“I don’t understand,” said Cariss with surprise in her voice. “We’re winning. Why isn’t Vestapalk doing more?”
Belen frowned and looked at the passage behind them. One of their sunrods lay just inside its the mouth. Nothing stirred within the shadows as far down the passage as she could see. No more nightmare demons. No more demons of any kind. Yet with all the demons of the Plaguedeep under his control, Vestapalk could have destroyed their entire group easily. “What’s he waiting for?” she asked. “He could smother us and be done!”
“He’s playing with us,” Cariss growled.
Quarhaun muttered a quiet curse. “He’s wearing us down! You heard what he told Kri. He says he knows our secrets, and that we came to destroy the Voidharrow. Look at how he’s watching Albanon and Kri-if he knows how they destroyed Vestausan and Vestausir, he knows they’re the real threat.”
“But why wear us down? Why pick at us with small bands of demons?”
“Probably for the same reason Shara wants to kill him personally,” said the drow. “Pride. Vengeance. He wants to destroy us himself, but we’ve also defeated his creatures every time we’ve encountered them. He wants us tired, not fresh.”
“There’s no honor in an uneven fight,” said Cariss.
“Honor?” Quarhaun laughed. “No drow matriarch would try to destroy a rival House without making sure it was first weakened from within. I think Vestapalk wants to make sure this is a fight he can win. That’s why he split us up.”
Belen stared down at the rest of her friends. “So when Albanon and Kri defeat the fire demons, Vestapalk will attack?”
“I would if I were him.”
Cariss bared her teeth. “Then what can we do?”
Belen’s stomach tightened. “We still have rope, don’t we? Maybe Vestapalk wants us split up, but I don’t. First we get down and join Shara, Roghar, and Uldane, then we do what we planned to all along: we give Albanon and Kri time to work their magic.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The stink of burned hair filled Albanon’s nostrils. Given the many possible stenches of battle, it wasn’t the most awful smell, but it made him want to cough with every drawn breath and every shouted spell. Worse, it came over him in a fresh wave each time he turned his head-and with every fresh wave came the thought that he hadn’t had short hair since he was a child.
It was a completely inappropriate thought for the middle of a life or death battle. Albanon might have suspected he was going mad if he didn’t already know what that felt like.
He flicked his hand and hurled a silvery bolt of force at one of the remaining fire demons. The demon shifted slightly and the bolt tore through its shoulder. It barely left a trace on the flames, just a dark spot that lingered briefly and vanished entirely a moment later. Albanon cursed and brought his staff up to block a fiery arm as it slapped at him. The tendril tip wrapped around the staff, then dissipated, leaving another charred black ring among the many already scarring the stout wood. The demon raised its arm for yet another lashing blow.
Tempest’s voice rose in a scream and a twisting ribbon of darkness rushed past Albanon to strike the demon under its upraised arm. Where it struck, flames withered and were extinguished. It seemed to Albanon almost as if they were sucked back along the stream of darkness. The demon stumbled and dropped to one knee, then its fire winked out altogether. All that remained was a crumbling husk of ash with a sooty crystal, now dark, at its heart. Albanon spared a glance over his shoulder at Tempest. She smiled at him.
“Four down,” she said tightly. “Four to go.”
Albanon grimaced and turned back to the fight. He sent another bolt of force at the next enemy.
At least the fire demons showed no more desire than them to close and turn their battle of spells and flames into a melee. The creatures didn’t die easily-and it didn’t help that fire-based spells had little effect on them, rendering much of Albanon’s arsenal of spells and almost all of Tempest’s completely useless. Albanon had quickly found himself hoarding his store of cold and lightning spells, waiting for the right time to use them. He felt like an apprentice again, hammering away at his opponents with simple magical missiles until they weakened.
But he and Tempest weren’t the only ones hoarding their magic. “Kri! We could use some help.”
“I’m doing my part.” Bright white light flared on the other side of Albanon as the priest hurled a lance of pure radiance at a fire demon. The demon’s flames flickered, but came back. Kri’s prayers could have devastating effects against the demons-Albanon had seen it before-but the old man seemed to be holding his most powerful prayers in reserve.
Albanon bit back a curse. “Do more!”
“Accept the Chained God’s power. You’ll have all the help you need.”
A blast of cold will save you, whispered the voice inside Albanon. The knowledge unfolded before him. There was a spell he knew that would create a cloud of freezing vapor. Enhanced and expanded in exactly the same way as fire magic, it could fill the cavern. Maybe even all of the Plaguedeep. In his mind, Albanon saw the fire demons snuffed out, their ashes as cold as last night’s campfire. He saw plague demons frozen to the walls of the Plaguedeep like grotesque carvings. He saw Vestapalk turned white with frost and the Voidharrow frozen like red ice.
He saw Kri frozen, too-and Tempest. And Roghar, Uldane, Belen, Cariss, Quarhaun, Shara…
“No!” He thrust both temptation and the whispering voice away. To deny them entirely, he thrust his staff at a pair of fire demons standing close together and spoke a word that left his lips cold. A glowing blue speck sped from his staff and streaked toward the demons. It burst as it approached, exploding into a bright mist. The fire demons hissed in voices like wind rushing over hot coals. One of them stumbled out of the mist. The other didn’t.
“Three to go,” said Kri. “That was a waste.” He raised a hand and murmured a prayer. Holy light shimmered around his hand and flashed above the demon that had escaped Albanon’s spell. The creature hissed again, then crumbled into ashes. “Two,” said Kri.
The remaining two fire demons drew back as if realizing they were outnumbered. However, with the middle section high above and the remains of the passage even higher, they were just as trapped as Albanon and the others.
“We’ve got them!” Tempest said triumphantly.
Suspicion nagged at Albanon. He turned away from the retreating fire demons to the Plaguedeep where Vestapalk and all of his plague demons had crouched motionless, watching the spell battle.
They still hadn’t moved. Vestapalk’s gaze was focused on him and him alone.
The tips of Albanon’s ears tingled. This one knows all your secrets, Vestapalk had said. You come to destroy the Voidharrow. This one will not give you that chance.
“What is he waiting for?” the wizard murmured.
“So the sleeper wakes,” said Kri. He turned to face Vestapalk as well. “What is he waiting for? Us. He waits for us. Where are your mighty spells now, Albanon? Thrown away. Are you ready to face him?”
Albanon’s mouth went dry. Vestapalk had manipulated them with the fire demons’ attack. How had he not seen that before? And the others, isolated on the other sections of broken passage? Because they were on the lowest level, he couldn’t see up to where they were. He hadn’t given a thought to them since the fire demons’ appearance. He’d heard Roghar’s battle cry and a scream that might have been Cariss, but those were the only sounds that had registered.
Instinct told him to look up, to see if they were still there, but Vestapalk’s gaze held him. The dragon’s mouth turned up in a predator’s smile. He lowered his head, bringing it closer to Albanon’s level.
“Come, Albanon,” he called. “Come and serve this one as you were meant to.”
The crystal-riddled stone on which the dragon perched twisted around, reorienting itself like a living thing. One end of it stretched down to the ruined passage so that Vestapalk crouched at the end of a long spire jutting into the Plaguedeep. His eyes never left Albanon’s. His double voice reached into Albanon’s mind and rang inside his skull. Come.