Orquell made one more slow circle of the column. He ran his torch up and down its length. Finally, he stopped again before the niche, the throne of the witch. “She has begun her attack.”
“Mirra?” Laurelle squeaked out.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he lowered his head and stepped toward the column. “We don’t have any more time.”
Laurelle refused to follow him closer. “What are we supposed to do?”
Orquell motioned to the column, to the room, and beyond. “Close your eyes, strip away the natural stone, until only the unnatural flowstone is left. Do you know what you find?”
Laurelle tried to map in her mind’s eye a picture of the streaking veins through which the stair had cut, leading at last to here.
“It would look like a great swirl of black flame, frozen to glassy stone. What are called Boils. I’ve seen smaller of them, but never one so large.” He stepped back. “But though this old flame is turned to stone, it still burns with the fires of the naether. And where there is flame…?” He glanced inquiringly at Laurelle.
She remembered his earlier lesson. “There is also shadow.”
He offered her a tired smile. The coldness that had crept into his manner warmed away. “Very good,” he said. “This flame does indeed still cast shadows, but not ordinary darkness.”
“Gloom,” Laurelle mumbled.
His smile deepened. “Exactly. You might do well to pay a pilgrimage to Takaminara. I believe you’d fare well with her.” He turned back to the twisted column.
Laurelle could now almost imagine it as a frozen whirlwind of fire.
“But you are right,” Orquell said. “It casts Gloom like a pure flame casts shadow. But worse for us now, this flame also smokes with power, drifting upward, fueling the witch with dire forces. That is what we must stop if we are to help Tashijan.”
“How do we do that?”
He returned his attention to the chair. “By stanching this fire. Her power flows from the naether, along this column, and smokes high.”
“But how do you stanch a fire that is set in stone?” Kytt asked.
Laurelle remembered the master’s example on the stair. “You must purify it…with fire.”
Orquell glanced back at her, his milky eyes appraising her anew. “You continue to surprise me, Mistress Hothbrin.” He returned his attention to the black stone. “The heart of this Boil must be purified. Burnt out to kill the poison. Setting fire against fire.”
He shifted closer to the niche.
Laurelle felt a stab of fear. She didn’t like the master to be so near to that black flame. But he stopped and turned back. He slipped out a bag of powder. She recognized it as the same bag where he had stored the remaining powder that fueled his torch. Orquell opened the bag and sprinkled the powder over his head, shoulders, and across chest and back.
“What are you…?” she began.
“It will take more than just fire to purify this,” Orquell said. “Someone has to enter this pyre, direct the flame. It is the only way to stop the witch. But there is great power flowing through here. One touch and your will and mind will be burnt away, lost to whatever hides below in the naether.” He faced the niche one last time. “Perhaps that is what happened to Mirra. Perhaps she discovered this place or was maliciously directed down here. Either way, once she sat on this throne, she would’ve been lost forever. Yet if someone who was purified sat here…”
Laurelle again proved her understanding of the intent behind his words. “No.”
“I must. It is the only way.” Orquell held out his torch toward her. “Once I sit down, you have to set me on fire.”
Kathryn yelled to be heard above the bleat of a horn. “More flames! Get more torches! Where’s that barrel of oil?”
She manned the line on the sixth floor. The lower five were gone. All of Tashijan, those still living, were crammed into a mere ten levels.
Gerrod climbed up from below, his armor reflecting the firelight that shone down the stairs. He led another handful of knights. All their cloaks were charred at the edges. The witch’s attack had proven especially difficult to thwart. The same fires that shunned her black ghawls shed the speed and force of shadows from the knights, weakening them when they needed to be strongest.
Also the wraiths still harried the line at top, dividing their full force.
Gerrod and the other knights cleared the picket here. “That’s the last,” he said, joining her.
The other knights climbed past. One of the knights carried one of his brothers over a shoulder. The body smoked. She caught a glimpse of a blackened arm hanging from beneath a cloak.
“Coming through!” a shout erupted behind them.
Two men rolled a barrel of oil down the steps. Others helped slow its descent with hands as they passed, lest it roll out of control.
“If we cast much more fire below,” Gerrod warned, “we may burn Stormwatch out from under us.”
Kathryn remembered the blackened arm. “Rather a clean fire than the corruption wielded by Mirra.”
A piercing scream echoed up to them, full of pain.
It wasn’t human-nor was it daemon.
Horse.
Kathryn had emptied the stables into the lower level of Stormwatch as the wraiths attacked. The thatching of the old structure had offered no protection against Ulf’s winged legion. So she had led the entire stable inside, horse and horsemen.
“We couldn’t clear them,” Gerrod said. “There was no space up here for the horses. Climbing stairs, all the fires…Horsemaster Poll even tried blinding them with blankets. They were too panicked.”
She remembered the stablemen’s refusal to abandon their charges, hiding with their horses in the cold barns.
“What about the barnstaff?”
Gerrod shook his head. “I don’t know. They were ordered to clear, but…” He shook his head.
It had been chaos for the past half bell.
“I have to go down there,” Kathryn said.
“Are you mad?” Gerrod said, almost sputtering in his helmet.
“She is slaying the horses on purpose. Most cruelly. She knows my love for those horses. And if there are any of the barnstaff still down there-”
“They’re not worth the risk,” Gerrod said too quickly. He raised a hand to his forehead. “I didn’t mean to make it sound like that.”
She touched his arm. “I know. But they’re all good folk who man our stables, every one of them. I will take a few knights, ripe with power, and strike a fast assault. Just to see if any of the barnstaff are down there.”
But in her heart Kathryn knew they were down there.
Gerrod stared a long time at her, unmoving, a statue in bronze. “Go,” he whispered, but she knew it took all his reserve to utter that one word.
Kathryn had never loved him more. She didn’t need his approval, but his concession fueled her when she needed it most. She turned to two knights. “Bastian and Tyllus. You’re with me.”
They came quickly, without question.
They both bore the Fiery Cross, but she knew they were stout of heart and had proven themselves countless times this day. She told them what she proposed. They nodded and gathered what was necessary.
“Let’s go.” Kathryn crossed the picket and headed down. “Send word to Argent at the top line,” she called back to Gerrod.
He lifted a bronze arm in acknowledgment, then vanished from sight as she fled around a turn in the stair. Fires still blazed here, but after another two turns, all the torches were guttered. Darkness filled the lower stairs.
Kathryn pulled up hood and masklin. Despite knowing what lurked in the depths of that darkness, she still sank gratefully into the shadows, wicking their power along all the threads of her cloak. She whisked away from sight, flanked by her knights.
