The Cerulean Storm

FOUR THE CLOUD ROAD

Neeva crawled forward on the cloud road, a long ribbon of black slate hanging across the face of an enormous cliff. She reached the jagged brink where a section of the bridge had fallen away, and peered down into an arid valley. Far below lay the missing section of road, a jumble of broken rockwork strewn across a drift of red sand. The warrior saw no indication of what had caused the collapse, only a handful of limestone buttresses half-buried beneath shattered slabs of paving stone.

“This road’s as old as Tyr,” she growled, more to herself than to the companions waiting behind her. “Why’d it have to collapse today?”

Coming as it did at the start of their journey, the breakdown did not bode well for their mission against Borys-or for the legion’s chances of reaching the giants before nightfall. Already the sun hung low over the western mountains, its rays striking the granite cliff at a direct angle, while the Tyrian warriors waited impatiently at the beginning of the Cloud Road. There were a thousand of them, all human, armed with huge obsidian axes, bone tridents with serrated tines, saw-toothed scimitars, spiked balls hanging at the ends of long coils of rope, and a variety of other weapons as deadly as man’s infinite desire to murder.

Neeva looked across the missing stretch of road. A brightly cloaked merchant stood on the other side, his image dancing in the heat waves pouring off the cliff face. The man was staring into the breach and scratching his ear, his face hidden beneath the broad brim of his great round hat. Shaking his head in despair, he looked over his shoulder at a pair of inixes, wagon-sized lizards with horny beaks, pincerlike jaws, and serpentine tails. The reptiles were harnessed to a cargo dray that was so large that one side was pressed tight against the cliff, while the other hung over the outside edge of the Cloud Road.

Neeva backed away from the gap.

Magnus took her arm and helped her to her feet. “What did you find?” he asked. The windsinger and Rikus had joined Neeva and the others in Tyr, shortly after the council had voted to send the city legion to help Rkard slay the Dragon.

“I didn’t see much,” Neeva reported. “There was nothing in the rubble to suggest something heavy made it collapse.”

“I thought as much,” Caelum said. He pointed at the square cavities where the buttresses had been mounted into the cliff face. “Those joining holes are in perfect condition. There aren’t any broken posts sticking in them, or any chips around the edges.”

“Which means?” asked Magnus.

“That the supports didn’t snap because of a load or sudden impact,” Caelum answered. “They came straight out. The buttresses were pulled-intentionally.”

“Could be more giants,” Rikus suggested. The mul was just returning from the beginning of the road, where he had gone to fetch a rope from the legion’s supply kanks.

Neeva shook her head. “We’re twice as high as a giant stands,” she said. “Besides, why would they bother? If giants didn’t want us to get across, they’d just smash the road, not pull it apart.”

“Well, whoever did it, they aren’t going to stop us.” Rikus glanced at Rkard, who stood near his father’s side, and asked, “You’re not afraid to cross that gap on a rope, are you?”

“No.” The boy answered sharply, frowning as though insulted.

Rikus chuckled, then said, “Good. If we don’t reach the giants before dusk, our plan won’t work.”

They had decided the best way to make the giants leave the valley was to lure them away. While the legion surrounded the titans, Rikus and Sadira would interrogate the invaders about Agis, Tithian, and what they knew of the Dark Lens. During the questioning, the mul would let it slip that the Lens was not in Tyr and that they were on their way to recover it. Then they would allow one of the titans to escape. Sadira would use her magic to spy on him and be sure that he returned to his fellows with the news that their Oracle was not in the city. Once Sadira was certain their ruse had worked, the legion would leave an obvious trail for the giants, so that any further war parties would go after the legion instead of attacking the city.

Rikus sat down on the road’s jagged brink and wrapped the rope around his waist. Magnus watched him for a moment, then scowled.

“Have you thought this out?” the windsinger asked.

“Of course,” Rikus answered. “Clavis said it would take a day to fix the road, and we don’t have a day. So, we’ll have to rope across.”

“And then what?” asked Magnus. “You can’t expect the whole legion to crawl across that rope. It would take too long-and with so many warriors, dozens are sure to lose their grip and fall.”

“The legion can take its time, if it needs to,” said Neeva. “We can fetch my militia from Agis’s estate. Our numbers aren’t as great, but there should be enough to support Sadira while she attacks with her magic.”

“Speaking of Sadira, I’m sure she could solve our problem easily enough,” Caelum suggested. “Maybe Magnus should send a message to her?”

