“Hurry, Bink. Hurry!”
“Shut up, shut up!” snarled Binkton, and he bent the tip of the wire at a different angle and probed again.
Another Dwarf died ere Binkton succeeded. But at last the lock fell to his skills, and he and Pipper, grunting and shoving, managed to wedge the stone panel open.
They found the insides completely hollow, but for a spiral stair winding upward.
“Come on,” shouted Pipper, and up they ran, turning, winding, ascending. At the very top they came to a jade trapdoor. And together and straining, with stone grating, they managed to lift it and throw it back.
They climbed onto a flat roof, a low parapet running about. They ran to the lip closest to the taller central tower; four openings could they see-the nearest fifty feet away.
“I can’t throw that far,” said Pipper.
“Give it to me,” said Binkton.
And as the wind howled, and darkness roiled in the sky, and a thing below sucked the life out from another Dwarf, Binkton whirled the grapnel at a short length of line, while Pipper held the far end, the rope coiled so as not to impede the flight.
Binkton threw.
The grapnel fell short.
Swiftly he recovered the line and hook, and whirled and threw again.
It clanked into the side of the tower and dropped.
Once again Binkton whirled and threw, and this time the hook flew through the opening.
Pipper pulled the line taut and looked about, and only a runoff slot at the far side did he see. “Oh, Adon, there’s nought to tie this end to.”
“Yes, there is,” shouted Binkton above the shriek of the wind. And he took the line and wrapped it about his waist thrice and lay down with his back to the roof and his feet against the parapet, the rope taut. He looked at Pipper and said, “I hope I can hold this.”
“Remember, Bink, your card, the one you drew for Lady Aylis, it was Strength.”
“Oh, Pip, the wind, it’s-”
“And mine was the Naif,” shouted Pipper, stepping to the parapet. “A decision to be made, and I’ve made it.”
And gauging the force of the swirling wind, Pipper stepped onto the line.
And as the rope took Pipper’s weight, Binkton grunted and gritted his teeth and held on with all his might, his legs trembling with the strain.
Across the line, sloping slightly upward, Pipper ran, praying to Elwydd and Adon that Uncle Arley’s training in the pines would see him through. Don’t place a foot wrong, don’t place a foot wrong, Pip! And the howling wind tore at him, as of a creature seeking to hurl him to his death on the jade stone far beneath.
And the swirl of darkness within the thing below moved on to another sailor. Just beyond writhed screaming Lissa, yowling Vex twisting at her side.
Pipper lost his balance just as he reached the arched opening, yet with a final lunge he managed to grasp the sill and pull himself in.
He jumped to the floor and looked about, and did not see the shadowy grey form slumped against the far wall, an astral being who had spent too much power loosing the deadly creature, a thing that had just finished sucking the life from a Human and now descended upon a Pysk.
But up above in the tall tower, Pipper could see an urn at rest on a high pedestal. Yet, what did that have to do with-? But then with his Warrow sight he saw the twisted rope of darkness extending from the footed vase and leading out and down to the plaza below.
As Pipper loaded a bullet into his sling, he did not see the astral form that struggled to its feet and limped to that same opening, nor did he hear the frantic aethyrial shout.
And the blackness below sucked up into a ball and flew toward the arched opening high above.
With a whirl and a snap, Pipper loosed the bullet, just as he was engulfed by darkness and hideous pain once again.
Yet the missile flew true, and it shattered the delicate, rune-marked vase, scattering the ashes of a deadly wraith.
And the howling wind whirled up those ashes and hurtled them out from the tower, scattering them wide, spinning the motes spiralling away like the long-dead dust they were, the wraith mewling even as its unnatural life bled away on the storm.
And Pipper fell unconscious, released from unbearable agony.
And even as an astral being fled toward a far-distant mountain fastness, the skies opened and a torrential rain thundered down and down on the long-lost City of Jade.
50
DARK DESIGNS
MID AUTUMN, 6E9
Nunde expended nearly every bit of the remainder of his essence just to reach his stronghold in the Grimwalls. It had been a close call, for he had spent too much of the stolen ‹life force› as well as his very own merely to release the wraith. He certainly had not retained enough ‹essence › to imprison the Shade again, and he knew that when the fiend had finished with Aravan and his band, he, himself, would be the next victim. Yet even as Nunde had been gathering his strength to flee back to his fortress, where he planned to slay many more Chun for their ‹fire›, enough to defeat the wraith, that fool of a Warrow had entered the sanctum of the jade tower.
And when the Necromancer had seen the Warrow ready his sling to break the funerary urn, he knew that only the Shade could stop the intruder. And Nunde, at peril of his own life, had cried out a warning. Yet the Warrow had succeeded, and though Aravan was most likely slain, mayhap his trollop had survived. Nunde could not risk that whore of a Seeress discovering who he was, for she would send legions of Magekind to track him down, and he would spend the rest of his existence in flight.
And so Nunde had fled, and now he was back in his own body and wheezing for each feeble breath, while locked away safely in his chamber, locked away from Ghoki and Driki and Oghi and all other Chun, any of whom at an opportune moment might try to slay him, and he was oh, so very weak.
And it was a frail, greatly aged Necromancer who struggled up from his dark throne to totter to his bed and collapse. On the morrow he would slaughter many Drik and wrench their fire from them to restore his own youth and essence. But for now, totally spent, he needed rest, and he fell into a black and dreamless sleep.
51
ELVENSHIP
MID TO LATE AUTUMN, 6E9
A ravan awakened in a drenching rain to the sounds of someone shouting in the distance and the whines of a fox nearby. Slowly he rolled to his side to see Aylis, lying as if dead. Up he wrenched and scrambled to her and took her form in his arms. She breathes. He looked about. Dwarves lay strewn like tenpins-sailors, too. But Brekk
