T Lain - The Living Dead

A loud crack resounded in the chamber. Cavadrec brought the heavy end of his black staff across Ehlonna/Zalyn’s jaw and sent her little body flying through the air. Mialee saw the elder of Silatham, and with her, the Mother of Elves, slam with a sickening crunch into the stone, then fall chillingly still.

With dreadful certainty, Mialee saw that the goddess-cleric had been fooled by a very simple deception. The staff that bore the icon of the god of death was not at all an unholy tool of the Reaper. The black staff was a powerful magic weapon infused with arcane energy. “A wand disguised as a prayer book” was how wizards and sorcerers described such deceptive artifacts.

Mialee cried out involuntarily as the staff cracked again, knocking Soveliss back, but the nimble ranger stayed on his feet, the Mor-Hakar a menacing sliver in his hand.

Mialee buried her face in Devis’s hair and gazed down his body. Too bad, she thought madly, so much will be lost.

Her eyes fell on the ornately engraved tube tucked into an open pouch on the bard’s belt. The scroll! She reached forward, yanked out the tube and leaped to her feet. She heard Devis’s head thunk against the stone and he barked a cry of pain as he was jolted awake. He’d thank her later, if they were still alive. She thumbed the stopper off the end of the scroll tube and unrolled the yellowed parchment.

Mialee heard another crack and a pair of thumps, and saw Soveliss on his knees. He still held the Mor-Hakar. She frantically read over the lengthy scroll—damn Favrid’s wordiness!—as the wight stepped toward the staggered ranger. Cavadrec raised the ebony staff like a club, preparing to deliver a blow that would crush Soveliss’s skull.

Mialee began reciting the words on the scroll.

Devis leaped in front of her with a mad yell, driven by some reserve of strength she could hardly believe remained in his nearly bloodless body. She continued reading aloud and felt the sparkle of magic surround her and fill the air.

As she continued reading, her gentle voice rose to a hoarse shout.

She thought Devis was moving to help Soveliss, but to her shock, the bard ran right past the ranger and grasped the grinning goblet set before the extinguished shrine of Nerull. His hand curled with smoke. Mialee smelled burning leather and flesh. The chalice must be anathema to anything that was not soiled by the Reaper’s foul touch. Despite what must have been terrible pain, the bard raised the chalice in the air and turned.

“Hey, Bright Eyes!” he bellowed madly. “You can kill the ranger or save your cocktail. What’ll it be?”

Devis tipped the skull-cup, and a drop of something thick and red dripped to the floor, where it sizzled as it touched the stone.

The wight froze, then turned slowly to regard the ranger. “I choose both,” Cavadrec snarled, holding his staff in one hand and reaching out with the other.

Mialee saw the glow of a spell stretch from the wight’s talons and wrap around the chalice. Devis grasped the cup with both hands and struggled against the pull of Cavadrec’s magic grip, but only skidded across the floor on the heels of his boots.

Mialee finished reading the scroll. A blast of blue lightning exploded from the paper’s surface. She clutched the parchment with white knuckles and absorbed the barrage with her eyes squeezed shut. She was reasonably certain this wasn’t one of the spell’s intended effects. She must have mispronounced something, perhaps a single word. As blue energy crackled painfully from nerve to nerve throughout her body, she forced her eyes open to see what, if anything, she had wrought. The magic arcing through her body made everything appear to move as if in syrup.

The chalice tumbled end over end, splattering blackish-red gore all over Devis, who was whirling his arms in a hopeless attempt to keep from tumbling over backward. He dropped hard onto his backside with a shout of pain.

Cavadrec screamed and crouched to pounce for the precious artifact. The ranger was forgotten. The ebony staff no longer gleamed with black light, but was only a simple shaft of gnarled wood. The wight hissed and dropped the staff, brandishing hooked claws. He swiped the air in a screaming rage, forcing Soveliss back. Finally, the wight landed a blow on the ranger, who slammed against the temple wall, staggering and dazed.

Cavadrec loomed over the ranger. He backhanded the man across the jaw, knocking Soveliss’s head against the wall, but somehow the elf avoided the next blow and slipped away sideways. The wight would be back on him in seconds.

Aside from the disenchanted staff, Mialee could see little evidence that the scroll had worked. The wight still seethed with his own, innate power. Soveliss would be ripped limb from limb.

Mialee had played Favrid’s part with little apparent success. Soveliss was down and at the wight’s mercy. Favrid was dead. Zalyn was unconscious, possibly dead. Devis was dying, Hound-Eye was paralyzed. She’d have to try her own scheme. Maybe the wight couldn’t hit what it couldn’t see. The spell was untried, but she would never get another chance.

Mialee waved a series of precise hand motions in the air and whispered, “Nehdarn, Soveliss.”

The ranger disappeared. The invisibility spell had come in handy after all.

Cavadrec slashed the empty air in fury, then turned to an enemy he could see: Devis. The bard was still struggling to regain his feet. Cavadrec slapped Devis across the face with the back of a bony fist, driving him down to the floor with a thud where the man lay still. The wight whirled toward Mialee, red eyes flashing, and took one long step toward the fallen elf woman.

“For Silatham!” Soveliss shouted from the empty air.

A crack, then a crevice, then a crater split Cavadrec’s forehead between the eyes as the ranger hammered the invisible blade of the Mor-Hakar through the creature’s skull. The point erupted from the back of the wight’s head in a spray of bone and gray matter. A deafening wail erupted from the creature that had once been Cava, cleric of Ehlonna. The wight writhed like a pinned insect around the blade, which gradually became visible but stayed fast. The unearthly howl filled the lair.

Finally, Cavadrec’s screech settled into a hiss of fetid air. His body, instantly rigid, toppled backward onto the cold, stone floor.

“For Elyrra,” a quiet voice said.

Soveliss, now almost completely visible, bent over the corpse and gave the short sword a brutal twist. The wight’s head cracked open, releasing a fountain of matter. The ruined skull lolled over to face Mialee. Two red lights in the pits of the hideously empty sockets flickered once, twice, then died with a curl of acrid smoke. Cavadrec’s flame was extinguished.

The ranger wiped gore from the Mor-Hakar onto the wight’s torn robe. For the first time since Mialee laid eyes on the man, he looked at peace.

A long minute passed. Devis tried to stand, then resorted to dragging himself toward Mialee, who sat dumbfounded on the floor. As he struggled to reach her, she gazed mutely around the lair. Hound-Eye and little Nialma were walking toward her in a daze, both speechless. Her eyes passed over Favrid—the elf’s fate was still too fresh and horrible for her to look at him. Soveliss stood over the gray corpse, already slowly rotting away. Finally, her gaze fell on Zalyn.

The rose blossom of scarlet on the wall above her, and the wet trail leading down behind her to the floor, told Mialee all she needed to know. The elder’s body, at least, showed no sign of the wightling disease. She was simply dead. Zalyn had left with Ehlonna to join Favrid. Darji, mute and mundane bird though she now was, perched on Zalyn’s tiny boots. It cocked its eye at Mialee, then spread its wings and disappeared down one of the many cave entrances dotting the lair. A single caw echoed back to her.