The Living Dead

27

Cavadrec's lair shook and rumbled. A pair of wolves bounded into the room from one of the many tunnel entrances, howling and stalking the room with obvious and uncharacteristic anxiety. Still, he reminded himself, they were only animals acting on instinct. He decided not to destroy them, but to instead find out what had just set off an earthquake.

"They're coming for you, Cava!" the eyeless, brutalized old man shrieked insanely. Favrid, as near as Cavadrec could see, had been reduced to a screaming lunatic after the wight consumed his eyes. "You can't escape! They won't just bury you! They'll destroy you, Cava!"The old elf began giggling, and it grew into the raving laugh of a madman. "Cava, this fix he's in, because I stole his thirimin," he sang deliriously.

Cavadrec whirled in fury and slashed Favrid's ruined face with splayed claws. He hissed like a cat, longing to tear the old fool into lifeless pieces for daring to bring up their past.

Favrid lifted his battered, bloody head, and the wight heard a gurgle. Blood poured from the old wizard's throat. The impulsive slash had done more damage than Cavadrec intended.

Through bubbling blood, Favrid croaked, "The day of prophecy is at hand, Cava."

Blood flew in a spray from his mouth as he spat the last word, and slumped as his life drained into the cracks in the dusty, stone floor.

"Too soon! Fool!" Cavadrec shouted. Cavadrec leaped to the sacred skull-chalice of Nerull in one bound and had the cup pressed against Favrid's chest with another. As the last of his hated enemy's blood pulsed weakly into the grinning cup, Cavadrec smiled in relief. He felt a dark certainty enter his brain, the hollow, terribly beautiful voice of the god of death. The voice prodded him-not with words, for words were useless to the dead, but with the Reaper's will-to proceed. They had waited long enough.

The liquid in the cup reached the brim. He held the cup to his nose and drank in the sweet aroma of liquid life. Favrid choked one final gasp, then hung limp in his shackles. Cavadrec leered.

With a swirl of ancient robes, the wight moved to his worktable and began adding ingredients to his draught.

Mialee's face pressed into Devis's belly, and she screamed into his leather vest. She could not breathe.

She had to do something. She felt the warmth of a spell suffuse Devis's body and felt vibration in his torso from the quick spellsong he contrived. An armor spell. Fine for them, but she could tell from Hound-Eye's desperate wails that the man was suffering terribly. No doubt the others were, too, they just weren't screaming as loudly as the little thief.

Mialee squirmed in the bard's protective embrace until she faced the orange fire above them, or at least that's what gravity told her.

She wriggled her hands onto her chest and shouted, "I'm sorry!" as she jabbed a fist into Devis's solar plexus.

The bard arched his back, giving Mialee just enough room to maneuver her hands in the motions required by the spell she was casting. Her fingers flew through the precise movements, and she hoped with all her heart that the aphasia potion had truly left her system.

"Mithral drii!" she shouted.

The effect was immediate. Mialee felt rather than saw the shield of translucent, silver force materialize directly overhead. It appeared exactly where she'd hoped, far enough away from her to make room for everyone. The shield also cut back the roar of the explosion to a loud rumble.

"let me up!" she shouted into Devis's belly and was rewarded with a gulp of hot but breathable air when he rolled off her.

Her eyes blinked at the sudden appearance of the wall of flame just overhead. It seemed to be thinning out, and she could tell from the horrible, jouncing ride that they were going much, much faster than the mine cart had been intended to go. The others, in various states of injury but still gratefully alive, huddled under the shield and waited for Hell to cool down, if not freeze over.

They didn't have long to wait. Within half a minute, the ceiling of the tunnel emerged through the grasping flames. Within another half minute, the wind of their passage finally overcame the receding shock wave of the exploding blasting powder.

They bounced along the tunnel. Mialee had no idea how far, measures of distance had never been her strong suit and their dizzying speed made the black rock lining the ancient lava fly by. She flicked the hardened metal chunks from Devis's back with his ridiculous jeweled dagger and heard Hound-Eye whimper as a stoic Nialma gingerly knocked still-hot ingots from the halfling's scorched fur cloak. Zalyn, who bore not a mark, helped Soveliss dig searing bullets from his bare shoulders and armored back. The ranger did not flinch, but hissed frequently. Mialee wondered if the ranger had protected Zalyn as Devis had shielded her, or if hot metal simply wasn't capable of penetrating skin inhabited by a god.

Suddenly the bouncing stopped. Mialee felt the huge iron cart tilt nose down.

They were no longer on the tracks, she realized. They were no longer on anything. The cart was falling.

Cavadrec looked up from his concoction. It was finished. He carried the precious chalice to his shrine and placed the grinning rictus of the skull-cup on a worn altar big enough to hold a half-orc. The surface was black and grimed with centuries of dried sacrifices. Flames rose in the brazier set into the shrine.

The rumbling overhead stopped. He paused and cocked a gray ear toward the ceiling of his lair.

Idiots. The old wizard had thought to intimidate him with the noisy entrance of his supposed saviors. Favrid would never know his folly. That was unfortunate, because his pain would have been a thing of beauty. Cavadrec had known about their "secret" passage for hundreds of years. He also knew the tracks no longer led as far as the fools supposed. He waited a few precious seconds for the satisfying crash. Even if the intruders survived the fall-which he doubted-the rust monster would take care of the rest. It was not his creature in the same sense as the rats, wolves, and other wightlings, but it worked to his advantage in this case all the same.

The lair shook as something terribly heavy came violently to rest in a sea of rusted metal. Cavadrec hissed. Not a thing stood between the wight and total dominion. In a low, quiet voice that soon boomed into a horrible shout, he began the chant that would raise the fallen warriors of Morkeyth.

Devis groaned. His ribs had to be broken, a few of them, anyway. Even so, they'd been extremely lucky. The iron cart had tumbled end-over-end twice, and by sheer, dumb luck, it came to rest on its wheels. From the shrieking thunder of metal grinding on metal that accompanied their landing, he guessed that the sturdy iron box had probably saved their lives.

He blinked and looked around at the others. They were all alive, though Soveliss looked like his arm was broken. Hound-Eye held little Nialma tight, ignoring the bleeding raspberry running the whole length of one muscular, brown arm. Devis blinked when he saw the halfling actually kiss the elf girl's elbow, which she must have skinned. The girl was otherwise unharmed as far as the bard could tell, it looked like Hound-Eye had protected her with his own body. Mialee had a nasty welt on her temple that seeped blood, and her ankle looked twisted in an impossible way. Zalyn the goddess-possessed had her mouth open to little Darji, mouthing the words to a spell.

Devis shook his head. Mouthing? No, she wasn't. They were all talking and making noise, but Devis couldn't hear them. The crash had deafened him.

For the second time in the last ten minutes, Devis prayed silently for Fharlanghn to grant his favorite bard one last favor.