"Forward," Murgan said. "Stand in the shadow of the Divine One."
Esmor and Murgan ushered them in further and the rest of the giants crowded close. The humans standing amongst the giants-Cale guessed them to be priests of Shar-slithered through the crowd, encircling the three companions.
The trap would soon be sprung.
Silence fell in the chamber, save for the eager panting of the female gnome.
Cale let himself feel the darkness in the room, on the balcony. He drew it close to himself.
Ready yourselves, he said to his companions, and called to his mind the series of spells he would need to cast.
Kesson placed his palms on the balcony's railing and looked down on the trio. His voice was as smooth as glass. "I wished to look upon you two, the servants of the Shadowlord in this age. This I have done." He shook his head in feigned disappointment. "The Shadowlord has fallen far to choose such as you. He must be desperate indeed."
Riven spun his sabers. "Why don't you come down here, and we'll chat about that?"
Kesson smiled, showing fangs. The female gnome guffawed. The giants shifted on their feet. Cale could feel their eagerness.
"You have something I want," Cale said. "Give it to me willingly and I will not kill you."
Stand ready, Cale said to his companions. Riven, you have the gnome. Mags, light-and lots of it.
The giants laughed raucously. The gnome giggled uncontrollably. Kesson merely held his smile. "I think not."
"The hard way, then," Riven said. He spat on the symbol of Shar and ground it into the floor with his toe.
The giants murmured in anger. Huge hands went to huge hilts. They wanted only a command. Kesson's eyes narrowed.
Almost, Cale said. Almost.
"Kill these pretenders," Kesson said.
The moment the words left his mouth, the Sharrans incanted spells. The giants jerked their blades free of their scabbards and charged.
Now! Cale said.
He surrounded himself and his companions in darkness and rode it to the balcony. The gnome shrieked at their appearance and reached for the daggers at her belt. Kesson faced them, his face hot with anger, the words to a spell already on his lips.
A doorway off the balcony led into a large chamber beyond. Cale could not tell its function and did not care. Movement at the corner of his eye turned his head.
Hundreds of shadows peeled off the wall and swarmed toward them like a hail of arrows.
He called upon the darkness once more and pulled everyone on the balcony into the room beyond.
The moment they materialized, Riven drove both his sabers into the gnome's back and out her abdomen. Blood sprayed and she hissed with pain, eyes wide. He jerked the blades free and she fell to the ground, bleeding, dying.
A ball of light as bright as a noon sun formed above Magadon's head and lit the chamber. The pursuing shadows shrieked and stopped.
The illumination stung Cale's flesh, set his eyes to watering, and dissolved his shadow hand, but he hurriedly spoke the words to an abjuration.
Kesson, too, endured the light. He held out an arm to shield his eyes but continued to cast his own spell.
They stood in a long, wide hallway with rows of statues running its length on both sides. Like those on the ground floor, the statues depicted Shar. They looked stricken in the luminescence.
An elf woman with long dark hair and a shimmering blue robe stood on the far end of the hallway. She held a smooth, straight staff of black wood in her hand, and several wands hung from her belt. A bow was slung over her shoulder. Surprise stole whatever words she might have uttered.
Cale finished his spell before Kesson, and a circular line of silver energy expanded outward from him until it described the entire chamber.
The spell warded the room, making magical travel into and out impossible while Cale's spell remained. Cale would not be able to shadowwalk out, but neither would Kesson, and none of his servants could shadowwalk or teleport in.
Everything you have, Cale told Riven and Magadon. And keep the light bright. I will seal the room.
Kesson finished his spell and spun a long finger in the air. Thousands of magical blades, each about as long as a dagger, formed a ring in the air around him and spun like a cyclone. They reached floor to ceiling and moved so fast they hummed. Cale could hardly distinguish one from another. They caught two of the statues within their orbit and stone chips flew until the force of the blades' impacts toppled the images of Shar. They fell with a crash.
Green light flared around Magadon's head and a bolt of white energy shot from his palm, through the wall of blades, and struck Kesson Rel in the chest.
Kesson grunted and the force of the energy drove him backward a step. The smell of burning flesh filled the air.
The elf recovered from her shock, shrieked in rage, and incanted a spell of her own. A ball of shadows coalesced in her hand and she flung it across the room at Magadon. It hit the floor at his feet and burst into a viscous glob of shadows as thick as tar. The substance covered Magadon to his knees and affixed him to the floor. It started to ooze up his body, covering him in the gook.
"Cale! Riven!" Magadon shouted.
Help him, Cale said to Riven.
Cale had only a moment before two score giants found their way into the chamber. Clutching his mask, he shouted the words to his next spell. When he pronounced the last couplet, the magic created smooth gray stone from the air and Cale mentally molded it into a hemisphere that covered the entire chamber. All doors were blocked.
Magadon's light would hold off the shadows, and Cale's wall of stone would hold off the giants. At least for a time.
"You will not leave here," Kesson said. He incanted another spell, the words sharp and powerful, and pointed his finger at Riven.
"Die," he pronounced.
A black ray went forth from his finger. Moving to help Magadon, Riven never saw it coming and it hit him in the back. His face went white and he fell to his knees, eyes wide, mouth open, gasping for breath.
"You will suffer for this," the elf said, and leveled her staff at Cale. Blue lightning fired from the tip and tore across the chamber. Cale interposed Weaveshear, absorbed the lightning, and pointed the blade back at her.
The blade discharged the bolt and it hit her in the midsection, shattered her staff, and blew her backward against the wall. She fell to the ground, smoking from her clothes, the charred piece of her staff clutched in her hand.
Cale turned to look at Riven. Riven?
Cover your ears, Riven answered, as he climbed to his feet and uttered a single word of the Black Speech. With his one good hand wrapped around Weaveshear's hilt, Cale could not effectively cover his ears. Cale's ears rang and he felt a moment's dizziness. Magadon shouted with pain, but the word disintegrated the black substance holding the mindmage to the floor.
Behind him, Cale heard the elf woman intoning a spell. He turned, saw her casting from her knees.
She is mine, Magadon said.
The elf's speech turned to slurred incoherence and her eyes widened. She screamed and clutched her head. Blood poured from her nose, her eyes, her ears.
Behind his wall of blades, Kesson held forth his hand and an arc of unholy energy went forth from it. It hit Cale, Riven, and Magadon and tore holes in their flesh, cracked bones, bruised organs. They screamed as one.
Cale endured the pain, quickly scanned his friends to ensure they were alive, then bounded forward and stuck Weaveshear into the whirling blades. He grunted with frustration when the blade did not absorb the spell and the impact of the spinning blades almost knocked Weaveshear from his hands.
Kesson chuckled, spoke the words to a spell. Cale answered with a spell of his own. They stared at one another through the blades as they cast.