Nathifa, her bleached-white features twisted into a mask of sheer hatred, lunged at Tresslar, but Ghaji stepped in front of her and barred her way with his flaming axe. The lich shrank back with an angry hiss, and Tresslar pointed the dragonwand at the statue of Nerthatch. Streams of black energy began to flow from the statue's stone surface and drift into the mouth of the golden dragonhead, almost as if the mystical device was devouring them. Ghaji understood what was happening: Tresslar was draining the magical power from the statue of Nerthatch.
"No!" Nathifa cried out.
Ghaji grinned. "Oh, yes."
Makala's body writhed as the burning light of the Silver Flame poured from the holy symbol pressed to her forehead. The Flame blazed through her being. She tried to dislodge Diran, but her strength had deserted her. She felt weak as a newborn kitten, and she feared the power of the Flame was going to consume her. She squeezed her eyes shut, and deep inside the inner recesses of her mind, Makala saw herself standing on Regalport's dock, but she wasn't standing alone. Before her stood an old man in a fur cloak with roiling pools of shadow where his eyes should be.
"Resist!" the old man shouted, blood-flecked spittle flying from his fanged mouth. "The priest is trying to drive me out! Fight him, damn you!"
Here within the core of her soul, Makala was still human, and she knew the dark spirit that she'd inherited from Aldarik Cathmore was desperate to maintain its hold on her.
You present yourself as a benefactor that provides both strength and coldblooded ruthlessness, Makala said. But you're nothing. Just a parasite afraid to be separated from its host. You heard what Diran said: begone!
The dark spirit threw back its head and roared its fury to the night sky. A small dot of silver light began to grow on the spirit's wrinkled forehead. It quickly assumed the shape of a glowing blue-white arrowhead, and then the light spread rapidly across the spirit, blazing brighter and brighter, until Makala could see nothing but its light… a light that no longer hurt to gaze upon.
She opened her eyes and found herself looking up at Diran's concerned face. The priest knelt beside her. He'd removed the arrowhead from her flesh, holding it clasped in his fist to hide it from her sight. Her forehead felt as if a white-hot branding iron had been pressed to it, but the pain was already beginning to recede.
She smiled at the man who had once been her lover. "You did it, Diran. The dark spirit's gone. Am I…" She reached up and touched the sharp point of her right incisor. She was still a vampire.
"I'm sorry," Diran said.
Makala sat up. "Don't be. Thanks to you, my soul is free of Cathmore's taint. That's enough of a miracle for one night, wouldn't you say?"
Diran smiled, but before either of them could speak again, they heard Nathifa cry out in a voice like thunder. "I'll see you all dead!"
The shadowy substance of the lich's cloak rose up to cover her head, and her ebon form began to grow, its shape rearranging as it expanded. Slender sections separated from the central core, forming a dozen writhing tentacles. Makala realized what Nathifa was doing: she was using up the remainder of her magic for one last attack. Perhaps she would snatch them up in her tentacles and squeeze the life out of them, or perhaps she would simply drain their lifeforces. It didn't matter. Whatever the sorceress intended, Makala wasn't going to stand by and allow it to happen. Diran had saved her soul, and now she was going to save his life, regardless of the cost to herself.
She gave the priest a quick kiss.
"Don't say I never did anything for you."
Before Diran could react, Makala transformed into a bat and flew directly into the tentacled monster Nathifa had become, disappearing into its shadowy substance.
Solus's mind was lost in a raging storm of psionic chaos-a riotous cacophony of blinding images and deafening sounds. Thanks to the memories of his kalashtar creators that he had absorbed long ago, he understood what was happening. When Solus had first descended to the dock, he had sensed that Nathifa was summoning and controlling the weresharks through a psionic link with Haaken, who in turn was linked to the stone body of the priest Nerthatch. Solus, drawing on his creators' knowledge, knew that if he could disrupt that psionic chain Nathifa had established, he could stop her enchantment. But what he hadn't paused to consider-and what was the cause of his current predicament-was that while there was at times a certain overlap in the disciplines of psionics and magic, their power came from very different energy sources. The power Nathifa used to fuel her spell was corrupted by the foulness of her undead form, and the substance of Nerthatch's stone body was suffused with the evil energies of the dark power that had cursed him. Thus, when Solus had attempted to establish his mind-link to Nathifa using the statue and Haaken as conduits, he'd opened himself up to the dark energies surging through all three. Now he could not break the link, and evil filled his mind, threatening to plunge him into madness, and though he was fighting as hard as he could, he feared it was a losing battle.
He thought of Diran and Ghaji, of Tresslar and Yvka, but most of all, he thought of Hinto. He and the halfling had formed a special bond, right from the beginning, and while Solus felt sorrow at the thought of failing his friends, he regretted letting Hinto down most of all. The psiforged hoped his friends would find a way to defeat Nathifa and stop the weresharks attacking Regalport without him.
But just as Solus was about to surrender to the whirlpool of insanity that threatened to pull him under, he felt the pressure in his mind ease. The storm of madness that swirled around him lessened, and though it did not abate entirely, it diminished to the point where Solus was no longer in danger of being lost to its fury. He didn't know precisely how it happened, but he sensed that Nathifa's link to Haaken, and therefore to the statue of Nerthatch, had been broken. He was about to sever his own link to the statue since he could no longer use it to strike against the lich, but now that his mind was free to focus more clearly, he sensed that all the weresharks Nathifa had summoned remained linked to the statue.
And that meant they were all linked to him.
If Solus had possessed the physiognomy for it, he would have smiled. To the weresharks still at sea, he sent a single command: Stay away! But he had something a bit more special in mind for those lycanthropes rampaging through the streets of Regalport.
Solus concentrated on sending a very specific image into their minds.
It had been a glorious night of slaughter so far for the weresharks, and the fun showed no signs of abating. True, there had been some minor resistance. The city watch was putting up a fight (though not much of one), and the Sea Dragons had given a much better account of themselves-and continued to do so in isolated spots throughout Regalport. Operatives from House Thuranni were striking silently and swiftly from the shadows, though not doing much permanent damage, and of course there were various swordfighters, artificers, wizards, and more who had taken to the streets in order to protect their city. But what of it? The defenders' efforts only added to the weresharks' amusement, and every person the lycanthropes wounded but did not slay became infected with their curse, adding to their numbers, if not this night, then on the morrow. There was nothing anyone could do to stop the weresharks' rampage. There were simply too many of them, and they had struck swiftly and without warning. Regalport had already fallen. Its citizens just hadn't realized it yet.