Vercevoran's bindings.'
'Don't be even stupider than usual. We have to reach the wyrm, or we're beaten before we start.'
Pavel murmured a rhymed couplet and swirled his hand through a pass. Power whined, and for an instant, the whole door shone with a golden light. Will winced at the commotion, but when he peered about, saw no sign that anyone else had noticed.
Pavel twisted the tarnished brass handle, and the latch clicked open. He cracked the door, and he and Will peeked inside. Will caught his breath.
The keep's entire ground floor was one big, high-ceilinged room. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been large enough to hold its prisoner. Vast and serpentine, batlike wings furled, Vercevoran lay motionless in the middle of the floor, with only the slow expansion and contraction of his chest demonstrating he was still alive. The blank, phosphorescent eyes, a paler green than the scintillant scales, stared at nothing.
Despite the wyrm's immobility, his evident helplessness, he was so imposing that Will needed a moment to take in the other features of the hall. Crystal globes atop wrought iron tripods shed the soft, steady light illuminating the captive. Limned in gold and scarlet pigments, intricate geometric designs entwined with writing radiated out from Vercevoran across the floor. The air smelled of bitter incense and the drake's own dry, reptilian scent.
'What do you think?' whispered Will.
'I need a minute,' Pavel replied.
He prowled the room, examining first the glowing orbs, then stooping to inspect the figures painted on the floor.
'Well?' Will demanded.
'Patience.'
'Bugger that. We're in danger, lingering here. Look, it's wizardry holding the drake, and you're no wizard. It's no shame to admit you can't figure out how to free him.'
'I do know, in theory. I've studied how arcane magic works, and I understand how to pit my own kind of power against it.'
'I don't want to butcher the poor creature, either,' said Will, 'but if we don't fix it so we can travel freely, we're never going to solve the puzzle of Sammaster's journal in time to do anybody any good. It's thousands of lives against one.'
Will drew his hornblade from its scabbard.
'No. The Morninglord teaches-'
Pavel cried out and clutched at his head with both hands.
For an instant, Will didn't understand what was wrong. Then he too staggered as agony burned inside his skull. When the pain finally abated, his upper lip was wet with the blood flowing from his nostrils, and a figure stood on the stairway that ran up the wall to the higher levels of the tower.
Will had never seen anything like the creature, but reckoned it could only be the demon the Zhents had summoned to control Vercevoran. In the keep, the tanar'ri had dispensed with its cowl and mantle to reveal a slimy, burly, ogre-sized frame so hunchbacked it was natural for it to lumber about on all fours. Fanged jaws jutted beneath a protuberant brow, a long, thin tongue flickered beyond its teeth, and a sort of cage of bony extrusions ran all the way along its crooked spine. Within that latticework glistened moist, whorled tissue like a prodigious quantity of exposed brain.
'Splendors of the dawn,' breathed Pavel, 'it's a cere-brilith.'
'I'm guessing that's bad,' said Will.
The demon knuckle-walked farther down the steps. 'Who are you?' it snarled. 'How did you get in here?'
Will's head still throbbed from the cerebrilith's psychic attack. But he knew he and Pavel had to shake off the shock of the unexpected assault and fight. The hal-fling leaped to the side-a sudden maneuver he hoped would startle his foe-readied his warsling, and let fly. The skiprock struck the demon in its round black eye. The cerebrilith recoiled.
'Hit it, you idiot!' Will shouted.
Spurred into motion, Pavel rattled off a prayer. The air grew warmer for an instant, and sparks of red-gold light danced about the cerebrilith's misshapen head. Will couldn't tell exactly what his friend had done to the demon, but the magic must have had some effect, because the tanar'ri let out a screech.
Amazing, Will thought, snatching for another sling stone, we're winning.
Then the cerebrilith roared, 'Kill them!' Whereupon Vercevoran surged to his feet and spun around toward the intruders.
Gigantic jaws gaping, sinuous throat swelling, the emerald dragon howled. Knowing the noise could kill anyone caught in front of the wyrm's head, Will and Pavel flung themselves to opposite sides. Still, the cry shook the half ling's bones and spiked pain through his head and torso, even as it vibrated the floor, threatening his balance, and jolted dirt loose from the rafters.
Vercevoran pivoted, chasing Pavel. Reeling, the priest only barely managed to dodge the dragon's raking talons. So long and heavy were the hooked, glittering claws that if only one of them snagged in his flesh, it could easily rip him limb from limb.
And if no one intervened, taking the pressure off Pavel, enabling him to recover his equilibrium and come on guard, Vercevoran certainly was going to rend him. Bellowing, Will cut at the wyrm's hind leg. The hornblade penetrated the shimmering jade scales to gash the flesh beneath, but not deeply. The wounds wouldn't even slow a dragon down.
They likely stung, though, and the reptile whirled toward him. The time had come to vault or somersault clear, away from its fore claws and jaws. Unfortunately, though, Will had never fought a gem drake before, and some subtlety in the way Vercevoran moved threw off his reckoning. He hesitated, unable to gauge precisely when or in what direction to spring, and in that instant, the chance was lost. The emerald wyrm lunged forward, and he had to scramble backward to avoid being trampled.
It only took a second for Vercevoran to pin him against the wall. The dragon struck at him. He sidestepped, and the enormous fangs clashed together on empty air. He riposted, but the hunting sword failed to penetrate the reptile's natural armor.
Vercevoran lifted a forefoot. Still caught against the wall, Will poised himself to dodge, and a voice whispered in his mind, commanding him to stand still. He froze, and the dragon's claws slashed in a horizontal arc.
Somehow, at the last possible instant, Will broke free of the compulsion and leaped to the side. Vercevoran's attack caught him anyway, flung him through the air, and only a tumbler's trained reflexes enabled him to roll and avert a skin full of shattered bones when he smashed down on the floor. He scrambled up and took stock of himself. His last-ditch defensive maneuver had thrown off Vercevoran's aim just enough to save him from serious harm. The drake's claws had slashed his leather armor and cut the flesh beneath, but not deeply enough to incapacitate him. Above him on the stairs, the cerebrilith snarled in frustration.
Will didn't think the tanar'ri had any actual reason to be upset. If it could still attack despite the enchantment Pavel had cast to hinder it, then it and Vercevoran were likely to kill the intruders soon enough. It was obvious the hunters couldn't contend with a demon and a dragon simultaneously in that cramped, enclosed arena.
The only hope, then, was to change the game. Grateful that, when Vercevoran had tagged him, the blow had at least served to fling him to a spot where he didn't have his back against a wall, Will spun his warsling and slammed skiprocks into the reptile's head.
'You want me?' he cried. 'Here I am! Come get me!'
He faked a dodge to the right, then sprinted toward the smaller door, which was too low and narrow for a full-grown wyrm to use. Will reached it ahead of his pursuer. He plunged through and spun himself to the side, where Vercevoran couldn't reach him. Behind him, the wyrm's claws clacked on the floor, and his tail swept from right to left. Inferring from those noises that the drake had turned, Will risked a peek back inside. Sure enough, Vercevoran was racing toward the double doors on the far side of the hall. When the dragon hit them, they burst apart as if they were made of paper.
When Vercevoran followed Will out into the night, Pavel understood what his partner had in mind. While the halfling led the dragon on a chase, Pavel was supposed to slay the cerebrilith, then dissolve the enchantments holding Vercevoran in thrall. All this in the brief time before an old and powerful dragon would otherwise catch and
