The Ancient

TWENTY-NINE

Despoilment, Inevitability, and Questionable Triumph

By the time Bransen got down to the ice shelf, most of the trolls were either down or scattering and more than half of the powrie contingent was already in a full sprint to the edge of the chasm just south of their position. Both their courage and commitment stunned Bransen, for not only were they charging headlong into the waiting giants, but they were putting themselves into a position where they would be afforded one less avenue of retreat, where, if the battle went badly, they would find no escape.

It wasn’t stupidity, or ignorance of battle techniques, that launched them to the chasm, Bransen knew. They weren’t going to retreat. They were either taking the fight right to Badden’s castle across the way, or they were going to die trying.

His surprise and confusion over their level of commitment nearly cost Bransen his life, as a troll spear flew in for his side. At the last moment, and with the prompting of a cry from Milkeila, the Highwayman half turned and snapped a backhand against the spear, just below its stone head. The force of the blow flipped the light spear into a near-right-angled turn, and the nimble Bransen flipped his hand and snatched it from the air, his legs moving perfectly to catch up to his shifting shoulders.

He sent the missile back out at the nearest troll, though he didn’t know if that was the missile-thrower or not. The creature flailed wildly and tried to fall away, and indeed did fall away, though not as it had intended, embedded as it was on the end of the spear.

Bransen thought to yank that spear back out of the squirming troll as he ran past. But he shook his head, confident that his hands and feet would prove to be all the weaponry he needed at that time. He skied into a pair of trolls, spinning a circle-kick as he came in. That one foot turned both their spears aside, and as he came around fully, Bransen quick-stepped forward, snapping off quick left and right jabs into the faces of the respective trolls. He pressed forward, staying inside the optimum reach of their weapons. He spun to face the one on his left and drove his elbow back behind him to further smash the face of the other.

A fast left-right-left combination knocked the troll facing him back and to the ground; then Bransen similarly dropped, turning sidelong and coiling his legs as he did. The troll behind him, now below his prostrated form, had just begun to recover from the elbow to the face when Bransen swept his lower, left leg across, hooking the troll behind the ankle and sliding its foot forward, while Bransen’s right leg straight-kicked for that same knee.

Legs weren’t supposed to bend like that, as the troll’s howl of agony proved.

Bransen thrust his left arm down below him, driving his upper torso up from the ice. He tucked his legs again and spun with the momentum, right into a standing, turning position that allowed him to circle-kick the descending troll right in the face.

Its head snapped over backward with such force that its neck bones shattered.

A roar from behind turned Bransen around just in time to see a giant topple over, grasping both its knees. The powries wasted no time, swarming over the behemoth with glee, stabbing it and slashing it and wiping their berets across the wounds.

Bransen’s jaw dropped open in disbelief as he lifted his gaze to view the fight beyond the fallen giant, to where a group of powries was rushing to and fro and back again, in and around the legs of a futilely swatting giant who never got close to hitting any of them.

Oh, but they were hitting the giant! Great, reverberating smacks, and always about the knee. They looked like wild lumberjacks chasing animated trees. The giant danced and tried to keep ahead of them, but they’d only reverse direction, dart between its legs, and whomp it yet again. They howled with excitement and sheer enjoyment, and that only infuriated the beast more, it seemed, and its swings became more frantic, and more futile. Other powries joined in the dance, chopping, always chopping, at the giant’s legs. Down it went, to be swarmed and finished.

Bransen remembered his feelings upon first seeing the giants. How puny and helpless he had thought himself. But the powries had long ago found the answer to the imposing, seemingly impregnable behemoths. One after another, the giants fell. And the powries rolled along, berets glowing in the afternoon sun.

Cormack and Milkeila collected the stunned Bransen as they rushed to catch up. “We’ll be at the ice castle within the hour!” Cormack predicted.

Accurately, Bransen knew.

Toniquay sang great songs of rousing tenor, heroic deeds, captured and amplified and now enhanced magically to provide more than a morale boost, but an actual physical boost to the listener. And the warriors of Alpinador, the brave men and women of the many tribes that inhabited Mithranidoon, lived up to their heroic heritage. With coordination and fury, their line drove deep into troll ranks; whenever one group broke through and spearheaded out in front, those to either flank appropriately stretched behind them, so that instead of having any group get caught out alone and surrounded, the length of the barbarian line surged forward in a series of small wedge formations. One-against-one, there was no contest to be found. The larger, stronger, better-armed Alpinadorans stabbed ahead with impunity, skewering troll after troll.

And yet, Toniquay and the other leaders observed, their progress proved painfully slow. Waves of trolls came against them. Mobs of the monsters rushed in, leading with a barrage of flying spears that set the barbarians back on their heels and forced them to pause and cover with their wicker and leather shields.

Toniquay looked to the distant ice castle, their goal, and then to the west, toward the dipping sun. They would not get to the castle in daylight, he surmised to his dismay, and the night would not be kind.

