Realms of War

THE LAST PALADIN OF ILMATER

27 Eleint, The Year of Queen's Tears (902 DR)

The Chondalwood

"How dare he," Maze said.

Jaeriko struggled to keep up with the angry woman as she tromped through the tangled under shy;growth of the Chondalwood. It was obvious Maze had little regard or skill for the ways of the forest. If she had possessed even a modicum of respect, she wouldn't have been making such a racket. Predators and worse for miles around must have cocked an ear to the woman's infernal crashing. Not that such attention would vex Maze any-Jaeriko imagined the fierce woman would welcome the chance to wet her blades on anyone unfortunate enough to cross her path.

Jaeriko, in contrast, was uncannily adept-walking solely on roots and rocks, and making as little sound as a ripple moving through still waters.

What was more, the vines, grass, and leaves curled and popped back into place after their every step, at her bidding. Perhaps that was why the General of Reth had sent her along on a task that-on the surface-she seemed exceptionally ill-suited for: to cover the dark, scowling woman's tracks as she stormed toward their mutual goal.

Jaeriko shook her head at a particularly virulent curse that escaped the unhappy woman's mouth. She didn't even need eyes to follow the path Maze cut-following the stream of invectives was simple enough. And though it brought her some small delight to see her own proficiency by the light of her companion's deficit, she would have strongly preferred their trip pass in silence. After all, the forest they walked was far from welcoming.

Even for someone as in touch with nature as she, the thick, choking trees and hard-packed earth studded with harder stones made for slow and uncomfortable travel. Moss dripped like blood from every sharp-fingered twig, mush shy;rooms spangled the trees like spent arrows, and vines and branches wove themselves with almost human intent into the path of the two travelers, tripping and cutting whenever they could. To make matters worse, a veil of moon-bright ash hung in the air like a cloud of spores, riding in on every breath and obscuring the dark shapes of the firs and oaks until the travelers stumbled nose-first upon them.

Jaeriko's eyes were sore from squinting through the perpetual haze, her lungs ragged from breathing in the fire-choked air, and her skin dusty as a moth's wing. To Maze, it must have meant the world had declared war.

"Sending an assassin to do a thief's job," Maze muttered in a rare stretch of language unbroken by profanity.

"A. . what?" Jaeriko said, standing like a startled fawn. Maze backhanded a branch that crossed her path, and Jaeriko ducked just in time to see it hiss back into place. Maze looked back over her shoulder and arched an eyebrow at the flustered druid.

"An assassin. What, you just now figure that out?" Maze said. "Yes, I kill people for money." Maze faced forward again, missing Jaeriko's stricken expression. "You helped me, when I paid for your services. Does that bother you?"

Jaeriko wasn't sure it didn't, but she was too shocked by her former client's lack of trust to contemplate it. "You could have told me!" she protested.

"You didn't need to know," Maze said.

"Your partner 'didn't need to know'?" Jaeriko said, but the pieces fell into place. The dark alley, the herb garden, the smell of almonds. The spells of stealth and speed, the exotic collection of weaponry, the extra coin for discretion. She told herself she had never known what the jobs were for, but she had never asked either.

"You're not my partner!" Maze said, interrupting her thoughts. "And what the Hells did you think I did, anyway?"

"I thought you were a thief," Jaeriko said.

"And you were all right with that?" Maze said.

Jaeriko shrugged. "People have too much stuff anyway."

Maze laughed, and though the sound was pitched high with frustration, it was the first sign of amusement she'd seen from the dour woman. Just when Jaeriko was about to take advantage of the unexpected levity, Maze tripped on a root and had to swing her arms out to avoid falling. "Gods damn him! I hate forests, I hate children, and I hate everything to do with this blasted war-particularly the undead. By the Nine, who does he think I am?"

"Isn't the question normally 'Who does he think he is'?" Jaeriko asked. Maze glared at her and Jaeriko felt a surge of compassion for the angry assassin. Who could blame her for her angst? Maze hadn't asked for this job. She hadn't asked to be assaulted in her home or to be forced into service at sword point. It was good coin, but it was still unasked for.

"I know who he is," Maze muttered.

It was just, the general's sword had moved so fast. Jaeriko couldn't have stopped it had it crossed her mind to do so. One moment Maze was telling the General of Reth what he could do with his job; the next, her friend's body was bleeding on the kitchen floor, lying in a pool of blood and chicken soup.

"The coin I'm paying for this job is more than enough to cover your friend's resurrection," the general had said. "Just bring me the boy."

There had been no further arguments.

Dead blue eyes darkened to brown as she refocused on Maze. Then a branch snapped back into place and Maze continued on her way, the errant limb smacking Jaeriko across the face. That was going to leave a welt. She rubbed at her skin and felt the gummy sap work its way farther into the rising abrasion. Great-she didn't have time to clean it now, so she'd have to let it go until morning-until after the job. By then, it would be nice and sore.

"Why doesn't he just do it himself? He's obviously powerful enough," Jaeriko asked, rubbing at the rising bump on her cheek. Maze's scorn burned more than the welt, and she dropped her hand.

"If you'd asked that question yourself before you invited him into my home, we might not be in this mess," Maze snapped. When Jaeriko colored but did not rise to the bait, Maze sighed. "Do you know what they say about the good General of Reth, our beloved patron? They say he's more like the devils of Arrabar than us … Turned for some reason known only to him, and liable to turn back again just as soon as he gets what he wants." Maze turned back to the path and continued walking, but her assaults on the flora were half shy;hearted at best.

