orcs back to the fight, setting his fur on fire. The ball passed harmlessly over the bugbears stomping over their opponents with their heavy hobnail boots, before scorching half a dozen orcs across their snouts. The hobgoblin commander rolled on the floor, trying to escape the mysterious sphere. The two bugbears knocked him back and forth between them with their glaives, much like a pair of cats batting mice from one paw to another. The wizard twitched a finger to the left, and the flaming sphere bounced left to fry more orcs. He twitched a finger to the right, and the sphere flew to the right and set another hobgoblin blazing. Smoke filled the room, and that the wizard also controlled. With a small wind, the wizard whipped it into the faces of his attackers, so the creatures gasped and choked and dropped to the ground, smothered by the acrid fumes from their own burning comrades.
Fottergrim's raiders were routed. As a body, they rushed to escape the fate of their choking, frying fellows. They burst around Ivy, Sanval, and Zuzzara, streamed past the rest of the startled Siegebreakers, and disappeared down the dark tunnel that led down to the river-out of the fire and into the flood.
'Oh, blast,' said Ivy when she saw how spell after spell burst from the wizard's hands in rapid succession. 'This is not good.'
She looked around, hoping to see a clear exit. There was no way out that was not clogged with dying or dead hobgoblins and orcs. More worrisome was the fact that the rest of her friends had followed her blindly into the room. Gunderal's violet eyes were round with shock at the easy burst of fire spells that came from the wizard.
'We need help,' Zuzzara sputtered over her shoulder to her sister.
'You know I can't control fire!' Gunderal sobbed, her uninjured hand protectively crossed over the hand still resting in the sling.
'I don't mean to nag, sister,' said Zuzzara as she punched an orc and then slung it over the heads of Gunderal and Mumchance to join its fellows, 'but sometimes you can dampen down flames.'
The black smoke still swirled around them. Zuzzara caught a lungful and coughed. At the sound of her sister's hacking distress, Gunderal's face turned even whiter. She muttered a spell, hissing out each word like an angry kitten. A swirl of damp but clean air, smelling pleasantly of evergreen trees and spring flowers, swept through the room. Zuzzara drew in a grateful breath of the healing mist, thumped the last standing orc over the head with her shovel, and gave her sister an enormous pointy-toothed grin.
'Knew you could do it,' bellowed Zuzzara.
Gunderal acknowledged her with a weak smile and leaned more heavily against the wall. 'That should have been stronger,' she said, her voice rising barely above a whisper as she drew in her own deep breaths of the mist.
Noticing that the fighting had now completely stopped, Zuzzara added. 'Hey, we did good, didn't we?'
Ivy almost agreed, but then she caught sight of Mumchance and Kid, both of whom still hugged the wall, flanking the more vulnerable Gunderal.
Mumchance looked as glum as a one-eyed dwarf could look-in other words well down the scale toward outright miserable-and all that could be seen of Wiggles was the tip of one quivering white ear poking out of Mumchance's pocket. But the expression on Kid's face worried Ivy even more. For the first time since she had plucked the little thief's hand off her purse and slung him over her shoulder to carry him home, Kid looked frightened. His head was pulled down into his shoulders, and his whole body was hunched over, as if he anticipated a blow or a beating.
Ivy glanced over her shoulder to see what terrified Kid so. She realized that Kid was staring at the flaming wizard still casually leaning on his big metal crutch. With an impatient snap of his fingers, the wizard plucked a scorched charm off his cloak and threw it to the floor. The flames springing from his clothes vanished.
The tall, thin man strode toward Ivy's group, confident and with no hesitation. The metal crutch under his left arm swung in perfect time with his legs and lent an odd and menacing thud to each step forward. Even slightly stooped, he still towered above all of them except Zuzzara. His face was young, but deeply lined; grooves of discontent ran from long nose to narrow lips.
He stared at them with absolute disdain and then smiled with the faintest upward tug of his closed lips. His yellow-green eyes narrowed with the type of pleasure usually seen in the face of a barnyard cat confronting a particularly plump baby bird.
