A Wildrunner shouted in pain, then in sudden terror. "E'li!" she cried, as though the name of her god must be the last thing she spent breath on. Dalamar knew her by her voice: Elisaad Windsweep, who had wondered about the mage who'd waked the land from Lorac Caladon's nightmare. "O E'li-!"

A bony arm thrust up from the water and grabbed the woman by the hair, yanking her down. Dalamar leaped across the bowed back of a rower still struggling for his oar against another of the bone-warriors. Dragged overboard, Elisaad screamed, her cry heard even above the crash of swords and the rattle of bones as the water claimed her. In the next moment, her hand broke the surface of the brown river, but her face-eyes wide and full of panic, mouth stubbornly shut against the river-showed only hazily through the turmoil of muddy water. Dalamar leaned far over the side of the skiff. Someone grabbed him by the belt and he leaned farther, reaching into the water for the drowning Wildrunner.

"There she is!" Caylain cried, holding onto Dalamar's belt with two hands now. "There!"

"Fight!" Dalamar shouted to her. "Reach for me! Give me your hand!"

Three faces looked up at him, one full of terror, two with empty eye-sockets that nonetheless left the feeling that they were filled with malice.

Swiftly, Dalamar called out a word of magic, one he hadn't used in many long years. It was not the first he'd learned-the call for light, Shirak, is ever the first a mage learns-but it was the next. It was, in itself, also a call for light, for it was a call for focus and clarity.

"Azral!" he shouted, and Elisaad's eyes went wide to hear magic from this servant, wider still to feel terror fall away from her and purpose flow in after. She surged upward, reaching for his hand, unhampered now by fear.

Skeletal jaws opened and closed in some kind of frantic speech, the brittle clattering heard even above the water's surface. It was the sound of old leaves scrabbling on midnight paths. Elisaad's hand closed tight around Dalamar's wrist, her eyes met his, bright and clear and filled with trust. Someone cursed; someone else sobbed in pain or terror.

Lord Konnal shouted, "Behind! There are more behind!"

Dalamar dared not look to see behind where. He could only hope they were not behind Caylain, for two of the undead grabbed Elisaad, one to hold her shoulders, another her legs.

Elisaad screamed.

The attackers held, and they had the same strength they might have had in life. Some elves, others old foes, all of them had a consuming hatred of the living. Dalamar pulled again, and now Elisaad's head was above water.

"Caylain!" he shouted, hanging on to Elisaad.

Caylain, pull! Caylain, don't let go! All these things he meant when he shouted, all these things the cleric understood at once. With one mighty surge, Caylain threw herself backward, dragging Dalamar, dragging Elisaad with him. The Wildrunner came up, head and shoulders, and she had a hand free to grasp the side of the wildly rocking boat. The release of resistance sent Caylain tumbling. Dalamar staggered, then reached for Elisaad again.

"Take my hand!"

She dragged herself higher out of the water, reaching. Someone came between Dalamar and her-Porthios in pursuit of a rattling, clattering foe-and her eyes went wide in horror again.

"No!" she screamed. "No-o-o-o!"

She vanished and disappeared, screaming beneath the water. Cursing, Dalamar leaped for the side of the boat. But he was too late. He reached the water's edge only in time to see the last of Elisaad, the pale oval of her face, the terror in her eyes as her lungs filled with brackish river water and the undead dragged her to her death.

Raging, Dalamar turned, and he snatched up the nearest thing he could find for a weapon-a rusted sword, the blade pitted and scarred. One, two, and three of the skeletal beings came clattering after him, jaws working but no sound issuing, their eye-sockets empty as dry wells. He swung about as though he were a warrior trained, instinctively holding the sword in a two-handed grip, not flailing but finding the same rhythm he saw Porthios using-arc and swing, for thrusting did a man no good in this kind of fight. He must swipe heads from neck and chop bony limbs from their sockets. He must dismantle in order to kill. This he did in rage, the wail of the woman stolen from his grasp like a spur to his fury.

Not until a hard hand grabbed his arm and held his swing did he stop. Not until Porthios pried the rusted sword from his grip did he look up to see that the fighting was finished, the battle won. In the fallen stillness, Dalamar heard the slap of water against the skiff, the hiss of a quickening wind in the dying reeds. Someone coughed. Someone else groaned, and he smelled blood. He looked around him and saw that two of the Wildrunners had deep wounds. The mages sat in the center of the skiff, still bowed over, still white-faced and weaving their spells.

In the moment Dalamar's glance alighted on them, Konnal's gaze touched him. Cool and narrow, that glance, glittering with suspicion as he eyed him from brown boots to dun shirt.

"Servitor," he said, "you dress strangely for a mage."

Dalamar's tongue leaped nimbly for the lie. "I haven't practiced magic since the war, my lord. I was the servant of Lord Tellin Windglimmer and served him in the Temple of E'li. He was pleased to have me learn the ways of magic. He's dead now, and no one seems to have taken as much interest." His history neatly amended, he shrugged. "No matter. I'm pleased to have remembered some little of what I learned." He glanced at the river and the calming surface of the water. Now he didn't have to feign his feeling. "I wish I had been able to do more for the Wildrunner."

"Indeed," Konnal said, eyes no less narrow, no less cold. "I've never approved of teaching a servitor the arts of magic. They get above themselves and find their heads filled with ideas they can't properly understand. Nothing but trouble comes of that."

He seemed to expect a reply, and Dalamar had none that would please him. After a moment, eyes properly lowered, he murmured, "If you have no other question, my lord, I'll return to minding the crates."

Konnal gestured curtly and sent Dalamar to his work. Somewhere upriver, a long moaning howl wound through the thickness of green mist. A dragon called, and another answered. In the water around the skiff, one small line of bubbles sailed up to break the brackish surface. Then all was still and remained so for the rest of the journey.

Chapter 12

The pain of the land moaned in Dalamar's very bones. He felt it most keenly as the little skiff put in at the docks on the north side of the city. He stepped gingerly from the vessel to creaking wood, hoping the rotting posts would hold. It was not easier when he walked into the city. In the Arts District the towers had tumbled, and the fair buildings of marble and quartz were fallen to ruin.

"It might have been a thousand years since we last walked here," whispered the cleric Caylain to one of her fellows. Her face was as pale as Solinari's moon, her long eyes wide and dark with sorrow.

The rose marble walls of the museums and theaters and libraries bore the wounds of cracks, and smaller buildings had fallen in on themselves, roofs shattered, walls collapsed. The statuary lining the streets were unrecognizable. Where the generals on their wide-winged griffins? Where the Wildrunner, bow nocked, fierce eyes glaring? Where the gods, Kiri-Jolith with his Sword of Justice, E'li, the dragon rampant? Where, Quenesti-Pah, her arms outstretched, and the Blue Phoenix, and Astarin with his harp? Gone, all gone, their images melted, shattered, fallen to dust and blown away. Not even ravens clung to the ruined aspen branches.