He turned to stare at the massive face of Sky's End across the bridge, and a green light glowed there among the fallen stone. It looked to the dwarf like light coming from an open door.
'Go,' Wingover said. 'I'll hold them here as long as I can. Go and do what we came for… whatever that is.'
Chane hesitated, then nodded. 'It is what we came for,' he said.
Abruptly he held out his hand. 'Good luck, human.'
Wingover took the hand in his good one. 'Good journey, dwarf.'
Chane turned toward the crown of the bridge and the mystery beyond,
Jilian following. Chess looked after them, started to tag along, but changed his mind.
'He's probably about to become rich and famous,' the kender muttered.
'And probably insufferable. I think I'll stay.'
Just beyond the foot of the bridge, Kolanda Darkmoor stood, looking up at them. Her stance was a warrior's stance. A victor's stance. Her eyes behind her steel mask glittered with anticipation, and something between her breasts glowed darkly. A faint, sizzling sound lingered in the air.
And then there was no more time. Out past the breaks, goblin troops raced toward Chane and his companions, and just beyond the foot of the bridge Kolanda Darkmoor signaled her guard to advance. Wingover picked up his sword and braced himself, estimating how long it would take for the dwarves to reach safety under the mountain.
Chapter 32
An eerie darkness walked across the land, a darkness of writhing black clouds that swirled and coiled, defeating the sunlight. West of the bridge, Sky's End was veiled, its slopes immersed in flowing darkness. To the east, the breaks, the low hills, and the vast plains beyond were a dancing mosaic of deepening shadow. Toward Skullcap the clouds circled and tumbled in upon themselves, twisting in clockwise rotation as the descending belly of the storm dropped lower and lower, becoming a funnel miles across. Above the gorge winds swept down from mountain passes and howled in murky glee.
Wingover set his sword upright against a stone and used his right hand to lift his left arm, shield and all, until the flinthide's edge was just below his eyes. With a strip of fabric from his tunic he tied the useless arm in place, then retrieved his sword.
The woman in the horned helmet gazed up at him, her pose arrogant, speculative. After a moment she called, 'I want the thing you brought from
Dergoth! Give it to me!'
Wingover waited.
'You won't kill me,' the woman called. 'You can't.' Her laughter cut across the wind as she lifted the hideous mask, letting Wingover see her face.
'I don't know what you want,' Wingover shouted.
'You know,' the woman laughed. 'The thing your wizard had. The thing you brought here. Give it to me!'
Wingover faced Kolanda, trying to hold her gaze, counting silently. It was only three hundred yards to the rockfall beyond the bridge. The dwarves should reach it any moment. Once within that hidden portal, they might be safe. He didn't know how he knew that, but he knew.
'You've come too late for that,' he shouted. 'It's gone.'
'Gone? Gone where?'
Above and just beyond the woman and the goblins, a figure appeared on top of a rock. It was Glenshadow. Bison cloak whipping in the wind, long hair and beard streaming, he leaned for a moment on his staff, then stood erect as the staff's crystal cap winked to life. A clear crimson beacon blinked to life in the darkening murk.
'They made it,' Wingover muttered. 'Spellbinder is beneath the ground.'
On the flat top of a sundered stone the wizard Glenshadow raised his glowing staff and shouted, 'I know you, Caliban!' His voice carried on the wind like flung ice, and a brilliant flare of crimson shot out from his staff toward Kolanda Darkmoor — shot out, and stopped just short of reaching her, swallowed up in a darkness that had a voice of its own.
The sibilant, withered voice said, 'And I know you,
Glenshadow. You are the last.' Blinding light blazed where the crimson beam ended, and crackling thunder rolled.
Glenshadow's beam receded, swallowed by a wave of darkness that rushed toward Glenshadow. Rushed, then hesitated. Wingover's mind reeled. Which
Glenshadow? There wasn't just one any more. There were three. Then five.
Then a dozen, and more. Myriad Glenshadows, everywhere, all moving in perfect unison as they willed their magics back upon the darkness centered at Kolanda's breast.
'Trickster!' the withered voice rasped. 'Red-robe, you'd fight me with illusion?' Blacknesses writhed outward, seeking all the Glenshadows.
'Die,' the voice whispered.
The blacknesses snaked out, and one by one the image mages were gone… except one. As Wingover watched that one grew to gigantic size. Hundreds of feet tall, his stance spanning the nearby breaks, Glenshadow absorbed the blackness cast at him. It pierced him here, there, searching, and lost itself in his vastness.
'Illusion,' the withered voice hissed. 'Can you do no better than that?'
The winds swirled, sizzling, and the searching blackness grew. Great dark holes appeared in the fabric of Glenshadow's massive image, and it seemed to flutter in the wind, dissolving. From one tiny corner of it a beam of crimson lanced out and smote the thing at Kolanda's breast, making it shriek and writhe. It fought back, then, and again the span between them was colliding energies, crimson and black with blinding glare between.
Somewhere beyond the bridge, greater thunders erupted. The stone bridge trembled, keened, and swayed. Somewhere across the gorge a piece of the mountain was falling.
'Where is the thing I want?' Kolanda shouted again, her voice rising in anger.
'It's where you can never reach it now,' Wingover called and started forward, limping. A goblin dart thumped into his shield, clung for an instant, and dropped away. A pigeon egg splattered on the armor of a goblin, then a pewter mug took the creature full in the face. One beside it screeched as a dagger made from a cat's tooth whistled from the kender's hoopak and lodged in its throat.
'I've had enough of this,' Kolanda Darkmoor spat. She stooped, retrieved a set and loaded crossbow, and trained it for an instant on Wingover. 'It ends now! Caliban, finish it!' Massed darknesses welled outward, seeking
Glenshadow. The dark magics reached out, then hesitated and swiftly faded.
The crossbow faltered as Kolanda Darkmoor looked down at the arrow standing in her breast, piercing the withered heart of Caliban, linking it forever to her own heart by a common shaft of hickory Wood.
Beside the north spire Garon Wendesthalas slumped, a goblin's blade piercing his throat. Slowly he sprawled, his bow sliding from nerveless fingers to lie beside him. He turned his head and looked up the bridge rise, then raised a battered hand in final salute to his old friend,
Wingover. He didn't move again;
The winds howled, and hailstones battered the land. Lightning like spider legs walked across the Plains of Dergoth and the nearer hills, striking among the goblin troops there. Staccato and brilliance, darkness and storm, the bolts danced on winds that screamed and sang and buffeted the swaying stone bridge.
Chestal Thicketsway clung to a bridge rail and shouted, 'It's Zap! He's happening!'
His shield to the raging wind, Wingover fought his way to the foot of the bridge with the kender clinging to him. They fell, rolled, and sought shelter in a storm like no storm ever seen on Ansalon… at least since the Cataclysm.
'Three spells cast Fistandantilus,'the Irda had said, 'in the Valley of
Waykeep. The first was fire, the second ice. The third has not yet happened.'
