Wislaf and Vlatin both raised their swords. “I’m warning you,” cried Wislaf.
“Sister, I think the men are getting rather hot-headed,” called Sisaroth, making no attempt to defend himself with his daggers. “Would you like to perform something to calm them down?”
“You know how much that takes it out of me,” she responded. “My voice suffers.”
“No,” groaned Ortram. “Please don’t sing! Have pity…”
“But I can give it a try.” The alf woman gave the boy a kiss on the cheek, took a deep breath and raised her voice in song.
V
The Outer Lands,
The Black Abyss,
Fortress Evildam,
Winter, 6491st Solar Cycle
Ireheart stood on the south tower watching the approach of the hideous and variegated monsters emerging from the chasm: A hotchpotch collection of horror about to swarm over the entire land.
Goda was at his side, a mantle draped around her shoulders. She was listening inside herself to her own remaining magic powers. The store of energy should be sufficient. For now.
Her hand slid to the little bag at her belt where she kept the fragments of the diamond she had retrieved from the site of the damaged artifact. These tiny shards still held residual energy and every minute particle would be needed.
Before the destruction of the artifact she had been able to draw down limitless force by placing her hands on the barrier. No longer.
The nearest magic source was only a few orbits’ journey away, but lay in the region ruled by the alfar. Goda doubted she would reach it alive.
The other source was in Weyurn, much further away, and she could not think of traveling there when at any moment the Black Abyss could be spewing out rampaging hordes against Evildam. Rumor had it that the Dragon Lohasbrand was sitting on a further magic source in the Red Mountains-right in the middle of a dwarf realm, at that.
Goda sighed. All she had was a bag of diamond splinters with a fraction of the strength of the original artifact. The more of them she used up the worse the position of Evildam’s defenders would be. She reckoned that, in the long run, the fortress catapults would not be able to repel Tion’s evil creatures. They would have to find a new way to protect themselves.
“Where is Tungdil?” Ireheart asked the ubari next to him. “Have you sent a soldier to find him?”
“Yes, General.” The warrior saluted. “His chamber was empty.”
“He’s probably left to go to Girdlegard,” interjected Goda, arranging her mantle. “After all, he told us very clearly that he wanted nothing to do with fighting here. He’ll be surprised to see what awaits him at home. If Girdlegard is his true home. Let us hope to Vraccas that we’ve not let the worst of the evils simply slip away like that!”
“I think we were pushing him too much,” Ireheart ventured. “We all know what it’s like to wage a war that lasts one, two or three cycles. But for over two hundred cycles he’s done nothing else but fight battles.” He glanced at his wife. “It may be late, perhaps too late, but I do understand his refusal.”
“What is there to understand?” she replied dismissively. “I cannot…”
“No, Goda. Save your breath,” he interrupted her. “Let Tungdil go off to Girdlegard and witness with his own eyes what has happened to the land and, you’ll see, he’ll be back to lead us against our tormentors. We can’t talk him into it. He has to want to do it.” Ireheart gave the order to fire the catapults; the spear-slings sent their missiles flying to the targets. “He’ll be back soon. Of his own free will,” he said quietly, observing the beasts being killed by the sharp iron-tipped missiles. Their screams and groans came in a wave of sound that crashed against the walls of Evildam.
He had not wanted to tell Goda why he had collapsed in the corridor. No one else knew what had happened. But still he held fast to the conviction that it was indeed his friend, the Scholar, who had returned to them.
The armor, he told himself, might have been a gift from some magic being. Or perhaps there were metals used in its composition able to store protective magic for the wearer. That will have been why Goda’s investigative spell had not worked. These metals would not notice the difference between a friendly touch and an attack. If it wasn’t Tungdil, why didn’t he kill me? On the contrary, he went to fetch a healer for me.
Ireheart sighed. All the same, his best friend seemed so alien to him. Different. Those cycles spent in the dark had wrought terrible changes in the Scholar. He had once driven out the demon alcohol successfully enough, but how do you rid the mind of what it has experienced?
“I’ll get my old Tungdil back,” he vowed, remembering how the three of them-his twin brother, himself and Tungdil-used to sit, beer in hand, laughing together, telling jokes and fooling around. He remembered how they had chased the orcs, how they’d sat under a tree to shelter from the rain, telling stories and making up things to tease each other with, how they had fought against the long-uns. How things used to be. “Vraccas and I will shake the darkness out of him.”
The ubari raised his telescope to see how much damage the catapults were achieving. “They’ve dealt with the first wave of beasts, General,” he reported. “But I can see that the next…” He stopped. “No. It’s not monsters. It’s something else,” he said excitedly.
“The kordrion?” Ireheart took the wax ear plugs out of his pouch in readiness. All the soldiers had orders to use these to protect themselves from being paralyzed by the terrible roar of the winged monster. The catapults must not stop firing if the kordrion was threatening to emerge.
“No, more like…” The ubari passed him the telescope. “Have a look for yourself, General.”
The dwarf squinted through the lens and tried to make out what was happening in the dark cleft of the abyss. “Some construction, long, narrow and tall,” he reported for Goda’s benefit. “It looks as if it’s made out of bones. Or very light-colored wood. And they’re keeping it behind the rock walls.”
“An assault tower?” suggested the ubari. “Or a stack of storm ladders?”
“Probably,” said Goda. “It would be the only way to conquer the fortress.”
Ireheart adjusted the end of the telescope to improve the focus. If he were not mistaken, the construction was being bent back. “They’re pulling it back… like a bow,” he called out. “Tell the men on the catapults to aim for the middle of the abyss,” he ordered the ubari. “I don’t want that… thing shooting at us. Who knows what they’re planning.”
While his commands were being conveyed to the troops by bugle signals, the beasts on the other side were acting fast.
Ireheart saw the construction shoot forward like a young tree held down under tension. Behind it, four long chains were thrown up into the air. White balls hung from them, each perhaps a full pace in diameter, and they had the appearance of spun cocoons. At the height of their trajectory the chains released them and the balls hurtled toward Evildam.
“Much too high,” commented the ubari, grinning. “Stupid beasts! Too dumb to aim straight.”
The nearer the strange spheres came the more obvious it was that they really were composed of spun threads.
“No, they intend them to go that high,” countered Ireheart. “They’ll come down behind the fortress! Tell the crews on the southwest ramparts to find out what happens when they come down. Maybe it’s a diversionary tactic to keep us busy on both sides.” He directed his gaze to Goda. “Can you stop them?”
She tilted her head and thought hard. “Wouldn’t it be better to wait and see? It might just be a harmless distraction and then I’d have wasted my powers on something trivial.”
Ireheart agreed and ordered the catapults to aim flaming arrows at the cocoons to send them up in a blaze. He watched what happened.