"Then why did we accept his help-why are we helping him now?"

Maze shrugged. "Who am I to question when one devil wants to kill another?"

"You're a strange woman," Jaeriko said.

"No, Druid-you're the strange one. Most people are running as fast as they can from the war. All of our best soldiers are dead, or in the case of Arrabar, dishonorably raised to kill and die again. The streets of formerly great cities are littered with corpses, victims of a war-spawned plague that kills indiscriminately. Poor divided Chondath is disintegrating under her own sickening mass. Most people want to get as far away from this catastrophe as possible, but you-you're heading down into its bloody heart to kidnap a diseased boy from his deranged father. And you're pulling me with you."

Jaeriko shrugged. "Some things are worth fighting for. With the General of Arrabar raising the fallen to fight again, Reth might never win her freedom. And if we have a chance to stop him-even at the cost of our own lives-we have a responsibility to try. This could end the war."

Maze groaned. "So could killing the bastard."

Jaeriko couldn't argue with that-or wouldn't, with a self-professed assassin. Though she thought killing the General of Arrabar might be just a little harder than all that. Maze fixed her with a glare.

"So how far to this river of yours?" Maze asked. "Let's get this over with." Jaeriko nearly took a mouth full of fir.

"I thought you were leading the way!" she protested, wincing at the wail that found its way into her voice. Maze's glare hardened but then cracked under the weight of her smirk.

"I am," Maze said. "It's a joke. Ha. See? I can be funny too.

Jaeriko was flooded with equal parts relief and irritation.

"That is not funny!" she insisted.

"Anyway, we're here," Maze said, sitting down on a fallen, moss-riddled tree.

With Maze's body out of the way, Jaeriko could see the river. While the waters might be raging farther north, by this point the river was silent and strong, pulling the whole water shy;course deep underground. That was no excuse for her not hearing it in advance of almost stumbling upon it, but she'd give herself the very real distraction of trying to calm an irate assassin as reason enough.

"Your turn, Druid."

Jaeriko walked over to the water. It worried her to place so much stock in the word of a man who had tricked her into leading him to Maze's house so that he could force them both into his employment, but she had little else to go on. The general told them that this river fed the cistern in the ruined citadel the General of Arrabar had holed up in. Provided he was right, a simple spell and an uncomfortable, wet time later and they should find themselves both within the citadel and undetected. Getting out undetected with the boy in tow would prove more difficult-but they'd tackle that problem when they came to it.

Reaching inside her doeskin jerkin, Jaeriko pulled out a locket. Reverently, she kissed it; the gold was cool against her lips. Then her fingers worked the catch, and it sprang open to reveal a sprig of mistletoe-her conduit to the spirits of nature. She spun the green sprig between her fingers.

"This will not be pleasant," Jaeriko warned Maze.

"Get on with it," Maze said. It was not as though they had a choice.

"Get in the water."

Maze complied, twisting her face as the water seeped under her leather. She ducked her head under the water and came back up gasping with cold.

"Keep your eyes closed and your limbs close until you feel air on your skin," the druid instructed. "The river's bargain allows you to breathe underwater, but it doesn't protect you from the dangers of underground water travel."

"Right, right," Maze said, but her teeth were already chattering.

"See you on the other side," Jaeriko said. Rubbing the mistletoe between her fingers, Jaeriko closed her eyes. Sister River, listen to me. . Words ripped through her and off her tongue like lightning, burning away the instant her mind touched them. A loud, rushing, siren song filled her ears, and the smell of salt filled her nostrils-then all was quiet. She opened her eyes to see five red gashes open on each side of Maze's neck like cuts from a tiger's claws. The woman fell into the water, the red gashes fluttered open and closed, and bubbles of air escaped Maze's nose. Jaeriko held her breath for Maze as the woman waved, then let the powerful undertow sweep her away.

Moments later, Jaeriko joined her.

Air washed across Jaeriko's face and she gulped in breath blindly. Searching for something to hold onto, her fingers swept up and closed around something slick and unforgiving. She opened her eyes-bars. The cistern had a grate covering its mouth, and the bars were encrusted with slime. The water was damn cold. Goose bumps rose along her exposed skin as the wind swept across again, raising a low moan from both her and the cistern. Already Jaeriko's arms ached from cold and forced use.

She heard a splash and a gasp and saw two eyes blink back at her in the darkness. Maze.

"Holy Hells," Maze panted. "I never want to have to do that again." A frown furrowed the woman's brow, and her fingers searched along the bars. "Gods be damned. I could deal with a lock, but there isn't even a door. What in the Nine Hells am I supposed to do with this?" She grabbed the grate in both hands and shook it angrily. It didn't budge.

"Shhh!" Jaeriko said. "They'll hear you!" The last thing she wanted to see was a ghoul's ghastly, flesh-torn face glaring at them from the other side of that grate. She could well imagine the spears and arrows that would follow.

"Bring them on," Maze whispered, but then she gritted her teeth and held her tongue.

Jaeriko breathed out a sigh of relief. It was hard enough to think with the icy water muddying her thoughts-trying to come up with any sort of way out with an irate assassin screaming in her ear was too much. Her fingers traveled automatically to the locket at her neck. Fire of the heavens, what was she to do now?

Jaeriko's eyes traveled the breadth of the grate. The whole contraption was essentially a stone opening to an underground river that had a grate tacked over it, probably to prevent intrepid intruders such as themselves from entering. There had been little to no modification to the natural stone at all, in fact … The fingers of her free hand traced the unworked stone as the other hand held the grate. A wild thought took root in her head, and she prayed it wasn't the cold speaking.