'How interesting,' the wizard said. 'Toram's lost little pet goat and a pack of scruffy fighters, led by a fellow in such shiny armor that he has to come from Procampur. It is amazing what you find underground these days.'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In a soft whisper, Kid murmured, 'Archlis.'
'Oh, by all the gods great and small,' swore Ivy. The last person she wanted to meet was Fottergrim's personal spell-caster, the master of Tsurlagol's walls throughout the siege.
The wizard focused on Sanval, obviously taking the Procampur captain as their leader. The others he had looked over with a disinterested eye and immediately dismissed as unimportant. Ivy kept quiet, wanting to observe without being too closely observed.
'So what are you hunting in these ruins with Toram's god-sight goat?' Archlis repeated the odd phrase, gesturing with the tip of his metal crutch at Kid, who cringed away as though he expected it to spit fire at him.
'What do you think we seek?' Sanval answered question with question, his voice very steady and low, even as he took a half-step in front of Kid, sheltering the little thief behind his well-armored back.
'I am the magelord Archlis, the terror of Fottergrim's army,' snapped the wizard. 'Do not play games with me, little captain from Procampur.'
'I am Sanval Nerias Moealim Hugerand Filao-Trious Semmenio Illuskia Hyacinth Neme Auniomaro Valorous, a captain of Procampur's army.' Sanval drew a deep breath after that recital. 'I can say with complete honesty that I did not enter these ruins to capture you.' Sanval's expression showed no more emotion on his handsome face than he had when confronted with Mumchance's leaping pack of mutts at the camp. His Procampur training in courtesy still held, even as the long-nosed Archlis sneered at him. 'And I never play games with wizards.'
'Wizard! Do you think that is all that I am? I, Archlis, who know the ancient secrets of Netheril. A magelord of the arcane arts. I could turn you to ash with a single word.' Archlis half-raised his Ankh, favoring Sanval with the same close-lipped smile he had given when he recognized Kid. Sanval's hand tightened on his sword hilt.
'So,' said Ivy, stepping forward before Sanval could provoke him further, 'noble magelord, how can we help you?'
The magelord looked her up and down. He did not seem impressed. 'Mercenary,' said Archlis as a definition and not a compliment.
Ivy nodded. 'Definitely. We did a little detour from the siege and ended up falling down here.'
'Do not lie to me. You think'-Archlis pointed at Kid, who was still half-hidden behind Sanval-'that will lead you to the crypt. But I still have the book, and without it, you could not hope to find the crypt, not even with the power of that trinket on your glove.'
Ivy glanced down at her gauntlets. The left one bore a battered silver oak leaf, a gift from her long-lost mother. The tarnished token was so much a part of her gear that she rarely gave it any thought. Odd that Archlis should notice so small and insignificant a magical item-just as the Pearl had. On his tabard hung a multitude of charms. Some were forged from iron, others knotted from what looked like elf hair; still more were tarnished silver and yellowed bone. Below the shifting, clinking charms, Ivy saw arcane sigils and runes woven into the very cloth. His hands were studded with rings, and Ivy doubted that those trinkets were only charged with spells to dry out his boots. All in all, his charms and rings were a far more impressive display of magical protection and-most probably- magical destruction than her one lucky silver leaf. Still, Archlis had noticed the token, and he seemed thrown slightly off balance by Kid's presence in their group.
'Kid is very good at what he does. And I have my protections as well,' said Ivy in the spirit of pure bluff. After all, if Archlis thought they were more powerful than they appeared, who was she to tell him that appearances were deceptive. And she would question Kid later about his supposed talents, just as soon as she was sure that Archlis was not going to sizzle their bones. 'I could sell you his services. I could sell you mine. Cheap.'
Kid gave an involuntary bleat and cringed farther away from Archlis. Sanval tried to say something, but Ivy stepped hard on his boot. When he started to protest, she gestured at Zuzzara, who clamped a large hand over his
