appearing and dissolving in the murk. Growing longer and taller as it traveled, it hurtled at his foes.
Those who'd charged Malark were closest to the effect, and it was rushing at them so fast that even as Aoth leveled his spear, he felt a sick certainty that it would hit before he could cast a spell. But Mirror drew another burst of radiance from his sword, Lallara spat a word of forbiddance, and the wave shattered into nothingness as though it had smashed itself against an invisible mass of rock.
Meanwhile, Lauzoril hurled a dagger at a target too distant and high above the ground for even an expert knife thrower to hit.
Except that the blade flew like an arrow, not a dagger, and turned to crimson light an instant before piercing the lich's body. 'Fall,' Lauzoril said. And Szass Tam plummeted to earth.
Gaedynn often remarked that if the gods had meant for him to go within reach of his enemies' swords and axes-or in this case, tentacles, claws, and stinger-they wouldn't have made him the finest archer in the East. But his arrows weren't hurting So-Kehur, the scorpion-thing was dragging Khouryn around on the ground, and now Jhesrhi, still disguised as Lallara, was advancing entranced toward her adversary's pincers.
Gaedynn sent Eider diving toward So-Kehur, meanwhile switching out his bow for a falchion. The griffon slammed down on the autharch's head, above the human mask, and, wings extended for balance, managed to cling to the smooth, rounded steel. Up close, the scorpion-thing smelled of the gore of the men he'd slaughtered.
'Rip!' Gaedynn shouted. What he actually wanted was for Eider to break away So-Kehur's remaining eyestalks. She wouldn't have understood such a specific command, but she was in the right place for her raking talons to snag them. He leaned to the right and smashed at one himself.
Mainly, though, he watched for So-Kehur's counterattack. The arms supporting the pincers didn't look flexible enough to reach him, but after an instant, the gigantic stinger whipped up and over.
'Go!' Gaedynn touched his heels to Eider's flanks. The griffon leaped clear and lashed her wings. Behind her, metal clanged.
Gaedynn climbed, turned his mount, and grinned to see what they'd accomplished. Most of the remaining eyestalks were gone. There was even a gap between two of the curved plates comprising So-Kehur's head. Either Eider's talons had caught in a crack and pulled them apart, or the autharch's own stinger had stabbed down and poked a hole.
Looking puny, almost vestigial, compared to the pincers, tentacles, and stinger, So-Kehur's manlike arms and hands swirled in a complex pattern. Gaedynn's momentary satisfaction soured into apprehension as he realized the necromancer was about to cast a spell. He hoped it would be something Eider could dodge.
Then So-Kehur lurched off balance, and Gaedynn saw that the tentacle that had gripped Khouryn no longer had anyone at the end of it. The dwarf had evidently come to, freed himself, scrambled back under the scorpion, and resumed chopping at the legs.
No longer mind-bound, Jhesrhi brandished her staff and cried words of power. The wind howled and threw stones. The big opal eyes in So-Kehur's mask shattered.
Spearmen shouted and advanced, weapons jabbing, and So-Kehur wheeled and scuttled away. Gaedynn started to pursue, but a zombie owl as big as Eider swooped down at him, and he had to fight it instead.
Szass Tam smashed down on the mountaintop, then immediately tried to rise. Bareris shouted, Aoth hurled a crackling lightningbolt from the point of his spear, and Mirror drew a pulse of searing light from his sword. One of the zulkirs caught the lich in a booming blast of flame, and another-Samas Kul, presumably, although Bareris would have had to look around to be certain- turned the ground under him into sucking liquid tar.
Assailed by so much magic all at the same instant, Szass Tam nearly vanished in the flash. When it faded, his robes were charred and shredded, and so was his flesh, portions stripped entirely to reveal the bone beneath.
Yet he still moved as though his muscles and organs had merely been a mask whose loss failed to hinder him in the slightest. He planted the butt of his shadowy staff on top of the tar, heaved his feet up out of the sticky mass just as if his prop were made of solid matter, then turned the ground to rocky earth again. He pulled off a scrap of loose, blackened flesh dangling over his left eye and raised his staff above his head.
