Vulpin could hear a scraping sound, like that of metal on stone. He glanced around. The irritated little gully dwarf was out of its cabinet. Stooping and panting, it labored, dragging a wide, iron bowl behind it.
“You will wish that I, Lord Vulpin, never be driven from this place,” Vulpin ordered the girl.
“I will … will wish that Lord Vulpin never leave this place,” Thayla managed.
“And you will wish that I, Lord Vulpin, shall prevail!”
“I will wish that Lord Vulpin pre-pre-”
“Prevail!” Vulpin hissed.
“Prevail,” Thayla whispered, struggling with the word. The big man’s fingers on her throat were an agony, but she was helpless to escape.
“Those are your wishes,” Vulpin said.
Across the stone floor a cave assassin screamed and doubled over, impaled on Chatara Kral’s flashing blade. The remaining assassin dodged aside and attacked. Vulpin raised the Fang of Orm and a tentative voice behind him announced, “Got lotta stew here. Anybody want some?”
“Get out of here!” Vulpin shouted, glancing around. With both hands occupied, he aimed a kick at the annoying gully dwarf. Clout dodged aside, and the man’s booted foot collided with the legendary Great Stew Bowl, throwing sprays and dollops of noisome concoction in all directions.
In Vulpin’s cruel grasp, Thayla squirmed and kicked. “Clout, get away!” she urged. Then the fingers tightened again and she hung silent, half-conscious and struggling for breath.
“The wish!” Vulpin ordered. “Remember the wish!”
“I … remember,” she gasped.
He loosed his hold slightly, set her on her feet and thrust the Fang of Orm into her hands, his angry eyes watching the last assassin fall. Chatara Kral stepped over the body and smiled a cruel, victorious smile. Raising her sword again, she stepped toward Vulpin.
“Wish, girl!” Vulpin hissed. “Wish, now!”
Thayla grasped the Fang of Orm. “I wish …” she said, and the daylight seemed to darken around them. Great, dark clouds sprang into being overhead, swirling and coiling like a massive storm aloft. “I wish that Chatara Kral die,” Thayla gasped. “I wish that the Lord Vulpin never leave this place.”
“Good,” Vulpin whispered. “Very good. Go on.”
Overhead, the dark clouds rolled, forming themselves into a wide ring with darkness at its center-a darkness that was beyond darkness.
“I wish,” Thayla said, gasping, “that the Lord Vulpin pre-pre …”
“Means wind up on top,” a helpful little voice nearby said.
“That Lord Vulpin wind up on top,” Thayla said, obediently.
On the near horizon a dark shadow streaked toward the tower. The shadow grew, revealing wide, graceful wings, a long, sweeping tail and extended talons. “Now,” a voice like distant thunder rumbled. It was the dragon’s own voice, speaking to itself. “Now is the time, Verden Leafglow!”
For a long moment, the humans atop the tower stood frozen, gawking at what was happening in the sky above. Out of the blackness within the ring of clouds, a gigantic head appeared, the sloping, glaring head of a great serpent. A mouth the size of a maize field opened wide, and black vapors drifted about the gleaming, curved luster of a single fang.
“Run like crazy!” Clout gurgled. In panic he upended the legendary Great Stew Bowl and ducked as it fell upside down. It clanged to the stones, with Clout hidden beneath it. Its surface was no longer dull, aged iron. It blazed now, like mirrors in sunlight, and the radiant, complex visage on its surface seemed to hang above it.
“No!” Chatara Kral screamed her anger. “This is a work of magic! But you will not see its end, Vulpin!” She launched herself at her brother, her blade singing.
Vulpin broke out of his trance at the last instant. Thrusting Thayla Mesinda aside, he blocked his sister’s lethal cut with a steel gauntlet. Her momentum carried them both back a step, as they grappled and fell. They struggled on the stone floor, Vulpin delivering mighty blows with a steel-clad fist, Chatara Kral kicking and biting, pushing aside his visor as nails like tiger claws sought his eyes.
