Jhesrhi studied the hillside with all its new pits and ditches to show where the underlying tunnels had collapsed. The dragon lay motionless, his head between his forefeet like a dog’s, as though merely looking around at all the commotion had exhausted him.
As far as she could tell, nothing else was moving either. That didn’t mean there wasn’t someone lying in wait-if there was one thing for which the denizens of the Shadowfell had a natural gift, it was sneaking and hiding- but if there was, she’d just have to wait for him to reveal himself and kill him when he did.
She strode out into the open. Drew breath to hail Tchazzar. Then a patch of earth heaved as something started to force its way out from underneath.
All right, she thought, let’s get this over with. She lifted her staff and felt its pleasure that she finally meant to use it in the manner it preferred.
Huge hands, their skin the same color as the surrounding dirt, gripped the edge of the new hole and heaved. A head with brutish features and curved taurine horns surged into view. Beneath it were massive shoulders armored in bands of sculpted stone.
Jhesrhi started backing away. She tried to stop.
I’m not a coward, she told herself. It unsettled me to return to Chessenta, and then to Threskel, but I got better. Gaedynn said I was better.
But evidently she wasn’t, because she couldn’t stop retreating. She couldn’t stop shaking or gasping either. Although she knew it couldn’t really be there, she seemed to feel her stiff, scratchy, filthy slave collar half choking her neck.
The elemental mage-a ken-kuni, one of the giants with an affinity for earth-sneered, drew himself to his feet, and lumbered toward her.
Abishais of various colors rushed the stairs. Aoth knew that like the dragons they resembled, each was largely immune to the force that infused its nature. The reds couldn’t burn, the whites couldn’t freeze, and so forth. So he hurled a rainbow of destructive power down the steps in the hope that multiple varied attacks would kill them all.
The barrage blasted them back and smashed the wooden risers beneath them. Some then lay motionless, charred and shriveled or transformed into stone. Another, plunged into dementia, looked around in confusion.
But others picked themselves up and snarled at the man who’d hammered them. And more of the vile things were still coming through the hole.
Maybe if Aoth killed the man who’d opened it, the gate would close. He pointed his spear, rattled off words of power, and hurled a jagged bolt of shadow. Like the abishais, the wyrmkeeper might be impervious to an attack resembling one or even all of his goddess’s breaths. But Aoth hoped the pure essence of death would knife through any defenses.
The magic pierced the wyrmkeeper’s torso. He dropped his pick and fell, patches of his flesh dissolving into slime before he even hit the floor.
But the hole didn’t close. And hands locked around Aoth’s ankles. While he’d focused his attention on the priest, one of the abishais had jumped up through the splintered wreckage of the stairs and grabbed him.
The devil-kin’s weight nearly dragged him over the edge. Its green stinger stabbed repeatedly against his reinforced boot, and the haze that surrounded the creature seared his mouth and nose and made him cough. The section of staircase beneath him, hanging with little or no support from below, swayed like it was about to give way.
He struggled not to cough. To articulate instead a word that swelled into an unearthly howl. The green abishai lost its hold and fell away. Three of its fellows dropped dead too.
But an instant later, Aoth heard banging and crashing at his back. He glanced around and saw the ruddy dancing glow of flame.
Instead of attempting a frontal assault up the stairs, some of the red and blue abishais were smashing, burning, and blasting their way through the basement ceiling. If he stayed where he was, he’d be trapped with foes assailing him from the front and rear simultaneously.
He hurled another rainbow at the opponents below him as he scrambled backward. He didn’t like doing it. Even a master war-mage didn’t command an inexhaustible supply of magic, and he was burning through his most powerful spells too quickly. But he had to hold back the creatures still in the cellar for at least another moment while he got clear of the stairs.
He felt searing heat and pivoted toward it. Shrouded in flame, a red abishai reached for him with hooked talons and whipped its stinger at him. He blasted it with a booming flare of lightning.
An instant later, a lightingbolt struck him, almost like his own magic had bounced back. Every muscle clenching and spasming, he shuddered in place for a moment, then dropped to his knees.
The power would likely have killed him if not for the protective enchantments bound into his mail and tattoos. As it was, it left his head empty and ringing like a bell. A light crawled in the blue abishai’s eyes, sparks popped and sizzled on its scaly hide, and a part of him realized it was gathering its strength to throw more lightning. But at first he couldn’t make himself react.
Even when his mind snapped back into functionality, his still-twitching muscles didn’t want to obey it. But somehow he pointed his spear and sent a blade of white light leaping from the point. The floating sword slashed, and the abishai toppled backward. Its lightningbolt shattered a section of the ceiling.
Panting, heart pounding, Aoth rose and retreated through the empty rooms. The flying blade finished killing its first target. He called it back to hover close by and strike at whatever popped out at him.
But the sword couldn’t keep all the abishais away. There were too many. There were ragged, smoldering holes gaping in the floor of every room, waiting to punish any misstep, and devil-kin lurking around every corner. When he was lucky enough to spot them while still a step beyond their reach, he blasted them with flame and frost. Otherwise he drove his spear into their vitals.
Suddenly he smelled a scent like a gathering storm, and a stray spark fell in front of his face. He wrenched himself aside, and a dazzling lightningbolt roared down from above. One of the blue abishais had gone up to the second story, clawed a hole in the floor there, and waited for him to pass underneath. He sent the flying sword streaking at it to shear the fiend’s head from its shoulders.
He realized he had no idea of his direction. He’d turned and dodged so often that, ridiculously, the handful of interconnecting rooms now felt like a maze. Clamping down on a surge of panic, he glanced around and spied a window.
He blew the shutters to splinters with a blast of sound, then ran toward the opening. Shrouded in mist and bitter cold, a white abishai lunged at him. He stabbed it in the eye with his spear, jerked the weapon free, and leaped through the opening-into the street where Jet had set him down.
No help was in sight, and he realized he shouldn’t have expected any. He’d only been inside for a little while, even if it had felt like all night to him.
He took a breath and aimed his spear at the abishais springing and clambering out after him. Come on, then, he thought.
Gaedynn loosed his last arrow, dropped his bow, pulled his scimitar out of the ground, and lunged from the thicket. He closed to striking distance before the shadar-kai he’d shot finished falling down.
He cut the second one across the kidney. By then the remaining two had their chains whirling. He jumped back, and the ends of the weapons streaked past him. He instantly stepped in and sliced into the torso of yet another silent, scar-faced opponent.
He looked for the last one and couldn’t find him. Pain smashed through his ankle, and then something yanked his leg out from under him. As he slammed down on his belly, he realized the last shadar-kai had shifted behind him and caught his leg with his chain.
