Pevkalondra inclined her head. “True enough, boy, as my soldiers and I discovered to our cost. But in your crude way, you Old Ones are like Raumvirans. You’re makers, and your magic derives more from the mind and less from the soul. In retrospect, it makes sense that your power might stand strong for a while longer than that of your mistresses.”
The ghoul turned her stained, jagged grin back on Aoth. “So you see,” she said, “I’ve lost a battle, but you’ve lost the war. The Eminence of Araunt has occupied the ground it needs to ensure its triumph and neutralized all who might have broken its hold in time.”
Aoth considered the situation and decided it justified Pevkalondra’s confidence. Indeed, because she didn’t know Lod himself had come to Rashemen to speed the dark rituals along to their fruition, the Eminence’s position was even stronger than she realized.
“The Black Flame burn me,” he said, “if I ever travel without my own army again. If I walk down to the corner for a mug of beer, the entire Brotherhood of the Griffon is going with me.”
“Then you admitdefeat,” Pevkalondra said.
Aoth smiled back at her, and something in his expression made her give a tiny start, predatory monstrosity though she was. “Well, no,” he answered, “I wouldn’t say that.”
He pivoted back toward the Old Ones. “You heard,” he said. “Your country’s enemies have deprived it of its usual cadre of protectors. We have to assemble a new one quickly to drive the vermin out of your sacred wood. Obviously, that effort starts with you. How soon can you be ready to march?”
For a heartbeat, no one answered. Then a man in a wolf mask said, “We can’t just do that because we want to. We can only leave the Running Rocks if the hathrans command it.”
“Stinky just told you,” Orgurth said, “the witches can’tcommand it. They’re dead, addled, or too stupid to see what’s falling apart right in front of them.”
“Still,” Shaugar said, “our vows are vows, and even if we did break them, no manis allowed in the Urlingwood.”
Orgurth shrugged. “Once you start breaking rules, what’s the difference if it’s one or two?”
An Old One in an iron T-shaped mask that left his cheeks and the corners of his mouth uncovered said, “To break our oaths would disgrace us. To defile the Urlingwood-”
“It’s being defiled now!” Aoth shouted. “How can you let that happen and still tell yourselves your vows and your religion count for anything? I’m an outlander-Abyss, I’m one of the Thayans you Rashemi all despise-and I don’t claim to understand your ways. But if it were mysacred forest, I’d save it and worry about getting punished for disobeying orders afterward. That’s what loyalty and duty mean to me!”
For a moment, the Old Ones were quiet again. Then Shaugar said, “But the ghoul was right. We are crafters first and foremost, and you saw how many of our staves and amulets we’ve already emptied of magic.”
“I’ve also seen plenty of intact Raumviran golems still standing around in the foundry,” Aoth replied. “Old Ones put them to sleep, and you can wake them too.”
“Some acts of creation,” quavered a stooped figure on the uppermost tier, an Old One in every sense of the term, “work in accordance with Nature, while others mock it. Our tradition-”
“So you break threerules!” Orgurth said, “to save your holy trees!”
“Yes,” said Shaugar, a hint of grim humor in his voice, “to save the ‘holy trees.’ ” He rose and turned so that, for a moment at least, he looked each of his fellow enchanters in the eye. “Our friends are right. We can’t sit idly by while the undead take over Rashemen even if the Wychlaran burn us all in wicker cages afterward. So: who’s coming with me?”
“I will!” Kanilak said.
“And I,” said a big man in a long-eared rabbit mask that presumably didn’t look as comical to his fellow Rashemi as it did to Aoth.
One by one, all the others agreed to march, although in some cases with manifest reluctance or windy-and likely specious-discourses on how precedent or the exact wording of their laws and vows might after all permit them to do as they intended. The lawyering made Aoth seethe with impatience, but he tried not to show it.
When all the talk was finally through, and most of the enchanters were headed out to prepare for the journey, Shaugar came down to the floor of the amphitheater. “Thanks for your support,” Aoth told him. “Can I hope the part about wicker cages was an exaggeration?”
Shaugar snorted. “You were right before. You really don’t understand Rashemen. But you were also correct that we mustn’t worry about that now. As we head north, we’ll pass near a couple other Old One villages. We can ask them to join us.”
Pevkalondra laughed. “You still won’t have enough men to stop what’s happening in the forest.”
“We’ll see,” said Aoth. “It may be that I can scare up a few more.”
“Either way,” Orgurth said, “I’m tired of listening to Stinky, here, jeer at us. I’ve also gone too long in my new life as a sellsword without picking up any plunder.”
He turned, grabbed Pevkalondra’s ocular between thumb and forefinger, and yanked. The pearl jerked free, trailing the thin prongs of metal that had zigzagged back into her head. They came out with bits of rotten matter clinging to them, and the ghoul screamed.
“See?” asked Orgurth, making a casual attempt to wipe the decay off on his sleeve. “I told you I could have made her talk.”
The durthans were performing their rites in a stand of towering, many-branched weirwood trees. It was one of the most sacred places of power in the Urlingwood, yet even so, permanently tilting the balance of dark and light in all Rashemen was proving to be a long and arduous process requiring night after night of chanted prayers and incantations around the greenish fire.
Although things were moving a little faster now that, with matters elsewhere under control, Nyevarra was leading the rituals. The Stag King’s antler staff had turned out to be a potent talisman for strengthening the conjurations.
She was spinning it through a complicated figure that made the bonfire blaze higher when, her mystical perceptions heightened by the ceremony, she sensed entities possessed of considerable supernatural power approaching in the night. She used a hand signal to warn her sister witches a pause was necessary, and they all stopped chanting on the same word, at a point that kept the forces they’d raised from bursting free of the metaphysical structures meant to channel and contain them.
Nyevarra and the other durthans then turned to await the newcomers. Some witches gasped or exclaimed when their fellow ghouls and specters marched out of the dark.
There were many creatures in the column formidable enough to merit such expressions of admiration and respect. But Nyevarra had no doubt that it was the singular entity crawling in the lead who’d riveted everyone’s attention.
The upper part of him was the top portion of a human skeleton. At the waist, those bare bones fused with an enormous, scaly serpentine body like a dragon’s tail. She knew from the description Uramar had given her that this was Lod, but even if she hadn’t, she would have assumed as much from the exceptional wizardly strength she sensed inside him.
She left the circle to greet him and his companions. Swaying slightly from side to side, he loomed over her, and she felt small and vulnerable. Making sure that didn’t reveal itself in her stance or voice, she said, “Welcome.”
“Thank you,” Lod replied. “You must be Nyevarra. Uramar’s messenger told me you’re the one who worked out how best to conquer this realm.”
Nyevarra smiled behind her mask. “It was my notion. But every durthan is aiding in the effort.”