Iron Tongue

" Perhaps this is a suitable opportunity to use your power against Claybore," suggested Krek, " but in a more restrained fashion."

" What do you mean?"

" Spy on his camp. Learn of his troop preparations. We spiders care little about such things, but you humans value such oddments of information. Though why, I cannot say." Krek sank down, legs curled about him, hardly more than a dark lump in the narrow tunnel.

Lan didn' t bother answering. He split off a portion of the shield blocking out the power stone dust and sent it streaking through the nonworld it inhabited and into the air above Claybore' s camp. Through this aerial porthole he witnessed the grey- clads moving to mount their attack. Lan lacked control over the sky- spy, but what he saw chilled him. The troops marched with more determination than he' d have believed after his dragons had grazed among their ranks. Claybore- or k' Adesina or Silvain- had instilled a battle fever that would carry them to their deaths on Wurnna' s battlements.

The brief glimpse of an exposed chart carried in the hand of an officer made Lan shake his head. The canyon walls on either side of Wurnna would soon be scaled and the heights occupied. None but a sorcerer might use those heights to advantage, but Claybore and his mage- assistants knew enough spells to destroy Wurnna, given the chance.

" We must rejoin Noratumi and the others," he said. Inyx' s head came up and her eyes gleamed strangely.

Lan felt a pang of jealousy. What had gone on between her and the Bron leader? Then he pushed it from his mind. He had no time for petty emotion. This was a day of bold moves- and bloody deaths.

The curtain of light pushed away from him as he advanced. The faster Lan walked, the quicker the seal moved. It passed over the wrecked wagons but all power stone and dust was shoved before the light curtain. When daylight shone down on his head, Lan relaxed and allowed the curtain to coalesce once again into the mote he had come to depend on.

Dust billowed upward and roiled about, obscuring bodies and crushed wagons, but Lan and his friends stood in a small clearing in the atmospheric confusion.

" Jacy!" cried Inyx. She repeated the name until a battered, bloodied figure stumbled through the dust and waved to them.

" I never thought I' d see any of you again. Iron Tongue abandoned us. Went on into Wurnna. It: it' s all over. I feel it." Jacy Noratumi sank to his knees, more unconscious than alert.

Lan closed his eyes and chanted a simple healing spell. Noratumi gasped and fought for breath. Lan ignored his plight and Inyx' s pleas for him to stop. Only when he had magically plucked the last of the dust from the man' s lungs did he allow breathing to resume normally.

Noratumi fell forward, supporting himself on hands and knees. He turned dazed eyes upward to Lan and said, " I can feel the change within me. What did you do?"

" You are whole again. I must heal the others before the power stone dust kills them. The death is not a pleasant one."

Noratumi made a mask out of his tunic and rushed back into the perpetual storm of dust boiling about the entrance to the tunnel. In a few minutes he led back a small band of survivors- too small. Only four still lived.

Lan Martak found the healing both tedious and simple. He drew on the power of the dust itself to bring about the cure, yet he chafed at the delay. He needed these four; he needed a thousand times their number. Magics alone would not win this day' s battle.

" We must hurry. Krek, go into Wurnna and tell Iron Tongue to get crews out here to salvage the power stone."

" He returns even now," the spider said.

Lan forced a small tube of clarity through the obscuring dust and saw a wagon recklessly driven across the short distance between postern gate and tunnel mouth. Seated beside the driver was Iron Tongue. His lips moved in a slow chant. Lan guessed he goaded the driver to even more suicidal daring in reaching the wrecked wagons.

" Begone!" came Iron Tongue' s loud command. The spell carried enough power and authority to dissipate the dust cloud in seconds.

" Why didn' t you do that?" demanded Noratumi.

" He' s had more experience with both power stone and spell," said Lan, but the words sounded lame to him. All the more so when he saw Inyx' s expression. He went to greet Iron Tongue.

" Don' t take a second longer than necessary," said Iron Tongue. " Claybore' s attack is already launched. We need this ore. Badly. Now!" He used the full power of his tongue to goad the humans into frenzied action.

They all fell to loading the ore onto the good wagon that Iron Tongue had brought back from his city. When only half a load had been accumulated, Iron Tongue clapped his hands together and ordered, " Into the wagon, all! We must retreat. The attack is upon us!"

Even as he spoke arrows came arching downward to embed themselves in the ground at their feet. Lan casually brushed them aside with a quick spell of only minor potency; his attention focused on the heights on either side of Wurnna.

" Iron Tongue, how do you defend those areas?" He pointed out the spots that worried him most.

" Defend them? Why bother? Nothing can reach us inside the city from there."

" Claybore' s magics can. He has a clear view of everything within Wurnna from either canyon wall."

" We have always picked off any enemy attempting to scale those cliffs. We will again. Our archers are good. Come, Martak, worry over important things. Can we activate enough of this power stone for our projectiles?"

Lan frowned. He hadn' t known Iron Tongue wanted the ore to place in rockets. He had assumed the rock' s use would be to aid mages in countering Claybore' s magics and in powering offensive spells. Quick fingers brushed over the bracelet of the power stone given him by Rugga. To waste all the power stone by shooting it at Claybore' s troops seemed ineffectual- and it made their sacrifices to this point trivial.

He maintained the magical dome over them to ward off arrows, but he " felt" something else building, something of a diabolically magic intensity.

" Claybore hides his troops with invisibility spells. They: they are so apparent to me now." Lan' s voice conveyed the shock he felt. Only a few weeks before, the idea of detecting any complex spell would have seemed a miracle to him. Now he analyzed and located the nexus for spells he only barely recognized. " There. He sends his troops up the mountains, just as I warned."

He and Krek exchanged looks. They remembered all too well how Kiska k' Adesina had followed them into the foothills around Mount Tartanius on a far distant world. The woman had been raised in mountains, knew their dangers and uses in war intimately, and could fight ferociously using their rocky strongpoints.

Their wagon crashed and bumped along until the gates of Wurnna slammed behind them. They had ridden around, ignoring the small postern gate in favor of a larger one that accommodated their laden wagon. Even as the driver slowed and applied the brake, workers rushed forth to unload the pitiful amounts of power stone salvaged from the three wrecked wagons.

" To the battlements. From there I will launch my messengers of death. Claybore will go to his death mourning the day he attacked Iron Tongue and Wurnna!"

" Claybore is immortal," said Inyx in a small voice. " Even the great Terrill couldn' t kill him."

" The heat of battle goes to his head," said Noratumi.

" He is overconfident. He doesn' t realize Claybore' s true power."

Lan said nothing. He had a different idea and it didn' t sit well with him. The tongue resting in Iron Tongue' s mouth was once Claybore' s. Did some measure of that sorcerer' s evil personality carry over with the organ? Or was Claybore able to reach out and subtly influence Iron Tongue into foolish recklessness? Whatever the answer, the result would be the same.