"Can you stand?" he whispered to Thamalon.
Thamalon rose to his feet, but he stood hunched painfully, his arms hanging in simian fashion at his sides.
"Barely," he said, raising one hand to receive the short sword Cale passed him. He held it gingerly but with the unconscious grace of a practiced swordsman.
Cale doffed his helmet and pulled open the straps on his pauldrons, letting them slip to the roof.
"Stay here," he said, before circling around the tower.
All eyes were on the Sorcerer and Shamur, so he felt he had at least a slim chance of closing with the man should he land.
The Sorcerer remained carefully out of reach of Shamur's sword. He lowered his scepter and gazed appreciatively at the woman.
"I can see the resemblance in your eyes," he said. "I suppose I should be grateful."
"Reveal yourself," Shamur shouted. "Show me your face!"
"With pleasure, my dear girl," said the Sorcerer.
He lifted his helm and tossed it to his soldiers, who fell over themselves to catch it before it struck the floor.
Shamur grimaced at the sight of her son's face.
She snapped at him, "What have you done to Tamlin?"
The Sorcerer flinched.
"Do not speak that name," he growled. "I will not tolerate-"
The tower shook as thunder rumbled up from the castle's foundation-exactly as Cale had felt at Stormweather Towers twice before falling into the strange alternate plane. He'd made it halfway around the tower's edge, slightly behind the Sorcerer. It was still too far, and the man still floated too high above the tower roof. Cale crept ever closer, praying that none of the guards would notice him and cry out a warning.
"Who dares?" said the Sorcerer, shooting a glance at Thamalon and dropping slightly closer to the tower floor as he did so. He seemed surprised to see his guest was still present. "How-? Who else have you brought here?"
"Tamlin!" cried Shamur. "Where is he?"
"Of course," the Sorcerer said. "He would be able… But that means…"
Cale sensed that the man was about to flee. He would have no better opportunity than this one. He ran at the Sorcerer.
"My lord!" shouted one of the guards.
Shamur spotted Cale at the same time. Her gaze flicked uncertainly from the Sorcerer to Cale.
"No!" she shouted. "Wait!"
But Cale knew that to hesitate would mean their deaths, not to mention thousands more when the elves arrived. He leaped while still two yards behind the man, thrusting at his spine.
The Sorcerer turned just enough to elude instant death. Cale's blade sank deeply into the man's back, piercing his lung.
Despite her uncertainty, Shamur pounced upon the wounded Sorcerer. Shocked by his wound, he sank to the floor as she pulled him down. Cale had already withdrawn his sword and pressed it to the man's throat. He pinned the Sorcerer's left arm to the roof and kicked away his scepter.
"Don't kill him," hissed Shamur. She knelt on the man's right arm, though not too heavily. Her expression flickered between mistrust and wonder. "He could be…"
She didn't finish her thought.
"Don't worry," said Cale. He shouted at the approaching guards, "Stand back!"
At the sight of the blade to their master's throat, the guards withdrew a few steps.
"Drop your weapons," said Cale.
They grudgingly complied, throwing down their spears and unbuckling their sword belts.
"Idiots," grunted the Sorcerer.
His handsome face was twisted in a rictus of pain and annoyance. He twisted his pinned arms to press his fingers to Cale's leg, and he spat out a word of Art.
Even as Cale drew his blade across his enemy's throat, an electric jolt snapped his spine like a whip and blinded him with a flash filled with green afterimages. His body jerked in uncontrollable spasms, and the Sorcerer pushed him away. Cale fell back on the roof. As the Sorcerer rose painfully to his feet, Cale saw Shamur twitching on the roof beside him.
The shock passed in mere moments, but that was all it took the guards to recover their weapons and form a line between their master and his foes. Cale rolled slowly to his side and seized the sword he'd dropped.
The Sorcerer looked up at the sky.
"You!" he shouted, shaking his fist at the heavens. With a gesture that left incarnadine trails behind his fingers, he waved away whatever vision only he had perceived then he snapped to one of his guards, "Take me to the Vault!"
The Sorcerer leaned heavily on the man's shoulder, and Cale saw he was leaving a trail of blood. Perhaps he would die before he reached his destination. Cale thought a prayer to Mask that it would be so.
Before descending the stairs, the Sorcerer paused to give his men one last command.
"Take these interlopers. When I return, I want to them all spinning on the Vanes."
CHAPTER 25
After the blinding light and the horrid keening sound, Tamlin floated in a white abyss. He'd lost both his sword and the mysterious key that had pulsed in his hand as they uncovered the gate. His hand went to his breast. Not only was the flesh unbroken by the wound he was sure had killed him, but it was also bereft of clothing.
As the light receded to a comfortable level, Tamlin saw that he was completely naked.
Also, he was flying.
Tamlin floated in the center of a high hall. Its ceiling soared so far above him that he could barely make out its vaulted arc. He looked down to see that the floor was a distant shadow. All around the curving walls were doors and windows, crooked passages and candlelit promenades, half-balconies and flights of stairs that rose up past balconies of mirrors and portraits, only to turn and end abruptly in midair.
The room looked like a jumbled jigsaw puzzle of Stormweather Towers stacked four stories too high, with pieces lost from a hundred other puzzles mixed in. There stood a gigantic suit of armor that Tamlin's uncle Perivel had once worn. Upon a flight of stairs was a painting of his mother as a young woman, but Tamlin had never seen the portraits to either side of her. One of them was a green-faced lion-woman.
Tamlin was fairly certain he would have heard of such an unusual ancestor.
"Where in the world…?" Tamlin let the question melt away.
"Beats me," replied a voice behind him.
Tamlin tried to turn around, but he managed only to squirm where he hovered in the air.
"Just think about it," said the voice. "Not, 'I'd like to turn around now.' That's not the way it works. Instead, just imagine that you've already turned."
Tamlin did as the voice instructed. His body responded instantly to his will, turning him gracefully around.
"You're a natural!" said the man who floated before him. "It took me hours to figure that out, and a tenday to get good at it."
Apart from the floating, the other figure differed from Tamlin in two significant ways. First, he was fully clothed. Second, he was very nearly transparent.
"Chaney Foxmantle!"
"In the ectoplasm," said Chaney.
"You're a ghost?"
Chaney lifted the collar of his shirt and peered through it at Tamlin.
"Either that, or I've got one hell of a complaint for the girl who does my wash."
"Very funny," said Tamlin.
"I see something funnier," said Chaney, smirking.
Tamlin covered himself with both hands. Scowling at the ghost, he said, "This is no time for jokes."
"Trust me," said Chaney. "There's never a better time for a few laughs than after you've just been killed."
"You saw what happened?"
"I had a box seat," said Chaney. "It's a long story, but you'd better hear it all."
Tamlin listened in wonder as the ghost relayed his tale. By the time he was finished, Tamlin felt a heat for vengeance rising in his heart. He couldn't decide whom he wanted to murder first, but the Hulorn was a favorite for when he was next in a betting mood.