The undead creature scrabbled at her, trying to achieve a better grip and rend her in the process. Beak snapping, she bit at it. Shouting in fury and terror, Aoth stabbed with his lance.

Finally the huge thing stopped moving. Unfortunately, that meant it fell with its talon still transfixing the griffon's wing, and she and her rider plummeted along with it. For a moment, they were all in danger of crashing to the ground together, but then Brightwing bit completely through the claw, freeing herself. Wings hammering, shaking the severed tip of the talon out of her wound in the process, she leveled off.

Aoth peered about. It was too late to help the priests. They were gone, yet the Thayans on the ground had at least succeeded in eliminating the undead from the midst of their formation, and mages and warriors, all battling furiously, had thus far held back the rest of the undead host. For the next little while, as he and his injured mount did their best to avoid danger, he dared to hope the legions might still carry the day.

Then the surface of the Thazarim churned, and hunched, gaunt shapes waded ashore. They charged the Thayan flank.

Aoth cursed. He knew of lacedons, as the aquatic ghouls were called. They were relatively common, but so far as he'd ever heard, they were sea creatures. It made no sense for them to come swimming down from the Sunrise Mountains.

Yet they had, without him or any of the other scouts spotting them in the water, and swarms of undead rats had swum along with them. Like a tide of filthy fur, rotting flesh, exposed bone, and gnashing teeth, the vermin streamed in among the legionnaires, and men who might have stood bravely against any one foe, or even a pair of them, panicked at the onslaught of five or ten or twenty small, scurrying horrors assailing them all at once.

It was the end. The formation began to disintegrate. Warriors turned to run, sometimes throwing away their weapons and shields. Their leaders bellowed commands, trying to make them retreat with some semblance of order. Slashing with his scimitar, a blood-orc sergeant cut down two members of his squad to frighten the rest sufficiently to heed him.

"Set me down," said Aoth.

"Don't be stupid," Brightwing replied.

"I won't take you back into the middle of that, hurt as you are, but none of the men on the ground is going to escape unless every wizard we have left does all he can to cover the retreat."

"We haven't fallen out of the sky, have we? I can still fly and fight. We'll do it together."

He discerned he had no hope of talking her out of it. "All right, have it your way."

Brightwing maneuvered, and when necessary, she battled with talon and beak to keep them both alive. He used every spell in his head and every trace of magic he carried bound in an amulet, scroll, or tattoo to hold the enemy back. To no avail, he suspected, because below him, moment by moment, men were dying anyway.

Then, however, the morning brightened. The clouds turned from slate to a milder gray, a luminous white spot appeared in the east, and at last the undead faltered in their harrying pursuit.

Ysval could bear the touch of daylight without actual harm, yet it made his skin crawl, and soaring above his host, the better to survey the battle, he stiffened in repugnance.

Some of his warriors froze or flinched, their reaction akin to his own. Specters faded to invisibility, to mere impotent memories of pain and hate. Still other creatures began to smolder and steam and hastily shrouded themselves in their graveclothes or scrambled for shade.

Ysval closed his pallid eyes and took stock of himself. His assessment, though it came as no surprise, was disappointing. For the moment, he lacked the mystical strength to darken the day a second time.

The nighthaunt called in his silent voice. He'd made a point of establishing a psychic bond with each of his lieutenants and so was confident they'd hear. Sure enough, the ones who were still functional immediately moved to call back those undead so avid to kill that they'd continued to chase Tharchion Focar's fleeing troops even when their comrades faltered.

Once Ysval was certain his minions were enacting his will, he swooped lower, the better to provide the direction the host would require in the aftermath of battle. Several of his officers saw him descending and hurried to meet him where, with a final snap of his wings, he set down on the ground.

He gazed at Shex, inviting her to speak first, in part because he respected her. In fact, though blessedly incapable of affection in any weak mortal sense, he privately regarded her as something of a kindred spirit, but not because they particularly resembled one another.

Like himself, she had wings and claws, but she was taller, tall as an ogre in fact, and her entire body was a mass of peeling and deliquescent corruption. Slime oozed perpetually down her frame to pool at her feet, and even other undead were careful to stand clear of the corrosive filth.

No, Ysval felt a certain bond with her because each of them was more than just a formidable and genuinely sentient undead creature. Each was the avatar, the embodiment, of a cosmic principle. As he was darkness, so she was decay.

At the moment, she was also unhappy. "Many of our warriors can function in the light," she said in her slurred, muddy voice. "Let those who are capable continue the pursuit. Why not? The legionnaires won't turn and fight."

They might, he replied, if they think it's the only alternative to being struck down from behind. He'd noticed that even many undead winced and shuddered when he shared his thoughts with them, but she bore the psychic intrusion without any sign of distress. We've won enough for one day. We've dealt a heavy blow to the enemy, and the pass, our highway onto the central plateau, lies open from end to end.

Which meant that for a time at least, the host would disperse to facilitate the process of laying waste to as much of eastern Thay as possible. In a way, it was a pity. It had been millennia since he'd commanded an army, and he realized now that he'd missed it.

Still, raiding, slaughtering helpless humans and putting their farms and villages to the torch, was satisfying in its own right, and he had reason for optimism that the army would join together again by and by. It was just that the decision didn't rest with him but with the master who'd summoned him back to the mortal realm after a sojourn of ages on the Plane of Shadow.

Shex inclined her head. Viscous matter dripped from her face as if she were weeping over his decision. "As you command," she said.

Her sullen tone amused him. I promise, he said, there's plenty more killing to come. Now, see to the corpses of the tharchion's soldiers. The ghouls and such can feed on half of them, but I want the rest intact for reanimation.

chapter five

25 Mirtul, the Year of Risen Elfkin

Surthay, capital of the tharch of the same name, was a crude sort of place compared to Eltabbar, and since the town lay outside the enchantments that managed the climate in central Thay, the weather was colder and rainier. Even murky Lake Mulsantir, the body of water on which it sat, suffered by comparison with the blue depths of Lake Thaylambar.

Yet Malark Springhill liked the place. At times the luxuries, splendors, and intricacies of life at Dmitra Flass's court grew wearisome for a man who'd spent much of his life in the rough-and-tumble settlements of the Moonsea. When he was in such a mood, the dirt streets, simple wooden houses, and thatch-roofed shacks of a town like Surthay felt more like home than Eltabbar ever could.