The wightlings that blighted Silatham sizzled and burned wherever they touched the enchanted wood. Any outside the enclosing walls simply dropped to the ground, lifeless at last. Those inside were trapped by Ehlonna and burned by her indignation.
But then Devis's concentration on the flowing music was snapped by a defening bellow from Clayn, far above him. Bodies and pieces of bodies of rats and zombies and wightlings plunged down through the chute above them.
A few twitching zombie parts and numerous rats landed in the cart, but Soveliss chopped and Hound-Eye smashed them into harmless chunks. Devis promptly slipped on the slickened floor and fell hard onto his back with a crunch. Desperately he pushed his back up the side of the cart and reached for the lute. He found it in two pieces, still connected by the strings. The bard couldn't know it, but he held the instrument exactly as he had held Mialee's body.
He stared at it, for the first time in his life so shocked he was unable to speak.
Zalyn spoke. "Devis, you did not need the song of Gunnivan. Your own muse gifted you with a voice that can charm a god all on its own." The elf-goddess's glowing features bunched into a gnomish grin, and she laughed. "It was not the lute! You did it! The power of Silatham is refocused. The athal trees are restored and Ehlonna is strong in the Silath wood once more."
Devis grinned incredulously. "You're seriously telling me I could have done that any time? Why didn't we just do it earlier?" he asked the cleric. Everyone in the cart looked at Zalyn.
"The day this would work wasn't my idea, it was hers," the elf replied. Then the glowing tones of the goddess flowed over Zalyn's voice and added, "But this is only one of the tasks we must see through. Those above are still in peril."
"Hey, goddess lady," Hound-Eye said, pounding a wightling rat into goo, "you think we might get a move on?"
Silently Zalyn waved her hand, and they started rolling slowly down the tunnel.
A booming voice echoed down the passage, shouting out a long string of Elvish curses. The voice was unmistakably Clayn's.
"Oh, no," Mialee whispered, looking up. Soveliss shouted his grandson's name.
"Soveliss?" the voice answered. "Where are you? They toppled me into the shaft. The other two, they're not warriors! Silatham lives, but the man and his wife will never drive back that horde by themselves."
A scream hammered down the shaft, the scream of an elf.
"Darji," Soveliss said to the raven, "can you fly back up the chute?"
The little bird chirped, "Of course!"
"Please find out what you can."
The ranger scowled as another scream fell around their ears. Devis saw Nialma look up for a moment, then the girl resumed her humming, swinging her arms in a dance step that only children know. Darji took off up the cavernous levitation tube.
They picked up speed as the heavy, iron cart rolled down the tracks of the mine tunnel.
26
The cart bumped across a rough section of track, and they all tumbled into a pile in the rear of the iron box. Mialee pushed Devis off her with a grunt.
"Devis," Mialee said, her aphasia gone at last. "Stay where you are, I'm going to stand on your back."
"Wait, I can just-" Devis began, but Mialee was already climbing off the floor of the accelerating cart.
She nearly fell over backward as the cart picked up speed, but she caught the very lip of the top and heaved herself up to the edge.
A bowshot behind them, a shouting, cursing elf was coming to rest on the ground. Mialee could tell that he was shouting something at the bird fluttering around his head, but the grinding of the iron wheels drowned out the words. Darji spiraled around the elf then flew like a shot back in Mialee's direction.
She heard three grunts of exertion from her left and watched as Soveliss kicked and vaulted up from the floor of the rocking, bounding cart to land on his feet next to her. The man’s balance was uncanny.
"Terrible view," Soveliss muttered, then shouted down the tunnel at the man who was his last, tenuous link to the past. "Clayn! Stay there, we'll come back for you!"
Clayn cupped a hand to his mouth to reply, but immediately flung the hand out as a fat, oily rat, which Mialee could see clearly even at this distance, floated down and settled on his shoulder.
"Soveliss! Go! I'll hold them off as long as I can!" the ranger's voice boomed back at them as more and more furry wightling rodents setlled around him.
Mialee gasped involuntarily when she saw wightling elves, groaning and smoldering, float down behind the rats.
Soveliss looked as if he wanted to jump from the cart and run back to aid his imperiled kin. Darji cawed as she reached the cart.
"No, Soveliss! You must go ahead!"
Soveliss threw a salute down the hall.
Clayn, hacking into a pair of descending gray legs, caught the salute and returned it. More and more burning, writhing creatures fell slowly down, and he chopped them all to bits as they came. As the cart rolled on, Mialee saw that many of the squirming pieces were still on fire. Clayn chopped into a vaguely man-shaped mass of flame and one landed atop the stacked kegs of blasting powder.
Fire. Blasting powder.
"Oh, no," Mialee whispered.
"And I've got another thing to say, Cava," Favrid said from his shackled, spread-eagled place on the stone wall. "You never did find the secret of the tomb. I did. You're a coward." He laughed bitterly. "The Buried One. That name's too good for you. We should have called you the Incompetent One."
The elf-turned-wight leaped from his rough-hewn deknae throne and hissed into the old man's bruised, bleeding face.
"Don't ever call me by that name, deceiver!" the wight snarled viciously, jabbing his hooked finger into the old man's eye.
Favrid screamed pitiably, and Cavadrec heard something pop. A thin line of green ooze drooled down his chin. He had not tasted his favorite treat in days. He opened one finger and carefully hooked the ruined orb with one razor-sharp claw, expertly severing the optic nerve without damaging the brain. Well, not too much. The old wizard only had to be alive. Nothing in the incantations required an intelligent, or even lucid, sacrifice, only that it must be blood that was spilled on the battlefield of Morkeryth, or the spell would fail.
In a very short time, Favrid's blood would fill the unholy chalice now resting on Cavadrec's trophy shelf. It would blend with a specially prepared mixture of arcane and divine magical components. Cavadrec would drink deeply of the concoction, and the dead would rise at his command.
He had never thirsted so, but timing was crucial. It would happen soon.
He pulled his morsel from the old wizard's eye socket with a pop, and was rewarded with another delectable scream. The wight popped the treat into his mouth and thrust his face in front of the old man's jaw. The empty socket bled profusely, but supernatural senses told Cavadrec his old enemy still had plenty of the stuff left inside him. And he was so hungry. The blood-covered eye was an excellent appetizer for the main course.
Two pinpricks of red light flashed in Cavadrec's empty sockets. He cocked his head to one side like a cat examining an insect it knows cannot escape, and stared into Favrid's remaining eye. The old man stared back, defiantly, but whimpered with agony.
Cavadrec extended the clawed pinky of his left hand and popped it into the soft jelly. The old fool screamed again. It was dinner music to the wight's wrinkled, pointed ears.v
Mialee landed in Devis's lap.
Her eyes were wide. "Blasting powder! Fire! Duck!" She covered her head, and they all did the same.
Devis felt and heard the boom in equal portions. A searing shock wave struck the back of the cart and pushed it even faster down the tunnel
Mialee pressed her forehead against his chest, but Devis realized she wasn't just looking for a shoulder to cry on. Flaming debris was thundering down the tunnel behind them. He put one arm around Mialee's shoulder and covered his head with his free arm just moments before the flames washed overhead. The heat was incredible, and cinders and small pieces of burning powder rained around them. Devis patted his hair, and Mialee's wild strands, putting out tiny sparks.