warrior-wizard sent white fire blasting down the empty passage, opening a hole through a wall two feet thick. Sturm ran on, past the third and fourth floors, to the roof.
'Come back, young Brightblade! You can't hide forever!'
Merinsaard taunted him. A miasma of anger and evil settled over the entire castle. Sturm came to a section of wall where the wooden boarding had been burned away. He teetered along a charred beam, thinking the heavier Merinsaard could not follow, then crouched behind the rubble from a fallen tower and tried to plan an attack.
When he came to the burned area, Merinsaard folded his arms across his chest and muttered a spell in an ancient, gut tural tongue. Black clouds collected around the hoarding, and Merinsaard simply walked across on the vapor, chuck ling fiercely as he came. Sturm pushed over a section of bro ken wall in a desperate attempt to impede the wizard's approach. Thresholder swept back and forth, shattering the tumbling blocks into gravel.
'Where will you go next?' chortled Merinsaard. 'You are running out of castle, Brightblade. What a disappointment you would have been to your father. He was a true warrior, ten times the man you'll ever be. My men pursued him for months after they sacked the castle. He survived them all, even the Trackers of Leereach.'
'What was he to you?' Sturm shouted. 'Why should you want his death?'
'He was a Knight and a battle lord. My mistress could not allow him to live if our plan for conquest was to go for ward.' A blast from the silver sword shaved off the top of the battered tower. 'What an irony it is that you will die wearing his armor. What a supreme moment for my Dark
Queen!'
He's right, Sturm thought. I've run out of castle, and I'm not the man my father was. A curved wall of the tower closed in behind him. Sturm looked up. There was no place to go — no place but down.
Tiny droplets of fire burst around Sturm's feet. He hopped aside, perilously close to the edge. 'Jump, boy.
Cheat my revenge, why don't you? It will be easier than the death I have in mind for you,' Merinsaard said, a scant five yards away. Sturm looked down. It was a long, long fall.
'Take the step. Jump. For you it can be over quickly,' hissed the wizard.
There was no hope. This was the end. Sturm would never again see his friends or solve the mystery of his father. For him, there was only a choice of deaths. A single step, and oblivion. Didn't every man want an easy death when his time came? But you're not every man! his mind screamed.
You're the son and grandson of Solamnic Knights! his mind screamed. This knowledge helped melt the icy fear that gripped his heart.
He squared his shoulders and faced Merinsaard. The
Brightblade sword pointed at the warlord's heart. 'I do not do your evil bidding,' Sturm stated. 'If you claim to be a warrior and a lord, let your blade test mine, and we will see who acquits himself with honor.'
Merinsaard smiled, showing white teeth. The blinding glow faded from Thresholder, and Sturm assumed a fighting stance. The wizard extended his blade at Sturm, and with no warning at all, a blast of fire lashed out from the tip. It struck Sturm in the chest and slammed him into the tower wall.
'As you see,' said Merinsaard. 'I am not an honorable man.' He raised Thresholder for the final, mortal strike, and his eyes got very wide and white. Sturm struggled to bring the tip of his father's sword waveringly into the air.
Suddenly, Merinsaard made a gagging sound and stag gered to the battlement. Sturm was astonished to see an arrow buried in his back. Some distance away, silhouetted against the morning sky, was a figure with a bow.
Sturm got to his feet. Merinsaard grasped the battlement with his mailed hands, but the iron links found no purchase, and the warrior-wizard toppled through a crenelation to the courtyard below. There was a scream, a heavy, ringing thud, and silence.
Sturm raced for the steps. The mysterious archer was nowhere in sight. He found Merinsaard dead, his sightless eyes staring into the mossy flagstones. Thresholder lay just beyond his lifeless fingers. As Sturm watched, the sword flared and vanished with a loud crack. Where it had lain, the stones were scorched.
Sturm wavered and braced himself against the donjon wall. As he tried to make sense of what had happened, another arrow struck the ground at his feet. The gray goose feather fletching on the long black arrow quivered from the impact.
Sturm jerked around and saw the unknown archer atop the outer wall. The bowman raised a hand in salute, then ducked into an empty watchtower and was gone.
He stooped to examine the arrow. Tied to the shaft just behind the head was a slip of paper. Sturm freed it and read:
Dear S
I knew you'd come here and here I find you in a losing fight with a wizard. My new friends don't choose to play fair but I decided to even the odds in memory of our past friendship. Next time you might not be so lucky!
K
PS: You were a sucker to let him point the magic blade at you.
'Kitiara!' Sturm called to the sky and stones. 'Kitiara, where are you?' But he knew she was gone, lost to him for ever.
Chapter 41
If took some time, but a message displayed by
Sturm from Palanthas to Sancrist was answered. Stutts, inventor of the practical (well, mostly practical) flying ship, sent Sturm a reply that took up sixteen sheets of foolscap, front and back. It seems that he, Wingover, Sighter, and the rest made it back to Mt. Nevermind eventually, using the hull of the Cloudmaster as a conventional sailing ship. The massive report the gnomes submitted to the High Council of
Gnomish Technology ran into thirty volumes.
'The irony is,' Stutts wrote to Sturm, 'in all the time we spent on Lunitari we didn't manage to bring back a single sample of soil, air, rock, or plant life. All our copious sam ple collection was abandoned trying to lighten the ship for takeoff. With only our notes, the High Council rendered a verdict of 'Not Proved' about our expedition. Sighter was pretty mad, but I'm not too disturbed. As I write this, the hull of the Cloudmaster Mark II is taking shape on the slopes of Mt. Nevermind. It will have four sets of wings and two bags for ethereal air, and carry…'
Sturm flipped through the letter with a smile. All the rest of the pages were a catalog of the things the gnomes planned to take with them on their next voyage. Only the last lines were of interest: 'If you and Mistress Kitiara would like to accompany us again, please make your way to Sancrist by ten days before the winter solstice. That's when we're taking off for Lunitari. Cutwood wants to go to Solinari, but he was overruled. We still have a lot to learn about the red moon. Plus, there is some hope we might find evidence of
Bellcrank…' The letter was signed with several lines of
Stutts's gnomish name.
Sturm set the pages aside. 'Safe voyage,' he said aloud.
The maid in the inn where he was staying in Palanthas heard him and came to his table.
'Something you require?' she asked. Her name was
Zerla, and she was pretty, with curly blond hair and a warm smile. She reminded Sturm of Tika, were Tika about ten years older.
'No, thank you,' he said.
'Been in Palanthas long?' she asked.
'A few weeks.'
'Thinking of staying, are youl'
