But Ivan growled and straightened his powerful back, locking himself firmly into place. And Pikel, though his arms ached with the strain of the awkward angle, kept the pressure on the heavy door, kept it open enough for Shayleigh to scramble through. She came over Ivan, up beside Pikel, and he let the door slam shut. Then he straightened, perpendicular to his braced brother, and Shayleigh climbed above him and turned as Ivan had turned.
Ivan climbed up Pikel next, as Pikel held fast to the braced elf maiden. Ivan went across Shayleigh, standing straight up in the chute. Pikel clambered up to the top, turned sidelong to Ivan, and set the next brace. And so it went, the three working as a living ladder.
“Eh?” Pikel squeaked as he set another stretching brace, around a bend and far out of sight of the chute’s end.
“What ye got?” Ivan asked, climbing even with him. Then Ivan, too, saw the lines in the chute’s wall—even, parallel lines, like those of a door.
The dwarf planted himself across Pikel’s back, his hands fumbling around the wall. He felt a slight depression—only a dwarf would have been able to detect so minute an inconsistency in the unremarkable wall—and pushed hard. The secret door slid aside, revealing a second passageway, angling up, as did the chute, but with an easier grade.
Ivan looked back at Shayleigh and Pikel.
“We know what is above us,” Shayleigh reasoned.
“But can we get through the trapdoor?” Ivan replied.
“Sssh,” Pikel begged them both, motioning with his chin toward the new passage. When the others quieted, they heard some scuffling from within, far away, as though some battle had been joined.
“Might be friends, and might be needing us!” Ivan roared, and he went into the new passage, pulling Shayleigh and Pikel in behind him. Fumbling again for the depression in the stonework, Ivan managed to close the secret door behind them, and with the lesser slope, the three made better time.
They came to a fork a short time later, the passage continuing up one way but angling down in a narrower chute to the side. Their instincts told them to keep climbing—they had left their friends on a higher level—but the sounds of battle emanated from the lower tunnel.
“It could be Cadderly,” Shayleigh offered.
“Giant dog!” came a familiar voice from down below.
“Traitor!” roared another powerful, and even deeper-toned, voice.
Pikel was into the chute, sliding headlong, before Ivan cried out, “Vander!”
Which door? Cadderly wondered, looking around at the many possible exits from the large circular room as he crossed over the bodies of the two dead ogres. He noticed, too, the many symbols carved into the walls, tridents with small vials above each point interspersed with triangular fields holding three teardrops, the more conventional design for the goddess Talona.
“We must be near the chapel,” Cadderly whispered to Danica.
As if in confirmation, the door across the way opened and a horribly scarred man, dressed in the ragged gray and green robes of a Talonite priest, hopped into the circular room.
Danica went into a crouch, and Cadderly brought his crossbow level with the man’s face. But the priest only smiled, and a moment later all the doors of the circular room burst open. Cadderly and Danica found themselves facing a horde of orcs and goblins and evilly grinning men, including several more wearing the robes of Talonite priests. Both friends looked back at the trapped corridor, the only possible escape, but the walls were tight against each other by then and showed no signs of opening.
For some reason, the enemy force didn’t immediately attack. Rather, they all stood looking from Cadderly and Danica to the first priest who’d entered, apparently their leader.
“Did you think it would be so easy?” the scarred man shrieked hysterically. “Did you think to simply walk through our fortress unopposed?”
Cadderly put a hand on Danica’s arm to stop her from leaping out at the foul man. She might get to him, might well kill him, but they had no chance of defeating that mob. Unless …
Cadderly heard the song playing in his thoughts, had a strange feeling that some powerful minion of his god called to him, instructed him, compelled him to hear the harmony of the music.
The Talonite cackled and clapped his hands, and the floor in front of him heaved suddenly, rose up and took a gigantic, humanoid shape.
“Elementals,” Danica breathed, drawing Cadderly’s attention. Indeed, two creatures from the Elemental Plane of Earth had arisen to the vile priest’s beckoning, and Cadderly realized the man must be formidable indeed to command such powerful allies.