"Maze, hold me up," Jaeriko demanded.

"What?"

"Just do it." What felt like a band of iron wrapped around her waist, and Jaeriko felt Maze's breath against the shell of her ear.

"Hurry-I can't hold you for long."

Furrowing her brow, Jaeriko clasped one hand to her locket. She brought it to her lips. She didn't dare open it over the water-she hoped she didn't need that strength. Fear ran through her mind scattering her thoughts. The cold was ruining her concentration. With her free hand, she massaged their prisons stone circumference. Father stone, wake up, she thought, please listen. Stone was not her first choice of a medium. It was hard to read, harder to please, and the hardest to keep lip a conversation with.

Just as she thought the stone would never answer, just as she felt Maze's arms weaken around her waist and saw the assassin's head begin to loll, she felt the fire of the stone's answer tear through her. Her fingers pushed through the stone and pulled a dollop of it away to rub between her fingers like clay. She shuddered with relief, and hit Maze's shoulders with her palms. "Let me down! All we have to do is push the grate up-it should move easily, at least for now."

Maze fixed her with an appraising glance. "You're more useful than you let on."

Jaeriko was unable to fully appreciate Maze's comment as her body quavered and shook. It was as though all of her heat had been consumed in that one spell.

"Just get us out of here," Jaeriko managed, her teeth chattering and clashing on every syllable. Maze nodded and let the water close over her head as she sank to the bottom of the cistern. Then, with a powerful push of her legs, Maze slammed out of the water and into the grate. It resisted initially but then pulled free of the softened stone with a wet pop. Hand-over-hand, Maze pushed the grate to one side of the cistern.

Pumping her legs, Jaeriko pushed herself up to the opening of the cistern and dug her fingers into the clay. She felt the water rush by her legs as Maze did the same. With agonizing slowness, she pulled herself up just enough to see where they had landed themselves.

A single light smoldered like a fallen star stuck in a white fang of a tower. It struck her as strange-how were the general's soldiers to stand guard with so little illumination? Then her eyes adjusted, and she saw the broken and malformed shapes that hunched like gargoyles along the walls. The undead required no light-nor sustenance other than that which can be garnered from a battlefield. They were the perfect soldiers.

A hiss of breath stirred the hair on the back of Jaeriko's neck; then a hand pushed her under the icy water. She heard the clang of metal on stone as the grate was shoved back in place-or almost back in place. Kicking and pulling at the hand tangled in her hair, Jaeriko struggled to catch sight of her attacker. Dark eyes met hers with a warning, and she stopped fighting. The hand let go of her hair and together, Maze and Jaeriko looked up through the distortion of the water.

A pale shape skittered forward, its limbs moving with unnatural speed and a total absence of grace. When it came to the grate it jerked to a halt and stood as still as stone. Lungs burning, Jaeriko began to panic. If she couldn't get to the surface soon, she would not live long enough to be killed. Just as it seemed the creature would never move again, it shuddered, and its head snapped in their direction.

Jaeriko bit back a gasp. The flesh had rotted on the left side of its face, baring white jaws and missing teeth. A rip in the skin under its eye socket shone like a red tear over which stared dispassionate eyes the color of old milk. It stood stiller than life above the grate, its old armor hanging off it like fat off a bone, looking-expressionless-at them. If it had been alive, Jaeriko would have sworn it had seen them and that their death would shortly follow, but after another lung-searing moment it took off in the same swift, broken gait as before.

Surfacing again with a pain-racked breath, Jaeriko allowed herself to shudder. She turned to thank Maze but Maze's attention was elsewhere. In her element at last, Maze shrugged the grate aside as though she were shedding a cloak, then surged out of the water and over the edge of the cistern with a speed and silence that spoke of exceptional strength and control. All was still for a moment, and Jaeriko tried to determine if she were to follow, then Maze's hand appeared out of the darkness, and the deft woman helped pull her out of the water.

The stench hit her first, coursing over her in waves-the sweet bite of rot, the bitter tang of blood, and the animal musk of feathers and crow's leavings. Then she noticed the glint of copper on the ground. Her fingers closed around the flickering metallic light. A copper coin. Looking for the round shapes now, she saw the floor was littered with them and what appeared to be sheets of paper. Armor, weapons, and bodies were oddly absent. She could smell them, but she couldn't make any out in the darkness.

Maze tapped her on the shoulder and pointed. Following the line of her finger, Jaeriko saw the same pale figure that had stood over them moments before scrambling past the tower without pause.

"It's running a circuit-bound undead are as predictable as the stars. We probably have another thirty heartbeats before it starts heading back this way." Maze pulled at Jaeriko's arm. "Follow me."

The assassin uncoiled like a cat and stalked forward, her body held low and her eyes focused on the white tower. Jaeriko followed as best she could, but found her eyes drawn again and again to the carpet of coins, papers, buttons, and refuse. There was something eerie about what was left behind-what the dead and their general had decided they didn't need. She passed a dark ribbon tied around a lock of muddy hair, a half-eaten trail ration crawling with moon-white maggots, a silver heart-shaped locket with broken hinges and shattered glass, a much-folded sketch of a woman looking back over her shoulder….

She forced her eyes up and almost ran into Maze, pressed against the outside of the white tower like a shadow. Maze scowled back at her, then motioned for Jaeriko to move up next to her. The tower wall was cut from a stone that left a sandpaper finish, and her clothes and hair caught and tugged at her as she sidled up next to Maze.

