by Doug Niles
“If you gave her something that will hurt that baby …” Melissa warned.
“No, it’s not that. By the gods, this is horrible! I never thought—ah, no! We all have to beware!” Hale wriggled pathetically, looking around in abject terror. “The Red Lotus—”
Nobody saw the man in black, sitting in a shadowy alcove near the rear of the room. He raised his hand and made a simple gesture. Hale grasped his throat, choking and retching horribly.
“Speak! What is it?” demanded Melissa, kneeling beside him, trying to pry his hands away from his throat. By the time they did come free, Hale was dead.
“Ankhar escaped—with most of his ogres,” reported Sergeant Ian.
“Where in the Abyss did they go?” demanded Jaymes, holding a poultice over his chest where the wizard’s magic missiles had scorched him.
Ian shrugged apologetically. “I can’t say, Excellency. But the prisoners swear there was a blue circle on the side of the building and that Ankhar and many of his ogres passed through it. Wherever they went, it wasn’t inside of the shed. The wall is as solid as ever.”
“Are you all right?” Dram asked gruffly, coming up to Jaymes as the man rose, head down, to stand amid the corpses of the ogres who had defended the route of retreat.
“I think so,” Jaymes said, nodding feebly. He swayed weakly until Dram’s strong hands took his arm, supporting him. The emperor cracked a small smile and nodded up the slope toward the three mine tunnels that loomed blackly overhead. “Nice timing on your attack, old friend.”
“I could same the same for you. I think Ankhar would have waited us out forever—at least, until long after our food was gone. We were locked in a deathtrap of our own making.”
“Who’d have thought the old bastard would come down the mountains at you?” Jaymes said, shaking his head.
“I guess we should of thought about it,” Dram said, shuddering at the memory of how close to disaster they had come. “After all, he was in these hills before we were.”
“Yes, those were the days,” Jaymes said, again allowing that small smile. “Riding after goblins, collecting bounties, watching each other’s backs—”
“And looking out for the knights at every turn,” Dram interrupted. “Ducking and hiding like the outlaws we were. I never imagined you’d end up commanding the whole bunch of them Salamis!”
“Life has taken some funny turns I guess you could say.” Jaymes turned through a slow circle, scrutinizing the devastation that was everywhere in New Compound. He stared at the smoldering remnants of the great bonfire in which Ankhar had burned the dozen uncompleted bombards. The timbers hadn’t burned away completely, and the massive rings of spring steel stood out like great hoops, but it was clear nothing would be salvaged from those ashes.
“I … I started to make them bombards,” Dram said awkwardly. “But only after I heard Ankhar was on the march. I guess you got my letter?”
“Yes. You didn’t like what I had done to Vingaard Keep, and you assumed I’d use the bombards against more cities, didn’t you?”
“Would you?” the dwarf asked bluntly.
“I shouldn’t have used them at Vingaard,” Jaymes admitted, surprising even himself. “And no, I don’t think I’d have used them anymore against my own cities, no matter what. I lost my temper when the young lord made a surprise attack and burned two of my guns.”
Jaymes rubbed a hand across his eyes, wiping away sweat and grime. “He was a courageous fellow, gnat though he was. And he had good reason to hate me, I have to admit; his father died in my custody.”
“Well, any way you look at it, it’ll be a year or two before I can get operations up and running again,” Dram said. “That is, if you decide you want another battery of guns.”
Sally came up and Dram put his arm around her; they both looked expectantly at the emperor.
“You don’t have to do that. Not now, at least. Go ahead with your mining—looks like you’ve got a good place for it. We’ll see what the future holds, but if I use any more bombards, it will be against enemies from beyond Solamnia. Now I just want to get back to Palanthas and to my wife.”
He winced as he said the last word, and Sally reached out and touched his hand. “Is … is everything all right there?” she asked.
“It’s worse than you know,” said a woman’s voice. They turned in unison, stunned to see Coryn the White standing behind them. She had obviously teleported, and her face was grim, even dour. Her black hair was tousled in disarray, and there were scuffs on her face and hands. Her white robe with its silver embroidery was, as always, immaculate.
