The Howling Delve (29 page)

Garavin snagged his maul and the flail before they fell, turning with both weapons to the second man on the rocks.

He brought the maul around as the man swung an axe blade in a reverse chop aimed at Garavin’s chin. The dwarf blocked the b)ow, but the weight of both weapons was too great, and the impact of the axe dtove him back hard. He skirted the lip of the chasm. The axeman lunged forward to try to force him the rest of the way into the pit.

A blast of hot ait caught the dwarf from behind, pushing him forward. He smashed the maul through the axeman, clipping his opponent in the ribs. Bones cracked audibly, and the man fell back. Gatavin thtew a quick salute skywatd, where Meisha hovered above his head.

The cavern’s ceiling was alive with aerial battle. Dantane and Meisha flew around each other, using stalactites for cover as they engaged the Shadow Thief wizard and his two protectors—a younger man and woman who appeared to be apprentices. Theit hands moved in frantic, mimicking circles, weaving spell-shields for their master.

Meisha hurled her last two stilettos. The blades caught fire as they spun through the ait. One burning missile caught the woman in the thigh, forcing her to break rhythm to put out the flames licking her robes.

“Dantane!” Meisha cried., but the wizard was already casting. With one palm atop the other, his ringers flush in a rough X shape, Dantane yelled, “Krevatcya, dannan shoe!”

The woman let out a desperate shout, but she couldn’t get the spell out in time. A ball of black energy formed under Dantane’s hands and streaked down to hit the other wizard in the chest, ruining whatever spell he’d been preparing. Instead of dissipating, the black energy mass crawled along his skin, trailing electrical sparks that singed his robes. The wizard tried to claw the ball off, gasping when his hands met a jolt of painful electricity.

Meisha spared Dantane a glance, but the wizard wasn’t looking at het. He’d paused to witness the effects of his own spell. The black energy sizzled along the wizard’s flesh. Dantane seemed detached, analytical as he watched it.

Thumb-sized teardrops of flame appeared, one above each of the fingers of Meisha’s open palm. She murmured an incantation, and the flames began to spin in a circle like tiny stars. They shot across the cavern, peppering the wizard’s apprentices with tiny firebursts. Protection spells flickered and peeled away as the wizard continued to grapple with the dark, killing energy.

Meisha grabbed the stalactite for leverage and swung around the base. She started to drop down and felt a painful coldness shoot up her leg. Whirling, putting her back to the stalactite, Meisha saw another thief crawling along the walls, his hands and feet covered with the same sticky climbing aid Talal had taken from the halfling. He held a barbed whip in one hand and a blade between his teeth.

Meisha put a hand over her thigh where the whip had ripped away cloth and flesh above her boot’s cuff. She was in the crossfire of the wizard and the whip-wielder now, and the man’s whip obviously bore some type of enchantment, for her leg was rapidly going numb with the cold.

She looked below. Morgan was nearest, but he bled liberally from a gash across his eyebrow. He ran below her to aid Garavin.

Her mind worked rapidly. Meisha pointed at the man on the wall, holding her arm out almost perpendicular to her body, affording him an easy target. He took the bait.

The whip snapped out, circling her arm, driving its barbs in deep. Cold spasms shot up to her elbow. Meisha clenched her teeth against the pain and called the fire. She prayed it would be enough to siphon off the cold. She pictured the whip in het mind—the shape, the coil of tope and spines when it lay at rest, then up, into human hands, ready to strike, to steal her life-force…

Fire filled her veins, coiled out from her trembling finger. She sent a jet spiraling along the whip’s length, all the way up the thief s arms. The fire whip slashed across his face, leaving a red line between his nose and his ear.

The man shrieked and raised his hands to his face. His grip on the ceiling faltered, and he fell to dangle above the tumult by his legs.

Meisha did not linger to see if he would drop. Her arm fell uselessly to her side, aching with the pressure of a thousand needles. She pushed off the stalactite with her good leg and flew to a corner, putting her back to the wall for some cover.

The battle below was growing more and more desperate. For all their skill, they were outnumbered. Where was Dantane?

Then Meisha saw him, flying up from the ground. He intercepted a stream of missiles from the wizard, who’d managed to rid himself of the black energy but not its effects. The electtical ball had burned his robes away at the chest, exposing singed hair and blistered skin. His face ttembled with rage. Dantane smiled and cast another spell.

