A chill came over Vala again. She raised her sword toward her helmet, wondering if Escanor would arrive quickly enough to save her if she touched the blade to one of the horns. Probably not—but maybe he would avenge her death or die himself at the hands of whatever was coming. Either way was fine, as far as Vala was concerned.
A bare foot appeared on the stair above Vala’s head. Small and fine boned, it reminded her of an elf’s foot, except that the flesh was so thin and white she could see the bone beneath, as well as the tendons and ligaments that made it move. The foot’s mate appeared, also small and pale, with long broken nails hanging off the ends of the toes. Above the ankles hung the ragged cuffs of a pair of long-rotted trousers.
Vala grew so cold her flesh broke into goosebumps. Whatever this was, it could not be good. She took a deep breath and spun away from the wall, then brought her darksword around to strike the feet off at the ankles—and barely stopped her blade in time to keep it from burying itself in the stone steps.
The feet were gone.
But the cold was not.
Vala stepped away from the wall and found a small figure with alabaster skin and a willowy build watching her from the base of the stairs. Clothed in the tattered remains of what had once been a fine cowled robe, the stranger’s features were sunken and shriveled, his eyes glowing orbs of pure white.
He pointed at Vala’s sword, then wagged a bony finger and said, “You do not seem very fond of elves.”
CHAPTER TEN
19 Mirtul, the Year of Wild Magic
The white elf turned his back to Vala and the dead Shadovar and started down the murky corridor.
“Come.”
Vala stood where she was and didn’t move. She didn’t even lower her sword.
“Come?” she gasped. “After you killed Parth and everyone else?”
“I did not kill them, woman. I saved you.” The elf continued away, but his head turned to face her, his neck giving a mushy crackle as it traveled the last few inches to sit backward on his shoulders. “From what I saw, I will be of more use to you than they were.”
“Doing what?” Vala asked, starting after him.
“Surviving.”
The elf rotated his head forward again. Deciding there was truth in what he said, Vala lowered her guard and moved to within four paces of him, where his chill aura grew so uncomfortable she began to shiver. She had seen enough undead in the past six months to recognize him as some sort of lich, but his presence did not engender the same sense of fear and corruption she had experienced back in Karsus when she and Galaeron and their companions had fought the lich Wulgreth. What she wouldn’t have given to have Galaeron at her side, with his Tomb Guard’s knowledge of all things unliving—but the old Galaeron before he fell victim to the corrupting influence of the Shadow Weave. Gods, how she missed that one, the Galaeron who had been so steady and earnest and noble.
The lich-elf turned down a smaller side corridor—still so wide three Vaasans could have stood abreast—and sent a spider the size of a pony skittering along the wall. Hanging in its web overhead were several silk-wrapped packages, some with clawed feet or beastly snouts poking out. From one dangled a halfling-sized boot, the toe still twitching. As she passed beneath this cocoon, Vala slowed and raised her sword to cut the halfling free.
“Leave him.”
Vala looked up to find the lich-elf’s head turned backward on his shoulders again, watching her.
“He is a relic thief and has met a relic thief’s end,” the lich-elf said.
Vala lowered her sword. She knew firsthand how elves felt about treasure thieves, and the last thing she needed was an angry lich … of any sort. She mouthed a silent apology to the halfling and followed her guide a hundred paces down the corridor to an iron door, which he opened by means of an ancient bronze key and a word of passing. They descended a long iron staircase filled with dog-sized rats and knee-high centipedes, all of which fled before the chill aura of the white elf.
“I’ll say this, you make this place a lot safer,” Vala observed.
The elf didn’t respond.
The staircase descended into a natural cavern filled with limestone formations. The place stank so foully of offal and mold that Vala had to cover her mouth and nose to keep from retching. When they stepped onto the floor of the chamber, she recognized a strange regularity to many of the largest formations, where the stalactites and stalagmites met to form a wall of cagelike columns. Peering out from between many sets of bars were glowing red eyes of various shapes and sizes, some the size of Vala’s fist, some no larger than pinheads. One of the nearest cages had no eyes, only a mold-covered skull with six ebony fangs propped against the bars with the tip of one dark horn poking out to touch the ground.
