Unclean

In another moment, however, a second voice, a soft, insinuating baritone, snagged him and pulled him around to face a man wrapped in a hooded gray mantle. The speaker was alive, but even so, Mirror discerned without knowing or wondering how he knew that he was one of the enemy, likely a warlock who'd employed magic to avoid detection hitherto.

The mage swirled his hands through mystic passes. "You're undead," he crooned. "You belong on our side."

Mirror felt something changing inside him. Like any sensation, it was seductive, simply because it filled the emptiness, but even so, it seemed to him that he shouldn't allow it to continue. He sprang at the wizard, closing the distance with one prodigious leap, and drove his sword into the man's chest. To his vague disappointment, the weapon didn't cleave flesh or spill blood like a proper blade, but it did stop the mage's heart.

Mirror pivoted back toward Ysval and observed another horror battling its way toward the nighthaunt. Tall as an ogre, approximately female in form, the winged, leprous entity ravaged men and horses with her talons, shredding them and rotting their flesh with gangrene all in an instant. Even the liquid filth streaming from her open sores was dangerous, blistering any living creature it touched.

Mirror abruptly recalled that such abominations were known as angels of decay. He thought he might have encountered one on a different battleground but couldn't actually remember.

In any case, the sight of her sharpened his awareness of the battle as a whole, and he recognized what a mistake it would be to allow her and Ysval to stand together. The nighthaunt was already holding his own against the men-at-arms and battle mages assailing him from all sides. If such a formidable comrade came to his aid, the mortals would have no chance at all.

Fortunately, Mirror thought he could prevent that. Though he dimly recalled someone calling him "undead" at some point in the past, he didn't know if he truly was or not, but instinct whispered that neither the angel's infectious touch nor her slather of corrosive muck had any power to harm him.

He flew at her and cut at her flank. Lightning-quick, she twisted out of the way and slashed with her talons. The first blow somehow streaked harmlessly through him, but he sensed that the next one would smash and tear, and he raised his arm to intercept it. As he started the motion, he wore no shield, but by the time he finished, there it was, round and affixed to his forearm by three sturdy straps. He knew it should have a coat-of-arms painted on the front and momentarily longed to view it.

He couldn't, of course, not while he was fighting. The angel's talons slammed into the targe and knocked him backward. Seeking to deny him time to recover, the creature lunged after him. Flinging spatters of slime, her flaking wing swatted him and sent him reeling farther.

He thought that would likely prove the end of him, but strangely, a simple exertion of will served to halt his flailing stagger and restore his equilibrium, as if he had no weight at all. He thrust at the angel, caught her by surprise, and his shadowy blade slid deep into her cankerous torso.

She cried out in her rasping voice, stumbled, but she didn't fall. He pulled his sword back, and they traded blows. Sometimes she evaded his strokes and sometimes they sheared into her, albeit without leaving a mark thereafter. At certain moments, her talons whizzed harmlessly through him, at others, his shield or plate defected them, and occasionally, they slashed him. Then he experienced a shock that was less pain than an upheaval of the elements of his being. The aching hollow at his core yawned wide, threatening to swallow everything else.

It was difficult to tell how many times the angel needed to wound him before that would actually happen, just as it was hard to judge how badly he was hurting her. He truly had no idea who was wi

Victory over such a formidable foe filled him with triumph, and intense emotion sharpened and deepened his thoughts. He sensed that he'd fought many times, and war remained his proper occupation. It might not ever make him remember, but at least while embroiled in the midst of it he comprehended there was something he'd forgotten.

He flew at Ysval.

Bareris's hand was steady as he hacked open Tammith's severed head to cut the brain within, then he slid his enchanted blade into her heart. He felt as numb and empty of feeling as any of the zombies he'd faced this day.

As soon as he finished, however, he started to shake, and anguish and self-loathing welled up inside him.

At the end, he'd had no choice but to slay Tammith. Otherwise, she would certainly have killed him, and as it turned out, it simply hadn't been in him to surrender to that.

He'd likewise deemed it necessary to desecrate Tammith's remains, lest she rise to fight anew. Yet he now understood that such an act, however essential, could be unbearable and unforgivable as well.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to run his sword into his own heart.

But that would mean abandoning the fight to defeat Xingax, Ysval, and the necromancers, and that was unacceptable. The wretches had to be punished. They had to lose and suffer and die.

Singing a pledge of vengeance, he cast about to see where Ysval was.

Aoth thrust the point of his lance into a shadow. The phantom frayed into tatters of darkness.

The ghosts were coming faster now, more and more of them finding their way through the gaps in the sheets of flame and planes of radiance the wizards had conjured to hold them back. Aoth and his fellow griffon riders fought doggedly to keep the spirits in the air from flying down to aid their commander.

He looked around and realized that at last the battle had granted him and Brightwing a moment to catch their breaths. No new foes had yet appeared in their immediate vicinity. It gave him a chance to peer down and assess what was happening on the ground.

Ysval clawed. Milsantos caught the blow on his shield, but the impact knocked him out of the saddle. The nighthaunt virtually tore the old man's war-horse out of his way as if it were a curtain and lunged after him, but in so doing, the undead captain exposed his flank to Bareris, who, chanting, slashed the creature's night black body with his sword. As did Mirror, flitting around to attack from behind. Ysval faltered, and Milsantos clambered to his feet.

Ysval pivoted and drove his talons into Mirror's chest. The ghost's misty form writhed and boiled. Ysval raised his other hand for a follow-up blow. Bareris cut at him but failed to divert the nighthaunt from his fellow undead.

Then, however, a colossal spider, gnashing mandibles dripping venom, ring of eyes gleaming, materialized beside Ysval. One of Aoth's fellow battle wizards had evidently summoned it. The spider pounced on the shadowy entity. The serrated jaws ripped him.

Ysval tore the creature off him and smashed it down on its back. As it started to heave itself upright, he thrust out his hand at it, malign power shivered through the air, and the arachnid stopped moving.

But Mirror's form once more appeared as steady and stable as it ever did, and as Ysval finished with the spider, Nymia rode by him and bashed him with her mace.

We're like a swarm of wasps attacking a man, Aoth thought. Individually, we're puny in comparison, but it's hard for him to defend himself against all of us at once.

Perhaps, his arrogance and manifest fury notwithstanding, Ysval also believed his foes might ultimately overwhelm him, for he brandished his fist, and ragged tendrils of shadow blazed outward from his body. His opponents stumbled and reeled. He lashed out with claw and tail, flinging them backward, giving himself room to spread his wings and spring into the air.