Certain the barrier would delay him long enough for her to close with him, she grinned a lupine grin when he scrambled to the locked door. Then he threw a dark bead or stone.
Since it landed in grass, it shouldn't have shattered. It did anyway, and shadow boiled out of it, separating into ragged, floating figures that moaned and gibbered as they advanced.
Tammith felt a dullness numbing her mind and exerted her will to banish it. Only after she succeeded could she think coherently enough to recognize the entities: allips, the mad, vengeful spirits of suicides. A particularly nasty rearguard to cover Malark's retreat.
She melted from she-wolf to woman, because the touch of an allip was venomous. If she had to fight the things, she preferred to do it with the superior reach her sword afforded.
Bareris started singing, probably to counter the hypnotic effect of the allips' babble. Tammith drew her blade, and then a pair of the spirits closed with her.
Fangs bared, she slashed at one and the sword whizzed all the way through it without any tangible resistance. The weapon was enchanted, but she sensed that the stroke hadn't hurt her foe. Well, perhaps the next one would.
The allips whirled around her, groaning and keening. She cut and thrust, and perhaps their murky forms began to fray, but it was difficult to tell for certain. She dodged and ducked to avoid their scrabbling, raking fingers.
But it was hard to avoid every strike when the entities were attacking from two sides, and eventually, one landed a blow from behind. Or so she assumed, for she didn't see it, nor did she feel localized pain or a shock of impact as such. Rather, she experienced a sudden disruption of thought, followed by confusion, fear, and a sense of filthy violation.
It was like having Xingax in her head again, and it drove her to fury. Screaming, she laid around her until her attackers dissolved into nothingness and their ghastly voices fell silent.
She turned, surveying the battle. Malark had broken the locked door and fled. Still singing, Bareris was holding his own against two remaining allips, and Mirror was exchanging blows; with another.
Aoth, however, was having problems. Half a dozen of the crazed, vicious spirits had swarmed on him, and, plainly hurt, he was stumbling around in the middle of them jabbing desperately with his spear. A spell would likely have served him better, but perhaps he was already too addled to cast one.
It occurred to her that Aoth was Bareris's friend, and that she could rush to his aid. But he was nothing to her, and the prey responsible for fouling her own mind was getting away. She dissolved into bats and flew in pursuit.
Though Mirror hadn't consciously tried to summon his targe when the allip engaged him, it had materialized on his arm anyway, and served him well. A wooden or steel shield would likely have proved all but useless, but he, his ethereal opponent, and his armor were all made of the same refined essence of darkness and pain.
He thrust his blade into his adversary's murky, demented features, and it gave a last mad gabble and withered from existence. That freed him to help Aoth.
But when he turned toward the war mage, he saw that it might already be too late to succor him. Aoth staggered and fell, the spear flying from his grip. The allips sprang on top of him and clawed like famished ghouls ripping at a corpse.
Mirror could leap to Aoth in an instant, but he couldn't strike half a dozen blows quickly enough to keep one of the allips from giving the griffon rider his death. But he could attempt something else, because communion with his god had partly restored him. At times, he thought more clearly, and he could now invoke the holy powers he'd wielded in life.
That didn't mean he was eager to do so, because as he'd discovered when healing Aoth's eyes, there was a fundamental discrepancy between the divine champion he'd once been and the tainted shadow that remained of him. When he channeled the power of his deity, he was like a snowman trying to handle fire.
Yet if his faith was strong, his master would protect him. He raised his sword and called to that which he no longer understood or could even name, but which he loved and trusted nonetheless.
A radiance like daylight blazed from his blade. The allips cringed from it, floating away from the fallen Aoth.
Mirror charged them and cut at the nearest. Now shrouded in blur to hamper an opponent's aim, Bareris rushed to stand beside him. Fighting in concert, the two companions slashed the remaining allips into evaporating wisps of murk, then hurried over to Aoth.
Mirror didn't trust himself to examine the war mage. After repelling the allips, he felt too hollow, too close to dissolving into mindless ache and malice, and in such a condition, his touch or even proximity might further injure a wounded man. "How is he?" he asked.
Bareris kneeled, stripped off his leather gauntlet, and worked his fingertips under the mail to feel for Aoth's pulse. "At least his heart is beating."
Malark sprinted through the labyrinth of corridors, chambers, and courtyards that was the Central Citadel. He was reasonably hopeful of escaping. Even if it didn't kill his adversaries, Szass Tam's gift would at least provide him a fair head start, and thanks to his training in the monastery, he could run faster and longer than most anyone he'd ever known.
The question was, where should he run? His horse offered the fastest way out of the city, but he suspected Aoth and Bareris had posted guards at the stable should he elude them in the garden.
Better, he thought, to procure a cloak and hood to throw on over his expensive courtier's clothing, then slip out of the fortress. He'd worry about a quick way north later. If worse came to worst, he could run the entire distance about as fast as an ordinary horse could carry him.
He plunged into another area open to the sky, an octagonal paved yard with a phosphorescent statue of the late Aznar Thrul, staff raised high, the bronze folds of his robe streaming as if windblown, towering in the center. Then something fluttered overhead.
Malark surmised it was a bat's wing-Tammith Iltazyarra's wing. He tried to spring aside, but to no avail. Something furry bumped down on top of his head.
The bat was so light that the impact didn't hurt. It did sting, however, when the creature hooked its claws into his scalp and ripped at his forehead with its fangs.
The bite sent an icy shock of sickness through his frame. He lifted a hand to tear his attacker away, and a second bat lit on the extremity and sank its teeth into his index finger. A third landed on his back, and, clinging to his doublet, climbed toward his neck.
He threw himself down on his back and crushed the creature before it could reach its goal, then whipped his arm and smashed the bat on his hand against the paving stones, dislodging it. He grabbed the one on his head, yanked it free, and wrung it like a washcloth.
Others descended on him. He rolled out from underneath them, sprang to his feet, and when they wheeled in pursuit, met them with stabs of his stiffened fingers. He hit one, and then they flew away from him, swirled together, and became a pallid woman in black armor, a sword extended in her hand. Despite the harm he'd inflicted on the bats, Malark couldn't see any sign of it in the way she carried herself. Still, it was possible she'd been injured.
"Perhaps you assumed," he said, playing for a little more time to steady his breathing, "that I couldn't hurt you without an enchanted weapon." He had the monks' esoteric disciplines to thank for it that he could. "Otherwise you might not have come at me as a flock of bats. You would have opted for something less delicate."
She glided closer. "That was the only mistake I'm going to make."
"Everything you've done since the Keep of Sorrows has been a mistake. You know Szass Tam, and now you've had a chance to take the measure of his rivals. Surely you recognize that none of them is a match for him. He may have encountered setbacks of late, but he's still going to win." He edged sideways and she turned to compensate.