Ivan wiped a line of blood from his brother's neck. "Druid?" Ivan asked, and there now remained little sarcasm in his tone. Pikel's wild fighting obviously had impressed Ivan, and the dwarf had no way of knowing how much more there was to being a druid than barking animal noises during a fight. "Maybe that'd not be so bad." Pikel nodded gratefully, his smile wide under his low-hanging helmet.

"Where do we go from here?" Ivan asked Cadderly, who was leaning quietly against the wall.

Cadderly opened his eyes. This passage was new to him and the fight had agitated him. Even concentrating on the dripping water did little to help him get his bearings. "We went mostly west," he offered tentatively. "Ws have to come back a-round ..."

"North," Ivan corrected, then he whispered to Pikel, "Never met a human who could tell his way underground," which brought a chuckle from both dwarves. "Whatever the direction," Cadderly went on, "we have to get back to the original area. We were close to our goal before the attack. I am certain of that."

"The best way back is the way we ran," reasoned Ivan.

"Uh oh," muttered Pikel, peeking around the comer to the passage behind them.

Cadderly and Ivan didn't miss the dwarfs point, and they understood even more clearly a second later, when the now familiar scraping-scuffing sound of approaching bony feet came from beyond the bend.

Ivan and Pikel clasped their weapons and nodded eagerly- too eagerly, by the young scholar's estimation. Cadderly moved quickly to quench the battle-fires burning in their eyes. "We go the other way," he ordered. "This passage must have another exit, just like all the others, and no doubt it connects to tunnels that will allow us to get behind our pursuers."

"Ye fearing a fight?" balked Ivan, narrowing his eyes with contempt.

The dwarfs suddenly gruff tone alarmed Cadderly. "The bottle," he reminded Ivan. "That is our first and most important target. Once we close it, you can go back after all the skeletons you desire." The answer seemed to appease Ivan, but Cadderly was hoping that once they had closed the bottle and defeated whoever or whatever was behind this whole curse, no further fighting would be necessary.

The corridor went on for a long way with no side passages, and no alcoves, though some areas were lined by rotted crates.

When they at last did see a turn up ahead, a bend that went back the same way as the one they had left behind, they were greeted once again by the scraping-scuffling sound. All three glanced at each other with concern; Ivan's glare at Cadderly was not complimentary.

"We left the others far behind," the dwarf reasoned. "This must be a new group. Now they're on both sides! I told ye we should've fought them when we could!"

"Turn back," Cadderly said, thinking that perhaps the dwarfs reasoning was not correct.

Ivan didn't seem to like the idea. "There are more behind us," he huffed. "Ye want to be fighting both groups at once?"

Cadderly wanted to argue that perhaps there were not skeletons behind them, that perhaps this unseen group in front of them was the same as those they had left behind. He saw clearly that he wouldn't convince the grumbling dwarves, so he didn't waste the time in trying. "We have wood," he said. "Let us at least build some defenses."

The brothers had no problem with that suggestion, and they quickly followed Cadderly a short way back down the passage, to the last grouping of rotted crates. Ivan and Pikel conferred in a private huddle for a moment, then swept into action. Several of the boxes, weakened by the decades, fell apart at the touch, but soon the dwarves had two shoulder-high-to-a-man and fairiy solid lines running out from one wall, forming a corridor too narrow for more than one or two skeletons to come through at a time.

"Just get yerself behind me and me brother," Ivan instructed Cadderly. "We're better for smashing walking bones than that toy ye carry!"

By then, the scuffling was quite loud in front of them and Cadderly could detect some movement just at the end of his narrow light beam. The skeletons did not advance any farther, though.

"Have they lost the trail?" Cadderly whispered.

Ivan shook his head. "They know we're here," he insisted.

"Why do they hold back?"

"Uh oh," moaned Pikel.

"Ye're right," Ivan said to his brother. He looked up at Cadderly. "Ye should've left the fighting to us," he said. "Be keeping that thought in yer head in the future. Now they're waiting for the other group, the one we shouldn't have left behind us, to catch up."

Cadderly rocked back on his heels. Skeletons were not thinking creatures. If Ivan's appraisal was correct, then some one, or something, else was in the area, directing the attack.

Shuffling noises proved the dwarves' guess right only a few moments later and Cadderly nodded grimly. Perhaps he should have left the fighting decisions to his more seasoned companions. He took up his appointed position behind the dwarven brothers, not sounding his concerns that the undead seemed to have some organization.

The skeletons came at them in a rush, a score from one side and at least that many from the other, and when they found the single opening to get at their living enemies, they banged against each other trying to get in.

A single chop from Ivan's axe dispatched the first one that made its way down. Several more followed in a tight group, and Ivan backed away and nodded to his brother. Pikel lowered his dub like a battering ram and started pumping his legs frantically, building momentum. Cadderly grabbed the dwarf's shoulder, hoping to keep their defensive posture intact, and it was Ivan, not Pikel, who knocked his hand away.

