Fistandantilus Reborn - Douglas Niles [111]
At last they worked their way down to the cavern floor, feeling the bedrock of the mountain quickly warm the soles of their boots and moccasins. In a small group, they crossed a stone arch that spanned one of the rivers. The crimson stuff was, in fact, molten rock, Foryth explained to Danyal.
Finally they gathered before the alcove where rested the skull of Fistandantilus. Its sightless eyes still glared, and Danyal squirmed under the uncanny sensation that they were watching him.
It was Emilo who took a step forward, scrambling up a shelf of rock below the alcove. He stared at the skull from only a foot or two away, and Danyal realized that the normally fearless kender was trembling.
“I remember,” Emilo said, his voice a harsh whisper. “I saw this skull before… There was a dwarf there, a wicked dwarf…”
“Take the skull! Bring it to me!” snapped Kelryn, prodding the knife hard enough to draw a gasp from Mirabeth.
Slowly the kender reached out his small, wiry hands. Hesitating only for a moment, he took the skull between his palms and slowly lifted it from the smooth rock of the alcove. Danyal, realizing that he wasn’t breathing, half expected the mountain to collapse or some sort of explosion to rock them.
Instead, there seemed to be almost a lessening of the vibrations in the deep, fiery mountain. With a sigh of relief, Emilo slumped to the ground, holding his grotesque trophy at arm’s length.
It was then that the deep chuckle rumbled through the lair, a sound that could only mean one disastrous thing. And as he looked up and saw the slitted yellow orbs leering out of the darkness, Danyal knew.
Flayzeranyx was here.
But that, too, would soon end!
Indeed, the kender was his slave now, the skull giving Fistandantilus the power at last to overwhelm his host’s limited powers of resistance. The wretch would suffer before he died, but first there was another task to perform. Still maintaining his focus, Fistandantilus felt the nearness of the bloodstone. He gathered his might, plunging through the recesses of the kender’s mind, taking full control.
Emilo Haversack sidled to the side, until he crouched next to the prone form of Kelryn Darewind. The bloodstone was there, and through the skull, the archmage could at last bring the kender under his control.
And Fistandantilus hungered for the nearness, the imminence, of killing.
CHAPTER 41
Shards Assembled Third Bakukal, Reapember
374 AC
Fistandantilus felt the flush of power as the kender’s hands touched either side of the skull. The circle was complete and needed only the explosion of blood and magic to bring the archmage’s scheme to fruition.
His will, his memories, and his presence coalesced into a single powerful entity, an entity with a growing semblance of control.
At the same time, he felt the pulse, the heated throbbing of the bloodstone. It was coming from nearby, and with the skull, it would make him complete.
Yet still there was that cursed, impenetrable interference that was somehow tied into the presence of the boy.
CHAPTER 42
Dragons, Priests, and Magic Third Bakukal, Reapember
374 AC
In the split second of recognition, Danyal knew that the wave of dragon awe was imminent and inevitable. Even so, the reality of the red monster’s presence jellied his knees and felled him like a corpse-except that he was still alive, gasping and horrified as he lay helpless on the floor. Mirabeth, Foryth, and even Kelryn Dare-wind had been similarly staggered by the serpent’s arrival, though the bandit lord had fallen on top of the girl, pinning her in place with his weight. The four humans stared, in various stages of immobility and fear, from where they had collapsed.
Only Emilo still stood. Danyal remembered the kender’s nonchalance when the dragon had flown over Loreloch, but even when he saw the proof repeated before his eyes, he wondered how it could be that his companion could remain upright, apparently unconcerned, in the face of that lethal and overwhelming presence.
In fact, Emilo, still holding the skull,