"That isn't proof," she snapped, "it's speculation."
She realized she craved a drink, and despite a suspicion that, tired and upset as she was, it would do her more harm than good, she picked up a half-finished bottle of wine. The cork made a popping sound as she pulled it out.
"Tharchion," Bareris said, "if my word isn't good enough, let me tell my story to one of the Burning Braziers. He can use clerical magic to verify that I'm speaking the truth."
Nymia had no desire to involve another person in their deliberations. Besides, she abruptly discerned that, much as she'd struggled to deny the perception, her instincts told her the bard was being honest.
She looked around for a clean cup, couldn't find one-she'd allowed her orderly to retire earlier-and swigged sweet white wine from the neck of the bottle. The stuff immediately roiled her stomach.
"For purposes of argument," she said, "let's say you are telling the truth as best you understand it. Your story suggests we're facing a cartel of rogue necromancers, traitors to their order."
"Maybe," said Milsantos, "and maybe not. I have informants in Eltabbar. I'm sure you do too, but have you heard from yours in the past couple days? Mine got a letter to me."
"And they said something pertinent to our situation here on the eastern border of the realm?"
"Perhaps. Two days ago, Szass Tam tried and failed to persuade the other zulkirs to proclaim him regent. In light of that, let's consider recent events."
"To have any hope of winning the council to his way of thinking," said Aoth, "the lich had to seem a successful if not triumphant figure, so he manufactured a threat to the eastern tharchs then played a crucial role in combating it. That means it isn't 'rogue' mages standing against us. It's conceivable the entire order of Necromancy is involved, including the Red Wizards in our own army."
"Impossible," Nymia said. "No one could keep such a huge conspiracy secret."
"He could," Bareris said, "if he silenced his underlings with enchantment. I told you about the guard who died when I tried to question it."
"That was an orc. No one would dare to lay such a binding on a Red Wizard."
"A higher-ranking and more powerful Red Wizard would."
"Curse it!" she exclaimed. "Even if all these crazy guesses are correct, don't you see, it's none of our business what games the zulkirs play with one another. All we need to know is that an undead host threatens Pyarados, and the council, Szass Tam included, wants us to destroy it."
"What," said Milsantos, "if Szass Tam has stopped wanting it? He desired our victories to advance a particular strategy, which has now failed. In the aftermath, what remains? A siege in which his followers and creatures are fighting on both sides. Can we be absolutely certain he's still backing us?"
"Why would he stop?" she demanded.
"To create the impression that when Szass Tam is honored as is his due, things go well, but when the other zulkirs deny him, they go disastrously awry? Truly, Nymia, I can't guess, but I shrink from the thought of what will happen if the necromancers and zombies in our own ranks suddenly turn on us in the midst of battle. Better, I think, to try our luck without them."
"So we send them away? Restrain them? Insult Szass Tam and the entire order of Necromancy?"
The old warrior smiled a crooked smile. "When you put it like that, it's not an appealing prospect, is it? We'd certainly need to win and hope our success would motivate the other zulkirs to shield us from the lich's displeasure."
"I don't know if we even have the authority to deal with Red Wizards in such a manner."
"You're tharchions," said Aoth. "This is an army in the field. The Burning Braziers will support you. They hate the necromancers condescending to them. Take the authority."
She considered it for several heartbeats then shook her head. "No. Not without proof, and I mean something I can see with my own eyes, not just a wanderer's tale, even should a cleric vouch for him."
"Then I'll interrogate one of your Red Wizards," Bareris said. "He'll tell the truth or die in a fit like the orc. Either way, you can be certain."
Nymia hesitated. "Neither Tharchion Daramos nor I could consent to such an outrage. You'd have to act alone, without our aid or intercession, and if you failed to extort the proof you promise, we'd order your execution. It would be the only way to make sure the stink of your treason didn't attach itself to us."
Bareris shrugged as if the prospect of a slow death under torture was of no concern. "Fine."
"Except," said Aoth, "that you won't have to do it alone. I'll help, and I know a fire priestess who will too." He grinned. "Now that I think of it, I can steer you to the perfect Red Wizard as well."
Bareris crooned his charm of silence, each note softer than the one before. He centered the charm on the sword sheathed at this side. It seemed as good an anchor point as any.
With the final note, the camp, quiet already here in the dregs of the night, fell absolutely silent. He, Aoth, Chathi, and Mirror, only perceptible as the vaguest hint of visual distortion, sneaked up to the rear of Urhur Hahpet's spacious, sigil-embroidered tent a few breaths later.
Aoth gave Chathi an inquiring look. Even without benefit of words, his meaning was plain. He was asking if she was certain she wanted to risk this particular venture. She responded with an expression that expressed assurance, impatience, and affection all at once.
The lovers' interplay gave Bareris a fresh pang of heartache. He turned away and peered about to make certain no one was looking in their direction. Nobody was, so he drew his dagger, cut a peephole in the tent, and looked inside.
No lamps or candles burned within. Evidently even necromancers, who worked so much of their wizardry at night, had to sleep sometime. But Bareris had sharpened his sight with magic, and he could make out a figure wrapped in blankets lying on the cot.
He gave his comrades a nod, then reinserted his dagger in the hole and pulled it downward, cutting a slit large enough for a man to squirm through, as he proceeded to do.
With the tent now enveloped in silence, he had no need to tiptoe, so he simply strode toward the man in the camp bed. But before he could cross the intervening space, something small and gray leaped onto Urhur Hahpet's chest, then, eyes burning with greenish phosphorescence, immediately launched itself at Bareris's face.
It was a zombie or mummified cat, evidently reanimated to watch over its master as he slept. Bareris swung his arm and batted it out of the air. It scrambled up and charged him.
Though the shriveled, stinking thing wasn't large enough to seem all that dire a threat, Bareris suspected its darkened fangs and claws might well be poisonous, either innately or because Urhur painted them with venom. Accordingly, he felt he had to deal with the cat at once. He shifted the knife to his off hand, whipped out his sword, and drove the point into the undead animal's back, nailing it to the earth. It made a final frenzied scrabbling attempt to reach his foot then stopped moving. The sheen in its eyes faded.
By then, though, Urhur had cast off his covers and was rearing up from the bed. The silence would keep him from reciting incantations, and since he didn't sleep in his clothes, he didn't have his spell foci ready to hand, but he was wearing a presumably enchanted necklace of small bones and grasping a crooked blackwood wand he'd apparently stashed beneath his blankets or pillow. He extended the arcane weapon in the intruders' direction.
Bareris yanked his sword out of the feline carcass, sprang forward, and poised the weapon to strike at the wand. At the same instant, a gout of dark fire, or something like it, leaped from the end of the wand to chill him. Refusing to let the freezing anguish stop him, he delivered the beat, and the wand flew from Urhur's grasp.