Aoth smiled. He was sure that he and his comrades would fight for the rest of the day and well into the night. But even so, he judged that in the truest sense, the castle had just fallen.

chapter nine

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

Aoth found Bareris and Mirror atop the east wall. He himself wore a hooded cloak fastened all the way down the front to ward off the cold rain spitting down from the bulbous gray clouds, but the bard stood exposed and seemingly indifferent to the elements. Maybe, now that he was undead, they had no power to vex him.

Mirror was certainly beyond their reach. During the battle, some injury or malediction had knocked the personality and coherent thought out of him, and now he was less a visible presence than a sudden pang of vertigo when a person happened to look in his direction. If not for his spellscarred eyes, Aoth doubted he would have seen anything hovering there at all.

Bareris was gazing out across the rolling plains. Any other man would have done so with apprehension, but Aoth suspected that his friend did so longingly. Because what did Bareris have when he wasn't killing?

"See anything?" asked Aoth.

His long, white hair whipping in the breeze, Bareris smiled ever so slightly. "If something was out there, you wouldn't need me to point it out to you."

"Well, probably not," replied Aoth. "You know, you don't have to stand watch constantly. We have other sentries, and Jhesrhi has made friends with the winds hereabouts. They'll whisper in her ear if some threat appears."

"I don't mind. Since we finished cleaning out the dungeons, I have nothing better to do."

"You could sing and play your harp. Tell stories. The men-the wounded, especially-would be grateful for the entertainment."

"I'll be more useful up here."

Aoth sighed, and a drop of rain blew inside his hood to splat against his cheek. "Well, do what you think best, of course. Either way, you won't have to do it much longer. Lallara tells me the ritual's tonight."

Bareris finally turned to face him. "Is everything ready?"

"I think everyone understands it has to be. We can't dawdle here forever, even with the fortress to protect us. Another of Szass Tam's armies will come looking for us eventually, and we don't want to fight another battle like the last one. We've lost too many men." Aoth's mouth twisted. "The Brotherhood of the Griffon, especially."

Bareris hesitated, as though he had to search his memory for the response that would come naturally to any living man. But eventually he said, "I'm sorry about that."

Aoth shrugged. "It had to be done. Still, they were good comrades. I'll miss them. More to the point, I'll need to replace them, and it may be difficult. Until you dropped this mess in my lap, I had a reputation for keeping my word and for winning without taking many casualties-that last comes from choosing your causes and fights carefully. Now, it's all tarnished. I turned on the simbarchs and all but beat the Brotherhood to pieces against these black walls. So it remains to be seen whether warriors will flock to my banner as they did before."

"I'm sorry," Bareris repeated.

"Truly, I don't blame you." Aoth grinned. "At least, not too much. In fact, I want you and Mirror to stay with the company when this is over. We're a motley band of knaves and orphans as it is, and the others have gotten used to you. They'll make you welcome, and they won't care that you're undead."

"Thank you for that," Bareris said. "But it won't be over. Not for me."

"Don't be stupid! Of course it will! You killed Xingax and Tsagoth. We're about to wreck Szass Tam's great scheme. That's as much revenge as you'll ever get. The lich himself-his person, his existence-is beyond your reach."

"You heard the speech I made to the rebels. I more or less promised I'd continue to help them."

"And we keep our pledges," Mirror whispered, his sepulchral tone as chilling as the wind and rain. "The rule of our order requires it."

Aoth scowled. "For the hundredth time, neither Bareris nor I belong to your extinct fellowship, and we don't care about its code. In fact, he's just using obligation as an excuse to put me off." He shifted his gaze back to the bard. "But all right. I can see there's no swaying you. Just tell me one thing. What if, someday, by some miracle, you actually do manage to slay Szass Tam, and his destruction doesn't ease you any more than Tsagoth's did?"

"However I feel, I'll go into the dark as the dead are meant to do and hope Tammith is waiting for me there."

The Dread Ring was an instrument built by an undead wizard to serve the unholiest of purposes, and to Jhesrhi's way of thinking, it would have made sense to try to break it in the purifying light of day. But Nevron had insisted they work at night, because the spirits he and his aides would invoke would be more powerful then.

He'd insisted on Jhesrhi's presence in the primary circle as well, perhaps because her escape from the trap under the wall had impressed him. Accordingly, she now stood with Aoth, Bareris, and the zulkirs on the same rooftop where Samas had melted the minaret.

She grasped the core idea of the ritual the zulkirs had devised, but not precisely how it worked. Fortunately, she didn't have to. During the initial phase, her job would be to raise power for others to direct. Still, though in most circumstances she was confident of her own abilities, she felt nervous as she waited to begin. What if, somehow, she spoiled the ceremony? Then Szass Tam would murder everyone in the East, everyone in all of Faerun, conceivably, and it would be her fault!

Gaedynn was one of the spectators sitting on the parapet. He wasn't as much of a dandy on campaign as he was when idling in town, but with the siege won, he'd done his best to burnish his appearance. His new, jeweled rings and cloak pin, plunder seized in the wake of the castle's fall, helped considerably.

Perhaps he sensed that Jhesrhi was tense, for he gave her a wink and a grin. His attention evoked the usual awkward tangle of emotions. But on this occasion, gratitude predominated, and she managed a twitch of a smile in return.

In the courtyard below, yellow flame boomed into existence, at this moment of its birth leaping higher than the roof of the keep. The Burning Braziers had lit the bonfire that was key to their own ritual. Mirror, she knew, was down there with them. The ghost was no servant of Kossuth, but, paradoxical as it seemed, he evidently channeled some sort of divine power and believed he could be of more use standing with the priests of fire than among arcane practitioners.

The Braziers would use their magic to support the zulkirs' efforts. Scattered throughout the fortress, secondary circles of wizards would do the same. Every surviving spellcaster who'd marched from the Wizard's Reach was taking part in one fashion or another, and Jhesrhi told herself that all of them, working together, must surely have a reasonable hope of destroying the Ring, even if an infamous lich had built it.

However grudgingly, Lallara's fellow zulkirs had agreed that, as an expert in countermagic, she was best suited to lead the ritual. She thumped the butt of her staff on the rooftop and produced a bang like the slamming of a massive door. "All right," she said, "let's do this."

She chanted the first incantation, and one at a time, the other members of the circle joined in, either reciting in unison with her or offering contrapuntal responses. Down in the bailey, the Burning Braziers prayed, and the bonfire hissed and crackled, a hint of cadence and pattern, conceivably of language, in the noise. Farther away, the lesser wizards called out words of power until the whole gigantic fortress droned and echoed with the sounds of invocation.