The light in the cavern dimmed as the creatures mobbed the magic globe, like a pack of enraged moths. Wiz struck out desperately again and again. Caught in the open as they were the things could attack from any direction, including driving straight down. Even the ones who had been knocked from the air crawled toward them to continue the attack.
A fireball whizzed past Wiz’s ear and singed the hair on the left side of his head. He turned his head to glare at Danny and the thing that was diving on him missed his eyes and latched onto his ear instead. Danny shrugged and went back to throwing fireballs.
The little things were so thick in the tunnel there was really no place to aim at, but it didn’t matter. As soon as each fireball emerged from Danny’s staff it was surrounded by a horde of suicidal batlets who dived to their destruction in it. Wiz, seeing what was happening, began dividing his time between beating off attackers and throwing fireballs. The cavern filled with rank smoke and the reek of ozone and burned flesh. Gradually the attackers became fewer and fewer and finally there were none.
The party found themselves standing back to back in the cavern, surrounded by a haze of stinking smoke and a carpet of dead creatures. Wiz realized he had been bitten in a dozen places or more. He could feel the blood oozing down both cheeks and a wound in his forehead was trickling blood into his eyebrows. Most of the others appeared wounded in several places as well.
"What where those things?" Danny panted, as he wiped blood from his eyes. June was instantly at his side with a cloth, cleaning the wounds on his face and ignoring her own.
Wiz bent down to examine the litter of corpses around them. Each of the things had the form of a tiny bat, perhaps hah0 as long as his little finger. The mouths sported a pair of outsized fangs and even in death the little eyes showed a glazed malevolence. He picked one up and showed it to the others.
"Little vampire bats," Danny said. "I wonder if these things carry rabies."
"Rabies we can handle," Wiz reminded him. "Healing magic, remember?"
"Speaking of which:" Malkin said, looking at the bloody wounds on the back of her hand.
As one person, the party sank to the ground where they were and started rummaging through their packs for what Wiz persisted in thinking of as "first aid kits."
On an impulse Wiz tried a listing and scowled at the result.
"More weird code," Danny said and then winced as June dabbed a healing salve on a wound on his neck.
"So the Enemy sent these things against us," Malkin said.
"If I had to guess I’d say they weren’t exactly sent," Wiz said. This part here looks like another variation on the watcher spell and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of code for remote control."
"Meaning?" Danny studied that section of the listing-
"Meaning I think these things operate independently. If I had to guess, and that’s pretty much what it is at this point, I’d say this part here is a magic detector and they home in on magic. What’s more, magic seems to rouse them to a rage. You’ll notice Malkin wasn’t the focus of an attack and they didn’t go after Glandurg until he got Bund Fury into action."
"Kinda like leaving hives of killer bees around as guards," Danny said. "Cute."
"Ugly," Wiz corrected. "Especially since the same principle could be applied to other critters. Nastier ones."
Danny nodded. "Let’s get out of here then. There may be more on the way and I’m not sure I’d want to face a horde of maddened dragons."
"And no more magic," Wiz admonished. "Not if it attracts these things."
"Our steel and our courage alone shall carry us henceforth," said Glandurg.
"Well," Wiz amended, eyeing Blind Fury, "we don’t have to swear off magic completely."
TEN
ENTER THE LOBSTER
"Moira," the wind moaned. "Moira, Moira, Moira, Moira."
It keened around the towers. Frigid fingers clutched at the banners and tugged at the windows. It could not find purchase against the wizards’ spells, but it kept on.
Moira went to the window and tried to look out, but a dark formless thing beat upon the pane, as if to strike her, and she turned away.
"Is it getting worse?" she asked Bal-Simba.
"It gets no better. That in itself means it will get worse. Like a starfish on an oyster. It pulls and pulls and eventually the oyster weakens."
The dragon hesitated. Then perhaps I should go out there," Moira said.
"And give our enemy the advantage he seeks? An unwise move, My Lady."
"Then what shall we do?"
"Work Wait. Perfect the spells to drive this thing from our door."
The dragon did not turn its head. "I wish Wiz was here."
Bal-Simba sighed. "So do I, My Lady. So do I."
Their first warning was the way sounds changed. Careless footsteps or dislodged pebbles rang sharper and more hollowly. Wiz was still trying to puzzle out the difference when they came around a bend in the tunnel and stepped out into a new world.
The cavern was immense. Stalactites and sheets of flow stone rippled from ceiling to floor in pastel pinks and yellows. They made weirdly distorted shadows in the light from Wiz’s glow globe. In spite of the steady illumination the shadows seemed to flicker and dance in eerie motion. The air was heavy with damp and utterly still. Occasionally a foot would dislodge a pebble and the sound would ring through the emptiness.
They picked their way along for perhaps two hundred paces and then, suddenly, there was no floor before ’ them.
It took a minute for Wiz to make a coherent picture out of the sense impressions, like staring at an optical illusion. Finally the elements snapped into focus and he realized they were standing at the edge of a cliff thickly coated with onyx flowstone. By directing the magic light out over the darkness he could see that the face was a steep cascade of the same orange, pink and white material as the surface they were standing on. He could not see the other side and the light did not show him the bottom, but his magic detector pointed straight out across the emptiness.