The Brat's Final Gambit

Davin led the way out of the cellar and into the room above. When Niam joined him, he saw that they were in one of the buildings behind Kreeth’s lair. The building was full of musty stacks of old boxes and unused barrels. Several unopened sacks of four and millet were stacked against one wall. The door to the outside was open. Cold air pushed and bullied its way into the room. Niam coughed. Now that some of the nervous energy from the flight out of the caverns had worn off, his leg throbbed. He absently wondered how Maerillus’s ankle was holding up. Although the injury was old by now, he knew that it wasn’t old enough to take the kind of punishment Maerillus had put it through.

“Hopefully the survivors will send help when they get back to Joachim’s estate,” Niam said.

“Hopefully,” Maerillus echoed him.

“Yeah.” Niam knew no one would get there in time to help them. He knew that this might be a one-way trip before coming, but he also knew that this was something he had to do. Niam felt the man who had killed his brother and sister deep within the manor in front of them. He felt his sick presence more acutely than ever. Like the heartbeat of a sparrow synced with the beating of an eagle, the pulsations of the thing in the pit overshadowed Kreeth’s presence but did not obscure it. Only now that he was far enough away from the cavern below could he sense the necromancer. I have to do this for my sister and my brother, for Bug and Corey, for Betsy, for all the other people the man killed or ruined. Everything that has gone wrong has happened because of him. It was strange knowing that he was probably about to die. Niam’s thoughts kept returning to Bug. She was his responsibility. He had made her his responsibility.

Niam’s whole body hurt as he emerged into the open air. “Look at that,” he said in amazement.

All around the dark manor, anything that grew had been cut down and dragged to great, tangled piles. Everything for at least a quarter of a mile in every direction now lay barren. Braches and limbs stripped from the felled trees as they were dragged to their jagged pyres littered the ground in a broken riot of hasty destruction.

“How ugly,” Davin said. But it had to be done. This is just another example of what people like Kreeth turned the world into.

Maerillus’s face clouded over. Niam knew he must be thinking of Betsy and what the failed kidnappers had done to his parents. His voice was sharp as a whip crack. “I hate him!”

Niam knew the anger Maerillus felt very well. “I think he orchestrated everything tonight to get the troops out of here,” he said. “All of the chaos and confusion was just so he could grab Kine and Joachim.”

“But Kine should have realized the there was a sorcerer near,” Maerillus protested.

“I think the cakes were how he did it. Kirse’s imposter used the red batter to hide the moonflower root.” As he said this, he held up his hands to show everyone the fingertips that were stained after rubbing the exposed ends of the roots. “See. Nearly the same color. At first he never had to get close to either the count or the Hammer. All he had to do was have them delivered. There are traitors within Kine’s order that have thrown their lot in with Kreeth. We know that at least one has for sure, now.”

“But how is Kreeth still behind all of this?” Maerillus demanded. “The worm left the kingdom. There are witnesses. He can’t be in two places at once!”

Niam shook his head. “He hasn’t had to. He’s been here all along.”

Maerillus gave him an indignant look. “What?”

Niam grimaced. “I can feel him. The maggot is inside. I think he’s been here all along to finish what he started.” With a shudder, Niam looked at his friends. They regarded Niam with frozen expressions as they sifted through everything they knew, linking all of what had happened in order to put everything together.

Davin said, “I think we have to do this now.”

Niam noticed Maerillus taking in a long, preparatory breath. “Yeah,” he said. “Now or never.”

“Yeah,” Niam repeated.

The three of them walked toward the house stepping gingerly through the deep snow, following the footprints leading into the manor. Within, the hallway now stood bare of any paintings and tapestries. All rooms they passed had been vacated. Anything that brought softness and order was unwelcome, a barbarous intruder in this civilization of emptiness. Yet Niam could still feel the manor. There was more to this building; it was a mausoleum designed to hold not just bodies, but events—terrible events.

And the evil effulgence that rolled off of them.

This manor, more than any other place Niam had been, wasn’t just a location with a long history. Beginning thousands and thousands of years ago, with the fiery impact of a dark being, with its dissolution into the crevices and hollows hidden from the sun, this place became the culmination of its history.

“You have to fight this place, remember?” Niam’s voice croaked as he mouthed these words.

Davin and Maerillus both looked ahead with the resolution of men marching to their executions. Despite Davin’s encouragement, Niam did not have the will to hope for the best. He knew that without a Hammer primed for the fight ahead, success was just as nebulous as vapors rising above spilled blood on frozen ground. He fought hard to push this feeling away. The taint of necromancy hung in the air so thickly that he saw it as a green, tenuous mist shrouding everything. Only Davin and Maerillus remained untouched by it.

