"Why are we doing this?" Peat whispered to Sadie, loudly enough for the black wizard to hear. The old female merely shrugged and pointed to her master. Willim had already determined that the two assistants didn't need to know the purpose of the exercise.

  "Come--we fly back to the Isle of the Dead now," he said.

  Their task completed, Willim, Sadie, and Peat glided downward on the wings of the flying spells that had borne them aloft--Willim through his own casting, and the two elderly Theiwar by dint of the potion he had given them to drink. The black wizard was satisfied that, soon enough, he would leave his mark on Thorbardin in a way that history would never forget.

  He wondered for a moment where he would choose to go after his task was done. He didn't have a place in mind, but he knew that his power would carry him anywhere, allow him to become the master of any place he chose to reside. He considered, briefly, visiting the Tower of High Sorcery in Wayreth Forest. Willim the Black, together with Dalamar the Dark and a host of other wizards of all three orders, had been instrumental in reclaiming that enchanted spire from the powers of corruption that had seized it earlier in the Fifth Age.

  But there were likely to be other wizards there, strangers, powerful wizards, and Willim was not inclined to share his time with the likes of them.

  Perhaps he would go east. He'd heard that many changes were occurring there, including a new wave of minotaur invasion. That would surely result in some nicely chaotic circumstances, just the sort of thing that was appealing to Willim.

  He saw the priestess, Gretchan Pax, gazing up at him as he swooped down to land on the hilltop. He smiled, admiring her beauty, and his emotions stirred with the kind of feeling Facet used to arouse in him. Perhaps, before he killed Gretchan, he would slake that lust, either against her will or with her magically compelled compliance.

  So intrigued was he by those prospects that he didn't notice the other dwarf until it was almost too late.

  Bluestone! Where did he come from all of a sudden? The Kayolin dwarf was sprinting onto the hilltop, racing toward the cage. And he had Gretchan's staff!

  "No!" barked the black wizard. He pointed his finger and launched a stream of magic missiles, sparkling darts that streaked unerringly at the Kayolin dwarf. The first one struck Brandon in the left shoulder, knocking him down. The staff tumbled from his fingers, falling--or was it thrown?--a dozen feet short of the cage.

  Brandon twisted, crying out in pain. His left arm hung uselessly, the joint shattered, and he lay on his back with the Bluestone Axe across his chest. More and more of the magic missiles spewed from Willim's finger, sparking and sizzling as they struck him right in the heart. By the time Willim had settled to the ground, the spell was exhausted, but the Kayolin general had been smashed with more magical power than any mortal could survive.

  Willim smiled as he landed, a hideous grimace creasing his features. Behind him, he heard Gretchan sobbing, her voice raw with grief.

  "You think you are suffering now," he said to her. She looked up at him, hatred glaring from her moisture-shedding eyes.

  "Just wait," he promised as he took a step toward the cage.

  Otaxx Shortbeard was gasping for breath. His chest felt as if it were being squeezed in a vice, and he could barely see. Damn his old age! He didn't have the endurance of a young child anymore.

  Still, he pushed himself up the last bit of the hilltop, each breath rasping in his throat. The sound of his blood pulsing was a roar in his ears, and he shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Finally he clawed his way over the lip of the summit and pulled himself to his knees and finally to his feet.

  The first thing he saw was Brandon Bluestone, lying on his back, his shoulder and chest shiny with blood. Then he saw the black wizard, advancing toward Gretchan, still trapped in the cage. She rose to her full height and spit at the Theiwar magic-user, and Otaxx wanted to rush to her, to stop her from antagonizing the brutal wizard.

  But of course, it was too late. Willim raised his hands, reaching toward the cleric, and Gretchan gasped and fell, rolling on the ground as if she were being physically attacked, though the wizard stood several feet outside of the cage.

  The scene was too much for the old general. He drew his short sword and lumbered forward as fast as his tired legs could carry him.

  "You leave her alone, you bastard!" he cried. "You leave my daughter alone!"

  Then the wizard turned that hideous face toward Otaxx, and he knew he was doomed.

