by Tim Waggoner
Yvka nodded. “It manifested in Kolbyr, during the Fury.”
“It’s not unknown for dragonmarks to appear later in one’s life.” The artificer looked thoughtful. “I wonder if exposure to high levels of the Fury had something to do with its emergence.”
Ghaji looked at Yvka, but the elf-woman wouldn’t meet his gaze. The sudden appearance of a dragonmark was a major event in her life, but in the two days since they’d departed Kolbyr, she hadn’t mentioned it to Ghaji. And now he knew why she’d insisted they make love in the dark the last several times: she hadn’t wanted him to see her dragonmark. Ghaji had always felt an emotional distance between Yvka and himself, and he’d struggled not to let it bother him. But her reluctance to share this latest development with him only made Ghaji feel farther away from her than ever.
Hinto and Onu stood looking down at the black residue that was all that remained of Nathifa’s arm.
“Was that really a lich’s arm?” Onu said. “Most remarkable!”
Hinto frowned at the changeling. “You’re enjoying this far too much, you know.”
Onu grinned. “My dear lad, one can never enjoy life too much!”
Hinto looked back down at the ebon dust. “Seems to me this business has little to do with life.”
Ghaji attempted to push aside his feelings about Yvka for the time being, but he vowed that the two of them would have a long talk when the opportunity presented itself. “Why would the lich sacrifice her arm just to slow us down?”
“She gave up more than just an arm,” Diran said. “She invested it with a significant portion of her own mystic power so that it could break through Solus’s psychic defenses and control him. Now that the arm is destroyed, that power is lost to her forever.”
“She’s getting desperate,” Leontis said in a low, almost guttural voice. “I can smell it in the air.”
Ghaji feared the priest wasn’t speaking metaphorically. In the time since he’d emerged hairless from the fireblast, Leontis’s hair had grown in to the point where it reached past his ears, and he had the beginnings of a mustache and beard once again. More disturbing, his body was dotted with small patches of thick body hair that resembled animal fur. Ghaji had been keeping a close eye on Leontis, and the half-orc was determined to strike the man down if he began to transform into a werewolf once again—and from the way Yvka, Tresslar, and Asenka continued glancing at Leontis, they felt the same way.
“But what’s so important about this cavern that it’s worth that kind of sacrifice?” Asenka asked. “Nathifa evidently didn’t want Paganus’s skeleton, and there’s nothing else of interest here.”
“Nothing obvious,” Yvka said.
Ghaji was about to interject a comment of his own, but he was cut off by an ear-piercing—and familiar—scream from the far end of the cavern.
Ghaji looked at Diran, Diran looked at Ghaji, and at the same time they said, “The barghest.”
Things weren’t turning out as Nathifa had planned. She’d sacrificed her arm to gain enough time to locate Paganus’s hoard of magic items and drain their energy into the Amahau. Once she’d accomplished that, she’d no longer have to be concerned about Diran Bastiaan and his retinue of hangers-on. With the mystical power that would be at her disposal, she’d be able to destroy them all easily, and the Amahau would still have more than enough magic left over for Nathifa to fulfill Vol’s design for the Principalities.
She’d located the dragon’s hoard easily enough. It lay at the rear of the cavern, accessible through a short tunnel concealed by an illusion spell that the lich had been able to remove with ease, even diminished in personal power as she was after the loss of her arm. The hoard chamber contained an impressive collection of stolen magical items: amulets, wands, crystalline figurines, gems of all types and sizes, pendants, bracelets, rings, gauntlets, leather-bound books, yellowed scrolls … But the chamber contained more than Paganus’s hoard. The dragon’s treasures lay piled around sepulchers carved out of black stone, a dozen or more, all with their lids removed, shoved aside, or knocked onto the floor. Strands of white gossamer covered the walls, stretched between the sepulchers, and lay across the magic items as if they had collected there naturally over the course of three thousand years while Paganus lay suffering in the outer cavern from wounds that would never heal. But Nathifa knew the white strands were no natural occurrence.
