The Last Threshold (Neverwinter #4)(75)

With trembling fingers, Effron brought forth the scroll tube. Dare he try? Or should he just kill her and be done with it?

A lumbering swing of his pet never got near to hitting the quick elf, and she countered with a solid stab of her long staff right between the mandibles—and retracted the weapon far too quickly for those hooked weapons to snap shut on it.

This was not an umber hulk, Effron reminded himself. It was a zombie, gigantic and imposing, but not nearly as clever, quick, or overpowering as it had been in life.

And Dahlia, apparently, was already figuring that out. She struck and struck again with her powerful weapon, and another lumbering swing from the behemoth missed badly. The beast ducked low to snap at her, only to have her smash it several times atop the head. Effron could see her confidence growing. She had started with her long staff, no doubt to keep the powerful creature somewhat at bay, but now, obviously confident that this monster wouldn’t get close to hitting her, she broke Kozah’s Needle down to the twin flails and went into a spinning dance, using every step in the tight alleyway to buy her enough room to strike and retreat.

For many heartbeats, Effron just watched the magnificence of this elf woman at her craft. She actually leaped to stand atop the monster’s thick arm on one low swing, rattled off a barrage of strikes with her weapons, and back-flipped away before the umber hulk zombie could respond.

The young warlock heard his breath coming in gasps, and the shock of that, the shock of realizing that he was wasting time, that his moment was slipping quickly away, jolted him into action. He popped the end off the tube and slid out and unrolled the spell, and immediately fell into casting. The dweomer was far beyond his understanding, of course, and the probability was that he would waste the scroll to no effect, or worse, destroy himself in the futile attempt.

But Effron didn’t let those doubts deter him, focusing instead on the situation before him, fast deteriorating.

He was losing her!

Again, Dahlia would get away, or would get to him and be rid of him, as she had tried once before.

Anger drove him. Outrage drove him. He began the incantation, every symbol on the scroll crystallizing before him, every syllable he spoke a distinct denial that Dahlia would again escape him.

He lost himself in that focus. Nothing mattered except the next word, the proper cadence, of the dweomer. Nothing else could matter, or all would be lost.

He was halfway through, but he didn’t know it.

Down the alleyway, Dahlia scored a solid hit and heightened it with a tremendous blast of lightning energy form Kozah’s Needle that threw the behemoth backward, to tumble to its back, but Effron didn’t know it.

He pressed on. He got to the last line, the critical release, and as he spoke the last word, he peered over the top of the scroll.

There stood Dahlia, staring back at him, staring back at her broken son, her arms limp at her sides, her jaw hanging open, her face a mask of shock, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him.

A metal plate appeared in the air and swung down to slam against the woman. A second appeared on the other side, knocking her back the way she had come. A third and a fourth showed, all swinging as if on a puppet master’s string. Dahlia tried to block, but they were too heavy and tossed her about with ease. She tried to dodge away, but there were too many, and the magic too coordinated.

And they were moving closer together, barely swinging now, surrounding her fully, encasing her.

Closing like a coffin.

Effron called his umber hulk back and put the jar on the ground in its path. As it neared, the magic pulled it, instructed it, and shrunk it.

As he scooped that caged pet up, Effron produced the other. The powerful dweomer, the Tartarean Tomb, now locked its plates around Dahlia, pressing in tight, holding her fast, despite her ferocious struggling. Even this great spell wouldn’t cage this fine warrior for long, Effron understood, and had understood during his careful planning, and now his final piece, the death worm, slithered into position.

The tomb was not complete, the elf woman’s feet and lower legs showing beneath the bottom edge of the metal plates, and the necrophidius coiled around one of those legs and climbed up into the tomb with Dahlia.

How she screamed!

In horror at first, and then in pain as the death worm bit into her.

She kept screaming, kept thrashing.

“Just succumb,” Effron begged her in a whisper, for to his surprise, these cries of pain and terror no longer rang sweetly in his ears.

“Just fall, damn you!” he shouted out against them, and as if on cue, the screaming stopped.

Effron froze, barely able to catch his breath. The paralyzing bite of the necrophidius had finally taken hold, he realized.

The coffin swayed and fell over.

Effron whispered a command to his pet, telling it to stay in place, and to bite again if the woman stirred.

“Now?” Effron heard behind him.

“Fetch her,” he instructed his two dockhand henchmen without turning back to regard them. They ran past him, blankets in hand. “And take care!” he called after them. “Else I will surely obliterate you!”

He walked to the street to the waiting cart his henchmen had brought up to the entrance to the alleyway. Some people were watching, but none approached, for in a place like Baldur’s Gate, a person who stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong most often had that nose ripped off.

The gaffer and his comrade half-carried, half-dragged the metal coffin from the alley, and got it up on the cart with great effort, even dropping it once to the street.