But Toliver only had one arm up to receive the light. He remained lurched over to his left. There was nothing Tuckernuck could do-he couldn’t even shout out for Toliver or he would ruin his own casting.
But how he wanted to, and even more so when he heard the sudden commotion below him, and glanced down to see the tumbling, spinning charge of a score of dwarves flying up at him.
No, falling up at him, he realized, for they were caught in Kenneally’s spell of inversion, where up was down and down was up.
“Flip!” he did yell at the other wizards when the dweomer reached them, and they did, except for Toliver, righting themselves upside down, which was now upright!
The falling dwarves drew near, but the Field of Feather Fall wasn’t complete, and the ceiling, now the floor, loomed just above.
“Toliver!” Tuckernuck and the other two shouted, for now their spells were complete.
And from the landing, which was not in the area of effect, the dwarves began to scream and curse.
Dead dwarves tumbled upward beside living dwarves. Pursuing goblins were caught in the spell and went falling upward in the line. More dwarves came in, leaping, then flailing as they were caught in a free fall as surely as if they had leaped off a cliff.
But many other dwarves weren’t going to make it, Kenneally realized. Nearly a hundred and fifty of the sturdy folk had leaped down, the last three groups falling to their deaths almost to a dwarf. But the Harpell wizard realized that of the six-score who were already on the floor, less than half were going to find their way back. Yet another group of several Gutbusters were pulled down by the goblin horde, overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
Kenneally spotted King Connerad of Mithral Hall staggering away from a skewered demon, the beast spouting blood from its gut but still stubbornly pursuing.
And more monsters-like great bipedal vultures-swept in from the sides, cutting off the young dwarf’s retreat.
Connerad fought valiantly, but Kenneally shook her head in despair. She began casting a spell, a fireball, thinking to put it high enough to catch the heads of the tall monsters. She took hope when one of those vulture-like demons screeched and staggered back, its beak shattered by a mighty stroke of Connerad’s sword.
But the four-armed behemoth leaped in, pincers leading, and Kenneally lost the spell in her throat as the beast extracted Connerad from the commotion and lifted him up into the air, both pincers grasping tightly around the poor dwarf’s midsection.
“Bah, ye dog!” she heard Connerad cry, and he lashed out with his blade and managed to clip the huge beast’s canine muzzle.
With a yelp of protest and rage, the demon thrust its arms out wide, and Connerad Brawnanvil, the Twelfth King of Mithral Hall, was ripped in half at the waist.
Kenneally’s fireball spell was lost in her throat then, and all she could do was fly up for the ceiling, her eyes wet with tears, and gasping for breath she could not seem to find.
She took some heart as she rose, though, to see her four kin maintaining their dweomer. Toliver had straightened and completed the square just in time. Upward fell the dwarves, then upward they floated, to land lightly on the ceiling.
And dwarves on the landing threw them ropes, which fell up to them, that they could be hauled to safety.
And upward fell the pursuing monsters, too, then upward they floated, and not one got to the ceiling before a dwarven crossbow launched a bolt into its torso, and the dwarves already up above were ready for them anyway, cutting the disoriented and confused goblinkin apart in short order.
“Hurry, pull them in!” she heard Tuckernuck commanding. “Kenneally’s spell will not last much longer! We will lose any not on the ledge!”
Kenneally nodded agreement and focused on the task at hand. She was more than halfway to the ceiling, the jumble of falling dwarves and monsters just in front of her. Now she concentrated on that tumbling mess, picking out monsters.
A line of magic missiles shot out from her fingertips, striking a goblin, killing it, and taking out the one beside it as well.
Kenneally chanted the spell for a lightning bolt, and when she executed it, she perfectly angled it to blast several enemies, with not a dwarf singed. The power of the bolt jolted one large demon too, sending it spinning out of the area of her reverse gravity, and as soon as the beast went out of the dweomer, it fell back the other way, more than fifty feet to the floor.
And so Kenneally realized a new and deadly tactic, and one executed by a simple spell she could cast quickly and repeatedly. She picked out her targets with gusts of wind, blowing them out of the reverse gravity field, sending them falling back for the cavern floor, living bombs to drop upon the sprawling horde below.
She would avenge Connerad, she determined, and she narrowed her eyes and sent a dozen goblins flying free of her enchanted area.
Tuckernuck Harpell looked up, or rather down, nodding approvingly of Kenneally’s exploits.
But noting, too, that fewer and fewer dwarves were among the dozens falling upward, and that little fighting continued on the floor.
He glanced the other way to see most of the living dwarves already out of the enchanted area, scrambling on ropes with their crowded brethren grabbing at them and hauling them over the lip of the landing.
He looked back the other way, back to the floor. He saw no dwarves, none living at least, but now more and more monsters were taking the leap.
Tuckernuck could only hope that he wasn’t killing more dwarves then, but he flew backward and dropped his arms, ending the ritual enchantment of the Field of Feather Falling. He flipped back upright, and waved his three fellow Harpells back as monster after monster tumbled past to crash against the ceiling, or, soon, to crash against the bodies of those that had already crashed against the ceiling.
He looked down again to Kenneally, and he gasped and cried out. A pair of ghastly creatures, like giant houseflies with human faces, flew upon her at either side, biting and tearing at her.
“Kenneally!”
He began to dive, but a fireball below stopped him before he ever truly moved.
Kenneally’s fireball dropped right upon herself.
The flames cleared and the chasme demons, their wings burned away, tumbled for the floor, bearing poor Kenneally with them.
Again Tuckernuck began to dive, and again he stopped short, for Kenneally’s powerful dweomer ended then, and a host of monsters and dead dwarves fell from the ceiling, and those falling upward in the field paused, then went tumbling back the other way.
So enthralled by the strange sight was Tuckernuck that he didn’t notice a swarm of chasme demons soaring up at him until it was too late.
Covered in blood, much of it his own, Bungalow Thump was the last dwarf holding the landing, and the one who hauled Toliver, the only Harpell to reach the landing, over the edge. The powerful dwarf sent the wounded man skidding back through the door, then his eyes widened in horror to note the other two nearby wizards caught suddenly by the horrid, insectoid demons.
Bungalow fell back in shock, barely avoiding yet another of the darting chasme. He would have been caught and surely killed, but a dwarf within the doorway grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him back and to the ground-and the pursuing chasme caught a swarm of crossbow bolts right in its hideous face.
The door slammed shut and Comragh na Uamh, the Battle of the Under Way, came to an abrupt and disastrous end.
CHAPTER 19