The Inquisitives [4] The Darkwood Mask (45 page)

“Gods,” Soneste breathed as she stared in horror at the gruesome scene. “What is this?”

Halix came up beside them, but Soneste tried to hush him before he could call out. Tallis could feel the tension boiling out of the boy at the sight.

Through the lenses of his mask, Charoth saw the nimblewright’s head swivel ever so sleightly to face the door of his workshop. The ancient construct had finer senses than he.

Charoth had spent too many months planning this moment—too many
years
researching the spells necessary to dissolve the matrix of polluted Positive Energy—to suffer this interruption. His factory had been compromised, and a very dangerous opponent had arrived to terminate his work.

Tallis and his allies stood at the door, peering within.

Charoth quelled the panic that threatened him. His opponent was too judicious to storm in without taking precautions, but Charoth’s own resources were stretched thin. Most of his spells had been expended to protect the factory, hide the royals, and execute the procedure itself. But he would not take any chances with Tallis.

He produced a pinch of gem dust, spoke the catalyst, and directed his hand to the door, giving the spell kinetic force. At the edge of his vision, there was motion at the throne, ever so sleight.

It was working! His hope had not been in vain. With the spell-barrier in place, Charoth regained control of the situation once again.

“Welcome, Major,” he said, returning his attention to the procedure—he was very nearly done—trying his utmost to keep his voice calm, to temper his rage. “Your intrusion is unwelcome.”

Magic carried his voice through the slit of his mask, through the glass walls of his workshop, and into the factory room beyond. Lady Mova looked up, jarred from her cabalistic trance.

Tallis heard the wizard’s voice reverberate across the vast room behind him like the words of a god. He didn’t bother to respond or even open the door. Leading with the adamantine head of his hammer, he crashed into the door with all of his strength.

When the shards fell away, an invisible, unyielding force barred his entry. “Blunted!”

“Tallis,” Soneste said, urgently.

His instincts flared a warning of their own as he turned around. He looked to the factory floor below and immediately set to counting the number of new enemies emerging from the shadows.

There were at least a dozen already and more coming. Leading them forward was Rhazan, an eight foot wall of coarse hair and bristling goblin features, his massive chain grasped in both hands.
At each end of the spiked chain was a large, bladed weight.

The creatures that slunk out from around Rhazan had hairless, haggard frames sheathed in desiccated, gray skin which stretched tight across angular bones. They wore the same clothing as the glassworkers, though soiled and in disrepair, and some even carried weapons. Filthy, jagged nails sprouted from fingers half again as long as they ought to be. The ghouls looked up in malignant glee and an unearthly howl of laughter rose up from them.

Servitors of the Blood of Vol.

Rhazan snarled when the ghouls surged before him, cutting off his path.

Tallis heard curses from his companions—neither was likely accustomed to fighting the ravenous dead. They were cornered, backed to a wall, but they did have the higher ground. He tried to formulate a plan—when an arrow loosed from somewhere within the horde, smashing against Charoth’s invisible wall. A second ricocheted off Tallis’s vambrace.

“Aegis!” he shouted, pointing to the base of the stairs. “Stand at the base. Keep them down there, if you can—they can’t poison
you
.” The necrotic toxins in a ghoul’s body could paralyze living victims with even the sleightest scratch, but the warforged’s physiology was quite different—the construct could not be afflicted. “Halix, Soneste, stay up here and by Aureon do
not
let them touch you! Soneste, if you—”

“Tallis, I have an idea!” she said. She took hold of his shoulder and pointed to the brick-walled glass tank not fifteen feet behind Rhazan. “The wall is damaged. Together we might break it open!” Following her lead, he fixed his eyes on the tank and spotted the sleight break in the otherwise even brickwork.

Even as the first of the ghouls reached Aegis—who swept them back with a mighty swing—Tallis turned to meet the Brelish’s eyes. “Perfect,” he breathed, forcing a smile.

“If you can cover me, I can—”

“No,” he said. “I’m going. I know what to do. Cover me. Use
that fancy blue poison of yours on Rhazan if you’ve still got it, but only if you can get a clear shot!”

“Tallis, alone you can’t—”

He ignored her, eyeing Rhazan as he climbed atop the metal railing.

The ghouls hissed and clamored to reach them all. Aegis stood with his legs spaced apart for maximum stability. The ghouls’ weapons and clawed fingers scrabbled against the warforged’s metal plating. Most rebounded without effect, but slowly they were wearing the construct down. With flashing blades, Halix and Soneste cut back those who tried to climb up along the rail or reach through the gaps of the stairs.

Sidestepping a few pale-skinned claws, Tallis stepped once then jumped out into the air, buoyed by the magic of his enchanted boots. He sailed over the ghoulish crowd, clearing them completely.

Rhazan had guessed his move and lashed out with his chain. Even from ten feet away, the spiked weight clipped him in mid-air. Tallis hit the ground in a roll, gritting his teeth as pain coursed through his arm from the bone-numbing blow. His bracers had kept the blade from tearing through.

Tallis leapt to his feet and turned to face Rhazan. “That’s all you’ve got, Rhaz-bag? You’re more bug than bear!”

Staying in one place would ensure a quick death with Rhazan so close, so Tallis started moving. He held his hammer ready in one hand, even as he fished in the pocket of his backpack with his other. He produced a metal flask—and just in time! The next swing of Rhazan’s chain tore the haversack from his shoulders, spilling its contents to the ground.

