As if in slow motion, she watched the length of Larz's sword descend, catching Nhaille in the shoulder. A thin line of blood trickled down the front of his leather armor. He crumpled, but still managed to stay in the saddle. "Get the Amber," he said hoarsely.

Riordan's eyes flashed to the amber stake lodged in Larz's belt. A second power stone. The one he'd led the army with.

She feinted left, putting herself bodily between Larz and Nhaille, drawing a swipe from Larz's sword. She cut high. Larz fended her off with a vicious swing.

And in doing so, he left himself open to the blinding arc of the Sword of Zal-Azaar.

Shocked eyes glared up at her. The Sword sliced cleanly through tendons, slowing only slightly as it hit bone. A fraction of a second later he tumbled to the ground, his horrified expression frozen upon his face.

Trailing blood, Nhaille lunged awkwardly toward Larz's body and snatched the Amber blade from his belt. The body liquefied, flowed into the Sword.

Disbelief reverberated through her mind. Larz's one last dying thought.

Haelian soldiers stared at her in mute terror. Amassed behind them, legions of the dead milled about in dazed confusion.

Nhaille held the Amber blade out to her. She looked down at the amber stake lying across his palm and took a step backward.

"No." Barely a whisper. Out of all her nightmares, this was one she'd never dreamed of.

"We have no choice."

"Nhaille, I can't do...that."

"Rau has fled back to Hael to the safety of the Master Stone. We must act before he reaches it. If that is where it's hidden."

Haelian soldiers recovered themselves. Finding no other way but to retreat through Kanarekii lines, they raised their Swords.

"Riordan, we're out of time and out of options." She heard the weakness in Nhaille's voice. "You must take the Amber."

Blood trickled Nhaille's arm, coating the Amber. Somehow she had to get him through what was left of Haelian lines and off the battlefield. Still, she balked at taking the Amber. "Give it to Penden," she suggested.

An odd expression crossed Nhaille's face. Revulsion mixed with longing. Nhaille shuddered. "Neither Penden nor I can wield the Amber."

"Why not?" She raised the Sword struck away a Haelian blade aimed her way.

"Neither of us are Shraal."

The words sunk in slowly. She parried a sword headed for her heart and sent its owner to hell. His dying screams twined with the twisting thoughts in her mind.

"That's why it didn't work. That's how Larz lost control of the army. He wasn't Shraal, but Rau was.""Shraal, or simply mad enough to suffice," Nhaille said. "It worked for Larz for awhile, but he couldn't sustain it. That is at least my guess." Nhaille's attention was torn away by a Haelian soldier.

She leapt in front of him, dispatching the attacker with one sure stroke. Another mind echoed within hers. She felt sick. But there was no time to attend to her own revulsion and frailties.

Nhaille held the dagger out to her again. "Take the Amber. Without it we perish."

Riordan looked around her. Soldiers in Kanarekii armor were still desperately few, even with Hael on the retreat. Without the leagues of the dead to fatten their ranks, they wouldn't succeed in taking Hael. Hael would stand by superior numbers alone.

Somewhere among the shifting lines of standing corpses were her brothers. Her Father. She balked at being their slavers, but she had no choice.

"Forgive me," she whispered. And reached for the Amber.

Unlike the coolness of the Sword, the Amber was hot to the touch. Riordan closed her fingers around it, felt Nhaille's hand drop away under hers. Slowly, she drew it back toward her.

A multitude of minds assaulted her. Worse by far than wielding the Sword. Chaos swirled in her consciousness. Hate, fear, dampened by death. Thoughts from beyond the grave, unnatural. Riordan closed her eyes. Broadcasted by the Amber, she sent her own thoughts out toward them.

Dead minds were capable of little resistance. She reached into decaying brains, laying her thoughts over the fragmented images she found there. Like shaping clay, she reworked the orders Rau had placed there, changing their form, substituting allegiance to Kanarek instead of Hael.

The change confused them. She felt their thoughts slipping away from her like trying to catch an eel with her bare hands.

