Temple Hill (29 page)

Corin raced across the battlefield, ready to slash down any foe foolish enough to get in the way of his reckless charge to the old gnome’s aid. But the soldiers of both sides were far too concerned with the enemies bearing directly down on them to take notice of a single man running past on the fringes of their peripheral vision, and he reached Fendel’s side without opposition.

“Here!” Fendel shouted as Corin dropped to a knee beside him, trying to be heard over the thunder of battle and the blast still ringing in his ears. “Take this.” He stuffed the hard leather case containing the potion to reverse the medusa’s curse into Corin’s belt. “Find Lhasha!”

“What about you?” Corin yelled back.

“Can’t walk,” the gnome said with a shake of his head, clutching his leg just below his knee. “Broken, maybe. I’ll only slow you down. You go. I’ll stay here and try to cover you.”

There was no sense arguing. After a quick check to make sure the bottle was secure, Corin waded back into the fray, determined to find Lhasha at any cost.

hen he burst through the wall of Xiliath’s treasure room, Azlar was momentarily surprised to find several guards in the chamber. He had expected the one-handed man’s suicide mission to draw their attention away from this room. If he had looked closely, Azlar would have noticed a familiar form crumpled against the crates near the far wall, but the young wizard’s attention was drawn elsewhere.

He noticed a white-haired mage lying on the floor, a glowing ring pulsating on his finger.

The ring! Bring me the ring! Snap the old man’s bony finger off if necessary, just bring it to me now!” He recognized the blue flame that sprung up in a protective circle around Xiliath’s wizard, but he didn’t bother to warn his men about the possible consequences.

Azlar watched with detached interest as the first of his men was incinerated by the spell surrounding the old wizard. However, his nonchalant attitude changed to one of eager fascination as an enormous figure entered the fray.

A giant orog in black armor rushed to the fallen mage’s defense. In one great leap the beast crossed the distance between itself and the incapacitated wizard, chopping down the cult

soldiers who were standing over the stricken form. It hacked away indiscriminately with its black blade, sending Azlar’s men scurrying away like frightened children.

Azlar recognized the creature that had taken his hand at the ambush in the clearing—the beast known as Graal. Seeing the beast in battle, the cult wizard’s thoughts were not those of revenge. The monster was magnificent in his ferocity.

Friend and foe alike fell before Graal’s assault, feeding the creature’s ravaging blade, fuelling his killing lust. Blood spurted up from the severed limbs and gushing wounds of those around the orog as bodies fell, adding to the ever growing pile of grisly corpses at Graal’s feet. Gore covered the monster from head to toe, turning his black armor crimson. The thing licked a splatter of warm blood from his chin, his long, bestial tongue irmning languidly over his tusks.

Yet even amidst Graal’s unbridled orgy of death, Azlar noticed that the creature was careful not to harm the old wizard at his feet. If the old mage died, the medusa would break free and turn her devastating powers on everyone within the chamber. The beast understood the potential consequences. He was intelligent, and he could be a useful ally—if brought under proper control.

Azlar motioned for the troops he had initially held back in reserve to enter the battle. As they rushed by him, the cult mage began an incantation—a spell to dominate the orog, to cage his wild fury and bring him under Azlar’s control.

Unseen claws extended out from Azlar’s mind, grasped at the Grog’s essence, trying to steal his identity, his sense of self, his very will to act. The beast shook his great head, tusks snapping at the invisible enemy trying to get inside his mind. The orog threw his head back and bellowed his howling defiance to the stony roof, thrusting the invader out.

Azlar’s eyes widened as he realized the armored monster had resisted his spell. Graal’s yellow eyes focused on him and a low growl escaped his throat. Azlar’s knees momentarily buckled. The monster began a march toward him. All thoughts of taking the orog alive vanished from Azlar’s head.

With a single barked command Azlar’s personal bodyguard, a half dozen of the cult’s best warriors arrayed in a protective circle around the young mage, moved for^ ward to destroy the threat.

They surrounded their opponent, striking from all sides. The beast took clumsy swings at them, first one opponent, then another, spinning and twisting in a vain attempt to guard against all six of the attackers at once. The guards easily avoided the hurried blows, dancing out of range then slipping back in as the creature turned toward another foe and left himself vulnerable. Little by little, the six men surrounding the orog picked away, relentless as gnats. The orog’s arms and legs began to bleed from countless cuts and wounds, and his thick, fur became matted with the sticky liquid.

