There came a great crack, like the splitting of a thousand crossbeams of great wood, and the stone split apart. Twilight looked up.
Then she dived to avoid the blinding avalanche that showered down. It struck her back, burying her as it poured, and poured, and poured. All went dark, and she was buried alive.
Erevan! she shouted in her mind-by reflex, unintentionally. She supposed she should be thankful she hadn't done it aloud, for her mouth would have filled with sand.
There was, of course, no response.
Blast you, wretch, Twilight thought. You're going to pass up the moment the impossible happens-when I call upon you for aid?
But there came nothing, not even what she expected: the tiny laughter of a wild elf who found himself entirely too amusing. She really was alone.
Typical, Twilight mused. She knew she was about to die, but that was all she thought. Typical.
Then it set in-blindness. She saw neither light nor dark, just white.
She was lost. Alone.
Then Twilight did scream-and choked. She thrashed, swimming in sand, dying, abandoned. Out of control-out of her mind. Lost.
A breath later, a hand grasped Twilight's wrist. Liet, she thought.
She latched onto it like a line tossed over the rail of a storm-swept galley.
Worriedly, Liet watched Gargan haul Twilight from the pile of yellow-white. She looked up, bright-eyed, but blinked in confusion at the goliath, as though she expected someone else. Then she nodded, and he returned it. Liet felt a little stab of jealousy. Ridiculous, he told himself.
He shook the snowy stuff out of his hair. "Sand?" he asked, perplexed.
The sand that had been trapped above ceased pouring out, leaving an open bubble of air. On the other side of this bubble lay another layer of sand. White grains hissed along its circumference as though along the inside of a great balloon.
Twilight furrowed her brow. " 'Twas what I was about to say."
"I don't understand," Liet said.
She plucked up a loose stone from the tower and hurled it upward with all of her might. It slowed as it rose, slowed, slowed even more, and almost seemed to hover as it reached a particular spot in the air-halfway between the tower and the sand. Then it accelerated up and up, and thumped into the sand as though it had fallen.
"What does this mean?" Liet asked.
Then there came a buzzing. From somewhere behind, Davoren shouted, and crackling lightning filled the air. The bee-men were upon them.
A stinger hissed straight for Liet. Crying out, he warded it off with his hands. Twilight leaped to his aid, her hand going to her rapier, but one of the creatures hit her from the side. Her head struck the stone with a crack, and her body went limp. Unconscious, she toppled, rolled, spun to the edge, and fell from the leaning tower.
" 'Light!" he shouted, agonized.
Then a dozen bodies slammed him down, spears gouging, and Liet screamed.
Gestal watched as she fell, reflecting how like a discarded doll she was. He especially enjoyed the helpless cry filled with mortal pain. But as Twilight fell toward her death, he felt nothing but bemusement and a slight twinge of disappointment.
Then a pair of black hands snaked out of shimmering distortions in the air to catch the falling body, and the eyes narrowed. The foe. The hands dropped her, redirecting her fall, and Gestal saw abeil-the bee-creatures-catch her. How frustrating.
Abeil swarmed the four from every direction, spears thrusting and multiple khopesh blades whistling. In spite of a veritable storm of lightning bolts from the warlock's scepter, the creatures quickly overwhelmed them with blade and sting. A pile grew around the four, but the fools were outnumbered twenty to one.
The stingers penetrated their bodies, and Gestal shivered at the lovely agony even as they fell. How sweet he found those stings. In the meantime, he enjoyed the screams of pain and distress as slowly each went down, inevitably. The gray-faced warlock lasted the longest, with his demon's blood. He killed at least a score, but it would not be enough.
As Gestal watched slaying power pour from that scepter, he grinned. 'Twas only a matter of…
Predictably, the scepter reached its limit, coughed when the warlock attempted to summon more killing bolts, and exploded in his hand, blowing the limb to nothingness. The warlock screamed, clutching his stump, and the abeil swarmed him.
The fiendish skin helped repel some of the stingers' force, but not the poison.
Well.
With the will of the Demon Prince, Gestal ripped into the other's mind and became himself. The other vanished into the darkness once more. The abeil hesitated but continued the assault, wondering why this one had risen, and why it looked so different.
Gestal smiled with lips that were his again. Their mistake.
He spoke a single word-a piece of pure chaos, born of the roiling madness that had reigned before the upstart gods had come. It was not an exclamation, nor was it even louder than a whisper. Gestal merely breathed, releasing the magical power of the master, and the spell soared out in every direction.
In a sphere centered on Gestal, scores of abeil simply stopped, their hearts or brains obliterated, and fell from the sky. The less fortunate ones screamed blood and splattered against the stone tower like raindrops, to lie writhing and screaming in buzzes and hisses. A hundred beelike voices rose in protest, and abeil streamed out of half the towers and windows of Negarath.
"Your time comes," Gestal said softly. "Our old foe."
Gestal looked down to where Twilight had vanished into the darkness. Then he was gone, fading into the form of a wraith and vanishing into the stone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
She had vague memories of golden walls-passing through tunnels sculpted of amber, or perhaps honey. Light pulsed and flickered. Hands held her, dozens of insect hands, and the buzzing as they carried her along ripped through her ears. Was she being taken to her death? To be encased in that comb, to be starved of air?
She didn't care. She'd failed, and all because she hadn't relied on herself.
Her price, for trusting others, was death, and she would pay it.
Liet, she thought. Liet, I'm coming.
Twilight awoke to terror and blackness so thick she could not see through it.
"Liet!" she shrieked. She started up, only to fall back when pain exploded in her head and forced her down. There was no reply.
No reply, that is, but for a pair of emerald eyes that opened and regarded her. The shifting of muscles like stones gave away his identity.
"He is gone," Gargan rumbled in his native tongue. That she could understand him meant she still wore Taslin's earring. "But we are not alone."
Twilight's hand shot to her throat. The star sapphire pendant still hung there. She breathed a sigh of relief without thinking.
Slowly, Twilight's eyes adjusted and her darksight returned to her. With it, she could see a few paces in the darkness, but no farther. Gargan, sword still sheathed on his back, knelt over her with concern written across his face. Twilight's eyes darted side to side, but she saw no one else-just cold stone. She sensed magic all over-the darkness itself seemed magical, though she expected it was simply radiation from something powerful, hidden within.
Then the pain came back, and she fell flat again. "The bees?"
"They left us and went back to their hive," the goliath said. "Whatever holds us now is not their master."
Gargan knelt beside her and laid his heavy hands on her temples. It struck Twilight as the second time he had touched her (the first, she'd thought he was Liet), and she was surprised at how gently his massive fingers caressed her skin.