Feather Fall because if the statue breaks he'll respawn. One of the Dominated enemies should go shrink him and bring him to her, please. Flesh to Stone, Dominate Monster, and then the spells aren't threnodic any more and she's back to Plane Shift, Plane Shift -

Iomedae is out of healing and the next time the terrible graveknight's axe strikes true she's down and doesn't get back up -

Then she'll Plane Shift him too, though as a wizard rather than as an astral deva because her wizard spells are stronger -

His profane armor grants him immunity to the arcane power of nearly every wizard alive.

Whether or not Arazni is alive is sort of complicated, isn't it? He pops out of existence.

Heal.

This is not the first time Iomedae has felt a blade cleave through her chest and consciousness fade and then found herself lying on the ground in perfect health. She stands -

"With me." She takes her hand and Dimension Doors -

Arazni's still invisible but Iomedae isn't, and also didn't Teleport herself here. He blinks. 

"They've moved on Canorate." And she will take his hand, too, and Teleport again to drop them in the middle of that.

For the past two years, Canorate has not been under siege.

No, really, it hasn't. When a city is under siege, the besieging army marches up to the city, banners flying; out of bowshot range they dig a trench and with the earth from that build an earth wall all around the city, to cut off all reinforcement. They send someone under a white flag to demand the city's surrender, and the city's defender formally rejects this demand. 

Then the siege properly starts. All supplies of food from outside the city are cut off; any rivers that go under the city's walls are dammed. Engines of war throw incendiaries over the city walls, and wizards drop them from above bowshot range. There are constant raids by both sides where they try to catch the other side napping, the attackers trying to get a gate open and the defenders to burn the supplies and equipment of the attackers. The besiegers have earth elementals dig tunnels under the city walls and then send in sappers to hack away at the walls of iron embedded underground to make the trick a little difficult, and then the defenders send their own elementals in to collapse the tunnels before they get anywhere. Every day the defenders cast Auguries or even Communes to determine if the attack will come today or if they can have their clerics spend their precious spells on Create Food and their wizards on teleporting bags of holding full of food in, and occasionally these wizards will be attacked by swift and overwhelming force at one end of the teleport routes, but not, like, often.

And, of course, every once in a while the attackers will try a sudden rush on one of the gates backed by archers, or Disintegrate a hole in the wall and have troops ready to rush through, and then there will be a battle at that chokepoint and that battle the defenders will almost always win.

Canorate, meanwhile, has had none of those things happening. It's just that, through some odd coincidence, any time anyone gets out of bowshot range of the city without an army backing them up they will probably be attacked and murdered by orcish marauders. All the peasants who didn't die have given up and abandoned the land and fled into Canorate or further south and east into Menador or Isger or Druma, and as a result of that the ability to replenish the city's food supplies are almost as limited as if the city was under conventional siege.

It is, therefore, a new and startling thing that greets Canorate, at the moment that Arazni, Arnisant and Iomedae arrive.

Canorate is a city built on the south side of the Nosam river, where the Maw river flows into it to form a sort of inverted V shape, forming the north, east and west sides of the peninsula Canorate sits on. A land wall runs across the southern edge of the city, dotted with towers, with a much lower sea wall guarding against landings. It's not much of a city by the standards of a provincial capital - ten thousand citizens under good conditions, which these aren't; both rivers are unbridged, and only ferries connect it to the now-abandoned suburbs across the river and the fort on Tower Island. The ferry-boats are, of course, drawn up at the shipyards under the protection of a few towers with ballistae in them and the river-galleys that didn't disappear up- or down- river hunting orc boats. Its eyes, therefore, are the small forts across the rivers and the great towers on the southern wall, and what can be seen from these eyes is not something that was seen before.

