"Zombie!" the half-elf cried, desperately fumbling with his right hand for the dagger on his left hip. His fingers locked around the hilt and whisked it free, then brought it slashing down on Delbridge's cold, dead forearm, but the zombie seemed hardly to react as the blade sawed through its toughened hide.
Flint was there in a flash, chopping at the arm with his axe. Tanis stumbled away from the box as the zombie crashed back into it, minus its left hand. The quivering, severed hand of the dead man maintained its grip on the half-elf, but Tanis frantically pried up the ringed fingers one at a time with the blade of his dagger until the hand fell to the ground with a dull thud.
The zombie did not hesitate or even cry out, but continued struggling to grasp the edge of the box with its oozing stump.
Flint was ready. The hearty dwarf raised his axe high and swung it down again and again with the rhythm of a practiced woodcutter, mindless of the ichor that splattered with each blow, or even of Tanis standing next to him, slashing with his dagger. He knew that a zombie never veered from its single obsession until destroyed, turned back by a priest, or called off by its master.
"I think you can stop now, Flint," Tanis panted at his side, gripping the dwarf's shoulder. The undead creature, or what was left of it, twitched reflexively twice more, then stopped moving.
Ears ringing with the thunderous pounding of his own blood, Flint's gore-spattered hands clenched and unclenched the haft of his gruesome axe.
Selana and Tas stared with unabashed horror and shock. The room, still bathed in the soft amber light of the sea elf's spell, fell quiet between the ragged breaths of its occupants.
Almost clinically, Tasslehoff watched a little red mote dance in the rafters. It seemed to grow before his eyes, a weaving scarlet swirl containing infinite gradations of red, until it was at least as big as his head.
By now the others had noticed the spiraling, growing mote and knew that in a room that housed a zombie, it could not be good news.
"Run!" cried Tanis and Flint, almost in unison.
But before anyone could move, the air in the tiny room was rent with a flash of lightning that singed Flint's beard and sizzled Tas's topknot, leaving behind a cloud of choking, oily smoke.
Amongst the roiling clouds stood a hulking figure, well over six feet tall. Selana screamed at the sight of its horned head and dark, leathery wings. Then Tas was at her side, shouting, "It's a man, not a monster!" and she realized that the horns were a cap fashioned from a ram's skull and the wings were a cape that was supported beyond his shoulders by a frame.
An enormous scar ruined the right side of his face and sealed his eye socket. His remaining eye blazed with fury.
"Who have we here?" The magician focused his lone eye on the red-faced half-elf and dwarf standing over the hashed zombie, then on the wide-eyed kender and trembling woman standing on the far side of the catacomb. "What have you done to poor Omardicar the Omnipotent?"
His tone was light and mocking, but his left eye had an angry, hard glint as it returned to Tanis and Flint. In a flash, the wizard raised his arms and mumbled a single, indistinct word. A gigantic web materialized, extending from floor to ceiling, and wrapped itself around Flint and Tanis. Sticky goo dripped from the strands and adhered to the struggling victims. The more they twisted and fought to break free, the more the web tangled around them, until they could hardly move at all and finally collapsed to the floor.
Then, with practiced precision, the wizard snapped his attention to the two by the door. Again he muttered his magic word and the twisting strands appeared to engulf Tas and Selana. But instead of wrapping around them, the web splattered against an invisible barrier and slid to the floor, then glowed briefly and disappeared. Selana grinned grimly at her opponent.
"You surprise me, woman," the mage said in his imposing baritone, a mixed look of admiration and irritation on his hideous countenance, "but I won't be surprised twice."
Selana was already preparing her next spell, and surprise Balcombe is exactly what she did. The sea elf extended her hands with the fingers spread and shouted, "Dasen filinda!" A spray of colors burst from her fingers and splashed across the wizard, streaking round his body and spinning him in a half-circle. As he staggered back toward the wall, he tripped over a broken plank on the floor and sprawled into the dirt. The hideous ram's skull cap fell from the mage's head and rolled into a dark corner, and the cape's wing frame snapped. The dazzling colors continued flashing around his thrashing form as he struggled to remove the ruined cape.
"Don't mess with Selana, or she'll turn you into a bug!" crowed Tasslehoff, running up with the sea elf to untangle Tanis and Flint. But Balcombe's webs were tough and sticky. Tas yanked the dagger from his legging and sawed through enough strands to free Tanis's knife hand. As the elf worked to cut himself out, Tas switched to Flint.
"Hurry the spell won't last long," urged Selana. But the sticky strands of web wrapped around the blades of the knives and clung tightly to Tanis's and Flint's arms and legs.
"I was very lucky that my spells worked against him," she whispered to the half-elf. "Whoever he is, he's far more powerful than I am. I have no spells or herbal components left."
Even as she spoke, Balcombe's thumbless right fist thrust through