A chorus of low groans and rasps arose from the nearest cages, gradually mounting toward a din of bestial growling and rumblings. Though Vala was holding the hilt of her darksword, she could see nothing beyond the stone bars but red eyes.
“Mind the prisoners,” the lich-elf warned. “They’ll be hungry.”
Vala eased away from the cage she had been peering into, only to hear a wet plop as something struck her armored thigh. The lich-elf cursed in some ancient language she did not understand, then spun toward the source of the saliva and loosed a flight of golden energy darts. When the bolts passed through the bars and exploded into her attacker, Vala glimpsed a bristly muzzle with long curved tusks, a pair of fan-shaped ears, and a set of folded wings rising up behind its shoulders. The creature roared and tore at the inside of its cage with four huge claws. When the energy bolts faded, it vanished back into the darkness inside its prison.
The lich-elf pointed at a glob of green mucus bubbling on the surface of Vala’s armor. “Wipe that off before it takes root,” he said. “The last thing I want is you spreading devil spawn through my Irithlium.”
“Your Irithlium?” Vala tore a strip from the hem of her undertunic and wrapped it over the back of her darksword, then scraped the stuff off and flung the cloth into the creature’s cage. “Who were you?”
The lich-elf’s eyes brightened. “Were?”
“No offense meant,” Vala said. “It’s just that I’m not friends with many undead.”
Nor was she friends with this one, as the lich-elf made clear when he turned and continued through the chamber without speaking. Taking care to avoid the occasional glob of mucus that came flying her way, Vala followed as closely behind as her tolerance for cold allowed. They passed through the strange prison and wandered the dark caverns beneath the Irithlium until her legs grew weary with exhaustion. Periodically, she would try to learn more about her guide by engaging the lich-elf in conversation, but he only spoke to utter a word of passing or warn her about some deadly hazard into which she had nearly stumbled. Twice they were ambushed by spell-flinging dark nagas, one of which actually succeeded in wrapping the lich-elf in a web spell before Vala diced it into six three-yard pieces. Before continuing on, her guide was grateful enough to inform her that his name was Corineus Drannaeken.
Finally, they ascended a vertical shaft into the subbasement levels, emerging in what had once been the central fountain in an elaborate two-story complex of work chambers. Clambering past a giant constrictor snake that had been immobilized by Corineus’s aura of cold, they slipped out of the basin and sneaked down a narrow service corridor. Near the back, the white elf stopped and pulled a loose wall stone out of place. A section of stone wall grated open and rumbled aside. He uttered a word of passing, then motioned Vala through the opening.
Ever the cautious one, she dropped to a knee and peered around the corner—and found herself looking underneath a floating beholder into a large room filled with wands, crowns, bracers, and other items even she recognized as magical. There was also a mind flayer, whirling toward Vala’s door, and half a dozen confused bugbears scrambling for their weapons.
Cursing herself for a fool and Corineus for a faithless double crosser, Vala whipped her
darksword at the mind flayer. Waiting only long enough to see that the spinning blade was flying toward its target, she launched herself forward and rose beneath the beholder, pinning it against the ceiling of the opening while she drew her dagger.
“Ressamon, you idiot!” the beholder screamed. “Stun it—stun it before—”
Vala drove her dagger into the monster’s underside. The resulting shriek was more angry than pained, and the mordant smell of powdered stone filled the air as the beholder began to spray the rock above with its disintegration ray.
“Ressamon!”
But Ressamon, if that had been the mind flayer’s name, was already lying on the floor beside its amputated head. Finally gathering their wits, the bugbears sprang over the illithid’s body to charge Vala.
