"Sheemzher remember smell, good sir. Sheemzher never forget egg-smell. Smell stronger this way. This way, right way, good sir. Come."
"Bad eyes, good ears," Rozt'a muttered, repeating the common wisdom. "Good nose, too… I guess… hope." The light spell made all of them look pale, but Rozt'a's face had no color at all.
They hadn't gone far when they came to an intersection that offered three choices and more Dethek runes. Sheemzher took the middle path. Dru committed the runes to memory. Wizards trained their memories the way warriors sharpened their swords and merchants counted their coins. They didn't make mistakes-Druhallen of Sunderath didn't make mistakes when he memorized.
Make a mistake with a fireball and he'd be dead instantly. Make a mistake inside Dekanter and there'd be time enough for despair.
The mountain was all around Druhallen, pressing inward, interfering with his memory and, maybe, his judgment. They kept going forward because that was easier than making a decision to turn back.
The squared-off, rune-marked corridors gave way to rougher, unmarked passages. Newer passages, Dru thought, and wondered why.
"Not far," Sheemzher announced when they came to another intersection.
They heard that before in Weathercote. This was their eighth crossing, the third with no runes, the third where they'd followed the straight-ahead path. Dru looked for something… anything… physical to commit to his memory.
He heard something instead, down the left-hand path-garbled sounds that might have been voices. Sheemzher tugged Dru's sleeve. The goblin's ears were as good as a man's.
"Quick! Quick, good sir!"
"What are they?"
"Demons, good sir," the goblin predictably answered. "Quick!"
Dru called the light close and dimmed it to a firefly spark. They linked hands and trusted Sheemzher to lead them through the darkness. No one spoke, but they weren't silent. Their boots clattered on the stone. Rozt'a's sword clattered against her hip. Tiep yelped and Dru had never heard anything half so loud as the hammering of his heart… until he heard the sound of pursuit.
Daring a backward glance Dru saw light and shadows behind them. Whatever the demons were, they didn't have a goblin's dark vision advantage over humankind. Dru planted his feet and the quartet came to a stop. He fingered his folding box and found a sliver of quartz near the hinge.
"Roz-What do you think? Stand or run?"
She swore once and whispered her decision: "Stand. Everybody, flat against the wall and hope they've got to get close before they can start fighting. What about you, Dru? Can you fire them from here?"
He rubbed the quartz between his fingertips, warming it. "I'd sooner give you an advantage. By the time I have something to aim fire at, there won't be enough time for me to blur you."
The blurring spell would make Rozt'a shifty and elusive in the eyes of anyone trying to attack her. It was like armor, without the weight or encumbrance and usually she welcomed it.
"I'll take my chances."
That wasn't the answer he'd hoped to hear. "There's risk to fire-they might not be against us until we use it and we could find ourselves with nothing to breathe afterward."
"We're here to steal a golden scroll. Burn them." Rozt'a surged forward to take the point position in the tunnel.
Druhallen shifted the crystal to his offhand and retrieved a cold ember instead. They waited in the dark until he saw something he considered more silhouette than shadow.
There-he thought, aiming the spell as an archer would aim an arrow. He felt a prick of icy cold as it leapt off his fingertips. A magician could track his own spells; a good magician could track the spells of others. For several heartbeats, the question in Dru's mind was: do they have a good magician with them?
The answer, when it came, was a resounding No! Blinding light and screams filled the tunnel. Dru's fireball eliminated an unknown number of their pursuers, but not all of them. His aim had been slightly off, or his timing-whichever, the magical fire had erupted behind the front ranks of pursuit. If they hadn't had enemies before, Dru and his companions had them now. The silhouettes that raced toward them had thrown down their own torches and were lop-sided with drawn swords.
There was no advantage left in the darkness. Druhallen let his light expand and rise to the ceiling, then weighed his next move, defense or offense? Blur Rozt'a or throw more fire? He knew what Rozt'a would say. She'd rather have him take down one of the long-armed swordswingers coming toward them. Dru could cast a fiery streak with the ember bits that remained on his fingers after the fireball, and he did, as soon as the kindling power had flowed back to him.
He aimed for the base of the forefront swordswinger's neck and his head disappeared in a sphere of flame. The three behind the first never hesitated; that was ominous. They leapt over their fallen comrade and two of them attacked Rozt'a together.
Dru recovered quickly from the fire spell. He had two more memorized. The angles were bad now that Rozt'a was fighting. The odds of hitting her were almost as high as hitting one of her opponents. Dru took aim at their third pursuer, the one hanging back. He'd lost the advantage of surprise. The fellow dodged and, despite the close range, wound up singed, not burned.
Rozt'a backpedaled and, for an instant, Druhallen was closer to the attackers' swords than she was. Using the torch as if it had been the ax shaft he'd left behind, Dru beat steel with green wood. It was a close call-a chunk of wood went spinning in the air-but Dru survived and retreated.
He dropped the bit of quartz. There wasn't anything he could do for Rozt'a except prepare his second and last fireball, in case they attracted more attention. There was something Sheemzher could do, and he did it well. The goblin scurried forward, low to the floor, and jabbed his spear at Rozt'a's opponents whenever they tried to get beneath her guard.
Sheemzher didn't draw blood, but he kept the swordswingers off-balance until Rozt'a did. With a shout and a swallow-tail slash, she disarmed her right-side attacker and made sure he'd never swing a sword again. The goblin got past Druhallen and finished the wounded attacker with a thrust and a twist. In that moment, Rozt'a got the upper hand on the other swordswinger. She put him down with a two-handed cut across the mid-section.
The third attacker-the attacker that Druhallen had singed-beat a retreat. Dru's last fireball burnt itself out without stopping him.
"I'm whole," Rozt'a declared before anyone asked.
"And I," Dru added. "Sheemzher? Tiep?"
Tiep answered that he was fine. Sheemzher's attention was on the corpses. Druhallen called the goblin off before he butchered them; then he willed his light magic to its greatest radiance.
"Demons!"
The goblin was wrong, but the bodies belonged to creatures unlike any Druhallen had seen before. They had the torsos of men, the limbs of elves, the faces of goblins, and the jewel-red eyes of Wyndyfarh's mantis servants. The corpses were bald and instead of either pointed or rounded ears, their skulls bore what appeared to be parchment drumheads behind their temples. Their skin was a shade lighter than Sheemzher's, but scaled in places, especially around their hands. They had four fingers, two of which were jointed; the other two were rigid and opposed like an insect's claws. The pair wore scabbard belts for their weapons but nothing else in the way of clothing. Short of cutting them open, Dru couldn't tell if they were male or female.
Dru pried the sword from one death-frozen hand. The hilt had been adapted for their odd combination of pincers and fingers, but the balance was tolerable, the steel better. He handed the weapon to Tiep who hesitated and wouldn't take it.