Tol dropped the chief to the ground, yanked off his talisman, and planted a boot on his back.
“You men, listen!” he shouted. “You’ve seen this pass. Go too far and you’ll fall to your deaths!”
The captured chief would say nothing about the defenses that lay ahead. There was no time to question him properly, so Tol and Early retrieved their weapons and mounted their own horses, which were still protected by talismans. They left behind a bizarre tableau: unhorsed soldiers, mounted men, and their animals frozen in place. The horses were shaking, the men cursing, all too frightened to move.
The peculiar half-light cast no shadows, as if the air itself was the source of the illumination. Riding cautiously up the steep slope, they still could not see their destination. The escarpment frowned above them, but the fortress itself was set back so far it wasn’t yet visible.
“That wasn’t so hard,” said the kender cheerfully. “Getting away from the soldiers and through the wall of fog. Not so hard at all.”
Tol stared at him in disbelief. Blotchy purple bruises covered Early’s face. He had only one good eye and had lost two front teeth. Tol knew he himself must look at least as bad.
“Not hard at all,” he agreed, grinning back.
The path abruptly leveled out. Brown granite, deeply fluted by years of wind and rain, rose like a wall in front of them. Flanking the path were two huge statues. Each was more than twice the height of a man. They appeared to be lions, sitting on their haunches, but their features were so eroded it was hard to know for certain. Something about the statues nagged at Tol; they seemed oddly familiar.
As he came abreast of the two figures, he felt a sharp sensation of warmth. The nullstone was hot against his belly. He reined up, realizing why the statues looked familiar. They were carved from the same bluestone as the ruins he’d explored at the confluence of the Caer River, the ruins where he’d found the nullstone. These statues must be Irda-made as well. Why else would the nullstone react this way?
Early doubled back, asking why Tol had stopped.
“This place is very old,” Tol murmured, staring up at the colossal lions. The nullstone was pulsing now, first hot, then cooler, then hot again. It had never behaved this way before.
“Trust in the gods and your sword of steel.”
Tol gave Early a sharp look. The kender’s voice sounded deeper than usual. Beneath the bruises, his usual carefree expression was gone. He seemed calm, composed-and not himself.
“Felryn?”
“You’re not alone,” was the reply, “nor is the kinder, but do not speak any names. The stones have ears.”
A surge of confidence filled Tol. With the gallant healer at his side, even in spirit form, he felt he could handle anything Mandes threw at him. They rode on. Once they’d left the lions behind, the millstone’s pulsations ended.
The trail became more and more narrow until they were forced to proceed single file. Walls of stone closed in on either side. The clop of the horses’ iron shoes echoed loudly against the stark stone surroundings.
The path ended at stairs cut into the living rock. Wide, shallow steps ascended, curving to the left and disappearing into a cleft in the escarpment.
There was nothing on which to tether their horses, and Tol wondered how they could be certain the animals would remain, in case they needed to make a fast departure.
Possessed by Felryn’s soul or no, Early shrugged in typical kender fashion and plucked the paper talismans from both animals’ necks. Immediately stricken by the blinding mist, Tetchy and Longhound stood rooted to the spot. Unless led away, they would be there when Tol and Early returned.
Tol drew his saber. The hiss of steel against the scabbard’s brass throat seemed terribly loud in the silence. Early didn’t draw his weapon but started, unconcerned, up the steps. Was it Felryn’s courage or kender impetuosity that was guiding him?
Mist flowed down the steps, curling around their ankles. They ignored it until Tol noticed the kender was flagging. A few steps more, and Early sat down hard on a stair.
“Sleepy,” he muttered. “Need sleep-”
This new mist must be some of Mandes’s sleeping fog. Tol grabbed the front of Early’s vest and dragged him to his feet, trying to rouse him with the nullstone’s influence. The kender began to snore.
Tol cursed silently. Sighing, he boosted the limp Early over his shoulder. It was an absurd way to enter a hostile fortress, but he wouldn’t abandon a comrade. He started up the steps again.
The staircase seemed endless. There seemed to be thousands of steps. Valaran could probably tell him the exact number. As a girl she’d calculated the number of stone blocks in the Inner City wall. Her computations had filled a scroll five paces long.
Thoughts of Valaran ignited a shameful notion in his mind: with the emperor stricken, perhaps dying, would Val be free to marry him? Could they at last live honorably as husband and wife?
The selfish dream helped him ignore the fatigue in his burning limbs. For all his small size, Early was surprisingly heavy.
Unexpectedly, it grew brighter as he climbed. Warmer, too. By the time he reached a broad landing, Tol was sweating inside his furs. Above him, the ancient castle appeared clearly for the first time.
Made of the same brown granite as the mountain, the fortress looked as though it had been carved from the living rock. It was terraced in three levels, one above the other, the sides merging into the face of Mount Axas. The style was unfamiliar to Tol, and judging by the weathering, the castle was very old. No curtain wall encircled it, but the citadel was studded with towers and turrets. Recent work by Mandes was evident-new battens on the tower windows, a freshly painted gate.
Tol lowered Early to the ground and removed his own furs and the kender’s. Sweat was beaded on the slumbering kender’s face.
The landing was fifty paces square, paved with alternating slabs of obsidian and white granite. Many were cracked with age, and tufts of stiff, brown grass sprouted through the gaps. A path had been worn across the landing; it led from where Tol stood to another set of ascending stairs. Another pair of eroded statues flanked the path. Winged creatures of indistinct form, they reminded Tol of the griffins Mandes had used to flee Daltigoth. The bluestone colossi were of an age with the lions he’d seen earlier. It was clear the ancient Irda had walked this way.
Hoisting Early to his shoulder again, he followed the well-worn path across the landing. He’d made it only halfway before a rapid flicker of heat on his face warned him that magic was at work. Fearing an ambush, he spun in half-circle, searching for the source.
A blur at the edge of his vision caught his eye. Tremors echoed through the ancient stone pavement. Something was moving around him-something big.
Unceremoniously, he dropped Early, and drew Number Six. There were two blurs, moving fast on his extreme left and right. Rather than attempt to follow their preternaturally quick movements, Tol stood still, both hands on his sword, facing forward. What horrors had Mandes conjured for him now?
— and then he saw it, huge and powerful, on his left. An ogre! Moving so quickly, it was invisible until just before attacking. Tol brought his sword up and received a crushing blow from the creature’s stone mace. He staggered backward.
The blur on his right resolved into a second ogre, armed with a saw-toothed sword as long as Tol was tall. Tol ducked the wicked blade and swung low. His saber caught the creature at the elbow. A man would have lost his arm, but the ogre wore slabs of nephrite sewn onto a crude leather jerkin. The pale green stone turned aside the dwarf-forged steel. Alarmed, Tol leaped back, dodging another blow from the first ogre’s mace. His massive opponents blurred into motion and disappeared.
No ogre was so fast! Mandes must have cast a spell on them.
Tol swept the air with his blade, backing rapidly away from the center of the open square. He was too slow. The sword-wielding ogre flashed into sight just behind him. His saw-toothed weapon raked down Tol’s back, tearing open his tunic. The mail shirt he wore underneath saved his life, but his right shoulder was badly cut. He staggered and fell.
The second ogre’s mace passed through the space Tol’s head had just occupied. Tol felt the wind of its passing tug at his hair.
He rolled, thrusting awkwardly at the mace-bearer. The saber found a gap in the ogre’s stone armor, below