"Why didn't that thing try to kill us back there?" Jaeriko whispered. Maze snuck a furtive glance through the finger-wide crack between the door and the wall near where it locked, then stared out in the direction of the cistern as she answered.

"It's probably operating under strict rules," Maze whispered back. "If we don't technically violate the conditions of its binding, it doesn't have to do anything. I was betting that it hadn't been given instructions as to what to do to people found underneath the citadel-as we were when we were submerged in the cistern."

"How do you know it wasn't given instructions to just tell the general?" asked Jaeriko.

"I don't," Maze said. Jaeriko's mouth formed an O. "That's why we have to move fast." Tension was visible in every line of Maze's body-from the tendons standing out on her neck to the stiff arch in her back. Tilting her head skyward, Maze closed her eyes and pulled what looked like a prayer necklace from her pocket. Fingering the long strand set with a bead in the center, she whispered something Jaeriko couldn't catch. Just then, the door to the tower swung wide, and another pale figure emerged, this one hung with brass metal plates with a soot-blackened blade slung through its belt. The metal of the blade made a quiet hiss as it rasped along the stone.

The moment it strode past them, Maze leaped at its back, knee first, and whipped the cord around its neck, the bead centered beautifully on the center of its throat. Her knee planted itself mid-spine. Jaeriko watched in horror as Maze yanked back on the cord and shoved down with her knee, riding the flailing creature to the ground.

"Destroy it!" Maze said, and Jaeriko stared at her.

The flesh on the creature Maze had mounted sagged as though it wanted to flee the bone, but the lack of living muscle seemed to have no effect on its strength as it set a yellow-clawed hand down on each side of it.

"Now!" Maze said, a note of panic entering her voice.

But Jaeriko stood, frozen, as the rotting creature pushed up and spun under Maze's hold till it faced her and the bridle she'd improvised proved useless.

Maze cursed and dropped the strand, the bead forgotten. Her arms crossed and she withdrew a knife like a thorn from a sheath on her upper arm-then she fell backward as yellow claws filthy with decay snapped up at her, rolling out of harm's way. The pale monstrosity, liberated from its rider, climbed to its feet seemingly uninjured, but in the light from the tower above, Jaeriko could see the shadow where its windpipe used to be.

The creature opened its mouth as though to shriek, but a wet gurgle was all that found its way out. Then its dead eyes found hers. In two quick jerks it turned to face her, like a badly strung marionette. Jaeriko knew she should run, duck, strike, something, but in terror's grip she stood transfixed by its impassive gaze. Gathering its limbs under it, the ghoul sprang at Jaeriko-and she could not even find the breath to scream. It stopped a hand's breadth from her nose as a sloppy red line tore across its throat in a flash of silver. Then its head slipped backward and its body tumbled to the side, hitting the open door and sending it swinging.

Maze caught the door with the still-bloody blade and glared at Jaeriko, panting. "Next time I tell you to do something, you do it. You hear me?"

"I. . I can't do this," Jaeriko whispered, staring at the crumpled, headless corpse. A corpse that had been someone's son. That had just tried to kill her. That could still try to kill her for all she knew. Fear rose in her gullet, and it tasted like bile.

"You don't have a choice, Druid," Maze said, her eyes glittering. "And if you don't do what I say, you don't have a chance, either."

"You don't understand," Jaeriko said. "You kill people all the time. I can't do this." Maze sighed and motioned her through the door into the white tower.

"I do understand," Maze said. "More than you know. But I also know that they're already dead, and that if you don't help me put them down, you'll end up dead too. Besides, you gave your word, Jaeriko. Where are all your brave words about ending the war?"

"I didn't know it would be like this," Jaeriko said, but Maze had already moved into the corridor, so her words were for her ears alone.

Swallowing her tongue and her misgivings, Jaeriko followed. She shut the heavy wood door, revealing a painting of broken hands wrapped in and clasping a red ribbon on its back-the symbol of Ilmater, god of mercy. It appeared the tower had once been a temple. The ground could hardly remain consecrated, though, if it held the clawing undead within its walls.

Putting the matter out of mind, Jaeriko turned to see Maze motioning for her to hurry at the end of the hallway, and she nearly tripped over the uneven floor catching up. The corridor was short, as could be expected for the first level of a tower, and was made of the same ghostly stone on the inside as out. The walls were bare, but there were clean shadows where pictures once hung. The most terrifying aspect of the former temple was its utter silence. Walking in that hallway was like walking in a tomb-the sounds of life as alien as its concept within those stone walls.

When the silence came to an end as Jaeriko joined Maze, she thought she would be pleased, but what she heard haunted her more than the absence of life before. Sobs echoed in the corridor, soft at first, but louder as the pair slinked toward their source. At the end of the passage was an open archway that led into a room, and from that room spilled light and sound-the first human sounds they'd heard outside of each other. As they crept closer Jaeriko could make out a kneeling figure-misshapen in which she assumed was armor-backlit in the light of the room. Words formed in the weeping.

"Ilmater forgive me." The man's voice was deep and thick with tears. "He suffers so that others may live. Please." Jaeriko could see his hands clasped in imitation of Ilmater's on the tower door. "I would gladly have given my body to this corruption, had you not prevented it." The man's voice was bitter, almost accusatory in its grief. "It was the only way. Were he older, he would pay her price willingly-the sacrifice of one for the good of many. You must see that." His voice grew desperate. "Why have you forsaken me?"

