“Good,” Brandon said. He felt the incredible weariness again, looking around in something like surprise at the sprawl of horribly gashed bodies around him. His axe was still stained with gore, and the sight of that mess disturbed him more than the corpses of his enemy. Quickly he snatched up a piece of dusty but clean linen—apparently once an elegant tablecloth, dating back to some distant time of peace—and used it to wipe his blade to a shining brilliance.
By then, both officers could hear the sounds of loud cheering, coming from the city streets and the plaza beyond the palace wall. They made their way out of the keep to be greeted by several dwarves of the Second Legion, all of them flushed with victory and triumph.
“It’s King Bellowgranite, sir!” one of them proclaimed. “He and the Tharkadan Legion are marching into the plaza. They’re being followed by thousands of dwarves; that’s the cheering you can hear! General, the war is won!”
“It’s not won!” snapped Bluestone, his harsh tone immediately quelling the delight in the soldiers’ faces. “We’ve won a victory, a great victory even, but the enemy army still survives, and our task is not complete until it is destroyed!”
And until I get Gretchan back, or die in the attempt.
“Yes, General! Of course—and, sorry, sir,” replied the chagrined swordsman. “I—I just …”
“You were celebrating the victory, as you should,” Brandon said, much more gently. “You, all you men, have done a splendid job and have every right to be proud. Just remember, this was a battle, not the war.”
“I will, sir. And thank you.”
“Go,” ordered Morewood. “Tell the king that we’ll be out to meet him as soon as possible.”
The men jogged off, and Fister looked Brandon in the eye. He offered him a waterskin, and the general drank greedily, surprised at how thirsty he was.
“Do you need to sit down for a bit, sir? I could find you a bite to eat …”
“No. Thanks anyway, Fister. I’m all right. Let’s go meet the king and then get this whole damned thing over with.”
“Very good, sir. And … I saw Gretchan on the tower, in that cage. But I’m afraid I didn’t see very clearly what happened up there. Did the dragon …?”
Brand’s reply was a sharp bark of laughter. “The dragon died. Gretchan, and her staff, slew it. But then the wizard took her away again. I don’t know where they are now.”
“I’m sorry, General. But you know we’ll find her! There’s not a man in the army who wouldn’t give his life to bring her back.”
“I know, Fister. And thanks, old friend. I needed your good words. Now let’s go welcome Tarn Bellowgranite back to his palace.”
The two officers emerged from the keep and pushed through the main gate, which had been cleared by the diligent efforts of Kayolin diggers. “We had them ready, you recall, but didn’t need to use the Firespitters here,” Morewood explained. “Once the dragon was gone, our men were in control of the walls, and they were able to come down and clear out the courtyard in quick time. After you set the example, of course.”
Brandon blinked, realizing that he barely remembered the fight, his wild and solitary charge into the palace. For the first time, he imagined that he could understand the fury that seized a Klar when the haze of battle frenzy came over him.
Emerging onto the great plaza of Norbardin, they saw the Tharkadan Legion, with King Bellowgranite and his old general, Otaxx Shortbeard, marching at the head. The column of cheering citizenry swirled around the military formation, with maids rushing up to kiss the soldiers or to throw silken scarves at the feet of the returning monarch.
“Long live King Bellowgranite! Hail to the true king!”
The cheers resounded through the great cavern, and despite his gloom and worry, Brandon couldn’t help but feel a resurgence of hope. Yet when he reached the royal party and spotted Gretchan’s father, he was reminded of her absence again; and everything else seemed to pale to insignificance when compared to her dire peril.
Tarn Bellowgranite and Otaxx Shortbeard led the Tharkadan Legion to a station in the great central plaza of Norbardin, and it was there that Brandon joined them.
“Congratulations, my lad!” Tarn proclaimed expansively. “Your Kayolin troops did a magnificent job! The city is retaken!”
“And what word of Willim the Black?” asked Otaxx Shortbeard, ever more practical than his liege.
