The Summoning, page 2
Slipping smoothly into a spell incantation, he crushed the coal nugget and brought his hand forward. A fan of pink radiance shot from the eye tyrant’s huge central eye, speckling Galaeron’s vision with pale light. Even through the red spots in his eyes, he could see that the tunnel remained as bright as before.
The woman tapped her dagger above the monster’s huge central eye. “Haven’t fought many beholders, have you? Magic’s not much good around Shatevar.”
“I am aware of an eye tyrant’s power.” Galaeron lowered his gaze to address the creature directly. “But I had not heard they were such faithful slaves. We have no quarrel with you, Shatevar.”
Shatevar twisted his toothy maw into a sheepish grin. “Sadly, your warriors are not the ones holding darkswords to my back. Should that change, rest assured I will serve you as loyally as I have Vala.”
“Vala?” Galaeron repeated, guessing the reason the eye tyrant had spoken her name. Charm spells were much easier to use when a caster knew his quarry’s name, and they did not require anything so clunky as hurling coal dust at someone. “What kind of name is Vala? Meshim deri—”
“Enough!” Vala pricked her dagger into the eye tyrant’s head, drawing a single bubble of brownish blood.
Shatevar’s central eye widened, and again the pink flash filled the corridor. Galaeron’s spell died on his lips.
“Try that again, elf, and there will be blood.” Still keeping the eye tyrant’s largest eye pointed at Galaeron, Vala cut another eyestalk loose from its bonds and aimed it at a fist-sized hole the creature had inadvertently drilled into the wall. “You’ve eleven eyes. Back to work.”
“As you command, mistress.”
The eye tyrant began to sweep its blue beam across the wall again, revealing a strange square of glimmering radiance deep inside the hole it had created. Content with a standoff for now, Galaeron dropped his hand and used a pair of curt finger gestures to issue two instructions, the most important being to wait. With a little patience, he might learn what the humans were doing and—more importantly—not get anyone killed.
The eye tyrant continued to melt the rock away, shaping something that looked ominously like a doorway. As the opening grew, so did the shimmering square of radiance, though it seemed little more than a sheet of silvery light. Shatevar’s blue beam passed through undisturbed, continuing to disintegrate stone on the other side, while the rocks that occasionally fell from the ceiling tumbled back through into the chamber. Given their location, Galaeron wondered if he might be looking at the fabled Sharn Wall, a barrier of ancient magic rumored to lie buried along the perimeter of Anauroch. If so, he could not imagine what the humans wanted on the other side. The few veteran tomb guards who gossiped about such things claimed the hell beyond was rivaled only by the slave pits of Carceri.
Vala kept a wary watch while Shatevar worked, and the patrol was still awaiting Galaeron’s signal when the blue beam began to leave black nothingness in its wake.
“We’ve broken through,” reported a human.
Vala’s eyes shifted, and Galaeron knew this to be the best chance he would have. He curled the tip of his index finger, signaling the attack, and a trio of white arrows flashed past. He was already diving as the shafts struck home, two above Shatevar’s central eye and the third in Vala’s cheek. Though the arrows sank only fingertip deep, that did not prevent the victims from crying out.
To Galaeron’s surprise, no human arrows clattered off the wall behind him, and no elf voices cried out in pain. As he rolled, he glimpsed Louenghris falling beneath the blow of a human sword’s lustrous pommel and saw two more archers lying in the dust unconscious but unbloodied, then Takari and her companions swept past him, flinging sand and uttering spells of sleeping.
Galaeron came up face-to-eye with Shatevar. Though the lid of its central eye was drooping, the eye tyrant had not yet fallen to the sleep arrows and was swinging around two unfettered eyestalks to attack. The blue beam swept past above Galaeron and tore a six inch hole across Aragath’s chest. The scout did not scream; he simply dropped his chin and stared at the red mess spilling down his stomach, then he fell into the dust.
