The Living Dead

30

Mialee landed with a hard thump on her backside and tumbled head over heels, coming to rest a few feet from the end of the slippery tunnel. She thought she heard Devis shout something off-color overhead, but could not take her eyes of the scene unfolding before her stunned eyes.

Zalyn…no, Ehlonna…no, both of them…stood before the hideous wight that had killed Mialee, voice booming as she shouted the incantation of the forest goddess that would make the wight vulnerable. The creature ignored the little elf. It had to be him, Mialee realized. It could be no other. The grinning rictus of Cavadrec, the Buried One, turned to regard the new arrival with a flash of red light in its hollow eyes. It extended a horrible, clawed hand toward the wizard girl and crooked a finger to beckon her forward.

"Welcome," Cavadrec hissed. "Would you like to try your luck again?"

Mialee gaped. Aside from Zalyn, her friends were not doing well. Soveliss limped around the wight, the only other person still upright. Hound-Eye and Nialma were huddled in the corner, crying in supernatural terror that had to be the effect of a fear spell. And Favrid…

…was dead. At least, Mialee hoped he was, because if he lived, his suffering would have been unimaginable. The elf's corpse hung motionless and limp in a pair of rusty, iron shackles embedded in the rough wall. He was covered with blood, cuts, gashes, and bruises. He had endured grievous torture. Where his gentle, laughing eyes had once twinkled with mischief, there were only empty, bloody sockets. His throat was torn open as if by some kind of animal.

Mialee placed a hand to her mouth and choked back bile. No, she thought, not an animal, but Cavadrec. And with Favrid dead, all was lost.

The elf woman drew in a quick breath of fetid, foul air and felt for the scroll pouch. There was still one wizard here, and she had to try casting the spell. She kept her eyes on Cavadrec as she frantically patted her belt pouches. Where was the blasted thing?

The wight lost interest when she didn't rise to its challenge, and turned to block a long sword blow from Soveliss with the black, skull-topped staff.

The scroll was gone. Mialee felt sick. She collapsed, dropped her head between her knees, and pressed her palms against her temples. Everyone was doomed.

"Coming throooooooooooough!" echoed a familiar voice down the tunnel, and Devis slammed into Mialee head-first. They rolled into a tangle of arms and legs behind the bellowing Zalyn-goddess.

Cavadrec laughed as the pair struggled to disentangle themselves and stand.

"How very romantic," he cackled. "Linelle, what have you been teaching these children?"

Linelle? Mialee blinked, and then realized he was talking to Zalyn. Linelle must have been her name when Cava was alive.

Behind the wight, Mialee saw Soveliss creep forward and raise the Mor-Hakar. Without looking, Cavadrec twirled his black staff and slammed the end into Soveliss's gut. The elf grasped his belly with an "oof!" and dropped to his knees. His long sword clattered to the ground, and the hand holding the Mor-Hakar slapped against the floor as Soveliss caught himself from toppling forward. The ranger's open palm pressed the hilt of the short sword into the stone while he clutched at his abdomen with the other, struggling to draw breath.

Mialee and Devis helped each other stand. Mialee felt the wetness on the bard's right side and realized he was bleeding badly. She fumbled for her last potion and failed to find that, either.

She licked her hps and knew where the potion had gone. "Devis, you idiot," she whispered urgently as Zalyn and Cavadrec squared off. "Why didn't you take the potion yourself? You're going to bleed to death!"

The elf woman felt the bard lean against her, and his face was pale and bloodless.

"You first," Devis said deliriously and showed her his blood-soaked hands. "Couldn't lose…yrrrr," he managed.

The bard's eyes rolled back and he dropped heavily against her, unconscious. She lowered him gently to the floor and pulled his head into her lap as green-gold energy started filling the room with a warm glow. The shrine of the death god, smoldering with Cavadrec's interrupted invocation, blazed higher in the rush of oxygen and fresh air that the swelling power of the forest god provided.

