The Ruin

by Richard Lee Byers

  But not this time. Not if Azuth, Mystra, and all her Chosen took the field against him. This time, by the blood of every wyrm who’d ever flown, he was going to win, and in the process, annihilate Tamarand, Nexus, and all their lackeys for good and all.

  He started a spell and pulled a jade circlet from a pocket inside his mantle. The song dragon hastily sang a pounding musical incantation, and flame exploded all around him. The blaze stung a little, but not enough to disrupt his own conjuring. He placed the crown on his head, and power jolted through him.

  He willed himself to transform, and though he remained a thing of dead, shriveled flesh and exposed bone, everything else changed. His form expanded, fingers becoming claws, face pushing forward into reptilian jaws. Tattered, rotting wings exploded from his shoulders, and a tail writhed forth from the base of his spine.

  In an instant, he was a dracolich. A dream of an undead ancient red given substance. The biggest and mightiest thing on the battlefield, his physical strength as dreadful a force as his wizardry.

  Azhaq dived at him, and he spat a plume of flame. The shield dragon veered, but even a graze seared burns across half his body.

  Sammaster laughed, and, relishing the snarling thunder his voice had become, commenced another charm.

  Pavel watched as Scattercloak murmured a spell and brandished a bit of quartz. Ice spread over and through the shivering rubble at the top of the pit, binding it in place as mortar held bricks.

  “That might slow the golems down,” the wizard said, his tenor voice emotionless as ever. “Now, I suggest that Sureene or Drigor attempt the counterspell. Perhaps the divine magic version will work where the arcane failed.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Selûne’s priestess. Gazing upward as if she could see the moon through the ceiling, sweeping her mace with its crescent-shaped flanges through mystic passes, she recited the prayer. Meanwhile, the layer of ice crunched and cracked. Celedon and Firefingers murmured charms. No doubt they, too, were trying to hold the living statues down.

  At the end of Sureene’s recitation, Pavel conjured a glow of dawnlight, hoping it would help. It didn’t. The flares of power kept right on leaping and twisting from their points of origin to the floating amulet.

  “That’s no good, either,” said Sureene. “I’m sorry.”

  “If we can’t do this,” said Darvin, his voice shrill, “we need to clear out before the golems free themselves. Because we can’t cope with them, either!”

  Ignoring the mage’s outburst, Will looked up at Pavel. “What was that useless bit of stupidity you tried?”

  “From the start,” said Pavel, “we’ve known Sammaster must have modified the enchantment generating the Rage. Because, in times past, it drew its power from the stars, and only woke when the King-Killer appeared in the sky. By the same token, being a creation of elven high magic, it would only obey the will of one of the tel’Quessir.”

  “I believe I understand,” said Taegan. “Since the lich had to alter the mythal, the key you scholars devised doesn’t fit the lock anymore.”

  “But why did you think a flash of sunlight would help?” Jivex asked.

  “Because I think I comprehend what Sammaster did,” Pavel said. “He’s pulling mystical force directly from the Abyss, or possibly one of the Hells, to power the enchantment, and focusing it through his own phylactery. That was the only way he could gain control of the magic: by fusing it with his own essence. Thus, I hoped Lathander’s power, which is anathema to the undead, would weaken the metaphysical structure of the magic sufficiently for our countercharm to break it apart. Because I refuse to believe our researches missed the mark entirely. Our invention just isn’t as perfect as it needs to be.”

  “Yes,” said Darvin, “and your little trick didn’t tip the scales. So—”

  “Please, my friend,” said Firefingers, “you’ve fought like a hero so far. Stand fast just a few breaths longer while I attempt something else.” He murmured a charm, and a floating, luminous disembodied hand shimmered into existence beside the phylactery. It tried repeatedly to take hold of the black amulet and pull it away from the center of the pentagram, but the thing kept slipping from its grasp. Then one of the seething streamers of hellfire washed over it and it crumbled from existence.

  “My turn,” said Will. He whirled his sling and hurled a skiprock at the phylactery. The stone hit it squarely, but bounced off without jarring it out of position. “Curse it!”

