Zaknafein and Galathae moved down the corridor at a swift pace. Galathae wore a fine suit of silvery chains, but it made not a sound, backed and lined as it was by the silk of the white spiders and the mucus of the strange hagfish bred in Callidae. Every so often, the paladin would stop and hold forth her sword of blue-white ice, then reach into it, or into herself, or perhaps both, Zak thought, to bring forth a mist of some sort, bluish in color, that seemed a ghostly image of that sword.
“The way is clear,” she said, inviting Zak to move along with her.
“The sword told you that?”
“My goddess told me that.”
Zak gave a little chuckle, one that brought a frown to Galathae’s face.
“Bluccidere helps me to focus my thoughts,” she said, her tone showing Zak that she was clearly perturbed by his continuing and obvious doubts.
“Your thoughts?” he sarcastically asked anyway, because he simply could not help himself. Zaknafein had heard too much of goddesses in the many years of his life. “Perhaps that is the source then, yes? Your thoughts. Your senses. Your instincts.”
“To focus my thoughts to connect with the answers of my goddess. You do not believe in Eilistraee.”
“I know nothing of—”
“But you think you know enough to tell me that I am wrong in my faith,” Galathae interrupted.
“No, it’s not that.”
“It is exactly that,” said Galathae. “I understand, though, and fully so, for I was as lost as Zaknafein not so long ago.”
“So, now I am lost because I do not see this Eilistraee creature the same way that you do? And here I was, fearing that my doubting would offend you, when, had I known your intent to condescend, I would have tried to offend you.”
“Condescend?”
“I am hardly lost.”
“I did not mean—”
“You did exactly mean.”
The two stared hard at each other for a few heartbeats, both showing expressions caught somewhere between indignation and apology.
Zak broke the tension when he began to laugh, and a moment later, Galathae joined in with him.
“I meant no disrespect,” he said.
“Nor did I,” said Galathae.
“Yes, you did,” they both said together, and they shared a heartier laugh still.
“As long as your divine senses of direction and danger work, be they from some goddess, your sword, or your inner power, who am I to judge?” Zak remarked.
“Fair enough. And if you fight well, perhaps I’ll keep you around.”
Down the corridor they went, laughing.
And then, so suddenly and unexpectedly, falling.
“Wonderful news!” Azzudonna said excitedly. “And it is the right thing—”
“This is not what we discussed,” Vessi interrupted. Allefaero, Ayeeda, and Ahdin Duine all turned to the small man in surprise, while the last at the meeting, High Priest Avernil, simply offered a scowl.
“What do you mean?” Azzudonna asked. “This is exactly what we four talked about that day in Ibilsitato.”
“We four,” Vessi agreed. “Four of us, and a fifth if Nvisi decided to join.”
“That was before we knew Holiness Avernil’s intentions,” said Ahdin Duine.
“We are walking into a city against enemies who number in the thousands,” Ayeeda added.
“Tens of thousands,” Avernil said.
“But so, too, do our allies count such numbers,” said Vessi. “We were supposed to be going in support of Galathae and Zaknafein.”
“That, and to free our kin from the grip of a demon,” Ayeeda said.
“Which is the more important issue,” High Priest Avernil put in, staring at Vessi and not backing down or even blinking at all. “Being loyal to your friends is important and honorable, and surely a positive attribute in the eyes of Dark Maiden Eilistraee, but—”
“I give not a thought to Dark Maiden Eilistraee,” Vessi snapped back. “That is your calling, not mine.”
“But the notion of breaking tens of thousands of our kin free of the grip of a tyrant demon is the higher calling,” Avernil stubbornly finished.
“Kin?” Vessi replied. “We know nothing of these udadrow. Nvisi is more kin to anyone of Callidae than they.”
“Even Zaknafein and Jarlaxle?” Ahdin Duine asked, looking at Azzudonna as she did and drawing Vessi’s gaze to his dearest friend as well.
“No, of course I’m not talking of Zaknafein or Jarlaxle, or any of the other three who came to Callidae. But this was not our plan. We four were to travel fast down the tunnels to catch up to Galathae and Zaknafein, going in support of them. We four! Not Avernil and his hundreds.”
“Only fifty or sixty will go,” the priest interjected.