Niam made an effort to steady his mind, but the nervous energy in his body made this difficult. Every part of him felt alive and sensitive beyond anything else he had ever felt before. His swollen inner eyelids still burned, only now, he imagined that he felt every painfully engorged blood vessel throbbing in syncopation to his heartbeat. His legs felt ready to bolt even before his mind gave them the order to run. He had to hold his staff firmly with both hands to keep them from shaking right off of his wrists.

From the entry into Kreeth’s hidden basement room, Niam heard the same angry hiss and crackle that had issued from the thing in the cavern. He forced his weakened legs forward step-by-step to confront the man who had ruined his life and the lives of so many others. But there was one living person he was willing to die for.

Bug.

He no longer had Sarah, but he had his little friend. In that moment before he took the steps leading down to where Kreeth worked his dark energies, Niam thought of Bug the day he found her outside the old Abbey’s ruins. She had been so small, thin, and fragile, but puffed up with determination to barge right down into the heart of Bode’s gang and fight them. Then came the memory of Bug nestling against his chest, weeping after Salb lay broken and impaled on two old plows. Niam pushed that image from his mind. The first was the one he wanted to remember.

Davin and Maerillus held within their irises the yellow coronas of blazing suns. Niam felt himself attuned to every crackle of necromantic energy snapping like hot coals biting frigid winter air in the room beyond. He knew his eyes shone, too. Today there was no more hiding. Today was the day, win or lose, that he faced down Garrolus Kreeth or died trying. Anything else was just too hard to live with.

As he stepped out onto the landing, Niam trembled. Below him, the stone removed during the last foray into the manor had been replaced. Long, living roots of energy writhed at its base and arced up to the ceiling, surrounding a hooded figure whose arms were outstretched in a gesture of welcoming supplication. Wispy green shoots stood out like faint fuzz on each eel-like tentacle. They seemed to lovingly caress the sorcerer, whose body responded with quivering delight. Behind him, Joachim and Kine were tied to the trusses that the sorcerer’s first victims had suspended from.

Only now, at the bottom of the trusses, piles of wood waited to be lit. Both Kine and Joachim appeared to be unconscious. And now, the cords of power flowing up from the floor seemed flush with power and vitality, making Niam’s first encounter with them seem anemic by comparison. And around the room sprawled the bodies of emaciated and drained men.

The thing that had consumed them was hungry, and it looked like some of Kreeth’s followers had been just so many more hors d’oeuvres.

Niam felt the thrumming of the fierce blast of power course through his body. Every part of him revolted against its presence. The necromantic energies hit him like an onslaught of broken glass. Somewhere in the distance, Niam heard someone screaming, and faintly recognized the voice as his own. Overwhelming nausea crashed over him like a fetid wave of grave water, the pooled accumulation of swollen and corrupted corpses melting within their coffins, the slobber of millions of teeming maggots drooling over decomposing bodies slicked over by the juices of their own putrefaction

An evil presence worked to squirm its way into Niam’s mind with an unholy and triumphant “YES!” as he felt it attempting to latch onto his body. More. Its “YES!” surged into Niam as he became aware that its craving was for something more than merely flesh. It rushed into him, hungry and ravenous beyond any animal’s appetite. Niam felt as if the oily coils of something serpentine closed around his spirit. There it tried to nestle. There it wanted to feed.

And so he sensed that what the terrible being had done to the bodies of living men and women was only a sign of its ultimate victory, which was to corrupt and despoil everything that was not in some way a part of its essence. As the force of the being melted into Niam’s body and touched his soul, Niam heard another voice ring through the tumult and agony.

This voice . . . this Voice rang out with the purity of high mountain Alps in the freshmade morning sky, with the clean briny scent of the ocean blown inland by a playful morning breeze. This Voice held the laughter of millions of little children and the songs of choirs too innumerable to count. Within the sounding of that voice, Niam heard Sarah’s laughter, echoing down the corridors of time, never to be diminished or stopped.

“NO!” the Voice that was both mountain and ocean, laughter and defiance, rang clear and golden like a beautiful trumpet note that was too perfect to be sounded by human lips.

“NO!”

Suddenly the pressure and invasive presence was hurled back. Niam realized that he held his hands defensively in front of himself, that with each sounding of the trumpet’s “NO,” he felt a new type of power flowing through him.

Somewhere within the depths of Niam’s soul, there existed an ocean fathomless and still, unmoved because it was always in motion, the origin of all motion, containing everything and nothing all at once. He knew that it had always existed within him.

“NO,” the Voice rang out, and Niam cried with it. He realized that at the tips of his fingers, a bowl was forming within the air, not of the air, but composed partly of it, shielding him and his friends from the effects of the necromancy below them.

“NO!”

Niam had never heard a more beautiful word in his life. He heard himself screaming, “NO!” along with it.

