The Summoning (3 page)

“Now!” It was the same voice that had filled the tunnel earlier. “Take up my swords and kill it now!”

The remaining elves reached for their weapons and started forward, but Galaeron did not want them anywhere near the creature. “Not swords! Magic bolts.” He raised his hand. “On my count… now!”

Shafts of golden magic began to converge on the creature. Some sank into its stony hide with no effect whatsoever, but most struck powerfully, hurling the thing back into the purple beam, blasting off thorns and pieces of hide. Galaeron’s first spell had barely left his hand before he repeated it, firing another flurry of raw magic even as the creature tumbled away from the first. His bolts flashed through the silver curtain and met the beam of purple magic coming from the other side.

The result was not exactly an explosion. There was a flash of a thousand colors and the roaring silence of the void, then a horrid prickling and the bewildering realization that he now lay slumped against the tunnel wall. The air reeked of burning iron, and everything ached. There was a crimson ring on the silvery barrier, flickering and steadily growing dimmer as it expanded outward. On the other side of the curtain lay the strange creature, its body pocked and pitted with blast marks, strips of peeled hide showing long strips of green flesh. As Galaeron struggled to comprehend what he was seeing, the thing rose off the ground and floated over to the barrier, then stuck its head through the smoldering hole.

Galaeron’s stomach grew hollow, and his stunned elves began to fill the tunnel with low groans. The huge mouth seemed to smile, then the creature floated the rest of the way through the hole. It plucked an unconscious human off the floor, then delicately pulled off his helmet.

Galaeron forced himself to his feet. “Stand if you are awake!” he yelled, reaching for his sword. “Defend yourselves!”

Only a handful of figures stirred, but it was enough to make the creature drop the human. The thing’s mouth swung toward Galaeron, shooting a plume of black fog out between its teeth.

There was no time to shout a warning. Galaeron barely managed to close his mouth before the cloud rolled over him, burning his eyes and nostrils and making his lungs cry out for air. The sound of coughing and retching filled the tunnel, anguished and frightened and all too brief. By the time Galaeron could summon to mind the words of a wind spell, half the voices had fallen silent. By the time he actually uttered it and sent the deadly fog whirling down an empty side passage, the rest of the voices were also quiet.

Knowing he would be the next to fall, Galaeron did not fight the terrible rage rising up inside him. Anger bred folly, but it also bred desperate courage and mad strength, and he had seen enough of this devil-creature to know what he needed most He charged after the receding edge of the black cloud, still holding his breath and swinging his sword blindly into the murk. He felt the edge bite once, then inverted his grip and lunged, driving forward with all his strength.

The blade sank perhaps a foot before slowing to a stop. Galaeron dropped to a squat and heard two arms whistle past his head, then he jumped back and saw two more come slicing out of the swirling cloud. He pulled a glass rod from his sleeve. The fog spun away and left the creature’s body floating not five paces away, his sword lodged up near its mouth. Hoping a lightning bolt would prove more effective than the rest of his magic, he leveled the rod at the thing’s body and started his incantation.

“Not magic,” boomed the deep voice. “I said swords!”

Galaeron glanced over and saw the swarthy wizard stepping through the barrier, dark robes swirling around him like

shadow. The creature whirled toward the human, twenty tiny tongues of flame already crackling on its fingertips. Melegaunt circled his hand, creating a wheel of cold blackness in the air before him, and stepped confidently forward. The flames shot straight from the monster’s hands into the shadowy wheel and vanished.

Galaeron was already moving, snatching a black sword from the hands of a fallen human and leaping to the attack. Even with the leather wrapped around the hilt, it was so cold it burned his flesh, instantly turning his fingers numb and stiff. He attacked anyway, bringing the edge down two feet from the creature’s tail.

The dark blade sliced through effortlessly, cleaving the tail off cleanly.

The creature shuddered in pain and whirled on Galaeron but stopped when it nearly impaled itself on the dark blade. Galaeron lunged for its throat, nearly dropping his weapon when the thing pulled back and his frozen fingers could not adjust.

Galaeron changed hands. In that instant, his armor grew so hot it began to glow, filling the tunnel with eerie pink shadows and washing out his dark sight. He screamed in agony but rushed forward slashing wildly The creature had no choice except to fall back—straight into Melegaunt Tanthul.