Sadira had stayed behind in Tyr, making provisions with the Veiled Alliance to help defend the city in the legion’s absence. She had promised to catch the legion long before it reached the giants, and Neeva was surprised that the sorceress had not joined them already.

“That’s the wisest thing anyone has suggested yet,” Magnus said. He went a few steps up the road and began to work his magic.

“I’ll take a line across anyway,” Rikus said, finishing his knot. “We don’t have any time to waste if Sadira can’t come yet.”

After handing the other end of the rope to Caelum, Rikus reached out and thrust his hand into the square hole where the first missing buttress had been lodged. The mul swung out onto the cliff and reached for the next hole, grimacing as his face rubbed over the hot stone. His fingertips barely caught the bottom edge of the dark square. He worked them deeper into the cavity, then released his first hand and slipped it into the next hole.

Rikus shrieked in fear and surprise. He jerked his hand out of the far hole and began to fling it around madly. A silvery creature about as long as a stiletto had attached itself to his middle finger.

Neeva pulled her dagger and kneeled at the edge of the road. “Hold still, Rikus!” she ordered. “I can’t see what you’ve got.”

“I’ve got nothing!” the mul roared. “It’s got me.”

In spite of his shock, Rikus managed to steady his hand. A huge scorpion had clamped its pincers onto his middle finger, cutting him clear to the bone. The barb of the tail was buried deep into the back of his hand, with a great cone of red flesh already swelling up around the puncture.

“That scorpion’s huge!” Caelum observed. “It couldn’t have been in the hole when the buttress was there.”

“Who cares?” Rikus growled. “Just get it off!” The mul pushed his hand toward the road but could not quite reach because he had to cross his arm in front of his body.

Neeva lay down on her belly and stretched out to cut the pincers. The scorpion pulled its tail from Rikus’s hand and struck at her. It moved with such blinding speed that she barely managed to twist her blade flat and deflect the venom-dripping barb. She changed targets and sliced at the thing’s body, but the creature was every bit as quick as she was. Its tail lashed again, this time arcing at her wrist.

Neeva pulled back to avoid being stung. “I’ve seen lightning strike slower!”

“I could’ve told you that!” Rikus growled.

Pulling his hand back toward his body, the mul lowered his head and opened his mouth. There was a crunch of splintering carapace, then Rikus turned toward her and spit the scorpion’s severed tail from between his sharp teeth. The mul extended his arm toward her. Already, his hand was so swollen that it looked more like a bear’s paw.

“Get the damn thing off-now!”

As Neeva reached for the scorpion, its carapace suddenly changed from pearly gray to yellow. The color did not fade so much as slip off the arachnid’s body like a passing shadow. For an instant, the formless apparition hovered in the air, then it floated down to the hole into which Rikus had been sticking his hand when he was stung.

The scorpion itself turned gold and began to shrink, until it was so small that its pincers would no longer fit around the mul’s thick fingers. It fell free and tumbled away, its tiny body vanishing from sight long before it hit the ground.

“By the sun!” cursed Caelum.

Neeva tossed her dagger onto the road, then grabbed Rikus’s arm with both hands. She felt her husband’s powerful arms slip around her waist, then the dwarf pulled both her and the mul back onto the road. Caelum kneeled in the dust and grabbed Rikus’s wrist with both hands, his stubby fingers pressing down on the veins to shut off the blood flow. Neeva did not need to ask why the sun-cleric was so concerned. Of all the poisonous beasts in the Athasian desert, gold scorpions were among the worst, with venom powerful enough to drop an adult mekillot in five steps. Of course, such creatures did not normally change sizes or disguise their color beneath silver shadows, but Neeva was too concerned with Rikus’s welfare to dwell on the matter right now.

“Hold his wrist, tight!” Caelum ordered.

Neeva did as commanded, and her husband raised his own hand to the sky. “The sun’s heat will boil the poison away.”

Rikus grimaced. “This is going to hurt, isn’t it?” The mul’s eyes were glassy and his words slurred.

Caelum lowered his hand, fiery red and smoking from the fingertips. It glowed so brightly that it was translucent, save for the dark bones beneath the skin. The dwarf laid his palm over the scorpion puncture and squeezed Rikus’s hand as hard as he could. There was a soft sizzle, and streamers of greasy black smoke rose between his fingers.

