She started forward, but Ebenezer caught her arm. “You go back with the others. Wait by the mouth of the main cave. You don’t need to be seeing what I’m about to do,” he said grimly.
Bronwyn’s heart ached for the necessity facing her friend. She suspected that the pragmatic dwarf could not allow three such potentially deadly enemies to grow into a threat, but Ebenezer’s deep love for kids—be they dwarf or human or even ore—made the hard task even more terrible. She swallowed hard. “You go. I’ll do it.”
“I said git!” Ebenezer roared. He seized the siege tower from the shelf and hurled it into her hands.
Clutching the artifact, she darted from the cave. As she ran, she heard the dwarf tell the ore young to “Stop your damn sniveling.” Harsh words, but with a note in them that prompted Bronwyn to linger at the entrance to the children’s cave.
She peeked around the side as the dwarf took from his pack an intricately carved toy soldier—an ore, if the faint light did not deceive her eyes, and handed it to one of the ore lads. “Take this, in exchange for the tower, and you other two each pick a favorite. Then get some clothes on you, and a knife and a packet of food. There’s a back way out. You three are going to take it.”
They just stared at him. He swore and said a few words in a halting, guttural speech. This time they understood and scurried to do his bidding. “Follow this path out, but don’t wander too far. Your two hearth dames here will wake up and come looking for you. Tell them you’re to travel north, and join a new clan. Go!”
One of them babbled a few words, and Ebenezer, or so Bronwyn surmised, repeated his instructions. The scramble of small feet announced that the ores were only too happy to comply. Bronwyn hurried out to the first cavern. If Ebenezer knew that she had heard all, he would never again be able to look her in the eye.
“Dwarves,” she muttered, then grinned as she realized how much she’d come to sound like her friend.
The battle was long over. Six of the elf fighters stayed at the cave to dispatch any ores who might circle back, and the rest began the walk back to Gladestone.
As they neared the village, they noted that the snares had done their jobs well. Ores dangled upside down from young trees like hideous, wingless bats. Elven arrows bristled from their chests. Only a few ringing clashes, a few grunts, and screams of pain, emanated from the village. When they arrived in Gladestone, it was all but over. A trio of villagers stood at the edge of the triggered pit trap, raining arrows at the trapped ores.
After what she had witnessed in the cave, Bronwyn expected Ebenezer to protest this unchivalrous treatment of an enemy, but the dwarf just nodded with grim approval and joined the villagers in dragging the rest of the slain ores to the pit.
An elf male rolled a barrel of lamp oil over and let it fall into the opening. Another elf dropped a torch. Flames leaped high into the night while Bronwyn and Ebenezer bore silent witness, and the villagers took stock of the price they had paid for this victory.
After the fire had died away, they all pitched in filling the hole. By the time the sun rose, the task was done. A plume of thick, black smoke rising from the south indicated that the rear guard had likewise cleansed the ore den.
The village of Gladestone was secure at last.
Bronwyn, however, felt anything but safe. They were too close to Summit Hall. She said her farewells to the villagers, and she and Ebenezer rode out into the fields.
“That’s that,” he commented. “Did what you came to do.” She wasn’t so sure. Yes, she did have the Fenrisbane, but she felt a bit like a farm dog who habitually chased—and finally caught—a horse-drawn cart and thought, what now?
“Best be getting back to the city,” the dwarf commented, breaking her troubled reverie. ‘Way I figure it, that Brian Swordmaster fellow has only two more days to talk my kin into staying around for good. I’d just as soon add my voice to the matter.”
“True. And I’ve got to make arrangements for Cara and decide what to do with these trinkets.”
The dwarf scratched his chin. “After all the trouble we went through to get that toy, I’d like to take a look at it. You feeling up to a little magic?”
Bronwyn thought this over. She had only two of the three rings and only one of the two people whose agreement was needed to activate the siege tower’s power, but even a partial result, if that were possible, would be enlightening. She certainly owed the dwarf that much.
She took the tower and gestured for him to follow her. They walked out onto the rye field, beyond the sight of the villagers. She set the small tower down on a furrow and took the two rings from the thong around her neck. “I don’t know if this will work, but here it goes,” she said.
Bronwyn slipped first one, then the other ring into the slots on the tower. For a moment nothing happened. Then the tower began to grow, a quick, smooth spreading motion that looked as if a massive tidal wave was rising from the young rye.
Ebenezer hauled her up by her collar, and they both kicked into a run. After a hundred paces or so, they turned to look.
“Stones,” whispered the dwarf.
