"Melisanda!" he cried.
Melisanda held to her spell with fierce concentration, finishing the enchantment. With one gesture of her hand, she filled the library with the roaring racket of a great revel, complete with music, singing, the clatter of dishes and the loud buzz of dozens of conversations. The yugoloth growled in distaste, but it ignored the cacophonous sounds for the moment-with Aeron caught in the coils of its tongue, it didn't need to hear what was around it. Digging in its great talons, it reeled Aeron closer to its terrifying fangs.
Then, like a silver blur, Baillegh launched herself against the monster's flank, knocking it over and seizing a mouthful of its chitinous hide. The wolfhound growled and worried at the back of the yugoloth's neck, cracking its armored plates beneath her powerful jaws. The yugoloth shrieked in pain and rage, momentarily drowning out Melisanda's sound glamour, and lunged back at the hound, but it couldn't get at her while it held Aeron with its tongue. Finally, it released him in order to retract its tongue and meet Baillegh's attack. With catlike swiftness it spun and snapped at the hound, but Baillegh dodged away from its attack.
Aeron scrambled to his feet, ignoring the blood that streamed from the rough abrasions that circled his body. The yugoloth might have been deafened by Melisanda's spell, but it scrambled after Baillegh with uncanny precision, following her scent in its gaping nostrils while it whipped its tongue back and forth, trying to locate the hound by touch. Baillegh yipped and dodged, looking for an opening to dart in and resume her attack.
In the corner of his eye, he saw Melisanda snatch up a heavy book and hurl it across the room at the monster, striking it in the flank. Instinctively the yugoloth turned and snapped at empty air. In that moment Baillegh attacked from the other side, her jaws closing on the yugoloth's throat. The fiend wheeled in the air, trying to shake her off. Aeron tried to move closer, trying to decide how he could help Baillegh.
"Aeron! Try Dalrioc's wand!" shouted Melisanda over the din of her own spell. The yugoloth tried to turn toward her, but Baillegh pulled it back into the fight. With one huge paw it turned on the hound and smashed her to the ground. It broke free of Baillegh's grip and turned against the silver elf hound, its massive jaws gaping wide for the kill.
Aeron vaulted over the great table in the center of the library to give himself a clear line of fire, snatching the iron scepter from his belt. He aimed it at the yugoloth's back and shouted the weapon's command word. The tip of the scepter glowed white as a thin, pale ray sprang out to strike the monster with a blast of unbearable cold. The chitinous plates that covered its back whitened under the ray and then split with brittle cracking sounds, revealing dark meat underneath that froze solid under the wand's deadly beam. The yugoloth screeched with an awful sound, stampeding blindly through the bookshelves and wreaking awful havoc in the ancient library. Aeron pursued it, firing blast after blast into the monster while Baillegh worried at its flanks.
Enraged beyond reason, the yugoloth wheeled and sprang at Aeron-but the mage stood his ground and delivered one final blast of transarctic cold into the creature's face, spearing its head with a lance of ice. It stumbled once, wheezed, and collapsed to the ground, dark ichor seeping from its double jaws. Melisanda allowed her illusory revel to die away, leaving the room curiously silent as they watched for any sign of animation in the creature.
Aeron moved over to check on Baillegh. The hound was battered but intact, scratched and clawed all along her flanks. She looked up at Aeron and licked his face.
"Someone must have heard that racket," said Melisanda.
"I know," said Aeron. "Come on. Let's get out of here while we can. We have to get back to the plane of shadow."
Twenty
Aeron, Melisanda, and Baillegh slipped ghostlike from the college library, using one of the barricaded side doors to conceal their departure. Aeron expected another attack at any moment; the struggle against Oriseus's yugoloth had been anything but silent, and the gaping wreckage of the great double doors in the front of the library building was impossible to miss from the college quadrangle. But the open courtyard between the college buildings was empty and quiet, cloaked in a heavy ground mist. The fog clung to the sides of the building with long streamers, drifts of impure snow driven against each hall.
Aeron's breath streamed away, caught in a bitter cold that seared his nose and throat. Dusk had long since failed, and the yellow-burning lamps of the college barely flickered in the gathering gloom. He glanced up at the sky and gasped; the streams of magic overhead were ribbons of elfin light against a black and colorless sky. They circled in a silent maelstrom centering on the rebuilt obelisk, spinning more and more rapidly with each passing moment. The masters and students must be at the tower, he realized. Oriseus's masterpiece is almost complete.
"Did we step through a shadow-portal?" Melisanda asked in a small voice. "This isn't right."
"Oriseus is tearing the veil between the worlds," Aeron answered. "When he finishes his spell, there won't be a plane of shadow anymore. It will be here." He wrenched his gaze away from the horror in the sky and hurried toward the Masters' Hall.
No one remained in the building. Its paneled corridors were empty, echoing with their footfalls. The gloom was even denser indoors, thick shadows clinging to the walls despite the flickering globes of mage-light that illuminated the hall. Aeron padded quietly to the Council Chamber, checked the door for any magical seal or alarm, and let himself in. Melisanda and Baillegh followed, keeping a close watch up and down the corridor outside.
The Council room was empty, as before. The novice's body had been removed, but none of the damage to the furnishings had been repaired. Dark frost still gleamed over the swath of the room where Aeron had employed Dalrioc's ice-scepter. In the center of the floor, the faded circle of magical symbols that marked the doorway into the chamber of the Shadow Stone waited. Aeron did not hesitate; he trotted into the circle, Dalrioc's wand clasped in his hand.
"Stand close," he told Melisanda and Baillegh. "Oriseus may have left a guard to watch over the chamber this time."
Melisanda and the wolfhound crowded close behind him, joining him in the rune-marked circle, but nothing happened. They waited a long moment, taut with anticipation, before he growled in disgust. "Why isn't this working now?"
"You didn't see Oriseus use a spell or command word to trigger this portal, did you?" asked Melisanda.
"No, the student just walked right into it," Aeron replied. He frowned, thinking. Unconsciously, he wrapped his arms closer to his body, trying to stretch his battered cloak over his bony frame. The Council Chamber was freezing. "Wait a moment," he said slowly. "Maybe the portal isn't working because we're already in the plane of shadow."
"It feels like it. Have you noticed how you can hear the stone now?" said Melisanda. She was pale in the darkness. "The worlds are merging. How much power it would take to move the entire college across the barrier?"
"Why assume that Oriseus only dragged the college into the realm of shadow? It might be the entire city. Or all of Chessenta, for that matter," Aeron said bitterly. "Well, we'll have to get into the tower on foot. Come on."
They left the same way they'd come in and crossed the college grounds again, this time heading for the ruined obelisk. As they neared the monument, Aeron felt the pulsating distortions of the Shadow Stone growing stronger, until it seemed the entire world was quivering in time to the stone's menacing rhythm.