Blood orcs rushed out of the dark, then hesitated when they took in his ink black eyes and bone white skin. They wondered if a warrior so manifestly undead could truly be a foe, and under other circumstances, Bareris might have tried to bluff them. Now, however, he broke their bones and blasted them off their feet with a thunderous shout.
"Tsagoth!" he called in a voice augmented to carry throughout the fortress. "Show yourself!" He sprinted to a door at the base of one of the Ring's lesser towers and yanked it open.
No one was on the other side. Not in this little antechamber, anyway. He sang a spell to seal both the door he'd just entered and the one on the far side of the room, then took a better look around.
Even here, inside the fortress, the windows were mere arrow slits. He just had time to reflect that nothing solid and man-sized would have room to wriggle though when something else did, a flowing shadow with the murky, rippling suggestion of an anguished, silently wailing old man's face. It reached for Bareris, and he felt the chill poison that comprised its essence. The malignancy was nowhere near as dangerous to him as it would have been to a mortal, but no doubt the wraith could hurt him.
He sidestepped its scrabbling hands, drew his sword, and cut through the center of it. The phantom flickered, stumbled, then rounded on him. He cut down the middle of its head, and it disappeared.
Bareris pivoted back to the nearest arrow slit. He pressed his eye to it just in time to see a necromancer thrust out a wand made from a mummified human forearm. A spark leaped from the instrument's shriveled fingertips.
Bareris dived away from the opening and threw himself flat. The spark streaked through the arrow slit and, with an echoing boom, exploded into a yellow burst of flame.
Fortunately, only the fringe of the blast washed over Bareris. It stung and scorched him, but that was all. He scrambled back to the arrow slit, chanted a spell, and felt a throbbing in his eyes. He stared at the Red Wizard, and the necromancer cried out and doubled over, dropping the preserved forearm in the process. The blood orcs gathered around him gaped in consternation.
"I want Tsagoth!" Bareris howled. "Tsagoth! Bring him to me, or I'll curse you all!"
Malark and Tsagoth stood on the wall-walk, high enough that Bareris couldn't possibly see them, listening to the intruder shout and watching more and more guards gather in front of the minor bastion in which he'd taken refuge.
Malark smiled. "Even after a century of undeath, even when he's raving at the top of his lungs, you can tell he still has that magnificent voice."
His breath smelling of blood, Tsagoth snorted. " 'Raving' is the word for it. When you decided to drive him mad with hate for me, I never imagined it would work as well as this."
"Well, since their first assault failed, the zulkirs haven't dared make a move against us. In fact, there are signs they may even pack up and leave. If so, then sneaking into the Ring alone was Bareris's only hope of getting his revenge."
"But it's no hope at all. A sane man would have understood it couldn't possibly work."
Malark twirled his ebony wand in his fingers, a habit the Monks of the Long Death had taught him to promote manual dexterity. "Well, you've got me there. Are you going to go down and give him the duel he so desires?"
"If you tell me to. Otherwise, no. Obviously, I'm not afraid of him. Back aboard that roundship on the Alamber Sea, I held off him, his griffon, the ghost, and Tammith Iltazyarra, all attacking me together. But I don't reciprocate his hatred, either. How could I, when I can barely tell you human vermin apart? So let the dogs"-Tsagoth waved his lower right hand at the orcs, ghouls, and necromancers assembled below-"dig the badger out of his hole. It's what dogs are for, isn't it?"
"I suppose. It's just that Bareris is an old friend of mine, and I'd like to give him the gift of a fitting death. If he perished fighting you, that would do the trick. But I consider you a friend as well, and I won't compel you if you aren't so inclined."
Tsagoth laughed, though his mirth sounded more like a lupine snarl. "You're as crazy as he is."
"Perhaps. You're far from the first to tell me so."
"You know, I could promise him I'll meet him in single combat. Then the men could loose a few dozen arrows into him as soon as he comes through the door. That's a way to put him down before he kills any more of us."
Malark shook his head. "I won't do that."
"I figured as much."
"But I will let you lure him out, and then I'll duel him. After all, I betrayed him and the southern cause. He ought to hate me too, at least a little. If he meets his end fighting me, it's not as perfect as if it happened battling you, but it's still a death reflective of his fundamental nature."
Peering through an arrow slit, Bareris saw a column of mist spill down from on high. When it reached the ground, it thickened and took on definition until it became a dark, four-armed figure half again as tall as a man, with glowing crimson eyes and a head part human and part wolf.
Bareris shuddered, and hatred like burning vomit welled up inside him. He closed his eyes to shut out the sight of the blood fiend. Struggled to remember his true purpose and his pledge to Aoth.
"I'm here, minstrel!" Tsagoth shouted, a hint of a lupine howl in his voice. "What is it you want?"
It seemed to Bareris that he had himself under control. He risked opening his eyes, and it was still all right. "Isn't it obvious? I want to face you in single combat!"
"Done. Come out and let's get started."
The quick acceptance of the challenge brought a fresh surge of fury. Made Bareris want to leap up this instant, rush outside-
He clamped down on the impulse. He needed to do more talking before permitting anything else to happen. "How do I know all your allies won't attack me the instant I appear?"
Tsagoth shrugged a peculiar-looking four-armed shrug. "You'll just have to trust me."
"I have a better idea. You come in here, and that will ensure it's just the two of us."
"The two of us and whatever snares you've prepared with your bardic tricks. I think not. Come out and take your chances, or all these soldiers and I will storm your pitiful little redoubt. It should take about ten heartbeats."
"All right," Bareris answered, "I'll come out." He dissolved the locking charm he'd cast, opened the door, and, singing, stepped out into the open.
No quarrels or flares of freezing shadow leaped at him. Arranged in a crescent-moon arc some distance from the door, Szass Tam's servants were content to stand and stare, orcs and mages with malice and curiosity in their eyes, zombies with nothing at all in theirs. Tsagoth waited at the other end of the patch of clear ground, in reach at last after ninety years spent hunting him.
Bareris felt his anger deepen until its weight threatened to crush everything else inside him. He told himself that Tsagoth was merely Szass Tam's pawn and that sticking to his plan was the way to discomfit the lich. Reminded himself of every other consideration he'd counted on to help him maintain control. And at that moment, none of it mattered. How could it? He was a dead man, a ravening beast, capable of nothing but grief, self-loathing, and rage.
He switched to a different song, raised his blade high, and took an eager stride.
He closed half the distance, and then Tsagoth vanished. Bareris faltered, startled, anguished that the demonic vampire evidently intended to break his word. Then Malark, clad partly in crimson, a black wand or cudgel in his hand, floated down from the sky to stand where Tsagoth had been.
Bareris realized a measure of calm had returned to him. Consternation had blunted his frenzy. "My business is with Tsagoth," he said.