by T. H. Lain
"I will not be able to turn when we leave, Clayn. I must be at full strength to defeat the Buried One. You will be trapped in here. But Ehlonna will provide," Zalyn said.
"I've lasted this long," Clayn said. The bard could not have been more surprised at the next voice he heard.
"Halfling," Delia said in a monotone whisper, "take her. Take her, please. Get her out of here."
Hound-Eye went into a coughing fit, but managed to pound his chest and ask, "Gyah?"
"We have decided what we must do," Pell cut in suddenly. He turned to Clayn and stammered, "We will help you fight them, ranger. But you," he pointed at Hound-Eye, "will see to it that my daughter escapes, if you do."
Hound-Eye simply nodded, his one eye wide as Nialma slipped a tiny hand into his calloused palm. "Houndie!" the elf girl said, and started to make little barking noises.
Hound-Eye crouched-but not much-to take the girl by the shoulders. "You listen to me, rat-girl," he growled, "this is going to be bad. Maybe more bad than staying here. If you want to stay with your mama…"
"Houndie!" the girl said and wrapped the halfling in a gleeful hug.
"It's 'Hound-Eye,' kid," the halfling whispered.
"All right, then," Zalyn suddenly said. "We all know what we must do. Mialee, you will prepare spells focused on offense, freeing Favrid, and anything else that might be useful. Ah!" she exclaimed, remembering something, and ran back to her still-open trunk. She rummaged through the treasures within and produced a pitch-black wand with a red tip. Mialee's was almost out of charges after the last few days, Devis was willing to bet.
"Hey, Zalyn," Devis asked. Delia's desperate request had reminded him of something he could not believe he hadn't thought of before. "Are you going to teleport us into Morsilath?"
"Thought you'd never ask," Zalyn said, looking very much like her gnome-self. "Look at this." She crossed the room to the center of the floor, slapped three times with the butt of her hand, and stood back.
The center of the floor glowed orange for a moment, then disappeared. Hound-Eye had to hold Nialma back from jumping in.
"This leads to an ancient mining track. The tunnel will lead us right there. It is useless as an escape route," she said apologetically to Pell and Delia, "for it leads only to Cavadrec's prison and the hollow volcanic tubes that run out from beneath Morsilath. You are safer here with Clayn.
"We must not leave the cart track, for the lava tube network is a labyrinth. One wrong turn, and we would be lost forever."
"Elder!" Clayn suddenly hissed, pointing at the little cleric, wide-eyed. Everyone turned and stared at Zalyn, who froze. A small, gray rat with empty eyes finished wriggling from the shoulder of her robe. Before even the rangers had time to act, the wightling rodent sunk a pair of tiny incisors into Zalyn's exposed neck.
Zalyn screamed.
Soveliss was to her before Mialee could move and flung the foul thing off of the cleric's shoulder. It landed in front of Clayn, who stomped it flat.
Zalyn's eyes grew wide and Mialee saw her face become a faint shade of gray.
"How?" the little cleric whispered, and dropped to the floor.
A hideously familiar chorus of arrhythmic thumps pounded all around them as Mialee ran to the fallen Zalyn. The wightling elves had climbed back up the tree and now sounded like they covered Zalyn's tiny home like a swarm of nesting hornets.
"Devis!" she shouted, gratified that the bard whirled to join her. She might have said "dodo" a few hours ago.
Clayn, Soveliss, Pell, and Delia-Delia, Mialee blinked with amazement-dashed to the doors and windows. She didn't spot Hound-Eye, but heard him whispering soft reassurances to little Nialma.
She rolled Zalyn over onto her back before she considered how foolish that might be-if Zalyn was already a wightling.
The little elf was drawn and injured, but as her eyes fluttered open, Mialee saw with relief that the elder's sockets still held the twinkling brown eyes she'd learned to trust.
"Mialee," she whispered weakly, "I am lost."
"No, you've got to fight," Devis said as the din outside grew into an incessant chorus of pounding, rotten fists and growling, mindless moans.
Mialee felt her eyes begin to well up. Though Devis was typically optimistic, she saw in Zalyn's face that the little woman spoke the truth.