"Tactics, boy, tactics," Ivan grumbled, shaking his head incredulously. "I told ye to leave the fighting to us."

Cadderly nodded again and pulled back.

Pikel sprang away, battering into the advancing skeletons like some animated ballista missile.

With the general jumble of bones, it was hard to determine how many skeletons the dwarf actually had destroyed. The important factor was that many more still remained. Pikel wheeled about quickly and came rushing back, one skeleton right behind him.

"Down!" Ivan yelled and Pikel dove to the ground just as Ivan's great axe swiped about, bashing Pikel's pursuer into little pieces.

Cadderly vowed then to let the dwarves handle any future battle arrangements, humbling himself to the fact that the dwarves understood tactics far better than he ever could.

Another small group of skeletons came on, and Ivan and Pikel used alternating attack routines, each playing off his brother's feints and charges, to easily defeat them. Cadderly rested back against the wall in sincere admiration, believing that the brothers could keep this up for a long, long time.

Then, suddenly, the skeletons stopped advancing. They milled about by the entrance to the crate run for a moment, then systematically began dismantling the piles.

"When did those things learn to think?" asked a disbelieving Ivan.

"Something is guiding them," Cadderly replied, shifting his light beam all about the passage in search of the undead leader.

* * * * *

No light could reveal Druzil's invisibility. The imp watched impatiently and with growing concern.

Counting the skeletons back in the earlier passages, these three adventurers had destroyed more than half the undead force.

Druzil was not normally a gambling creature, not when his own safety was concerned, but this was not a normal situation. If these three were not stopped, they eventually would get into the altar room. Who could guess what kind of damage the two wild dwarves might cause in there?

Yet, it was something about the human that bothered Druzil most of all. His eyes, the imp thought, and the careful and calculating way he swept his light beam, reminded Druzil pointedly of another powerful and dangerous human. Druzil had heard of dwarven resistance to all magic, even potent ones such as the chaos curse, so he could understand how the two had found their way down, but this human seemed even more clear-headed, more focused, than his companions.

There could be only one answer: this one had been Barjin's catalyst in opening the bottle. Barjin had assured Druzil that he had put spells on the catalyst that would keep the man from remembering anything and from posing any threat. Had Barjin, perhaps, underestimated his foe? That possibility only increased Druzil's respect for Cadderly.

Yes, the imp decided, this human was the true threat. Druzil rubbed his hands together eagerly and stretched his wings. It was time to end that threat.

* * * * *

"We've got to charge them before they rip it all down!" Ivan declared, but before he and Pikel could move, there came a sudden rush of wind.

"Oo!" Pikel yelled, instinctively recognizing the sound as an attack. He grabbed the front of Cadderly's tunic and pulled him to the ground. A split second later, Pikel yelped out in pain and grabbed at his neck.

The attacker became visible as it struck, and Cadderly, though he didn't recognize the creature precisely, knew it was a denizen of the lower planes, some sort of imp. The bat-winged thing flew off, its barbed tail trailing behind, dripping Pikel's blood.

"Me brother!" shouted Ivan, but, though Pikel seemed a bit dazed, he warded off Ivan's attempts to see to his wound.

"That was an imp," Cadderly explained, keeping the light beam in the direction the creature had flown. "Its sting is-" he stopped when he looked at the concerned brothers "-poisoned," Cadderly said softly.

As if on cue, Pikel began to tremble violently and both Cadderly and Ivan thought he surely would go down. Dwarves, though, were a tough lot, and Pikel was a tough dwarf. A moment later, he growled loudly and threw off the trembling in a sudden violent jolt. Straightening, he smiled at his brother, hoisted his tree trunk, and nodded toward the skeletal host, still at work taking apart the crate defenses.

"So it was poisoned," Ivan explained, looking pointedly at Cadderly. "Might've killed a man."

"My thanks," Cadderly said to Pikel, and he would have gone on, except that other things demanded his attention at the moment. The imp had targeted him, he realized, and it most probably would be back.

Cadderly released a latch on Percival walking stick and tilted the ram's head backward on cleverly hidden hinges. He then popped off the stick's bottom cap, leaving him a hollow tube.

"Eh?" asked Pikel, wording Ivan's thoughts exactly.

Cadderly only smiled in reply and continued his preparations. He unscrewed his feathered ring, the one filled with drow-style sleep poison, and showed the dwarves the tiny feather, its other end a cat's claw dripping with the potent black solution. Cadderly winked and fitted the dart into the end of his walking stick, then grabbed a nearby plank and waited.

The fluttering sound of bat wings returned a moment later and both dwarves hoisted their weapons to defend. Cadderly had anticipated that the imp would be invisible again. He determined the general direction of the attack and, when the flapping grew near, tossed out the plank.

