“What’s happening?” Lita asked.
“Battle,” Alexander said, opening the door and racing out into the underdark again.
The wizard had left his perch on the other side of the chasm and was now following his men, a happy fact that gave Alexander time to reach another platform wrapped around the last ten feet of a giant stalactite. Two bridges leapt away on the opposite side, one going higher, the other lower. Alexander took the high road.
Grant and his people emerged ahead of him along the far wall of the chasm and started tying off ropes so they could lower themselves to a balcony below. A bridge arced gracefully from that balcony to the next pillar in Alexander’s path. He picked up the pace, his breathing becoming labored from exertion.
The soldiers had reached the central pillar behind him and were ascending the stairs to reach the bridge he’d taken. Ahead of him, the chasm was narrowing and the network of bridges was beginning to converge on a single platform perched atop a giant stalagmite. Several bridges joined to this platform, but only one spanned the distance from it to the guardian chamber.
He would have to face some of Grant’s men before he could reach the last platform. Several were racing across the bridge to intercept him at the next pillar, while still more slid down ropes from the level above to join the fight. Grant watched.
Alexander slowed as he approached the next pillar. Three of Grant’s men were there, spread out across the bridge abutment, weapons at the ready. The first fired a crossbow bolt. Alexander turned sideways, allowing the bolt to pass within inches of his chest. The other two loosed crossbow bolts as well. He spun right, avoiding them with relative ease. All three drew shortswords and advanced.
Another crossbow bolt sailed past him from a quickly approaching cluster of five more men, racing toward the pillar from Grant’s position. Alexander ignored it. His danger sense hadn’t alerted him to it, so it wasn’t a threat. The first three men waited for him at the abutment, twenty feet … ten feet.
Alexander lit up Luminessence like the sun. The light felt warm and soothing, not too bright, no glare, just clean pure light. But the men facing him dropped their weapons, covering their eyes as if they’d been gouged out with hot pokers, shrieking in pain from the sudden onslaught. Two of the group running to join the fight recoiled so violently from the sudden brilliance that they threw themselves over the railing and into the void.
Alexander strode through the men cowering on their knees and holding their hands over their eyes. Once past the immediate threat, he dimmed the light since it took an effort of will to maintain such intensity, and continued toward his objective.
Seconds later, he saw the Andalians reach the platform where Grant’s men were recovering from temporary blindness. The three men who’d faced Alexander were quickly overpowered and thrown from the balcony, while the remaining brigands in Grant’s employ held back, launching a volley of crossbow bolts at the soldiers. A few Andalians fell, but most defended against the attack with their heavy shields.
Alexander left them to it, noting that Grant and a number of his people hadn’t descended down the ropes and were now moving back into the warrens of the underdark, leaving those who had moved to intercept Alexander to fend for themselves against the platoon of soldiers. The fight was a stalemate until the Acuna wizard arrived and killed five of Grant’s men with a series of red-hot force shards. The remaining brigands broke and ran. The soldiers and wizard laughed at them, mocking their cowardice, but didn’t pursue.
Alexander reached the final pillar standing between him and the last platform before the guardian chamber. A sentinel stood in his path, eyes glowing, spear and shield at the ready. He marched toward it, assessing the field of battle with each step. This platform was different than the rest in that there were no railings, just a thirty-foot-diameter circle of stone with three bridges joining it on one side and a single span without railings arcing away on the other. A guardian before the guardian.
He stepped onto the platform, stopping to face the sentinel.
“You shall not pass,” a distant voice said. “This way is forbidden.”
Alexander stretched out with his all around sight. Soldiers and brigands were converging on his position from a number of directions. The Acuna wizard was nearly in position to throw a spell. Then a man went flying off the near edge of the guardian chamber, screaming into the dark.
Soldiers had reached the guardian ahead of him.
He strode toward the sentinel, reaching into the moments to come with his mind, seeing the thrust a moment before it became reality, spinning around it and past the sentinel, then breaking into a dead run, leaving the inanimate sentry behind as he sprinted across the bridge that would deliver him to the guardian chamber.
Danger flared in his mind an instant before a blow hit him square in the middle of the back, hard as a hammer. It knocked his wind out and sent him sprawling on his face, Luminessence clattering across the floor, coming to rest on the edge of the bridge, three feet of the enchanted staff hanging out over the void.
Alexander scrambled forward, all other thoughts pushed aside as he dove toward the edge of the bridge, catching the staff just before it slipped over, rolling onto his back and holding Luminessence to his chest with both hands. He lay there for a moment, schooling his breathing and calming his heart.
A man’s scream was cut short by a loud thump, then another man went over the edge of the open-ended chamber that Alexander was struggling to reach. He staggered to his feet just in time to see soldiers lumbering toward him, struggling to move quickly under the weight of their armor. Then the Acuna wizard began casting a spell.
He unleashed Luminessence again, filling the chamber with a flash of light so bright that everyone nearby had to look away or cover their eyes. The wizard’s spell went wide, a bubble of liquid fire whizzing past him into the guardian chamber and splashing against the ceiling, dripping orange-hot fire into the room below. A solider screamed.
Alexander was up and running again, pain in his back jolting him with every step, but he pressed on, reaching the guardian chamber just as Grant and a dozen of his brigands stopped at the threshold of an oversized door on one side of the room. A dozen soldiers were already dead, their bodies broken and burned. A dozen more were surrounding the guardian, trying to bring it down while trying harder to avoid its stone fists.
Alexander skirted to the right of the guardian, putting it between him and Grant’s men. It lunged, striking at a nearby soldier with both fists in unison, catching him in the chest and blowing him backward scores of feet, his still, dead corpse coming to rest against the wall. Another soldier stabbed the guardian in the knee, his sword sinking into the red-hot magic joining the stones and melting in a shower of sparks. A backhanded swat by the guardian sent the man flying silently off the far edge of the open-ended chamber.
When Alexander reached the midline of the room, the guardian spun toward him, hurling a lava-red stone the size of a man’s head. He turned to avoid it, but it grazed him across the chest, burning his tunic and heating his dragon-scale chain to the point of searing. He cried out, pulling the chain away from his skin, then emptying his waterskin on it, turning his face away from the sudden cloud of steam.
The Acuna wizard and his men reached the chamber’s edge, stopping to assess the situation before the soldiers began to advance toward Alexander. He flipped Luminessence to his left hand and drew the Thinblade.
“McGinty!” he shouted.
He inched toward the far edge of the chamber, drawing the guardian’s attention again. It threw a stone at him, the rock heating to orange-hot in an instant. Alexander dodged, feeling a wave of heat as it zipped past his head and hit the wall behind him, shattering into scores of glowing pebbles.