“What are you talking about?” Danica demanded.
Dorigen’s answering shout stole the strength from Danica’s knees, hit her so unexpectedly that she couldn’t even babble a retort. “They are father and son!”
Ivan fared the best of the three trapped friends as the fighting in the dining hall raged on. In the tight opening along the side of the cubby, the stout dwarf and his mighty axe formed an impenetrable barrier. Men and monsters came against him two at a time, but they couldn’t hope to get by his furious defense. And though Ivan was sorely wounded, he took up a dwarven battle chant, narrowed his focus so greatly it didn’t allow him to feel the pain, didn’t allow his wounded limbs to weaken.
Still, the relentless press of enemies prevented Ivan from going to his brother, or to Shayleigh, both of whom needed support. The best that the yellow-bearded dwarf could do was yell out, “Dead snake!” every now and again to heighten Pikel’s fury.
Shayleigh blew away the first man who tried to come over the counter and hit the next adversary, a bugbear, with four arrows in rapid succession, the hairy creature slumping dead before it ever got atop the narrow counter. Shayleigh fired one to her side, between Pikel’s legs, catching an orc in the face then turned back as another enemy, a goblin, leaped up on the counter.
She shot it in the chest, dropping it to a sitting position, then shot it again, putting out the light in its eyes.
The goblins behind that victim proved smarter than usual, though, for the dead goblin didn’t fall away. Using its bleeding body as a shield, the next goblin in line came up atop the counter. Shayleigh got it any-way—in the eye as it peeked over its dead comrade’s shoulder—but the rush as both creatures pitched in behind the counter gave the following goblin a clear path to the elf maiden.
With no time to notch another arrow, Shayleigh instinctively grabbed for her sword. She whipped her bow across with one hand, deflecting the straight-ahead spear attack, and just managed to angle her short sword in front of her as the goblin barreled in, its own momentum impaling it.
Shayleigh jerked the dead thing to the side, throwing it down, and tore free her blade, its fine edge glowing fiercely with its elven enchantments. She had no time to take up her bow, but knew she wouldn’t likely get a chance to put it to use in that fight again. She dropped it to the floor and rushed ahead, meeting the next adversary before it fully cleared the counter.
The goblin was off-balance, just beginning its leap to the floor, when Shayleigh got there, her sword snapping one way, knocking the goblin’s defenses aside, then the other. Quicker than the goblin could recover, Shayleigh poked her sword straight ahead, popping a clean hole in the creature’s throat. She used its shoulders as a springboard as it slumped and got up to the counter at the same time as the next enemy soldier. The man hadn’t expected the rush and was pushed back, sprawling into the pressing throng, leaving Shayleigh free to smash down at the orc that was next in line.
She killed it cleanly, but a spear arced over its shoulder as she bent for the strike.
Shayleigh stood very straight, and tried to keep her focus through the sudden jolt and blur of agony. She saw the spear hanging low from her hip, saw a man grab at its other end. If he managed to twist the shaft around….
Shayleigh hit the spear just under its embedded tip with her sword. The fine-edged elven weapon slashed through the wood, but the shocking jolt nearly sent Shayleigh falling into blackness. She held on through sheer stubbornness, forcing her sword through her most familiar attack routines to keep the pressing foes at bay until the waves of dizziness swept by.
“Ooooooo!” Pikel’s club did a rotating-end dance before the stupefied expression of an ogre. The giant monster swiped across with its hand, trying to catch the curious weapon, but by then, the club was gone, brought up high above the dwarf’s head.
“Duh?” the ogre stupidly asked.
The club slammed down on its skull.
The ogre shook its head, its thick lips flapping noisily. It looked up to see what had hit it, looked up and up some more, its gaze continuing for the ceiling until it over-balanced and fell backward, taking down three smaller comrades under it.
Pikel, already down at the other end of the counter, didn’t even see the ogre fall. A man had come up, and the dwarf slid down low, club swiping across to blow the man’s feet out from under him.
