Except that it was no longer a dwarf.
A massive, flat, and snakelike body—ancient and awful—reared upward, expanding out of the dwarfs body like a monstrous plant bursting out of a seed pod. The serpent took shape and form faster than the eye could follow. Its tail lashed out, struck the sword, sent it flying. The weapon’s rune-magic began to fall apart, the sigla shattered, crumbled in midair—links of a chain broken and scattered.
Haplo sprang back, out of the way of the lashing tail, watched for an opportunity to recover his weapon. He’d expected this—his attack had been too swift, too random. He hadn’t had time to concentrate on his magic. But he had achieved his goal. Killing, even wounding the serpent, was not his objective. He’d meant to force it to show its true form, disrupt its magic. At least now the dwarves would see the serpent for what it was.
“Very clever of you, Patryn,” said Sang-drax. The graceful form of the serpent-elf walked slowly out of the ranks of red-eyed dwarves. “But what have you accomplished—except their deaths?”
The dwarves gasped in shock, fell over themselves and each other in an effort to escape the hideous creature that now loomed over them.
Haplo darted beneath the serpent’s whipping tail, snatched up his sword. Falling back, he faced Sang-drax. A few dwarves, shamed by the cowardice of their fellows, came to the Patryn’s side. The other dwarves rallied around him, gripping pipes, battle-axes, whatever weapons they had been able to find. But their courage was short-lived. The rest of the serpents began abandoning their mensch bodies. The darkness was filled with their hissing and the foul odor of decay and corruption that clung to them. The fire of the red eyes flared. A head dove down, a tail struck out. Massive jaws picked up a dwarf, lifted him to the Factree roof far above, dropped him to a screaming death. Another serpent crushed a dwarf with its tail. The serpents’ best weapon—fear—swept through the ranks of dwarves like an ague. Dwarves bellowed in panic, dropped their weapons. Those nearest the serpents scrambled to retreat down the hole, but ran up against a wall of their brethren, who could not get out of the way fast enough. The serpents leisurely picked off a dwarf here and there, making certain that they died loudly, horribly.
The dwarves fell back toward the front of the Factree, only to encounter the elven barricades. Elven reinforcements had begun arriving, but they were meeting—by the sounds of it—dwarven resistance outside the Factree. Elves and dwarves were fighting each other among the wheels and gears of the Kicksey-winsey, while inside the Factree itself, chaos reigned. The elves cried that the serpents had been built by the dwarves. The dwarves shrieked that the snakes were a magical trick of the elves. The two turned on each other, and the serpents drove mem on, inciting them to the slaughter. Sang-drax alone had not altered his form. He stood in front of Haplo, a smile on the delicate elven features.
“You don’t want them to die,” said Haplo, keeping his sword raised, watching his opponent closely, trying to guess his next move. “Because if they die, you die.”
“True,” said Sang-drax, drawing a sword, advancing on Haplo. “We have no intention of killing them, not all of them, at any rate. But you, Patryn. You no longer provide sustenance. You have become a drain, a liability, a threat.” Haplo risked a swift glance around. He couldn’t see either Limbeck or Jarre, presumed that they had been caught up in the panicked tide, swept away. He stood alone now, near the statue of the Manger, who stared out unseeing on the bloodshed, an expression of stern and absurdly foolish compassion frozen on the metal face.
“It is all hopeless, my friend,” said Sang-drax. “Look at them. This is a preview of the chaos that will rule the universe. On and on. Everlasting. Think of it, as you die...”
Sang-drax lashed out with his sword. The metal gleamed with the sullen, reddish light of the serpent’s magic. He could not immediately penetrate the magical shield of the Patryn’s sigla, but he would try to weaken it, batter it down.
Haplo parried the blow, steel clanging against steel. An electrical jolt ran from the serpent’s blade to Haplo’s, surged through the hilt, passed into his palms—the part unprotected by the runes—and from there up his arms. His magic was shaken. He fought to hold on to the blade, but another jolt burned the flesh on his hand, set the muscles and nerves in his arm twitching and dancing spasmodically. His hand no longer functioned. He dropped the sword, fell back against the statue, grasping his useless arm.
Sang-drax closed in. Haplo’s body-magic reacted instinctively to protect him, but the serpent’s blade easily penetrated the weakening shield, slashed across Haplo’s chest.
The sword cut the heart-rune, the central sigil, from which Haplo drew his strength, out of which sprang the circle of his being.
The wound was deep. The blade sliced through flesh, laid bare the breastbone. To an ordinary man, to a mensch, it would not have been mortal. But Haplo knew it for a death blow. Sang-drax’s magical blade had cut open more than flesh. It had severed Haplo’s own magic, left him vulnerable, defenseless. Unless he could take time to rest, to heal himself, to restructure the runes, the serpent’s next attack would finish him.
“And I’ll die at the feet of a Sartan,” Haplo muttered dazedly to himself, glancing up at the statue.
Blood flowed freely, soaked his shirt front, ran down his hands, his arms. The blue light of his sigla was fading, dwindling. He sank to his knees, too tired to fight, too ... despairing. Sang-drax was right. It was hopeless.
“Get on with it. Finish me,” Haplo snarled. “What are you waiting for?”
“You know full well, Patryn,” said Sang-drax in his gentle voice. “I want your fear!”
The elven form began to alter, the limbs merged horribly, coalesced into a slack-skinned, slime-coated body. A red light glared down on Haplo, growing brighter. He had no need to look up to know that the giant snake head loomed above him, prepared to tear at his flesh, crush his bones, destroy him. He was reminded of the Labyrinth, of the time he’d been mortally wounded there. Of how he’d laid down to die, too tired, too hurt...
“No,” said Haplo.
Reaching out his hand, he grasped the hilt of the sword. Lifting it awkwardly in his left hand, he staggered slowly to his feet. No runes shone on the blade. He’d lost the power of the magic. The sword was plain, unadorned mensch steel, notched and battered. He was angry, not afraid. And if he ran to meet death, he could, perhaps, outrun his fear.
Haplo ran at Sang-drax, lifting the blade in a blow he knew he would never live to strike.
At the start of the battle, Limbeck Bolttightner was on his hands and knees on the floor, trying to find his spectacles.
Dropping his battle-ax, he paid no attention to the shouts and frightful yells of his people. He paid no attention to the hissing and slithering of the serpents (they were only shadowy blobs to him anyway). He paid no attention to the fighting raging around him, no attention to Lof, who was rooted to the spot with terror. Limbeck paid absolutely no attention to Jarre, who was standing over him, beating him on the head with the feather duster.
“Limbeck! Please! Do something! Our people are dying! The elves are dying! The world is dying! Do something!”
“I will, damn it!” Limbeck yelled at her viciously, hands pawing desperately over the floor. “But first I have to be able to see!”
“You could never see before!” Jarre shrieked at him. “That’s what I loved about you!”
Two panes of glass shone red in the reflected light of the serpent’s eyes. Limbeck made a grab for them, only to have them shoot out from under his very fingers.
Lof, jolted free from his paralyzing fear by Jarre’s shout, turned to run away and accidentally kicked the spectacles, sent them skittering across the floor. Limbeck dove after them, sliding on his rotund belly. He scrabbled under one dwarfs legs, reached around another’s ankles. The spectacles seemed to have become a live thing, perversely keeping just beyond his grasp. Booted feet crunched on his groping fingers. Heels jabbed into his side. Lof toppled to the floor with a panic-stricken yell, his rump missing smashing the spectacles by inches. Limbeck clambered over the prostrate Lof, stuck a knee in the unfortunate dwarfs face, made a wild, stabbing grab.