The beasts of darkness sweep from the steps of the pyramid. Jhatli, taken first, struggles for a moment and then grows still.
I stare in consternation and cannot help but recoil, for these are beasts every bit as corrupted as the creatures of the Viperhand. They bear every mark of a god’s punishment, in their misshapen bodies, their fur- covered, spider-like legs.
Now, among the creatures of night, I see one of pale whiteness, standing apart from the rest, looming over us all as we look upward from the ground. This one, clearly female, is full of might and danger.
And this one also is a creature of talonmagic. I sense the power of Zaltec within her, and I know that she is a menace that must be destroyed.
21
A WINDSWEPT DAWN
Possessed by his full battle instincts, Halloran did not stop to think. Through the dark of the black night, he saw the horrible shapes descending the pyramid as the first one grabbed Jhatli and held the youth several steps up from the structure’s base.
Instantly Helmstooth gleamed in his hand. In another moment, the sticky black blood of the leading drider dripped from the blade. The creature died as it stepped onto the ground, and the next one backed cautiously upward, away from Halloran.
With their eight legs, the driders had little difficulty supporting themselves on the steep stairway. Keen eyes, adapted to complete darkness, gave them an additional advantage in the Stygian night. Helmstooth’s glow faded almost to insignificance against the opacity surrounding them.
Help!” cried Jhatli, trying to twist away from “the powerful black arms encircling him. He kicked reflexively, shocked by the suddenness of the attack and by the ghastly nature of his opponent. The driders moved around him, and he saw three of them advance on Halloran on the ground below.
Erixitl sank to the ground beside Hal, and the terrible knowledge of her vulnerability was like a physical tie binding him to her. The fight was inevitable; indeed, it had already begun, and he could not allow it to rage at his wife’s side. Coton and Lotil went to the woman as the swordsman advanced to Jhatli’s aid, stepping onto the first steps of the pyramid.
“Get it off me!” Jhatli squirmed in the drider’s grasp as another of the creatures rushed at him, raising a keen black blade. Helmstooth came between them, deflecting the drider’s blade as Hal climbed up another step. He lunged upward, driving the tip of his blade into the flank of the drider holding Jhatli, and the youth tumbled free. Halloran de-fleeted two attacking driders, backing down the steps until once more he stood upon level ground.
Jhatli sprang to his feet beside him, drawing his own shortsword. The steel blade gleamed, reflecting Helms- tooth’s brightness almost as if it held a fire of its own.
Behind them, Erixitl moaned again, and more of the driders swept toward them. Both of their blades clashed with dark steel, and then another pair of driders tried to slip past them. Jhatli spun to the side, lashing outward, but his inexperience with the blade proved a costly handicap.
The drider met his thrust squarely and parried the blade downward and away, to Jhatli’s right. For a brief moment, the youth’s chest and stomach lay exposed to attack, and the drider was swift to capitalize. His black blade darted down, thrust powerfully forward, and Jhatli gasped in pain. Blood spurted from a deep wound, and he collapsed, motionless, in the dust.
Shouting a dark curse, Halloran whirled on the killer, driving Helmstooth with the power of his pluma and his rage. The drider’s eyes widened in terror, and it raised its weapon, only to have the blade shatter like glass when it met Hal’s blow. The gleaming scythe that was Helmstooth continued its driving force, slicing through the skull and the neck and half the chest of the creature.
But he had no time to tend to his friend nor grieve for him. He saw the white shape of a drider, a pale freak among the black creatures, and deep in his gullet, he recognized her. Then her creatures swarmed toward him, and he stood before his wife and the priest and the blind featherworker, raising his sword, the only barrier between the helpless trio and certain, horrifying death.
Halloran fought the fight of his life. He charged the driders, feeling the pluma cuffs at his wrists driving his blade forward with a power he had never imagined. He sprang to
his right, leaped to his left, darted forward and back again as the driders closed in. Helmstooth struck an arm from a drow torso and a leg from an arachnoid body. The blade carved deep into a dark elf trunk and shattered another sword of black steel.
A quick drider scuttled sideways past Halloran, while two more lunged in frontal attacks. Helmstooth found the heart of one as Hal’s entire being cried out from the threat of the flank attack-not for him, but for the suddenly silent Erixitl behind him.
Flexing every muscle in his body, he tore the blade from the first victim, slicing the head from the second drider in front of him without slowing the momentum of his spin. His momentum carried him through a sideways tumble, and as he rolled, he cut two of the drider’s left feet out from under it.
The creature hissed its frustration, slipping backward and raising its sword. With a snarl of pure rage, Halloran sprang at the drider, driving it backward with two hammering blows. The second knocked the creature’s sword from its hand, and without hesitation, Hal swept Helmstooth through a vicious arc, severing the upper portion of the drider from its monstrous, eight-legged body Both halves twitched grotesquely as the drow hands seized the body, as if to pull itself together once more. It died while Halloran turned back to the threats before him.
Now more of the creatures rushed forward, and he realized his vengeance had cost him a second of time he could not afford. He deflected the first blow, losing his balance and stumbling. The second he avoided by twisting away as he fell. But then he was on the ground, and the driders were swarming around him, some of them straight past him!
“Erixitl!” He thought of her name but did not realize that he called it out loud-He saw a black sword raised over him, and then he saw only darkness.
Her first plan had been to obliterate the man with a blast of magic, so that she could linger over the death of the woman beyond. But then Darien had remembered: too often in the past she had wasted powerful magic at Halloran and his woman, only to have the spells thwarted by the woman’s magical protection.
Instead, Darien had crept carefully down the steep steps of the pyramid, letting her driders fight the battle for her. She had only one goal: the sweet flower of light that beckoned her with irresistible temptation-She saw the woman now, curled on the ground in the agonizing prelude to childbirth. She sneered at Erixitl, caught as she was in such a moment of weakness, a weakness that would prove fatal.
The white drider crept around the periphery of the fight watching her creatures attack and die at the hands of Halloran. In a cold, aloof sense, she admired the human for the savagery of his battle. Indeed, she found the sight of his sweat- and blood-streaked form exciting in a way she had not known since the Night of Wailing.
Yet she had known that his fight would be futile, and she watched him fall with a vague sense of pity, as if a good horse had been wasted.
Now Darien advanced toward the woman on the ground. She saw two old men beside her and heard her cry out in pain. But Erixitl’s dark brown eyes met Darien’s and surprised the drider with their anger and their power of will.
Erixitl groaned and threw back her head as convulsive pressure pushed against her womb. She saw the horrid, leering face of the white drider, and she knew that Halloran had fallen. She feared that she would lose her mind.
Lotil suddenly stood up beside her. The blind pluma-worker held in his hands a soft, rich blanket, a blanket of lush colors and deep, seductive shades.
Darien paused for a moment, feeling oddly confused Around her, the others of her kind hesitated as well.
Lotil spun the blanket gently in his hands, and the colors whirled in a most alluring fashion, forming a swirling