“Only fifty or sixty. Well, that makes it very different,” came Vessi’s reply, dripping with sarcasm. “I’m sure that the Temporal Convocation won’t mind, then, that only fifty-five, or sixty-six, or however many the final count turns out to be, disobeyed them and abandoned Callidae for some desperate mission in Menzoberranzan.”
“Fifty-five, or sixty-six, or however high the number becomes, is a far stronger force than the handful,” said Avernil.
“And a far more noticeable force,” Vessi replied.
“We’ll be long away before they know we are gone,” Allefaero assured Vessi.
“For a wizard, you really miss the point far too often. They will know we are gone, but even that is beside the main issue here. The reason the Temporal Convocation said no to Avernil’s church and to Azzudonna was because they fear the udadrow will realize with the infusion of such numbers that another place, another city, another entire clan of drow have come to join the fight against their demon Lolth. Galathae alone would not present that problem.”
“With her unusual sword of pressed blue ice?” Azzudonna asked, and reminded.
“Is it any more unusual than Entreri’s?” Vessi argued. “And Jarlaxle is known for collecting exotic items. No, with fifty and more of us entering Menzoberranzan, we put Callidae at risk. I cannot be a part of that.”
“I have to go,” Azzudonna pleaded with her dear friend.
“I know, and I’ll tell no one.”
“I need you with me. Vessi, we’ve been through so much.”
“We have, and I respect your choice, though I fear that Biancorso’s chances in the next cazzcalci will be greatly diminished without you. But I cannot go, my friend. I cannot. Callidae is my home and my heart and I’ll not join in this plan that so puts it at risk.”
“We will become just more members of Jarlaxle’s mercenary band, then,” said Ayeeda. “Strays he collected on the surface and brought into his fold.”
“That would be a good front for you down there,” conceded Vessi.
“For us,” Ayeeda insisted, but Vessi just shook his head.
“Galathae went under Geas Diviet,” Vessi reminded, and stared hard at Avernil. “Will you priests demand the same of yourselves and of your flock?”
The priest considered it for a few moments, then shook his head. “No.”
Vessi scoffed.
“We will, if it will satisfy your . . .” Ayeeda began, but Vessi waved the whole notion away.
“I cannot go, in either case. I cannot do this to my beloved Callidae.” He kissed Azzudonna on the cheek, then Ayeeda, then bowed to the others and left the small house where they had gathered.
Callidae had suddenly become quite lonely for Alvinessy of Biancorso.
Some twenty feet down, they landed hard. Zak managed to turn his legs to send him into an immediate roll and slide, for the floor upon which he landed was sloped, descending before him. Galathae crashed down less gracefully, though, sliding to the side and slamming her hip and elbow, then her head with lesser force. She gurgled, then groaned, and grabbed at her hip and tucked her arm in tight against her side.
By the time Zak could recover enough to stand—and on a badly twisted ankle—the paladin was softly chanting. Zak ambled to her and slid down beside her, immediately wiping a bit of blood that was streaming down over her temple from under the brim of her silvery helmet. Worse, the front and side of her tan trousers were showing blood, as well, and lots of it.
Her eyes didn’t seem to focus and her chant—a spell of healing, Zak presumed—fell away to nothingness.
“Stay with me,” he whispered to her, and he grabbed at her belt, thinking to reveal the wound there and stem the flow.
But Galathae’s hand went to that hip and she whispered the name of Eilistraee.
Zak watched the woman’s hip shimmering like the water on a pond in a slight breeze, and he heard Galathae’s breathing ease.
She brought the hand to her head, brushed off her helmet, and continued to send forth those waves of healing until that wound, too, had mended.
Then she relaxed and looked up at Zak. “Ouch,” she said quietly.
He helped her to sit up.
“Your goddess granted you healing without casting a spell?” Zak whispered.
“What is a spell but a prayer? I am a paladin of Eilistraee. When I most need her, she will be there for me. And yet you doubt.”
“Drizzt can mend his wounds similarly, and no god is involved,” the stubborn warrior replied, still keeping his voice low.
“You have witnessed divine magic all your life and yet you doubt,” the paladin said with a shake of her head.
“The most powerful magic I have witnessed is that of Gromph Baenre, and I have never met anyone with less use for the gods than he. Or perhaps that of Kimmuriel Oblodra, who despises all notions of meddling greater beings.”
