With a deep breath and trembling hands, Jynn began to climb.
Kaitha exhaled and steadied her hands. She kept her eyes on the blaze in front of her, burning like a pyre in the middle of the ruined outer wall.
Laruna grunted from the ramparts behind the Elf. “Do you think we got—”
Lady Carabae burst from the flames with an inhuman wail, flying toward the two heroes with claws outstretched. Kaitha caught the flash of her eye and fired; there wasn’t time for another chance. The vampire veered to dodge the incoming projectile, and a subsequent blast of fire from Laruna drove the creature below the ramparts.
“Do you think we got her?” Laruna asked again, stepping back to back with the ranger.
“No.” Kaitha nocked another arrow, watching the ghastly forms circling above them. Ghosts and specters had swarmed to the fight, and vampires lurked among the glowing souls like sharks amid a school of fish. “The thralls are still alive. Or… moving. Whatever.”
“I get it,” muttered Laruna. “So, they’ll all die when we kill her?”
“Yeah, but it’ll work faster if we do it the other way around,” said Kaitha softly. She loosed the arrow, but it fell well short of the vampire she’d aimed at. “Every one we kill makes her a little weaker. If we kill enough, she can’t keep those defenses up.”
“We have to kill them all?” Laruna whispered incredulously.
“No, just enough to get her guard down.” Kaitha fired another arrow. It fell out of the air long before it reached a thrall. “If we can get her to make a mistake when she’s weakened, I can land a shot.”
“But she has a thousand of them!” hissed the solamancer. “We’ve taken out, what, ten? Maybe a dozen? We could have hundreds to go.”
“She doesn’t have a thousand thralls,” said Kaitha dismissively.
One of the vampires, lulled into overconfidence by the short shots, drifted a little closer to the pair of heroes. Kaitha blasted it to oblivion with a bolt of silver.
“And now she’s got one less,” added the ranger.
Laruna shook her head. “A thousand. That’s what she said.”
“That’s creative exaggeration,” said Kaitha. “You know, building a brand. Remember Lorgrim the Devourer of Skulls? A nasty old warlord, no doubt, but he started every morning with a bowl of oat bran and went the whole of every day without having a single bone in his diet. It was just image.”
“Yeah, but that’s a title,” countered Laruna. She loosed a ball of fire that incinerated a ghost swooping in for an attack. “A thousand thralls is a specific claim. You have to back those up.”
“She’s a villain! She’s not going to go to court for false advertising.” Kaitha watched as the remaining thralls scattered and dropped down into the shadows. “Besides, ‘Mistress of a Couple Dozen Thralls’ doesn’t exactly sound impressive.”
“Well, however many there are, they’re plotting something.” Laruna shifted her weight.
“Yeah,” agreed Kaitha. She scanned the ramparts, watching for the next attack.
They didn’t have to wait long. At the far end of the ramparts, several dark figures swirled into a cloudy mass and rushed toward the heroes in a sudden charge.
“They’re protecting her!” Kaitha said, picking off a thrall. She downed another quickly, and a third, but the shadowy ball was approaching faster than she could fire.
Laruna added her own flames to the assault. The vampires slowed and wavered under the women’s onslaught.
“It’s working!” Laruna shouted.
“Careful!” Kaitha warned her. “Vampires are really—”
The Elf was mid-sentence when Lady Carabae leapt up from beneath the ramparts directly next to the Elf and mage.
“Clever,” Kaitha gasped.
The moment lasted a tiny eternity. Kaitha watched the vampire’s fangs flash in a triumphant grin as her ruse brought her to the heroes’ flank. The Elf swiveled her bow, but it was slow—far too slow to hit the mark. Laruna was turning too, but she couldn’t weave fast enough, and Lady Carabae was already diving forward, claws ready for the kill.
Then a rock hit her.
It was the sort of large block of rough granite used in laying foundations, unremarkable save for its trajectory. It caught the vampire in the side, snapping bones and twisting wings. Lady Carabae gave a pained squeal and took a moment to find her bearings.
