* * * * *
The Dowager Queen could not believe her eyes-six of her finest ogre guards mangled and bleeding, most of them dead. Blood everywhere, while three of her burliest guards continued to hack and chop at the resistant door.
“An elf did this?” grunted one of her attendants, biting back any further questions as she flashed him a murderous look.
“Break it down!” she cried. “Out of my way!” She raised her iron cudgel and swung a mighty blow.
With her help the splintering barrier finally gave way, cracking down the middle and collapsing in two halves. The first three ogres charged through with vengeful roars, and Queen Hannareit pushed behind them-then they all froze, paralyzed by fear.
“What are you doing?” she gasped, trying to comprehend the scene.
The Alchemist was alone in the room, the window wide open. If the Messenger had been here, he was gone.
Somehow the craven and feeble elf who had been her pet, her slave for all these years, had found the strength to lift the golden orb. He had hoisted it in his two hands, balancing it on the windowsill above the hundred-foot drop to the courtyard below. The elder queen and her ogre guards stood aghast, then began to back away.
“I had a chance to talk to my son,” he said, “I found strength I didn’t even know I possessed.”
“Put that down-carefully,” Hanna said, her voice like an iceberg grating against the hull of a ship. “Put it down, and I will forgive you… for this… for everything. You shall have… everything you want… need.”
“I think that for the first time in a very long time, I have everything I need,” said the Alchemist.
He seemed strangely content-happy, Hanna would have said, if she had time to say anything. Dimorian Fallabrine leaned out the window and let go of the golden orb.
* * * * *
Stariz was red-faced, puffing for breath, as she jogged up to Grimwar Bane. “I saw the fight,” she said. “I hurried as fast as I could. Was it just two men who attacked?”
“Yes,” replied the king with irritation, looking down at his prisoner. The blond Highlander had regained consciousness and now sat on the ground at Grimwar’s feet, hair matted with drying blood, hands bound behind his back. Several watchful Grenadiers stood nearby with weapons poised, ready to abort any aggressive move.
“Why did you and your comrade attack us?” demanded the ogre king. “What could you have hoped to gain?”
“A measure of vengeance for a very good friend,” the man retorted, his jaw set and his eyes blazing with pride. “That’s her father’s cape that you wear over your shoulders. I wished to get it back for her.”
“What nonsense is this?” Grimwar unconsciously reached a hand to his shoulder, touched the bear pelt, that black color unique among all the bears of the Ice-reach. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“Just a man from the Highlands,” said the prisoner with a dismissive shrug.
“Don’t be a fool!” Stariz snapped to Grimwar, her disrespect toward their king provoking growls and startled glances from the ogres gathered around the royal couple. Grimwar himself flushed with fury, but his wife continued without breath. “You dolt, they were trying to keep you from getting back to the castle! Away from your duty, your station! Look up there! Look! The elf is probably striking now, even as we stand here uselessly!”
Surprised, the king looked up the valley, to the lofty citadel five or six miles away. It stood black, tall, and impervious on its rocky height, yet it looked strangely vulnerable against the pale blue sky. He had a sick feeling in his gut, a fear that his wife, as usual, was right.
The queen was not finished with her rebuke. “I tell you, we should be there, right now-”
Everything vanished. Grimwar’s vision went blank as it was seared by a flash of brilliant light. He felt heat against his face, as if a furnace door had burst open just a few feet away. He gaped, trying to see, but even though he blinked and rubbed his eyes he could not restore his vision.
Then came the second blast, a wave of force that knocked the wind from his lungs, sent all the ogres smashing to the ground, rolling like tenpins. He tried to breathe but felt only that awful, crushing pressure. After interminable seconds of this punishment the third wave, the sound, reached them, a horrifying blast pounding their ears with the same brutal force that had impacted their bodies.
Grimwar was vaguely aware of screaming, groaning ogres to all sides. He himself was roaring and screaming. Finally, after long minutes or hours, the burning, the noise, the fiery whiteness began to fade. Though he saw only a bright wash of whiteness in the middle of his field of vision, he began to make out images around the edges. There was smoke, a billowing cloud of dust besmirching the once clean sky… but that was not the worst of it, not at all.
As he looked up, toward the knoll at the head of the valley, his ultimate fear, his impossible nightmare, was confirmed.
Castle Dracoheim was gone.
* * * * *
Kerrick felt himself blown toward the sea, the force of the blast propelling his gaseous form through the air like a piece of feather-light rubbish. He rode the blast, feeling no pain, just a numb sense of horror. Moreen was lost in the gale, but he believed that she was nearby, borne along like him by the force of the magic weapon his father had created.
As the tumult waned, he finally discerned the cloudy image of the chiefwoman drifting nearby. He floated over to her and reached out, tendrils of vaporous limbs embracing, linking themselves together. Gradually they drifted downward, angling themselves toward the shadowed waters of the cove where the Whalefish had landed them.
Moreen alighted on the shore of black sand, and she became a woman again, looking dazed and battered, but a human female of flesh and blood, muscle and beauty. In another instant Kerrick was there beside her, whole again, feeling the magic drain from him to leave only a weakness and emptiness, a gnawing hunger he would never satisfy.
But both of them were again whole, corporeal beings. They embraced, relishing the miracle of their lives.
Never had Kerrick found such comfort in the touch of another person. Moreen cried, as he pressed her head against his shoulder, stroked her hair, desperately tried to soothe her.
Just off shore, the top of the submersible’s hull rose from the placid waters with a gentle splash. Whalefish bobbed in the shallows, rolling gently from side to side.
“Do you see Strongwind or Randall?” asked the elf, looking worriedly around.
Moreen’s expression was stricken. “When-when we were floating… up there,” she said, her voice choking with grief. “I think I saw Randall, his body… horribly slashed. It was down on the ground, near a whole band of ogres. I didn’t see Strongwind, but…”
“But they would have stayed together,” the elf said, feeling a weary sadness permeate him. He wanted to collapse, to lie down and sleep for many days. “Both of them lost. It doesn’t seem possible.”
The hatch atop the steel hull popped open, and Captain Pneumo waved. “I’ve got gold in the boilers and steam in the pipes,” he called. “There’s some kind of madness going on around here. C’mon, let’s go!”
“None of this seems possible,” Moreen said quietly. “Even you-you found your father, and lost him again.”
“Yes,” Kerrick said, turning, wading into the water. He stopped to look back at the island, barren and bleak as ever, now with a huge smoke column billowing upward, marking the pyre of an elf, a weapon, and a reign of terror.
He choked on the words, as he drew a breath. “Now, at least, I know he died a hero.”