Horror and compassion warred within her. Without a doubt, this man was the seed from which atrocities were sewn. Much of the fallout of the Rotting War could be traced to him and him alone. And yet, this servant of Ilmater-a paladin, by his garb-had lost his god, his son, and his war. All that was left was for him to lose was his life. Jaeriko could sense Maze itching to relieve him of that burden, too, but the assassin managed to hold herself in check.

"He sounds like a man who's lost his faith," Jaeriko said, fingering her locket.

"He sounds like a man who's lost his mind," Maze said. "Never empathize with the enemy. If you do, you'll never make your kill."

"I don't want to make a kill," Jaeriko said.

But Maze had already moved on, motioning for Jaeriko to move with her. Turning the corner, they went up a staircase and emerged in a narrow hall with a door some twenty paces distant, lit by a single torch. The door was old wood, and the hinges were dull with wear, but the lock gleamed bright brass in the flickering torchlight. Jaeriko was grateful that the general's pleas to his god could not be heard through the floor and the twisting stone of the staircase.

"Perfect," Maze murmured. "This is what we came for."

"How do you know?" Jaeriko asked.

"What else does the general have worth locking up?" Maze padded up to the door and traced her fingers around the metal of the lock.

"Are you going to pick the lock?"

"Hells, no." Maze looked up, irritated. "I'm not a godsdamned thief. Why won't you listen to me?" The question was rhetorical, as the assassin turned, scowling, back to the mechanical device on the door.

"Then-"

"Just sit down and shut up." Maze pulled a vial out of the pouch on her belt and uncorked it-pointing it away from her. The stopper of the vial had a long glasslike needle attached to its bottom, and a drip of clear liquid hung off its tip. It glistened iridescent in the torchlight, then fell to the floor, drilling deep into the white stone. With great care, Maze dipped the needle into the vial and applied the point to one side of the lock.

The door burst open, banging against the wall, and a broken, pale figure in armor stood backlit in the doorway.

"Damn it!" Maze shouted, splashing the contents of her vial up into her attacker's face. Steam and the acid stench of boiling flesh flooded the hallway, accompanied by the most hideous hissing and popping sounds. Moments later, the pale figure in the doorway crumpled to the ground, face shy;less. Maze nudged it with her foot. It was another one of the general's ghouls. What it was doing coming through that door was beyond Jaeriko-possibly standing guard? — but it confirmed her suspicions about the fallen temple.

"Well, that's one way to open a door," Maze panted. With a mock bow, Maze motioned Jaeriko in.

It was obvious upon entering that the room was the source of the light that shone from the white tower. Alone among all the rooms in the tower, it was well lit. A red carpet graced the floor, pictures hung on every available section of wall, and candles burned on every horizontal surface, bathing the room in flick shy;ering light. An open window on the far side of the room let in a cool breeze and let out the room's startling radiance.

In the center of the room was a plain bed on a steel frame made up with white linen. Twisted in those sheets was as poor a boy as Jaeriko had ever laid eyes on. Boils peppered his fair skin like freckles, his fingers were blackened and bone-thin, and his skin glistened with sweat in the cool air. His eyes were closed and his lips were cracked and covered in dried blood. Moaning, the boy turned and thrashed in his covers, deep in the thrall of fevered dreams.

A hissing intake of breath alerted Jaeriko to another presence in the room. She snapped her head to the side and caught sight of a red-haired woman with frightened gray eyes holding a mallet inches from its gong.

"Maze!" Jaeriko cried.

Silver streaked through the air and blood blossomed in the woman's hand from the knife pinning it to the wall. The mallet fell to the carpeted floor without a sound. The woman opened her mouth to shriek but Maze's hand found its way into her mouth.

"Gods, Maze. You could have pinned the mallet!" Jaeriko rushed to Maze's side and examined the knife and the wound it had created. The woman's fingers were white with tension, and the dark red blood that pumped down it to drip on the floor spoke of serious injury to the limb. If it weren't treated quickly, the woman would lose a hand, and even then, she might gain a disease and lose more than that.

Maze rolled her eyes. "Assassin, remember?"

Jaeriko stood and looked the red-haired woman in the eye. The woman's face was painted with fear.

"If Maze takes her hand out of your mouth, you have to promise me you won't scream," Jaeriko said. The woman nodded, tears leaking from her eyes.

"Why in the Nine Hells would I do that?" Maze asked angrily, turning to face Jaeriko.

"Shh-just trust me on this one," Jaeriko pleaded. "We're partners, remember? Now, remove your hand." Maze glared at her for a moment longer, then reluctantly pulled her hand from the woman's mouth and wiped it on her jerkin. The woman gasped with relief.

"Don't make me regret this," Maze said, and she stomped off to examine the boy. Jaeriko watched her go, then turned to the woman whose eyes reflected much of the terror she'd felt that day.

"You're the boy's caretaker?" Jaeriko asked. She placed one hand on the hilt of the knife, and one hand on the flesh it pinned. The woman nodded and bit her lip. Jaeriko pulled the knife out with a wet slurping sound. The woman's lip began to bleed and she swayed on her feet, but she did not cry out.

"I can't heal him," the woman said. Her voice was weak with pain.

"Shhh. No one's asking you to," Jaeriko said, stroking the torn meat of the woman's hand. The wound was deep. Even with magical healing, it would take awhile for it to regain its dexterity. "Now who are you-are you a servant of Talona?" The woman looked horrified at the thought of the goddess of disease. A good sign, Jaeriko thought.