Galaeron was already raising his hand to spray magic at the eye tyrant when a black sword fell on it from behind. The shadowy blade slid through the leathery head almost effortlessly, splitting the skull down the back and spilling the ghastly contents onto the floor. Shatevar’s many eyes grew foggy and vacant, then the blue disintegration beam died and left the tunnel in darkness.
“You fool,” growled a gravelly voice.
Galaeron looked up, struggling to see. The silvery radiance was still glimmering in Shatevar’s door but did not seem to cast light so much as be light. As his dark sight returned, he found a mustachioed human staring across the eye tyrant’s deflated orb at him. By the look of utter contempt on the man’s face, it was clear he could see in the dark as well as any elf.
“You have no—”
Takari interrupted the human by catching him across the jaw with the dull side of her blade. He staggered backward, then stumbled over Vala’s legs, protruding from beneath Shatevar’s cleaved skull, and landed on his back. Takari placed a boot across the back of his neck and kicked his sword away, but the precaution was hardly necessary. The man was sleeping as soundly as his commander.
“Don’t break his neck.” Galaeron rose. “They aren’t killing, so neither should we.”
Takari glanced at Aragath’s body, then said, “The beholder was theirs.”
Despite the bitterness in her voice, she scuttled off to join the hunched battle at the head of the tunnel. It was a strange fight, with stooped figures on both sides striking with hilt pommels and flat blades, the walls echoing with the ferocious yelling of any combat, but no one wailing in fear or grief. Galaeron was not pleased to see that his elves were winning only by dint of magic and numbers—and had the humans been willing to kill, even these advantages would have failed to achieve victory. Determined to end the fight before someone made a mistake and turned it into a mortal brawl, Galaeron summoned to mind the incantation of his sleep spell.
“Can you fools not be silent out there?” The voice was wispy and dark and as deep as the tunnel itself. Galaeron stopped and looked to the hole in Shatevar’s doorway, but the voice seemed to be coming from everywhere around him. “You have led the devils straight to me!”
The remaining humans fell silent and lowered their swords. Takari knocked one unconscious, and two moon elves slipped quickly forward to take charge of the prisoners and prevent them from restarting the fray. Galaeron used finger talk to divide his patrol between caring for his fallen archers and binding the humans, but he kept Takari at his side. He did not want the unpredictable Wood elf venting her grief over Aragath’s death on their prisoners.
Turning to the nearest of three humans still standing, he asked, “Who did that voice belong to?”
The humans looked blindly about, uncertain as to who Galaeron had asked, and he realized they could see in the dark only with their swords in hand. He touched one on the chest.
“Who was that voice? What are you doing down here?”
“No harm to Evereska,” answered the man. “That’s all—”
The last few words were lost to the crack of a magic blast, then the cavern vanished into an instant of murk thick enough to feel. The clatter of falling stones echoed through the tunnel, almost inaudible to Galaeron’s ringing ears, and his vision slowly returned, spotty and filled with strings of spidery darkness. He motioned the guards to continue watching the prisoners then turned toward the source of the explosion.
The head and shoulders of a burly human protruded through a saddle-sized cavity in the back of Shatevar’s doorway. Behind the screen of silvery radiance, he looked pale and ghostly, despite what Galaeron guessed to be a swarthy complexion and hair as black as jet.
“Melegaunt?” called one of the prisoners. “Melegaunt Tanthul?”
The figure nodded, then thrust a beefy arm through the hole and shouted, “Help!”
The humans started forward at once, trying to bull their way forward despite their bound hands. It was a bad mistake. Takari laid one out with an elbow to the nose, and the other two fell to their guards’ pommel strikes. Fortunately for Melegaunt Tanthul, half a dozen elves were rushing forward in the humans’ place. They slowed as they passed through the silvery barrier, then caught hold of his arms and began to pull. The human slipped forward, then abruptly stuck and screamed for them to stop.
The shocked elves obeyed, and the human vanished back through the hole. There was a muffled thump but no scream.
Takari looked to Galaeron for orders, as did the elves inside the silver barrier.
