The Band of Four, all of them, here in his lair!
Ingryl Ambelter lashed out with his mind in a fury, goading the Melted into the best lurching, shuffling semblance of a charge they could muster. Clumsy clay they might be, but in this crowded room they were so numerous that they'd hamper his attackers as if the walls themselves were reaching out to grasp and bludgeon and blunder into the way. And that should give him time to-
The Dwaer flashed, and a Melted in front of him, along with most of the table he'd been seated at, vanished in a roar of flame and a shrieking spray of splinters that lanced out in all directions like deadly arrows. Snarling, the old woman that was Ingryl Ambelter threw himself to the floor behind the ruin of the table!-and into a drifting, flickering cloud of dying magic that had been his Sword of Spells ere the Dwaer had shattered it and drained much of its power.
He hissed a few swift words, and what was left flowed back into him, filling the disguised Spellmaster with more power than his body had ever held before. Like cool fire it flooded him, setting his fingers and teeth to tingling.
Gasping, he spent some of it on a shielding that would drain the next Dwaer-blast to come his way, and a mere trifle more on unseen eyes that soared to the ceiling of the cavern and showed him every cranny of it.
The Band of Four were wrestling with the Melted, that beast of an armaragor hacking at unliving limbs like a woodcutter, and the procurer doing his usual dance of leaps, twirls, and magpie grabs at anything that glowed or looked valuable. Phelinndar was crumpled into the farthest corner, trying to do something with the Dwaer, his face twisted into the grimace of the unpracticed and nongifted mind-struggling with greater enchantments. He was… trying to communicate with someone afar!
The baron's look of horror told the Spellmaster that he hadn't been expecting the Overdukes of Aglirta to make an appearance here, but his blunderings could quite well have summoned them! Well, by the Dark One, Phelinndar would the in a few moments- Graul, but he should have been slain days ago!
Embra's Dwaer flashed, and a dozen advancing Melted were shredded by a ravening light that cleared quite a space in front of her, their bones bouncing and crumbling into dust. Dark One look down! If she were to do that thrice more, she'd be facing a certain Spellmaster directly, and-
Gods! The other one, the little she-sorceress, had just hurled a handful of conjured fire into Phelinndar's face, and was making a grab for his Dwaer!
Desperately, Ambelter hurled most of the magic he'd just drunk along the lingering threads of the mind-lock he'd cast on Phelinndar days ago, seeking only to flood the Dwaer with fire, and-yes!
The Stone burst into flames as the wench laid hands on it, searing her. She threw back her head and shrieked, falling away from the Dwaer with her hands and bodice ablaze. The baron whimpered, his own hands burned to stumps of ash-but the Stone fell into his armored lap.
Phelinndar shuddered in mewing agony as Ingryl Ambelter let fall his disguise and used the last of his borrowed magic to hurl himself across the chamber like a darting hawk.
The armaragor didn't even see Ingryl, but that great warsword flashed perilously close to the diving wizard as Hawkril reeled back from hewing down a Melted, and swung his steel around in a great arc to hurl himself forward into another. Craer was ducking under a lurching undead warrior, and darting toward a scattering of small, glowing trinkets that had fallen from a shattered shelf, and Tshamarra's scream was lost to the ears of everyone in the great roar of Embra's Dwaer hurling back rank after rank of Melted, as it built into a great lash of flaming force that would be turned on the Spellmaster next, unless he-
– touched the Dwaer, scooping it up heedless of the pain, twisting its hot blaze of fury into the magic he needed, a shield to do this, a Dwaer-maze ready to do that, and a lance of his own, to stab at!-
The Lady ofjewels was swifter. She spun away from the staggering horrors of twisted flesh confronting her, and lashed out with her Dwaer at the triumphantly blazing figure behind her, who held a still-flaming Stone in his hands. If she could smite him before he could raise the magics he sought…
Ingryl Ambelter grinned like a wolf as his shield did its work, thrusting aside all of the Embra's fury into!-the Baron Phelinndar.
Orlin Andamus Phelinndar's eyes snapped open. He stared despairingly into the Spellmaster's cruelly smiling gaze for one last, dying moment ere baronial eyeballs popped into sizzling ruin, fire raged around inside that skull, and armor surged and buckled from the force of the bubbling, smoking fury beneath. And then the bones that had been Baron Phelinndar slid in a tumbled, smoking heap down the wall, trailing blackened armor, and Ingryl Ambelter spun around to face Embra with the Dwaer in his hands!-and struck back.
In a chamber of gleaming tables and castle candelabras in distant Ragalar, Hulgor Delcamper blinked, growled, and stiffened, feeling a sharpness in the air and an echo of power bursting and surging, as all sight of oily Orlin Downdaggers was swept away, probably forever. The old noble brought his flagon up ready like a mace in one hand and snatched out his belt-knife with the other, tensing for a battle that… did not come, as the air fell silent, and breath after ragged, anxious breath passed.
The Spellmaster had no hope of blasting the lass down, Dwaer to Dwaer!-not with her alert and angry, and all her armed and ready friends close around her, but his lance of magic was ready, and all he had to do was… this.
Into the ragged fire of her Dwaer the fury of his own Stone crashed, and as the opposing powers of the Dwaerindim clawed and roiled, his lance leaped over, and through-and struck home.
"No!" Embra howled, recognizing him even as she wrestled his attack aside. "Ambelter, you snake, get you gone from my mind."
In a fury she threw him out, and fought to shape the fire of her Dwaer into a blade to strike back at him!-but his own Dwaer was already flashing, whirling the Spellmaster away in a vanishing that left a singing, shimmering Dwaer-maze in his wake.
"Longfingers!" Hawkril roared, as he hacked down another Melted and all the rest suddenly froze where they stood like so many statues. "What magic's that?"
Craer found his feet, disgust on his face as the baubles he'd been snatching up crumbled into dust between his fingers, and said sourly, "A wildfield, or some such: it banishes you anywhere if you enter. I'd say that whatever mage just escaped us left it behind him so that we can't use a spell to trace him, even with a Dwaer."
He turned his head, and saw Tshamarra writhing in soundless agony, tendrils of smoke streaming from her. Embra Silvertree was on her knees not far away, clutching a wand and a flickering Dwaer to her breast as if they were wounded children. Her face was wet with tears, and she was trembling.
The armaragor and the procurer sprinted across the cavern like men possessed.
"Embra!" Craer howled, long before he reached his stricken lady. "I need your healing here!"
Lady Silvertree did not reply. Hawkril fell to his knees as he skidded to a halt, and put his arms around her as gently as a feather seeking the earth. "Lass," he rumbled, "how fare you?"
"He… touched my mind," the Lady of Jewels whispered. "Trying to enslave me through the old enchantments. Ingryl Ambelter, the Spellmaster of Silvertree Castle, lives yet!-and he's stronger than ever."
Arkle Huldaerus came awake out of a vengeful dream as magic thrummed through him, washing over him with only a hint of its full fury. He blinked up into a young, beautiful, and unfamiliar face bent close to his, and thus lit dearly in the spark-shot glow of the magic she was hurling at his chains, and shook his head. Surely he was still asleep, and dreaming?