He thrust his stiffened fingers into their throats, one hand for each, and lunged, bulling his way between them. Dmitra was standing on the other side. Her eyes widened in dismay.
Though he didn't see a telltale glimmer or anything comparable, he had no doubt she had defensive enchantments in place. He bellowed to focus every iota of his strength and spirit, and punched at her heart.
He felt ribs break. The shards had nowhere to go but into the pulsing organ behind them, and she fell backward.
It was a perfect death, for she'd perished wielding the art and guile that defined her. Malark felt the mix of exultation and envy that transported him on such rare occasions.
But he had no time for contemplation. He had other foes to fight. He pounced, grabbed the ruby amulet dangling on the Red Wizard's chest, and gave it a jerk that snapped the illusionist's neck.
Bareris had exhausted his bardic powers, and he had a single arrow left. Seeking an appropriate target, he peered at the ground.
The fog-entity wasn't a logical choice. Even magic didn't seem to hurt it, although given its amorphous nature, it was difficult to be sure. If anyone had wounded it, the steady growth it experienced as it absorbed victim after victim likely offset the damage.
He spied an orc nocking an arrow. Judging from its position on the battlefield, it had come from the Keep of Sorrows. Like the rest of its comrades, it was keeping its distance from the fog-thing. But as the southern army fell back before the entity and its formations disintegrated, the orc and its fellows were shooting foes who blundered within easy reach of their weapons.
Bareris let his own arrow fly before the orc finished aiming. The missile punched into the warrior's neck just above its shoulder, and it staggered. It lost its grip on its bowstring, and its shaft flew wild.
Another orc shouted and pointed, and arrows hurtled up from the ground. Winddancer raised one wing, dipped the other, veered, and dodged the missiles. But one came close enough to tear a feather from the griffon's wing, and Bareris realized his mount was as weary as he was.
It's time to go, he thought, but couldn't make himself give Winddancer the appropriate command. Not yet. He wouldn't flee until he was certain the situation was as bleak as it seemed. He made the griffon climb for a better view of the battleground.
Large as an army itself, the cloud of gibbering, keening faces extruded arms that dissolved one southerner after another, although Bareris wasn't certain why it bothered. All it really needed to do was flow forward and engulf the council's warriors to obliterate them. The dread warriors inside it swung their axes and jabbed with their spears, dispatching anyone lucky or hardy enough to survive the vapor's touch.
Until the fog-thing rippled, churned, and contracted in on itself, uncovering the marching corpses and skeletons. It shrank to a writhing point, then vanished entirely.
Bareris shook his head in amazement. If the thing was gone, perhaps that meant the southern army might yet prevail.
But no. When he studied the field, the last dogged trace of hope withered inside him.
The remnants of the southern army were too few, too disorganized, and too demoralized. They only wanted to run away. Whereas Szass Tam had succeeded in bringing enormous numbers of undead down from the top of the plateau. They and their comrades from the Keep of Sorrows had arranged themselves in well-defined battle lines and in the proper positions to assail their foes from three sides at once.
Aoth had been right to mistrust Bane. The council had lost the battle, and its agents had no choice but to run until the sun rose to slow pursuit. Only those possessed of horses or capable of flight were likely to last that long.
Bareris was grateful that Tammith could fly. Praying she still survived, and that she could somehow find him before dawn, he turned Winddancer south.
CHAPTER TEN
16 Eleint-4 Marpenoth, the Year of Blue Fire
Samas Kul impaled a link of venison sausage on his knife, lifted it, and smelled its spicy aroma. His stomach squirmed, and he discovered that even though he hadn't eaten since lunch, and it was now mid-afternoon, he wasn't hungry. The realization startled him, as if he'd looked down at his hands and discovered they'd turned green.
He supposed that last night's debacle was responsible for his loss of appetite. Most of all, the horrible moment when he'd ventured to the front of the battle formation to confront the cloud-thing.
He hadn't wanted to, but he'd judged that only a zulkir could destroy the thing. Because plainly, none of the lesser Red Wizards, nor Burning Braziers hurling gout after gout of fire, were having any luck against it.
So he raised his power and attempted to turn the entity into an enormous lump of stone. But it didn't transform. Rather, it reached out and caught him in a dark, swirling extension of itself, and a terrifying intimation of dissolution ripped through his body and mind alike. He barely managed to cling to sufficient lucidity to activate the magic of the tattoo that whisked him to the Central Citadel.
Looking older than usual, and for once, shaken rather than ill-tempered, Lallara had appeared shortly thereafter, and then other Red Wizards capable of translating themselves across long distances. Samas realized that if they too were forsaking the field, the battle was surely lost, not that he'd had much doubt of it before.
Scowling, Nevron marched into the council chamber and took his seat at the table. He was the last to arrive at a conclave that, the zulkirs had decided, only they would attend, and not all of them at that. Like Yaphyll's, Dmitra Flass's chair was empty. No one knew what had become of her, only that she hadn't transported herself back to Bezantur with the rest of her peers.
"Let's get to it," Nevron growled. "I summoned the high priest of Bane this morning. I thought he might care to explain yesterday to me. The son of a dog sent his regrets. He claims to be ill."
Lauzoril's thin lips twitched into a grim and fleeting smile. "That sounds plausible. Living as he does in a great temple, where would he possibly find a healer?"
"What does this mean?" Samas asked.
"Either that he fears to face my displeasure," Nevron said, "or that he imagines he can flout my commands without consequences."
"When your devils drag him forth screaming," Lallara said, "you can ask him which it is."
"I hope that day will come," Nevron said, "but for now we have graver matters to address. What was that new creation Szass Tam sent against us?"
Zola Sethrakt cleared her throat. The slight stirring made her white and black jewelry clink. "My assistants and I," she said, "have been reading the grimoires and journals the griffon riders took from the sanctuary of the creature called Xingax. In one passage, he describes such an entity, although it doesn't seem that he had any intent of creating one himself. He thought the process would be difficult, and that it might prove even harder to control the thing."
"But obviously," Lallara said, "Szass Tam dared, even with sorcery weakened and unreliable."
"Yes. Xingax called the entity a dream vestige."
Samas snorted. " 'Vestige' seems a puny word to describe anything so dangerous and immense."
"I suppose," Zola replied, "but that's the name he gave it. It's somewhat similar to a creature known as a caller in darkness, which is made of a number of spirits melded together. A dream vestige begins as hundreds of nightmares gathered, combined, and infused with the energies of undeath. It grows by devouring any being possessed of a mind."
"Is it as impervious to magic as it seemed?" Lauzoril asked.
"Not entirely," Zola said. "But even though we could see it, it isn't a physical entity. Intangibility gives even a common wraith a measure of protection, and this creature has strong additional defenses. So, with wizardry diminished…" She shrugged her bony shoulders, and her necklaces and bracelets clattered.