Rkard slipped over to watch, placing his back to the cliffs. His face paled at the sight of Rikus’s scorched skin, but he did not look away. Neeva considered sending him elsewhere but decided against it. Her son was as much a sun-cleric as he was a warrior. If she attempted to shield him from the unpleasant sight of a wound, he would never learn his father’s art.

When an involuntary hiss slipped through Rikus’s clenched teeth, Rkard stepped closer and laid his hand on the warrior’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The sun demands pain in exchange for its magic.”

“I know.” The mul winced then added, “Your father’s done this to me before.”

Caelum continued to hold his hands over the wound for many moments, until Neeva could no longer see the bones outlined beneath his flesh, and the fiery glow had completely faded. By then, Rikus was only half-conscious and hardly seemed to realize where he was.

“What happened?” asked Sadira’s voice.

Neeva looked up to see the sorceress coming toward the small group, trailing black wisps of the shadow spell that she had used to answer Magnus’s summons.

“A gold scorpion stung him,” Neeva explained. The sorceress kneeled at her husband’s side and took his injured hand between hers. Although the swelling had gone down, the flesh remained black and scaly.

“Is he going to die?” Sadira asked.

“No. Father won’t allow it!” said Rkard, his hairless brow furrowed in determination.

“That’s right,” said Caelum. “He’ll be a little sick for a few hours, but he’ll live.”

The sorceress’s blue eyes seemed to glow a little brighter. “Thank you.”

Sadira rose, cradling her husband’s limp form in her arms. Although the mul probably weighed half again as much as a normal man, the sorceress showed no sign of strain at lifting his heavy body.

She passed Rikus to Magnus. “If you’ll bear Rikus for a while, I’ll get us across this gap.”

The sorceress took the rope from around Rikus’s waist and lay down at the end of the road. She leaned over the brink and tied one end to the last buttress, then returned to her feet and tossed the coil toward the merchant standing on the other side of the gap.

At first, Neeva thought the rope would fall short of its target, but Sadira uttered a quiet incantation that sent the line drifting straight into the merchant’s hands. “If you’ll tie that off, I’ll bring you and your wagon across,” she called.

For a moment, the man seemed too astonished to reply. Then he dropped down and fastened the line to a buttress beneath the road. Sadira smiled and yelled for him to stand back, then took the rope in her hand and spoke the words to another spell. A sheet of crimson light spread outward from both sides of the cord. Within moments, a red, flickering ribbon of luminescence spanned the gap, connecting the two severed ends of the Cloud Road.

“Come on ahead,” Sadira called. She continued to kneel, holding one hand on the rope. “My spell is more than strong enough to hold both you and your beasts.”

The merchant stared at the scintillating patch and did not move.

“I’ll go across and show him it’s safe,” Caelum volunteered.

“No, I’ll go,” said Neeva. She checked her harness to make sure both of her steel short swords were readily accessible. “With buttresses slipping from their joining holes and gold scorpions disguising themselves as something else, there’s something strange here. The merchant might be part of it.”

The warrior stepped onto the bridge and started across. With each footfall, the road swayed slightly under her weight. Through the soles of her sandals, she felt a strange, pulsing heat rising off the shimmering surface, and she understood the merchant’s reluctance to lead his inixes onto the unstable road. Even if it would support the weight of his huge wagon, coaxing the skittish draft lizards over a hot, vibrating surface would not be easy.

After Neeva had taken a dozen paces, the merchant stepped onto his end of the shimmering bridge. The inixes kept their gazes focused straight ahead and pulled the heavy wagon with no sign of spooking. As each set of wheels settled onto the road, the pathway swayed and undulated beneath Neeva’s feet, making her feel as though she were standing on water. She continued forward, thinking it wiser to meet the stranger in the middle of the link.

The man kept his eyes on the road, hiding his face beneath the broad brim of his hat. He wore a striped robe of many bright colors, though its vibrance was dulled by a gray coating of road dust. His gloves were worn and black, as were his belt and boots. The inixes behind him had silver-gray hides, which served to reinforce Neeva’s fear that this was a trap. Usually, the beasts were covered with a mottled assortment of scales ranging from rusty red to murky brown, hues that camouflaged the beasts in the rocky wastelands of Athas.

Neeva stopped at the halfway point. “Hail, trader,” she called. “Have you waited long?”

The man did not look up.

“Before you come farther, I’ll know the name of the man who wishes to pass over this bridge.” She rested her hands on the pommels of her twin swords.

The merchant continued forward, his hat shielding his eyes. Neeva drew her swords and stood ready to defend herself.

