As the thick band of storm clouds blotted out the last of the moonlight across the Dragon City, Eliseth paced the lofty observation platform on top of Dhiammara’s highest tower, unable to contain her restlessness. “Where is she?” she muttered. “Aurian must come soon.”
It was completely unnerving. For three days now, the Magewoman had been blind and deaf as to Aurian’s whereabouts. Just when the wretched woman had been heading south toward the desert, and Eliseth really needed to keep a close eye on her enemy’s progress, she had lost contact with her spy. Each time she tried to insinuate herself into Vannor’s mind, she had come across a hard, blank, reflective surface that would not yield to her probing will. “That bitch is coming, though,” Eliseth said to herself “I just know it.” Already she had doubled her patrols in the skies around the mountain, and put the Khazalim troops who manned the lower corridors on full alert. The grail and the Sword were safely hidden, and she had just completed her last defense—the buildup of a storm above the city that she could unleash at will. Surely, that would be enough?
“It’s been a long lime, Eliseth—I’ve been looking forward to this meeting!”
With an inarticulate cry, the Magewoman spun round, looking frantically for the source of her enemy’s voice. There was no one on the rooftop, but there, down there among the city’s scattered buildings—was that not a tall, familiar figure with flaming hair? Curse her—she was heading for the emerald tower!—Frantically, Eliseth waved her arms, trying to attract the attention of the guards she had stationed round the rim of the crater. “There,” she cried. “Are you blind, you fools? Aurian is here! Why did you let her through?” She ran to the edge of the roof and began a headlong descent of the spiral track that led down to the ground, but her pace was slowed by the need for care, for there was no rail or guard to prevent her from plunging to her death should she miss her footing. Down in the city, the Mage had disappeared.
The fight in the great cavern was brief but bloody. The settlers of both races, winged and human, were savagely glad of a chance to avenge their dead and repay the ruin of all their dreams. The Khazalim woke to find their sentries gone, their weapons stolen, and the exits to the cavern blocked, the cave mouth to the outside being guarded by two black demons of unmatched ferocity. The access that had been hewn into the bowels of the mountain as an alternative to the Dragonfolk’s peculiar crystaline means of transport up to the city was blocked by two strange Northern warriors—a man and a woman—who were soon joined by the slave who had been the leader of the rebels, the man who, rumor said, had killed the great swordsman Xiang himself. No one dared face him now that he was free.
A good half of the Southern warriors survived: mainly those with the intelligence to realize that their cause was lost from the start. They were locked in the same stockades that they had previously been guarding, with the knowledge that their own laziness and laxity had put them there.
When the cavern had been secured, Aguila and the rest of the wounded settlers were gently lifted or helped from the stockade before the enemy were locked inside. They were made comfortable in the encampment near the upper pool as the leaders gathered there to make their plans.
“What now?” Petrel asked Schiannath. Like Eliizar and Nereni, the winged man and his mate Firecrest were ablaze with excitement at the news of their child’s miraculous survival.
“Now we get up to the city,” the Xandim said. “Aurian said there was a secret way up, something I couldn’t make out about a crystal, but if Eliseth had brought the Khazalim in to guard this cavern, she must know about it....”
“I don’t think she does,” Nereni put in. “From what we could overhear, she discovered the cavern separately from the chambers in the mountain—she got into those from above. That’s why she made us dig a way into the lower levels of chambers—she thought that failing all else, she’d make her own entrance.—There were two transporting crystals,” she added brightly, ignoring Eliizar, whose smile was vanishing rapidly. “We didn’t go in them, but Shia did.” The little woman frowned, trying to remember. “There was one by the pool,” she chattered brightly—“don’t poke me like that, Eliizar, you know how I bruise—but that one didn’t go all the way, and they had an awful time, Aurian said, with chasms and invisible bridges and all sorts. And then there was another one—the one they came down by. That one was in the back of the cavern, over there. ...”
Shia went to the back wall, her whiskers bristling, and sniffed at the stone.—Suddenly she halted with a low growl, all the hair on her spine standing up on end. Though they had no Mage to interpret for them, it was quite clear that the cat had I found the place.
Schiannath leapt to his feet. “Right, let’s get moving,” he said briskly.
“Skyfolk, you can fly up the outside of the mountain. You’ll know what to do when you get up there—your task is to deal with the airborne threat. We’ll have to go up in shifts—how many folk do you think this contraption will take, Nereni?”
The woman shrugged. “About six or eight, I would think. Not many.”
“Well, the cats can be first,” Schiannath decided. “They can do the fighting of about ten! Iscalda, you had better go with them to get things organized at the top—and what about you, Eliizar? Do you want to go in the first load?”
Eliizar stepped back hastily. His face had gone a ghastly greenish shade. “I don’t—” he began. Nereni narrowed her eyes at him. “Your daughter is up there,” she said.
The swordmaster swallowed, and stepped forward. “All right—let’s get this over with.”
Nereni hugged him. “I’m very proud of you,” she said softly, and stepped back to join Raven, who was staying behind with Jharav to take care of the wounded and the children.
Since Nereni couldn’t fight, she knew there was no sense in her trying to take a warrior’s place. Nevertheless, as she watched the warriors departing in small groups, as though they had been sucked into nothingness by the wall, she wished vehemently that at some time in her life, she’d had a chance to learn to fight.
“But you can’t just go off like that and leave us all alone,”
Amahli protested to the man with one hand. “The Lady Aurian said you were supposed to stay here in this building and guard us. What if someone comes?”
“No one will come,” Vannor said impatiently. “And I don’t see why I should have to stay here and miss all the action playing nursemaid. You’ll have to manage. You’ve got the wolf, after all.” With that, he was gone.
A moment later, when Amahli and Tiercel looked around for the wolf, he was gone too.
“All right, Grince—let’s see how good a thief you really are,” Aurian whispered.
Since the entrance to the emerald tower had been destroyed in the earthquake, Eliseth’s slaves had repaired it with stone from the mountain, and hung a great, heavy iron door with a series of complex locks.
“Where in the name of all Creation did she get that from?” Forral muttered.—Aurian shrugged. “There were a whole lot of chambers down inside the mountain with doors like this. We never did find out what was behind them—we couldn’t get inside.”
“I’ll get inside the bugger,” Grince muttered, sliding a slender dagger into one of the latches. “I never saw a lock that could beat me yet.”
“Well, hurry up,” Forral told him. “We want to be in there before Eliseth thinks to come back this way....”
Suddenly Aurian’s hawk took off from her shoulder and flew round her head in circles, screeching with excitement. “Look The Mage pointed upward. “They did it! The cats and the Xandim have freed the slaves!” In the sky above, the air was full of winged figures, swooping and swerving through the low storm clouds as they fought with savage ferocity. Behind her, from Grince, came the sounds of clicking, scraping, and swearing. She realized that now the slaves had been freed, Shia would be bringing folk up in the crystal contrivance that emerged within the emerald tower—and the tower had better be open. “Grince,” she said, “do you think you’ll be ...”