“Targon!” Vaegon yelled, as he came upon the white-robed man.
There was no response. The man was in the middle of a casting, and left Vaegon pleading with the air. The desperate elf was about to shake him, when a crackling bolt of yellow lightning shot forth from the man’s hands, down into a swarm of undead soldiers, who were trying to set yet another scaling ladder against the wall. The base of the wooden structure exploded, as Targon’s lightning superheated the sap in the fresh green timbers of the construction. The ladder began a slow tilting arc back into the troops below. When the spell had expired, Targon turned to the elf with clenched teeth, and a wild, almost insane, look in his eyes.
“If you can heal, then heal!” The black haired wizard shouted excitedly. “If not, then grab up a weapon! It’s all we can do here until Hyden Hawk returns!”
Vaegon started to ask, “From where?” but a great light began to fill the darkness out beyond the soldiers below. Out in the distance, a globe of reddish purple energy was forming over the head of a bald white-skinned figure wearing an ornately decorated black robe. The ball of swirling energy was the size of a wagon-wheel now, but it was growing steadily.
“Pael,” Targon hissed, then immediately began casting another spell.
Vaegon looked on, with his feet rooted to the plank walk, as the dragon passed at the edge of the evil wizard’s brightening lavender light. He shuddered with fear when he saw the beast’s huge horned head cut through the edge of the illumination. Several long seconds passed before its tail finally disappeared back into the darkness, but all he had really seen was the edge of a wing, a smattering of sparkling scale, and a huge undefined mass of slithery motion. By then, the sphere of energy building over Pael’s egg-like head was the size of a farmhouse. With a throwing gesture, and a psychotic, almost primal yell, he launched the globe into a comet-like arc, high up over the wall. It lit up the whole section of city as it started its way down. It’s churning, wavering glow, sent the shadows of buildings and towers sweeping around the city like dark swords. It was as if Pael had thrown up a miniature purple sun.
The piercing shriek of the Choska erupted far too close to Vaegon, and he dove to the side, just in time to avoid its snatching claws. He managed to pull Targon down by his robes as he went, and the demon beast’s razor sharp talons snatched nothing but air. The city quaked then, and a subsonic gut jarring boom effectively eclipsed the night.
The explosion caused by the impact of Pael’s comet was white-hot, and blinding. Orange-yellow blasts of flame and debris followed, as the traps and pitfalls set by the Highwander Mages, were triggered prematurely. The sounds of these explosions were merely pops and crackles in the near deaf hum caused by the concussion of Pael’s blast. Everything was unnaturally silent now, especially for Vaegon, who could see the mouths of the men around him moving, but couldn’t hear anything at all.
Targon and Vaegon both blinked away the spots from their vision, and then realized at the same time, that they had no chance now to get themselves back to the secondary wall. Not from where they were stranded. To make matters worse, a nearby section of the wall crumbled away, in a rumbling, flickering explosion of silvery white energy. Before the debris even settled, thousands of undead soldiers poured into the gap, and swarmed the city.
From somewhere in the sky, the dragon roared out again. When the sound of it subsided, a commanding shout cut through the chaos from behind them.
Targon grabbed Vaegon by the sleeve, and started back towards the ramp Vaegon had come up earlier. Below them, just inside the wall, and near the breach, a warrior in gleaming red plate armor had opened up the lane with his flashing sword. The soldiers of the Blacksword were rallying to his side. If they could get down the ramp, they might have a chance to make it back to the secondary wall. A slim chance, but a chance nonetheless. They had to hurry though. Already, a knot of rotting undead soldiers were heaving up and over the wall from a siege ladder just beyond the point they had to reach to gain the ramp.
Targon stopped, and cast a quick spell. Sizzling blue streaks leapt from his pointed fingers, not at the undead, but at the wood planking just in front of them. Loud thumping divots were shattered out of the wood, sending shrapnel-like splinters, and chunks, tearing through the decaying flesh of the undead. It slowed the foul things, but didn’t stop them completely.
Vaegon, with Targon on his heels, reached the ramp just before the enemy did. They charged headlong down the slope, but it was too late. Halfway down the grade, a hammer blow had already struck the pins that held the wooden section of ramp in place. The man who had knocked out the pin, looked up with regret as the section fell away. It was all Targon could do to keep Vaegon from charging into the now empty space before him. As Vaegon teetered on the edge of a thirty-foot dead fall, the thick, palpable smell of the undead came washing up over them from behind.
