Troy Denning - The Summoning

The cage was cluttered with listless elves, all with an inflamed puncture wound somewhere on their torsos. They were in various states of ague, and many had fallen into a sort of comatose trance beyond all hope of recovery. The worst had arm-sized snakes writhing beneath their skin, usually along the path of their intestines, but sometimes coiled over their hearts or girding their ribs.

In the center of the cage floated the great Kiinyon Colbathin, stripped naked and clawing at his wounds. Unlike the wounds of the other prisoners, his punctures showed no sign of inflammation or infection. Recalling how Takari had immediately fallen into a stupor and how her wound had swollen, it seemed unlikely that the tomb master had been injected with an egg. Galaeron streamed across the ceiling and pressed himself to the tomb master's far side.

Kiinyon shuddered and cried out. Galaeron slipped a shadowy hand over the elf s mouth and felt it sink into flesh. The tomb master's voice shrieked through it unmuffled.

Several nearby phaerimm turned their open mouths toward the cage. Galaeron wrapped himself around Kiinyon's body and hoped he was truly as unnoticeable as Melegaunt had promised. The tomb master began to shiver. The phaerimm kept their mouths pointed toward the cage. Finally, Kiinyon could no longer contain himself and let out a single groan of fear.

The phaerimm swung their heads away, chuckling in their strange wind language. Galaeron waited until they had turned back to the pile of magic treasure, then pressed his shadowy lips to Kiinyon's ear.

"Master Colbathin, hold your tongue or I swear by the Black Arrow I'll leave you here," whispered Galaeron. "Understand?" Kiinyon's eyes grew round as plates. "Do you know who this is?"

Kiinyon nodded, though his eyes held a thousand questions.

"Good. I won't waste time asking whether you are happy to see me," said Galaeron, "but if you want to live, you must comfort Lord Imesfor with the Prayer for the Dying."

The tomb master remained silent, looking first to his own wounds, then to the inflamed punctures of an elf lying nearby.

"Whatever the phaerimm injected you with, it wasn't eggs, or you'd be as sick as everyone eke," said Galaeron. "Now, say the prayer if you wish to live."

Instead of obeying, Kiinyon whispered, "What of the others?"

Galaeron looked at their listless forms, and his heart grew as heavy as gold. "They're not going to move themselves, and you felt what happened when I tried to cover your mouth. Do you have a way to carry them?"

"No." Kiinyon closed his eyes, no doubt coming to the same conclusion as Galaeron. Their only choice was whether to leave and let the others die alone, or stay and die with them. "This isn't right."

"No, it isn't, but we'll do what we can." On the ceiling outside, Galaeron saw a shadow flicker back and forth and realized Vala was signaling him. "We're out of time. Speak if you wish to live."

Kiinyon shook his head at the awfulness of the decision, but said, "I must live." A cry of fear sounded around the corner, and Kiinyon looked toward the door. "Have strength, Imesfor. Behold, there in the West-"

The prayer was interrupted by the deafening trill of an anguished phaerimm. Galaeron slipped to the front of the cage, then took a position on the wall. On the floor beyond the door lay a crooked phaerimm arm, severed cleanly at the biceps and resting in a pool of rusty blood. Lord Imesfor lay on the chamber floor, holding his mangled hands to his chest, his neck craned back to stare up in shock at the stump of Zay's amputated arm.

Zay shrieked something too fast for Galaeron to understand even with Melegaunt's eavesdropping spell, then reached for Imesfor again. Vala's darksword drove down from the ceiling, appearing out of the shadows as though wielded by the rock itself, and buried itself in Zay's thorny back.

Zay screeched and spun in the air, pulling Vala half off the ceiling. For an instant, her torso hung stretched between the ceiling and the writhing phaerimm, a vaguely female silhouette holding a very three-dimensional glassy black sword-Then she turned the blade into the roll, and the shadowy edge began to cut again. Zay's body opened around the middle and spilled steaming gore into the dust. Vala barely had time to pull herself back onto the rock before a storm of fire and lightning blasted the ceiling.

Galaeron slipped around the corner, then spoke in High Elvish. "Into the cage with you!" He had to shout to make himself heard. 'To Kiinyon's side, and into the tunnel of shadow!"

The high mage's eyes went wide, but he rolled to his knees and, using his mangled hands like forepaws, scrambled for the cage.

It's the yellow one! trilled Tha, pointing at Lord Imesfor. It's his-

Galaeron drew his borrowed darksword and saw it appear in the air. He silenced Tha with a vicious slash across both jaw hinges, and the phaerimm's mouth fell open gurgling blood. Galaeron sheathed his sword and continued across the floor, streaming safely away even as the stone behind him erupted into a spray of molten magic.

Melegaunt's deep voice rose briefly from the direction of the Sharn Wall. A shaft of spinning shadow shot from the breach across the chamber, knocking shocked phaerimm aside like a battering ram. It extended through the cage door and stopped. Tiny tendrils of shadow twirled off the end like threads off a fraying sweater cuff, weaving themselves through the bone bars of the cage.

This time, the phaerimm were quicker to recover-far too quick for Galaeron's liking. A dozen whirled around, flinging every manner of magic at Melegaunt. Whether the attacks troubled the wizard was impossible to say, for the instant the spells touched the Sharn Wall, they exploded into searing heat. Those attacks aimed into the breach simply vanished into the whirling shaft of shadow, then came spinning back out a few seconds later.

The remaining phaerimm turned their attention to Galaeron's side of the chamber, flinging meteor swarms and ice storms toward the bone cage. The brunt of the attack vanished into the shadow net spinning off the end of the shadow column, but enough of the spells penetrated to fill the air with the stench of scorched flesh and half-lucid elf screams.

Galaeron flowed across the floor and took a position on the wall opposite the door, ready to attack when the phaerimm tried to pass through the net of shadow. Through the mesh of dark tendrils, he could just make out the figure of Lord Imesfor struggling with his fingerless hands to shove sick elves into the mouth of the shadow tunnel. Kiinyon was helping as much as possible, but trapped as he was against the ceiling, he was even less efficient than the high mage.

Galaeron started to wonder where Vala's humans were, but his question was answered when he saw a pair of thick hands pulling a sick elf into the mouth of the tunnel. The other two men were, of course, continuing to wrestle with his body and Vala's.

Realizing their magic was no more able to pass through the Sharn Wall from the outside than the inside, the phaerimm on Melegaunt's side of the chamber concentrated on the whirling column of shadow. As before, their spells simply vanished into the blackness, then came spinning back out. One of the phaerimm even tried to break into the shaft He lost two arms to the whirling darkness. Another created a blazing orb that illuminated the whole chamber in brilliant silver light, but of course where there was light, there was shadow The shaft became a writhing, snake-like thing weaving along through the dark corners of the cavern, bowing up behind the moving phaerimm, then disappearing into the dust beneath their floating bodies.

The phaerimm on Galaeron's side of the chamber were more successful. A pair floated alongside the shaft and paused before the cage. The polished bones fell away from each other, collapsing into a heap on the floor and leaving only the shadowy mesh that had spun off the end of Melegaunt's tunnel. One dared push a finger through the mesh. When it passed through without being torn off, the creature pushed an entire hand through-and promptly lost it to Vala's darksword.