A shaft of pearly light flashed down from the heavens into the hathran’s staff, and her body lit up from within with the same power. She stretched out her other arm, and a beam like a silver sickle slashed from her fingertips.
Nyevarra leaped to the side. The light grazed her shoulder anyway, and though it didn’t cut her like a blade of common steel, pain ripped through the point of contact and a bit of her substance swirled away as mist, without her willing the transformation.
No vampire could suffer such an assault without yearning to strike back, and Nyevarra was no exception. With the moon shield still blocking her and so precluding the use of fang and nail, she clamped down on the urge to hurl lightning or frost. She wanted the hathran alive.
She swayed away from a second sweep of the arc of pale light, dived, grabbed her staff to aid in her spellcasting, and rolled back to her feet. Despite the exigencies of her situation, for an instant, she rejoiced once again in the catlike nimbleness that undeath had bestowed.
She hissed rhyming words in an old Draconic dialect. The moon sword swept low, and she leaped above the stroke without botching her incantation. On the final syllable, she jabbed with the staff as though with a spear.
The glowing shield disappeared.
Instantly, Nyevarra once again discarded her staff, ripped off her mask, and rushed the hathran. Her fangs ached with the need to pierce a vein. Just in time, she realized the mortal was still aglow with white light, and although she considered herself as true a witch as when she was alive, it still might not be prudent to drink in that argent power right along with the human’s blood.
She punched at the hathran’s jaw, and her knuckles cracked the white wooden mask. The mortal witch fell on her rump, and when she lost her concentration, both the pale light inside her and the luminous sickle winked out of existence.
Nyevarra dived on top of the hathran and shoved her down on her back. She tore off the mortal’s mask to expose a plain, square face with finely etched laugh lines, tore aside her cowl too, to finish baring the throat, and then struck like an adder.
For a heartbeat, the hathran struggled. Then she subsided into somnolence, and Nyevarra reveled in the greedy ecstasy of feeding.
It would be so easy to lose oneself and guzzle more and more, especially when the prey had stirred her passions by resisting, indeed, had actually succeeded in wounding her, so she needed blood to stop hurting and recover the full measure of her strength. But she had no idea what else was going on or what danger might even now be preparing to strike at her, and so she forced herself to lift her head and look around.
All was well. Her companions had overwhelmed the lesser hathrans, and apparently without making enough of a stir to alarm anybody else. Nyevarra couldn’t see or hear any sign that anyone was venturing out into the frigid dark to investigate, and she sensed that the assembled fey had watched the fight with a certain curiosity but without caring who won, like men might watch a dogfight.
She looked back down at the priestess of the moon and had to clench herself against the impulse to drink more from the two oozing punctures in her neck. She took a steadying breath, gripped the dazed hathran by her bruised chin, and turned her head so they were looking into one another’s eyes. Then, putting the full force of her will into it, she used her gaze to reinforce the compulsions her bite had already instilled.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Fy … Fyazel,” the hathran whispered.
“And mine is Nyevarra. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Fyazel. And you must be pleased to know me, because I’m your whole world now. You’ll love and obey me like you would the mother of your birth, your mothers in witchcraft, and the Moonmaiden herself. Tell me you understand.”
Fyazel swallowed. “Yes. You’re Mother … and Selune … love and obey …”
“Very good, daughter.” Nyevarra climbed off the fallen mortal. “When the weakness passes, you can stand up. Just don’t be alarmed at anything you see. Everything is exactly as it should be.”
So it was. The other vampires were binding the wills of their own new hathran slaves. Because their ability to walk in the sun made it feasible for them to impersonate living witches for extended periods of time, ghouls stripped corpses of their masked, hooded cloaks and other regalia and used charms to clean and mend the bloody rents. Abandoning solid form, or the illusion of it, a leering ghost streamed and swirled into the body of a woman who babbled prayers for deliverance and thrashed in the grips of her undead captors until the possession was complete.
Nyevarra smiled because here was the true beginning of the conquest of Rashemen. From this modest start, she and her sisters would spread their influence through the Wychlaran, the Iron Lord’s court, and the Urlingwood itself, and when their work was finished, the reign of the durthans would begin. Several decades later than originally planned, but the important thing was that it would last forevermore.
Dai Shan knotted the final strip of torn banner, then cocked his head and contemplated his work.
“Well?” Vandar asked.
“I trust the mighty lodge master-”
“My lodge is dead!”
Pleased that the subtle gibe had scored, Dai Shan bowed. “I beseech your pardon for my clumsy speech. I trust the mighty warrior understands that my formal training didn’t encompass griffons. Still, I see reason for hope that I’ve splinted the wing properly. If adjustments are necessary, perhaps Jet himself can guide my efforts when he awakens.”
His fortitude and pride notwithstanding, Aoth Fezim’s steed had lost consciousness midway through Dai Shan’s ministrations. From the Shou’s perspective, it had come as something of a relief. Jet was no mere beast, yet he could display a beast’s ferocity, and Dai Shan had feared that his painful ministrations might elicit a reflexive snap of the griffon’s beak or a slash of his talons.
“All right.” Vandar used the red spear to gesture to the doorway, and a glint of reflected firelight slid along its gleaming length. “Now show me how to open the hidden maze.”
“Noble chieftain, it will be my honor to help you achieve your purposes as expeditiously as may be. Still, is it wise to wander off and leave Jet unattended, particularly when you and I are likewise hurt and exhausted?”
“We can’t leave Cera and Jhesrhi trapped if there’s a chance of getting them out. Move.”
“As you wish.”
Dai Shan had employed his mystical disciplines to diminish the pain of his burns and bruises. Still, he ached as he and Vandar exited the chamber they’d commandeered and descended into the dungeons underneath the ground floor of the Fortress of the Half-Demon. He took care that neither the discomfort nor the resentment it engendered showed in his carriage or his face. The dignity of a Shou gentleman required nothing less.
The appearance of placid serenity could also cause an adversary to relax his guard, and should that occur, perhaps Dai Shan could spin around and rip away the spear the barbarian held poised at his back.
But no. The moment might come when he could rebuke Vandar’s disrespect as it deserved, but for the moment, it would behoove him to remember that he was the one who was injured and that he might actually need the berserker’s help to survive in this pile and the frozen wilderness beyond.
Vandar found a torch to light their way through the depths. Dai Shan could have seen perfectly well without it. That much shadow magic remained to him even in his depleted state. But why say so? The less the barbarian knew about his capabilities, the better.
After the battle for the fortress, the victors had removed human and stag-man bodies for a mass funeral pyre, but the corpses of hobgoblins, trolls, zombies, and even demons still littered the passageways. Picking his way through the mangled remains, Dai Shan led Vandar to a place where a secondary passage ran away from the primary one. The arch at the start of it had three vertical notches at the top.