Tragius was certain that Resalintas was as disturbed and unsettled by the new arrivals as the rest of them, but a lifetime of discipline and hard training prevented the undead priest from giving any outward sign of this. Instead, he took a steady, confident step forward to greet the second group of new arrivals and held out his hand to them. “Am I correct in thinking that a delegation of the Eeii has agreed to accompany us on this mission?” he asked.

     “You are,” replied the leading member of the Eeii delegation, lowering the hood of his robes. The bloated, distorted head that was revealed betrayed the creature’s ancestry clearly. The puffy, half closed octopus eyes with their wide, wavy pupils. The sagging, bleached white skin. The proboscis that hung limp and lifeless from the most forward extremity of its face. It was an undead slaver. A member of the alien molluscan civilisation that ruled the world below as humanity ruled the world above.

     The Eeii were not raks. The cthillians became undead in different ways from the humanoid races and took different forms, but they were the most powerful form of undead that cthillians were capable of becoming and were therefore the slaver equivalent to raks and feared more than anything else in all the world of Tharia. “I wish to correct you on one point, however,” the Eeii continued. “It is not we who will accompany you. It is you who will accompany us. We have been planning a strike at Arnor for many months now. When we learned that you were planning something similar, it seemed sensible to us that we combine our efforts.” Resalintas nodded his agreement. “Make no mistake, however. This is our mission, not yours. We will lead it.”

     “Just so long as we end up in Arnor, in a position to kill the Shadowbeast,” replied Resalintas, “it is immaterial who is leading it.” The Eeii nodded and stepped back to rejoin its fellows.

     “Is that it then?” said Tragius impatiently. “Can we go now?”

     “There is one other group of allies still to come,” said the vampire mage. “They should be here any time now...”

     “We are here,” said another new voice. It was a voice that Resalintas recognised instantly, and he spun around, searching for its source. “We have been here for some time.”

     A dozen more figures were coming into view as invisibility spells were allowed to fade, and the white raks were alarmed to find themselves surrounded by more priest raks. Not priests of Samnos, though, or priests of any other of the good, friendly Gods. These priests all carried an amulet of cold iron around their necks; an amulet in the shape of a clenched fist.

     “Skorvosians!” cried Vasta in alarm. “What is this?”

     “You didn’t really think you were going to go off and have all the fun without us, did you?” said the leading Skorvosian, a giant of a man who’d made a ridiculous attempt to preserve his cruelly handsome good looks despite the ravages of the rak transformation. He was dressed in fine, richly sewn clothes embroidered in silver and gold and wore a wig of brown, curly hair on his shrunken, mummified head. He’d even made an attempt to groom what was left of his upwardly pointing moustache, even though there were only a few strands of it left.

     “Fangrap,” said Resalintas with an air of resigned acceptance. “There’s a kind of awful inevitability about this.”

     “What?” said the Skorvosian rak with a grin of gleeful delight. “Not pleased to see your old friend again after all these years?”

     “Resalintas!” cried Kharsh furiously, the pinpoints of fire that served him as eyes blazing with the intensity of his emotion. “Vampires we can associate with, in this time of crisis. Fell men and cthillians too if the situation is really that bad, but do you really expect us to associate with these, these...”

     “I don’t like it any more than you do,” replied Resalintas with sympathy. “However, perhaps there is some merit to the idea.”

     “You can’t be serious...”

     "I have neither the time nor the inclination to argue with you!" Resalintas glared furiousy at the other rak, but then made a visible effort to calm down. His eyes met those of Tragius, his old team-mate in the far off days of their youth, and the wizard rak saw the same fear that he was feeling himself. Deep down inside, they could both hear the deep, sonorous ticking of a clock marking the gradual degradation of their souls. The gradual, insidious creep of evil stealing over them a bit at a time. A terrible sense of urgency was on the priest, Tragius knew. A desperate need to get the job done as quickly as possible so that he could end his undead existence before too much of what made him unique was lost forever.

     “Forgive me, my old friend," said Resalintas to Kharsh, therefore. "I should not have taken that tone with you." The other rak bowed his head, accepting the apology. “The priests of Skorvos have as much reason to hate the Shadowhordes as the rest of us, though. If the enemy is victorious, all life on this world will be wiped out and there will be no more wars. And warfare is worship to them. Isn’t that so, Fangrap?”