  Sadie watched the old Daewar charge, and she knew that he was going to die, that Willim would kill him as certainly as he had killed Facet and Brandon ... and would kill Gretchan Pax, and undoubtedly her and Peat after that, probably sooner rather than later.

  The old woman felt a strange mix of emotions. Fatigue was high among them: it had been too long that she had known fear every minute, every day, every step she took, every breath she took. She looked to the side, where Peat had come to rest on the ground beside her, and recognized the same fear, the hopelessness, in his eyes.

  He had just come back to her, less than an hour past, and it was all going to end. Even more powerful than fatigue was the crushing sadness: she had managed to get Willim to reverse the spell that had condemned him to the glass bell jar, but for what?

  Only to die on the rocky hilltop. That place was all too appropriately named, she reflected bitterly.

  The Isle of the Dead.

  She looked again at Willim, who had driven the old Daewar onto his back with a blow from a force spell, like a powerful punch that required no physical contact on the wizard's part. The elderly dwarf, his face already reddened to an unhealthy degree, was grunting as the wizard's intangible blows swatted him back and forth. Willim was taking a long time to kill the old fellow, she realized. Probably he was enjoying it.

  Gretchan was sobbing, tugging on the bars of her cage as if that would do any good. She called out to the Daewar, called him "Father" in a tone full of grief and heartache. Sadie actually felt sorry for her.

  Only then did she notice the staff on the ground, lying very near her feet, where Brandon had dropped it when Willim's magic missile barrage had smashed him down. Sadie looked up again. The wizard was fully engaged in his gradual, deliberate murder. He was paying no attention to his elderly apprentice or to her equally elderly husband.

  Slowly, not sure why she was doing it, Sadie reached down and picked up the Staff of Reorx. She caressed the smooth wood, which felt very nice and solid in her hands. And she noticed that the priestess had stopped crying.

  Instead, Gretchan was looking at Sadie with wide, disbelieving eyes.

  Gretchan was almost blinded by grief. She could see Brandon's bloody, immobile form on the ground and was watching the black wizard pummel her father to death. Those two images were enough to make her want to blind herself, to tear out her eyes.

  Then a strange calm possessed her, and her grief slowly dissipated.

  She felt the presence of Reorx, a benign and comforting embrace, easing her despair, somehow even infusing her with a measure of hope.

  It was then that she looked around, spotting Sadie a mere ten feet away. The old Theiwar woman was holding the sacred staff, looking at it in wonder. Perhaps she, too, felt the presence of Reorx, Master of the Forge, Father God of All Dwarves.

  "Please!" Gretchan begged, her voice a hoarse croak. "Give me the staff!"

  Sadie stared at her for what seemed like a lifetime but was perhaps only five seconds. Then she inched closer and extended the staff, anvil head first, and the cleric seized it as if it were a lifeline thrown to a drowning woman. She pulled the sacred artifact to her, clutched it to her breast, and spun around to locate the wizard.

  Willim stood over her father's body, gloating. Then the wizard turned his eyeless face toward Gretchan, his expression distorted with fury.

  "He died!" cried the wizard in a monstrous rage. "He died before I could kill--"

  Abruptly he stopped, growing stiff and still. "Oh, your staff," he said calmly. "Do you think that will save you? It won't. But it will make your dying all that much sweeter ... for me."

  He took a step toward her, and she planted the butt of the rod on the ground and seized the middle with both hands. "Oh, mighty Reorx," she intoned. "Father God of All Dwarves! Free me from this unholy cage."

  As the bars burst apart around her, Willim the Black took another step closer and raised his hands for the casting of yet another mighty, lethal spell.

  Brandon lay on the rocky ground, his body wracked with pain. This is what dying feels like, he thought. The Bluestone Axe he still held in his right hand, the only hand he could use as his left shoulder had been smashed to a bloody pulp by the wizard's deadly missiles.

  At least they would have been deadly if the Kayolin dwarf hadn't been able to pull up his axe as he fell and use the wide, Reorx-blessed blade as a makeshift shield. The last dozen of Willim's bolts had blasted into the metal axe head and been absorbed there without inflicting further damage to their target.

