he heard the clicking pause and the sound of a low growl.
His patience at an end, Valas spun around, an oath on his lips. He saw Quenthel moving toward him, leading the others down the corridor. Danifae was just behind her, but Jeggred was lagging several paces to the rear and was looking backover his shoulder, still growling.
Mistress!Valas signed angrily.Tell Jeggred to keep -
Before he could finish, the relative silence was split by a fierce roar. Jeggred launched himself back down the tunnel, bellowing his battle howl as his claws scrambled on the floor. In another instant, Valas saw what had triggered the draegloth's attack.
Two twisted caricatures that had once been duergar, with claws as long as Jeggred's own and mouths filled with needle-sharp teeth, were stalking up behind them. Rotted clothing hung from them in tatters, and their hair was a tangled mass, crusted with dirt. Their eyes blazed with the malevolence with which all undead regarded the living. Unlike the drow they'd been stalking, the two wights moved in utter silence. Seeing they had been spotted, they ran forward to meet Jeggred's charge.
Jeggred crashed headlong into the first wight, smashing it against one wall with a powerful swipe of his fighting arm, then ripping its belly open with a rake of the claws on one foot as he stomped on it. As the pungent odor of death and rot filled the air, the second wight darted under Jeggred's other arm and casually slapped Jeggred's chest. The draegloth grunted and clutched one of his lesser hands against him - the first time Valas had heard him express pain aloud - and he staggered slightly. An instant later, however, he recovered. Roar-ing fiercely, the draegloth grasped the wight's face with a fighting hand and, wrenching violently, tore the head from its neck.
The first wight was still moving, crawling furiously after Jeg-gred with its rotted entrails dragging along behind it. Before it could reach him, Danifae rushed forward, morningstar in hand. There wasn't much room to swing the weapon in the low-ceilinged cor-ridor, but she managed an abbreviated downward smash. The spiked ball of the morningstar connected with the wight's head in a blaze of magical sparks, filling the air with a sharp ozone tang. The wight dropped and laid still.
Pharaun stared at Danifae with a look of open admiration. He held a tiny leather pouch in one hand, which he'd drawn from his pocket as the wights attacked.
"Well done," he said, tucking it back into a pocket of hispiwafwi.
Quenthel looked past Danifae.
"Are there more?" she asked Jeggred.
Jeggred stood panting, head turning from side toside as he searched for the scent of additional foes. As his chest rose and fell, Valas noted the wound the wight had inflicted on the drae-gloth. It was little deeper than a scratch, but it was causing Jeggred to wheeze as if each breath was painful. After a moment, Jeggred shook his head.
"No more," he concluded, "just these two."
Valas cleared his throat.
"Wights are the least of our worries," he reminded the others. "We should get moving. The portal is just ahead, at the center of the vault, about seventy-five paces into the room. Pharaun's marked it with a spell. Quickly now, and one at a time. Take a run and leap out from the end of the tunnel, then levitate down. Touch nothing in the room. You first, Quenthel, then Jeggred, while Pharaun casts a spell on Danifae. Then Pharaun, followed by Danifae. I'll go last."
That said, he flattened against the wall and motioned the others forward. As he did, he scanned the vault one last time, searching for signs of movement, in case any wights had entered it while his back was turned.
They hadn't.
Quenthel moved forward to glance down into the room, then, after communing silently with her whip vipers, she nodded. She backed down the corridor, then sprinted past Valas and leaped into the air. A heartbeat later Jeggred rushed after her, arms flailing.
As the pair drifted down through the empty room toward the portal, Valas glanced up at the ceiling. Were the gods in the mural scowling a bit more fiercely? He stared back at them a mo-ment, then decided it must have been his imagination. Meanwhile, Quenthel had ignored his instructions and was hovering above the portal. Jeggred, floating in the air beside her, kept glancing back and forth between his mistress and the portal, a confused look on his face.
Valas turned to warn Pharaun that something was delaying