Galaeron shook his head uncertainly but started toward the doorway. “I guess we should see what—”
Something that looked like a mouth surrounded by four arms shot through the hole and began to slam itself around, catching elves between its scaly head and the doorway’s rocky walls. One elf tried to scream but instead poured forth a torrent of frothing blood. Another fell with her flattened helmet still on her head. The survivors tried to draw weapons and back away. The creature lashed out with its four arms, catching two of the elves by their throats and arms, then came slithering the rest of the way out of the hole.
With a spiked, slug-shaped body tapering back from its huge mouth to a thin tail, the creature was the strangest living thing Galaeron had ever seen. It had no eyes or ears but was aware enough of its foes to jerk its captives away from the two elves who had escaped its grasp. As they moved to help their comrades, a black bolt materialized out of thin air and struck one down. The second warrior fell when the thing hurled one of its prisoners into her head. Both elves fell with broken necks.
“What hell did these human bastards open?” Takari yelled, reaching down for a second sword. When her palm closed around the leather-wrapped hilt of human’s sword, she hissed and dropped the black blade then displayed a welt of frozen skin. “By the Night Hunter, even their weapons are profane!”
On the other side of the wall, Melegaunt’s muffled voice rose up, sounding pained and quivery as it growled out a string of arcane syllables. Something long and spike-covered floated past the hole, then the bearded wizard finished his spell. The only effect Galaeron could see was a set of scintillating shadows.
“Bows—choice of arrows!” Galaeron yelled.
“What of Ehamond?” Takari asked, referring to the elf still struggling in the creature’s grasp.
Galaeron started forward without bothering to answer. Of all the elves in his patrol, Takari had been with him the longest, and they shared an almost instinctive rapport. He nudged her toward Ehamond, indicating he would attack and she should rescue.
“When wolves mount porcupines!” she snapped.
Pushing Galaeron behind her, Takari snatched up the human sword and hurled it at the strange beast then sprang forward behind the tumbling blade. Galaeron followed close behind, his spell ready on the tip of his tongue.
The human sword passed through the silver barrier and buried itself to the hilt in the creature’s squirming torso, then Takari pushed through the light and was on the creature, slashing and slicing. Galaeron danced through behind her—the barrier dragged at him like a curtain of cold spider silk—and slid over behind Ehamond. The elf was coated in blood, screaming, hacking wildly at the thing’s teeth.
“Calm yourself, guard!” Galaeron dodged a claw, then caught a free ankle. “We can’t help you like this.”
Takari parried a claw, dodged the creature’s snapping mouth, then brought her blade down on an arm holding Ehamond. The sharp elven steel bit deep, nearly slicing the limb off at the elbow, and Galaeron pulled Ehamond’s right side free. Crying out in elation, Ehamond brought his own blade around and lopped off the hand still holding him. Galaeron stumbled back through the silvery barrier, dragging Ehamond after him, and saw the monster’s barbed tail arc around behind Takari.
“Behind—”
The barb struck her between the shoulder blades, piercing Takari’s leather armor as though it were parchment. Her arms dropped and her body arched forward. The tail began to pulse, pumping its contents into her body. Galaeron dropped Ehamond’s leg and leveled his hands at the tail then cried out an incantation. Four bolts of golden magic shot from his fingers and blasted the barb off the tail, freeing Takari to collapse back through the silver barrier.
She had not even touched ground before a flight of black arrows sizzled past Galaeron to strike the creature. The first three bounced off the thing’s thorny hide, but the final stuck deep in its mid-section. The archer who had fired it spoke a command word, activating its death magic.
A puckered white ulcer appeared around the wound, but the strange creature did not fall. It did not even sag.
Leaving Ehamond to scramble off on his own, Galaeron grabbed Takari and dragged her away. Her eyes were open but glazed, more shocked than frightened. Another flight of arrows hissed past, but the creature’s hide turned gray and stony, and all four bounced off harmlessly. The small number of shafts filled Galaeron with despair, but with Ehamond and Takari wounded and three more elves unconscious from the fray with the humans, only four warriors remained to him.
