"So why talk about the possibility?" Jhesrhi said. She inspected her grimy hand, then picked at one of her fingernails.
Samas Kul belched. He tossed away a chicken bone, and a candied pomegranate appeared to take its place. "If we could make contact with someone inside the castle-someone alive, I mean-perhaps we could bribe him to open one of the gates."
"I doubt it," Bareris said. "Szass Tam started shackling the minds of his agents at the beginning of the war. Given that the Dread Rings are crucial to his plans, it's unlikely that he'd station anyone there who was still in possession of his free will."
Lauzoril pursed his lips, an expression that made him look even more like a priggish clerk than usual. "Working together, Lallara and I might be able to break some of those shackles. Of course, then you'd still have to identify exactly whom it was. You'd have to find a way to communicate with him and convince him it was in his best interests to switch sides…"
"In other words," said Nevron, sneering, "the idea's too complicated, and we can't pin our hopes on it. We have to take the Ring by force of arms." He shifted his glare to Aoth. "Your avowed area of expertise, our 'equal for the duration.' "
"I've given the problem some thought," the warmage said, "and even with a company of griffon riders at our disposal, I doubt we can get enough men on top of a wall, or inside the walls, to open the place up for the rest of us. We need to break down a gate or a section of wall, and then we'll have a chance."
Lallara frowned. "Those fortifications are massive. Even if the builders hadn't reinforced them with enchantment-which they did-it would take too much time to batter them down with mangonels and such."
"That's true, Your Omnipotence. But every wall, no matter how strongly built, needs something solid to stand on."
"You're talking about mining."
"Yes."
"Wouldn't that take too much time as well?"
"If we did it in the usual way. But I hope we have an alternative. Jhesrhi?"
Her golden eyes catching the lamplight, the wizard said, "I'm well-versed in elemental magic, and I've studied the patch of ground on which the Ring stands. I know where the soil is softest and where an underground stream runs. I believe that if I spoke to the earth and water, I could conceivably topple a section of the east wall. But the job would be a lot more feasible if I had help. Master Nevron, I've heard that you and your disciples are as adept at commanding elementals as you are demons and devils, even if you don't see fit to call on them as often. Would you join me in this effort?"
Nevron's scowl deepened as if it vexed him to have someone who wasn't a zulkir speak to him as an equal. But he simply said, "I'll do it if someone can convince me the plan is practical. It will take more than I've heard so far. Let's say the wall falls."
"By all means, let's say that," Gaedynn interrupted. "The collapse breaks the magical pattern, and our work is done. Right?"
"Wrong," Nevron spat. "If we merely inflict physical damage and march away, they can restore the symbol. We need to rake the Ring and then perform a ritual to render it harmless for all time. Now, as I was saying: The wall falls. Won't the army still have a great heap of rubble blocking the path into the fortress?"
"A heap of loose stones isn't the same thing as a solid wall," Jhesrhi said. "I'm confident that, with all the wizards in our army, we can clear it out of our way."
"Well, possibly so. But have you considered that when we strike to knock down the wall, the wizards inside the fortress will sense the attack and move to counter us: And no matter how skilled we are at elemental magic, inertia will be on their side."
Aoth scratched his chin. "Yes, that's the tricky part. We need to distract the bastards so thoroughly that they won't notice what you're up to."
"So we make what looks like a committed, furious assault," Bareris said.
"That's my thought," said Aoth.
Lauzoril put his hands together in front of his face, fingertip to fingertip, and peered into the space between his palms as if wisdom dwelled therein. "The feint will have to look convincing, which means it will give the enemy the opportunity to kill a good many of our troops. Breaching the wall won't help us if we end up too weak to exploit the opportunity."
"Well," said Aoth, "it would stop Szass Tam from using the castle as a giant talisman until his servants mend the hole. You're right, though: if the first battle cripples us, that delay wont save us in the long run. But I don't think the fight has to cripple us. We've been watching this place since we got here and have seen few flying warriors or steeds. Whereas we have griffon riders, so that's one advantage. Most if not all of their mages are necromancers, and they don't appear to have any priests at all. We have a greater diversity of magic at our command, so that's another."
"In fact," Khouryn said, "if I can get some ladders planted against the wall and a squad of my best men to the top of them, this 'feint' might just take the castle all by itself. Stranger things have happened."
Samas Kul shook his head. "I'm just not persuaded this ploy will work."
"Do you have a better idea?" Lallara waited a beat, as if to give the gluttonous transmuter a chance to respond. He didn't take it. "Because I don't, and we have to try something."
"I agree," Lauzoril said.
"As do I," Nevron said. He glowered at Jhesrhi. "But you'd better be as competent as you claim."
That seemed to settle it, for Samas pouted and held his peace thereafter. And, though no one said it outright, Bareris sensed that the zulkirs would expect the Brotherhood of the Griffon to do the hardest fighting and face the greatest peril, just as in the battle against the Aglarondans. He had a guilty sense that, as Aoth's friend, he ought to resent the unfairness, but he couldn't. Because if the sellswords were at the forefront and he was with them, it would maximize his chances of getting at Tsagoth.
Jet carried Aoth soaring over the warriors of the Brotherhood of the Griffon who didn't ride the steeds from which the company took its name-ranks of armored foot soldiers, lines of bowmen, lancers on restless, prancing horses, and artillerymen making final, fussy adjustments to their trebuchets and ballistae. Viewing them, he wished, as he often did at such moments, that he could be with every component of his army simultaneously to oversee everything it did.
"Well, you can't,"' said Jet. "So let's get on with it."
Not the most inspirational words that ever hurled fighting men into the jaws of death, but Aoth supposed they'd do. He looked across the gray sky, caught Bareris's eye, and dipped the head of his spear to signal. The bard nodded, raised a horn to his lips, and blew a call amplified by magic. Scores of griffon riders hurtled at the Dread Ring.
Blood orcs on the battlements bellowed to see them coming, while their undead comrades, rotting cadavers and naked skeletons, stood stolidly and waited with weapons in hand. Bareris struck up a song that stabbed terror and confusion into the minds of some of the swine-faced living warriors, and they bolted and plummeted from the wall-walk. Aoth pointed his spear and hurled a dazzling flare of lightning that blasted both live and lifeless defenders to smoking fragments. Gaedynn loosed one of his special arrows, and in a heartbeat, brambles sprouted where it struck, growing and twisting outward from the shaft to catch Szass Tam's minions like a spiderweb. Those griffon riders who lacked a means of magical attack shot shaft after shaft from their short but powerful compound bows, and hit a target more often than not.