A cheer in the southern end of the Alpinadoran line turned Toniquay that way, and when he noted the fierce fighting there, he did not at first understand. As he focused, though, he heard the bolstering cry “Another giant is down!”

He swept his gaze out farther to the south, to the powries, the fallen monk, the stranger, and Milkeila. The shaman’s tight old face crinkled with confusion and consternation; were these to be the saviors of Mithranidoon?

All he had for weapons were his hands and feet, and Bransen really didn’t see how either would do any damage to the giant battling the powries before him. But he had to try.

A dwarf rolled right around the behemoth’s treelike leg, ending with a solid, two-handed wallop of his heavy club against the front of the giant’s knee. As the behemoth lurched and howled, Bransen closed the last dozen running strides and leaped high. Good luck was with him, for even as he lifted, the dwarf, having gone around to the back of the giant’s leg, drove in a dagger, then smacked it hard with his club. The giant lurched backward this time, distracted and overbalancing just as Bransen crashed in and began launching a series of heavy punches. Over went the giant, crashing down to its back on the ice, and Bransen hopped up to a crouch, sprang into a forward somersault, and double-stomped his heels into the giant’s eyes.

The giant howled and swatted him, launching him away, and only good fortune and a beam of wood prevented Bransen from going over the lip of the chasm. As soon as he had steadied himself, his legs dangling over the ledge, he looked back in fear, expecting the behemoth to rush over and finish him, but the damage had been done, and now powries swarmed over the supine giant, hacking with abandon.

Cormack slid down low and clamped his hands on Bransen’s shoulders, desperately steadying him. Bransen started to assure the man that he was all right, but a shriek from the north, a supernatural, preternatural piercing screech, cut him short.

When he looked at the small dragon swooping across the lines of cowering barbarians, Bransen knew at once that it was Ancient Badden. Leathery wings propelled the beast with great speed, its long hind legs and talon-tipped feet snapping down to keep the warriors ducking and diving aside.

It screeched again, and there was magic behind that powerful wail, for many men fell to their knees, screaming in pain and grabbing at their ears. A dragon claw caught a woman by the shoulder and jerked her from the ground with such force that one of her boots was left behind! With that one foot holding her tight, the dragon’s other foot raked at her, talons tearing clothing and skin with ease.

The creature banked and rolled back under, and with a sudden halt of its momentum, hurled the broken woman like a missile through the throng of barbarians. The dragon breathed forth a line of fire, immolating some and creating an obscuring fog.

Spears reached up at it but they seemed to bother the beast not at all, for they did not penetrate its armored body, or what seemed like a magical barrier encompassing that body. The defiant dragon issued that deafening, earsplitting screech again, sending more warriors to their knees in pain.

“We have to help them!” Cormack cried, tugging Bransen back from the ledge. He scrambled to his feet, as Bransen did behind him, and started for the Alpinadorans.

“That is Badden,” Milkeila mouthed in horror-filled understanding.

Bransen grabbed Cormack by the shoulder, tugging him about. “The castle,” he said.

“We have to help them!” Cormack implored.

“We help them by taking the castle,” Bransen replied. “It is the source, the conduit, of Badden’s power.”

Cormack glanced back at the desperate fight to the north, but desperate acquiescence was in his eyes as he turned back to Bransen.

“Go on! Go on!” Bransen shouted to the powries, for he saw that the way was clear. “To the castle doors, for all our sakes!”

But few powries heeded that call, entranced by the allure of bright giant blood, and with still more behemoths to be tripped up and slaughtered. And the hesitancy of the behemoths-obviously they had fought the tough little powries before-only made the dwarves hungrier.

“Mcwigik!” Cormack called, and the dwarf skidded to a stop and turned to face the humans. “To the castle!” Cormack yelled, pointing emphatically that way.

Mcwigik put on a sour look, but he did stab out his arm to stop Pergwick from running by. Cormack nodded and started off, Milkeila and Bransen close behind. By the time they crossed the glacier to the ice ramp leading into the castle, Mcwigik and his three cohorts trailed in close pursuit.

A strange sense of urgency came over Bransen, then, and he overtook Cormack, moving from a trot to a sprint for the front of the large castle. He looked all about as he ran, though his path was straight. Were Brother Jond and Olconna still alive?

How much he suddenly cared about the pair and the other prisoners surprised Bransen, and he silently cursed himself for his hesitance back on the path. How could he have considered turning aside? He lowered his head and ran on faster, right to the base of the ice ramp that led up through the carved towerlike guardhouses that flanked the opening to the castle’s bailey. But there, right at the base of the ramp, he skidded to a stop, and he quickly put his arm out to block Cormack from running by him.

“It is warded,” he explained.

“How do you know?”

Bransen shook his head, but did not otherwise answer. He fell within himself, finding the line of his chi and willfully extending that life energy down to the ground beneath him. He felt the power there, clearly, and discordant with the teeming magic that had constructed and now maintained this castle.

“He says that it is trapped,” Cormack said to Milkeila when she came up beside them, the four dwarves huffing and puffing close behind.