The lich stood at the chamber’s entrance, a rough-hewn doorway that, from the crudity of its construction, had most likely been made by Paganus when the dragon had broken through the wall in order to use the ancient crypt to store his treasures. Makala and Haaken stood in front of the sorceress, and Skarm stood in front of them. There was no sign of life in the chamber, but Nathifa could sense it just the same. Life that was, paradoxically enough, suffused with negative energy.
“What is that stuff?” Skarm asked. “Cobwebs?”
“It’s webbing, yes,” Makala said. “But not the kind formed from dust.”
“The vampire is correct,” Nathifa said. “In order to safely drain the mystic energy from this many magical artifacts, I will need several moments of undisturbed concentration. It appears that in the decades since Paganus’s death, a new resident has taken possession of the dragon’s hoard chamber. You three will enter the chamber, flush out the creature, and slay it for me.”
Makala turned to Nathifa. “You’re a sorceress. Why not use magic to destroy whatever thing has made this place its lair?”
Nathifa wasn’t about to admit to Makala that she’d been weakened by the sacrifice of her arm. Nor did she wish to reveal that she wanted to conserve her power for the task of wielding the Amahau. Using the device to absorb a vast amount of energy in a short period of time would require precise control. One mistake, and the Amahau would release its captured energy in a conflagration of mystic power that would destroy everything in its vicinity—including Nathifa and her servants.
Nathifa spoke in a low, dangerous voice. “Because I am your mistress, and I command you.”
Makala had already had the pleasure of tearing the lich’s arm off, and Nathifa thought the vampire—no longer be able to restrain herself—would finally attack. But though Makala’s undead eyes flared bright crimson, the vampire made no move toward Nathifa. Instead, she gave the lich a cold, hard smile, and nodded.
“As you desire, my lady.”
Makala turned and walked past Skarm into the hoard chamber.
Haakan grinned. “Looks like this is going to be fun!” The sea raider’s flesh turned gray, his muscles swelled, a dorsal fin protruded from his spine, and black claws erupted from the tips of his broadening fingers and toes. His face lengthened, teeth grew sharper and more pronounced, hair and ears disappeared, eyes became shiny black orbs, and gill slits opened on the sides of his neck.
The wereshark lumbered into the chamber after Makala.
Of Nathifa’s three servants, only Skarm still remained standing at the chamber’s threshold.
The barghest turned to his mistress, an expression of mingled fear and apology on his goblin features. “Nathifa, what sort of creature—”
The lich didn’t wait for Skarm to finish his sentence. With her remaining hand, she snatched hold of the barghest’s cloak, lifted him off his feet, and hurled him into the chamber. Skarm yelped as he flew overtop the heads of Makala and Haaken, arms and legs windmilling as if he might somehow slow his flight. In anticipation of a painful landing, the barghest began to transform into his natural shape of a lupine-goblinoid hybrid. But before he could complete his metamorphosis, a strand of white silk shot down from the chamber’s ceiling and struck the barghest in the back. The strand adhered instantly and went taut. Skarm’s flight was arrested, and he hung in the air for a split second before the strand withdrew, pulling the barghest along with it.
Nathifa, Makala, and Haaken looked upward to see Skarm being reeled in by a mottled gray spider the size of a horse. The spindly creature clung to the chamber’s ceiling and as the barghest—still in m
id-change—came within reach, she snatched hold of him with her mouth parts and swiftly plunged her fangs into Skarm’s chest. Skarm resumed his goblin shape, almost as if the spider’s venom had forced the transformation, and then the huge creature flexed her abdomen and rammed a sharp barb into his stomach.
A scream of sheer agony tore loose from Skarm’s throat, and in that instant Nathifa knew the barghest was lost.
She was about to order Makala and Haaken to slay Skarm—though the barghest was next to useless, he had served her for many years and therefore had earned a swift death. But before the words could leave her mouth, a pair of web-wrapped corpses that had been lying hidden in sepulchers sat up. Beneath their gossamer covering, the mummies’ skin rippled, as if numerous small creatures squirmed within. The mummies began climbing out of their hiding places, and Nathifa decided that Skarm hadn’t been that good a servant after all. It would take the spider several moments to finish implanting a fresh batch of eggs inside the barghest’s body and wrapping it in silk to turn him into a new web mummy. The mummies needed to be destroyed now, before they had the chance to release the broodswarms that writhed within them.
