A tail of crackling oily flame lashed across the treasures-his treasures! Walls of steel and stone dissolved, and Dark-end groaned in abject misery as he saw piles of coins turn to ash. A fire dragon surged past in an ecstasy of destruction, crushing a king's ransom in gems to dust as its inferno of heat melted coins of steel and gold.
"Fight, you worms!" cried Darkend, sending more of his warriors into the path of that killing blaze. "Save my treasure!"
A few obeyed and died, burned to powder by the touch of wing or claw. Others threw themselves flat on the floor, cowering and miserable, risking the wrath of their thane rather than facing certain death from the infernal wyrm.
And then the monster was gone, leaving an eerie, smoking silence. A great cavern yawned in the wall, marking the passage of flaming Chaos.
"My thane, we must hurry!" hissed Garimeth. "Our only chance is to keep climbing, to find Zarak Thuul."
"But, my baubles, my coins, my gems!" moaned Darkend.
"She's right." Slickblade was suddenly back at his side, oddly speaking in agreement with Garimeth. "We must go!" he urged.
"Why? What's the point?" Darkend looked at the singed and soot-covered survivors of his troops. He wanted nothing more than to have them executed slowly, while he sat and watched.
"There will be other treasures, I promise you. And your life means everything, does it not?" asked the assassin.
Darkend looked back once to see the vault shrouded in the same red smoke that permeated so much of this city. "What of Tarn Bellowgranite?" he demanded. "Tell me: is he dead?"
"No!" spat the assassin. "He is lost in the maze of this dying city. I have not been able to find him."
"Then come with me as we climb," snarled the thane. "We must catch the daemon warrior and stop him!"
"How can you hope to do that?" Slickblade asked.
"How should I know?" demanded Darkend. He pointed at Garimeth. "You may as well ask her!"
"I don't know!" she screamed wildly, irrationally. "But he's right. We have to try. Can't you see that?"
"What does it matter? What does anything matter? We're conquering a mess here! By the time we do anything, all that will be left of Hybardin is rubble, dust, and smoke!"
"We will catch him, but not until we can get to a higher level in the city," Garimeth said, her tone growing calm and surprisingly soothing to the agitated thane. "If necessary we will climb to the top of this miserable Life-Tree and find him there. We must stop him before it is too late!"
Darkend cursed but knew he had no choice but to follow her.
"Let's go, then," Garimeth said, fixing him with a steady glare. "But my lord, first I have a demand."
"How dare you!" Darkend's temper flared again, but he forced himself to listen. "What is it?"
"I need your promise-a bonded word-that you will not kill me when this is over."
"Very well, as Reorx is my witness, you have my word." Darkend gave the oath reluctantly, knowing the strength of the god's name. He might still choose to renege upon his word, but if he did so his treachery would surely cost him. It galled him to admit that he still needed Garimeth, needed the power she possessed with her artifact, the power that gave them their only hope of arresting the insane havoc of Zarak Thuul.
Chapter Twenty-five
Love and Chaos
"By Reorx, I thought I'd never see you again," Tarn declared weakly, embracing Belicia with one arm while he held the rung of the ladder with the other.
Similarly suspended, she returned his hug without speaking. Tarn could feel her shuddering and could hear her soft sobs as they desperately clung together.
Above them the Aghar, all of whom had scampered up the ropes without difficulty, were making great progress climbing the shaft. Playing leapfrog, swinging by single hands, and otherwise acting in a fashion more like monkeys than dwarves, they moved steadily away from the ruins of lower Hybardin. Hooting and jeering, clambering over each others' backs and shoulders, they bounded quickly and eagerly upward-though at any moment it seemed to Tarn that at least half of them were a hiccup away from a fatal plunge.
"I think we'd better do some climbing ourselves," Belicia said, indicating the enraged dark dwarves swarming below. The two were still at the bottom of the shaft with the long transport tunnel extending straight above them. A thirty-foot drop to the crest of the rubble pile yawned beneath them. "We're out of sword range, but I wouldn't be surprised if one or two of them have crossbows."
"You go first," Tarn insisted, then followed as Belicia hastened up the ladder.
One missile knocked into the heel of his boot and several more clattered off of the walls nearby, but in moments the two dwarves were safely above the lower terminus. Looking around, Tarn realized that this must have been the route for a small cargo lift. The tunnel was only ten feet or so in diameter and was marked by rails in all four corners as well as these rungs that formed a permanent ladder.
"How high does it go?" he asked. "Are the Hylar making a stand on Level Three?"
"You're out of touch," she said sadly, looking down at him from the rungs immediately over his head. "And so am I, I'm afraid. I know we're going to have to climb at least as far as Level Five before we get off this ladder."
"You lead the way."
"Actually, your friends are leading the way. Those are your friends aren't they?" Belicia asked, pausing while several Aghar swung, apelike, from the rungs just above her.
"And good friends, too," Tarn confirmed.
Grimly the half-breed labored upward. They soon reached a small lift station leading to Level Three, but the terminal was masked from the area beyond by steel doors that had been bolted and barred shut from the inside. The air was thick with pungent smoke, and there were no distinguishable noises coming from beyond the heavy metal barrier.
They stopped here only long enough to rest and catch their breath. Tarn tried to find out what had happened to the dwarfwoman, but Belicia's descriptions were curt. Her company had retreated from the plaza when the Chaos horde had swept into Hybardin. Many dwarves on both sides had been killed when the bottom of the Life-Tree had collapsed and sent tons of rubble cascading onto Levels One and Two. The rest of the Hylar had tried to fight on Levels Three and Four but had been expelled with heavy losses. Breaking into this transport shaft, Belicia and a handful of survivors had been prepared to risk a climb to safety when a sharp-eyed scout had noted Tarn and his companions trapped below. The half-dozen Hylar remaining from her band had already made their way upward, she explained, preceding the Aghar in the ascent.
Level Four was another hundred feet, with the fifth a similar distance beyond. The gully dwarves continued to scamper merrily into the higher darkness, while Tarn needed all of his concentration to keep his grip and move his cramped hands and aching arms upward. Periodically he stopped, linking his elbows through the rung before him while he panted for breath. Even this restful position quickly became uncomfortable, so he followed Belicia higher and higher.
"Soon now. Close," Belicia finally said, the effort of the climb audible in the staccato delivery of her words.
Tarn saw a gleam of illumination up above, and he watched the gully dwarves scramble off the ladder and disappear from his view. Obviously they had reached another lift station, and he allowed himself to anticipate the blissful sensation of a solid floor under his feet.
"Hey! We good guys!" came one indignant cry, followed by a volley of Aghar insults and the deeper, stern tones of Hylar guards.
"Ouch! You stoppit!"
"Get outa here, you runts!"
Finally Tarn and Belicia reached Level Five to find Regal Everwise locked in a furious argument with a burly Hylar who seemed quite ready to pitch the gully dwarf and his scruffy companions right back down the shaft.