The door was locked.
It crossed Cadderly’s mind more than once in the next few heartbeats that Aballister might be harboring yet another of his pet monsters behind that door, that blowing it open might put him into a fight with another hydra, or perhaps even something worse.
The reverse of that argument, of course, was that Aballister might be behind there, recuperating, preparing some devilish magic.
Cadderly leveled the crossbow at the lock and fired, shielding his eyes from the expected flash. He used the moment to put another dart in place, and when he looked back, he found a scorch mark where both the lock and the handle had been, and the door hanging loose on its hinges.
Cadderly ducked to the side and pushed the door in, crossbow ready. His bow slipped down, and his smile widened once more when he realized that the room was an alchemy shop.
“What’ll bring you out of hiding, wizard?” the young priest muttered under his breath.
He pushed the door closed behind him and crossed to the beaker-covered tables. Cadderly had read many texts on potions and magical elixirs, and though he was no alchemist, he knew some arcane ingredients that he could safely mix.
And more importantly for what the young priest had in mind, which ingredients he couldn’t.
Ivan and Pikel led the charge down one corridor, cut through a room to the side, and headed out a back door into another corridor. Vander came roaring right behind them, still cradling Shayleigh, though the elf maiden was conscious and demanding to be put down. No enemies stood against the friends when hey started their scrambling rush for safety. The enemy soldiers they did encounter, even two ogres, fell all over themselves trying to run away from them. Ivan, more wounded than he cared to admit, let them go. The dwarf wanted only to find Cadderly and Danica, or to find some place where he and his three companions could pause and recover a bit from their many wounds.
Through the back door of another room, the two dwarves surprised a man trying to come through the other way. He had just grabbed the door’s handle when Pikel’s club hit the thing, launching him across the corridor to slam against the wall. Both dwarves charged across the corridor and fell over him, Ivan connecting with a left hook, Pikel with a right, at the same time, on opposite sides of the unfortunate man’s face.
Ivan considered finishing the unconscious soldier as his friends ambled past, but he put up his axe and ran after them. “Damned young colt,” he muttered, referring to Cadderly, whose constant demands for compassion had apparently worn at the tough-skinned dwarf.
“To the side!” Shayleigh cried as Vander and Pikel dashed across the entrance to a side passage.
“Oo!” Pikel squeaked, and he and the firbolg sprinted on, a group of enemy soldiers wheeling around the corner behind them.
Ivan barreled into the midst of the force, his great axe chopping wildly.
Twenty feet ahead, Vander put down Shayleigh, who went right to work stringing an arrow. The firbolg spun around beside Pikel, determined to crash through to Ivan’s rescue. The two had only taken a step or two when Shayleigh cried out, “The other way!”
Sure enough, enemies poured into the corridor from another side passage farther down, a large force led by a contingent of ogres. Shayleigh put three arrows into immediate flight, felling one of the leading ogres, but another took its place, running right over the monster’s back as it fell.
Shayleigh fired again, scored another hit, and put her next arrow to her bowstring. She couldn’t hold them back, though. Even if every shot were perfect, if every shot killed an enemy, she would surely be buried where she stood.
She fired again then the ogre was upon her, its club up high, a victorious scream erupting from its huge head.
Vander’s forearm slammed it in the chin and knocked it flying into its comrades. The firbolg’s greatsword swiped across, disemboweling the next ogre, driving the enemies farther back.
Ivan chopped and spun, every swipe connecting. He saw an arm go flying free of one orc’s body, and he smiled. But that smile was smacked away as he continued to turn and a goblin’s club slammed him squarely in the face, taking out a tooth.
Dazed, but still swinging, the dwarf backstepped and sidestepped, trying to keep his balance, knowing that to fall was to be overwhelmed. He heard his brother calling from not far away, and heard an enemy grunt and groan as Pikel’s club smacked hard against bare skin. Something slashed Ivan’s forehead. Blinded by his own blood, he chopped out, connecting solidly. He heard Pikel again, to the side, and took a stumbling step in that direction.
