Measure and the Truth

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Coryn and Jaymes strode side by side through the wreckage caused by the blast. Nothing about the smoking crater suggested it had once been a mighty gatehouse or part of any kind of structure. The broken rock was strewn haphazardly, with a shallow groove running through the middle to vaguely suggest where the explosive-packed tunnel had been mined underneath the ground.

The bodies of many men and ogres of the garrison had been blown to pieces by the explosion. Here and there lay a grotesque corpse-or a part of a corpse-but those, like everything else, were so coated with the ubiquitous gray dust that they resembled stone more than flesh. Coryn turned away from the sight of one apparently unmarked corpse, a dead Dark Knight pasted with so much fine powder that he looked like a skillfully rendered statue of a dead man.

“Over here,” Jaymes said, finding a channel in the debris. They passed between shattered walls rising like jagged cliffs to either side of them, and the emperor had to clasp a hand over his face just to keep the dust from choking him. He felt it coating his beard and skin, saw it on his leggings and tunic and boots.

Yet when he looked at the enchantress, her robe was as immaculately white as ever. He could only shake his head in amazement.

“We need to climb up into the tower, see who’s still alive up there, right?” he asked.

“Ankhar has been on the High Lookout many times every day,” Coryn reported. “I’m guessing he has quarters somewhere high up in the tower.”

“Yes,” Jaymes agreed. “Let’s go pay him a visit.”

He came to a section of broken stairway leading toward the top of one of the walls. The outer portions of the steps had been blasted away, but some remained. Clasping the railing with his left hand, he stepped carefully upward, kicking loose rubble out of the way. Coryn took his other hand and climbed behind him.

From the top of the wall, they could see the dwarves surging around the top of the curtain wall. Already they were halfway around the main tower, closing toward the north gatehouse. Dayr’s men were making good progress on the other half of the wall, and Jaymes had hopes that within another hour or so the entire perimeter of the great fortress would be in the hands of his men.

Of course, that still left the main tower, the mountainous structure that rose to its imposing height in the middle of the massive fortress. Sounds of battle rang from throughout that edifice as the two moved closer as fast as caution would allow.

They passed through a doorway where there had been heavy fighting. The bodies of three men of Palanthas were pulled to the side and arrayed in respectful repose, while a dozen dead Dark Knights sprawled just within the entry, just where they had fallen.

The pair started up the great central stairway, but after climbing fifty steps, they came up against the backs of a hundred of Weaver’s legionnaires, who were engaged in a furious clash with a company of ogres who had barricaded the way with benches, tables, and other furniture. The heart of the skirmish was about one floor above them, and they couldn’t see much, though they heard plenty of steel clashing, voices shouting and crying out in pain.

“We’ll flush ’em out with steel, Excellency,” a sergeant promised over his shoulder. “But it might take us an hour or two.”

“What about elsewhere in the tower? How goes the advance?”

“They’re blocking all the stairs now. We can beat ’em back one floor at a stretch-for as soon as we carry one stairway, we can outflank all the others on the same floor-but it’s a damn tall tower and it’ll take time, sir,” the man concluded awkwardly.

“Carry on,” Jaymes said, clapping him on the shoulder.

“There’s a way we can get around this,” Coryn said. “Come outside.”

She led Jaymes through a door onto one of the small parapets that dotted the outside of the massive tower. They stood side by side as she pulled a small bottle from within a pocket of her robe. “It’s a potion of flying,” she said. “I’ve been saving my magic, but I think we might as well head straight to the top now.”

“That’ll give us the advantage of surprise,” he agreed. Jaymes took the tiny bottle from her and quickly tossed back the bitter, burning liquid. The magic tingled through his limbs, and he merely had to will himself upward to rise from the parapet.

At the same time, Coryn cast a spell of flying on herself. Thirty heartbeats later, the wall of the tower slipped easily behind them as, like ascending birds, the magic-user and the emperor soared toward the High Lookout.

Ankhar held his spear in his right hand while clutching the waist of his ogress in his left. He could see the emperor’s army was going to take over the fortress. For all the talk of high walls and gatehouses, the defense had proved hopeless. Hundreds had been killed by the initial blast, and those left alive were dazed to the point where many could not even fight. As far away as he had been, Ankhar still felt the stunning effects of the explosion and had just begun to recover his senses. But the tower would fall.

Even so, the half-giant did not feel much disappointment. He was prepared to die there that day. He did experience a momentary tug of regret when he thought of the winter he might have spent there in a snug room with a fire and a large bed and Pond-Lily. But he shrugged away the thought. He was a warrior, and it was fitting he should die in battle.

