Chumed regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. But if So-Kehur even heard the implied criticism, combat had left him too exhilarated to make an issue of it. "How long to get the columns moving again?" the autharch asked.
"Not too long. The healers have to tend the wounded, and everyone needs a chance to catch his breath."
"Well, take care of it all as quickly as you can. I want to reach the battlefield by nightfall."
I don't, Chumed thought. Not especially.
It wasn't that he was afraid. He was no coward, and the army they were about to engage had all but crippled itself taking the huge fortress in the northern part of the tharch. But, So-Kehur's bloodlust aside, he still didn't see any compelling reason for this fight, and what was even worse was that the enemy had just demonstrated they could outthink the autharch. Chumed recognized it even if his master didn't.
The round, flat roof of the keep provided a view of the city surrounding the Citadel and the mountains beyond. Columns of smoke rose from some of the latter, and a cold wind blew them toward the bloody sunset.
Bareris looked for some indication that Szass Tam had cast potent enchantments on this place. He didn't see any. But both Aoth and Mirror faltered when they came up the stairs. Apparently the warmage's spellscarred eyes could discern the truth, and the ghost perceived the same "unholy" malignancy to which he'd reacted before.
Szass Tam walked to the center of the rooftop, turned, and gave them all a smile that jabbed a fresh spasm of loathing into Bareris's guts. He stifled the feeling as best he could.
"Well, here we are," said the lich. "Nothing remains but to unlock the door. So if you want to enhance your defenses or anything like that, now's the time."
"So it really is going to be just us," said Samas Kul, his tone petulant. "Even though you have an entire army garrisoned here."
"He already explained," Lallara said. "Springhill is in control of the realm beyond the gate. Since he created the place, Szass Tam can take us through even so, but we're about the limit. Any more and we'd simply lose people, much as we lost them translating ourselves into the dungeons. Now, if we could be certain of losing you-"
"I understand!" the obese transmuter snapped. "I'm just amazed that a would-be god can't do a little better."
"Perhaps the years have sapped my powers," Szass Tam said. "I suspect that the next little while will give you ample opportunity to judge."
"Before we go in," said Aoth, his fingers scratching amid the feathers on Jet's neck, "I need to be clear on one thing. Is it enough to interrupt Malark? If we knock the breath out of him in the middle of an incantation, will that stop the Unmaking?"
"Unfortunately, no," Szass Tam replied. "The ceremony involves a number of conditions and limitations, but that isn't one of them. He can pause, deal with an interruption, and then pick up where he left off."
"So we have to kill him," Nevron growled. "Fine. We all want to kill him. Let's get on with it."
"As you wish," Szass Tam said. He turned his back on them; Bareris shivered and clamped down on the urge to strike while the lich looked vulnerable.
Szass Tam flourished his shadowy staff and whispered words that somehow made Bareris angrier still, that seemed to feed the hate and bitterness inside him like dry wood feeding a fire. Then a square of utter blackness, big as the entry to a rich man's house, painted itself on the air.
Bareris assumed that they'd walk into it. Instead, it rushed forward, expanding as it came, first swallowing Szass Tam and then himself. And all the others too, presumably, although at that instant, he lost sight of them. He seemed to tumble through freezing darkness, then jolt down on his feet. A new world oozed into view.
It was a place of towering crags and twisting canyons, without even a sprig of brush or speck of fungus growing anywhere on the dry earth and stone. Only a handful of faint stars gleamed in the black, moonless sky.
He and his companions had arrived in one of the gorges. The others pivoted, peering around. "I assumed," Lauzoril said, "that you'd shift us into position to attack Springhill immediately."
"It wasn't possible," Szass Tam said. "He has layers of protection. I couldn't pierce them all with a single spell."
"But now that we're here?" Samas asked.
"I hope so." Turning, the lich studied the peaks and cliffs, then chuckled.
"What?" Nevron spat.
"Malark's altered the geography," Szass Tam said. "Either to disorient me if I escaped Thakorsil's Seat and came after him or simply because he finds the new skyline more conducive to focusing his thoughts."
Either way, Bareris didn't like hearing that their foe had shifted mountains like a child playing with blocks. Szass Tam had warned that Malark was a god in this realm, and that didn't seem like hyperbole anymore.
"So I take it we have to find him," Lallara said. "I can cast a divination."
"We might as well try the obvious way first," said Aoth. Jet shook out his wings, and the warmage swung himself into the saddle.
"Be careful," Szass Tam said. "I put guardians in the sky as well as on the ground."
"I under-" Aoth began, and then Jet leaped, lashed his wings, and carried the warmage aloft. Apparently, after all the time he'd spent underground, the griffon was eager to take to the sky, even the sky of a dismal place like this. Seemingly surprised by the abrupt departure, Mirror rose into the air a moment later.
Bareris watched as they soared high overhead. If something attacked them up there, he'd have a difficult time helping them.
But nothing did, and after a time, they swooped back down to earth. "Got him," Aoth said. "He's conjuring on a flat mountain-top about a mile in that direction." He pointed with his spear.
"Did he notice you?" Lallara asked.
"I didn't see any indication of it."
"Does he have a pack of guardians clustered around him?" Samas asked.
"I didn't see those, either."
"Still," said Szass Tam, "they're there. I guarantee it."
"So we hit fast and hard and kill their master before they can react," Nevron said, "just as I've been advising all along." He glowered at Szass Tam. "Captain Fezim has given you your bearings. Now can you translate us to our quarry?"
"Let's find out." The lich slipped his withered fingers into one of his many pockets, no doubt to remove a talisman or spell trigger. Then skeletal figures stalked out of the darkness ahead.
Each was half again as tall as a man, with strips of ragged, desiccated flesh dangling from its frame. Their heads were hairless, and their ears, pointed. Tiny figures writhed inside their ribs like anguished prisoners jammed behind the bars of a cage.
One of the zulkirs' surviving soldiers happened to be closest to the oncoming horrors. He wailed and raised his sword and shield to fend them off. The creature in the lead pounced. The legionnaire's blade bit into its torso, but it didn't seem to notice. It grabbed him in its jagged talons, and the man screamed, convulsed, then dangled limp as string. A new prisoner-the soldier's soul, evidently-squirmed into existence behind the skeletal entity's ribs. The creature dropped the corpse and kept coming.
"They're devourers!" Szass Tam called. Perhaps the term meant something to the zulkirs, but Bareris had never heard it before.
But if he had to fight in ignorance, so be it. He shouted, and the thunderous bellow ripped flesh from the lead devourer's frame and broke a number of its bones, even as the cry echoed down the gorge and brought pebbles showering from overhead.
Its legs shattered, the devourer fell but crawled onward. Mirror stepped up beside Bareris, brandished his sword, and light flared from the blade. The crawling devourer and the one behind it burned away to nothing in an instant.