Pool of Radiance_ Ruins of Myth Drannor - Carrie Bebris [109]
She glanced up at the antechamber. Good-her companions betrayed no hint of their presence. She knew Durwyn, still invisible, watched her progress from the doorway. Faeril and Ghleanna were to initiate a distraction when she reached the pool arm, unless she had need of it sooner. With so many eyes focused on the sapphire, even she couldn’t climb all the way up the ledge unnoticed.
The pool hissed louder down here, a sinister murmur that sounded almost sentient. By the gods, she couldn’t wait to stop those foul whisperings from entering her ears. Still hugging the wall, she continued her surreptitious journey.
Ahead, three cult fighters leaned against the cavern wall, engaged in low conversation. She couldn’t make out their words, and she didn’t much care-she was more concerned about getting around them. She studied the shadows dancing across the cavern floor. There was no good route, but she found one that might work. If she was very lucky.
With a deep breath, she stepped away from the wall and into the pulsing blue light of the sapphire. She walked quickly and silently, hoping the combination of her speed and the strobe effect of the gem’s light would play tricks on the cultists’ eyes and obscure her exact position.
It didn’t.
The trio raised an alarm. Kestrel didn’t wait to see what happened next-she ran for all she was worth. Magically sped by Ghleanna’s prior incantation, she practically flew past the cultists as the sorceress’s lightning bolt streaked across the east side of the cavern to strike a cluster of unwary cult mages.
She’d expected the chant to stop abruptly after her party’s initial strike, but many cult sorcerers were so absorbed in the Mythal ritual that a second attack hit before all the dragon-worshipers mobilized. Fortunately for Kestrel, most of the cultists focused their attention on finding the source of the magical attacks. Units of fighters hurried around the edge of the pool, trying to reach the west side to uncover the renegade sorcerer in their midst. Those cultists on the target side, meanwhile, scurried out of the line of fire.
The resulting pandemonium enabled Kestrel to get nearly to the pool tendril before anyone else noticed her.
“You!” a cult sorcerer cried, his voice all but lost in the din. He pointed his sinister claw at her and unleashed a cone of swirling white vapor.
Kestrel tensed as the funnel enveloped her, but she felt no harmful effects. With a grateful thought for the baelnorn, she rubbed her thumb over the band of one of her mantle rings and hurried on.
As fire and ice, poisoned gas, and conjured missiles soared and billowed through the air, Kestrel lost track of which spells were cast by her friends and which were retributive strikes. She just did her best to ignore the chaos erupting around her and focused on reaching the ledge. Mordrayn remained locked in communion with the Mythal, oblivious to the mayhem that had overtaken the cavern. The blue aura, undisturbed by mortal turmoil, continued to surround the archmage and the sapphire.
She reached the pool arm-a slough, really, an extension of the main pool filled with watery muck. From the foul smell that greeted her, she wondered if the gray sludge comprised the remains of victims tossed into the wicked pond. The slough was about six feet across. With her running start, she should have no trouble leaping its breadth. She boosted her speed in preparation for the jump.
And landed on her face.
“Going somewhere?” The cult fighter who’d tripped her emerged from the shadows as she rolled to her feet and scrambled for a weapon. The enormous man towered over her, swiping his claw through the air like a second weapon. She snapped her club to its full length and swung it up just in time to block his first sword thrust.
He brought the blade around to strike again. Still under the hastening effects of Ghleanna’s spell, Kestrel managed to block the second blow with her right hand while freeing Loren’s Blade from its scabbard