Vandar hurried down the slope. When it noticed his approach, the winged creature struggled to its feet, snow spilling from its back and flanks as it did. For an instant, the berserker still wasn’t sure he was looking at Jet. The griffon was too badly burned over too much of his body, and his halting, palsied movements in no way reflected the strength and speed of the beast that had accompanied Vandar and his brothers on the march north. But the smoldering blood-red eyes were still the same.
“What happened?” Vandar asked.
“Bez,” Jet rasped.
“I suspected as much. He attacked the lodge too. I may be the only one left.” Vandar pivoted. “Is Aoth …?” He faltered when he saw that the burned man half hidden in snow wasn’t the Thayan after all but rather Dai Shan. Somehow, despite the lodge’s efforts at secrecy, every contender for the wild griffons had found his way north, not that the Shou had any reason to be glad he’d undertaken the journey.
“Captain Fezim’s alive,” said Jet, “somewhere. I can feel him across our link. But he’s busy, and it could make the danger worse if I distract him. We’ll talk when he’s safe. Or if that imp”-the griffon stabbed his beak in Dai Shan’s direction-“wakes up first, maybe he can tell me where Aoth is.”
“I understand you want to find him,” Vandar said, “but once you do, you need to carry both of us back to Immilmar. It’s our best hope of reaching Bez before he claims his prize and disappears into the south.”
Jet laughed. The sound had always been so bloodcurdlingly harsh that it had taken Vandar a while to realize what it was, but now it held a bitter note that was new.
“I’ve always known that humans are blind and stupid,” the griffon said, “but you take the prize. Open your eyes and look.”
With a grunt, he extended his wing as far as he evidently could, which was about halfway. It bent in places and at angles where it shouldn’t, and in two spots, jagged bone stuck out through the skin.
“I can’t fly anybody anyplace,” the griffon said.
“Curse it!” Vandar said. “But all right. I was going to trek back to Immilmar on foot, and if I still have to, I will. But first, I’m going to double back to the Fortress. You might want to follow and lay up there for the time being. Good luck.”
Vandar turned away and took five crunching steps in the snow. Then Jet said, “Berserker.”
Vandar looked around. “Yes?”
“I don’t know if you think of us of the Brotherhood as your rivals or your comrades. You humans have a way of complicating everything that should be simple. If we’re your rivals, then leave. But if we’re your friends …” The familiar faltered in the manner of a proud creature unaccustomed to needing to ask for anything. “I told you I can’t fly. Truly, I’m so weak, I can barely stand, and without my feathers, I’m nearly frozen through. If you go, I’ll die, and the merchant too, not that he matters.”
Inside, Vandar flinched. “The warriors of the lodge were my brothers. The Halruaans murdered them.”
Jet nodded. “Go get your revenge, then.” He lowered himself back down into the snow.
Vandar tried to turn away once more. Plainly, avenging the lodge was the honorable course. Even Jet realized it and had just acknowledged as much.
And yet …
Jet was a griffon, the lodge’s totem in the flesh.
And believing himself justified, Vandar had turned his back on the outlanders once already, and it was possible that if he’d chosen otherwise, his brothers would still be alive.
Moreover, if he focused his attention inward, he could feel the wordless nudging of the fey spear and sword, strangely warm in his hand and on his hip, urging him on toward the possibility of battle, vengeance, and, perhaps still, even glory. The effect was subtle because it merely reinforced his own innate desires. Yet it was an influence nonetheless, and though he prized the virtues of the weapons as much as ever, he was learning to question the inclinations of the strange sentience that had tangled itself with his own like ivy wrapped around a post.
He heaved a sigh. “I have flint and steel, and there’s wood about. We can make a fire and find something to eat, and then, when you’re up to it, we’ll hike back to the fortress together.”
Aoth leveled his spear, and even that simple action made his neck, shoulders, and back spasm. He rattled off words of command, and the shriveled mage in the nightcap and nightshirt did the same, meanwhile sketching isosceles triangles with his wand. The ebony rod left streaks of amber phosphorescence in the air.
Aoth finished first, only because he’d opted for a simpler spell. Darts of blue light hurtled from the spear and pierced the undead wizard’s scrawny torso. Lord So-Remas cried out and flailed, his casting ruined short of completion.
Running footsteps pounded. All but certain he was moving too slowly to keep the two onrushing guards from driving their weapons into his body, Aoth blundered around to face them.
He was right. If he’d had to protect himself, he would have been too late. But the orc had picked up a small table, and now he heaved it at the soldiers. The improvised missile bashed one guard and made him stumble. Startled, his comrade balked too.
Aoth pulled his short, heavy sword from its scabbard and tossed it to the orc, who caught it deftly by the hilt. It wasn’t much to hold off two armored spearmen, but it was better than nothing, and handing it off was all Aoth had time to do. He had to use his magic-or what was left of it-to fight the most dangerous foe.
He wrenched himself back toward the doorway to the bedchamber and found the Red Wizard had already shaken off the effects of the darts of light. Worse, he was already chanting a new incantation, one that made a sickly green glow flower in the depths of his sunken eyes and branch out through the veins in his temples to his hairless crown.
Aoth started a spell of his own, but this time, So-Remas finished first. He flicked the ebony wand in an arc that ended with it pointing straight at his opponent. Shedding its clattering pieces, the lanceboard table leaped into the air and flew at Aoth.
He tried to dodge and gasped at the resulting stab of agony. The table slammed into him and knocked him onto the floor, and that double jolt was just as excruciating.
He curled up and tucked his head as, prompted by So-Remas’s wand, more objects flew at him. Struggling to keep to the proper cadence despite the punishment, Aoth gritted out another spell and jabbed with his spear on the final syllable.
A red spark shot from the point to strike at the undead mage’s feet. There, it exploded into a fiery blast that knocked the wizard backward and filled the doorway with a hissing sheet of flame.
Gasping, Aoth hoped that was the end of it, and for a heartbeat, it appeared to be. He was about to turn and see how the orc was faring when So-Remas strode back through the fire. Either he was innately impervious to it, or he carried some talisman that made him so.
The undead noble flicked his wand up and down. The animated game table hammered Aoth like a boot stamping repeatedly on an insect.
Aoth struggled to think of a counterstroke he might conceivably accomplish despite the ongoing torment and his depleted powers. The drawn curtains with the shuttered windows behind them caught his eye.
The orc had said that on rare occasions, he’d seen his master when the sun was out. But that wasn’t the same as saying that he’d seen the undead creature in the sunlight, and Aoth was going to gamble that the thrall had meant the former but not the latter, and that there was a reason for it.
He thrust his spear at a window and shouted a word of command. Raw force leaped from the weapon to tear down the drapes, shatter the greenish panes behind them, and smash open the shutters on the other side of those.