Suka could see the eladrin s delicate nostrils flare as she stepped backward to Marabaldia s side. Not ten minutes before she had been irritated and frustrated at the giantess s condescension, her increasing habit to treat the gnome as if she were a child or a toy. But now she reached up to grab hold of Marabaldia s blue dress. She yanked importunately on the rich cloth, and then peered up into her friend s noble face, its pale purple skin touched with an angry cast of red.
Marabaldia reached down to touch Suka s shoulder, a comforting, encompassing gesture, while at the same time the membrane over her evil eye slid open, and the surface of the eye itself bulged from the plane of her flat cheek.
Askepel put up his hand. You will not coerce me with your sorcery, he said, and nothing more.
Whatever image Marabaldia had conjured to disarm him, the effect was instantaneous. He stood immobile, an expression of disgusted rage on his smooth face. The rest of the eladrin drew their swords, and some had carried double-bladed axes down the steps, along with the giant spits; a dozen or so knights of Llewyrr, in silver fish-scale armor, white capes, and spiked helmets. Ughoth lifted up his hands palm out, as if in a gesture of surrender, then drove his naked fist into the face of one of the eladrin and knocked the lance out of his grasp. The others grabbed at him. Eleven feet tall, he looked like a man wrestling or playing with a knot of boys, buffeting them about their heads with slaps of his great hands. Even now he wasn t trying to kill them.
The hall filled up with soldiers. Marabaldia had slipped Askepel s sword out of its sheath. It looked slight as a poker in her big fist. Two fomorians had already fallen, hewn down on the steps before they could reach the dais. Their dark blood exploded out of them. At the top of the hall, a third was on his knees.
Suka kept one of her secret knives in the crease of each hand. Standing in back of him, for a moment she considered whether she should cut down Askepel as he stood helpless, cut him across his hamstrings no, she wouldn t. She wouldn t do that again. Already she d disgusted herself by what she d done in Synnoria, the unnecessary foolishness that had started all this, and that now seemed likely to get them killed, regardless of how she punished Askepel for insulting her. It wasn t as if he d had no cause.
The three remaining guardsmen had come down to stand together with Ughoth and Marabaldia, and it was possible, Suka thought, that something could be done to save them all. She turned toward Lord Mindarion, still slumped in his chair, and the Lady Altaira stood beside him, a horrified expression on her face, her almond-shaped eyes wide with terror and distress. Suka climbed onto the tabletop and ran down to stand on the useless documents in front of the old lord. She kicked some of the parchments off of the marble surface then leaned forward and grabbed hold of Mindarion s long nose, and forced her fingernails into his nostrils not to hurt him, but only to wake him. The lady scarcely glanced at what she did. She stood leaning on the tabletop, her yellow hair around her face. All around her there was chaos and fighting as the eladrin pushed down the steps, but Suka pushed her fingers into Mindarion s nose until he came awake under her hands.
A puzzled frown knotted his white brow, and he opened his bright eyes, blinked, and sat up, a smile of happy recognition on his lips she d let go of his nose by this time, and squatted back on her heels.
My small friend, he murmured, how I am happy to see your face. These others were boring me which was as far as he got before he realized something terrible was happening. Stop! he shouted, leaping from his chair.
Ughoth was wounded, his shoulders drenched in his blue blood, but he had gotten hold of two of the giant-spits, one in each hand, and with them he did deadly damage to his attackers, his yellow eye blazing fire. Marabaldia, also, had skewered several of the Llewyrr knights, though Askepel unfortunately (in Suka s modest opinion) had escaped.
Stop! shouted Mindarion again, as another of the unarmed fomorians went down. No one heard him or paid attention. But he lifted up his hand and grabbed the gnome s shoulder, pulled her toward him, and told her to jump down and close the eyes of the sun, words which would have made no sense if Suka had not passed under the table earlier and seen its etched and painted twenty-foot-long underside, in contrast to its smooth marble top. She did as she was told, and had to duck to see the pattern that ran along the narrow ceiling; constellations, individual stars, the phases of the moon, and at the far end the likeness of the sun, its rays inset with gold, its face a human face surrounded by shaggy yellow hair and a shaggy beard, its eyes wide and deranged. Suka jammed her fingers into them, and pulled down the clockwork metal lids, which shut with a click that was audible to her even in the noise of the assault.
One of the fomorians lay full length beside the dais, his purple face turned toward her, his lips wet with blood and distorted with death. He looked not so much like a creature who had ever been alive, but like a leather mask that had been painted to scare children at the solstice festival or the Feast of the Moon Suka closed her eyes. She was without hope. All of this was her fault.
But then she felt some movement, and opened her eyes to see the dais underneath the table start to turn, and the whole circular bottom of the council hall of Harrowfast turn like a screw, and sink down along a sloping, cylindrical shaft slowly at first, and then at an increasing speed. Supported on iron wheels, revolving along a greased iron rail, the entire stone structure made a screeching noise and threw up sparks as it slid out of sight, away from the ring of enraged knights and down into the darkness. Lord Mindarion stood by the spinning table as if directing the descent, Altaira by his side. Marabaldia and Ughoth, also, had retreated to the table as it began to sink, and the two remaining fomorian guardsmen, all of them protected by the dark. As they slid down the long decline, they looked up to see the faces of the eladrin peering down at them. The air was full of dust and cobwebs and the screech of iron brakes.
They slid down into the guts of Harrowfast, coming to rest finally on a bed of wrecked and rusted machinery, a system of clockwork pistons and counterweights, which Suka imagined had once driven the stone plug up and down its screw-shaped track, unused, perhaps, since the dwarves had fled more than a hundred years before. Light had followed them down the shaft, but the fomorians evil eyes were glowing now, spreading beams of yellow light around the chamber at the bottom of the track. They climbed down an iron ladder, Mindarion last of all.
Sir, said Marabaldia, once again you have saved our lives.
The old eladrin raised his hand to silence her. Come, he said, and led the way into the darkness down a sloping tunnel that led northeast, as far as Suka could tell after turning in so many circles.
Ughoth carried the dead guardsman, but after a few minutes he laid him down by the side of the passage, then took his time in getting up, because he was hurt. The guardsmen were carrying the giant-spits. Ughoth was on his hands and knees, and then with a shake of his great head he pushed himself upright and rose unsteadily, supporting himself on the brick wall. Marabaldia watched him, but there was nothing to be done; they had to move.