Hyden Hawk was brought awake by needle sharp teeth clamping down on his hand. He opened his eyes in a jolt of sheer terror. He felt hot, wet breath breathing down his neck, and he saw a skull face before him. With a scream, he jumped to his feet. His heart fluttered around his chest crazily.
Excitedly, Talon fluttered down from the tree above, the hawkling’s wing beats adding to the thrumming sensation in Hyden’s breast. He nearly bolted off into the endless expanse of grassy hills that surrounded the tree and all its dead visitors. Only the merry laughter of two young wolf pups prancing at his feet stopped him. He recognized them immediately, but it took him a few minutes to calm himself, and wrench himself free of the terror that had overcome him. He had healed their mother in the ravine the same day that Loudin had been torn apart by the hellcat. With his breath finally under control, and his heartbeat steadied, he smiled down and greeted them.
“Where is she?” asked Hyden.
“At the door,” one of the pups answered.
“Waiting for us,” added the other.
They didn’t quite speak with words like the squirrels had, yet what they said was perfectly clear to Hyden. And the differences in them radiated with each of their personalities. They were both boys, young adolescent male Ridge Wolves, healthier than most, and fearlessly sure of themselves.
“The Great Mother of the forest said you needed a guide,” the one called Rurran said.
“We didn’t have to come,” his brother Arrah added. “But we wanted to, because you saved our mother.”
“We would’ve gone hungry without her.” Rurran nuzzled against Hyden’s leg. “So you saved us too.”
“It looks like nobody came for them.” Arrah nodded towards all the skeletons that ringed the base of the great tree.
“Come, Hyden Hawk, follow us.”
“What’s that bird’s name?”
“Talon,” Hyden answered, with a hint of amazement and his voice.
Hyden tried to recite the riddle as he followed the two frisky wolf pups, but it was impossible. The two curious youths told him excitedly how they had chased, and killed a field mouse, and had chased a badger into its burrow. They wouldn’t let his attention wander too far from them. Rurran made fun of Arrah for getting scared, but admitted that the badger had turned on them fiercely, and had scared him a little as well.
Not long after he had healed her, the mother had led them to a cave up on the ridge. They said it had been full of the stink of men, but since they smelled that Hyden had been there, they knew they would be safe.
Their mother had taken a doe, and they had gotten their first taste of red meat, and oh, how they loved meat. It was what they lived for now; they were on an eternal quest for meat. Hyden couldn’t help but laugh at them, laugh with them. They were sly, imaginative, and so full of life, that the joy that radiated from them was contagious.
It took some time, an hour, half the day maybe, Hyden wasn’t sure. The only disruption of the landscape was a small stream-formed pond they came upon. Leaning against a boulder at its bank, was another skeleton, this one still garbed in a tattered scarlet robe. The pups only stopped long enough to drink, and then bounded off again. Hyden didn’t stop. There was nothing there that he wanted to see.
In between the casual banter, and excited bursts of thought from the curious young wolves, Hyden pondered why the kingdom folk all called the lovely and polite Queen of Highwander, Willa the Witch Queen. She didn’t seem like a witch to him at all. The old crone who had told him and Gerard their fortunes: now that was witchy woman.
He didn’t want think about how much he missed Gerard, it would only serve to spoil the fantastic mood the wolf pups had put him in, but he couldn’t help it. Luckily, they came upon the mother wolf, and his sadness didn’t get a chance to take root.
She was lazing beside an ivory door that was set in a golden frame, and standing alone on a hilltop in the midst of the sea of rolling hills.
He spotted a trio of skulls half buried in the thick turf, and a strange, crystal staff lay close at hand. Walking around it, Hyden couldn’t help but notice that the door looked exactly the same from both sides, but he ignored the odd portal, and the temptation to grab up the staff, and just enjoyed the company of the wolves and his familiar.