With a desperate, animal fury the beast swung wildly, throwing himself off balance. Much to Azlar’s relief, Graal tripped over his own feet and collapsed.

Instantly, the gnats were on their fallen foe. Sheer numbers overwhelmed the creature, beating him down with a barrage of blows to the body and head. Graal’s armor reverberated with the song of battle as the weapons rained down. Blades rang off his mail shirt, and edged weapons meant to cleave his skull clanged off his iron helm.

To Azlar’s amazement, the creature shrugged off the blows and rose to his knees. From the half-prone stance the orog slashed at the forest of legs around him with short, powerful strokes, slicing sinew, muscle, cartilage,

and bone, leaving one of Azlar’s men with nothing but a stump below mid-thigh.

The Grog’s dark sword glowed with a black light, and Azlar heard the unmistakable hum of necromancy. The young wizard felt the power of the black sword’s magic as the blade in Graal’s talons drank from the stolen life-force of the dying cultists.

Before Azlar’s horrified eyes the most serious of his enemy’s wounds closed over, healing instantly. Bolstered by the influx of new life, the orog heaved himself to his feet, knocking the circle of attackers off balance. Before Azlar’s guards could recover from their foe’s unexpected surge, a second cultist had fallen, his chest torn open diagonally from his shoulder to the opposite hip by a single, swift stroke of the sinister weapon. More of Graal’s wounds spontaneously closed, and the orog stood a little straighter.

Realizing his warriors were overmatched, Azlar began a spell of mass destruction, one that would destroy both the relentless animal of war and his own guards.

The spell was cast in a matter of seconds, but even in that short time the orog had slain another of Azlar’s men, leaving only three of the original six cultists standing. A carefully placed ball of fire erupted around the four figures still engaged in the melee, engulfing the combatants. Azlar recoiled from the blaze of his own spell, shielding his face from the heat. The inferno lasted only a second and was gone. The young mage looked up to see the charred remains of his loyal bodyguards smoldering on the cavern floor. The orog was still standing.

The beast’s flesh was blistered from the heat, his coarse, dark mane was singed in places and burned clean off in others. But the orog was relatively unharmed. He grinned at Azlar, a malevolent smile full of sharpened yellow teeth and fierce, pointed tusks.

The young mage hurled another spell at the creature, a bolt of electrical energy strong enough to fell an umberhulk. The lightning struck the orog full in the chest and rocked the monster back a half step, but instead of tearing a hole through Graal’s torso, the bolt was absorbed and dispersed by the monster’s black ringed armor, again inflicting only minimal damage.

With a chuckle resembling a snarling growl, the orog advanced on Azlar again.

The raging battle between Xiliath’s troops and the cultists was both a blessing and a curse in Corin’s eyes. The chaos and confusion allowed him to move freely about the battlefield as he searched for Lhasha, but the violence of the confrontation was taking a heavy toll on the statues in the cavern. Wild, off-balance swings by soldiers broke limbs or shattered stony features. Warriors from both sides darted back and forth between the petrified bodies, using them for cover and concealment, sometimes toppling them over through careless disregard or sheer malice. Already several of the medusa’s unfortunate victims were now nothing more than piles of rubble, forever beyond hope of salvation.

From the corner of his eye, Corin caught a glimpse of a small group of Xiliath’s guards moving in to cut him off. As he turned to face the advancing threat, the guards collapsed in coughing, choking heaps, overwhelmed by the green cloud of noxious fumes that had materialized in their path.

Fendel. Corin quickly glanced over his shoulder at the old gnome, tilting his head in unspoken thanks for the magical aid.- Fendel was too busy conjuring another spell to notice the gesture.

Turning back to the carnage, Corin saw two cultists momentarily bar his path, but their weapons slipped from their suddenly clumsy grasps—another spell from Fendel. Unexpectedly unarmed, they offered no resistance as the one-armed warrior chopped them down without even breaking stride.