A moment was all Kaitha and Laruna needed. Three arrows and an incinerating beam of fire and light slammed into the dazed vampiress in quick succession. As her ashes drifted down toward the street, the surrounding thralls began to disintegrate with horrid wails.
Kaitha wasn’t paying them any mind. She ran to the edge of the ramparts, staring at the muddy, trampled earth outside the outer walls. Her eyes scanned every pile of stones, searching for some sign of life.
“Hello?” she yelled, straining to raise her voice above the death cries of the fading thralls. “Thane? Are you there?”
But now another scream was drowning the ranger out, a high-pitched whine cutting through the air. On the edge of her hearing she could make out Heraldin shouting and Laruna hollering back. Kaitha remained focused on the stones just on the other side of the outer wall.
A hand gripped her shoulder. “Kaitha!” Laruna said. “Come on! We need to go!”
“It was him!” The Elf shook her head. “Thane’s out there! He threw the rock.”
“Kaitha, look!” The solamancer pointed up. High above them, a specter flew over the edge of the Wall, dislodging one of the stones from its ramparts. The brick soared out across the road and demolished, with fated accuracy, an abandoned fruit cart.
“No.” Kaitha shook her head. “No. The rock that hit the vampire wasn’t falling. It… I thought it came from… I don’t think it was falling.”
“Maybe,” said Laruna. “I don’t know. I was looking at the vampire. But I do know that Heraldin is down below, and Gaist is wounded. And Jynn has gone on to fight his father.”
“But Gorm’s with him,” said Kaitha.
“Heraldin thinks he’s gone berserk,” said Laruna. “So, he may be with the wizard.”
Somewhere in the distance, a mad cackling echoed above the fray.
“But maybe not,” said Laruna.
Kaitha’s breath caught in her throat. “So Jynn is fighting the liche alone?”
“You cannot be serious.” Detarr Ur’Mayan sighed as he held his flaming face in the palm of his skeletal hand.
“I… I am, F-Father,” Jynn said to the liche’s back. The wizard struggled to clamber from the ruins of Fafnir’s Gate onto the top of the huge stone that had ruined it. “I-I’ve come to stop you.”
“Of course you have,” said Detarr, looking at the sky. “It’s practically a guarantee that you’ll show up to interfere with any plan I have. Why should my greatest triumph be any different?” The liche waved a hand at the crumpled form of Johan the Mighty on the corner of the spire.
The King of Andarun was unrecognizable save for the bits and pieces of his distinctive armor still hanging from his battered frame. Barbed hooks of shadow protruded from every inch of his skin, drawing up great, swollen, purplish-black welts and pustules wherever they touched. He used his sword like a crutch as he kneeled, breathing heavily. Two bloodshot eyes watched Detarr warily from the mass of black boils that had once been his face.
Jynn struggled to find his voice. “Y-you’ve committed cr-crimes against all the people of A-arth.”
“You have no idea what I’ve done, what you’re interfering with. You’re just cluelessly—what are you doing?” The liche finally turned to face his son, and his snarl became a surprised shriek. “How dare you sully the Ur’Mayan name with an… an omnimancer’s robes?”
Jynn’s heart fell into his stomach. The inner defenses he’d spent decades fostering melted at the sound of his father’s voice. Embarrassment and fear welled up within him.
His mouth was dry and wouldn’t form words. “I… I…”
“You what?” said the liche, his voice laden with exasperation. “You’ve managed to somehow find your way back to Andarun, make your way past my army, climb atop the Dark Spire of Nephan, and now you can’t even form a simple sentence to explain… this?” Detarr waved at the offending robes again.
“I… Y-y-you…”
Detarr made a sighing noise again. “Why is it that the only thing you’re good at is ruining—”
The liche was interrupted by a scraping, clanging noise. Father and son turned to see Johan drop from the spire and scuttle off into the shadows.
“Oh, for the gods’ sake!” Detarr turned back to Jynn. “Now look what you’ve done! It will take hours to track him down! Longer still to get him in that state again.”
