“It’s him!” yelled Tarrel, running across to where Haldin was slowly picking himself up from the floor. Mordan hurled a flask of holy water at Dravuliel, but the elf stepped aside almost lazily, ignoring the splash as the vessel shattered at his feet.
Brey flew at the necromancer with an incoherent cry of hatred. Holding up a hand, he spat a phrase in the ancient elven tongue of Aerenal. The vampire woman seemed to fold up in midair and came crashing to the ground before him. She struggled to regain her feet, but he made an imperious gesture and she cowered as if in fear.
The others could do nothing but watch. Tarrel raised his wand but could not risk a fireball without harming Brey as well as the elf. Mordan judged the distance between himself and Dravuliel, and realized that he couldn’t reach her in time to intervene. Haldin was fumbling shakily with his crossbow but still seemed to be in distress from the dark energy that had struck him. Dria cowered behind a crate of black stones, her homunculus silently hugging her neck.
Brey’s face contorted with effort as she tried to regain her feet. The elf looked down at her with an expression of amused contempt.
“My,” he said, “haven’t you grown stronger! I expected to master your will, as I did with your maker Wultram.”
“You . . Brey struggled to form words, but only disjointed, strangled sounds came from her mouth.
“I see you found your rangers,” Dravuliel said. “I suspected you’d come back for them one day, so I saved them for you. Quite a successful test, don’t you think?” Brey’s eyes blazed a deeper red, but she could not rise to her feet.
Mordan felt a nudge in his ribs and looked down to see Tarrel crouched at his feet, a crate hiding him from the necromancer’s view. He gestured to the Karrn’s enchanted rapier, then to himself, then the elf, and finally drew a finger across his throat. He seemed to have a plan. Moving slowly to avoid attracting attention, Mordan handed the sword over. Tarrel touched the crystal wand to his chest, and disappeared.
Haldin raised his crossbow and took aim, but Dravuliel saw him and gestured with one hand, softly pronouncing a complex syllable. The bolt rattled off empty air without touching him. Reaching down, he dragged Brey to her feet, holding her body in front of his. Her eyes were frantic, but she couldn’t even struggle.
“Naughty,” he admonished the gnome. He raised a hand in Haldin’s direction. “
“Oh, no.” said Dravuliel. “You stay where you are.” He swept the chamber with a glance, apparently looking for the rest of the companions. In that instant, Tarrel appeared behind him, driving Mordan’s enchanted rapier deep into his back.
With a cry of surprise and anger, Dravuliel threw Brey to the ground and turned to strike Tarrel a back-handed blow across the face. Dark energy blazed around his fist, and the half-elf crumpled to the ground.
Mordan threw himself into the cover of a stack of crates. He drew his dagger and edged carefully toward the elf. He saw from the corner of his eye that Dria d’Cannith was still crouching behind a crate, but was fiddling with one of the shields dropped by the zombies. Her homunculus was nowhere to be seen. He hoped she had a better plan than Tarrel.
Bleeding heavily from five holes in his chest, Haldin flattened himself behind the corpse of the zombie he had been examining when the necromancer first struck. He had one hand on his dragon statuette, and his lips moved in silent prayer. He was still pale, and his hands trembled.
Employing the same trick he had used in Falko’s warehouse—in another life, it seemed—Mordan scooped up a handful of cast-iron miniature skulls from a crate and flung them as hard as he could. They landed far away with a rattle, and while the necromancer’s attention was distracted Mordan rolled from the cover of one pile of boxes to another.
Dravuliel began to speak, but no sooner was his mouth open than an ear-splitting shriek rent the air behind him. As he turned, the flying homunculus streaked away. Dria stood from her hiding-place, holding an iron rib from the discarded shield. She had engraved it with arcane symbols, and a blazing bolt of energy shot from the end of the makeshift rod, striking the necromancer square in the chest. He rocked back on his heels, and Mordan was on him before he could recover, stabbing the dagger at his eyes. When the elf raised an arm to shield his face, Mordan struck him hard in the ribs with the stump of his left arm, releasing wounding negative energy of his dragonmark. Holy water had not affected the necromancer; he only hoped that meant that he was not undead.