     “That is true,” agreed the skorvosian rak, his gleeful grin fading to be replaced by an expression of anger; deep and serious. His dry, leathery face twisted into a scowl so terrible that the pure evil that festered in his soul was revealed for all to see, and a deep growl began to come from his shrunken, knotted throat. “Warfare is the only pure form of human activity, all pretence and delusion stripped away. It is the most holy act that humans can indulge in. There must be no end to warfare. No end ever. The Shadowhordes must be wiped out, and no priest of Skorvos in the world will rest until the last Shadowsoldier has fallen into the dust.”

     Resalintas turned back to Kharsh. “That's why I'm ready to accept their presence on this mission with us. However, I will understand if your own feelings are so strong that you can't do the same. For thousands of years, the priests of Samnos and Skorvos have been taught to hate each other. All that hatred cannot simply be put aside as you might put aside a heavy backpack or an uncomfortable helmet. If you can't bring yourself to march with Fangrap and his fellows, you are free to go elsewhere.” He turned to address the other Samnian raks. “That goes for all of you. We cannot afford to have discord amongst us. Any of you is free to depart if you so wish.”

     “You mean you would prefer their company to ours?” exclaimed Renda, pointing a gnarled, sticklike finger at the Skorvosian raks.

     “I would prefer the company of all of you,” said Resalintas, his voice still betraying no hint of anger or impatience. His legendary self control was still as great as ever. “Malefactos said that the Necropolis contains thousands of undead creatures. Thousands. To have any hope at all against that many we must have as many allies as possible and the power of the Skorvosian raks will be invaluable, but the one thing that would really destroy us is discord in the ranks. That is why we cannot afford to have anyone with us who isn’t totally happy about the mission. If you’re going to allow your hatred of the Skorvosians to affect your professionalism, then we’d be better off without you.”

     His words stung his fellow priests, as they’d been meant to, and Tragius tensed nervously as the other Samnian raks stiffened angrily. What’s he playing at? thought the wizard apprehensively. Is he deliberately trying to drive them away?

     Kharsh backed down, though, as Resalintas had known he would, and he nodded his shrunken, mummified head. “I just hope you know what you’re doing,” he muttered, turning away, and the tension evaporated as the other priests also accepted the situation. Resalintas shared a glance with Tragius again, and again his old friend could clearly see his thoughts. So do I, the priest was thinking while Fangrap started grinning again and brushed a speck of dust from his immaculately sewn and decorated robes. I pray to Samnos that I’m not going to regret this bitterly.

     “Now that that’s settled,” said Kar-Noth, looking anxiously to the east where the yellow sun was steadily rising higher in the sky. “With age and power comes a certain ability to resist the sun, but it only goes so far. Do you mind if we make a move before we reach the end of our endurance?”

     Resalintas nodded. He’d forgotten that they had vampires among them. “After you,” he said, indicating the open stairwell, and the vampires hurried gratefully away into the darkness. The others followed, and Tragius found himself beside Resalintas as they picked their way down the rubble strewn stairwell.

     “Just like old times,” said the wizard rak mischievously. “Darry and Jake, together again for one last adventure.”

     The priest rak scowled, a sight that would have made the bravest living man quail in fear. “Please don't call me that,” he said, glancing around to see if any of the others had heard. There was the slightest trace of gratitude in the set of his body, though, as if the use of his childhood name was reminding him of his humanity, as Tragius had intended.

     “I am disturbed by the fact that the good members of this expedition are outnumbered by the evil members by over three to one,” the priest added.

     “You weren’t expecting so many to turn up, were you?” said Tragius. “Especially the Skorvosians. I could see that even you were taken aback by their arrival.”

     Resalintas nodded. “It's a pity so many senior priests of Samnos fell in battle before they could join us, and that your fellow wizards failed to see the wisdom of this venture. That would have evened up the numbers nicely.”

     “Even so, though, this is an astounding feat,” said the wizard rak jubilantly. “The forces of good and evil teaming up together to fight the common threat. Only you could have done it.”

     “I was inspired by Samnos,” replied Resalintas, “and if it hadn’t been me, Samnos would have inspired someone else. All true praise goes to Samnos.”

     “And the other Gods,” agreed Tragius. “Remember that it’s not just Samnos whose banner is being carried by this expedition. There’s Skorvos too, plus Atlacha, the Demon Queen of the fell men, and whatever strange Gods the cthillians worship. Right now, Samnos is just one of four, my old friend.”

     Resalintas scowled again but said nothing, and they went the rest of the way in silence.