A sword gashed Pikel’s hip, but down low, he saw even more clearly his poor dead snake. His club came flashing across, snapping the swordsman’s head to the side, breaking the man’s neck.
“Ooooooo!” Pikel was up in an instant, fury renewed. He skidded back the other way, defeating a potential breach, then came flying back again, tripping up a climbing goblin.
The creature stumbled back, its chin hooking against the counter’s lip. That was not a good position with Pikel’s club fast descending.
But how long could Pikel last? Even the dwarf, for all his rage, couldn’t deny that his movements were beginning to slow, that the press of enemies had not relented, and that two soldiers had come into the back of the dining hall for every one that the companions had killed. And the friends were all hurt, all bleeding, and all weary.
Across the hall, near the door, a man flew up into the air suddenly, over the ogre that was standing before him, his arms and legs flailing helplessly. Shayleigh glanced back that way whenever she got the chance, glanced back just in time to see a huge sword explode through the front of the ogre’s chest. With power beyond anything the elf had ever seen, the ogre’s attacker tore the impaling sword straight up, through the ogre’s chest and collarbone to exit at the side of the dead creature’s neck. A giant arm swung around, connecting on the ogre’s shoulder with enough force to send the dead thing flying head over heels away.
And Vander—Vander!—waded ahead, his fierce swipes taking down enemies two at a time.
“Oo oi!” Pikel cried, pointing his stubby finger toward the door.
The sight of the firbolg renewed Shayleigh hopes, and her fury. Tangled with an orc atop the counter, she punched out with her free left hand, slamming the creature’s jaw. She feigned a jerk with her sword then punched again, and a third time.
The orc swayed, balanced precariously on the counter’s edge. It somehow blocked Shayleigh’s darting sword, but her flying foot got it squarely on the chest, knocking it backward.
“Vander is come!” she cried, so that Ivan, too, might know, and she rushed to the forward edge, crouching low and slicing down to drive back the next would-be attacker.
“That damned ring!” Ivan bellowed into the face of the man standing before him, referring to the magical, regenerating ring that Vander wore, a ring that had brought the firbolg back from the dead at least once before.
Ivan’s wild laughter gave his opponent pause. The dwarf brought his axe up over one shoulder, and the startled man reacted by throwing his sword up high.
Ivan loosened his grip with his bottom hand and drove his top hand down, the butt end of the axe shooting straight out to pop the man in the face. He fell back, dazed, and Ivan tossed his axe up into the air, and in a single, fluid motion, caught it low in both hands at the bottom of its handle and whipped it diagonally across, slashing the man’s shoulder.
Near the middle of the room, a spearman jabbed at the firbolg’s hip, scoring a minor hit. Vander twisted around and kicked, his heavy boot connecting with the man’s belly, driving up under his ribs and launching him fifteen feet into the air. Vander spun back the other way, all his weight behind an overhead chop that cleaved a goblin half.
The sight proved too much for the goblin’s closest companions. Howling with terror, they rushed from the room.
Too many other enemies presented themselves for Vander to consider pursuing the goblins. An ogre rushed in at him, its club coming across to score a direct hit on Vander’s breast. Vander didn’t flinch, but smiled wickedly to show his attacker that he was not hurt.
“Duh?”
“Why do they k
eep saying that?” the firbolg wondered, and his sword took the surprised ogre’s head from its shoulders.
To the companions still at the counter, Vander’s walk resembled a ship rushing through choppy seas, throwing a spray of goblins, orcs, and men high into the air at his sides as he passed, leaving a wake of blood and broken bodies. Vander was at the counter in a mere moment, cutting the enemy force in half. Pikel came down beside him and together they blasted an opening around to the side so that Ivan, too, might link up.
By the time the three got to Shayleigh, she was sitting atop the counter, leaning heavily on the pillar support, for her remaining enemies had gone screaming away into the halls.
Vander picked up the wounded maiden, cradling her in one arm. “We must flee this place,” he said.
