Another fifty feet farther, and they came to a branching passageway that descended sharply to the left. A thin trickle of water spilled out of the wall on the right and crossed the dragon's passage before splashing down into the darkness. Gethred looked back to Erzimar.
"Which way?" he mouthed quietly.
The wizard pointed forward. The downward passage looked a little small to him; a dragon with Serpestrill-vy th's evident ego would not care to squirm its way into its lair. But he resolved to keep a very careful watch behind the party as they continued on, just in case.
They continued a short distance past the intersection, and Bragor halted and went to one knee, reaching his thick fingers to the stone floor.
"Stone's pitted here. Acid burns," he whispered.
Erzimar leaned close to look over Bragor's shoulder.
"The dragon's breath," he murmured.
His eye fell on an oddly shaped dark lump deep in a crevice in the floor. He prodded it with the end of his staff. Rusty red flakes crumbled away, revealing a small white glint of bone: A human hand in a seared mail gauntlet.
"Damn," Bragor muttered. "Right about here, then."
He looked up, hefting his warhammer.
"Little humanss. Your sswords are sharp, your sspells are strong. Have you come to sslay me, then?" a sibilant, oddly high-pitched voice rasped from somewhere overhead.
The Argent Hawks went on guard, blades pointing up, crouching against the stone walls of the passage. Erzimar glimpsed a glimmer of bright green near the top of the crevice, a glint from the dragon's eye.
"We've come to put an end to your depredations here, Serpestrillvyth," Gethred answered. "You can leave now, fly off and never return, and we'll let you go. Otherwise you'll not leave this cave alive."
"You musst help me carry off my hoard, then. I cannot fly it away sso easily."
"Seeing as your hoard consists of things you've stolen from the people you've murdered, you can leave it right here," said Gethred.
He glanced back at Erzimar and cut his eyes toward the crevice overhead. The wizard caught the message-take the opportunity to locate the creature as long as it was willing to talk. They all understood that Serpestrillvyth had no intention of leaving; the dragon thought it was toying with them.
"You creep into my house to murder me and take my gold, and you call me a thief?" Serpestrillvyth sounded aggrieved. "If the humanss in that little town keep sending brigandss and assassinss against me, I will have to redouble my effortss to show them the error of their ways. I have dealt with one ssuch band already."
"You'll find us a more formidable challenge than the Sundered Shields," Isildra called up into the cave.
"Indeed. Do you know you are sstanding exactly where they sstood when I killed them all?"
Serpestrillvyth laughed-a strange sound like sandpaper abrading a plank-then the dragon thrust its head down low into the passage and hissed out a tremendous gout of sickly green vapor.
The Hawks cried out and scrambled for cover, so taken aSack by the quickness of the attack that their magical protections were momentarily forgotten. Only Erzimar did not allow himself to flinch. Instead he gestured and snapped out a magical word, and hurled a bright stabbing fork of lightning up at the spot where the dragon crouched. He saw the creature twist away from the magical blast, but then the dragon's horrid breath sank down over the company.
Acrid fumes stung his eyes, and thousands of tiny pinpricks danced over his skin-but Isildra's holy protections against the dragon's breath held, and Erzimar endured with little more than a stinging in his eyes and throat, while the very rock around him turned black and flaked to the ground like rotten clay.
"You are warded against acid!" he called to his companions. "Stand your ground!"
Gethred swore in Elvish and said, "I can't reach the damned thing!"
He held his greatsword in a high guard, never taking his eyes from the darkness above. Bragor, crouching nearby, set down his warhammer and unslung a big crossbow from his back, quickly cranking back the bow's arms. The dwarf expertly laid a thick quarrel in the weapon.
The dragon hissed in frustration, "Sso. Your magic guardss you from my breath. But I have other weapons, humanss."
Erzimar readied his staff, expecting the dragon to drop down on them, but Serpestrillvyth had something else in mind. The dragon shifted across the top of the crevice with a quick writhing of its body, then whirled away and slammed its powerful tail into the fragile limestone above. Stone split with a loud, terrible crack! that staggered the adventurers in the bottom of the dragon's passage. Then a great cascade of rubble thundered down over them.
Erzimar raised his arms to cover his head, feeling jagged boulders and broken stalactites glance from his magically armored flesh. The smaller pieces simply bounced away from him like so much firewood burned completely to ash, seemingly solid but light as a feather. But then a much larger piece of the wall caught him as he straightened up, a blunt stalactite the size of a butter churn. Despite the armoring magic that protected him, the wizard was driven to the ground and knocked breathless. Bright spots danced in his eyes.
That would have killed me if not for the stoneskin spell, he realized.
He shook his head to clear his vision, and looked up at his companions.
Bragor and Isildra were digging themselves out from under loose rubble, floundering to their feet. Gethred; at the head of the band, had actually been in front of the dragon's cave-in, and had avoided the rocky avalanche. Similarly, Selran in the back was out of the way as well. But Murgholm….
"Help… I… help…" Murgholm murmured.
He lay pinned against the wall by a boulder the size of an ox, gasping out curses in Vaasan. His face was as pale as a sheet, and a dark trickle of blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Erzimar's spell guarded him from sharp blows, but the inexorable weight of the boulder simply crushed him.
The wizard took two unsteady steps toward the injured Vaasan before he thought to look for the dragon and see what Serpestrillvyth was doing. He glanced up just as the wyrm descended into the passage above Isildra. With one quick snap of its jaws, it seized the Helmite cleric by the head and shoulder, digging its fangs into her flesh and worrying her from side to side. Isildra screamed-a muffled sound, since her head was inside the dragon's mouth-and struggled, frantically trying to pull herself away.
"Let her go, you fiend!" cried Gethred.
The half-elf leaped in from above and slashed at the dragon with his sword. Black blood spattered from his blade as he sheared away a broad swatch of scales from the side of its neck. Serpestrillvyth hissed in pain and thrashed away. Still clenching Isildra in its teeth, it dug its claws into the soft rock of the passage walls and scrambled back up into its retreat overhead, dragging her out of reach. Gethred leaped up and hacked again, but the dragon was out of reach. Bragor finally found his crossbow again and snapped off a shot at the retreating monster, but the bolt merely punched a small bloodless hole in the membrane of its wing.
Erzimar started to incant a deadly spell of disintegration at the monster, but the dragon had Isildra in its grasp-if he missed by even a finger's width, he might incinerate his own comrade. He cursed and changed his spell to a barrage of fiery orbs, easier to aim and less dangerous to the cleric if he should miss. Five searing bolts scorched the dragon's lashing tail, and it scrambled up out of sight again.
Gethred howled in wrath, "Erzimar! We have to go after her!"
"I know!" Erzimar snapped back.
Isildra still struggled up above. He could hear her cries. The stoneskin enchantment would keep Serpestrillvyth from ripping her to pieces easily, blunting its claws and teeth-but it could still maul her to death slowly. They had to get up there quickly.