by T. H. Lain
The chalice tumbled end over end, splattering blackish-red gore all over Devis, who was whirling his arms in a hopeless attempt to keep from tumbling over backward. He dropped hard onto his backside with a shout of pain.
Cavadrec screamed and crouched to pounce for the precious artifact. The ranger was forgotten. The ebony staff no longer gleamed with black light, but was only a simple shaft of gnarled wood. The wight hissed and dropped the staff, brandishing hooked claws. He swiped the air in a screaming rage, forcing Soveliss back. Finally, the wight landed a blow on the ranger, who slammed against the temple wall, staggering and dazed.
Cavadrec loomed over the ranger. He backhanded the man across the jaw, knocking Soveliss's head against the wall, but somehow the elf avoided the next blow and slipped away sideways. The wight would be back on him in seconds.
Aside from the disenchanted staff, Mialee could see little evidence that the scroll had worked. The wight still seethed with his own, innate power. Soveliss would be ripped limb from limb.
Mialee had played Favrid's part with little apparent success. Soveliss was down and at the wight's mercy. Favrid was dead. Zalyn was unconscious, possibly dead. Devis was dying, Hound-Eye was paralyzed. She'd have to try her own scheme. Maybe the wight couldn't hit what it couldn't see. The spell was untried, but she would never get another chance.
Mialee waved a series of precise hand motions in the air and whispered, "Nehdarn, Soveliss."
The ranger disappeared. The invisibility spell had come in handy after all.
Cavadrec slashed the empty air in fury, then turned to an enemy he could see: Devis. The bard was still struggling to regain his feet. Cavadrec slapped Devis across the face with the back of a bony fist, driving him down to the floor with a thud where the man lay still. The wight whirled toward Mialee, red eyes flashing, and took one long step toward the fallen elf woman.
"For Silatham!" Soveliss shouted from the empty air.
A crack, then a crevice, then a crater split Cavadrec's forehead between the eyes as the ranger hammered the invisible blade of the Mor-Hakar through the creature's skull. The point erupted from the back of the wight's head in a spray of bone and gray matter. A deafening wail erupted from the creature that had once been Cava, cleric of Ehlonna. The wight writhed like a pinned insect around the blade, which gradually became visible but stayed fast. The unearthly howl filled the lair.
Finally, Cavadrec's screech settled into a hiss of fetid air. His body, instantly rigid, toppled backward onto the cold, stone floor.
"For Elyrra," a quiet voice said.
Soveliss, now almost completely visible, bent over the corpse and gave the short sword a brutal twist. The wight's head cracked open, releasing a fountain of matter. The ruined skull lolled over to face Mialee. Two red lights in the pits of the hideously empty sockets flickered once, twice, then died with a curl of acrid smoke. Cavadrec's flame was extinguished.
The ranger wiped gore from the Mor-Hakar onto the wight's torn robe. For the first time since Mialee laid eyes on the man, he looked at peace.
A long minute passed. Devis tried to stand, then resorted to dragging himself toward Mialee, who sat dumbfounded on the floor. As he struggled to reach her, she gazed mutely around the lair. Hound-Eye and little Nialma were walking toward her in a daze, both speechless. Her eyes passed over Favrid—the elf's fate was still too fresh and horrible for her to look at him. Soveliss stood over the gray corpse, already slowly rotting away. Finally, her gaze fell on Zalyn.
The rose blossom of scarlet on the wall above her, and the wet trail leading down behind her to the floor, told Mialee all she needed to know. The elder's body, at least, showed no sign of the wightling disease. She was simply dead. Zalyn had left with Ehlonna to join Favrid. Darji, mute and mundane bird though she now was, perched on Zalyn's tiny boots. It cocked its eye at Mialee, then spread its wings and disappeared down one of the many cave entrances dotting the lair. A single caw echoed back to her.
Mialee smelled burning hair and frantically patted her locks to extinguish a few persistent blue flames. She felt the back of her hand slap flesh and Devis said, "Hey!"
"Sorry. On fire. Now I'm out."
Devis's arm slipped around her shoulders and she leaned into him with a weary sigh, careful not to aggravate his injuries further. Devis winced, but pressed a fist into the hole in his side. He grinned weakly at Mialee, and she saw some color had returned to his face. "The bleeding's slowed down," he croaked. Either that, or I'm running out. You?"
"Just a little singed," she whispered.
The lair lurched and the floor tilted, sending them all sprawling in the direction of the caves leading out to the lava tubes. A great rumbling shook everything in sight.
The wight was dead, his spell disrupted, but apparently the god of death had decided to cheat. Or maybe Cavadrec had somehow kept the dead mountain in check for a thousand years. Whatever the reason, sleeping Morsilath was waking up.
Hound-Eye howled in pain. A thin jet of magma blasted him in the toe. Mialee saw it was just a herald of much worse to come as cracks appeared in the stone all around and the air filled with fire.
Cavadrec's throne lurched from its resting place and began to slice toward them.
Darji flapped back into the chamber and then disappeared up another lava tube.