An ogre’s club caught the yellow-bearded dwarf in the lower back and launched him tumbling through the air. He crashed through several bodies, the last being Pikel’s, and went down atop his brother.
Pikel heaved Ivan over behind him and hopped back to his feet, clubbing wildly at the tangled mass in front. He squeaked frantically for his brother to join him, and Ivan tried, but found that his legs would not move to his mind’s call.
Ivan struggled to stand, to get beside his brother. He realized only then that he’d somehow lost his axe, realized that he couldn’t see and couldn’t stand. Darkness engulfed his thoughts as it had his eyes, and the last thing he felt was slender but strong hands grabbing his shoulders and hauling him backward along the floor.
They were greeted at the mess hall entrance by the groans and shrieks of the wounded. Danica started forward, her first instincts telling her to run through the carnage and seek out her friends. She stopped, though, and spun around, hands crossing in front of her.
The sight of their dead comrades had put the soldiers that had accompanied Danica and Dorigen into a rage, and two of them stood right in front of the monk, their spears leveled, their faces firmly set for battle.
“The truce holds,” Dorigen said, seeming not at all surprised by the piles of dead and mutilated soldiers.
One of the spearmen backed away, but the other stood, unblinking, unmoving, apparently trying to decide if the consequences of disobedience would outweigh the satisfaction of impaling the intruder.
“Do it,” Danica prodded, as eager to strike at him as he was to hit her.
Dorigen put her hand on the man’s back. Flickers of electricity arced up the wizard’s body, slipped down her arm and through her fingers, blowing the man to the floor several feet away. He rolled to a sitting position, the shoulder of his leather tunic smoking, metal spearhead split in half, and hair dancing on end.
“Next time, you will die,” Dorigen promised, to him and to the other soldiers milling nervously nearby. “The truce holds.”
The wizard nodded to Danica, who sped off around the room. She quickly discerned that her friends had made their valiant stand behind a serving counter at the back of the hall. Finding their trail was easy enough. It was dotted with blood.
“Milady Dorigen!” cried a man, rushing in behind the wizard and her soldiers. “We have them!”
Danica’s almond eyes flickered at the painful news, and she ran back across the hall.
“Where?” Dorigen demanded.
“Two passages over,” the man was happy to report, though his smile lessened when he noticed Danica running free. He gripped his weapon tightly, but thoroughly confused, made no move to threaten the monk.
“Are they dead?” Danica demanded.
The man looked to Dorigen, and she nodded that he should answer.
“They were alive by last reports,” he replied, “but fully surrounded and sorely pressed.”
Danica was again surprised by the sincerity in Dorigen’s alarmed expression.
“Quickly,” the wizard said to her, and Dorigen took Danica’s hand and ran off, the shrugging, confused soldiers of Castle Trinity falling into ranks behind them.
Pikel dodged back and forth along the corridor, his club holding back the enemy line while Shayleigh picked her deadly shots around him. Pikel’s club rarely came close to hitting anything other than an enemy weapon, but the corridor was fast filling with dead and wounded.
br /> Shayleigh emptied one quiver, and began working furiously on another.
“Ogre!” Vander yelled.
Shayleigh had to spin around. An ogre had slipped past the firbolg and bore down on the elf. She put her bow up quickly and fired point-blank, her arrow disappearing into the ogre’s fleshy bulk. But the beast didn’t stop, and the clubbing it gave Shayleigh sent her flying back against the wall, tumbling over Ivan. On the very edge of consciousness, she tried again to load her bow as the monster advanced.
Pikel glanced back over his shoulder—and a sword slipped over his lowered club to slash his upper arm.
“Ow,” he groaned, and he turned back just in time to see another sword slip in to gash his other arm.
“Ow!”
The dwarf darted forward in a feigned charge, and his enemies fell back. Pikel swung around, transferring the momentum of his spin into his wide-flying club. The ogre roared as its hip cracked, and it lurched to the side.