The agile imp dodged the heavy board, just nicking it with one wing tip as he passed. While the hit hadn't done any real damage, it did cost Druzil dearly.

With his walking stick blow-gun held to pursed lips, Cadderly registered the sound of the nick, aimed, and puffed. A slight thud told him that the dart had struck home.

"Oo oi!" Pikel squealed in glee as the invisible imp, stuck with a quite visible dart, fluttered overhead. "Oo oi!"

* * * * *

Druzil wasn't sure if he or the corridor was spinning. Whichever it was, he knew, somewhere in the back of Percival dreamy thoughts, that it was not a good thing. Normally poisons would not affect an imp, especially on a plane of existence other than its own. But the cat's-claw dart that had struck Druzil was coated in drow sleep poison, which was among the most potent concoctions in all the world.

"My skeletons," the imp whispered, remembering his command, and feeling that he was somehow needed in some distant battle. Druzil couldn't sort it out; all he wanted to do was sleep.

He should have landed first.

He bit the wall before he realized that he was flying, and fell with a heavy groan. The concussion shook a bit of the slumber from him and he remembered suddenly that the battle was not so distant and that he was indeed needed ... but the thought of sleep felt so much better.

Druzil kept enough of his wits about him to get out of the open corridor. His bones crackled in transformation, leathery skin ripped and reshaped. Soon he was a large centipede, invisible still, and he slipped in through a crack in the wall and let the slumber overtake him.

* * * * *

When Druzil fell, so did any semblance of organization in the skeleton forces. Now the imp's intrusions into the undead creatures' predetermined commands worked against the skeletons, for they were not thinking creatures and their original course had been seriously interrupted.

Some skeletons wandered aimlessly away, others hung their bony arms down by their sides and stood perfectly still, while others continued their methodical dismantling of the crate barricades, though they no longer followed any purpose in then-actions. Only one group remained hostile, rushing down the narrow channel at Cadderly and the dwarves, their arms reaching out eagerly.

Ivan and Pikel met them squarely with powerful chops and straightforward thrusts. Even Cadderly managed to get in a few hits. He stood behind Pikel, knowing that Ivan's antlers probably would foul his spindle-disks. Pikel was only about four feet tall, with another few inches added for the pot helmet, and Cadderly, standing at six feet, snapped off shots whenever the dwarfs clubbing maneuvers allowed him an opening.

At Cadderly's suggestion, they worked their way down the channel, leaving piles of bones in their wake. The imp had been controlling the skeletons, Cadderly realized, and with the imp down-Cadderly had heard it hit the wall-Cadderly suspected that the monsters would take little initiative in the fight.

With the one attacking group dispatched, Ivan and Pikel moved cautiously toward those breaking down the barricades. The skeletons offered no resistance, didn't even look up from their work, as the dwarves smashed them into bits. Similarly, those skeletons still remaining in the area, those standing still and showing no signs that they had even been animated, fell easy prey to the dwarves.

"That's the lot," Ivan announced, blasting the skull from the last standing skeleton, "except for those that are running away. We can catch them!"

"Let them wander," Cadderly offered.

Ivan glared at him.

"We have more important business," Cadderly replied, his words more a suggestion than a command.

He moved slowly toward where the imp had crashed, the dwarves at his side, but found no sign of Druzil, not even the feathered dart.

"Which way then?" asked an impatient Ivan.

"Back the way we came," Cadderly replied. "I will have an easier time finding the altar room if we return to tunnels I know. Now that the skeletons have been defeated ..."

"Oo!" chirped Pikel suddenly. Cadderly and Ivan looked around anxiously, thinking another attack imminent.

"What do ye see?" asked Ivan, staring into the empty distance.

"Oo!" Pikel said again, and when his brother and Cadderly looked back at him, they understood that he was responding to no outside threat.

He was trembling again.

"Oo!" Pikel clutched at his chest and went into a series of short hops.

"Poison!" Cadderly cried to Ivan. "The excitement of battle allowed him to fight it off, but only temporarily!"

"Oo!" Pikel agreed, scratching furiously at his breastplate, as if he were trying to get at his heart.

Ivan ran over and grabbed him to hold him steady. "Ye're a dwarf!" he yowled. "Ye don't go falling to poison!"

Cadderly knew better. In the same book he had found the drow recipe, he had read. of many of the Realms' known poisons. Near the top of the potency list, beside the deadly sting of a wyvern's tail and the bite of the dreaded two-headed amphisbaena snake, were listed several poisons of lower plane denizens, among them one from the tail stingers of imps. Dwarves were as resistant to poison as to magic, but if the imp had hit Pikel solidly ...

"Oo!" Pikel cried one final time. His trembling mocked Ivan's desperate efforts to hold him steady and, with a sudden burst of power, he threw his brother aside and stood staring blankly ahead for just a moment. Then he fell, and both Ivan and Cadderly knew he was dead before they ever got to him.

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***