“Sorry. They’re very tiny cracks, and it’s a very faint flicker. If it makes you feel any better, there’s a chance that if the ceiling comes down, it will crush Cera and me too.”
“That is comforting. But on the whole, I think I prefer that we all remain unsquashed. What should I do, back up?”
“No. It’s like you’re at the center of a spiderweb that sprang into being around you. You’ll break a strand whichever way you step.”
“That’s … inconvenient.”
“I can try to dissolve the enchantment,” Cera said, with only the slightest quaver in her voice.
“I know,” said Aoth. “But do you think you can channel enough power to outmatch Tchazzar?”
Cera frowned. “Perhaps not.”
“Then maybe we should try another way. When he set this trap, Tchazzar wrote runes on the ceiling with a wand or his fingertip. I can see those too, and I think they contain the phrase that allows safe passage.”
“You ‘think,’ ” Gaedynn said.
“Yes,” said Aoth, “and I thinkI can pronounce them correctly too, even though Aragrakh isn’t my best language.”
“Then take your shot,” Gaedynn said.
Aoth raised his spear over his head and held it parallel to the floor. The point glowed red, like it had just come from the forge. He hissed sibilant words that filled the air with a dry reptilian smell, as though a wyrm were lurking just a pace or two away.
The cracks in the ceiling became visible as they too flared with crimson light. Despite himself, Gaedynn tensed. But then the glow simply faded away.
“It’s safe now,” said Aoth.
Gaedynn grinned. “Of course it is. I never doubted you for an instant.”
They prowled onward. Until Aoth called for another halt.
“What is it this time?” Gaedynn asked. “Am I about to burst into flame?”
“No,” said Aoth. “Or at least I don’t think it’s another snare. But there’s somethingjust ahead of you. Tchazzar dug into the floor, then fused the broken stone back together.”
Cera smiled. “And you can see that too.”
“I have to admit,” Gaedynn said, “the bastard’s clever. To those of us without truesight, there’s nothing to distinguish this bit of passage from the rest of the cave. No trap or guardian in the immediate vicinity. No widening out into a vault or anything like that. Even if a searcher knew something was in here somewhere, he’d likely walk right on by.”
“But we won’t.” Aoth stepped past Gaedynn, and then the head of his spear glowed blue as he charged it with force. He gripped the weapon in both hands and plunged it repeatedly into the floor. The resulting cracks and crunches echoed away down the tunnel.
Something scuttled into the light.
Big as a man, it looked like a scorpion carved from black rock and possessed of a pair of luminous crimson eyes. But it was charging faster than anything made of stone should have been able to move-and, intent on his digging, Aoth plainly didn’t see it rushing forward to seize him in its serrated pincers.
“Watch out!” Gaedynn said. He drew, released, nocked, drew, and released.
Both shafts pierced the creature’s body but failed to stop it or even slow it down. Nor was there time for a third shot. Gaedynn dropped his bow, snatched out his short swords, and lunged past Aoth, interposing himself between the war-mage and the beast.
When Gaedynn got close to the thing, he discovered its body was blistering hot-standing near it was like standing too close to a fire. It snatched for him, and he sidestepped and thrust. His primary sword chipped a dent in the scorpion’s claw, then popped out of the wound and skated along, leaving a scratch behind.
The scorpion reached for him with its other set of pincers. He stabbed again. The claws snapped shut on his blade and yanked it from his grasp.
At the same moment, the pincerlike parts on either side of its mouth spread apart. A glowing red drop of some viscous liquid oozed out, and Gaedynn’s instincts warned him the beast was about to spit. He poised himself to dodge.
Then, behind him, Aoth growled a word of command. A flare of silvery frost shot past Gaedynn and burst into steam when it splashed against his foe. Cera called out to Amaunator, and the light with which she’d surrounded them burned brighter.
The scorpion fell down thrashing. Its pincers clattered, and Gaedynn’s bent and twisted sword clanked on the floor. He lunged and drove his remaining blade into the creature’s left eye. It heaved in a final convulsion, then lay still.
It was still hot though. Stepping back from it, he panted, “Let me just point out that I said, ‘No guardian in the immediate vicinity.’I never said there wasn’t one lurking around somewhere, listening for the sound of digging.”
Aoth grinned, lifted his spear, plunged it down, and broke away another chunk of floor. And that was sufficient to reveal what lay beneath.
It was a gem the size and shape of an egg. Or at least Gaedynn thought it was. At certain moments, it looked less like a solid object than a mere oval of shadow with tiny blue lightning bolts flickering inside it.
“Is that it?” he asked.
“That’s it,” Aoth answered. “Alasklerbanbastos’s spirit. His life.”
“I still say that if Tchazzar weren’t as crazy as a three-tailed dog, he would have destroyed the thing.”
Aoth shrugged, and his mail clinked. “Maybe he thought that would be letting his old enemy off easy. I mean, it would be hellish to be stuck inside a stone, alone and bodiless, for eternity, wouldn’t it? Or maybe he plans to haul out the Bone Wyrm by and by, and torture him for his amusement.”
“Except that we’re going to haul him out first,” Cera said. She drew a deep breath, opened the leather pouch on her belt, produced a gold box large enough to hold the phylactery, and dropped to one knee beside the hole. His pulse ticking in his neck, Gaedynn did his best to believe that the spellcasters knew what they were doing.
EPILOGUE
15 FLAMERULE THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
Blind and deaf, aware of nothing but the alternating mumble and yammer of his own thoughts, Alasklerbanbastos floated in the void. Deliverance came as a sudden feeling of soaring.
For an instant, the mere fact of sensation filled him with such ecstasy that he could think of nothing else. Then he remembered that Tchazzar, Jaxanaedegor, and the rest of the traitors had destroyed his body and sent his ghost into his phylactery. So it was almost certainly the red dragon calling him forth, and not because the lunatic had decided to show him any mercy.
Well, so be it. Tchazzar would no doubt thrust him into some weak and possibly crippled form, but Alasklerbanbastos still had his spells. And with magic, many things were possible.
For a heartbeat, he felt heavy as lead, and then merely corporeal once more. But that didn’t entirely relieve him of the feeling of burdensome weight. Someone had buried the body he now occupied, a frame of rotting flesh as well as bone.
Which was strange. Tchazzar couldn’t possibly expect a mere grave to hold him.
Puzzled, Alasklerbanbastos snarled an incantation and noticed how odd it felt to have an actual tongue curling and flapping in his mouth again. Then the earth above him rumbled and split, revealing a glimpse of the stars. He heaved himself up into the open air, and dirt streamed from his wings.
When he noticed the crooked talon on his right forefoot, he realized he’d entered the corpse of Calabastasingavor, a relatively young blue Tchazzar had killed at the start of his campaign. That explained all the charred, flaking patches on his hide, not that they or the provenance of his new body mattered at the moment.