In the center of the room, Oriseus ignored Aeron's attack. It seemed to almost splash against an unseen shield, vanishing with nothing more than a brief sparkle of light. "You fool," he hissed. Crouching, the ancient warlock shouted a word of power that blasted Aeron to his knees, leaving him deaf and stunned, blood flowing from his ears and nose.
Behind him, Eriale whirled and loosed an arrow at the old High Necromancer as Eidos worked at a spell of holding. With a curse, the vulpine sorcerer abandoned his enchantment and raised a defensive ward. His wattled hands flickered in a spell of defense that would have deflected any mundane threat, but Eriale's arrow carried a powerful elven enchantment. The shaft sank into Master Eidos's heart, crumpling him like brittle paper.
Eriale nocked a second arrow, but a green ray sizzled across the chamber as the Mulhorandi abjurer whispered a spell of fatigue. The archer's muscles turned to water and she sank to the floor. With all her effort, she drew her bow to half its length and managed to stick an arrow two inches into the abjurer's knee before the spell overcame her. The emaciated sorcerer howled and hopped back, one hand clamped over the arrow.
Aeron staggered to his feet and started to work a spell, but Oriseus brushed his effort aside and lashed out with a crackling black ray that shattered Fineghal's staff in his hands, scorching him badly. With a gasp of shock, Aeron reeled backward. Relentlessly, Oriseus declaimed another spell, this one a binding that created a gossamer web of razor-sharp strands. The bone-white threads sprayed from his fingertips, winding around Aeron and sinking into his flesh until blood flowed freely from a dozen wounds. With one last word, Oriseus jerked his hand back, dropping Aeron heavily to the stone floor.
"A valiant effort, Aeron. How I wish you'd reconsidered my offer; mages of your caliber are hard to find." The sorcerer straightened and snapped his fingers. Several gray-faced soldiers in the livery of the Sceptanar's Guard appeared from another of the dark archways, moving with a blank, mechanical torpor. "Take him to his place," Oriseus ordered them.
"What of the girl?" Dalrioc asked. He cradled one damaged arm, and a wide trickle of blood marked one side of his head.
Oriseus turned and looked her over with a cold smile. "We can always use another archer," he remarked. "Leave her here with me."
Dalrioc Corynian and the silent soldiers dragged Aeron into one of the shadow portals framing the room, emerging in a cold maze of stone walls. To his surprise, it was open to the sky, and a lurid red overcast seemed to twist and churn sluggishly above him. We're not in the tower anymore, Aeron realized. After a moment, he amended that thought. We're not even in Cimbar anymore! Despite the change in his surroundings, he was still conscious of the ever-present chill of the shadow-plane and the jarring sense of wrongness that grated on his nerves until his head ached and nausea rose in his stomach.
"You can't imagine how long I've dreamed about this moment, Aeron," Dalrioc said smugly as he led the way. "I don't know what Oriseus ever saw in you, but I've known for years that this day would come."
They passed an alcove, where Dalrioc instructed the soldiers to halt and turn Aeron to see inside. In the shallow depression, a strange statue or relief seemed graven on the stone wall. It was the size and shape of a man, a carving of immaculate detail. Its wrists and ankles were encircled with old iron chains that were anchored in the flanking walls and sunk into the stone. Aeron peered closer, detecting something familiar in the statue's face and stance. It seemed an excellent likeness of Baldon, his former hallmate. The cold eyes stared sightlessly into the sky, and a grimace of inhuman pain was captured on the carving's face.
"This will be your fate, Aeron," Dalrioc hissed into his ear, relishing Aeron's helplessness. "Baldon is still alive, of course. We need his power, his will, to channel magic to the pyramid. But I wouldn't care to trade places with him." He indicated the dark passageway ahead. "Bring him this way."
The soldiers complied. They turned a corner and carried Aeron to a blank alcove, with iron chains waiting.
"Bind him," Dalrioc commanded.
Although Aeron attempted to struggle, he only cut his hands and face with his effort. The dead soldiers made no sound or protest as the gauzy strands covering Aeron slashed their hands and arms as well. . nor did they bleed. When they finished, Aeron was suspended on the wall by the chains, unable to move.
Aeron noticed that the stone behind him felt unusually cold, like a great block of ice. In moments he began to shiver, feeling the warmth draining out of his body. He glanced down and saw that the tough strands of razor-gauze that held him were dissipating, vanishing like water as they were absorbed by the wall behind him. In a few heartbeats he was free, but his arms and legs were pinioned by the chains.
"What is this, Dalrioc?" he grunted, struggling against his bonds.
"You should have listened to Oriseus," the prince said. "You might have been a ruler, a lord. Now you are nothing more than a slave, to be wrung dry and thrown away."
"What do you mean?"
Dalrioc laughed, a particularly unpleasant sound. "You're clever. You'll figure it out." Still chuckling, he turned and walked away, trailed by the gray soldiers. "I'll be back in a while to see how your new accommodations suit you."
Aeron squirmed away from the pervasive chill of the wall behind him, panic welling in his heart. Every time he slumped against the stone, he could feel the heat, the warmth, draining from his body, a diabolically slow process. It's taking more than my warmth, he realized after a time. It's absorbing the magical spark of my life-force. He shuddered in fear.
In the silence, he could hear faint sounds, some distant, some near. Chains clanking on stone, voices whispering and moaning, so soft that he could almost mistake it for the sound of the wind. But there was no wind in this place, no light, only a ruddy red glow that colored the blank walls of stone the hue of old blood. He groaned in despair.
"Who's there?"
Aeron looked up. It was a woman's voice, tired and faint. He wondered if he'd imagined it. "Hello?" he called.
"Hello," the woman answered. She was somewhere to his right, down the stone hallway. "Did they shackle you to the wall?"
"Yes. I can't move."
"Are you certain?" she replied. "Your life depends on it."
Aeron craned his neck out to examine his fetters. He tested them against the wall, but he couldn't budge them at all; he'd never been strong of limb. Frowning, he tried to narrow his hands and pull them free, but after a valiant effort he gave up.
"No, I'm chained," he said. "What happens now?"
"You'll die," the woman replied, her voice heavy with resignation. "It may take weeks, even months, but this place will slowly kill you, just like the rest of us."
Aeron listened closely. Beneath the exhaustion, there was a familiarity to her voice, a hint of a burring Reach accent. "Melisanda? Is that you?"
"Who wants to know?"
"It's Aeron, Aeron Morieth."
"Aeron?" It was Melisanda's voice, sadder and somehow more distant than Aeron remembered. He could read a long tale of sorrow and hopelessness in the way her voice cracked and rasped. There was a long silence then, and Aeron strained to hear what she might say. Finally she spoke again. "It's good to hear your voice."
"And yours. Although I wish it were under better circumstances."
Melisanda laughed bitterly. "Indeed. A year or two ago I heard that you'd returned to the Maerchwood. What are you doing here?"
"I tried to put a stop to Oriseus's work. I'm afraid I did not succeed."