“Dantane!” she cried.

“Are you all right?” the wizatd asked when he flew up to join her. He came in at an angle to examine her leg.

“Forget it,” said Meisha. “The arm’s worse. I can’t cast, not for a while.”

“We don’t have that long,” Dantane teplied. He rummaged in a pocket of his robes.

“We’re not going to make it.” Meisha leaned her head back against the wall. She was sweating. So hot….

Dantane pressed a vial between her limp fingers. “Drink this. Stay here,” he said. “I’ll get to Kail.”

Meisha started to ask what that would serve, but she saw something across the cavern that stole the breath from her body.

Talal, clutching one of her boot daggers—she hadn’t even known it was missing—was sneaking up behind one of the men fighting with Laerin. The half-elf saw the boy in time to check his own swing, a blow that would have cleaved through his opponenr’s skull and likely taken Talal’s head as well.

“Fool,” Meisha whispered, a sob in her throat.

White-faced and shaking, the boy reared back and stabbed the Shadow Thief. The boy wasn’t strong, but he had four years of pent-up hatred and grief driving the blow. Meisha didn’t see where the blade penetrated, but the man stiffened. Blood trailed from the corner of his mouth. Laerin danced to the side to avoid being borne to the floor with the body. He was just in time to catch Talal as he, too, pitched forward unsteadily. Laerin pushed the boy behind him.

Across the cavern, Kali saw Dantane flying toward him. He pulled his blade out of a Shadow Thief and moved to meet him, but another figure rose up in the wizard’s path. Kali stepped aside, expecting Dantane to hurl a spell at the fool. Then he saw the tattered robes, the wild hair….

“Varan!” he heard Meisha shout, but the din of battle reduced her cry to nothing.

Dantane saw the wizard too late. He tried to pull up, but flew straight into an invisible wall. The impact sent him reeling backward. He lost control of the flight spell and fell to the cavern floor at Varan’s feet.

The fire beast howled in triumph. In his mind’s eye, he forced the wizard to crawl to the man lying prone on the ground.

Bring them, the beast thought. He bore down on the link between his mind and the wizard’s, pressing mental tongues of flame against Varan’s will. He enjoyed reducing the wizard to little more than a dog, herding his prey to exactly whete he wanted them.

Embrace our bond, the beast cooed, and heard the silent screams of the wizard ttying to resist the mental command. Join me, and witness power unimaginable. I know your thoughts. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? Who would deny such a dream?

The wizard sobbed pitifully, and the beast reached out to stroke him again with fire and claws. He gloried in the ensuing screams, as the wizard went to catry out the beast’s will.

Kail broke into a run, heedless of the danger. Cold dread welled up inside him. He swept aside a blade that came at his flank and kept going. He was almost to Dantane when pain exploded in the back of his neck.

Kali went down in a protective crouch. He swung around and saw the halfling reloading his sling. Aazen motioned the halfling back and stepped to block Kail’s path. Behind him, Varan rolled Dantane’s unconscious body over, feeling inside the wizard’s robes. He removed the pottal key and turned. Kail saw his face clearly for the first time.

Vatan looked terrified.

Kali sprang up. He raised his weapon to cut a path, but Aazen was there, his blade ringing off Kail’s enchanted sword. “I need him alive,” Aazen said, shoving Kail back.

“He’ll kill us all!” Kali swung the blade high, angling it at his best friend’s head. He did it without thinking, putting killing force behind the blow.

Aazen ducked, maneuvering to attack from Kail’s wounded side. Kail twisted and blocked, but was forced to tetreat a step away from Varan.

“That’s it, Kail,” said Aazen, stalking forward, inviting Kali to continue his attack. “This is exactly how I need you to be.”

Kali swung again, bewildeted. Had Aazen gone mad as well? “Meisha!” he shouted. If she could get Varan’s attention, get through to him, they might have a chance.

Varan took the key and crawled to the dark pit. Tears streamed from his good eye, and he clutched the empty socket, making pitiful mewling noises as he moved.

“Please, don’t!” Varan cried as he approached the edge of the chasm. He stared down into the. dark, his terror magnified by whatever he saw. “Don’t make me!” He grabbed the pouch at his neck, as if to tear it away. His hands locked into claws around the bag, and he screamed. With a violent motion, he reached inside the pouch and pulled out something small and black. Fumbling, he pressed the object against his empty socket.