The throne slid toward them, front end first, chipping rock shards from the floor and launching them in a shower ahead of itself. Orange lava flashed through widening cracks behind it. Devis remembered how the iron cart protected them from the thing in the metal pile and had a terrible idea. The throne might block the flow of lava down their escape tunnel long enough for them to get away—if they could find a tunnel that really led to the surface and not back into a wall of magma.
The bard got behind the sliding throne and shoved hard with his shoulder, guiding it toward the tunnel entrance Darji had selected. Soveliss saw what he was up to and he and Mialee joined in. The trio pushed, shouted, and cajoled the massive deknae artifact into place a foot or so in front of their intended exit. Hound-Eye and Nialma were already heading up the tube. Soveliss dashed after them.
"After you!" Devis screamed at the top of his lungs, gesturing for Mialee to step in.
"You first!" Mialee shouted.
The bard gripped Mialee by the arm and half-pushed, half-pulled her into the opening, then squeezed in behind. Hound-Eye, Nialma, and Soveliss were twenty feet ahead. Mialee and Devis stumbled up the steep, smooth, shaking walls of the escape route.
The eruption of Morsilath finally broke into Cavadrec's lair. The group had moved only a few yards up the tube when Mialee felt heat at her back and the tube filled with blazing orange light. She looked back and saw their improvised shield heat up from black to red to orange, then it was gone.
The inferno crawled up the tunnel after them.
Mialee thought furiously. If only she hadn't used the shield the last time something was going to fry them.
The pearl.
She had forgotten it since the incident at the tavern. She reached into her pouch. It was still there, thank Ehlonna. She pinched it in two fingers, running all the while and trying to recall the incantation that would place the shield at their backs.
The round, invisible force wall snapped into existence behind her. The spell was just wide enough to fit in this tube. If she could pull it behind them and adjust its edges just right, she might be able to hold back the lava long enough for them to reach the surface. Mialee steeled her mind to push back against it when the lava struck. The lava itself would provide the propulsion.
Despite her concentration, the shield spell slammed into her back when the rising lava smashed into it. The party was pressed backward in a pile against the shield effect. Mialee screamed from the unbearable heat, but the force wall held. Despite the pain, she spread her arms and legs wider, pressing against the clutch of bodies—if one of her friends slipped past her, they would slide through the shield and be incinerated.
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nbsp; The pressure forced them up the tube fast enough to make Mialee's eyes water and her ears hurt. She struggled to keep the disc of force pressed against the molten rock at right angles to the smooth walls of the tube. Bits of rock were shaved off by the magical edges of the disk and covered them like charcoal powder. She worried about how long the tunnel was. Would the spell last all the way to the top?
Mialee squinted against the wind and flakes of stone. She risked looking ahead for a split second, trusting the shield spell to her subconscious control.
Several yards ahead, a white-yellow light, roughly circular, awaited her. Seconds later, the five of them blasted out into the open air. Mialee gaped as the party rode the spell up, up, up, and then down, down, down into the forest, where Ehlonna's personal protection kept the molten stone from burning her children.
"Gods," Mialee whispered, "it's beautiful."
Her concentration broke. The shield spell fizzed and died. Gravity and entropy pulled the five apart only a few feet before they crashed into the boughs of an enormous old Silath tree.
With a chorus of cracked wood, barked curses, and terrified screams, they dropped gradually through the tree to the ground.
Mialee marveled. They'd landed smack in the middle of Silatham. The undead were dead, and the elven village was alive.
Epilogue...Mialee smiled over her glass of milk at the last remaining family in Silatham. She raised her glass to Pell's warm grin when he caught her glance. Ehlonna's newest cleric—and the reason the lot of them weren't all still lying on the ground covered with burns—clasped Zalyn's golden holy symbol and nodded, mouthing thank you. Delia and Hound-Eye played a game of hide-and-seek with little Nialma, who they all knew was under the bed in the next room. Still the halfling loudly professed that rat-girl had just disappeared. That drew excited giggles from beneath the bed, and the sound rang like music through the cozy home. The living village had saved Nialma's parents from the fire. Now, it seemed, the family might be about to grow by one growling halfling.
Mialee leaned back in her chair and stretched, yawning and considering. The music, and Ehlonna herself, had kept the mountain in check. Morsilath stewed, rumbling now and then, but had not covered the land with lava.
"Of all the damn-fool luck," Devis had said when they'd dropped with a thud amid the zombie carnage.
Silatham's survival was miraculous, but the cost to its population had been dear. Thousands now lay rotting outside, gray meat-things covered with flies. They'd cleared this house—Pell and Delia's—of the foul things, but the village needed time to rest. A long cleanup job lay ahead for the last ranger of Silatham. Favrid and Zalyn were gone, but Soveliss had sworn on the Mor-Hakar he would see the place filled again with life within his years.
"And who knows, I might reach two-thousand yet," the elf said after taking his oath.
"Check this out," Devis said, scooting into the chair next to Mialee's at the table. "Pell had a bottle of very, very old dwarf whiskey. I saw a man get killed over a bottle of this stuff in Dogmar. It's incredible."
He smacked the bottle on the table in front of her and placed a pair of shot glasses on either side. "I have milk."
"Mialee, we just saved the world. Have a drink with me." Mialee pushed her milk aside and grinned at the bard. "One drink?" he asked. "One drink," she said.