She concentrated harder, tempting them with the promise of eternal rest. Promising them vengeance for the terrible wrong Hael had dealt them.

Slowly, she felt the tide of their thoughts change. The dead raised their weapons.

And turned on the soldiers of Hael.

It took an inordinate amount of effort to maintain contact. No wonder Larz had weakened. Twin forces threatened to tear her mind apart. The Sword, confused by the proximity of the Amber, the banquet of so many bodies and so little killing clamored to be appeased. Each time she stole a little concentration to keep it under control, her command over the dead weakened. Dividing her attention, Riordan poured the full force of her will into diametrically opposing tasks.

Nhaille's good arm closed around her, holding her upright with the last of his strength. She hadn't even realized she was falling. The Amber burned in her mind, its flame consuming all conscious thought save for the dire instructions she broadcasted to the dead. In contrast, the Sword was cool evil, seducing her brain with thoughts of killing, of absorbing the souls of all around her.

Riordan tightened her thoughts around the Sword, squeezing its demands into silence, preventing it from killing, while she sent the Amber the opposite order. It tore at her soul. But one glimpse of the battlefield told her there was no other choice. They had to win over Hael before they could rid the world of the Amber.

Shouts leaked through the barriers. Riordan opened her eyes. Haelian soldiers who moments ago had stared at her in dumb- struck silence, now fought for their very lives. As if lifted by the strings of an invisible puppeteer, the dead sprang to life.

The dead outnumbered them all. Hael could not hold out for long. Especially without Larz or Rau.

"We're going to have to make more of them," Nhaille said. Seeing she was steady on her feet once again, he dropped his hands. It was then that she noticed his pallor, the tight lines of pain around his mouth.

"Nhaille, we can't do that!" Her concentration slipped. Riordan caught herself and poured the last of her will into the equation.

"Wielding the Amber is one thing. Making more of those ghouls is quite another." She motioned to the congealing blood on his armor. "You're injured, we have to get you out of here, so you can rest and--"

"Do not be short-sighted, Riordan. I am expendable in this matter. I have only to keep to my feet long enough to win back Kholer. After Kholer you must go on to defeat Hael."

"I'm not going anywhere without you!" Riordan parried another sword that slipped through the protective ranks of the dead around them. "What," she grunted, taking down another Haelian, "makes you so sure that's where Doan-Rau has hidden the Master Stone?"

"He would have taken it there," Nhaille said, "to win the King's praise."

"All right," Riordan said. "Hael it is. I'll find the Master Stone if I have to dismantle the palace brick by brick." She looked around in dismay. "And you're right, we don't have the numbers for such a conquest." It took only a glance at the field to notice that Kanarekii uniforms were in desperately short supply. Without the dead, and the extra Haelians added to their number, they had no hope at all.

"There must be a cache of amber stakes nearby. Pray Rau wasn't carrying them himself when he fled."

"The tent," she said between labored breaths. "Can you get to it?"

Nhaille squinted into the sun. Between them and Rau's tent, the ground was thick with writhing bodies. "I have no choice. We need that Amber."

"I'll come with you."

"Riordan, you can't."

"Damned if I'll leave you to fall here in Kholer," she said viciously. Plunging into the fray, she swung the Sword in a wide arc before her, leaving Nhaille no choice but to follow.

On the field, the dead hacked at the Haelians with anything they could lay hands to. Can't all be my influence. Could it be that on some subconscious level the dead recognized those that had enslaved them and now wanted revenge? Revenge and the promise of eternal rest thereafter.

The sword came from out of nowhere. Instincts instilled by years of Nhaille's relentless training took over. Riordan swung.

Blade pierced armor. She clenched her teeth, terrified to give into the pain and lose her hold on the dead army. Her pain raised the Sword's bloodlust to new heights. She swung, the effort tearing at the edges of the wound. The soldier's scream cut through the air and clove her mind.

Detached, she watched as the Sword sucked up the puddle of life, then she fled toward the black tarp buffeted by the wind.

Behind her she heard Nhaille swearing as he followed her.

