The Summoning rota-1

by Troy Denning

  Vala drifted into the shadows on the ceiling and started toward Lord Imesfor. Galaeron slid along the wall, creeping along in small, flickering motions that he hoped would look like normal shadow movements. Melegaunt had assured him that while the monsters could see normal magic as easily as an elf saw at night, the creatures had never detected any spell he cast using his "other source of magic." The wizard had been unable to tell Galaeron whether they could see normal things-like shadows.

  Galaeron made his way along the edge of the chamber, then entered the darkness in order to cross the tunnel. As he did so, he felt something cold pulling at him, trying to draw him deeper into the darkness. The spell glow became a green sphere in the far distance, and it took him a moment to realize it was growing smaller. He bit back a cry of alarm and concentrated on moving toward the green light. It grew as large as before, filling the chamber in front of him. Deciding he would rather be discovered by the phaerimm than dragged into the darkness by whatever had grabbed him, he crossed to the other side at the edge of the light and slipped between the bone bars.

  The cage was cluttered with listless elves, all with an inflamed puncture wound somewhere on their torsos. They were in various states of ague, and many had fallen into a sort of comatose trance beyond all hope of recovery. The worst had arm-sized snakes writhing beneath their skin, usually along the path of their intestines, but sometimes coiled over their hearts or girding their ribs.

  In the center of the cage floated the great Kiinyon Colbathin, stripped naked and clawing at his wounds. Unlike the wounds of the other prisoners, his punctures showed no sign of inflammation or infection. Recalling how Takari had immediately fallen into a stupor and how her wound had swollen, it seemed unlikely that the tomb master had been injected with an egg. Galaeron streamed across the ceiling and pressed himself to the tomb master's far side.

  Kiinyon shuddered and cried out. Galaeron slipped a shadowy hand over the elf s mouth and felt it sink into flesh. The tomb master's voice shrieked through it unmuffled.

  Several nearby phaerimm turned their open mouths toward the cage. Galaeron wrapped himself around Kiinyon's body and hoped he was truly as unnoticeable as Melegaunt had promised. The tomb master began to shiver. The phaerimm kept their mouths pointed toward the cage. Finally, Kiinyon could no longer contain himself and let out a single groan of fear.

  The phaerimm swung their heads away, chuckling in their strange wind language. Galaeron waited until they had turned back to the pile of magic treasure, then pressed his shadowy lips to Kiinyon's ear.

  "Master Colbathin, hold your tongue or I swear by the Black Arrow I'll leave you here," whispered Galaeron. "Understand?" Kiinyon's eyes grew round as plates. "Do you know who this is?"

  Kiinyon nodded, though his eyes held a thousand questions.

  "Good. I won't waste time asking whether you are happy to see me," said Galaeron, "but if you want to live, you must comfort Lord Imesfor with the Prayer for the Dying."

  The tomb master remained silent, looking first to his own wounds, then to the inflamed punctures of an elf lying nearby.

  "Whatever the phaerimm injected you with, it wasn't eggs, or you'd be as sick as everyone eke," said Galaeron. "Now, say the prayer if you wish to live."

  Instead of obeying, Kiinyon whispered, "What of the others?"

  Galaeron looked at their listless forms, and his heart grew as heavy as gold. "They're not going to move themselves, and you felt what happened when I tried to cover your mouth. Do you have a way to carry them?"

  "No." Kiinyon closed his eyes, no doubt coming to the same conclusion as Galaeron. Their only choice was whether to leave and let the others die alone, or stay and die with them. "This isn't right."

  "No, it isn't, but we'll do what we can." On the ceiling outside, Galaeron saw a shadow flicker back and forth and realized Vala was signaling him. "We're out of time. Speak if you wish to live."

  Kiinyon shook his head at the awfulness of the decision, but said, "I must live." A cry of fear sounded around the corner, and Kiinyon looked toward the door. "Have strength, Imesfor. Behold, there in the West-"

  The prayer was interrupted by the deafening trill of an anguished phaerimm. Galaeron slipped to the front of the cage, then took a position on the wall. On the floor beyond the door lay a crooked phaerimm arm, severed cleanly at the biceps and resting in a pool of rusty blood. Lord Imesfor lay on the chamber floor, holding his mangled hands to his chest, his neck craned back to stare up in shock at the stump of Zay's amputated arm.

