It was longer still before he felt whole enough again to roll cautiously over and try to get up. As far as his knees, at least, to stare around at a passage that seemed strangely unmarked for all the raging magic that had so recently been hurled around in it. It was deserted. Dark and empty, with no elves racing to see what had made all the tumult.
And there, mockingly close to him, stood the doors of the crypt of House Nathalanorn that the baelnorn had guarded for centuries before his birth, and had fallen defending against him. Just as-if things went much better than this first bumbling assault-many other baelnorn would fall.
Wincing, for although the pain had fled to no more than a dull ache of reminder, his restored shoulder was stiff, Helgore got to his feet. His shoulder felt … odd. As if it wasn’t truly part of him. It didn’t seem to fit, somehow.
He shook his arm and flexed the fingers, numbness racing along them and then fading, as he studied the Nathalanorn House symbol. That entwined salamander and fish, amid a sinuous and clinging forest of ivy. At least, that’s what it looked like, and he supposed there was no one left in the world to correct him about that now.
He had won.
Helgore permitted himself a smile, then walked a few cautious steps back and forth in the passage to make sure his body was his own once more. It was high time to, as the arcanists who’d first tutored him had been fond of saying, “Get on with it.”
He hadn’t much magic left, but this should suffice, right now …
He worked a swift magic, remembering to step aside as he finished, and had the satisfaction of watching the crypt door shatter.
The pieces, however, hung in place, hovering in midair, the broken edges glowing and pulsing with the angry blue racing glows of disturbed magic. So his way was still barred. Of course.
Helgore snorted. Misbegotten elves!
He spent the slightest of spells to sweep the shattered pieces of door aside, to crash down on the passage floor. Several of them slumped straight into dust.
Leaving him facing another set of doors. An inner pair that were closed and intact and seemingly not locked. These would, of course, bear an enchantment that would slay any non-elf-or any elf not bearing the right token-touching them, to prevent tomb looting.
So it would take another spell to … wait.
Helgore looked back down the passage the way he’d come, and there it was: the skin of the elf he’d slain. Rippling and lifting a little as he gazed at it, like a cat or quiet dog craving attention.
He gave the skin a wry little smile, worked a very small and simple magic-of the sort wizards these days called cantrips-and bent his will on it.
Obediently, it slithered forward, flowing to the doors and climbing them like some sort of animated, rearing leaf. At his direction, it wrapped itself around the pull ring of the inner doors, turned it, and pulled.
The doors opened in eerie silence, revealing the faint blue glow of a ward. By its light, he could see into the circular, dome-shaped crypt of the Nathalanorns.
He could see dozens of effigies on the floor. Or, no, they were the crumbling, ancient skeletons of elves, cloaked in magic that almost hid them from swift and distant scrutiny-magic that shaped the likeness of the dead as if they were alive but lying on their backs, asleep. Intangible effigies of magic, rather than the sculpted stone that adorned the tombs of some dwarves and humans. And-ahh-what he’d come for and had begun to hope hard for, in addition to the crypt ward itself, was there as well-small areas where the blue ward glow was more intense, unmoving spots centered on swords, hunting horns, harps, gauntlets, bracers, and breastplates interred with or upon the dead. Magic items.
Helgore looked up and down the passage again to make sure no one was approaching. Finding it as deserted and silent as before, he drew in a deep breath, settled himself into a comfortable stance, legs balanced well apart, and worked one of the longest and most intricate magics he’d ever been taught.
He was shaking with weariness when he was done, but if this worked, that would shortly cease to be a problem.
And so would whatever spells any baelnorn hurled his way.
Helgore smiled and held out both hands to what he could see of the crypt, as if it was a young child he was beckoning to run into his arms.
What stole out of the crypt was utterly silent, and slower than a child. It was more like a scent wafting through the air, inexorably drifting toward him, and up his arms-his fingers tingled as if struck by sparks, then went numb-into him.
Yes! His weariness melted away, his hair slowly straightened to stand quivering on end, his scalp lifted and prickled, his teeth started to itch … power was sliding into him, the force captured and stored by all those enchantments now becoming his, building in him, building …
Helgore stood silently, watching swords and harps and armor slumping to dust in the crypt as the magic left them and flowed into him, more and more of it.
The effigies faded, the bones slumped to dust, and the walls of the tomb cracked, long jagged lines moving across the hitherto-smooth dome, as the blue light grew fainter and fainter …
Until all of the power of House Nathalanorn was a visible blue-white line in the air, flowing into his embrace. And he was filling up, feeling the first rising discomfort as he swelled, on his way to bursting with energy-a discomfort that swiftly became pain, and that pain grew and grew …
He was quivering, a quivering that became trembling, that fell swiftly into uncontrollable shuddering. All of his wounds were gone, healed by the blue-white fire still sliding inexorably into him, but the boon was now agony, his skin starting to glow blue-white, his eyes turning to blue-white flames.
Blue-white fire spilled from his lips as he groaned, a long moan escaping from blue-white lips, a moan that started deep but rose slowly in pitch and urgency-
And then it was done.
The crypt of House Nathalanorn stood dark and empty, and Helgore Ulitlarathulm swayed and shuddered in the passageway, swollen with blue-white light that boiled and leaked out of him as he turned, lurching like a drunken man whose knees were too stiff to bend, and stalked like a zombie down the passage.
Drunk on power, swollen to gasping pain from all the energies surging through him. Heading for the next crypt.
It was surprisingly close to the one he’d just ravaged. This one had a device he recognized on its doors, an emblem that had been in the records that had been gathered to prepare him for his task. It was not something easily described-privately, he thought of it as the tangled collision of three harps-but Helgore knew it at first glance. It marked the crypt behind it as that of House Erembelore.
He lurched up to the doors, but no baelnorn appeared. So he fought the pain down to a few moments of precise control-and blasted the doors to nothingness, aiming sideways so if anything more shattered, it would be the stone of the doorframe, and nothing in the crypt beyond.
That brought out the Erembelore baelnorn, in a cold rage that Helgore was still in too much pain to indulge with high words.
He merely sent enough energy to make himself feel far more comfortable right through the undead guardian, a roaring that consumed it before it could utter a sound.
Helgore took five unsteady steps forward, right through the sighing, eddying, glowing dust that a moment ago had been an elf who’d spent centuries guarding his dead kin. He paused just long enough to make sure it was indeed gone, and not lurking as some sort of malicious remnant, and-fell headlong into the dim blue radiance of the last resting place of the Erembelores.
That hadn’t been so hard, he thought dully, trying to collect his thoughts. The pain was almost all gone, and the dazedness that had almost overwhelmed him had been dashed out of him by his sudden meeting with the cold and unyielding floor.