Pathfinder Tales: Lord of Runes (40 page)

I quick-stepped back, sweeping the blade to cover my retreat. I caught the shadow’s hand before it showed sense enough to dodge. Reversing my grip, I got ready for a good stab to its heart—assuming it had one—and then something knocked me flat.

The shadow dog was on me, biting and scratching. Its weight held me down, so it had meat or something to it, unlike its pals. Rolling to the side, I lashed back with a spur and got a nice wet yelp.

The dog jumped again. This time I had the knife braced. The blade sank deep into the shadow hound’s belly. I twisted and pulled the blade up, spilling its guts all over me.

“No!” screamed the shadow. He ran at me while I pushed at the dog carcass. He was going to get me before I freed myself.

Two quick strokes of light cut the shadow into three pieces. Like the first one, they shriveled and blew across the room.

The boss stood there with a weird black sword. I blinked when I realized it was the Shadowless Sword, only now it was black with runes on the sides.

The boss’s face was a white mask. I thought maybe he was sick, or maybe he was still mad at me. I was afraid I might be next in line after that shadow. But he didn’t stab me. Instead, he offered me a hand up.

“You should not have followed me,” he said.

Behind him, Kazyah fought the golem, who’d already taken a pretty good beating. She lifted him off the ground and threw him across the room.

“Let’s see how he likes it,” I said. The boss didn’t laugh. He didn’t even look irritated at my dumb joke, so I changed the subject. “Did Ygresta get fatter?”

“Zutha has claimed his body,” said the boss. “He has not recovered his full strength, but he already far more powerful than Ygresta.”

“And Ygresta beat our asses.”

The golem came crashing down on Zutha, but the big guy shoved him aside with a gesture. He pointed one of his rings at me and the boss. Its diamond head flared. Four crackling balls of lightning flew at us.

The boss shoved me down and made a fancy gesture with his sword. Whatever it was supposed to be, nothing happened before the lightning exploded all around him.

“Boss!”

He staggered back, flame flickering in his hair. He started a spell of his own, making the gestures with his free hand and the sword at the same time.

Svannostel roared, the sound shaking the room. She’d changed back into an elf to slip out of the giant hand, but now she was changing back. Next to her, Illyria had her hands ready for a spell, but she was waiting for something before she cast it.

Zutha began his own spell, looking at her. Illyria’s eyes went wide, but she let her own spell go before cringing.

The boss didn’t wait to see how that turned out. He ran forward and leaped over the tomb. On the downward arc, the Shadowless Sword cut through some magic barrier with a black-and-white flash. The blade met the runelord’s wrist. The necromancer’s fat hand fell away.

Zutha shouted. He sounded more surprised than hurt, but he was no less pissed. He swung his scythe around. The blade was big enough to cut a man in half, but it cut nothing but air. The boss had already rolled away, putting himself between Zutha and Illyria.

Always a gentleman.

Zutha yelled something I didn’t understand and held up his stump. Black tendrils grew out of the wound, already forming a new palm and fingers. “You see?” he went on in Taldane. “You cannot destroy me. In my seat of power, I regenerate faster than you can harm me.”

A shower of dust and stone fell on him from above. With it came a ghoul. The thing latched on and started gobbling at Zutha’s fat shoulder.

“Off of me, you wretch!” He tried to shrug the thing off, but it held tight. “I am the master of this place. Obey me!”

“Hung—hung—hungry!” gibbered the ghoul. It tore chunks out of him, drool and blood running from its jaws. Next to Zutha, the
Tome
dipped, bobbing in the air like he’d lost concentration on keeping it there.

“Radovan!” the boss yelled. He showed me a hand sign that meant
distraction!

There’s a lot of ways to do that, but only one came to mind. I ran behind Zutha, who was too busy shaking off the ghoul to notice me. Maybe my knife wasn’t as special as the Shadowless Sword, but it’d leave a mark. I stabbed the runelord in the spine.

Whatever whammy was in the big knife, it was enough to get through his magic shield. But then there was so much fat to cut through that I didn’t see blood until the third or fourth stab. By then, my first cut had already sealed up. Zutha was right. He was healing faster than we could cut him down.

The boss and Illyria threw more spells at Zutha. Magic shields from his crown of stones absorbed them. Svannostel blasted him with lightning. Another floating stone sucked the bolt out of the air.