“NO!” he roared, turning the defensive force he wielded against the spellcaster bathing in the cesspool of corrosive magic. Niam watched in amazement as circumference of the O protecting the three of them unfurled, opening into a flower’s blossom, taking on the scintillating color of sunflower petals. Slowly it straightened and became a wall. Niam pushed against the wall he had somehow created, and while the necromancer’s attention was absorbed in a posture of ecstasy, Niam made his way down the stairs, straining to take each step, fighting to keep his balance. The evil flow of energy continued spewing out of the floor while its rapacious tentacles lovingly cradled Kreeth.

When he reached the floor, Niam placed all of his fury and fear behind his effort. He grunted as he cast the wall outward, willing his defense into a weapon, and watched as the wall sped toward the sorcerer, where it slammed into the stone obelisk on the floor, igniting it in a blinding flash. The Sorcerer was thrown aside as showers of sparks rained down like the starfall of a shattered night sky.

Immediately, the hostile being’s oppressive presence abated. The tentacles retracted in pained spasms. Niam still felt the thing below, still sensed its insatiable hunger lurking in the impenetrable hole, but the worst of the alien magic was gone.

Maerillus and Davin let out startled exclamations. Niam sagged, and gave a nervous laugh. “Now the hard part begins,” he said, straightening and raising his hands before him. Please let me do that again! he fervently prayed.

The hooded figure’s reaction was lighting quick. He leapt up with uncanny agility as a high, piercing screech of rage issued from beneath the cowl. “Watch out!” Davin shouted, and pulled Niam aside just in time to see a sizzling ball of green lightning careen by his head. “The magic’s making him fast and strong,” Davin said between teeth locked in concentration.

Niam Davin’s gift allowed him to size an opponent up with an amazing degree of accuracy. He also knew what he just witnessed. Holding his hands out, he concentrated on producing another shield to protect himself along with his friends.

“I’ve got this,” Niam said, straining to make another barrier so that the next bolt did not fry them where they stood. He knew that if they remained together that the sorcerer was going to take them easily.

“You can drop the hood back, Kreeth,” he said, forcing as much contempt in his voice as he could manage. “I know it’s you.”

While the shield solidified in midair, making an opaque wall that blurred everything in front of it, Niam whispered, “I’ll get us close enough, and if I can distract him, lets take him from three sides.”

For an answer, Davin patted him on the back.

Another blast of power took Niam’s shield square on, knocking him back into his friends. “You must have worn yourself out with that little show you put on with the thing down below,” Niam taunted. “Brothels would pay a good money for something like that. Why didn’t you just find a sheep? Would have been safer, I think.”

“Stupid cockroach!” the necromancer hissed.

The man’s response encouraged Niam. If he could keep him talking for a bit, maybe they could get closer before he had a chance to kill them all. Niam heard himself respond, “No sir, I’m the incorrigible twit, Davin’s the stupid cockroach. We still don’t know what Maerillus is, yet.”

Another blast of weltering energy struck Niam’s shield, and he felt it weaken as he crashed backward into Davin once again. Niam immediately regained his stance and advanced several steps. He knew that if his foe thought that he was one or two more strikes away from losing his protection, they were as good as dead. Fake arrogance, he told himself. He had to appear stronger than he really was. That’s the only language this maggot understands. So Niam took a gamble.

Lowering his arms, he dropped the edge of the barrier enough to look squarely at his enemy. “Moonflower root,” was all he said, indicating the immobilized count and Hammer with a tilt of his head. Inside, Niam felt terrified. His knees shook. Standing in once place was nearly impossible.

The man before him stood still for a moment; then he reached up slowly and pulled his hood back, revealing the jaunt, smirking face of Ravel Grimmel. “It was easy to do when I had so many faces to hide behind.” As the sorcerer spoke, his face appeared to melt like beeswax and reform itself into a different mould. Now it was the deceased Kirse’s image Niam beheld. ’You have no idea how many times I wanted to do all of you, how many chances I had, waiting for the right moment to bring this all to its proper conclusion.

A part of Niam wanted to scream and run, yet he stood there, and a remote part of him listened, astounded when what he actually did was say, “Sir, I know many men your age have problems with performance. It’s why my grandfather only had seven children. Can you still make a good stream in the morning?”

Kirse’s face clouded a stormy scarlet as he began to raise his hands for another attack. Niam kept his shield low, and waited until his instinct warned him to move. Niam suddenly pivoted just in time to catch the powerful jolt at an oblique angle, sending it bouncing into the stairway beside them.

Then he lifted his trembling foot and stepped forward. “You’re going to have to try harder than that, Kreeth.”

The sorcerer gave a derisive laugh. “I hoped you three would make it past my mischief makers tonight. You were so close to catching me. If your friends had been just a few steps ahead, they would have.”

“We made it anyway,” Davin said.

“And yet you hide behind this little rat,” the sorcerer sneered. “Why is that, I wonder?”

“Because you won’t come out and play fair,” Davin growled.

