Roads spanning the sky had not been uncommon in that city. Cale could sense it. The magical skill evidenced by the spire suggested to him that the ruined metropolis, that even Skullport, had once been places of grandeur. He wondered at the true origin of the Skulls.
Putting the awe out of his mind, he eyed the ruins below, searching for any sign of the slaadi. He did not see them.
“We need to get to that spire,” he said. “The slaadi must be heading there. That spire is the origin of the lattice, and that’s where Azriim will use the Weave Tap.”
As though affirming his words, the shadows leaking from Weaveshear floated into the air and across the cavern toward the spire. The height at which the companions stood was about two-thirds of the way up the tower.
“Teleport us there, Cale,” Riven said.
Cale shook his head and replied, “I can call upon the shadows only infrequently. I can shadowstep often, but teleport only rarely. The slaadi, on the other hand have no such limitation with their teleportation rods. Likely, they’re already inside the cupola. We need another way.”
Cale ignored the look of satisfaction in Riven’s eye, and realized then that the assassin cared more about being Mask’s second than he did about stopping the slaadi. He didn’t have time to give it further thought.
“Look!” Jak said, pointing at the tower.
The slaadi emerged from around the back of the tower, loping up the crystalline staircase for the cupola. The largest of the three hobbled along with a limp.
“Why didn’t they teleport into the cupola?” Magadon asked of no one in particular.
“The magic of the tower must interfere with transport magic of that kind,” Cale said. “They probably teleported to near the tower’s base. We weren’t that far behind them and yet they’re already halfway up the tower.”
“I can get us there,” Magadon said. “Without magic.”
Cale turned to face the guide and asked, “What can you do?”
Magadon, already drawn and haggard from all of the psionic energy he had expended in recent hours, said, “Attune our bodies to the air. We’ll be able to run above the city to the tower.”
“Dark,” Jak whispered.
“What will you have left?” Cale asked him.
Magadon shook his head and replied, “I’ll drop the mindlink. But still, not much.”
Cale took only a moment to decide.
“Do it.”
Magadon nodded and held his left hand to his temple. A dim white light originated at the crown of his head and spread downward until it sheathed his entire boy. There was a sound like the whoosh of a wind. Magadon touched each of Cale, Riven, and Jak in turn, causing a similar light to limn their bodies, eliciting a similar sound.
“Now,” Magadon said, and the light flared.
A tremor ran the length of Cale’s body. He felt lighter, as ephemeral as a spirit. The white light rapidly diminished to nothingness, but the feeling of insubstantiality remained.
“Walk on the air as though it’s solid earth,” Magadon said. “Vertical movement is controlled by your mind. Imagine stairs or a ramp as you run, and you’ll move up or down.”
Without another word, the guide stepped off the corridor’s edge and into the open air. Jak audibly gasped, but instead of plummeting to his death, the guide stood suspended on nothing.
Cale took a deep breath and followed suit. The air felt spongy under his feet, but solid enough. He could see the ruins of the city far below and had to fight down a wave of dizziness.
He said to Riven and Jak, “Come on.”
They did, and when all four had tested the air, they turned and ran across the sky for the tower. Magadon and Cale led. Jak and Riven followed hard after.
With nothing but air and orange light around him, Cale felt exposed, visible. He yearned for the comfort of shadow. He toyed with the idea of making himself invisible but saw no point. He could do nothing to hide his comrades, so he would stand with them.
When they had made it halfway across the city, the biggest of the three slaadi—Dolgan—saw them. The fat slaad, wobbling on his wounded leg, made an obscene gesture in their direction and shouted to his fellows.
The creatures were almost to the cupola. One more twist around the tower and they would be at the top.
Cale could see Azriim’s fanged grin, even from that distance. An itch manifested deep in the base of Cale’s brain, an itch that became a whisper, then a voice.
It is my pleasure to see you again, Azriim said into Cale’s mind. Unlike the feeling elicited by Magadon’s mindlink, the slaad’s psionic touch felt greasy, hostile. You are a persistent creature.
I’m going to kill you, Cale projected back.