“He’s taken Gretchan!” Brandon said, seizing Otaxx by the shoulder, clenching the old soldier tightly. “Willim the Black has taken Gretchan! He’s magicked her away, and they’ve disappeared.”
The veteran general’s face paled. “By Reorx—do you have any idea where they have gone?”
“There’s no way to tell. We’ve learned that his army, such of it as survives, is fortifying the main road to the Urkhan Sea. We’re making ready an attack there.”
“By all means, make haste,” Tarn said, overhearing the conversation and immediately growing serious. “We’ll find that villain—and get Gretchan back, I trust.”
Brandon nodded and turned back to the war. He hoped the king was right. But that was all he could go on …
Hope.
Chap Bitters proved to be an inventive and hardworking captain. Operating under Blade Darkstone’s orders, he had sent out numerous small parties of his men, ordering them to quietly muster any of Willim’s troops they could find. Hour by hour he gathered a steadily expanding force in the concealment of the warehouse district.
The rest of the company had set to work expanding and fortifying their space. By knocking out the walls connecting the coal storage building to several neighboring structures, they had created a large hideaway in which to gather and wait. All the external doors except their initial entrance were fortified and guarded around the clock.
By the time some forty-eight hours had passed, General Darkstone had assembled more than a thousand loyal Theiwar. For the time being, they kept a low profile, concealed in the bank of warehouses along the darkest streets of Norbardin’s industrial quarter.
Most of the citizens in the area had been frightened away, and those who weren’t and could be found were given a quick choice: either join Darkstone’s force or die.
Most of them, of course, volunteered.
At the same time, the general’s spies brought him steady reports about the enemy’s progress. The fall of the palace was reported to him, though it did not come as a surprise: Darkstone knew that the battered structure was ill suited for defense.
More significant were the reports that Willim’s troops were massing to make a stand on the Urkhan Road. Though they had suffered tremendous casualties thus far, the general knew that his troops, added to the black wizard’s, meant they still had a sizable force at their disposal.
Then he looked up to see that, in a breath of magic, his master had come to him.
“Welcome, sire,” Darkstone said, bowing deeply. He didn’t know whether he would be allowed to live through to the end of his report, but he was not ashamed of his recent activities. And when he explained about all the recruiting he had done, boasting of the nearly twelve hundred loyal soldiers collected there in secret, poised on the enemy’s flank and, as yet, undiscovered by the invaders, Willim the Black was not displeased.
“It is as if you have read my mind,” the wizard said with uncharacteristic praise. “I have been preparing a bit of a surprise for our enemies. First, I will lead them away from here, into a perfect trap. I am certain that, flushed with victory as they are, they will follow me …”
Then, Blade Darkstone would have a great ambush ready—an ambush that would either win the war or leave a scar of blood and despair across the breadth of the new king’s realm.
Gretchan sat in her cage and watched the two black-robed females talking in low tones, looking frequently in her direction. Sadie, Facet, and the imprisoned cleric were alone in the vast cavern of the wizard’s lair, Willim having teleported away to an unknown location several minutes earlier
.
The priestess stared at her staff, resting on the wizard’s worktable, well out of her reach. To her, that sacred artifact seemed almost to thrum with power. The anvil on the head retained a faint glow, which was very unusual when she wasn’t holding onto it. She remembered how the device had seemed to absorb the dissolving essence of the fire dragon, and she couldn’t help but wonder how the presence of so much uncontained power could affect the thing.
The black wizard’s worktable, as usual, was covered by a scattered assortment of vials and jars, dishes and boxes filled with components too vile and mysterious for the cleric to identify. Among them lay scrolls, some rolled into tubes, while others were spread flat for reading. In her rare glimpses, Gretchan had seen that some of the pages contained various arcane symbols, none of which made sense to her. But she knew enough about the ways of wizards to understand that the scrolls contained written versions of his spells, some of them undoubtedly very powerful. Through the medium of a scroll, even a wizard who was not powerful enough to learn a specific casting could obtain the means of using certain elaborate magics, by carefully reading the words aloud.
