“Thank you. I would feel most foolish.” The mandarin gestured down the corridor. “Please to make most of soldier’s sacrifice.”
Ruha turned down the hall and tried a dozen barred doors before the captured man finally stopped screaming.
There was a brief silence; then the warrior behind Hsieh said, “Dead men follow us.”
“Cypress fears to destroy oil sack,” Hsieh observed. “Otherwise, he sprays us with acid.”
“True, but I doubt he is willing to let us escape.” Ruha started down the corridor again, judging they had less than forty paces before it ended in a windowless stone wall. “And we will soon run out of room. I fear the back of this building stands against Temple Hill.”
Hsieh caught Ruha by the shoulder. “You stop dead men. We find way out.”
Ruha glanced down the corridor at the long line of zombies. The closest was only ten paces away, but was slow and shambling. She nodded. As Hsieh’s warrior began hacking at a door, the witch picked up a small stone lying among the refuse against the wall. She used it to scrape a line up both walls to within a few inches of the ceiling. She connected them with another line on the floor, then laid the rock upon it. The leading corpse was only two steps away.
A muffled clamor sounded somewhere in the structure far above, presumably Cypress tearing the roof away. As much as Ruha wanted to glance at the ceiling, there was no time. She spoke the incantation of her stone spell. The rock on the floor disappeared, then a shimmering gray wall formed between the three lines the witch had traced on the floor. The first corpse, a dark-haired cult member with an ugly skull wound, arrived at the barrier. He managed to push his head and one arm through before the magic wall turned as solid as granite. The zombie remained there, reaching for the witch’s oil sack and moaning in the plaintive, incoherent voice of a tormented spirit.
Another crash reverberated down from above, this time followed by the clatter of falling rubble.
“He is digging his way down through the building!” Ruha cried, spinning toward Hsieh.
She completed the turn in time to see an iron bolt shoot through the breach Hsieh’s man had hacked in the door. The dart buried its head in the opposite wall, and the muffled clatter of a bow crank sounded from inside the chamber. The warrior reached through the hole and lifted the crossbar off its supports.
“Get on with you!” cried the man on the other side of the door. His voice sounded both fearful and old. “The next one won’t miss!”
Hsieh’s soldier shoved the door open and stormed inside, yelling, “You dare to attack Shou mandarin!”
A heavy thud shook the building; then the ceiling began to crack and groan beneath a great weight. Ruha and Hsieh followed the warrior into a small, windowless shop filled with the cluttered shelves of an apothecary. The soldier was leaning over a chest-high counter, holding his sword to the throat of a mousy, squint-eyed man. On the counter lay an empty crossbow and a crucible heating over the flame of an alcohol lamp.
As soon as she saw the lamp’s blue flame, Ruha’s heart skipped a beat. If she could use such a hot fire to cast her most powerful sun spell, even Cypress would be helpless to defend himself. She stepped toward the apothecary, but Hsieh spoke before she could ask the old man if he had any brimstone.
“Where is Number Two Exit?” Hsieh demanded, his gaze darting from one cramped corner to the next.
“Isn’t one.”
“What is this material?” Hsieh stepped to the outside wall and ran his fingers over the smooth, white-washed surface.
“Wattle and daub,” the apothecary answered.
When the mandarin did not seem to understand, Ruha said, “A sort of mud plaster.”
The planks above their heads creaked, then began to pop and crack. The chandelier above the apothecary’s counter started to swing, and Ruha looked up to see the exposed joist logs bowing directly over their heads. The dragon knew exactly where they were, and it took the witch only an instant to guess how. If the smell of ylang oil had led her to Hsieh earlier, then certainly the dragon, with his much larger nose, could track them by the same scent.
A tremendous splintering filled the room as five huge talons pierced the ceiling. The apothecary wailed and dropped to his knees behind the counter, and Hsieh shoved his warrior toward the outside wall.
“Kick hole.”
The claws began to rip through planks of thick wood as if they were made of paper. Hsieh’s soldier sheathed his sword and stepped back to get a running start, and Ruha leaned over the counter to look at the cowering apothecary.
“Have you brimstone?” When the man only looked at her with terrified eyes, she yelled, “Brimstone powder—now!”
The dragon’s fist closed around a joist log and started to tug. The beam, a rough-hewn pine trunk as thick as an ogre’s leg, groaned and bowed, but it would not break—at least not easily. Hsieh’s man charged across the room, then picked up both feet and attacked with a flying, two-legged stomp kick. The daub cracked beneath his heels, and he crashed through the wall to disappear outside.
The apothecary shoved an open bottle of yellow powder onto the counter and ducked out of sight again. Ruha grabbed the lamp from beneath the crucible and pulled the wick stopper. The cloth was still saturated with alcohol, so the flame continued to burn as she poured the fuel into the brimstone bottle.
A deep, rumbling grunt shook the shop. The joist log snapped with a mighty crack, and the ceiling sagged beneath Cypress’s weight. The dragon tore a handful of wood away, creating a hole twice the size of a door.
Hsieh stepped to Ruha’s side. “You must come now!”
“In a moment.” Holding the saturated brimstone in one hand and the flickering lamp wick in the other, Ruha turned to face Cypress. “First I must stop the dragon.”
“That will not be so easy as you think!” Cypress’s voice boomed through the empty hole as loud as thunder. I have learned to be wary of you.
The dragon’s second sentence tolled through Ruha’s head like a striking bell, shattering her concentration. She tried to summon the incantation of her most powerful sun spell, but could not.
Did you think I had to see your eyes to attack your mind? The words echoed back and forth through Ruha’s head, building on each other, growing louder and sharper with every reverberation. Any contact will do.
Ruha tried to bring the flickering wick to the brimstone bottle, but her body did not seem to hear her wishes. Her hands remained a foot apart, shaking with the memory of what she had intended, yet unable to obey. The wick in her hand sputtered and smoked darkly as it ran out of alcohol and began to consume itself instead.
“Why do you wait?” Hsieh demanded. “Cast spell!”
The sound of cracking wood filled the chamber once again, and the ceiling sagged almost to their heads as the dragon lay on the floor above. When Ruha did not move, Hsieh apparently realized what was wrong. He pulled a lasal leaf from his pocket and slipped it between her lips. The witch allowed it to fall from her mouth; if they were to have any chance of escaping the dragon, she could not allow a lasal haze to cloud her mind.
Hsieh watched the leaf flutter to the floor, then pulled his dagger from its sheath.
“So sorry, Lady Witch.” He cut the rope hanging over her shoulder and took the sack of oil. “Must not let dragon have ylang oil.”
The dragon’s withered hand came through the hole and snaked toward the witch. The mandarin quickly stepped away, then turned and threw himself through the opening in the wall.
Cypress’s talons stopped a foot short of Ruha, and the din assailing her head quieted to a dull roar. The lamp wick hissed and flickered and began to shrink. The witch considered trying to resist the dragon’s mind attack, but he was too powerful to defeat. Instead, she let all her defenses down, envisioning her mind as the great hall of an empty Heartlands castle, where even the slightest sound reverberated like a drum.