Tristan held his sword before him, looking to the right and left for enemies he did not understand but nevertheless sensed awaited them. This place stank, and the very air made his flesh crawl. And what was there to fight? The statues stared back at him, as if mocking his mortal form. The king fixed his gaze on one of the stone forms after another, seeking some sign of movement or menace.
The companions emerged into the clearing around the well to the sudden flapping of wings, like geese struggling aloft from a small pond. But these "geese" had perverted antlers growing from their heads and the ghastly look of vile corruption. The deathbirds had been lurking among the shattered pillars around the well, but now they flew, their deadly antlers angling toward those who would threaten their master.
"Come on!" The king broke into a run, charging the flock even as the hideous creatures fought to gain altitude. He saw several arrows dart overhead, striking a pair of the monsters from the sky. The Sword of Cymrych Hugh compelled him, with a will of its own, to attack the things.
The ground shook beside him as Yak followed. Tristan heard, incongruous in the oppressive grove, the strident chords of Tavish's lute. Inexplicably, the notes brought a rush of ferocity to his heart, and he shouted an inarticulate challenge at the obscene flyers.
Pawldo advanced at his right, brandishing his sword. He
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moved awkwardly, for his skis were strapped to his back. He had not used the things once during the long hike, but he remained reluctant to give up the products of his labor. Yak advanced at Tristan's left, the companions in line abreast to face the greatly reduced flock. Another shower of arrows rained overhead as the sisters and Yazilliclick maintained their deadly fire. The deathbirds dived, and the sword pulled the king from his feet as it thrust upward to cut the life from the leader of the flock.
Yak swung his heavy club and crushed one of the creatures in midair. The shattered body fell to earth as the fir-bolg turned on another deathbird, sending it veering madly away to avoid the knobby weapon.
"Tristan! Look out!" Robyn's voice, a desperate shout, suddenly jerked his attention back to the ground. He looked to his side, past Pawldo, to see a nightmare vision of death springing toward them, as if it charged straight from the lowest levels of the Abyss.
"What is that thing?" He whirled, the sword instinctively swiveling with him to face this new and much more serious threat. He sensed Yak crushing a deathbird above his head, but he could not tear his gaze from the black, hellish creature now lunging toward Pawldo.
Its eyes blazed a savage yellow, gleaming starkly against the midnight black of the creature's coat. Its long fangs drooled, and the two tentacles writhing from its shoulders reached like hungry snakes for the halfling's face. In that second, Tristan knew that this was the beast that had slain Daryth.
Pawldo swiveled, his skis swinging through a broad arc. The wooden boards passed right through the form of the drooling monster, but then they smashed into something solid, yet invisible, beyond the beast. The force of the blow knocked the halfling sideways, pushing him away from the snapping clamp of those horrid jaws.
Then Pawldo's body whipped into the air, and the king imagined him seized by one of those tentacles. With a dull thud, the halfling slammed back to earth and lay, utterly silent and motionless, beside the monster.
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The creature crouched again, and this time THstan sprang. He swung his sword through a vicious horizontal slash and felt it bite into flesh梑ut not where the monster appeared to be! Then he, too, stumbled backward, struck by an invisible tentacle that hurtled him to the ground. Once again his father's armor had saved him from a deep and slashing wound.
Tavish the bard stood entranced as the fight raged. The battlesong of the harpist was upon her, and her fingers flew across the strings. The words of an unknown song filled her heart, and though the lyrics made little sense as a story, they lifted the spirits of the Ffolk and urged them onward into battle.
Tavish watched the monsters attack, strumming with a fantastic intensity a tune and a rhythm born in her mind only as it was played. She felt the words erupt within her, whirling through her mind, and suddenly she sang. Her voice was a challenge to all the evil and blackness in the world, but especially to the dark power lurking before them, as she sang her message of hope and prayer for herself and her companions.
The lyrics of her song were incomplete, but now a tale began to take shape. She had no ending, for the song was a ballad, and the tale it told had not yet seen its conclusion. But Tavish felt herself swept along by the music, felt it raise the spirits of her companions, and so she challenged the darkness with growing courage and strength.
The deathbirds swirled in confused savagery, and several of them dove toward the bard. Tavish, caught in the rapture of her music, failed to see them coming.
