Resurrection

Chapter Twenty

Inthracis shook off the last lingering effects of the drow wizard’s cone of cold. His ears still rang from the wizard’s banshee wail, but he had been too far away for the magic to affect him otherwise. His nycaloths had not been as fortunate.

Things were not going as Inthracis had hoped. The klurichir and swarm of spiders were churning through the regiment. His troops were fighting well, but the huge demon and spider swarm were more than he had anticipated. The dead littered the battlefield. He could have summoned his own additional aid, of course, but nothing to match either the klurichir or the swarm.

He had to keep the klurichir and swarm occupied, at least until he could kill the priestesses.

He pulled a thin rod of basalt from his thigh sheath and summoned its power.

A pulse of black energy went out and down from him and rippled across the battlefield.

Where it passed, slain mezzoloths and nycaloths clawed and shambled their way to their feet, even those just killed by the drow wizard. The undead yugoloths would not be as effective combatants as his living troops, but they would be of help against the swarm of arachnids and perhaps even the klurichir.

He sent his mental projection across the field, commanding the newly risen undead: Attack the klurichir and spider swarm until they are destroyed.

The dead moved to obey, joining their living comrades in the desperate melee. Satisfied, Inthracis considered his options.

Vhaeraun wanted him to kill the three priestesses. He saw only two. They were battling each other on the path leading down from the mountain. He decided that he would see them dead quickly or not at all. Vhaeraun would be satisfied or he would not. Inthracis had seen enough.

To every surviving nycaloth in the Black Horn Regiment, he projected, Two of the three priestesses are on the ledge leading down from the Pass of the Soulreaver. Teleport there, kill them, and retreat from the field.

That done, Inthracis’s thoughts returned to the drow wizard. He called to mind the words to one of his more powerful necromantic spells.

Quenthel lashed out with her whip at Danifae. The battle-captive dodged aside but too slow.

The serpents tore into the flesh of her arm and injected their venom. The poison had little effect—the battle captive must have been protected against poison—but Quenthel took satisfaction in the bloodshed. So too did the whip serpents, who laughed and hissed.

Danifae gritted her teeth and charged, swinging her morningstar for Quenthel’s head.

Quenthel took a step back, parried the blow with her shield, and answered with her whip. The serpents bounced off of Danifae’s mail. Danifae spread her grip on the morningstar and drove the haft under Quenthel’s shield and into her abdomen.

The blow stole Quenthel’s breath, and she backed off. Danifae bounded forward—

And screamed in pain.

A blade erupted from the right side of her chest, spraying Quenthel with blood. Danifae’s shocked eyes opened as wide as coins and stared down at the arm’s span of steel jutting from her chest.

Standing behind Danifae, her invisibility spell terminated by her attack, stood a drow female.

Hate so contorted her face that it took Quenthel a moment to recognize her.

It was Halisstra Melarn.

The traitor priestess put her mouth to Danifae’s ear and whispered, “Good-bye, battle-captive.”

Pharaun knew he was vulnerable—his protective spells had been countered—but he could do little about it. And the wounds from the nycaloths continued to leak blood, much more than Pharaun would have expected for the relatively minor wounds. He could do little about that too, and the blood loss was causing him to grow weaker. He could not afford a prolonged spell duel.

He and the ultroloth circled at a distance, eyeing each other. The slaughter went on below.

The bellows of the klurichir rang through the air. The seething of the swarm sounded like the waves of the Darksea.

The ultroloth began to incant, his fingers tracing an intricate gesture through the air. Pharaun answered with his own spell.

The ultroloth finished first, and a black beam streaked from his outstretched fingertips.

Pharaun swerved but too slowly. The beam hit him in the arm.

Negative energy soaked him and siphoned off his soul. His lungs froze for an instant. His body went weak. His mind clouded. The spell wiped half a dozen of his most powerful spells from his mind.

He struggled to maintain enough coherence to continue his own incantation. Blinking, dazed, he spat out the arcane words. When he managed the final syllable, he waved a weakened hand at the ultroloth, and a green field of energy enshrouded the creature.

It did not harm the yugoloth wizard, Pharaun knew. Instead, it merely prevented the ultroloth from teleporting or otherwise using magic to travel. It was a strange spell to cast, but the mage had an idea.

While the ultroloth puzzled over the spell his dark elf opponent had cast, Pharaun fought through the numbness and pulled a tiny ball of bat guano and a pinch of powdered quartz from his piwafwi. He would need to cast two more spells in rapid succession for the stratagem to work.

He held the guano between thumb and forefinger and spoke the words.

The ultroloth drew his blade and slashed at the green field that enveloped him. Pharaun assumed the blade must have the ability to absorb or dispel magical effects that it touched.

The blade met Pharaun’s magic, cut a visible slash in the energy field, and set the whole to vibrating.

But it did not fail. Pharaun breathed a sigh of relief and finished the first of his two spells.

The ball of guano transformed into a small bead of fire. He pointed a finger at the ultroloth and started his second spell.

The bead followed his finger and streaked away. It stopped right in front of the ultroloth without exploding. There it spun, building energy.

The ultroloth knew the bead for what it was—a fireball with a delayed blast. The creature moved his long-fingered hands through the gestures that would effect his own spell, possibly to counter the fireball.

Hurrying, Pharaun cast the quartz powder into the air and rushed through his second spell. He completed it at the same moment the ultroloth completed his.

Pharaun’s dweomer encapsulated both the ultroloth and the bead within a sphere of force. At the same time, the ultroloth’s spell—not a counter to the fireball; perhaps he thought his wards would protect him—caused a field of black energy to flare around the drow wizard. The magic gripped Pharaun’s body and held it rigid. He could not move even his little finger, though his ring still allowed him to fly. He was a floating statue.

The two stared at each other across the battlefield, the dark elf immobile and vulnerable, the ultroloth trapped and unable to teleport out.

Pharaun started a mental count: Four... three...

The bead near the ultroloth spun faster, glowed brighter.

The ultroloth understood his danger and frantically cut at the wall of force with his blade. The weapon’s edge slashed a tear in the dome but not large enough for the creature to slip through.

The bead spun faster, began to hum. The ultroloth cut another slash, crosswise, and tried to squirm out.

Two... one...

The ultroloth’s squeezed his head and shoulders out of the globe of force as Pharaun’s bead blossomed into fire.

A momentary inferno burned within the globe. A tongue of flame shot from the slash in the sphere’s side, engulfed the ultroloth’s head, and extended twenty paces into the sky.

From the battlefield below, a cry of shock went up from the yugoloths.

Within the sphere, the explosion turned back upon itself time and again. Pharaun did not doubt that the ultroloth had been shielded against fire and heat, but no wards could protect against the firestorm in the globe. The heat devoured the yugoloth wizard’s body, charred his head and shoulders into blackened cinders.

When the fire abated a moment later, a curled and blackened husk lay halfway in, halfway out of the sphere. Nothing more remained of the ultroloth.

Pharaun would have smiled if only he could move.