Shayleigh’s next arrow dived into its chest, and Vander’s heavy sword gashed into its side.
It fell headlong over Pikel as he muttered, “Uh-oh,” and dived forward, trying desperately to get away.
A man behind Pikel, fully intent on the dwarf, didn’t react quickly enough and was squashed under six hundred pounds of ogre flesh.
Pikel, laid out straight, scrambled and clawed his way from under the prostrate torso, past the ogre’s hips and right out between its legs.
Other enemies had run over the creature’s back and were waiting for, and stabbing at, the dwarf as he reappeared.
Pikel squeaked, “Ow! Ow!” and took stinging hit after stinging hit, trying to get his balance and turn around, so he might fend off the wave of weapons.
An arrow cut the air above him, and he used the distraction and the shield of a falling body to roll all the way out from under the fallen ogre. Three scrambling steps put him next to Shayleigh, the elf holding her sword low before her, standing unsteadily.
“Together,” she mumbled to Pikel, but as she spoke, a club twirled through the air and smashed her in the face. She fell to the floor.
More clubs and daggers came flying the dwarf’s way. Pikel’s waving club blocked a few, and he looked down to regard a dagger’s hilt quivering from his shoulder, and his arm fell limp to his side.
Pikel tried to backtrack, stumbled, fell over Shayleigh, and hadn’t the strength to get back up.
The side of her face against the stone, only one eye opened, Shayleigh noted the measured approach of the enemy horde, though her fleeting consciousness could not comprehend the grim consequences. The elf saw only blackness as a heavy boot slammed to the stone right in front of her face, its heel only an inch away from her bleeding nose.
TWENTY-TWO
TRUMP CARD
Cadderly ran from the alchemy shop, pulling the ruined door closed behind him. A moment later the young priest was sprawled out on the floor, and the ironbound door was no more than a pile of burning kindling against the corridor’s opposite wall. Cadderly hadn’t expected the mixture to react so quickly. He put his feet under him and started running, managing to hold his balance as a second blast rocked the area, blowing apart the door opposite the alchemy shop and cracking the walls along the corridor.
Cadderly rounded a corner, glancing back as a fireball engulfed the area. He could only hope that the second door he’d ruined was not another portal to the lower planes, could only hope that some evil, horrid denizens wouldn’t come leaping through into the corridor behind him.
He ran past another door then skidded as he crossed by yet another, made of iron, not wood, and hanging open.
“What have you done?” came an angry cry from inside.
I have forced you to face me, Cadderly answered silently, a satisfied look stealing the trepidation from his face. He moved slowly to the iron door, pushing it all the way open.
Cages and glass cases of various sizes lined the huge room’s walls, and a tumult of growls and squawks greeted the young priest. The wizard stood across the way, in front of another door and between the four largest cages. Three of them were empty—for the manticore, the chimera, and the hydra? Cadderly wondered—but the fourth held a creature that would grow into a fearsome beast indeed. A young dragon, its scales glossy black, narrowed its reptilian eyes as it regarded Cadderly.
The young priest noted the slight trembling of the wizard’s shoulders, could tell that the exhausted man’s magical energies had been greatly taxed. And the young priest’s pillar of flame had hurt Aballister, for the side of the wizard’s neck was red and blistered, and his fine blue robe hung in tatters.
Another explosion rocked the extradimensional complex.
Aballister gnashed his teeth and shook his head. He tried to speak, but his words came out as a singular growl.
Cadderly didn’t know how to respond. Should he demand the man’s surrender? He, too, was weary, perhaps as weary as the older wizard. Perhaps the fight was far from over.
“Your war against Shilmista Forest was unjustified,” the young priest said, as calmly as he could manage. “As was Barjin’s attack on the Edificant Library.”
The wizard chuckled. “And what of the attack in Carradoon,” he brazenly asked, “when I sent the Night Masks to kill you?”
Cadderly believed the man was daring him to act, was baiting him to make the first move. He looked again at that young black dragon, which stared hungrily back at him.