  “It’s possible,” said Pavel, unrolling the scroll Sureene had written for him, “that part of the problem is distance. Our magic may prove more potent if the person casting it is in physical contact with the phylactery. I’ll give it a try.”

  “What?” squawked Will. “You said it’s dangerous inside the room.”

  “It is. The currents of force could burn and poison me. But if our friends will give me the benefit of whatever wards they have left for the casting, that may protect me.”

  Will shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

  “I’m not delighted with it, either, but do you have a better notion?”

  “Even if this is a good plan,” Drigor said, “you aren’t the most powerful cleric here.”

  “No, but I’m the one bound to the sun. That makes a difference dealing with the undead, just as it did on our expedition into Shadow. So I should be the one to go. Agreed?”

  Drigor’s scarred face twisted. “Reluctantly.”

  “It’s settled, then. Quickly, everyone, give me your blessings and protections. By the sound of it, the golems are about to crawl up out of their hole, and then it will be your job to keep them off my back.”

  The stone dragon’s lashing wings and ridge of spine erupted from the rubble. Taegan beat his own pinions, sprang into the air, and flew over the golem, striking it again and again with his sword. Jivex streaked after him, landed on its back, and scrabbled with his talons.

  Eye glowing yellow, the statue’s head burst out into the open air and twisted toward its attackers. The jaws spread wide, and the creature spewed a plume of gray vapor. Taegan tried to fling himself aside, but the breath weapon washed over him anyway.

  His muscles locked, and a cold heaviness flowed through his limbs. He started to fall. No, no, he thought, I refuse this, and the malignant power lost its grip on him. His wings flapped just in time to bear him up and keep him from dropping into the churning chunks of stone on top of the pit.

  He looked for Jivex, and felt a pang of horror to see that the faerie dragon, still attached to the golem’s back, had become a shape of gray granite like his foe. Then, however, Jivex too shook off the petrifactive effect, his scales shimmering as he became living flesh once more. The construct struck at him, and he dodged. Its fangs clashed as they snapped shut on empty air.

  Taegan cut at it and said, “Back!” He and Jivex wheeled and joined the battle line Drigor, Celedon, Sureene, and Will had formed to block the way into the heart of the Rage. Firefingers, Scattercloak, and Darvin stood behind them.

  His hands a blur, Will slung skiprock after skiprock at the golems as they clambered up out of the shattered floor. “Can’t somebody just sink them down to the bottom again?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid not,” said Firefingers. “We don’t have any more of those spells ready for the casting.”

  “Of course you don’t,” the halfing said. “Here they come!” He tucked his warsling back in his belt and whipped his hornblade from its scabbard.

  The golems finished their scramble up to the surface and found their footing atop the shifting rubble. Jivex conjured a troop of flying pixies to hover in front of them and jab at them with their spears, but the illusion didn’t balk them. Without hesitation, they charged right through it.

  That left the matter up to sword, mace, warhammer, tooth, and claw, with the wizards aiding the folk on the front line as best they could. Firefingers made the iron golem’s flaming breath arc harmlessly up at the ceiling, and Scattercloak created floating shields and blasts
of wind to keep the stone drake’s exhalations from reaching their targets. Darvin placed one glowing wall after another in the statues’ way. The barriers dissolved the moment the constructs touched them. But perhaps they slowed them down a trifle and kept them from overrunning their foes by dint of sheer bulk and momentum.

  Yet the golems steadily gained ground, for all that their foes contested every inch of it. Taegan cut, ducked, slashed, and sidestepped. Jivex raked at the stone dragon’s luminous eye and hurtled on, narrowly evading a snap of its jaws, then a slap of its wing. Will darted under the iron wyrm, stabbed, and darted out before it could stamp on him.

  Then huge iron claws flashed out and tore Drigor’s head from his shoulders. His body fell with a clank of armor.

  Several heartbeats later, the stone golem’s tail whipped around at Celedon. The half-elf leaped back and parried, and the combination was enough to save his life. The blow, however, snapped his sword in two. He cursed, tossed it away and snatched a dagger from his boot.

  The iron wyrm raked at Sureene. The stroke failed to penetrate her mail, but it knocked her reeling, and afterward, her right arm dangled uselessly. Her comely face ashen, she shifted her mace to her off hand and advanced once more.