“I, for one, am glad for such a meddling being,” she said, indicating her healed wounds.
Saying nothing to that, he helped Galathae to her feet, the two looking back up at the wall they had somehow come through. There was no door to be seen.
“A trap,” Zak surmised.
But Galathae was shaking her head. “My augury would have shown it to me. When I last asked the goddess weal or woe regarding our path, the answer indicated no such dangers as this. However you believe I get my magic, that cannot be.”
“Unless the trap was put there after you cast your spell,” said Zak.
“Which means that there are enemies in the tunnels above. We must get back up and find them!”
“But how? And where are we now?” Zak asked, turning about. He nudged Galathae, who held forth her sword, which was now emanating not a blue mist, but red.
“Enemies,” she said.
Zak nodded and tried to take a more complete look at the large chamber, one with a ceiling spiked by stalactites and a floor broken by thin, tapering stalagmite mounds. The smell of death hung in the air—not as if it were a fresh kill rotting, but rather, as if this place was simply too full of murder to ever be rid of the stink.
“Stay close,” Galathae whispered, and Zak was impressed at how quickly and fully she had recovered from her fall. Perhaps she, or maybe Drizzt, was onto something here with these added disciplines, he thought, especially as he tested his ankle.
They moved into the chamber, past the stone pillars, standing silent sentry like the stripped skeletons of some long-dead behemoth. At one point, Zak came upon a mess of entrails against a base of a stalagmite.
Galathae nodded when he pointed it out.
This was a place of death.
Zak stopped and held up his hand. Something had moved in the darkness to the right. He pointed that way, he and Galathae taking cover behind two pillars, with Zak at the very edge of the light emanating from Bluccidere, and not yet calling upon his own light-emitting blade.
They came in fast at Galathae, a band of zombies and skeletons of all sorts: humans, elves, dwarves, even a pair of skeletal minotaurs, their massive horns seeming all the more impressive attached to a bare skull.
Galathae met the first attack with a sweeping two-handed strike, shattering a skeleton and cutting a zombie cleanly in half. She had to immediately go to a one-hand grip, though, lifting her shield to fend the charge of a skeletal minotaur. She took the hit and went flying backward, but held her balance as she skidded against a rocky mound, the minotaur close behind.
Zak leaped out from his cover, calling forth the whip and cracking it one, two, three, tearing and ripping at the nearest monsters, including the second minotaur.
He snapped the whip again, drawing a line of fire on the minotaur’s skull as it turned.
A zombie rushed in from the right, clawing for Zak’s extended arm, but he casually sent his smaller sword across and under that extended arm, angled up to stab the zombie right in its open mouth.
He twisted his arm and jerked suddenly to take the top half of the undead thing’s head off as he rushed past it, moving behind a group of monsters that turned as he passed—and put them between him and the raging minotaur beast.
Its charge was barely lessened as it barreled through its supposed allies, sending broken bones and shattered zombies and skeletons every which way. Head lowered, it bore down on Zak—who called his blade of light back, turning Soliardis into a sword of radiance once more, as he fell flat to the floor, rolling and turning at exactly the right moment for that powerful weapon to cut across the giant skeleton’s ankles—and he was surprised and amazed at how easily Soliardis bit at the undead monster, severing both its ankles with that single strike.
Zak still got run over, but the minotaur took the worst of it, flying down hard against the floor and the next stalagmite in line—and with Zak up and charging in right behind, smashing it a dozen times before it could turn around to fight back—and by that point, it was little more than a pile of broken bones.
Zak moved around it, away from the other monsters, this time, trying to keep everything in front of him, and also trying to keep a watch on Galathae. He gasped when he saw her, for the minotaur had crushed in against the pillar where the paladin has been standing. He breathed easier when he saw Bluccidere come up through the back of that monster’s skull, a beautifully executed uppercut.
The weapon master went to work on the minotaur standing before him, leading with his ice sword and waiting for those moments of best opening to send Soliardis driving in, the powerful blade, its radiance hungry to consume the undead, taking great chunks of the flailing monster with every hit.
They were turning the fight perfectly, he thought.
Until he saw a giant eyeball hanging in the air at the far end of Bluccidere’s glow.
“Galathae!” he called.
Two bolts of black energy shot out from the eye, one at Zak, one at Galathae, who was still pinned to the stalagmite and could not dodge.