“Forget Skarm! Stop the others!” Nathifa ordered.
The web mummies had finished lurching out of their sepulchers and now shambled toward the vampire and the wereshark.
“Skarm who?” Makala said with a laugh, and she and Haaken ran toward the web-covered corpses.
“But whatever you do, don’t—”
Haaken rammed a gray-fleshed fist the size of a ham through the chest of a web mummy, while Makala took hold of the other’s head and ripped it off the creature’s shoulders with a single, savage twist.
“—break open their bodies,” Nathifa finished with a sigh.
As Haaken withdrew his hand, a swarm of fist-sized bright-red spiders surged forth from the gaping hole he’d created in their host’s body. A second broodswarm began to emerge with equal swiftness from inside the neck of the web mummy Makala had decapitated.
“Now you tell us!” Makala said.
As the broodswarm spiders launched themselves at Makala and Haaken, their mother dropped Skarm. The barghest—partially covered in webbing and writhing in pain—hit the floor of the crypt with a sharp crack of snapping bone. The tomb spider released her grip on the ceiling, flipped over as she descended, landed on her legs, and scuttled toward Makala and Haaken.
Tomb spiders reproduced by implanting their eggs in humanoid corpses, which in turn reanimated as undead creatures called web mummies. Once the eggs inside them hatched, the mummies served as both incubator and food source for the spider’s young. As they grew within their undead host, the spiderlings began to devour those weaker than themselves until eventually only the strongest individual survived to emerge from the mummy as an adult. But if the immature spiders were released prematurely, they formed a broodswarm, attacking any living humanoids in the vicinity. In turn, the parent spider would seek to replace a ruined web mummy, for the immature spiderlings would never live to reach adulthood once released from their host.
Nathifa knew the tomb spider wasn’t trying to save her children, for she could not do so. She was instead seeking hosts in which to implant more eggs. The lich didn’t know whether Makala or Haaken could serve as effective hosts, since one was undead and the other a lycanthrope, and she didn’t care. All that mattered was that they provided a distraction to occupy the tomb spider so the sorceress could work. Nathifa could have easily used her magic to slay the tomb spider. A simple fire spell would have sufficed, given the flammable webbing that filled the crypt chamber. But she refused to spare even the smallest fraction of her power to aid her servants. She needed every scrap of her magic to accomplish the task before her, especially now that she would be forced to drain the magic from Paganus’s hoard as fast as she could. Maintaining control of the energy transference into the Amahau would take a greater effort than she had originally planned, but there was no hope for it. Bastiaan and his followers would be here soon: she could sense it. Swiftness was paramount now.
Besides, Nathifa thought, if the tomb spider managed to destroy Makala, the creature would be doing her a favor.
Makala and Haaken were fighting to shake off the crimson spiderlings they had released, when the two web mummies—even though one was headless—lurched forward and grabbed hold of them. The tomb spider raced toward them, intending to inject the intruders with her venom. Nathifa didn’t bother to watch anymore. Whatever the outcome of her servants’ battle with the giant spider, she would claim the power of Paganus’s hoard in the name of Vol.
Before she could begin, she needed to do one last thing. She reached up, pressed her fingers against her left eye, and gouged it from the socket. The lich felt no pain, but even if the action had caused her excruciating agony, she would have gladly endured it for her Queen. She spoke a series of blasphemous words and tossed her eye into the air. The detached orb swelled to the size of a melon and hovered above its owner’s head, facing the crypt’s entrance. In case her servants failed to defeat the tomb spider, Nathifa wanted to make certain that someone was guarding her back, and there was no one she trusted more than herself.
She plunged her remaining hand inside her chest and withdrew the dragonwand from her inner darkness. She held the mystical artifact out before her, the golden dragonhead with crystalline teeth and ruby eyes that was the Amahau affixed on the end. She concentrated on activating the Gatherer, and the dragonhead’s ruby eyes glimmered as the device began to do what it was designed for: absorb magic power. The undead sorceress shifted her perceptions until she could see multicolored lines of mystic force curl upward from the hundreds of objects Paganus had stolen over the centuries. The energy-tendrils began snaking toward the Amahau, and despite her vow to maintain strict control as the absorption proceeded, Nathifa couldn’t help laughing.
