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“It sounds like fighting,” someone offered hopefully.
“Maybe some of the others have come to rescue us,” the young sailor half shouted.
Raekar kept his mouth shut. True, they hadn’t been able to gather all of Dedran’s soldiers before launching their assault, but he privately thought those who were left were more likely to steal his ship and sail away than mount a rescue, but who knew? The captain he’d retained to manage the ship was an able man, but had never struck Raekar as a brave one. Still, maybe some other of the sailors or Dedran’s men had realized the lich’s wards wouldn’t let the ship leave harbor, and were trying to take the castle themselves. Unlikely, but…
Suddenly, the cell door screeched open. Torch light spilled into the room and Raekar squinted at the woman silhouetted in the doorway. For an instant, he could only feel a profound relief: it was not a beglamoured ghoul sent to “reward” him for the history he’d given Vessadial. Instead, it was the elf.
She stepped into the cell, and from his vantage, tied up again and laying on his stomach to spare his hands, Raekar could see into the hallway. Ghoul fought ghoul in snarling claw to claw melee.
“What in the names of the gods is going on?” Dedran demanded. He was ignored.
“You’re Raekar, aren’t you?” the elf said instead, stepping towards him.
Raekar suppressed a groan. First the death knight had charged him on the beach. Then the lich had hauled him into the dining room. And now the elf! After the first two, he wasn’t sure he wanted the personal attention of another one of the castle’s denizens – but the rebellious undead in the hall made him hopeful.
“That is correct,” Raekar said – and yelped when she drew her sword and crossed the distance to him in a bounding stride. She knelt over him and slashed through his bonds, and Raekar felt his cheeks flush in embarrassment at having cried out. “So,” he asked into the ground, “to what do I owe the pleasure of this visitation?”
“I require your assistance,” she said, helping him to sit up. “You have to put up wards, or some other barrier to contain magical energy. Around me. And they must be strong enough to restrain a lot of power.” She tossed her sword to one of the soldiers. “Get yourselves free,” she snapped at him before turning back to Raekar. “What are you waiting for? Hurry.”
“Patience, my dear,” Raekar muttered in a strained voice. “I’m afraid it will be a few months before my fingers are fit to cast anything, if they even do heal straight.” For emphasis, Raekar held up his hands.
Now the elf’s face turned scarlet, and she fumbled with a pouch on her belt. “I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I’m not used to anyone else’s injuries mattering. Here.” She liberated a set of vials marked with Raekar’s own seal, unstoppered one and brought it to his lips. “Drink this.”
“Thank you,” Raekar said as she opened one and held it to his lips. It was one of the weaker droughts he’d left on the ship. It wouldn’t heal him in less than a day, but it should take care of the pain. Even without his hands, there were some magics he could perform as long as he could focus.
The elf careful tipped back the vial, and Raekar swallowed. A warm numbness washed through his limbs, chasing away the pains that plagued him. Then his hands spasmed. Bones set themselves and knit together. Raekar yelped again: it didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t supposed to have happened. He stared at his hands, and then at the elf. Without pain to cloud it, his awareness expanded.
“Good gods,” he said, “You’re leaking power all over the place!” And it's channeling through anything it can find that will carry it, he realized. Raekar stared at the empty vial in the elf's hands and adjusted his estimate of how much energy was roiling off of her unclaimed: for one of his minor healing elixirs to have absorbed so much potency just from diffusion of energy....
“I know,” the elf replied. “Winia told me. She said it was more than her circles could contain, but that you’d be able to stop Vessadial from drawing from it.”
“Yes, I – Winia? Where is she?”
The elf shrank back. “She ran towards the grand hall. She said Vessadial was doing something she had to stop.”
Raekar’s face went ashen. “She’s not facing that monster alone?”
The elf did not reply. Instead, her breath caught in a strangled wail of pain. In Raekar’s awareness, the power she had been giving off in diffuse circles spiraled sharply together, forming a cord flowing up, out of the dungeon.
“Sweet Saints,” Raekar gasped as puzzle pieces clicked together in his head. Around him, Dedran and his men and the young ship hand were free.
“What do we do?” the sailor asked.
“You, help her walk. I can’t break this link without both ends being together, now that it’s active.” In the hallway, one after another of the elf’s ghouls collapsed, starved for the energy she had been providing them. Fortunately, the ghouls who had been their jailers were no longer animate: the hallway was littered with limbs and shredded corpses. Raekar swallowed. He could follow the pull of power from the elf to the lich – and besides, he’d been to the grand hall before. “Everyone, follow me. Once this spell is interrupted, I will be worthless for anything. It will be up to you warriors to finish our task, before the lich finds a way around my own wards.”
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