Zak did dive aside, but still got nicked and felt as if his very life force was being sucked out of him, as if the cold jaws of death itself had entered his body and begun to chew.
He came up out of the dive to see the floating eyeball blink away, and with a roar, he threw himself at his foes, determined to get to his companion, who had apparently taken the necrotic ray at full force.
Galathae felt the cold energy biting at her. She shoved aside the destroyed minotaur and swept her sword across to drive back the monsters, then cast a quick spell of healing upon herself.
And felt nothing. Something—likely that beam of dark energy—was preventing her from healing.
Confused, but with no time to sort it out, the paladin began wildly sweeping Bluccidere, then bashing anything that came too close to her with her shield. Realizing that Zak was okay, and even finishing the group that had turned for him, she fought defensively, scored few hits but gave up none.
She nodded, seeing Zak revert Soliardis again to a whip, snapping it back and forth horizontally before him and taking the face from a trio of zombies that fell over one by one, like chopped trees finally surrendering to the earth.
They would win, she believed.
And then the wall grabbed at her, tentacles sprouting from all about the stalagmite, hooking her arms, pulling her shield from in front of her, weakening her swing so that Bluccidere did little damage to the fiends coming at her!
A skeleton’s bony finger raked across her face. A zombie bit the forearm of her shield hand, pinching her viciously beneath her mail.
“No!” Holy Galathae said in pure denial, and with a roar, she drove herself forward, tearing and tugging, pulling her sword arm free, then whipping her holy blade down atop the chewing zombie’s shoulder, nearly decapitating it and dropping it destroyed to the floor.
Across went her backhand, taking a pair of skeletons, and then Zak was there, thinning the ranks with equal fury from behind.
“No!” Galathae yelled, and she ripped herself free of the grabbing tendrils, staggering forward, shield-bashing the next zombie with such force that she launched it into the air and to the ground.
She started to advance, then stopped, so suddenly understanding it all, the lair of this hellish beast, as a giant, strange skull appeared from behind a nearby pillar, its toothy maw of bone opened wide, its enormous singular eye staring at her with obvious malevolence.
Tiny lights floated about its head—lights, she understood, that used to be the eyes at the end of fleshy eyestalks, long rotted to nothingness.
“Stay close,” she told Zaknafein. She ran to the zombie she had shield-rushed and chopped it down as it tried to stand.
One of the lights floating about that skeletal creature issued a pair of purplish rays, shooting out to strike its companions.
Zak felt his skin hardening, felt as if he were turning to stone!
But he felt the warmth of Galathae’s presence and the mist of Bluccidere, shimmering about his skin, defeating the petrifying attack.
“Clear a path for me!” Galathae yelled, and Zak brought forth his whip and began tearing lines into the plane of fire as it slashed across the faces of zombies and the skulls of skeletons, ripping them apart with wild abandon.
Fearlessly, Galathae charged the floating undead eye monster, Bluccidere in both hands, calling to the sword, empowering the sword, with every stride.
Another ray came forth from a different one of the tiny orbs floating about the skull, this one streaking a yellow line.
Zak felt himself lifted and thrown back.
Galathae, too, took the hit, but she powered through it, growling, determinedly stepping forward.
“I . . .” she roared, “smite . . . thee!”
Her overhead chop met the floating monster’s attempted bite, the blue-white blade humming furiously with power, and she brought it down with all her strength and with all the holy power she could manage.
The sword struck, the air about her and her target suddenly glowing blue. The floating skull was driven down, the blade putting a large crack from above that huge central eye all the way to the crown.
But the monster was far from finished, and bit hard at the paladin’s midsection, sending her twisting away in pain.
In came Zak, blades in hand, in a whirling and ferocious assault, stabbing and slashing wildly to force the monster back; then, as it floated back from his reach, Zak made Soliardis a whip once more and cracked it in a stinging sweep above the skull, across the floating tiny lights.
Not one but three rays came forth in response, each splitting to strike at Zak and at Galathae.
The first made him feel heavy, as if his limbs were wrapped in thick metal.
The second made him realize that he couldn’t win and should flee for his life.
The third showed him the truth of the world, that the real monster here was Galathae, and so he should strike at her!