Jynn grit his teeth and shook his head. It was like every box had fallen from the shelves in his mind, and the swirling memories and emotions threatened to overwhelm him. Visions of his childhood kept bubbling into consciousness whenever he tried to speak.
“First you ruin my plans at the Ashen Tower, then I have to miss my victory at Highwatch dealing with you, and now you’ve ruined my plans here, and that’s not even the worst of it. An omnimancer! Honestly!” the liche fumed to himself. “It usually goes without saying, but I am very disappointed in you, Jynn!”
Some part of Jynn screamed that he should be weaving, but the rest of him was sliding down well-worn grooves in the depths of his mind, slumping back into old habits and patterns at rock bottom. “I… I-I know.”
“Still, I blame myself. I’ve probably done something to deserve you.” The flames surrounding Detarr’s skull flared a little brighter. “One way or another, son, I’ll get you back in line.”
The liche waved the Wyrmwood Staff, sending crackling bolts of black lightning at his son. Jynn’s drive for self-preservation momentarily seized control, and he instinctively raised a ward against the incoming spell. A spell woven in haste, however, was no match for the full power of a master of undeath. The dark magic forced its way through Jynn’s defenses and found its mark.
Chapter 31
“Good kill, sir!” exclaimed Ted.
Ned pointed a talon down at the twitching body. “I don’t suppose you’re going to eat that?”
Knight-Commander Tyren Ur’Thos ignored the zombie and ghoul as he stepped over the prone man. The rest of the civilians fled from him, and dark magics compelled him to pursue.
“He’s not going to even dignify that with a response, Ned,” said Ted. “Our knight-commander is focused on the mission at hand, as we should all be.”
“Which is odd, given his recent hesitance to take part in the siege,” Ned said, shuffling along to join the pack of walking dead.
“A momentary lapse,” said the zombie. “Clearly. The knight-commander has been nothing if not motivated of late.”
“Quiet as well,” said the ghoul.
In the confines of his own mind, Tyren screamed a litany of curses at the pair of idiots.
The civilians ahead had stopped, cornered by another squadron of the undead. Tyren pressed in. He felt his blade raise for the kill. His eyes fell upon his victim, a tiny Gnollish woman holding a young pup. His arm was at its zenith when a Human girl pushed the Gnoll away and stepped in the path of the blade, staring up at the knight-commander with bravery and defiance on her face—
Her face!
From the haunted corners of his memory, Tyren saw the same rebellion in the brown eyes of a toddler claiming she’d not go to bed for the night. He heard her laugh as she bounced on his knee, helped her wipe away tears as he cleaned the scrape on her elbow, marveled at the radiance of her smile as she bit into her first tea cake, held her close as they watched fireflies dance in the garden at Vetchell. Her cheeks were thinner now, her features those of a woman rather than a babe, but there was no mistaking his daughter’s face.
Somewhere beyond consciousness, something snapped. Power surged through Tyren, flooding into him from unknown depths and melting away bonds and barriers alike. It broke from his throat in a singular, anguished scream. “Stop!” he roared in a voice like that of death itself.
To his surprise, he did. His blade halted inches from little Aubey’s face. The other undead froze as well, locked in place. Black scorch marks spread from beneath the knight-commander’s feet, creeping over the pavers and up the walls like a rapid mold.
For a long moment, father and daughter stared at each other from opposite sides of Tyren’s unholy sword.
“Au… Aubey,” Tyren managed to croak. Wherever his newfound strength came from, it wasn’t sufficient to give him complete control of his own body. He was caught between his own will and that of the Crown of Iron Thorns, unwilling to strike and unable to sheathe his blade.
“How… How do you know my name?” The girl’s face was a mask of horror. “What are you?”
Tyren couldn’t answer.
“Perhaps I can help, miss,” said Ted, prompting alarmed stares from the assembled civilians. “The knight-commander’s exact nature has been a matter of some debate among us, you see. But with his newfound ability to control the rest of us, the black flames he’s throwing off, and the new glow in his eyes—”
“Not to mention the foul magic oozing from his armor,” added Ned.