I kept stabbing until Zutha flicked a finger and threw me across the room. Between him and the golem, I was damned tired of getting tossed around.

The boss said something to the dragon. She snatched up a ghoul gnawing on her leg and threw it at Zutha. The ghoul latched onto him just like the first one. Slobbering in excitement, it dug in.

Zutha howled, this time in pain. “Obey me, scavengers!”

“More ghouls!” the boss shouted.

“Are you sure?” said Illyria. “You were very cross with me the last time.”

“Confound it, I am certain that—!”

She was already spilling teeth from her pouch into her hand. She just wanted to get a dig in, maybe in case it was her last chance. Casting the boss’s least favorite spell, she threw the teeth at Zutha.

“Kazyah, can you break the others out of their cells?” said the boss.

“I might bury us all.”

“Can you escape on your own?”

She nodded.

“Then do it. We shall find another way.”

Illyria threw handful after handful of ghoul teeth at the runelord. Some stuck like knives. Others disappeared into his rolls of fat. All of them sprouted ghouls. The things were born hungry, and they wasted no time feasting.

The boss ran over to Illyria and waved at me to join them. I limped over, avoiding falling stones and ghouls.

“You vexatious worms! Your punishment will last longer than my slumber!” Zutha’s flesh grew back as fast as the ghouls devoured it. He threw off two of them. Three more scrambled up and savaged him.

Illyria rose from the floor, flying. Amaranthine flew after her.

“Stay close,” said the boss. He snapped off a riffle scroll. “Cover me while I go in.”

“He says we can’t kill him here!”

“Perhaps not,” said the boss. “But I can be vexatious.” He ran toward Zutha, which looked like the worst possible idea. The runelord reached out a hand, aiming a ring. It began to flare, and the boss threw himself to the side to go for
Tome
—which had been his plan all along.

The Shadowless Sword licked out twice.

A scream filled the crypt, louder than Svannostel’s roar or any of the explosion. I couldn’t tell whether it came from Zutha or the open pages of the
Tome
. The sound stabbed deep into my ears and left puddles of blood in them.

Zutha reeled, flailing a regenerating hand toward the book. The ghouls chewed off his fingers and spat out the rings. They swarmed thick enough to knock the Azlanti stones out of their orbit. Without them, I wondered how long he could hold out before they ate every last bit of him.

The boss threw
Tome
’s front cover to Svannostel. The dragon caught it, said a spell, and disappeared.

He threw the back cover to Kazyah. She shifted back to human form to catch it.

“Now!” he yelled.

Kazyah chanted a spell and slammed her earth breaker into the floor. The impact sent deep cracks across the room and up the walls. Thunder rolled through the earth, shaking stone off the walls, spilling more and more ghouls out of their cells.

The boss slapped the
Tome’s
middle pages onto my chest. “Take these.”

I tucked them under my arm as the ground crumbled beneath us. “You keep it. I don’t wanna get fat!”

“Then resist the temptation to read it.” He hooked his arm around mine and pulled me into the air.

“I ain’t tempted.” I held tight to the book and to him.

Below us, Kazyah finished her spell and sank into the floor like it was a pool of water.

As ghouls rained down, Zutha bellowed more Thassilonian words. The bodies of ghouls muffled the sound, but I guessed more of it was curses than spells.

The boss shouted back in the same language. Whatever he said made Zutha curse louder, and then a ghoul grabbed both sides of his face and bit out the runelord’s tongue.

As more falling stones and ghouls covered him, his squeals faded away. We flew up through the pit. Some kind of earthquake—and I had an idea what kind—had broken open all the cells to spill out the ghouls.

“Is that the end of that guy?” I said.

“Certainly not,” said the boss. “Pray there are enough ghouls to keep him occupied for many years.”

“They’ll get full, won’t they? Then he’ll come for us.”

The boss had nothing to say to that.

By the time we reached the main floor, the joint was jumping. Kazyah’s earthquake had scattered Zutha’s army. Some ran out of the Cenotaph. Svannostel hovered above them, beating her wings to knock them down, blowing lightning kisses to incinerate the ones that ran.

Illyria and Amaranthine were already flying out the open doors. The boss followed, slower on account of carrying me.