It was an eye, Kail realized, but it was no human orb.

Black, with thteady gray veins bulging from the sides, the eye was too large for the space Varan intended. Kali watched, sickened, as the wizard forced the otgan into place with a howl of agony.

Varan lifted the stolen portal key in his other hand and slammed it down against the rocks. Words of power, dredged up from some unwilling place deep inside him, spilled out into the darkness.

The cavern began to shake in great, wracking tremors. Light flared, a halo that burst from the chasm, momentarily blinding everyone in the cavern. Meisha tried to fly, but a falling stalactite struck her out of the air. The blow knocked her senseless. She dropped, straight toward the pit.

Kail saw her fall, saw her body disappear into the green light. He cried out in wordless grief that manifested in a jarring blow against Aazen’s sword.

She was gone, Kali thought. He hadn’t been able to save her a fret all.

Grief melted into rage. Kail batted aside Aazen’s unresisting

blade and knocked him to the floor. Fot a moment, he fought the urge to keep going, to run his blade through Aazen’s heart. “Kali!” Morgan cried.

Chest heaving, Kail tote himself away from his friend’s prone body and ran for the chasm. The cavetn was still shuddering. The tremors seemed to come from deep below ground. More stalactites and rock shook free of the ceiling and dropped in a deadly rain. He dodged a spear that plunged to the floor where he and Aazen had just been fighting. Aazen had gotten to his feet and was looking to his own remaining men, issuing commands Kail could not hear over the rumbling.

Kail made it to Dantane. He hauled the wizard up into a sitting position. Varan had collapsed on the stones.

Dantane opened his eyes. They widened—he grabbed Kail by his uninjured forearm. ” ‘Ware!” he cried.

Kail reversed his blade, stabbing backward blindly, but Garavin was already there, using his maul to pluck a Shadow Thief off his feet like a rag doll.

“We have to go!” the dwarf shouted over the rumbling. “The place’ll come down on out heads.”

“Tunnel’s blocked!” called Laerin from the far side of the cavern. He held Morgan by one shoulder, Talal the other. They limped across the room to join the group. The Shadow Thieves’ left alive had ceased their attacks in light of the greater danger. “It’ll take a while to cleat it.”

“We don’t have any time,” said Kail.

“It’s anothet portal,” Dantane said, pointing to the glowing gteen halo, which had fotmed over the chasm tathei than the shaft above. “The wizard wanted someone to go through it.”

“Like Hells,” said Morgan. “I say we go back through the shaft—take our chances with the Shadow Thieves.”

Kail stated down the chasm. “Meisha’s down there,” he said. “She may still be alive. The test of you use the key to activate the othet portal once I’m gone, but I’m going through this one.”

Garavin called Borl to his side. “I’ll take my chances with ye,” he said simply.

“As will I,” said Laerin.

Morgan spat. “Don’t be believing him!” he said. “He’s just doin’ it to make me look bad.” He faced the portal reluctantly. “Let’s go then, if we’te goin’.”

Kali helped Dantane to his feet. One by one, they stepped off the stones, into the green light, until only he and the wizard remained.

“What about him?” asked Dantane.

Kali knew he meant Varan, but Kali stared across the room at Aazen. He’d gathered his remaining forces under a protected shelf of rock near the blocked tunnel, but even that meager cover was cracking, coming apart like the rest of the cavern.

“He’s on his own,” said Kali. “So are you, Dantane, if you leave now.”

The wizard shook his head. “I haven’t gotten my reward yet. I go with you.”

“Suit youtself.” They stepped off the edge, into nothingness.

Keczulla, Amn

5Marpenoth, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

Balram stepped into Morels main hall. He felt as if time had teversed itself. Suddenly he was back in Esmeltaran, his men at his side, seeking Morel’s death.

But the setting had changed, and it wasn’t Morel or his son who faced him from the top of the ballroom staircase. A woman stood there, wrapped in a hooded cloak, her face painted in forest colors. A long spear rested comfortably in the crook of her right arm. She looked like a savage carved from stone—beautiful and cold—staring at him as if she craved his death.

“Lady Morel.” He bowed in greeting, allowing his men to fan out across the hall. If she was intimidated by the show of strength, her expression did nothing to give it away. She walked down the stairs, her soft boots padding against the wood. She stopped on the first landing.