Caramon waited in ambush at the head of the stairs, drew his throwing dagger, and tossed. The knife struck the demon point-blank in the chest.
Reaching up, irritated, the demon plucked it out of its black pelt.
“Huh? I guess that’s why Bast said to use the sword,” Caramon muttered.
He saw the wand aiming at him and threw himself to the floor. Red light burned through the room, over his head. Looking about wildly, the fighter discovered a portal in the ceiling, just low enough for him to reach. He pushed the wood-slatted cover off with his bastard sword, throwing the blade through it to land on the roof. Leaping up, he grabbed the edges of the portal and started to pull himself up.
Powerful hands grabbed hold of his ankles and jerked him to the floor. The demon’s paws smashed down onto his ears, stunning him. The creature extended its claws and cut down under the warrior’s armor, digging forward, dragging dirty talons through his flesh.
The pain brought Caramon to his senses, and he kicked up with his legs, knocking the demon over. Leaping after it, he tried to pin it to the floor. The demon
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slipped out of his hold, and Caramon scrambled backward.
His sword was high above him, and he cursed himself for his carelessness. Then he put his hand on something on the floor and, thinking he recognized it by its feel, he closed his fingers over it.
The demon reached for its wand, snarling in dismay when its clawed fingers closed on air.
‘This what you lost?” Caramon said, holding up the weapon.
The demon leaped for it. The warrior brought his knee up straight at its stomach. The creature doubled over and Caramon clasped both arms around the demon in a bear hug, muscles straining against its dark fur, crushing until he felt bones snap beneath his grip. The body went limp. Dropping the corpse to the floor, the warrior leaned against the wall, gasping for breath. After a short time, he moved back up to the hole in the ceiling, lifting himself easily through the portal and onto the empty rooftop. Picking up his blade, he crawled to the edge and stared down to see if the other demon had returned with—
A powerful fist slammed across the side of his head, nearly sending him reeling over the edge of the roof. The demon, apparently uninjured, bared its fangs, biting deep into the human’s shoulder.
Caramon stifled his cry of pain for fear of alerting any others of its kind, and brought the hilt of his sword up into the demon’s chin, knocking it backward. The warrior slashed the bastard sword across in a horizontal arc, cleaving the head from furred shoulders.
White and silver spots danced before Caramon’s vision. His legs weakened and gave out under his weight, forcing him to sit down roughly on the smooth stone.
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Stretching himself out on the roof, closing his eyes to the image of the Great Eye, he swallowed, breathing hard. “And there’s an army of these things!” he said with a groan.
In his room in Barnstoke Hall, Raistlin removed several black bags from his pack—flat pouches heavily lined with fur and other soft materials. He opened one of them to reveal an array of bottles and tubes, capped with cork and stoppered with rubber blocks, containing a variety of colored liquids and crystals and powders. Unfolding a brass frame used to store chemicals while working, he took the containers out from their holding straps and placed them into their proper locations—solids in front, liquids at the back.
Another pouch produced a shallow mixing dish with matching pestle and a glass bottle of clear liquid with a wick jutting from the top. From another he drew a melting pan and stand, and a smaller pan with a handle covered in wound leather. A third contained holding stands, tiny metal chains, and various silvered tools.
The mage erected the apparatus on top of the table. Reaching into his voluminous robes, he pulled out a hollow gold tube, as long as one of his gold fingers, unadorned by symbol or rune, and placed it next to the pan.