heard no sounds about them other than the echoes of dwarven sandals and boots, and while that fact gave her some comfort, she realized that this blind rush through the complex would Hkely get them nowhere.
Finally Shayleigh was able to stop the brothers' wild run, reminding them that they had to sort out the maze of tunnels and try to find Cadderly and Danica.
When the dwarves had quieted, they did hear some noise, a general murmur, down a corridor to the left Shayleigh was about to whisper that she should go ahead and stealthily check out the place, but her words were buried under Pikel's hearty "Oo oi!" and the resounding clamor of the renewed charge.
The Fifth Corner
There," the prisoner said to Cadderly and Danica, pointing across a last intersection to an unremarkable door. "That is the entrance to the wizard's chambers." Cadderly.
The call came again in the young priest's mind, from somewhere not so far away. Cadderly closed his eyes and concentrated, coming to understand that the call came from somewhere beyond the unremarkable door. When he opened his eyes once more, he found Danica eyeing him curiously.
"The man does not lie," Cadderly said to her. The prisoner seemed to relax at that "Then why are there no guards?" Danica asked, more to the prisoner than to Cadderly. TTie man had no answer for her. "This is a wizard," Cadderly reminded them both. "A powerful wizard by all that we have heard. There may indeed be a guardian or some protective magic."
Danica roughly pushed the prisoner forward. "You shall lead," she said coldly.
Cadderly immediately moved up beside the man, catching his arm to hold him back, and looked across him to regard Danica,
"We go together?" he asked as much as stated.
Danica looked to the door, to Cadderiy and the other man. She understood her love's sympathy and protective-ness toward the helpless prisoner, understood that Cadderly, convinced that this was not an evil man, would not use the prisoner as fodder.
"He and I lead," Danica decided, pulling the man from Cadderly*s light grasp. "You follow."
The monk soft-stepped up to the intersection, bent low and peered both ways. She turned back to Cadderly and offered a shrug, then motioned for the prisoner to keep pace and skittered across to the door - almost
The creature seemed to unfold from the air itself, becoming first a black line, then expanding left and right, two dimensional, then three dimensional. Five serpentine heads waved in front of the startled companions.
A hydra.
Danica skidded to a stop and hurled herself to the left, rolling from the lunging reach of three great heads. The prisoner, not as quick as the monk, managed only a single step before a monstrous maw clamped down across his waist
He screamed and batted futilely at the scaly head as the needle-sharp teeth ripped him. A second maw descended over the man's unprotected head, stifling his scream fully. Both heads working in unison, the hydra tore the man in half.
Cadderly nearly swooned at the sight. He got his loaded crossbow up in front of him, shifting it this way and that, trying to follow the almost hypnotic motion of the wearing heads.
Where to fire?
He shot for the center of the great body, and the hydra roared in rage as the dart hit and exploded. Two heads still snapped at the dodging Danica, two continued their feast on the slaughtered man, and the fifth shot forward, far short of Cadderly, but compelling the hydra's bulky body into a short rush at the young priest
Danica started for Cadder'.y, but reversed direction abruptly as the hydra shuffled by, and chose instead to work her way behind the beast. She cried out for Cadderly to run, though she could not see him around the bulk of the monster.
The lead maw came, straight as an arrow, for the young priest, testing his nerve as he struggled to get his weapon readied a second time. The serpentine maw was barely two feet away when Cadderly's arm at last came up, and he fired, the quarrel skipping off six-inch fangs, diving intc the mobster's mouth and blasting in a muffled explosion.
The head and neck dropped in a line on the floor, slowing the charge.
The two heads that had been after Danica, and the one finished with the dead prisoner, came sv/ooping in, though, and the young priest wisely fell back, desperately bringing up his walking stick to fend off the nearest attack.
He knew that he had to get fa- enough away