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inn.
    It killed one of the Hand and tore a dozen of the risen into rotting shreds—not that they seemed to care. The death of the sorcerer-priest engulfed his familiar Storm, causing a great roar of thunder to shake the inn as the heavens mourned one of their own. Though I couldn’t see it, I knew that the clouds would already be forming overhead—a harbinger of the wind and rain to come.
    The Signet drew a pair of short, leather-bound rods from her belt, like a pair of truncated axe handles. Crossing them in front of her face, she snapped them down and out in the manner of twinned whips. Bright coils of lightning lashed outward, crisping the entire front row of the oncominghorde, but more of the dead quickly flowed in behind. She struck again and again, but the risen kept coming. I moved to one side to intercept a couple that had slipped around the edge of the zone of death described by her lightning whips.
    She was one of the most accomplished magical warriors I’d ever seen, but even with me guarding her blinds, the dead forced us back, and back again, until we were wedged into one corner of the long common room. That uncovered the base of the spiral stairs that led to the apartments above, and more of the risen swarmed upward. I hadn’t the time or breathing space for more than a passing worry about what that might mean for Faran and Siri.
    Periodically, the engine hurling stones from outside would fling another through the inn. Mostly they killed the restless dead, but I had just beheaded another—the surest way to make this their last rising—when a lucky shot turned the Signet’s legs into a mass of pulped flesh and shattered bone. She fell at my feet and faceup, her eyes somehow seeming to pierce the shadow that hid me from my foes.
    “You must end Corik. He profanes the world by his very existence.” She coughed then, and red bloomed on her lips. “Do what I could not,” she whispered, and was gone. Thunder boomed again and again and again, as a mighty wind hammered the inn.
    Though I had only just met Toragana, I felt her passing with a sharp pain—mourning the friendship that might have come with time. I wanted to stay and make those who had killed her pay, but she was right. The risen might fall here like autumn leaves before a northern wind, but there was no end to them, and they seemed to care nothing for the final death. If I remained longer I would die as surely as the Signet had.
    A glance around the room reinforced the futility of our situation. All but one of the Hand were dead or taken, as were the inn’s staff. I couldn’t speak to Kelos, nor Siri and Faran for that matter—if they’d even come down to join the fight here instead of meeting the dead above. I couldn’t see any of them—though that would be as true if they weresimply shrouded as it would if they’d fallen under the seething horde of the dead. The building itself stood on the brink of collapse after all the rocks that had ripped their way through its walls. The growing storm was already causing it to creak and sway. When it fell it would bring ruin to any who remained within.
    By dint of a very controlled sort of manic flailing I cleared a brief hole in the fighting and sent up a shock of magic. Pink and orange—invisible to the mortal eye, but a bright burst for those with magesight—the colors my order traditionally used to signal one another. The flare formed itself into a blazing arrow pointing toward the side of the inn that faced the wall and the Sylvain, slipped through a hole, and then shot away, paralleling the magical wall’s top in the direction of the sea. I hoped that my companions would see it, but I couldn’t wait around to find out. I cut my way to the nearest window and vaulted through, dropping toward the wall below.
    The risen were thinner here, but still present in great numbers, so it was more luck than skill that allowed me to land in a clear space. Even through the pounding rain I could see that