Milkeila nodded her agreement almost immediately. Her magic was quite similar to that of the Samhaists, both drawing their energies from the power of the world beneath their feet. She stepped up tentatively and began chanting and rattling her claw and tooth necklace.

She nodded again and looked back to Cormack. “Our adversary has collected the muted countering energies to his construction together in this one place,” she explained. “It is a powerful ward.”

“Can you defeat it?” Cormack asked.

“Or can ye bleed it?” asked Mcwigik, and Cormack looked at him curiously, and all the more curiously when he noted Milkeila nodding and smiling.

The shaman tentatively walked up the ramp, rattling her necklace before her as if it served as a guard to the release of Samhaist magic. As she neared the opening to the castle bailey, she began to softly chant while jiggling her necklace with one hand and running her other hand in the air right near the doorjamb without touching it. Immediately the gleaming ice began to sweat and drip, and little flames seemed to dance within the ice itself.

Bransen felt it all profoundly. He understood Milkeila’s counter; she was calling to the ward in measured volume, bringing it forth in bits and pieces to release the pressure. He nodded as he came to understand the trapped flames in the doorjamb, designed to burst forth with tremendous energy if any crossed through without the appropriate magical commands.

As his understanding of both the ward and Milkeila’s apparent answer to it crystallized, Bransen joined in the effort, channeling his chi to tease out pieces of the warding magic. Now the jamb was sweating all about so profusely that a steady drip fell from the overhead ice beam like a moderate rain.

“Yach, but ye’re to drop the whole thing!” Mcwigik grumbled.

“Exactly what the trap was designed to do,” Bransen explained. “But Milkeila and I have diffused it enough so that…” With a grin back at the dwarf, the Highwayman darted ahead past Milkeila through the opening.

Flames burst forth all around him, a sudden and sharp release of energy, but nowhere near what it would have been initially.

“The explosion would have taken down the front wall,” Milkeila explained, leading the others through the puddles and the portal to join Bransen. And not a moment too soon, for they found their friend already engaged with another contingent of the stubborn and pesky trolls.

The first spear thrown his way had become Bransen’s weapon as he sprinted right into the midst of the creatures, who quickly formed a semicircle about him. Holding the light spear in his left hand only, Bransen thrust it out to the left, and as he did, he hooked its back end behind his hip. Using that leverage, he swept the spear across in front of him, catching it in a reverse grip with his right hand. He kept the spear head moving left to right, as if he meant to put the thing right around his back, but instead rolled it in his fingers, deftly flipping it to a forehand grip with his right before stabbing it out that way. The troll on that flank, taking the bait that the spear would fast disappear behind the man, had just lifted its club and begun its charge when the thrusting spear pierced its chest.

Bransen bent his arm at the elbow powerfully, sending his hand straight up, and he flipped the spear back across his shoulders. He caught it with an underhand grip with his left and subtly altered the angle of momentum, rolling it completely around to stab out in front of him, again left to right. He loosened his grip, letting the spear slide forth as if in a throw, but caught it firmly lower on the handle with his left and grasped it at midpoint with his right, then stabbed diagonally out to his right more powerfully, retracted, reangled and stabbed straight ahead, then again, turning his hips to put it out right of his position in three short and devastating thrusts.

Three trolls fell away. The others of the group fell back on their heels, confused and frightened, and just as Bransen’s friends rushed past him, overwhelming the lot of the trolls. Only an unlucky turn, a broken spear hooking at a bad angle, caused a wound on any of the companions, catching Pergwick painfully in the hip.

The dwarf shrugged off any attention, though, and matched the pace of the others as they charged across the courtyard to the castle’s inner door. Again Bransen took the lead, and again he thought to filter out his sensitivity to magic to seek out wards. But the door slid aside and out jumped a man dressed in Samhaist robes and holding a short bronze sword. For a brief instant, Bransen thought it to be Ancient Badden, and he instinctively pulled up.

That proved a fortunate delay, as the Samhaist sent a gout of flames out through his hand to engulf his sword blade and came forward with a series of mighty sweeps, extending those flames out before him.

Mcwigik ambled by Bransen and nearly right into them, before finally stopping with a shout of surprise. He shouted again when Bransen leaped atop him, then sprang from the dwarf’s sturdy frame, soaring high and far, lifting his chi as he went to carry him far above the expected mortal boundaries. He threw his spear at the man as he went, but the Samhaist was appropriately warded against such missiles and it did not penetrate.

It was no more than a diversion, anyway, and Bransen soared up and over. The surprised Samhaist turned his blade upward to try to intercept, but Bransen was too high. He landed behind the Samhaist, turning as he descended, and as the man tried to turn, Bransen shot his arm through the gap in the man’s bended elbow, then knifed his hand up behind the Samhaist’s neck, catching a firm grip. He turned with the Samhaist, staying right behind him and up against him, and as soon as the man tried to reverse back the other way, throwing back his shoulder and arm instinctively to break his momentum, Bransen similarly knifed his other arm in the same manner as the first. Now with both of his hands clamped behind the Samhaist’s neck, “chicken-winging” his opponent’s arms out behind him in the process, Bransen easily turned the man and tripped him up.

