"There are mothers and children at the back of the crowd," Tammith whispered. "I can hear them talking to one another."
"No," said Bareris, still addressing the big man, "you won't. You can't win. I understand you're brave and determined, but the soldiers have armor, superior weapons, and the training to put them to good use. They also have sorcery backing them. If you press on, you can only die, and watch your wives and babies hacked to pieces alongside you. Is that what you want?"
The man with the trowel swallowed. "You said it yourself. At this time of night, most of the soldiers are asleep. If-"
Tammith stepped forward. Her eyes gleamed and she snarled, exposing her extended fangs. A sudden feeling of foulness and menace radiated from her, and even Bareris flinched back a step.
"Idiots!" she cried. "You know what Red Wizards can do. What they love to do to anyone who defies them. You know the sort of creatures who fight for them. I'm only the first of many such beings who stand in your way, I could butcher every one of you by myself, and I'm getting bored with your stupidity. Choose now whether you mean to live or die, or I'll choose for you."
For a heartbeat, the mob stood and gaped at her. Then the big man dropped his trowel, and it clanked on the street. He turned and bolted, shoving into the mass of humanity behind him.
When he panicked, so did his fellows. They all ran.
Tammith laughed an ugly little laugh and took a stride after them. Bareris caught her by the forearm.
Fangs still bared, she rounded on him, glared, and then seemed to remember who he was, or perhaps who they were together. The chatoyant sheen left her eyes, and the long pointed canines retracted.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Don't be. You did that brilliantly."
She smiled. "We did it together. Your magic softened them up, and afterward I thought that if I could throw a scare into the leader, they'd all lose their nerve."
"I'm glad we were able to chase them off before any of them came to grief."
"Believe it or not, so am I. They're just frightened people trying to survive. They don't deserve punishment for that."
Trumpets blew, and someone screamed. Crossbows clacked, discharging their bolts.
"Damn it!" Bareris cried. Prompted by instinct, he dashed toward the water, and Tammith sprinted at his side.
When he looked up and down the boardwalk at the end of the lane, with the docks extending out into the surf beyond, he saw what he'd feared he might. He and Tammith had turned back the troublemakers advancing down one particular street, but those misguided souls had been only one contingent of a far bigger mob converging on the harbor. Emerging from other points, the malcontents were trying to fight their way toward the docked vessels, while lines of legionnaires formed to hold them back. Other soldiers scrambled from the warehouses to reinforce them, and sailors leaped from the decks of their long, sleek ships.
The violence exploding on every side made Bareris and Tammith's little coup in the cause of peace and public order feel like a bitter joke. But there was nothing to do now but stand with their fellow soldiers.
So they did. Whenever possible, Bareris sang songs of fear to force rioters to turn tail before anybody had to kill them. But he still had to bloody his sword, and the necessity sickened him as it seldom had before.
Light and heat flared behind him, and he risked a glance backward. Flames leaped up from the prow of a warship.
It didn't make sense that a rioter had started the fire. None of them were anywhere near it, and besides, they wanted to steal the vessels, not destroy them. Bareris suspected that one of the wizards on his own side was responsible. He'd been trying to hurl flame at the enemy, and because of the problems with sorcery, the spell turned against him.
But that didn't make much sense, either. Bareris had seen his share of battle magic, and incendiary spells usually flew in a straight line. A wizard onboard the ship wouldn't have had such a clear path to the foe. Legionnaires were in the way.
But if someone had been trying to hit the vessel with a flaming arrow or spell, the best way would be to shoot from an elevated position. Squinting, he peered upward.
At first he saw nothing to justify his sudden, half-formed suspicions. But then he spotted a point of light like a firefly. It was an arrowhead, glowing as if the point had just been forged.
He could just make out the dark figure holding the shaft. And other archers creeping around on a warehouse rooftop.
He started a song to shift himself through space. He was only halfway through when one of the black-clad bowmen loosed a shaft. The arrow lodged in the foremast of another ship, and flames instantly roared up the spar. The missiles had to carry a potent enchantment to spark such a prodigious blaze so quickly.