“What’s happened?” Jaymes asked. He thought of Selinda, feeling a stab of fear in his belly.
“Selinda has been kidnapped. By all accounts, it looks like her father was to blame.”
“Is she all right?” demanded the emperor, his face ashen.
“As far as I know. But there’s more bad news: the Dark Knights have struck,” she reported grimly. “They’ve captured the High Clerist’s Tower, and they’re trying to take over Palanthas and prop the lord regent back onto his throne,” she concluded. “You won’t be able to bring your army back to the city with them holding the pass.”
Jaymes groaned, but his thoughts were already churning. “Can you take me back to Palanthas right away?” he asked Coryn.
“Yes. I was hoping you’d want to do that.”
He nodded absently, turning to Dram. “Can you accompany the legion up the pass to the High Clerist’s Tower? And bring all the casks of powder that you have?”
Dram nodded. “I’ll be there—with enough to fill three or four wagons.”
The emperor nodded gratefully, touching Sally on the shoulder. “I’m sorry to take him away from you, again,” he said. “But I’ll do my best to see that he’s back here before you even know he’s gone.”
“Go,” she said, sniffling. “Be quick about it! But … may Reorx watch over you.”
“Thank you,” he said before turning back to Coryn. She spoke another word, the magic swirled, and they were gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
COUNTERCOUP
You might have killed her!”
Selinda heard those words, spoken by an angry voice … a familiar voice … She tried to shake off the cobwebs fogging her mind and felt her unsettled stomach churning.
Father!
She was lying on a couch in the anteroom of his study. The loud, stern words were coming from behind the closed door. Her father was speaking to the one who had brought her there, she realized at once, the black-masked priest of an evil god.
Selinda tried to call out to her father, but again her body failed to cooperate. Instead, she tried to listen carefully, to hear the outside sounds over the frantic pounding of her heart and the labored effort of her breathing.
“She was in very little danger.” That was the priest’s voice, insistent but hardly apologetic. “And I brought her here at once, just as you ordered. Perhaps she is weakened by the pregnancy—I did nothing to harm her! Or else your other agent, the one who lured her into his place of business, might have given her something to make her ill. How far do you trust him?”
“Hale has always been a faithful agent,” the lord regent said coldly. “He knows better than to displease me.”
No! Selinda was repulsed by her father’s words, almost gagging in horror. But the truth was plain: du Chagne had contracted Lame Hale to accost his own daughter! Hale had drugged her, tied her up, threatened her—and all at the command of her own father!
She pushed herself up into a sitting position, looking around, wanting only to escape. There was another door besides the one leading to her father’s office. Standing unsteadily, she stumbled to that exit, tried the handle, and found it locked. Despairing, she returned to the couch and sat down, trying to collect her thoughts. Gradually she noticed there was only silence coming from the office. She wondered if the priest had left by some other route.
Abruptly, th
e door opened and du Chagne strolled in. “Ah, you’re awake,” he said with forced heartiness. “Do you think you can sit up? Would you like something to eat?”
She shook her head, looking over his shoulder. “Father! That man? Where is he?”
“The … the Nightmaster is gone.”
“He’s a terrible man, a wicked man!” she accused. “And so is Lame Hale!”
Du Chagne sighed, slumping wearily. “I had hoped things would turn out different,” he started to explain. “I mean … this was meant to be for your own good! I hoped you’d understand—”
The outer door opened, and the Nightmaster came in, pushing Melissa du Juliette before him. Her hands were bound, and there was a gag wrapped tightly around her mouth. The priestess’s eyes widened in dismay at the sight of Selinda and her father.
“Melissa!” Selinda cried, trying to rise as the priestess of Kiri-Jolith was roughly pushed onto the couch. The princess glared at the Nightmaster. “What do you think you—”
“She was spying on you,” the priest said, speaking directly to the lord regent. “I caught her outside your window—levitating, of course. I’d slit her throat right now and be done with it.”
