The beast charged forward and lowered its head in line. Its serpentine neck snapped with a rattle of bones, sending those terrible, torn jaws forward into the tunnel, straight for the helpless Entreri.
The assassin didn't strike out but rather dived down, curled up, and screamed with all his strength.
For as the dracolich's skull came through the archway, came under the red-eyed silver dragon statuette that Entreri had just placed there, the devilish trap fired, loosing a blast of fire that would have given the greatest of red dragonkind pause.
Flames roared down from the archway with tremendous force, charring bone, bubbling the very bedrock. The dracolich's head did not continue through to bite at Entreri, but the assassin knew nothing but the sting of heat. He kept curled, his eyes closed, screaming against the terror and the pain, denying the roar of the flames and the dracolich. He felt his cloak ignite, his hair singe.
The defenders of Palishchuk fought bravely, for they had little choice. More and more gargoyles came in at them from out of the darkness in the latest wave of a battle that seemed without end. After the initial assault, the townsfolk had organized into small, defensible groups, tight circles surrounding those who could not fight. To their credit, they had lost only a few townspeople to the gargoyles, though a host of the creatures lay dead in the streets.
In one small room, a lone warrior found less luck and no options. For, like some of the other townsfolk who had fallen that night, Calihye had been cut off from the defensive formations. She battled alone, with Davis Eng helplessly crying out behind her.
Three gargoyles were dead in the room, with two killed in the early moments of the long, long battle. After an extended lull, the third had come in against her, and it had only just gone down. Its cries had been answered though, with the next two crashing in, and Calihye knew that others were out there, ready to join the fray.
She dodged and stabbed ahead, and she thought she might win out against the pair, but she knew she couldn't keep it up much longer.
She glanced over at Davis Eng, who lay there with the starkest look of terror on his face.
Calihye growled as she turned her attention back to the fight. She couldn't leave him, not like that, not when he was so utterly helpless.
So she fought on, and a gargoyle went spinning down to the floor. Another came in, then another, and Calihye spun and slashed wildly, hoping and praying that she could just keep them at bay.
All thoughts of winning flew away, but she continued her desperate swinging and turning, clinging to the last moments of her life.
The gargoyles screeched so loudly, so desperately, that it stung Calihye's ears, and behind her, Davis Eng cried out.
But then the gargoyles were gone. Just gone. They hadn't flown out of the room. They hadn't done anything but disappear.
The gargoyle corpses were gone too, Calihye realized. She blinked and looked at Davis Eng.
"Have I lost my mind then?" she asked.
The man, looking as confused as she, had no answers.
Out on the street, cheering began. Calihye made her way to the broken window and looked down.
Abruptly, without explanation, the fight for Palishchuk had ended.
From a crack in the wall across the chamber, Jarlaxle had seen the conflagration. A pillar of fire had rained down from above, obscuring the dracolich's upper neck and head. The great body, one wing torn away, shuddered and trembled.
What trick had Entreri played?
Then it hit the drow. The statuette he had placed over their apartment door in Heliogabalus, the gift from the dragon sisters.
My clever friend, Jarlaxle thought, and he thought, too, that his clever friend was surely dead.
The flames relented and the dracolich came back out of the hole. Lines of smoke rose from its swaying head and neck, and when it turned unsteadily, Jarlaxle could see that half of its head had been melted away. The creature roared again or tried to.
It took a step back across the room. It swayed and fell, and it lay very, very still.
Jarlaxle slid out of the crack and rematerialized in the chamber—a room that had grown eerily quiet.
"Get off o' me, ye fat dolt," came Athrogate's cry, breaking the silence.
The drow turned to see the dwarf roll Olgerkhan over onto the floor. Up hopped Athrogate, spitting and cursing. He looked around, trying to take it all in, and stood there for along while, hands on his hips, staring at the dragon cadaver.
"Damned if we didn't win," he said to Jarlaxle.
The drow hardly heard him. Jarlaxle moved across the room quickly, fearing what he would find.
He breathed a lot easier when Artemis Entreri walked out from under the archway, wisps of smoke rising from his head and torso. In one hand he held the crumpled, smoldering rag that had been his cloak, and with a disgusted look at the drow, he tossed it aside.
"Always dragons with you," he muttered.
"They do hold the greatest of treasures for the taking."
Entreri looked around the bone-filled but otherwise empty room, then back at Jarlaxle.
The drow laughed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TO THE VICTOR…
Olgerkhan grunted and groaned and held his breath as Athrogate tied a heavy leather strap around his broken leg. The dwarf looped the belt and held one end up near the half-orc's face.
"Best be biting hard," he said.
Olgerkhan looked at him for a moment, then took the end of the strap in his mouth and clamped down on it.
Athrogate nodded and gave a great tug on the strap, yanking it tight and forcing the half-orc's leg in line. The strap somewhat muffled Olgerkhan's scream, but it still echoed through the chamber. The half-orc's hands clenched and he pounded them on the stone floor.
"Yeah, bet that hurt," Athrogate offered.
The half-orc lay back, near to collapse. He flitted in and out of consciousness for a few moments, black spots dancing before his eyes, but then through the haze and pain, he saw something that commanded his attention. Arrayan appeared on the ledge. She stood straight, for the first time in so long, leaning on nothing.
Olgerkhan came up to his elbows as she met his gaze.
"And so it ends," Jarlaxle remarked, he and Entreri moving to the dwarf and half-orc. "Help him up, then. I will levitate you up to join Arrayan on the ledge one at a time."
Athrogate moved to help Olgerkhan stand, but Entreri just moved away to the wall, where he quickly picked a route and began climbing. By the time Jarlaxle made his first trip up, easing Olgerkhan down beside Arrayan, Entreri was nearly there, moving steadily.
When he finally pulled his head above the ledge, he found Arrayan fallen over Olgerkhan, hugging him tightly and professing her love to him. Entreri hopped up beside them, offered a weak smile that neither of them even registered, and moved off to check the ascending hallway.
He sprinted up some distance but found no enemies and heard no sounds at all. When he came back, he found the other four waiting for him, Olgerkhan leaning on the dwarf with Arrayan supporting him under his other arm.
"The corridor is clear," he reported.
"The castle is dead," Arrayan replied, and her voice rang out more strongly than Entreri had previously heard.
"Ye can't be sure," Athrogate replied.
But Arrayan nodded, her confidence working against the doubts of the others. "I don't know how I know," she explained. "I just know. The castle is dead. No gargoyles or mummies will rise against us, nor daemons or other monsters. Even the traps, I believe, are now inert."
"I will ensure that, every step," Entreri assured her.
"Bah, but she can't be sure," Athrogate reiterated.
"I do believe she is," said Jarlaxle. "Sure and correct. The dracolich was the source of the castle's continuing life, was giving power to the book, and the book power to the gargoyles and other monsters. Without the dragon, they are dead stone and empty corpses, nothing more."