followed her friends.
She dodged around the corner. Shield stood in the cross-passage calmly pulling a crossbow quarrel through his left biceps. At least four projectiles jutted from his body.
'Can you still walk?' she asked him.
'Don't fear for me,' he rumbled. Beside him Still-hawk pinned the prisoner to the wall, his sword tip pressed to the hollow of his throat. 'I'm fine.'
'You're not fine,' Zaranda said. 'You're badly hurt.'
Shield took her sword hand in one bloody claw, raised it to his tusked mouth, kissed it. 'Waste no tears on me, Mistress,' he said. 'I'll lose nothing today that hasn't been forfeit for a long time.'
Coughing and choked curses echoed down the corridor. Zaranda stuck her head around the corner. Blue- and-bronzes were braving the noxious smoke. Several had torn the voluminous sleeves from their doublets and tied them over their faces. Two collapsed, retching, on the floor the instant they came through.
Zaranda plucked another pellet from her pouch, spoke words, hurled it, and ducked back as the corridor filled with fire and screams.
'Hardisty,' she said to the terrified captive. 'The false king. Lead us to him. And no wrong turns, or the orc will twist your head off.'
Zaranda had misjudged the former Baron Hardisty. She was sure he would await the unfolding of events in his room on the uppermost floor, with his model city to keep him company.
But he was king now, even if he'd had to crown himself, and would play the role to the lasts and stays. He had prepared himself a throne room on the palace's ground floor and a throne to go with it, and he occupied both when Shield of Innocence put his shoulder to the fancy double doors and crashed them open.
A score of blue-and-bronzes stood between entrance and king, shifting weight from boot to boot and looking nervous. Behind them Tatrina sat slumped beside the huge gilt-washed throne. When the adventurers burst into the throne room, wild-eyed and bristling with weapons, she gasped, leapt to her feet, and tried to run to them.
The king caught her wrist. 'Where are you going, my love?' he asked, baritone voice as beautifully modulated as if he asked if she wished to go for a ride in the country. 'It's treason to desert your king. Or lese-majeste at least; I've never been clear on the distinction.'
Zaranda pointed her sword at him. 'Hardisty! You are deposed. Let the girl go and surrender, and we'll leave you with your life. Your freedom, even-if you'll help us stop the evil you set loose.'
King Faneuil put back his head and laughed. His crown was a surprisingly modest circlet of gold. 'Always fanciful, Zaranda. Might I point out that you're outnumbered?'
'Let's alter the balance, then,' Zaranda said She spoke mystic words and cast a pinch of sand at the guardsmen. Five slumped down, sound asleep, their halberds clattering to the marble floor beside them. The rest leveled weapons and charged.
Stillhawk drew back his bow and loosed. Not for nothing had the king spent years as a fighter. Already in motion as Stillhawk pulled his bowstring, he rolled over the arm of the throne as the arrow sang past to strike the back and vibrate at the precise point his crowned head had occupied a heartbeat before.
He came up with an arm around Tatrina's neck. 'No, no,' he said, wagging a finger at Stillhawk. 'Don't try that again. Kill them.'
The last was to his guardsmen, who were already trying their best. Stillhawk had reslung his bow and was standing off three halberdiers with his long sword. Shield drew his two scimitars and began to lay about him. Zaranda ran straight at the guards. One pulled up short, clutching his halberd across his chest as if unsure how to deal with this menace. In passing, Zaranda gave him a jab to the face with the studded knuckleduster hilt of her left-hand dagger, then parried an overhand cut from a second foe.
Towing his reluctant consort behind, Faneuil dodged behind his throne and ducked under the corner of a huge tapestry depicting him, crowned in a laurel wreath, standing guard over a tiny stylized Zazesspur with sword in one upraised hand and a white radiance, representing Ao, in the palm of the other.
Zaranda slashed a guardsman across the fingers, causing him to shriek and drop his weapon. Another stabbed at her with his halberd. Zaranda beat the haft aside and lunged into a riposte that sent the tip of her sword through his throat. She was aware of Stillhawk on her left and Shield on her right working similar execution as they sought to win through and follow the king down his secret passage.
Chen had played little role in the proceedings. When she grabbed at Zaranda's sleeve from behind, the older woman's reflex reaction was a flash of irritation.
'Randi, look!' the girl cried.
Zaranda turned her head to see more blue-and-bronzes flooding the throne room through the double doors of the main entrance behind them, flowing to either side of Armenides, who stood with arms upraised, voicing an incantation.
By dint of long practice and hard-won experience, Zaranda had increased the suppleness and cogency of her mind enough that it could contain two fireball spells at a time. The effort in the thieves' foyer, aborted by the magic-deadening stones of Tantras, didn't count. She had one left in her, and she loosed it now.
The blast scattered guardsmen like skittles. A sphere of red flame engulfed the false priest. His flesh blackened, flowed, burned away- Revealing his true form: a fiend with the body of a giant scorpion and the head of a bull, rearing eight feet above the rose-marble flagstones. His laughter filled the throne room.
'This isn't good,' Zaranda said.
'Go!' Shield roared. His blades were in constant motion, flowing about his body in intertwining loops that struck down any guardsman heedless enough to wan- der near. It seemed impossible that any foe could strike at him through such tapestries of steel, but his breast- plate was gashed, and his face and body bled from a dozen fresh wounds.
'Follow the king!' he shouted. 'I'll hold them.' The orog charged. You're only an apprentice paladin, Zaranda wanted to scream. And Armenides must be a puissant fiend indeed: even with the aid of Cyric, lord of deceit, it would require mighty magics for a servant of evil to produce the spurious miracles with which Armenides had bolstered his claim that Ao had grown active in this plane.
But she knew she couldn't handle the monster. Any delay the great orc could inflict would increase the others' chances. Of success, if not survival.
Stillhawk cut down the last of the king's guards who still showed fight. The rest had fled, and the sight of Armenides's horrid transfiguration only made them run the faster. Zaranda flipped up the tapestry's corner with her sword. A door yawned behind. A damp, cool breeze, touched with grave mold and brimstone, blew out of darkness into their faces.
Zaranda saw one of Shield's blades lop a short-clawed nipper off Armenides's jointed forelimb. Her heart leapt. The creature has plenty more, she re-minded herself. She bundled Chen through the door-way and down a steep stairwell. An instant later Stillhawk followed them into darkness.
Zaranda's fireball had killed or incapacitated most of the men Armenides had brought with him to the throne room. But not all. Four swarmed over Shield of Innocence from behind, one jumping on his broad back, the others trying to pin his arms.
He roared and swept his arms forward, dashing two assailants' heads together before him. A third clung to his left arm. He split his skull with his right-hand scimitar.
The man on his back produced a single-edged dagger and began sawing at the Grog's corded neck. Without relinquishing grip on his swords, Shield grabbed the man with both hands and raised him, squirming, above his head.
Another guardsman, hair blackened, crinkled, and smoking from Zaranda's fireball, took a running start and thrust the spike of his halberd into the small of Shield's back.
The orog bellowed and spun, torquing the halberd from the guardsman's grasp. He flung the man he held into the face of the one who had stabbed him. Then he reached back and plucked the weapon from his body.
Armenides caught him from behind by the arms and the legs and hoisted him in the air as easily as Shield had lifted the blue-and-bronze. 'You betrayed your people and your gods,' the false priest said in the voice he had used in human guise, 'and now I'll flay the flesh right off your soul.'
Blood spurted as pincers bit. Twisting in the monster's grasp, Shield lashed out with his right hand and opened a gash across Armenides's cheek. The bull-thing screamed in pain and dropped its prey as black blood
