Unholy

Bareris dodged a blow from the other undead elemental, landed a second cut, and then something big and heavy-an attack he hadn't seen coming-smashed down on him, drenching him and slamming him to his knees. Water forced its way into his nostrils and mouth and down his throat like a worm boring into an apple.

The attack would have killed a living man. But while Bareris hated what his contact with the dream vestige had made of him, it had given him certain advantages. He was more resilient than a mortal warrior. Since he didn't need to breathe, he couldn't drown. And the poison touch of a fellow undead was i

He jumped back up, conceivably surprising the necromentals, and cut the one his shout had injured, distinguishable from the other because the magical assault had left it a head shorter. Retching water to relieve a painful pressure in his chest, and, more importantly, to recover the use of his voice, he whirled and dodged, thrust and cut.

The smaller necromental abruptly lost cohesion, its shattered form pouring to the ground like beer from an overturned tankard. That left him free to focus on the other.

As was Jhesrhi. She struck it with a blaze of fire that turned much of it into steam. Bareris snarled and commanded himself not to flinch or falter as the vapor scalded his face and hands. He supposed he should be glad that the mage had at least aimed high enough to avoid hitting him with the flame itself.

He whirled his sword in a horizontal cut through the necromental's belly. Jhesrhi chanted rhyming words with a sharp, fierce sound and rapid cadence. The undead water spirit started to boil, bubbles rising inside it. Bareris leaped back before the heat could burn him a second time.

The necromental stumbled around, pawing at itself, then broke apart like its fellow. Jhesrhi cried out.

For an instant, Bareris, still looking at the spot where the steaming remains of the necromental soaked the ground, imagined the wizard had crowed in triumph. Then he recognized the distress in her voice and pivoted.

Jhesrhi was reeling around in the midst of a dark, droning cloud, on first inspection no different from the swarms of mosquitoes that had tormented the living all the way through the swamp. But Bareris assumed the tiny creatures were actually another necromantic creation, capable of inflicting considerable harm.

It was a threat he couldn't dispatch with a sword, nor pulverize with a shout without battering the woman trapped in the midst of the cloud as well. As Jhesrhi fell to one knee, he coughed the last of the water out of his lungs and throat, sang a charm, and ran to her.

He'd cloaked himself in an enchantment designed to repel vermin, and as he'd learned over the years, it was never certain the magic would work on things the necromancers had made using bugs and the like for raw materials. This time, it did. Buzzing furiously, the mosquitoes flew away from him and Jhesrhi, and he shouted, a thunderous roar that obliterated the insects and blasted bark and dead branches from the oaks behind them.

He kneeled beside Jhesrhi. She seemed dazed though not unconscious, and she had little beads and smears of blood all over her body where the undead swarm had bitten her. He took her hand and sang a song of healing.

Her eyes shifted, focused on his face, and then she jerked her fingers out of his grasp. "Don't touch me!" she snarled.

"I don't need to anymore." He rose and lifted his sword. "You've done your part. Why don't you stay out of the rest of it?"

'"No. I can fight." With the aid of her staff, moving like an arthritic old gra

Bareris looked where she was looking, at Khouryn and Gaedy

Red, liquid tendrils rose from the soft earth beneath their boots like grass growing tall in a heartbeat. The blood amniote had flowed and burrowed through the mud to surround and cage them. The tendrils branched and co

Confined as he was, the bowman couldn't dodge. The attack swatted him to the ground, and, as the tentacle lifted again, blood burst from his skin and flew upward to add itself to the substance of the amniote. Jhesrhi gasped.

"Hit it with everything you have!" Bareris said. "It doesn't matter if I'm in the way!" If his blistered hands and face were any indication, perhaps he hadn't needed to tell her that, but it still seemed like a good idea. Her slightest hesitation could cost Gaedy

He charged the blood amniote, singing even as he sprinted as only a war bard could. It was harsh music, full of hate, designed to bleed the strength from an opponent, and the first sting of it made the gigantic ooze stop flailing at its captives. Bareris closed the distance, slashed at the creature's flowing, foul-smelling body, and then it started hammering at him.

He dodged, cut, and sang his spell of grinding, relentless destruction. More faces appeared in the crimson, latticed mass, and it seemed that a female one mouthed his name. Lightning crackled, thunder boomed, and blasts of fire roared, he felt sudden heat and glimpsed flashes at the periphery of his vision, but Jhesrhi managed to hit the huge undead without striking him. He thought they might actually have the situation under control. Then, instead of lashing at him with an arm, the amniote simply fell at him like an avalanche or a breaking wave.

He couldn't dodge that. The great, formless mass of it slammed him down on his back, then reared above him. Pain, different and worse than the shock of impact he'd suffered an instant before, wracked him.

His heart didn't beat, and he didn't bleed when a blade cut him. He'd assumed he didn't have any blood the amniote could steal. But now skin and muscle split, and the veins beneath them ruptured. Brown powder swirled up from the wounds.

The blood amniote faltered like a man who had taken a bite of food and found it unexpectedly foul. Its liquid bulk shifted toward Gaedy

His whole body throbbing with pain, Bareris scrambled to his feet and gritted out the next line of the song. He cut through a section of the amniote's body, and his blade left a trail of scarlet droplets behind it.

The ooze-thing oriented on him again, rearing above him. Then it broke apart, its liquid remains drumming the earth.

Bareris staggered to Gaedy

"Help them!" Jhesrhi snapped.

Bareris saw they were both still breathing. "I can keep them alive, but they need a real healer. Fetch a priest."

By the time the healer, a young Burning Brazier with keen, earnest features, finished his work, the battle was over, the necromentals and other horrors dispatched. The cleric eyed Bareris uncertainly, and the latter had a good idea what was going through his mind. On one hand, the priests superiors had trained him to despise and destroy the undead. But on the other, Bareris was manifestly an ally and a warrior who'd been fighting Szass Tam, the great maker and master of zombies, vampires, and their ilk, for a hundred years.

"I can try to help you too, if you want," the young man said at length.