The masked witches

Nyevarra laughed, and he saw that she d collected the weapon when he wasn t looking. She tossed it clattering down the passage, putting it even farther out of his reach. Her gaze stabbed at him. It made him feel like she was lunging at him, or that the world had tilted on end and sent him falling down at her.

Her stare would paralyze him if he let it. He jerked his eyes away and saw a brown-robed witch rushing in on his flank with her clawed, decay-mottled hands poised to snatch and rend. He lowered his head and whipped it up again. His antlers ripped both her black leather mask and the face beneath it away.

By that time, one of the vampires was rushing him. He caught hold of her as he bellowed, and he jerked her head off her shoulders. Slime pattered out of her robes as her flesh began to liquefy.

He gri

He didn t really expect his bravado to frighten them into turning tail, and it didn t. But no one else was reckless enough to fight him hand to hand. Instead, standing together, they snarled and hissed curses that made his heart stutter, his guts twist, and fresh blood stream from the cold, throbbing bites in his neck and forearm.

A single phantom hawk swooped through the archway behind him. A witch robed in black and white rattled off a rhyme, and the telthor s body twisted as though invisible hands had seized it and wrung it like a washcloth. It vanished as it fell to the floor.

Zyl hopped through the opening and cried the opening words of an incantation in his shrill voice. A durthan in a brown cloak had pounced on him like a cat before he could finish. She ripped at his body with her jagged claws and flung bloody chunks through the air. The Stag King grieved momentarily for his servant, before grimly refocusing on his own plight.

Through gritted teeth, the Stag King muttered charms of protection that seemed to do no good at all. He struggled to advance on the witches, but it was like walking into a gale. In his addled, pain-ridden condition, he couldn t tell if the enemy had conjured an actual wind or if it was the pressure of Nyevarra s gaze shoving back at him.

Whatever it was, after a straining step or two, it stopped him. He wondered, with more amazement than dread, if, after all these mille

Growing in an instant, brambles shot up from the floor. They whipped around him, yanked themselves tight, and plunged their long thorns deep into his flesh.

He strained to break free, but to no avail. The only effect was to tear the punctures wider around the thorns. The durthans pounced on him.

First, the Stag King stopped flailing, then he stopped twitching, and a few heartbeats after that, Nyevarra and her sister witches stepped back from his corpse. She wiped her bloody lips with the back of her hand and slipped on a tarnished silver mask.

Do we give him the chance to rise? asked a durthan in red.

No, the vampire said. Take his head and fetch his weapon.

The witch in red retrieved the axe and used it to decapitate its erstwhile owner. It took four bone-splintering chops for the Stag King s head to tumble away from his neck. She stooped and picked it up by one of the antlers.

Now, said the vampire in the silver mask, let s see if his retainers still want to fight when we show them proof that their lord is dead.

Aoth advanced to meet the patchwork swordsman, and, with a limp that might be the result of having mismatched legs, the creature moved to meet him. So did Aoth s former antagonist, the skull lord.

And Cera knew, so surely that it was possible the Keeper or one of his exarches had whispered the information to her, that her lover couldn t contend with both foes at once. Not in such a press, where he couldn t cast his most potent spells without smiting friend as well as foe. She had to help him.

She swept her mace over her head, drew down the Keeper s power, and hurled a shaft of radiance from the head of the weapon. It struck the skull lord like a battering ram and knocked him backward.

Well, she had his attention. In the moment it took him to recover his balance, she rattled off a second prayer. Floating sigils of golden light shimmered into existence all around her.

She was just in time, for an instant later, red light flickered in the orbs of one of his skulls, and then a flare of crimson fire leaped at her. The scorching heat and sickening vileness of it rocked her backward, and for a moment made it feel like there was nothing around her to breathe but filth and embers. Then the flame went out, and she gasped in cleaner air. Frantically taking stock, she found that the attack had only blistered her. The floating runes had shielded her from the worst.

But the fiery blast had provided the skull lord with cover of a sort, and he d used it to rush forward. Indeed, he d nearly closed the distance between them. Terror jolted Cera and froze her in place.

Or rather, it tried. She gasped, Keeper! and warmth poured into her. It didn t purge her of every trace of her fear it probably would have needed to steal her reason to do that but the u

The skull lord s falchion leaped at her. She blocked with her buckler, and the heavy blade hit so hard that for an instant she feared the stroke had broken her arm. She tried to hit back with her mace, but she was off balance, and the riposte didn t come anywhere near her foe. The skull lord chopped at her again, and it was only Tymora s favor that enabled her to flounder back out of range.

It was plain that, despite all she d learned during her time with Aoth, she was nowhere near up to the task of defeating her ghastly opponent in a contest of arms. As he advanced, she again reached up for the power of the Yellow Sun and rattled off a prayer. She didn t know if she could finish it in time, but her only real hope was to try.

A pair of ghostly warriors, each a blur of amber light, appeared between her and the skull lord. He tried to lunge between them, but they shifted to hold him back and struck at him with their swords.

Sheltering behind them, Cera hurled bursts of Amaunator s power, shafts of sunlight infused with holiness and the deity s righteous hatred of the undead. The third such attack blasted the skull lord into burning scraps of bone.

For an instant, forgetting what she d learned previously, Cera hoped that was the end of the thing. Then the charred fragments of skeleton slid and jumped back together, commencing the task of reassembling him.

No! she thought. Not again! And though the exertions, physical and otherwise, of the last few moments had left her winded and weak, she scrambled forward to smash the one skull that remained intact. Sliding like pieces on a lanceboard, her conjured protectors moved with her.

She thought she had closed the distance in time, because she reached the skull lord when his power was still putting him back together. But the arm with the gauntlet had already reassembled itself, and, via scapula and vertebrae, reco

A thing like a deformed cherub with bruised-looking purple skin burst into view, a necklace of mummified eyeballs swinging from its blubbery neck. It lashed its leathery wings, shot at Cera, and stretched out stubby hands with long black claws. Her glowing bodyguards cut at it and missed. She tried to deflect it with her buckler but failed to lift the armor quickly enough.

The demon slashed at her face as it hurtled by. Pain ripped through her head, and everything went black. She realized the tanar ri might just have torn out her eyes.