Just then, Hoarst and the Nightmaster came through the door from the tower to join Ankhar and Pond-Lily on the lookout. The ogress and the half-giant, standing at the parapet while watching the battles rage below, turned at the approach of the two men.

“So, you’re alive,” the half-giant grunted at the sight of the black-masked priest. “I thought you probably blew up.” He gestured at the smoking crater where the gatehouse had stood.

“The Prince of Lies whispered a warning in my ear, and I teleported away an instant before the blast,” the Nightmaster said dispassionately.

“Hmm. You are favored by the Prince, indeed,” Ankhar said, impressed. He thought of du Chagne, and wondered if he should tell the priest what he had done. But he merely shrugged that thought away too. Dropping the man from those heights had been one of the most pleasurable things he had done in a very long time.

At the memory, Ankhar peered over the edge, hoping something blocked the sight of the man’s shattered body below. But something else-movement he did not expect to see-caught his eye.

“Oh, oh! Here comes the emperor and the White Witch!” the half-giant cried. Hoisting his spear over his head, the shook the weapon eagerly. “They fly like birds to us! Come here, birdies! At last-the birdies are bringing a fight to me, a fight for the Truth!”

In the next instant, the two humans, magically soaring, swept up and over the wall. Coryn paused in the air, hovering, while Jaymes stepped onto the platform, landing in a crouch and drawing his mighty sword. Ankhar raised his spear to greet the swordsman.

The Nightmaster, Pond-Lily, and the two wizards were all forgotten as the huge half-giant readied himself to meet his hated foe.

Then the Nightmaster cast a spell, and everything went dark.

Jaymes came to rest on the parapet and immediately charged toward Ankhar-until the darkness spell blinded him and he halted, spun, and dodged instinctively. He heard a clatter of stone against stone and realized the half-giant must have stabbed his huge spear into the ground, just missing him.

“Light!” roared the great brute. “I must see!”

“Use the darkness, fool!” the cleric’s voice hissed. “Strike about you!”

Air whooshed past Jaymes’s ear, and he knew Ankhar was taking the priest’s advice. The foe had a longer weapon, and he was too close already. The swordsman edged away, trying to keep away from the edge of the tower. Where was Coryn? Damn, he had to see!

“Burn!” Jaymes demanded, crouching and twisting in the magical darkness.

Giantsmiter erupted with crackling energy, limned with the searing blue flames. That fire pushed back the darkness in the man’s immediate vicinity. Ankhar stood right before him, and the half-giant reared back, retreating from the lunging attack, vanishing again into the murk of the priest’s cloaking spell.

Jaymes noticed the Nightmaster then, and he rushed at the priest with his weapon raised. The dark cleric cast another spell, this time causing an image of blurry force to gather in the air between the two men. The power of the great sword knocked the magic away, breaking the shimmering force field into shards, and the murk of the darkness spell broke as well.

“Look out!” cried Coryn. Flying, she swept around the central pillar, pursuing the Thorn Knight who was retreating in front of her.

Then something hit Jaymes from the side, and he darted out of the way of a deadly blow. Looking down in shock, he saw blood spilling from his hip. The chubby ogress, who was obviously Ankhar’s consort, stood there, a bloody knife in her hand, which she was drawing back for another blow. With a quick slash of his great sword, Giantsmiter, Jaymes cut her down, half slicing her head from her shoulders before he spun back to attack the priest.

From somewhere out of sight, he heard Ankhar’s wail of anguish.

The Nightmaster turned to run, reaching the door to the interior of the tower as the emperor charged, driving his blade through the black cleric’s back. As the priest gasped and stumbled sideways, Jaymes spun on his heel, swinging the sword so the impaled man slipped off the end of the blade. He struck the edge of the parapet and, with a wrenching drive, Jaymes pushed him over the lip. The high priest of Hiddukel, already dying, tumbled downward to sprawl near the body of Bakkard du Chagne.

But where was Ankhar?

Jaymes spun again and saw the half-giant crouching over the body of the bleeding ogress, still making his keening wail. Then the big creature stood and beat his chest. With a cry of rage more animal than articulate, Ankhar turned and charged toward Jaymes.

The emperor blocked the attack with a two-handed cross parry but was forced three steps backward by the weight of Ankhar’s rush. The half-giant smashed and stabbed with his spear, the emerald tip glowing like green fire, the monster’s roars and howls ringing nightmarishly. Jaymes retreated around the central spire, allowing his attacker to expend his energy.

