Steel and Stone

magical lock. Then he slung up the heavy lid, reached inside, and drew out a sandalwood box carved with silhouettes of minotaurs and seal-like creatures with huge tusks.

He repeated the incantation, with a slight difference in intonation, then opened the box. A look of relief spread across his face. 'The power of ten lifetimes for the man who unlocks it,' he whispered. Kitiara felt the hair rise on the back of her neck.

Janusz's fingers disappeared into the box and emerged with two-two what? 'Gems' was the obvious word, but the stones were more than gems. They glowed with unearthly light. Once, traveling south of the Khurman Sea, two hundred miles to the south, Kitiara had seen a necklace of amethysts that had gleamed violet in lamplight but, outside, had deepened to the purple-blue of the darkest ocean. Those Khurman stones, however, were mere pebbles compared to these. These radiated the heat of light and the cold of winter.

Ice, Kitiara thought; they looked like glowing, purple ovals of ice, the size of robins' eggs. She'd never seen anything so beautiful. Her breath quickened.

The mage had said they held power. Kitiara knew he spoke the truth.

'Mage!' The Valdane was shouting from his own tent. The spell-caster looked up and caught Kitiara spying on him at the opening of his tent. He hurriedly slipped the two stones into a pocket of his robe, and the weird purple light went out as completely as if the gems had never existed. Shaking with anger, Janusz could barely speak. 'Return to your post, Captain,' he choked out. 'And forget what you've seen here, lest you suddenly find yourself with the head of an eel.'

Kitiara made a show of moving away from the tent flap, but seconds later, she peered back in. The mage was taking the deep breath that Kitiara had seen her brother, Raistlin, use to cleanse his thoughts and focus his attention on spell-casting. Then Janusz turned and swept from the tent, scant seconds after Kitiara had dodged around the corner of the mage's lodging.

The mage moved to a clearing in the trees downhill from the tents. He was in clear view of the castle. His hands twitched. It was as if Janusz's fingers had lives of their own as they danced through the complex movements that accompanied the spell.

'Ecanaba ladston, zhurack!' the mage intoned.

Kitiara felt her face tingle, and she looked away. She heard Janusz continue his chanting. Was he turning her into an eel after all? She looked around, seeking something shiny, a mirror or pool of melted snow that might tell her if she was still Kitiara Uth Matar. Even as she looked, however, a voice in her brain reminded her that the mage hadn't locked the box. Sudden thunder distracted her. She looked up.

Now clouds coalesced in columns above the Meir's castle, forming a thunderhead as high as a dozen castles. The sky above the mercenary camp was suddenly clear. The soldiers abandoned their duties. Frozen, mouths agape, they watched as the mage on the hillside drew the forces of nature into his grasp and commanded them against his enemy. On the parapets, the castle's occupants were nearly as still. They gazed upward with dawning horror.

The cloud throbbed above them. Lightning bolts of yellow, blue, and red burst from the churning mist. Thunder reverberated inside Kitiara's head. She forced herself to remember to breathe. Her knees felt watery, and she leaned against a tree. If she'd had to defend herself now, she would have been felled as easily as a young sapling. But no attacker advanced against the mercenaries.

Then suddenly the cloud opened, and fire poured down upon the defenders of the castle.

Soldiers, peasants, and nobles screamed and sought frantically, futilely, to escape the liquid flame. Some managed to remove their clothing, only to discover that the brimstone adhered to their skin. Many, to avoid lingering deaths, dove to quick ones off the castle walls. Others tried in vain to protect the castle, shooting arrows toward the surrounding army as it waited safely out of reach of danger.

Impotent against the brimstone, the Meir's supporters burned to death where they stood. The wooden gate of the castle exploded. The top floor of the castle collapsed. A section of the castle wall cracked open. Through it, Kitiara saw the contents of water troughs boil and bubble. Then the troughs, too, exploded.

So great was Janusz's control that the mercenaries felt none of the fire, felt only a comfortable warmth beneath their feet. A hot wind streamed through the camp, and that, too, was almost pleasant, given the dampness they'd grown accustomed to. But the wind also carried ashes, and the eyes of the mercenaries streamed with tears.

The wise ones held the wool of their cloaks before their mouths and noses. Lloiden did not. He collapsed, choking, to the ground before his tent, and Kitiara wondered if Janusz was avenging the insolence of a few hours earlier.

And then it was over. The fiery rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The cloud hissed into nothingness. The mercenaries released their breath. What once had been an imposing castle was nothing but steaming wreckage. The opening still gaped at the front of the castle, but still no one dared enter. The air was thick with ashes and the horrible smell of charred flesh.

One quavering voice rose out of the camp. 'So why'd he bother to hire us?' the soldier asked.

Then the Valdane appeared around the back of Janusz's tent. He pointed his sword at Kitiara where she still leaned against the tree. 'Attack!' he screamed, his face red with anger. 'I hired you to annihilate my enemy! Now do it!'

'Valdane,' Kitiara said wearily, forcing herself to stand upright, 'there is no enemy. Your mage has killed them all.'

But the leader waved his sword like a child tilting at an imaginary monster. 'You will make sure, Captain! I want to be certain they're all dead.'

Kitiara tried again. 'Valdane, no one could possibly sur-'

'Find them!'

There was no defying him. Janusz, looking half-dead with the effort that the fiery rain had cost him, dragged himself up the hill. His voice was barely audible, his face streaked with ash and sweat. 'Valdane, it's too hot in the wreckage for our soldiers to venture inside.'

'Then send rain!'

Janusz took a long look at the Valdane, then turned soundlessly and stumbled back down the incline. Kitiara heard more chanting.

'It's raining!' a soldier shouted.

It was true. There were no clouds, yet the mage had created a gentle shower, warmed by the heat of the smoldering, hissing castle. One of the generals, the self-important one, ordered troops to advance into the Meir's castle. Kitiara's troops, the general commanded, were to stand guard around the stricken building's perimeter.

The soldiers had no sooner marched between the smoldering columns that once had flanked the main gate when a cry went up from the advance guard of Kitiara's men. The cry passed from man to man and finally became audible. 'We are attacked!'

'What?' the Valdane shrieked. His blue eyes bulged; he swept his sword back and forth more wildly. 'Mage!'

Kitiara drew her sword from its scabbard and ran a few paces downhill to join her troops, but the Valdane called her back. 'Get the mage and meet me in my tent!' he ordered.

'But my men…' Kitiara looked down at them. Already she could see them falling before hundreds of mounted nobles dressed in scarlet and royal blue, followed by swarms of peasants armed with hoes, axes, and plow blades mounted on staffs. Inefficient weapons, perhaps, but not in the hands of men and women defending their homes and lives.

The smell of smoke and mud thick in her nostrils, Kitiara ran down the hill and approached the mage. Janusz sat upon a boulder, face ashen, eyes closed, hands lying limp on his lap, palms upward. 'The Valdane wants to see you, mage,' Kitiara said.

His eyes opened. Kitiara had to lean toward him to catch his words. 'I… have nothing left,' Janusz whispered. 'No strength.' He coughed and closed his eyes again.

'We've been attacked by a large force of Meiri,' Kitiara insisted.

'I know.'

'Perhaps more fire-?'

The mage cast her a withering look and shook his head contemptuously. Kitiara remembered, from her