And even without it, Mandel guessed.
"—I will attempt to overtake them," Clavis said. "I've already arranged for an ambush."
Lenik growled contemptuously. "And you need to surround the island for that?"
"No," Clavis said calmly, "that is for your ... added protection."
Lenik was about to roar again when Mandel cut him off.
"That's fine," he said, maintaining only a thin layer of control over the euphoria bouncing in the back of his mind.
"Thank you, sir."
Clavis gave a slight, formal bow.
"Is there anything further?" Mandel asked. "No."
Mandel nodded. "Then we won't take up any more of your time. With the patrol effort and everything else Sendark has placed under your control, you must be very busy."
"With your leave." Clavis bowed again.
"Have a safe journey," the master thief said.
Clavis turned sharply on one foot and marched from the great hall, picking up his entourage of zombie warriors standing in wait outside on the steps.
The huge doors had hardly closed when Lenik spun angrily to face Mandel. "This is ridiculous. They're not helping us. Are you mad?"
"Everything's fine," Mandel said, as sweat beaded his forehead. "You and I are linked to the second fountain. You and I are the only ones who can reach it. You know that from the efforts you've made in the past. The fountain is mystically guarded. If Sendark could reach it on his own, he would have already."
Mandel walked to the window overlooking the courtyard. The earth was totally barren, showing only dry dust in all directions, including the laid-out gardens that must have been majestic in their time.
Clavis and his group of zombies marched across the courtyard and through the massive front gates. The mercenaries Lenik had assembled drew back from the undead.
"But you're right," Mandel mused, trying to get the feel of Sendark's machinations in his mind. "There is something we've overlooked. Something the demoniac necromancer is interested in."
"There's only one thing of interest on this island," Lenik stated. "The fountain."
Mandel shook his head. "We're going to think ourselves into too many problems, Lenik. For now we'll concentrate on the second fountain. Then we'll be free to do anything we want."
"Only if we're able to pass as normal," Lenik griped. "And at ten feet tall, that's not going to happen."
The thought suddenly struck Mandel as obscenely hilarious. He guffawed and laughed deeply, the noise filling the great hall.
"We've been normal before," he chirped, "and we didn't enjoy that experience much. I'm ready for godhood now. And that's what Morely says the second fountain promises. Get excited, Lenik—we're almost there."
Lenik shook his head. He didn't know what was happening to Mandel, but the first fountain had definitely affected him differently.
"Are you all right?" he asked again.
"Why?" Mandel asked, stifling a last chuckle.
Lenik threw out his arms.
"Because you keep laughing like an idiot!"
"Oh, so now a little gaiety over our successes bothers you?"
Lenik hesitated. "We've changed, Fahd, and that concerns me. And perhaps you've changed more than me."
"We're supposed to change," Mandel said, "and soon we'll change into something even greater. Now get Morely and let's get started. It's time to unlock the second fountain."
22
Dark and soaring birds were everywhere. They filled the sky, speeding out of the greenish hole in the grey-white mist and slamming into Crimson Raptor like a horde of locusts. Their bodies hammered the deck, creating a thudding din that almost drowned out the cries of the sailors.
Xarfax's warriors yelled in battle fury, and the deck was bathed in slashing swords.
Some of the sailors had climbed up in the rigging to handle any sail corrections Captain Jarrell might call out and to repair any damage done during the coming battle, but hanging in the rigging as they were, they had no chance at taking cover when the birds attacked.
One of the sailors dropped from the rigging over Praz and slammed onto a sailor below him. Both men went down in a heap. Birds descended on them like a feathered quilt and began ripping off gobbets of flesh, choking down great morsels with frantically bobbing heads.
Standing on the dying man's chest, one bird yanked its bloody bill free. Turning immediately, it faced Praz and lifted its wings in an M-shape, screaming as it set itself to attack.
The way it carried its wings marked it as an osprey, a hunter of the sea. Its gaunt flesh was already bug-infested and showing bits of skeleton through holes, and Praz's eyes went wide with recognition.
"They're undead!" he yelled.
Lifting a shield and passing it across his body, Praz backhanded the shield into the osprey and slammed it to the deck. He stomped it with his boot, feeling the wings and breastbone snap like kindling.
However, even crushed to the point that it could barely move, the osprey continued to attack, lunging with its wickedly curved bill. Cursing, Praz kicked the foul creature over the railing, but not before it succeeded in sinking its bill through his pants and leg. Blood flooded warmly down his calf, running into his boot, and as it did, a sinuous tendril of green fog darted out from the Mist and wrapped itself around Praz's wound without him noticing.
"More are coming!" River said desperately. She pinned one of the ospreys to the deck with one" knife, then hacked it to pieces with the other. Her hands gleamed with blood, showing that the cruel bird had scored with a few hits of its own.
Praz glanced up into the sky and saw another flock of ospreys streaking for the warship. Sailors cried out in fear while the first mate stood on the stern deck waving his cutlass and daring the carrion creatures to bring their fight to him.
The first mate got his wish in the next instant as an osprey speared through his eye with its bill and drove the mate's head backward.
Praz stood his ground, wanting to stand within the protected perimeter created by his three friends and Xarfax's warriors. He pointed his hand, summoning his power, and threw a shimmer of electricity toward the approaching flock.
The white energy mushroomed, spreading fifteen feet across, hollow on the inside as he'd cast it. The dancing crackles met the approaching osprey flock and caught them in a web, sucking them into a small ball and burning them all raw until it fell into the ocean.
But it doesn't matter, Praz thought, for as many osprey as he'd killed, more seemed to magically appear from the greenish hole in the Mist.