‘ Corin felt a sudden chill in the air descending from above and peeked up to the high ceiling. A dark cloud formed near the cavern’s roof—black as the harbingers of the fierce storms that pounded the Dragon Coast throughout the Claw of Winter. Fendel was preparing to unleash a tempest within the room.

A fleeting feeling of panic seized Corin’s chest—would the fury of the storm destroy more statues? But the feeling quickly passed. Fendel would never do anything to endanger Lhasha. Best to let the wizard worry about his spells, Corin realized. He had to stay focused on the task at hand. Lhasha was somewhere in the cavern, one of the countless forms still unidentifiable in the shrouding shadows of the dim torches. He could feel it. He knew it.

A stone form glimpsed from the corner of his eye brought him up short. Not the lithe, almost childlike statue of his half-elf friend, but an enormous, circular mound of rock. The statue was so squat and round it almost resembled a boulder. Corin knew only one man in Elversult with that shape.

Xiliath must have felt it best to leave the treacherous steward in his petrified state until the plans with the medusa were done. It wasn’t hard to imagine Fhazail’s double-crossing of the cultist becoming a triple-crossing of Xiliath’s own schemes. Or perhaps there was another explanation, another reason why the corpulent steward had not yet been restored.

The statue was less than twenty feet from where Corin was standing, half hidden behind a small stack of crates.

It would only take a minute for Corin to dash over, move the crates aside and smash the statue to bits, destroying Fhazail forever, as punishment for his betrayal of the White Shields on the Trader Road. But every second Corin spent avenging his dead companions was a second lost in his quest to save Lhasha—precious time in which the half-elf s statue could be inadvertently destroyed by the ravages of war.

Corin’s lust for revenge had already cost Lhasha far too much. Pushing all thoughts of Fhazail from his head, Corin resumed his search for bis friend.

A loud clap of thunder from the roof announced the completion of the gnome’s latest spell. A blizzard of blinding snow and huge chunks of ice, hard as frozen rock, battered the beleaguered soldiers in the center of the chamber. A surprised chorus of alarmed shouts rose up above the cacophony of battle, momentarily drawing Corin’s attention away from his search and to the battlefield. Soldiers on both sides were pelted with snow and ice. They slipped and fell in the slush, scrambling to avoid the weapons of their enemies while trying to dodge the fist-sized hail that pummeled them from the cavern ceiling. Many of them didn’t get up again.

The lethal blizzard proved only a momentary distraction to Corin. He was far enough from its center to avoid the worst of the storm. If anything, the spell would keep the armies occupied and less likely to focus their attention on him.

After an eternity of several minutes, Corin’s persever-ant searching was rewarded.

Most of the statues were standing, frozen in mid-stride as they fled the medusa’s gaze. But Lhasha’s form was lying on the ground, her arms thrust out as if to brace a fall. By some amazing fluke, Corin surmised, she must have caught the medusa’s eye while tumbling to the ground.

The miraculous fact that she hadn’t shattered upon striking the ground was lost on Corin as he fumbled to open the case in his belt. His prosthetic arm, combined with the magic of Fendel’s forged blade, provided no handicap in combat. But his metal hand lacked the precision and dexterity to perform fine, exacting movements. He struggled with the case for several long, frustrating seconds before managing to pop the latch. Using his good hand he grasped the thick glass bottle and yanked the stopper out with his teeth.

He raised the bottle to her hps, then paused. Obviously Lhasha couldn’t drink the potion in her current state. He glanced back toward Fendel, hoping for guidance, but the gnome was too focused on his spells to notice Corin crouched over Lhasha’s prone form.

Realizing there was only really one possibility, Corin carefully poured the contents over the statue, trying to distribute it as evenly as possible. The liquid beaded as it struck the half-elf s face and body. It trickled along the ridges in Lhasha’s petrified features and the creases in her petrified clothes. Then the droplets began to move with a life of their own, slipping and sliding over the rock, moving faster and faster until they became a shimmering glow racing over every inch of Lhasha’s stone body.

The shimmer became a shroud of blinding light, wrapping itself around Lhasha. It flared a deep violet, then flickered to blue, red, and finally pink, the brightness and intensity of each color increasing until Corin was forced to momentarily avert his gaze, squeezing his eyes shut against the glare.