with blades or pincers for hands and wheels as well as feet. All rushing past as Iskarra and Garfist cowered down together, slowly going pale at the thought of trying to fight past so many guardians.
Coins slid noisily as they trembled, and a metal helm as large as Garfist's middle thrust through the doorway, peering.
Garfist and Iskarra closed their eyes and stayed as still as they could, barely daring to breathe. No man was ever so tall and broad, and no man snuffled so loudly and wetly as it sniffed the air for the scent of humans, but whatever sort of beast it was wore oversized armor of the same design as the Dark Helms.
It seemed like a heavy-booted, hastening eternity to the cowering pair before it snorted in disgust and was gone, joining the headlong hurry.
'Falcon spew!' Garfist hissed. ''Tis coming back, after, to seek us out. I know 'tis! It snorted just as night- wolves do, when they do that. What're we going to do?'
'Stop mewling and dig,' Iskarra snapped. 'Down right here, down the wall, and see if this room has a door in it like the last three did; the row of empty ones, remember? Then see where it leads.'
Nodding like a fool, the panicked ex-pirate elbowed her aside and started scrabbling in the coins, clawing them aside with his hands like a child in a frenzy to recover a favorite lost and buried toy. Almost immediately he let out a shout of triumph, and dug even faster.
'Careful, idiot!' Iskarra snapped. 'Bury yourself headfirst and the coins will kill you, never mind about monsters coming back for us. They slide, look you. And if that door opens into this room, forget it! We'll never thrust it open against the weight of all of these.'
'Doesn't,' Garfist panted, disappearing rapidly deeper amid all the sliding wealth. His ample behind and two well-worn boots were all she could still see of him now; her warnings might just as well have been given to a stone wall.
Garfist managed to do something, and the half-revealed door burst open, away from them, shoved by an enthusiastic flood of coins. With a wordless roar of triumph Gar rode them through the doorway and into-
A sudden, raging glow of magic, roiling up bright and purple.
'Oh, Falcon!' Iskarra cursed wearily. 'Where now?'
The gate-magic had already swallowed Garfist, so she shrugged, raked a huge armful of coins down her bodice and grabbed two fistfuls more, kicked off, and slid after him.
Into softly falling mists of blinding brightness, through which she tumbled, so gently that not a coin strayed out past her throat, to…
A hard stone floor somewhere, where she bounced, coins bounding in all directions, some already rolling or
They were in a turret room, high in a castle, with disbelieving warriors frowning at them and dropping jaws at all the gold coins that had accompanied them. Grim warriors with crossbows in their arms, standing at windows ready to use them.
A face or two among them looked a little familiar. As another handful of gold coins bounced and rolled out of the front of her ragged garb, Iskarra struggled to her feet, heart sinking, and gasped, 'We come in peace! What castle is this?'
'Bowrock,' one warrior snarled, bringing his bow around to aim at her breast, so close that the point of its quarrel almost grazed her slight bosom. 'Are you wizards?'
'Do we look like wizards?' Garfist demanded sourly from the floor, where he'd paused, quite suddenly, at the appearance of two crossbows thrust right into his face.
'Bowrock,' Iskarra groaned. 'Is the siege-?'
'Well underway,' a warrior told them sourly. ''Raging,' as the minstrels like to say. Look out this window, and you'll see the massed armies of Galath ranged around our walls.'
Garfist and Iskarra didn't wait to do that before they began to really curse.
'We cannot prevail against so many!' Taeauna shouted. 'Run!'
She caught hold of Rod's arm and raced to the nearest gate, moving so swiftly that even at a dead run, he found himself being dragged the last few strides.
And then shoved into the glowing mists, without pause or word; the tumult of roaring monsters, Taeauna's cry of alarm, and Deldragon's snarled defiance all chopped off abruptly.
'Die, witless warrior!' Lorlarra snarled, twisting a helm in a brutal, ruthless jerk. She felt the man's neck break more than she heard it, and let go, to bat aside a slicing sword and snatch at the next Helm, her dark armor trailing a tangle of slashed straps and plates.
'Slay them, sisters!' scarred Juskra cried, from the other side of the dell. 'Slay them all!'
Ambrelle soared into view, large and severe, purple-black hair streaming.
The dozen-some Dark Helms in the dell were crying out in real fear, now. As they turned to offer her raised swords and brandished spears, the youngest of the four Aumrarr swooped in from behind them. As she passed over the warriors, Dauntra rang her mace off a row of Helms as if she were at an anvil, in a great hurry to hammer a shield back into shape.
Seven Dark Helms fell as one, and Juskra whooped in delight.
Lorn were swooping, talons out. Taeauna's back was unprotected, all her will and effort bent on shoving the Shaper through the gate, so Deldragon stroked his flaxen mustache, set his jaw, and stepped in front of her, daggers raised.
'I never wanted to be a hero,' he told the lorn calmly through the din of racing monsters and automatons. 'I just wanted to do the right thing. For Galath, and for Falconfar. And if that makes me a hero, that's a sad thing, for it means most Falconaar don't want to do the right th-'
His words ended in a grunt of pain, as two lorn smashed aside his daggers and the arms that held them, his bones shattering, to drive their talons deep into his chest. They'd been aiming for his throat, but-Falcon, the pain! — it didn't matter much, did it? Throat or chest, he'd protected the Shaper and the Aumrarr, and now he was dying.
He hadn't expected to fall so swiftly, though. His heart seemed to thunder in his ears as Taeauna turned and saw him. Anguish twisted her face as she reached for him.
'Come!' she cried. 'Lord Rod can heal you again! Come!'
But something bat-winged and long-jawed was hurtling right at her, and Deldragon fought his way to his feet, arms flailing, stumbling, and thrust her away, back into the grip of the mists. The glow belled out, reaching for her, and he managed to hiss hoarsely, instead of the gallant farewell he'd intended, 'Go! Go and save Falconfar!'
Then the bat-winged monster slammed into the velduke and he was gone, one open and reaching hand the last she saw of him as she stared in horror-and the gate-magic whirled her away.
'Well,' the hard-faced commander snapped, 'that glorking well looked like magic to me! Empty air one moment, then the pair of you whom I've never seen before, in Bowrock, standing here the next!'
He waved his hand around the small turret room, with its cots and lanterns and chests of smoked fish and cheese. 'Look you; do you see a door anywhere here, that we somehow haven't noticed yet? Or figured out a clever enough lie as to what it could possibly open into, the other side of yon wall, that isn't empty air and a long, killing fall down onto the butcher Ulkorth's back shed? Hmm? And if there's no hidden door, only one thing brought the two of you here: magic.'
Iskarra put her foot down on Garfist's, hard, to quell the angry rumble that meant he was about to say something imprudent.
'Of course it was magic, lord,' she said soothingly. 'We deny that not. Yet not our magic. We were prisoners in Ult Tower, and managed to get free when some wizard or other attacked the Doom of Galath, and they started fighting with spells. Blowing the place apart! That's where all these coins came from; we scooped them as we ran.'
'So every last one of them could have a spell on it, just waiting to go off, or could turn into a Dark Helm the moment our backs are turned,' the commander snarled. The warriors crowded behind him, blocking the turret room's only door, muttered in grim agreement.
'Hold on, now!' Garfist growled, waving one hairy hand. 'You-'
