brilliant electrical arcs, stabbing full into Damanda and Gunggari’s foe. Both staggered and flailed, as the flesh smoked and boiled under the intense magical assault.
Damanda spoke, tiny sparks flashing across the gap of her opened mouth, “Lex! Stop gawking; kill the one you’ve immobilized.”
Marrec tried to get to Lex, the vampire mage standing next to Elowen, but Damanda, still smoking, was on him again. Gunggari grunted with a similar exertion, beating back his foe. They were both pinned.
In a fluid single motion, Lex extruded spindly white hands, claw tipped, from the folds of her black cloak, and grabbed Elowen as if to embrace her. Lex opened her mouth wide, creating a gap larger than any mere human could accomplish, and brought her head toward Elowen’s unprotected neck.
The vampire shuddered, pausing. “Huh,” grunted Lex, releasing her hold on Elowen. She bent her head to look down at her chest. From it protruded the broken end of a wooden branch, darkly slick with pooling blood.
Fallon stood behind Lex. It was he who had thrust the branch through the vampire’s chest.
Marrec blinkedFallon saved Elowen’s life.
Already shriveling and smoking, Lex turned and slashed Fallon with her razor sharp claws. In a spray of blood, both went down, Lex crumbling and Fallon grasping at his neck.
Marrec’s gaze, Ususi’s unexpected assault, Fallon’s betrayal, and Lex’s destruction was enough for the blightlord. She pulled a rolled parchment from her belt with one hand while reaching out to tap her last remaining follower with the other. She began uttering the arcane words inscribed upon the parchment in short, clipped breaths.
Marrec threw Justlance. The spear screamed through the empty air that a moment earlier contained its intended target. Damanda was gone, likely back to the court of the Rotting Man.
On the ground where he’d fallen, Fallon struggled, gasping. Marrec and Gunggari rushed across the chamber, Marrec to Ash’s side, Gunggari to kneel next to Fallon. Ususi stepped tentatively into the chamber, looking around suspiciously. Elowen, still standing stiffly, groaned and tried to move her arms. She managed to do so, if somewhat clumsily. The compulsion was apparently lifting.
“Are you ok, girl?” Marrec asked Ash, inspecting her for bruise, blemish, or other sign of poor treatment. Ash was unmarked. He hugged her close.
Gunggari inspected Fallon’s bleeding neck wound. He said, “Marrec, his wounds are beyond simple tending, and the Nentyarch’s satchel is empty of healing balms.”
Marrec knew that Gunggari, in speaking of his satchel, was actually asking if Marrec retained any healing grace. Marrec met his friend’s eyes, shaking his head. The cleric remembered seeing named vials in the satchel, one of which contained his own name, but none had contained Fallon’s name. Disengaging from Ash, he bent, too, at Fallon’s side.
Fallon looked up at Marrec, whispered, “I should never have taken the girl. I am sorry…” He stopped, coughing blood.
The unicorn warrior said, “It was a brave thing you did, just now. In the end, you chose right.”
Fallon, breathing shallowly, smiled then said, “I know.”
He breathed his last, a smile frozen on his unmoving lips.
Marrec gently closed the elfs staring eyes. “May Lurue grant you redemption.”
Damanda and Bonehammer fell from a height of over ten feet. Damanda corrected, landing on her feet with perfect grace, though Bonehammer stumbled and fell heavily onto a pile of crumbled brick.
She had panicked. She had used her emergency escape scroll, as unreliable as it was, when things turned sour. Luck was with them. Despite the scroll having been scribed by Lex years earlier, and Damanda’s only passing facility with the arts of wizardry, both she and Bonehammer made the uncertain transit and in’ full possession of their limbs.
Shafts of afternoon light bored into the chamber from two high punctures in the ceiling. Luckily, neither of them had appeared beneath those rough apertures. Damanda had picked the bastion of retreat the very moment Lex had penned the scroll, of course. A fortified but empty building in the middle of the Dun Tharos ruins still above ground, it had seemed unlikely to fall into disrepair after having stood for so many centuries. It was near the Close but not in it, in case it was from the Rotting Man she had to use her escape. Despite the odds, in the intervening time the structure had moldered and fallen into further disrepair. That would teach her for choosing an above- ground retreat. Of course, she couldn’t repeat her mistake even if she wished. Lex had been destroyed by that prince of betrayal, Fallon.
Damanda roundly cursed the elf, envying the Rotting Man his way with words and ancient languages but making do with her own obscene vernacular. At least Lex had slashed the little bastard as she fell. Damanda knew lethal blows. She doubted she’d see Fallon again.
“What now, Damanda?” inquired Bonehammer, already back on his feet. With the light of day so close, the wounds given by that odd dark man with the strange war club were not mending as quickly as they should.
Damanda considered her minion’s question. She said, “The Talontyr once told me that the cleric and his band would bring the Child to him of their own accord. If that is true, we merely need to arrange an ambush of such magnitude that nothing can survive it; well, we want the girl to survive, of course.”
“Perhaps we should refrain from setting an ambush, if they’re going to come to the Rotting Man anyway.”
“I’d rather the Talontyr receive the girl from the hands of his trusted lieutenant.”
Bonehammer nodded; he was nothing if not a yes man to Damanda’s will.
While the sun remained above, they were trapped there in her emergency redoubt. On the one hand the building stood within sight of the Close itself. Once darkness fell, she’d raise an army. In a few hours, she’d gather hundreds of blighted volodnis, twigblights, and other rot spawned creatures. She knew all the passages, all the ways that the Close could be accessed, both above and below ground. If the cleric pressed ahead with his fool’s errand, they’d be caught and flayed, there was no doubt in her mind.
First, a bit of rest. Activity during the day, even spared direct light, was taxing. Yes, a bit of a lie-down was called for, she decided. Soon, in just a few hours, the sun would dip below the horizon. Then her full powers would return. Her quarry was as good as in her grasp.
CHAPTER 28
Ash bent, touching the limp form of Fallon on the forehead. Where she touched, a glow lingered before suffusing the body. It seemed then to Marrec that Fallon’s motionless form sighed.
Ash said, “Redemption he has.”
Marrec turned quickly to the crouching girl. “Ash. Can you hear me?”
The girl rose, the look of compassion fading from her face, animation fleeing her body. In a moment, she looked as she always didunresponsive and uncaring.
Marrec was grateful for the small miracle that moved Fallon to save Elowen from the vampire’s bite. He murmured thanks to Lurue. He just wished the betraying hunter had decided to return to the light before he’d kidnapped the girl. Had it been so, perhaps all might now be different.
“Now what?” wondered Elowen.
“We continue to head toward the center of Dun Tharos and confront the Rotting Man. With Ash in our keeping, we may have some protection,” replied Marrec.
“Going overland will take daysyet I do not wish to return to Under-Tharos.”
“True,” said Marrec. He turned to the Oslander, “What do you think, Gunny?”
“Either route has its difficulties. Above ground we’ll likely run afoul of the Rotting Man’s forcessuch was the original reason we decided to approach from belowbut the subsurface route seems far more indirect and dangerous than we hoped. The path is not clear.”
“It is not,” agreed Marrec, sighing.
Gunggari continued, “If the blightlord had retreated physically rather than magically, I might have tracked her back to the center.” The Oslander shrugged.
Ususi held up one hand. “Hold on… that gives me an idea.”
