Jenna looked around frantically. She knew Kalrakin would quickly grow bored with such diversion. How long could she keep this up?
Then she spotted something that gave her a flash of hope.
The dark elf had burst courageously from the shadows, the knife gleaming in his hand. Quickly and silently, he charged the wild sorcerer.
But Kalrakin saw him coming, must have known all along that he was lurking nearby. The sorcerer merely flipped his hand in a gesture, and a crackling bolt of fire exploded toward the dark elf. Jenna felt the searing heat even from down the hall. She watched in horror as the wild magic tore at the right side of Dalamar's head, peeling back the skin of his face, tearing at his eyes, ripping away one ear. By the time the spell faded, crackling and hissing into nothingness, the dark elf lay like a corpse on the floor.
It looked like half of his face had been burned away.
The god Nuitari cried out in anguish. He howled his grief like a storm through the known planes of existence. He felt the terrible pain of his favorite son's grievous injury, as though his own flesh had been ravaged. Thunder broke around him, and great storms of rain fell through the cosmos.
The black moon was shedding tears.
"The Master of the Tower is failing," Solinari noted glumly. "And all our pawns fall." His visage was wan, a pale approximation of his usual silvery brilliance.
"The wild magic is too powerful," Lunitari declared, equally dejected. "The sorcerer will slay them all and leave the wreckage of the Tower as their tomb. Our children are trapped, defeated, doomed."
Even as they spoke, the blood of the dark elf Dalamar drained into the Tower of High Sorcery's broken stonework. The gods felt the slow ebbing of his life.
"His life slips away, and with his death our hopes perish," Solinari said. His tone was gentle, even sympathetic toward his black cousin, who was experiencing such grief and failure.
But Nuitari raised his head. Thunder and lightning flared in the black sockets of his eyes, and when at last he said something, it was not to pronounce a message of defeat.
"Yes, if time advances, he will die. But there is one way he can survive," the god of the black moon said. "Let him cast the spell that will bring time to a stop."
Far above the dying Dalamar, Aenell gingerly approached the door on the high platform that had been destroyed at her brother's approach. The broken entryway gaped like a wound. Only darkness could be glimpsed 'within.
None of the other wizards were in sight. All of the ones that had been drawn into the Tower were apparently dead. Never had the young elf maid felt so alone as she did at that time, in that lofty place. There was really no choice, no alternative. She had to follow after her brother.
Hesitantly she reached a hand forward, feeling the abrupt tingle of magic. She pulled back, tried to break away, but it was too late-a powerful spell had trapped her, was catapulting her through space, a teleport spell that was overruling her own will. She fought it with all her might, and lost.
She found herself lying on a cold, stone floor. Other wizards milled about in distress and agitation, including a young Red Robe who was kneeling at her side, asking if she was hurt. The Red Robe repeated her question.
"Can you hear me? Are you hurt?"
"N-no, I don't think so," Aenell replied, dazedly. Sitting up, she looked around. The elf maid recognized, first, that she had been teleported to the Hall of Mages, and second, that her brother was here, too.
He laid on the floor just a few steps away, alive, but gravely wounded.
Chapter 28
The Scar
Luthar! Come here! I forgive you! Come and see the great red-robed enchantress! She is on her knees, begging for her life!"
But Jenna was not yet ready to beg-she had more important things to do. She tried to get up hut fell roughly to the side as the ground shifted under her feet, and strong waves rippled the solid stone of the Tower's floor.
The wild magic made the floor twist and writhe beneath her, jolting her from one side to the next, preventing her from gaining any equilibrium. Somehow the sorcerer kept his balance, like the captain of a pitching ship during a violent storm, though the floor continually rose and sank. He laughed crazily.
When she tried to push herself up again, the floor heaved wildly, and she fell roughly onto her face. She rolled over, feeling tremendous pain, wondering if her nose was broken. Once again the floor buckled, and she was slammed against a slab of rock.
"She dances; she prances!" Kalrakin crowed. "See her cavorting about the floor-Luthar, you must witness!"
Though there was no sign of Luthar, Kalrakin seemed to take no notice of his lackey's absence. He was too busy enjoying his victim, toying with his wild magic just enough to keep the floor lurching unsteadily. The white Irda Stone flashed as he tossed it back and forth from one hand to the other. Jenna was tossed like a rag doll from one place to another.
At last she managed to grab hold of something and sit up, her hands spread to the sides in anticipation of another lurch. Her staff lay nearby, and so, too, Dalamar, who lay on his back, motionless and probably dead. The right side of his face was a gruesome sight, flesh torn away and awash with blood.
Kalrakin's attention drifted for a moment as he raised his head, looking as if he heard something. He shrugged then waved one hand. Instantly another wave of violence wracked the Tower. Crashes and bangs echoed everywhere. Streams of rubble and dust fell from the ceilings. The foundation groaned. The floor lurched sickeningly, and Jenna's heart faltered. The whole place was about to come down around her.
But Kalrakin, head thrown back as he cackled with crazy laughter, was momentarily preoccupied with his spellcasting.
The Red Robe drew a breath. Her hands were raw, scraped, and bruised. Her stomach lurched unevenly. Magic spells roiled in her mind-spells that might conceal her, possibly even let her escape-as a last resort.
Kalrakin seemed to remember her then, glancing down at the Red Robe. "All of your great wizards have fallen into my trap, now. Ironic that they will all perish in the Hall of Mages, don't you think? Like pathetic rats, drowned in a little cage? But still, I can't decide-is that how I should kill them?
"Drown them, perhaps, with a storm inside a closed room? Or should I simply bring it all down on their pathetic little heads-an avalanche of black stone, so that the Tower dies along with them? Symbolic and appropriate, of course, but perhaps a little too sudden for my tastes. What do you say?" he asked, looking at her with his eyebrows raised mockingly.
Jenna watched him warily, her attention focused on that stone, which he was flipping back and forth between his two hands, so casually. By Lunitari, how she wanted to tear that thing from his grasp. Yet she knew that before she could reach him, he would destroy her with the simplest spell.
He smiled coldly, as if reading her thoughts, then continued to speak conversationally.
"The flaw in that plan-destroying them along with the Tower-is that I won't get to see the last looks on your colleagues', my victims', faces. Tons of rock fall, they die, and it's all over. No, I might prefer a more measured approach." He extended his hand before him, made a simple gesture, and two heavy chunks of stone rolled together, pinioning Jenna's ankle.
"Such as this!" Kalrakin squeezed his hand and the enchantress gasped in pain as the two blocks of stone slowly began to move together, squeezing her ankle so tightly that she cried out. Slowly the two stones began to grind closer together; the bones of her ankle began to be crushed.
"Yes, that would be much better." The sorcerer seemed pleased with his experiment. "A gradual approach. More fun to watch."