Unholy

The road south ran a few miles west of the towering cliffs the Thayans called the First Escarpment. Close, but not nearly close enough for anyone to menace the Brotherhood of the Griffon and the zulkirs' legions with missiles hurled from the top.

Or so Jhesrhi would have assumed, before the stones started showering down along with the cold drizzle from the overcast sky. They hammered the road with unca

It was plain that only folk who could fly had any hope of stopping the bombardment, so Aoth led griffon riders to the top of the crags, which appeared to be deserted. But the breeze whispered to Jhesrhi that her enemies were almost directly below her, shrouded in an invisibility that couldn't blind the tactile sight of the wind.

She drew breath to shout a warning, then saw that she needn't bother. The concealment hadn't fooled Aoth's spellscarred eyes, either. He pointed his spear, power glimmered around it, and a greenish cloud swirled into existence around the hidden men, revealing their forms to those who soared above them.

Some of the enemy doubled over, puking. Other, hardier crossbowmen shot a volley into the air, but the griffons veered, swooped, and dodged most of the quarrels. Their riders shot back, and Szass Tam's warriors fell.

With their bodyguards slain, the Red Wizards died almost as easily. Afterward, the griffon riders set down to loot and learn whatever they could.

The magical artillery used a scrying pool to provide a view of the highway. Beside the water was a flat piece of slate incised with a groove carved to mirror the slight curve of the road. One aimed and launched a barrage by placing a black pebble at a point along the depression. Then the rocks heaped on a slab of granite vanished to reappear above the designated spot.

Since Thay had been at peace for some time, it seemed likely the apparatus was relatively old. Jhesrhi wondered if someone had crafted it during the first War of the Zulkirs, and if so, which side the craftsman had been on.

"What do you think?" Gaedy

She turned to face him. As was so often the case, he seemed to be smirking at a joke that was opaque to everyone else, and his long red hair shined even on a gray, cheerless day.

"It's cleverly made," she said. "I've never seen anything exactly like it."

"It's good that you can appreciate such things," he said, "seeing as how we're likely to have them hurling death at us with some regularity."

She frowned. "You know we have no choice but to do what we're doing."

"Because two dead strangers and a fu

"You know his visions come true."

"So far."

"Are you just babbling to hear yourself, the way you generally do, or are you actually thinking of ru

He gri

"You know I owe Aoth everything."

"Whereas I don't. Honestly, I think he's lucky to have enjoyed the benefit of my services for as long as he has." Evidently glimpsing something from the corner of his eye, he turned. She looked where he was looking and saw Aoth straightening up from a red-robed corpse with a folded parchment in his hand. "Shall we go see what the old man's found?"

"You should sing," said Mirror, striding, flickering a little, effortlessly keeping pace with Bareris's steed. The ghost was merely a shadow in the deepening twilight, his form too indistinct to resemble anyone in particular.

Bareris's mouth tightened. He truly wished his friend well. He wished Mirror's mind could be clear every instant of every day. But it was at those times that the phantom became talkative, and the chatter sometimes grated on Bareris's nerves.

"I don't want anyone to take me for a bard," he said. That was why he'd left his harp behind when he and Mirror had split off from the army.

"There's no one but me to hear you," Mirror said, and he was indisputably right. The tableland atop the First Escarpment was even more blighted than the plains below. A traveler encountered hamlets and cultivated fields less frequently and saw even more gnarled, pallid flora and deformed wildlife. High Thay was bleaker still, as if Szass Tam's actual residence was a fountainhead of poison that lost a bit of virulence as it seeped down from the Citadel.

"Still," Bareris said, "I don't see a point."

"We're finally going to try to kill the creature you hate above all others, with the fate of the East-at a minimum-hanging in the balance. You must have feelings about that. Don't you want to express them?"

"I always feel the same, and singing doesn't help it."

That answer seemed to irk or discourage Mirror, and they traveled in silence for a time, the cantering gait of Bareris's steel gray mount eating up the miles. As best he could judge, the burly, misshapen beast was a cross between a horse and some infernal creature and seemed not to require sleep or rest.

In time, a crescent moon rose to reveal the black, rectangular shape of a tax station. It was no surprise to see it. Such bastions lined the Eastern Way. But Bareris scowled to behold the roadblock, even though they too were common. The soldiers garrisoning tax stations threw them up for any number of reasons, including extortion and simple boredom.

"It figures," said Mirror. "We passed through Nethwatch Keep without any trouble only to get stopped out here in the middle of nowhere. Unless you want to go around."

"No," Bareris said. "They've already seen us. If we just play our roles, they'll pass us through."

He thought it would work. He was wearing the trappings of a Thayan knight, plundered, like his demon horse, from the Dread Ring, and if that proved insufficiently convincing, he'd bring his bardic powers of persuasion to bear.

But as he rode closer, he saw that the soldiers ma

So they did, and when they had finished with the soldiers at the roadblock, they broke into the tax station and slaughtered every creature within. Because no one must survive to report who'd perpetrated the massacre. And for a precious time, the exigencies of combat drove all other thoughts from Bareris's head.

When the fight was done, Mirror-who had at some point taken on the appearance of a gaunt, withered ghoul complete with fangs and pointed ears-frowned. "The authorities will likely blame the local rebels for this. They'll make reprisals."

"Good," Bareris said, then caught himself. "I mean, good if they don't even suspect that we were the ones who passed by in the night. Not the reprisals part."

Keeping low lest the moonlight glint on their armor or the saddles, tack, and packs slung over their shoulders, Toriak and three companions slunk toward the sleeping griffons. Fortunately, the winged creatures occupied a field somewhat removed from the rest of the camp. The zulkirs' soldiers were leery of the beasts, and well-trained though the griffons were, it would be stupid to keep them close to the horses whose meat they so relished. So, once Toriak and his companions crept clear of the smoky, crackling campfires and rows of tents, they didn't have to worry quite so much about being spotted.

Or so he imagined. But as he cast about for Dodger, his own beloved mount, a figure rose from behind the moundlike form of a different griffon. Gaedy