Azure bonds - Kate Novak [107]
Dragonbait pointed upward and began climbing the stairs.
"Damn you!" the mage shouted up the steps from the platform. "I may be a greengrocer, but I know better than to abandon a friend! I'll die before I abandon her to that thing, you coward."
Directly behind him, the wall with the secret door exploded and the great, oozing mass surged into the pit. The stone platform began to collapse under its great weight, but the corruption cascaded downward still babbling from innumerable mouths. Now, the squealing cries were chanting in chorus.
In voices ranging from frog piping to deep, resonant tongues as ancient as the great elven forests, the word repeated over and over was Moander.
The Turmish mage blanched and fled up the stairs.
19
Moander's Resurrection and Mist's
Return
Dragonbait was waiting for Akabar halfway up the stairs. The lizard's breathing was fast, but nowhere near as labored as the mage's. Akabar staggered up the stairs with his hands clutching his chest. The pain there had changed from sharp needle pricks to a deep, crushing sensation. His face was drenched with sweat. His shoulder and back ached.
"Why?" he gasped, his furor burned out by the fire in his lungs, "why did you let her die?"
Dragonbait made a quick dismissive shake of his head such as an adult might use to warn an overbearing child. Then, noticing the perspiration dripping down the Turmishman's anguished face, the lizard reached out to take his shoulder.
Akabar retreated from his grasp. "No," he insisted. "You go ahead. I can't run. Muscle cramp," he lied. "If it climbs up the walls, maybe I can slow it, maybe have a chance still to free her. Go!"
The mage collapsed in a heap on the stairs.
Dragonbait slipped past Akabar a few steps lower and knelt to get a better look at him. He put the finder's stone down beside him and reached out with both clawed hands. He laid his palms and fingers over the slime-spattered robe covering Akabar's chest.
The smell of woodsmoke enveloped them. A small aura of light flared around the reptile's claws. Nowhere but in the blackness of this pit would Akabar have been able to see the light the lizard generated. A feeling of warmth and relief spread out from Akabar's torso.
Akabar stood and the pain in his chest, back, and shoulder was gone. He stared at the lizard in confusion.
"Who in Gehenna are you? What are you?"
But Dragonbait's attention was fixed on the pit. He stared over the edge of the staircase into the earth's depths. Akabar tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness to see what held the lizard's gaze. A bright, blue light shimmered in the depths. At first, Akabar thought it might be the moon reflected in water, but the sky above the pit was dark.
"Alias!" he whispered excitedly. 'She might still be alive. Look, the light's coming closer."
The light was indeed approaching them, the blue light shed by the sigils on the warrior woman's arm, but it was not Alias propelling herself upward. The bottom of the pit, a mass of rot and oozing garbage, was rising up the shaft. Alias was just a tiny human figure pinned to the muck.
Dragonbait pointed up the stairs and nudged Akabar to climb in front of him. The mage nodded and ascended without further argument or complaint. When he reached the top, he was only mildly winded. The pain had not reasserted itself with the exertion of the climb. He turned around to check on the lizard's progress up the stairs.
Having judged the speed of the monster to be less than their own, Dragonbait now took his time, turning back often to study it. Is he some sort of tribal shaman? Akabar wondered. What other secrets has he kept hidden?
Akabar peered back down the pit. Far below, the oozing mass that had kidnapped Alias was still crawling up the sides of the midden. It rose like lava in a volcano and had already regained the height of the ruined platform. The titanic effort of hauling its vast bulk did not seem to tire it. If anything, it seemed to be moving faster now.
"Don't move, mooncalf," a strange,