She turned and swooped at him, in hopes of distracting him long enough for The Masked to take him down. Voyvik, however, had got a knife from somewhere, and was holding The Masked at bay, driving him back with vicious slashes. He turned as she swooped in, shrieking.
The gleaming blade came at her-and The Masked was there, tackling him, the knife gliding over her head.
She strained to turn in the air, kicking, and her left toe caught the mad Nirmathi in the ear and spun him around with a roar of startled pain.
Then she was past, tumbling in the air, curling up to bite at her next vial.
It slammed into her lower lip painfully, splitting it open. Tantaerra tasted blood, spat it out, and bit into the vial's seal.
The healing tingle, when it came, was still one of the most wonderful sensations she'd ever experienced. The pain in her gut faded, and she flew high into the air. She was whole again.
There was no way to know how long this flight would last. With the other potions already fading, it was past time to end this. Tantaerra turned in midair and hurled herself down at the mausoleum again.
On the roof below, Voyvik and Tarram were locked in a struggling clinch, the Nirmathi's blade held well out to one side with the masked man's hand locked around the wrist that held it. They strained against each other, throwing themselves from side to side to try to overbalance each other. And then they toppled together, with spectacular slowness, into the mausoleum below.
Tantaerra swerved to arrow after them.
They smashed down atop the pinned skeleton of Valorn the Healer, shattering one of its arms. Voyvik ended up on the bottom and took the brunt of the fall, landing on his back amid riven shards of bone, as The Masked tumbled away.
The Nirmathi rolled slowly to his feet and came up staggering, bent over and clutching what were probably broken ribs.
Tantaerra stopped in front of him, floating. "My turn," she spat.
Voyvik ran.
Well now, Tantaerra thought with surprise. Inspiring that sort of fear was a pleasant change.
Then she saw his destination: Valorn's broken coffin, and the healing vials lying in it amid the goo. He scrambled up into it just as Tantaerra's power of flight faded, sending her to the ground in a bruising landing she could feel all over. She rolled, slammed into the dais that held the healer's coffin on high, and ended up with her feet up it and the back of her neck on the mausoleum floor, looking up.
It was the perfect position to watch from as The Masked leap down out of the darkness, from atop another raised coffin he'd scaled, and slammed into Voyvik's back, ramming the Nirmathi face-first against the stone sarcophagus.
It didn't yield, but Voyvik's face did.
The Masked gave him no time to recover, but hauled the Nirmathi up by the shoulders and threw him forward, across the top edge of the coffin. He dragged him back until his neck was on that stone lip-then leaped high and came down on it with both boots.
Voyvik's body bounced and spasmed, arms and legs flailing, then went still. His head lolled loosely, drooling blood, the eyes dark and unseeing.
The Masked turned away from what was left of Voyvik without another glance. "How many vials can you carry?" he asked Tantaerra.
Tantaerra, still looking at Voyvik's corpse, fought against a sudden surge of nausea, then shrugged and started fishing unbroken vials out of the goo. The seat of Voyvik's breeches served to wipe them more or less dry, and she started stowing them. They all looked the same, so there was no knowing what each one did, but any magic was better than none at all.
She managed to stow eleven in places where they might not break if she took a hard fall, then started handing them to The Masked, who managed to put away ten, on various places on his person.
That left more than a dozen.
They exchanged looks. "Right here is as good a place to leave them as any," Tantaerra told her partner.
He nodded. "Remember how to get back here, then."
They turned and looked into the gleaming yellow eyes of countless dweomercats.
"Oh, yes," The Masked said slowly. "Our escort."
Tantaerra eyed the swirling radiance playing over eerie blue pelts. "Can we eat them?"
The Masked chuckled. "Gods, but you're a great partner."
Tantaerra looked up at him. "Thank you," she said quietly. "I-thank you."
The remaining arm of Valorn the Healer lifted, perhaps in salute.
She gave the feebly moving bones a good hard kick.
∗ ∗ ∗
As the masked man and the small halfling walked the overgrown streets of Hurlandrun, dweomercats stalked them-yet this time did not attack, even when The Masked stopped to cut a sapling. As they went on he trimmed off its branches to fashion a crude pole. None of the cats ever ventured quite near enough to bite or claw, or to be reached by the drawn daggers of the pair. Rather, the sleek blue panthers surrounded the two intruders in a ring, in the end almost herding them up to the doors of the tall, hulking building with the cracked dome. Like the mausoleum, it was windowless.
"One needn't be a sage to know this is the Shattered Tomb," The Masked muttered.
"How old is it?" Tantaerra asked, eyes on the great rift in the dome and the leaning half of the building.
"About fifty years," he replied, "not ancient."
"So what did that?"
"Spell battle between Mahalagris and Karm, perhaps. Or mice."
Tantaerra sniggered. "They have big mice, hereabouts. All right, Masked One, let's be about this."
They were standing in a wilderness of weeds and grass sprouting between great square stones, underfoot. A wilderness that had grown a crop of more human skulls than Tantaerra had ever seen before. Raised stone platforms jutted up like gigantic teeth here and there, either plinths for vanished statues or the sort of ancient communal tombs she'd heard were sometimes called "bone boxes." Dweomercats slunk watchfully among the ruins on all sides.
Facing them across this desolation of weathered stone, centered in the wall of the building, was a tall, arched double entrance door of carved stone. Two carved, snarling lion's heads adorned the doors where handles should be, their fangs carved in arcs that touched each other, to form jutting rings of stone. A stout tree trunk had been thrust through these to keep the doors together-a bar that certainly hadn't been there for more than a year, let alone fifty.
Tantaerra looked at The Masked. He looked back at her for a moment, then led the way. They turned their backs on those doors and walked all around the building, seeking other ways into and out of it. They found none that they could recognize. Not a window, not a seam among the stones that suggested a doorway-and no damage of passing years that was more than bird droppings or stained stone.
Along the way, The Masked had picked up a fist-sized fragment of old stone. He used it now to poke the tree trunk out of the stone rings.
The wood fell and bounced on the flagstones underfoot with the ringing crash of falling timber.
"So much for stealth," Tantaerra muttered.
The Masked shrugged. "Wizards know when visitors intrude." He gave her a sidelong look. "And if they happen to be asleep, flying halflings that glow pink and trail flames are apt to awaken them."
Tantaerra's reply was as a gesture as rude as it was wordless.
With his pole, The Masked thrust at the lion's fangs on the right-hand door. The great door swung open-outward-easily and in eerie silence. Clearly counterweighted and well maintained, with nothing unusual to be seen in its frame, and the hinges on the inside free of rust and freshly oiled.
"See? Expecting us," The Masked commented.
"As it happens, that does not fill me with joy," Tantaerra murmured.