“I tried not to mention that, yes,” said Ted. “Embarrassing. Regardless, I think it’s safe to say now that Knight-Commander Ur’Thos is a death knight.”
“Ur’Thos?” breathed Aubey. Tyren saw recognition and pain in her eyes, and it felt like a stab in the heart he didn’t have anymore.
“We probably should have known as much,” said Ted. “All the classic signs of a death knight origination story are there. He had all those family issues a few years back when Lady Ur’Thos left him for that bard.”
“Certainly some unresolved grievances there,” agreed Ned. “And then the public fall from grace when he was demoted to head of the guardhouse.”
“Right. And again when he was put in charge of Vetchell’s defense,” said Ted. “Which brings us to the dereliction of duty leading to an untimely death.”
“Oh, that’s the key bit,” said Ned.
“You’re my father,” breathed Aubey, looking into the flaming sockets where Tyren’s eyes used to be.
Slowly, laboriously, the knight-commander nodded.
“Another important detail,” said Ted.
“And… and now you’re saving us?” asked Aubey.
“Well, let’s not be hasty,” said Ned. “The knight-commander’s sudden burst of willpower might delay the inevitable, but the curse of undeath still drives us all to eat you.”
“I don’t want to eat anyone,” offered Rudge from somewhere in the back.
“Nobody cares, Rudge!” snapped the ghoul.
“I know…” said Rudge.
“No, no,” said the Gnoll. “I like where the skeleton is going with this.”
“What we want is beside the point, really,” said Ted. “It’s only a matter of time before the liche re-exerts his will, and then Commander Ur’Thos won’t have any more choice in the matter than the rest of us. We’ll be compelled to kill you all. “
“But we won’t be allowed to eat anyone, if that’s a consolation.” Ned sighed. “So nobody wins, really.”
“Well, some of us lose by a much bigger margin!” snapped the Gnoll.
Tyren could already feel his grip slipping. The blade inched closer to Aubey.
“Still, it’s impressive that our knight-commander has held out against a liche’s will this long,” said Ted.
“Perhaps the master is distracted,” suggested Ned.
“I just can’t concentrate when you slouch like that.” Detarr paused his weaving, wisps of Shadowflame and noctomancy still suspended around his fingers and staff. “You know how bothersome I find it.”
Jynn Ur’Mayan could barely lift his head to look at the liche. His vision was blurring, and he clutched his side with his gloved hand to staunch the flow o
f blood. “W-what?”
“It makes you look like a feeble street urchin,” the liche said. “Stand up straight.”
Jynn stared at the specks of light where his father’s eyes had once been, drawing deep and ragged breaths. “I-I’m dying and you want me to think about my posture,” he said levelly.
Detarr nodded. “It’s a major milestone in your existence.”
“I… I can’t even die well en-enough for you.” The omnimancer shook his head. Memories sloshed around in his mind, recollections of his father telling him to stand up in classes, at events, during dinner, at Mother’s funeral. An echoing chorus of a father reminding a son how stupid, how foolish, how weak, how poor he looked whenever he didn’t sit the right way. A thousand voices chorusing about his posture, fusing into a single line that ran through the chaos in his mind. And at the end of it, a feeling that had always been there, locked away.
“You could if you stood up straight! There, like that, yes,” said Detarr. “Appearances matter at times like this.”
“You are literally in the process of killing me, and you’re giving me a lecture on my bearing.” Jynn’s voice was as flat and even as a frozen lake. The emotions went farther down than the memories, to depths he didn’t know he had. Reserves he never knew existed.
“I’m not lecturing you. I’m just saying that I stood up straight when I died,” said Detarr. “You could have asked Johan if you hadn’t helped him escape.”
In that moment, however, Jynn didn’t really hear his father. “How?” he said, channeling water through his gloved hand. The wounds on his side closed as he straightened up. “How can this be the most important thing right now? How has it ever been the most important thing?”
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