The wizard pushed forward, driving the thing onto Galaeron’s blade. It gave the same pained squeal it had earlier, but he could hardly hear it over his own wail. He found the strength to twist the blade and drag it along as he fell.

A pile of green entrails landed on the dust before him, and the creature drifted slowly to the floor at his side. Galaeron screamed and rolled away, fumbling for his dagger.

Melegaunt Tanthul placed a restraining foot on his stomach, then kneeled at his side. “It’s dead. Well done, young fellow. Now hold still.” The wizard passed his hand over Galaeron and spoke some strange magic, and the armor cooled. “Better?”

Galaeron nodded. “What—”

“No time for talking. There are another dozen on the way.” The man pulled Galaeron to his feet, then gestured at the hole in the silvery curtain. “And now they can get at us.”

Biting back a scream of pain, Galaeron asked, “They?”

“Later, or well be as dead as everyone else.”

The wizard started to pick his way through the bodies. Elf and human alike, their faces were contorted into masks of anguish, their chins covered with beards of red froth.

Melegaunt stopped beside Shatevar’s deflated body and pointed at Vala’s legs. “That one’s still alive. Bring her.”

Though the wizard looked capable of carrying his own wounded, Galaeron pulled Vala from beneath the eye tyrant. Much to his astonishment, her chest was rising and falling with breath, just as the wizard had said it would be. Galaeron loaded her over his shoulder and started after the wizard, paying no attention as her black sword dropped silently into the dust.

Melegaunt spun on his heel and pointed at the weapon. “Her darksword, you fool.”

“1 can’t carry it.” Galaeron displayed his frozen palms.

The wizard stepped closer, running his gaze over Galaeron’s face. “What are you doing here?” he asked, seeming to notice Galaeron’s pointed ears for the first time. “You can’t be of the Granite Tower…”

20Nightal, the Year of the Unstrung Harp

In the month of Nightal, the sand winds turned wild and bitter, sweeping in from Anauroch full of stinging grit and stabbing cold. At night, no elf in uncloaked armor could long abide their frigid blasts, yet Galaeron’s scalded flesh raged at the extra weight of his thkaerth wool cloak. His hands, still dead and white from touching the black sword, had moved beyond pain to agony, and even that did not seem punishment enough. Takari sat slumped on a big human horse, so weak and delirious that Ehamond had to sit with her. Ehamond himself was webbed with claw slashes and puncture wounds. Nimieye and Dynod remained uninjured, having stayed outside the cairn to guard the prisoners, but they would have to scout ahead, and one or both might yet fall to some dragon or griffon drawn by the smell of so much blood. The rest were gone. Of the seventeen

elves who had entrusted their lives to Galaeron’s command, he had lost thirteen. For such a failure, he deserved more punishment than a simple scalding—far more.

Galaeron fumbled the last binding over Vala’s foot and jerked the loop tight then wrapped the end around her boot and stirrup. When he pronounced a mystic word, the line snaked up her ankle, fastening her into the saddle. He did not realize how hard he had tugged until the magic line, taking a cue from his angry yank, cinched itself down so tightly that boot leather bubbled between its coils.

“The line will tighten if you pull.” Galaeron normally preferred to let captives discover this for themselves, but he feared the line would crush Vala’s ankle if it grew any tighter. “It can be removed only by the one who put it on.”

“Is that so?” Though the binding had to hurt, Vala’s pale eyes betrayed no hint of pain, only cold ire. “Then 1 suppose I mustn’t try to escape.”

The edge in her voice suggested she had no intention of escaping, not until she repaid Galaeron for the deaths of her men. Though it was a vengeance she would never have, she could at least take consolation in the price he would pay to his own masters. Not since the days of Kiinyon Colbathin had a patrol of tomb guards taken such losses—and never along the Desert Border South, the quietest of any area the tomb guard patrolled.

Galaeron started to walk away, then thought better of it Without turning around, he said, “We are sorry for the deaths of your men. Know that we would have saved them, had it been in our power.”

“But it wasn’t, elf.” Vala’s voice remained unforgiving. “As 1 said then, you have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

Galaeron bit back the urge to make a sharp retort. “Then why don’t you tell me?”

