Realms of Shadow - Lizz Baldwin [41]
Melegaunt turned to see a pair webbed hands clutching the edge of his shadow-walk, and between them was a slimy reptilian head shooting up to attack. The face itself was rather broad and froglike, save that its dead black eyes were fixed on Melegaunt's leg and its lips were drawn back to reveal a mouthful of needle-sharp fangs. He lowered a hand and spoke a magic power word, unleashing a cold black bolt that drilled a fist-sized hole through the thing's head. The hands opened, and its lifeless body slipped back into the sodden peat.
"What magic is that?" Bodvar gasped, watching from a few steps ahead.
"Southern magic," Melegaunt lied. He stopped at the Vaasan's side and stooped down, offering his hand. "You wouldn't know it."
Bodvar was not quick to reach for the shadow wizard's swarthy arm. "Who would?" he demanded. "We are not so backward here in Vaasa as you may think. We know about the dark magic of Thay."
Melegaunt had to laugh. "You have no idea." He uttered a quick spell, and tentacles of darkness shot from his fingertips to entwine the Vaasan's wrist. "Now come out of there. You made a bargain."
Melegaunt stood and drew the tentacles back into his fingers, pulling Bodvar's arm along. A muffled pop sounded from somewhere below the peat, and the Vaasan screamed. Though Melegaunt was fairly certain he had just separated the chieftain's shoulder, he continued to pull-pulled harder, in fact. As loud as Bodvar had screamed, the bog people would be after him like a school of snagglesnouts after a waterstrider.
The Vaasan did not budge, and though Melegaunt had the strength to pull the arm off, that would not free Bodvar of the sodden peat's cold clutch. He stopped pulling. Bodvar continued to groan-though less loudly than he had screamed before-and a long ridge of upwelling peat began to snake its way toward the chieftain.
Melegaunt pointed a finger at the head of the ridge and uttered a magic syllable, and a ray of black shadow shot down through the peat. The creature was too deep to see whether the attack hit home, but the ridge stopped advancing in Bodvar's direction.
"Be quiet," Melegaunt urged. "See if you can slip free of your boots and trousers."
Bodvar stopped groaning long enough to cast a sidelong glance at Melegaunt. "My trousers? My dragon-scale trousers?"
"You must break the suction," Melegaunt explained. "It is your trousers or your life."
Bodvar sighed but struggled to move his free hand under the peat.
"Can you reach them?" Melegaunt asked.
"No, I can't-" Bodvar's eyes suddenly went wide, then he began to yell, "Pull! Pull!"
Melegaunt felt the Vaasan being dragged downward and began to haul in the opposite direction. Bodvar howled in pain and rage, his body squirming and thrashing as he struggled to free himself. There was a muffled crunch that sounded something like a breaking bone, then Bodvar finally came free, rising out of the bog with no boots or pants, but a dagger in hand and his sword belt looped over his elbow.
Melegaunt glimpsed a slimy figure slipping down the hole with the Vaasan's trousers trailing from one corner of its smiling mouth, then the bog closed in and concealed it from view. Melegaunt cast a shadow bolt after it, but it was impossible to say whether the spell bit its target or vanished into the bottomless depths without striking anything.
"Hell-cursed mudbreather!" Bodvar swore. "Look what it did to my sword!"
Melegaunt lowered the Vaasan to the shadow-walk, then looked over to find the man naked from the waist down and one arm sagging askew from the shoulder socket, holding the flopping scabbard of a badly shattered sword in his good hand.
"How am I to fight