He surely meant to conjure with the staff, but a hyena-headed demon twice as tall as a man charged him and struck down at him with a greataxe, and he had to use the implement to parry. A floating thing like the shadow of a jellyfish followed just behind the brute with the axe, and then several other creatures, all of them equally grotesque, appeared. Plainly, Nevron had no intention of allowing Szass Tam to cast spells without interference.
And Bareris couldn't bear to let the familiars tear at the lich while he stood back. He sprinted toward the knot of struggling figures, and Mirror bounded after him. Aoth cursed as though he thought the two of them were doing something stupid, and maybe they were. But it was impossible to care.
Moments later, something rustled over Bareris's head. He glanced up and saw Aoth and Jet flying toward Szass Tam and the demons. The warmage evidently hoped height would give him a clear shot at their foe.
Bareris and Mirror dashed up to the circle of roaring, flailing demons. The ghost's lack of a solid form allowed him to slip through the press without so much as a pause. But Bareris had to halt mere strides away from the action.
He shivered with the mad urge to cut down one of demons just to clear a path. Then the hyena-headed giant reeled backward. Its eyes were on fire, and snakes had grown out of its chest and were biting it repeatedly. Its huge axe floated in the air, hacking at those opponents who tried to come at Szass Tam from behind.
Bareris lunged into the space the blinded demon had vacated. Singing a song of hate, he cut at Szass Tam's chest.
The blow glanced off. Szass Tam thrust his staff at his new attacker. Darkness stabbed from his eyes into Bareris's head. For a moment, Bareris couldn't see or think. But he still felt the exaltation of his rage, and when it ebbed, his battle anthem brought it surging back, and it broke the grip of the confusion.
He cut again, and again failed to pierce Szass Tam's armoring enchantments. The necromancer whispered words of power, and some of the demons pivoted to attack their fellows. He waved his hand, a ruby ring on a withered finger flashed, and a dozen wounds split the hulking body of a furry, gray-black, bat-winged creature as though invisible blades had hacked it from the inside. A flourish of the shadow staff made darkness seethe and divide into manlike silhouettes.
Bareris felt a sudden pang of fear that, though it scarcely seemed possible, he and all his formidable allies were going to lose. Then Mirror lunged and plunged his insubstantial sword through Szass Tam's body.
At first Szass Tam scarcely seemed to feel the violation. Then both the blade and Mirror himself flared, bright as the sun, and the lich cried out.
Bareris had seen his comrade channel the power of his god before, but never so much of it, because it was dangerous. No matter how worthy a champion Mirror might be, no matter how faithfully he adhered to his ancient code of chivalry, the divine light was inherently antithetical to his undead condition.
And equally poisonous to Bareris. The radiance burned him even though he wasn't the target. It might do worse if he dared step any closer.
But he didn't care about that, either. All that mattered was that Szass Tam stood transfixed and vulnerable. Singing, he hurled himself at the lich.
The light was agony, but the pain didn't balk him. Rather, it seemed to feed his fury. He cut and cut, and the strokes plunged deep into Szass Tam's body, cleaving what remained of his flesh and splintering bone.
Until the radiance died. Bareris looked and saw that Mirror had simply disappeared, like a flame that had burned out.
Bareris felt a pang of grief. Then skeletal fingers grabbed him by the neck.
'He's gone to his god,' Szass Tam croaked. 'You go to your woman.'
The lich's fingers simultaneously cut and pulled. Bareris felt tearing pain, a nauseating whirl of vertigo as his head tumbled free of his body, and then nothing more.
His tongue smarting because he'd chewed it during his seizure, Chumed put his foot in the stirrup. But before he could hoist himself onto his charger, he spotted So-Kehur scuttling toward him though the confusion of other warriors in retreat and the reserves trying to push their way forward against the tide.
From the looks of it, So-Kehur's scorpion body had taken a considerable beating. Chumed tried not to feel too pleased about it. That sort of spite could be dangerous, given that the lord he served possessed psychic
