quick and quiet, and put the troll down without alarm, to save the surprise. Gargan first, me second, Slip as reserve. Agreed?'
The others nodded silently.
'If this goes wrong and we face Gestal, get in close,' Twilight said. 'He'll be weak hand-to-hand, all his skill bound up in attacks from a distance.'
Gargan furrowed his brow and Slip blinked. 'You know this?' she asked.
Twilight's eyes narrowed. That damned warlock. She'd been a fool to trust him and it had cost her two friends, perhaps a lover as well. No more.
Her jaw clenched, like her heart. ' 'Tis a death I should have dealt long ago, but I was blind.' She grasped Betrayal. 'No longer.'
The goliath nodded gravely and drew his great black sword. The halfling stared at Twilight, then giggled through a hand. This disturbed her, but Twilight let it pass. After Gestal was dead, she would interrogate the little one. But for now…
She felt the hilt of her rapier, sheathed at her waist, took out her crossbow, and remembered the stiletto in her glove. They were as prepared as they could be.
Unable to shake a twinge of trepidation, Twilight gestured Gargan forward and rose from the shadows herself. The goliath darted into the chamber, sword out, and bore down upon the troll. Twilight came behind, ready to fire.
The gnarled troll gave a roar as Gargan's acid-sheathed sword hacked into his slim hip. The greenish liquid burned the flesh like parchment.
Twilight fired and the quarrel stabbed into Tlork's red eye, wrenching another cry of pain. This was going well. She darted toward them, dropping a hand to her rapier. If she could get behind the troll, she and Gargan could make short work-
'Well met,' came a cold rasp, echoing around the chamber. 'You've arrived just in time for the evening banquet-mine.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Twilight's hand went to the quarrels at her belt, but Gestal's magic was faster. Dark power blazed from his fingers and struck her full in the stomach. She flinched and her body erupted in pain. The magic forced a spasm that consumed her with agony. Within the span of a heartbeat, her muscles strained and locked, cutting off a squeal of shock. The crossbow clattered to the ground.
Gestal stepped from the shadows, cloaked in tattered gray robes. Rot and corruption spread up the folds of fabric, as though it had never been cleaned. A pair of human hands emerged from the sleeves, wrists scarred and covered in swaths of black flesh that spread like a cancer up the forearms. Madness bled from the gaps in the robe like leaking ink.
'Fox-at-Twilight,' he said, his voice disturbingly hungry. 'I've been waiting.'
Twilight remained calm. She suppressed a twinge of confusion. Davoren had never shown the power to freeze foes by pain, but he could have hidden it. She had been under spells like this before, and knew it was only a matter of time. All she could do for a few breaths was watch.
Tlork kicked, and Gargan, staggering over the uneven ground, took the troll's bony foot full in the chest. The goliath hit the broken stone hard but instantly reversed his momentum, rolling back the way he had come. He lunged to avoid Tlork's elephant leg. Rising behind the troll, Gargan slashed acid across Tlork's inner thigh, wrenching a fiendish screech from the troll. The goliath had no time for a lethal blow, however, having to duck a whirring warhammer that splintered a long stalactite.
Twilight told herself the pain was only in her head, and the demon power clenched her mind more tightly. This confirmed it, and her mind worked to slip out of the spell. It would take time, though, and it might be time they did not have.
Then she watched Slip materialize and scurry at the cloaked demonist with the grace of a black cat. She paused and gazed at Twilight, perhaps uncertain whether to help her friend or attack her foe.
'Kill… him…' Twilight tried to say. She was freeing herself, she hoped.
As though she had heard, Slip whispered toward Gestal, who was just finishing a chant. Dark, edifying power swirled around the troll. Unhindered, Slip drew her mace and dagger.
Then, in those cowl-shadows Twilight's eyes could barely pierce, Gestal smiled. His lips were moving. He could cast two spells at once?
'No,' Twilight tried to scream, but she couldn't hear if she succeeded. 'No!'
Then the halfling was upon Gestal, and the demonist turned.
He hissed the last word of his spell, a syllable in Abyssal that wrenched Twilight's heart and made her ears want to bleed. Vile darkness gathered and flared.
Slip screamed as her eyes exploded in a red spray. The fluid hissed onto Twilight's leg, where it burned like acid. The eyeless halfling collapsed, sobbing and weeping black. The demonist doubled over and quivered as though the spell's depravity had sapped his body's stability.
Then, reeling, Gestal burst into laughter. He could have been doubled over in mirth. 'Daltyrex,' he said. He clucked his tongue as though chiding a child.
The earring did not translate, but he could have spoken the a spell for all she knew. Would the earring translate such a thing?
Spurred on by outrage, Twilight's wriggling mind finally slipped the spell's shackles. She leaped to shaking feet. She took a running step, only to be thrown to the floor when the world shuddered at Gestal's cry. A great tremor ripped through the cavern, tearing it asunder. Stalactites rained and moonlight from the desert above streamed down from a broken ceiling fifty feet up. The stars hid behind a cloud of dust. Gestal's mad laughter boomed across the screaming stone.
Twilight grit her teeth. How could he cast so quickly? Spells seemed to flow through him at random, all without pause, all deadly.
The quake dug a wide furrow between the combatants and the demonist. Twilight realized she could not jump it, even with the boots. As Slip collapsed into a moaning heap, the demonist smirked in the depths of his cowl and began another spell.
Twilight bit her lip. She couldn't give in to fear. She had to end this, and end it quickly. She shook off the last of her pain, extended Betrayal, and ran.
'Gargan!' she screamed as she barreled toward his back.
Gargan glanced and nodded. He hacked at the troll, driving it back, and whirled even as she jumped, tossing his axe in the air. His trailing hand caught Twilight's arm and heaved her over the crevasse. Her leap became a flying lunge. Then he spun back to the troll and caught his axe as it fell, just in time to block the troll's hammer with both weapons, the force driving him back toward the pit.
As she flew toward the shivering, chanting demonist, Twilight screamed with as much wrath and hatred as she could muster. All the tears that she'd shed for fallen comrades, her heartache at not knowing if Liet lived, and her crushing fear rose out of her in a roar.
Gestal turned and threw back his hood.
At the scream, Gargan rolled between the troll's mismatched legs and glanced after the elf. Gestal had drawn a blade-a cleaverlike dagger-and he used it to parry her lunge aside. She landed, staggered, and dropped her rapier.
'No,' she said. She looked as though she were choking. 'It can't be!'
Gargan knew the time had come to run.
Using instincts and reflexes honed against giants, the goliath eluded Tlork's claws and dodged the crushing hammer by a hand's breadth. With a mighty roar, the goliath dropped his axe and swung his huge sword down in
