Once there, he sang softly. He couldn't have said exactly what he was doing or why, but he exerted his bardic skills anyway, striking precisely the right notes, rhythm, and phrasing to spark magic flickering in the air around him like a cloud of fireflies.

The spell picked at another power that, at this moment, seemed to cover his skin like a smothering coat of lacquer. The process stung, but the pain was a kind of relief, and by the time it ended, his mind was clear, his will, his own once more.

When he'd nudged Malark and the other necromancers to enslave rather than destroy him, he'd fully expected the binding to take. That was why, prior to sneaking into the castle, he, working with Lauzoril and Lallara, had imposed a different geas on himself. At the proper moment, he would find himself compelled to cast countermagic that would, if Tymora smiled, break the enemy's psychic shackles.

Keeping to the shadows but, he hoped, not so blatantly that he'd look like a skulking footpad if someone noticed him anyway, he headed toward a sally-port in the west wall. Still, no enchanted mouths opened to denounce him. The defense wasn't sophisticated enough to distinguish between the thrall he'd been a little while ago and the foe he was now. Some wizard had instructed it that he belonged in the stronghold, and as far as it was concerned, that was that.

The four guards currently standing watch on the battlements above the postern were gaunt dread warriors with smoldering amber eyes. Bareris couldn't muddle the minds of his fellow undead, and a thunderous shout or some other violent mystical attack was apt to draw unwanted attention.

But that was all right. He didn't mind doing things the hard way.

He climbed a set of stairs to the top of the towering wall and strode on toward the living corpses. They glanced at him once, then resumed their scrutiny of the rolling plain beyond the gate. Dread warriors were more sentient than ordinary zombies, but that didn't mean they were capable of casual curiosity.

The wall-walk was plenty wide enough for him to make his way past the first two. When he was in the middle of the group, their corrupt stink foul in his nostrils, he drew his sword, pivoted right, and struck.

The cut tumbled a dread warrior's head from its shoulders to drop into the bailey below. He swept its toppling body out of his way, rushed the one behind it, and split its skull before it could aim the spear in its gray, flaking hands.

He whirled and saw that slaying the guards on the right had given the ones on the left time to prepare themselves. The dead man in front held a scimitar in one hand and hurled its spear with the other.

Bareris crouched, and the spear flew over his head. He straightened up again and charged.

He cut a sizable chunk of the dread warrior's left profile away, exposing a section of black, slimy brain, but that didn't kill it. The corpse-thing tried to slash his leg out from under him, and steel rang when he parried. He shifted in close and hammered the heavy pommel of his sword into the breach in the dread warrior's skull. Brain splashed his hand, and his foe dropped.

He saw with a jolt of alarm that the last guard was raising a horn to its crumbling, oozing lips. He sprinted at it, slipped a cut from its scimitar, and struck the bugle from its grasp.

That frantic action left him open, and the dread warrior hacked at his flank. He parried, an instant too late, but though he failed to stop the attack from landing, his defensive action at least blunted the force of it and kept it from biting deep. He thrust up under the sentry's chin, and his sword punched all the way through the creature's head and crunched out the top of it. The guard fell.

Scowling at the burning pain in his side, Bareris freed his blade and cast about. As far as he could tell, no one had noticed anything amiss, and he meant to keep it that way.

He sang under his breath, and a shimmer curled like smoke through the air. First it hid the remains of the dread warriors, both the portions of them still on the wall-walk and those that had fallen to the ground. Then it painted semblances of them still standing at their posts.

Bareris was all too keenly aware that both wizards and undead were notoriously difficult to fool with this particular sleight. But he trusted his own abilities and dared to hope the phantasm would at least convince any foe who merely happened to glance in this direction.

Next he crooned a counterspell to obliterate any mouths that might otherwise have appeared and called out from the stone. When that was done, it was finally time to open the postern.

In this colossal stronghold, even the secondary gates were massive, designed to be operated by two or more soldiers at a time. But with his unnatural strength, Bareris managed. It was odd to feel the heavy bars slide and the valves swing apart when, beguiled by the mirage he himself had conjured, his eyes insisted that the sally-port was still sealed up tight.

chapter eight

17 Mirtul, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

Invisible to hostile eyes-or so they hoped-Aoth, his fellow commanders, and a goodly portion of their army lay behind a shallow rise on the western approach to the Dread Ring. Blessed with the sharpest vision in the company, Aoth peered at the sally-port they'd selected before Bareris sneaked into the enemy stronghold. He willed it to open.

Crouching beside him, Jet grunted. "Yes. Wish for it. That'll make a difference."

"It can't hurt," said Aoth, and then, finally, the two leaves of the gate swung inward, first one and then the other. He could make out a fleck of white that must be Bareris pulling them open.

"By all the flames that burn in all the Hells," said Nevron, for once sounding impressed instead of contemptuous, "the singer did it."

"Or else the necromancers forced him to divulge his intentions and are exploiting our own scheme to set a snare for us," Lallara said, smiling maliciously. "Shall we go find out which it is?"

"Yes," said Aoth. "Let's." He drew himself up, the others followed suit, and for an instant, he thought again how odd it was to have zulkirs lying on their stomachs in the sparse grass at his direction. Even Samas Kul had grudgingly forsaken his floating throne, substituting a conjured armature of glowing white lines that wrapped around his bloated body and evidently enabled him to move without strain.

Only Aoth intended to march in the vanguard, so he had to wait while the archmages retreated to the center of the company and their bodyguards formed protective ranks around them. "Are you sure you want to walk in?" he asked Jet. "You could wait and fly with the rest of the griffons." He hadn't included aerial cavalry in the first wave lest it double the chances of being spotted.

Jet dismissed the suggestion with a toss of his black-feathered head. "I'll go when and how you go. Just don't think you can ride me in the same way you'd ride a damned horse."

"Perish the thought." Aoth glanced around and judged that they were ready. He pointed with his spear, strode forward, and the others followed.

As they advanced, Jhesrhi and other wizards whispered spells of concealment. Aoth could feel the power of them seething in the air, and, even with his fire-kissed eyes, he didn't see any foes lurking on the battlements waiting to spring a trap. Still, his throat was dry. He couldn't help imagining that when he and his comrades came close enough, flights of arrows and blasts of freezing, poisonous shadow would hammer down from the wall.

Fortunately, it never happened, and when, spear leveled, he warily stepped through the open gate, only Bareris was waiting to meet him. He grinned and gripped the bard by the shoulder. Mirror, on this occasion looking like the ghost of his own living self and not somebody else's, flitted in after him and saluted their friend with an elaborate flourish of his shadowy sword.