Which door? Cadderly wondered, looking around at the many possible exits from the large circular room as he crossed over the bodies of the two dead ogres. He noticed, too, the many symbols carved into the walls, tridents with small vials above each point interspersed with triangular fields holding three teardrops, the more conventional design for the evil goddess, Talona.
"We must be near the chapel," Cadderly whispered to Danica. As if in confirmation, the door across the way opened and a horribly scarred man, dressed in the ragged gray and green robes of a Talonan priest, hopped into the circular room.
Danica went into a crouch; Cadderly brought his crossbow level with the man's face.
The priest only smiled, though, and a moment later all the doors of the circular room burst open. Cadderly and Danica found themselves facing a horde of ores and goblins and evilly grinning men, including several more wearing the robes of Talonan priests. Both friends looked back to the trapped corridor, the only possible escape, but the walls were tight against each other by this point and showed no signs of opening.
For some reason, the enemy force did not immediately attack. Rather, they all stood looking from Cadderly and Danica to the first priest who had entered, apparently the leader.
"Did you think it would be so easy?" the scarred man shrieked hysterically. "Did you think to simply walk through our fortress unopposed?"
Cadderly put a hand on Danica's arm to stop her from leaping out at the foul man. She might get to him, might well kill him, but they had no chance of defeating this mob. Unless...
Cadderly heard the song playing in his thoughts, had a strange feeling that some powerful minion of his god was calling to him, instructing him, compelling him to hear the harmony of the music.
The evil priest cackled and clapped his hands and the floor in front of him heaved suddenly, rose up and took a gigantic, humanoid shape.
"Elementals," Danica breathed, drawing Cadderly's attention. Indeed, two creatures from the plane of earth had arisen to the evil priest's beckoning, and Cadderly realized that this man must be formidable indeed to command such powerful allies.
But Cadderly shook the dark thought away, fell back into the song, heard the music rising to a glorious crescendo.
"He is spellcasting!" one of the other priests cried out, and the warning sent the whole of the enemy force into wild action. The foot soldiers charged, weapons waving, lips wetted with eager drool. An archer took up his bow and fired, and the clerics went into their own spellcasting, some creating defensive energy, others calling out for magical spells to assault the intruders.
Danica yelled for her love and reflexively kicked out, barely deflecting an arrow that was soaring for Cadderly's chest She wanted to protect Cadderly, knew that they were both surely doomed, for they had no time....
A single word, if it was a word, escaped the young priest's lips. A trumpet note, it seemed, so clear and so perfect that it sent shivers of sheer joy rushing along Danica's spine, invited her into its perfect resonance and held her, trancelike, in its lingering beauty.
The note created a much different effect over Cadderly's enemies, over the evil men and monsters who could not tolerate the holy harmony of Deneir's song. Goblins and ores, and some of the men, grabbed at their bloodied ears and fell dead or unconscious to the floor, their eardrums shattered by the word. Other men swooned, their strength stolen by the bared glory of Deneirian truth, and the ele-mentals fell back into the stone of the floor, fled back to their own plane of existence.
For many moments Danica stood trembling, her eyes closed, and then, when the last lingering echoes of the perfect note died away, she realized the folly of hesitation and expected that the horde would be upon her. But when she opened her eyes, she found only three enemies standing: the first priest who had entered the room and an associate along a side wall, both holding their ears, and a third man, a soldier not a priest, standing not so far away and glancing about in absolute confusion.
Danica leaped forward and kicked the man's sword from his hand. He looked up at her, still too perplexed to react, and the monk grabbed him by the front of his tunic and threw herself backward in a roll, planting her feet into his belly as he came over her and heaving him hard against the wall beside Cadderly, where he crumbled down in pain. Danica was upon him in a moment, fingers coiled for a deadly strike.
"Do not kill him," Cadderly said to her, for the young priest realized that if this man had escaped the pains of his most holy spell, if the man could withstand the purely harmonious note, then he was probably not of an evil nature. Cadderly glanced at him only briefly, but he noticed revealing shadows atop the man's shoulder, the man's aura personified. These were not huddled, evil things, like the ones the young priest had often witnessed when viewing wicked men in similar fashion.