It is an orcish army, fully deployed for the field. A very, very large orcish army. The clan standards for the Black Claws and the Tuskmen and the Boar Brothers, Death's Heads and Axebreakers can all be seen and a dozen more swarm forwards, a black sea that swarms forwards slowly their drummers beating the call to action, pipers playing wildly, chieftains gesturing and making speeches to their followers, their great war machines - towers and catapults and rams, shielded by the distance but getting closer. Once the orcs of the north hated each other, once they were an eternal war that meant that nobody south of Ustalav had to care about them, but now they are unified and now they have a tremendous host, and with them swarm the dead who push their engines forward.

This is of interest because four hours ago nobody had any idea where the orcs were, other than "wherever they feel like, apparently." Also because it can is impossible to make siege weapons appear out of nowhere and very, very difficult to conceal them from capable and energetic scouts.

So you kill all the capable and energetic scouts first. Fool.

(The governor of the southern half of Molthune province, incidentally also the once and future godsdamnit Emperor of Taldor, is possessing an orc, invisible, flying, in midair, Mind Blanked, has a contingency active, and is surrounded by invisible flying bodyguards with life sense, a superhuman sense of smell, or in one case magic armor found in an ancient tomb that grants the wielder the power to see without sight so long as he has no eyes. This is how you get to try to conquer the Taldane empire multiple times.)

Arazni's dropped them on the walls. He has a good view; he takes it in. 

So they are outnumbered, at least four to one, and there will be traitors within the city just like there were in the First Army, already trying to throw open the gates, and undead who can scale the walls with no effort. It would be hopeless, but for the fact that no righteous cause is hopeless.

"Can we tell the men you're here."

"Oh, I'll tell them."

The commander of the wall, who cannot see Arnisant's invisible flying mind blanked ride but would not be surprised to hear he had one, is glad to see that Arnisant's back! He'll salute until it's returned or dismissed, and then - "Welcome back, general! Didn't realize the Sending had finished -" he'll send a runner to alert his superiors before going back to explaining the situation! There's the obvious orcs out there, and then you can see (if you're a master archer) that another tribe, the Hollow Orcs, are crossing outside bowshot range on their little hide boats (the warden of the river wants to go smash them with his ships, but the lieutenant-general* said no), and the signal fire on Tower Island has been lit to warn of some situation there, though they don't know what. Any other crises nobody has told the commander of the wall about.

(*: We are well aware that the meaning of this, in modern English, has metamorphosed to be quite different from how we are using it here. Nonetheless it is an etymological fact that lieutenant-general comes from the term "the general's lieutenant," just as general comes from captain-general, "the overall captain." If modern English disagrees I wish to suggest, first, that this is a loose translation from elaborate Taldane structures of rank from which you should all be grateful for my saving you, and second, that my version makes more sense.)

"Oppara has sent us the forces to hold the city and do much more than that," he says. "Where will I find Palaiologos? - Knight-Commander, the gates."

Each of which have a couple of her people assigned to them because the paladins are the only ones who definitely will not betray them to the enemy. There is no question that the city is full of traitors, and no realistic prospect of being rid of them, but you can ensure that at no gate will they be uncontested. "Yes, sir."

And some of them have already Dominated or stabbed their assigned paladins but she knows which ones. Probably. You can't do this many operations and be perfectly confident in Foresight, and right now the immediate future is a blurry smear of possibilities because Tar-Baphon might try to respond to her being here (but probably will instead go hide until he's immune to every method he knows for her to destroy him).

"Southern gates," she tells Iomedae.

Okay, there first.

Outside bowshot range is generally also outside Fireball range, because bows actually have better range than Fireballs. But it depends a bit on who's casting the fireballs. How distant are these boats?

Two, three miles? If you aren't Arazni you have to be a master archer to spot them.

That is in fact at the edge of the range where she's using her ordinary senses located in her body more than her god-senses which are not. She thinks the boats are...not that important, and the fireballs should wait until the siege weapons are in range.

That means she has about ten minutes free to go talk to the Emperor of Taldor. 

Aroden's Magic Army. Teleport.