She took a deep breath and forced that thought away. All the more reason to destroy Vestapalk. All the more reason to make sure the dragon died, no matter who struck the killing blow or how.
Then a deep shudder passed through the tunnel.
All of them froze. “Quarhaun, did you do that?” asked Tempest.
“No.”
The whispering shifted and changed. It swelled ahead of them, like excitement sweeping a crowd, until it echoed in the tunnel. No, Shara realized, it was no echo. The sound coming from behind them wasn’t excited whispering, it was the rapid skittering of claws on stone.
“Demons behind us,” said Roghar.
“Go!” said Kri. “We have to get into heart of the Plaguedeep. That’s the only thing that matters.”
They picked up their pace, moving quickly along the tunnel. The strange floor absorbed the sound of their footsteps. Shara prayed silently that it might be enough to throw off the demons following them. Another shudder passed along the tunnel, stronger than the first. Strong enough to make Kri stumble. Cariss and Belen helped the old priest to his feet. The tunnel branched again up ahead, this time breaking into three passages. One of them made a steep downward plunge. Quarhaun turned into it without asking. Shara, following behind, turned after him-and almost knocked him over as he froze just inside. For an instant, they were a tangle of limbs, then Shara managed to grab the wall and clutch Quarhaun to her before they tumbled down the slope.
The red eyes of plague demons glittered up at them from below. One of the creatures let out a sharp hiss.
Hands from behind seized both her and Quarhaun, hauling them back into the main passage. “Demons coming up from below!” Quarhaun blurted.
“And above,” said Cariss. The shifter crouched with her warpicks ready, facing the main passage where it angled up ahead. More whispering and skittering came from it.
Without a word, Kri took Albanon’s arm and rushed him into the third passage, their robes flapping around them. Shara and the others followed. Another shudder shook the tunnel and this time, Shara felt the floor drop underneath her. She fell hard to her knees, her sword sliding out of her grasp. Between one breath and the next, the distant whispering of the plague demons rose into a deafening cacophony of screeches, cackles, and roars.
When Shara looked up, the passage had broadened into a small cavern and one wall had fallen away entirely. Not five paces from her, the new cavern opened onto chaos, an abyss of shimmering light lined with flashing red crystals. Boulders hung suspended in the air while lightning oozed in sheets. Wind tore through the gap to buffet her.
Plague demons crawled over every solid and semi-solid surface, so thick that it took Shara a moment to realize that the flashing crystals weren’t embedded in the walls-they were actually the bodies of the writhing demons.
Their bodies-and their eyes. Hundreds, even thousands of plague demons stared into the newly formed cavern and screamed with insane fury. Shara snatched up her sword and threw herself back. Her feet hit a chunk of fallen rock and she stumbled, but strong arms caught and held her before she could fall again.
“Quarhaun!” she gasped, but the arms weren’t the warlock’s. They were familiar, but they were encased in a paladin’s heavy armor. Roghar looked down at her, then turned her loose. Shara stared. The last tremor had done more than turn the passage they had followed into a cavern with a window on madness. Sharp drops now divided the former passage. She stood on a platform of rock perhaps a dozen paces across with Roghar and Uldane. On an even smaller section, separated from them by a drop of twice Shara’s height, were Albanon, Tempest, and Kri. Shara turned the other way.
Quarhaun, along with Belen and Cariss, stared down at her from the edge of the original tunnel-at the top of a sheer face of newly exposed rock more than three times her own height.
“Quarhaun!” she shouted again and it looked like he would have called back to her, but at that moment a shadow fell across the cavern. Shara spun around.
The noise of the plague demons went silent as Vestapalk rose up from the pit. Floating stones laced with the Voidharrow shuddered and came together, melting and growing into a bridge that spanned the abyss. Vestapalk settled onto his new perch like an emperor onto a throne. The dragon fixed them with eyes that were swirling pools of liquid crystal-and as he did so, all of the demons looked at them, too. Thousands of eyes staring at them. At her. Shara shivered and fell back a pace.
“Welcome to the Plaguedeep,” said Vestapalk and all of his demons along with him. “Welcome to your tomb.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The last time Albanon had seen Vestapalk, the Voidharrow had already transformed him. His bulk had melted away, leaving Vestapalk skeletally gaunt, his hide stretched tight over muscles and bones. His skull had become longer and narrow. The Voidharrow had oozed out of him, squeezing up between his green scales and staining them red, dripping from his jaws, and filling his eye sockets with shifting liquid crystal. More crystal had flashed like spurs from his joints and his spine. It had taken the place of his talons. It had run in glittering veins across his wings.
Albanon had seen those wings on Vestausan and Vestausir. He’d left them rotting in a valley among the Cairngorms. Yet Vestapalk still had wings-wings that were now entirely crystal, as if formed completely from the Voidharrow. One of his talons, too, was the perfect red of the Voidharrow, replacing the one that lay with Vestagix in Winterhaven.
But Vestapalk had changed in other ways, too. He had grown larger and the red stain on his scales was almost complete. The spurs on his limbs were as big as sword blades. Strength and power flowed off him.
Deep inside Albanon, that small part of him that remembered his own near transformation into one of Vestapalk’s demon exarchs stirred. He could have served this magnificent creature. He could have been one with him.
The part of him Tharizdun had touched rose as well, sweeping over him in a flash of heat and madness. The Voidharrow had been meant to free the Chained God from his eternal prison. Instead it dared to attempt to take this world for its own! It was his enemy. He would destroy it in retribution for its arrogance.
Adoration and hatred, neither emotion truly his own, clashed within him as Vestapalk settled onto his perch. Albanon’s hand sought out Tempest’s. Fear and dread churned in his belly. Those emotions were most definitely his own.
“Welcome to the Plaguedeep,” said Vestapalk and all of his plague demons. “Welcome to your tomb.”
The dragon’s voice still had the same double quality Albanon remembered, one voice deep and rumbling, the other strange and chiming like crystal. His words brought a scream of outrage from Kri. “He knew we were coming!” The old priest turned on Albanon. His face was flushed and there was spittle at the covers of his mouth. “He knew! Those so-called sleeping demons, the two demons we found arguing in front of the tunnel entrance, the demons that came up behind us in the passage…” Kri turned again and glared up at Vestapalk. “You guided us. You put us exactly where you wanted us!”
Kri’s voice was small in the vastness of the Plaguedeep. Vestapalk smiled at him. “Servant of the Elder Eye, this one knows all your secrets. You come to destroy the Voidharrow. This one will not give you that chance.” His double voice rose to a ringing roar. “Kill them!”
Tempest’s grip tightened on his hand. “Up there!” she cried. Albanon looked where she pointed. High on the wall above them, the dark hole that was all that remained of the passage they’d been following began to glow with flickering, reddish light. Flames appeared within that light-or rather humanoid figures of animated flame appeared, each with a red crystal at its heart.