Vala looked away. “It is not my place.”

“Very well,” Galaeron said. “Then what about yourself? Where is the Granite Tower?”

Vala’s eyes flashed, whether in alarm or anger was impossible to say. That is not for you to know, elf. We are hardly friends.”

“No, 1 suppose we aren’t.”

Galaeron turned and walked away. It hardly mattered where the woman and her three sentries were from. In all likelihood, they would soon be joining their fallen companions. The Hill Elders rarely made hasty decisions, but when a tomb guard brought captives before the council, there was seldom much to decide. The sentence for crypt breaking was as certain as it was harsh.

Galaeron heard Melegaunt Tanthul before he saw him. The human’s deep voice came from the shadowy side of the moonlit cairn, growling out the arcane syllables of a bizarre spell. The incantation was unlike anything Galaeron had ever heard, even among the corpse-stealing draw who occasionally worked their evil in the isolated crypts of the Desert Border. The words were booming and raspy, loaded with power and danger, hut also intricate and enigmatic, full of cleverness and deception. Though it was the third enchantment of caging the wizard had cast since leaving the battle site, Galaeron, who usually had an instinctual feel for all things magic, had yet to grasp this wizard’s art.

When he rounded the corner, Galaeron found Melegaunt working the shadows into an impassable maze of moonlight and darkness, swirling them into dead-end spirals, folding them into meandering corridors that rounded a hundred corners and came back to their own beginning. The wizard himself was nearly impossible to find, his black robes and swarthy complexion blending into the night the same way Wood elves melted into the forest.

Though Galaeron did not think he had made any noise as he approached, Melegaunt glanced in his direction and nodded. He finished his maze by feeding its only exit into a hole of fuming darkness, then simply melted into the shadows beneath his feet.

Galaeron stood outside the maze feeling perplexed and foolish. Before his indifference to the ritual tedium of the Academy of Magic had landed him across the glen at the Academy of Arms, he had spent more than two decades studying the basics of every known spellcasting system, and he could not even guess how Melegaunt had vanished. There had been no gestures or words to trigger the spell, nor even a twitch or sharp breath to activate a ring or magic pendant. The wizard had dissolved into the shadows as though by an act of will.

“The umbral maze should hold until dawn.”

The voice came from the ground beside Galaeron. In spite of himself, he hopped away and looked down. The wizard’s body was rising out of the shadow, peeling itself up like a turning page.

“And they won’t like the daylight at first.”

Melegaunt braced on the ground then brought his feet beneath him in a practiced motion. As he stood, his body resumed its shape, filling out like a glove inflated with breath.

“We have until tomorrow dusk, no longer.”

“We?” Galaeron had to scurry after the wizard, who was already rounding the corner of the cairn. “To do what?”

“To set things right, of course. I’ll need at least one company of good wizards and a trio of high mages.” The human spun on Galaeron, bushy brows furrowed in concern. “Evereska does have three?”

“I—I couldn’t say.” Galaeron assumed the city had at least that many, but high mages were not something Evereskans discussed openly and certainly not with humans. “First, we must talk about—”

“We’ll talk while we ride.” The wizard whirled away and rounded the corner. When he came upon Nimieye and Dynod standing guard over Vala and the other three prisoners, he stopped. “What’s this?”

“Your friends are crypt breakers.” Though Galaeron had been dreading this moment since coming to realize how powerful the wizard was, his duty was clear. “They must be taken

before the Hill Elders, but you were not with them. You are free to do as you please.”

“Of course I am.” Melegaunt s black beard twitched as though he might laugh. “But this won’t do, elf. I was the one who told them to break the crypt Do you intend to tie me, too?”

Galaeron swallowed and reached for a binding rope. “I have sworn—”

“What you have sworn makes no difference.”

Melegaunt gestured at the ground, and icy ribbons of shadow spiraled up Galaeron’s legs, squeezing his bones and numbing his flesh. The wizard glanced down and shook his head in an expression of dismay then turned toward the horses. Galaeron tried to go after him and found his feet rooted in place. He flashed a finger command to Nimieye and Dynod, ordering them not to engage the human in what would certainly be a futile attack.