“Speak,” she ordered.

The man was now so close that she could see that his clothes were not covered with road dust, as she had thought earlier. They seemed immersed in a pale shadow, as if he were lurking in some back alley in the Elven Market. The same was true of the inixes, for Neeva could now see dim blotches of much-faded color on their hides.

“Stop and show yourself!” she demanded.

The merchant raised his arms to about chest height. Though he carried no weapon, Neeva took the gesture as a hostile one. She waited for the man to close within two steps, then raised both her short swords. The merchant threw his arms up to ward off the expected blows. She slipped one blade over his guard and slapped the hat away, baring his head.

The warrior gasped at what she saw. The man was a corpse, with a swollen tongue protruding from between his cracked lips and the hollow expression of death in his eyes. A gray pall covered his flesh, not in the fashion of his inherent color, but like a silken shroud clinging to his lifeless features.

“It’s a wraith!” Neeva yelled.

Having fought similar creatures during the war with Urik, the warrior knew instantly that she was in trouble. Wraiths had no bodies of their own. Instead, they took control of other beings, such as the corpse before her or the gold scorpion that had stung Rikus. She had even seen them animate marble statues.

The wraith launched itself at her, the corpse’s arms outstretched, and its filthy fingers slashing at her eyes. Neeva swung her second sword, twisting her whole body to increase the force of the blow. Her blade sank deep into the neck. There was a pop as the head came free, but the corpse’s momentum carried it forward. She caught the brunt of its charge on her shoulder, then dived away and rolled.

Neeva came up facing her companions. Sadira continued to kneel at the edge of the road, holding onto the rope to keep her spell activated. Caelum was just charging past the sorceress with a raised mace, while Rkard followed a few steps behind with Rikus’s sword clutched in both hands.

“Rkard, no!” she yelled.

Caelum’s crimson eyes went wide, and he spun around instantly, almost impaling himself on the Scourge as his son crashed into him. He swept Rkard off the ground and started back up the road.

A shiver rolled down Neeva’s spine as a pair of cold hands touched her neck. She raised a hand above her head and spun. As she came around, she brought her arm down and trapped her assailant’s wrists between her elbow and body.

Neeva found herself staring into a pair of sapphire eyes set into a face of ghostly gray shadow that sat upon the stump of the corpse’s severed neck. The wavering visage was that of a sneering man with a sharp chin, an arrowlike nose, and hollow cheeks.

The boy! it commanded. Although the wraith’s lips moved when it spoke, no sound came from them, and Neeva heard the words inside her head. Borys commands it!

Neeva’s mouth went dry as she realized that not only did her attacker resemble the creatures she had encountered during the war with Urik, it was one of them. Before their deaths a thousand years ago, the wraiths had served as knights in Borys’s campaign to eradicate the dwarven race. They had even fought at his side when he had used the Scourge to mortally wound the last king of the dwarves, Rkard. Now, having returned to their master’s service, they had come to destroy Rkard’s namesake and heir, her young son.

“This time, Rkard shall not fall!” Neeva yelled.

Still holding the corpse’s forearms trapped beneath her elbow, the warrior plunged the sword in her free hand into its stomach. The weapon sank deep and true, the tip driving up into the heart. Blood, cold and dark with death, oozed from the wound.

The dead thing simply raised its arms and clasped its hands around Neeva’s throat. The cold fingers sank deep into her flesh. Her temples began to pound, and she felt dizzy. Her vision narrowed to a tunnel, a hissing roar filled her ears, and her knees grew weak.

Leaving her second sword buried in her attacker, Neeva snaked her hand over one of his arms and under the other. She clasped her hands together around the pommel of her other weapon and pivoted. The motion sent the dead merchant swinging toward the side of the road, and the warrior used all her strength to pry the thing’s arms from her throat.

The corpse’s grip broke, and it soared away, tumbling over the edge of the road toward the red sands below. After the body hit, a gray shadow drifted away and began a slow rise back toward the road. The warrior watched the wraith long enough to be sure the thing would take many moments to reach her again, then turned her attention to a more immediate danger: the inixes.

The gray-mantled beasts were only a dozen steps away, scrambling forward as fast as they could pull the heavy wagon. Their eyes sparkled with gemlike light, one’s red and the other’s yellow, leaving little doubt in the warrior’s mind that the beasts were also controlled by wraiths.

