The sorceress reached Borys’s midsection and slapped her hand against his belly. She spoke the command word of her spell. She immediately turned visible, for she did not possess the psionic talents to keep herself hidden after making an attack. A deep hum throbbed through Borys’s abdomen, then the tintinnabulation of shattering glass erupted from inside his stomach.
The Dragon roared in pain. He struggled to finish the incantation he had begun a moment earlier, but he only managed to belch forth a cloud of black dust-all that remained of the obsidian globes that had been stored in his stomach.
Sadira swung up toward the hand holding Rkard. Far below, Neeva and Caelum charged the arch, yelling and screaming madly. The sorceress streaked past Borys’s wrist and swept low over his palm. She reached down and snagged Rkard, gathering him up into her arms-and felt four sharp claws close around her body.
“Caught you, stupid woman,” the Dragon chortled. He jerked her out of the air and closed his fist, bearing down with indescribable force. “I knew you’d come for the child.”
Sadira wrapped herself around Rkard, protecting the boy from the awful pressure. At the same time, she kicked at the Dragon’s gnarled fingers, trying to break one or force them open. It was no use. The sorceress might have been imbued with the power of the sun, but the Dragon was infused with a magical force just as strong.
Borys met the charge of Rkard’s parents at the front of the arch. He casually kicked Neeva aside, sending her tumbling across the broken ground, then stomped at Caelum with his other foot. The dwarf saved himself by diving away.
Sadira tried to look toward the top of the cliffs, wondering if Rikus and Tithian could see what was happening. The effort was futile. She could peer between Borys’s scaly fingers and see most of what was happening on the ground, but it was impossible to twist around to look up.
“Sadira! You shouldn’t have come for me,” said Rkard. He was so hoarse that the sorceress could barely understand him.
“Of course I should have,” the sorceress replied, her voice strained. It was all she could do to keep her arms extended and her body curled over Rkard so the Dragon’s fist would not crush the boy. “You’re going to kill Borys.”
“I don’t think so,” Rkard said. “Jo’orsh said something that-”
The Dragon bore down harder.
“Not now, Rkard,” Sadira groaned. She tensed every muscle in her body, struggling to keep herself and the boy from being crushed.
Borys stepped from beneath the arch and peered down at Caelum, who was struggling to return to his feet. Sadira took a deep breath, expecting Rikus’s war cry to ring off the gorge walls as he and Tithian leapt down from above.
The only thing she heard was Borys chuckling. The Dragon fixed one beady eye on Caelum. From the intensity of his gaze, she guessed that he was about to use the Way against the dwarf.
“No!” The sorceress started to reach for a spell component but had to stop when she nearly collapsed on top of Rkard.
To Sadira’s surprise, the rugged image of a human man suddenly flashed into the shadowy corridors of her mind. He had blocky features, with a shaven head, round ears, and a long beard with no mustache. His eyes were beady and full of hatred, much as the Dragon’s, and he was dressed in a full suit of gleaming plate armor.
At first, Sadira was perplexed about what she was seeing. Then she realized that Borys was attacking with the Way.
The knight pulled a sword and walked until he reached a door of polished ebony, which he kicked open. The doorway opened into a gloomy room with a high, vaulted ceiling. The walls were lined by benches and draped with richly colored tapestries depicting the bearded dwarves of old. In the center of the chamber, a ball of crimson fire hovered over a circle of white marble.
Sadira was confused. She had no memories of such a room. It almost seemed as though she were looking into Caelum’s mind.
The warrior crossed to the circle and paused before the blazing globe. “I should have finished my job and cleansed the world of every filthy dwarf when I had the chance.”
A few tendrils of flame lashed out and washed over the knight’s armor. He simply laughed and raised his sword, then began to chop away great pieces of the burning sphere.
In the ravine, Caelum began to scream, leaving no doubt in Sadira’s mind about what she was seeing. The Dragon’s mental attack was so powerful that it had penetrated her thoughts, carrying a part of her consciousness into the victim’s mind.
“What’s happening?” Rkard demanded.
Sadira covered the boy’s eyes. “Don’t look.”
Caelum fell silent, then his body erupted into a spray of blood and flesh. It collapsed to the ground in a dozen neatly sliced pieces. Borys snickered then turned around and stepped back toward the arch.
Sadira heard Neeva yell. The sorceress shifted her gaze between another pair of fingers and saw Rkard’s mother burying the sparkling edge of her axe into Borys’s leathery calf. The blade bit deep, and the Dragon’s leg began to jerk with rhythmic convulsions.
The spasms brought a feeling of satisfaction and hope to Sadira. She knew that with each contraction, the enchantment she had placed on Neeva’s axe was pumping another bolt of mystic energy into Borys’s leg. The resulting explosions were not powerful enough to kill the Dragon, but they would certainly serve to slow him down for Rikus and Tithian.
Apparently Borys had no interest in waiting for the pair to arrive. Growling in pain, he limped back beneath his arch without taking the time to remove either the axe or Neeva from his leg. As the Dragon passed between the pillars, he uttered a long series of words in a language Sadira didn’t understand.
A loud crackle echoed off the walls of the arch, then a brilliant flash of orange light forced Sadira to close her eyes. She felt Borys step forward, then the mordant stench of boiling rock burned her nose and throat. Her stomach grew queasy, and she suddenly felt as light as a cloud.
“Rikus!” she yelled. “Where are you?”
FIFTEEN
THE BROKEN PLAIN
Tithian scurried up the slope with just the proper amount of urgency, joining Rikus on the hill’s crest. From this high vantage, the king could see that the abyss beyond the arch was filled with a sea of lava. In some places, it bubbled and shot viscous geysers high into the air, and in others torpid whirlpools slowly sank into unseen sinkholes. Scattered spires of scorched stone rose out of the molten expanse, while the black ribbon of a cliff barely showed on the far side of the vast pool.
The king saw no sign of Ur Draxa, the secret city-prison wherein Rajaat was confined. Still, he felt certain that they were not far away from it, for the great arch and its yellow runes had been created to protect something-and the king did not think it was a sea of molten stone. Soon, he would free the ancient master of sorcery and receive his reward: the powers of an immortal sorcerer-king.
But first, Tithian had the Dragon-and a few former slaves-to kill. The king peered over the cliff and discovered that the ravine below was empty. The blood was still draining from the assorted pieces of what the king assumed had once been Caelum.
In a concerned voice, Tithian asked, “Where is everyone?”
As he spoke, the king searched the broken floor of the valley for some sign of Neeva’s body. He saw nothing but a few pulsing heaps of stone and the arch, its face still covered with writhing yellow runes.
“They’re gone!” Rikus pointed the tip of his sword at the arch. “The Dragon stepped through there with Sadira just as I reached the top of the hill.”
“And Neeva?” the king asked.
“Clinging to Borys’s leg,” the mul reported. “Her axe was buried nice and deep.”