The mother wolf commented about the scent of the Great Wolves that lingered on him, and he had to tell the pups the tale of Grrr, and how he had died to save King Mikahl from the Choska. Telling the story made him feel like Berda, and he sort of liked it. The story was sad, yet it made the pups proud of their kind. The mother wolf sensed the underlying urgency burning inside Hyden’s spirit, and carefully tempted the pups away, with the promise of a fresh meal. Hyden hugged them, and let them lick his face, and then watched with a conflicting well of emotion boiling inside him as they casually trotted away.
Talon was perched atop the golden doorframe, patiently preening his feathers. The door inside the frame was slightly yellowed with age. Carved upon its face, was a glade set in a forest of tall pine trees, with mountains beyond them, and a little stream running through the foreground. As he stood there observing it, the trees might have swayed a bit, and maybe the stream gurgled and trickled. He didn’t let the hypnotic scene distract him though. His full concentration was on the riddle that the Dying Tree had told him.
“A pyramid, a patterned knock, made up of only ten,
If you start from the bottom, I will let you in.”
He hoped he had it right. He said it as he remembered it in his head. About the fifteenth time he recited it, the answer came to him. It was so easy, that it was startling. So simple, and yet so easy to complicate, that it was no wonder that no one had ever returned from this place.
A pyramid of ten: one, two, three, four, it added up to ten. From the bottom up, it was truly a pyramid: four, three, two, and one.
With confidence, he rapped four times on the door. After a moment’s pause, he rapped three times, then two, and finally one. With the final knock, Talon fluttered from the doorframe to his shoulder.
The door creaked open on a room, formed of the same white marble as the palace of Xwarda. The circular tower chamber was dark, but the cracks in the ill fitting window shutters were letting in the wavering orange glow of some distant raging inferno.
Hyden knew he was in Pratchert’s Tower now, for on the floor, was a thick, lush rug, made from the skin of an arctic bear. It was the same arctic bear that Pratchert’s father had killed for his King a few hundred years ago.
The Choska demon’s mouth came snapping down at Mikahl, but a great white bundle of furred aggression leapt into the space between him and those slavering jaws. The teeth still found his flesh, but their force was blunted by the wolf’s breaking body. Grrr had sacrificed himself, and the sorrow Mikahl felt for the loss of such a beautiful, and proud creature, almost outweighed the physical pain he was in.
Almost.
Mikahl suddenly sat up.
The memory of the Choska demon’s toothy mouth, and Grrr’s bloody body faded from his mind quickly. The rush of Ironspike’s magic had been charging his blood for hours, and now his veins were full of pure liquid lightning.
In his confused, yet alarmingly aware mind, a chorus of angelic voices called out to him in a symphony of vast and consuming sound. Each voice sang out a different melody of possibility. One voice sang of defenses: of a shield, of armor, of a field of force to hold something in place, or deflect an object. He wasn’t sure how he understood the glorifying music, but he did. Another voice sang of binding and constraining; another of finding, of searching and summoning. A melody, that was rather louder than the rest of the symphony, sang of fire blasts and concussive energy, of streaking missiles and lightning strikes. There was healing strength, and a whole percussive section of portal commands, but the sound that flared into a solo melody of its own, over the rest of the harmonious din, was the voice that sang of the “Bright Horse.”
What it was, and why it was coming for him, he had no idea, but somehow Mikahl had called out to it, and now it was here.
Queen Willa angrily watched the darkened battle in the distance, from the crenellated roof of the Royal Tower. She wanted to be there, amongst her soldiers, so badly that it was driving her mad.
Andra, General Spyra, and the Mayor had forbidden her from joining in the battle at the outer wall. She had a duty to stand guard over the Wardstone, and to fight to protect it from those with evil intent. The mother lode of the magical bedrock was more or less under the palace, and she knew that it was what the demon was after.
She doubted that Pael knew it, but one could actually place their hand on the core of the powerful stuff along the bottom of Whitten Loch. Had he known this, he could have just slipped into the castle grounds, gone for a swim, and saved himself a lot of trouble.
There were other ways to access the Wardstone too. The mine had several passages, some big enough for wagons, but all of those tunnels opened inside or near the inner walls. If she were to go fight, and fall at the outer or secondary wall, it would only invite disaster. She was the last line of defense, and it irked her, because all she could do at the moment was watch Xwarda burn while her men were being overrun.