He lifted his head, eyes streaming tears. Geppo was halfway to the rift. Wykar had to go after him, to destroy the egg. It was all for that egg. He heard nothing but an endless scream from his ruined ears. But his eardrums would heal in time. There had been no other way to block the cloakers' moaning, no way to keep them from claiming him. His ears would heal, and he would be a hero and have his revenge on the drow.
Wykar saw Geppo stop and look back in puzzlement. The gnome realized he was running and probably making a lot of noise. He forced himself to stop and concentrate through his pain, then walk more carefully and quietly. Geppo relaxed at that, then went on toward the glowing rift.
The air turned bad. Wykar now smelled dead things, rotting things. The ground was covered with bits of stinking algae, like everywhere else, but a dark lump that looked like a body was just ahead. It was a drow, most of its flesh and muscle eaten away, one leg was missing. It lay in a peculiar, loose-limbed position, untouchably foul. Its filthy bones were draped with algae and ripped, soaked clothing.
The face and long hair were still recognizable. It was Sarlaena, who had once owned him.
Wykar averted his streaming eyes. He tried not to inhale the air. He was close to throwing up again, he bit down harder on the fur. More long, thin, dark bodies lay ahead, scattered around like forgotten dolls. The wave, Wykar remembered. The first wave must have come up all the way to flood the split in the wall. Something about that bothered him, something bad. He shook off the feeling and trudged on. The pain burned bright as a lighthouse beacon in his head, sending its agony out to the world.
Geppo, now only twenty paces ahead, was cautiously peering into the rift. The sight and stench from the wet, rotting bodies did not seem to affect him. Geppo looked over the bodies carefully, then looked up, saw no threat, and continued on into the rift.
The final weapon was in Wykar's hands. The black wand would have to work the first time. There would be no chance for a second time. He spit out the corner of his vest and some loose fur fibers with it. He had control of himself now, in these final moments.
Geppo was in the rift. He kicked aside a severed limb, perhaps a drow's arm. He looked down at the ground now. He toed something, a sack or piece of clothing. He bent down to pick it up.
Then he straightened up fast, and his bony hands clamped tight over his ears. He seemed to be screaming, his eyes shut. It was the moaning attack of the cloakers.
Something white fell from the cavern ceiling high above the derro.
Wykar raised the black wand and said the three words that would make it work. He never heard the words he spoke. He only felt them vibrate his chest. Moving his jaw tore the wounds in his ears open again, and he almost forgot the words. The pain was horrific.
White light burst out, filled the world in a flash. Wykar saw afterimages of the entire cave imprinted on his retinas like a gigantic, detail-perfect painting. A white arm of sunlight, over a hundred feet long, perfectly connected his wand tip to the falling cloaker. The cloaker was in flames, dying the instant the burning light struck it. The wand of sunfire, taken from an ambushed drow wizard and hidden away among the deep gnome's caches long ago, worked perfectly. Wykar ran forward. There would be more, at least five more. But he was half blind, and his feet caught something, and he fell.
He dropped the black wand of sunfire. He kicked at the thing holding his legs, looking back and blinking at the afterimages.
A dead drow lay at Wykar's feet, his boots entangled in its blood-darkened arm bones and clothing.
Wykar kicked and screamed. Each scream renewed the bolts of agony in his deafened ears. The limp arms lost their grip on him and fell away, unmoving and dead. Wykar crawled away from the drow, limbs shaking with fear. He saw the wand, grabbed for it, looked up again.
Another white thing was falling from the ceiling. Geppo was below it, clutching his head. The cloakers were singing to him as they had sung to the drow.
Wykar raised the wand and shouted out the three words.
Nothing happened.
Your people are like mine, a little, because we are resistant to magic more than other folk.
"NO!" Wykar screamed. He threw down the wand, then snatched it up and aimed.
The cloaker had Geppo in its folds.
"NO!" Wykar got up and ran, waving the invisible wand like a sword. "NO! NO!"
Geppo was trying to get out. Wykar could see his thin fingers pushing out against the black folds. The derro's narrow mouth was open and screaming and making absolutely no sound. Wykar screamed as he ran. He pulled off his ring, his invisibility ring, and threw it at the cloaker entrapping Geppo. "Look at me," he screamed. "Look at me."
Something white fell from the ceiling. He saw it just before it got him.
The wand went up, aimed, the three words said.
A staggering white spear of light set the cloaker ablaze, it curled up and fell to the side. Wykar saw in the great flash that a dozen dark things hung from the ceiling above him. A nest of monsters. They pulled loose when he saw them, a dozen white sheets falling at him with huge mouths and glassy eyes and fangs. Wykar screamed three words, wand out, and shut his eyes. He screamed them again and again and again, over and over, white flames roaring now from the wand and heat searing his hands, a litany of fire in the darkness.
Something caught him by the foot and pulled. Wykar lost his balance and fell, unable to see anything through the maze of afterimages and agony in his head. He struck blindly with the wand at the thing that had grabbed him, but the thing only tightened its grip. It didn't feel like a hand.
Wykar swiftly rubbed his eyes on his short sleeve. In the red-violet light of the rift, he then saw what gripped his foot, even through the afterimages in his eyes and the fire in his ears and the bodies of flaming cloakers scattered across the rift floor. He saw it clearly.
The egg in the chest had hatched. It held his foot in one of its thick, dark tentacles.
Wykar screamed and heard himself scream even with no eardrums. The sea wave had hatched it, of course. Wykar realized that even in his madness, as he screamed out the three words and pointed the wand at the three liquid-black eyes only a yard away. He knew why the drow thought it was so funny, the idea of spitting on the egg, which they did not dare do. Water would hatch the egg and set the baby free. Not even a drow would want that.
The scaled newborn raised itself up as Wykar said the last word. He could not shut his eyes to block out the sight of it.
Hot, so very hot, and so blind after, though he saw everything.
In the flash of pure light that filled the rift, he saw the tentacled creature with three eyes impaled on the white-hot lance in his hands. Smoke flew from it in that instant, smoke black as a nightmare, and the creature and the wand blew up.
Almost half the population of Raurogh's Hall fell victim to the earthquake, injured or killed. When the surviving dwarves reached the shivering fisher dwarf, her eyes were closed but her blue lips were still moving.
"One hundred sixty-five," she whispered aloud, hearing their approach. "One hundred sixty-five."
The rescuing dwarves heard the fading thunder from the Deepfall's silo and understood. One hundred sixty-five seconds from top to bottom. They pulled her to safety. Her place in the legends was assured.