Speeding out from the corner of his vision, a dart-sized crossbow bolt sank into the thick fur at the bugbear’s collar. Rhazan growled in pain. Sleep well, Tallis thought, remembering how quickly Soneste’s poison could take effect.

Rhazan opened his mouth and bellowed a challenge in the Goblin tongue, spinning both ends of his chain and looking for an opportunity to strike his foe. The bugbear advanced on him just
as two of the ghouls peeled away from their fellows and rounded on Tallis, their hunched bodies loping toward him like animals. He’d been ready for this. He stopped moving only long enough to skewer the first with the mithral pick, then rushed on again when Rhazan’s chain swept a little too close. One head blow from that thing would finish him.

The second ghoul swiped at him, its claws coming away with ribbons off the back of his shirt but failing to draw blood. Tallis stopped again, turned, and threw his weight into a one-handed hammer swing. The blow balked the creature’s advance but didn’t knock it down. He dodged aside just as Rhazan’s chain soared in, the heavy weight catching the ghoul instead. The thick spike opened the creature’s hideous head, spilling its contents to the floor as the body dropped.

Khyber! Was Soneste’s poison doing nothing against the brute?

As Rhazan drew his chain back in, Tallis sprinted directly
at
him. He’d get only one chance at this.

Mere feet away, Tallis dived at the bugbear’s feet and upended the metal flask across his foe’s hairy, sharp-nailed toes. A pale amber substance slipped from the flask in one large gob and landed squarely across a bearlike foot and the stone beneath it. Good enough!

“Stick it out, Rhaz-bag!” he quipped.

Rhazan roared, released one hand from his chain, and punched Tallis between the shoulder blades before he could move away. Grimacing under the wave of pain that coursed through his spine, Tallis pulled out one of his immovable rods and locked it in place along Rhazan’s shin only one foot off the ground. I’m not getting this one back, he thought darkly.

Tallis kept on rolling, and the bugbear moved to follow with his chain spinning through the air. His lower shin pressed against the floating rod, keeping him in place for just a few seconds.

That was all Tallis had needed. He gained his feet when he heard the bugbear’s roar of frustration, then he looked to back to see his handiwork.

The amber substance connecting Rhazan’s foot to the ground had solidified into a mass harder than the bugbear’s own bones—sovereign glue, a magical adhesive far stronger than any tanglefoot bag. Expensive, but worth it. Rhazan wasn’t going anywhere.

Sovereign
glue? Tallis thought. Lenrik would have made a pun from that.

The bladed weight at the end of Rhazan’s chain whistled past his head. Damn, the bugbear was good with that thing! Soneste’s poison hadn’t even slowed him.

“Coward!” Rhazan shouted.

Moving in a half circle around the bugbear and dodging a second swing, Tallis reached the brick-walled tank. Just as Soneste had said, there was erosion in the brickwork, an imperfection yet to be fully repaired.

Tallis gripped his hammer in two hands and struck. He felt the brick crumble under the impact. Adamantine was the hardest metal on Eberron. A few more blows like that and he could break through!

He raised the hooked hammer again. Metal slapped against metal as Rhazan’s chain encircled the shaft and wrenched the hammer from Tallis’s grip. The barbs on the chain cut into his hand and the weapon spun away, the sheer strength of the bugbear’s pull sending the weapon clanging to the ground fifty feet away.

Blunted!

Tallis knew staying a moving target was his only way to survive Rhazan. The sheer force of those spiked weights could break bone—yet Tallis couldn’t breach the wall without a weapon.

Then the idea hit him fast, and he had no time to reconsider it.

Staying right where he was, Tallis called out. “Rhaz-bag!”

Rhazan, trying in vain to pull his foot free from the ground, looked up. He set his chain spinning again. The spiked weight lashed out—perfect aim, as always.

Tallis danced aside only a step aside, ducking as fast as he was able. The heavy weight whistled just above him and sank its spike
into the brick wall of the tank. When the bugbear yanked it free, Tallis stepped back again.

“By the Six, Rhaz-bag!” he laughed. “That was terrible aim.”

The spiked weight came in at him again, and Tallis dodged. He felt the weight clip his arm then heard it smash against the wall again, scattering chunks of brick. Intense heat washed over Tallis from where he crouched on the ground. He looked up to see a leak of bright yellow fluid from the wall’s sleight breach.

That will have to do, he thought. He leapt to his feet, glancing at Rhazan only long enough to note the next attack.

Tallis threw up both arms as he tried to dodge and felt the concussive force of the spiked chain glance away. Were it not for the magic of his vambraces, he knew he’d be dead by now.

As the chain was pulled back for another rotation, Tallis looked to the tank again, aimed with his right fist, and looked at the dragon-headed ring he wore.

“Telchanak,”
he said, willing as much power as the ring could expend at one time. The ghostly manifestation of the ramlike dragon’s head surged out from the ring and struck the wall of the massive bricked cylinder.

The wall broke under the impact. The magical force dispersed, and Tallis felt a wave of caustic heat roll over him, along with the yellow-white glow of molten glass as it spilled out in a torrent of burning death. With a stab of fear, Tallis
knew
that he was too close to escape the deadly flood. He started to turn, but the liquid glass moved like water. Rhazan’s scream came first and Tallis understood that he was only a second or two behind.

All shadows receded as light and heat surged around him.

In a desperate move, Tallis reached for the only thing that could save him and jumped without direction as high as he could.