He goaded Ankhar with a feint then stepped back, and back again. Each time the half-giant stabbed at the human, he skipped nimbly out of the way. The big chieftain began to swing his spear like a club, and Jaymes evaded his blows, steadily falling back, going around and around the ring of the High Lookout. Ankhar’s eyes bulged; his tusks were slick with drool and foam; his roars became more enraged. Finally, he swung his spear again, missing, letting the blow carry wide, and the swordsman saw his chance.

Giantsmiter came up, driving like an arrow, piercing that immense chest from the left side, stabbing under the chieftain’s rib cage and slicing through the creature’s heart. The sword forged to slay those of the giant races found a worthy victim in that great son of a hill giant and an ogress.

Ankhar sighed, a sound almost gentle in its rush of sound. The half-giant swayed, and Jaymes stepped back, pulling his weapon free from the deep, gory wound. The blade was no longer burning, as if the fire had been slaked by the hulking warrior’s blood.

And when Ankhar toppled to the floor, his spear tumbled from his lifeless fingers, and the glowing brilliance in the emerald head flickered, faded, and finally went out.

Coryn groped through the ether, trying desperately to track the Thorn Knight called Hoarst. He had opened a door between dimensions and stepped through, escaping from the High Clerist’s Tower, from Solamnia, even from Krynn. But the white wizard had hurled herself after him before he could vanish entirely.

He lurked and swirled through the mists, evading and stalking at the same time. Magic flew at Coryn in darts and bolts, and she parried each attack, launching lethal spells of her own. He blocked and fled. She pursued.

The white wizard cast a lightning bolt at the gray blur somewhere before her and watched as her crackling spear of magic broke in two, passing to either side of the target. The gray mage spat back with a blinding array of colorful balls that whirled like scythe blades, and Coryn shrank herself to an insubstantial cloud, letting the deadly slashes whip right through her suddenly intangible body.

Solid once again, she blasted him with missiles and bombarded him with a fireball that erupted like a small sun in that murky cosmos. His gray robe singed, the Thorn Knight nevertheless ducked away without suffering any real damage. A blast of frigid air frosted her face and numbed her skin, but neither did she suffer lethal or crippling wounds.

Hoarst came at her suddenly with a barrage of smoldering, speeding boulders that blasted toward her like meteors. Her hand shot out, wielding a shield of magic that knocked the first of them to the side and sent the next ricocheting through the nothingness. The third she reversed entirely, and it shot back toward the caster.

The Thorn Knight barely dodged that counterattack, and once again fled through the mists. The Mistress of the White Robes sped after him, casting spells, drawing on the greatest depths of her magical powers. For countless and timeless miles, they battled. They passed oceans and moons, and whole dimensions swirled around them for less than an instant. Gods watched and wagered on the contest; worlds swept by in the blink of an eye as they raced and chased through the planes of all existence.

For one heartbeat there was utter blackness; in the next, it was as though they were in the middle of the sun. Coryn cast up a globe of protection and watched in horror as the plasma of life seethed and burned just beyond the barrier, trying to consume her. She veered away from the searing inferno, spotting her foe, and the chase moved on.

They were under the ocean; they flew through the sky; they stood on opposite mountaintops and hurled thunderbolts at each other; they penetrated to the very interior of the world-and out the other side.

They hurtled through space. The moons loomed as terrifying obstacles. Coryn knew those moons, for they were central to all the orders of magic, but they were deadly close up. The red moon, Lunitari, burned, its searing radiance blistering their faces, singeing their eyebrows, charring their magical robes. Then Nuitari, the black moon, suddenly appeared, almost invisible but fiercely powerful, a void so compelling, so hungry, it almost drew both of them in. Only with the greatest exertion did the wizards shear away, coming around the black moon, breaking free from its murk.

And in that new brightness, a white moon suddenly loomed before them, so silvery pure it was almost blinding. Coryn sped toward that moon, drawn by the pure beauty and gravity of its embrace. Hoarst followed, but he was screaming in terror, compelled closer by the unforgiving pull of the planetary body.

And there was no turning away.

Coryn returned as suddenly as she had left. Her hair, where it had been barely flecked with lightness, had turned gray, though her face was unlined by age. She staggered wearily, collapsing into Jaymes’s arms.

They settled to the floor of the High Lookout, their backs braced by the parapet. In the tower, the sounds of fighting were dying out. The Dark Knights and the ogres who survived, sensing certain defeat and knowing their leaders had perished, were surrendering, and the emperor’s men were at last accepting prisoners.

“What happened?” Jaymes asked Coryn softly, holding her on the parapet, feeling her trembling slowly subside.

“The Thorn Knight met my god, Solinari-the white moon,” she said. “He will not be returning to Krynn.”