creature swelled even larger, looming to an impossible height, flaring those black wings, and casting its gaze over the whole of the great hall. The fanged jaws gaped, and a roar bellowed forth, the sound reverberating from the walls, shaking the very bedrock of the floor.
The hill dwarves around the lift platform recoiled in horror, many of them running out the fortress gate, others whispering prayers to Reorx and staring in wide-eyed fear. The monster roared again, and Brandon found some control of his limbs, stumbling away in abject fear. Still clinging to his axe, he sprang down from the platform and staggered across the floor, feeling those crimson eyes burning into his back.
He felt a shocking chill and looked back to see the black beast pounce after him, springing like a massive winged cat. Brandon ducked to the side, falling and rolling across the floor as the monster came down on the spot where he had been. All around, the hill dwarves were fleeing, shouting in panic and dismay, thronging into a packed bottleneck in their frantic efforts to get out of the massive gate.
The monster spun and roared again, the blast of sound actually brushing Brandon’s hair and beard like a gust of wind. He could never outrun it, he knew, so he raised his axe and his voice, roaring a war cry of his own.
“For Bluestone and Kayolin!” he cried, rushing forward with his axe upraised. The monster reared, wings flapping, as if it couldn’t believe the dwarf’s effrontery. Brandon swung his axe, the ancient blade of his ancestors, the keen steel slashing through the talons of the monster’s foot with a hiss like red-hot metal touching water. The beast howled in fury. With one backhanded blow, it knocked the dwarf to the side, sending him tumbling like a gaming pin. It took all of Brandon’s concentration to hold on to his axe as he rolled across the floor.
“Behold the true power of Harn Poleaxe!”
Gretchan’s shouted voice rang out amid the suddenly eerie silence of the great hall. She was riding down in a second lift platform, her staff grasped in her hand, her golden hair shimmering in the light from the glowing anvil of Reorx. She pointed to the monster but addressed the gawking, awestruck hill dwarves who still remained in the hall and were trying to decide what to do.
“This is the corruption that ate away his soul! This is the power that drove him to this mad war-that almost resulted in death on a scale you can’t even imagine.”
The lift continued to drop, bringing her down to the docking station next to Brandon.
The creature’s red eyes glared in fury and hatred at the priestess and her shining light. As she neared, it raised up taloned foreclaws as if to shield its face from the burning glare. Growling and shivering, it stood its ground, and when she raised the staff in challenge, it flapped and, instead of recoiling, stepped closer to her.
Gretchan’s face was locked in a grimace of determination. She put both hands on the staff, bracing her feet as if she were trying to withstand a gale of wind-and, indeed, when the monster bellowed again, her hair blew back from her head like a golden plume. The light on the head of the staff wavered, and the monster roared another exultant challenge, taking a second step closer to the dwarf priestess.
She shook her head to ward off the onslaught, hair cascading in a halo, and raised her voice in the face of the beast’s challenge.
“Good hill dwarves!” she cried. “Is this the kind of master you serve? A creature of darkness, of foul magic and even more foul gods? Haven’t you been deceived enough by Harn Poleaxe, who was a slave to that master?”
The lift came to a rest on the floor. Brandon stood on shaky legs, breathing hard, his fingers clenched around the haft of his axe. The Kayolin dwarf stumbled toward her as she pointed to him.
“This dwarf, whom you would have killed under Harn’s orders, risked his own life to try and save you. He warned you of the trap, which the Klar captain was ready to spring, and if those stones had fallen, he, too, would have perished under their weight, as well as most of you. But he was willing to take the chance to save Neidar lives… and work toward peace.”
The beast roared, wings flailing, and it reared high, snarling and snapping toward the priestess. With a sudden lunge, it sprang toward her.
“Begone!” cried Gretchan. She pounded the base of her staff against the platform with a thump that echoed through the vast hall. Her talisman pulsed with light, so bright that even the hill dwarves couldn’t look at it.