The brazier on the terrible shrine of Nerull flared and went dark. A grinning goblet made from an ancient, elf skull stared back at Mialee. She felt a surge as the goddess that walked as a cleric finished her invocation, severing the wight's connection to Nerull. The wight screamed and staggered, thrown off balance. Now, if the arcane scroll were read, it would be over. She watched Soveliss cough up black, bloody phlegm, struggling to his feet with the Mor-Hakar gripped in one gloved fist and blind hatred flashing in his eyes.

If they could just read the scroll, the wight would be vulnerable, or as close as they could hope to make it. Mialee would accept the risk in a heartbeat. If only she hadn't somehow lost the precious scroll tube. She wrapped her arms around Devis, propped up but unconscious, and sighed miserably.

A loud crack resounded in the chamber. Cavadrec brought the heavy end of his black staff across Ehlonna/Zalyn's jaw and sent her little body flying through the air. Mialee saw the elder of Silatham, and with her, the Mother of Elves, slam with a sickening crunch into the stone, then fall chillingly still.

With dreadful certainty, Mialee saw that the goddess-cleric had been fooled by a very simple deception. The staff that bore the icon of the god of death was not at all an unholy tool of the Reaper. The black staff was a powerful magic weapon infused with arcane energy. "A wand disguised as a prayer book" was how wizards and sorcerers described such deceptive artifacts.

Mialee cried out involuntarily as the staff cracked again, knocking Soveliss back, but the nimble ranger stayed on his feet, the Mor-Hakar a menacing sliver in his hand.

Mialee buried her face in Devis's hair and gazed down his body. Too bad, she thought madly, so much will be lost.

Her eyes fell on the ornately engraved tube tucked into an open pouch on the bard's belt. The scroll! She reached forward, yanked out the tube and leaped to her feet. She heard Devis's head thunk against the stone and he barked a cry of pain as he was jolted awake. He'd thank her later, if they were still alive. She thumbed the stopper off the end of the scroll tube and unrolled the yellowed parchment.

Mialee heard another crack and a pair of thumps, and saw Soveliss on his knees. He still held the Mor-Hakar. She frantically read over the lengthy scroll-damn Favrid's wordiness!-as the wight stepped toward the staggered ranger. Cavadrec raised the ebony staff like a club, preparing to deliver a blow that would crush Soveliss's skull.

Mialee began reciting the words on the scroll.

Devis leaped in front of her with a mad yell, driven by some reserve of strength she could hardly believe remained in his nearly bloodless body. She continued reading aloud and felt the sparkle of magic surround her and fill the air.

As she continued reading, her gentle voice rose to a hoarse shout.

She thought Devis was moving to help Soveliss, but to her shock, the bard ran right past the ranger and grasped the grinning goblet set before the extinguished shrine of Nerull. His hand curled with smoke. Mialee smelled burning leather and flesh. The chalice must be anathema to anything that was not soiled by the Reaper's foul touch. Despite what must have been terrible pain, the bard raised the chalice in the air and turned.

"Hey, Bright Eyes!" he bellowed madly. "You can kill the ranger or save your cocktail. What'll it be?"

Devis tipped the skull-cup, and a drop of something thick and red dripped to the floor, where it sizzled as it touched the stone.

The wight froze, then turned slowly to regard the ranger. "I choose both," Cavadrec snarled, holding his staff in one hand and reaching out with the other.

Mialee saw the glow of a spell stretch from the wight's talons and wrap around the chalice. Devis grasped the cup with both hands and struggled against the pull of Cavadrec's magic grip, but only skidded across the floor on the heels of his boots.

Mialee finished reading the scroll. A blast of blue lightning exploded from the paper's surface. She clutched the parchment with white knuckles and absorbed the barrage with her eyes squeezed shut. She was reasonably certain this wasn't one of the spell's intended effects. She must have mispronounced something, perhaps a single word. As blue energy crackled painfully from nerve to nerve throughout her body, she forced her eyes open to see what, if anything, she had wrought. The magic arcing through her body made everything appear to move as if in syrup.

The chalice tumbled end over end, splattering blackish-red gore all over Devis, who was whirling his arms in a hopeless attempt to keep from tumbling over backward. He dropped hard onto his backside with a shout of pain.