But Robyn did. The druid let go of the scroll and momentarily attacked as a warrior, raising her scimitar into the air and slicing a wing from the leading deathbird. The monster's body crashed into the bard, knocking her to the ground, as Robyn whirled and cut another of the creatures from the sky before it could attack.
The lute fell from Tavish's hands and a black silence again settled over the clearing. The bard sat up awkwardly and saw the black panther-beast strike down Tristan as the
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king's weapon again struck at the empty air.
Not knowing why she did so, Tavish pulled forth the broken spectacles from the firbolg lair and fumbled to place them on her nose. She squinted toward the battle and immediately saw the beast in its true position, several feet to the side of the iflusionary appearance.
Standing again, lifting her lute, lavish cried out to the king. "There! Tb your left! There it is!" But then another of the deathbirds smashed into her face. A cruel antler tore at her cheek, and the glasses flew across the muddy ground, lavish fell backward heavily, gasping for air and seeing the shadow of horned death looming over her.
Brigit and Maura nocked and fired their arrows with mechanical precision, while Colleen drew her sword and raced to Tristan's defense. One by one the silver missiles found targets in the flying creatures.
Brigit felt a great emptiness rise within her as the music ceased. She suddenly realized that, for a brief moment, the music had recalled memories of pristine Synnoria. The sister knight turned and saw Tavish on the ground, saw Robyn reach to strike one of the deathbirds with the now bloody scimitar.
But two more swept toward the prone bard, and Tavish squirmed awkwardly, too slow to get out of the way. Brigit dropped her bow and raced toward the fight, her own long-sword extended.
None of the companions saw the displacer beast crouch, its yellow eyes gleaming, and slink along the ground. Genna pointed a finger, again unnoticed by the others, and the creature sprang toward Robyn's unarmed and unprotected back.
Ysalla floated easily in the shallows, watching the great march below her. Hundreds and hundreds of the dead of the sea, preceded by the hulking corpses of the ogres, moved through the gap in the breakwater and approached the beaches at either side of Corwell Harbor.
The storm overhead clearly waned, though large break-
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ers still smashed against the shore. The priestess could see no sign of sunlight through the thick clouds, and this pleased her. The Claws of the Deep could emerge from the water and fight and breathe among the air-breathing peoples, but they abhorred the light of the sun. This boded well for the coming battle, the priestess thought.
Sythissal, King of the Deep, drifted behind her, casually drawing a clawed hand along the ridges of her spine. She whirled on him, a hissing froth of bubbles exploding from her scaly maw.
Ysalla drew back her golden dagger and was on the verge of striking him for his insolence, but the sahuagin king floated breezily past. She understood the warning implicit in his gesture: Though the power of Bhaal had given her command of this great mass of undead creatures, the king had told her that he was her master, as well as lord of all the Claws of the Deep. Seething, she acknowledged the truth of his point.
But it would be her troops that would win this battle, she knew. Finally the mighty army had gathered into position for the attack, either inside the harbor or spread along the outer shores. It was time to move.
A dozen sahuagin, the yellow-scaled priestesses of Bhaal, ordered their legions forward. Lumbering but implacable, the undead emerged from the water. Ysalla surfaced, her proud spines breaking the water first like the dorsal fin of a monstrous shark. She saw that gray clouds glowered above and was pleased.
Everywhere around her the heads and bloated bodies of the dead of the sea emerged from the surf. Tb Ysalla, the sudden panic in the town was a powerful drug, and she knew that Sythissal's legions, too, would feed upon that fear. With steady, slow precision, the dead army marched to the shore and emerged from the water.
In the town, Hobarth watched the attack with unconcealed glee. From a room on the second floor of the inn, he faced the harbor. Now he stood at the window, observing the array of zombie troops before him. They advanced steadily along the wharf, clambering into the boats docked
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at the pier or struggling awkwardly up the steep seawall to shuffle along the docks. The Ffolk at the waterfront, in a mass outbreak of panic, turned and bolted for the central regions of the town.
Snow still floated gently from the sky, but the storm had passed. Now the white flurries drifted and eddied in the gentle breeze, in stark contrast to the brutal scene enacted on the ground.