"Ilmater, like the general is-was," the woman said. She sucked in a breath as Jaeriko dug her fingertips into the wound, her other hand clasped around her locket. "My name is Kalmia. I'm an herbalist. The general keeps me because I can't do any harm-or good-without his supplies." Kalmia closed her eyes in relief as golden swirls of healing magic coursed through Jaeriko's fingertips and puckered the woman's flesh closed. It wasn't much-it would still leave a nasty scar and it would take a couple of days for the feeling to come back, but it should be enough to keep her from disease or permanent injury. "He only gives me enough herbs to keep his son alive-never enough to cure him or to end his suffering."

"What kind of man does this to his son?" Jaeriko said, more to the world than to the red-haired woman holding her healed but still blood-drenched hand and staring at it as though it wouldn't obey her commands. The fingers twitched but refused fuller motion.

"The general does not like losing," Kalmia said, sighing and letting her hand rest, useless, by her side.

"More like he doesn't know when he's lost," Maze snapped, but her eyes held a distant softness as she beheld the stricken boy. Her hands moved almost of their own accord, wrapping the boy in his bed linens.

"Can you. .?" Kalmia began, looking at her hand and then up at Jaeriko, but the druid shook her head.

"Sorry. But I can take him to someone who can," Jaeriko replied. The herbalist's eyes filled with fear. "The General of Reth has nothing against the General of Arrabar's son. He sent us here to rescue him."

Kalmia's eyes closed and her head fell back to rest upon the wall. Indecision held her features taut until resolution poured over them like a soothing balm. She opened gray eyes cleared from doubt.

"Take him, then," Kalmia said. "But go quickly. It is the general's habit to check on his son after vespers and before bed."

"Way ahead of you," said Maze.

Jaeriko looked over to see that Maze had finished bundling the boy in his sheets and was carrying him to the window. If the general came in and saw his son gone, Kalmia would likely prove yet another senseless casualty of the general's misplaced loyalty. It wasn't fair. Kalmia had doubtless already suffered enough for her care of the boy.

"You should come with us," Jaeriko blurted, looking over her shoulder at Maze as she left the boy in the sheet at the window and climbed outside herself. "The general will be angry-we can protect you."

"No, I can't."

"Why?"

"I just can't!" Kalmia said, wringing her hands. Jaeriko was about to press her further, but Maze glared at her from the window. Time was running out. "He's got my brother," Kalmia whispered. "My brother. . He's always been there for me. Protected me. Even when the war got bad, and he was called away. Now it's my turn to protect him." Her dark eyes searched Jaeriko's. "I can't just leave him."

Jaeriko softened. "Then take this." Unhooking a gnarled ivory wand from her belt, Jaeriko handed it to the trembling herbalist. Kalmia looked as though she was about to protest, so the druid added, "For self-defense."

"I won't use it," the herbalist promised, but her fingers devoured the wand's shape.

Jaeriko ran over to the window, confident the woman would use it if she had to. Maze had just dropped to the ground, and held her arms out for the boy. Bracing her feet against the sides of the window, Jaeriko lowered the sheet-wrapped child into Maze's waiting arms. Then, with one look back at the herbalist and the now-empty sickroom, she, too, slipped out the window.

Ash snowed down from the charred trees around the citadel and drifted on the breeze in a gray miasma, choking their vision and their breath. The sickly green of faerie fire licked the gathering storm clouds above, heralding a tempest that had yet to be unleashed. Armed men stood still enough to be statues among the trees, their armor darkened with soot to match the forest's painted hue. The night was silent but for the trumpeting horn that echoed off the inside of the crumbling citadel.

It let them know he was coming.

Jaeriko and Maze stood by the boy they had rescued and the man they had brought him to-the General of Reth. Only one part remained to their task-the largest part of which was to stay alive. The smallest part of which was to keep the boy alive as well.

The boy, still swaddled in white linens, lay on a simple cot, lost in the oblivion of disease. His nursemaids, the blackened trees, stood all around him, and the General of Reth stood right behind him, holding a long, slender knife, like a surgeon's tool, to the boy's throat.

They waited like a drawn bow, aimed at the gate to the crumbling citadel.

The General of Arrabar burst through the gate like a lion, his ragged gold mane flying like a banner and his haunted green eyes fixed first on his son and then on the man above him. His face was haggard; his sins written as deeply upon his flesh as upon his soul. He was still dressed in the armor of Ilmater, with a white tabard emblazoned with the ribbon-threaded hands, but the white of the tabard had turned brown with dirt, and his armor bled with rust.

Twisted, pale men hung with the brassy remnants of armor poured out of the citadel and arrayed themselves around the Lion of Arrabar in a ghoulish honor guard. Upon reaching their positions, they stood still-unmoving and not breathing.

The General of Reth dipped the point of his knife in the hollow of the boy's throat and a drop of blood beaded there like sweat. The boy screamed, though whether in fevered dreams or pain, Jaeriko did not know.

"Stop! Don't kill him, Thais." The General of Arrabar's face and voice twisted in distress.

"Tell me why I shouldn't, old friend," said the General of Reth. He turned the knife to display its ruby shine. "Surely he has suffered enough."

"It's what she's been waiting for," the General of Arrabar said. "My bargain with Talona is broken the same moment as her hold on him-by death or by new life. If you kill my son, the ghouls will no longer obey me, the war will be lost, and all my suffering will be for nothing. Do you understand me? The boy's suffering will be for nothing."

