The Ultimate Helm (28 page)

The tunnels widened once the warriors had made their way deeper into the ship, and they walked side by side, their weapons at the ready. Splotches of phosphorescent moonwort on the walls absorbed the light from their rods and glowed steadily after they had passed. Teldin, in the lead, paused occasionally at intersections, trying to peer as far as he could down the joining tunnels.

“How do you know where you’re going?” Djan asked.

“I don’t. I’m just trying to follow whatever trail I can find,” Teldin said. “He’s been down here a long time. I’m just looking for, well, a trail of darkness, I suppose.”

“So you’re going on instinct,” CassaRoc offered.

“That’s what I said.”

“Do you feel anything from your amulet?”

Teldin caught CassaRoc’s gaze and looked down. The glow from the amulet had ceased once they had passed into the warrens, and Teldin could feel nothing from it, as though its powers were muted down here. “No, nothing,” Teldin said, “nothing at all.”

Stardawn concentrated. Magic ran through his elven veins, and he reached out with a minor spell of detection. He pointed with his sword down a tunnel. “Farther in that direction. The taint comes from there.”

They proceeded farther down. At one intersection, Teldin caught a wisp of black smoke curling in the distance, and he led the warriors toward it. At another intersection, each connecting tunnel except one was thickly layered with phosphorescent lichen. He chose the dark tunnel.

The Fool had designed his trap very well.

Teldin led them down the tunnel, his light rod held high. The lichen here glowed red and brown, as though diseased. The tunnel walls seemed to close in, tapering so that the warriors could walk only in single file. The light from the rods seemed to grow dimmer, as though the brightness were being absorbed by the lining of the walls, or countered with a lasting spell of darkness.

“I don’t like this,” Djan said behind Teldin. “I don’t like this at all.”

“You think I
 
—” Then Teldin clutched his chest and staggered against the wall. His mind went cold. Pinpricks of ice tingled across his chest. “Cold,” he said weakly. “It
 –
it’s calling me, and it can’t...
sense
me here in the warrens. It is searching for me, but it
hurts
!”

The group stopped and waited while Teldin relaxed and the pain of the
Spelljammer’s
summons faded. Then they started forward again as Teldin regained his composure, and they trudged steadily deeper.

Teldin knew they were close when he saw a thin layer of black mist curling around his feet. He stopped the group and warned them. “Can you feel that?” he asked. The air was chill and reeked of rotting flesh. “We’re near his lair, I’m sure. Be ready for anything.”

He stepped into the mist. It curled coldly up his legs as he led the party in, then it rose higher with every step, until it was so thick that they could not see before them.

Teldin’s senses told him that they had stepped out of a tunnel and into some kind of chamber. He tensed, his ears alert. In the darkness, the light from the rods was practically insignificant, swallowed by the black mist, and he heard rustling, almost like the soft, shuffling footsteps of others, from somewhere deep in the mist around them.

He felt the rustle of a breeze on his arms, then the mist swirled and eddied around them, borne on a cold wind that sprang from some unknown source. Their light rods spread warm, yellow light upon nests of crumbling blankets and broken bones, into the narrow entrances of other tunnels, and upon weapons and chests and leather pouches heaped against the far wall. Teldin picked up a pair of discarded short swords and looked them over.

“Well, we’ve found something,” CassaRoc said, staring at the wooden chest. He stepped forward cautiously and kneeled. He opened a chest, and the light from his rod was reflected in a million sparkles upon his face.

“Gold,” he said softly. “Gold.”

The chest was packed with gold and silver coins, with necklaces and amulets, brooches and bracelets. He plucked out a gold ring boasting an opaque green stone that bore a diamond-shaped carving, with angles emanating from two points. He smiled and pocketed the ring, then lifted out a dazzling necklace encrusted with rubies and emeralds. In the center, a silver disk had been engraved with symbols and jewels, and CassaRoc held it up to the light.

Teldin noticed the warrior’s uncustomary frown. “What is it?” he queried.

“I know this necklace,” CassaRoc said. “This used to belong to a fighter of mine.”

“Damn!” Na’Shee shouted behind them. “That’s Chel’s! I know her!”

CassaRoc turned. “Knew her. She died when you arrived here, Teldin.”

Teldin said nothing.