Hardly a novel plan for you, priest, Azriim replied with a mental sneer.
The slaad broke the contact and spoke to his fellows. As one, the three slaadi pointed in the direction of Cale and his companions, each mouthed an arcane word, and fired three pea-sized orange balls from their outstretched palms.
“Cover!” Cale shouted, and immediately realized how foolish the exclamation sounded.
They were running across the open air. There was nowhere to hide.
He turned, grabbed Jak, and threw himself face down over the halfling as orange fire exploded in their midst. He prayed that Magadon would survive the blast, knowing that if the guide was killed, their ability to walk on air would cease.
One ball of flame exploded, then another, and another. The blistering air rushed past and over Cale. Jak hissed against the pain. The heat and flames enshrouded them. Cale grimaced against the expected agony but the pain did not come. His shadowstuff-suffused body resisted the spells of the slaadi and sheltered Jak from the worst of the blast. Cale waited for the fall to come, his heart in his throat.
The air remained as solid as earth under his boots.
He climbed to his feet, pulling Jak up by the cloak. The halfling already had his holy symbol in hand and he began to chant.
To Cale’s right, Magadon and Riven clambered to their feet, skin raw, clothes smoking. Riven pulled shadows from the orange-tinted air, twirled them around his fingers, and touched them to his flesh. His wounds disappeared. Magadon swayed but seemed all right.
In the meantime, the halfling completed his prayer. White fire flew from Jak’s outstretched hands and broke on the slaadi like water on rocks, seemingly to no effect.
Recovered, Magadon unshouldered his bow, knocked an arrow, and let fly. The arrow took Dolgan in the shoulder. The impact drove the fat slaad against the tower and he howled, stumbling on his wounded foot.
“Move!” Cale said. “We have to keep them from reaching the tower!”
Together, they pelted for the spire, Cale and Magadon in the lead. They had a full bowshot of open air to cover before they reached the tower.
Seeing them charge, Azriim barked something to his fellow slaadi, turned, and raced up the crystal stairs, taking them two at a time. He spiraled around the tower and went out of sight. Meanwhile, Dolgan jerked the arrow from his flesh, threw it over the side of the staircase, and pulled a thin iron rod from a leather tube on his thigh. His fellow did the same, except that his wand appeared to be made of wood.
“Wands!” Magadon warned as they ran.
“Spread out!” Cale shouted, and began to incant his own spell.
The comrades opened some distance between them as they charged, to make targeting them with the wands more difficult. Cale finished incanting his spell, a dweomer that cancelled other magic. He targeted it on the gray-eyed slaad’s wand hoping to disable it. His spell took effect, met the magic of the wand, and failed. In that failure Cale caught a sense of the power of the mage who had crafted the wand: the Sojourner.
“Dark and empty,” he whispered.
Dolgan’s fanged mouth formed an arcane word and the tip of his wand flared. A mass of churning green gas formed in the air near Jak and Riven, a noxious, sick-looking little cloud. The halfling tumbled aside, but R
iven ran right into it. The vapors swallowed him. The gas was so thick Cale couldn’t see within.
“Riven!” Magadon said.
Unwilling to leave Riven behind, Cale and Magadon aborted their charge and turned back.
Quickly, Jak sheathed his blade, pocketed his holy symbol, and said, “I’ll get him.”
The halfling took a great gulp of air, held it, and rushed into the cloud. He emerged a moment later pulling Riven by his cloak. The assassin was bent double, coughing and vomiting. He pushed Fleet away and gestured toward the tower.
“Go,” the assassin spat at them. “I’ll follow.”
He retched again, raining the contents of his stomach on the ruins far below. The cloud of gas, evidently heavier than air, began to slowly sink toward the ruins below.
Cale turned just in time to see the gray-eyed slaad fire a thin green beam from the tip of his wand. Magadon saw it too, and danced aside as the beam streaked past his hip.
Azriim came into view again around the near side of the tower, still loping hard up the spiral stairway. He was nearly to the archway that opened onto the cupola. Cale knew then that they would not be able to stop him. His heart sank.
