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Einvar fights like a tempest; fierce and unrelenting. He kicks the first undead—the creature that was once Valdon Duthriss—in the stomach, sending him staggering backwards. Then he swings his blade and lops off the other one’s leg.
The undead figure—that poor, wretched embalmer—loses its balance and crashes to the floor, sword clattering away.
To my horror, it starts to crawl, leaving its severed limb behind.
“Take off the head!” I shout. “That’s how you kill them. You must cut off the head!”
But Einvar suddenly has his hands full with the other one. The once-emperor of Rahava is nothing but an empty husk, filled with the malevolent will of a master manipulator.
He’s caught up in a flurry of vicious sword blows, and he appears to be losing ground.
Meanwhile, the crawling undead has reached the gardens.
“I’ll take care of it, my lady,” Kharuk growls. “Stay there. Don’t move.”
Believe me, I wish I could.
Why, oh why, is this feeling of dancing lightning spreading through my body? Why do my fingers tingle? My mind feels detached from my body… as if I’m both inside it and outside it at the same time.
And there’s that tightness in my chest again; that pressure, growing so intense I can barely breathe.
And the world moves both fast and slow. I can see everything in vivid detail, right down to the fine hairs on the back of Kharuk’s neck as he walks toward the undead creature, his blade raised. I see moonlight gleaming on cold steel. I see the tremor in the guard’s powerful arm.
I smell the sweet fragrance of the winterlilies, a dozen times more potent at night.
Kharuk’s blade falls. Einvar’s attack falters. He’s being pressed back. The emperor has been transformed into a glowing-eyed demon.
It’s impossible, how thatthingcan move so fast.
At this rate, Einvar will fail. He’s a formidable warrior, but he’s only mortal.
Kharuk goes for the neck, just like I told him to.
But the crawling undead creature moves unnaturally fast, evading the blade. The silks covering its hair come undone, revealing a shock of russet curls, a reminder that this body was once human.
It launches itself at the guard. Kharuk throws his blade, piercing the undead’s chest.
The creature falls, impaled by four feet of cold steel.
For a moment, it’s perfectly still.
But then it rises to its knees; teeth bared, eyes glowing lurid green. It curls up like a spring, body becoming taut. It’s going to strike again.
Kharuk has no blade. Said blade is still protruding from the undead’s chest.
But he doesn’t back away.
He’s going to defend me with his bare hands. This brave, loyal man.
I don’t want him to die. I don’t want Einvar to die either, but even though he’s fighting valiantly, he’s starting to tire.
He’s wounded. Blood drips from his right arm; his sword-arm.
I look around wildly, searching for something I can use. I rack my brain, trying to remember all the infuriating little snippets of knowledge I’ve gleaned from the books. I try to recallEulisyn’sbrief conversation with me.
But there’s nothing.
The undead moves as fast as an arrow through the garden, leaping off one foot, becoming a blur as it spins around, and now its back is to Kharuk and it’s flying toward him with the pointy end of the sword extendingoutof its back, thrusting toward the guard.