“They’ll be back,” Ivan agreed. They looked to Pikel, who was reverently extracting the bottom half of his sliced snake from his torn sleeve, muttering a quiet, “Oooo,” as each inch slipped free.
TWENTY
BOLT FOR BOLT, FIRE FOR FIRE
The plush, carpeted room Cadderly found himself in in no way resembled the harsh stone of the underground reaches of Castle Trinity. Gold leaf ornamentation and beautifully woven tapestries hung thick on the walls, all depicting images of Talona or her symbol. The ceiling was sculpted and decorated with some exotic wood Cadderly didn’t recognize. Any one of the ten chairs in the huge room, their backs and seats carved to resemble teardrops, seemed worth a dragon’s hoard of treasure, with sparkling gemstones running up their legs and armrests and silk upholstering covering them from top to bottom. The whole of the image reminded Cadderly of some pasha’s palace in far off-Calimport, or the private chambers of a Waterdhavian lord.
Until he looked deeper. The song of Deneir came into Cadderly’s thoughts without his conscious bidding, as though his god was reminding him that it was no ordinary room, with no ordinary host. He realized he’d stepped into an extradimensional, space, created by magic, woven, to the last detail, of magical energy.
Looking more closely at the nearest chair, the song playing strong in his thoughts, Cadderly recognized the gems as variations of magical energy, saw the smooth silk as a uniform field of magic and nothing more. Cadderly remembered an experience in the tower of the wizard Belisarius, when he had battled an illusory minotaur in an illusory dungeon. On that occasion, the young priest had perverted Belisarius’s handiwork, had reached down the minotaur’s throat and extracted an illusory heart of his own design.
But in that unfamiliar, and obviously dangerous setting, Cadderly needed a boost to his confidence. He focused again on the chair, grabbed at its magical field, and transmuted it, elongated it, and turned it flat.
“A table would look better here,” he announced, figuring that his host, Aballister, could hear his every word.
And so the chair became a table of polished wood with thick, curving supports carved with eyes, candles, and rolled scrolls, the symbols of Cadderly’s god, and Denier’s brother god, Oghma.
Cadderly looked at the only apparent exit from the grand room, a wide hallway supported by sculpted arches running directly opposite the wall he’d somehow walked through. He shifted the song of Deneir slightly, searching for invisible objects or other extradimensional pockets, but saw no sign of Aballister.
The young priest moved to the table he’d created and felt its smooth surface beneath its hands. He smiled as an inspiration—a divine inspiration, he mused—swept over him. Then he called upon his magic and reached out to the nearest tapestry, reweaving its design. He recalled the marvelous tapestry in the great hall of the Edificant Library, pictured its every detail in his mind, and made a nearly exact replica. A chair beside him became a writing desk, complete with an inkwell lined with Deneirrath runes. A second tapestry became the scroll of Oghma, the words of the most holy prayer of that god replacing the former image, one of evil Talona and her poisoned dagger.
Cadderly felt his strength swell from the images of his own creations, felt as if his work was moving him closer to his god, his source of power. The more he altered the room, the more the place came to resemble a shrine at the Edificant Library, and the more the young priest’s confidence soared. With every image of Deneirrath worship he created, more loudly did the holy song play in Cadderly’s thoughts and in his heart.
Then Aballister—it had to be Aballister—stood at the opening of the ornate hall.
“I have made some … improvements,” Cadderly announced to the cross wizard, sweeping his arms out wide. His bravado might have hid his nervousness from his enemy, but Cadderly couldn’t deny the moisture that covered his palms.
In a sudden motion, Aballister smacked his hands together and cried out a word of power that Cadderly didn’t recognize. Immediately, the new furnishings disappeared, leaving the room in its former state.
Something about the wizard’s motion, about the sudden flash of anger from the obviously controlled man, struck a familiar chord in Cadderly, tugged at the edges of his consciousness from a distant place.
“I do not approve of the icons of false gods decorating my private chambers,” the wizard said, his voice steady.
Cadderly nodded and brought an easy smile to his face. There really was no point in arguing.