  Still, he was brutally wounded. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open, to watch the events swirl around him. He knew that Otaxx was dead; the old Daewar had sacrificed himself to distract the wizard's attention away from Brandon.

  Then he had watched with numb disbelief as Sadie had snatched up the staff and handed it to Gretchan. He had seen the cage burst to pieces as the power of the god was made real. And he witnessed Willim, his back to Brandon, slowly advancing on Gretchan. The priestess did not seem to be afraid, but the Kayolin dwarf knew that neither could she hope to stand, to survive, in the face of the wizard's murderous rage.

  Gasping from the pain, Brandon tried to move. His left arm was on fire, and his shoulder grated sickeningly as the broken bones shifted and twisted against each other. Somehow he managed to block out the agony, to use his right arm to push himself to a sitting position while he rested the axe in his lap. When next he looked up, Willim was only two steps away from Gretchan. She held her staff before her, as if to ward off the villainous wizard, but her power couldn't match his. With a single, sharp gesture, Willim the Black swept his hand to the side, and the staff was torn from Gretchan's hands. It went clattering helplessly onto the rocks of the hilltop.

  The handle of the Bluestone Axe was in Brandon's hand. He hoisted that hand, pulled it back over his shoulder, and hurled the artifact with all his might, aiming for the middle of the black robe shrouding the back of the eyeless wizard.

  The throw was true: The axe spiraled through the air and struck the wizard squarely between the shoulder blades. The keen edge sliced through the black robe, the withered skin, and the scrawny, scarred frame of its intended target. Willim tumbled onto his face with a gagging cry, clawing at the stony ground. He twisted, trying to reach the weapon that was killing him, but it was behind him, beyond the grasp of his fingers.

  With one last croak of sound, he died.

  In that death his body became fire, and the fire spumed into smoke. It rose from his corrupt flesh like a living thing, the manifest remnant of foul magic, consuming evil, and nearly absolute power. The smoke, thick and dark and acrid, exploded from the vanishing flesh, swirling and churning, gathering strength near the ground for a few moments.

  Then it began to billow upward. The murky cloud rose quickly, surging and churning and climbing. As it spumed upward from the Isle of the Dead, it separated into three columns, and each column swelled higher, flying like a living creature, a dragon of smoke perhaps, roaring and churning toward the three dragon teeth embedded in the ceiling of Thorbardin.

  There is nothing that terrifies a population of underground-dwelling mountain dwarves as much as an earthquake. Nothing can rain death upon a cavern as soundly, as quickly, as thoroughly as a great convulsion that shakes the bedrock of the world and collapses structures and caverns and pillars and caves that have long been considered solid and permanent. The crushing weight of such a cave-in can mark a permanent and fatal end, not just to lives, but to houses, villages, cities, even whole nations of dwarves.

  Thus, when the ground shivered underneath and rumbles of sound, louder than thunder and twice as violent, shot through the great plaza of Norbardin, the celebration of victory and the triumph of King Bellowgranite's return to the throne came to an immediate end. Cheers of laughter and hope, songs of delight and praise, all were replaced with cries of terror. The pounding of the drums ceased, though the loud percussion continued as rocks split free from the ceiling to crash into the streets and onto the buildings. Screams of pain replaced the sounds of revelry from one end of the city to the other.

  The floor buckled and pitched underfoot. Dwarves who were dancing crazily lost their balance and tumbled to the ground. Youngsters screamed in fear, and elders shouted prayers or curses, depending on temperament. Everywhere dwarves dived for cover or fled, screaming, into the side streets or the imagined safety of sturdy buildings.

  In the heart of the celebration, near the center of the great plaza, Tarn Bellowgranite wrapped his arms around his wife and bore her to the ground, protecting her body with his own. For a second he lay on top of her, heart pounding, eyes tightly closed as he waited for the lethal, crushing force of collapse.

  But then the ground grew still again, and it seemed that the danger had passed.

  "I appreciate the sentiment," the restored queen said, grunting for breath. "But if a ten-ton rock falls on you, I don't think you're going to offer much protection."