  Zay shrieked something too fast for Galaeron to understand even with Melegaunt's eavesdropping spell, then reached for Imesfor again. Vala's darksword drove down from the ceiling, appearing out of the shadows as though wielded by the rock itself, and buried itself in Zay's thorny back.

  Zay screeched and spun in the air, pulling Vala half off the ceiling. For an instant, her torso hung stretched between the ceiling and the writhing phaerimm, a vaguely female silhouette holding a very three-dimensional glassy black sword-Then she turned the blade into the roll, and the shadowy edge began to cut again. Zay's body opened around the middle and spilled steaming gore into the dust. Vala barely had time to pull herself back onto the rock before a storm of fire and lightning blasted the ceiling.

  Galaeron slipped around the corner, then spoke in High Elvish. "Into the cage with you!" He had to shout to make himself heard. 'To Kiinyon's side, and into the tunnel of shadow!"

  The high mage's eyes went wide, but he rolled to his knees and, using his mangled hands like forepaws, scrambled for the cage.

  It's the yellow one! trilled Tha, pointing at Lord Imesfor. It's his-

  Galaeron drew his borrowed darksword and saw it appear in the air. He silenced Tha with a vicious slash across both jaw hinges, and the phaerimm's mouth fell open gurgling blood. Galaeron sheathed his sword and continued across the floor, streaming safely away even as the stone behind him erupted into a spray of molten magic.

  Melegaunt's deep voice rose briefly from the direction of the Sharn Wall. A shaft of spinning shadow shot from the breach across the chamber, knocking shocked phaerimm aside like a battering ram. It extended through the cage door and stopped. Tiny tendrils of shadow twirled off the end like threads off a fraying sweater cuff, weaving themselves through the bone bars of the cage.

  This time, the phaerimm were quicker to recover-far too quick for Galaeron's liking. A dozen whirled around, flinging every manner of magic at Melegaunt. Whether the attacks troubled the wizard was impossible to say, for the instant the spells touched the Sharn Wall, they exploded into searing heat. Those attacks aimed into the breach simply vanished into the whirling shaft of shadow, then came spinning back out a few seconds later.

  The remaining phaerimm turned their attention to Galaeron's side of the chamber, flinging meteor swarms and ice storms toward the bone cage. The brunt of the attack vanished into the shadow net spinning off the end of the shadow column, but enough of the spells penetrated to fill the air with the stench of scorched flesh and half-lucid elf screams.

  Galaeron flowed across the floor and took a position on the wall opposite the door, ready to attack when the phaerimm tried to pass through the net of shadow. Through the mesh of dark tendrils, he could just make out the figure of Lord Imesfor struggling with his fingerless hands to shove sick elves into the mouth of the shadow tunnel. Kiinyon was helping as much as possible, but trapped as he was against the ceiling, he was even less efficient than the high mage.

  Galaeron started to wonder where Vala's humans were, but his question was answered when he saw a pair of thick hands pulling a sick elf into the mouth of the tunnel. The other two men were, of course, continuing to wrestle with his body and Vala's.

  Realizing their magic was no more able to pass through the Sharn Wall from the outside than the inside, the phaerimm on Melegaunt's side of the chamber concentrated on the whirling column of shadow. As before, their spells simply vanished into the blackness, then came spinning back out. One of th
e phaerimm even tried to break into the shaft He lost two arms to the whirling darkness. Another created a blazing orb that illuminated the whole chamber in brilliant silver light, but of course where there was light, there was shadow The shaft became a writhing, snake-like thing weaving along through the dark corners of the cavern, bowing up behind the moving phaerimm, then disappearing into the dust beneath their floating bodies.

  The phaerimm on Galaeron's side of the chamber were more successful. A pair floated alongside the shaft and paused before the cage. The polished bones fell away from each other, collapsing into a heap on the floor and leaving only the shadowy mesh that had spun off the end of Melegaunt's tunnel. One dared push a finger through the mesh. When it passed through without being torn off, the creature pushed an entire hand through-and promptly lost it to Vala's darksword.