CassaRoc gave Na’Shee the necklace, while Stardawn and Djan looked through the chest. CassaRoc waved his sword around. “What is this place?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Teldin said. “It looks like someone has been staying here.” He picked up one of the bones on the floor. “I don’t like their eating habits, though. This is a human bone.”

They all heard them then, closing in from the intersecting tunnels. The gold and silver and jewels were forgotten in the rush to bring weapons to bear, to arrange themselves defensively in a circle as their assailants shambled in from the tunnels around them.

“The undead,” CassaRoc announced.

The warriors were quickly surrounded by a score of the undead. Most were human; two were elves, and three were halflings. Some bore swords and daggers, ready to use them, albeit awkwardly, with a semblance of living memory. Most just stared hungrily at the intruders, ready to kill by tooth and jagged bone.

“This was a trap,” Na’Shee said. “We were suckered in.”

Then one shape stepped from the farthest tunnel and stood in the entrance. Its teeth gleamed wickedly in the yellow light as it hissed with sadistic laughter. Its fur was mottled with blood, with the colors of the spectrum layered in dizzying patterns across its obscene body. An intricate series of circles was painted on its forehead.

“Trapped,” the undead Coh said, snapping at them with his sharp yellow teeth. “Compliments of the Fool.”

The zombie neogi turned then and plunged into the surrounding wall of mist.

The undead swarmed upon them.

The living sliced their way through the ranks of the undead with incredible ferocity. CassaRoc swore constantly as his sword cleaved through bone and dead flesh, severing heads and arms without conscious thought. He recognized two of the zombies, his own warriors who had died protecting Teldin from the neogi hordes: Chel, who once owned the jewel-studded necklace, and Gar, a fighter and merchant from the open market. He grimaced and killed them as mercifully as he could, staring at their long-dead faces as they lay together on the floor. “Sorry, my friends,” he said.

Na’Shee left her crossbow hung at her waist and depended instead on the swiftness of her steel. She cut a swath through the undead forces, then spun around and came back, finishing off those who were still mobile with clean thrusts into their soft skulls or necks. When she was finished, she looked upon their peaceful faces and realized that she had sent friends of hers to their final, true deaths: K’aald, once a guard of Cassa-Roc’s, and Jenn, from the Academy of Human Knowledge.

Na’Shee looked up and saw CassaRoc staring at his own dead compatriots on the floor, and wondered if undeath would happen to her as it had to their friends,... if the Fool were successful in his plans.

Djan was attacked by seven undead, who grappled with him and tore his sword from his hands. Stardawn saw the half-elf’s plight and dispatched his own assailants with relative ease. He picked up an axe from the stack of weapons by the treasure chest and leaped into the fight, chopping through spinal columns and skulls as though they were made of twigs. Djan finally picked up his sword and, back to back, he and Stardawn fought off the zombies until most of the undead were a heap of bloody limbs jumbled at their feet.

Stardawn’s last assailant was particularly strong and single-minded, virtually ignoring Stardawn’s blows as one would the sting of a gnat. The elf was pressed against the wall, and the zombie’s fetid hand was reaching for his neck when Stardawn realized that physical force would not be enough to finish the creature off. As the undead’s fingers closed around his flesh, Stardawn whispered an ancient elven spell. The zombie’s eyes rolled back in surprise. Within seconds, it loosened its grip on the elf as its body shook with a thin, papery rustling sound. The undead screamed once, and it fell to the floor in a cloud of black dust, decomposed instantly from the inside.

Teldin was an angry, elemental force against his unnatural enemies. He realized he had finally taken enough from this foe that he had never seen, and he attacked the Fool’s undead with a short sword in each hand, whirling through their ranks, slicing indiscriminately with all his might. Black blood spattered his armor, his legs, but his cloak remained unstained. A head dangled from dead flesh on his right; on his left, a zombie dropped with a clean, powerful cut through its collarbone and heart. Teldin’s hair was sticky with sweat and blood, and his eyes blazed with rage, framed by his taut, blood-spattered face.

He felt the power of the cloak blazing through him, pulsating through his veins with unheard of energy. His blades were silver arcs whistling through the air. His foes fell back, defenseless, maimed by the speed and strength of his swords. The cloak, useless against the nature of the undead, still filled Teldin with power, enhancing and amplifying his own strength and will.