Thayla Mesinda slumped nearby, half-conscious, her hand still holding the Fang of Orm. Then there were strong arms around her. She was swept up in big, gentle hands and a voice said: “Drop that thing! It’s evil!”
As the Fang of Orm slipped from her fingers she looked up into concerned, sky-blue eyes. “Graywing,” she breathed. She blinked and her eyes went wide with new terror. Beyond his begrimed, bearded face, an enormous serpent descended from the swirling sky. Mouth wide, single fang dripping evil vapors, Orm struck.
The great head descended with incredible speed, and just beyond it a dragon wheeled downward, wings folded, plummeting like a falcon in stoop.
As the viper’s head reached the tower, Verden Leafglow hit the thing from behind, driving it downward. Her tons of falling fury added to the serpent’s momentum, driving the great muzzle with its extended fang as a hammer drives a nail.
Neither Lord Vulpin nor Chatara Kral ever saw the giant fang that impaled them both. Needle-sharp ivory drove through Vulpin’s mass, downward through the armored breast of the woman struggling beneath him, through paving tiles and floor structure, to imbed itself solidly in the white stone beneath-the cap of that mighty pedestal on which the entire fortress rested.
Verden Leafglow was shaken by the impact of her strike. Hitting the great viper’s skull had been like hitting a mountain. But she shook herself, flapped mighty wings, circled aloft and stooped to strike again, driving the giant head downward, the great fang deeper into its stone prison.
With a hiss that shook the landscape, Orm lunged and struggled, trying to free himself. This could not be happening again! But his fang would not budge. He roared and tugged, rearing upward, shaking from side to side, and suddenly he was loose. Free! Yet even as he realized that, he saw the gory stump of his last fang still standing above the tumbled bodies of his prey.
His shrill of anguish made hillsides dance in the distance. He raised his serpent’s head and saw a dragon before him, a tan-brown, metallic-hued dragon veering this way and that in the air, taunting him. “Go away, worm,” the dragon said. “You do not belong in this world … or in any other.”
With a final hiss, Orm withdrew. Toothless and defeated, the great viper recoiled, diminishing into the clouds from which he had come. When he was gone, the ring of storm clouds collapsed upon itself, following him into that nothingness between universes. It was a nothingness infinitely large and infinitely small, a mere suggestion of distance but now so far away that Orm could never again return.
Clout peeked out from beneath his shield, peering around with puzzled little eyes. “Wow,” he said. “Musta been some kinda storm.” Then he saw faces he recognized. All along the broken wall, gully dwarves appeared, clambering over the sundered rails to look around in confusion. “Hey ever’body!” Clout greeted them. “What ever’body doin’ here?”
“Lookin’ for Highbulp,” Gandy said, searching the area for scraps of cloth to wrap around himself. “Don’t see him,” Clout said.
“I do,” Scrib pointed. “You him. Clout th’ new Highbulp. Congrat … alla best … hey, there, Highbulp.”
“No way!” Clout yelped. He clambered out from under the Great Stew Bowl. “Not me! I don’t be Highbulp. Get somebody else!”
The Lady Bruze was beside him, then. She inspected him for breakage, decided he was unharmed, and grabbed him by the ear. “Clout is Highbulp!” she ordered. “Behave self!”
Clout let it sink in, then shook his head violently, dislodging his wife’s grasp on his ear. “No way, dear,” he said. “Won’t do it. Clout not dumb ’nough for be Highbulp. Get somebody else!”
“Who else?” Scrib asked, looking around.
At that moment Bron appeared at the stairway portal, loaded down with loot. He had swords, daggers, helmets, water jugs, several sandals, a broken spear and a large, scuffed boot. He had been foraging in the stairwell.
“Get him!” Clout pointed. “Make Bron be Highbulp. He’ll do!”
Scrib peered at the happy Bron, trying to remember whether this ground had been covered before. “How ’bout it, Bron?” he asked. “You be Highbulp?”
“No!”
“He will,” Pert interrupted. “Might as well. Nothin’ better to do.”
