Richard Byers - Prophet of the Dead

A steel automaton in the shape of a wild boar stopped one murky figure with a slash of its tusks. An Old One cast darts of white light from a brazen gauntlet to obliterate another. Snatching for the wand she’d sheathed to more easily manipulate her staff, Yhelbruna shouted a word of power. A scythe-like curve of congealed moonlight flowed into existence before her, then slashed in a horizontal arc.

The attack caught an apparition with a short, curved blade in either hand, and it faltered just like a living man whose guts suddenly threatened to slide out the rip in his belly. But either leaping over the strike or ducking under it, the other four aspects of the doomsept avoided harm.

And now they were all around Yhelbruna, shadowy axes poised to chop and short swords ready to thrust. Could she destroy them all before one of them cut her down? She doubted it, but she could at least make them pay for her death. She thrust her wand at the ghost directly in front of her.

A crackling bolt of lightning leaped from the tip of the weapon. Pierced through, her target twisted like a cloth wrung by unseen hands and disappeared.

At the same instant, Vandar rushed in and dispitched another phantom with a slash of the red sword. The last time Yhelbruna had caught sight of him, he’d been berserk fighting at the very forefront of the attack. Judging from the ferocity manifest in his twisted face, rage still possessed him, yet even so, he’d noticed her peril and raced to help her.

Without pausing, he pivoted toward another phantom just as it was starting to swing its axe at him. Though he surely perceived the threat, he didn’t jump back or even dodge. He simply cut with catlike quickness and trusted his stroke to land first.

It did. And when the scarlet blade sliced into the ghost, it and its hurtling axe disappeared.

That fortunate attack still left one aspect of the doomsept unscathed. Yhelbruna spun in a swirl of cloak, seeking it, and found it just as darts of blue light pierced it and made it boil and smoke into nonexistence. Wheeling overhead on Jet’s back, eyes glowing, Aoth saluted her and Vandar with a dip of his spear before turning to find his next foe.

At the same time, following their new king Jet’s lead, the wild griffons came swooping and diving into battle. The golden telthor plunged down on a lich with a pair of dragon fangs raised above his head in invocation. The impact all but smashed the skeletal wizard flat, and when his hands convulsively gripped the talismans, the edges cut his leathery fingers off.

Screeching, other griffons tore holes in a shield wall of zombie spearmen, then climbed and wheeled for a second pass. Booming thunderbolts and missiles that burst into corrosive vapor when they hit the ground rained down as even the dastards aboard the Storm of Vengeance began to play their parts in Aoth’s strategy.

Yhelbruna supposed she’d better keep playing hers as well. As she considered what spell to cast next and where to cast it, Vandar fixed on a white-faced vampire warrior whose sword and chin alike were wet with blood. The berserker screamed like a griffon and charged.

A company of bright fey was advancing, or at least Lod assumed the score of warriors and the two sorceresses in their midst were fey. They looked like elves might look if some whimsical power whittled them even skinnier, painted their skins with faint striations, and replaced their hair with tufts of leaves. As if to give the lie to their spindly, fragile appearance, they bore outsized, two-handed cleaverlike weapons that few human beings could have wielded with any semblance of grace or skill.

They evidently had faith in their prowess, for despite Lod’s daunting appearance, they were coming on without hesitation. He rebuked their arrogance by hissing a word that stabbed pain through their eyes and struck them blind. Only temporarily, but they were still stumbling around in the snow, calling out to one another, and wiping bloody tears when skeletons came running to cut them down.

It was a satisfying moment. But any pleasure Lod might otherwise have taken in it withered when he twisted away to survey the battle as a whole.

Rashemen was supposed to be easy prey, backward to begin with, witless and feeble now that the Eminence had rotted it from within. Yet somehow the allegedly befuddled, broken realm had mustered a formidable little army and had known exactly where to send it.

The Eminence hadn’t lost the resulting battle yet. But it very well might. Lod assumed that he, who had, after all, bested Sarshethrian, was more than a match for any single combatant among the foe. But even he couldn’t be everywhere buttressing every part of the defense at once.

Nor was the ambient darkness likely to take up the slack. It hindered the living to an extent, but not enough now that they understood its toxicity.

If only he and the durthans could have continued their rites uninterrupted for a few more days! Then no amount of defensive charms or sheer determination would have saved the attackers from weakening and ultimately strangling on the gloom.

But what, Lod wondered abruptly, if he and his comrades didn’t actually need a few more days? For safety’s sake, wizards customarily performed their greatest works with protracted, painstaking care. But the present enterprise was already well advanced with mystical safeguards in place. Surely, at this point, competent spellcasters could pick up the pace.

He cast around, spotted Nyevarra sweeping her antler-topped staff through looping mystic passes, and crawled in her direction. On the way, he observed the sun priestess and fire mage who’d escaped from the Fortress of the Half-Demon fighting their way forward.

He supposed the two women had overheard too much while in captivity, that the hathrans and such were here because they’d guided them here, and felt a vicious urge to pause and strike the escapees down. He didn’t, though. He kept moving.

Unfortunately, no matter how single-minded he was, he couldn’t stop the enemy from assailing him and slowing his progress. Sheltered behind golems and spearmen, a hathran chanted and brandished a scythe at him. Growing out of empty air, rose vines wrapped around him, binding him, the thorns jabbing into his scales and even the naked bones of his upper body. Meanwhile, the perfume of the crimson flowers filled his head and made it swim.

He snarled words of negation and reprisal. The vines vanished, and staggering, the witch yanked up her mask to retch squirming maggots into the snow.

An iron ball arced out of the sky. He caught it, chanted to it, released it, and it flew back up into the air, reversing its trajectory to burst at its point of origin.

Finally, he reached Nyevarra. The durthan was reciting what he recognized as a summoning spell even though he couldn’t tell precisely what she was calling. More useless fey, most likely. Nearby, Uramar was conferring with a lich whose shriveled face and limbs were furry with grave mold.

For a moment, gazing down at the hulking blaspheme and the little witch in her mask of blackened silver made Lod feel as disgusted as he had peering across the battlefield at the sun priestess and fire mage. And why shouldn’t it? Wasn’t Uramar and Nyevarra’s bungling equally responsible for this crisis?

Well, perhaps not equally , and in any case, the two were his undead kindred, and he needed them. With an effort, he put aside the impulse to blame.

Nyevarra finished her spell, and half a dozen big, vulturine entities flapped out of nowhere to assail a griffon. She then turned and peered up at Lod.

“Well done,” he said. “But I need your help with a special task.”

“Anything,” she replied.

“We need to pull the breach wider. Let Shadow flood through until our magic is invincible and our enemies sicken and die.”