The masked witches

More griffons plunged down, each on its chosen prey. Then Jet screeched, furled his wings, and dived.

The unexpected plummet jolted Cera out of her daze. Amaunator! she called. Please, give us your light!

The god s power manifested as a warm golden glow in her hands. She leaned and stretched forward as far as she could and laid them on the sides of Jet s head.

The warmth surged out of her flesh and into the griffon s. For a heartbeat, she was afraid it hadn t been enough, for, while her deity s might was limitless, a mortal s ability to cha

Then the horses changed.

Had it happened more gradually, Cera might have not have spotted it immediately, because by then, all the animals were shredded, eviscerated, dismembered, dying, or dead. But they changed into a different sort of ruined thing virtually all at once, as a wave of mottled discoloration swept through them. The smell of raw meat and spilled blood in the air became a nauseating stench of decay.

The equines struggles had become feeble, turned to mere twitches and shuddering, or subsided altogether. But paradoxically, as their aspect changed from that of creatures killed moments before to that of ones that had lain dead for some time, their movements became far more vigorous. They no longer appeared to care about escaping. Rather, their only concern was biting a griffon and its rider, or battering them with their hooves.

Even though the griffons were gorging on putrescence and likely had been all along, with only illusion making it appear otherwise their riders still couldn t compel them to stop. Thus the soldiers only option was to stab at the undead horses with their lances. They set about it with fierce determination, oblivious to the other tattered, shambling forms rearing up out of the snow all around them.

Jet streaked beyond the edge of the battle. Cera looked over her shoulder but could already see little of the rapidly dwindling figures at her back.

Turn around! she said. We have to help them!

They re our rivals, Jet replied. We want them to fail.

Turn! she said, then realized that despite his protest, he was already wheeling. As he lashed his wings and flew back at the combatants, she reached out to the Keeper and prayed for all the strength that he could give her. The magic flared inside her like the Yellow Sun itself, filling her with an ecstasy that nearly washed away her ability to think. Almost, but not quite. She still remembered her purpose.

She swung her hand over her head, and golden light blazed down from the black starry sky to illuminate the field below. The undead cringed, and rotten flesh sizzled and crisped like bacon frying in a pan. But those effects were incidental. Cera s actual intent was to free every griffon from the enchantment trammeling its mind, and she shouted with joy when the mighty beasts started to spring away from the horse-things and shake out their wings.

One griffon leaped but fell back down onto the ground. Another started to trot and then staggered off balance. A third gave a strangled cry and vomited.

Cera realized the rotten horseflesh had poisoned the griffons, and they could no longer fly. She snarled an obscenity.

The things that had hidden under the snow Cera thought they were mostly ghouls, although the dark made it difficult to tell for certain lunged at their prey from all sides. They clawed at the stricken griffons and reached to drag the riders from their saddles.

Cera asked Amaunator for more power. Somehow seeming both to descend from above and to rise from deep within her, it came in the form of the deity s wrath, of his loathing for creatures that made a mockery of the natural progression from life into death and what came after. The magic was as hot as a cauterizing iron, but she held it without discomfort. It made her feel as taut as a drawn bow ready to drive an arrow.

She swept her hand over her head and downward. Light blazed from her fingers. One of the ghouls crumbled to dust in an instant. The Keeper s power burned holes in two more, and still others cringed, dropping onto their bellies and hiding their fanged, vaguely canine faces in the gory snow.

But those were the only three that fell. For a moment, she wasn t sure why, because it had certainly felt like she d hurled a prodigious flare of the sun god s power. Then she spotted the grotesque figure looking back up at her with three pairs of empty eye sockets.

She d never encountered such an undead before. But from Aoth s tales of the War of the Zulkirs, she recognized the armored figure with the war hammer in his hand and the three skulls perched on his one set of shoulders as a skull lord. Such beings possessed arcane abilities, and it was likely his power was shielding the lesser undead from the full effect of Cera s magic.

Looking back at her, the skull lord tossed an arm that wore a bulky gauntlet like a falconer s glove. Vague, murky shapes, somewhat manlike but with long, curved horns and batlike wings, burst into existence above his hand. They flew at her and Jet.

The griffon instantly started flying faster and veering back and forth and up and down. Cera didn t have the skill or the psychic link that would enable her to anticipate the sudden shifts, and they whipped her around in the saddle. Even worse, Jet s headlong progress carried them away from those on the ground who so urgently needed their help.

The Aglarondans! she gasped.

We have to protect ourselves first! Jet rasped.

We can t help anybody else if shadow demons are tearing us apa

One of the ghostly creatures suddenly appeared on the right. It slashed with a clawed hand and just missed the familiar s wing, at which point Cera belatedly realized the point of his racing, seemingly erratic progress. Jet knew shadow demons had the ability to shift through space. Thus, an unpredictable, constantly changing course was the only hope of avoiding them.

Jet wrenched himself to the right, leaving the spirit behind. Unfortunately, it was still close enough to try a different form of attack. Though she couldn t define precisely what she perceived or how, Cera suddenly sensed its malice stabbing at her like a dagger leaping at her eye.

She felt her spirit separating from her body as it had when she and Aoth had performed the ritual of discovery in the temple garden in Soolabax. But then it had been of Cera s own volition. There, above the Hurong s Road, some power was dragging her out, and the shadow pounced at her to pierce her material form to its core and fill the void.

Keeper! she cried. The god s power thrust her soul back into its proper place. The demon splashed against an invisible barrier, its limbs and horned head losing all definition.

Despite Jet s dogged efforts at evasion, another demon appeared right in front of him, so close he had no hope of avoiding it. The spirit plunged its claws into his shoulder, holding on with one hand and raking with the other. Meanwhile, another shadow materialized above the griffon s left wing and snatched hold of that.

Cera drew another measure of Amaunator s power, pressed her hand to Jet s back, and made him shine like he himself was a piece of the sun. Creatures of living darkness, the demons released their holds and flung themselves away from the holy radiance.

They still weren t done, however. The glow flickered and dimmed as bursts of shadow threatened to taint and drown it. The invasive gloom came with freezing cold that made Cera gasp and Jet s body jerk beneath her.