man.
On the counter lay an empty crossbow and a crucible heating over the flame of an alcohol lamp.
As soon as she saw the lamp's blue flame, Ruha's heart skipped a beat. If she could use such a hot fire to cast her most powerful sun spell, even Cypress would be helpless to defend himself. She stepped toward the apothecary, but Hsieh spoke before she could ask the old man if he had any brimstone.
'Where is Number Two Exit?' Hsieh demanded, his gaze darting from one cramped corner to the next.
'Isn't one.'
'What is this material?' Hsieh stepped to the outside wall and ran his fingers over the smooth, white-washed surface.
'Wattle and daub,' the apothecary answered.
When the mandarin did not seem to understand, Ruha said, 'A sort of mud plaster.'
The planks above their heads creaked, then began to pop and crack. The chandelier above the apothecary's counter started to swing, and Ruha looked up to see the exposed joist logs bowing directly over their heads. The dragon knew exactly where they were, and it took the witch only an instant to guess how. If the smell ofylang oil had led her to Hsieh earlier, then certainly the dragon, with his much larger nose, could track them by the same scent.
A tremendous splintering filled the room as five huge talons pierced the ceiling. The apothecary wailed and dropped to his knees behind the counter, and Hsieh shoved his warrior toward the outside wall.
'Kick hole.'
The claws began to rip through planks of thick wood as if they were made of paper. Hsieh's soldier sheathed his sword and stepped back to get a running start, and Ruha leaned over the counter to look at the cowering apothe- cary.
'Have you brimstone?' When the man only looked at her with terrified eyes, she yelled, 'Brimstone powder- now!'
The dragon's fist closed around a joist log and started to tug. The beam, a rough-hewn pine trunk as thick as an ogre's leg, groaned and bowed, but it would not break-at least not easily. Hsieh's man charged across the room, then picked up both feet and attacked with a flying, two- legged stomp kick. The daub cracked beneath his heels, and he crashed through the wall to disappear outside.
The apothecary shoved an open bottle of yellow powder onto the counter and ducked out of sight again. Ruha grabbed the lamp from beneath the crucible and pulled the wick stopper. The cloth was still saturated with alco- hol, so the flame continued to burn as she poured the fuel into the brimstone bottle.
A deep, rumbling grunt shook the shop. The joist log snapped with a mighty crack, and the ceiling sagged beneath Cypress's weight. The dragon tore a handful of wood away, creating a hole twice the size of a door.
Hsieh stepped to Ruha's side. 'You must come now!'
'In a moment.' Holding the saturated brimstone in one hand and the flickering lamp wick in the other, Ruha turned to face Cypress. 'First I must stop the dragon.'
'That will not be so easy as you think!' Cypress's voice boomed through the empty hole as loud as thunder. J have learned to be wary of you.
The dragon's second sentence tolled through Ruha's head like a striking bell, shattering her concentration
She tried to summon the incantation of her most power- ful sun spell, but could not.
Did you think I had to see your eyes to attack your mind? The words echoed back and forth through Ruha's head, building on each other, growing louder and sharper with every reverberation. Any contact will do.
Ruha tried to bring the flickering wick to the brim- stone bottle, but her body did not seem to hear her wishes. Her hands remained a foot apart, shaking with the memory of what she had intended, yet unable to obey.
The wick in her hand sputtered and smoked darkly as it ran out of alcohol and began to consume itself instead.
'Why do you wait?' Hsieh demanded. 'Cast spell!'
The sound of cracking wood filled the chamber once again, and the ceiling sagged almost to their heads as the dragon lay on the floor above. When Ruha did not move,
Hsieh apparently realized what was wrong. He pulled a lasal leaf from his pocket and slipped it between her lips.
The witch allowed it to fall from her mouth; if they were to have any chance of escaping the dragon, she could not allow a lasal haze to cloud her mind.
Hsieh watched the leaf flutter to the floor, then pulled his dagger from its sheath.
'So sorry, Lady Witch.' He cut the rope hanging over her shoulder and took the sack of oil. 'Must not let dragon have ylang oil.'
The dragon's withered hand came through the hole and snaked toward the witch. The mandarin quickly stepped away, then turned and threw himself through the opening in the wall.
Cypress's talons stopped a foot short of Ruha, and the din assailing her head quieted to a dull roar. The lamp wick hissed and flickered and began to shrink. The witch considered trying to resist the dragon's mind attack, but he was too powerful to defeat. Instead, she let all her defenses down, envisioning her mind as the great hall of an empty Heartlands castle, where even the slightest sound reverberated like a drum.
What is happening to you? Cypress demanded. Where is the oil?
Ruha made no reply, allowing the dragon's words to crash through her mind with such force they shattered the walls of the hall she had envisioned.
The ruse worked. Cypress's hand suddenly pulled away, and the cacophony in Ruha's mind quieted as he sniffed out the ylang oil. Her hand obeyed when she tried to move it; even the dragon could not focus his attention in two different places at once. She pushed the bottom of the wick into the mixture of brimstone and alcohol. The flame quickly returned to its steady blue gleam, but the witch forced herself not to think about her sun spell. The dragon was still inside her head, and he would feel the effort of summoning the incantation from her memory.
Ruha had to wait only an instant before Cypress's head shot through the hole, his nostrils flaring as he tried to sniff out the fading scent of Hsieh's oil-soaked body. The witch hurled her bottle at an eye socket. The dragon flinched away, and the glass shattered against the side of his head. The burning wick instantly touched off the mixture of alcohol and sulfur, filling the chamber with a searing blue-yellow flash.
Cypress bellowed in shock and pulled his burning face out of the chamber. Ruha stepped over to the hole, summoning her incantation as she went. She saw the dragon's head more than two stories above, shaking madly from side to side, trailing long tails of sapphire and amber flame. The witch thrust her hand toward the fire and spoke her incantation.
The blaze erupted into a blistering orb of white-hot flame, as brilliant as the sun in the sky and twice as large. The dragon wailed in anguish. When he raised his claws to his face, they caught fire and started to burn with a flickering yellow flame. He started to dance about, and Ruha heard a tremendous crash in the next room as one of his heavy feet came through the ceiling. Burning scales began to flutter off his head and touch off fires on the floors above. Cypress raised his wings, then roared in fury and launched himself into the air.
The witch turned away from the conflagration and saw the astonished apothecary standing behind his counter, his rheumy eyes fixed on the fiery hole over his head. She pulled him from behind the counter.
'Come along. We had better leave this place,' she said dragging the old man toward the hole in the wall. 'Per- haps you would be kind enough to guide me to the Jail- gates?'
Sixteen
Deep in the Jailgates' thick foundations, Ruha caught herself staring at Yanseldara's cataleptic face. The Lady
Lord lay in an infirmary bed, a honey- haired beauty with the slender face and sharply delicate features of a half ^ elf. Save for the amethyst circles beneath her eyes, her skin was as pale as pearl. Her cheeks were hollow from the lack of eating, her lips as gray as ash, her brow lined by the strain of a wicked and endless nightmare. She