But the creature waved a massive paw and seemed to wipe that light away. Roaring again, it pressed closer, looming five times Gretchan’s height, throwing back its head with the fanged maw gaping. It pounded taloned fists against its chest, the sound thrumming like a massive drumbeat through the cavernous hall.
The priestess struggled to stand, to hold her staff, but the force of the monster was too great. She stumbled back, almost falling. The light of Reorx’s forge flickered again and faded.
In the sight of her peril, Brandon found his nerves and his strength. He raised his axe and charged, bringing the weapon in a great downward sweep as he approached the creature from the flank. He couldn’t reach its head or even its torso, but his axe blade sliced through the beast’s thigh, cutting the black flesh, tearing through enchanted sinew and bone. The thing wailed in savage pain and staggered, sinking down as the limb collapsed underneath it.
“Go!” Gretchan shouted again, her voice pitched to a piercing scream. Her staff blazed anew, the white light searing into the creature’s face, burning, charring, killing. Shrieking and writhing, the dark monster slumped, weakened, and vanished, leaving the hill and mountain dwarves staring in horror.
Brandon staggered up to Gretchan and took her in his arms. She collapsed with a sob, and for long heartbeats they held each other. Only gradually did they become aware of the eyes of the Neidar, many hundred of whom still remained in the hall, watching them in awe and apprehension.
“Let the killing cease, in the name of Reorx.” Gretchan spoke almost in a whisper, but her voice carried through the whole vast chamber.
“Peace,” said the hill dwarf called Slate Fireforge as the restive Neidar looked warily around the vast chamber, as if expecting another attack. “Let’s talk about this for a moment.”
“Good idea,” replied Gretchan Pax.
Mason Axeblade took charge of Garn Bloodfist, who was on his knees, sobbing and wailing at the failure of the trap. The Daewar captain secured the rebellious Klar’s wrists with manacles and ordered two of his Hylar warriors to lock him up in the dungeon.
Tarn Bellowgranite and Otaxx Shortbeard descended to the floor of the main hall, where some of the Neidar remained. The hill dwarves’ morale had been badly shaken by the death of Poleaxe and the manifestation of the monster, and the vast majority had been only too willing to march back out of the fortress. Some had headed straight home, no matter how many miles away. Many others camped on the flats outside the wall, huddled around hundreds of fires that dotted the field for an expanse of nearly a mile.
Within the Tharkadan Wall, torches burned all around the big room. The bodies of the slain were being collected and prepared for burial, hill and mountain dwarf corpses arrayed side by side. Two hill dwarf captains, Slate Fireforge and Axel Carbondale, met with Tarn and Otaxx to parley.
Gretchan and Brandon were there too, while Gus and Berta sat with Kondike off to the side, watching the bigger dwarves with mingled awe and skepticism. The two gully dwarves had managed to capture the attention of a couple of Hylar men-at-arms, and those sturdy dwarves had been able to hoist both Gus and the dog back up to the catwalk.
“When Gus escaped from the black wizard, he inadvertently brought a bottle of the wizard’s brew with him,” Gretchan was explaining to everyone between puffs on her pipe. A bluish haze of sweet smoke surrounded her.
“I don’t know what it was, but it obviously had some kind of corrupting effects. It was in a bottle of dwarf spirits, and Harn Poleaxe stole it from my room in Hillhome. I have no doubts that he drank it and became the tool of that darkness we saw looming just a short time ago.”
“And you killed it?” Otaxx Shortbeard asked in awe.
“I don’t think so,” Gretchan said honestly. “But it was banished by the power of Reorx, through my staff-and Brandon’s axe.”
“How did Reorx wield my axe?” the Kayolin dwarf asked dubiously. After all, he rather thought that he, himself, had struck the killing blow.
Gretchan merely smiled. “Remember the story you told me: how that axe was carried by your ancestor, who was on a mountaintop the day the Cataclysm struck.”
“Balric Bluestone, yes,” Brandon remembered.
“They never found him, but they found his axe. Do you think that was just luck?”
