Then a Burning Brazier armed with a chain peered warily through the half-open gate. He spotted the dread warriors and brandished his weapon at them. The links clattered and burst into flames. The dead men exploded into a roaring blaze that burned them to ash in an instant.
The brassy notes of a glaur horn echoed down the passageway at Tammith's back. The attacking force had secured the gate, and Bareris was calling the griffons, and the riders who'd stayed with them, down from the sky.
Squirming on his padded chair, the cushions, though recently replaced, already stained and stinking with the effluvia of his decaying body, Xingax squinted down at the Red Wizard laboring in the conjuration chamber below the balcony. Squinting didn't bring the scene below into sharper focus, so he closed the myopic eye he'd possessed since birth and looked through the one he'd appropriated from Ysval's corpse. That was better.
It would have been better still if he could have hovered at his assistant's side, but that wasn't practical. His mere proximity was toxic to the living. Although perhaps the idiot chanting and flourishing his athame deserved a dose of poison, because he was useless.
But no, that wasn't fair. Much as Xingax wished he could blame the human for botching the ritual, the fellow had performed each successive revision competently enough. The problem was that the laws of magic were changing, and as a result, Xingax found himself unable to exploit them as cunningly as before.
The fact distressed him. He lacked the natural aptitude to practice necromancy to any great effect, but he deemed himself Faerыn's greatest inventor of necromantic spells, greater in that regard than even Szass Tam, though he had more discretion than to tell his master so. It was his pride and his passion, the deepest delight of a being forever barred from many of the joys natural creatures took for granted.
What if he couldn't work out the new rules? Or what if the balance of mystical forces never stabilized, and therefore no constant, reliable principles ever crystallized? Then he would never again be the sage and brilliant creator. The possibility was terrible to contemplate. So much so that, while he understood he ought to be concerned about more tangible misfortunes-with magic crippled, Szass Tam could lose the war, or cast him off as useless, or blue fire could destroy all Thay and him with it-he could scarcely find it within himself to care about them.
The wizard shouted the climactic words of the incantation. He gashed his forehead with the ritual dagger, swiped at the welling blood with his fingertips, and spattered scarlet droplets across the object of his spell.
For a moment, nothing happened, and Xingax felt his mood sour even further. Then glazed eyes rolled from side to side. A leathery tongue slid over rows of jagged fangs to lick gray, withered lips, but couldn't moisten them.
Something writhed beneath trailing whiskers the color of tarnished brass. Protruding from the rigged neck, tangled guts and veins slithered and clutched to heave the entity across the floor.
The colossal severed head had belonged to a cloud giant sorcerer, and if the reanimation had worked properly, it should still possess arcane powers akin to those it wielded in life. Xingax was suddenly confident that it had worked. By all the lords in shadow, he was still a master of his particular art and always would be, no matter how many deities assassinated one another.
Elsewhere in the fortress, a glaur blared. The unexpected sound extinguished Xingax's jubilation like a splash of water snuffing a candle. His retainers didn't use horns.
An instant later, the door to the chamber below him banged open, and a hunched, shriveled ghoul with foxfire eyes lunged through. The creature faltered when it saw the swollen disembodied head shifting around, but only for a moment.
"Enemies!" it cried, in a voice like a jackal's snarl.
Xingax scowled. He'd believed he'd escaped the battlefields of Szass Tam's war, but it seemed that somehow, conflict had followed him home. "Outside the gates?" he asked.
"No, Master, already inside! I think they tricked the guards!"
That was unexpected, and serious enough to give Xingax a pang of genuine apprehension, because the fortress was lightly garrisoned. It didn't require an abundance of soldiers to control the prisoners awaiting transformation, and no one had expected it would need to repel a siege.
Still, he assured himself, he could cope if he kept a clear head. "Tell everyone to contain the intruders in the central hall," he said to the ghoul, then shifted his gaze to the bloody-faced necromancer. "You woke the giant's head, and it will obey you. Get it into battle."
As his minions scurried to obey him, Xingax sought to enter a light trance. Anxiety made it more difficult than usual, but he managed. He sent his awareness soaring outside the fortress to find his watchdog.
It was hard to imagine that his foes could have slain the creature, let alone have done so without making enough commotion to rouse the citadel, and in fact, it was still creeping through the brush. Evidently, the southerners' "trick," whatever it had been, had fooled it as completely as the legionnaires protecting the gate.
Well, it wasn't too late for the beast to avert calamity, for it was one of the most formidable beings Xingax had ever created, so much so that he'd almost felt guilty withholding it from the legions. But he hadn't survived as long as he had without giving some thought to his own personal protection. Besides, an artist was entitled to retain possession of one or two masterpieces, wasn't he?
He touched the entity's mind, and it bounded toward the fortress.
Bareris stood in the gate and waved the griffons and their riders into the entryway. In that enclosed space, the distinctive smell of the beasts, half fur and half feathers, was enough to make his eyes water.
Murder furled his wings and touched down on the ground. Bareris hadn't expected any harm to befall his mount while they were apart. Still, it was good to see the animal hale and ready to fight.
So far, he thought, everything was going well. Then a huge shape crashed out of the brush.
At that moment, Bareris could see in the dark like an orc. It was one of several charms he'd laid on himself just prior to approaching the fortress. Thus, he beheld the oncoming beast clearly. It resembled a dead and rotting dragon, with a saurian head, four legs, and a tail. But the neck was too short, and it had no wings. Tentacles writhed from its shoulders, and weeping sores the size of saucers dotted its mottled, charcoal-colored body. Frozen with shock, Bareris wondered how such an immense creature had managed to conceal itself.
His paralysis lasted only a heartbeat, but as fast as the behemoth was charging, that could have doomed him and his companions. But as it happened, a dozen fleeing Theskians were between the lizard-thing and the cliff face, and it paused to slaughter them. Tentacles picked them up and squeezed, and the flesh of those so grappled flowed like molten wax. Clawed feet stamped others to pulp, and gnashing jaws chewed the rest to pieces.
Bareris saw that all the soldiers couldn't squeeze into the passage in time to escape the behemoth, nor did this disorganized clump of men and griffons have any hope of turning and fighting it effectively. "You!" he shouted, gesturing to everyone still outside, "get in the air and shoot the thing! Everyone else, stand clear of the gates and push them shut!"
The legionnaires scrambled to obey. To his relief, the heavy stone leaves swung easily on their hinges, and the bar slid just as readily in its greased brackets.
As soon as it was in position, the gates boomed and jolted. A few moments later, the same thing happened, and a crack appeared in the bar.
"It won't hold!" a griffon rider cried.