They fell together, the Samhaist facedown and with no way to free up his arms to break his fall. Bransen added to the impact by shoving out with his hands just before the Samhaist’s face hit the ice.

Bransen sprang up, running right over the man to grab the fallen sword. He was content to leave it at that, but of course, the powries were not. They came in stabbing and slicing, pounding the poor fool back to the ice in short order, so they could dip their berets in his spilling blood.

Through the open door went Bransen. Milkeila came in right behind. “We need to find Badden’s place of power,” she said. “There must be one greater than all the others.”

Before Bransen could agree, Cormack rushed past and shouted, “Brother!” Both Bransen and Milkeila turned his way. The pair then followed Cormack’s gaze to the side where a group of miserable prisoners huddled, most prominent among them a man wearing Abellican robes.

“Jond,” Bransen breathed, and he thought again of his hesitation back on the ledge, and his serious considerations of just turning around and going south to find Cadayle and Callen.

The Highwayman’s face flushed with shame, and even more when Brother Jond called out, “Bransen Garibond, have you come to save us, friend?”

Friend. The word bounced around Bransen’s mind, an indictment made all the more damning because Brother Jond didn’t even understand that it was one. Cormack had reached him by then, working the ropes to free the man and the others around him.

“Not one will be able to aid us in this battle,” Milkeila was saying when Bransen finally joined the couple at the prisoners’ side.

“Well found, friend,” Bransen said to Jond, and he couldn’t suppress his horror at seeing the man’s maimed face, scarred slits where his eyeballs once were.

The blind monk followed the voice perfectly and fell over Bransen, wrapping him in a hug, sobbing with joy and appreciation.

“No time,” Milkeila said. “That beast is outside, killing my people! I am certain that his power is concentrated in here through some conduit to the magical emanations beneath this glacier.”

“A dragon is he!” one of the other miserable prisoners proclaimed.

“Horror of horrors!” another chimed in.

“Whenever Ancient Badden appears to us, he comes down the ramp across the foyer,” Brother Jond blurted, shaking his head and pushing Bransen back to arm’s length, as if trying to sort it all out.

Bransen recognized the desperation on his face, the need to help here, to try to repay Badden for the injustice that had taken his sight.

“Please! Help me!” came a cry from behind, and all turned to see the Samhaist Bransen had clobbered, crawling on his elbows toward them, the four powries close behind. “Help me!” he said again, reaching plaintively toward the human intruders. As he spoke, Bikelbrin came up beside him, spat in both his hands, and took up a heavy club, lifting it for what was sure to be a killing blow.

“Hold!” Cormack yelled at the dwarf, and he rushed back. “He can tell us.”

The warriors of the tribes increased the number and ferocity of their attacks on the dragon. As one, they dismissed their fear and threw their spears, or rushed to engage the beast whenever it swooped low enough for them to reach. They hardly cared for the trolls, then, for next to this monster, those creatures seemed no more than a nuisance.

But the dragon seemed unbothered by it all, seemed pleased by it all. Toniquay and the other shamans, chanting more fiercely to inspire and protect and strengthen their charges, throwing whatever offensive magics they could conjure at the beast, understood better than their noble and ferocious warriors.

And in that understanding, they trembled with fear.

For the dragon not only seemed impervious, but seemed to grow, in size and in strength. No spear penetrated its scaled armor, and no warrior stood against it for more than a few heartbeats. Tearing claws and snapping maw, thunderously beating wings and snapping, clubbing tail drew a line across the Alpinadoran ranks, laying men and women low with impunity.

“How do we even hurt it?” Toniquay heard himself asking. Hoping to answer just that, the shaman completed his spell, bringing forth a bird sculpture he had just magically fashioned from the ice. He held it up before his lips and blew life into the small, crystalline golem, then thrust out his arm, launching it away at the dragon.

The gleaming ice bird flashed overhead, gaining tremendous speed before crashing hard into the dragon.

If the great beast even noticed the animated missile, it did not show it, and the ice bird exploded into a million tiny and harmless droplets of water.

Toniquay winced, and then did so again as he saw another man lifted into the air in the dragon’s rear talons. Those mighty feet squeezed powerfully and with such force that the poor warrior’s eyeballs popped from their sockets, blood and tissue flushing out behind.

Toniquay could only suck in his breath in horror.

They hustled up the ice ramp, Brother Jond leaning heavily on Bransen and the four dwarves bringing up the back of the line, carrying the captured and battered Samhaist by the wrists and ankles.

The ascending corridor wrapped around to the right as it rose, crossing over one landing and then another, both circular and both centered by the same wide icy beam that seemed the main support for this part of the castle structure.

“I’m not thinking he’s long for living,” Mcwigik said, and the people in front paused and considered the poor fellow, and winced as one as the dwarves just let him drop face down on the floor.

