25
Many wightling elves had clawed their way fully into the little room. Clayn, Pell, and Delia fought them back with the ferocity of a mother bear defending her young. Devis spared the desperate defenders one last look, clutched Gunnivan's lute to make sure it was strapped in place, closed his eyes, and jumped.
He fell for maybe five seconds before opening his eyes. Above him, he heard bold shouts of challenge and the screeching howls of the living dead. He was descending at a fairly relaxed speed down the inside of a long tube of woven athel wood. Orange light glowed from below and cast long, bizarre shadows all around him.
This escape hatch was magical. He looked down and could barely make out Mialee, falling at a slightly faster rate, but not apparently in danger. Beyond her, he could see tiny specks that must have been the others coming to a landing.
"Amazing, isn't it?" a voice chirped in his shoulder, and Devis inadvertently yelped. Darji flapped her wings slowly, turning cartwheels. "I feel like a hummingbird!"
Devis looked down and felt his stomach roll uncomfortably. The distance hadn't seemed real to him as he slowly descended, but seeing the bird zip around the tube made him reassess the distance.
"Gods," he whispered.
He still had to be at least a mile up. He hoped the orange glow he was seeing wasn't from an open magma flow.
Devis guessed it was a full two minutes before he finally felt stone beneath his feet. He stood at the head of a long tunnel that descended into blackness, lit by torches. Twin iron tracks ran the length of the narrow tube. A large mine cart stood before him. It was twice his height, and as big as a good-sized fishing boat, but without the charm. About a dozen barrels labeled with the Dwarvish words for "blasting powder" were stacked behind him, where the tunnel ended.
Screams, bellows, and howls echoed down the shaft above him, but he did not look. Devis could not have pulled his attention away from the rest of the area all around the hollowed-out unloading dock. The barrels of black powder, if they actually still held any, along with a surprising number of food crates and iron water tanks, were the only undisturbed containers in the cavern. Everything else had been methodically, almost insanely, destroyed.
The place was an absolute treasure trove of armor, weapons, and, well, treasure.
There were swords with more gemstones encrusted on the hilt than Devis had ever imagined could fit. Hammers, axes, pikes, picks, and elegant, unstrung bows lay everywhere. Gold and silver shields emblazoned with fascinating symbols Devis had only seen before in history libraries, others bearing the unicorn and tree of Ehlonna, were tossed in careless piles. A few empty suits of heavy dwarven plate, the hammer and anvil of Moradin embossed on their chests in platinum, sat in ghostly repose against a wall covered in silver, gold, and platinum. Sweet platinum. Coins of every denomination he had ever coveted and many more he'd never seen littered the ground. Crates and chests had been shattered and all the possessions inside strewn about and picked over.
Amongst the piles of gold, unsettling footprints marked where someone-or thing-on two legs had stomped through the lode. Devis had a disturbing feeling those tracks had not been made by any Silatham elves on a stroll through their siege hoarde. Despite their lousy luck at confining evil overlords, he had to give the elves credit. Everyone else in the world could turn into a wightling, and they just might be able to hold out. They might have, if the wightling plague hadn't started within their walls.
Devis must have been licking his lips, for only that could explain how badly he bit his tongue when a screech jumped out of the huge cart. He winced and pressed his lacerated tongue to the roof of his mouth. Nialma's little head poked over the edge of the cart above him. She was smiling with the resilience of youth and the joy of finding an enormous, new toy. She giggled and then disappeared.
Devis looked at the assorted riches and sighed, wincing at the cold air on his injured tongue. The money wasn't going anywhere, and he supposed if he didn't get moving he wouldn't ever be able to spend it anyway. Still…he crouched and scooped up a few handfuls of platinum coins and gemstones and slipped them into one of the bigger pouches on his belt.
As he rose, something metal smacked him on the forehead. A familiar silk rope and a supposedly collapsible grappling hook, still folded, hung in the air before him, dangling down from the lip of the cart.
The bard grasped the line and clambered up the smooth iron to join his friends, careful not to let the lute hanging at his hip scratch against the wall of the giant cargo mover and trying to remember where hed left that rope.
Hound-Eye was in mid-sentence as Devis dropped with a clang and a boom to the bottom of the iron cart, "-don't you just zap us down there? Why the he-"The halfling eyed the giggling Nialma and continued, "Why are we in a giant cart, for-er-pity's sake? You're a goddess, ain't ya?"
"We are here to preserve this vessel," Zalyn said with a voice that betrayed very little of her real self. "The magic of the song is still required to grant us focus and allow me to suffuse dead Silatham." She turned to Devis without explaining the last. "It is time. We remember our obligation. This vessel did not know that we always watch over her. We do not need to be 'coaxed.' But we do love music, and we require inspiration." Devis felt himself melt before the goddess-Zalyn, and fumbled for the scroll pouch that held Gunnivan's ballad.
"Thankth, Zthalynth."
Devis blinked and worked his jaw, sticking out his bleeding tongue. "Oh tho! Youth'e goth tho be kithing thee. How ab I thuppothed thoo thig the thog? Thith ith thust thuthig geat!"
"What did he say?" Nialma asked.
"Nothig. Nothig," Devis snapped. "Oh, Tharlaghn abthidthes!
Then the frantic bard snapped up straight. "Wai, pothionth! Tthalynth, you hab the watht pothionth."
Zalyn-or Ehlonna?-stepped to Devis in a flash and waved a hand in front of his chin. Devis looked down at the pint-sized elf.
"Hinual faenya," boomed a voice that filled the tunnel.
He felt warmth on his tongue and popped his mouth open. The injury was gone. At the same time, a desire to sing flooded through him, more powerful than any emotion he'd ever felt. Music surged up from his heart as Devis sang, and it flowed through his fingers into the lute as he played. He didn't know the words or the melody, yet as each note formed-no, as he formed each note and sang each word-it was perfect.
Zalyn took up the song, but she wasn't Zalyn. The shrunken, poisoned body of the elf was filled with Ehlonna and her voice was strong, youthful, and beautiful. Together their voices overflowed the rail cart that somehow seemed pitiably small now, they flooded the tunnel and rushed up the levitation shaft to the tiny, beleagured house where Devis's friends fought for their lives against undead monsters.
He was awash in the sensation of wanting only to protect ten precious souls. He was connected to every one of them, feeling their terror, anger, resolve, and hope. Most of all he felt Zalyn, dying Zalyn, struggling to sustain her life against a black cloud of poison spreading through her exhausted, weakened body.
And there was one more…a distant, unfamiliar, but smiling heart Devis knew could only belong to Favrid.
Then through the song Devis felt the stirring of a new presence. It was far above them. Not human or elf, but animal and plant. Silatham was returning to life. The athel wood still felt the horror of the walking dead. But now the city itself would fight back and aid the trio high above Devis's head. Their courage blended with the courage of the goddess, who was so much more than just a spirit inside Zalyn. She suffused Silatham itself.