Driving her dagger into the beholder’s underside again, she extended her free hand to summon her sword. It flashed between two of the charging bugbears, slashing open a furry knee and buckling the leg. The astonished brute collapsed in front of two companions and sent them sprawling, prompting the rest of the band to stop and whirl around to see who was attacking from behind.
The darksword arrived in Vala’s hand, and the beholder’s disintegration ray finally cut through the keystone of the hidden archway. With a thousand tons of stone settling on her shoulders, she had no choice except to leap into the chamber ahead and let the wounded eye tyrant escape behind her. She tucked into a diving somersault, taking a bugbear’s legs off at the knees as she rolled past, then came to her feet and brought her dagger over her head, driving it to the hilt in the nearest furry back.
The roars of the wounded bugbears were lost to the sound of the collapsing doorway. Vala ducked a massive axe as the quickest of the bugbears whirled to attack, then removed the arm holding it and opened its chest on the backstroke. She glimpsed another axe coming and barely managed to pivot away, though not before the blade slashed along her chest, denting steel scales and hurling her into a pair of hairy arms as big around as her waist. With her arms pinned at her sides, Vala brought her feet up over her head and smashed her booted feet into her captor’s face.
The blow was not sufficient to drop a bugbear, but it did startle it. The creature’s grasp loosened enough for her to bring her sword around beneath her. So weak was the attack that not even the sharpest steel would have penetrated the bugbear’s thick hide, much less the apron of leather armor it wore over its loins.
The darksword’s glassy blade slashed through the leather like gossamer. The bugbear bellowed in shock and started to squeeze, and Vala cocked her wrist, driving the tip of her weapon deep into its abdomen. The hairy arms went limp and dropped her on her shoulders, her captor’s huge body doubling over above her face. Reaching up behind it, she grabbed a handful of fur and pulled herself through its legs and to her feet.
A huge hand axe came tumbling through the air and smashed into her helmet, breaking one of the horns off and knocking it from her head. Sure of only the direction the attack had come from, Vala spun around to the opposite side of the bugbear she’d just wounded and found another big axe swinging toward her throat. Barely flipping her darksword up in time, she caught the weapon near the top, using the attack’s own momentum to cleave the shaft and send the head spinning off to lodge itself in one of the attacker’s wounded companions.
Faster than the others, this bugbear followed its first attack by slamming a huge fist into Vala’s armored ribs, launching her across the room into a shelf full of artifacts. She dropped to the ground in a limp heap, still holding her sword and struggling to get the wind back in her lungs.
Snorting in triumph, the bugbear snatched a weapon from a wounded companion and stomped toward Vala. Behind it, she saw a spherical form float out of the dust cloud rising from the collapsed doorway. Of Corineus, there was no sign.
Vala bounced to her feet and raised her darksword to throw. The bugbear pivoted away and brought its big axe around to block. Vala hurled the blade anyway. As the weapon sailed past the astonished brute to split the beholder down the center, she charged after it. Seeing its mistake too late, the bugbear swung back into the attack, but Vala was inside the arc of its weapon by then, her boot heels driving for its face in a flying side kick.
The bugbear leaned aside in an attempt to slip the blow. Vala kicked her feet apart and caught its head between her ankles. As she swung into its torso, she scissored her legs and swung herself around to the side. Though the bugbear was easily three times her size, the weight of her body acted like a pendulum, pulling it down face first. It slammed to the stone floor with a heavy thump and immediately began to push itself up again.
Vala’s sword was already returning to her hand. She brought it down on the back of her attacker’s neck, then leaped up and dispatched the wounded bugbears in a series of cautious, darting attacks from the rear. By the time she finished, the dust in the fallen doorway had cleared enough for her to see Corineus standing in the service corridor on the other side of the rubble.
“Well done, woman.” he said, pointing past her toward an iron door on the adjacent wall. “Above the door, you will find a holy symbol painted in black blood. Break it.”