But Cadderly shook the dark thought away and fell back into the song. He heard the music rising to a glorious crescendo.
“He’s spellcasting!” one of the other priests cried out, and the warning sent the whole of the enemy force into wild action.
The foot soldiers charged, weapons waving, lips wetted with eager drool. An archer took up his bow and fired, and the clerics went into their own spellcasting, some creating defensive energy, others calling out for poisonous spells to assault the intruders.
Danica yelled for her lover and reflexively kicked out, barely deflecting an arrow that soared for Cadderly’s chest. She wanted to protect Cadderly, and knew they were both surely doomed. They had no time—
A single word, if it was a word, escaped the young priest’s lips. A trumpet note, it seemed, so clear and so perfect that it sent shivers of sheer joy rushing along Danica’s spine, invited her into its perfect resonance and held her, trancelike, in its lingering beauty.
The note created a much different effect over Cadderly’s enemies, men and monsters who couldn’t tolerate the holy harmony of Deneir’s song. Goblins and orcs, and some of the men, grabbed at their bloodied ears and fell dead or unconscious to the floor, their eardrums shattered by the divine word. Other men swooned, their strength stolen by the bared glory of Deneir’s truth, and the elementals fell back into the stone of the floor, fleeing back to their own plane of existence.
For many moments Danica stood trembling, her eyes closed, then, when the last lingering echoes of the perfect note died away, she realized the folly of hesitation and expected that the horde would be upon her. But when she opened her eyes, she found only three enemies standing: the first Talonite priest—she knew they called themselves Malagents—who’d entered the room and an associate along a side wall, both holding their ears, and a third man, a soldier not a priest, standing not so far away and glancing around in absolute confusion.
Danica leaped forward and kicked the soldier’s sword from his hand. He looked up at her, still too perplexed to react, and the monk grabbed him by the front of his tunic and threw herself backward in a roll, planting her feet into his belly as he came over her and heaving him hard against the wall beside Cadderly, where he crumbled down in pain. Danica was upon him in a moment, fingers coiled for a deadly strike.
“Don’t kill him,” Cadderly said to her. “If this man escaped the pain of my most holy spell, he’s probably not truly evil in nature.”
Cadderly glanced at the soldier only briefly, but he noticed revealing shadows atop the man’s shoulder, the man’s aura personified. They were not huddled, dark things, like the ones the young priest had often witnessed when viewing wicked men in a similar fashion.
Danica, trusting in Cadderly’s judgment, put the man in a defensive lock, and Cadderly turned his attention back to the still-standing Malagents.
“Damn you!” the horribly scarred leader growled in a loud voice—and the awkward volume of that response revealed to Cadderly that his holy utterance had probably deafened the man.
“Where is Aballister?” Cadderly called out.
The priest regarded him curiously then tapped his ears, confirming Cadderly’s suspicions. Both of the Malagents began chanting frantically, beginning new spells, and Danica slammed the soldier to the floor and started forward.
“Get back” Cadderly warned her.
The m
onk appeared torn. He knew she knew the importance of getting at the spellcasters before they could complete their enchantments, but she knew, too, to trust in Cadderly’s warnings.
With supreme confidence, feeling invulnerable against the priests of the malignant Lady of Poison, Cadderly fell back into the flowing music and began his song. He felt waves of numbing energy as the priest to the side hurled a paralyzing spell at him, but within the protective river of Deneir’s music, such a spell had no hold over Cadderly.
The scarred leader lifted his arm and hurled a gemstone, glowing with the mighty energies it contained. Danica leaped in front to block it, as she had blocked the arrow, while Cadderly pointed to it and cried out.
The glow in the gemstone disappeared, and on a sudden inspiration—a silent telepathic message from Cadderly—Danica caught the stone.
