The nightwalker reached for her. Gaedynn ran in and hacked at its ankle. The giant toppled, snapping more tree limbs as it fell, and Eider sprang clear of it.
It didn't look as though the nightwalker were going to get back up again, and small wonder. The griffon had torn away a big piece of its already burned and mangled head. She spat foulness out of her beak, and Gaedynn turned to see how the rest of the battle was going.
Not well. Two other nightwalkers had fallen, but the rest-half a dozen in all-were stalking among the trees. He strained to think of a way to fight them at close range with the troops at his command. Meanwhile, sensing victory, the living men and orcs in the enemy host raised a cheer.
Then demons-hopping toad-men, slithering six-armed women whose bodies turned into serpentine tails at the waist, and a variety of others-burst from the trees behind him. They charged the nightwalkers and attacked ferociously. The sellswords and the zulkirs' troops scrambled back and left them to it.
The nightwalkers ripped a number of demons apart. If not for the damage Gaedynn and his comrades had inflicted, perhaps they would have destroyed them all. But they were wounded, and in time, the demons dragged the last of them down.
The giant was still struggling when Nevron-or a figure that looked exactly like him-strode past Gaedynn. Illuminated by the glimmer of his defensive enchantments, the newcomer advanced beyond the tree line, sneered at So-Kehur's army, and spat.
Then, still moving without haste, as if nothing on the battlefield posed any threat to him, he turned and tramped back the way he'd come. When he reached Gaedynn again, he stopped as though he wanted to talk, stepping behind the oak in the process.
Nevron's features dissolved into those of an older-looking man with fewer tattoos and a skinnier frame. He wore Lauzoril's dagger insignia. "I deemed it best to cut that short," he said. "I could feel the necromancers studying me, probing for weaknesses. Eventually, they might have seen through my mask."
"That would have been unfortunate," Gaedynn said. "Thanks for coming to our aid."
"It was your comrade Jhesrhi who sensed the need. You should thank her too." The Red Wizard looked deeper into the trees, where other robed figures awaited him. He'd tried to create the impression that Nevron alone had unleashed the mob of demons, but in reality, it had taken a number of lesser conjurors to command them. "And my colleagues and I should get back. You may think the enemy is pushing hard here, but it's nothing compared to what the main body of our army is facing."
"Oh, I'm sure," Gaedynn said. "I was just thinking of lying down and taking a little nap."
Lallara seemed accustomed to winged steeds, for she rode without clutching Aoth around the waist or any other sign of anxiety. Mirror, who'd found them not long after the cliffs smashed together, flew several yards to the right of Jet. The ghost was currently a glimmering shadow of the knight he'd been in life.
They all had to fly because it turned out that Malark had enchantments in place to keep anyone from shifting through space to his mountaintop. So they used other peaks to shield their approach and kept a wary eye out as they traveled. At one point, Aoth saw a pair of the huge, batlike undead called nightwings gliding in the distance, but the creatures didn't seem to notice them. He didn't see Bareris, Szass Tam, or any of the other zulkirs. Not along the way, and not when he and his companions set down on a ledge thirty yards below the site of the ritual.
"Try again to find the others," he said, swinging himself off Jet's back.
Lallara extracted a luminous blue crystal cube from one of her pockets, peered into it, and muttered under her breath. "Still nothing. Perhaps they really are dead. Or perhaps they warded themselves lest Springhill locate and attack them again."
"Well, we're here," Mirror said, "and our enemy is just above us. I'm willing to go up and fight him."
"Szass Tam seemed to think it would take all of us to win," Aoth replied. "And when I remember how tough Malark was a century ago in the normal world, before the bastard even learned sorcery, I can believe it."
"I see your point," said the ghost. "But on the other hand, the Unmaking is happening right now. For all we know, Malark is only moments away from the end. How long do we wait for reinforcements that might never come?"
"I don't know. Look, I'll climb up and see what's happening. Then we'll decide what to do."
"Not a bad idea, but let me go. I can be invisible and be certain I won't make any noise."
"But we can't count on you seeing everything that I'd see." Aoth grinned. "Remember, I've done a lot of scouting. You can worry about everything else that's happening in this nightmare-the gods know, I am-but trust in my ability to sneak."
"And in my ability to shield a man," Lallara quavered. Murmuring words of power, she swirled her twisted, arthritic-looking hands in circular patterns, and a cold stinging danced over Aoth's body. "With luck, that will keep even Szass Tam's prized pupil from spotting you, and if it doesn't, I've also cast other enchantments to armor you and disperse harmful spells before they strike home. They ought to keep you alive for a few heartbeats, anyway."
"That's reassuring." Aoth stowed his spear in the harness a saddler had made for it, strapped it to his back, and started to climb.
At this point, the mountainside was steep but not so sheer that a man needed to be an expert equipped with climbing gear to scale it. That was why Aoth and his comrades had landed where they did. Yet it still seemed to take an eternity to reach the top, as he worried every moment that Malark would sense his coming despite his and Lallara's best efforts to prevent it, peer over the edge at him, and blast him from his perch with a flare of magic.
Or maybe just drop a stone on his head.
But it didn't happen, and finally, he gripped a last pair of handholds and pulled himself just high enough to peer out across the flat, rocky expanse on the summit.
Malark floated in the center of the space. He wore a jagged diadem formed of murky crystal and held a staff made of the same material over his head.
When Aoth had spotted the spymaster before, he'd been brandishing the staff and chanting, but now he didn't seem to be doing much of anything. That appearance was almost certainly deceptive. He'd simply reached a phase of the Unmaking that required pure concentration as opposed to a more conventional sort of conjuring.
At first, that was all Aoth observed. Then patches of seemingly empty space flickered and oozed in a way that made his head throb and his stomach turn. He assumed he'd located more of Szass Tam's guardians, concealed so well that even his spellscarred eyes couldn't make out what they were. But they were big and plentiful.
He decided it was time to return to his comrades. But before he could start his descent, he glimpsed something else.
Also imperceptible to normal sight, a great wheel or sphere or tangled knot of something hung and turned above the mountaintop. Aoth couldn't see it clearly either, or maybe his mind instinctively cringed from the attempt. He was no surer of its substance than its shape. He thought it might be akin to the blasts of shadow that necromancers hurled to kill the living.
But somehow he knew it was infinitely more poisonous than any such spell effect, as well as profoundly if indefinably hideous. He could imagine the virulence exploding out of it to shred the sky and shatter the earth. He could imagine a man gouging out his own eyes so he wouldn't have to see it anymore. Yet he found that he couldn't look away.