Orange light streamed out of the archway in a cascade of beams. And in that light, Cale suddenly saw a way to stop the slaad.
To Magadon and Jak he said, “You two take the slaadi on the stairs. I’ve got Azriim. Go!”
“Do not delay, Erevis,” Magadon said, and Cale could see the fatigue in the guide’s eyes.
He would not be able to keep them attuned with the air for much longer.
Cale nodded and said again, “Go.”
The guide and the halfling charged forward together. Cale stayed back, drawing his own shadow close around him, eyeing Azriim, waiting. He spared a look back at Riven, who appeared to have gathered himself.
“Meet me in the cupola,” Cale said to the assassin.
Riven wiped the vomit from his mouth, eyed him, and nodded.
Jak knew he had to do something about the wands. He and Magadon were thirty paces from the slaadi. The creatures would get another shot at them before they could close.
“Cover me, Mags,” Jak said.
The halfling pulled his holy symbol and began to incant a prayer as he ran.
The guide did not ask questions, instead he unshouldered his bow and began to fire. The guide fired rapidly, if inaccurately, even while running. His archery was astounding. The slaadi dodged the streaking missiles, though the effort nearly caused the fat one to fall from the tower.
Jak finished his spell and targeted the mind of Dolgan, overwhelming the slaad’s brain with conflicting, confusing ideas and images. He knew it had worked when the huge creature gripped his head between his clawed hands and began to mutter. The slaad set down his wand and looked from Jak to his fellow slaad, then to the top of the tower and to the ruins below.
“Well done!” Magadon said.
The guide reshouldered his bow and drew his sword. Jak unsheathed his own blade, reserving his other hand for his holy symbol.
“He’s only confused,” the halfling explained. “He’s still potentially dangerous, but for now, focus on the other.”
Magadon nodded and they raced across the solid air at the slaadi.
The slaad unaffected by Jak’s spell fired his wand again. Jak dodged, but the beam struck him in the side. His body went soft, amorphous. He felt his form begin to shift, felt the components of his body begin to metamorphose….
“No,” he said between gritted his teeth.
Still running, even as his legs began to shrink and thin, he willed himself to stay whole, to resist whatever transformation the wand sought to force.
The effect ceased. He’d done it. Jak came back to himself, grinning fiercely.
The gray-eyed slaad, seemingly untroubled, replaced his wand in his thigh sheath and pulled a huge falchion from a scabbard over his back.
Magadon and Jak spaced themselves as they ran to come at the slaad from different angles.
But before they could close, the slaad confused by Jak’s spell growled something unintelligible, turned to his fellow slaad, and lashed out with a claw. Red tracks opened in the skin of the gray-eyed slaad’s chest. He bounded backward and down a few stairs, shouting urgently in a tongue Jak didn’t recognize. The wounds on the slaad’s chest began to close, while the larger one advanced on him in a fighting crouch.
Jak’s spell was working better than he could have hoped. Tymora and the Trickster always smiled on the brave.
Still, it sometimes paid to be cautious. He slowed his charge long enough to allow him to utter the words to another spell. When he finished, his hands and feet grew sticky. He knew they would adhere to walls and ceilings, helping prevent a fall from the tower.
Meanwhile, Magadon took advantage of the confused slaad’s attack on his brother. Shouting, the guide charged the gray-eyed slaad, blade bare. He closed in a final lunge and sent a cross cut at the slaad’s head. The creature parried the blow, ducking and answering with a quick thrust that Magadon avoided only by bounding backward onto the air. The larger slaad attacked his brother again, but the gray-eyed creature twisted out of the way and opened a slash on his fellow’s arm.
Jak realized that the guide’s skill at archery exceeded his bladework. Only Riven or Cale could match the speed of the small, gray-eyed slaad.
Dolgan raised a claw to strike at his brother again but stopped in mid swing, a dumbfounded look on his broad, flat face. As suddenly as it had started, the confused slaad left off the attack on his brother, sat with a sigh on the stairway, and looked at his bloody claws as though they belonged to someone else. He began to dig his talons into his own arms, moaning in either pain or ecstasy—Jak couldn’t tell which—at the sensation.
