instinct, perhaps, certainly not a fully formed idea-prompted him to sing.
Since he couldn't call anything that could fight as well as he could with sword and magic, he generally had little use for summoning spells. Nor was he currently attempting any of the several such melodies in his arsenal. Rather, this song was an improvisation devised to take advantage of the vasuthant's own chaotic essence.
Just beyond the periphery of the creature's vaporous form, other Barerises-this time, by no means identical- wavered into being. One was the young man who'd adventured with the Black Badger Company, seeking wealth to buy Tammith and himself a life of ease. Another was the griffon rider who'd fought in the first War of the Zulkirs. The rest were versions of the undead fugitive who'd skulked about Thay in the ninety years after.
The pallid outlaws attacked. The youthful wanderer and the legionnaire faltered, and Bareris realized they couldn't see in the dark. He conjured light to reveal the cave and the creature it contained, and they too advanced on the entity with slashing blades.
The vasuthant couldn't form and direct enough arms to hold them all off at the same time, and, perhaps because Bareris and Mirror had already hurt it severely, or because it had already expended so much of its power, it quickly withered under the onslaught. It boiled, thrashed, then shattered into nothingness. Bareris felt a sort of intangible thump as the insult to time repaired itself.
With the breach closed, his counterparts couldn't remain. Most faded instantly, but for some reason, the youngest lingered another moment. He seemed to gaze at his older self with consternation, pity, or conceivably a mixture of the two.
It made Bareris want to say something. But he had no idea what, and his younger self dimmed to nothingness before anything came to mind.
Bareris felt inexplicably ashamed, strangely bereft, and scowled the emotions away. Surely his inner turmoil was just a transient and meaningless aberration, an aftereffect of the psychic punishment he'd endured.
He needed to focus his attention on Mirror. The vasuthant might be gone, but the bubble of gloom it had created remained, with the ghost still a motionless prisoner inside.
Bareris walked to the sphere, took a moment to center himself and regulate his breathing, than sang a song of liberation. The dark globe withstood the spell without so much as a quiver.
'Are they sure?' asked Samas Kul. A stray crumb dropped from his ruddy lower lip.
Lallara sneered at him. 'Do you actually think Captain Fezim's scouts could be mistaken about observing an entire army on the march?'
Nevron's attendant demons and devils didn't think so. They whispered, hissed, and snarled in voices only he could hear, begging him to take them into another battle.
The invaders had been working their way down the Lapendrar when a patrol led by Gaedynn returned mid- afternoon. Upon hearing the redheaded archer's report, Aoth immediately summoned the zulkirs to a council of war in the shade of a stand of gnarled, fungus-spotted oaks on the riverbank. Lallara conjured a dome of silence to keep anyone from eavesdropping, and as a result, the world had a strange, hushed quality. Nevron could no longer hear the cheeping birds in the branches overhead or the gurgle of the current.
'Gaedynn and the other griffon riders are certain of what they saw,' said Aoth. Unlike Nevron, Lallara, and Lauzoril, he hadn't bothered to tell an underling to fetch a camp chair. He sat crosslegged on the ground, his back against one of the tree trunks and his spear on the ground beside him.
His immense floating throne ludicrous in the wan sunlight and open air, Samas made a sour face. 'You said that if we avoided Anhaurz, we wouldn't have to fight another battle.'
'I said I hoped we wouldn't,' Aoth replied. 'But either Szass Tam ordered the autharch of the city to chase us, or else the bastard simply wants a fight. The rebels claim he's some sort of intelligent golem or living metal monstrosity, so Kossuth only knows what's in his mind. Anyway, he's maneuvering to come at us from the west and pin us against the river.'
'Could we march faster and keep away from him?' Samas asked.
'Conceivably,' said Aoth, 'but it would destroy any illusion that we're serious about reaching the Dread Ring in Tyraturos.'
Lauzoril laced his fingers together. 'What if we actually did cross the Lapendrar? Then this metal man's army and ours would be on opposite sides of it. I understand that we couldn't ford without the aid of magic, but we have magic.'
'That too might work,' said Aoth, 'but at the cost of putting us exactly where we don't want to be: deeper inside Thay, where the river that shielded us from Anhaurz's army might cut off our escape when an even bigger force descends on us later.'
'So you recommend we stand and fight,' Lallara said.
'Yes,' said Aoth.
'I agree,' the old woman said.
'As do I,' said Lauzoril.
'And I,' Nevron said. His familiars roared and cackled to hear it.
'Can we win?' Samas asked. 'Even after the losses we sustained taking the first Ring?'
'The enemy is fresh, and there are a lot of them,' said Aoth. 'But the four of you are zulkirs. That should tip the scale in our direction.'
Heedless of the risk that it would draw Szass Tam's sentinels or other dangerous creatures, Bareris sang as loud as possible. He also sustained the final piercing note longer than anyone but an undead bard could, expelling every trace of breath from his lungs, pouring all the force of his trained will into the tone.
Mirror's prison weathered the assault just as it had resisted all of Bareris's previous attempts at countermagic.
In desperation, he drew his sword, grasped the hilt with both hands, and tried to smash the shadowy sphere as if it were an orb of cloudy glass. No matter how hard he struck, the blade glanced away without leaving a mark.
This was bad. He thought he understood what had befallen Mirror. The vasuthant had snared him in a petrified moment where the ghost could take no action, because
But unfortunately, inferring that much didn't enable Bareris to break the enchantment. The songs he ordinarily employed for such tasks hadn't done the job, and he no longer had any hope of improvising a new spell to manipulate time itself. The conditions that made that possible ceased when the vasuthant perished.
If he called to the zulkirs and they succeeded in translating themselves into the caverns, it was possible that one of them- Lallara, perhaps-could liberate Mirror. But as he'd explained to the ghost, he had his reasons for not wanting to summon the archmages prematurely. These particular caves might not connect to the Citadel's dungeons, and even if they did, the longer the zulkirs wandered around on Szass Tam's home ground, the likelier it was that the lich would detect such a concentration of arcane power and prepare a deadly reception for them. Better, therefore, to wait to call them until it looked as if they might be able to sneak up on their supreme foe relatively quickly.
Perhaps Bareris could wait until he found a way into the dungeons, and then he could perform the summoning. Then he and his allies could backtrack to this cave-
But no. Even as he conceived the idea, he knew it wouldn't happen that way. The archmages would never spend precious time and brave additional perils just to rescue Mirror. It wasn't in their natures.
So that left two alternatives. Bareris could press on alone and trust that whatever danger arose from this point forward, he'd be able to contend with it unaided. Or he could stay here and continue to assail the bubble of frozen time with countermagic, resting when he exhausted his power and hoping that eventually, somehow, one of his spells would breach Mirror's prison. Knowing all the while that Szass Tam could start the Unmaking at any moment.
Bareris looked at Mirror, a shadow locked in shadow with a blade that glowed like moonlight in his hand. 'With so many lives at stake,' he said, 'I have to go on. And I know you'd want me to.'
That last part was plainly true. If he were able, Mirror would tell him to leave him behind. But Bareris suspected he'd just lied about his own motives-that in truth, it was the possibility of revenge compelling him onward, as it had once prompted him to break faith with Aoth-and it made him feel even more like a traitor.