  "Sorry," Tarn said, quickly rolling to the side. "But it's a quake--!"

  "And your first instinct was to protect me," Crystal replied, not unkindly, as she sat up and brushed herself off. "I think that's marvelous. But doesn't it seem strange that there would be an earthquake now, of all times?"

  Indeed, her voice had a calming effect on the king, and it seemed to have the same effect on the world itself. At least, after the initial shock, the ground seemed to have grown still, and the rumbling slowly faded into echoes.

  "Could it be over already?" Tarn wondered, standing on shaky legs and helping his wife climb to her feet. "It seemed terribly abrupt and quick."

  "I don't think that was a natural earthquake," Crystal said. "I'm rather more worried that it had something to do with the black wizard. I think we should investigate. Where can we go to get a look at what's happening?"

  "The Urkhan Sea!" Tarn said, holding on to his wife rather more than was strictly necessary for safety's sake. Thankfully, the ground remained still, though the deep, thrumming rumble of unsettled bedrock continued to assault their ears, forcing them to shout just to be heard. "That's where Otaxx and Brandon were going. Maybe there."

  "Let's go!" Crystal agreed.

  Gretchan knelt over Brandon's bloodied form and touched his shoulder, closing her eyes as she concentrated on a prayer of healing. Almost immediately she felt him twitch then heard him groan--at least, she thought she did, though the roar of the churning smoke consuming the wizard's body was all around, making it difficult to hear anything else.

  Willim's corpse had disappeared, but the unholy murk still churned, and the three columns continued to spume upward, reaching all the way to the ceiling. Each of the pillars extended like a great, black tentacle, the whole resembling a three-taloned paw reaching upward from some monstrous being, claws extended to scrape the sky itself.

  "It's the black wizard!" Sadie screamed. "He wants to bring all of Cloudseeker Peak down upon us! Look!"

  That appeared to be the case. The cleric looked upward and saw that three great fires burned at the places where the smoke touched the top of the dome over the sea. They burned like cancerous sores, boring holes in the ceiling, eating away at the foundation of the rock, rotting the very roof over the mountain kingdom. They seemed to shed no heat, but they were terribly bright, casting a pale, sickeningly yellow light.

  Tons of rocks were already breaking free, falling into the lake on three sides, breaking loose from each of the oozing sores on the upper dome of rock. The collapsing stone, some of it in the form of house-sized boulders, sent huge waves churning across the waters that had never been troubled by so much as a breath of wind.

  In the glaring light of the unholy fires, it was possible to see to all sides of the great cavern, much as if the whole place had been thrown open to a noonday sun.

  "Do something!" Sadie screamed while Peat dropped to his knees and covered his face with his frail, spotted hands.

  Seeing that Brandon was sitting up, touching his healed shoulder in wonder even as he looked around at the monstrous scope of destruction, Gretchan rose to her feet and strode to the very summit of the Isle of the Dead, to the place where her cage had rested before the power of Reorx had blasted it asunder.

  The priestess stood tall, resting the butt of her staff on the ground, and she leaned back to expose her face to the ceiling, to the blinding light of the infernal fires. Closing her eyes in concentration, clutching the rod of her sacred artifact in both hands, she raised her voice in a chant that pierced through even the thunderous chaos roaring through the chamber.

  "O Father God of All Dwarves, Master of the Forge--hear my prayer!" cried the priestess. Her words echoed and resounded like a chorus of singing voices. The anvil on the tip of her staff glowed with a brilliance that outshone even the hellish fires on the dome overhead.

  Suddenly, with a shocking lurch, the ground moved under her feet, and for an instant the cleric thought they were all doomed, that they were going to fall amid the rocks, tumble into the water, drown or be buried by the massive, cataclysmic collapse of the entire mountain range. But they were not falling. In fact, it was the lake that seemed to be going down and away from them as, with each passing second, the surface of the water appeared to recede farther and farther away.

  Still, Gretchan kept her feet and sensed the movement as a steady, stable force. She held firm in her position upon the crest of the hill, with Brandon, Sadie, and Peat huddling nearby. It was clear to all by then that they were not falling.

 

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