In need of a moment to center herself and refocus her energies, she backpedaled. As she did so, she noticed the warriors stag men, mostly pouring into the vault through the same arch that had previously admitted her and the rest of their comrades.
There was nothing inherently wrong with that. The crypt was where Aoth had wanted to make a stand, and all troops were supposed to make their way into it as expeditiously as was consistent with good order and protecting their rear. But she could tell the stag men weren t hurrying in to fight. They were fleeing, bumping into their allies, knocking them down, and trampling them in their haste, spreading alarm and disarray.
Their little army obviously didn t have much of a rearguard anymore. Something was routing it, and that same something threatened to stab into the very heart of the company just as soon as the fleeing stag men cleared the way.
Jhesrhi decided that the dismantling rearguard was an even bigger problem than the glabrezu. But what could she do about it when she was on the wrong end of the passageway?
She cast about and saw that Vandar s berserkers had successfully defended another of the doorways leading into the chamber, killing or repulsing the enemy who d attacked from that direction. There were just a couple of Rashemi there, keeping watch.
Jhesrhi reached out again to the stone around her. Upset that it had taken harm at her behest, its mind tried to tug away from her own.
I m sorry, she told it, but for something as big as you, that hurt was just a tiny scratch. I need you. Show me how that tunnel connects to the one next to it.
The stone didn t answer for a moment. Then a diagram of sorts flowed into view before her inner eye.
Thank you, she said.
So far, so good. She knew that no one soldier, even a wizard, should venture through any part of the maze alone. She looked for warriors to accompany her, but most of the berserkers were already engaged in one vital struggle or another. The only exceptions were casualties, pale and shaky from pain, blood loss, and the sickness that overtook them when their rage had run its course. Several of the least enfeebled were shouting and waving their arms in a futile attempt to bring the influx of frightened rearguarders under control.
For want of anyone better, Jhesrhi strode in the direction of the stag men. They spotted her, first one and then another, and her approach did what the Rashemi couldn t. The creatures stopped struggling to shove farther away from whatever was behind them and peered at her with brown, shining eyes.
What is it? she wondered, unsettled. What is it they think they see?
But she knew it wasn t the time to ponder the question. Hoping it would further impress them, she cloaked herself in flame.
During her time with the stag men, she d learned that although they couldn t speak, they all understood at least a bit of Elvish. So she switched to what she knew of that tongue, shouted for the stag warriors to follow her, and reinforced the command by sweeping her staff at the archway that was clear. Then she strode in that direction.
For a heartbeat, the stag warriors stayed right where they were, and she thought that, whatever the basis of their interest in her, it wasn t profound enough to overcome their fear. A moment later, their bells chiming and hooves clattering on the floor, they trotted after her, between the surprised berserker sentries, through the litter of bloody corpses, and on down the passageway.
She wanted to tell them to silence their bells but didn t know the right words to give the order. The glow of her fiery mantle would likely alert the enemy that they were coming in any case, and she wasn t willing to douse that for fear that it would undermine the confidence of her troops.
Voicing a dozen screams and snarls at once, a fiend or an undead creature at first glance, Jhesrhi couldn t tell which scrambled out of the mouth of a branching tunnel. The thing was a head taller than she was, and almost as broad as it was high, with dozens of grimacing, mad-looking faces protruding from its slate-gray skin. The visages on its torso might have been flayed from adult men and women, while the ones running down its thick, knotted limbs dwindled in size until they were as small as the faces of newborn babies. It rushed at her with its hands outstretched.
She met the creature with a flare of flame that produced a kind of hollow pang in the core of her. The creature staggered and shrieked from its various mouths. Although covered in burns, it caught its balance and kept shambling forward. She prepared to cast another spell, but four of the stag warriors streamed past her, intercepted the thing, and drove their spears into it until it collapsed.
She supposed that was just as well, because the twinge of almost-pain had been a warning that she d already expended a considerable amount of her power. She was likely to need the remainder for what was to come.
Two more turns brought her and her comrades into the tunnel behind whatever was putting the remnants of the rearguard to flight. She squinted, trying to make sense of the scene before her even though the figures in the foreground nearly blocked out everything behind them.
It looked like a force of undead had come up behind the rearguard as she and her companions had similarly come up behind it. Some of the revenants were witches, and they d apparently panicked the rearguard by killing the Stag King and regaining mastery of the telthors he d previously wrested from their control.
Jhesrhi was able to infer so much in just a heartbeat because, as she d feared, the enemy had heard her and her stag men approaching, and the durthans had left off assailing the rearguard to turn and confront the newcomers. A witch in dark robes and a black mask that might be tarnished silver held the Stag King s antler weapon like a staff. A wise woman in red dangled his severed head. Their eyes gleamed like stars, and phantom wolves and badgers crouched at the witches feet.
The durthans pointed their arcane weapons and recited incantations. The virulence of their curses swept down the passage in a wave of greenish phosphorescence. Patches of the stonework cracked and crumbled as it passed.
Jhesrhi rattled off words of defense. Her own power manifested as a burst of flame that met the oncoming shimmer and burned the poison out of it.
She struck back by calling for fire to leap up from the stones beneath her opponents. But the witch in the silver mask nullified the spell before it had even started to manifest with a contemptuous-looking flick of the antler-axe. The weapon was no doubt a powerful talisman.
The two sides traded attacks for a while, with neither able to penetrate the other s arcane defenses. Jhesrhi decided that she was a more powerful wizard than any of those standing against her, but the weight of their numbers offset that advantage.
While she dueled with her sister mages, spirit animals and undead pounced out of the archways in her vicinity, or simply lunged from solid stone. Stabbing with their spears and slashing with their swords, the stag warriors protected her from them.
Darts of ragged darkness pierced her cloak of fire, and a stab of chill made her clench and gasp. She tried to bring the ceiling down to bury the witches, but nothing happened. Not, she perceived, because the undead had countered the magic, but because the spell had simply fumbled its grip.
This failure was a warning that her current approach couldn t win the fight. Her foes were wearing her down. While still attacking and defending furiously, she tried to think about the situation as her friends might see it.
Aoth and Khouryn would say her current objective wasn t to destroy the creatures who were striving so doggedly to kill her. It was to keep the force they commanded from punching through what little was left of the rearguard and taking the Rashemi by surprise. And Gaedynn, grinning his crooked grin, would tell her that when neither skill nor strength could prevail, it was time to bluff.