  The phaerimm's reactions were far quicker than they should have been, at least by elf standards. The creature simply lashed out with its remaining hands and caught hold of the sword hilt, easily jerking it free of Vala's shadowy grasp. The creature trilled at the weapon's icy touch, but held on as its companion blasted the wall with lightning and magic. Galaeron was on the thing in an instant, flowing across the tunnel ceiling and slashing his own blade across the width of its body. The phaerimm all but exploded, spraying the tunnel with a green ichor and dropping to the floor in a heap of thorny flesh-It was harder to kill than that The thing rolled to its back, spraying the ceiling with a long stream of fire. Galaeron shrieked as the heat struck his leg. He flowed down the wall and along the floor, placing the other phaerimm between himself and the one he had just wounded.

  Whistling in anguish, the creature on the floor dragged itself away through the dust Galaeron searched the walls and floor for Vala, but she was as hidden to him as to the phaerimm.

  Coward! accused the phaerimm he was hiding behind. Switching Vala's sword from one hand to the other, the creature pushed through the icy net toward the fleeing elves. They're just shades!

  Galaeron brought his darksword up and severed the hand holding Vala's weapon, then caught the darksword as it fell. He whipped the blade around and plunged it deep into the yelling phaerimm. The creature reacted by spraying the floor with raw magic. Galaeron flowed up the wall, screaming at Kiinyon and Imesfor in High Elvish. "That's it! We've saved all we can."

  The wounded phaerimm turned toward his voice and blasted the wall with lightning, but Galaeron was already back on the floor, slashing at the thing's underside with both swords to hold its attention. Kiinyon and Imesfor did not make things any easier. There were only three elves left in the cage, and the high mage paused to snatch one up in his dismembered hands before hurling himself into the shadow tunnel. Kiinyon grabbed the other two by their collars and slowly kicked his way across the ceiling, dragging them along behind him.

  Galaeron escaped another flurry of fire and ice by flowing onto the ceiling, then glanced back to see half a dozen phaerimm floating through the shadow net. Realizing he would never stop them all with his swords, he slipped the weapons into his belt-or, rather, where his belt would have been- then plucked off a lock of his shadowy hair. Moving along the ceiling to avoid being impaled by a spear of golden light, he opened himself to his fear as Melegaunt had taught him.

  With so many phaerimm approaching, fear was an easy commodity to come by. It flooded into him, bringing with it that eerie, cold energy he had felt earlier. He tossed the tress of hair at the phaerimm and uttered an improvised wind spell.

  A howling gale tore through the cage, blasting the phaerimm with a solid wall of dust. The spell was hardly enough to injure them, but it made them pause in a moment of caution. That was all Kiinyon needed. Carried along by the gust, he floated past the blindly slashing claw of the last phaerimm and vanished into the shadow tunnel.

  Thinking to make the best of the opportunity, Galaeron drew his swords again and swung around to finish off his wounded enemy-then felt a shadowy hand grab his wrist

  'Time to go, elf," Vala called. She jerked him into the shadow tunnel. "And give me my sword!"

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  24 Nightal, the Year of the Unstrung Harp

  Galaeron's body hung on him like human armor, heavy and hot and painfully ill-fitted. His shoulders ached, his head throbbed, his neck wouldn't turn. The hand holding his corner of the floating litter was so frozen he doubted the fingers would unbend, and still he counted himself lucky. Dexon, who had been holding him down, had two black eyes, a missing tooth, and so many bruises that they looked like camouflage in the dusky realm.

  A gurgling shriek rose from the center of the litter. Galaeron and the other stretcher bearers- Kiinyon, Vala, and her three men-stopped and spun toward the sound. A catatonic elf was thrashing about, coughing, choking, and clubbing fellow patients. Even from the edge of the platform, an arm-sized phaerimm larva could be seen writhing about under his skin, flickering across his breast as it worked its way up into the elf's throat. Galaeron instinctively stretched out a hand, as did Kiinyon on the other side, but the victim was surrounded by a dozen fellow patients and well beyond reach.

  "Keep him quiet!" Melegaunt rushed back and vaulted onto the litter, paying no attention to those he stepped on, then slapped a hand over the elf's mouth. "Put us down."

