priest's eye-fire wrestled something unseen in the air between them… and was slowly forced back, quivering and spitting sparks.
Keeping his gaze on Golskyn, Beldar retreated toward the window. One of the tall swivel-mirrors was in his way.
In his way…
Beldar ducked behind it, caught hold of it, and thrust it at Golskyn. Fire splashed off the mirror and rebounded, and the priest gasped and then snarled in pain and fury.
Beldar ducked away as the glass shattered, sparkling shards flying everywhere, and the fire-beam lanced forth again. It took but a moment to pluck up the mirror up by its wooden stand and thrust its jagged remnants into the priest's face.
Golskyn screamed in earnest in this time, a howl of agony that broke off into frantic flight when Beldar slashed with the mirror, again and again, glass tinkling down until he was holding a bare frame. By then, the room was empty of haughty priests and sorcerous sons alike.
Beldar snatched up his sword and some cushions and got himself over to the wall just beside the door. In another breath Mrelder would think of some clever spell. They needed him alive, unless they were abandoning use of the Walking Statues, so it would be something disabling, not deadly.
An icy cloud hissed past Beldar. He shrank down as most of the room vanished under a frigid coating of glittering ice.
Flattened against the wall, cushion in one hand and sword in the other, Beldar waited as silently as he could manage. He tried to breathe gently, slowly… so quietly.
'It'll take too long, Father,' Mrelder said suddenly, from just outside the door. 'If I'm still feeling around for the lordling's mind when some nobles get up here with their swords and their anger-with you like that…'
Cautiously the sorcerer peered into the room, and Beldar swung the cushion as hard and fast as he could.
It caught Mrelder in the face, trailing feathers, and burst into flames as the sorcerer got it with some lightning-swift cantrip or other, but by then Beldar had swung his blade, slicing through fire and feathers into flesh.
Mrelder sobbed, and Beldar's blade came back wet with bright blood. He hacked again, hard, but this time his seeking steel bit only air, and he heard the moaning sorcerer stumbling away.
'Couldn't you even-' Golskyn began angrily, and Mrelder hissed something furious and pain-wracked… then two pairs of stumbling footfalls receded hastily down the gallery.
Beldar Roaringhorn ran to the window with bloody sword in hand, his mind free of shouting voices, and glared at the stone legs.
Step away, he thought angrily. Step AWAY.
And with the sound of ponderous thunder, the wall of stone outside the window moved.
Beldar thought hard, seeking to thrust himself into that heaviness, the great stone weight he could now dimly perceive in his mind.
As a great foot came down and Beldar's room rocked, plaster falling in tumbling plumes, he became aware of movement. He was moving, or rather, the statue was moving and he was a part of it.
Buildings all around him, at knee and thigh level, bright lights in the night…
He was the Walking Statue. Great power, slow but unstoppable, surging cold and dark and heavy, surging…
Beldar beheld a garden wall across the shattered street from the Purple Silks. Strike that down!
A fist swung, and stones melted before it, spraying down across the street to shatter against the festhall walls. Blocks crumbled and fell, opening rents that gave Beldar a glimpse of the sagging feasting hall galleries inside as stone fell into dust and rubble, and tumbled into the festhall.
From his great height, Beldar looked down. There were holes in the street, great pits of collapsed cobbles, and behind him, pits that laid bare the sewer-tunnels where frightened men and women were scurrying, some looking up at him in pale-faced horror as they ran.
Around that terrified human flood, smaller folk were at work: dwarves, hammering and hefting in expert haste to shore up the walls and crumbling ceilings of the damaged tunnels. Beldar plucked up a great handful of stones from the rubble he'd caused, turned with infinite care, bent, and tilted his great hand into a chute, lowering it to just beside a dwarf.
That bearded stalwart squinted up at him for a moment-it must have been like gazing up at a mountain-and then leaped onto the great hand and tugged at the nearest stone, passing it down to others below. Beldar kept the Statue motionless as the dwarf worked, thrusting and tugging. A great iron bar was tossed up, and a second dwarf joined the first, huffing and shoving, tipping the stones one by one to the swarming dwarves below.
Gods above, he was rebuilding Waterdeep! Beldar grinned into the great cold darkness that engulfed… and was still doing so (there was something about the Statues that made one's thoughts slow and heavy) when his hand was emptied of the last stone. One dwarf and the bar promptly disappeared over the edge of his finger. The last dwarf-the one who'd first been brave enough to leap onto his hand-looked up and gave Beldar a laconic nod of thanks ere leaping down out of sight.
Beldar made the Statue straighten slowly and carefully and then was struck by the whim to look back at himself in the window and see what wayward sons of Roaringhorn look like.
That was a mistake, because something roared and flashed in Beldar's head… and he found himself sprawled over the padded sideboard, sword in hand, back in the shattered room full of cushions and mirrors. Back in the festhall, where Mrelder and Golskyn of the Amalgamation were lurking.
Beldar found his small crimson vial and unstoppered it. He was free for the moment, but who knew when the voice might return? Of one thing he was certain: they must not regain control of the Statues.
With one hand he held his eyelids firmly open-and with the other he emptied the vial into his beholder- eye.
White fire exploded in his head.
Agony like he'd never known… the potion spilled down his face in corrosive tears, searing bubbling furrows.
Darkness swept in, the white light dwindling… somehow Beldar pushed away oblivion and took a step.
The room tilted and swayed. He took another cautious step. Glass crunched underfoot as he felt his way to the doorway.
Tears were glimmering in his remaining eye, but he could- just-see. There was no waiting sorcerer or priest, just a deserted, sagging gallery.
A deep-voiced shout called for more stone. Beldar turned back to the window, wistfully eyeing the Statue. He'd been too quick to destroy the beholder eye-and with it, his connection to the Walking Statues. Another load of stone, just one, might make a vital difference.
To his astonishment, the great construct stooped, gathered up rubble, and lowered it to the waiting dwarves. The Statue still obeyed his unspoken commands!
Too numb and pain-wracked to ponder this mystery, Beldar hefted his sword and staggered out into what was left of the Purple Silks.
If he survived this, he'd have to ask Taeros why ballads never mentioned how tired heroes got or how their victory battles seemed to never end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The winecellar seemed endless. Beldar picked his way over bodies and more bodies, seeking his foes.
Two halflings faced him, weapons drawn. Beyond them a lantern flickered on the floor, shining on glimmering blue cloth, and showing him two faces he knew: the Dyre sisters.
Blue gemweave…
'Korvaun!' Beldar shouted. Crossed swords barred his way.
'Let him through,' ordered Naoni.
Beldar went to his knees beside his oldest friend. It took only a glance to know that Korvaun Helmfast was