Cavadrec screamed and crouched to pounce for the precious artifact. The ranger was forgotten. The ebony staff no longer gleamed with black light, but was only a simple shaft of gnarled wood. The wight hissed and dropped the staff, brandishing hooked claws. He swiped the air in a screaming rage, forcing Soveliss back. Finally, the wight landed a blow on the ranger, who slammed against the temple wall, staggering and dazed.

Cavadrec loomed over the ranger. He backhanded the man across the jaw, knocking Soveliss's head against the wall, but somehow the elf avoided the next blow and slipped away sideways. The wight would be back on him in seconds.

Aside from the disenchanted staff, Mialee could see little evidence that the scroll had worked. The wight still seethed with his own, innate power. Soveliss would be ripped limb from limb.

Mialee had played Favrid's part with little apparent success. Soveliss was down and at the wight's mercy. Favrid was dead. Zalyn was unconscious, possibly dead. Devis was dying, Hound-Eye was paralyzed. She'd have to try her own scheme. Maybe the wight couldn't hit what it couldn't see. The spell was untried, but she would never get another chance.

Mialee waved a series of precise hand motions in the air and whispered, "Nehdarn, Soveliss."

The ranger disappeared. The invisibility spell had come in handy after all.

Cavadrec slashed the empty air in fury, then turned to an enemy he could see: Devis. The bard was still struggling to regain his feet. Cavadrec slapped Devis across the face with the back of a bony fist, driving him down to the floor with a thud where the man lay still. The wight whirled toward Mialee, red eyes flashing, and took one long step toward the fallen elf woman.

"For Silatham!" Soveliss shouted from the empty air.

A crack, then a crevice, then a crater split Cavadrec's forehead between the eyes as the ranger hammered the invisible blade of the Mor-Hakar through the creature's skull. The point erupted from the back of the wight's head in a spray of bone and gray matter. A deafening wail erupted from the creature that had once been Cava, cleric of Ehlonna. The wight writhed like a pinned insect around the blade, which gradually became visible but stayed fast. The unearthly howl filled the lair.

Finally, Cavadrec's screech settled into a hiss of fetid air. His body, instantly rigid, toppled backward onto the cold, stone floor.

"For Elyrra," a quiet voice said.

Soveliss, now almost completely visible, bent over the corpse and gave the short sword a brutal twist. The wight's head cracked open, releasing a fountain of matter. The ruined skull lolled over to face Mialee. Two red lights in the pits of the hideously empty sockets flickered once, twice, then died with a curl of acrid smoke. Cavadrec's flame was extinguished.

The ranger wiped gore from the Mor-Hakar onto the wight's torn robe. For the first time since Mialee laid eyes on the man, he looked at peace.

A long minute passed. Devis tried to stand, then resorted to dragging himself toward Mialee, who sat dumbfounded on the floor. As he struggled to reach her, she gazed mutely around the lair. Hound-Eye and little Nialma were walking toward her in a daze, both speechless. Her eyes passed over Favrid-the elf's fate was still too fresh and horrible for her to look at him. Soveliss stood over the gray corpse, already slowly rotting away. Finally, her gaze fell on Zalyn.

The rose blossom of scarlet on the wall above her, and the wet trail leading down behind her to the floor, told Mialee all she needed to know. The elder's body, at least, showed no sign of the wightling disease. She was simply dead. Zalyn had left with Ehlonna to join Favrid. Darji, mute and mundane bird though she now was, perched on Zalyn's tiny boots. It cocked its eye at Mialee, then spread its wings and disappeared down one of the many cave entrances dotting the lair. A single caw echoed back to her.

Mialee smelled burning hair and frantically patted her locks to extinguish a few persistent blue flames. She felt the back of her hand slap flesh and Devis said, "Hey!"

"Sorry. On fire. Now I'm out."

Devis's arm slipped around her shoulders and she leaned into him with a weary sigh, careful not to aggravate his injuries further. Devis winced, but pressed a fist into the hole in his side. He grinned weakly at Mialee, and she saw some color had returned to his face. "The bleeding's slowed down," he croaked. Either that, or I'm running out. You?"

"Just a little singed," she whispered.