Vala turned in the direction he pointed. When she’d had a chance to examine the room, she could see that it was divided into two sections. She had entered the front area, which the bugbears, beholder, and illithid all shared with the assortment of magical items she’d noticed earlier. In the back, opposite the door Corineus was pointing at, an assortment of gem-studded scepters, rods, rings, tomes, and other powerful artifacts of magic—even a diamond ball the size of a halfling’s head—floated inside a field of green spell light. Vala’s throat went dry, for she understood the phaerimm well enough to realize when she was standing in one of their lairs—and to know that had the creature been present, she would have been too busy fighting to take in all that she was seeing.
“What are you waiting for?” Corineus demanded. “Break the seal.”
“Not so fast,” Vala said, retrieving her helm. She had no idea whether it would still protect her from the phaerimm mind control with only one horn, but it was worth a try. “Not until you answer a few questions.”
“The phaerimm who claims this laboratory lair will soon realize it has been broken into and return,” Corineus replied. “That is the only question you need answered.”
“Afraid not,” Vala replied. “You surrendered your right to claim my trust when you sent me through that door without warning.”
“You had to be tested.”
Vala bit back the rage she felt rising inside and said, “I passed.”
She turned toward the nearest shelf and picked up a pair of fabulously decorated silver bracers.
“Put that back!” Corineus started forward, only to encounter a field of flashing blue energy that hurled him back against the wall. “You’ve no right!”
“No?” Vala raised her brow and considered threatening the lich-elf, then recalled how touchy elves could be about their ancestral treasures and decided to try a different tactic. “Consider these a token of good faith.”
She tossed the bracers through the door.
Corineus’s eyes went wide, and he nearly let the bracers fall. “The symbol, woman! You’ve no idea what you just did.”
Vala’s mouth went dry, but she managed to meet the white elf’s gaze without shaking. “Don’t be too sure.”
Corineus’s white eyes glared at Vala for a moment, then drifted to the symbol over the door.
“Have you ever heard of a baelnorn?” the white elf asked.
Vala shook her head. “I take it I’m looking at one.”
“Sworn to a duty more sacred than you can know.”
A dull clunk sounded from the other side of the door.
“The time has come for you to choose,” he said. “Without my help—”
“One moment,” Vala interrupted, jerking the iron door open.
A teleport-dazed phaerimm tumbled into the room, its four spin
dly arms windmilling wildly. Vala brought her darksword down across the thick part of its body and clove it cleanly in two, then stepped back and opened both halves along their length. When she was certain the thing was dead, she cut off the wicked tail barb, then finally reached up with her sword and broke the holy symbol painted above the door.
Corineus rushed into the room, his white eyes shining bright with rage. “How dare you disobey—”
“How dare I?” Vala tossed the tail barb into the baelnorn’s face, then touched the tip of her darksword to his throat. “Let’s get something straight, White Eyes. I need you as much as you need me, but if you ever send me into a lair again without warning me, it’ll be you I’m carving into little pieces. Clear?”
The baelnorn moved closer, enveloping her in his chill aura. “I do not think you understand who you are talking to.”
Vala stepped even closer, so close that her face and hands began to ache with cold. She laid a bloody palm on his flesh-freezing face.
“Oh, I understand,” she said, “but what you need to know is I mean to see my son again, and I’ll gut anything that makes that less likely.”
A low groan rolled from beneath the roots of the smoke tree, where Aris lay hidden in an undercut carved out of the dry riverbank by some long-ago flood. Galaeron, standing watch outside, dropped to his haunches and peered inside, where Ruha kneeled beside the unconscious giant’s head, using a wet rag to drip water onto his cracked lips. His broken arm was stretched out beside him, splinted to the straightest pair of branches Galaeron had been able to find in a mile of dry riverbed. A shield-sized circle of charred flesh on his chest marked where the dragon’s lightning bolt had entered his body, and a blackened foot marked where it had left. Of the most concern to Galaeron, however, were the giant’s black and sunken eyes, which Ruha said were signs of the head injury he had suffered.
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