Embra smiled. "Try 'flying' your eyes toward me now-and when you reach me, veer away and mentally throw up some mist, by plucking at the mists that will seem to be all around you. Try it."
After a moment, the procurer grinned. "Easily done. I've just smoothed the mists away again."
Embra nodded. "I felt you do so. We're ready. So here's my scheme: If we find one Stone, we jump to it and do battle. When we get there, Craer, I'll need you to get our Dwaer to where Tash or I can touch it as fast as you know how. If we see multiple Stones, we trace where they are and then stop to decide whither we go. In all cases, of course, ignore the Dwaer my father's holding."
She looked at Hawkril, who nodded, and glanced at Craer. The procurer also nodded, wiped sweat from his brow that hadn't been there a few breaths before, and turned his head to look at Tshamarra, mouthing some silent words that might have been "I love you." She gave him a fond smile, and then turned to Embra and inclined her head once.
Four overdukes drew in deep breaths together, and Embra closed her eyes and flung up her hand in a wave to Hawkril. He said his remembered word, Tshamarra hissed a swift incantation, Embra quivered-and the Stone in Craer's hands suddenly glowed like an evening star.
Craer found himself hanging in glowing mists, lit from behind him by a growing radiance that was cradled in Blackgult's reassuring presence. He turned his attention away from it, looking out into the endless mists elsewhere, and-therel Over there!
He could feel Hawkril's ragged wonder, Tshamarra's cool calm, and Embra's strength and slight pain at the power roiling through her. They were with him, were aware of what he'd found, were flying with him…
… to a cavern, in damp Aglirtan earth and stone nigh the Silverflow, where a Dwaer was awake and alive in the hands of someone unaware of them, someone whose attention was bent elsewhere, someone against a wall far from a glowing web of magic, a shielding around a lazily turning cage of force-lines…
Craer forced himself to stop looking at those fascinating flows of power!-Three Above, no wonder mages grew so hungry for power; 'twas the greatest ecstasy imaginable!-and back at the Dwaer. It was in the hands of an armored man, no mage… Phelinndar!
He was conscious of Embra taking power from him now, of the flow that had been racing up through the numbed hand he was sitting on now reversing to drain back the other way. Even as he wavered in confusion, not wanting to lose any of that thrilling force, he felt her mind-voice: Hold to him, Craer. Hold to him!
Determinedly he did so, clawing his attention away from the fascinating beginnings of Embra's weaving of a magic that would snatch them all from Flowfoam to the cavern he was seeing. He thrust his attention at the renegade baron, clinging to the edges of the awakened power of that other Dwaer. Something bright arose behind him as Embra did her work, caught him up as it surged forward in a mighty wave, and then threw them all through the mists, Darsar brightening and sharpening around them as they were suddenly-
– elsewhere, crashing into the midst of that glowing cage of magic, the shielding vanishing around them in a howl of flame. Embra had flung the Four together, breast to breast, and she slapped Craer's Stone and clawed at the humming cage of magic around them at the same time, shattering it in an instant.
Craer staggered in the thrall of magic clashing and roiling around him, pain and glory and savage fire all grappling in and through him, and cried with mocking enthusiasm: "For Aglirta! For glory! The Four are upon you! Obligingly surrender, or die!"
The snoring woman shot bolt upright with a shriek of surprise and dismay. The shielding that should have seared intruders to bones was gone, the Sword of Spells collapsed into whirling sparks around her, and!-a Dwaer glowed not a dozen paces away, in the hands of Embra Silvertreel
The Band of Four, all of them, here in his lair!
Ingryl Ambelter lashed out with his mind in a fury, goading the Melted into the best lurching, shuffling semblance of a charge they could muster. Clumsy clay they might be, but in this crowded room they were so numerous that they'd hamper his attackers as if the walls themselves were reaching out to grasp and bludgeon and blunder into the way. And that should give him time to-
The Dwaer flashed, and a Melted in front of him, along with most of the table he'd been seated at, vanished in a roar of flame and a shrieking spray of splinters that lanced out in all directions like deadly arrows. Snarling, the old woman that was Ingryl Ambelter threw himself to the floor behind the ruin of the table!-and into a drifting, flickering cloud of dying magic that had been his Sword of Spells ere the Dwaer had shattered it and drained much of its power.
He hissed a few swift words, and what was left flowed back into him, filling the disguised Spellmaster with more power than his body had ever held before. Like cool fire it flooded him, setting his fingers and teeth to tingling.
Gasping, he spent some of it on a shielding that would drain the next Dwaer-blast to come his way, and a mere trifle more on unseen eyes that soared to the ceiling of the cavern and showed him every cranny of it.
The Band of Four were wrestling with the Melted, that beast of an armaragor hacking at unliving limbs like a woodcutter, and the procurer doing his usual dance of leaps, twirls, and magpie grabs at anything that glowed or looked valuable. Phelinndar was crumpled into the farthest corner, trying to do something with the Dwaer, his face twisted into the grimace of the unpracticed and nongifted mind-struggling with greater enchantments. He was… trying to communicate with someone afar!
The baron's look of horror told the Spellmaster that he hadn't been expecting the Overdukes of Aglirta to make an appearance here, but his blunderings could quite well have summoned them! Well, by the Dark One, Phelinndar would the in a few moments- Graul, but he should have been slain days ago!
Embra's Dwaer flashed, and a dozen advancing Melted were shredded by a ravening light that cleared quite a space in front of her, their bones bouncing and crumbling into dust. Dark One look down! If she were to do that thrice more, she'd be facing a certain Spellmaster directly, and-
Gods! The other one, the little she-sorceress, had just hurled a handful of conjured fire into Phelinndar's face, and was making a grab for his Dwaer!
Desperately, Ambelter hurled most of the magic he'd just drunk along the lingering threads of the mind-lock he'd cast on Phelinndar days ago, seeking only to flood the Dwaer with fire, and-yes!
The Stone burst into flames as the wench laid hands on it, searing her. She threw back her head and shrieked, falling away from the Dwaer with her hands and bodice ablaze. The baron whimpered, his own hands burned to stumps of ash-but the Stone fell into his armored lap.
Phelinndar shuddered in mewing agony as Ingryl Ambelter let fall his disguise and used the last of his borrowed magic to hurl himself across the chamber like a darting hawk.
The armaragor didn't even see Ingryl, but that great warsword flashed perilously close to the diving wizard as Hawkril reeled back from hewing down a Melted, and swung his steel around in a great arc to hurl himself forward into another. Craer was ducking under a lurching undead warrior, and darting toward a scattering of small, glowing trinkets that had fallen from a shattered shelf, and Tshamarra's scream was lost to the ears of everyone in the great roar of Embra's Dwaer hurling back rank after rank of Melted, as it built into a great lash of flaming force that would be turned on the Spellmaster next, unless he-
– touched the Dwaer, scooping it up heedless of the pain, twisting its hot blaze of fury into the magic he needed, a shield to do this, a Dwaer-maze ready to do that, and a lance of his own, to stab at!-
The Lady ofjewels was swifter. She spun away from the staggering horrors of twisted flesh confronting her, and lashed out with her Dwaer at the triumphantly blazing figure behind her, who held a still-flaming Stone in his hands. If she could smite him before he could raise the magics he sought…