“Don’t ye even be thinking of it,” Mcwigik warned them, and Bransen laughed at the accuracy of the dwarf’s guess, for he too could clearly see the silent debate between the two over whether or not they would use their healing magic to help the man.

“We cannot just let a fellow human die,” Milkeila remarked, as much to her fellow humans as to the dwarves.

Ruggirs walked up beside Mcwigik, stared hard at the humans, then stomped on the back of the Samhaist’s neck. Neck bones shattered with a sickening crunch and the Samhaist twitched violently once or twice before lying very still.

“Yer magic’s for meself and me boys, and don’t ye even think o’ using it on one of them that we’re fighting when there’s fighting afore us,” Ruggirs explained.

“Yach, but it’s not looking like he was hurt that bad after all,” Pergwick said from behind the angry Ruggirs, and Bransen understood the statement to be for the sake of the humans and nothing more, a way to accentuate Ruggirs’s point.

“But ye was right, Mcwigik,” Pergwick went on. “He weren’t long for living.”

Mcwigik waved his hand at the humans, bidding them to move along.

They wore expressions of shock (even outrage, in the case of Milkeila and Brother Jond), but they did indeed move along, for they hadn’t the time to discuss the powries’ tactics.

At the top of the ramp, they came into another circular room, and recognized that they were in the highest tower of the many-turreted castle. Here, too, the support beam ended, but at floor level and not at the ceiling, for it was no support beam in the conventional sense at all.

It was the base of a fountain, one that sprayed a fine and warm mist into this room. That mist contained power, Bransen recognized immediately, and so did Milkeila. That mist was the stuff of Samhaist and shaman earth magic, the exact conduit Milkeila had sought.

The water stream lifted about six feet into the air, before collapsing back in on itself and splashing down into a two-tiered bowl, and though that base was also made of ice, it seemed impervious to the warm flow.

“This is his source of power,” Milkeila stated, moving closer and lifting her hand to feel the splash and spray. “This is where Ancient Badden connects to his earthly power.”

“You can feel it?” Cormack asked, and Milkeila’s expression showed clearly that she was surprised that he could not.

“I can, as well,” Bransen said. “It is not so unlike the emanations of your gemstones. It teems with energy, with ki-chi-kree.“

Cormack rubbed his face and looked over at Brother Jond, who sat silent and expressionless. What Bransen had just said, the comparison of Samhaist magic to Abellican, would be considered heretical to the leaders of the Abellican Church, but Jond seemed not to mind, nor to disagree.

And Cormack certainly didn’t. Adding the fact that Bransen had also included his own mystical powers, this strange concept of chi, only reinforced to Cormack that he was right in this, that all the Churches and magical powers were in fact pieces of the same god and same godly magic.

As he considered that, he felt an acute sting, a memory of his whipping, across his torn back.

Bransen closed his eyes and stepped up to the fountain, then washed his bare arm through it.

“If that is Badden’s source of power, can we, too, use it?” Cormack asked. “Perhaps to counter the Ancient?”

“We cannot use it as he uses it,” Milkeila replied. “The powers he garners from it are… beyond me.”

“This magic is not focused and stable, as with the Abellican gemstones,” said Bransen. “It is fluid and ever-changing, and we cannot access it as Badden does-certainly not in the time we have.”

“What, then?” Cormack asked.

“Despoil it,” both Jond and Milkeila suggested together.

“I will weave spells into it, to divert it from whatever course Badden has fashioned,” the barbarian shaman explained, and she stepped right up and began softly chanting, singing, an ancient rhythm of an ancient blessing.

Similarly, Bransen held his arm in the flow and sent his chi into it, trying to stagger the infusions and twist them in a wild attempt to somehow alter the magic within the water.

And most straightforward of all came the powries, all four. “Ye heard her, boys,” said Mcwigik. “Put a bit o’ the dwarf into it!” They lined up around the bowl, unbuckled their heavy belts and dropped their britches, and began their own special and to-the-point method of despoiling the magical water.

“Hope he’s not drinking it,” Bikelbrin noted with a snicker.

“Yach, but I hope he is,” Pergwick added. “We’ll give him a taste o’ the powries he’s not to forget, what!”

He soared over their line with impunity, roaring and breathing forth lines of fire, ignoring their feeble spears thrown by their weak, mortal muscles. He was Badden, Ancient of the Samhaists, the voice of the ancient gods, who blessed him with the power of immortals, in this case, the strength of a true dragon.

He pondered that if he killed enough of them up here, he might not even need to drop the front off of the glacier and flood the lake. It was a fleeting thought, though, for after the contamination these heathens had brought, the lake would be better off for the purification, in any event! Besides, he would enjoy it. As he enjoyed this slaughter of unbelievers. He raked the line; he roared with divine joy.

A spear dug deep into his side.

Ancient Badden’s roar changed in timbre. More spears reached up and stung him profoundly. He answered with another gout of fiery breath, and indeed, those nearest barbarians shied away from the flames. But those flames were not nearly as intense as the previous.

