"No. I hate this, but I mean to do my duty. Curse it all, why would you turn traitor now, when we actually had a chance of winning? What can Szass Tam give you that Dmitra Flass wouldn't?"
Malark sighed. "It's complicated."
"Have it your way. I'm sure it will all come out during your interrogation. Will you accompany me peacefully? It might go a little easier for you if you cooperate."
"All right. Take me to Dmitra."
"No. She's fond of you. Of course, she's also a zulkir, and I doubt mere sentiment would cloud her judgment sufficiently for you to talk your way out of trouble, but I figured, why risk it? I showed the proof of your guilt to Nevron, and he's the one who ordered your arrest. He'll question you first, and involve the rest of the council when he sees fit."
"All right." Malark took a step forward. "But indulge my curiosity. Tell me what aroused your suspicions." Sometimes people had trouble talking and focusing on an opponent at the same time, and if he could distract Aoth, maybe he could spring and attack without provoking a blaze of arcane power from the head of the spear.
Or maybe not. Malark rarely met a warrior whose prowess he truly respected, but the commander of the Griffon Legion was one of the few.
Which meant this confrontation could quite possibly end in a fitting death for one of them. But the prospect made Malark feel an unaccustomed ambivalence. He still wanted to die, but he also wanted to share in what was to come.
"Sorry," Aoth said. "I don't care to answer that question." He leveled the spear and stepped off the path, making way for his prisoner to move in front of him, and then, off to Malark's right, something brushed in the grass.
At last Malark knew the approximate position of another adversary, and this one might be less formidable than Aoth. He pivoted and charged toward the faint noise.
He felt a pang of surprise when he saw Bareris. He'd thought the bard and war mage had had a falling out, but apparently they'd patched things up. From a certain perspective, that was unfortunate, for Bareris too was a fighter to be reckoned with.
Happily though, Malark's sudden move caught both griffon riders by surprise. Aoth hurled a blast of flame from his spear, but it only roared through the space his target had just vacated. Bareris extended his sword, but his timing was off. Malark brushed the blade aside with one hand, stepped in, and struck at Bareris's chest with the heel of the other.
Bareris jerked back from the blow, which kept it from landing with full force. Instead of smashing splinters of rib into his lung and heart, it simply sent him staggering backward.
Malark sprinted to the door in the garden's east wall, then glanced back. The closest foes were Mirror, who looked like a wavering semblance of Bareris, and a huge wolf that could only be Tammith Iltazyarra. Aoth and the bard were farther back, the former circling, trying to reach a position from which he could cast another spell without a tree or his allies blocking the line to the target, and the latter still doubled over, gasping and pressing a hand to his chest.
The odds against Malark were even longer than he'd initially guessed. Still, since he'd broken out of the noose that had been closing around him, maybe he had a chance. Szass Tam had given him a charm to use when the moment came to make his escape, but had also made it clear that he must be particular as to how he employed it. Otherwise, the effect could prove as deadly to him as to his pursuers.
Now, he judged, was the moment. He opened a hidden pocket on his belt, snatched forth a black pearl, threw it, and spun around. He jerked the handle of the door and found it locked. He kicked it off its hinges and dashed onward.
Tammith understood that Bareris and Aoth hoped to take their friend into custody without hurting him or depriving him of his dignity. That was why they hadn't blasted him with spells the instant they found him, or brought a squad of legionnaires along. The part of her that still remembered fondness and compassion made her feel that she might have done the same, even as her vampire side scorned her comrades as fools.
Now she no longer felt any such ambivalence. Malark's break for freedom had suppressed what passed for her humanity and fired her predatory instincts. As she raced after him, all she wanted in the world was to rip his legs out from under him, tear him with her fangs, and guzzle his blood. Indeed, it was going to take all the self-control she could muster to stop short of killing him, but Nevron wanted him alive.
Certain the barrier would delay him long enough for her to close with him, she grinned a lupine grin when he scrambled to the locked door. Then he threw a dark bead or stone.
