‘Otha? Is he really that skilled?’
‘Skilled probably isn’t the right word,’ she replied. ‘Otha has great power, but he’s clumsy. He’s too lazy to practise.’
They continued their menacing advance, but the men awaiting them in that grotesque armour still made no move either to attack or even to reinforce those of their number barring the door.
When Sparhawk reached the first of the guards, he raised his sword, and the previously motionless man howled at him and clumsily raised a broad-bladed axe embellished with useless spikes and barbs. Sparhawk slapped the axe aside and struck with his sword. The dreadful-looking armour was even less useful than Tynian had suggested. It was scarcely thicker than paper, and Sparhawk’s sword-stroke slashed down into the guard’s body as if it had met no resistance whatsoever. Even had he struck at a totally unprotected man, his sword should not have cut so deeply into the body.
Then the man he had just slaughtered collapsed, and his gashed armour gaped open. Sparhawk recoiled in sudden revulsion. The body inside the armour had not been the body of a living man. It appeared to be no more than blackened, slimy bones with a few shreds of rotting flesh clinging to them. A dreadful stink suddenly boiled out of the armour.
‘They aren’t alive!’ Ulath roared. ‘There’s nothing in the armour but bones and rotting guts!’
Sickened, gagging with nausea, the knights fought on, hacking their way through their already dead enemies.
‘Stop!’ Sephrenia cried sharply.
‘But –’ Kalten started to object.
‘Take one step backwards – all of you!’
They grudgingly stepped back a pace, and the outrageously armoured cadavers menacing them returned to immobility. Once again at that unseen and unheard signal they gave vent to that emotionless howl.
‘What’s going on?’ Ulath demanded. ‘Why aren’t they attacking?’
‘Because they’re dead, Ulath,’ Sephrenia said.
Ulath pointed at a crumpled form with his axe. ‘Dead or not, this one still tried to stick his spear into me.’
‘That’s because you came to within reach of his weapon. Look at them. They’re standing all around us, and they aren’t making any move to assist their companions. Get me a torch, Talen.’
The boy wrested a torch from between two flagstones and handed it to her. She raised it and peered at the paving beneath their feet. ‘That’s frightening,’ she said with a shudder.
‘We will protect you, Lady Sephrenia,’ Bevier assured her. ‘You have nothing to fear.’
‘There’s nothing for any of us to fear, dear Bevier. What’s truly frightening is the fact that Otha probably has more power at his command than any living human, but he’s so stupid that he doesn’t even know how to use it. We’ve spent centuries fearing an absolute imbecile.’
‘Raising the dead is fairly impressive, Sephrenia,’ Sparhawk suggested.
‘Any Styric child can galvanize a corpse, but Otha doesn’t even know what to do with them once he raises them. Each one of his dead guardians is standing on a flagstone, and that flagstone is all it’s protecting.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Test it and see for yourself.’
Sparhawk raised his shield and advanced on one of the stinking guards. As soon as his foot touched the flagstone, the skull-faced thing swung jerkily at him with a jagged-bladed axe. He easily deflected the stroke and stepped back. The guard returned to its former position and stood motionless as a statue.
The vast circle of guards ringing the palace and the temple howled their empty howl again.
Then to Sparhawk’s horror, Sephrenia gathered her white robe about her and quite calmly began to thread her way through the ranks of the stinking dead. She stopped and glanced back at them. ‘Oh do come along now. Let’s get inside before the rain starts. Just don’t step on any of their flagstones, that’s all.’
It was eerie to step around those savagely threatening figures with their foul reek and their skull-like faces in the ghastly light of the dancing lightning, but no more dangerous in fact than avoiding nettles on a forest trail.
When they had passed the last of the dead sentries, Talen stopped and squinted along a diagonal rank of those guardians. ‘Revered teacher,’ he said quietly to Berit.
‘Yes, Talen?’
‘Why don’t you push this one over?’ Talen pointed at the back of one of the armoured figures, ‘– sort of off to the side?’
‘Why?’
Talen grinned a wicked kind of grin. ‘Just give it a shove, Berit. You’ll see.’
Berit looked a bit puzzled, but he reached out with his axe and gave the rigid corpse a good shove. The armoured figure fell, crashing into another. The second corpse promptly beheaded the first, staggering back as it did so, and it was immediately chopped down by a third.
The chaos spread rapidly, and a sizeable number of the intimidating dead were dismembered by their fellows in a mindless display of unthinking savagery.
‘That’s a very good boy you have there, Kurik,’ Ulath said.
‘We have some hopes for him,’ Kurik said modestly.
They turned towards the portal and then stopped. Hanging in mid-air in the very centre of the dark doorway was a misty face engraved upon the emptiness with sickly green flame. The face was grotesquely misshapen, a thing of towering, implacable evil – and it was familiar. Sparhawk had seen it before.
‘Azash!’ Sephrenia hissed. ‘Stay back, all of you!’
They stared at the ghastly apparition.
‘Is that really him?’ Tynian asked in an awed voice.
‘An image of him,’ Sephrenia replied. ‘It’s more of Otha’s work.’
‘Is it dangerous?’ Kalten asked her.
‘To step into the doorway means death, and worse than death.’
‘Are there any other ways to get in?’ Kalten asked her, eyeing the glowing apparition fearfully.
‘I’m sure there are, but I doubt if we’d ever be able to find them.’
Sparhawk sighed. He had decided a long time ago that he would do this when the time came. He regretted the argument it was going to cause more than the act itself. He detached Bhelliom’s steel-mesh pouch from his belt. ‘All right,’ he said to his friends, ‘you’d better get started. I can’t give you any guarantees about how much time I’ll be able to give you, but I’ll hold off for as long as I can.’