The tent loomed before her. They ducked into the darkness inside.

"It's not deep," Riordan said to Nhaille's grim expression of concern. She felt beneath the leather of her armor to be sure. The wound would need a couple of stitches, but at least her sword arm was uninjured.

Kanarekii soldiers flowed in behind them, securing Rau's cache for Kanarek. She caught Penden's shadow against the brightness of the doorway and motioned him forward. Riordan moved blindly forward in the darkness of the tent. Penden found a torch and lit it. Strange to be rifling through Rau's personal affects. There were surprisingly little of them for a person of his station.

His packs turned up nothing but clothing. There was nothing on the table by the cot. Nothing at all that might hold the fragments of the Mother Stone that could enslave the dead.

Riordan impaled a space of earth with the Sword of Zal-Azaar. Fiercely, she reined in her frustration. It took only a moment's lapse to leave the dead army open to rebellion.

"Nothing," Nhaille said. She could hear fatigue and pain in his voice.

"They have to be here. There's no way Rau could have had that much Amber with him. "

She moved toward the cot, intent on throwing off the covers just in case Rau was crazy enough to sleep with the Amber warming his bed. Her toe met something hard.

Her stifled curse brought Penden to her side. In one fluid movement he overturned the flimsy cot. Blankets fell into a heap at their feet.

Beneath the bed was a metal-bound chest.

With one sure stroke of his sword, Penden broke the lock. The contents gleamed golden in the torch-light.

Rau's cache.

Penden looked at her in askance.

"Do it," Nhaille said. "We have no other choice."

Penden motioned to the Kanarekii soldiers in the doorway, who came nervously toward the chest as if it held a deadly poison.

It made her physically sick to see her own countrymen handling the Amber shards, preparing to do to others the horrible deed that had been done to them.

No choice. Nhaille's words echoed over and over in her mind.

I may meet you in the halls of Al-Gomar after all, Rau.

"Get it over with," Riordan said.

Nhaille issued the order. Penden's men moved to obey.

The confines of Rau's sanctum were suddenly suffocating. She stepped into the sunlight, casting a worried glance at the battlefield around her. Kanarekii soldiers were already about the ugly business of creating slaves of fallen Haelians.

It's come to this. I'm sure this wasn't what you had in mind, was it, my father?

Nothing to do but the horrible deed itself. And after that there was Hael and more ugliness to come. Holding the Sword high above her head, she rallied the Kanarekii to her and plunged back into the battle.

A ghoul barred her path.

Nhaille stepped in front of her, ready to come to her aid with the last of his strength and left-handedly strike down what he took to be a stray renegade.A sharp curse was torn from his lips. His sword fell.

It was then that she looked at the swollen, rotting face that even through the advanced stages of decay still held a trace of the regal.

"Father."

The word was a plea to be mistaken. But there was no mistaking the regal bearing, the tattered clothes that had once been cut from the finest of cloth. His one clouded eye beseeched her.

She couldn't waver. She had not the luxury. Not even now.

Riordan raised the Sword of Zal-Azaar.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Sword descended in a bright arc.

Riordan put the last of her effort into the swing to ensure her stroke was true, that she wouldn't cause him more pain than he'd already endured.

She wanted to shut her eyes and forget the sight of blood matted hair and tattered cloth. She desperately wanted to look away from that one eye that stared levelly back at her from beneath the battered diadem. But honor kept her eyes open. Someone had to witness the King's death.

Just as the Sword reached the summit of its killing stroke, the King uttered a flat moan. The flicker of a thought rushed through the Amber, then was extinguished.

With a vivid curse Riordan aborted her swing.

Muscles screeched in protest. She turned her wrist, forcing the Sword away from what remained of the King. It glanced off his shoulder in spite of her efforts. Her aim went wide, slicing through one of the ropes that secured Rau's tent. The rope snapped, one side of the tent sagged. The Sword connected with hard earth, coming at last to a stop. Its fury ricocheted through her mind.

Riordan brought her eyes up slowly, afraid to look into that terrible face that beseeched her to do...

What?