Lark almost swallowed her tongue in startled fear when the quiet voice nigh her ear said her name.
Her mewing jump brought her around, dagger up-to face Elaith Craulnober. He held a sword and a roll of parchment, and there was a small band of warriors behind him, one of them a silver-crested, scaled man who looked to be half a dragon.
'Well met,' Elaith said dryly. He slapped the parchment into her hand. 'A sewer map. Use it. Round up as many of these idiot humans as you can and get them out.'
Then he was gone, and all his blades with him, leaving her staring at empty darkness.
Shifting stones grated and rumbled overhead.
Then something burst into sudden brilliance at her feet. Lark jumped back again, hissing out a curse, and stared at the lit torch that hadn't been there a moment earlier.
Then she swallowed, looked up to find three halflings from the Warrens nodding gravely to her with swords ready in their hands, sighed-and unrolled the map.
'Come,' she said to Naoni.
Her mistress shook her head. 'Taeros said to stay here. He'll not know where to find us otherwise.'
There were more stony rumblings from overhead, and a spray of dust and small stones showered down around them.
'Go!' Naoni commanded.
Lark looked to Faendra, who slipped an arm around her sister's waist. It was clear that nothing Lark could do was going to shift either of Varandros Dyre's stubborn daughters.
Lark bowed to them, spun around, and trotted off. One of the hin plucked up the torch and ran with her. There were more rumblings and then a shout. She looked for its source and saw two bloody, bedraggled merchants and an old noble.
'Follow me,' she called, waving the map. 'I know a way out!'
They fell into step without argument, as the rumblings overhead grew louder-and closer.
Lark turned a corner and found herself staring at their source: a tunnel-team of dwarves, hastening to toss stones into a side-tunnel and shore it up. Those stones lay in a huge flood of light that was, yes, moonlit!
A street above had collapsed, and they were looking at the surface! The merchants swarmed past her with glad shouts.
Lark helped the old nobleman clamber after them, up the shifting drift of cobbles and building-stones. Then she turned back into the darkness to seek others.
It was what Texter would expect of her-and what she'd now come to expect from herself.
The voice in Beldar's head was growing stronger. He groaned. His beholder eye was pounding, burning, and his actions were no longer wholly his own. Against his will, he was stumbling through the festhall. He had little doubt who awaited him.
'Our labors being not done,' he gasped aloud, dredging up fragments of a warriors' ballad a stern Roaringhorn tutor had forced him to learn years ago. 'We fared forth, our swords ready. For perils broad and deep continueth, and we are beset…'
The inexorable mind-voice grew firmer, stronger…
'And no strength shall deliver us but our own, for the gods but watch, and are amused, and reward those who best entertain by their strivings…'
Beldar's memory failed him, and the thunderous pain rolled in.
He was staggering along a ruined, deserted gallery with sword drawn, just one more lost, wounded noble in a feasting hall full of lost, wounded nobles.
A door presented itself to his right, and he hurled himself against it.
It held, bruisingly. With a snarl, clutching his eye now, Beldar staggered on.
A second door also held, and a third.
The fourth burst open, spilling Beldar into a cluttered chamber-a storeroom? It was crowded with wardrobes, heaps of cushions, and several man-tall oval mirrors with suggestively carved frames. Beldar stumbled past them and over a low, padded-top sideboard-padded-top sideboard? Oh, aye, festhall, stonewits-into a little open area by a window.
Beldar Roaringhorn turned around to face the door, and took off his eyepatch.
It wasn't the battleground he might have chosen, but he would make the best final stand he could.
Cracks widened, and great drifts of dislodged stone tumbled down the walls to burst and shatter against the floor. More than once, the Purple Silks groaned-almost as if the festhall was a weary wounded Waterdhavian, knowing death was near-and that the slow slide into darkness had very much begun.
Folk were fleeing once more into the tunnels, following shouts that promised a way out had been found.
On their backs under a fading, flickering golden dome, Tarthus and Amaundra Lorgra of the Watchful Order trembled and sweated, exhausted beyond their endurance, but somehow holding on…
For now. Every breath a victory, every victory harder than the last. For now.
'Come on, then,' Beldar Roaringhorn murmured, watching a crack crawling slowly up the wall, to where it could send stabbing fingers across the ceiling.
Golskyn and his son Mrelder were very near; the voice in his head was like the roaring of vast, inexorable surf. Skull pounding, Beldar went to his knees and groaned, long, low, and loud.
There was a great pile of tasseled cushions over yonder, behind the His feeble thoughts were shattered by the crash of the door being hurled wide. Smoke curled from it-gods, they'd used a spell to open an unlocked door!
Lord Unity of the Amalgamation swaggered into the room, the shimmerings of a protective spell singing around him. Beldar bent the power of his gaze on the man, but Golskyn merely sneered.
'He's in here, right enough, son,' he announced. 'I don't think your spells will even be needed. There's not much left of him.'
Beldar staggered to his feet, used his sword to spear a cushion, and hurled it in Golskyn's face.
The protective spell flared, and the priest threw back his head and laughed.
He was still laughing when Beldar flung himself against a mirror. He twisted it as it toppled, riding it as its edge crashed through Golskyn's shield and into the arm of the man beyond. The mirror shattered as it bit down, glass shards sinking deep.
Golskyn screamed, and Mrelder came through the door fast, fingers a-crawl with magic.
Beldar ruined that spell with the same cushion, booted up from the floor into Mrelder's face, and followed it with the mightiest slash he'd ever swung.
Mrelder ducked away, but not quite far enough.
As warsteel bit into his shoulder, the sorcerer shrieked, and the voice in Beldar's head was silenced as if chopped off by a-sword.
Something slapped around Beldar's ankle and jerked. He crashed onto his rump and bounced. A thigh-thick tentacle had downed him; its wart-covered length curved back under the priest's robes.
Laughing, Golskyn tore off his eyepatch. A fiery beam leaped forth.
Beldar drove his blade into the tentacle and thrust it up in time to intercept the beam of light. There was a sickening hiss and a foul stench, and the tentacle writhed away as the priest cried out.
Beldar sprang from the floor and hurled himself at Mrelder.
The sorcerer jumped back, stumbled, and fell heavily. Beldar slammed into the floor beside him, sword reaching out to stab and hack, but Mrelder had rolled out of reach, heading for the door.
Fire seared Beldar from behind.
Roaring, Beldar spun around and glared back at Golskyn. What his eye sent forth could not be seen, but the
