"Excuse me," Darin said, reaching. With the bar in both hands, he ran into the water, testing the bar's balance as he went. It was clumsy but it had weight and a sharp end, much more important now.
Even Darin was not so foolhardy as to climb on the carapace, to fall off where tentacles, legs, or claws could still do fatal damage. He waded out until any man much shorter than he would have been swimming, then dived.
He rose from the water with the force if not the grace of the Dimernesti, the bar in his hand. The sharp end tore up under the lower rim of the Creation's skull, bone cracked and peeled, and Darin drove the bar into the exposed brain.
The Creation found a voice then, an enormity of raw sound, corrupted nature roaring its hatred of all uncorrupted nature. Foam rose higher than Red Elf's deck as the Creation churned out the last of its unnatural life.
Those nearest Rynthala were torn between leaving the widow alone and drawing near, lest she fling herself after Darin. Then part of the foam showed a darker core, the core moved, and Sir Darin waded out of the Creation's death maelstrom.
His hands were empty, and indeed he seemed to be favoring one arm. He wore rags of clothes and a painful array of scratches and cuts, and had he been able to find the breath to speak would have said that he preferred wrestling bears. But he walked out of the water to find Torvik hugging Rynthala. It was an odd pairing, as the young captain was a good six inches shorter than the knight's lady.
"You did it, you did it!" he was babbling. "You put those arrows exactly where they belonged. Magnificent!"
Darin tapped Torvik on the shoulder. "Excuse me, Captain. I agree that my lady is magnificent. But your sister had something to do with the victory, I think, she and her archers."
Torvik drew back from Rynthala, who looked ready to burst out laughing. "Very well," he said. "Then, Sir Darin, you can kiss my sister."
"Yes, and then we will all kiss you," Rynthala said, finally losing her composure. "The thing did not have many brains left, but those it had, you dashed out."
Torvik cheerfully refused to kiss Darin, but was amenable to kissing Mirraleen. This left Darin free to kiss Chuina, which he did quite properly, for all that he had to stoop considerably to meet her lips and she winced at the pain of standing on tiptoe to help him.
Stooping sent pains shooting up and down strained muscles and scarred limbs, but Darin did not believe in letting minor pains distract one from honorably kissing a lady.
What distracted him-and everyone else-was a shaking of the ground that was accompanied by a distant rumble.
Looking down the torrent, Darin saw a distant ruddy glow reflected on the foam. A similar glow seemed to be spreading ahead, in the darkness on the far side of the lake, beyond the reach of the glowballs.
"We'd best start looking for that last passage Mirraleen's directions describe," he said. "The lake may drain out, and that much water washing about here could bring down more rocks."
That was true enough, but earthquakes could yield bigger rockfalls than all the water under the Smoker put together. Also, water flowing down volcanic vents could reach molten rock and turn into steam. Seeking an upward passage, the steam might cook them and Wilthur alike, as if they were so many chickens on a tavern spit. Not finding that passage, the steam might build pressure until the entire mountain tore itself apart in one cataclysm.
Going up and getting out of the Smoker had just become a race with death. Nor was the magic of Wilthur the Brown any longer the only likely source of that death.
Zeskuk had come to the rim of a hole where another passage dropped steeply downward, when word came that the humans had caught up. He knelt beside Lujimar, who was lying on the rock, peering down into the hole as if his gaze could pierce not only the darkness but the rock itself, Zeskuk wished it could, and pierce Wilthur like an arrow when it found him. That would save a great deal of muddling about in the darkness, in passages that were becoming a tight fit for humans, let alone minotaurs.
"Do we let the humans take the lead from here?" Zeskuk asked. "We can always follow, to pull them free if they become wedged."
"I sense no barriers of rock between here and Wilthur," Lujimar said. He sounded no worse than tired, but his tone still chilled the chief. "Other barriers are as may be. For these, we will need human aid."
Lujimar stood, turned his back to Zeskuk, and held his staff out over the hole. He muttered something that the minotaur chief was very glad not to fully understand, and the tunnel was suddenly lit as by the noonday sun. Wind blew both up and down, and Zeskuk would have been prepared to swear that it blew sideways, through the walls.
Instead, he cursed, as he suddenly found a small, bony human female flung into his arms as if by a siege engine.
"What do you fatherless minotaurs think you're doing?" Lady Revella Laschaar screamed.
"A simple spell of transference," Lujimar said. Zeskuk could not see him over Lady Revella's high-peaked cap, but would have wagered the priest was smiling.
A second thought chilled the smile. Teleporting another wizard of Lady Revella's strength, without her consent and without warning, was vastly potent magic. It had been plain for some while that Lujimar knew more than priests' arts. Now it was a question of how much more.
Zeskuk had no answer to that question, which needed none in any case. Lady Revella, on the other hand, needed many answers, as well as being put on her feet in a reasonably dignified manner. When she had shaken dust from her clothes and cap, and laced up her boots, she glared impartially at the two minotaurs.
"I suppose you think I can do more good here than from aboard ship?" she asked.
"I know it," Lujimar said, in a tone that froze even Lady Revella's tongue. Zeskuk was glad someone else had answered; he could not have spoken.
"Well, then," the Black Robe said. "I will be of much more use much longer if I do not have to walk every step of our road through this volcanic pest hole. Where I can ride in a litter, I would prefer to do so."
"Of course," Zeskuk said, finding his voice at last. His bellow of four names sent echoes ravaging everyone's ears.
When Lady Revella had taken her hands from her ears, she was glaring again. "I am to ride in a litter borne by minotaurs?"
"Free minotaurs," Zeskuk said. "Surely you have ridden in enough borne by minotaur slaves, a lady of your rank? You must allow us to give you the gift of this new experience, trusting yourself to freeborn minotaur warriors."
Lady Revella's face said that she would as soon trust herself to ghouls, but prudence kept that message from her lips. Before she could frame a more diplomatic reply, moreover, glowballs and hurrying footsteps told of the arrival of the human vanguard, and nothing could undo her embarrassment now.
Wilthur the Brown was not embarrassed. He was enraged at the demise of his Creation and the destruction wrought around the lake. His defenses would surely prevail against flesh and blood, but would the mountain be safe afterward?
Perhaps, perhaps not. He could still make a new abode in the Green Mountain, even if there was less magic to draw on in it. He would not flee.
The gods were not embarrassed, either. They were quite content with the progress of the battle. Some were not so content with Takhisis's reminding them that Wilthur had been White, Red, and Black, so was a balance in and by himself, and should be carefully preserved.
Zeboim spoke rarely, but now said things about Takhisis that the Queen of the Abyss had seldom heard even when incarnate as a human woman, from the most foul-mouthed males. There was silence among the gods for some while after that, except for some subdued laughter from Sargonnas.
Gerik was still less embarrassed. He had no time. When one is within minutes of attacking eighty men with thirty, one has no time for anything except the work that will soon be at hand.