The smaller slaad grinned, feinted at Magadon to draw his blade out of position, and stabbed the guide through the shoulder. Magadon groaned, waved his blade defensively, and staggered backward down three steps. The slaad took them all in a single bound and pressed the attack. Magadon backstepped, using his blade as best he could to ward off the slaad’s lightning-fast attack. Wound after wound opened on the guide. He was weakening.
Jak decided to gamble. He whispered the words to another spell and when he was done, he ran forward to the stairs, putting himself between the slaadi, right at the edge of the staircase. The confused slaad paid him no heed.
“Try me, you son of a diseased toad,” Jak called.
He knew the insult was silly but that didn’t matter. The magic of his spell lent the words power and significance. If the casting worked, the slaad would not be able to resist attacking him.
The slaad opened a gash in Magadon’s stomach and whirled around to face Jak, hissing in rage. From the look of hate in the slaad’s gray eyes, Jak knew that his spell had worked.
He added further insult by waving his short sword and saying, “I’m going to cut out your maggot-infested tongue and stick it so far up your polluted arse that you’ll be able to lick your eyes.”
He could not help but grin at that one.
The slaad dropped his sword, apparently intent on using his claws to rip out Jak’s throat, and bounded up the stairs with terrifying rapidity.
Jak feigned fear, raised his blade awkwardly, and fumbled backward. The slaad rushed him. His claws closed on the halfling’s chest and face. Pain blossomed.
Jak fell backward over the side of the staircase. The momentum from the enraged slaad’s charge carried the creature right after.
Jak slipped from the slaad’s grip, flipped in midair, and slammed his hands against the side of the tower. It occurred to him too late that the stone might hold an enchantment that would defeat his spell. His heart found his throat.
But his grip held.
Jak enjoyed a moment’s satisfaction as the slaad fell, the beginnings of a scream erupting from the creature’s throat.
His satisfaction vanished as clawed hands closed on Jak’s ankles in a grip
stronger than a vice. The weight of the falling slaad nearly dislodged the halfling, but his spell held them both hanging from the side of the tower at a height of four bowshots above the ruins. Jak kicked his feet, trying to shake the slaad loose. No use.
Jak tried to step onto the air and found that he could no longer walk on it. Magadon’s psionic effect had ended. Was the guide dead? What had happened to Cale and Riven? He had no time to pay the questions further heed.
“You will pay for this, little creature,” growled the slaad below him.
The creature’s claws sank deeply into Jak’s calves. The pain was excruciating and Jak could not contain a scream. The slaad began to scale him as he might a rope. One claw released his calf only to sink into his thigh. Jak was dizzy with agony. Warm blood coursed down his leg.
“Magadon!” Jak screamed, praying that the guide was still alive. “Magadon!”
From above, all he could hear were the dumb moans of the enspelled slaad.
“Pain….” the slaad hanging from his legs said.
The creature sank a clawed hand into Jak’s shoulder and began to pull himself up. Jak cried out in agony. He couldn’t hold on much longer. He could imagine the creature’s huge, fanged mouth just behind his head.
“I’ll drop us both, you stinking frog!” Jak threatened, and he meant it.
The slaad tensed at that. Jak prepared to let go of the wall, praying to the Trickster that the impact of the fall would kill him quickly.
Magadon’s face appeared over the ledge, and the glowing tip of a knocked, psionically-enhanced arrow followed.
As absurd as it was, Jak could not contain a smile.
“Mags!” he said.
He felt the slaad on his back tense, and could imagine the look of shock on his froglike face.
“Take your fill of this,” Magadon said, and fired.
The impact blew the slaad from the halfling’s back. Jak heard an aborted scream of pain and looked down between his feet to see the creature plummeting toward the ruins.
“Jak!” Magadon said. “Here.”
Jak looked up to see Magadon’s extended hand. Jak took it in his own sticky grasp, and the guide lifted him up to the stairway. Magadon was covered in wounds, some of them deep.