Troy Denning - The Siege

The blow was not sufficient to drop a bugbear, but it did startle it. The creature's grasp loosened enough for her to bring her sword around beneath her. So weak was the attack that not even the sharpest steel would have penetrated the bugbear's thick hide, much less the apron of leather armor it wore over its loins.

The darksword's glassy blade slashed through the leather like gossamer. The bugbear bellowed in shock and started to squeeze, and Vala cocked her wrist, driving the tip of her weapon deep into its abdomen. The hairy arms went limp and dropped her on her shoulders, her captor's huge body doubling over above her face. Reaching up behind it, she grabbed a handful of fur and pulled herself through its legs and to her feet.

A huge hand axe came tumbling through the air and smashed into her helmet, breaking one of the horns off and knocking it from her head. Sure of only the direction the attack had come from, Vala spun around to the opposite side of the bugbear she'd just wounded and found another big axe swinging toward her throat. Barely flipping her darksword up in time, she caught the weapon near the top, using the attack's own momentum to cleave the shaft and send the head spinning off to lodge itself in one of the attacker's wounded companions.

Faster than the others, this bugbear followed its first attack by slamming a huge fist into Vala's armored ribs, launching her across the room into a shelf full of artifacts. She dropped to the ground in a limp heap, still holding her sword and struggling to get the wind back in her lungs.

Snorting in triumph, the bugbear snatched a weapon from a wounded companion and stomped toward Vala. Behind it, she saw a spherical form float out of the dust cloud rising from the collapsed doorway. Of Corineus, there was no sign.

Vala bounced to her feet and raised her darksword to throw. The bugbear pivoted away and brought its big axe around to block. Vala hurled the blade anyway. As the weapon sailed past the astonished brute to split the beholder down the center, she charged after it. Seeing its mistake too late, the bugbear swung back into the attack, but Vala was inside the arc of its weapon by then, her boot heels driving for its face in a flying side kick.

The bugbear leaned aside in an attempt to slip the blow. Vala kicked her feet apart and caught its head between her ankles. As she swung into its torso, she scissored her legs and swung herself around to the side. Though the bugbear was easily three times her size, the weight of her body acted like a pendulum, pulling it down face first. It slammed to the stone floor with a heavy thump and immediately began to push itself up again.

Vala's sword was already returning to her hand. She brought it down on the back of her attacker's neck, then leaped up and dispatched the wounded bugbears in a series of cautious, darting attacks from the rear. By the time she finished, the dust in the fallen doorway had cleared enough for her to see Corineus standing in the service corridor on the other side of the rubble.

"Well done, woman." he said, pointing past her toward an iron door on the adjacent wall. "Above the door, you will find a holy symbol painted in black blood. Break it."

Vala turned in the direction he pointed. When she'd had a chance to examine the room, she could see that it was divided into two sections. She had entered the front area, which the bugbears, beholder, and illithid all shared with the assortment of magical items she'd noticed earlier. In the back, opposite the door Corineus was pointing at, an assortment of gem-studded scepters, rods, rings, tomes, and other powerful artifacts of magic-even a diamond ball the size of a halfling's head-floated inside a field of green spell light. Vala's throat went dry, for she understood the phaerimm well enough to realize when she was standing in one of their lairs-and to know that had the creature been present, she would have been too busy fighting to take in all that she was seeing.

"What are you waiting for?" Corineus demanded. "Break the seal."

"Not so fast," Vala said, retrieving her helm. She had no idea whether it would still protect her from the phaerimm mind control with only one horn, but it was worth a try. "Not until you answer a few questions."

"The phaerimm who claims this laboratory lair will soon realize it has been broken into and return," Corineus replied. "That is the only question you need answered."

"Afraid not," Vala replied. "You surrendered your right to claim my trust when you sent me through that door without warning." "You had to be tested."

Vala bit back the rage she felt rising inside and said, "I passed."

She turned toward the nearest shelf and picked up a pair of fabulously decorated silver bracers.

"Put that back!" Corineus started forward, only to encounter a field of flashing blue energy that hurled him back against the wall. "You've no right!"

"No?" Vala raised her brow and considered threatening the lich-elf, then recalled how touchy elves could be about their ancestral treasures and decided to try a different tactic. "Consider these a token of good faith." She tossed the bracers through the door.

Corineus's eyes went wide, and he nearly let the bracers fall. "The symbol, woman! You've no idea what you just did."

Vala's mouth went dry, but she managed to meet the white elf's gaze without shaking. "Don't be too sure."

Corineus's white eyes glared at Vala for a moment, then drifted to the symbol over the door.

"Have you ever heard of a baelnorn?" the white elf asked. Vala shook her head. "I take it I'm looking at one." "Sworn to a duty more sacred than you can know." A dull clunk sounded from the other side of the door.

"The time has come for you to choose," he said. "Without my help-"

"One moment," Vala interrupted, jerking the iron door open.

A teleport-dazed phaerimm tumbled into the room, its four spindly arms windmilling wildly. Vala brought her darksword down across the thick part of its body and clove it cleanly in two, then stepped back and opened both halves along their length. When she was certain the thing was dead, she cut off the wicked tail barb, then finally reached up with her sword and broke the holy symbol painted above the door.

Corineus rushed into the room, his white eyes shining bright with rage. "How dare you disobey-"

"How dare 7?" Vala tossed the tail barb into the baelnorn's face, then touched the tip of her darksword to his throat. "Let's get something straight, White Eyes. I need you as much as you need me, but lf you ever send me into a lair again without warning me, it'll be you I'm carving into little pieces. Clear?"

The baelnorn moved closer, enveloping her in his chill aura. "I do not think you understand who you are talking to."

Vala stepped even closer, so close that her face and hands began to ache with cold. She laid a bloody palm on his flesh-freezing face.

"Oh, I understand," she said, "but what you need to know is I mean to see my son again, and I'll gut anything that makes that less likely."

A low groan rolled from beneath the roots of the smoke tree, where Aris lay hidden in an undercut carved out of the dry riverbank by some long-ago flood. Galaeron, standing watch outside, dropped to his haunches and peered inside, where Ruha kneeled beside the unconscious giant's head, using a wet rag to drip water onto his cracked lips. His broken arm was stretched out beside him, splinted to the straightest pair of branches Galaeron had been able to find in a mile of dry riverbed. A shield-sized circle of charred flesh on his chest marked where the dragon's lightning bolt had entered his body, and a blackened foot marked where it had left. Of the most concern to Galaeron, however, were the giant's black and sunken eyes, which Ruha said were signs of the head injury he had suffered.