  It was obvious to Taegan that he and his remaining comrades couldn’t resist much longer. In all likelihood, they were going to die within the next few breaths, as a legion of avariels had perished in this place millennia before.

  So be it. But only if their lives purchased a comparable victory. Come, on, Pavel, do it! he thought, even as he lunged at the stone wyrm’s head.

  Cloaked in a shimmering, multi-layered aura of protection, Pavel sprinted halfway across the vault before he started suffering ill-effects from the hellfire contaminating the air. Then, however, a bluish flare swept over him, and agony stabbed through his body. He lost his balance, collapsed convulsing, and blacked out.

  He woke to the clangor of steel bashing iron and stone. Thank the Morninglord, he’d only lost consciousness for a little while. His friends were still fighting to protect them. He just hoped he was still capable of an effort worth defending.

  For his throbbing tongue was raw where he’d chewed it, and his mouth tasted of blood. Worse than that, his entire body had a sickening, pulsing wrongness to it. He could feel masses swelling inside his flesh, like tumors or parasites growing.

  He considered trying to heal himself. But even if it worked, the hellfire would simply poison him anew, and in any case, he couldn’t spare the time. The golems might break through Will and the others at any moment.

  He groped around, found his mace and Sureene’s scroll, and clambered to his feet. The world tilted and spun, and he nearly fell again. He took a breath, and the vertigo partially subsided. He limped onward.

  Hellfire snaked and crackled, and he was too weak and dizzy even to try to avoid the streamers anymore. They seared him, stabbed him, staggered him, and the nodules inside his body pounded like extra hearts at their touch. But they failed to knock him down as the blue one had. Perhaps Lathander was holding him up.

  He hobbled the last few steps to the phylactery, and reckoning that one ought to try the simple and obvious first, bashed it with his mace. But the blow neither damaged the black pendant nor jolted it out of position.

  It would have to be magic, then. He took his own amulet from around his neck and gripped it and the phylactery together in his hand. He called his deity’s name, drew a blaze of purifying dawnlight from the sun symbol, and read the first trigger phrase on the parchment.

  Nothing happened, and so he repeated the process.

  Sammaster exulted in the impotence and degradation of his foes. He snarled an incantation, and hail hammered the two sisters. It didn’t kill them, but it left them bloody and dazed, crawling on the ground like the vermin they were. A flick of his tail shattered a copper’s skull. His gaze paralyzed a brass, and the “noble” metallic plummeted out of the sky.

  It was glorious. Until he felt a blaze of pain. It was an insult less to the body than the spirit, and for all his erudition and long and varied experience, he’d never felt anything like it before. Yet he knew what it meant.

  Some power was attacking his phylactery. Belatedly, he remembered the foes who’d run into the barbican. Repeatedly distracted, he’d never verified that Gjellani had actually disposed of them, and certainly hadn’t sent any more wyrms to assist with the job. He could only assume that the wretches had somehow survived and made it all the way to the source of the Rage.

  Bungler! Idiot! Playing games out here when the only thing that truly mattered was in jeopardy!

  But he could still salvage the situation. All he had to do was recite the proper incantation to translate himself to the mythal. He growled the first word.

  Intent on Sammaster, Dorn had momentarily lost track of Kara, but heard her cry, “Don’t let him finish that spell!” Then, wings furled, she plummeted down on top of the lich and drove her talons into his spine.

  Huge as she was in dragon form, she was small compared to the titanic shape Sammaster had adopted, and even her ferocious assault didn’t make his recitation falter. Without missing a beat, he twisted his head around, caught her in his jaws, yanked her off him, and slammed her to the ground, where she lay unmoving.

  Brimstone pounced on the lich, rending rotten, shriveled flesh with his oversized fangs. That injury did make Sammaster’s recitation falter, and dead eyes glaring, he seized hold of Brimstone’s collar in his foreclaws and roared a different word of power. The choker broke apart, the jeweled fragments melting even as they dropped, and the vampire dissolved along with them. For a moment, he endured as a swirl of smoke and embers, then vanished utterly.

