Power gathered in the air, alternately caressing and scraping, searing and chilling, but whatever the sensation, it was never truly painful. To the contrary, a swell of exaltation swept Jhesrhi's lingering anxiety away.

Her consciousness expanded. Her thoughts brushed the cognition of those around her, and it was a touch she could bear without panic or loathing, an intimacy that verged on the seductive. She'd have to take care lest some other mind impress its shape on hers and compromise her identity.

She perceived the demons and devils Nevron had invoked, but only vaguely, as shadows hovering at the borders of physical reality. The vast, ancient entities evidently didn't need to manifest fully to lend their aid to this particular endeavor, and that was just as well. Otherwise, their knowledge and commitment notwithstanding, some of the spellcasters might have fled in terror. Many of the common soldiers surely would.

Last but most clearly of all, she discerned the Dread Ring itself like a festering wound in the earth. Like a well of unnatural and inexhaustible power. Arcing away from it were lines of force linking it to other such talismans, defining an immense dark circle of death on the face of the land.

That was the Dread Ring that Jhesrhi and her allies had to destroy. Not the stone walls and bastions, although some of those might crack and crumble as an incidental effect of their assault, for battlements and towers could be rebuilt. They had to attack the concept, the potential of the Ring. If they could obliterate that, it would spoil the whole pattern, and none of the similar castles scattered across Thay would serve its intended purpose anymore.

Jhesrhi realized that since she now perceived the true, transcendent form of the Ring, it stood to reason that her partners in the circle must see it too. Lallara glanced around as though gauging whether everyone was ready, then raised her staff and rammed it down with all the strength in her deceptively frail-looking arms. Jhesrhi expected a louder bang than before, and perhaps that was exactly what happened, but if so, she didn't hear it.

That was because, as the rod plunged down, she felt the power they'd all raised plunge with it. The magic both stabbed a hole to a different level of reality and thrust her-or perhaps just her spirit- into it, as if she were an ant clinging to the flat of a blade.

She cast about. Previously, she'd seen the essence of the Dread Ring as a well. Now she and the rest of the circle seemed to float deep inside it. The curved walls weren't solid, though, but made up of crisscrossed bands of shadow. Beyond them lay nothing but a sort of twilight, extending as far as the eye could see.

Bareris was the first to attack. He shouted, and his thunderous voice chipped away blackness where one length of shadow overlapped another. Then Aoth hurled fire from his spear and burned away a little more.

Lauzoril spoke in a gentle voice like a father coaxing a child, and a section of well dissolved into dark vapor. Lallara snarled a spell, and a kite shield made of crimson light appeared in one portion of the cylindrical, weblike structure, withering the strands that occupied the same space. Nevron fingered an amulet dangling on his burly chest, and a huge winged devil with long, extravagantly curved horns appeared to stab at the black lattice with an iron trident. Samas brandished his baton, and a section of the construct turned to gold. Jhesrhi could feel that the transmutation compromised it as much as any of the other assaults.

She needed to start her own assault. She couldn't detect any fire, water, or earth ready to hand. If she wanted to use them, she'd have to produce them. But air was here, or at least the notion of it, for everyone could breathe and talk. She conjured a howling whirlwind that tore away chunks of blackness like a thousand raking claws.

She smiled at the thought that things were working out. Breaking the Ring would be a big, arduous job, but the important thing was that plainly, they could damage it. Now they just had to persevere.

Then their attack roused the defensive enchantments.

Ragged, flapping things like bats-or their shadows-erupted from the dark construct in a blinding cloud. They engulfed Jhesrhi in an instant, and pain danced across her body, although she couldn't tell precisely how her assailants were hurting her-biting, clawing, or doing something stranger.

In any case, they were touching her, and she flailed at the vileness of it with her staff. Perhaps she hit one or two of the creatures, but that was of little use when she had dozens clinging to her and whirling all around her.

Fortunately, responding to her need, her conjured whirlwind struck to greater effect. It roared to her, snatched up the bat-things in its spin, and tore them into what resembled scraps of black paper.

Panting and trembling, she cast about and saw that her comrades too had managed to defend themselves. Lallara wore a corona of rosy light, and when the flying shadows touched it, they blinked out of existence, although each such contact dimmed it an iota. Hideous demons hovered around Nevron in a protective sphere. Samas flicked his quicksilver wand through a star-shaped pattern, and a dozen pieces of living darkness turned into mice, which, bereft of wings, plummeted down the well.

Still, Jhesrhi judged that her optimism had been premature, and events soon proved her right. No matter how many bat-things she and her allies destroyed, the well birthed more, and it was only during those precious moments when they'd cleared every immediate threat away that they were free to strike at the construct itself.

Then she noticed she was growing short-winded. Wheezing. Fighting for breath as if someone were holding a pillow over her face. Or as if the whirlwind she'd conjured to serve as her weapon were laying claim to all the air around her.

Something comparable was befalling her allies. Nevron plainly bore several wounds beneath his scarlet robes; blood soaked patches of silk and velvet above them and stained the cloth a darker red. He summoned another demon, a hairless, somewhat manlike creature with claws and feathered wings, and instead of simply appearing before him, the spirit burst forth from a tattoo on his wrist, taking the ink with it and leaving raw, shredded flesh behind.

Meanwhile, Bareris sang, and his bone white mouth and the tissue around it cracked and rotted. Samas brandished his wand, and pieces of his own corpulent form altered. Bumps of gold jutted from his skin like warts, and fishy scales encrusted the left side of his face. Lauzoril gripped a dagger in his fist, and as he recited his spells, flailed his arm repeatedly as though trying to cast the blade away. As though he feared that if he didn't get rid of it, he'd use the weapon to harm himself. But his fingers wouldn't open.

The attackers could all still use their magic. But every time they did, the well turned a portion of it against them.

Jhesrhi looked to Aoth, who was hovering a short distance above her. Bat-things flew at him; he pierced them with darts of azure light from the point of his spear, then jerked and grunted as though something had stabbed him as well.

"We're not going to make it," she whispered. There was no air left for anything louder. Not in her lungs, anyway.

But Aoth heard, and he glared with his lambent blue eyes. "Yes, we will! All of you, remember, we're not alone! Our comrades are still feeding us strength! Reach out and take it!"

Hard to focus on that when she was suffocating, with black spots swimming in her vision and raw animal desperation yammering in her mind. But she was a wizard, with a wizard's disciplined mind, and after a moment, she succeeded in shifting her perception to the Ring of stone and timber.