The iron door slammed shut.
“Get the potion! Now!” Alynthia shouted as she turned to the door.
“It’ll break!” Cael cried, trying to pry the bottle out of Hoag’s hands. “He’s been turned to stone. I tried to warn him.” He clawed at the petrified flesh encasing the neck of the potion bottle.
They heard the ball clanging down the stairs, all the while shrieking “Mistress Jenna! Mistress Jenna!” like some hideous parody of a parrot. Below a woman’s voice answered in a language none of them knew but all understood to augur magic.
“Leave it!” Alynthia ordered. “Help me open the door.” Her nimble fingers danced across the iron surface, searching for a latch, a hidden keyhole, anything that might release the door. There was no handle for her to grip and pull. She pressed against the door, throwing her body against it, but she might as well have been trying to crash through a stone wall.
“I’ll break off his hand!” Cael shouted, still trying to free the potion from Hoag’s grasp. He held out his staff, still cane-sized, and said aloud, “Dinshar” The ironwood shaft shimmered, and suddenly it was staff-sized again. He raised it above his head and brought it ringing down on the thief’s wrist Chips of rock exploded from the blow, but the stone thief held firmly to his prize.
“Forget the potion,” Alynthia shouted.
“No. If we fail, it means my life,” Cael said, raising his staff for another blow.
“Can you open the door, Old One?” Alynthia asked Mancred.
He removed a scroll from his pouch, unrolled it, and quickly read the enchantment inscribed upon it. The door shuddered in its frame but did not move. Mancred staggered back, the scroll slipping from his grasp. “It is too powerful,” he gasped.
“Trapped!” Alynthia cried, her voice almost a shriek of despair. “Trapped like gully dwarves.”
“I’m no gully dwarf! Speak for yourself!” Cael exclaimed, abandoning the potion at last. The mightiest blows of his ironwood staff had hardly marred the petrified thief’s wrist. The Potion of Shonlay remained firmly-in his stone grasp.
He rushed at the door, his staff a blurred wheel. His staff rang like a struck bell against the iron door. A ring of red fire spread from the point of impact, and the door opened a slight crack, revealing a lurid glow in the hall beyond.
“Good work,” Alynthia shouted as she pushed past him “Do not fear,” she added in a low voice, pausing to grip his arm. “All is not lost.” He had no time to ponder her words.
Ijus still stood at the top of the stair, a loaded crossbow pointed into the stairwell. The stairs crackled with flames as though the entire lower floor were afire. The thief’s eyes were on his captain, awaiting the order to retreat.
“What’s that fire?” Alynthia asked.
“An illusion of mine,” he shouted. “It won’t hold her long.” Even as he spoke, the flames winked out.
Cael stood beside Alynthia as Mancred scurried up the rope. He held it out for Alynthia, but she turned back, motioning Ijus to abandon his position.
Before he could move, he swore a surprised oath and fired his weapon down the stairs. There was a dull crack. He turned and shouted, “She’s protected against missiles.”
A single word echoed from below, and a flash of light streaked up the stairs. It exploded against the lookout’s chest, flinging him against the wall like a rag. He collapsed to the floor, dead, the smell of seared flesh filling the air.
“Go!” Alynthia ordered.
Cael stared in horror at the man who had just died, the second of the Circle to sacrifice his life to save him.
“Go now! Hurry!” Alynthia shouted at him.
He turned to her. “No, you go. I will die tonight whether I flee back to the Guild or remain here, that much is certain. I might as well die in battle.”
Alynthia’s eyes softened. She nodded quickly, and said quietly, “Get out if you are able. I’ll wait for you.”
“Go,” he answered her, touching her hand a moment She pulled away from him, grasped the rope, and was lifted rapidly through the hole in the ceiling. Cael watched her feet vanish into the darkness above, to be replaced by Varia’s masked face, her eyes glinting with excitement. She lowered the rope to him and hissed, “Hurry!”
A noise from behind drew him around. Mistress Jenna, her red robes flying about her like the sheets of a ghost, floated into the hall. A globe of shimmering air surrounded her.
“Shon l’phae loch fellawathwen Tanthalas lu’ro,” Jenna said in the Elvish tongue. “Here is the fool to whom I once sold a pair of boots enchanted to leave reversed footprints,” she snarled. Her voice sounded strange through the shield of her magic, as though she spoke from the depths of a cave. “I suspected you would come. You were not hard to predict”
“Maybe not, but I was clever enough to rob two treasures from your hoard, Mistress,” he responded as he gripped his staff.
“Not clever enough to escape with them,” she answered. “Surrender. I do not wish to kill you.”
“Neither do I want you to, but I will not surrender,” the elf said.
She floated closer to him. “Were you not an elf and so inured to all charms, I would befuddle your mind and force your compliance. But I see stronger measures are needed.”
With these words, she extended one hand, index finger pointed at the elf’s chest She spoke a word, and a bolt of lightning coursed down her arm and flashed from her fingertips.
Chapter Twenty-One
The magical attack came too swiftly for Cael to hope to dodge, and under any other circumstances, he would have died horribly. However, instead of blasting a smoking hole in his chest, Jenna’s lightning bolt merely struck Cael’s staff and disappeared. Such a comical look of surprise appeared on the sorceress’s face that Cael actually laughed out loud before realizing his good fortune. He changed his guffaw into a shout of defiance.
“So, my staff defeats your spell, Mistress Jenna! Shall we see if it can shatter your sphere of protection as well?” He leaped at her, swinging his staff with all his might.
Jenna flew backward, avoiding his blow, and Cael’s staff crashed against the wall. He recovered, preparing to strike again before Jenna could escape down the stairs.
A shout from above stopped him. Looking up, he saw Alynthia reaching a gloved hand through the hole in the roof. “Come on!” she ordered. “Now’s your chance.”
With one more glance at Jenna, who was busy opening a scroll, the surprise on her face changing to indignation, Cael leaped up and caught the proffered hand. Grimting, Alynthia pulled him onto the roof.
“Shall we go?” she asked, as Varia stuffed the tripod into the hole.
“After you,” Cael answered.
They sprinted for the roofs edge, Varia quickly following.
Behind them, the tripod rocketed up out of the hole into the night sky and came crashing down in the street in front of Jenna’s shop. Cael and Alynthia reached the battlement wall where they had first climbed up. Their rope still lay coiled beside it. At their approach, a thief rose up from the shadow of the wall and tossed the coiled rope over the edge. He was a burly fellow, with forearms like those of a galley rower. He wrapped one end of the rope around his waist, then around his beam-thick wrist.
“Down you go, Captain,” Rull said.
“Wait,” she whispered. “Look, Cael!” She pointed back the way they had come.
Mistress Jenna was on the roof, her long gray hair swirling in a nimbus of power around her head. Still, the shimmering globe of air surrounded her, visible even in the darkness.
As Jenna slowly scanned the roof, searching for the fleeing intruders, her magical globe of protection was suddenly bombarded, struck by light and audible pinging noises. A second attack followed, then a third, striking from three different directions. Jenna spun quickly, trying to locate her opponents, only to suffer more blows.