Much to Galaeron’s relief, the creature stayed in the cramped cavity between the silvery barrier and the hole at its back. It snapped the single arrow that had wounded it and tossed the ends at the elf who had fired the shaft.
Galaeron rolled Takari to her side and plucked the creature’s barb from her back. The wound was already swollen and pestilent. Deep in the puncture was something small and round, glowing hot scarlet in Galaeron’s dark sight. Knowing better than to attempt removing the thing now, he called Ehamond over and pushed Takari into the arms of the battered elf.
“Take her and go. If we don’t follow, make a report.”
“You’ll follow,” said Ehamond, glancing toward the strange creature. “You’d better—who’d believe this if you don’t?”
With that, he pulled Takari into a cross-shoulder carry and vanished up the tunnel. Galaeron started to toss the tail barb aside, but thought of what Takari would do and threw the spike contemptuously across the silvery barrier. The creature caught it, then rose a few inches and floated to Galaeron’s end of the cavity. Though it was impossible to perceive anything resembling emotion on the faceless thing, Galaeron had no doubt that were it able to attack across the silver barrier, he would be dead.
The creature was still hovering in front of Galaeron when a beam of purple magic crackled through the hole, catching the thing in the back and slamming it against the barrier. It writhed madly, loosing an ear-piercing squeal that sounded like it would bring the roof down.
“Now!” It was the same voice that had filled the tunnel earlier. “Take up my swords and kill it now!”
The remaining elves reached for their weapons and started forward, but Galaeron did not want them anywhere near the creature. “Not swords! Magic bolts.” He raised his hand. “On my count … now!”
Shafts of golden magic began to converge on the creature. Some sank into its stony hide with no effect whatsoever, but most struck powerfully, hurling the thing back into the purple beam, blasting off thorns and pieces of hide. Galaeron’s first spell had barely left his hand before he repeated it, firing another flurry of raw magic even as the creature tumbled away from the first. His bolts flashed through the silver curtain and met the beam of purple magic coming from the other side.
The result was not exactly an explosion. There was a flash of a thousand colors and the roaring silence of the void, then a horrid prickling and the bewildering realization that he now lay slumped against the tunnel wall. The air reeked of burning iron, and everything ached. There was a crimson ring on the silvery barrier, flickering and steadily growing dimmer as it expanded outward. On the other side of the curtain lay the strange creature, its body pocked and pitted with blast marks, strips of peeled hide showing long strips of green flesh. As Galaeron struggled to comprehend what he was seeing, the thing rose off the ground and floated over to the barrier, then stuck its head through the smoldering hole.
Galaeron’s stomach grew hollow, and his stunned elves began to fill the tunnel with low groans. The huge mouth seemed to smile, then the creature floated the rest of the way through the hole. It plucked an unconscious human off the floor, then delicately pulled off his helmet.
Galaeron forced himself to his feet. “Stand if you are awake!” he yelled, reaching for his sword. “Defend yourselves!”
Only a handful of figures stirred, but it was enough to make the creature drop the human. The thing’s mouth swung toward Galaeron, shooting a plume of black fog out between its teeth.
There was no time to shout a warning. Galaeron barely managed to close his mouth before the cloud rolled over him, burning his eyes and nostrils and making his lungs cry out for air. The sound of coughing and retching filled the tunnel, anguished and frightened and all too brief. By the time Galaeron could summon to mind the words of a wind spell, half the voices had fallen silent. By the time he actually uttered it and sent the deadly fog whirling down an empty side passage, the rest of the voices were also quiet.
Knowing he would be the next to fall, Galaeron did not fight the terrible rage rising up inside him. Anger bred folly, but it also bred desperate courage and mad strength, and he had seen enough of this devil-creature to know what he needed most. He charged after the receding edge of the black cloud, still holding his breath and swinging his sword blindly into the murk. He felt the edge bite once, then inverted his grip and lunged, driving forward with all his strength.