"I will, Devis," Zalyn croaked, smiling bitterly at the bard. "Even now, I feel Ehlonna…lending me her strength against the plague. It was-"
The hacking cough shook her form, and Mialee helped her wipe away the black phlegm that dribbled down the side of her mouth.
"It was a small rat, a little bite," Devis said, growing more frantic. "You can handle that. You're the big-time elder, right? Right?"
"Right," Zalyn managed, but she looked far away.
A strange light flashed into her eyes, and suddenly she leaped to her feet, jaw clenched, but glowing with a faint, green halo of light. When she spoke next, her voice was strange. It sounded like Zalyn's voice, but layered beneath another, impossibly beautiful tone that immediately made Mialee feel a comforting warmth.
"Children, we must go. Ehlonna is ready. We are so close. We will hold off the Reaper that long."
Mialee and Devis gaped. "Is that-?" the bard stuttered.
"It is me, Devis," Zalyn smiled beatifically at the bard, and Mialee saw him smile in genuine awe as she felt her own jaw refuse to close. "And we are also a part of Ehlonna. This vessel is tainted, but must persevere. We will see the destroyer cleansed of our body by the morrow." Mialee wondered which one of the elf's occupants, the deity or the cleric, had said the last part. She opened her mouth to ask but before she had a chance, the little elf/god said, "Come. We go." She crooked a finger at them, then leaped into the nothingness in the center of the floor.
Chunks of wood flew into the room as the wightlings finally breached the long-abused defenses. Nialma's screams of terror were muffled by Hound-Eye's fur cloak.
"Get out of here!" Clayn shouted, slashing at the wightlings that crashed into the room.
Devis and Mialee scrambled to their feet as Soveliss and Darji followed the Zalyn/Ehlonna hybrid's example.
"Hound-Eye!" Devis shouted. The halfling was clutching Nialma, who was screaming at her parents.
Pell and Delia turned as one. Delia gave a small, sad wave to Nialma.
"Damn you halfling! Save my daughter!" Pell shouted as he took up a chunk of wood, turned, and cracked it against a grasping, clawed wightling arm.
"Come on, baby," Hound-Eye said as soothingly as he could to the confused little girl, and dropped into the hole clutching Nialma to his chest. His one eye widened at them, then he disappeared with a long, descending epithet that trailed off into the darkness below.
Mialee didn't have time to think about what they were jumping into because Devis put his arms around her shoulders and shoved her forward. She stepped out over the black pit and dropped like a stone.
25
Many wightling elves had clawed their way fully into the little room. Clayn, Pell, and Delia fought them back with the ferocity of a mother bear defending her young. Devis spared the desperate defenders one last look, clutched Gunnivan's lute to make sure it was strapped in place, closed his eyes, and jumped.
He fell for maybe five seconds before opening his eyes. Above him, he heard bold shouts of challenge and the screeching howls of the living dead. He was descending at a fairly relaxed speed down the inside of a long tube of woven athel wood. Orange light glowed from below and cast long, bizarre shadows all around him.
This escape hatch was magical. He looked down and could barely make out Mialee, falling at a slightly faster rate, but not apparently in danger. Beyond her, he could see tiny specks that must have been the others coming to a landing.
"Amazing, isn't it?" a voice chirped in his shoulder, and Devis inadvertently yelped. Darji flapped her wings slowly, turning cartwheels. "I feel like a hummingbird!"
Devis looked down and felt his stomach roll un
comfortably. The distance hadn't seemed real to him as he slowly descended, but seeing the bird zip around the tube made him reassess the distance.
"Gods," he whispered.
He still had to be at least a mile up. He hoped the orange glow he was seeing wasn't from an open magma flow.
Devis guessed it was a full two minutes before he finally felt stone beneath his feet. He stood at the head of a long tunnel that descended into blackness, lit by torches. Twin iron tracks ran the length of the narrow tube. A large mine cart stood before him. It was twice his height, and as big as a good-sized fishing boat, but without the charm. About a dozen barrels labeled with the Dwarvish words for "blasting powder" were stacked behind him, where the tunnel ended.
Screams, bellows, and howls echoed down the shaft above him, but he did not look. Devis could not have pulled his attention away from the rest of the area all around the hollowed-out unloading dock. The barrels of black powder, if they actually still held any, along with a surprising number of food crates and iron water tanks, were the only undisturbed containers in the cavern. Everything else had been methodically, almost insanely, destroyed.
