James Wyatt: Oath of Vigilance

The sunrod’s light reached the bottom, revealing Quarhaun standing in a circle of six crouching beasts. One lay still on the ground at his feet, its shattered ribs identifying it as the one that had attacked them on the surface-the one that had led them into the trap as Quarhaun had predicted.

Shara dropped the sunrod, gripped her sword with both hands, and charged down the remaining stairs. Swinging the sword fiercely, she knocked the nearest demon aside and stepped into the ring of them beside Quarhaun. She slashed at a demon as it lunged toward the drow, cutting its face and driving it back. She put her back to Quarhaun’s and they both held their long, deadly blades at the ready.

“I win,” Quarhaun said over his shoulder.

“You take the prize, all right,” Shara shot back. “I should have just left you here.”

“But you didn’t. That was foolish.”

“We’ll see about that.” The demons were holding back, assessing them, looking for an opening in their defenses.

The demon nearest the stairs screeched as Uldane’s dagger slid between its ribs, and it wheeled on the halfling in surprised rage. Shara lashed out at it and it turned back to her, batting uselessly with an enormous claw, weakened by Uldane’s strike.

“They’re still coming,” Quarhaun said.

Shara glanced behind her and saw two more of the creatures fill in the circle around them, and she noticed dark shadows moving just beyond the sunrod’s light. “That’s a lot of demons,” she muttered.

“So we kill them all.”

“Right.” Shara scanned the circle and found the one Uldane had stabbed. Blood from its side ran down its front leg, leaving sticky footprints glistening in the light as it stalked around the circle. She lunged at it, bringing her sword down in a mighty swing toward its neck.

Her target hopped back away as the two demons beside it leaped at her. The one on her left clamped its jaws around her arm, pulling her sword off target, though her armor kept its teeth from biting into her flesh. On her right, sharp claws cut through the leather and mail that protected her knee, but the wound was shallow. She slammed the pommel of her sword into the face of the demon that held her arm, but it held her fast.

Uldane appeared out of the shadows again and drew his dagger across the beast’s throat. It yowled and released Shara’s arm. Its voice died in its throat as Shara brought her sword down to split its skull.

“We need to get into a passage or something,” Quarhaun said, “a narrower hall where they can’t surround us.”

Shara glanced at the stairs where the sunrod still sputtered, and she saw Uldane nod. “Right,” she said. “Follow me.”

With a roar, she slipped between two of the creatures and made for the stairs, swinging her sword in a wide arc to slash at the demons as she passed. Uldane shadowed her movement toward the stairs. Shara turned and paused to let Quarhaun get behind her, but the drow was nowhere in sight.

“Quarhaun!” she called.

“I’m here.” His voice came from somewhere beyond the pool of light the sunrod shed, and he sounded annoyed. “In the hall I was pointing to.”

Shara slashed at a demon that came too close and called back, “I can’t see you!” Even as she spoke, though, she saw a flash of fire illuminate the drow, two demons snarling as the flame licked around them, and the mouth of a narrow tunnel a half dozen paces ahead and to the right.

The beasts were tough, and there were a lot of them crowded into the room. The smart thing to do would have been to get to the stairs and retreat. On the narrow stairs, the demons couldn’t surround them, and they could fight just two or three demons at a time. Quarhaun’s idea had been sound, but he’d apparently had a different narrow passage in mind-one that he could see but that her human eyes couldn’t.

At this point, retreating up the stairs would leave Quarhaun stranded in his hallway with no way out. Shara doubted he could hold the passage by himself-the demons would get around him, attack from both sides, and bring him down in a minute or less. She changed her plan.

“Uldane, light another sunrod,” she said.

Her heart pounded as she rushed at the demons again, hacking furiously on every side, her sword cracking through bone and drawing spurts of blood. She advanced in the general direction of where she’d seen Quarhaun’s fire, keeping an eye out for any other sign of his presence. Another sunrod sputtered to life behind her, and Shara gasped as she realized just how many demons were crowded around them. But then Uldane rejoined the battle, slicing and cutting with his dagger, making up in precision what he lacked in strength. Together they carved a path through the demons until the mouth of Quarhaun’s passage came into view in their circle of light. The drow wasn’t there.

“Quarhaun!” Shara called. The only answer was the roar of another demon as it lunged at her, clawing the wounded spot on her knee. This time the claws went deeper and pain shot up her leg. Her knee buckled under her and she stumbled, giving another demon the chance to lunge in, slashing at her side, slamming against her ribs without piercing her armor. Then another pounced onto her back, and she fell under its weight.

“Get off her!” Uldane shouted, and the demon’s weight lifted from her back. Uldane might have been small, but he wielded his dagger with such speed and skill that he could outmaneuver even much larger and stronger foes, positioning them just where he wanted and driving his dagger home.

“There’s too many of them,” the halfling said as Shara found her feet.

Shara roared and whirled in a complete turn, unleashing a hail of steel on the demons that had closed in for the kill, driving them back again. “We can’t just leave him,” she said.

“Of course not.” Uldane didn’t sound convinced, but Shara knew the halfling would never abandon a friend. Or even a casual adventuring companion, or whatever the drow was.

Shara scowled. She and Uldane were risking their lives for Quarhaun. Just a few moments earlier, Quarhaun had chided her as foolish because she hadn’t abandoned him to the demon. He was a drow, after all-born and raised in a society that exalted scheming and treachery as the highest virtues. She had no reason to believe that Quarhaun would even inconvenience himself for her benefit, let alone put his life at risk. Why should she do any more for him than he would for her?

“Come on, Uldane,” she said. “We’re almost there.” Back to back, they fought their way to the hall, a raging storm of steel and fury cutting their path through the demons. Uldane held the sunrod up to light the passage where they’d last seen Quarhaun, a hall running straight, as far as the sunrod’s light could reach.

Quarhaun was gone.

“Now what?” Uldane asked.

“We have to find him.”

Uldane nodded, and Shara smiled grimly. He didn’t ask why. He knew, just as she did. They would risk their lives for Quarhaun, even if he wouldn’t do the same for them. They’d do it because it was the right thing to do.

Tempest was silent as they walked, and Roghar recognized her expression-her brow creased, her eyes on the cobblestone beneath her feet, her lower lip caught between two sharp teeth, pinched almost tight enough to draw blood. He rested a big, gentle hand on her shoulder but left her to her silence. The past months had taught him that nothing he could say would be any greater help than that simple reminder of his presence and his concern.

He’d thought at first that time would heal the wounds that her brush with possession had left on her soul. In those first weeks, though, she’d been haunted by constant reminders of Nu Alin, terrified that any stranger they met might be harboring him, ready to assault her again. At times she even looked at Roghar as though she thought he might be possessed and waiting for the right time to attack her. Finally he’d decided that she needed to leave the Nentir Vale, and they’d traveled together to Nera, where they first met. Somehow he’d thought that removing her from the scenes of their last adventures and immersing her in places that evoked happier memories might help her forget the ordeal.