Selinda’s eyes widened in horror. She turned to look at her father and was horrified to see he was clearly thinking over the dark priest’s advice.
“No!” shouted the princess, furiously leaping to her feet to confront the masked priest. He reached out a hand, touched her cheek, and she slumped back onto the couch. Desperately, she struggled to rise, tried to lift her arms, but she couldn’t move.
She could see and hear everything in the room, but her muscles were utterly paralyzed.
“I thought we would find Melissa here,” Coryn said to Jaymes in some surprise. They had teleported directly from New Compound into the priestess’s quarters within the temple of Kiri-Jolith. But the chambers were clearly empty. “She must have felt too much urgency to wait and gone directly to the regent’s palace herself. Or perhaps she’s merely scouting the scene. I really don’t think she would go in until we arrived to help.”
“Let’s get going, then,” Jaymes urged.
Again, Coryn cast her magic spell, and shortly the two found themselves transported to a small room. A glance out the nearby window showed that they were high above Palanthas, looking down on the city and the harbor from a lofty tower. Jaymes quickly deduced that they were in the Golden Spire of the lord regent’s palace.
“We can go down the stairs and surprise du Chagne,” Coryn explained softly. “He doesn’t expect to see anybody coming from this direction.”
They descended the spiraling stairs quickly but as silently as possible. Within a few moments, Coryn and Jaymes were crouching on the lowest balcony of the long stairway descending from the top of the Golden Spire. They could hear voices raised in anger emanating from behind the closed door of the lord regent’s office. Two men-at-arms stood before that door, looking nervously at each other.
Jaymes pointed to himself, then at the guards, indicating first one, then the other. His hand clenched over the hilt of his sword, and the white wizard took his arm, looked at him, and shook her head. With an impatient expression, he held his place.
Coryn pulled a pinch of something from a tiny pocket in her robe. Gesturing to the emperor to stay where he was, she stood and started down the stairs toward the two guards.
They both looked up in surprise at her unexpected appearance. She smiled and murmured something, waving her hand before her face and opening her fingers. The pinch of sand she let go sifted down toward the floor, and the two guards slumped backward against the wall then slowly slid down to sleep on the floor.
Jaymes was already gliding down the stairs and drawing Giantsmiter for action. Coryn leaned her head against the door, listening. As Jaymes approached, she nodded, and he lowered his shoulder and hit the door with a violent crash.
Selinda lay on the couch, magically immobilized. Melissa du Juliette, still bound and gagged, was seated on the couch beside the princess. They heard the smash of wood and even without turning her head, Selinda could see that her husband, his great sword drawn, had come bursting into the room. Coryn was right behind him.
“Halt!” demanded the Nightmaster through his black mask, raising his hand. Magic pulsed through the room, and Jaymes stopped in his tracks, his body lurching forward while his feet remained fixed to the floor. He twisted, almost dropping his sword.
Coryn raised her hand, crying out a word that sounded like a terrible growl. A flash of light seared through the room, and Jaymes tumbled free, rolling once before bouncing, catlike, to his feet. At the same time, Selinda, who had been straining to see what was happening, felt her paralysis weaken. The magic holding her, as well as the spell restricting Jaymes, had been weakened by Coryn’s counter-spell.
The princess wrenched her head around. Relief flooded through her—not at the prospect of rescue but because she was starting to regain control of her body. She twitched her fingers and felt a rewarding flicker of mobility. Still, she knew she was too weak to stand and couldn’t quite gain control of her vocal cords.
Smoke swirled around them, and she saw the Nightmaster casting a spell, hurling a cloud of noxious gas toward the white wizard. With a sharp bark—like a guttural challenge—Coryn raised her wrist to parry the attack, and the cloud exploded, erupting upward to shatter a good portion of the ceiling. Dust and debris showered down. A beam broke free and tumbled downward, knocking the white wizard on the shoulder and sending her sprawling.
