Avenger

Geran shook his head. “Unlikely.” There was no doubt about it; something trapped within the old temple was straining at the portal that Sarth was carefully working open.

Sarth neared the end of his spell, but halted before he spoke the last words. He drew back a pace and looked at Geran and Hamil. “This is our last chance to reconsider,” the tiefling said. “There is an infernal presence sealed behind this door. Once we pass within, we will be in its power.”

“We didn’t come all the way to Myth Drannor to leave empty-handed,” Geran answered. “Aesperus is the key to defeating Rhovann’s gray warriors, and the key to Aesperus is the bargain for the missing pages from his tome. I have to make the attempt; I can’t see any other way to bring the pages out. But you two don’t have to follow me.”

“Not too likely now,” Hamil muttered. “Let’s get this over with.”

Sarth nodded, and readied his scepter in one hand. He faced the archway at the bottom of the stairs, and spoke the last words of his passage spell: “Anak zyrsha saigesh!”

The stone portal blocking the passage ahead groaned open. In the space of an instant, the subtle menace waiting for them grew tenfold. Exchanging glances, they advanced into the chamber below the old school. It was a great vaulted cellar dominated by old sepulchers carved with the images of long-dead mages, most of them elves. Several other corridors led off into darkness. Geran paused, and murmured an elven finding charm he’d learned years before when he began his studies in magic, fixing in his mind the Infiernadex as he remembered it-he’d briefly handled the tome a few months back, and any pages that had once been a part of it likely retained a faint impression of the whole. The passage to the left immediately leaped to his attention, and he nodded toward it. “That way, I think,” he said to his companions.

They were only three paces from the archway when the malevolence lingering in the temple’s catacombs suddenly coalesced into a knot of living darkness behind them. They whirled to face the threat, watching as the inky blot took on a tall, manlike shape and became real and substantial. In the space of a few moments a gaunt, scaled, winged devil crouched in the center of the chamber, its wings flexing, its fangs bared in an evil grin. A chain of iron links glowing cherry red with heat dangled from its clawed hands.

“Foolish halfblood,” it hissed at Sarth. “You have delivered me the keys to my freedom by weakening the warding above. When I slay you, I will at last be able to leave this place!” The creature hurled itself at the tiefling with sudden ferocity.

Geran leaped into its path, interposing himself between the devil and his friend. He struck with a crackling bolt of lightning that leaped from his blade, singeing the creature’s belly scales in a smoking black crease. It wheeled on him, lashing with its burning chain, and for a moment overwhelmed Geran with the sheer frenzy of its wrath-snapping fangs, raking claws, battering wings, and goring horns, all the while flailing wildly at him with its infernal iron. He parried, ducked, countered-to no avail. A powerful wing knocked him off balance, and a raking claw under his guard caught him on the side and threw him headlong into the nearest sarcophagus. His magical wardings saved him from being gutted on the spot, but the impact against the cold stone knocked him senseless for a moment.

“Geran!” shouted Hamil. The halfling darted in beneath the monster’s slashing claws, stabbing and cutting at its legs as he tried to stay inside its reach. Geran hardly noticed. Slowly he shook his head and rolled to all fours, wincing. Get up, Geran! he told himself. Distantly he was aware of a brilliant bolt of lightning searing the shadows of the catacomb, followed by a thunderclap that brought a rain of dust from the ceiling. With one hand on the sarcophagus next to him, he pulled himself to his feet and took two deep breaths to steady himself. Warm blood ran down his shirt and splattered the damp old stone. With a cry of challenge he charged at the monster’s back and struck it deeply between its wings.

The infernal creature shrieked in pain, whirling to face Geran. He leaped over its lashing tail, and deflected a strike of its chain that was powerful enough to rip chunks of stone from the wall when it passed over his head. The monster surged toward him in fury, but at that moment Sarth-who was sprawled on the floor a good ten feet back from the creature-raised himself up on his elbow and shouted, “Raizha ektaimu!” From his scepter, a bright green ray shot out, catching the devil in its side. Instantly a great gory bite appeared in its flesh as the disintegrating spell gouged a horrible wound in the creature. The monster shrieked again, so loud that Geran winced in pain, and then sank to all fours under the spell’s power. In a moment nothing was left but a half- eaten corpse, its wound smoking with an eerie green vapor.