The tower rose into the sky, tall as the forest trees. The front fell in a straight line, the back was sloped down. Strips of wood offered footing to soldiers who needed to climb up to the massive attack deck. A huge counterweight stood ready to drop, thus ifinging the contents of an enormous trebuchet. The ballista was an monstrous machine. Next to it, stacks of bolts stood ready. The whole structure was built of thick, solid oak planks, with a sheen on it that suggested some sort of protective coating far superior to the wet animal hides that draped most siege towers. Bands of iron and thousands upon thousands of spikes held the massive construction together. But for all its size, it was little more substantial than a strong wind. Bronwyn could see through it, to the trees beyond. The rising sun caught and shimmered on its faintly luminous outline.
The Fenrisbane was a marvelous, indestructible, deathdealing. . . ghost.
It was also larger than Bronwyn had anticipated, and thus clearly visible from the village. She turned around to see if they had witnesses. Indeed, most of the villagers came at a run, swiftly at first, then dropping off at a safe distance to take stock of this marvel.
Ebenezer whistled softly. “Nice piece of work,” he admitted, eyeing the Fenrisbane with naked awe. “Not much starch to it, though.”
That was true, and it left Bronwyn with a bit of a dilemma. How to get the rings from the attack deck? But either the incomplete magic wavered, or the magical tower responded to her thoughts, because the monstrous attack machine swiftly shrank back down to a toy, and Bronwyn pulled out the rings and slipped them onto her fingers.
The dwarf glanced over his shoulder at the gaping villagers. He did a quick double take and swore. “Lookit there,” he said grimly, pointing to the hills south of the village. A white horse was clearly visible and approaching fast. With the rider were four others. “Now that they’ve seen this thing, they’ve got one more reason to run you down. We’d best be riding, and fast.”
* * * * *
The incident in Thornhold’s chapel weighed heavily on Dag Zoreth, as did the disturbing information that Ashemmi had passed on. He went to his chamber and took his scrying globe out once again. Ashemmi’s “visit” had left him seething with helpless fury. He used this, letting it fuel his prayers. As a result, so intense was the purple flame that leaped into the heart of the scrying globe that he could feel the pain he was inflicting himself
Sir Gareth came into view almost at once. “Where are you?” the priest snapped.
“Summit Hall,” the knight said, his voice somewhat slurred by intense pain.
Dag pulled back the power just enough to allow the man to function. “I had a most enlightening conversation with one of my . . . comrades from Darkhold. She informed me that my daughter was shipped south on a Zhentish slave ship—the same ship that was to dispose of those wretched dwarves. The same shipment that you so ably helped to arrange. I am most eager to hear your explanation.”
Hope drained from the fallen paladin’s eyes. “She was taken by the paladins, that much is true. I intercepted her and tried to have her taken away to safe fosterage.”
“On a slave ship?”
“The Knights of Samular have few outposts in the south,” Gareth argued. “She would have been safe enough, tended in the villa of an old associate who has reason to be grateful and discrete. There she could have stayed until it was safe to return her to you.”
The truth hidden behind these self-serving words began to come clear to Dag. Perhaps Sir Gareth had had a role in the original abduction of Cara. Perhaps not. But certainly, he used the situation to position himself well. Cara wore a ring of Samular and thus had the potential to wield power. Of course Gareth would want to have her in his secret control. And if he was forced to do so, he could “discover” the child’s hiding place and make himself a hero to whomever he relinquished the child. It was not a foolish plan, but it had gone awry.
“I want her back,” the priest demanded. “Now.”
“That could prove difficult, Lord Zoreth,” the knight said, “She is in Blackstaff Tower, under the protection and tutelage of the lady mage Laeral Silverhand.”
Dag hissed out a foul curse. The beautiful mage was as unconventional as she was powerful. If she took it upon herself to keep Cara, a small flight of dragons would be hard pressed to sway her from this course. But the archmage, the ruler of Blackstaff Tower, was another matter. Khelben Arunsun was not only a mage, but a ruler, deeply involved in the politics of the city and the surrounding area. If the matter were posed to him as a political expediency, he might be willing to see reason.
“Use your name and contacts. Get the child to Thornhold at once,” flag commanded. “And my sister as well, or you will find the same end as Hronulf.”
‘That is unlikely,” the old paladin said. “Unfortunately, I am no longer fit to face armed men in a siege.”
The priest laughed softly. “Hronulf did not die from his battle wounds. I tore out his heart with my own hands. You might want to bear this in mind, as you tend this task.”
Seventeen
For two days Bronwyn and Ebenezer rode as hard as they dared push their horses. The paladins were never far behind them, though Bronwyn used every trick and shortcut she had learned in her years on the road.
Finally, the walls of the city lay before them. The lath afternoon sun glinted off the spires of the Trolltower and bathed the huge arch of the Northgate in a welcoming glow. Bronwyn drew in a long breath and released it on a sigh. Some of the tension slid from her neck and shoulders, and she reached out to pat her horse’s lathered neck.
“Stones!” exclaimed Ebenezer with more vehemence than usual. “Lookit there!”