Badden’s serpentine neck swiveled to offer him a view of his distant castle. Something was wrong here, he knew. Something was interrupting the flow and strength of his magic. Another spear pierced him, shooting lines of hot pain. The dragon roared and beat his long and leathery wings, propelling him across the barbarian ranks and beyond.

The barbarians cheered behind him and threw more spears and clubs and rocks-anything to sting the defeated beast. Then they threw taunts, and more than one noted that the dragon seemed as if it had diminished in actual size.

Feeling the painful sting of a dozen wounds, and feeling even more acutely a sudden distance to the power that fed his draconian form, Badden knew those observations to be more than illusion.

There was little for Cormack to do as the other six, in their own special ways, despoiled Badden’s fountain conduit. Too late, he thought to take the gemstone necklace from Milkeila, for now he did not dare interrupt her concentrated efforts.

Nor did he want the gemstones at that time, the former Abellican monk had to admit, to himself at least. The sense of betrayal was too raw and too sharp. His communion with the gemstones had always before elicited a feeling of kinship to Blessed Abelle, the man who had founded the Church less than a century before. But now, clearly, the representatives of that dead prophet considered Cormack’s worldview as heretical.

If he used the gemstones in this tremendous battle, would he feel the consternation of the spirit of Abelle?

He considered that perhaps he was making too much of it all, was allowing his anger and disappointment to overrule his judgment. He looked over at Milkeila and could see the strain on her face from her continuing efforts. The magic she battled was tangible, and formidable.

With a sharp inhale, Cormack steadied himself and took a step toward her, determined to dismiss his excuses and offer whatever help he could. But he stopped before he had really even started, for through the translucent wall above and behind Milkeila came such a blossom of orange and yellow that Cormack instinctively pondered that he was seeing the birth of the colors themselves. He watched, mouth agape, unable to even call out a warning, as those colors, the fires of dragon breath, turned the icy wall to water and steam, and through the glowing cloud came the beast itself, framed in hot-glowing mist that made it seem as if it were entering through some extradimensional portal!

The powries cried out and scrambled to pull up their pants; Bransen reacted with snakelike speed and precision, diving to the side, out of the way and collecting Milkeila as he went, still deep in her trance.

Cormack could only stand there and gape as the dragon’s serpentine neck swept down and the beast rolled right over it, tucking its wings. As it came around, it was not the lower torso of a reptilian dragon that showed, but the legs of a man, feet adorned with painted toenails and vine-tied sandals. Badden continued his transformation as he completed the somersault and it was a man and not a dragon that landed on the floor before the fountain.

But not just any man; it was the Ancient of the Samhaists come calling.

He landed with such a thud that it seemed as if he must be many times his apparent weight, and the same magic that perpetuated that strange perception reached out from Badden and into his magical ice floor. Huge ripples rolled out from the man, waves of ice, as if the floor had been caught somewhere between the state of a solid and of a liquid. Those ripples rose like waves and crested sharply and with tremendous energy, throwing dwarves and humans alike into the air violently. They crashed into the walls and bounced off the fountain, handheld weapons flying wildly. Milkeila splashed down into the fountain, and with the rumbling all about her, it took her a long while to sort out which way was up and get her head above water.

She fared the best, however, for the only place in the room, other than at Badden’s feet, that was not violently rolling and crashing was within that very pool. The shaman grimaced as Mcwigik and Bikelbrin flew past her, grabbing at each other for support until they were split apart from each other by the intervening fountain tower, both ricocheting, spinning out toward the walls. She cried out in pain as her beloved Cormack flew straight up into the air, more than a dozen feet-and only his considerable training allowed him to sort himself out enough in his descent to prevent landing on his head.

She winced at watching Bransen, not flying about, but maneuvering over the solid waves as a boat might defy heavy surf, and she gasped in shock to see one wave break right over poor Ruggirs, smashing down on the dwarf with tremendous force, blowing out his breath in a great and profound groan. The ice wave blended right over him, burying him in the floor.

Not far from her, Ancient Badden cackled with enjoyment, and stamped his foot again, giving rise to another series of waves, ones that crashed into the rebounding first set and sent the whole of the room into frenzy. Even the walls began to ripple and buckle! Now all of Milkeila’s friends flopped and bounced about uncontrollably, except for buried Ruggirs and one other.

To the Jhesta Tu, Bransen’s posture was known as doan-chi-kree, the “stance of the mountain,” a place of complete balance and perfect calm, where the straight-standing mystic reached his line of life energy, his chi, below his ki, his groin, and down to doan, the floor beneath his feet. That line of life energy became the mystic’s roots, his stability, and in such a state, a Jhesta Tu could not be moved by a charging giant.

The floor rolled to Badden’s command beneath Bransen’s feet, but Bransen moved with it, his legs bending and straightening accordingly and so perfectly that his upper body remained perfectly still. He locked stares with Badden. The Ancient stomped his foot again. But Bransen would not be thrown.

