Temple Hill (31 page)

Cloaked in his powerful spell of invisibility, the wizard roamed the battlefield at will. Jets of flame fanned out from his fingers, incinerating one of Xiliath’s guards. Bolts of lightning erupted from his fists, striking his nearest foe, then arcing from the frying corpse to the unfortunate man beside the first victim. The lightning continued jumping down the line from target to target, leaving smoldering husks in its wake as it continued its deadly chain. Half a dozen of Xiliath’s men were electrocuted by the spell, but Azlar didn’t even notice. He had already moved on, forgetting in the heat of the moment that he was no longer shielded by his spell.

He hurled glowing orbs of pure energy into the fray, stunning some of Xiliath’s soldiers so they could be easily hacked down by the cultists. Others were melted by burning acid or caught in deadly clouds of poisonous gas. A few of his own men went down as well, screaming as they died from the effects of Azlar’s magic—expendable sacrifices in the greater cause.

In a matter of minutes, the wizard had wrought utter havoc on his enemies. Their casualties would have broken the morale of lesser soldiers. Grudgingly, Azlar had to admit that Xiliath’s men were at least the equals of his own troops, though the cultists now had a distinct numerical superiority.

Azlar was toying with his foes now. He followed the progress of one soldier through the melee, preparing to unleash a spell that would bring about a gruesome, horrible death on the hapless man.

The mage carefully tracked the fighter as he sprinted across the cavern floor, making his way toward an unsuspecting foe. Azlar raised his still hands in the air and

began the incantation to seal the man’s fate, but when the intended victim suddenly tinned to stone, Azlar’s concentration was broken.

Casually, Azlar turned to the corner where the medusa had fallen. The creature was up now, her deadly face unveiled for all to see. Her serpentine tresses writhed in furious outrage, striking and snapping at the air in their desperate hunger for vengeance.

Azlar had taken precautions before this expedition to recover his stolen package. He had cast a spell before setting out. He had nothing to fear from the medusa’s gaze. His men, however, were not immune to the effects, and neither was the army opposing them.

Statues began to crop up among the soldiers with alarming speed, and the common threat to both sides quickly became obvious. But neither force panicked— they were too well trained, too fanatical in their loyalty to their respective masters. Until the order to retreat was given, these warriors would remain at each other’s throats, their relentless hatred matched only by their armed counterparts on the other side.

Azlar made no attempt to halt the medusa’s progress. He didn’t want to risk damaging her with a spell, and for all he cared she could turn every other living thing in the room to stone. All he had to do was stay beyond the reach of the vipers on her head, and he had nothing to fear. Once Xiliath’s old mage finally died or the spell protecting him wore off, Azlar would take the ring and regain control of the assassin he had worked so hard to acquire and smuggle into the city.

Until that time, he thought, he would stay still and quiet, protected from sight by his invisibility, and watch his creature at work. Except he could now see his hands. His ^visibility was gone, and Azlar had to find cover. Azlar let his eyes drift, taking in the details of the chamber he

had failed to notice before. The huge cache of weapons in the southwest corner. The chunks of ice and snow scattered about the room, melting remnants of a spell cast over the melee earlier in the battle. And in the far corner of the room, unguarded and almost unnoticeable, a secret door in the floor.

Had Azlar known about this entrance before, he would not have wasted his energies tunneling through the earth to reach this chamber. Curious, the mage approached the secret door. It was closed, but Azlar could see no handle or chain. Obviously it could only be opened from beneath. There was something else. A faint sound from under the earth, a dull roar coming from beneath the heavy door. The sound was getting closer. Azlar took several cautious steps back.

The door flew open, nearly bursting from its binges as the monster exploded up from the sub-tunnel below, erupting through the cavern floor to hover high above the soldiers still waging war on each other. Azlar fell to the ground, numb with terror at the apparition before him.

For a second the intruder loomed above the battlefield in all its terrible glory, a creature of pure evil, a legendary denizen of the fabled Underdark, the sphere of many eyes, the great eye tyrants—a beholder.

Its gigantic, spherical body pulsed with power and all-consuming rage, levitating high above the chamber floor. The numerous eyestalks atop its head flailed about, looking in a dozen directions at once. The great central eye darted from side to side, taking in the entire scene. Azlar realized the awful truth. Xiliath had come.