But he looked at her, bathed in holy light, serene and yet focused in her efforts to resist the rays—the same rays that had hit him. Her beauty—not physical beauty, but ethical beauty—comforted him, showed him the truth of the attempted charm, showed him that he could not be afraid, and allowed him to release the magical weights that were now slowing his movements.
He was on the beast in a heartbeat, whip leading, then Soliardis reverting to its sword form. Zak stabbed it straight into that central eye—and while it was stuck there, Galathae slammed Bluccidere down again atop it, widening the crack.
And then again as the eyes sent forth three rays once more.
The first sent both Zak and Galathae flying backward, as if a great invisible hand had just plucked them from their feet and thrown them away.
The second hit them in mid-flight, the same withering energy as Zak had felt initially, biting at his life force, calling him to the realm of death.
They landed and tumbled hard across the floor, some two dozen feet from the skull as the third ray flashed in, a yellowish bolt that hit Zak and Galathae, but also a zombie that was stubbornly rising from the floor between them and the eye.
Zak dove aside and felt a strange pulse go through his body, and his eyes widened in horror as the zombie’s entire form suddenly flapped as if it were a bedroll hanging on a wash line in a strong wind.
It flapped again weirdly, and then was simply gone, disintegrated to nothingness.
Zak turned to Galathae, who was still there, also gawking at the display of terrible power.
And then all that he saw on her face was determination, and she tried to claw her way up from the floor and charge back at the monster.
But she could not, nor could Zak, for that first ray remained, holding them like magical chains.
Zak struggled against the pull, but braced himself for more rays that were surely coming his way.
But no.
He and Galathae had truly wounded this monster, and it was no stupid thing, clearly. It floated away from them and the binding ray was gone, but replaced by a suddenly living floor, with tentacles and eyestalks rising all about the area where Zak and Galathae lay, confusing them and making it hard to move.
Galathae put Bluccidere horizontally in front of her and looked back to the area of the wall where she and Zak had fallen into the cave. She whispered to the sword, then let it point like some divining rod.
“There,” she told Zak. “The door, the magical gate. Go!”
Zak started for the wall, which seemed to be climbable, but he paused when he got to the base of it, noting that Galathae had stopped some three strides from the wall, had turned about and was now chanting repeatedly, “Grant me this, Dark Maiden. I have come to wage your battle beside you. Do not let me die so far from my destiny.”
“Come on!” he called to her.
She ignored him and kept chanting.
Zak started for her, but stopped. She had earned his trust. He didn’t know what she was up to, but she clearly couldn’t stop now to explain it.
He started up the rocky and uneven wall, picking his path carefully. About three-quarters of the way to the indicated spot, some fifteen feet up from the floor, he glanced back and whispered for his companion, for he saw the massive floating skull returning, and it was not alone, herding another host of undead monsters before it.
Galathae backed slowly toward the wall, still chanting.
The leading zombies and skeletons fanned out side to side, flanking her and preventing any attempt to flee. A group with the floating undead skull, including a trio of those minotaur skeletons, hurried for the paladin.
Thirty feet away, an eye cast another ray, but a singular one for Galathae, as if it had not noticed Zak up on the wall.
The woman held perfectly still and stopped chanting, and Zak feared that she was magically held and helpless.
He slowly pulled the hilt of Soliardis from his belt. He would get one chance, he believed, one strike to end this, or watch his companion be horribly murdered.
The eye and its companions were twenty feet away.
“Come on,” Zak whispered under his breath, ready for his spring.
The monsters from the side charged at her hungrily. The eye was closest, only ten feet from her now, its toothy maw opening wide.
Zak held one heartbeat longer.
Galathae didn’t, stabbing her finger ahead and to the floor, creating a spot of light under the floating skull, which burst outward and upward immediately, creating a twenty-foot cylinder in both diameter and height of shimmering, glowing magic that looked to Zak very much like the Merry Dancers of her homeland’s winter sky.
The floating skull and its immediate entourage were in it, but the undead from the sides and trailing the skull ran up and crashed against it as if it was not merely light, but a tangible barrier. They could not cross into the area of light!
Zak’s jaw hung slack, and he almost forgot the fight altogether for a moment, only realizing the danger as the eye kept coming. He turned to leap, but again, it was Galathae who moved forth, shouting, “Eilistraee! Bluccidere!” and presenting her holy weapon before her.
