sensitivities.
'Did you see?' So-Kehur cried. He spoke as if he no longer even remembered striking Chumed down.
'No, Milord. I was… indisposed until just a few moments ago.'
'I almost killed Lallara herself! I had her in my grip!'
Almost. The boast of the weak and stupid.
'I wish I had seen it,' Chumed said. 'But I have tried to assess the overall progress of the battle, and it appears to me that our assault isn't breaking the stalemate. For that reason, I still advise-'
'Where are my artisans? I need new eyes, a patch, and any other repairs they can make quickly. Artisans!' So-Kehur lowered himself onto his belly, no doubt so the craftsmen could reach his upper surfaces. He had a breach between two of the plates on the back of his head.
'Do I take it that you plan to rush back into battle?' Chumed asked.
'Of course!' So-Kehur said.
'Of course.' Chumed clambered onto the autharch's back.
One of So-Kehur's remaining eyestalks twisted its optic in his direction. 'What in the name of the Black Hand are you doing?' the necromancer asked.
'I see a broken piece dangling. If I pull it free, that will save the artisans a moment.'
'Oh. Well, in that case-'
Chumed whipped his sword from its scabbard and thrust the point into the gap between the plates. The blade punched into the silver egg housing So-Kehur's brain.
The scorpion-thing convulsed. Chumed leaped off its back. A flailing tentacle missed him by a hair, and then he landed. Awkwardly. Momentum hurled him to one knee.
He sensed the huge steel body rolling toward him. He scrambled up, ran, lunged out from under it just in time to avoid being crushed, then turned to see what it would do next.
It gave a rattling, clattering shudder, then lay inert.
Other officers had come hurrying to attend So-Kehur. Now they stood frozen, gaping at their master's body and his killer.
Chumed raked them with a glower. 'I'm in command now,' he said. 'Does anyone dispute that?'
Apparently, no one did.
'Then pull our men back! Move!'
For a heartbeat or two, Aoth clung to hope. After all, he'd more than once seen Mirror wither to the verge of nonexistence only to reappear. And after becoming undead, Tammith had twice survived decapitation.
But this time the ghost had vanished so utterly that not even spellscarred eyes could spot a trace of him, and dark wet patches cut through the bone white flesh of Bareris's severed head and body as ninety years' worth of deferred corruption flowered in an instant.
Anguished, Aoth realized that at least his friends' deaths freed him to hurl his most potent spells at Szass Tam without fear of hitting them as well. He didn't care about Nevron's remaining demons, because they no longer posed a threat to the lich. It was all they could do to fight the fiends that had fallen under Szass Tam's control and the phantoms he'd shaped from the fabric of the night.
Aoth aimed his spear and rained gouts of fire down on the necromancer's head. The zulkirs hurled flares of their own power.
The magic tore the demons apart and seared the shadows from existence. It reduced Szass Tam to little more than a blackened skeleton, but a skeleton who kept his balance at the heart of the blast.
His rings, amulets, and other talismans glowing with crimson light, Szass Tam turned his empty orbits on Samas Kul. The lich brandished the shadow staff, and a huge pair of fanged jaws appeared in the air in front of his former ally. The apparition shot forward, caught Samas in its jagged teeth, and chewed him to bloody pieces, all so quickly that the fat transmuter only had time for a single, truncated squeal.
Aoth conjured a flying sword to hurtle down at Szass Tam, who somehow sensed it coming, parried it with his staff, and dissolved it without even bothering to glance upward. An instant later, another fiery blast cast by one of the zulkirs rocked the lich. It tore away some of his ribs, but that didn't seem to trouble him, either.
He stared at Lauzoril.
Lauzoril's face twisted, and he shuddered. Then he turned, ran, and hurled himself over the edge of the cliff.
Nevron finished snarling an incantation. A goristro, a demon somewhat resembling a colossal minotaur, appeared in front of him. Running on its hind feet and the knuckles of its hands, it instantly charged Szass Tam.
The lich pointed his staff and spoke a word of power. The demon turned to glass and, off balance, toppled. It shattered with a prodigious crash.
Nevron started another incantation. Szass Tam turned his fleshless hand palm up and made a clutching gesture. The demon master fell, and a second Nevron, made of insubstantial phosphorescence, appeared standing over the body. For once, he didn't look angry or contemptuous but astonished.
Szass Tam recited rhyming words, and Nevron's ghost shrank into a pudgy creature only half as tall, with grubs wriggling in its open sores. Aoth just had time to recognize it as a mane, the weakest and lowliest form of demon, slave to every other. Then it vanished, probably to the Abyss.
Lallara whispered, and a wall of rainbows shimmered into being between Szass Tam and herself. 'On further consideration,' she panted, 'I do wish to take advantage of the truce you offered.'
Szass Tam laughed. 'Sorry, Your Omnipotence. But you and your allies insisted on this fight, and now I intend to finish it. There aren't going to be any more zulkirs in exile to plot against me.'
He hurled a ragged burst of shadow. The rippling colors in Lallara's barrier grayed when it splashed against them, and then their brightness blazed anew.
Grimly aware that there was hardly any power left in it, or in him, for that matter, Aoth aimed his spear to hurl a lightningbolt. Lallara glanced up at him. 'Come here,' she said.
'My attack spells won't pass through your wall,' he said.
'Now!' she snapped.
Maybe she had a plan. He sent Jet winging in her direction. Meanwhile, Szass Tam hurled another murky blast against the shield. This time, it took longer for the colors to reassert themselves, and when they did, they were softer than before.
Jet and Aoth swooped over the failing defense and landed by Lallara. Despite its sagging wrinkles, her crone's face looked taut with strain.
'What do we do?' asked Aoth.
She reached in a pocket, extracted a silver ring, and tossed it to him. As soon as he caught it, he felt the nature of the spell stored inside it. Under normal circumstances, it would enable the user to translate himself and a companion or two through space.
'Will this work now?' he asked. Maybe she'd figured out that with Malark's crystal diadem and staff broken, it would.
'We couldn't win,' Lallara gritted, 'even if it did. But I've spent my life afflicted with idiots and incompetents, and you were never either. Go live if you can.' Szass Tam threw his power at the wall of light, staining and muting the colors, and cracks of inky darkness snaked through them. Lallara cried out as though she herself were breaking and stamped the butt of her staff against the ground.
The world seemed to fly apart, then instantly reform. Aoth and Jet found themselves still under a black sky, but one with more stars shining in it. They still perched on a high place, but a smaller one, with merlons running along the edge and other towers rising beyond. Lallara had evidently observed how to open the door between realities when Szass Tam did it, and she used the knowledge to return her surviving allies to the roof of the Citadel's central keep.
Aoth felt a clench of anger. Given the choice, he wouldn't have abandoned her.
Yet underlying the anger was a guilty relief that he had no idea how to return himself to the battlefield, for after all, she was right. They had no hope of beating Szass Tam. Maybe at the start of the fight it had been otherwise, but then the scales tipped against them.
