Right in the path of that same foot, now plummeting toward her at an alarming rate.
Sabira rolled out of the way just in time, narrowly avoiding having her legs smashed by a toe nearly as large as she was.
She lay there for a moment, still stunned by the force of her landing. As she watched, the elemental’s foot slammed down again, this time on a thick stalagmite. The sharp formation was not crushed beneath the creature’s weight; it was too massive. Instead, it pierced the thing’s foot like a needle. And when the elemental went to take another step, its foot stuck on the stalagmite for just an instant before the thrusting formation broke off under the power of the creature’s stride.
The elemental slammed a fist down again, trying to squash Aggar, who was still hurling insults the creature could only dimly comprehend, like some persistent, buzzing gnat. She could see the dwarf leap to the side, but he was out of room. The elemental would be on him in just another step or two.
Well, if it worked for the stalagmite …
Sabira jumped up and ran for the elemental, dodging the deep hollows it left in its wake. She reached the creature just as it was about to take the final step that would bring Aggar into range of both fists, with nowhere for the dwarf to run.
She stationed herself in front of the thing’s earthbound foot and plunged the Siberys shard-tip of her urgrosh through it with all her might. She felt it lodge into something hard and firm. Bedrock.
As the elemental went to raise its foot, it caught on Sabira’s shard axe, just as it had on the stalagmite. But where the stalagmite had barely fazed the creature, the urgrosh, planted deep in unyielding stone, was not so easily dislodged.
With its weight already moving forward on that side, and no leg to support it, the elemental hitched and began to fall. Its heavy arms hit the edge of the chasm, and the ground crumbled beneath them. Aggar scrambled away in time, but Sabira, still pinned to the elemental’s foot with her shard axe, had no place to go.
She struggled to retract the urgrosh from the underlying stone, working it furiously back and forth, fearful for a moment that she might somehow break either the dragonshard tip or the leather-wrapped haft, but better either of those things than her. The shard axe came loose from the bedrock, but would not come free from the creature itself. Sabira had only moments to choose: give up the weapon or go to her death still vainly clinging to it.
Then Aggar was there, adding his strength to hers, and together they worked the tip free and jumped clear as the last of the elemental’s footing disappeared from under it, and it pitched headlong into the eager magma below, roaring wordlessly. Moments later, a resounding splash echoed through the cavern, and the ground rumbled in reply.
Aggar regained his feet first and went to the edge of the chasm, peering over to make sure their foe was really gone, swallowed whole by the river of molten rock below.
He watched for a moment, frowning, then turned back to her.
“We’d better find what we’re looking for quickly. I think the magma’s starting to rise. I had the engineers in Maintenance working on something to stop it, just in case Goldglove’s fantasies proved real, but we’ll have to get to their main station on that level to activate it, and well before the magma gets there, or it won’t work.”
Sabira nodded and started to rise, but her ankle had been twisted beneath her during her fall, and it was slow going. Aggar moved back to help her, holding out his hand.
“Careful, I think I broke a rib. It’s a good thing my spell didn’t wear off until after that jump—”
His words were cut short by a gasp of mingled surprise and pain as the tip of a pulsing black blade burst from his stomach in a foul parody of birth, with what looked like a stunted third arm emerging instead of a child.
As Aggar fell forward, sliding off the short sword and barely missing her, Sabira saw the blade’s owner—a cloaked and hooded figure that had literally appeared out of nowhere.
“A good thing, indeed,” the figure said, drawing back his blade for another blow.
And that’s when Sabira saw the ring.
Gold, set with a large black stone with a glowing blue heart. A Khyber shard.
A nightshard.
Sabira had seen the twin of that ring once before.
On Nightshard’s bloody hand, protruding from a pile of rubble that had crushed both the assassin and Leoned.
Or so she had thought.
She’d taken that ring, and she knew the assassin would never have willingly given up the one remaining, even to an accomplice. Which could only mean one thing.
There was no accomplice. There never had been. Because, despite what everyone believed—what Sabira herself had believed all this time—the assassin had not died in the cave-in.
Nightshard was alive.
Alive, and standing right in front of her, about to finish the task he’d begun so many years ago: killing Aggar.
Acting almost without thinking, Sabira reached down and grabbed a fist-sized rock, throwing it at the assassin without bothering to aim. She knew he’d be too fast for the projectile to do any real damage, even if it did manage to hit him. The attack was simply a distraction, meant to give her time to get up and get her urgrosh into position before he could deliver the killing blow.
The ploy worked; Nightshard batted the stone away with his sword, the black blade humming as it connected. Then he was swinging at Aggar’s unprotected back as the dwarf struggled to crawl away.
But Sabira was up now, her own weapon moving. As Nightshard’s arm came down, Sabira’s shard axe met it. But she hadn’t been aiming for his weapon. The blade of her axe cleaved flesh and bone, and the be-ringed hand holding the black blade separated cleanly from the assassin’s wrist, leaving nothing but a spurting stump.
Though the sword—a mindblade, Sabira realized—simply reappeared in Nightshard’s other hand, the assassin fell back with an agonized howl, and his hood slipped. Sabira now looked at the bald head, disfigured gray face, and glittering black eyes of a duergar.
A female duergar.
Sabira pulled Aggar up and away from the assassin even as Nightshard leaped forward to reclaim her severed hand. As the assassin placed her dragonshard ring on her good hand and used it to cauterize her bleeding wrist, Aggar used one of his own rings to heal the damage from her mindblade. On a hunch, Sabira tried the same motion and whispered word on the corresponding silver ring she wore, and felt a burning sensation spread through her ankle as torn ligaments reattached themselves in a mere fraction of the time they would normally have taken to heal. Too late, she realized she might have just used up the last of their restorative magic on what was essentially a glorified sprain, but she’d had no other choice. If she couldn’t walk, she couldn’t fight, especially not an opponent who could turn invisible, seemingly at will.
“I know her,” Aggar said suddenly, bringing Sabira’s attention back to him as he climbed to his feet. The dwarf winced in pain as the wound in his abdomen knit itself back together with the same speed Sabira’s own injury had shown. “Remember, I told you about her back in the Iron Council’s audience chamber? That’s the woman I was talking about. That’s Eddarga Noldrun.
“You were right all along. You just had the wrong Noldrun.”
“Clever,” the duergar woman replied with a nasty smile. “How unfortunate that none of the brilliant minds on your vaunted Iron Council figured it out sooner. Think of all the lives that could have been saved.”