“There is still the option of surrender,” Cadderly remarked, trying to equal the wizard’s confidence.
“I might accept your surrender,” Aballister replied sarcastically, “or I might not.” The wizard’s dark eyes flashed, and his hands began a circling motion.
Cadderly had his readied crossbow up in an instant and launched the dart at Aballister without the slightest hesitation. His shot was true, but the dart skipped off the wizard’s newest magical shield and struck up high on the back wall, blowing a hole clean through it. Sparks flared at the scorched edges, the force of the explosion threatening to unravel the magical energies that bound the place together—magical energies that were already being assaulted from the continuing explosions from the alchemy shop.
As soon as the dart skipped wide, Cadderly knew he was vulnerable. His choice of a conventional attack prevented him from throwing up a defensive shield. Fortunately, the wizard’s attack came in the form of fire. Aballister hurled a little ball of flame across the room. The fire hit Cadderly squarely, would have burned his face and hair except that enough of his protective globe remained so that the flames were dispersed into a green glow.
The young priest recovered quickly, reaching into his pouch for some seeds to hurl back. Cadderly dropped them right back into the pouch, though, and nearly swooned, for it was neither his turn to attack, nor the wizard’s.
The black dragon spit a line of acid from between the bars of its cage.
Cadderly cried out and spun, falling away to the side. He didn’t throw his arms up in front of him as his instincts demanded—if he had, they could have been melted away. Instead he used the methods Danica had taught him, and threw as much of his body as he could out of harm’s way. The acid slashed across his chest, burning and biting at his skin. Rolling on the floor, Cadderly saw that both his tunic and his bandoleer were burning.
His bandoleer was burning!
Screaming in terror and pain, the young priest twirled up to his knees and pulled the bandoleer over his head.
Apparently convinced that the battle had turned his way, Aballister paid Cadderly’s frantic movements no heed. The wizard was deep in the throes of casting another spell.
Cadderly put the flaming bandoleer into a few quick spins over his head like a lasso and hurled it across the room, diving for cover as he threw. The moment it left his hand, he curled up in a fetal position with his hands tucked behind his head.
Aballister screamed in shock and fear, and the dragon roared as the first of the magical darts exploded.
One after another, the tiny bombs went off, each blast seeming louder than the one before. Metal tips and the shafts of the darts whipped around the room, pinging off cage bars, ricocheting off stone walls, and smashing glass.
Cadderly couldn’t count the explosions, but he knew he still had well over thirty darts in his bandoleer. He tightened his arms around his head, and continued to scream if for no better reason than to block out the terrible tumult in the room.
Then it was over, and Cadderly dared to look around. Sparking fires had been lit all around the huge room. The dragon lay dead, its torso shredded by flying darts, but the wizard was nowhere to be seen.
Cadderly had started to stand when out of the corner of his eye he noticed a giant snake slipping out of the broken side of a glass container. He put his walking stick in the constrictor’s face, and held it back until he could quick-step past it.
A metal pole to the other side of the room disappeared in a flash of light. Another followed suit, and Cadderly began to realize that he’d inadvertently unlocked the bindings of the pocket dimension.
The young priest rushed across the room, through the far door, and into another, narrower corridor. The wizard stood forty feet away, one arm limp at his side, blood oozing from his shoulder, and his face blackened with soot.
“Fool!” Aballister yelled at him. “You have destroyed my house, but have damned yourself in its collapse!”
It was true, Cadderly realized. He had no idea how to stop the magical bindings from unraveling. He started to reply, but Aballister wasn’t listening. The wizard scurried through a nearby door and was gone.
Cadderly ran up and tried to follow, but the heavy wooden door wouldn’t budge. There came another explosion, and the floor bucked violently, knocking him to one knee. He glanced frantically up and down the corridor, looking for some escape, and grabbed up his crossbow, only to remember that he had no more explosive darts.
Glaring light flickered through the open door he’d left behind—the light of disintegrating dimensional material. He tried to fall into his magic, to search the song for a way out.