Palin, blood staining the front of his robes, struggled to his feet and out into the courtyard in time to see Rig leading out a throng of haggard-looking people. A brute trundled around the corner and pointed at the bloodied sorcerer.
“Trespassers!” the brute hollered.
“Our water’s gone!” came another cry from somewhere in the inner courtyard.
“Look!” shouted one of the knights stationed at the top of the nearest tower. “The prisoners are escaping!” He drew a horn to his lips, and a shrill bleating sound filled the air.
“Palin!” Blister yelled. “Over here!” The kender was frantically waving her arms. At the edge of the stable, the sorcerer spied a trio of Knights of Takhisis, tied and gagged. Nearby, the Kagonesti was gesturing at four elephants. The beasts were charging toward a large group of knights and brutes who were racing toward them.
Almost in unison, three of the elephants raised their trunks and trumpeted, then their great feet pounded over the sand, following the Kagonesti’s directions, and they charged at the onrushing knights. The fourth elephant thundered past them and headed around the corner of the fortress.
Palin shrugged off his bloodied robe. The tunic and leggings he was wearing beneath it were also stained. There’d been so much blood from the knights and the draconians that it had soaked through to his skin. He struggled for breath, and an incantation began to tumble from his cracked lips. Behind him he heard Rig shout to the prisoners. In front of him he heard the screams of the first knights to fall beneath the elephants’ feet
Chaos was erupting everywhere. The Kagonesti wrestled with a knight who had slipped past the elephants. The kender loaded her sling with elephant dung and pelted the knights. The largest elephant skewered a knight on one of its tusks and pitched the broken body to the side.
Rig motioned for the former prisoners to run, then left them, dashing headlong into the fray. He slipped between two of the incensed elephants, his blade arcing down and drawing blood with practically every swing.
From somewhere in the inner courtyard, where the fourth elephant had gone, there were more screams and barked orders. “To the walls!” the sorcerer barely heard someone say. “Get the bows!”
Palin continued to mouth the words of his spell, and the energy in his hand surged outward, a catapulting magical force.
He stared at the castle of sand, at the black walls, the towers, and the ornate crenelated tops. Then he uttered the last syllable of his summoning spell, urging some of the castle’s foundation to disappear.
At the same instant, a barrage of arrows filled the air. Arrows pelted the elephants, but only served to madden them. One found its mark, lodging in Palin’s right shoulder. A second and a third struck his left thigh. The sorcerer groaned in pain, and dropped to his knees. Another arrow struck in the sand perilously close to him, and another. The pain was intense, but the sorcerer shoved it to the back of his mind. He couldn’t let it overwhelm him, lest his concentration on spellcasting break. The magic was harder now, but not out of his reach. He bit down on his bottom lip and fixed his gaze on the castle’s sandy base.
“Palin!” he heard Feril cry. She was running toward him. He heard her feet pounding across the sand, then felt the sand, the ground deep beneath him, vibrate. Then came the piercing pain of another arrow lodging in his upper arm. The sensations—the trumpeting of the elephants, the pain he felt, the warmth of his sunburnt skin, and the wet, sticky heat of the blood from his wounds—started to overlap one another.
“What’s happening?” Palin heard a knight cry. “The Bastion! Run!” Other words were shouted, but the sorcerer could no longer make them out. He felt himself slipping toward a welcoming blackness.
Then he felt Feril tugging at him, helping him up. His legs were lead weights and didn’t want to move, let alone support him, but she persisted. Was this what my brothers felt, what my cousin Steel felt? Palin wondered. Did they feel agony like this before they died?
Feril worked her way under his left arm, propped him up and started dragging him forward. The vibrations in the ground were increasing, and Palin tilted his head toward the stronghold. The walls were collapsing, and the towers were folding in upon themselves. Black sand exploded in all directions. Knights who were perched on the walls and towers pitched forward into the ditch, and those who survived the fall suffered further horror.
“The scorpions,” Palin whispered.
A loud thud cut through the din and the ground shook. One of the elephants had fallen, slain by the knights. The other two elephants continued to trample the knights and the brutes creating a sea of limbs and blood.
Buster hurried to Palin and Feril, and then the trio saw Rig. He was covered in blood — his own and that of the knights he’d been fighting. The mariner was racing toward the path that led through the city gates and to the desert. The freed prisoners were already straggling down that path as his cries urged them to move faster. A few of the prisoners were being carried by their fellows, a couple of them were being dragged.
Feril and Blister guided Palin in that direction, too. The knights they passed were too busy to try to stop them. The knights were intent on staying alive, avoiding the elephants’ feet and tusks, and staring wide-eyed at the thousands of scorpions pouring out of the ditch.
The scorpions swarmed over knights who had lost their footing, scrabbling over their plate armor and stinging their victims’ hands, necks and faces. The knights screamed and writhed on the ground, trying to brush the creatures off. But for each one flung away, three more skittered up to take its place. Scorpions swarmed up the legs of the brutes, who tried frantically to brush them off. Distracted, the brutes couldn’t defend themselves from the elephants’ tusks or get out of the way of their massive feet. Many of the brutes were trampled as the elephants plodded past them on their way to join the Kagonesti.
“So much death,” Palin whispered. His thoughts drifted back to the Chaos War where bodies of Knights of Takhisis, Knights of Solamnia, and dragons littered the floor of the Abyss.
“We’ll be next” the kender said. “If we don’t get moving.”
Feril and Blister nudged the sorcerer forward. The two were practically carrying him. “We’ve got to stop, tend to your wounds,” the Kagonesti was saying. “You’ll bleed to death.”
Palin shook his head. “Not that bad,” he insisted. “Keep moving. Blister’s right. We’ve got to get away from here—the scorpions.” The elf protested, but they had reached the escaped prisoners who were poised on the lip of the depression and the murmurs of the many excited voices drew her attention.
Rig was talking to the gaunt elf with long, matted blond hair and ragged clothes who had urged the prisoners to trust the blue-skinned mariner. When Rig noticed Palin, Blister, and Feril, he rushed toward them.
“I’ve got him,” Rig said. The Kagonesti and kender let Rig take over propping up the sorcerer.
“Palin Majere?” the prisoner said, meeting the sorcerer’s clouding gaze. His voice was weak, but tinged with awe. “I’ve heard of you. I know your parents. You’re the most powerful sorcerer on Krynn.”
“I don’t feel so powerful” Palin answered. “And you’re…”
“Gilthanas.” The man brushed a clump of hair behind a dirty, but gracefully-pointed ear. “I was second to the throne of Qualinesti. You saved us. All of us.” He swept his hand out to indicate the more than one hundred men, women and children. “We owe you more than our lives. We were destined to be …”
“Spawn,” Rig finished.
“Not the elves,” Gilthanas said. “It seems they don’t want elves for their process. I was taken when I tried to keep the knights from capturing humans outside Palanthas. I was slated to be executed in front of the Blue for my insolence.”