Since it landed in grass, it shouldn't have shattered. It did anyway, and shadow boiled out of it, separating into ragged, floating figures that moaned and gibbered as they advanced.
Tammith felt a dullness numbing her mind and exerted her will to banish it. Only after she succeeded could she think coherently enough to recognize the entities: allips, the mad, vengeful spirits of suicides. A particularly nasty rearguard to cover Malark's retreat.
She melted from she-wolf to woman, because the touch of an allip was venomous. If she had to fight the things, she preferred to do it with the superior reach her sword afforded.
Bareris started singing, probably to counter the hypnotic effect of the allips' babble. Tammith drew her blade, and then a pair of the spirits closed with her.
Fangs bared, she slashed at one and the sword whizzed all the way through it without any tangible resistance. The weapon was enchanted, but she sensed that the stroke hadn't hurt her foe. Well, perhaps the next one would.
The allips whirled around her, groaning and keening. She cut and thrust, and perhaps their murky forms began to fray, but it was difficult to tell for certain. She dodged and ducked to avoid their scrabbling, raking fingers.
But it was hard to avoid every strike when the entities were attacking from two sides, and eventually, one landed a blow from behind. Or so she assumed, for she didn't see it, nor did she feel localized pain or a shock of impact as such. Rather, she experienced a sudden disruption of thought, followed by confusion, fear, and a sense of filthy violation.
It was like having Xingax in her head again, and it drove her to fury. Screaming, she laid around her until her attackers dissolved into nothingness and their ghastly voices fell silent.
She turned, surveying the battle. Malark had broken the locked door and fled. Still singing, Bareris was holding his own against two remaining allips, and Mirror was exchanging blows; with another.
Aoth, however, was having problems. Half a dozen of the crazed, vicious spirits had swarmed on him, and, plainly hurt, he was stumbling around in the middle of them jabbing desperately with his spear. A spell would likely have served him better, but perhaps he was already too addled to cast one.
It occurred to her that Aoth was Bareris's friend, and that she could rush to his aid. But he was nothing to her, and the prey responsible for fouling her own mind was getting away. She dissolved into bats and flew in pursuit.
Though Mirror hadn't consciously tried to summon his targe when the allip engaged him, it had materialized on his arm anyway, and served him well. A wooden or steel shield would likely have proved all but useless, but he, his ethereal opponent, and his armor were all made of the same refined essence of darkness and pain.
He thrust his blade into his adversary's murky, demented features, and it gave a last mad gabble and withered from existence. That freed him to help Aoth.
But when he turned toward the war mage, he saw that it might already be too late to succor him. Aoth staggered and fell, the spear flying from his grip. The allips sprang on top of him and clawed like famished ghouls ripping at a corpse.
Mirror could leap to Aoth in an instant, but he couldn't strike half a dozen blows quickly enough to keep one of the allips from giving the griffon rider his death. But he could attempt something else, because communion with his god had partly restored him. At times, he thought more clearly, and he could now invoke the holy powers he'd wielded in life.
That didn't m
ean he was eager to do so, because as he'd discovered when healing Aoth's eyes, there was a fundamental discrepancy between the divine champion he'd once been and the tainted shadow that remained of him. When he channeled the power of his deity, he was like a snowman trying to handle fire.
Yet if his faith was strong, his master would protect him. He raised his sword and called to that which he no longer understood or could even name, but which he loved and trusted nonetheless.
A radiance like daylight blazed from his blade. The allips cringed from it, floating away from the fallen Aoth.
Mirror charged them and cut at the nearest. Now shrouded in blur to hamper an opponent's aim, Bareris rushed to stand beside him. Fighting in concert, the two companions slashed the remaining allips into evaporating wisps of murk, then hurried over to Aoth.
Mirror didn't trust himself to examine the war mage. After repelling the allips, he felt too hollow, too close to dissolving into mindless ache and malice, and in such a condition, his touch or even proximity might further injure a wounded man. "How is he?" he asked.