The General of Arrabar stood, an arm extended as though he could stop the knife from his son's throat by will alone. Thais, the General of Reth, eyed him, as expressionless as the walking dead.

"A bargain with the Lady of Poison, Paladin of Ilmater? Sacrificing your son, and for what-another chance for Arrabar to subjugate Reth and Hlath?"

"To keep our kingdom whole," the General of Arrabar corrected. Thais shook his head.

"I wouldn't kill your son, Dominic," Thais said, and he sheathed his knife. "You were doing a fine job of that yourself."

The moment the knife ceased threatening his son, all pleading left Dominic's face.

"Now!" the leonine general commanded, dropping his arm and drawing his sword. Ghouls swarmed forward like a plague of spiders over the crumbling walls and over their brethren, murderous animation driving their limbs to inhuman speeds.

Soldiers fell out of the woods to meet them, bringing shields to bear and forming a wall of steel around the general and against the oncoming horde. At a gesture from the general, Maze and Jaeriko snapped into position; Maze guarding the body of the boy, Jaeriko farther back, clasping one of Maze's knives in a white-knuckled hand and searching frantically for ghouls who might be trying to circumnavigate their defense. Bodies splattered unhurt against the shields of the living, testing the soldiers, who held it strong. She could hear the General of Arrabar shouting orders, and in answer, pale fingers sharpening into long yellow nails gripped the tops of the shields, and ravenous eyes cleared the wall.

Thais stood with his back to Jaeriko, between her and the battle, head bowed under the ashen rain as though in mourning for the deaths to come. Soft brown hair obscured his features, and his shoulders were back. Then his hands shot out, fingers spread like talons, and clamped into the blackened bark of the trees that guarded him.

Darkness seeped out of the charred trees and out of his skin, spilling onto the ground and down his body like sap. His men cheered as the waves of night overtook them, but the ghouls skittered and keened, pulling themselves back away from the shield wall, unwilling to step into the spread shy;ing sea of glistening ebony. It overcame them anyway. Thais's head snapped back, stars burning for eyes, and the roiling shadows took flight, swirling upward in a deepening tide until everything was painted in shades of black.

Then the shield wall broke and surged forward, and the battle was joined in earnest.

An explosion of light burst from Reth's general, and for a heartbeat, even the shadows ceased to exist. Jaeriko could see soldiers in the process of impaling ghouls and ghouls with their long fingers plucking out human eyes. Maze stood in front of the boy, her long knife wet and dripping, spinning low with a leg extended at knee height. And the General of Reth dropped down from the heavens like a bird of prey, angling his burning blade at the paladin of Ilmater, who just managed to raise a sword in defense. The dark general hit the ground, and the paladin spun with the energy of the deflected blade, angling a strike at his opponent's back.

Just as it looked as though the blade would shear the General of Reth in half, he rolled backward and to his feet, slicing at Arrabar's unprotected neck, but the paladin stepped forward and bashed the hilt of his sword up into his opponent's face. The dark generals head snapped back and he stumbled, his body weaving. A well-planted kick on Reth's ribs threw the wounded general to the ground. Arrabar lunged after him, his sword poised for the killing stroke. His would-be victim cracked a smile, and an ebony tide swept over the battle, plunging the forest into darkness.

The sounds of the dying and the screams of metal on metal filled the air like a crying symphony. Blind, nearly deafened, Jaeriko felt something fly by her ear, and a stinging wetness screamed for her attention an instant later. Dropping to the ground, she felt around for a tree, a body, anything to hide behind, when a brilliant radiance blossomed again. A helmet studded the tree behind her, limned with her blood; near her feet was the head it had belonged to.

Maze screamed-a sound lost in the clamor of battle-and Jaeriko looked up. A white-fleshed ghoul scrambled up Maze's prone form. Her red-streaked hands, somehow bereft of blades, reached back toward Jaeriko, and their eyes met, equally hor shy;rified. Help me, Maze mouthed. Jaeriko's hand throbbed from holding onto her knife. Setting her jaw and forcing her trem shy;bling legs into action, she half ran and half stumbled across the corpse-strewn field to Maze's defense. She fell upon the ghoul in a blade-studded heap. Striking back and forth without regard to angle or point, she plied her knife against the ghoul's flesh until its white skin was rent with red gouges, and the ghoul, hissing in pain, reeled back to face this new threat. Faced with the long yellow claws herself, Jaeriko's mouth opened to scream and she dropped her knife. Then the ghoul dropped like a felled tree, with Maze wrapped around its knees, and the lithe assassin pounced up its body to cut off its head. She raised her blade, and darkness swept over the field once more.

Jaeriko felt around for her knife and recovered it, gripping it with hands sore from unexpected use. Back to back, Jaeriko and Maze huddled together, blades out, striking at anything that came near without radiating warmth. Once, twice, three times she struck at things she hoped to the gods were undead, before the clammy fingers stopped pawing in her direction. Still she crouched, blade trembling, listening for attackers so hard it hurt.

But no more came. The clashes of steel diminished until the only sounds came from a single pair of combatants. Then she felt something fly by her head, heard it thump to the ground, and all sound of combat ceased. The eerie silence was broken only by feet shuffling through leaves, and Jaeriko's heart pounding in her ears. She hoped against hope it didn't mean she and Maze were the only living things left.

Then Jaeriko gasped as a brilliant nova boomed out from Reth's general, bathing the combatants in unnatural light. The shadowy man's bare hands were wrapped around the leonine general's face, fingertips cupping the slackening flesh. Weaponless, the paladin clawed at the hands that lay almost reverently upon his cheeks, drawing blood but not moving them. Sweat glistened on the dark general's arms, and veins rose up in bruising hues under his victim's skin. They stood, locked that way, for as long as Jaeriko could hold her breath.