Neeva turned and ran. Had the things been normal inixes, it would have been a simple matter for her to find a vulnerable spot and kill them both, even with her small sword. But, animated as they were by wraiths, the only way to stop them was by cutting their huge bodies to shreds or pushing them off the bridge, and she would need help to do either.

“Borys sent them for Rkard!” she called, pointing at her son. “Take him and go!”

Caelum passed their son to Magnus. The windsinger started up the road with Rikus tucked under one arm and Rkard under the other, and the dwarf raised a hand toward the sun.

Neeva glanced over her shoulder and saw that the inixes remained a dozen paces behind. Normally, the lizards would have caught her in a matter of steps, but with a heavy cargo dray harnessed to their shoulders, they were not as swift as usual.

“Sadira will help me, Caelum. You go with Rkard!” Neeva commanded. She pointed at the many fissures lacing the hard granite next to the road. “The scorpion that stung Rikus was possessed by a wraith. There may be more.”

Caelum stopped short of casting his spell and ran after Magnus, positioning himself between the windsinger and the wall.

“Hurry, Neeva!” Sadira called, her hand still on the rope. “I can’t cast another spell until I drop this one.”

As Sadira spoke, a flurry of gray forms streamed out of nearby crevices and streaked over to her. Before Neeva could cry a warning, the wraiths attacked, their immaterial hands sinking into the sorceress’s flesh as though it were air.

A cloud of black shadow billowed from Sadira’s mouth. Her glowing eyes flared white, and her ebony body trembled with the pain of the onslaught. She did not release the rope to save herself.

One more gray streak flashed up from the valley below, slipping over the side of the Cloud Road to join the attack on Sadira. Neeva looked down and saw that the wraith that had animated the merchant’s corpse was gone. It had been waiting to join its fellows in the assault against the sorceress.

The wraiths had played her for a fool, Neeva realized. They had never intended to take Rkard but had only demanded him so that the company would concentrate on protecting the child. Then they had struck at their true target: Sadira.

Behind the sorceress, Magnus was rushing back to help, leaving Caelum to guard Rikus and Rkard, whom he had dropped upon the Cloud Road. Neeva did not think he would arrive in time. She kneeled and felt the roadway shuddering with the heavy footsteps of the inixes.

“Drop the spell!” Neeva yelled.

Sadira shook her head and did not release the rope. Her emberlike eyes burned with pain. She flung her free arm about madly, trying to shake off a pair of wraiths clinging to it. Her ebony body had turned gray in many places.

“I’m fine!” Neeva yelled. The warrior pressed her hand to the pulsing road, directly over the rope, and called, “Save yourself!”

Neeva faced the inixes and found the huge beasts upon her. The first beast snapped at her head. She ducked, thrusting her sword into the lizard’s maw. The reptile closed its jaws on the steel blade and whipped its head around, ripping the weapon from the warrior’s hand. The second inix opened its sharp beak, pushing the first reptile aside.

The surface of the road suddenly grew cold. It stopped shimmering, and Neeva knew that Sadira had dropped the spell. The warrior felt the bite of the rope across her palm, then she was falling. She closed her fingers around the cord, all that remained of Sadira’s bridge, and caught herself.

The dray dropped onto the rope, causing a sharp jerk, then tipped to one side. As the wagon fell past Neeva, the second inix snapped at her dangling legs. She kicked its beak away, and the beast was gone.

When the warrior looked back to her companions, a sick feeling filled her chest. Sadira was engulfed in a swirling ball of black shadow and gray haze, just transparent enough to reveal that she had risen no farther than her hands and knees. The sorceress’s limbs were all shaking violently, while her weakly glowing eyes stared blankly at the road’s slate surface.

Magnus stood behind her, singing an angry, tempestuous song, while a hot wind tore at the gray wraiths in a vain attempt to rip the apparitions away. Caelum was cautiously approaching the pair, taking care to keep himself between the wraiths and his son.

Neeva hauled herself toward her companions, traveling along the rope hand over hand. The two wraiths that had been animating the inixes streaked up to join the attack. As soon as they rose above the surface of the road, Magnus’s searing windsong sent them tumbling away.

They circled back to approach from below the surface.

Neeva reached the edge of the gap and transferred her hands to the slate roadway. “The last two are coming from underneath!” she warned.

Magnus’s shoulders drooped, and Neeva knew that the windsinger’s spell would not penetrate through stone. Nevertheless, he did what he could to help Sadira, directing his voice down at the surface of the road. The hot gusts simply curled up into his own face. As the last two wraiths passed through the stone directly beneath Sadira and joined the attack, Neeva pulled herself onto the road.