Outside, he paused long enough to let Svannostel join us. Then he closed the weird green doors with a touch. We flew down to the base of the mountain.

“Where is the carriage?” he asked. “Where are the others?”

“I’d say right about there.” I pointed west.

His eyes widened as he saw the dust clouds. The sound of war drums rolled across the foothills. He dug the spyglass out of his satchel.

“They had to keep moving while we came inside after you. We tried to lose them, but this land is lousy with orcs, and we weren’t flying.”

“What is that cloud to the south?” he said.

Without a spyglass, I could only shrug. “Those guys are new.”

As soon as I said it, I saw a third group coming from the southeast. The boss looked their way. More orcs. “They have warbeasts.”

“Desna weeps,” I said. “I thought the hard part was over.”

Peering through the glass, he said. “Far too many.”

“You need to learn how to make the carriage fly,” I said.

His eyebrows rose, but he had to know I wasn’t serious.

“Make for the carriage,” he said.

“What about Kazyah?”

“She can escape on her own, and I cannot carry you with any speed.” He took to the air. He and Illyria flew toward the carriage.

“Hey, what about me?” I knew I’d sort of killed him, but I didn’t like being ditched. Before I could get sore, Svannostel swooped down and grabbed me by the arms.

“Hey, hey!” I yelled. “Shouldn’t I be riding on top?”

“No.”

She flew me to the Red Carriage. Eando was hanging onto the scorpion for his life while Janneke drove.

Behind them ran twenty or so wargs, wolves the size of ponies. Most had orcs riding on their backs. One had a bloody streak running down its side. Eando must have got off a good shot.

“Don’t spook the horses!” I yelled.

Svannostel banked away as the horses screamed and veered the other way. I was bad enough for scaring horses, but there was no
not
spooking them with a great big dragon. At least they didn’t turn back to the orcs.

On the second pass, Svannostel let go of me just before we reached the carriage. She was a good shot, too. I hit the roof, rolled, and hung onto the luggage rail. Down below, Arni woofed and stuck his head out the window.

“Stay put, Arni!”

I pushed Eando out of the way and started cranking the scorpion. “Reload! Janneke, we got two more groups coming in from the south.”

“I can’t turn toward the mountain!”

“Well, pick a group.”

Ahead of us, the boss threw lightning at one war band while Illyria sent a blurry gray specter toward one of its shamans.

The orcs had scorpions of their own mounted on the backs of their war rhinos. One shot a bolt so close I thought it’d gone straight through the boss, but he didn’t fall. Others fired arrows. Some fell past the wizards, but others ricocheted off their wards. That would only last so long, and the orcs were getting closer to them than we were.

“Svannostel!” I yelled, wanting her to go help the boss and Illyria, but she’d already circled behind us. She laid down a line of white lightning, frying the first rank of wargs. The ones behind leaped over them and kept coming. The horses screamed, but they couldn’t run any faster.

Eando slapped a bolt into the scorpion. I turned it around to fire at the orcs closing in on the boss, but we were too far away.

“Go higher!” I yelled. That was pointless. The boss couldn’t hear me from that distance, especially not over the battle screams of the orcs.

The orcs split into two groups. At first I thought they meant to surround the boss and Illyria. Then I saw that something else was cutting through them.

Two dozen armored mercenaries charged from behind. At their head, I saw Faceless Kaid’s red plume.

“Yes!” Janneke punched the air.

I was happy about it too, but we were still outnumbered.

“Look!” Eando shouted. “Turn this thing around!”

I spun the scorpion back to point at the wargs. A big ugly one was close enough to nip at the back wheel. The angle was no good for me to shoot that one. Eando cast a spell, flinging a ball of acid down at it. The warg yelped and peeled away. I grinned to think we were routing them, but then I saw they weren’t running. They were just letting their reinforcements through.

“Hell,” said Janneke. “Dragons!”

I looked where she was pointing. Three blue-winged reptiles flew above the third group of orc marauders. I didn’t like it any better than she did, but it could have been worse. “Don’t be such a baby. It’s only wyverns.”

She didn’t waste time shooting me a look.

Svannostel headed for the wyverns. They spread out, trying to come at her from all sides. She blasted one with a breath of storm. It went down, trailing a spiral of smoke.