As the weapon darted forward again, he saw splashes in the shallow water below it, marking the passage of invisible feet. He snatched the sword he had claimed from Alvarro from the nearby saddle and parried the attacker's next blow.
But the enchanted sword flickered back and forth too quickly for Hal's eye, and the legionnaire stumbled backward to avoid another deadly thrust. His shock turned to fear as he realized that this inanimate attacker could kill him. He tumbled backward through shallow water, and something splashed after him.
Corporal leaped at the attacker, snarling and biting at the air. The greyhound twisted in the water as a sudden gust of wind whipped up froth. A column of swirling air suddenly lifted the dog and hurled him to the shore.
Halloran darted at the invisible shape, hacking back and forth, trying to knock Helmstooth to the ground. The whirlwind turned back, and spray flew in a howling column, blinding Hal. The force of the air buffeted him backward, and he sprawled on the shore.
The once placid grotto became a cage to him now, the limestone walls barring him from maneuver… or flight. The rocky barriers formed a deadly arena, where life would be the winner's prize.
Halloran scrambled desperately to his feet as Helmstooth came at him again. Diving away, he once again tumbled headlong in his desperate attempt to evade death. The sword chopped at the ground behind him, and he rolled away, bumping his shoulder on a sharp object.
The sword lifted above him, ready for the kill, when something thumped into the invisible figure and knocked it aside. Hal saw Erix holding a sizable log, originally intended for their fire. But the whirlwind shape came swirling back, and Halloran knew they could not best it with physical attacks.
The sharp object jabbed at him again as he struggled to his feet, and he realized that he had fallen onto his backpack. The top of one of the small potion bottles was barely visible, jutting from the side pocket. It had been that bottleneck that had poked him.
Erix swung again, knocking the invisible sword-thing backward, but then the wind swirled around her, smashing her to the ground. Hal's throat tightened with a cold terror that dwarfed his earlier fear. Then the sword turned back toward him. It was not interested in killing Erixitl of Maztica.
Desperately Hal pulled the little bottle from the pack. I hope this does more than make me invisible. Popping the cork, he threw back the bottle and gulped its entire contents in one swallow. In the next instant, he raised his sword and parried another slashing blow.
Once again the swirling wind raced through the camp. Spray blinded Hal, and he braced himself for the crushing force that had twice knocked him over. Closing his eyes against the stinging needles of water and dirt, he leaned into the wind and struggled to keep his balance.
But the wind did not swirl so forcefully this time, at least, not against his whole body. He felt it pounding his belly and his legs, then just his legs. He opened his eyes as the spray fell into mist and the wind jerked, annoyingly but not dangerously, at his calves.
He looked down at the fire, down at Erix, saw the starlit horizon stretching for miles around the grotto… around the grotto! Even the twenty-foot high walls that had concealed their camp now looked like a trench around him. I'm a giant! he suddenly realized. For a moment, he reeled with vertigo, so dizzying was the sensation.
But his feet had grown proportionately, and his balance remained steady. He crouched lightly, dropping into the trenchlike grotto, every bit as nimble as he had ever been.
Halloran saw the silver sword slash in for another attack, and he kicked the irritating thing away. Slowly he grasped the significance of the potion: It had increased him to a height of perhaps thirty feet. His weapons and clothing had grown right along with him!
Erix sat, awestruck, gaping up at him. The invisible stalker whirled in again, and Hal raised one huge foot, stepping down hard on the struggling form. His massive weight pressed the thing into the water.
A froth of bubbles exploded around his giant foot, but he could feel the substance of the monster still wriggling beneath the pressing weight. For several minutes, he stood still, and slowly the struggles faded. Finally bubbles burst from the water all around his foot, as if a great air sack had burst.
Feeling nothing resisting him now, he reached down and plucked Helmstooth from the bottom of the stream. Holding the sword like a toothpick, he looked around for any sign of the attacker, but once again the night was silent.
Erix stammered something unintelligible, and once again he looked at her horrorstruck face.
"Don't worry," he soothed, his voice like the rumbling of thunder. "It won't last long."
At least, that's what he hoped.
"Up here, inside the mountain," explained Luskag, barely breaking a sweat. "That's where we'll find the Sunstone."
Poshtli gasped an inarticulate reply. The combination of the steep climb and the high altitude made it virtually impossible for him to move, much less speak. Nevertheless, he followed the desert dwarf in their slow, steady ascent.
Clad only in sandals and loincloths, they made the grueling climb under the blazing light of the morning sun. The climb was not treacherous, just a steady, long uphill grind in an atmosphere that offered precious little air to breathe.
The mountain spread across a vast area of desert, rising from a tumult of lesser peaks to dominate the skyline in all directions. Dirty white snowfields, streaked with mud from melting, adorned the heights of the cone-shaped peak, and finally the climbers neared this region.
"The mountain was born at the time of the Rockfire," explained Luskag when they both paused to catch their breath.
"You've talked about that before," noted Poshtli, between gasps. "What's the Rockfire?"
Luskag looked at him in surprise. "I thought surely the tale was known to all. The Rockfire marks the birth of the desert dwarves, but the death of all of our kindred dwarves."
Poshtli looked at him in puzzlement, and Luskag continued. "The time was many generations ago, by dwarven reckoning – that means even more, measured in human generations – though no one knows exactly. The dwarves were locked in conflict with their archenemies, the drow elves… the dark elves.
"It was a conflict that wracked the far corners of the world, for the underearth at that time was linked by tunnels and caverns, such that a dwarf could cross under the great ocean, past the vast snow realms of the north and south, anywhere he wanted, without poking his head above the earth.
"And this region was the domain of many peoples – dwarves and dark elves, of course, but also the deep gnomes, the mind flayers, and many others. But none were as evil, as calculating, as the drow.
"The drow maintained a magical focus, deep under the earth, that they called the Darkfyre. Into this, they fed the bodies of their slain enemies, and the Darkfyre grew in power. Finally it overwhelmed those who fed it and grew of its own will into a great force, of cataclysmic destruction – the Rockfire.
"It consumed the world of the underground, destroying most of it. Mountains such as this were born in the fire, while whole cities and nations of the underdark were demolished." Luskag paused, and Poshtli sensed the pain of the tale, a pain that appeared as fresh as if the disaster had occurred only yesterday.
"The dwarven race was annihilated, except for a few small tribes, such as my ancestors. And even they found that life underground was no longer possible, for the hallowed caverns of antiquity, those that survived the fire, became caldrons of poison gas or pools of hot, molten rock. So the dwarves came to the surface, and now we live our lives in shallow caves, very near the baking heat of the sun. Now we dwarves, here in the House of Tezca, are the last survivors of a proud and noble race.