Unholy

He cut, and it seemed to him he finally felt a measure of resistance, though scarcely more than if the urgrosh had sheared through a piece of straw. He thought too that for just an instant, the stroke drew a scarlet line on the air. He wondered if it truly had, or if hope and the afterimages floating before his eyes were conspiring to trick him.

Then a falchion leaped at him. It was already close by the time he spotted it, and when he tried to parry, he was too slow. It clanged against his chest, then skipped away as the sword spirit continued to spin it around the axis of rotation.

Though the impact hurt, it wasn't the crippling shock that would have come if the weapon had pierced Khouryn's mail and the vital organs beneath. Still, it knocked him staggering, and the wind's shoving kept him from regaining his balance. He now found it impossible to attack and brutally difficult to defend.

A tumbling mace flew at him. He knocked it aside, saw the other weapons whirling right behind it, and jerked the urgrosh back into position to parry those as well. Then the wind stopped howling and mauling him, and its several blades fell to the ground. A figure made of gray vapor fumed into visibility in the center of the space the maelstrom had inhabited.

Cheers rose from the battle lines. Panting, his heart pounding, Khouryn realized that something had balked all the sword spirits.

It appeared to be Lallara, outlined by the golden glow of her protective enchantments, standing at the front of the formation and brandishing her staff. But something about the crone's posture told Khouryn it was actually Jhesrhi inside the illusory disguise.

That made sense. The sword spirits were undead, but they needed to manifest as whirlwinds to wield their weapons. And Jhesrhi was adept at raising and quelling winds. In effect, she was grappling with the phantoms, gripping their wrists to keep them from using their hands.

Breezes whistled and gusted back and forth. A flail lifted partway off the ground, then dropped back. Jhesrhi had arrested the ragewinds, but even with other wizards lending covert aid, she evidently couldn't hold them for long.

Khouryn croaked a battle cry and charged the misty apparition. He struck it repeatedly, every blow gashing it with a streak of crimson light. It started to come apart, but the wind was moaning louder, blowing harder, and he couldn't tell if the phantom was dissolving because he was destroying it or because it was breaking free.

He hit it once more in the chest, and it vanished. He pivoted to find himself again at the center of a vortex of blades lifting up off the ground. He felt a pang of despair, struggled to quell it, and then the whirlwind died. The spirit's weapons dropped.

Fresh cheering sounded. He looked around and saw that Jhesrhi's intervention had likewise enabled his comrades to destroy the rest of the ragewinds in one ma

In a just world, Khouryn would now have had a moment to rejoice and catch his breath. But in this one, dozens of dread warriors were still poised at the front of the enemy formation. They hadn't been able to advance with the sword spirits, or the spi

Aoth clambered onto the mountaintop. As far as he could tell, nothing had changed. It was possible-indeed, likely-that the confluence of forces overhead was even more hideous than before, but he had no intention of taking another look at it.

His mouth dry, he stalked along the edge of the high place. If he could sneak behind Malark, maybe it wouldn't matter that "hostile intent" would breach his invisibility. Maybe he could still attack by surprise.

It irked him that even close up, he couldn't see what waited in the patches of writhing distortion. He'd gotten used to seeing whatever existed to be seen, even when magic sought to conceal it. Smiling crookedly, he told himself that in this situation, he might be better off not seeing. Most likely, it would only be bad for his morale.

To his surprise, he reached a point directly behind Malark without anything trying to stop him. He aimed his spear and whispered the first words of a death spell. If it worked, it would grip and crush the spymaster's body like a piece of rotten fruit.

Malark dropped back to earth, whirled, and ended up in a crouch, staff cocked back behind him in one hand. A dimness, evidence of a protective enchantment, flowed over his body. Meanwhile, the guardians exploded into view.

Some were the floating spherical creatures called beholders, each with one great, orblike eye and other, smaller ones twisting around on stalks, and with mouths full of jagged fangs. Rotting, spotted with fungus, and riddled with gaping wounds, these particular specimens were plainly the undead variety called death tyrants.

The rest of the guardians were gigantic corpses with snarling, demented faces and lumps scuttling around beneath their slimy, decaying skins. Xingax, who'd invented the things, had called them plague spewers, and they were one of his foulest creations.

Aoth felt a mad impulse to laugh, for, given that he was a lone attacker, his situation was so hopeless as to be ludicrous. Instead, he rattled off the rest of his incantation. Though it seemed clear that Aoth was about to die, maybe Malark could go first.

Alas, no. A dark blaze of power leaped from the spear, but it frayed to nothingness when it touched Malark's haze of protection.

The spell Aoth had cast would enable him to make more such attacks, but unfortunately, no two at the same foe. As he scrambled sideways to make himself a moving target, he weighed whether to turn the magic on one of the guardians or try to blast Malark with something else.

His foes all pivoted with him. "Where are your allies?" the spymaster asked.

Apparently he did want to talk, and Aoth judged that conversation might well stall him longer than continuing a fight that would likely last only another heartbeat or two.

"As far as I know, everybody else died when the cliffs smashed together. Well, except for my griffon. He got hit by a falling boulder, but he was able to carry me this far before the wound killed him."

Malark smiled. "I'm not certain I believe you."

"The way I hear it, you're supposed to be a mighty wizard now. If anyone else were still alive, wouldn't you have found him with your scrying?"

"Perhaps, but after I shifted the mountains, I didn't try. I don't know if you can tell, but the Unmaking is close to flowering. It's possible I'm only a few breaths away. So I thought it would be a good gamble just to try to finish before any survivors reached the mountain. It still seems like a sensible strategy, once I dispose of you."

"So this is the way our friendship ends."

Malark shrugged. "It doesn't have to be. Throw your spear over the edge, submit to a binding, and you can watch the ritual unfold. You've grown into one of the finest soldiers in the East. A master killer. A true disciple of Death, even if you don't think of it that way. I'd like to believe that if you only give yourself the chance, you'll perceive the glory of what's about to happen."

"Sorry, no."

"I understand. You'd rather go down fighting, and of course it's a proper end for a man like you." Malark lifted his hand as though to signal for the guardians to attack.

Aoth groped for something, anything, to say to keep the other man talking. "Curse it, your idiotic ceremony isn't even going to work! The zulkirs say it can't!"