Cadderly grabbed the back of Danica’s tunic and pulled her behind him, singing all the while. Equations and numbers flashed through his thoughts with every note. He saw the very fabric of the space around him, the relationships and densities of the different materials. Energy flowed from the torches set into sconces on the walls, and a more static energy, the very binding force that held everything in place, was clearly revealed.
The Malagents began chanting again, stubbornly, but it was Cadderly’s turn. The young priest focused on that binding force, replayed equations and changed their factors, forcing truth into untruth.
No, not untruth, Cadderly realized. Not chaos, as was the enchantment he’d forced over Old Fyren. In the revealing equations, Cadderly found an alternate truth, a distortion, not a perversion of physical law. By sheer willpower and the insights the song of Deneir had offered to him, the young priest bent the binding force, turned it in on the scarred Talonite leader, making him the center of gravity.
For every unsecured item near the scarred man, the floor was no longer a resting place.
Dead and downed soldiers “fell” at their leader. They didn’t slide along the floor, but actually toppled and plunged, as though the floor was a vertical surface. A desk from the room behind the surprised priest crashed against his back, all its items clinging to him as though he’d become a living magnet. Two of the torches within the area of warped reality leaned toward the Malagent and slowly slid along the sides of their sconces, coming to an angled rest in a precarious perch, their flames burning out to the side away from the cursed man.
The priest who had been standing at the side of the room hung straight out, his feet toward his master, his hands clutching desperately at the doorjamb.
Danica couldn’t prevent a chuckle at the ridiculous sight. A ball of bodies and items had converged on the scarred Talonite, smashing him from every angle. The priest to the side fell last, slamming hard against a dead orc. Then everything settled once more, everything unattached or unsupported within fifty feet of the Malagent had come to rest atop him, pounded him, and buried him.
Several groans came from within that confused pile, mostly those of the battered leader, buried somewhere far beneath the jumble.
The man’s associate, lying on the outside layer of the confused pile, looked at Cadderly with sheer hatred and began again his stubborn chant.
“Do not!” Cadderly warned him.
The priest did stop, but not because of Cadderly’s warning. Out of the same room that had held the desk fell an incredibly fat giant, hitting the pile with such tremendous force that those bodies on the opposite side of the pile, near Cadderly and Danica, bounced out to the side then fell back and settled on the pile once more. The leader went quiet then for the first time, and Cadderly winced, realizing that the giant had probably crushed the man.
The giant was far from dead, though. It roared and thrashed, launching bodies far to the side, smashing them apart as they inevitably fell back into the pile.
“How long will it last?” Danica asked.
Her darting eyes revealed her fear, for there was no apparent way for her and Cadderly to get out of the room. Many of the men stricken unconscious by the holy word were awakening, and that ferocious giant hadn’t been badly wounded.
Trepidation welled up in Cadderly, dark fears for what he must do to finish the battle. He searched his spells, listened carefully to the song, seeking something that would allow him and Danica to get through without further bloodshed. But what of his friends? he wondered. If they came out behind him, and the spell was no more, they would face a formidable force.
Again the raging priest atop the pile chanted. A soldier to the side of him hurled a dagger Cadderly’s way, but it was as if he were throwing up the side of a cliff, and the knife dropped back to the jumble, sticking into the back of a dead goblin. The giant climbed through next, a look of sheer hatred on its huge face.
Cadderly looked at Danica, at the gemstone, a hunk of amber, that she held. Of all the trials the young priest would ever face, none would be so agonizing as that trial of conscience. He couldn’t fail, though, couldn’t allow his own weakness to threaten his mission, to threaten all the goodly peoples of Baronies of Erlkazar. He waved his hand over the gemstone, uttered a few words, and it began to glow again, teeming with magical energy.
“Toss it,” he instructed.
“At them?”
Cadderly thought about it and shrugged as though it didn’t matter. “To the side,” he said, pointing to the doorjamb where the priest had been hanging.
Danica still seemed not to understand, but she tossed the enchanted stone. It followed a normal, expected course for a few feet then crossed into the area warped by Cadderly’s spell and fell in an arcing, unerring curve to strike at the pile.