Then the General of Arrabar's eyes rolled back in his head, his flesh drawn and gray, and he cried out. "Mercy!" And the General of Reth removed his hands.

Upon release, Dominic of Arrabar collapsed to his knees and bowed his head. Thais put a hand on a nearby tree to steady himself, and his ribs heaved and shook. The blinding light and darkness faded, until only the eerie glow of the storm remained.

Pale corpses, weapons, and dismembered limbs littered the ground in a grotesque garden, blooming with arrows and blood. Not a single ghoul had survived the battle, and only a handful of Reth's soldiers lay fallen. They hadn't even had to kill the General of Arrabar to get his compliance-only the men he'd stolen from death's domain.

"Friend, forgive me," Dominic said, staring up into his friend's eyes. Thais looked down with pity, but the paladin's gaze had ascended farther, into the heavens. "Ilmater, for shy;give …" A bolt of lightning split the sky with a crack and coursed down straight onto the head of the kneeling general. Smoke leaked from his helmet, and his eyes stared vacantly upward. Then a second bolt struck where the first one had, and Dominic fell backward, his skin crisping inside his metal shell. A third bolt hit, and a fourth, and a fifth, shattering the sky with thunder and light and causing the little metal figure to dance, prone on the ground.

When the smoke finally cleared, a charred skeleton leered out from the General of Arrabar's helmet, and his metal armor was twisted beyond recognition of having ever belonged to Ilmater.

"Look!" said Maze, pointing to the entrance to the citadel. Standing in the doorway, wand still extended, was Kalmia. A wisp of smoke trailed from the tip of the twisted ivory. Jaeriko's wand. Thais looked up, his heavy gaze hanging on the woman in the door.

"Seize her," commanded Thais. He gestured to two of his men. The soldiers charged forward, one taking hold of her arms and the other relieving her of her wand. She did not struggle, but stared at the smoking body of her former master with hunger burning in her eyes. Thais watched his men take her.

Then two coins flashed into Thais's hands. Kneeling, he placed one in each blackened eye socket of the dead general.

"Good-bye, my friend," Thais said, and he stood. "You strived to starve out the darkness in you, but in the end, it consumed you instead." Thais shook his head and looked up from the grinning corpse. "A poor death for the last paladin of Ilmater."

Jaeriko stared at Kalmia.

"Oh, Kalmia," Jaeriko said. The woman had said she couldn't even use it for self defense. Had that all been a lie? Kalmia fixed her with a look that chilled her to the bone.

"You saw what he did to his son," Kalmia said. She lowered her gaze to the ghoulish corpses that littered the ground, then looked up again, resolution steeling her eyes. "If Reth intended on killing him, you two would have done it before we met. I could not risk him escaping justice."

Jaeriko stared at Kalmia as the soldiers bound the herbalist's hands behind her and led her off in the direction of the soldiers' caravans. The herbalist held her gaze, looking over her shoulder, until they could no longer see each other through the weave of the forest. A tug on her arm tore her attention away from the path the soldiers had taken.

"Never empathize with the enemy," Maze said softly. She pushed a pouch filled with coins into Jaeriko's hand. "Your half of the fee."

"Right," Jaeriko said. Maze looked at her for a moment, then put an arm around her shoulder and began guiding her back through the woods.

"Come on. Let's go home."

The first night on the road, the General of Reth let Kalmia go. He told her that under law he could not sanction her actions, but that he had long understood war-and justice-to be above the law. Then a strange cast had come over his storm gray eyes and he told her he was sorry to hear of her brother.

That strange look almost made her confess everything. If there was anyone who would understand her actions, surely it was he. But her fear of him kept her words in check, and she mumbled her thanks and left, heading straight back for the crumbling citadel cradled deep in the Chondalwood.

Morning had come and gone by the time she arrived back at the citadel, but she did not stop walking until she arrived at the door at the top of the white tower. Removing the shiny brass key from her pocket, she unlocked the door and stepped back. The door crashed open and the pale form of the ghoul she had trapped in the boy's bedroom scrambled toward her. Its yellow nails were filed sharp from clawing at the wood, and its body was ragged from pounding against the door, but it was ani shy;mate, which was more than could be said for its fellows.

When it reached her it halted and stood too still in front of her. Then its nostrils-ragged tears in its sunken flesh-flexed. Starting with her feet, it snuffled up the length of her, pausing longest at her neck, behind her ear, where it tasted the scent of her hair without touching her. Her skin crawled, but she held still, searching its dead eyes when she could see them for some sign of the paladin's taint. She found the ghoul's eyes empty. It was free-uncontrolled by man or god.

The General of Reth must have finally managed with magic what she hadn't been able to with herbs and cured the paladin's son. Purging Talona's plague from the boy's body broke the Lady's bargain. Had he not, the ghoul she faced would still be clawing to get to his fallen master's side, as per his last orders. Orders she had prevented him from carrying out.

"Brother," Kalmia whispered. She reached her hands out but did not touch him. The ghoul regarded her, expressionless as always. Talona had warned her it would be this way. Her hands fell to her side. It was still worth it to extract her revenge. "Come with me." She could never forgive the General of Arrabar for what he had done. But neither could she destroy what he had created. Instead, she would make for herself a new life-one that included her dead sibling. "We're going home."