Without a warning, without a word, Xiliath, unleashed his wrath on the battle. A magical fear descended on the combatants, creating terror among friend and foe alike. The steadfast discipline of the two armies, their unshakable morale, broke like a dam before the flood as a wave

of panic washed over the assembled troops. Soldiers from both sides threw down their weapons and ran screaming from the cavern, completely oblivious to anything other than the unimaginable levitating horror that had emerged from beneath the cavern floor.

As the men scattered like insects under an angry boot, the eyestalks atop Xiliath’s body unleashed their rays of destruction, choosing targets without any regard to allegiance or loyalty. Those struck by the rays rarely survived. Some collapsed into a comatose sleep, trampled under the feet of the fleeing mob. Others were hurled through the air by unseen forces and smashed against the cavern walls, their limbs twisted and shattered. A few were transformed to stone, adding to the medusa’s own collection of statues. Many died instantly, their hearts bursting inside their armored chests when touched by the deadly bolts. Most were simply obliterated, reduced to tiny piles of ash before they could even scream.

Azlar cowered back into the shadows of the chamber walls, no longer able to hide behind his magical invisibility. Xiliath turned his attention to the medusa, who was too involved in her own rampage of destruction to have noticed Xiliath’s entrance.

Xiliath focused a single eyestalk on the medusa’s form, and Azlar saw her body stiffen. She spun around, clutching at her serpentine locks with her hands, oblivious to the snakes’ agonized writhing as they snapped and bit at her hands. Protected by his own incantations, Azlar was able to stare directly into her tortured eyes. He recognized what he saw. A battle of wills was being waged inside the medusa’s skull. Xiliath was trying to dominate her mind with the power of his magical eye.

“No!” she screamed, snapping her head back as if it had been struck. The glazed look receded from her eyes,

leaving only a blazing anger. “Not again! I will not be your slave anymore!”

“Xiliath!” she screamed, the identity of the fearsome monster as obvious to her as it had been to Azlar mere moments before. “You shall pay for my suffering!”

The beholder’s unflinching central eye met the gaze of the snake-haired woman. Xiliath stared directly into those flashing eyes that meant a stony fate worse than death for most mortal creatures, and to Azlar’s amazement, nothing happened.

A look of surprise and then understanding flickered across the medusa’s beautiful features. Her serpentine locks hissed in anger, but she refused to flee. She bent down and scooped up a long spear from where one of the panicked soldiers had dropped it on the floor. With sin-prising strength, she hurled the weapon across the cavern at the hovering sphere.

The weapon bounced harmlessly off Xiliath’s leathery bide.

From the cover of the shadows, Azlar watched as the beholder slowly advanced on the medusa. Again and again, she took up weapons from the floor and threw them at the monster, trying vainly to halt his methodical, relentless advance. Her desperate throws were hurried and wild, most far from their mark. Those that struck Xiliath’s hide bounced harmlessly away. A single shaft punctured the large central eye of the beast, sinking deep into the pale flesh of the orb. The beholder merely shook the weapon free and let it fall to the ground below, seemingly oblivious to the effects.

Finally, the medusa’s courage broke. She turned to run, but a beam from one of the eyestalks atop Xiliath’s head struck her between the shoulder blades, slamming her to the floor. A second beam engulfed her, and the writhing snakes atop the medusa’s head began to smolder and burn, their agonized, hissing screams drowned out by the sizzle and pop of the snakes’ own boiling blood.

Somehow, the medusa clambered to her feet, but Xiliath was right on top of her now. She dropped to her knees, the steaming blood of the snakes on her head dripping down to cover her face with dark, crimson streaks. Cowering before the beholder, the medusa clasped her hands together, begging for mercy. A single thin ray arced down from above, striking the medusa flush in the chest.

Azlar was unable to pull himself away from the scene, captivated by the terrible power of the eye tyrant’s mere presence, fascinated by the vicious slaughter Xiliath had unleashed. The medusa’s shriek cut through the air, piercing Azlar’s eardrums. She dissolved in an explosion of light that seared Azlar’s eyes—though the wizard still refused to look away.