“I sincerely hope we see nothing more like that in here,” Hamil said.

“As do I,” Sarth admitted. “That was my only spell of disintegration.”

Geran stood waiting, stretching out with his senses for any hint that more of the devil’s kind were nearby. The aura of supernatural evil had diminished noticeably, but he couldn’t be certain if it was entirely gone. “We’d better keep on,” he finally said. “The sooner this is done, the better.”

He limped toward the archway he’d sensed before with his finding charm, one hand clamped over his badly scored side, his sword in the other. Sarth and Hamil followed after him, weapons at the ready. The passage ran only a few feet before it ended in a large conjury. The summoning circle in the center of the room was defunct, its wardings broken by masonry debris that had fallen from the ceiling at some point in the past. Geran wondered if the devil they’d just battled had been confined within until the debris set it free to roam the vault, or if it had fled into the vault from outside to hide itself from the elves when they retook the city. He decided that it was irrelevant now, and looked around the room for any sign of the tome he sought.

A dusty old bookshelf leaned against the far wall. “Aha,” he breathed. He hurried over to examine it more closely. Most of its contents had long since fallen to pieces, littering the floor with rotted coverings and scraps of yellow parchment, but one book seemed to be in better shape. Carefully he removed it, carrying it over to a worktable nearby.

“Is that it, Geran?” Hamil asked.

“I’m not sure,” he replied. He blew gently over the cover, and found glyphs in Espruar gleaming under the dust: The Book of Denithys. He started to turn away in disappointment, but then it occurred to him that he was looking for a fragment, not a complete tome. He opened the book carefully, and found between its pages a folio of parchment that was a little larger and darker than the rest of the book. He closed the book, turned it over, and opened it by the back cover, and there, right in front of him, were markings to match the ones he’d seen on the rest of the Infiernadex months earlier in the tomb of the priestess Terlannis. “Wait, yes-yes, this is it! We’ve got it!”

His comrades hurried over to his side, peering at the ancient paper. “That’s all there is?” Hamil said. “It can’t be more than five or six pages. What does Aesperus want with them?”

“Allow me an hour to inspect them, and I will have an answer for you,” Sarth replied.

“I suggest that we can inspect the pages later,” Geran said. “I don’t want to linger here a moment longer than we have to.” He took a couple of endplates from the ruined books left on the shelf, brushed them clean, and placed the old Infiernadex pages between them as a makeshift protection for the old tome. Then he put the covered manuscript into his satchel, and led the way as they retraced their steps. They passed through the chamber of the wizards’ tombs again, and back up the long passageway toward the tower foundations.

“Do we set out tomorrow?” Hamil asked. “Or should we wait a day, and make sure we’ve got what we came for?”

“Tomorrow,” Geran decided. “Sarth can inspect the manuscript while you and I retrieve our mounts and reprovision. With luck, we’ll be on our way by noon.” He dimmed his light spell as they emerged into the tower foundation, turning toward the stair climbing back up to the ground level-and then he stopped midstep.

Elves in the fine mail and coats of the Coronal Guard stood waiting on the steps above Geran and his companions, their faces grim. Several held arrows on their bowstrings, half-drawn and pointed at the adventurers below. At the head of the patrol stood Caellen Disarnnyl, his sword bared in his hand.

“I am sorely disappointed in you, Master Alderheart,” the moon elf said in a cold voice. “I warned you quite clearly against venturing into our ruins without a writ of permission. Apparently my words lingered with you for something less than a day and a half before you forgot them.”

Ah, damn it, Hamil said to Geran. The halfling raised his hands in a placating gesture. “I think there’s been a small misunderstanding,” he began. “I believe we actually possess the proper permissions.” Not a word of that last part was true, of course, but Geran thought it at least seemed plausible.

“Unlikely, as I happened to speak with the city warden not more than two hours ago before commencing my