And all the area was bathed in radiant light, the undead monsters staggering suddenly.
All but the floating skull, which continued shooting rays at her, stinging her, tearing at her life force, slamming her back against the wall.
Tendrils sprouted from the wall to grab at her.
The maw opened wide and swept in at her and, finally, Zak came down from on high, both hands tight against Soliardis’s hilt, driving the blade straight down with all his strength and all his momentum through the floating skull.
He bounced away heavily to the floor, staggering and dazed, and shocked to see the eye still there, still floating, still alive, or undead—still animate, which is the main thing that concerned him. And now, badly hurt, he had to pull his second blade, for a minotaur charged at him and he had nowhere to run.
Galathae tore free of the tendrils, crying for her goddess, and stabbed at the eye with Bluccidere, divinely empowered and crackling with energy. The holy sword struck and flashed and the skull recoiled in obvious pain, flowing lights like glowing ichor pouring from its huge central eye.
Galathae pulled Bluccidere back and released the boundaries of her enchantment of light, creating a blast of radiant energy all about, brilliant and blinding.
Zak cried out and covered his eyes.
His sight had still not returned when he heard Galathae shout out, “I . . . banish thee!”
He did see the strike, did see the floating skull simply disappear beneath it, with Soliardis, which had remained stuck in the bone from the strike of Zak’s leaping assault, now falling freely to the floor. As his eyes adjusted, he saw, too, the smoldering mounds of zombies and skeletons, the lesser ones destroyed, the three minotaurs still standing, but smoking as if their very beings were melting away.
The one coming at him had stopped in its tracks, and so Zak struck, again and again, driving it back with battering slashes against its skull. He dove past it and retrieved Soliardis, then went into a frenzy, ignoring the pain from the fall and the life-devouring rays. The remaining two skeletal monsters, badly wounded from the stunning burst of radiance, lasted only a couple of heartbeats under Zaknafein’s barrage.
He finished the last and staggered back for Galathae, who stood gasping, as if she had given all that she could and more.
“What did you do?”
“Something I have never done before,” she admitted, and she shook her head as if coming out of a trance. “Do you still disbelieve?”
“In the goddess? Yes!” he said. “But I believe in Galathae.”
Smiling, she shook her head again at his obstinance.
“Where did the skull thing go?” he asked, looking all around. “An undead beholder?”
“Banished to its home plane of existence.”
“Then we have a lair to explore,” Zak said, mustering some enthusiasm. “What treasures—”
“Banished if this is not its home plane,” Galathae interjected, stopping him short.
“And if this is its home?”
“It will return soon.” She looked plaintively at Zak. “I have little left to offer this day.”
In truth, Zak had little as well. He pulled a fine cord from his belt and gave her one end, then went up the wall with all speed. Galathae began to climb behind him, though much more slowly, finding a handhold or a foothold, then taking some time to hold her place, and very unsteadily, as Zak tightened the rope between them.
He poked around for a bit, seeking where stone ended and illusion began, and finally tapped at a spot which was not there.
He found the door and fell through the magical opening onto the floor of the corridor they had been walking. He poked his head back into the lair of the undead beholder, for that was what he believed the floating skull to be, and began pulling with all his strength to assist Galathae’s climb.
She was almost to him when the skull reappeared, right where she had banished it.
Zak reached down and grabbed Galathae by the shoulder, hoisting her, tugging her, with all his strength.
The eye looked up at them with pure malice.
He pulled Galathae through and pushed her flat to the floor, then rolled aside, and just in time as a white ray flashed through the dimensional opening, angled up, and where it struck the corridor’s ceiling, the stone simply disintegrated, leaving an angled ten-foot-deep shaft up into the stone.
“We have to kill it,” Zak said, but Galathae shook her head.
Zak crawled for the unseen portal and poked his head through just for an eyeblink, to confirm that the monster was still there.
Still crawling, he backed up. “We cannot leave this here for those who come behind us, or for our friends returning.”
Galathae’s voice was growing weaker by the word, her eyes rolling up in their sockets as consciousness flitted away. “Zak, I cannot.”
He wasn’t asking her to.
“Zaknafein!” she called weakly as the weapon master got to his feet and charged, both hands again on Soliardis.
He leaped through the portal and back into the other-dimensional lair, blindly hoping the monster had not moved.