Pool of Radiance - James M. Ward [120]
Shal and Cerulean were right behind him. It'll be difficult for me to do this without slipping. Cerulean warned. Shal reached back to lead the big horse across, but it was she who slipped on the loose limestone fragments, sliding from the top of the rubble pile to the bottom, where her foot collided with the side of a granite mausoleum. Immediately the wooden door was flung open, slamming against the wall, and three horrible apparitions burst from the doorway.
"Wights!" yelled Tarl, charging forward to come to Shal's defense.
Shal had never seen such creatures. Their long hair bristled with filth. Their faces were wild, like men turned beasts, with gaping canine mouths and glaring nocturnal eyes. Their arms were elongated, like an ape's, and their gnarled hands bore claws long enough to inflict lethal damage. The wights separated right away, forcing Tarl and Shal and Cerulean to fight them one on one.
Tarl raised his shield against the wight nearest him. Talonlike claws flailed over and under his shield, and he found it all but impossible to get in a clean swing with his hammer. As fast as he was able to, he returned his hammer to his belt, smashed ahead with his shield, and did his best to splash holy water over the creature. It shrieked in pain and backed away, its flesh burning, but Tarl had not managed to hit any vital area, and much of the precious water went to waste. The creature charged again, and Tarl hurriedly uttered the words of a spell to raise the dead, the only thing he knew of that would stop a wight.
Shal backed up hurriedly, trying to keep enough distance between herself and the nearest wight so that she could utter an arcane command to activate the Wand of Wonder. As awkward as the creature appeared to be in the daylight, its big nocturnal eyes obviously pained by the sunlight, it charged forward, snarling and slavering and lashing out constantly with its yellow-taloned hands.
Just as the wight came near striking distance, Shal finished the incantation for the wand. Instantly flowers sprouted where the wight's claws had been-clean, white daisies with buttery yellow centers.
The wight swiped at Shal with its hands, fully expecting to rake her eyes from her face with one stroke and her bowels from her abdomen with the next. Instead daisies lightly brushed Shal's face and stomach, and the creature recoiled in horror. Shal might actually have laughed if it were not for the wight's furious response. Without wasting another second, it rushed at Shal with its great maw open like a mad dog. Shal couldn't move out of its way fast enough. She just barely had time to blurt a command to activate the Wand of Wonder again. Immediately, so fast that Shal didn't even see it happen, the wight's flesh vanished, and its skeleton crashed against her body. The impact sent her sprawling backward, and she scrambled frantically to get out from under the pile of bones, but the skeleton wasn't animated; the wight was no longer.
Cerulean was glowing purple with fury and magic. Three times he reared and stomped on the grotesque creature in front of him, and three times it managed to claw the flesh of his forelegs as his hooves came down. The magical nature of his attack protected Cerulean from the wight's life-sapping force but not from the pain of the wounds.
Each time the wight's claws combed Cerulean's flesh, blood ran freely, and at the same time, brilliant violet sparks flew, singeing the wight and causing it to cry out in a ghastly screech. It wasn't until Cerulean reared for the fourth time that he caught the wight square on the head and smashed the creature's brains into the ground.
Tarl's spell worked instantly. The spirit of the dead, trapped in the wight, burst from the creature's chest like a great puff of steam. The spirit was free at last, and the wight's hideous