surrounding walls when the enchantments broke and the ogres fled. It was a setback, a slowing of her plans, but only a brief one. The tower was almost complete-grown out of rock, out of earth, out of nothing. The walls were an afterthought, scarcely necessary when strong magic ruled in Neraka.
Cerestes had seen enough to know. The devices of the Dark Queen were well under way, but they could still be disrupted with a clever mind and a subtle tongue. His own safety lay in continuing to serve her for now, to seem strong and resolute as her captain in the waking world. The time would come, and the secret of the runes would come to him-but not now, not yet. Open rebellion seemed thin and futile, like the hopes of these horsemen on the darkening plain.
He laughed again at that prospect. It looked as though Daeghrefn had found disaster within sight of his own fortress. But there was always the garrison-a hundred stout men in Nidus's walls, who, on seeing the danger to their lord and master, would…
What would they do? What indeed?
The world was filled with unfaithful servants, he mused ironically. And sometimes it seemed that they were the safe ones, huddling and skulking behind the walls while their masters stood in the open and braved the approaching peril.
Braved the fires and the ogres.
But if the fire raged further and the ogres ran riot, Daeghrefn would not fall alone. Somewhere behind the flames wandered the mace-wielder, and the druidess's girl was with him, and the other lad.
Softly, insistently, the Voice spoke to him now, low and melodious and achingly feminine. Those three cannot perish on the plains, it said. They must not fall into the clutches of the ogres.
'I know,' he replied, whispering a quick spell of veiling. Then he stood in the midst of the evergreen grove, his face shadowed by the crisp-smelling darkness, his deepest thoughts concealed in a layer of spellcraft. 'What would you have me do, Lady?' he asked aloud to the wind and the night.
It is time, the Voice proclaimed as the branches rustled with a warm breeze, upon it the smell of lilac. But beneath that sweet and lulling smell lay the sharp, disturbing odor of fire and carrion, so that Cerestes reeled for a moment, wondering if the smoke had risen from the plains or if he had imagined the gruesome smell on the air.
Or if, on the wings of the night, the breath of the god dess had passed over him.
It is time, she repeated, and he knew what she meant.
Time to show yourself.
'But they will fear me as well,' he protested. 'The mace-wielder. His companions.'
The mace-wielder understands me, Takhisis explained. And I am the Queen of Dragons.
Mystified, Cerestes nodded. And though he was weary of changing and longed for a form that was ever the same, he answered her call. He focused his will past pain and fear, past the barriers that the mind sets for the body's limits and boundaries, and his thoughts rocked in a white-hot ecstasy. His bones stretched and thickened. Scales erupted on his blistering arms, and he groaned with the fresh pain of metamorphosis, with the remembered pain of a thousand years of waiting for this moment.
All who wandered the plains would look upon the dragon, and the will of the Dark Queen would be done.
Daeghrefn shielded his eyes against the heat and the rush of smoke. One of the men-Mozer, he believed- tugged at his cape, shouted something loud and urgent and indecipherable, but it was lost in the roar of the flames, the whinny of horses, the fierce war cries of the ogres.
A half-mile's ride north toward Nidus had brought them up against yet another wall of fire. Yet another band of ogres had arranged themselves in the flatlands south of the castle, so that Daeghrefn and his men were caught between two converging parties of the enemy.
'Lord Daeghrefn!' Mozer shouted insistently, tugging again.
With the back of his hand, the Lord of Nidus slapped away the sniveling wretch, then guided his horse to yet another rise in the midst of the plains-a small, bare moraine glittering with black obsidian.
The men followed him numbly onto the rise. Graaf, Mozer, Tangaard, and Gundling-they were the survivors, all who remained of the proud dozen who had set off for Neraka.
'What now, sir?' Graaf shouted above the din.
He was the sensible one. The veteran.
'The north is thick with ogres,' Graaf continued. 'There's a score of 'em between us and the castle, and a brace of 'em alone would be a handful for five tired men.'
'I am aware of the tactics, Sergeant,' Daeghrefn answered hotly, his mind on the fire coursing relentlessly over the plains behind them. They had passed through it twice, and the second time Aschraf had fallen from the saddle. As the flames engulfed him, the soldier had tried to rise. But he stumbled, and the blood burst from his face, and he stretched his dying hand pitifully toward his commander, a flame on the tip of each finger.
Daeghrefn shook his head and banished the thought.
Gundling spoke now, a rough voice to his left, his Est-wilde accent still thick after a dozen years at Nidus. Something about 'more' and 'last hopes.'
Daeghrefn looked to Gundling. For a brief, nightmarish moment, he saw Aschraf's face, mottled and fire- sheared. Then he blinked, and Gundling stared at him, his beard singed and blackened.
Gundling was pointing to Castle Nidus, where twenty more of the monsters were circling and menacing, hurling rocks wildly at the old black battlements.
Daeghrefn looked toward the eastern foothills. Perhaps there was still a way to get to the highlands, circle the castle, and approach from the northern side. There was a rise he remembered… a copse of evergreen…
As he looked toward the jagged silhouettes of the trees framed against the white of Solinari, Daeghrefn saw the dragon's dark wings rise above the black aeterna, and the hillside shook, and the tall pines snapped like kindling.
'Lord Daeghrefn, what do we do?' Gundling shouted, his eyes on his commander. 'Lord Daeghrefn? Lord Daeghrefn!'
When Daeghrefn froze in the saddle on the fiery plain, it was not from fear of ogre or flame, but from a darker cause. He would never remember the dragon itself-the dark web of wings passing over the moon-but he would remember the fear always.
And he would think, as a man who believes in neither monsters nor gods, that the fear was again of his own making.
Verminaard galloped over the blackened plain, moonlight glimmering on his uplifted mace.
At a distance, he saw the ogres, milling around a small group of soldiers atop South Moraine. It was defensible ground, and the men had bows, but the ogres were closing on them slowly, batting at the arrows. The men were few and the weapons paltry against such monsters. The soldiers wouldn't hold out much longer.
'Verminaard!' Aglaca shouted. 'It's your father's squadron!'
Verminaard looked more closeJy at the stone-tattered standard nodding above the horse soldiers, a black raven on a red field.
The black mace whistled and droned in his scorched hand, and he was suddenly filled with surety and power. Here was an enemy he could fight!
With a shout, he turned Orlog toward the milling ogres and lifted the mace above his head. Exuberant and wild, he swung the weapon in a wide arc. Black fire flashed before the mace head, and its wake painted a wide stream of darkness, a blackness against which the depths of a starless night sky seemed afire.
Two hulking ogres, bound for the battle at the moraine, turned at the sound of Orlog's hoofbeats. Verminaard galloped toward them, mace uplifted, and before the first of them could raise its club, he brought the weapon flashing down upon the monster's shoulder.
'Midnight!' he cried, as the Voice in the cave had instructed.
The air rained blood and black fire. The ogre shrieked, its skin curling and blackening, and it fell to its scabious knees in the high grass. Its eyes, suddenly and strangely blinded, rolled white and terrified toward the slate-gray sky, where the stars of Morgion shone coldly above the fiery bloodbath.
The second ogre leapt away with a shout, crossing swiftly before Judyth's charging mare and stumbling and sliding through the rock-littered grass on its way back to the smoke and safety. Verminaard veered to follow it, spurring Orlog swiftly across the field in pursuit. The ogre reeled and tried to bring up its weapon, but the mace
