"We meet up with the soldiers to the west and form a line to the ashfall along the eastern slope," she called easily in Orcish. "We form that line and let nothing cross it alive. Do you hear me? " she screamed at them. The troop howled in agreement, beating their swords and cudgels against their shields. Tazi took to the air and assumed a position circling her growing wall of soldiers.
She could see Justikar holding an arm up toward the mass of darkenbeasts that were swirling around in frenzied flight, awaiting her signal. From one side to the other, the legions of undead and the Blooded Ones joined forces, forming a solid barricade, an unholy alliance. Farther north, Tazi could see more and more of Eltab's demons surge out of the Thaymount. Another eruption shook the region as Tazi turned her head from one side to the other to take one, last inventory.
"Now!" she screamed long and loud. Justikar released his hold on the darkenbeasts, and they swarmed forward. The Blooded Ones broke out into a full run, while the undead marched relentlessly onward. Tazi kicked at her winged mount and dived straight into the demon hordes, sword flashing.
Szass Tam and Nevron re-entered the council chamber. Lauzoril had taken the unconscious Azhir Kren to a more secure location, with Aznar Thrul trailing close behind.
The gray-haired Nevron had called after them, tauntingly, "Do you really think there is a safe haven in this place as long as the demon-king is free?"
Lauzoril had ignored them and wearily carried Azhir away. Aznar Thrul shouted back over his shoulder to them as he departed, "This is all your doing, with your secret scribblings, so you should be the ones to take care of it."
Several of the lich's human servants had come into the chamber not long after the Red Wizards and Tazi had abandoned it. They had tried vainly to salvage what they could from the room and douse the many fires that still blazed. The lich's zombie servants had pointedly stayed away, as he suspected they would, because of their inherent fear of those very flames. He briefly wondered how Thazienne was going to manage to get his troops to fight with the burning earth all around them, but dismissed those queries as her concerns to deal with. The lich had other matters that occupied his attention.
The room was in shambles. Two women batted at the tapestries that still smoldered with heavy blankets that they had scrounged up from one of the many linen closets. Another was mindlessly collecting up the bits of shattered dinnerware and glasses, simply needing to do something. An elderly man slapped several parchments with a broom. Some of the papers curled up at the edges and wafted around like injured butterflies, and he alternated between swatting them and trying to catch them. He had already collected a small pile and stacked it against the wall nearest him. That was where Szass Tarn went first.
"Nevron, go around to the far side of the table where Naglatha had been standing before this disaster took place," he ordered the other zulkir. "I'll start in on these."
As the lich approached the old man, he could see the fear in his faded eyes. Szass Tarn ruled with a fierce hand and had little tolerance for failure. Many of his slaves bore subtle and not-so-subtle reminders of their master's standards. And it was clear that the old man assumed the catastrophe did not bode well for any of those who served the necromancer. Szass Tarn appreciated his quivering, obsequious behavior but had no time for it at the moment.
"You did well. Please continue," he murmured to the slave and floated past him to the remains of his stolen scrolls. He snatched up the fragments and didn't even notice that the man wept tears of relief as he passed.
With the pieces of his spell scrolls in his skeletal grip, the lich searched for a place to try and piece together the fractured puzzle. He saw that a smaller serving table was relatively unscathed though overturned.
"Right that for me," he told the two women who had extinguished the last of the flaming furnishings.
They scurried over, coughing heavily, and flipped the table upright.
"You may go," he dismissed them without an upward glance. He began to lay all the vestiges of parchment on the smooth surface of the table. Scanning the remnants quickly with his sharp eyes and tracing a bony finger across them, Szass Tam tried to cobble together a binding spell.
Barely looking up, he called over to Nevron, "What luck have you had?" The gray-haired zulkir was on his knees, tearing away at a portion of the smashed council table. He tossed bits of the wood madly behind him, and Szass Tam was hard pressed not to laugh in spite of the circumstances. The Zulkir of Conjuration looked for all the world like a dog frantically digging up a bone.
"I think there's a scroll, or at least a good portion of one, under the table leg-if I can just reach…" his voice faded with the strain.
"Got it," he croaked triumphantly, and when he popped back out from under the wreckage, his hair was askew and a smudge of soot crossed his forehead. But Szass Tam saw that he had a mostly intact parchment in his fist.
"Bring it here," the lich ordered. "Let's see what we have left."
Nevron walked over quickly, though he too continued to cough from the lingering smoke. Out of the whole room, only Szass Tam was unaffected by it, since he did not need to breathe. The zulkir placed the mostly intact scroll with the other pieces Szass Tam had collected on the table. Together, they read over the documents as best they could. An occasional quake rocked the chamber, but the two men were silent for some time. Finally, Nevron breathed in sharply and turned his head toward the lich with a look of horror and awe.
"I can't believe you found this," he said quietly and pointed to one of the burned fragments. "How?" he croaked.
"That is not for you to know," the necromancer replied.
"My whole life has been in pursuit of these runes," he said mostly to himself. "And now, to find them here, broken and incomplete…"
"Perhaps you can now understand why one lifetime is not nearly enough," Szass Tam told him evenly.
"No matter for now," Nevron dismissed the discussion. "Without the other pieces, I don't see how we can bind Eltab. We might be able to stop the lesser minions, but the tanar'ri lord may be beyond our reach."
Szass Tam was silent for what seemed like an eternity. He scanned the puzzle pieces again as though he might have missed the keystone, but it was not there to be found. He balled up his bony hands and pounded the table with a cry of fury. Then he smoothed his robes with those same hands and regarded the other man solemnly.
"I fear you may be right," he admitted calmly, "but we must try, nonetheless."
And he and the Zulkir of Conjuration began to chant.
Tazi flew toward another flock of Eltab's darken-beasts, carving through them with her sword as she had the others. The griffon swooped into the herd like a hunting raptor and sliced at the flapping bat creatures with its razor-sharp talons. Tazi gripped her mount with her thighs to maintain her seat on its back and hung onto its mane with her left hand. She twisted around to spear a darkenbeast that tried to find purchase on the griffon's haunches. She dispatched the creature though it left a track of bloody welts along the griffon's rear left flank. It screeched in pain.
When Tazi turned forward, she ducked low and hugged the griffon's neck as another darkenbeast swooped toward her face, missing her by mere inches. More started to surround the griffon, smelling the blood, and it reared back, flapping its wings furiously as the smaller darkenbeasts cut off all escape routes. One after another dived at Tazi and her mount, and she swiveled from her right to her left to slash at the monsters. But their numbers kept increasing. As they slashed down one, another two took its place. The griffon cawed in panic as several of the flying creatures began to target its vulnerable wings.