A groan of exhaustion escaped Sadira’s lips, and the sorceress collapsed to her side. The ball of shadow and haze settled over her like a veil, leaving nothing exposed except her flowing locks of amber hair and her emberlike eyes, now blazing a sickly hue of greenish-blue. The murky shroud turned completely black, then flashed to gray, and began to alternate between the two colors at rapid intervals.

“We’ve got to do something!” Neeva said.

“We can’t,” said Caelum. “The wraiths are swarming her spirit. Any attempt to drive them away will harm her more than it does them.”

“Then we have to attack them another way.” Neeva stepped past her husband and took the Scourge from Rkard, who still held the enchanted sword.

“What will you do with that?” asked Magnus.

“I saw Rikus slice a shadow giant’s hand off with this blade,” the warrior explained. “Maybe it will work against wraiths, too.”

Neeva studied Sadira’s flickering shroud for several moments. Finally, the warrior felt confident she could predict the changes. She waited for the pall to turn gray and gently drew the tip of the Scourge along the sorceress’s shoulder, hoping it would slice through a wraith’s insubstantial body without harming Sadira.

A vicious screech echoed off the cliff wall, and a gray ribbon flew off the whirling mass. It shot up the Scourge’s blade in a pearly streak, then expanded to form a gray, cloudlike mass around the weapon.

The warrior thought she had destroyed a wraith. The gray cloud slowly assumed a shape vaguely resembling that of a human female. A pair of orange eyes appeared in the head, and the hazy figure began to shrink. Neeva felt a searing sting as the apparition passed through her flesh, then the sword’s hilt twisted in her hand.

“Get back!” she yelled. “The wraith’s trying to animate the Scourge!”

The sword wrenched violently against her thumb and came free. It did not fall to the ground but floated tip down in front of the warrior. The entire weapon had turned gray, and a pair of angry orange eyes burned out from the pommel. The point slowly began to rise toward Neeva’s heart. Caelum started to reach for the hilt but pulled back when a line of blue frost shot down the length of the blade.

The Scourge stopped rising. The steel began to quiver, filling the air with an eerie, high-pitched wail.

“What’s happening?” Neeva asked.

“The Scourge’s magic is too powerful for the wraith,” Magnus replied, a note of urgency in his voice. “Perhaps we should move-”

Before the windsinger finished, the sword emitted a blue flash of cold. The blade stopped vibrating, and the shrill wail of quivering steel was replaced by a howl of pain. Ribbons of gray shadow flew in all directions, trailing droplets of sleet.

Neeva and the others threw themselves to the ground. The Scourge continued to float, wobbling madly. The blade flexed almost in two. It straightened with a deafening knell, and the sword’s shroud exploded into a cloud of gray haze. For an instant, the road seemed very quiet. Then the weapon clanged to the ground, and the cloud dissolved into a squall of ash-colored snowflakes. The tiny crystals did not even last long enough to fall. In the blistering heat of the day, they evaporated long before they reached the Cloud Road.

Neeva retrieved the Scourge, then gasped in alarm. The sword was as cold as ice, but that was not what troubled her. The blade had lost its silvery sheen. It was now covered with a dull gray stain that made it look more like tin than steel.

“What have I done?” she gasped.

Magnus came and stood at her side. After studying the sword for a moment, he gently took it from her hands. “The wraith’s touch has tainted the blade.”

“Can we fix it?” Neeva asked.

“Perhaps, with time,” answered the windsinger. He kneeled next to Sadira, who remained covered beneath the murky shroud that Neeva had been trying to remove. “But for now, we have more pressing problems. The giants are still trapped at Pauper’s Hope, and the Cloud Road remains impassable. Once the sun sets, we can’t stop them from rampaging-especially with Sadira and Rikus both unconscious.”

“Rikus might be well by then,” said Caelum. “As for Sadira …”

“Even if we can help her prevail against the wraiths, I suspect she will be unconscious until morning,” said Magnus, “Still, we can hope. I see nothing else we can do.”

“I do,” said Neeva. She turned and looked toward Agis’s farm, where the Kledan militia was awaiting their return. “Find me a runner who can show my warriors the way from the Asticles Estate to Pauper’s Hope.”

Magnus folded his ears in doubt. “Your men are brave, but are they a match for giants?”

Neeva shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I’ve learned never to underestimate a dwarf.”