Yardryk made a little show of placing one burning brazier in just the right spot on the floor, stepping back to frowningly survey it, stepping forward to move it a few inches, stepping back again, and finally nodding. Yes.
The other brazier he left where it was, hoping Korryk would heed it not. He busied himself over the first one, getting out a dummy wand (a simple stick of wood, not magical in the slightest) to wave is he used his other hand to trace the runes in the in that mattered, murmuring after each the word that would make it take fire and glow, building on the previous runes in a long, faintly humming chain that rose up from the brazier like a column of purple flame.
He walked around it, peering at it as if seeking flaws. Stopping finally on the far side of the shaft of purple magic from the warrior, Yardryk nodded as if satisfied with his work, and commanded, 'Korryk, I need those spheres now.'
The warrior ambled over in a slow slouch this time, giving a gusty sigh to make it very clear that magic bored him. He thought it was scarcely as useful as a shrewdly swung sword, and for something treated with such wary awe, it seemed to need a lot of help.
Yardryk gave the sullen warrior a tight little smile, and pointed at one rune in the humming column. 'This one; I need you to touch that ball to this rune. Gently. Don't worry, nothing bad will happen.'
Reluctantly, giving Yardryk a glare that was heavy with suspicion, Korryk rather gingerly extended the sphere.
The column bulged to take it in, for the first time giving the impression that the purple air, or whatever it was, was rushing up and down past the runes, and now rushing around and over the metal ball, too.
By now, a tingling should be rushing through Korryk's arm. Nothing painful or even uncomfortable, but… unusual.
'Do… do I let go of it?' the warrior asked, sounding more wary than sneering. At last.
'No,' Yardryk said warningly. 'That would be bad.'
He stepped forward, drew another rune, and chanted a swift incantation.
For a moment, as Korryk stared up at the rushing purple column, nothing happened.
Then, as swiftly as a striking snake, the column bent over, swooped down from on high toward the second brazier, and swung sideways in its plunge at the last moment to race at the second sphere Korryk was holding. It swirled around the sphere for a rushing moment that left the warrior's arms shuddering and his mouth open in rising fear, and then swooped away, to bury its end in the second brazier.
Yardryk smiled tightly and lifted his hand with the careless indolence of an indulged and haughty emperor.
And the purple snake rose and straightened into a smooth, high archway, rooted in the two braziers, and hauled Korryk off his feet, still clinging to the two spheres that were now embedded in the curving purple arc of magic, well off the ground.
'I
'No,' the wizard replied, almost purring in satisfaction. 'You can't.'
There was a crackling in the air, a sudden tension and heaviness that shouted silently that something powerful was about to happen.
As the warrior started to kick wildly, thrashing his arms in increasingly frantic attempts to get free, the air along the inside of the purple column started to shimmer, like the air above a raging fire. Within its shimmering, the shadowy dimness of the cellar room split apart like tearing canvas, to reveal a larger, slightly better lit chamber beyond, a cavernous space that was certainly not visible outside the purple arch.
Something was moving in that larger hall, something-no, several somethings-that flapped and glided, flying swiftly nearer…
A trio of lorn, and then another, swooped through the arch and soared up to circle the cellar room of Deldragon's keep. Then they shot out of its doorway, wings raked back, heading elsewhere fast.
More lorn followed, and Dark Helms, too, a score or more of men in black armor, drawn swords in their hands and visors being swung down into place as they stepped into the gloom of the cellars.
'You see, Korryk,' Yardryk said gloatingly, 'just as you were ordered by our master to serve me, I was ordered to complete a specific task here: to construct a magical gate between our master's keep and this one. Unlike a tantlar, many living things like lorn and Dark Helms, for instance, can traverse a gate swiftly, at the same time. A tantlar-link can be destroyed very easily, by extinguishing the fire its destination tantlar is being warmed in, or removing that tantlar from the flames. This gate, however, feeds on magic hurled at it, and can even survive these braziers being extinguished or removed; it will only collapse when what powers it is gone. And it's powered by the life force of a living human, or humans.'
'No!' the warrior shouted. 'Noooo!'
'One such could have been the servant you killed,' Yardryk added, with a ruthless smile. 'Now, it's going to be you.'
He turned his back and walked away, heading for the doorway of the cellar, where the trapped warrior's screams would be less deafening.
If Arlaghaun had been telling the truth about how many creatures he was going to send through the gate to overrun Deldragon's keep, those screams might not last all that long.
Gates were hungry things.
'Well,' Garfist rumbled, 'I don't exactly look like someone even a starving sailor would lust after. I mean, look at this face! Tits can only do so much.'
'Yes, but what tits,' Iskarra grinned.
He cuffed her playfully across the forehead. 'Now we have to steal something that'll do up over them. All this for a bit of food and wine.'
'Lantern, don't forget the lantern,' Iskarra reminded him, earning herself a sour look from the feminine travesty Garfist Gulkoon had become.
'Look at me!' he snarled, waving two shovel-sized, hairy hands. 'Who'm I supposed to fool, eh? I mean, how many blind folk am I likely to meet on my way to the kitchens? Blind folk without hands to feel these-and then the rest of me-with?'
'Gar, don't be surly. We have to eat. The occasional man still looks at me, remember.'
'Aye, but… but…' Garfist became aware of Iskarra's dangerous glare and the dagger that had very suddenly appeared in her bony hand, very close to him, and settled for saying, 'but there's no safe thing I can say just now, is there?'
'Well, you could say 'Dearest Iskarra, whose body I will worship fervently and often in these days ahead, you are right in all things, always, and of course in this, so how can I best pass myself off is a woman, I who am not worthy to be counted among womanhood no matter how hard I try?' But somehow I doubt you're going to say that.”
'I can't say that,' Garfist rumbled. 'Ye lost me after 'fervently and often.' I sorta got… got…'
'To thinking about that. Of course.' Iskarra's voice dripped with acid. 'Things will go much better, Gar dear, if you just stop trying to think and start trying to do what I tell you to do. Whenever you don't, you wind up finding one thing with frightening speed: trouble.'
'Found a lantern,' Garfist replied sullenly, pointing.
'Good. Go fetch it. Yes, with your front all hanging out like that; if someone sees you, just leer at them, and don't run or look furtive or guilty. And bring the lantern back here. Then we'll talk about finding clothes.'
Garfist nodded and trudged off down the passage. Iskarra watched his broad-shouldered figure dwindle toward the distant lantern, hanging from a beam where two passages met, and winced. He looked less like a woman-even a large and lumbering woman-than anything she'd ever seen.
Garfist reached up for the lantern, and then lowered his arm again and peered intently down one of the side-passages. He thrust his head forward, sinking it between his shoulders like a vaugril, and then stalked down the side-passage, slowly and intently, hunting prey.
Iskarra flattened herself against the cold stone wall, wincing. 'No, you great stupid ox!' she hissed. 'Don't try to get clever. Just get the lantern and get back here. Don't…'
Garfist burst into view around the corner again, running hard, his false crawlskin breasts bouncing up and slapping him in the face with every pumping stride. There was a gutted boar carcass in one of his hairy hands, still trailing the hook it had undoubtedly been hanging from.
