Storm shook her head. “Impossible, with all the roots-see you the size of these trees around us? — that’d be in their way. Moreover, we humans and elves aren’t the only things dwelling in this forest; the very badgers would be bolting up out of their burrows all around us, if any sustained tunneling was going on. No, that was something else.”
She frowned. “Probably something ancient.”
“Share,” Rune suggested sharply. “I’m beyond tired of the ‘I’m so old and wisely mysterious’ act. Thanks to Elminster.”
Storm gave her a wry smile. “Well, then, I’ll turn to handing out sayings so hoary you’ll roll your eyes: this is going to grow far worse, I fear, before it’s over.”
Rune obligingly rolled her eyes. Then gave Storm a glare and flared her nostrils like an angry horse.
The bard’s sudden grin made her look like a young girl. “Oh, that’s good,” she said admiringly. “Wish I could do that.”
Arclath sighed. “Ladies, ladies.”
Storm and Amarune turned in perfect unison to give him the same flatly withering look. “Well,” Storm remarked, “that’s not your first slip of the tongue this day, and I suppose it’ll be far from your last.”
“Ah, the joys of growing up noble,” Lord Delcastle observed. “Surrounded by spitfires. I’m quite used to it. And before you ask, know this: my mother could surround someone all by herself.”
The agent of Thultanthar faced the baelnorn before the doors of the crypt it was charged to guard, and it was not the undead guardian who was the angriest of the two.
Helgore snarled wordlessly. This was taking too long, and he certainly hadn’t expected the baelnorn to have managed to hurt him this much.
And he had so many more of them to find and destroy.
He’d just have to-but wait, the tiresome dead elf was declaiming his defiance again.
“I am Thurauvyn Nathalanorn, Guardian Undying of House Nathalanorn, and so long as any of me still exists, you shall neither pass nor prevail, human vandal.” The hiss sounded fierce-and desperate.
“Well, then, baelnorn, we shall have to see about that continued existence of yours,” Helgore taunted, with a heartiness he was far from feeling. There had better be powerful magic in the Nathalanorn crypt, because he might soon be in sore need of it. “You’ve proven to be little more than feeble bluster thus far, so it should not take me long, nor much effort …”
They both knew that was a lie, but his words at least made him feel better. This had not gone at all as he’d envisaged it, proud and confident that what Telamont had given him would allow him to sweep baelnorn to dust with a casual gesture, shattering their own baleful battle magics in an instant.
His most powerful swift spells for a fray were gone, spent in a duel that was taking far too long, and this damned undead elf was still standing, still defying him, still preventing him from taking one step nearer the door it guarded-and for that matter, down the passage beyond, seeing as this oh-so-annoying Guardian Undying of House Nathalanorn had decided it was guarding not just the crypt of its family, but the corridor outside the crypt doorway, from wall to root-laced wall.
So he couldn’t even rush past it to blast other baelnorn he might catch unawares, and then return later to deal with this one. It was blocking his path like a castle portcullis. Damn it.
“Shar take you and rend you,” Helgore muttered in the baelnorn’s direction, though latest barrier magic swirled between them like smoke, hiding it from him except for two blue eyes that blazed through the gloom at him with crimson anger flaring around their edges.
If looks could kill … but they couldn’t. Not the gaze of this ancient undead thing, at least.
And he would destroy it, would prevail here, if he just took care enough not to put a foot wrong …
He’d been impatient thus far, irked and letting his rising anger fuel overly swift and reckless attacks.
So it was more than time to try a little patience. First, another rash strike that the baelnorn would easily counter and sneer at-and in its wake, while its effects were still blossoming, three slower attacks: spell-serpents, those agonizingly slow lances of force that undulated through the air like swimming snakes toward a foe. Three, all coming at the undead elf from slightly different directions, while he kept it distracted and busy with swifter, more spectacular spells.
Yes.
He launched his rash strike-a spectacular spell that brought into being streamers of flaming acid, that he arced around to come at the baelnorn from all directions-and then, as the guardian’s smoky barrier lit up under the assault to become a brightly flaring chaos Nathalanorn shouldn’t be able to see through, Helgore created his three serpents, one after another in swift succession, and watched them begin their porpoise-like charges toward their target.
Whom he had to keep very busy, so the baelnorn wouldn’t see its doom coming for it until too late.
He hurled a swarm of magic missiles. Puny darts that the guardian’s barrier would almost certainly intercept and quell-but they were that many more twisting, racing, wheeling perils for the guardian to have to keep track of amid all the long, reaching tentacles of fiery acid homing in on it, in a tightening net that-
The magical blast that thrust at Helgore then was as sudden and powerful as it was unexpected, a speeding helix of force that tore through the barrier and snared the nearest acid streamers as it came, clawing them into itself and bringing them along as it-
Stabbed into Helgore’s shoulder, laying open his chin to the bone as he frantically twisted his head away to avoid losing his face and likely his life as it hurled him off his feet and away.
Unfortunately, the far side of the passage was so close that he crashed into its unyielding stone with force enough to shake even his cocoon of warding magics.
The raw agony of it was worse than any pain he’d ever felt in his life before, and only his wards kept him from blacking out.
Which might mean he would manage to defend himself in the moments ahead and so cling to life, but certainly meant he felt it all. Every last raging flare of pain, as he bounced off the wall and rolled to a gasping, blood-drenched stop. His left arm hung limp and useless, his shoulder was just gone, and-
He could collapse his innermost ward into healing force, and he had to, no matter what the danger. If he got away from the baelnorn …
Helgore kicked feebly at the floor, trying to scoot himself away as he sat huddled and clutching his arm, rocking from side to side and moaning.
What was the baelnorn up to, anyway? Why hadn’t it-?
Through streaming tears, as the dissolving ward flooded through him, sending relief enough that his shuddering body began to obey him again, Helgore saw …
That his serpents had reached the baelnorn and were searing into it, wriggling like hungry eels as they burned its undeath, boring in and up and through.
Translucent flesh sagged, seeming to melt, the baelnorn’s mouth yawned open in a long and soundless scream, and it spent itself, falling from a thing with limbs and a head into a racing streak of glowing undeath, howling at him through its own fading barrier, racing at him in what expanded into a ghostly fanged maw fringed with many reaching taloned arms, talons that grew impossibly long-
And then faded away against his last, feebly flickering ward, and tore it down.
Baelnorn and ward vanished together, in small writhing snarls of nothingness that fell from him, to roll away, and fade as they rolled … across the suddenly dark and quiet stone passage.
He was alone. The Guardian Undying was no more.
Helgore lay there panting and staring into the darkness for what seemed a long time before he mastered the pain enough to work a restorative spell on his shoulder, sacrificing three lesser battle spells to fuel that healing.