Unclean

Aoth prepared a blast of fire to keep them from interfering with the elemental, but wraiths flew up at him, and he had to use the magic to incinerate them instead. Fortunately, his fellow griffon riders, adept at hitting a mark even from the back of a flying steed, harried the necromancers with arrows. Meanwhile, stone crunched and crashed as the magma giant continued to demolish the exterior wall.

Aoth cast spell after spell, more than he liked with so much fighting still to come, but if he and his allies failed to protect the elemental until it completed its work, it wouldn't matter how much magic remained to him. Phantoms and necromancers perished, or abandoning their efforts to stop the giant, bolted for cover.

Brightwing wheeled and dived. Arrows loosed by their own allies streaked past her and Aoth, but he saw that she was right to risk that particular hazard in order to respond to a greater one. Possibly cloaked in enchantments that armored them against common missiles, two necromancers had ascended the battlements. Chanting and whirling their hands in mystic passes, they were glaring not at the elemental but at the war mage and his familiar.

Aoth doubted that he could have cast any of his own attack magic before they completed their incantations, but Brightwing reached them in time. Her outstretched talons punched into the torso of the necromancer on the left, while her wing knocked the one on the right off the wall-walk to drop, thud, and lay motionless on the ground below.

The griffon beat her wings, gaining altitude once more. "I guess he didn't have a charm of slow falling."

"Apparently not," Aoth said.

Then Brightwing lifted one wing, dipped the other, and turned, affording him a fresh view of the fortress, and he felt a reflexive pang of dread.

The nighthaunt had appeared atop the flat, rectangular roof of the central citadel, and despite its apparent lack of a mouth, was attempting magic of its own. Aoth couldn't understand the words of the incantation, but he could hear them inside his mind. Indeed, they pained him like throbs of headache. His fellow griffon riders, those who were still alive, assailed the creature with arrows, but the shafts glanced off its dead black form.

Meanwhile, the elemental was moving more slowly, as if in pain. Glowing chunks of it flaked and sheared away to shatter on the ground.

Aoth hurled lightning at the nighthaunt, but that didn't seem to bother it any more than the arrows. For a moment, he was grimly certain the demonic entity would succeed in destroying the elemental before the latter could break down enough wall to do any good.

But enraged by its agonies, perhaps, the disintegrating giant balled its hands into fists and hammered the stonework repeatedly, then flung its entire body at the barrier as if it were a battering ram. The entity and a broad section of wall smashed into fragments together.

Aoth scrutinized the breach then smiled. He and his allies had hoped the elemental would demolish the entire wall. Due to the nighthaunt's interference, that hadn't happened, but the opening was wide enough for an attacking army to enter in strength, not just a vulnerable few at a time.

The Thayan force cheered. Aoth and the other griffon riders wheeled their mounts and retreated to join their comrades. There was no longer any need to linger in a highly exposed and dangerous position directly above the castle.

It was Aoth's duty to return to his command, but he detoured to set down among the Burning Braziers and the monks who were their bodyguards. He cast about, spied Chathi sitting on the ground, slid off Brightwing, and strode to the fire priestess.

She rose to meet him. Her fire-scarred face was sweaty, with a gray cast to the skin.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Fine," she said. "It's just that the ritual was taxing, particularly once the nighthaunt tried to oppose us."

"If you aren't fit to fight, you've done plenty already." Even as the words left his mouth, he knew how she'd respond.

"I'm a Burning Brazier. I still have magic to cast, and there's a battle to be won. Of course I'm going to fight!"

"Of course. Just be careful." He wished she still served as a member of his company, where he could better keep an eye on her, but now that the army had reunited, the servants of Kossuth constituted their own unit.

Chathi rolled her eyes. "Yes, Mother. Now go do your job and I'll do mine."

He wanted to kiss her, but it would be inappropriate with others looking on. He touched her forearm in its covering of mail then returned to Brightwing.

As the griffon sprang into the air, she asked, "Are you worried about the priestess for any special reason?"

Aoth sighed. "I suppose not."

"Then that makes it all the more pathetic."

It didn't take Aoth, or any of the officers, long to arrange their companies to their satisfaction. The common legio

The Thayans proceeded warily. Archers shot at any foe that showed itself on the remaining battlements. Mages cast flares of fire and clerics, pulses of divine power through the breach, in hopes of smiting any creature lying in wait just out of sight on the other side.

Aoth and Brightwing flew over the wall, and spears leveled and shields locked, the first warriors passed through the breach. Rather to the mage's surprise, at first nothing appeared to oppose their progress, but once a substantial portion of their force had entered, undead exploded from the doors and windows of nearby buildings. Others came racing down the u

Surrounded by their floating, luminous runes, quells suddenly materialized among the largest formation of fire priests, but the guardian monks assailed the creatures with glowing batons and blazing swords and hammered, slashed, and burned the apparitions out of existence. With that threat eliminated, the senior cleric barked a command, and moving as one, the Braziers extended their scarlet metal torches.

Weapons, Aoth suddenly recalled, that Szass Tam had supplied. If the Red Wizards in their company had been poised to betray them, could they rely on these particular devices?

He shouted for the priests not to discharge the torches, but the cacophony of battle was already deafening. Bows groaned and flights of arrows thrummed. Shields crashed as animate corpses hurled themselves against them. Officers bellowed orders, and legio

The red rods exploded in their wielders' hands, flowering into orbs of flame big and hot enough to incinerate the clerics, the monks hovering protectively around them, and any legio

My fault, thought Aoth, abruptly sick to his stomach. I knew where the torches came from. Why didn't I think to suspect them before?

Startled, warriors pivoted in the direction of the bursts of flame, then stared aghast as they realized that the majority of the priests, invaluable allies against the undead and an integral part of the tharchions' strategy, were gone. The shadows and skeletons hurled themselves at the living with renewed fury.