The place was an absolute treasure trove of armor, weapons, and, well, treasure.
There were swords with more gemstones encrusted on the hilt than Devis had ever imagined could fit. Hammers, axes, pikes, picks, and elegant, unstrung bows lay everywhere. Gold and silver shields emblazoned with fascinating symbols Devis had only seen before in history libraries, others bearing the unicorn and tree of Ehlonna, were tossed in careless piles. A few empty suits of heavy dwarven plate, the hammer and anvil of Moradin embossed on their chests in platinum, sat in ghostly repose against a wall covered in silver, gold, and platinum. Sweet platinum. Coins of every denomination he had ever coveted and many more he'd never seen littered the ground. Crates and chests had been shattered and all the possessions inside strewn about and picked over.
Amongst the piles of gold, unsettling footprints marked where someone-or thing-on two legs had stomped through the lode. Devis had a disturbing feeling those tracks had not been made by any Silatham elves on a stroll through their siege hoarde. Despite their lousy luck at confining evil overlords, he had to give the elves credit. Everyone else in the world could turn into a wightling, and they just might be able to hold out. They might have, if the wightling plague hadn't started within their walls.
Devis must have been licking his lips, for only that could explain how badly he bit his tongue when a screech jumped out of the huge cart. He winced and pressed his lacerated tongue to the roof of his mouth. Nialma's little head poked over the edge of the cart above him. She was smiling with the resilience of youth and the joy of finding an enormous, new toy. She giggled and then disappeared.
Devis looked at the assorted riches and sighed, wincing at the cold air on his injured tongue. The money wasn't going anywhere, and he supposed if he didn't get moving he wouldn't ever be able to spend it anyway. Still…he crouched and scooped up a few handfuls of platinum coins and gemstones and slipped them into one of the bigger pouches on his belt.
As he rose, something metal smacked him on the forehead. A familiar silk rope and a supposedly collapsible grappling hook, still folded, hung in the air before him, dangling down from the lip of the cart.
The bard grasped the line and clambered up the smooth iron to join his friends, careful not to let the lute hanging at his hip scratch against the wall of the giant cargo mover and trying to remember where hed left that rope.
Hound-Eye was in mid-sentence as Devis dropped with a clang and a boom to the bottom of the iron cart, "-don't you just zap us down there? Why the he-"The halfling eyed the giggling Nialma and continued, "Why are we in a giant cart, for-er-pity's sake? You're a goddess, ain't ya?"
"We are here to preserve this vessel," Zalyn said with a voice that betrayed very little of her real self. "The magic of the song is still required to grant us focus and allow me to suffuse dead Silatham." She turned to Devis without explaining the last. "It is time. We remember our obligation. This vessel did not know that we always watch over her. We do not need to be 'coaxed.' But we do love music, and we require inspiration." Devis felt himself melt before the goddess-Zalyn, and fumbled for the scroll pouch that held Gunnivan's ballad.
"Thankth, Zthalynth."
Devis blinked and worked his jaw, sticking out his bleeding tongue. "Oh tho! Youth'e goth tho be kithing thee. How ab I thuppothed thoo thig the thog? Thith ith thust thuthig geat!"
"What did he say?" Nialma asked.
"Nothig. Nothig," Devis snapped. "Oh, Tharlaghn abthidthes!
Then the frantic bard snapped up straight. "Wai, pothionth! Tthalynth, you hab the watht pothionth."
Zalyn-or Ehlonna?-stepped to Devis in a flash and waved a hand in front of his chin. Devis looked down at the pint-sized elf.
"Hinual faenya," boomed a voice that filled the tunnel.
He felt warmth on his tongue and popped his mouth open. The injury was gone. At the same time, a desire to sing flooded through him, more powerful than any emotion he'd ever felt. Music surged up from his heart as Devis sang, and it flowed through his fingers into the lute as he played. He didn't know the words or the melody, yet as each note formed-no, as he formed each note and sang each word-it was perfect.
Zalyn took up the song, but she wasn't Zalyn. The shrunken, poisoned body of the elf was filled with Ehlonna and her voice was strong, youthful, and beautiful. Together their voices overflowed the rail cart that somehow seemed pitiably small now, they flooded the tunnel and rushed up the levitation shaft to the tiny, beleagured house where Devis's friends fought for their lives against undead monsters.