The world shattered into blurry streaks, and then Bareris was standing on the sloping, shingled rooftop. He'd cast the spell to position himself behind the three archers, and moving quickly but silently despite the pitch, he stalked up behind the nearest and drove his sword into his back.
The bowman made a croaking noise as he toppled forward. Despite the clamor rising from the struggle below, it was loud enough to alert his comrades, and they both jerked around in time to see his corpse roll down the slope.
Bareris rushed the nearer of the two remaining archers. He didn't have an arrow on the string, and didn't like his chances of nocking, aiming, and loosing one in time. He threw down his bow and whipped a short sword from its scabbard. The hand gripping the blade was tattooed solid black, a sign of devotion among worshipers of Bane.
Bareris scrambled to close with the man. He wanted to kill him quickly, before the third archer, who was now standing behind him, could attack from that favorable position. But his haste, coupled with the slant of the roof, betrayed him. One foot slipped out from underneath him and he fell. The swordsman stabbed at him.
Bareris slammed down hard, but managed to swing his blade in a frantic parry. Somehow it carried his adversary's thrust safely to the side. Taking advantage of his supine position, he sliced the bowman's hamstring. The man with the black hand yelped and fell. Bareris heaved himself to his knees and cut, shearing into the archer's stomach.
That should take care of him, but what about the third enemy? Bareris twisted around just as the other man's arrow leaped from the bow.
The bard wrenched himself sideways and the shaft hurtled past him. The bowman instantly snatched for another. Bareris sucked in a breath to batter him with a thunderous shout.
But before he could, a cloud of black bats swirled down to rip at the archer from all sides. He collapsed immediately. The bats hadn't shed nearly enough blood to kill, but the cold poison of their touch had stopped his heart.
The bats flew round and round one another and became a woman. "Are you all right?" Tammith asked.
"Yes." He looked up and down the row of roofs and saw other black figures slinking with bows in hand. "But we have problems." He bellowed loud as his magic would permit. "Legionnaires! Look up! At the rooftops!"
Despite the volume he achieved and the power of coercion with which he infused his call, he wasn't certain anyone would heed him. There was too much happening on the ground. But someone paid attention. Arrows and quarrels flew up from the docks and ships, and the dark bowmen started to drop. Bareris heaved a sigh of relief, and then an enormous shadow swept over him.
Black against a black sky, largely visible because it eclipsed the few stars shining through the cloud cover, a nightwing soared above the harbor, while other huge, batlike shadows glided over other parts of the city. Bareris wished again for his brigandine, wished, too, that Winddancer was with him, and that he hadn't already expended so much of his power. But the nightwings didn't dive and attack, and when they wheeled and flew north, he inferred that they'd simply been scouting the city stretched out beneath them.
He was glad he wouldn't have to fight one, but far from overjoyed. If the creatures had ventured here tonight, it could only mean the rest of Szass Tam's ho
st was following close behind.
The Tower of Revelation offended Lallara's sensibilities. As far as she was concerned, a wizard's fortress was meant to hide secrets and provide strong defenses, and the sanctuary of the Order of Divination seemed capable of neither. The acoustics were so excellent that she could hear tiny sounds from two chambers away, and the place sported so many big, costly glass windows that it scarcely seemed to have enough solid stone wall to support its mass. More often than not, the casements stood open to admit the morning breeze and the faint sounds of the city, abnormally quiet, almost holding its breath after last night's insurrection and the sighting of Szass Tam's flying creatures.
But though the citadel made her feel exposed and ill at ease, she was an archmage specializing in protective magic, and perceived that the building had wards in place to foil eavesdroppers and keep assassins from flinging daggers or thunderbolts through the openings. So she supposed she could tolerate it for a while. Certainly it had seemed more expeditious for the zulkirs to go to the diviners than to require the seers to drag the appurtenances of their discipline to the Central Citadel.
