He set her down again, got out a vial, drained it-and slowly went pink.
His resigned, lopsided grin made her burst out laughing, broken laughter that soon died. The next vial made him smile in earnest-and his ruined eye glowed faintly blue and was an orb once again, though a deep gash still creased his ruined forehead above and cheek below it. It took another vial before he could see out of it again. The gash stayed just as it was.
When two eyes gazed on Tantaerra out of a mask of drying blood, she asked softly, "You didn't chop up the gauntlet, did you?"
The unmasked man shook his head.
"Then get it, and let's get the hell out of here," she told him fiercely. "Before anything worse happens. Like that wizard rising again."
Armistrade turned, crossed the room, and took up the Fearsome Gauntlet from where it had fallen when he'd chopped the arm that wore it to pieces. Then he bent and plucked up a ring from among the gore. Then another.
"May not be magical," he muttered without looking up, "but they're gold. Oh. Nice gems on this third one."
He turned, took two steps back toward Tantaerra-then stopped in mid-stride, looked over his shoulder, hesitated …and went back for his mask.
"I don't dare leave it here," he murmured. "Not still linked to Karm, and Mahalagris, and this place …and me. I just wish I knew more as to how."
Its glow had faded. As he held it up, Tantaerra could see that its entanglement with the Whispering Blade had left it scarred, a large cut crossing brow and cheek and cutting across one eye. In just the same way her partner was now disfigured.
Tarram gazed down at the mask. Then, slowly, he thrust it into the breast of his tattered garments, shook his head, and sighed. He turned to her. "Now, we flee."
Together they ducked through the open door Mahalagris had appeared from, into dimly lit rooms beyond crammed with chairs, tables, and shelves of books.
"If we had more time, and less of a nightmare journey home …" Armistrade murmured, as they wistfully eyed the tomes they were passing.
"Ifs are horses you can't trust," Tantaerra whispered back at him. She was about to say more, as they headed through an open doorway on into the next room, but heard something behind her-the faintest of boot-scrapes-and whirled around.
In time to see Orivin Voyvik, on his feet again, stalking after them.
The Nirmathi was limping slightly, his head and neck at an odd angle. The Whispering Blade was glowing a cheerful reddish-purple in his hand.
"Tarram!" Tantaerra shrieked. She saw her partner's unmasked face working with effort as the Fearsome Gauntlet on his hand started to glow emerald green. He raised his arm, fingers spread, and aimed it at Voyvik.
The magical gage pulsed once, and something unseen rushed through the air and smote the Nirmathi, hurling him backward.
Voyvik grunted in pain, almost dropping the Whispering Blade as it shrieked its way along one wall and fell, skidding back. Ruby magical radiance awakened on Voyvik's breast and raced briefly up and down his limbs, washing over his face as he rolled up to his feet and started to advance again.
Was he …taller? Stronger?
His head and neck were no longer askew, and he was indeed taller, Tantaerra decided, backing hastily away but taking care to keep to one side, so The Masked could blast Voyvik unimpeded.
Dung.
The Masked unleashed the blasting of the gauntlet again, a ramming blow that staggered the Nirmathi and made him snarl in pain-yet left him looking even taller as he advanced, moving more decisively now, the Whispering Blade raised and glowing an eager, brighter reddish-purple.
He'd staggered but not fallen. Double dung.
Behind her, The Masked muttered something less than pleased and called on the gauntlet again, a different sort of power this time-louder and more visible, a solid blow that drove Voyvik a few paces back.
And left him trembling and growing. Bulkier, more burly, and striding forward again. Smiling more widely, too.
Frantically, The Masked blasted him again-and again.
Overstretched cloth groaned as Voyvik's body bulged, bulking farther. Then a seam split with a long ripping sound, and the Nirmathi's clothes started to fall away in tatters, revealing not a man beneath, but rippling muscles clad in silvery scales.
Voyvik cried out in pain, howls that swiftly became screams-but the agony was from his transformation, not the relentless blastings of the Fearsome Gauntlet. As Tantaerra and her partner watched, backing away steadily, Voyvik's arms lengthened and split into at least four tentacles, his legs seemed to undulate like eels and then fuse into a long, slithering snakelike body and tail. He flopped forward onto his belly, then rose upright like the bowsprit of a ship, propelled by his now-coiling serpentine body, as his screams gargled and twisted into cold, hissing laughter.
Laughter that sounded very much like the cold mirth of Mahalagris.
Tantaerra shivered. "It's-it's not natural."
"I'm used to that," The Masked snapped, "and you should be getting used to such things by now! It's the wizard's magic working on him, out of the sword! Come on!" He shot out the hand that wasn't wearing the gauntlet, and pulled her around and into a run. They fled together.
The next door led them out of the dim light, books, and luxuries Mahalagris surrounded himself with, and back into the colder gray stone passages of the deadly tomb.
Now something slithering and tentacled but able to rear up like a man, Voyvik came after them, slicing the air gleefully with the Whispering Blade.
The Masked slowed to peer ahead suspiciously. "That," he muttered, looking at the ceiling ahead, "is almost certainly another falling-blocks trap."
"I'm thinking the wizard brought Voyvik back to life and protected him somehow," Tantaerra told him. "Taking all the power of your blastings and using them to make him into that snake-thing. I'll bet Mahalagris is in his head, now-which means he knows where all the traps, their triggers, and the ways around them are."
"I won't take that bet," The Masked growled. "Let's just get out of this place as quickly as we can-before our gliding friend back there can use what he knows of it against us."
"So …?"
"So let me try something," he said thoughtfully, raising the gauntlet again. What emerged from it this time was a giant, disembodied man's hand that flew ahead of them in ponderous silence.
Blocks on chains hurtled down, to sway harmlessly inches above the floor, letting loose swirling dust. The hand shoved them aside as they started to rise again. A little way beyond them, a vertical row of spears thrust out of one wall, followed an instant later by another row out of the facing wall. The giant hand thrust against them, and they squealed as they started to retract.
The hand descended to the floor under The Masked's mental bidding, and bumped along, seeking flagstone triggers it could set off.
There were surprisingly few of them, and Tantaerra and her partner were soon sprinting along farther and faster than either of them had ever run before, both mindful that the gliding tentacled thing pursuing them could use rafters and crossbeams to avoid steps and the like that would slow the two of them.
They ran for a long time but faced far fewer traps ere they emerged through a sliding wall into the first room of the tomb-the one with the relief carving of the dragon all across the ceiling-and burst out into the ruins of Hurlandrun, just as the last rays of the setting sun painted its tallest remnants golden.
Only to find the dweomercats charging them, a vast and furry flood.
The Masked did something with the gauntlet that sent a line of lightning crackling into them-yet rather than scorching fur and boiling blood, it made the blue cats disappear entirely, reappearing instantaneously at his feet. Then they were upon him in an avid tide, pulling him under.