Undead

"I'll come with you," Mirror said.

"No, you won't. You can't sing spells or row a boat, so you truly would be risking your existence for no reason whatsoever, and that would trouble me."

The ghost lowered his head in acquiescence.

It didn't take the mariners long to put the dinghy in the water, or for Bareris to climb into it. He nodded to his comrades, then rowed toward the dream vestige.

Nothing molested him. Except for mindless things like zombies and their ilk, even Szass Tam's other minions were trying to stay clear of the fog-thing, and so they made no effort to intercept a boat headed toward it.

When he was close enough, he started to sing.

He sang of loving Tammith more than life itself and losing her over and over again. Of hating the world that inflicted such infinite cruelty, and despising himself still more for his failure to shield his beloved from its malice. Of the insupportable need to attain an end. He took rage and grief, guilt and self-loathing, and sought to forge them into a sword to strike a blow against Szass Tam and to aid his friends.

The dream vestige extended a murky arm. He kept singing. The groaning, whispering swirl of shadowy figures engulfed him and hoisted him into the air.

The phantoms slithered around him like pythons trying to crush him. Their jagged fingers scratched and gouged. Shocks of fear and cold jolted him, and he felt some fundamental quality-the boundary that made him a separate entity, perhaps, as opposed to just one more helpless, crazed component of the fog-rotting and dissolving.

Rotting and dissolving as Tammith had, turning to scum and nothingness in his embrace. He focused on that and it gave him the strength to force out another note and another after that, to keep trying to enflame the dream vestige's wrath and self-hatred until they were strong enough to burst any constraint.

Samas Kul decided it was time to go. But he didn't share his conclusion with the transmuters who'd had the honor of journeying with him aboard his own ship, and they kept hurling spells at the enemy.

They were useful followers. He was genuinely fond of some of them. But they weren't made of gems and gold, and it was their bad luck that a spell of translocation could shift only so much weight.

Hoping that no one would notice his absence for at least a little while, he descended a companionway, murmured a word of opening, and entered his luxurious cabin inside the sterncastle.

A stack of chests stood in the center of the space. They couldn't contain the whole of Samas's liquid assets-the entire ship scarcely sufficed for that. But they did represent a significant portion of them, holding as they did, rare mystical artifacts and his finest gems.

He regretted it bitterly that henceforth, he wouldn't be any sort of sovereign lord. But at least he'd still be the richest man in the East and perhaps all Faerыn.

He removed a scroll from within his robe, unrolled it, and drew breath to read the trigger phrase of the magic bound in the ink and parchment. Then voices clamored overhead.

In itself, that wasn't unusual. People had been yelling all night when some threat or target drew near. But this time, the noise had an excited, almost exuberant quality that piqued his curiosity. He decided it wouldn't hurt to delay his departure long enough to determine what all the fuss was about.

He slipped out of the compartment and felt the locking ward seal it behind him. He walked to the rail to peer across the waves at whatever had manifestly riveted everyone else's attention.

It was the dream vestige. The cloud was churning, thi

Samas murmured an incantation that would allow him to communicate with Thessaloni Canos aboard her war galley. For a moment, he actually glimpsed her, breathing hard with a bloody cut just beneath her left eye. "Do you see what's happening to the dream vestige?" he asked.

If his voice, sounding from the empty air, startled her, he couldn't tell. She answered immediately, and her ma

"If the entity shrivels up and dies, can we salvage this situation?"

"Yes."

Feeling like a dauntless warrior in a ballad, Samas squared his shoulders. "All right, then, Tharchion. Let's do it."

The fleets battled through the night, and for most of it, Malark couldn't tell who was wi

But he realized the truth when Szass Tam stopped brandishing his staff and chanting words of power to flop down atop a coil of rope and slump forward. The lich looked as spent as any mortal laborer after a hard day's toil.

Malark squatted down on the ink black deck beside him. Up close, he noticed that the lich stank of decay more than on any occasion he could recall. "They beat us, didn't they?" he whispered, making sure that no one else would overhear the question.

Szass Tam smiled. "Yes." He nodded toward the east, where the strip of sky just above the horizon was gray instead of black. "Dawn is coming to exert its usual deleterious effect on our troops. I've expended all the power Bane gave me, and my own magic, too. Of course, I could still call any number of arcane weapons and talismans into my hands, but none of them would change the outcome."

"So what do we do?" Malark asked.

"Precisely what you in your wisdom suggested earlier. We withdraw our remaining ships while our swimming and flying warriors cover the retreat." Szass Tam struggled to his feet. Suddenly he held a scroll in his withered fingers. "I'll send shadows of myself to the various captains to inform them of the plan."

"We can communicate with bugle calls," Malark said. "You don't have to strain yourself any further."

"I suppose not," Szass Tam answered. "But I'm their leader and I'd prefer they hear the bad news directly from me, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof."

Aoth, Brightwing, and Mirror flew back and forth across the slate gray sea, edged with silver where the wan sunlight caught the crests of the waves. Corpses, arrows, and scraps of charred and shattered timber, the detritus of the battle just concluded, floated everywhere. The council's ships were dots dwindling in the west.

Aoth knew he should give up and return to his own vessel before it sailed farther away. He was exhausted, and through their empathic link, he could feel that Brightwing was wearier still. How could it be otherwise, considering that she was wounded and had carried him around all night?

Yet for once she performed her task without grousing, even though he sensed she considered it futile. Bareris had destroyed the dream vestige, but had almost certainly perished in so doing. It was doubtful his friends could even recover his body. It could have dissolved in the fog-thing's grip, or sunk to the bottom, or a current could have swept it far away.

Aoth was just about to abandon the search when he spied a pale form bobbing in the chop. Responsive to his unspoken will, Brightwing swooped lower. Bareris was floating face down, but Aoth recognized him anyway, perhaps by the uncommon combination of a lanky Mulan frame and longish hair.