The wizard scowled and shook his head, as if dismissing the thoughts of escape that had immediately popped into Gretchan’s head when she heard his plan. “And you should know that these bars are protected by many traps. Should you try to work your own magic upon them, they will burst into flames, and they will burn very hot and for a long time. You will not escape, but neither will you die quickly.”
“How can you claim to know what I would do?” she challenged angrily. She gestured at the two female magic-users. “And how do you know you can trust these two? How can you trust anyone? Don’t you think-?”
Abruptly he snapped his fingers again, and Gretchan’s voice was immediately muffled.
“I grow tired of your incessant prattle,” he said, almost as though bored. He chuckled, a harsh, cruel sound. “And I do not have to trust my apprentices. It is enough that they fear me, that they know the truth and the inevitability of my vengeance. No, my dear priestess, trust is vastly overrated among those of your cloth.”
He turned his back to her and resumed his aimless pacing, moving around the large cavern that was his laboratory. The apprentices watched him and stayed out of his way, and Gretchan was left alone within the cocoon of her thoughts.
The minutes ticked by, and she found her mind wandering, imagining Brandon’s distress and his terrible rage. He would push himself to the limits of his strength and beyond to find her, she knew. She uttered a silent prayer, beseeching her god to watch out for her beloved warrior, to keep him from bringing disaster upon himself with any mistakes.
Abruptly, she noticed that the wizard had stopped pacing; he stood stock still in front of her. His head was cocked to the side, like a dog listening for a distant sound, and his hands gripped the staff so hard that his knuckles had turned white.
Too, it was growing steadily warmer in the cavern. She noticed a glow emanating from a wide fissure in the floor, a chasm she had not even noticed before. The glow grew brighter, and the heat increased quickly.
“Now! It is time you will see the truth of my will! You will prevail, or you will die!”
Gretchan, still silenced by his spell, shook her head and rattled the bars.
“Feel that heat! Feel the power!” Willim declared. His face had paled almost to the color of snow, and his mouth was open, his breath coming in short pants. He snapped his fingers again, and the spell of silence was dispelled; the first proof was the sound of Gretchan’s distressed breathing. She turned to see what was happening behind her.
It was enough to feel the growing warmth, and the expanding brilliance swelling upward from the chasm in the floor. Fire clearly burned there, a source of heat and light growing steadily stronger.
“Tease the Chaos creature!” he barked to his two female apprentices. “See that it pursues you. Bring it to the priestess and me; you know where to find me!”
The wizard reached out and grabbed one of the bars of the cage. In another instant, the world shifted and shimmered, and they teleported. The cleric gasped at the sensation of sudden weightlessness, of rapid, whirling movement.
He was taking her somewhere else, somewhere he hoped would help the priestess to defend herself against the fire dragon. The cage came to rest, canted at a slight angle on a high elevation, allowing her to look out across a vast cavern. Gretchan stared in awe at the sight before her.
She knew at once that Willim the Black had taken her to the right place.
Both Firespitters had been refueled and readied for battle, and their crews rolled them into position before the gate of Norbardin’s royal palace. Brandon had waited impatiently for the maintenance to be completed. He had expected Tarn Bellowgranite’s arrival at any minute, and in fact had heard word that the exiled king was marching at the head of the Tharkadan Legion and that the citizens of the city were turning out in great numbers to cheer and support him as he advanced. Well more than the estimated hour of the king’s arrival had passed, but from the reports, the general guessed that the crowds were probably slowing the monarch’s progress through the city.
So Brandon had decided to go ahead with the assault. After all, if the enemy troops could be driven out of the royal palace in short order, the structure would be the perfect headquarters for the king. Symbolically, it would make a powerful statement to the people of Thorbardin that their former monarch had returned and taken control. But there was a pesky garrison of Theiwar dwarves still sealed up in the palace, and the Kayolin commander had to root them out. His troops had caught their breath and taken advantage of the time to eat and rest, and they were ready for the assault.
Even as the two big, fire-spewing war machines rumbled forward, the dwarves of Kayolin’s Second Legion, divided into two wings and advanced to either side of the tall, well-fortified gate. Fister Morewood led the right-hand wing, while Brandon himself commanded the group to the left of the gate.
The defenders behind the palace walls fired crossbows at the charging dwarves, but-unlike at the gate of the nation itself-the number of attackers far exceeded the number of defenders. A few dwarves, including one axeman sprinting right next to Brandon, fell under defensive fire, but the vast majority of them reached the base of the wall. There they wasted no time in heaving ladders against the ramparts.
From the rear ranks of the Kayolin companies, crossbowmen fired return volleys. Many of the bolts bounced off the stone wall since their targets were protected by the battlements except for visible heads and arms. Even so, the purpose of the shooting was not so much to kill the enemy archers as it was to distract their aim from the Firespitters.
The great machines included several plates of metal armor as protection for the crew, but the dwarves who manned the maneuver handles were partially exposed. If they were killed, the machines would have been unable to advance and could not employ their firepower against the gate.
Reaching the base of the wall, the attacking troops quickly hoisted their ladders, and lightly armored skirmishes began scrambling upward. The attackers were met at the top by swordsmen, but again superior numbers came into play. Steel clashed against steel as the skirmishers chopped and stabbed and tumbled over the wall, quickly seizing control of the immediate platforms.
Brandon held one of the ladders long enough for a dozen dwarves to scramble up. He had been convinced that the army commander should be not be first man over the top, but finally he could wait no longer. Slinging his axe over his shoulder, he pulled himself up hand over hand, springing to the rubble-strewn parapet and stepping to the side so still more warriors behind him could ascend.
The shattered palace nearly filled the courtyard. It looked more like an ancient and long-abandoned ruin than it did a royal edifice of dwarven construction. Great ruptures yawned in the wall, and many of them were still strewn with the stones that had been knocked free by whatever force inflicted the initial damage. The front door of the keep was gone, the entryway gaping open like a dark, silent mouth. Rising over it all was that long tower, the half spire that was missing its top.
“General, look! It’s Gretchan Pax!”
The words, shouted by one of his swordsman, pulled Brandon’s attention away from the crucial assault on the palace gate. He followed the man’s pointing finger, and his heart leaped into his throat. He saw her at once, trapped in a metal cage, high atop the shattered spire of the palace’s main tower. The cage was perched awkwardly on the stone rim of the spire, which had been broken off during the recent civil war. His priestess was there, bracing herself by clinging to the bars of the cage.
“Gretchan!” Brandon shouted, his voice rising above the chaos of the battle.