Two dozen senior diviners chanted spells to their mirrors and crystal orbs. Light seethed inside the devices, then coalesced into coherent images. Lallara, Nevron, Lauzoril, Samas Kul, and Kumed Hahpret prowled among them, peering at ranks upon marching ranks of dread warriors, packs of loping ghouls, crawling hulks with writhing tentacles like the ones that had reared up out of the ground outside the Keep of Sorrows, and skeletal horses drawing closed wagons.
After a time, Lauzoril said, "You've done well. Thank you."
A diviner with additional eyes tattooed above and below his real ones said, "To be honest, Your Omnipotence, it wasn't difficult. The necromancers aren't trying to conceal their numbers or their location."
Nevron spat. "No. Why should they? You soothsayers, get out. Your masters need to talk."
If the diviners resented the brusque dismissal, they had better sense than to let on. They filed out docilely.
Samas flopped down on a stool, plucked a silk handkerchief from a pocket of his luxurious scarlet robe, and wiped sweat from his mottled, ruddy face. He looked as if the brief stroll around the chamber had taxed his stamina, and, as on many previous occasions, Lallara felt a pang of disgust at his gross, wheezing immensity.
"How can Szass Tam have such a large army?" the obese transmuter said. "How could the necromancers create so many undead in so short a time?"
"We don't know!" Lallara snapped. "We already discussed it and agreed that we don't understand. Either think of something new to contribute or keep your mouth shut."
Samas glared at her. By the look of him, he was attempting to frame a truly scathing retort, but Lauzoril intervened before he could.
"Let's not take out our frustrations on one another," the zulkir of Enchantment said, his manner that of the stuffy, condescending schoolmaster he was at heart. "We have decisions to make, and we need to make them quickly, because I recognize that tax station." He gestured to a greenish sphere floating in the air. The luminous scene inside it revealed gigantic hounds, their forms composed of mangled corpses twisted together, standing near a roadside keep, its walls a distinctive mosaic of white stones intermingled with black. "The lich's host has nearly reached the First Escarpment."
"How do they travel so fast?" Kumed asked.
"The undead are tireless," Lauzoril said, "and by day, the wagons carry the creatures who can't bear sunlight. And we have no one left in the field to harry the enemy and slow them down."
"The Griffon Legion did it at the start of the war," Samas said.
"The Griffon Legion is a shadow of its former self," Nevron said, "like all our other legions. I don't think they could manage the same trick again. Let's not send them to their deaths until we can accomplish something thereby."
"So," Samas said, "Szass Tam will be here soon. The question is, do we linger to receive him?"
"Yes, damn it!" Nevron snarled. "This is Bezantur! It can withstand a siege."
"Can it?" Lauzoril asked. He waved his hand again, this time in a gesture that encompassed all the globes and mirrors shining on every side, and all the visions of martial and mystical might flickering inside them.
"If it can't," Nevron said, "the four of us-" He stopped short, then gave Kumed a cold smile. "Excuse me, Your Omnipotence, obviously I meant to say, the five of us can always transport ourselves to safety."
"In the midst of battle," Lauzoril said, "nothing is certain. It would be difficult to articulate any spell properly with a vampire's fangs buried in one's throat. Besides, if we waited to escape until Szass Tam's army had breached the walls and flooded into the city, we might get away, but it's likely that the ships carrying our treasure and our more useful followers wouldn't. Is that how we want to start our lives in exile?"
Samas looked pained at the mere thought of leaving his vast wealth behind.
"At this point," Lallara said, "we can count ourselves fortunate we even have ships. Only four burned, but we could have lost all of them."
Kumed cleared his throat. "What really happened last night? Who was responsible?"
"The church of Bane," said Lauzoril. "Their agents stirred up the rabble to try to steal the ships to flee the city. The point was to create cover for the Banites to sneak over the rooftops, shoot flaming arrows into the vessels, and so keep us from fleeing."
Kumed attempted a scowl as fierce as Nevron's. "Then we should hang every Banite we can find."
"You won't find the ones who actually pose a threat," Lallara said. "They've gone into hiding."