☆☆☆

     At the bottom of the stairs they found the teleportation chamber, and Tragius went through it to Grand Central where he cast a beacon spell, allowing those of the others able to cast teleportation spells to teleport there directly. The rest, which included a couple of the wizard raks and three of the fell man raks who’d failed to master the teleportation spell, and most of the vampires who weren’t able to use magic at all, had to use the chamber as Tragius had.

     A few moments later they were all in Grand Central, the heart of the old Agglemonian teleportation network, and those of them who’d once been human stared around in amazement, impressed yet again by the achievements of the old Empire. The fell man raks and the Eeii stood aloof, though, their pride not allowing them to give any outward sign that they were impressed by a human achievement.

     Or maybe they were genuinely unimpressed, thought Tragius as he watched the nonhumans standing casually in the centre of the broad corridor, casting their eyes (or whatever now served them as eyes) over the dozens of doors that stretched as far as the eye could see. Maybe the achievements of their own races, unknown for the most part by humanity, were so great that a continent wide teleportation network was nothing more than a cluster of mud huts in comparison.

     “Well, hopefully we’re now directly beneath the city of Arnor,” the human wizard then said. “I’m hoping we’re not going to tunnel our way up to the surface only to find that we’re under the Great Lake, or on the surface of one of the moons.”

     His attempt at humour fell flat, though, so with a grunt of disappointment that emerged from his shrunken, mummified throat sounding like the rattle of dry bones, he drew his Wand of Disintegration and aimed it at the ceiling.

     “One moment,” said Fangrap, however, before Tragius could speak the word that would activate the wand. “We mustn’t emerge in the middle of Arnor in a disorganised rabble. We have to draw up a plan of action, decide what each of us is to do, or we’re going to find ourselves in a real holy mess. We may even end up fighting each other.”

     "He’s right," said Resalintas, looking annoyed. Tragius guessed that he’d been about to say the same thing himself. “We priests of Samnos are the only ones capable of saying the Holy Words that can kill the Shadowbeast. That is the central aim of this mission. The task facing the rest of you is to keep the undead of Arnor away from us long enough for us to accomplish this task.”

     “And I must be in the Puncturium room to guide Elmias in afterwards,” added Tragius. “We wizards will be too busy trying to dismantle the Puncturium to be of much use in your defence.”

     “Then that task must fall on the rest of us,” said Kar-Noth. “Is that acceptable to you, Darekstilarman?” The leader of the fell man raks nodded silently. “And you, Chollophuwunwi?”

     “We have come here to destroy the Circle of Raks,” the leader of the Eeii delegation replied, and even the newly transformed raks winced at the feel of the telepathic words seeping through their minds like droplets of vile putrescence. “The rest of you may do as you wish so long as you do not interfere with us.”

     “Very good,” said Kar-Noth, and Tragius was amused to see that even the vampire mage was disturbed and intimidated by the undead cthillians’ presence. The Eeii simply weren’t in the same league as the rest of them, the wizard rak realised. Their power and their evil were so great that even raks and vampire mages could legitimately be afraid of them.

     For a moment, he wondered how old the undead cthillians were. Their bleached and bloated bodies, so full of putrefaction that they squelched sickeningly with every step they took, had the look of a corpse that had been lying in a shallow swamp for a week, but Tragius knew that the Eeii were frozen in that condition, the process of putrefaction halted forever at that point, so there was no way of telling whether they’d been undead for weeks or centuries. There was even a possibility that they’d been undead before the first slavers came to Tharia all those centuries before.

     Had those undead eyes once gazed upon the alien landscapes of Cthill itself? wondered the wizard rak in awe. According to the University archives, no Eeii had ever been known to be permanently destroyed, so any Eeii that had come to Tharia with the cthillian expeditionary force would almost certainly still be ‘alive’, and wouldn’t the brainpools send their most powerful servants to attack this threat to the cthillian race? The mere possibility numbed Tragius’s mind, and he gazed at the ancient, inhuman beings with renewed fear and respect.

     “Very good,” repeated the vampire mage, making a visible effort to regain his composure. “The Eeii will attack the Circle of Raks, the Samnians will attack the Shadowbeast and the wizards will find and dismantle the Puncturium. The rest of us will spearhead the attack, engaging the palace’s other occupants and preventing them from interfering with the first three groups. Our job will be to secure the palace and then hold it when every undead being in Arnor throws itself at us. Does anyone have any problem with this plan?”

     “Sounds good to me,” said Fangrap, grinning so widely that his entire jawbone was exposed and his fiery eyes blazed like furnaces. “Let’s get going before Skorvos gets fed up waiting and blasts the lot of us.”

     He gestured to Tragius, who nodded and raised his wand again.