He gritted his teeth and began to dig-slowly and cautiously at first, but with rising urgency as he heard the murmuring cease, heard the girl's voice clearly for the first time: "What in the name of Branchala…"
Then there was light, and the torn edge of a wooden tub hovering over him. The water swirled and trickled above him, yet he remained dry.
"By Paladine!" he breathed.
The water pooled and was caught on some strange shimmering tension in the air. It was like looking at a rain storm through glass or ice, and for a moment, Aglaca thought that indeed it was glass above him. He weaved a moment on his ladder of rough roots, clutching for purchase in the fractured dark.
"Who-who are you?" the girl whispered, peering through the puddle. He recognized the face, the lavender gown she clutched to her breast, the brilliant blue-lavender eyes.
"Y-Your rescuer, by Paladine's grace! We are two. The other waits below," he muttered triumphantly and vaulted toward the light.
It was then that he discovered the magical shell that lay between him and the astonished girl. The spell-charged air snared him, pushed him back. He fell back into the roots with a crash and an oath, staring stupidly up at her. His hands crackled with sparks as he clutched for balance, and his hair stood on end.
"Do you think a simple line of trees could keep me in?" the girl hissed to Aglaca. "Or keep the guardsmen out, if they fancied to trouble me? The priests in that temple have magicked the Pen with a glyph of warding."
"Glyph of warding?"
"An old sign, it is. Charged with shamanic conjury when the black moon rises."
Aglaca swallowed. This hostage girl knew magic beyond his wildest dreams. "How do we…" he began, but a quick wave of her hand urged him to silence.
"I know the countercharm," she whispered. "I didn't go guileless into the mountains, but I need another voice for the casting."
"Another voice? Why?"
"No time. Speak after me. Then stand back. There's a big leak in this bathtub. You're partway under it."
Blushing, his eyes averted and his legs lodged in a chaos of roots, the lad waited for Judyth to dress, then repeated the spinning, incomprehensible Elvish that she spoke to him. It was a brief verse, its vowels dancing in subtle arrangements, and twice the girl had to stop him, correct him, and start him again in the strange incantation.
But the third time it worked.
In triumph and relief, Aglaca repeated the last line, and the air above him stirred and snapped. A deluge of soapy water tumbled from the broken tub, and Judyth, now fully dressed in the lavender robe, slipped through the wet hole and clutched her rescuer about the waist.
"Hurry!" she ordered through clenched teeth, untangling her sleeve from a stray root tendril. "You've freed more than a damsel in distress."
Verminaard had waited sullenly in the cavern, clutching an oozing shoulder wound he had received from backing into a sharp broken root. Then he heard her voice- hushed and melodious and low, not the high-stringed harp music he had imagined-and it was suddenly drowned by a rumble overhead, a tumult of shouting and screaming and the crashing sound of buildings and lean-tos shaking and toppling.
Judyth quickly descended into the torchlight, Aglaca leading her carefully over and around the latticework of roots. They were both wet, dripping with soapy water, and it would be much later before Verminaard discovered the reason.
Verminaard stepped back indignantly.
It was your plan, the Voice insinuated. Your plan, and a good one, conceived in d noble spirit… the'stuff of heroism, all- For a moment, the Voice paused and garbled, as though at the edge of an unpronounceable word. Then it continued. All Huma and lances and glorious victory. It was your idea and your doing, and who leads the girl forth? And why does he lead her?
The Voice repeated the questions again and again, each time more softly until they merged entirely with Ver-minaard's thoughts, and the lad forgot the Voice altogether, asking the questions himself as he reached out to help the girl through the last of the knotted entanglements.
"Thank you," she breathed, and brushed back her hood.
Behind her, a stalactite crashed to the cavern floor.
For the first time, Verminaard looked into the face of the girl he had dreamt of and pursued through two seasons. Her dark hair shone like obsidian in the guttering lamplight; it was not the spun gold he had imagined. And though her skin was flawless, the touch of her hand like fine silk or velvet, that hand was dark, not porcelain or alabaster as the poems had told him it would be, should be.
And the eyes. Deep and lavender, a strange blue, bright and fathomless. Like the eye of that daylily.
She was not the girl he had imagined at all.
Behind her, a rockslide opened the cavern to a shifting, misty light from above. She shoved Verminaard toward the cave entrance and shouted as he staggered back in amazement.
"Don't stand there gawking or we'll all be crushed! Get us out of here!"
They emerged from the cavern just as it collapsed behind them. Verminaard wheeled about, open-mouthed, as the passage behind him caved in with a dusty crash, the plateau collapsing, concentrically spreading all the way to the base of the Nerakan walls, toppling tents and lean-tos and makeshift cottages in a matter of seconds.
He could barely speak. His order that they move quickly to retrieve the horses came as a dry, croaking sound in a landscape of deafening noise. They hurried toward the wooded rise where Orlog and the mare nervously waited, and did not look behind again as the tower itself quaked and the first fires sparked in the town of Neraka.
They did not look back, but not far from the green encampment, another pen-this one fashioned of stone and timber-toppled when the ogres pushed against it. There were two dozen of them, freed from ensorcellment by the chanting of Judyth and Aglaca, and they were joined by thirty others whose chains had burst on the scaffolding near the walls. Drowsily, stupidly, as though they had freshly awakened, the monsters tramped through the fallen tents, gathering torches as they wandered, weaving in dangerous circles and rapidly igniting more thatch and wood. They were dark and hulking in the torchlight, draped in skins and furs, their own sallow hides and blue-black hair glistening in the rising flames as the fires spread through the settlement.
By dark instinct, the ogres moved to the spot of the chanting, where the spell that had contained them was first broken. They reached the Pen and milled together, gaping at one another, uprooting tent posts and wattled walls in their dull uncertainty.
Then one of them-grizzled and small for his race- lifted his face and smelled the switching wind.
"Horse!" he cried out, his broken mouth salivating at the prospect of food. "Horse… and young humans!"
With an exultant, rumbling cry, the ancient ogre rushed toward the green flags, and the rest of the monsters followed.
Ember heard the outcry of the sentries-the name "Judyth" rising like an alarm out of the smoke-and fanned his wings contentedly as the magical fog redoubled over the city and the plains, mingling with the smoke and casting the town into a thick and abiding darkness.
They had her now. Ember was certain. And they would need cover of shadow and cloud to mask their path west through the mountains.
The dragon stirred and rumbled. He had done all he could. He would return to Castle Nidus and await their arrival. There he would be Cerestes again, handsome and witty and learned for the benefit of the captive girl. He would charm the rune-wielder, and he would sound her like the lost rune, rist her in his intricate thoughts and plans until she told him everything she had learned at the feet of the druids.