“You mean like this?” he snarled, as his hand whipped out in a blur sending an object darting across the space between them so quickly that Niam barely saw it. The projectile sailed through his shield as if it didn’t even exist, catching Davin on the shoulder before he had a chance to completely move out of the way. Niam saw his friend hunch over to pull a small throwing knife from the fleshy part of his upper arm.

“I’m alright,” he grunted.

“You shield won’t work against solid objects,” the killer said. “Although I am curious how you gained your powers. I didn’t think you’d make it through my little surprises in the caverns. It’s been quite a long time since the Guldeen-gar have eaten.”

“That’s just one more thing you’re going to have to account for, Kreeth,” Niam spat.

The image of Kirse’s face melted, appeared to swirl, and sorted itself out into the merchant’s leering features. “A useful trick. Enough to buy me time after you brats interfered with my plans. I was never able to find what I was looking for, but I suppose I have you to thank for all of this. My plan B. I was going to wait until things were settled before delving into the deeps below me, but what I found there made me reconsider everything. “ Kreeth held his head back and chortled.

“You should have stopped long ago,” Niam replied in a wheezy voice.

Kreeth went on, talking overtop Niam’s words. “When I found the Khadihar, there was barely enough lifeforce left in her to tell me what she needed. Lucky for me I had the foresight to begin feeding her years ago. In return, she taught me sooooo many things . . .”

The relish in Kreeth’s voice sickened Niam. He took another step forward. Kreeth cocked his head to the side as he watched. “Now I wonder where your third friend has gone,” he said with a sly voice.

Niam realized Maerillus had made himself invisible and must be moving into position for a clear attack. He had to do something to distract the necromancer. Before he could think of what to do, he heard Davin move behind him and saw a flicker of motion arc toward the evil fiend. Kreeth reacted in a flash, snatching the knife he had used against Davin from the air almost effortlessly. He then arched his eyebrow contempt and looked to the side. “I hear you,” he hissed and then gave an underhanded toss. The knife tumbled with the speed and momentum of an arrow, and struck the wall at the opposite end of the room with a loud clang.

“No? Not there?” Kreeth asked, annoyed. Then, he spoke a word that struck Niam’s ears as vile and utterly inhuman, and Niam felt a shift in the power around Kreeth. The sorcerer made a crude gesture with his fingers and a billowing mist poured into the room, spreading quickly, thinning as it expanded, filling the air around them. Niam’s lungs began to burn, but that was not its only effect. He watched helplessly as the fine particles conjured by Kreeth began sticking to something just paces from the sorcerer, cohering around a tall, slender form, revealing Maerillus plainly as he slowly moved forward to make his attack, just inches away from the path the knife had taken before hitting the wall.

“Look out!” Niam cried out in alarm, but before he had a chance to react, Kreeth snarled and released something like a wave of compressed air that lifted Maerillus off of his feet and sent him sailing backward through the room. He came down hard and did not move.

Niam screamed as he saw his friend’s body flop to the ground. “Now!” Davin shouted, and Niam rushed forward, terrified but enraged, placing his will into the force protecting them and once again sending it barreling toward Kreeth like a battering ram.

The gauzy shield struck the necromancer hard, but this time he made a slicing motion with his hands, and as the barrier met Kreeth, it folded around him, staggering him without knocking him to the ground. Then he leveled a malevolent glare at the two of them. Niam’s blood ran like ice in his veins.

Davin made it to Kreeth just as Niam’s attack folded around him and ghosted past, slamming into the wall like a barrel. Kreeth cackled, and flicked his hand to the side in a dismissive gesture. Davin let out a muffled “Umph!” as all of the air escaped from his lungs and he was sent sprawling across the floor. Niam skidded to a halt and raised his hands, preparing to place another wall of force between himself and Kreeth, but Kreeth was quicker. The necromancer made a gesture with his hand again, casually sweeping it to the side, and Niam gasped as he felt invisible bands of iron wrap around him and lift his helpless body into the air, where he hung immobilized and impotent.

“You never should have crossed paths with me,” he said in snide voice. With another casual tossing motion, Niam felt himself hurled end over end into the shelves at the far end of the room. A loud scream escaped his lips when he felt his right arm fracture as he fell to the floor in a heap.

The pain was excruciating, and he gasped as he tried to sit up. His arm hung limp as the blazing agony forbade even the slightest movement. Niam struggled through the fog of pain to grab onto a thought—any thought—as he used his left hand to prop his body up enough to face the sorcerer.

Kreeth walked slowly toward him, shaking his head. “And you thought you were a match for me?”

Niam took in great gulps of air as he tried to steady himself enough to speak. When he finally managed to form words, they came out in stuttering, staccato, spurts. “K-knew I w-w-was going to d-die,” he said barely above a whisper.

Kreeth laughed contemptuously. “And you will, as will your friends and your precious Count and his Hammer.”

