Vangerdahast made a fist and gestured toward the creature, and his floating glove closed around the firefly in its palm and shot in the direction indicated. Still hiding behind its wing, the ghazneth gathered itself to spring, The wizard guided his glove over its wing, then turned his hand palm down and made a slapping motion. The glove flipped over and slapped the firefly against the phantom’s head.
“Light!” Vangerdahast commanded.
A brilliant globe of magic light engulfed the ghazneth’s head. The creature cried out and jumped back, shaking its head madly. The light moved with it.
Vangerdahast lowered his hand and closed his fingers as though grasping a knife handle. The glove disappeared behind the phantom’s wing, and a snarl of surprise rolled up the canyon. The wizard moved his hand up and down. The glove rose and fell with the motion, grasping Rowen’s rusty knife and spattering the canyon walls with streams of dark blood.
The ghazneth shrieked and lowered its wing, fully revealing the brilliant aura that engulfed its head. Its arms and wings flailed about wildly, but its efforts to catch the floating glove were all in vain. It could see nothing inside the golden ball but blinding yellow light. Vangerdahast whipped his hand around, and the rusty dagger circled and came up beneath the phantom’s ribcage. The ghazneth clutched at the black-bleeding wound and fled down the canyon, careening oft’ the walls and wailing in rage.
Vangerdahast started after it, but the creature was as fast as a lion. Before his third step, the wizard realized he would never keep up and turned to find Tanalasta now on her own mare, pulling Rowen on to the horse behind her. Though the fellow had suffered no obvious wounds, he seemed to be reeling from his collision. Cadimus was standing behind her, looking wide-eyed and dazed, but little worse for wear. Vangerdahast rushed up the canyon and grabbed the stallion’s reins, then swung into his saddle.
“Go!” Though one of Vangerdahast’s light spells normally lasted close to a day, he suspected the ghazneth would not need nearly that much time to absorb the enchantment’s magic and return more angry than ever. “I didn’t kill it, you know!”
“Yes, but at least we wounded it.” Tanalasta set her heels to the mare’s flanks, and the horse sprang up the canyon at a gallop. “That’s an improvement.”
Vangerdahast started after her, at the same time motioning the glove back to his side. Fearful of losing Rowen’s dagger, he plucked the bloodied weapon from the magical hand. To his astonishment, it was a simple blade of cold-forged iron. Demons hated cold-forged iron, but the ghazneth wasn’t a demon-it couldn’t be. He cleaned the blade on his saddle blanket and stuck it in his belt, then snatched his linen glove out of the air and returned it to his pocket.
They galloped around two sharp corners, then Tanalasta cried out and reined her horse up short. Expecting to find a band of orcs blocking the way-it was inconceivable that even the ghazneth had negated his light spell that fast-
Vangerdahast reached into his cloak for a chunk of brimstone, then eased up beside the princess. Twenty paces ahead, the canyon was blocked by a huge steel gate.
“By the nine doors to hell! What’s that doing here?”
Rowen peered over Tanalasta’s shoulder, then pinched his eyes shut and tried to shake his head clear.
“Are you sure this is the way?” Tanalasta asked.
“It’s the way,” Rowen replied. “It must be an illusion. We ran into one before, just before we opened the second tomb.”
“An illusion?” Vangerdahast waved his hand at the door and uttered a long string of mystic syllables. “Begone!”
The door vanished at once, revealing a dark, squat figure with large crimson eyes and a huge nose veined from too much drink. A tarnished crown sat tangled into his wild halo of long, spiky hair, and the gaping hollow in his unkempt beard could be identified as a mouth only because of its four yellow fangs and wagging red tongue.
“What? No knock?” the stranger croaked. He flung his arms to the sky in some strange gesture Vangerdahast did not understand. “You just vanish my door?”
The strange little man was as naked as the day he was born, with glistening skin the color of obsidian and a pot belly the size of a soup kettle. There were broken yellow talons at the ends of his fingers, a pair of tall wings folded behind his shoulders, and an unspeakable collection of parasites crawling through his sparse body hair.
“Another..” Vangerdahast was so astonished he could hardly gasp the question. “Another ghazneth?”
“Of course!” Tanalasta sounded more excited than frightened. ‘They’ve opened three tombs.”
“Three… that we know of,” Vangerdahast said.
The ghazneth flexed its wings. When the appendages hit the canyon walls, it cursed vilely and started forward at a walk.
“Enough is enough!” Vangerdahast dropped his reins and reached over to grab his companions by the wrists. “Hold on.”
Rowen’s eyes grew large. “Not me!”
The ranger jerked his arm free, then snatched the dagger from Vangerdahast’s belt and slipped off the mare. The ghazneth closed to within ten paces.
Tanalasta twisted around in the saddle. “Rowen-“
“My duty is here,” he said, backing away from the horse.
Tanalasta glanced at the ghazneth. Its long tongue snaked out between its fangs, and it gathered itself to spring. Vangerdahast leaned across Cadimus’s back and reached for the ranger.
“Give me your hand,” the wizard commanded. “Now!”
Rowen backed away. The ghazneth cackled madly and sprang into the air. Vangerdahast pulled his hand back and pictured the stables of the palace in Arabel. Tanalasta cried out, then ducked and twisted away, tearing her arm from his grasp as he spoke his incantation. The world went black and something heavy and hard slammed into Vangerdahast from above, then suddenly he was falling.
It seemed to take forever to, reach the ground. The weight vanished from his back. He grew disoriented and queasy and lost all sense of time. This fall seemed to be taking forever, and he thought maybe this was what a quick death felt like-no pain, no fear, just a sudden, endless darkness-save that he could still feel something foul and hot touching his neck, and something bristly rubbing against his cheek.
The light returned the same instant it had vanished. Vangerdahast glimpsed Cadimus’s brown flank slipping past his nose, then crashed headlong into the brown soft earth. The weight of the world came crashing down on top of him, and he found himself buried beneath a heap of cackling, rancid-smelling black leather.
For a long instant, the wizard lay there with his head spinning, trying to sort out where he was and what the terrible stench in his nostrils might be. He heard voices crying out in astonishment-men, and a few women, too-and he grew aware of a terrible crushing pain in the center of his back.
Vangerdahast reached out and dug his fingers into the soft ground, then slowly dragged himself forward. Now he heard the sound of clanking armor. Certain voices began to seem familiar to him. The wizard pulled himself forward and suddenly he was free of the terrible weight. He rose to his knees and saw the hem of a woman’s gown and no fewer than fifty horse legs separating him from the white, daub-and-wattle walls of a well-kept stable, then it all came flooding back to him.
Vangerdahast craned his neck and found himself looking up at a fully armored company of Purple Dragons. With them were several familiar figures: a tall, gray-bearded man in dusty riding clothes and a golden field crown, a bushy-browed wizard with a plump face, a honey-haired beauty with eyes as blue as ice, a wiry priest with a thin, weather-beaten face. Azoun, Merula, Filfaeril, Owden-all staring at him with confused looks of horror on their faces.
Something fluttered next to Vangerdahast, and he looked over to see the tip of a leathery black wing beating the air.