The lair lurched and the floor tilted, sending them all sprawling in the direction of the caves leading out to the lava tubes. A great rumbling shook everything in sight.

The wight was dead, his spell disrupted, but apparently the god of death had decided to cheat. Or maybe Cavadrec had somehow kept the dead mountain in check for a thousand years. Whatever the reason, sleeping Morsilath was waking up.

Hound-Eye howled in pain. A thin jet of magma blasted him in the toe. Mialee saw it was just a herald of much worse to come as cracks appeared in the stone all around and the air filled with fire.

Cavadrec's throne lurched from its resting place and began to slice toward them.

Darji flapped back into the chamber and then disappeared up another lava tube.

The throne slid toward them, front end first, chipping rock shards from the floor and launching them in a shower ahead of itself. Orange lava flashed through widening cracks behind it. Devis remembered how the iron cart protected them from the thing in the metal pile and had a terrible idea. The throne might block the flow of lava down their escape tunnel long enough for them to get away-if they could find a tunnel that really led to the surface and not back into a wall of magma.

The bard got behind the sliding throne and shoved hard with his shoulder, guiding it toward the tunnel entrance Darji had selected. Soveliss saw what he was up to and he and Mialee joined in. The trio pushed, shouted, and cajoled the massive deknae artifact into place a foot or so in front of their intended exit. Hound-Eye and Nialma were already heading up the tube. Soveliss dashed after them.

"After you!" Devis screamed at the top of his lungs, gesturing for Mialee to step in.

"You first!" Mialee shouted.

The bard gripped Mialee by the arm and half-pushed, half-pulled her into the opening, then squeezed in behind. Hound-Eye, Nialma, and Soveliss were twenty feet ahead. Mialee and Devis stumbled up the steep, smooth, shaking walls of the escape route.

The eruption of Morsilath finally broke into Cavadrec's lair. The group had moved only a few yards up the tube when Mialee felt heat at her back and the tube filled with blazing orange light. She looked back and saw their improvised shield heat up from black to red to orange, then it was gone.

The inferno crawled up the tunnel after them.

Mialee thought furiously. If only she hadn't used the shield the last time something was going to fry them.

The pearl.

She had forgotten it since the incident at the tavern. She reached into her pouch. It was still there, thank Ehlonna. She pinched it in two fingers, running all the while and trying to recall the incantation that would place the shield at their backs.

The round, invisible force wall snapped into existence behind her. The spell was just wide enough to fit in this tube. If she could pull it behind them and adjust its edges just right, she might be able to hold back the lava long enough for them to reach the surface. Mialee steeled her mind to push back against it when the lava struck. The lava itself would provide the propulsion.

Despite her concentration, the shield spell slammed into her back when the rising lava smashed into it. The party was pressed backward in a pile against the shield effect. Mialee screamed from the unbearable heat, but the force wall held. Despite the pain, she spread her arms and legs wider, pressing against the clutch of bodies-if one of her friends slipped past her, they would slide through the shield and be incinerated.

The pressure forced them up the tube fast enough to make Mialee's eyes water and her ears hurt. She struggled to keep the disc of force pressed against the molten rock at right angles to the smooth walls of the tube. Bits of rock were shaved off by the magical edges of the disk and covered them like charcoal powder. She worried about how long the tunnel was. Would the spell last all the way to the top?

Mialee squinted against the wind and flakes of stone. She risked looking ahead for a split second, trusting the shield spell to her subconscious control.

Several yards ahead, a white-yellow light, roughly circular, awaited her. Seconds later, the five of them blasted out into the open air. Mialee gaped as the party rode the spell up, up, up, and then down, down, down into the forest, where Ehlonna's personal protection kept the molten stone from burning her children.

"Gods," Mialee whispered, "it's beautiful."

Her concentration broke. The shield spell fizzed and died. Gravity and entropy pulled the five apart only a few feet before they crashed into the boughs of an enormous old Silath tree.

With a chorus of cracked wood, barked curses, and terrified screams, they dropped gradually through the tree to the ground.

Mialee marveled. They'd landed smack in the middle of Silatham. The undead were dead, and the elven village was alive.