“D-don’t care if I die,” Niam said as tears began to stream down his face. He knew they had failed, that the Voice had been a farce, a will-o-the-wisp leading them to believe they could make right what had been set wrong by this disgusting man.

“Oh? You’ll care, you brat.” He slowly turned his lean frame to the side and clenched his first. As he opened his hand, Niam watched in horror as a green, wispy flame ghosted across the room and landed within the pile of wood surrounding Joachim and Jolan Kine. There, it seemed to bury itself among the logs. Niam heard the crackle of wood taking to flame and he watched it begin licking eagerly at the edges of the pile more rapidly than a normal fire could spread.

Kreeth went on mercilessly, “You’ll care when the flames devour your friends, and as you watch them cook, you’ll live long enough to know that your death will be slow and painful.”

“Already b-been in a fire once,” Niam said, and let out a sound that was part laugh and part sob.

Behind Kreeth, Niam noticed Davin’s legs twitch slightly. He was coming round, but not around fast enough—which meant his friend was going to be conscious as the flames began to consume him. The only thing he could do was keep the murderer talking as long as he could and pray Davin roused himself in enough time to put a stop to the necromancer.

“Why?” Niam croaked between gasps. His arm throbbed with a jagged sensation that sent exquisite waves of agony through his body as his muscles convulsed.

Kreeth raised an eyebrow, and his simple words were colder than ice. “Because I can.”

“Not good enough!” Niam shouted.

The evil man paused as he drew closer to Niam, and appeared to consider for a moment. “Because if not me, then someone else,” he said. “You think I’m the only one of my kind here?” Kreeth held his head back and laughed. There was nothing boastful or mocking in this reaction. The sincerity and depth of the laugh made Niam sure that the man was telling the truth. “I know what is coming, fool. I found out when I was a boy. I never had a chance to piss my time away like you and your meddling friends. I didn’t have the coddled life privileged brats like you have!”

As the necromancer spoke, his fists clenched and unclenched in rhythm with the tempo of his voice. Niam’s eyes darted to Davin, but did not remain on him for fear Kreeth might look.

His friend seemed to have stopped moving. Niam sank further into despair. As Kreeth went on, Niam closed his eyes. He could not look, did not want to see.

“My family lived as merchants in the lands bordering the Waste where countries are just names and nationalities do not matter. We were among the few who knew of secret passes in the southern mountains that kept us safe from the filthy Shakta clans. We got lost in those mountains and stumbled upon the ruins of an ancient outpost from a time before memory . . .” the necromancer’s voice seemed to falter slightly as he narrated the story unfolding within his mind. “That was when I met them . . . so beautiful, so pure, so different and beyond human understanding. They took us, gave us a choice to join with them or die.” His voice began to harden once again. “My family was weak. They did not see the advantages that came with the joining that the Dremokh offered. Only I embraced them wholeheartedly.”

Niam flinched at that name: Dremokh. The word felt wrong in his ears. . . like Khadihar . . . the sound of both words crawled across his skin.

Kreeth suddenly stopped, and Niam felt the sorcerer seize his chin and force his head forward. “I was able to find the Khadihar in the caverns below because I felt her calling to me. I searched her out over the years, always calling, always speaking lovely words into my ear, always drawing me to her dying ground. Before she fades completely, she is feeding me with her own life. When we are completely joined, I won’t need the object I have been looking for. I will be as powerful as the Necromancer Kings that made the world shake thousands of years ago.”

“I saw it fall,” Niam said. “That thing didn’t come from here. It doesn’t care about anything . . . especially you. To it, you’re just a . . .” Niam broke off for a moment, coughing up painful, thick glumps of dark mucous from his damaged lungs. Even as he knew he was about to watch his friends burn to death and he was about to die, his mind searched for the right words to say. For some reason, naming what Kreeth was, what he had done was crucial. Kreeth had willingly surrendered himself into the embrace of something so vile and evil it had no place on this earth. Naming it and speaking true was now a necessary rite of exit from this world, the one last act of defiance that was left to him. As his mind raced to do this final thing, he realized how absurd and pathetically limited Kreeth’s insight was.

And so Niam began to laugh. Kreeth’s face drew back in surprise at Niam’s reaction. As Niam saw the expression on Kreeth’s face change, he began to laugh harder, causing his chest to spasm and rid itself of the crud in his lungs.

“You’re just a sad little megalomaniac!” Niam tried to say, but through his hacking and choking only a few syllables made it through. Niam steadied himself until he was able to wheeze out enough words for the sorcerer to hear him, “To that thing, you’re just another trall, and you can’t even see it.”

A sharp blow rocked Niam’s head to the side causing lights to flare behind his eyelids. Kreeth shrieked, “You won’t talk about her like that!!!”

Her! The word hit Niam like a second physical blow. His mind reeled while he blinked as tears wet his cheeks, streaming off the side of his face now burning with fresh, searing pain. Kreeth made an effort to calm himself, and went on as if Niam’s comment had never happened. “She barely made it here, to our home.”

