Unholy

The world shattered into chaotic points of brightness, and Aoth had a sudden vertiginous feeling of hurtling like an arrow shot from a bow. Translating oneself through space wasn't a part of his own specialized discipline, but other wizards had taken him on such journeys a time or two, so he was prepared for the sensation.

He wasn't ready for what happened next.

The travelers should have appeared before Bareris and Mirror as quickly as a hummingbird flicks its wings. Instead, they abruptly found themselves suspended in a gray void that, Aoth realized, was scarcely even a space in the truest sense but rather a condition of transition and indeterminacy.

He felt multiple pressures acting on him simultaneously. Something-the spell the zulkirs had cast, presumably-shoved him relentlessly forward. But he couldn't go forward, because something else-Szass Tam's wards against this form of intrusion-had him in its grip. Bareris and the archmages had weakened those defenses, but not enough, with the result that Aoth and his companions were like men trying to squeeze through a hole too small to accommodate them. The effect was painful and growing worse.

One of the soldiers screamed, and then, armor groaning and bones snapping, his body crumpled in on itself and disappeared. Perhaps, ejected back into the real world, the corpse had fallen to the ground somewhere outside the Citadel.

A second warrior's body compressed as if it were no weightier than a sponge. Blood gushed from his mouth and nostrils.

Lallara rattled off a spell of protection. The pressure holding Aoth in place abated, and he had a sensation of lurching forward. Then Szass Tam's defenses clamped down again, arresting him. Another bodyguard shrieked as magic crushed him like a grape in a press.

Lallara glared at Aoth. 'Back at the Dread Ring,' she said, 'I saw you conjure a prismatic wall.'

He didn't see how the spell could help them, but he was willing to follow her lead. The Firelord knew, he had no ideas of his own. 'Where do you want it?'

'It doesn't matter! Just cast as many as you can.'

The balance of pressures acting on Aoth's body was becoming more excruciating by the moment, but he managed to grit out the incantation with the necessary precision. Multicolored radiance flared from the point of his spear, but instead of forming the usual barrier, it arced over to Lallara and cloaked her decrepit-looking form in rainbows, which coruscated as she chanted words of command. Aoth inferred that since a prismatic wall was a defensive enchantment, she, with her mastery of that form of magic, could siphon its power to strengthen her own spells.

He cast another wall, then another, and she wrapped those around herself as well. Szass Tam's wards mashed three more soldiers to pulp. Then the gray space burst apart.

The surviving travelers materialized down the length of the corridor in which Bareris and Mirror awaited them. Aoth stumbled a step, then caught his balance. A warrior exclaimed at the sudden darkness, and, with a casual gesture, Lauzoril kindled a globe of floating silvery light.

Aoth grinned at Bareris. 'Nice work.'

'How do you figure that?' Samas demanded, shrill with displeasure. 'We nearly died. Both my guards did die.'

Nevron sneered. 'You're a sad excuse for a zulkir if you need soldiers to protect you. But if you do, rest assured, we still have plenty.' He made a sweeping gesture to indicate his own person with all its talismans and tattoos, and, by implication, the demons and devils caged inside them.

'We did experience an awkward moment,' Lauzoril said, 'but in my view, the scheme worked as well as we reasonably could have expected. All the important people made it through, and a few of our underlings as well. So I suggest we turn our attention to finding Szass Tam.'

Bareris had hoped that the zulkirs could cast a divination to pinpoint Szass Tam's location, and in fact, Samas Kul tried. But for some reason, the magic simply indicated that the lich was somewhere above them. Since that took in the entire fortress, it wasn't much help.

Bareris struggled to quell a pang of impatience, to take solace in the thought that surely the lord of the Citadel couldn't be hard to find. The castle must be crawling with servants who kept track of his whereabouts, the better to meet his needs.

Lauzoril shrouded the company in an enchantment akin to some of the spells in Bareris's arsenal. With luck, it would beguile anyone who happened to see them into believing they were familiar faces with legitimate business in the catacombs. Then they started looking for the way up.

At first the trek was uneventful, with only the occasional scuff of a footstep, creak of leather, or Samas's wheezing to break the silence. Rumor had it that the dungeons were as haunted and dangerous as the caverns below, but it took a while for one of its denizens to reveal its presence.

Eventually, though, the intruders climbed a staircase and found themselves at a spot where two passages diverged from a common origin, and a murky painting of a farm without farmers or animals, its fields infested with tares and weeds, adorned a nearby wall. And suddenly Bareris's hackles rose as he sensed a hostile scrutiny.

He cast about but couldn't find the source of the glare boring into him. 'Aoth?' he said.

The warmage peered around with his luminous, azure eyes. 'Sorry. Even I can't see it. Which may mean that somehow, there truly isn't anything to see.'

'I think it's a ghost,' Mirror said, pity in his tone, 'but terribly old and faded. It's forgotten nearly everything.'

It was what Mirror might have become, Bareris supposed, if the two of them hadn't encountered one another in the Sunrise Mountains.

'I can sic a demon on it,' Nevron said.

'It hates us,' Mirror said, his resemblance to Bareris gradually bleeding out of his shadowy features, 'but I don't think it has the power to hurt us.'

'Then ignore it, and move on,' Lallara said.

That sounded good to Bareris. He took a stride and felt the phantom shift position. Which was contrary to common sense, since he hadn't pinned it down to a specific location before. Yet even so, he somehow perceived a surge of movement, and then, though he still couldn't see it, his instincts told him the spirit had planted itself squarely in front of the procession.

'Does it think it can bar our path?' Samas asked.

'Whatever it believes,' Lauzoril said, 'I daresay we can walk right through it, and I see no reason why we shouldn't.'

'Wait,' Mirror said, his face oozing into a wavering mockery of Nevron's brutal features. 'I sense it's trying to do something. Nothing harmful, just… something.'

Slowly, as if the process required extreme exertion or concentration, a horizontal line scraped itself into existence on the painting of the deserted farm. The spirit then scratched a crude little arrowhead on the left end.

'It's pointing for us to turn around and go in the other direction,' Lallara said.

'Because the ghost hopes to send us into harm's way,' Samas said. 'You said we should ignore it, and for once I agree with you.'

'Wait,' Mirror repeated. 'I have a feeling it isn't finished.'

For several moments, it seemed he was mistaken. Then, even more slowly than it had drawn the arrow, the haunt scratched a pair of letters above it.

Bareris felt a pang of excitement. ' 'S. T.' Szass Tam?'

'How can it be?' Lauzoril replied. 'The spirit has no way of knowing we're hunting the lich and no motive to help us even if it does.'

'Unless it's trying to lead us into a trap,' Samas said, 'just as I warned you.' His wand crawled out of his voluminous sleeve with its trimming of diamonds.

Bareris peered around and strained to listen as well. As far as he could tell, he and his fellow intruders were alone with the haunt. 'I imagine Szass Tam could think of better ways to lure us if he wanted to. Ploys less likely to rouse our suspicions. And remember, we tried to enter the castle in a way that would keep him from noticing.'

Samas snorted. ' 'Tried' being the operative word.'

'Maybe,' said Aoth, 'the spook has a grudge against Szass Tam. It would hardly be the first undead that a