The enemy had taken notice as well. The slaves cringed and ran from the hovering death that moved inexorably across the cavern. The drow did not run, but Ruen saw their wizards gathered near the tunnel mouth, watching Garn’s progress.
They’ll turn all their spells loose on him in a moment, Ruen thought. He makes too big a target.
He didn’t have time to warn Garn. A pair of drow warriors charged the runepriest. Crouching low, Ruen ran to intercept them. He flung out his arms and caught both drow at the chest. The impact shot burning pain into his shoulders, but the drow’s forward momentum halted, and they both went down.
Fragile, Ruen thought. These drow aren’t brawlers, and they’re not used to these kinds of attacks, blows that go through their fine armor.
Ruen knew he couldn’t keep up his defense of Garn forever. He called out for aid, and several dwarves stopped their charge and fell back to form a protective perimeter around the runepriest.
“That’s right, you dogs, run!” Garn screamed in fury as more drow and bugbears fell before him. His voice carried on the thunder of falling rocks. Shaking all over, he thrust his fists into the air.
Ruen fell into a crouch, sweeping the legs out from under another drow. They were attacking side by side with the slaves, but the enemy spells he’d expected hadn’t yet come. What were they waiting for? Ruen tried to see the tunnel mouth, but the shower of rocks and the close press of bodies and flashing weapons made it impossible to see the drow at the far end of the battlefield.
Distracted, Ruen saw the blade slicing at him out of the corner of his eye only just in time. He ducked, but the axe bit deep into his flesh. Ruen swung around and grabbed the bugbear’s wrist, twisting its arm behind its back. The creature squealed and dropped its weapon. Ruen brought his hand back, aiming for a blow to the bugbear’s spine. He halted in mid-strike.
Beneath the creature’s filthy, blood-splattered armor, he glimpsed a familiar marking carved into the bugbear’s flesh. Unlike the dead bugbear he’d seen earlier, this slave’s mark glowed faintly and pulsed with a blood-red light.
Instead of striking the creature, Ruen forced it to its knees, careful to keep pressure on its axe arm to hold it in place. With his other hand, he ripped the flimsy armor aside to get a better look at the rune. It was obviously magical, but he had no idea what it meant.
Glancing across the battlefield, Ruen noticed a pattern he hadn’t seen before. Dread swelled in his stomach. The goblin slaves fought mostly together, not counting the creatures that broke ranks and ran from Garn’s hail of stones. But the bugbears fought scattered throughout the cavern, spaced evenly amongst the dwarf attackers, as if they’d been assigned to those places.
“Garn!” Ruen shouted, frantic, but there was no way for the dwarf to hear him. He shoved the bugbear to the ground and forced it on its back. Ruen took out his dagger and pressed it to the creature’s throat. “What are your masters planning?” he growled in Undercommon. The creature whimpered and stared at him blankly, its face creased in pain. Ruen punched the bugbear. Bright blood welled up around the creature’s mouth. It squeezed its eyes shut, tensing for another blow.
Ruen cursed, digging his hands into the creature’s filthy tunic. He reached up and laid his palm flat against the creature’s cheek. The bugbear’s eyes widened with fear. It expected violence, but that wasn’t Ruen’s aim. He felt his spellscar react to the creature’s flesh. The bugbear’s heartbeat surged through him, strong, yet wild and fearful. Ruen gasped at the burning red pain he felt from creature’s shattered arm. He pushed forward, past the pain, seeking-there!
A blemish spread throughout the creature’s body, a creeping darkness in the shape of a spider’s web-or perhaps that was merely Ruen’s perception of it, compounded by his fury and dread.
The bugbear was going to die, but instead of slowly consuming him, the magic hovered like a growing storm, waiting to burst from the creature’s body with violent force.
Ruen pulled back from the bugbear, breaking the skin-to-skin contact. The bugbear stared fixedly at him. Red light crept into its eyes, and suddenly, the creature smiled, exposing broken teeth and a mouthful of blood.
“You’ve touched your doom, human,” it said in Common. The voice that issued from the creature’s lips was not the rough, animal rasp of a bugbear, but a smooth, musical murmur that sent a chill crawling over Ruen’s flesh. “The earth shakes, and the walls come tumbling down.”
Ruen grabbed the bugbear’s head between his hands. “Watching gods damn you all,” he whispered. “We’ll take as many of you with us as we can.” He twisted sharply, breaking the bugbear’s neck. The red light faded from the creature’s eyes, leaving a blank, peaceful stare on the slave’s face.
Climbing unsteadily to his feet, Ruen sheathed his dagger and ran toward Garn, shouting and waving his arms. His feet felt sluggish and clumsy. He tangled with a crowd of dwarves and drow warriors locked in vicious swordplay. One dwarf turned and almost took his head off with his short sword before he realized Ruen was an ally.
“Get in the fight or get out of the way!” the dwarf screamed angrily, shaking Ruen by the shoulder.
Ruen reached for the dwarf, intending to tell him, to shout at them all to fall back. They didn’t realize what was going to happen, that they were all doomed if they didn’t move. The dwarf had already turned away. Ruen ran blindly on, determined to get to Garn. The runepriest would give the order. His booming voice could carry over the entire chamber, warning everyone that death was coming.
A burst of orange and blue light erupted somewhere over Ruen’s left shoulder. The cavern went silent except for a loud ringing in his ears and a distant pounding. Ruen felt wetness run down his neck. He reached up, touching his ear. When he took his hand away, blood coated his fingers.
Turning, he saw the orange fireball spreading across the chamber in waves like bright, fluffy orange clouds. It was raining, too-chunks of stone fell around him as the cavern ceiling came down on their heads.
Another blast came, farther away, or maybe Ruen just couldn’t hear it. It shattered the stone near him and threw him to his knees. He looked up in time to see a third blast as a bugbear standing not far away suddenly shuddered, bent double, and exploded in a brilliant flash of red and gold light.
Ruen fell into blessed darkness, cool and silent, and he felt no more pain.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ILTKAZAR, THE UNDERDARK
25 UKTAR
Icelin looked up and shivered, as if a cold hand had touched her on the shoulder. Nothing appeared amiss-the books stood silently upon their shelves, behaving themselves, and Zollgarza sat at the table in the middle of the room, eating a bowl of stew the guards had brought him. Icelin shook away the sense of foreboding that had momentarily gripped her and turned back to her book.
In front of her, suspended above a glass case, gold letters shaped themselves out of the air. As soon as Icelin stopped reading, the letters stopped forming. She removed a gold ring from her index finger and hooked it on a peg protruding from the glass. The writing began to fade, leaving only a faint afterimage on the air, but the memories of the text were forever imprinted in Icelin’s mind.
The glass case contained one of King Mith Barak’s oldest tomes. According to the seneschal, the last time the pages had been touched by living hands was more than two hundred years ago. No magic had ever been cast on the book, and the pages were too fragile now to be exposed to the air. The text could only be read using the ring to recall it from the book. The seneschal had drawn her attention to it because there was a physical description of the Arcane Script Sphere in the text.