“You’re dead,” Belen said. She tried to speak with confidence but the words came out a whisper. “Tempest and Albanon destroyed you.”
Nu Alin laughed, forcing her corpse’s face into a grin. “You’re the one who’s dead. I can’t die! I just move on to a new body, wear it out, then move on again.” Nu Alin leaned her body close. “But I think I’ll keep your body longer. I like it.”
“You dried up and turned to dust when Albanon and Tempest forced you out of me.” Belen fought against her fear. This wasn’t really Nu Alin, just a nightmare demon. “You can’t exist without a body to inhabit.”
“Yet you were kind enough to bring me a new one,” said Nu Alin.
His substance bulged out of her corpse’s mouth and groped toward her. Belen remembered how it had felt when the bodystealer had first attacked her, his flowing form forcing its way into her mouth and up her nose. He had reached down her throat and into the cavities of her body, wrapping himself around bones and organs until he was in complete control of her. Terror rose in her again. Nu Alin’s tentacle touched her cheek.
She jerked her head around, the first movement she’d been able to make. Nu Alin hissed in annoyance. “Stop struggling! You’ve already lost. I have destroyed you!”
Belen ground her teeth. “No,” she said. “You didn’t destroy me. You’re the reason we’re here. Because of you, I knew where to find Vestapalk.” She turned her head back to glare at Nu Alin. “We can still win.”
Her sword was still in her hand. She thrust it up into her corpse. Into Nu Alin.
Into the nightmare demon.
Cold hands fell away from Belen’s face. Fallcrest vanished, replaced by the Plaguedeep. Her legs felt like they might collapse. She forced them to stay straight. The nightmare demon’s face was stretched out in shock only a handsbreadth from hers. Belen drew her sword back a bit, wrenched it up to a sharper angle, and thrust it in again.
The nightmare demon jerked and went limp. Its corpse was so light, it was almost weightless. Belen shoved it off her sword and stepped quickly over to the demon clutching Quarhaun. The creature seemed almost as lost in the drow’s fear as Quarhaun himself. It didn’t even look up as she drove her sword down between its shoulders. Quarhaun fell away from it with a gasp to lie panting on the ground. Belen whirled to Cariss.
The death of the first two demons must have gotten through to the third somehow. Its crystal eyes blinked. It let go of Cariss’s head and grabbed her shoulders, trying to turn the shifter’s moaning body between it and Belen like a shield. But it was too slow. Belen twisted around and thrust her sword through its side. The nightmare demon gave a high, keening cry and pushed Cariss away to reach for Belen.
She ducked the grasping hands and ripped her sword sideways out of the demon’s belly. Cut nearly in half, it let out one more cry, then toppled backward and over the broken edge of the passage. Belen let her sword fall and grabbed Cariss before the staggering shifter could plunge after it. Still half in a panic, Cariss tried to push her away, but Belen held on.
“Easy,” she said. “It’s over. It’s over.”
Cariss sucked in great gulps of air, breathing hard. “Thank you,” she gasped between breaths. “Thank you. I will tell Turbull that you are worthy!”
Belen frowned. “What?”
Cariss stiffened a little and pulled away. “I shouldn’t have-” she began, then she scowled. “You are Riven,” she said bluntly.
Real fear raced through Belen and she opened her mouth to deny it, but Cariss shook her head. “Don’t shame me with lies. Turbull saw it. No outsider embraces Tigerclaw traditions the way you embrace them. Turbull believes you are a generation Riven from the tribe, maybe two.”
“My mother,” Belen said tentatively. “She taught me.”
“Turbull saw the way you fought alongside us in the valley. He told me to watch you on this journey and if you proved yourself worthy, he would invite you to join the Thornpad clan.”
After the terror of the nightmare demon attacks, the suggestion was like being drenched with cold water. For a moment, Belen didn’t know what to say or how to react-all she knew was that there was a new warmth growing inside her, something that might even erase the scars Nu Alin had left. “Cariss, I never thought something like that would be possible.”
“Turbull is not like any other clan leader,” said Cariss. “He believes you could bring new ideas to the Thornpads without sacrificing tradition. He sees ahead-sometimes even further ahead than Chief Scargash.” She grasped Belen’s forearm above the wrist. Belen recognized a Tigerclaw oath grip and returned it. That brought a smile from Cariss.
“If I don’t escape this place,” the shifter said, “go to Turbull and tell him what I told you.”
“If I don’t escape,” said Belen, “tell Turbull I would have accepted.”
“I hope you realize there’s a good chance none of us will escape,” said Quarhaun harshly. The drow was back on his feet, his face a little drawn, but otherwise recovered. He had his sword in his hand and used the tip of it to flip Belen’s sword back to her.
She caught the weapon but kept it out and ready to use as she looked around, assessed their situation, and found it most… unexpected.
Their triumph over the nightmare demons seemed to have gone completely unnoticed, at least by Vestapalk. A few of the nearest plague demons watched them and shifted restlessly, but all of the dragon’s attention was on the battle still being waged on the lower portion of the broken passage. Magical energy of all kinds flashed as Albanon, Tempest, and Kri traded spells for flaming strikes by the fire demons. A few burned-out husks of demons lay on the ground, but they were the only casualties. Except for scorches on Tempest’s robes and a burned patch in Albanon’s long silver hair, their friends seemed to be holding their own.
The battle on the middle portion seemed to have turned in their favor as well. In spite of his mad rush against the brute demons, Roghar still lived. He and Shara fought back to back, while Uldane danced around the perimeter of the fight, stabbing and crippling the big crystal-armored demons wherever he could. In fact, there were only three of the demons left standing, and even as Belen watched, another went down with its head cleft in two by Shara’s greatsword.
“I don’t understand,” said Cariss with surprise in her voice. “We’re winning. Why isn’t Vestapalk doing more?”
Belen frowned and looked at the passage behind them. One of their sunrods lay just inside its the mouth. Nothing stirred within the shadows as far down the passage as she could see. No more nightmare demons. No more demons of any kind. Yet with all the demons of the Plaguedeep under his control, Vestapalk could have destroyed their entire group easily. “What’s he waiting for?” she asked. “He could smother us and be done!”
“He’s playing with us,” Cariss growled.
Quarhaun muttered a quiet curse. “He’s wearing us down! You heard what he told Kri. He says he knows our secrets, and that we came to destroy the Voidharrow. Look at how he’s watching Albanon and Kri-if he knows how they destroyed Vestausan and Vestausir, he knows they’re the real threat.”
“But why wear us down? Why pick at us with small bands of demons?”
“Probably for the same reason Shara wants to kill him personally,” said the drow. “Pride. Vengeance. He wants to destroy us himself, but we’ve also defeated his creatures every time we’ve encountered them. He wants us tired, not fresh.”
“There’s no honor in an uneven fight,” said Cariss.
“Honor?” Quarhaun laughed. “No drow matriarch would try to destroy a rival House without making sure it was first weakened from within. I think Vestapalk wants to make sure this is a fight he can win. That’s why he split us up.”
Belen stared down at the rest of her friends. “So when Albanon and Kri defeat the fire demons, Vestapalk will attack?”
“I would if I were him.”
Cariss bared her teeth. “Then what can we do?”
Belen’s stomach tightened. “We still have rope, don’t we? Maybe Vestapalk wants us split up, but I don’t. First we get down and join Shara, Roghar, and Uldane, then we do what we planned to all along: we give Albanon and Kri time to work their magic.”