“Deluded.” Niam mouthed the word, not caring if another blow followed, but Kreeth ignored him.

“Imagine my delight when I realized that not all of her rested.” He nodded his head, as if remembering an old conversation. “She told me that you were dangerous.” The necromancer drew close once again, and his breath stank like diseased meat. “She told me that I should kill all of you right away, but when you and your friends ruined my plans, that made this personal, you little brat!”

Niam’s face burned. His arm burned, his chest burned, and soon he, along with everyone else in the room, would burn as well. He cast a desperate glance past Kreeth’s face to where Davin and Maerillus lay on the floor, but salvation wouldn’t be coming from either of them. They remained still. Not even Davin stirred, now. The flames were beginning to feed hungrily at the wood beneath Joachim and Kine, inching its way closer to their shoes, and then to the soft flesh beneath.

This was it. His time had run out.

“You killed my brother and sister,” Niam forced himself to say. Kreeth began to respond, but Niam had heard and seen enough. He worked up his mouth, and despite the fact that he was parched, Niam spat what little was there directly in the man’s face.

The sorcerer reacted immediately, raising his hand and bringing it down hard across Niam’s face. He only had time to flinch before blow after blow followed, and a rain of pain pummeled his face until Niam felt only the impact of the blows. His face went numb. The room and all of the sounds within it began to fade. Niam had no idea how long the beating went on, but as the room returned, it spun at a sickening rate, and he was on his side. Several boxes lay across his body. The taste of blood was heavy in his mouth.

From the direction of Kine and Joachim, Niam heard Kreeth cursing as he knocked blocks of wood around on the floor. The sorcerer must have noticed he was stirring, because he said irritably, “You made me forget myself for a moment. The fire was spreading too quickly, and I want all of you awake for this. I want you to feel it burning you alive. She says that all she needs to complete our joining is a few more souls. Then she will have enough strength to complete the transfer. I might have killed you and your friends more quickly if I had been able to find Linea’s Heart. I went to a lot of trouble for that, and I might have had enough power to save her . . . to bring her back, but—” the sorcerer chuckled wickedly, “—this will be enough for us. More intimate, I think.”

Niam attempted to open his eyes, but they were nearly swollen shut. Every little movement was agony. Niam moved slowly to his side, too tired to even cry. He shifted his weight and only managed to partially right himself. Too many things had fallen from the shelves as Kreeth savagely beat him to avoid the intense pain sitting up required. Yet he managed to hold his head up enough to squint through eyelids gummed shut by sticky blood. Kreeth was rearranging the wood so that it burned more slowly. He held his hand up in an angry gesture, producing a weak bolt of energy that arced out like lightning, striking Joachim on the thigh. The count’s body convulsed briefly, and from his lips came a groggy whimper.

“Wake up!” Kreeth snarled. Then he used a riding crop to strike Kine hard on his thigh. “You too! Wake up, it’s time to get this started!” Laughter, gleeful in the depths of vengeful depravity, echoed through the room.

Niam laid his head back, closing his eyes tightly against the continuous onslaught of pain and rolled to the uninjured arm. Dangling from the packed shelves several feet away, Niam noticed that a link of rope had become dislodged and hung as if the stacked boxes had spontaneously sprouted a lone vine. Niam had the passing, bitter thought that if it had been close enough, he might have been able to choke himself with it. Anything would be preferable to the flames that Kreeth held in store for all of them, yet he knew he didn’t have a ledge to jump from. The basement held enough dry wood that the space within would fill with smoke and heat rapidly. What Salb failed to do, the sorcerer would finish.

Bug would be safe, though he and his friends would die horribly. This time Niam knew there would be no way out of the trouble they were in, no help coming, no eluding the enemy. Once again, he found himself laughing. The sound came out as a harsh groan. His ribs hurt, and the movement of his body shaking with laughter caused fresh roots of pain to spread from his leg up to his shoulders.

Niam sat there, laughing at the absurdity of dying this way, after all he and his friends had given in response to the pronouncements of the Voice. Kreeth’s ranting abruptly stopped.

Something in the air surrounding him changed, the same way pressure often fluctuated before a storm’s arrival—only, it happened in the blink of an eye. There was no storm. Not in the basement. Yet something was brewing.

Kreeth scanned the room, startled. “What is that? What is that I feel?” he demanded. His body became tensely animated. He twisted from side to side, searching for something elusive and dangerous.

To Niam, the room now felt warmer and lighter. A freshness permeated the air, and even the smoke from the logs burning around Jolan Kine and Count Joachim was growing thinner, the way wood smoke seemed to sometimes evaporate into a clear fall sky with none of the stench of charred wood lingering around. Niam almost believed he felt the warmth of the sun penetrating into the thick clothes he wore, dispelling the enduring cold of winter from where it had taken up a permanent residence in the bowls of Kreeth’s lair.

