"Captain, you must move quickly! I fear we may have little time!"
His eyes flew open. "Zayl?"
Sure enough, the necromancer leaned over him, one slim hand clutching the right arm. Farther back, Gorst watched them, his expression caught midway between relief and mistrust.
Of the other three, he could see no sign. All else in the chamber looked exactly as it should, but Khan, Atanna, and the Vizjerei had all vanished.
"What—?" he began, only belatedly realizing that the power of speech had been returned to him.
The necromancer cut him off. "Hurry! He may realize at any moment that I have usurped his spell. I must get us away from here before then!"
Zayl took his dagger and quickly passed it over each limb. As he did, Kentril felt the ability to move return. He needed no more urging from the spellcaster to leap free of the sacrificial platform.
"I am going to try something," Zayl informed him and Gorst. "With so many sources to draw power from, it may work. It may be our only chance!"
Not liking the thought of just standing around and hoping that the necromancer could save them, Kentril asked, "Can we do anything?"
"Indeed you can! Gorst, give the captain a weapon. The two of you must watch out for me in case our esteemed host realizes what I am now doing."
Kentril took the sword the other mercenary offered him, realizing at the same time that Zayl fully expected Juris Khan to return from wherever he had been sent at any moment. The two wary soldiers kept guard while the necromancer swiftly drew a complex pattern over the runes.
"This should do it," Zayl suddenly remarked. Withoutexplanation, he pointed the dagger first at himself, then at each of his companions.
A sense of extreme lightness touched Kentril, almost as if he had lost every bit of weight. The mercenary officer almost expected to begin to float away, much as a cloud might. He opened his mouth to ask what the spellcaster planned—
The chamber vanished.
A wind—tossed mountain ridge materialized around him. Kentril reacted to this abrupt change of venue by planting himself against the rock face as quickly as he could.
Zayl had transported them to the most precarious edge of Nymyr.
The wind howled ominously, and thunder rumbled. Kentril looked up, saw that the sky had transformed. The nightmarish colors of his earlier visions had returned. He quickly glanced down at Ureh, to see now only a few sinister lights below. Captain Dumon could only imagine the scene within the city, the demonic denizens of the once—holy realm now stripped of any pretense of humanity.
"This was not where I planned to send us," muttered Zayl, his expression quite frustrated. "With the power I usurped from the runes, I should have easily been able to transport us to somewhere beyond the confines of this cursed shadow."
Kentril recalled the image of the false archangel. "Maybe that's not allowed. Maybe there is no escape from Ureh."
The necromancer eyed him closely. "Captain, what was Juris Khan doing when I appeared?"
"He said he had to cast a spell to ensure that Ureh would remain on the mortal plane, a spell that would allow his children to go forth into the world." With a deep breath, Kentril quickly went into what details seemed relevant. He described the monarch's clear madness, Tsin's entranced betrayal, the horrific incident involving Atanna,and the discovery that Lord Khan's archangel had been anything but Heaven—sent.
"This begins to add up, although not in any way I find comforting," Zayl remarked when Kentril had finished. "I think I understand. My friends, I think that Juris Khan did not nearly send his people to the sanctuary of Heaven… but instead all but condemned them to Hell."
The news did not surprise Captain Dumon nearly as much as it once might have. Such an answer would explain much of what they had confronted and certainly explained how he had felt simply staring into the eyes of Khan's interpretation of the mysterious archangel.
Zayl peered around carefully, almost as if he expected other ears to be listening on the godforsaken ridge. "This is my thought. In the days when Ureh stood above all others as a symbol of purity, that which spellcasters and priests knowledgeable called the Sin War took place. Little is known about its true form, but the powers of darkness were most active then, and such a place as the holy kingdom suffered many insidious attacks. Some of the legends you know hint of this, but hardly explain the full depth of the danger present to the mortal world back then."
"Demons attacked Ureh?" Gorst asked, his brow furrowing deeply at such a monstrous notion.
"Not as an army, but rather as forces seeking to corrupt those within. Generations of rulers worked endlessly to keep the corruption out, to protect the innocents from the Prime Evils…" The necromancer suddenly knelt and began drawing symbols on the ridge with his dagger. "Forgive me. I must work while I explain, or else we are all lost…"
"What're you doing?"
"Providing us with some protection from the eyes of our host, I hope, captain."
He drew a vast circle, then in the center put in place aseries of runes. Although the necromancer appeared quite untouched by the harsh wind, both mercenaries had to continue to press against the mountainside to garner even some minute bit of security.
"Your tale fills many of the gaps in my own," Zayl went on. "I fear that while Juris Khan so carefully guarded his flock, he did not himself remain wary enough of the wolf. I believe that, as you indicated, something taking the semblance of a warrior of Heaven seduced the good ruler into believing that what he did would be best for Ureh. I believe, as you do, that this may very well have been Diablo himself!"
"But surely it can't be!" Kentril protested, not wanting to believe that he had seen the truth. "That would be just too outrageous!"
"Hardly. Ureh was the greatest prize of all. It would demand the effort of the greatest of demons. Yes, captain, I think that Diablo came in the form you saw, corrupted Lord Khan without him realizing that fact, and twisted everything good the man desired into worse and worse evil. Instead of Heaven, he would have sent them to Hell, and only the timely action of Gregus Mazi prevented that. However, even limbo could not save them forever…"
Diablo, so the spellcaster suspected, had managed at last to touch once more the mind of his pawn. Slowly, he had made Juris Khan give both his people and his daughter to the demon lord. Ureh had become a corrupt nightmare, where the few who had perhaps resisted had become sacrifices or worse.
But the Lord of Terror had not been satisfied yet. Perhaps it had initially occurred to him when Ureh had first momentarily returned to the mortal world. Perhaps then Diablo had seen the opportunity for a true gateway through which his evil hordes could spread out into the world, unchecked by any barrier whatsoever.
"But Diablo required blood, untainted blood, to do this. Unfortunately, in his madness, Juris Khan had slain all other available spellcasters. He needed someone to aid him, someone of knowledge and skill. By either chance or fate, your party provided him with both."
"But you rescued me. We've stopped him."
Zayl arose, his solemn gaze meeting the captain's own. "Have we? The spell seemed quite advanced when I finally reached you."
"But he never drew any blood from me."
The necromancer nodded, but clearly took no comfort from that fact. "He still has Master Tsin."
Kentril gaped. Tsin had become Lord Khan's puppet, but, like the mercenaries, he had not been touched by either the original spell upon Ureh or its subsequent corruption. "But is that possible? Won't they need him for the rest of the work?"