Realms of the Underdark - J. Robert King [105]
Geppo, now only twenty paces ahead, was cautiously peering into the rift. The sight and stench from the wet, rotting bodies did not seem to affect him. Geppo looked over the bodies carefully, then looked up, saw no threat, and continued on into the rift.
The final weapon was in Wykar's hands. The black wand would have to work the first time. There would be no chance for a second time. He spit out the corner of his vest and some loose fur fibers with it. He had control of himself now, in these final moments.
Geppo was in the rift. He kicked aside a severed limb, perhaps a drow's arm. He looked down at the ground now. He toed something, a sack or piece of clothing. He bent down to pick it up.
Then he straightened up fast, and his bony hands clamped tight over his ears. He seemed to be screaming, his eyes shut. It was the moaning attack of the cloakers.
Something white fell from the cavern ceiling high above the derro.
Wykar raised the black wand and said the three words that would make it work. He never heard the words he spoke. He only felt them vibrate his chest. Moving his jaw tore the wounds in his ears open again, and he almost forgot the words. The pain was horrific.
White light burst out, filled the world in a flash. Wykar saw afterimages of the entire cave imprinted on his retinas like a gigantic, detail-perfect painting. A white arm of sunlight, over a hundred feet long, perfectly connected his wand tip to the falling cloaker. The cloaker was in flames, dying the instant the burning light struck it. The wand of sunfire, taken from an ambushed drow wizard and hidden away among the deep gnome's caches long ago, worked perfectly. Wykar ran forward. There would be more, at least five more. But he was half blind, and his feet caught something, and he fell.
He dropped the black wand of sunfire. He kicked at the thing holding his legs, looking back and blinking at the afterimages.
A dead drow lay at Wykar's feet, his boots entangled in its blood-darkened arm bones and clothing.
Wykar kicked and screamed. Each scream renewed the bolts of agony in his deafened ears. The limp arms lost their grip on him and fell away, unmoving and dead. Wykar crawled away from the drow, limbs shaking with fear. He saw the wand, grabbed for it, looked up again.
Another white thing was falling from the ceiling. Geppo was below it, clutching his head. The cloakers were singing to him as they had sung to the drow.
Wykar raised the wand and shouted out the three words.
Nothing happened.
Your people are like mine, a little, because we are resistant to magic more than other folk.
"NO!" Wykar screamed. He threw down the wand, then snatched it up and aimed.
The cloaker had Geppo in its folds.
"NO!" Wykar got up and ran, waving the invisible wand like a sword. "NO! NO!"
Geppo was trying to get out. Wykar could see his thin fingers pushing out against the black folds. The derro's narrow mouth was open and screaming and making absolutely no sound. Wykar screamed as he ran. He pulled off his ring, his invisibility ring, and threw it at the cloaker entrapping Geppo. "Look at me," he screamed. "Look at me."
Something white fell from the ceiling. He saw it just before it got him.
The wand went up, aimed, the three words said.
A staggering white spear of light set the cloaker ablaze; it curled up and fell to the side. Wykar saw in the great flash that a dozen dark things hung from the ceiling above him. A nest of monsters. They pulled loose when he saw them, a dozen white sheets falling at him with huge mouths and glassy eyes and fangs. Wykar screamed three words, wand out, and shut his eyes. He screamed them again and again and again, over and over, white flames roaring now from the wand and