Niam felt a shiver run down his body, but the response was not to the chill, but to something else, another kind of presence entirely. His hurts seemed less painful. His arm no longer throbbed; and was it his imagination, or had the swelling gone down enough for his eyes to open a bit more?

As if in answer to this, the Voice that had guided and spurred Niam and his friends along this bitter and maddening path spoke up quietly but clearly, seeming to come from all directions at once.

YOU HAVE TO MOVE, NIAM.

“Now?” Niam asked. His voice still barely rose above a whisper. “After all of this?”

NOW, it answered him. With it came a warmth and certainty that he would be okay if he only did as it told him to do.

Niam shook his head, while nearby, Kreeth screamed at him to stop.

“Your word’s squat with me,” Niam told the Voice. All it had gotten him was beaten to a bloody pulp. “Think I’m ready for the smoke,” he murmured weakly. A seductive part of him reasoned that once his lungs got enough of it, he knew he might go out before the fire got to him. He felt heavy, as if his body would soon become so leaden with fatigue and pain that it might sink down into the rock and dissolve there.

NOW, the Voice insisted.

Across the room, Kreeth screeched, “Who are you talking to?”

Niam ignored him and addressed the Voice instead. “Still hurt too much,” He muttered. “Ask the dog to do it for you.”

Niam was utterly exhausted—so sapped that there didn’t seem to be much left within him for movement . . . but he looked beyond the sorcerer to his friends lying still upon the floor. And then to Kine and Joachim, who were beginning to stir in their restraints.

MOVE, It told him again. Wrapped within the word were notes both kind and encouraging.

“Stop this!” Kreeth shouted hysterically. “I’ll burn everything right now!” he bellowed.

Niam noted this distantly. Everything seemed to be receding. Kreeth hadn’t moved, and a part of him knew this was important, something worth thinking about if only he had the energy. Something held the sorcerer rooted in one place.

He’s going to begin moving soon, a smaller voice warned Niam. Not THE Voice. A tiny voice . . . sensed rather than heard. His voice. His own. Niam’s.

MOVE

Niam managed to lift his good hand and shoo the warning away: Kreeth’s or the Voice’s . . . it didn’t matter.

“I’ll do it for my friends,” Niam slurred.

He used his one good arm to drag himself away from the broken, toppled boxes at his feet. Slowly, Niam placed his arm out, steadied himself, and pushed again. Pain screamed along his body, making the room spin like a child’s cartwheeling pinwheel. Again, he repeated the motions. And again. Arm, push, pain . . . arm, push, pain . . . Then begin again . . . arm, push, pain . . . arm, push, pain . . .

Sensing that he only had moments before Kreeth pushed free of the force holding him, Niam gritted his teeth, slowly scooting himself toward the place beneath the shelf where the dislodged length of rope hung down like a lifeless trunk. Waves of darkness danced at the edges of his vision, and he knew it would be sooooo much easier to give in, stop, and lay his head back down, but the Voice’s presence awakened a spark of hope within Niam that he might be able to do something after all.

He scooted and fought to remain awake. Within the sharp framework of pain seizing his body, something about the rope dangling over the edge of the shelves tickled his memory. A fleeting image of Bug shrugging her shoulders and telling him innocently, “You’ve just got to know how to handle your bees” flashed in his mind. That was the first time he met his little friend, and the deadpanned voice combined with her ironic sense of playfulness unexpectedly struck Niam as funny—and the fact that he found it funny right there in the basement of a sorcerer about to kill him struck him as downright hilarious.

Niam began to laugh. Paces away, Kreeth lurched forward, as whatever it was that had been holding him finally released its grip on him. He looked about; equal parts fury and fear shone in his eyes. Finding nothing but empty air, he jerked his gaze sharply toward Niam. Even from ten paces away, Niam saw Kreeth’s pupils constrict, as if he found the culprit of his alarm. “What are you doing!?” He screamed

Inwardly, Niam shrank in on himself. He tried shaking his head, but the muscles in his neck felt torn. “No idea what you’re talking about,” he said, mouthing the words more than speaking them, working hard to manage to speak between laughter and gasps for air.

Kreeth looked around frantically, terrorized by something neither of them could see.

“Stop that!” he demanded. “Maldies, I know it’s you!”

Niam looked around, but no readily apparent source revealed itself. He shifted on his unsteady hand and turned himself to see the rope better. He needed to get closer to it. Yet even the act of thinking about moving caused intense shivers of pain to flare like dry straw thrown into a fire. Niam held his breath and pushed himself forward.

Kreeth began moving swiftly toward him. “What are you doing?” he screamed.

“Don’t quite know,” Niam grunted. Still unable to suppress the bubbling laughter within, he used a shelf support to steady himself. “Got to get to the rope,” he heard himself slur dreamily.

