Douglas Niles - Fate of Thorbardin

It was enough to feel the growing warmth, and the expanding brilliance swelling upward from the chasm in the floor. Fire clearly burned there, a source of heat and light growing steadily stronger.

“Tease the Chaos creature!” he barked to his two female apprentices. “See that it pursues you. Bring it to the priestess and me; you know where to find me!”

The wizard reached out and grabbed one of the bars of the cage. In another instant, the world shifted and shimmered, and they teleported. The cleric gasped at the sensation of sudden weightlessness, of rapid, whirling movement.

He was taking her somewhere else, somewhere he hoped would help the priestess to defend herself against the fire dragon. The cage came to rest, canted at a slight angle on a high elevation, allowing her to look out across a vast cavern. Gretchan stared in awe at the sight before her.

She knew at once that Willim the Black had taken her to the right place.

Both Firespitters had been refueled and readied for battle, and their crews rolled them into position before the gate of Norbardin’s royal palace. Brandon had waited impatiently for the maintenance to be completed. He had expected Tarn Bellowgranite’s arrival at any minute, and in fact had heard word that the exiled king was marching at the head of the Tharkadan Legion and that the citizens of the city were turning out in great numbers to cheer and support him as he advanced. Well more than the estimated hour of the king’s arrival had passed, but from the reports, the general guessed that the crowds were probably slowing the monarch’s progress through the city.

So Brandon had decided to go ahead with the assault. After all, if the enemy troops could be driven out of the royal palace in short order, the structure would be the perfect headquarters for the king. Symbolically, it would make a powerful statement to the people of Thorbardin that their former monarch had returned and taken control. But there was a pesky garrison of Theiwar dwarves still sealed up in the palace, and the Kayolin commander had to root them out. His troops had caught their breath and taken advantage of the time to eat and rest, and they were ready for the assault.

Even as the two big, fire-spewing war machines rumbled forward, the dwarves of Kayolin’s Second Legion, divided into two wings and advanced to either side of the tall, well-fortified gate. Fister Morewood led the right-hand wing, while Brandon himself commanded the group to the left of the gate.

The defenders behind the palace walls fired crossbows at the charging dwarves, but-unlike at the gate of the nation itself-the number of attackers far exceeded the number of defenders. A few dwarves, including one axeman sprinting right next to Brandon, fell under defensive fire, but the vast majority of them reached the base of the wall. There they wasted no time in heaving ladders against the ramparts.

From the rear ranks of the Kayolin companies, crossbowmen fired return volleys. Many of the bolts bounced off the stone wall since their targets were protected by the battlements except for visible heads and arms. Even so, the purpose of the shooting was not so much to kill the enemy archers as it was to distract their aim from the Firespitters.

The great machines included several plates of metal armor as protection for the crew, but the dwarves who manned the maneuver handles were partially exposed. If they were killed, the machines would have been unable to advance and could not employ their firepower against the gate.

Reaching the base of the wall, the attacking troops quickly hoisted their ladders, and lightly armored skirmishes began scrambling upward. The attackers were met at the top by swordsmen, but again superior numbers came into play. Steel clashed against steel as the skirmishers chopped and stabbed and tumbled over the wall, quickly seizing control of the immediate platforms.

Brandon held one of the ladders long enough for a dozen dwarves to scramble up. He had been convinced that the army commander should be not be first man over the top, but finally he could wait no longer. Slinging his axe over his shoulder, he pulled himself up hand over hand, springing to the rubble-strewn parapet and stepping to the side so still more warriors behind him could ascend.

The shattered palace nearly filled the courtyard. It looked more like an ancient and long-abandoned ruin than it did a royal edifice of dwarven construction. Great ruptures yawned in the wall, and many of them were still strewn with the stones that had been knocked free by whatever force inflicted the initial damage. The front door of the keep was gone, the entryway gaping open like a dark, silent mouth. Rising over it all was that long tower, the half spire that was missing its top.

“General, look! It’s Gretchan Pax!”

The words, shouted by one of his swordsman, pulled Brandon’s attention away from the crucial assault on the palace gate. He followed the man’s pointing finger, and his heart leaped into his throat. He saw her at once, trapped in a metal cage, high atop the shattered spire of the palace’s main tower. The cage was perched awkwardly on the stone rim of the spire, which had been broken off during the recent civil war. His priestess was there, bracing herself by clinging to the bars of the cage.

“Gretchan!” Brandon shouted, his voice rising above the chaos of the battle.

He saw, then, that the black wizard was there too. Willim’s robes swirled from the lingering motion of the spell that had carried them there, and he held Gretchan’s staff in both of his hands.

Then Brandon and everyone else were further distracted as a blossom of fire exploded in the great chasm. A creature made of fire, with great wings trailing sparks and smoke and a gaping mouth spread wide, roared a cry of inarticulate hunger and longing as it soared into view.

Those wings pulsed again and again as the monster flew on, and Brandon could see that the fire creature was flying directly toward the cage holding Gretchan Pax.

“It comes!” Willim the Black croaked, his voice a mixture of thrilled anticipation and stark dread. “Make ready!”

The latter statement was accompanied by a shiver of genuine terror, and Gretchan understood how much the wizard truly feared the creature of Chaos. He certainly had reason to fear. She knew the story of the Chaos War and the massive destruction the monsters had wrought across the face of Krynn. As she beheld the monster for the first time, she understood how its kin could have wreaked such destruction throughout all of Thorbardin.

“You must release me! And I’ll need my staff,” she said, somehow managing to sound calm.

The wizard refused to let her out of the cage, but he did allow her the religious talisman. “Here, take the staff! Remember, you will defeat the monster or die!” hissed Willim, suddenly thrusting the butt of the staff through the bars.

Instinctively she snatched the staff away from him, clutching it to her and murmuring a prayer of thanks. Immediately she felt the strength and serenity of Reorx flowing through her. She was ready to fight and, if it came to that, to die.

But there were all those other dwarves around her. She saw at least a thousand of the Kayolin soldiers, and guessed that Brandon must be down there with them. In the same instant that she thought of him, almost as though her magic had created him, Gretchan saw Brandon, standing on the wall almost directly below her, shouting and waving up at her.

The two female magic-users flew through the air; they were black specks that were almost impossible to see against the bright, surging flame of the Chaos creature. They swept toward the cage, following Willim’s command, until, a hundred yards away from Gretchan, they vanished, presumably teleporting to safety.