The lich spoke in low tones, an evil hiss that seemed to resonate throughout the organic chamber. His fingers twitched with the clack of dried bones as he wove a spell of forgotten antiquity. The words were ancient, unknown to her; but in them she could feel the ring of history, of chanting voices long stilled, of gods long ago desecrated.
Gaye realized it was the rats he was controlling, and at once she could feel that he could see through the eyes of his vermin.
Then she was seeing through his eyes, the dead eyes of his rats, as welclass="underline" the dark passageways, the dim light panels on the walls, the guard posted at the entrance. She realized that the rats were winding their way through the Human Collective and into the Tower of Thought.
She saw the wave of rats as they swarmed over the lone human guard, their yellow teeth snapping hungrily into flesh as he stumbled and ran, bleeding, up the stairs, toward Gaye screamed in her mind. Noooooo!
— toward Teldin…
The master lich turned toward her. His spell was a forgotten whisper on his thin, translucent lips. "Ehhh?" he said. "Someone is there…"
With a wave of his hand, an aura of shimmering energy erupted around Gaye, revealing her form to the master lich.
His eyes sparkled with the color of blood. The skull-like face seemed to smile. A guest, he said telepathically. I have a guest. He beckoned once with a skeletal arm, and Gaye was jerked forward, toward him.
Welcome to my palace, he said. My palace. A palace of the dead.. and the undead.
He laughed, and his laughter was the sound of a soul screaming in torment. Gaye's blood went cold. I do not know who you are, he said, but I… I am called… the Fool.
Chapter Fifteen
"… In response, I say that the design of the Spelljammer is obviously deliberate, and that the citadel has a secret, more far-reaching purpose than man can understand. Perhaps each tower has some larger purpose than to simply house the individual races. Who can say, since only the lower floors of the Armory are ever open to us? Who can say until we gain entry into the Dark Tower? " We may never know. The Spelljammer tends to hoard its secrets like a jealous dragon…"
The rats were a black carpet, swarming up the tower stairs in a sea of rotted fur and gnashing yellow teeth. The stairway was hidden by their solid black mass, and they moved up the tower in an undulating wave, their ragged claws scraping the stone steps.
"Get him up!" Teldin shouted. CassaRoc and Chaladar lifted HarKenn from the stairs. "Get him inside!" he said. "It's rats! Gods! I've never seen so many rats."
Teldin backed up the stairs and rushed through the open door with the warriors. He slammed the door behind them and bolted it. Still, the gap under the door seemed too wide to him, too vulnerable; as Teldin watched, a long black snout appeared under the door. Claws and teeth ripped at the wood.
Teldin lashed out with his boot and crunched the rat's snout under his foot. Black blood trickled from its shattered jaws. The rat was still for a moment, then twitched back to unlife and started clawing at the door in increasing fury.
"Undead," Teldin said. "The rats are all undead."
CassaRoc stared at him in surprise. Chaladar said, "It can be only the Fool."
Teldin nodded unconsciously. Chaladar's words rang true. Instinctively, he knew the paladin was right.
They were trapped in the common room. The bolted door was their only exit, and, as they watched, the gap at the bottom was gnawed larger under the fury of the rats' yellow fangs.
CassaRoc hefted HarKenn in his arms and laid him out at one end of the bar. The guard moaned once, then fell unconscious. Blood oozed from his wounds and dripped onto the bar.
The warriors drew their swords and waited. They knew the blades were virtually helpless against the undead swarms, unless they could somehow sever the rats' spines or chop them until they truly died; but they had no other weapons, and the rats were attacking in too large numbers.
"Fire would do it," CassaRoc said.
"If we could have a fire in the flow. You saw what happened at the neogi tower," Teldin said. "It would bring the tower down on us all-right where the Fool wants us."
Chaladar said, "No. I believe he wants you."
CassaRoc nodded. "This is another assassination attempt, Teldin. He doesn't care about us. It's you he wants."
"Because of the Dark Times?"
"No," Chaladar said. "He would have no concern of the Dark Times, since he lives in darkness. He wants you for some other reason."
Teldin placed the light rod on a table and stared down at his amulet. The rats had chewed ragged the bottom of the wooden door. "Me
…"
Teldin sagged and let the amulet fall against his chest. He looked over to the rats. Their claws and teeth were flashes of dull ivory, and splinters of wood were spewed across the floor by their razorlike teeth. Then one was squealing, squirming its fat body through a chewed-out gap along the floor. It leaped straight at Teldin.
Chaladar cried out. The paladin's sword was a silver flash as it swung down and sliced the rat in two. Its hind legs scrabbled to move forward; its jaws snapped at Teldin's booted feet. Then it ceased, finding true death at last.
"We're going to have to do something," CassaRoc said.
Chaladar frowned at the oily blood smeared on his sword. From outside they Could hear CassaRoc's warriors shouting for them, warning others of the rats. CassaRoc yelled back, "We're trapped in here! Call a mage! We need help!"
Then another rat was inside with them, and another, and another. Within minutes, the floor was strewn with the severed torsos of the black vermin, and more were streaming through the widening gap in the door.
The trio kicked and sliced their way through the rats and climbed up on the bar. Three rodents leaped up and were killed instantly by the grand knight's swift sword. Some scrambled up the wooden bar using their sharp, dead claws, and were crunched under Teldin's heavy boots or skewered by CassaRoc's blade.
The floor was a slimy mass of dark blood, of dead and undead vermin. Teldin paused and focused, concentrating on his cloak and its powers, but its hidden energies refused to be summoned. The powers of the cloak seemed to be exhausted, and Teldin considered if its magic did not work on the undead… and if it would work on the Fool.
The undead rats came on.
Teldin said, "The cloak will not help us, and we can't stay here and try to chop them all in half. There are just too many." As he said this, two rats leaped onto the bar and dove for his legs. He lashed out and kicked one across the room; the other drove its fangs into his flesh, and he screamed in pain. CassaRoc reached down and tore it away, then bent it back in his bare hands until its spine snapped with a loud crack.
"We might have to make a run for it," Teldin said.
"Where do we go then?" CassaRoc asked. "They'll just come after you again."
"The Fool is the one we have to stop," Chaladar said angrily. "He is the one controlling this evil."