Bareris kneeled, stripped off his leather gauntlet, and worked his fingertips under the mail to feel for Aoth's pulse. "At least his heart is beating."
Malark sprinted through the labyrinth of corridors, chambers, and courtyards that was the Central Citadel. He was reasonably hopeful of escaping. Even if it didn't kill his adversaries, Szass Tam's gift would at least provide him a fair head start, and thanks to his training in the monastery, he could run faster and longer than most anyone he'd ever known.
The question was, where should he run? His horse offered the fastest way out of the city, but he suspected Aoth and Bareris had posted guards at the stable should he elude them in the garden.
Better, he thought, to procure a cloak and hood to throw on over his expensive courtier's clothing, then slip out of the fortress. He'd worry about a quick way north later. If worse came to worst, he could run the entire distance about as fast as an ordinary horse could carry him.
He plunged into another area open to the sky, an octagonal paved yard with a phosphorescent statue of the late Aznar Thrul, staff raised high, the bronze folds of his robe streaming as if windblown, towering in the center. Then something fluttered overhead.
Malark surmised it was a bat's wing-Tammith Iltazyarra's wing. He tried to spring aside, but to no avail. Something furry bumped down on top of his head.
The bat was so light that the impact didn't hurt. It did sting, however, when the creature hooked its claws into his scalp and ripped at his forehead with its fangs.
The bite sent an icy shock of sickness through his frame. He lifted a hand to tear his attacker away, and a second bat lit on the extremity and sank its teeth into his index finger. A third landed on his back, and, clinging to his doublet, climbed toward his neck.
He threw himself down on his back and crushed the creature before it could reach its goal, then whipped his arm and smashed the bat on his hand against the paving stones, dislodging it. He grabbed the one on his head, yanked it free, and wrung it like a washcloth.
Others descended on him. He rolled out from underneath them, sprang to his feet, and when they wheeled in pursuit, met them with stabs of his stiffened fingers. He hit one, and then they flew away from him, swirled together, and became a pallid woman in black armor, a sword extended in her hand. Despite the harm he'd inflicted on the bats, Malark couldn't see any sign of it in the way she carried herself. Still, it was possible she'd been injured.
"Perhaps you assumed," he said, playing for a little more time to steady his breathing, "that I couldn't hurt you without an enchanted weapon." He had the monks' esoteric disciplines to thank for it that he could. "Otherwise you might not have come at me as a flock of bats. You would have opted for something less delicate."
She glided closer. "That was the only mistake I'm going to make."
"Everything you've done since the Keep of Sorrows has been a mistake. You know Szass Tam, and now you've had a chance to take the measure of his rivals. Surely you recognize that none of them is a match for him. He may have encountered setbacks of late, but he's still going to win." He edged sideways and she turned to compensate.
"So help me escape and come back with me," Malark continued. "If I plead your case, the lich will forgive you. You'll command your followers just as you did before."
She glared and showed him her fangs. "I don't want anything to be as it was before, because I was a slave, with my mind in chains. Maybe you don't know what that's like, spymaster, but you will. With the Silent Company lost to me, I need some new progeny to do my bidding, and I'm going to start with you."
His mouth tightened. "Captain, it's conceivable you may kill me, but I swear by everything I hold sacred that I will never allow you to make me undead."
"It's always either funny or sad when people make vows they have no hope of keeping. In your case, I'd have to say funny." She sprang at him.
He twisted aside, hooked her ankle with his foot, and jerked her leg out from underneath her. She lurched forward. He snapped a kick into her kidney and chopped at the nape of her neck with the blade of his hand.
She planted her front foot and recovered her balance, but her upper body was still canted forward. That should have kept her from even perceiving the strike at her neck, let alone reacting quickly enough to counter it. But she twisted at the waist, grabbed Malark's wrist, and ripped the back of his hand with her fangs.