  Galaeron and the others obeyed. By the time Melegaunt dragged the warrior off the litter, only the larva tail remained visible, a fingerlike cord worming up toward the gullet. The wizard dropped a knee across the elf's chest, then slipped his dagger tip under the skin and exposed a spine-covered tentacle as big around as Galaeron's arm. He pulled the thing out of its victim and pinned it down while he sliced off the tiny mouth atop its body.

  The wizard was not quite finished when the elf s foot swung into the murk alongside their path. He started to slide into the darkness, but was too weak to do more about it than whimper. Galaeron lunged for his arm-then was nearly knocked off his feet by one of Melegaunt's huge arms. "Don't!" "Something has him!" Galaeron tried to push past

  Melegaunt held him back. "And it will have you, if you're fool enough to challenge it!"

  As the warrior was dragged off, his glassy eyes rolled toward the wizard's face and remained there until he vanished into the shadows. The wizard turned away, his own expression as hard as it was unreadable.

  'Take up your friends and keep moving." He motioned to the big shadow stretcher. "We must go before more shadator come."

  Only Kiinyon did not reach for his corner. "We can't leave him."

  "We can and we must." Melegaunt started forward again. "Shadator seldom come alone."

  Kiinyon did not move. "Elves are not cowards. We do not abandon the spirits of our dead to places such as this."

  Melegaunt turned, this time with an expression of genuine sorrow. "I am sorry for your friend, but there is truly nothing we can do. When the rest of the shadator arrive, they will strike at more capable prey. They'll attack from below, at first taking only one or two of us. But the feeding frenzy will start quickly, and all our spirits will be left to the dark. Is that what you want?"

  "Of course not." Kiinyon's face was silver with rage. "But I've seen enough of your magic to know you can do something."

  Melegaunt's eyes went dark. "Sadly, you are mistaken." The wizard started to walk again. "You may stay if you wish. It is all the same to me."

  Eyes bulging, Kiinyon started after him. "You… will… not!"

  Realizing the tomb master had been robbed of self-control-and perhaps even his wits-by the past few days of death and defeat, Galaeron blocked his way.

  "Master Colbathin, if Melegaunt says he has done everything possible, he has. It's only because of him that you are here at all. I was ready to give you up for dead, but he insisted it was possible to rescue you."

  Kiinyon's fiery gaze shifted to Galaeron-a definite improvement, since Galaeron was not likely to grow impatient and blast the tomb master into shadows.

  "Why am I not surprised?" Kiinyon said. "You and your laz
y magic-I should've known you were a coward, too." "That's enough." Vala stepped to Galaeron's side.

  Though her tone was calm, the blow that followed was not The tomb master was rocked back into Burlen's waiting grasp, where his arms were pinned to his side. Vala produced a black cord and tied his hands.

  "Galaeron deserves this abuse no more than does Melegaunt." Whether she was speaking to Kiinyon or Lord Imesfor was unclear. She was looking past the tomb master toward the high mage, whose glassy eyes barely seemed to notice the confrontation. "Nor do we have time for it."

  "Do as you must." Lord Imesfor held his arms crossed in front of him, his mangled hands pressed to his chest. "The tomb master will understand when he returns to his senses." The high mage inclined his head toward their backtrail.

  Galaeron looked and saw a ghostly silhouette crossing the light between two shadow hills, four short tentacles where there should have been a nose. He looked away casually, then asked, "Illithids?"

  "They've been following us for some time," said the high mage. "I was wondering if they're native to this plane."

  "No." Despite the softness of his voice, Melegaunt sounded angry "They're servitors to our enemy. The phaerimm, I fear, have figured out how to track us."

  He gestured in Burlen's direction. The warrior gasped in surprise, then blinked in confusion.

  "You will grow accustomed to it soon enough," said Melegaunt. "Someone must keep watch behind us."

  Burlen waved a cautious hand behind his helmet. "You might have warned me. This is… unnatural."

  Melegaunt waved at the maze of shadow and light around them. "Four eyes are as natural as anything here."

  The wizard nodded to Vala, then started to walk away. She tossed Kiinyon onto the shadow litter with the patients, then Galaeron and the others took up their positions and followed.