With a blinding flash, all the jumble was aflame. Men cried out for a moment then fell silent. The giant thrashed wildly, but had nowhere to run, could find nothing to roll in that was not also burning. It went on for what seemed a long and agonizing time, but was in reality merely moments, then the only sound was the crackle of hungry flames.
Pikel plowed through another angled doorway and fell fifteen feet to hit the corridor floor with a resounding, “Oof!”
Dazed and unable to find his balance, the dwarf turned his gaze to the side and saw Vander—Vander’s furred boots, at least—stumbling around the bodies of several dead ogres. Even larger boots moved to keep up with the dancing firbolg, a hill giant, probably, along with the dirty, naked feet of yet another ogre.
Pikel knew that Vander needed him, so he gave a determined grunt and started to pull himself off the floor.
The plummeting Ivan hit him squarely in the back. The yellow-bearded dwarf bounced up from his cushioned landing and rushed ahead, recognizing Vander’s desperate situation. The hill giant had Vander wrapped in its huge arms, and the ogre, wielding a huge spiked club, circled around them, looking for an opening.
“Traitor!” the hill giant bellowed once more.
Vander butted with his forehead, smashing the giant’s nose. With a roar, the giant swung around and launched Vander into the wall with such force that it shook the whole corridor. Vander bounced back a step, trying to get his sword up, but the ogre rushed in at his side and hit him with a roundhouse that drove a spike right into the side of his head.
Down on his knees, the dying firbolg noticed Ivan rushing in and with heroic effort heaved his sword forward as though it were a spear. The blade slashed into the hill giant’s shoulder, knocking the monster back, slumping, against the opposite wall, its huge hands trying to find some hold that it might pull the thing out.
The ogre’s great club smashed in again, and Vander saw no more.
Tears welled in Ivan’s dark eyes as he pounded down the corridor. He leaped atop the wounded giant and crunched his axe into the monster’s thick skull. The ogre roared at the sight of the dwarf and rushed back across the corridor, swinging wildly.
Ivan hopped away, and the ogre’s spiked club drew bloody creases down the giant’s face and sent the behemoth sprawling to the floor.
“Duh,” the ogre groaned s
tupidly then it jerked to the side as Ivan’s axe chopped it on the leg. Like a lumberjack, the sturdy dwarf went to work, hacking with abandon, and four blows later, the ogre toppled to the floor.
Behind Ivan, the giant groaned and tried to rise. The cry of, “Ooooooo!” followed by the resounding smack of a tree-trunk club against flesh brought a grim smile to the yellow-bearded dwarf.
Pikel hit the stunned giant again and moved for a third strike. But the stubborn behemoth, far from finished, caught the club and pulled it aside.
Pikel let go with one hand and pointed it straight out at the giant, who seemed not to understand—not until something with venom-dripping fangs snapped out of Pikel’s loose-fitting sleeve into the surprised giant’s face.
The giant let go of the club and fell back, clawing at the stinging wound, horrified. It heard Pikel’s, “Ooooooo!” as the dwarf, club in hand, wound up, but it never saw the killing blow coming.
Without its weapon, the ogre across the hall raised its arms defensively and called out a surrender.
But those arms, however thick, were no match for Ivan’s blind fury. Vander lay dead behind him, and the dwarf was hardly in the mood to listen to anything the desperate monster might have to say. The dwarf’s axe chopped down repeatedly, smashing through flesh and bone, and by the time Shayleigh joined Ivan and put a hand on his shoulder to calm him, the ogre’s cries were forever silenced.
SIXTEEN
A CALL ON THE WIND
The man at the base of the wall groaned, and Danica was on him in an instant, pulling his arms behind his back and pushing him facedown against the hard stone.
“How long will your enchantment block our way?” she snapped at Cadderly.
“Not long,” the young priest replied, surprised by Danica’s harsh tone.
“And what are we to do with him?” Danica gave a rough tug on the captured soldier’s arms as she asked the question, drawing another groan from the battered man.