  Sammaster raised and swiveled his head, spewing fire. The blaze seared some of the metallics diving at him and forced others to veer off. Then, floating, still burning, it split and shaped itself into half a dozen bright, draconic shapes that lashed their wings and flew at one or another of his foes.

  Evidently confident that none of his enemies in the air would be able to balk him, Sammaster again began the spell that had so alarmed Kara.

  By that time, Dorn and Raryn had covered most of the distance to their adversary. Running on two good legs, even if they were short ones, the dwarf reached the lich first. He drove his ice-axe into Sammaster’s hind leg.

  Sammaster plainly perceived the stroke, because he retaliated by picking up his foot and trying to stamp on Raryn, who scrambled out from underneath. But the pain, if, in fact, that was what the mad creature felt, was insufficient to disrupt his conjuring.

  Dorn rushed in cutting, ducking and dodging huge, raking talons, the sweeping, pounding tail, and hammering wings. It was insane. In his present form, Sammaster was so big that the hunters couldn’t even reach his body, only his extremities, and obviously, no crippled hunter could expect to last more than heartbeat against such a fearsome quarry.

  Don’t think about it! Just hit and move, hit and move.

  The tempo of the spell accelerated toward its conclusion. Dorn invited a strike to give himself the chance to cut at whatever part of Sammaster came hurtling at him. It turned out to be a gigantic, withered forefoot. He twisted aside, and felt the remains of his iron leg buckle. As he cut, turning his whole body into the blow, the prosthesis broke apart.

  But his blade still plunged deep into the corpse-thing’s limb, cleaving flesh and smashing bone. Sammaster shrieked, finally botching his incantation. As he fell, Dorn resolved to cherish the memory of that scream even as the lich tore him apart.

  Pavel had read the trigger phrase four times, to no effect. But on the fifth try, the phylactery shuddered in his grip like a frenzied animal struggling to escape, then crumbled into grit and soft, tiny fragments. Their terminus lost, the flares of hellfire leaped wildly around the chamber, until the miniature portals from which they sprang exploded in a stuttering series of blasts, leaving only ragged craters in the walls.

  That’s it, thought P
avel. It has to be. He wanted to rejoice, but felt too sick and weary.

  Besides, it wasn’t entirely over. The destruction of the mythal hadn’t deterred the golems. They were still striving to kill the trespassers as fiercely as before.

  Pavel hefted his mace and moved to help his comrades. But as soon as he took a step, his strength failed, and he fell down vomiting blood.

  Dorn looked up expecting to see the stroke that would kill him. But Sammaster wasn’t moving. Or rather, he was standing in place trembling, while Raryn chopped at his leg.

  A shaft of red-gold light punched a hole in Sammaster’s flank from the inside. Another beam burst forth, and another, erupting from every part of his body and in all directions, until the hideous shape of rot and bone was nearly lost inside a blaze like the rising sun. The lich lifted his head and screamed, then toppled.

  Right at Dorn, and even riddled with holes, there was still plenty of corpse left to squash a human. Knowing it was hopeless, he nonetheless tried to crawl, and a pair of fanged jaws snatched him up. Leaping, Kara whisked him out from under the plummeting mass.

  Dorn’s eyes ached as if he was going to cry. “Sammaster didn’t kill you,” he said. “You’re alive.”

  She set him gently on the ground. “Better than that,” she said, “I’m sane.”

  Will slashed at the stone dragon, and the hornblade glanced off without biting. Small wonder. In time, hammering on iron and granite dulled even an enchanted sword.

  He twisted away from a talon strike. Tried to riposte but found himself too slow. He was tired, gasping, his weapon heavy in his grip, and everyone else was in the same sorry condition. The end would come quickly.

  Then, abruptly, Scattercloak said, in a voice still so devoid of emotion that it took a moment for the words to register: “We’ve won. Fall back, gather round, and I’ll translate us away.”

  Of necessity, Will had been focused on the enemy. Still, it seemed astonishing, unreal, that after a year of striving, Pavel had succeeded in quelling the Rage without him even noticing. As he and his surviving comrades retreated, the golems pursuing, he risked a glance to make sure his friend was hurrying to join the rest of them.