Her bite was frigid poison, and another wave of lightheaded weakness almost buckled his knees. He shouted to focus his strength, and she thrust the point of her sword at his midsection.
Fortunately, she was still in her awkward crouch, and they were too close together for her to use the long blade easily. It gave him just enough time to twist his arm free of her grip and her fangs and fling himself backward. Her thrust fell short by the length of a finger.
Tammith Iltazyarra straightened up and returned to a conventional swordsman's stance. She had his blood smeared across her mouth. More of it ran down from his torn hand, and dripped from the wounds in his brow to sting his eyes and blind them. He wiped them and willed the bleeding to stop. It didn't quite, but at least it diminished.
Tammith stared into his eyes and stabbed with her will, trying to hypnotize him. But his psyche proved too strong, and he struck back with a kick to her knee. She snatched her leg out of the way and cut at his torso. He dropped low, and the stroke whizzed over his head.
The combatants resumed circling, exchanged another set of attacks and then another. Still, neither could land a decisive blow.
It was plain to Malark that he was more skillful. Unfortunately, Tammith's preternatural strength helped to make up the difference, as did her sword, armor, indefatigability, and resilience. In theory, the naked hands of a monk could hurt her, but it was difficult to strike to great effect when mere pain appeared unable to slow her for more than an instant, and she no longer required the use of most of her internal organs.
Yet Malark had to finish the duel quickly. He couldn't linger, sparring, until her allies caught up or until someone came to investigate the commotion. It was time to take a chance.
She stepped forward, then back, or at least it was supposed to look that way. In reality, her lead foot hitched backward, but the other stayed in place. She was trying to throw off his sense of distance, to make him perceive her as farther away than she actually was.
He advanced as if the trick had deceived him. She lunged, her sword extended to pierce his guts.
Using both hands, he grabbed the blade. It cut him instantly. With her inhuman strength, his adversary needed only to yank it backward to slice him to the bone, sever tendons, and possibly even shear his fingers off.
He hammered a kick into her midsection. The shock locked her up and weakened her grip. He jerked the weapon free.
By doing so, he cut himself more deeply, but it didn't matter. He didn't care about the pain-wouldn't even really feel it until he chose to all
ow it-and his fingers were still able to clasp the hilt.
Employing both hands, he seized it in an overhand grip like a dagger, swung it over his head, lunged, bellowed, and struck. It was a clumsy way to wield a sword, but the only way to attack with the point and achieve the forceful downward arc he required.
The point crunched through her mail, pierced her heart, popped out her back, and stabbed into the pavement beneath her toppling form, nailing her to the ground.
A wooden stake would have been better. It would have paralyzed her. But at least the enchanted sword had her shrieking, thrashing, and fumbling impotently at the blade. In another moment, she might collect herself sufficiently to realize she could free herself by dissolving into mist, but he didn't give her the chance. He gouged her eyes from their sockets, then drove in bone-shattering blows until her neck broke and her head was lopsided.
He stepped back, regarded his handiwork, and felt a pang of loathing that had nothing to do with the harm she'd done to him. She was an abomination, an affront to Death, and he ought to do his utmost to slay her, not leave her to recover as she unquestionably would. But it wasn't practical. In fact, considering that she'd survived repeated beheadings, it might not even be possible.
He'd cleared her out of his way, and that would have to do. He turned and ran on.
CHAPTER NINE
21 Eleasias-15 Eleint, the Year of Blue Fire
Aoth peered at the faces looking back at him. At first he didn't recall them. He only had a sense that he should. Then one, a ferocious countenance comprised of beak, feathers, and piercing eyes, evoked a flood of memories and associations. "Brightwing," he croaked.
The griffon snorted. "Finally. Now maybe I can have my lair all to myself again." She nipped through the rope securing Aoth's left wrist to the frame of the cot.
He saw that his associates had actually tied him to a bed in the griffon's pungent stall. Shafts of moonlight fell through the high windows. Tammith's skin was white as bone in the pale illumination. Mirror was a faceless smudge.
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