was behind them, pushing them on, encouraging them, helping them get free of their attackers, somehow never getting pinned down himself. The blade had given him the power to dominate this situation.
He pushed Leiber through the doorway and sent him sprawling. Another human ended up beside Teclis, terror and hope at war on his face. Teclis tried to smile reassuringly but it did not work. He lacked his brother’s charisma. Tyrion was already fighting his way back across the chamber to get the rest of the men out.
Teclis breathed deeply, willing his heartbeat to stop racing and his mind to become calm. He reached out, twisting the winds of magic to his will, feeling them flow through him and around him, responding to his gestures and his voice and his attitude of mind. He thought of flame and tiny fires flickered into being around him, sending shadows skittering away into the gloom. He intensified his command and the fires grew hotter and brighter, blazing forth from his hands in sudden hellish eruptions.
The humans scrambled away from him, moving back down the corridor away from the combat as fast as they could. Forces flowed around him, in great spiralling serpents of fiery energy. Now all he had to do was trigger them. He waited for Tyrion to get out of the chamber.
His brother slashed his way through more walking corpses over to where the human had fallen. With a sudden flurry of blows he cleared the area, lifted the man over his shoulders and made for the door again.
Burdened by the additional weight, unable to use his weapon, all he could do was run. Teclis wanted to shout for him to drop the human and get himself clear. His feelings of responsibility towards the man were as nothing to what he felt for his brother. Something made him keep his mouth shut though. Perhaps the belief that Tyrion could win free.
The undead clustered around his brother now, seeking to pull him down, clawing at his armour, scratching his face and exposed flesh. Tyrion kicked and butted and used his body weight to push assailants aside, but even he could not do anything against the enormous tide of desiccated flesh through which he was attempting to swim.
‘Drop him!’ Teclis shouted. ‘Get yourself out. Don’t be a bloody hero.’
Tyrion grinned and kept moving. Leiber surprised Teclis by springing back into the room to aid Tyrion. He said something that Teclis could not hear. Tyrion dropped his burden and started fighting again with the sword. Leiber dragged his companion through the archway and out into the corridor. Tyrion followed a moment later.
‘Back!’ Teclis bellowed. ‘Get clear and don’t come back!’
They took him at his word, rushing down the corridor. Teclis found himself facing the regiment of animated corpses. For a moment the sight of them almost froze his heart. He took a step backwards and they followed, leaving the chamber and its protections behind. Teclis kept back-pedalling. They kept following until the corridor was full of them.
Teclis spoke the final words of his spell.
A gigantic wall of flame sprang into being in front of him, hot as hell, with all the incandescent force of a blast furnace. Corpses shrivelled. Eyeballs popped. Skulls exploded as the brains within superheated. Blackened bones kept moving forward through the flames until even they were consumed.
Within moments it was all over. Tyrion looked at him with something like awe.
‘That was impressive,’ he said.
‘If we are going to get the treasure we need to do so now,’ said Teclis. ‘We may not get another chance.’
Tyrion held up the blade. ‘I’ve got what I came for,’ he said.
Teclis gestured at the surviving humans. ‘They haven’t.’
‘Go ahead,’ said Tyrion to Leiber and the others. ‘You have earned it.’
Teclis strode back into the death chamber and studied the inscriptions on the walls. He knew enough about the ancient slann writings to know that he had stumbled across something important. There was something about the runic language that he recognised, something that niggled at his subconscious, and told him that he really needed to pay attention to what he was seeing.
He recognised one of the runes in particular. It could mean either the end of the world, or the end of an age or both. Another rune concerned the elves. A third concerned the coming of Chaos. A fourth represented a Keeper of Secrets. The way they were laid out hinted at a conjunction of all these things. They were all inter-related although he