Somewhere between crying out in pain and pushing himself on two wobbly legs, Niam remembered the day he led his friends down into the basement, and he knew why he needed to get to the rope, knew why the Voice insisted that he move. And on cue, the silent, omnipresent words rang clearly to Niam, YES NIAM, MOOOVE . . .

Drunkenly, Niam made a rude gesture to the Voice, and said, “Shove it, I’m almost there.”

“Kreeth saw what held Niam’s attention and moved to the rope first. “Stay away from that! Touch it and I’ll kill you now!”

Niam raised his eyes to look at the murderer. Behind the man’s weltering gaze, he saw terror. “You’re a-afraid of m-me!” Niam said, his giddy words verging on hysteria. “Wouldn’t pull that, if I were y-y-you,” Niam said. Gales of laughter were about to erupt from his chest, and he felt as if they might tear him apart if they did.

Kreeth instinctively grabbed the rope, protecting it from Niam’s reach. Kreeth reached out, his hand clenching as he readied another strike.

“It won’t work,” Niam lied. “Y-you’ve got n-no more p-p-power over me.” When Kreeth faltered for one fleeting instant, Niam realized that the man believed him, and he began laughing so hard the pain made his legs give out beneath him.

“Stop it! Be quiet!” Kreeth bellowed.

Niam fell sideways, supporting himself against the shelves. “Y-you said Bee!” Rails of laughter shook his body so hard Niam no longer knew whether he was laughing or sobbing. He just couldn’t help himself. The perplexed expression on Kreeth’s face as the sorcerer tried to figure out how the tables had suddenly turned on him ensured that Niam couldn’t stop laughing.

Kreeth took an involuntary step backward.

“I wouldn’t if I were you. I’d just stand right there and try to behave . . . get it—bee-have?” Niam felt himself beginning to slide down on his good elbow. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t remain upright any longer. Had he said bee-have or bee-hive? Niam laughed like he had never laughed before.

Kreeth stared in bewilderment at Niam as if he had suddenly sprouted venomous fangs. He stepped back again in order to avoid Niam, reacting as if he were made of acid instead of flesh and blood. The necromancer unconsciously tugged on the rope so hard it pulled the box Niam had tied it tied to away from the weakened plaster behind it. The box fell from the shelf and the sorcerer let out a squeak of surprise and leapt to the side. From within the wall, an angry, furious buzzing rose as thousands of angry bees became abruptly dislodged within their winter home.

“What is this?” Kreeth’s voice rose like a strident trumpet. “What magic is this!” he demanded, raising his hand toward Niam, who lay on the floor cradling his arms, laughing uncontrollably.

“I told you to bee-have!”

Kreeth shrieked in fury, but before he conjured the killing strike, a rumbling mass of bees erupted from the hollow in the wall and boiled into the room, surrounding Kreeth and Niam alike in a vengeful cloud, protecting their queen by delivering thousands of tiny, fiery stings to anything they managed to sink their stingers into.

Niam accepted the pain . . . welcomed it, crying out to the man who murdered so many people, “I know how to handle my bees!” laughing as the enraged bees went about their work.

Kreeth forgot all about Niam, and began swatting frantically at the little insects attacking him. He gibbered incoherently as the things came at him from every direction. Panicked, circling, trying to knock the bees off of his face and away from his mouth, Kreeth also forgot about two people lying on the floor—who lay there no longer. He raised his arms, summoning a sheath of crackling green energy in a desperate attempt to kill some of the bees diving at him.

From nowhere, a form melted out of thin air.

“This is for Betsy!” Maerillus snarled, bringing his blade upward, removing one of the sorcerer’s hands with a vicious, clean slice.

At the same instant Maerillus struck Kreeth, Davin appeared and seized Kreeth by the hood of his robe. He flung him screaming onto the burning wood. The man’s robes ignited immediately. He convulsed and began thrashing wildly about. The flames eagerly latched ahold of the necromancer’s clothes, and he let out a high, keening scream of disbelief and pain.

Davin picked up an opened cask of lamp oil and slid it across the floor toward Kreeth’s burning form. The moment it hit the man’s leg, the flammable contents within sloshed and spilled over its edge and lit into a blazing torrent of fire. Kreeth floundered on the wood in uncontrolled spasm, screaming mortally. His legs kicked in an attempt to dispel the flames, but the only effect this had was to knock over the oil, sending a lake of flame spreading in all directions. As the liquid flames fed the ones already working at the wood above them, Niam heard a low whoosh as more oil came hungrily to life. The sorcerer, now shrouded in ropes of fire, balled helplessly into a fetal position, and as he died, the flames grew in strength and life.

“We’ve got to go!” he heard Davin yell. But all Niam could do was lay there and laugh until the world closed around him in darkness with only a pinpoint of fire at the center of his vision.