The companions followed the direction of the barghest’s scream and discovered a tunnel at the far end of the dragon’s cavern. They hurried down it and soon came to a crudely excavated opening leading to a chamber of some sort, and they paused at the entrance.
Diran took the situation in at a glance: ancient crypt filled with webbing, tomb spider, broodswarm younglings, a pair of web mummies (one without a head), a wereshark—where had it come from?—Makala (his heart lurched at the sight of her), the barghest lying on the floor half-covered in webbing, and the lich Nathifa, holding Tresslar’s dragonwand out before her, a huge crimson eye floating over the sorceress’s head as she worked some manner of foul spell. Makala and the wereshark were held in the grip of the web mummies, broodswarm spiders crawling all over them, the younglings’ mother rushing in to join her children’s attack.
Diran had no idea what the floating eye hovering over Nathifa could do, and he really didn’t want to find out. He hurled a dagger at the levitating orb, hoping to spear the eyeball the same way he’d practiced throwing knives at pieces of fruit when he was a boy. But as the dagger flew toward the crimson eye, a beam of necromantic energy lanced forth from the pupil, deflecting the blade. The dagger’s new trajectory sent it hurtling toward the tomb spider, and the blade pierced the giant arachnid’s abdomen.
The spider screeched and whirled about, as if to shoot an accusing glare at whoever had dealt it such an insulting wound. The monster’s inhuman black eyes fixed on the companions and then, though the creature gave no obvious command, a dozen more web-covered figures sat up inside the black-stone sepulchers, their skin writhing from the motion of all the spiderlings growing inside them.
“Solus, Tresslar, Leontis, and I will handle Nathifa,” Diran said. “Ghaji, you take the others and deal with the web mummies. But be careful: the spiderlings inside them are just as venomous as their parent.”
“Got it. Good luck, Diran.” Ghaji turned to the others. “You heard him. Let’s go!” The half-orc warrior dashed forward, axe raised and ready for battle, Yvka, Asenka, Hinto, and Onu following close on his heels.
Diran
had momentarily forgotten about the changeling. Onu’s combat skills were rudimentary at best, and Diran feared for the man’s life. But there was nothing the priest could do to help him now. He would have to trust that Ghaji and the others would do what they could to protect Onu.
“The lich is using the Amahau to drain the energy from the magic artifacts in this crypt!” Tresslar said. “Once she has that much power at her command, we won’t be able to stop her!”
“And what of that floating eye?” Leontis asked.
“A guardian of some sort,” Tresslar said.
The lich is getting desperate, Diran thought, else she wouldn’t be sacrificing pieces of her body like this.
“We’ll never get close to the lich unless we do something about that eye,” Leontis said. His voice was pitched low, the words more growled than spoken. Diran knew his friend was losing his battle against the beast that shared his soul.
Ghaji and the others were battling the web mummies, but since the warriors were restraining themselves to avoid releasing any more broodswarms, they were at a decided disadvantage. The tomb spider had turned her attention back to Makala and the wereshark, and the two monsters ignored the crimson spiderlings crawling over their bodies as they fought the giant arachnid. Nathifa remained motionless as she continued to draw magic power into the dragonwand. If Tresslar was right about what Nathifa was doing, and Diran had no reason to doubt the artificer, then the sorceress was growing more powerful by the moment. They had to stop the lich. Now.
The priest turned to Solus. “I have an idea. I just hope you have the energy to help me make it a reality.”
Ghaji had fought undead of all sorts during his travels with Diran, but he’d never faced tomb mummies before. The things were slow-moving and clumsy like most zombies, and they attacked without any sort of strategy or concentrated group effort. Their strength wasn’t out of the ordinary. In fact, they seemed somewhat weaker than most undead. But these mummies possessed two very important differences: the webbing that covered them was incredibly sticky, and their body cavities were filled with deadly crimson spiderlings. So the trick was to fight the damned things while simultaneously avoiding touching them or causing a wound that would release the spiderlings they hosted.