Knaarl cursed and yanked the whip back. The braided demons in Warren’s handturned loose and curled around to attack in earnest. They slithered up his arm and came immediately at his face.
Warren’s first instinct was to run.
“Don’t,” the voice said. “If the demons don’t get you, your exertion willonly pump the poison through your heart faster. If that doesn’t kill you, Knaarlor Merihim will. Fight them. You have the power.”
Steeling himself, Warren took hold of the arcane forces seething through him. He pushed heat out of his body and felt his bones grow cold. But when the heat touched the air outside his skin, it turned to white-hot flame that crisped the slithering snake-demons to gray ash. He shook himself and the ash fell away from him like powdered snow.
“Good,” the voice said. “Very good.”
Warren eyed the approaching demon and concentrated again. When Knaarl flicked the whip once more, Warren stepped to the side and it missed by inches. He thrust out his hand and picked up an empty crate that the Darkspawn had rifled through.
Knaarl drew back his whip and shook out its length again. “Going to throwthat at me, human?”
With a quick gesture, Warren did. Knaarl lifted an arm lazily, as if he were just going to brush the crate aside. Instead, only a few feet from his opponent, Warren shattered the crate into jagged shards.
The wooden shrapnel pierced Knaarl’s thick hide in several places. Most ofthe shards glanced off because they weren’t heavy enough to smash through thedemon’s skin or because they hit at an oblique angle and slid away. But dozensof others embedded in Knaarl’s face and upper body. One of the three black eyestook a direct hit and wept blood down his face.
Knaarl roared in pain and rage as he wiped at the offending splinters. He cracked the whip at Warren so hard that part of the snake-demons shot off the end. Several of the Darkspawn picked up their swords and axes and ran at Warren.
Working quickly, Warren levitated other cratessome empty and some fullatthe Darkspawn. Seeds and books flew in all directions when the crates impacted against the Darkspawn. Their energy weapons blasted the walls and produced pools of acidic poison or started fires. Several of them when down.
Warren turned and fled back up the stairway to the chamber above. When he reached the landing, he angled for the corner that held the Egyptian artifacts. He poured arcane energy outof himself as footsteps and the sound of coiling scales pursued him.
By the time the Darkspawn reached the chamber, the Egyptian mummies were climbing from their sarcophaguses. Animated by the dark forces that Warren supplied, the mummies tore into the Darkspawn with grim and savage abandon.
Desiccated flesh, bones, and natron salt-soaked linen quickly covered the floor as the mummies came apart. But the Darkspawn fell too, dragged down by the mummies.
His two remaining eyes blazing, Knaarl slithered into the room and searched for Warren. As Knaarl drew the whip back, Warren unleashed a wave of flames that washed over the demon and the nearby Darkspawn. The mummies went up in flames at once and wreathed the demons in them.
Knaarl drew back as the flames ate through his hide and burned him. His whip abandoned him as the snake-demons unbraided themselves and fell to the floor. They burned there and never made it out of the flames.
Behind Knaarl, Merihim stood looking on. Warren couldn’t tell what emotionwas showing on the demon’s face. Merihim’s attention was divided between Warrenand Knaarl.
“Merihim knows you’ve gotten stronger,” the voice said. “That unsettles him.”
“I don’t think he wanted me to die,” Warren said.
“No, but he wouldn’t have been surprised.”
“Then who would he have gotten to do his dirty work?”
“Merihim never counts on any one strategy,” the voice said.
While Warren was trying to figure out what that meant, Knaarl broke free of the flames and came at him. The demon drew the curvedsword from over its shoulder. Silver fire glinted along the razor-sharp edge. Knaarl seemed almost to spring forward.
“Now,” the voice urged. “Strike now while he’s concerned about the flames andhis wounds from the wooden splinters are still open.”
Warren reached into the pocket of his duster and pulled out a glass globe he’d prepared under instruction from the voice. The globe was filled with orangeand white froth, but three dark blue arrowhead shapes swam within the liquid. They each had one eye and a thin, barbed tail twice their length.
The voice had called them heart-renders and stated that Knaarl would be vulnerable to them. Warren hoped that was true. He held the globe on his palm and pushed it forward.
The globe spun through the air. Knaarl saw the projectile too late to avoid it. When the globe struck the demon just below the collarbone, the force was great enough to knock him backwards. His upper body swayed on the coils of his lower half so far that for a moment it looked like he might tip over. He put a hand back to steady himself.
The globe shattered and released its contents. Glass embedded in the demon’sflesh. Orange and white froth ran down his chest. The heart-renders surfed in the froth and each found entry into the demon’s body through open wounds leftfrom the wooden shrapnel. The heart-renders’ arrowhead-shaped bodies disappearedalmost immediately.
“No!” Knaarl roared. Panic tightened his features. He dropped the sword andstabbed his talons into his wounds in an effort to get to the heart-renders as they burrowed deeply.
Merihim stared at Warren.
Knaarl managed to get one of the heart-render demons out of his body. It flopped between his bloody fingers before he gutted it with a talon.
The other two escaped him. From what Warren had understood of the demons as he’d summoned them to him and trapped them in the globe, the heart-rendersburrowed into a demon’s veins and let the pulse carry it to the demon’s heart.Once inside the
