Galvin clenched his fists, and for the first time in many long years—since he was a child of seven watching his parents hang—he truly feared death. Alone, Wynter, Brenna, and he couldn’t take on Maligor and his darkenbeasts. Nor could they run; Szass Tam would find them.
The druid feared he would die deep in the bowels of the gold mines. If only he could save Wynter and Brenna, he thought, if somehow he could buy time for them to leave…
Beyond the sea of darkenbeasts, which stretched from one end of the chamber to the other, the walls glistened. Thick streaks of gold flashed in the pale light of crystals whose blue gleam illuminated the room.
Brenna cringed behind the druid, horrified by the gruesome scene. Galvin turned to her, placing his hands on her shoulders.
“You and Wynter need to get out of the mines. I’m going to find Maligor and end this,” the druid stated softly.
“No!” Brenna gasped. Quickly Galvin moved a finger to her lips to quiet her.
“I can get past the darkenbeasts. You and Wynter can’t. If you stay here, sooner or later the darkenbeasts will see you. You have to find a way out.”
“We won’t leave you,” she said in hushed tones.
“You have to.” The druid glanced up at the centaur. “Wynter, get out of Thay. Take Brenna with you. Let the Harpers know what happened.”
The centaur nodded reluctantly.
The druid moved a few steps forward, clinging to the shadows of the tunnel for a moment more, not wanting to be discovered by Maligor’s creatures in the cavern beyond. Galvin closed his eyes and focused his mind on the mass of darkenbeasts.
The druid fell to all fours, his head twitching and his hands and feet quivering.
The enchantress glanced at Galvin, then at Wynter, uncertain of what to do. The centaur held her arm to keep her back, and in an instant, she saw Galvin’s face contort.
The bones in Galvin’s face cracked and popped as they pushed outward into a funnel-shaped beak filled with sharp, jagged teeth. His eyes shrunk into his sockets and became red pinpoints beneath a bony brow.
The druid groaned again; this transformation was particularly painful and unnatural. His sides heaved as thin membranes found their way through the chain shirt on each side of his chest and attached themselves to arms that were becoming covered with a yellowish-brown hide. Galvin’s legs shriveled and jerked while his body took on a vaguely reptilian appearance and his clothes and skin vanished beneath the leathery exterior. A barbed tail sprouted from his rump and quivered. His batlike wings flapped against the shaft floor, and the darkenbeast-druid lifted its head on a thin, bony neck bearing a white crescent moon. The wings flapped again, and the creature propelled itself out of the tunnel and into the chamber beyond.
The stench of the cloud of darkenbeasts assailed the druid as he glided over the bodies of skeletons and zombies and joined with the malign creatures hovering overhead. The darkenbeasts were so numerous that the druid couldn’t count them. Hundreds of animals perverted by the Red Wizard, he thought. Galvin fought back a wave of nausea and kept his mind occupied by thinking of Brenna and Wynter.
Several minutes passed … then a half-hour. The druid hoped Wynter was leading the sorceress out of the mine. An hour drifted by, the druid estimated. Then finally part of the cloud separated, and a few dozen of the beasts peeled off and headed down a tunnel. Galvin followed them.
Through a darkened maze of twisting tunnels, the darkenbeasts and the druid flew. In places, they virtually hovered as they navigated sharp turns. The tunnels angled sharply downward, and at one point, it appeared the tunnel ahead had collapsed. The darkenbeasts veered off into a natural chamber to the north, from which the sounds of picks hitting rocks drifted. The druid hovered behind his sorcerous brethren to scrutinize the battered support beams. It appeared they had been hacked through with some kind of weapon. Perhaps that part of the mine was no longer valuable, the druid surmised.
Flying into the natural chamber to catch up with the darkenbeasts, the druid’s beak flew open in surprise. The walls of this cavern looked as if they had been painted with gold. The veins were so thick and so close together that little of the rock showed between them. A crew of slave miners was hard at work mining the area.
Beating his wings faster, Galvin caught up with the grotesque flock. The darkenbeasts wound through a series of small chambers, all circled by thick veins of ore. The last chamber they entered was huge—larger even than the one in which the skeletons and zombies had died. Magical orbs of light spaced about the room caused the thick veins to shine and made them look like gold ribbons circling and dancing about the cavern.
All the men working here had long, tangled hair, pale white skin, and bony frames, evidence they had been slaving here for years. They struck at the veins with their picks almost in unison, as if their movements were orchestrated. All but one man, that is. At the far edge of the cavern, standing on a rise of rocks several feet above the chamber floor, was a red-robed man with a mass of black hair and a well-nourished frame. A white skull on a black field gleamed in the magical light. Maligor.
The druid’s heart raced.
Galvin hid amidst the group of darkenbeasts, which had begun to circle the chamber. Concentrating, he focused on a knob of rock against the wall behind the Red Wizard. It quivered as the druid mentally shaped it, willing it to come forward. For an instant, the rock trembled, then it shot forward like a fist, striking Maligor solidly in the back.
The Red Wizard fell face forward from his stone pedestal to the floor of the cavern below. The slaves dropped their picks and looked blankly about the chamber. With Maligor unconscious, or perhaps dead, the wizard’s control on the slaves was over. Still flying with the darkenbeasts, Galvin watched as the slave miners glanced at the chamber walls, then at Maligor, who appeared to be still breathing. A handful of the slaves grabbed their picks, and for a moment, the druid thought they would begin working on the mines again. But instead the men began to advance toward Maligor, the picks raised above their heads.
Galvin decided he would do nothing to prevent the miners from finishing off the wizard. The druid had intended to kill him anyway.
The nearest slave raised his pick higher, and in a quick, fluid motion brought it down upon the prone body of the Red Wizard. But the pick stopped with a loud thunk inches from the wizard’s back, as if it had hit something hard yet unseen.
Galvin watched the miner’s mouth drop open in shock as Maligor quickly rolled away from him. In one movement, the Red Wizard leapt to his feet and cast out his hand, sending a bolt of energy into the slave’s chest. The slave was hurled backward, a gaping hole burned in the center of his body.
Then the wizard turned his attention to the other slaves.
“Fools!” he shouted. “You all will die for this!” Maligor began twirling his fingers about in the air, and the slaves dropped their picks and whirled to run from the room.
Galvin’s path with the darkenbeasts had taken him behind the Red Wizard, who was oblivious to any threat from that direction. Separating from the mass of darkenbeasts, he dove toward the wizard. He slammed his extended claws into Maligor’s back, and the Red Wizard fell forward again. The druid continued his flight, rejoining the rest of the darkenbeasts.
The maneuver had bought the slaves time to flee from the chamber, which further infuriated the wizard.
This time when Maligor rose, his black eyes seemed to burn, and a trickle of blood flowed from a broken nose. Galvin decided to press his attack.
Through his pain, Maligor spotted a single darkenbeast heading his way, claws outstretched. The Red Wizard sensed the creature was not one of his own, and he marshaled his powers and pointed a finger at the beast that dared to assault him.
“Die!” the Red Wizard shouted.