“Below?” Icelin didn’t like the sound of that. “How deep do these ruins go?”
The younger dwarf spoke again, and in his dark eyes, Icelin saw a mixture of pride, contempt, and an endless, aching sadness. If she hadn’t been afraid of provoking an attack, Icelin would have reached out to the dwarf. Crazy, she knew, but sadness like that … it urged her to soothe-to do anything to quell it.
“What did he say?” Ruen asked the father.
“Deep,” the dwarf said, “deep into memory.” He pointed to the passage ahead of them. “You come with us now. We’ll take you to your companion and then decide what to do with all of you.”
“Not yet,” Ruen said. “I have questions of my own.” He drew a dagger from his belt and held it at his side, a paltry thing in the shadow of the dwarves’ gleaming axes, but Icelin knew better than to underestimate what Ruen could do with the weapon. In her mind, she searched for a spell to defend them both in the close quarters. She hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.
As she prepared to call on her Art, the elder dwarf suddenly turned and stared at her. “Don’t,” he said quietly. He raised his hand.
Icelin braced for a spell, but the attack was not what she expected.
A symbol flashed in front of her eyes, bright and painful, as if she’d been staring into the sun on a burning hot day. Three slashes of fire in the air-that was all Icelin discerned before a thunderous roar filled her ears.
She stumbled back, managing to hold on to her staff and the torch when all she wanted to do was thrust both aside and cover her ears. The roar was impossible to block out. She closed her eyes. An involuntary cry escaped her lips. The rune had faded, leaving only a blurred afterimage on the inside of her eyelids, but the thunder beat painfully in her ears and sent threads of fiery pain into her temples.
“Stop it!” Ruen shouted at the dwarves, but Icelin barely heard him. She couldn’t call her magic, couldn’t think beyond the roaring.
Dimly, she heard the ring of steel. Icelin opened her eyes and saw the younger dwarf standing in front of his father, blocking a dagger strike from Ruen. The dwarf swung his axe as if to drive Ruen back, but he dodged the swipe and delivered a swift punch to the dwarf’s arm.
His grip on the axe faltered. A flicker of surprise passed over the dwarf’s face, and he stared hard at his thin opponent, as if re-evaluating the threat Ruen posed. Through her pain, Icelin felt a rush of satisfaction.
Ruen was an uncanny fighter, a bundle of contradictions. To look at him, a hard punch would break him in half, yet Ruen was the one who usually delivered such terrible blows. As with so much in his life, his spellscar was to blame. It left his bones brittle, forcing him to wear a magic ring that kept them strong. That same ring also enhanced his physical strength, which, when combined with his speed and martial training, made him a formidable opponent.
In that moment, however, he was outmatched, at least in bladed weapons. Ruen sheathed his dagger and came at the dwarf again with just his fists.
For all their differences in height and weight, the dwarf was sure-footed. He dodged Ruen’s quick jabs, and Ruen had to use every bit of his speed to keep pace with the dwarf’s movements. It would be a long and bloody fight-the last thing Icelin wanted.
“Please listen to me,” she implored the elder dwarf. Her voice shook with pain. “I swear, we didn’t come here to desecrate this temple. If you give us back our friend, we’ll leave this place and never return. We don’t have to fight!”
The older dwarf’s face remained impassive. He glanced from Icelin to the battle between his son and Ruen. Icelin thought he was going to let it continue, despite her pleas.
Abruptly, the roaring in her ears diminished, leaving behind a dull ache at Icelin’s temples. In her relief, she almost sagged to the floor.
“Ruen, stop!” she called out. “It’s all right. I’m all right.”
The combatants paused in their dance of blade and fists. Ruen stood tense, but glancing at Icelin, he took a careful step away from the dwarf. His opponent did the same.
“It’s all right,” Icelin repeated. “Now we can talk-” She couldn’t finish. The cloying scent of blood and a burning substance filled her nose. Icelin choked at the unexpected foulness and covered her mouth to keep from gagging. The dwarves looked at her curiously-Ruen in alarm. They obviously smelled nothing amiss.
It was the scent spell. She’d stopped paying attention to it in the wake of the dwarf’s magical attack on her senses.
“What is it?” Ruen took hold of her shoulder with his free hand, but Icelin shrugged him off.
“Something’s near-gods, that’s awful.” She looked around the torchlit darkness but saw nothing. The dwarves exchanged anxious looks.
Then they all heard it. The scrape of stone and a stirring of air overhead made them look at the ceiling. That brief glimpse was the only warning before a large, hairy body dropped from the ceiling and landed on the younger dwarf’s back. A second weight slammed into Icelin and drove her to the ground.
Icelin caught herself on her hands, but the breath whooshed out of her, and the torch rolled away, sending sparks and fractured light in all directions. When Icelin looked up, a black cage surrounded her, but the bars of that cage were not made of iron. They were jointed and covered with stiff black hairs.
Rolling onto her back, Icelin suppressed a scream. The reflection of her prostrate form shone in the glassy black eyes of an immense spider. Its mandibles hovered directly above her head. Blood from the last unfortunate creature it had encountered stained those mandibles and dripped from its glistening black body. A thick, greenish liquid mixed with the blood, and the scent of burning poison rose in her nostrils again. Icelin dismissed the scent spell so she could breathe, but it was impossible to tear her gaze away from those soulless black orbs.
Icelin lifted her hands and cast the first spell that came to mind. She spoke the arcane phrases haltingly, but in her mind, she screamed her intent: burn.
Her fingers glowed and flames erupted from her hands, shattering her reflection and blocking out the spider’s eyes. The creature recoiled, legs scraping across the stone, tangling in Icelin’s hair. Panic and revulsion rose in her. She had to get out from under the thing before it crushed her.
By the light of her fire spell, Icelin saw Ruen viciously stab the spider’s body, trying to draw it away from her. He danced aside as the monster turned and tried to take a bite out of him. Dropping to his knees, he pitted his weight against the monster and yanked aside one of the spider’s legs. Icelin reached through the gap, and he hauled her out from under the creature.
“Watch out!” Icelin shouted.
A third spider scuttled along the ceiling above their heads. Ruen let her go, ran to the far wall, and using a small stone outcrop as a leaping-off point, propelled himself up the wall, close enough to reach the spider’s bloated body. Before it had the chance to scramble away, Ruen pushed off the wall, ripping the spider off its stone perch. Icelin darted out of the way as he and the monster landed on the passage floor.
Ruen rolled clear just as a backhand swing from the elder dwarf’s axe drove the obsidian horns into the spider’s exposed abdomen. The monster’s legs flexed and clawed the air wildly, but it couldn’t pull itself together for another attack. The deadly axe tore it apart in a mess of gore.
The younger dwarf had thrown the spider off his back. He shouted and hacked at the creature. His axe sliced through the monster’s legs like sticks. He reversed the strike and tore into the spider’s abdomen with the obsidian horns as his father had done.
In its death throes, the spider latched onto the dwarf’s arm and bit deep. Blood and poison drenched the dwarf’s arm. He yelled and bore down with his axe, cutting the spider in half.