Then the medusa was gone. Where she stood was only a smoking crater and a small pile of dust.

The graphic reality of the medusa’s death snapped Azlar back to his senses. The wizard knew he had to escape the chamber. Xiliath would spare no one—even his own men would perish for having learned the secret of his true identity. Most of the panicked soldiers ran in confused circles around the room, their terror so great they were unable to even form cogent thoughts of escape. The beholder ignored these for the time being, Azlar noticed. The monster was focused on those still sane enough to try to flee the cavern.

Several of the terror-stricken soldiers disappeared through the passage Azlar himself had torn into the treasure vault’s wall, seeking an escape through the ancient smugglers’ tunnels. The mage knew few, if any, would ever see the surface. Those who avoided the countless traps still active from the long-vanished underground criminal empire would become victims of the

gruesome monsters that had taken over the tunnels when the smugglers had left.

Xiliath turned to focus another barrage of death on the medusa, and Azlar allowed a tiny seed of hope to be cultivated in his mind. The door to the secret entrance Xiliath had used to enter the chamber was still open. The tunnel beneath, Azlar knew, would eventually lead him to the surface.

The young mage emerged from his hiding place in the shadows and sprinted across the chamber toward the door. Just as he reached his escape route a beam from one of Xiliath’s eyestalks slammed the door to the sub-tunnel shut. The door locked with an audible click, trapping Azlar within the cavern.

The wizard spun to face the creature now bearing down on him. Another beam from one of Xiliath’s small eyes struck Azlar, and the wizard felt his limbs grow heavy and ponderous. He tried to turn and run, but every movement was agonizingly slow and labored. His feet felt too heavy for his legs.

He glanced back to see the beholder floating toward him, an evil chuckle rumbling out from the gaping row of teeth at the bottom of Xiliath’s spherical body. The beast did not move exceptionally fast, but Azlar knew his own magically hampered movements prevented any hope of escape through flight.

In desperation, Azlar began to cast a spell to save himself, the incantation taking far longer than normal. The arcane words came in a sluggish drawl, the somatic gestures were performed in a deliberate, measured pantomime of true spellcasting. Yet such was Azlar’s power that the spell still managed to function. A shield of flame encircled him. It was similar to the one Xiliath’s now-deceased mage had cast, though Azlar’s protective fire was red, not blue.

From Xiliath’s central eye a cone of energy rippled the air, engulfing Azlar and instantly snuffing out his protective shell, leaving him completely defenseless.

Azlar’s shrieks echoed throughout the cavern as Xiliath bit deep into his shoulder and tore away a chunk of flesh. The screams became muffled as the beholder’s maw descended to engulf the wizard’s head and torso. Xiliath’s jaws bit down, severing Azlar’s body in two just below his ribs, and the voice of the Dragon Cult’s rising star was stilled forever.

Fendel moved surprisingly fast for such a small, wrinkled gnome. Lhasha easily matched his pace, her lithe form bounding over the stones in soft, light steps, but Corin fell steadily behind. In part, he was burdened by the swords he carried in each hand. There was something else. He wasn’t used to fleeing a battle. It went against all his training, everything he had ever practiced, everything he stood for as a White Shield and a warrior. Part of him resisted his own efforts to escape.

In the short time it took the group to cross the room and reach the arch of the cultists’ passage, the warrior was already several paces behind his companions. As Corin entered the magically formed tunnel, soldiers darted past him on either side. He slashed out with his weapons without even thinking, his instincts for killing taking over. He hewed one man down with a single, fatal blow to the back and crippled the other with a hack to the leg, hamstringing the man.

It was only after his opponents fell to the floor that Corin realized they weren’t attacking him. They weren’t even armed. They had been fleeing the battle, running from whatever it was that had put Fendel to flight.

He passed or was passed by many more fleeing cultists as he ran, and he even noticed a few soldiers he suspected were Xiliath’s own men running in terror from the unknown horror back in the treasure chamber. Corin no longer swung his swords at the defenseless men, though the pair of naked blades were still clenched in his grasp. The panic of the other soldiers had finally helped the White Shield realize that the time for killing was over. Escape and survival were his only goals now.