The Cloakmaster’s final foe plopped to the floor, sliced in two at the waist. Teldin stopped, panting, and felt the powers of the cloak flow out of him. The remains of the undead were all around him, and he stood in a putrid sea of their corrupt, oily blood.

His friends stared at him in shock. The warriors then cleaned their blades, and Teldin took a deep breath, relaxing. CassaRoc cast a wary glance at him. “We thought you went berserk,” he finally said.

Teldin shook his head. “No, the cloak was... giving me energy.”

He raised his sword and pointed into the black mist that surrounded them. “That way,” he said. “Coh went through there.”

“It’s probably just another trap,” Djan warned.

“Of course it’s a trap,” Teldin said. “What do you expect? He’s trying to lead us to the Fool.”

Stardawn said, “You plan to walk right into it?”

Teldin grinned and wiped his sword on the body of a zombie. He stood at the threshold of darkness, then stepped through. Reluctantly, the others followed.

In the dim light, framed by his blood-stained features, Teldin’s smile was that of a hungry shark. “We’re going to get him right where he wants us.”

“You
are
right where I want you,” came a mocking voice from beyond. The darkness swirled away and dissipated, as though it had been absorbed back into its source, and the full size of the new chamber was revealed.

They were in the lair of the Fool.

Tunnels branched off from each side, and the roof of the cavern was lost in the shadows. The chamber was a natural formation, almost organic, diseased with tumors of black fungi and the stench of the dead.

The undead Coh greeted them. His eyes were blazing pinpricks of light. He smiled, beckoning with his black claw’s, and Teldin lunged and drove his sword straight into Coh’s mocking face. The undead neogi collapsed to the floor, spurting gouts of foul blood.

Laughter erupted from the far wall of the dimly lit chamber. Behind gauzy draperies of spiderwebs, the Fool waited for them, perched upon his throne of bones. Cwelanas kneeled before him, his skeletal hand tight on a heavy chain shackled to her slim neck.

“Welcome, Cloakmaster,”
the Fool said. His voice sent shivers down Teldin’s back. It was a death rattle, a breath from the grave.

The Fool stood, jerking Cwelanas’s chain tight. The iron shackle dug deep into her throat as she struggled to retain her balance. The Fool slid his black long sword from its ancient scabbard and rested its sharp point against the back of Cwelanas’s neck. He slung the heavy chain across her shoulders, and she cried out as the iron links pounded her vulnerable skin. With the other hand the Fool idly toyed with his scarlet amulet.

Teldin’s friends arranged themselves around him protectively and faced the dais. Teldin nodded at Cwelanas, questioning with his eyes. “I’m all right,” she said.

“Silence?
the Fool yelled with a hiss. The point of his blade drew a drop of blood from her flesh. The sword, tensing for more, for the blood and the life force of the elf, hummed in the Fool’s hand.

“The deathblade hungers,” the Fool said to Teldin. He laughed. “It has far less patience than I. It yearns to drink deeply of your lovely friend’s soul. Shall I let it, Teldin Cloakmaster? Shall I drive my blade deep into her heart, so that my thirsty steel may drink?”

Teldin took a step forward. “If you harm her —” he started, but the Fool interrupted him.

“
What will you do, Cloakmaster.
?” the Fool asked. “What do you think you really can do? You know nothing of my powers. You are but a whelp, a dispensable pawn who chanced on an instrument of power. Your meager determination brought you here, human, simply to see everyone you’ve ever loved die.

“Is that what you want, Cloakma —”

The Fool stopped suddenly as a glimmer of golden light appeared at Teldin’s shoulder. It flickered like a flame, growing into a ball of light that coalesced into the astral form of Gaye Goldring. Her robes flowed about her, glowing with her own psionic energies. She spied the Fool upon his dais and quickly positioned her hands into a defensive posture.

“Ah, my little kender friend,” the Fool mocked, “back for your final punishment? I am no shade or banshee to dispel with light, kender. You are nothing more than an insect to me. I will see you die today.”

The Fool turned to Teldin.

“Understand this, human. The elf’s blood will be spilled, O great Cloakmaster, unless you are prepared to bargain...”

“Bargain.” It was Teldin’s turn to laugh. “You don’t want to bargain, Fool,” he said. “You want only to kill.”