Milkeila drew courage from that image and shook herself from her stupor. She reached into her magic again and thrust it into Badden’s fountain, demanding that the violence end.

She felt as if she was trying to hold back the great Mirianic Ocean itself! But she shook away her despair and pressed on, blocking out all the distractions, focusing solely on the task at hand.

The room began to quiet.

Ancient Badden broke off his stare and looked over his shoulder at the woman, feeling her intrusion into his magic as keenly as if she was reaching into his stomach and tugging at his entrails. The Samhaist roared, as much the voice of a dragon as that of a man, and stabbed his hands out to the fountain’s centering geyser. The roiling waters froze solid suddenly, encasing Milkeila’s hands and forearms in a crushing grip.

Badden whipped his arm in a sudden circle, and the icicle responded likewise, turning over itself as it rushed around, twisting Milkeila right over.

She felt her shoulders pop from their sockets, then wrenched her back as the ice stopped its swing abruptly, locking her top half fast in place while her lower body whipped around.

Waves of nausea and dizziness and floating black spots filled her gut and head and eyes, and when the ice returned again to its liquid fountain form, the helpless woman dropped into and under the water, with no sense of direction or awareness at all.

Badden chuckled as he felt his magic flow more fully once more, but he knew that the diversion of this foolish woman had cost him. For in the moment of calm, the humans and dwarves had closed.

The Ancient snapped the fabulous sword off of his back, took the hilt in both hands and sent it out to arm’s length. With a maniacal cackle, the man went up onto the ball of one foot, hooked that balance point into his magical energy and began to spin. Not to spin like a young girl at play, but to truly whirl about, gaining speed and momentum with every turn. His form blurred; he altered the angle of his blade so that there was no possible approach.

Pergwick howled in sudden pain and fell away, desperately clutching at his head to hold his scalp in place. He went down to the floor, looking frantically for his lost beret.

Mcwigik and Cormack, side by side, fell away without getting stung, but Cormack shouted anyway, in frustrated outrage and not in physical pain, for he found himself separated from his fallen Milkeila, and he couldn’t see her above the rim of the fountain bowl. He tried to maneuver around the side, but got all tangled up with the ducking and retreating Mcwigik.

“What whirlpool’s he swimming in?” the dwarf barked in absolute surprise.

Bransen, too, slipped out of reach, but in a more controlled manner, taking a full measure of his adversary, and Bikelbrin dove over the side of the fountain, splashing down into the water. He had just regained his footing when Badden suddenly extended his reach, using the narrow sword as a focus for the release of his magical energy.

The prone Pergwick skidded across the room. Cormack and Mcwigik went flying away in a confused tumble, and Bikelbrin flew back into the center pole of the fountain with such force that his sensibilities kept right on flying.

Dazed and hardly conscious as he hit the water once more, the dwarf flopped over the drowning Milkeila. On pure instinct, he hooked his arm under the woman’s head and rolled himself onto his back, atop her back, using her bulk to keep his own head above the water. He kept his arm hooked to hold himself steady, and that alone saved the gasping Milkeila, for the weight of the dwarf rolled him back and his arm brought her head out of the water.

Ancient Badden had never felt a purer release of magical energy, as satisfying as any release any man might know. He stomped his foot to accentuate the magic, sending the room into a series of crashing ice waves once again.

Before he could congratulate himself, however, Ancient Badden looked into the face of one who had not been moved by his magical thrust, and who seemed not bothered in the least by the current rocking.

Bransen Garibond held his ground. “You have my sword,” the Highwayman calmly explained, and Badden looked at him in abject disbelief.

“It is you!” the Samhaist replied. “I threw you from the glacier!”

“Highwaymen bounce,” Bransen replied.

“You were a babbling fool-an idiot who could hardly stand!”

“Or I was a clever scout, taking a measure of Ancient Badden and his forces before bringing doom upon them.”

Badden stood up straight and shook his head-or started to, for faster than a striking serpent the Highwayman struck. He sprang forward and snapped off a left and right jab for the old man’s face, connecting solidly both times.

He leaped back immediately, throwing back his hips and keeping his belly just an inch ahead of the thrusting sword. As he bent double with the move, Bransen drove down his forearm to knock the blade downward.

But Badden had anticipated that, and he cunningly turned the sword so that Bransen’s arm hit the razor edge.

Bransen did grimace, but simply rolled his hand down lower, changing the angle and driving the blade out wide. Then he rushed back in, slamming against Badden, one hand holding the man’s sword arm, the other hand grasping the old man’s face.

And Badden responded by snapping his free arm up behind Bransen. First he crushed the man into him, and with strength beyond anything Bransen could ever have believed possible!

Badden grabbed the back of Bransen’s hair and bandanna and tugged back violently, and Bransen growled in pain and in the sudden horror that he might again lose that precious gemstone. He raked his hand straight down, fingernails drawing lines of blood on Badden’s face, then reversed and hit the old man with a series of short and devastating uppercuts, crunching bone beneath his pounding fist.