Tb either side, Hobarth could see hundreds of undead outside the walls of Corwell Tbwn. To the north, the grisly army shuffled forward against no resistance, sweeping along the edge of the town and cutting off retreat to the castle on its rocky knoll. Splendid! The Ffolk would be trapped in the town, and the castle could be dealt with later.
Tb the south, he saw the other wing of Ysalla's army. This segment turned toward the town as it came ashore, hammering at the gate and climbing, through sheer force of numbers, over the low wall and into the streets.
But what was this? Surprised, Hobarth looked down to see several hundred men, armed with swords and spears, carrying shields, gathering in the central square. Organized resistance! Hobarth picked out the figure of the town's Lord Mayor and realized that the militia had indeed been mustered.
He turned the other way upon hearing the screeching shrill of pipes and saw two more companies of men assembling in the streets. Some of the neighboring cantrev lords must have gathered their forces as well.
The cleric of Bhaal chuckled grimly as he observed these feeble preparations. He watched the three companies of the Ffolk, brave but doomed, gather together and move toward the waterfront. A bristling wall of spears advanced toward the first of the lumbering ogres. Hobarth saw several of the bloated creatures fall before the attack, though the others pressed mindlessly on. After all, the dead could know no fear.
But the living could. And Hobarth was determined to see that they did.
He called upon the might of his god, pulling a tiny scrap of
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insect larva from a pouch in his robe. He crushed it between his plump fingers, letting the dust swirl down to the street below as he summoned the might of his god to power his infernal casting.
Bhaal heard and answered. The dust of the insect larva suddenly blossomed and expanded, curling into a black cloud that began to flow through the streets of Corwell. Seeping and slithering forward, the cloud clung to the ground as it expanded. It probed alleys, filled yards, and slowly it took to life. The black cloud became a massive shroud of living insects, buzzing and humming in an infernal chorus.
Bees, wasps, locusts, hornets, savage biting flies, and a host of other insects filled the air and covered the streets. They flowed through the town with a nightmare hum. In the mass of their millions, they spelled horrible, painful death to anyone caught within their cloud.
The insect plague spread among the buildings and streets of Corwell Town, reaching forward with fingerlike tendrils to wrap around the men of the companies. First a few stragglers fell out of line, slapping and cursing the attack. Then the cloud gradually embraced them all, and the men broke and fled, unable to stand the supernatural attack.
And the legions of dead advanced through the town, unmolested.
Tristan felt a shadow pass over him. He scrambled to his knees, instinctively keeping the Sword of Cymrych Hugh away from the mud. He saw the black monster spring toward Robyn as the young druid slashed at a deathbird, unaware of the horror approaching from behind.
"Robyn!" As the king screamed a warning, the words caught in his throat. He struggled to his feet, raging against the clutching mud, knowing he could never reach her in time.
Yak turned beside him, also too far away. Pawldo lay motionless; the three sister knights struggled with the remaining deathbirds; lavish lay prone, struggling to rise
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. . . none could help Robyn.
The displacer beast landed in a crouch, a low growl rumbling in its belly. Robyn spun and gasped in shock, staggering backward in the face of the horrible drtibling visage. The beast crept forward, its tentacles flicking with deadly purpose.
Then it pounced. Desperately the woman dove to the side, sensing that the creature's balance was imperfect. She saw a deep wound in the monster's flank, a broken shaft of some kind protruding from it. It looked like a spear, only it was white.
One of the tentacles lashed across Robyn's legs, cutting her skin and knocking her to the ground. The monster twisted back toward her, and the druid saw the broken weapon that had been embedded in the creature's flank suddenly pop free from the wound. She lay helpless, watching the drooling fangs come closer, hearing the beast's deep, rumbling growls, smelling its fetid breath.
One, then another, and suddenly six four-footed creatures appeared before Robyn, snarling and yelping at the beast. The blink dogs, as a pack, lunged forward and snapped at the monster's flanks. They blinked in and out of sight at the front, sides, and rear of the beast.
Biting and snapping with surprising savagery, the dogs attacked the abominable cat-beast. The monster flew into a frenzy of rage, biting with its great teeth, slashing with its claws, and whipping its obscene tentacles at one after another of the nimble dogs.
