smuggled death into the Keep of Sorrows on a roll of parchment. Recognizing Muthoth as a more powerful necromancer and a stronger will, Szass Tam had chosen him to bring an even more terrible weapon to bear, and to carry it entombed in his own mind. At times the oppressive weight and the whisper of alien thought had nearly driven him mad, and he was eager to put an end to the torment.
Which didn't mean he could afford to rush. The entity was inimical to all life, but since it hadn't enjoyed being imprisoned any more than he'd enjoyed containing it, it now hated him more than anything else in the world. Accordingly, he recited the incantation of release, or rather, of transfer from one form of binding to another, with the utmost care.
The caller in darkness, as such abominations were known, howled up around him in that realm of concept and image they both occupied. The entity was a vortex of dark mist with anguished faces forming and dissolving inside it. Their shrieks pounded at him. They'd blast his mind apart if he let them, then tear the pieces out to add to the collective agony that was their source.