The Nightmaster was still there, standing in front of the cowering lord regent. “Kill them!” shrieked du Chagne. He was pointing at the emperor and the white wizard, but to Selinda’s mind, he might just as well have been talking about his daughter.
The priest cast a spell, and a force of mistlike energy materialized in the air. It smashed into Jaymes, knocking him flat on his back. The magical hammer swirled upward and smashed down again, driving her husband’s head hard against the marble floor.
Selinda’s voice came back to her as she croaked out a scream.
Jaymes lay on his back, his sword arm stretched to the side. Once more the hammer of the masked priest gathered for a mighty blow, but the emperor reacted first. Pulling his weapon over his body, he took hold of Giantsmiter’s hilt with both hands. When the magical hammer came down, the sword flamed and sliced cleanly through the enchantment. Springing to his feet, Jaymes closed on the Nightmaster, his face locked into a feral snarl. Coryn, groggy and bleeding, pushed herself to her feet, stumbling toward the lord regent.
Then the high priest spoke again, and the entire room was swallowed by darkness.
Bakkard du Chagne felt himself seized by the scruff of the neck. The surrounding darkness was total, so the lord regent couldn’t see who or what had accosted him, hoisting him off the ground like a child’s toy, but he felt pretty certain that whatever lifted him had force much greater than any mortal’s grip.
A chaotic tangle of noise surrounded him, and he tried to clasp his hands to his ears, blocking out the cacophony. But the power seemed to have a paralyzing effect because he couldn’t move his limbs, couldn’t feel his skin. He was consumed with terror, and the worst of it was he couldn’t even scream.
Then as quickly as the raging storm had started, it broke. Du Chagne found himself standing on a solid surface, perched high up on a tower—a tower much, much higher than the Golden Spire of his own palace.
“Where in the Abyss are we?” demanded the lord regent, staggering weakly, nauseated at the prospect of the dangerous depths just below his feet. He barely noticed the vista of lofty mountains pressing in from all sides, nor did he take note of the famous, sprawling outline of the fortress around him.
“This is the High Clerist’s Tower,” the Nightmaster said.
“Why did you bring me here?” the lord regent demanded.
“It was either that or let the emperor kill you,” replied the priest. “For reasons unknown t
o me at the moment, I elected to save your life.”
Blayne stood at the top of the steps leading up to the gate tower. The column of Dark Knights still milled around outside the gate, blocked by the portcullis he had just dropped, but there were a score or more of the attackers—including Captain Blackgaard—already in the city. The knights were charging him, coming up the stairway with swords drawn and murderous intent on their faces.
The young lord met the first of those foes with a savage downward chop, delivered with such force he shattered the knight’s upraised blade and cut deeply into the man’s face. Immediately twisting the blade free, he knocked a second knight to the side, sending the fellow tumbling back down the stairs with his throat cut.
But the stairs were wide enough for the Dark Knights to come at him two at a time and so they did. The next pair, no doubt gaining some respect for their opponent after seeing the fate of the initial attackers, approached more cautiously. Striking from below, they aimed at Blayne’s legs, both stabbing simultaneously. The young lord couldn’t parry two blows at once; he had no choice but to back away, even though that meant giving up his position at the top of the stairs.
He backed across the tower platform, moving into the corner and raising his sword as the attackers swept onto the platform. “Kill that one!” barked Captain Blackgaard, pointing at the young lord of Vingaard.
A trio of Dark Knights rushed at him. Blayne slashed to the right and left, cutting down two but leaving an opening for the middle attacker. That knight grinned coldly as he raised his blade. Then he croaked and stumbled sideways, an arrow jutting from the side of his neck.
Blayne wasted no time wondering who was shooting. He charged in a fury, cutting down another black-clad soldier and fighting his way toward the stairs. The other Dark Knights on the platform shouted in consternation as swords clashed against shields and other blades cut into flesh. A wild melee erupted, swordsmen ducking and dodging, parrying and attacking on all sides.