The wizard walked to the side of the entrance, his dark robes trailing out behind him, his hollowed gaze locked on the young priest.
Cadderly turned to keep himself squared to the man, studied every move the dangerous wizard made, and kept the song of Deneir flowing through his thoughts. Already several defensive spells were sorted out and in line, ready for Cadderly to release them.
“You have proven a great discomfort to me,” Aballister said, his voice a wheeze, his throat injured from years of shouting forth mighty incantations. “But also, a great benefit.”
Cadderly concentrated on the tone of the man’s voice, not on his specific words. Something about it haunted him, again from a distant place. Something about it conjured images of Carradoon, of long ago.
“I might have missed all the fun, you see,” Aballister went on. “I might have sat back here in comfort and let my formidable forces bring the Baronies of Erlkazar under my thumb. I shall enjoy ruling—I do so love intrigue—but the conquest, too, can be … delicious. Do you not agree?”
“I have no taste for food gotten at the expense of others,” Cadderly said.
“But you do!” the wizard declared.
“No!”
The wizard laughed at him. “You are so proud of your accomplishments to date, of the conquests that have brought you to my door. You have killed, dear Cadderly. Killed men. Can you deny the delicious tingle of that act, the sense of power?”
The claim was absurd. The thought of killing, the act of killing, had brought nothing more than revulsion to Cadderly. Still, if the wizard had spoken to him thus a few tendays before, when the guilt of having killed Barjin hung thick around Cadderly’s shoulders, the words would have been devastating. But not any more. Cadderly had come to accept what fate had placed in his path, had come to accept the role that had been thrust upon him. No longer did his soul mourn for the dead Barjin, or for any of the others.
“I did as I was forced to do,” he replied with sincere confidence. “This war should never have started, but if it must be played out, then I play to win.”
“Good,” the wizard purred. “With justice on your side?”
“Yes.” Cadderly didn’t flinch at all with his confident reply
“Are you proud of yourself?” Aballister asked.
“I will be glad when Erlkazar and the Edificant Library are safe,” Cadderly answered. “This is not a question of pride. It is a question of morality, and as you said, of justice.”
“So cocksure,” the wizard said with a soft chuckle, more to himself than to Cadderly. Aballister put a skinny finger to his pursed lips and studied the young priest intently, scanning Cadderly, every inch.
It seemed a curious gesture to the young
priest, as though the man expected Cadderly, for some reason, to desire his approval.
“You’re a proud young rooster in a yard of foxes,” the wizard announced at length. “A flash of confidence and brilliance that is quickly lost in a pool of blood.”
“The issue is bigger than my pride,” Cadderly said.
“The issue is your pride!” Aballister snapped back. “And my own. What is there in this misery that we call life beyond our accomplishments, beyond the legacy we shall leave behind?”
Cadderly winced at the words, at the thought that any man, particularly one intelligent enough to practice the Art, could be so singularly driven and self-absorbed.
“Can you ignore the suffering you have caused?” the young priest asked. “Do you not hear the cries of the dying and of those the dead have left behind?”
“They do not matter!” Aballister growled, but the intensity of the denial led Cadderly to believe that he’d struck a sensitive chord, that perhaps there was some flicker of conscience under the man’s selfish hide. “I am all that matters!” Aballister fumed. “My life, my goals.”
Cadderly nearly swooned. He had heard those exact words before, spoken in exactly the same way. Again he pictured Carradoon, but the image was a foggy one, lost in the swirl of … of what? Cadderly wondered. Of distance?
He looked up again to see the wizard chanting and waggling the fingers of one hand in the air before him, his other hand extended and holding a small metallic rod.
Cadderly silently berated himself for being so foolish as to let down his guard. He sang out the song with all his voice, frantic to get up his defenses before the wizard fried him.
The words stuck in Cadderly’s throat as a lightning bolt thundered in, blinding him.
“Excellent!” the wizard applauded, seeing his blast absorbed into blue hues around the young priest.
Cadderly, his vision returned, took measure of his protective shield, and saw that the single attack had thinned it dangerously.