Among all the detritus on the table, rising higher than anything else, stood the bell jar that had caught the cleric’s eyes long before. A lone blue spark drifted around in that jar like a wistful firefly, seeming to fly without pattern or purpose. Gretchan had noticed the elder apprentice, Sadie, paying a great deal of attention to that jar, frequently glancing at it with a frown of concern or worry on her face. Once, when neither of the other wizards was looking, she had gone over to it and placed a tender hand on the glass, almost stroking it affectionately.
Beyond the table stood a large cabinet closed and locked. But Facet and Willim had opened it several times during Gretchan’s captivity, and she had noticed that it contained rows and rows of bottles in a variety of sizes and shapes and colors. Some were so large, they looked like wine jugs, and they were opaque, as if made of clay. Others were tiny vials of clear, delicate glass, with liquids that were colorless and watery or dark and thick as syrup. She had guessed that it was the wizard’s potion cabinet, and she knew enough about sorcery to know that such dangerous elixirs could offer the one who drank them any of a wide variety of powerful, albeit temporary, powers. She’d heard of potions that allowed the imbiber to fly or to become invisible or to move at a speed far faster than any mortal could attain. Others were known to bewitch the drinker into viewing the one who had offered the drink as a great friend, a person to be trusted and favored in every way possible. There were even more sinister and vile applications, up to and including lethal poison. In fact, it had been the wizard’s intent to test one such potion on Gus, an incident which had led to the gully dwarf’s fortuitous escape from Thorbardin, when he had drunk a potion of teleportation instead of poison.
Gretchan couldn’t offer any comments or start a conversation with the other dwarf maids because, before he had departed, Willim the Black had once again muffled her with a spell of silence. In fact, he had even ordered Facet, the younger apprentice, to bring the priestess food and water. Gretchan had unquestionably been drained and exhausted by the confrontation with the fire dragon, and after quenching her hunger and thirst, she had, for the first time since her capture, fallen into a deep sleep.
When she awakened, Sadie had been absent and Facet had been servicing her master in a very personal way, much to the dark wizard’s loud and groaning delight. Stomach turning, Gretchan had turned her back and tried to ignore the activity, which was punctuated by Willim’s cruel cries of ecstasy and, eventually, the whimpering submission of the young, beautiful apprentice. Not long after that, Sadie had returned via teleportation. The wizard had spoken to them both quietly before departing.
Gretchan spotted Facet looking in her direction. The priestess raised a hand and beckoned her to come closer, taking care to move slowly, to mask any threat that might be implied by her gesture. The two black-robed females whispered together again, both of them glancing over at her, and finally they rose and, side by side, and walked slowly and cautiously over to Gretchan, stopping several paces back from the bars of the cage.
Gretchan gestured to her mouth then spread her hands and reached out, a clear gesture of beseeching. Let me talk to you, she mouthed silently.
She could see the hesitation and fear on both the wrinkled face of the elder Sadie and the beautiful but haunted visage of Facet. Once again she was struck by the contrast in appearance between the two, the only wizards she had observed in Willim’s company and service. Sadie was wary and guarded, her eyes deeply set in her skull, her expression cautious and, in some unknowable way, sad. Facet was brazen and haughty, meeting Gretchan’s look with a glare of frank hostility. With her crimson lips and alabaster, sculpted face, she was almost indescribably beautiful. Yet her eyes remained hooded with a look not so much of sadness, like Sadie’s, but of constant, lurking fear.
The priestess spread her hands, palms up, in the universal gesture of peaceful intent. The apprentice younger whispered something to the elder, and finally the older one approached the cage and snapped her fingers.
Immediately Gretchan heard all the sounds of her own body, the things she had so often taken for granted. As the breath rasped through her nose, her pulse thrumming audibly again, she nodded and said, “Thank you.”
“Beware,” cautioned Sadie. “If he returns, this will not go well … for any of us.”
“I know. But I’m so grateful. I was afraid I’d go mad, being cooped up in that silence. It’s a powerful spell,” she added, nodding appreciatively at Sadie.