Badden reflexively let go of Bransen’s hair to bring his free hand in to stop the barrage, but the moment he did Bransen shot out to the side, going after Badden’s sword arm, going after the sword, furiously.

But even though he got the leverage, the proper angle, he couldn’t pry the weapon free, and he realized his error, realized how vulnerable he had left himself, right before Badden’s fist smashed him in the back, driving his breath from his body. This was no mortal he faced, but some magical monstrosity! He needed the sword, but he couldn’t hope to get it. Badden pounded him again, and Bransen’s legs went weak.

“Fool!” the old Samhaist chided.

Bransen fell within himself as yet another explosive and thundering punch crashed against his back. He found his line of chi, found his center… He thought of Cadayle. He centered all of his fleeting thoughts on her, using her image as a focal point for holding on to his fast-flying consciousness. Something flew past him, and he was jerked backward. Another form rushed by-Cormack. He heard the slap of punches; he managed to glance over his shoulder to see Mcwigik tight about Badden’s leg, biting the man hard on the thigh, and to see Cormack facing Badden straight up, raining a rapid barrage of punches against the man’s face. That one was no novice to fighting.

But neither was he-were they-a match for Ancient Badden.

Bransen guessed Badden’s move-to pull free the sword and be done quickly with all three-so as soon as the Ancient started, Bransen reacted with sudden fury and all the power of his training behind him. He lunged for Badden’s sword hand, grasping the wrist and cupping his other hand over the Ancient’s clenched fist, snapping with all his strength, with all of his leverage, with every ounce of Jhesta Tu and gemstone magic he could possibly muster. One chance, he knew. One moment of focused power.

Ancient Badden’s hand bent back over his wrist, his wrist-bone shattering. Bransen drove his own hand up over Badden’s fist, catching the serpent hilt of his mother’s sword and pulling it free.

He got slugged one more time but anticipated it and was diving into a forward roll even as Badden’s fist hit him, thus absorbing much of the blow. He rolled head over, coming numbly back to his feet, and he spun about just in time to see Cormack launched in a sidelong somersault by a vicious backhand.

Staring at Bransen with hate-filled eyes, clutching his broken hand in close at his side, the Ancient clawed his free hand down on the stubborn, gnawing powrie, and with frightening strength plucked Mcwigik free.

He lifted the dwarf to throw him at Bransen, but the Highwayman was already there, coming under the would-be sentient missile. He stabbed, and quickly slashed upward, cutting under Badden’s arm. The Ancient still managed to throw Mcwigik, but suddenly he had so little strength behind it that the dwarf bounced and turned and roared right back in. Or would have, if there had been a need.

Bransen worked like a dancer, spinning, swinging his arm, changing the angle of his deadly blade with such skill and precision that Ancient Badden never once blocked or turned effectively enough to prevent the Highwayman from hitting him exactly where Bransen had wanted to.

The sword slashed across Badden’s belly, came around and poked him hard in the biceps, and as he lurched, his arm lowering, slashed him across the chin, drawing a sizable line across half his throat in the process. Over and over, Bransen rolled the blade, diagonal down, left and right, and lines of bright blood erupted all across the Samhaist’s light green robes.

Now Badden wore a mask of fear, and he stumbled backward, trying pitifully to get his arms up. Bransen kept hitting him, slashing him, even lifting a foot to kick him. Back went the Ancient, who suddenly seemed little more than an old man, to fall into an awkward sitting position against the wall. And Bransen was there, suddenly, sword edge against Badden’s already bleeding neck. Ancient Badden laughed at him, blood dripping out with every chortle.

“You seem happy for a man about to die,” said Bransen. Behind him, Cormack cried out for Milkeila, and Bransen heard splashing.

“We all die, fool,” Badden replied. “You will not likely see near the years I have known.”

“Or the failure,” said Bransen.

“Ah yes, the triumph of your Abellican Church,” Badden retorted, and indeed, Bransen’s face did crinkle at that.

“My Church?” he asked incredulously.

“You have thrown in with them!”

Bransen snickered at the absurdity of the remark.

“Do you think them any better?” Badden asked, his words becoming more labored. “Oh, they find their shining moment now, when their baubles so impress the young and strong lairds. But where will they be when those lairds are old and lie dying, and those baubles offer nothing?

“We Samhaists know the truth, the inevitability,” he went on. “There is no escape from the darkness. Their promises are hollow!” He laughed, a bloody and bitter sound.

“A truth you are about to realize intimately,” Bransen reminded him.

But Badden’s laugh mocked him. “And as these Abellican fools rise ascendant, buoyed by their empty promises of forever, do you think they will be any better?”

But now Bransen was back on level emotional ground. “Do you think that I care?” he chided right back, and that brought a curious look from the old man.

“Then why are you here?”

Bransen laughed at him and stood straight. “Because they paid me,” he said with a cold and casual tone, “and because I hate everything for which you stand.”

His sword came across, and Badden’s puzzled expression remained on his face as his head rolled across the floor.