"Which means they could try again," Samas said, summoning a golden cup into his hand. Lallara caught a whiff of brandy. "For that matter, the mob could rise again, now that the Dreadmasters have put the idea in their heads, and this time succeed in making away with the boats."
"All the more reason," Lauzoril said, "to use them ourselves as quickly as possible."
Nevron shook his head. "Are you really so craven?"
"I'm not surrendering," Lauzoril said. "I intend to spend my time in the Wizard's Reach planning and gathering strength. I'll deal with Szass Tam when the time is right, but that time has yet to arrive. If you disagree, then you're free to try and prove me wrong. Stay in Bezantur and command the defense. Just don't expect me to leave any enchanters, or any of the soldiers we command, behind to fight."
"I'm leaving, too," Lallara said. The admission wounded her pride, but pride was of no use to the dead.
"So am I," said Samas.
"And I," said Kumed, as if anyone cared.
"Then I must come as well," Nevron said. "Plainly, I can't hold the city without you. But curse you all for the gutless weaklings you are!"
He seemed furious enough, but Lallara sensed a histrionic quality to his bitterness. Perhaps, underneath it all, the conjuror was grateful they'd made it impossible for him to stay.
His fingers scratching among the feathers atop Winddancer's head, Mirror wafting a chill at his back, Bareris stood at the rail of a barge overloaded with griffons and their riders and watched the zulkirs' fleet set sail. It took a long time for so many vessels to maneuver out of the harbor. The Red Wizards and nobles had laid claim to every trawler, sloop, and cog in port to transport themselves, their troops, their possessions, and favored members of their households.
The city stood in a haze of smoke. As the fleet set forth, evokers had hurled blasts of fire at the piers and the shipyards with their half-completed and half-repaired vessels suspended in dry dock. The idea was to make it as difficult as possible for the necromancers to give chase over the Alambar Sea, and if the conflagrations spread to other parts of the city, the lords who were abandoning it no longer had any reason to care.
The smoke was thick enough to sting their eyes and make them cough. Yet hundreds of folk perched on rooftops, or ventured as close as they could to the water's edge, to watch their masters' departure. Bareris wondered if they were happy
or sad to see them go.
He wondered the same about himself. He'd been a warrior for sixteen years. He didn't like losing, and despite all the council's swaggering talk of hiring a mighty host of sellswords and returning to reclaim mainland Thay in a year or two, he judged that was exactly what had happened. He doubted he'd ever lay eyes on the city of his birth again.
It was particularly hard to accept defeat after a ten-year struggle against Szass Tam. He'd hated the lich ever since he'd discovered that his minions had turned Tammith into a vampire, and he still did.
But that loathing wasn't the passion that ruled his life anymore. His love for Tammith was stronger, and perhaps he ought to regard this final retreat as a blessing. Now they could devote themselves to one another, and to finding a remedy for her condition, without worrying that, in one ghastly fashion or another, war would sunder them yet again.
Yes, it might all be for the best-if the fleet managed to slip away unmolested.
The late Aznar Thrul had commissioned a magnificent pleasure ship for himself. After succeeding the murdered evoker, Samas Kul had looked forward to taking full sybaritic advantage of the vessel, only to discover that he was prone to seasickness. After that she had seldom left her berth.
But now he had a use for her, and he'd invited his fellow zulkirs aboard to enjoy a splendid breakfast and watch Thay fall away behind them. He hoped he wouldn't disgrace himself by needing to rush to the rail. So far, the potion he'd drunk seemed to be doing an adequate job of preventing distress in his guts, but one never knew.
Nevron summoned a demon with the head of a beautiful woman and a body like a small green dragon to carry him between ships. Lallara flew like a bird, and Lauzoril shifted himself through space.
That left only Kumed Hahpret to appear. Samas waited a little longer, then asked if anyone knew where he was.
Nevron smiled. "I'm afraid our young peer won't be joining us. He met with an unfortunate accident before we even set sail. I myself had to command his underlings to set the port on fire or it wouldn't have gotten done."
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