Bareris gave Tammith a gentle push, telling her it was her time to attack. As she dissolved into bats, he vanished.

When she flew upward, she spied him again, barely visible behind the gray, hulking form of the giant zombie. He'd shifted himself through space to attack Xingax from behind. He swung his sword in a high arc, aiming for the unseen rider on the hideous steed's back.

Even above the din of battle, she heard Xingax scream like an infant in distress. It was the sweetest music Bareris had ever made.

The giant zombie lurched around and swiped at Bareris, who retreated out of range. Wavering into visibility, Xingax hurled ice crystals from Ysval's blackened, oversized hand. Bareris twisted, but couldn't dodge all of the barrage.

Yet when he sprang back, cut into the zombie's knee, yanked his sword free, and whirled it upward for another slash at Xingax, Tammith could see it hadn't hurt him much, nor had the poison haze that shrouded his opponent. He'd prepared for this confrontation, enhancing his natural capabilities with his songs, and for all she knew, talismans and potions. She felt a thrill of pride to see how well he was faring.

It was a puny little flicker of emotion, an almost indiscernible fleck of flotsam in the torrent of hatred and rage she felt for Xingax. She whirled her bats together and set her human feet down amid the cinders and bits of blackened bone that were all that remained of the dread warriors. Even through her boots, the residue of divine power stung her soles.

She jumped, caught Xingax by the neck, and dragged him from his perch. Bareris could destroy the giant zombie, and she'd slaughter its master. She pulled her sword back for a thrust.

Twisting to face her, Xingax sneered, and she felt vibration through the fingers she held clamped in his putrid flesh. Then she couldn't feel anything, and realized he meant to shift through space or between worlds to escape her.

But an instant later, when his form congealed again, she realized he couldn't. He'd temporarily lost the ability. His twisted little mouth dropped open in dismay, and she drove her blade into his guts.

It didn't finish him. It didn't even stun him, stop him from floating weightless in the air, or keep him from clawing at her face. But that was all right. She wanted him to succumb slowly, because she'd relish every instant of his destruction. She twisted her head and his talons scored her cheek but missed her eyes. She jerked the sword free for another attack.

"Stop!" a deep voice grated.

Tammith froze, and she realized some enchantment had taken hold of her. She strained against it, and her sword arm twitched. She was breaking free.

"Stop!" Xingax said. From the moment of her rebirth as a vampire, he'd been able to command her. She'd believed the blight on wizardry had set her free, but apparently her liberation wasn't as complete as she'd imagined. Xingax was able to muster at least a shadow of his old coercive power, and it combined with the psychic assault she was already fighting to tilt the balance against her. Her body locked into complete rigidity, and Xingax clawed at her hand until flesh and bones came apart and he was able to pull free of her grip.

Something snaked around her. When it lifted her off the balcony, it turned her, and she beheld the creature that had crept up behind her.

Once it sat atop a giant's shoulders. Now the severed head was a swollen, misshapen thing with rows of jagged fangs in its oversized mouth. Some of the guts and blood vessels protruding from the neck hole had wrapped around her. Others had plastered themselves to the wall above the doorways, allowing it to crawl along the vertical surface like a fly.

"You're a bad, ungrateful daughter!" Xingax shrilled. "I gave you everything!"

The crawling head's trailing tendrils lifted Tammith toward its jaws. Change to mist, she told herself. Then it can't hurt you or hold on to you. But she couldn't transform.

Her captor turned her body. She realized it was positioning her so it could nip her head off.

Then Bareris sprang onto the balcony. He must have finished slaying the giant zombie, clearing away the obstacle that stood between him and the rest of the combat.

He struck at Xingax before the maker of undead realized he was there. His sword crunched into the bulbous skull, and Xingax dropped from the air onto the gallery floor. Bareris instantly pivoted toward the crawling head and Tammith.

But Xingax was still conscious. He grabbed Bareris's leg with his nighthaunt hand, sinking the claws deep into his calf, and pointed with the stunted, withered one. Tammith felt malignant power burn through the air.

Bareris cried out and arched his back, but he didn't fall. After a moment, as the agony abated, he pivoted and cut until Xingax stopped moving, and he could pull free of the long bloody claws.

He hobbled toward Tammith and the thing that clutched her tightly. The giant's head howled, a shriek as full of murderous force as Xingax's final attack, but Bareris sang a fierce, sustained, vibrating note that shielded him from harm.

The crawling head lashed at him with lengths of artery and intestine. Hampered by his torn, bleeding leg, Bareris defended as best he could. At the same time, the creature positioned Tammith's neck between its rows of teeth.

Once more, she struggled against her intangible fetters. Perhaps Xingax's death had weakened them, because her limbs jerked. Bonds of ropy flesh still held her, but nothing else did.

But she was out of time to shapeshift. She strained with all her inhuman strength, heaved her arms free, and braced her sword to prop the head's jaws open.

Heedless of the grievous wound it thus inflicted in the roof of its mouth, the horror snapped its fangs shut. A fiery pain through her neck told Tammith her head had come loose from her body.

She fought to defy terror's grip, to remember that she'd survived this same mutilation before. Then a rippling peristalsis tumbled her head inside the creature, depositing it in some manner of sac. In the darkness, fleshy strands nudged at her scalp, brow, and cheeks, then, biting or stinging, anchored themselves like lampreys.

Her consciousness faded. Despite the layers of bone and flesh around her, she heard Bareris bellow a thunderous battle cry, felt the crawling head jerk in reaction, and then her mind guttered out completely.

chapter six

2-21 Kythorn, the Year of Blue Fire

Bareris's shout tore flesh from the giant's head and splintered the bone beneath. At instant later, a Burning Brazier blasted the creature with flame. It lost its grip on the wall and crashed down on the gallery, where it lay blackened, smoking, and still.

Fast as he could, Bareris limped toward it, and a yellow-eyed dread warrior placed itself in his path. He had to slay it, and then the ghoul that took its place. It reminded him that, although all he truly cared about was breaking open the giant's head, he still had a battle to win.

In fact, it didn't take long. When the crawling head perished, the defenders' last hope of victory perished with it, and they began to turn and run.

Bareris cast about, found a fallen battle-axe, and chopped the colossal skull apart. For a time, he was terrified that Tammith's head had completely dissolved inside it, but he finally found it within a sac of leathery flesh.

It didn't move. Not the mouth, not the eyes. Even when he yanked loose the tendrils that had attached themselves to it and lifted it free, it looked as dead as the putrid mass that had imprisoned it. Bareris shuddered and felt a howl building inside him.

Behind him, someone cleared his throat. He turned to see one of the Burning Braziers. Though far advanced in the mysteries of his order, the priest was a relatively young man of Mulan stock.