He was awash in the sensation of wanting only to protect ten precious souls. He was connected to every one of them, feeling their terror, anger, resolve, and hope. Most of all he felt Zalyn, dying Zalyn, struggling to sustain her life against a black cloud of poison spreading through her exhausted, weakened body.
And there was one more…a distant, unfamiliar, but smiling heart Devis knew could only belong to Favrid.
Then through the song Devis felt the stirring of a new presence. It was far above them. Not human or elf, but animal and plant. Silatham was returning to life. The athel wood still felt the horror of the walking dead. But now the city itself would fight back and aid the trio high above Devis's head. Their courage blended with the courage of the goddess, who was so much more than just a spirit inside Zalyn. She suffused Silatham itself.
The wightlings that blighted Silatham sizzled and burned wherever they touched the enchanted wood. Any outside the enclosing walls simply dropped to the ground, lifeless at last. Those inside were trapped by Ehlonna and burned by her indignation.
But then Devis's concentration on the flowing music was snapped by a defening bellow from Clayn, far above him. Bodies and pieces of bodies of rats and zombies and wightlings plunged down through the chute above them.
A few twitching zombie parts and numerous rats landed in the cart, but Soveliss chopped and Hound-Eye smashed them into harmless chunks. Devis promptly slipped on the slickened floor and fell hard onto his back with a crunch. Desperately he pushed his back up the side of the cart and reached for the lute. He found it in two pieces, still connected by the strings. The bard couldn't know it, but he held the instrument exactly as he had held Mialee's body.
He stared at it, for the first time in his life so shocked he was unable to speak.
Zalyn spoke. "Devis, you did not need the song of Gunnivan. Your own muse gifted you with a voice that can charm a god all on its own." The elf-goddess's glowing features bunched into a gnomish grin, and she laughed. "It was not the lute! You did it! The power of Silatham is refocused. The athal trees are restored and Ehlonna is strong in the Silath wood once more."
Devis grinned incredulously. "You're seriously telling me I could have done that any time? Why didn't we just do it earlier?" he asked the cleric. Everyone in the cart looked at Zalyn.
"The day th
is would work wasn't my idea, it was hers," the elf replied. Then the glowing tones of the goddess flowed over Zalyn's voice and added, "But this is only one of the tasks we must see through. Those above are still in peril."
"Hey, goddess lady," Hound-Eye said, pounding a wightling rat into goo, "you think we might get a move on?"
Silently Zalyn waved her hand, and they started rolling slowly down the tunnel.
A booming voice echoed down the passage, shouting out a long string of Elvish curses. The voice was unmistakably Clayn's.
"Oh, no," Mialee whispered, looking up. Soveliss shouted his grandson's name.
"Soveliss?" the voice answered. "Where are you? They toppled me into the shaft. The other two, they're not warriors! Silatham lives, but the man and his wife will never drive back that horde by themselves."
A scream hammered down the shaft, the scream of an elf.
"Darji," Soveliss said to the raven, "can you fly back up the chute?"
The little bird chirped, "Of course!"
"Please find out what you can."
The ranger scowled as another scream fell around their ears. Devis saw Nialma look up for a moment, then the girl resumed her humming, swinging her arms in a dance step that only children know. Darji took off up the cavernous levitation tube.
They picked up speed as the heavy, iron cart rolled down the tracks of the mine tunnel.
26
The cart bumped across a rough section of track, and they all tumbled into a pile in the rear of the iron box. Mialee pushed Devis off her with a grunt.
"Devis," Mialee said, her aphasia gone at last. "Stay where you are, I'm going to stand on your back."
"Wait, I can just-" Devis began, but Mialee was already climbing off the floor of the accelerating cart.
She nearly fell over backward as the cart picked up speed, but she caught the very lip of the top and heaved herself up to the edge.
A bowshot behind them, a shouting, cursing elf was coming to rest on the ground. Mialee could tell that he was shouting something at the bird fluttering around his head, but the grinding of the iron wheels drowned out the words. Darji spiraled around the elf then flew like a shot back in Mialee's direction.