The old dwarf maid snorted skeptically. “It’s basic magic. Real power … well, that’s what you demonstrated when you vanquished the fire dragon like that. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
Remembering that the two apprentices had teleported away as the dragon arrived, Gretchan looked at her quizzically. “I didn’t know you saw it. I thought you had gone somewhere safer.”
Sadie smiled unapologetically. “We were on the far side of the city. We expected you to die and, well …”
“We wanted to watch,” Facet said sharply. She scowled, clearly disappointed by the cleric’s survival. “How did you defeat the monster, anyway?” Facet demanded. “We thought the Chaos creature was immortal!”
“I didn’t vanquish the creature,” Gretchan said. “All the glory goes to Reorx, Master of the Forge and Father God of All Dwarves,” she added pointedly, reminding her captors of the shared kinship of their ancestry. “I was merely his tool, and a prisoner at that, as you well know.”
“I do know,” Sadie said, nodding. “About being a prisoner as well.”
“Oh?” Gretchan prodded, grateful to have the conversation and curious as to what she might learn. “Who made you a prisoner?”
“Why, Willim, of course,” the elder apprentice declared as if surprised at the question. Her eyes flickered to the side, toward the laboratory table, and Gretchan remembered the bell jar, the blue spark, and Sadie’s constant attention to that mysterious light.
“Is that a prison? A glass cage?’ she asked.
Sadie stared at her again, frankly. “Yes. I was there too until very recently. Willim thought my husband and I were betraying him, and in his rage he was … not kind to us.”
Gretchan nodded sympathetically then turned her eyes to Facet, who was watching them, her face an unreadable mask. “And you? Were you his prisoner as well?”
“I am here by my own choice!” she asserted fiercely. “My master has taught me very much. He is training me, and I am learning from him. I serve him, and he shares the deepest secrets of the Order of the Black Robes with me.”
“I have noticed that he doesn’t seem to treat you very well, however,” Gretchan declared gently. “And it seems he forces you to do some … unsavory … things.”
For the first time, the pale female’s face colored. Facet tossed back her hair and lifted her chin proudly.
“I use all the tools at my disposal,” she said coldly and with a little too much bravado.
The priestess nodded, maintaining her sympathetic tone. “I understand. We all live in a man’s world. We must all do what we can to get along.”
“Why are you even talking to us?” Facet blurted. “Surely you remember that it was I who tried to kill you in the woods, on your way to Pax Tharkas?” She sneered. “You were a fool, traveling by yourself, sleeping with a big fire.”
“Oh, I remember. You scared the daylights out of me. And you were skilled with your magic—you almost killed me. But if I am such a fool, doesn’t that make you a greater fool for your failure?”
Gretchan again saw fear flicker across the young woman’s face. “I … I was already punished, severely, for my failure,” she said sullenly. “You will not survive me again.”
“I apologize for my words and am sorry you were punished,” the cleric said. “Of course I had to defend myself, but I can attest that you tried very hard to do your job. Your master must be very cruel, indeed.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Why are you talking to us?” Facet demanded again, her tone thick with suspicion.
The cleric shrugged, choosing her words carefully. “I’m lonely, for one thing. I’m used to being surrounded by people. And I’m a talker and a writer by nature. To be locked up in a cage and especially muffled under a spell of silence … well, it’s almost enough to drive me mad.”
The discussion ended with a sudden gasp from Facet, who quickly spun away from the cage and dropped to her knees. Sadie, more slowly, turned and bowed as the wizard materialized abruptly in the space in front of his table. He was frowning, agitated, and at first didn’t even take note of his accomplices or their reactions. He smashed a fist down against the stone surface then paced angrily away in the direction of the chasm.
“My master, is there news?” asked Sadie, shooting Gretchan a look of warning.
Instead of answering, he took up the cleric’s staff and stalked over to the cage where Gretchan, taking care to utter no sound, sat watching him. With a snap of his fingers he dispelled the magic of the silence spell, doing so with such distracted haste that he apparently didn’t notice the magic had already been neutralized.
The Fate of Thorbardin Page 22
