lizardthing. It resembled a statue of iron plate armor, twice the height of a man. Without a sound, it dashed two lizards to the ground with one mighty fist. The other dozen beasts fell on their attacker, spears and obsidian swords shattering against its iron carapace.
'What is that?' Liet asked. 'What do we do?'
'A golem,' Twilight breathed at his shoulder. 'Right.' She looked to Slip. 'You and Gargan keep the others hidden. I will be right back.' She moved.
'What?' Liet lost track of her within a heartbeat, as if the shadows had swallowed her whole, devouring her before his eyes.
The battle lasted less than twenty breaths. Methodical, brutal, and completely unemotional, the golem-as Twilight had labeled the iron monstrosity-smashed and trampled the lizards into the ground. They fought with indescribable wildness and inhuman ferocity, but they were as nothing against the golem. Its fists rose and fell with hideous speed and strength, powdering bones and sending webs of cracks through the stone. Every few swings, its helmet breathed out a cloud of vapor that melted skin and set the lizards flailing and gasping.
Finally, when half the fiendish creatures were slain, including two that seemed more demon than lizard, they admitted defeat and fled. All who could move scrambled away and ran down the narrow tunnels.
They went without pursuit. The golem, its work finished, gave the room a long gaze. Liet hunched behind the stone, praying that it wouldn't see him. After the space of a long, agonized breath, it shimmered and vanished. But it didn't seem to leave.
A moment of silence followed. Terrified, Liet looked around, trying vainly to find Twilight. She seemed to have vanished. Was her body amid the dead? He couldn't tell.
Liet rose, shivering. Even if the thing was still there, hidden from view, he felt better revealing himself than not knowing.
Then a hand caught his arm, and Twilight appeared out of the shadows at his side. 'Going somewhere,' she asked, 'without me? I'm crushed.'
' 'Light!' the swordsman exclaimed. He longed to throw his arms around her, but he stopped himself. She'd confused him before, and now wasn't the time-not in front of Davoren, and especially not in front of Taslin, with Asson so lately slain.
Then he noticed the body she was dragging.
'Thalea,' Gargan mused. Liet reasoned it must be his word for 'lizard.'
'Uh, Twilight?' he asked. 'What-what's that?'
'A present,' said Twilight.
It was an unconscious lizardman with black scales and fiendish features. Its body was completely frozen, even its eyes. It wore a rough loincloth and a black sash, upon which was embroidered a sigil of a sickly gray tentacle enwrapping a scimitar.
The only sign the creature lived was the madness in those reddish orbs. If anything, this imprisonment in its own body would drive the lizard even more insane.
'What's wrong with it?' asked Slip. 'Is it-dead?'
'Paralyzed,' Davoren said softly.
'How do you know?' the halfling asked.
The warlock scowled.
The fiendish lizard's eyes blinked, both sets of lids slicking over soft surfaces. The paralysis was fading, Liet realized. Then the beast recovered the use of its tongue, and it wasted no time using it. The words the creature spat were deep and violent, their texture broken and jagged. And though none but Taslin seemed to understand its words, the tone was clear enough.
'What tongue's that?' Slip asked.
'Infernal, wormling,' said Davoren. 'So garbled I cannot understand a word.'
'That's because it's Abyssal,' corrected Twilight.
As Davoren glared, bested, Slip brightened. 'How many tongues do you speak?' she asked the elf.
'Irrelevant,' the warlock snapped. 'What's he saying?'
Twilight looked to Slip first. 'Many enough,' she said. Then she turned to Davoren. 'And it's a she.'
The warlock started to retort, but shut his mouth. Liet understood and agreed-he really didn't care to know how Twilight could tell.
'The same words over and over: Takt der shar,' Twilight pronounced, her silky voice curling perversely around the fiendish tongue. 'The Mad Sharn.' Taslin shrugged.
Hearing the words, the fiendish lizard spat at Twilight and said something dark and unfathomably vile. Liet saw his companions fall to the ground, writhing and moaning. Gargan and Twilight sank to one knee. Taslin fell as though dead. Slip blinked, then clasped her hands to her ears and sank to her knees. Only the warlock remained standing, staring hard at Liet, to whom the word was mere profanity.
Why did it not harm him? Was this some inner power, as with the wight?
The fiendish lizard didn't finish the phrase, though, choking off in the middle. It was as though the very words stopped its heart. The creature died with a dry rattle.
'I suppose that solves that problem,' was all Davoren said.
Liet ran to Twilight and helped her up. The elf looked at him, uncertain of something. Then her eyes widened. 'A sharn,' she said. Liet could feel her shiver in his arms.
'Its master, I expect,' Davoren said. Leave it to the warlock to know some of the darkest secrets of the Realms. 'The madness of demons fits a creature born of chaos.'
'Chaos?' Liet asked. 'What-?'
'There are certain forces in this world you should not know about,' Twilight said. 'That no sane mortal would want to know about.'
'But you do,' Liet argued.
She conceded that with a nod. 'A race that was old when the elves were young,' said Twilight. 'Mighty spellweavers before Corellon's tears conceived the first elves-children of the primal chaos that came before the gods themselves.'
Her voice took on a mystical quality, as though she recounted the memories of a pleasant childhood or a beautiful, half-forgotten summer. Liet could almost fall asleep into dark dreams, listening to that lovely, haunting voice.
'Sharn is simply what men call them, though in truth that is only a fantasy. They are an ancient, mighty race, but not one that most would deal with lightly-not even gods.' Her eyes darkened, and Liet heard a second meaning. 'Which would be wise. A creature born of such disorder cannot be trusted.'
Liet Sagrin shivered, and not just with fear.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
'Why do you follow me?' Twilight asked later as she clicked open a lock. 'I told you to stay with the others. You have a habit of disobedience.'
'Why do we camp at a crossroads?' Liet asked.
The heavy door sighed when Twilight pressed on it. She gestured, and Liet helped her push it open. The door growled in protest but opened. The plain chamber within was empty but for refuse-shattered wood chips, broken ceramics, worn statuettes-and ancient dust. Footprints, distinctly those of a lizard's feet, traced a path through the chamber to an open portal across the room, but the prints were old. She wished she were a tracker, and might have known how old.
She pulled a torch from her pack. Liet grinned until she shoved it at him. No reason she had to carry it-she had darksight.
'I asked you first,' she said.
'I'm sure 'tis the same answer.'
'Guaranteed escape route?' Twilight asked simply.
'I thought you only, ah, appreciated the concept,' he said sheepishly. 'Of a crossroads, I mean. That's not-you
