But as he drew it to his ear, the mage glimpsed the intruders from the corner of his eye, or sensed their presence somehow. He was wise enough not to waste breath and time crying for help that would surely arrive too late to save him, nor did he attempt to scramble back through the doorway as Bareris might have done. Perhaps the space he'd just vacated had only the one exit, and he didn't want to trap himself.

Instead he flourished his hand, and the black ring on his thumb left a streak of shadow on the air. Each gripping a great-sword, four pairs of skeletal arms erupted from the band. They emerged tiny but swelled to full size in a heartbeat.

They were an uncanny sight to behold, and even Wesk faltered for an instant. The Red Wizard snarled words of power, and the bony arms flew at the gnoll and his companions. Ignoring the imminent threat of the greatswords, Wesk shot an arrow at the mage, unfortunately not quickly enough to keep the warlock from finishing his incantation. A floating disk of blue phosphorescence shimmered into being in front of him, and the arrow stuck in that instead, just as if it were a tangible wooden shield.

Then the disembodied arms hurtled into the distance and started cutting with their long, heavy blades. The intruders had the advantage of numbers, but even so, Bareris realized the wizard's protectors would be difficult to defeat. The only way to stop them or even slow them down was to hit hard and square enough to cleave a length of bone entirely in two, and they flitted through the air so nimbly that it was a challenge to land a stroke at all.

But the necromancer was an even greater threat, and Bareris didn't dare leave him to conjure unmolested. He stepped between a set of skeletal arms and Wesk, ducked a cut, and riposted, buying the gnoll chieftain the moment he needed to drop his bow and ready his axe. After that, though, the bard extricated himself from the whirl of blades and charged the mage who, the translucent, arrow-pierced disk still hovering between him and his foes, the skirt of his robe flapping around his legs, was himself sprinting toward the white stone archway. Apparently he believed safety, or at least help, awaited him on the other side.

Bareris was too far away to cut him off. He sang a charm so rapidly that he feared botching the precise rhythm and pitch required, but he didn't have the option of taking his time.

Magic groaned through the air, and the section of floor under the Red Wizard's feet bucked as though an earthquake had begun. The vibration knocked the mage staggering then dumped him on his rump. Bareris dashed on, closing in on the warlock while likewise interposing himself between his foe and the portal.

The Red Wizard thrust out his arm. A glyph tattooed on the back of his hand leaped free of his skin and became a hand itself, levitating and seemingly formed of shadow. It bobbed over the top of the floating shield, then streaked at Bareris.

The bard tried to dodge, but the hand grabbed him by the shoulder anyway. Agony stabbed outward from the point of contact to afflict his entire body.

It was the fiercest pain he'd ever experienced, severe enough to blind and paralyze, which was no doubt the object. Evidently still intent on reaching the gate, but looking to finish off his adversary as well, the necromancer simultaneously circled in the appropriate direction and hissed sibilant rhyming phrases.

The pain is in my mind, Bareris insisted to himself, and I can push it out. He struggled to straighten up, turn in the mage's direction, and lift his sword once more. For a heartbeat, it was impossible, and then the bonds of torment constraining him ripped like a sheet of parchment tearing in two.

He spun around. His eyes widening, the necromancer appeared startled, but the floating shield automatically shifted to defend its creator as thoroughly as possible. Bareris poised himself as if he meant to dart to the right then dodged left instead. That fooled the shield and brought him within striking distance of the wizard. He drove his point into the other man's chest. The enchanter fell back with his final incantation uncompleted.

Bareris studied the mage for another moment, making sure their duel was truly over, then pivoted to survey the rest of the battle. Two of the gnolls were down, but with a final chop of his axe, Thovarr was reducing the last of the disembodied arms to inert splinters of bone.

His allies' success gave Bareris the opportunity to contemplate the enormity of what he'd done, or the seeming enormity. He'd earned a death by torture the moment he'd lifted his hand to So-Kehur and his skull-masked partner, so in practical terms, it shouldn't matter that he'd now killed a Red Wizard outright.

Yet it gave him pause. The eight orders taught every person and certainly every pauper in Thay to think of their members as superior, invincible beings, and though Bareris's experiences abroad had given him ample reason to feel confident of his own prowess, perhaps a part of him still believed the myth and was accordingly appalled at his temerity, but then a surge of satisfaction washed his trepidation away. After all, these were the bastards who'd taken Tammith away from him, and this particular specimen didn't look so exalted or omnipotent anymore, did he?

Wesk trotted up to him, bow in hand once more. He had a cut on his forearm where a greatsword must have grazed him, but he wasn't paying it any mind.

"I don't hear anyone coming," he said, "do you?"

Bareris listened. "No. " Evidently the fight hadn't made a great deal of noise. He was glad he hadn't needed to produce any of the prodigious booms or roars of which his magic was capable. He pointed to the gnolls still lying on the floor. "How are they?"

"Dead." If Wesk felt bad about it, no human could have told it from his manner. "So what now?"

"We hide the bodies and what's left of the skeleton arms. With luck, that will buy us more time before anyone else realizes we were here."

"And then we go through the gate?"

Bareris opened his mouth to say yes, then thought better of it. "No. Thovarr's right. We don't know where it leads or what's waiting beyond, but we do know the necromancer believed that if he could reach the other side, it would save him. That means he could have had a lot of allies there. More than we, with half our band already lost, can hope to overcome."

Wesk cocked his head. "You didn't come this far just to give up."

"No, but I'm going on alone, clad in the dead wizard's robe, in the hope that trickery will succeed where force would likely fail."

"Did you notice that the robe has a bloody hole in it? You put it there."

Bareris shrugged. "It's not a big hole and not too bloody. Bodies don't bleed much after the heart stops. If I throw a cloak on over the robe, perhaps no one will notice."

He'd also sing a song to make himself seem more likable and trustworthy, the very antithesis of a person meriting suspicion, but saw no point in mentioning that. He was still leery of allowing the gnolls to guess the extent to which he'd used magic to manipulate them.

Wesk grunted. "Better, maybe, to disguise yourself with an illusion or be invisible."

"Perhaps, but I don't know those particular songs. Somehow I never had the chance to learn them. Now let's get moving. We need don't anybody else blundering in on us while we stand around talking."

They dragged the bodies to the room from which the Red Wizard had emerged. It turned out to be a small, bare, rectangular space the clergy of Horus-Re might have used to store votive candles, incense, and similar supplies. Bareris wondered what the mage had been doing in here and realized he'd never know.

He was stripping his fellow human's corpse when Wesk exclaimed, "Your hair."