"This is Sendark's doing," Alagar called out.
"Praz, look out!" River warned.
Wheeling, Praz caught a brief glimpse of another section of green fog stretching out toward him. Although it was borne on the wind, the tendril wasn't too fast for the young warrior to evade.
As Praz got ready to shift his weight and dodge away, sounds of battle reached out to him, but these were not the sounds of the sailors dying onboard the ship, or of Xarfax's warriors singing battle hymns to their chosen god while chopping ospreys to pieces.
The sounds that filled Praz's ears were from another battle. The ring of steel on steel was hypnotic, and the touch of magic confused the young warrior, emanating from somewhere on the other side of the green Mist rolling toward him.
The green tendril coiled slowly around him.
"Praz!" River yelled. "Praz!"
Praz recognized the young ranger's voice growing more dim and distant, but he didn't feel compelled to answer her, for in the next instant, even the deck beneath his feet faded away, and for the first time in his life he swore he could hear the shrieking sound of dragons.
23
Commander Lenik trudged down the spiral staircase leading to the caverns under the Isle of the Dead.
At his still-awkward height of ten feet, he had trouble negotiating the staircase, but as a lizardman, born with a tail thick enough and strong enough to serve as another leg, he was still well balanced and quick.
Lenik kept quiet and endured the discomfort of the descent. He carried his lantern in one hand and a two-handed broadsword that felt tiny in the other.
Mandel led the way, talking to himself and occasionally giggling.
He's mad, Lenik thought.
Mandel had only been getting worse over the course of the morning, and the thought was starting to bother Lenik. Will I turn into that? he wondered. And why does Mandel seem so much more adept at his newly acquired magic than I do?
Grumbling and still suspicious, Lenik turned away and glanced behind him to the small army of Minotaur warriors that followed.
Normally, even Lenik's size as a lizardman was somewhat dwarfed by the bull-headed warriors, but since attaining his new height, he stood more than half a head taller than the largest of them.
The Minotaurs' iron-shod feet clanked and thudded against the spiral stone staircase. The wavering glare of their lanterns cut into the sepulchral darkness of the huge main cavern and glinted off their weapons.
Devlin Morely, trussed like a turkey in a marketplace, rode the shoulder of one of them. The old sage stared fearfully at Lenik for a moment, then broke eye contact and slumped across the Minotaur's shoulder. Lissella rode the shoulder of another behind him, still in a sleeping spell and unaware of anything.
Lenik turned back around and bumped his head on the curving stairway above. He cursed and rubbed the area. Only a little farther on, he stepped off the final curve and onto a hard stone floor where at least six catacombs shot off in different directions.
"Where to now?" he asked.
Mandel didn't answer. Instead, he spoke a few words Lenik didn't understand and a small globe of light appeared before him.
Incredible, Lenik thought.
He knew that the expenditure of energy to create such a thing for most mages was tremendous. Yet every spell Mandel used seemed smooth and effortless.
Maybe it's his newfound magic that's making him crazy? he wondered.
Lenik didn't know, and the uncertainty scared him. His own senses might start to desert him and he wouldn't know until it was too late.
Silently, and despite the powers he now had, he damned Mandel and his own greed for putting him into his current situation. He was ten feet tall, he was stuck in a dark cavern, and he had no idea how to use the magic Mandel seemed so comfortable with.
"We're going to come out of this fine," Man-del said.
Lenik looked at the master thief and found Mandel watching him sternly.
"Once we find the second fountain," he said, "we're going to be stronger than ever."
"If we find the second fountain," Lenik growled. "When I was here with the earlier expedition, I lost several men. I told you that."
Mandel stared at him with disgust. "That's because you're a fool," he said, his face looking pale and drawn in the glow of the light.
"You can't go to the fountain from here," Lenik snapped. "The catacombs are endless. I've seen men enter those damned passageways and never come out."
Mandel gestured, and the fiery globe he'd created floated closer to the cavern wall in front of them.
"That's because you're not supposed to find this fountain," Mandel said. "You're supposed to connect with the last one."
He's insane, Lenik thought again, catching himself just in time to keep from commenting. He looked around and noticed Devlin Morely watching them with interest from the Minotaur's shoulder.
"The passageways are alive," Mandel went on, his eyes wide as he scanned the tunnel. "The keep isn't located in a mountain the way it appears to be. It was placed on the entrails of some gigantic beast. Those entrails constantly shift and reconnect with each other, leading only to deadly traps."
"Even if that's true," Lenik said, "that doesn't explain how we're supposed to get down to the second fountain, does it?"
"Lenik," Mandel said, "how can you doubt that the second fountain is down there? Can't you feel it?"
Lenik stared at him blankly.
"Close your eyes," Mandel suggested, closing his own, then theatrically placing a hand over them. "Feel the power coursing through you."
Lenik hesitated.
Closing his eyes meant he couldn't watch Mandel, and quick flashes of the master thief driving his sword through Lenik's throat weighed heavily on the lizardman's mind.
A moment passed, followed interminably by another.
"Do you feel it?" Mandel whispered.
Surprisingly, Lenik did feel the presence of the second fountain, even with his eyes open. It was like a pull in his gut, although he couldn't exactly place where it wanted him to go.
"You don't go through the passageway to get to the second fountain," Mandel said. "Having the power of the first fountain will allow you to call on the second."
He turned and walked back to the Minotaur holding Devlin Morely. "That's the secret, isn't it, old man?"
"You're going to die," Morely said coldly. "And I’m going to enjoy watching that. You didn't prepare your body to accept the power given you by the first fountain. Can't you feel your mind slipping, Mandel?"