Danica, trusting in Cadderly's judgment, put the man in a defensive lock, and Cadderly turned his attention back to the still-standing priests.
"Damn you!" the horribly scarred leader growled in a loud voice - and the awkward volume of that response revealed to Cadderly that his holy utterance had probably deafened the man.
"Where is Aballister?" Cadderly called out, and the man regarded him curiously, then tapped his ears, confirming Cadderly's suspicions.
Both evil priests began chanting frantically, beginning new spells, and Danica slammed the soldier to the floor and started forward.
"Get back!" Cadderly warned, and the monk was truly torn. She knew the importance of getting at the spellcasters before they could complete their enchantments, but knew, too, to trust in Cadderly's warnings.
With supreme confidence, feeling invulnerable against the priests of an evil god, Cadderly fell back into the flow-, ing music and began his song. He felt waves of numbing energy as the priest to the side hurled a paralyzing spell at him, but within the protective river of Deneir's music, such a spell had no hold over Cadderly.
The scarred leader lifted his arm and hurled a gemstone, glowing with the mighty energies it contained. Danica leaped in front to block it, as she had blocked the arrow, while Cadderly pointed to it and cried out
The glow in the gemstone disappeared, and on a sudden inspiration (a silent telepathic message from Cadderly), Danica caught the stone.
Cadderly grabbed the back of Danica's tunic and pulled her behind him, singing all the while. Equations and numbers flashed through his thoughts with every note. He saw the very fabric of the area about him, the relationships and densities of the different materials. Energy flowed from the torches set into sconces on the walls, and a more static energy, the very binding force which held everything in place, was clearly revealed.
The evil priests began chanting again, stubbornly, but now it was Cadderly's turn. The young priest focused on that binding force, replayed equations and changed their factors, forcing truth into untruth.
No, not untruth, Cadderly realized. Not chaos, as was the enchantment he had forced over old Fyren. In the revealing equations, Cadderly found an alternate truth, a distortion, not a perversion, of physical law. By sheer willpower and the insights the song of Deneir had offered to him, the young priest bent the binding force, turned it in on the scarred enemy leader, making him the center of gravity.
For every unsecured item near the scarred man, the floor was no longer a resting place.
Dead and downed soldiers "fell" at their leaden they did not slide along the floor, but actually toppled and plunged, as though the floor was now a vertical slope. A desk from the room behind the surprised priest crashed against his back, all its items clinging to him as though he had become a living magnet. Two of the torches within the area of warped reality leaned toward the evil priest and slowly slid along the sides of their sconces, coming to an angled rest in a precarious perch, their flames burning out to the side away from the cursed man.
The priest who had been standing at the side of the room hung straight out, his feet toward his master, his hands clutching desperately at the doorjamb.
Danica couldn't prevent a chuckle at the ridiculous sight A ball of bodies and items had converged on the scarred leader, smashing him from every angle. The priest to the side fell last, slamming hard against a dead ore. And then everything had settled once more, everything unattached or unsupported within fifty feet of the evil priest had come to rest atop him, had pounded him and buried him.
Several groans came from within that confused pile, mostly those of the battered leader, buried somewhere far beneath the jumble.
The man's associate, lying on the outside layer of the confused pile, looked at Cadderly with sheer hatred and began again his stubborn chant
"Do not!" Cadderly warned him. The priest did stop, but not because of Cadderly's warning. Out of the same rgtom that had held the desk now fell an incredibly fat giant hitting the pile with such tremendous force that those bodies on the opposite side of the pile, near Cadderly and Danica, bounced out to the side, then fell back and settled on the pile once more. The scarred leader went quiet then for the first time, and Cadderly winced, realizing that the giant had probably crushed the man.
The giant was far from dead, though. It roared and thrashed, launching bodies far to the side, then smashing them apart as they inevitably fell back into the pile.
"How long will it last?" Danica asked. Her darting eyes revealed her fear, for their was no apparent way for her and Cadderly to get out of the area. Many of the men stricken unconscious by the holy word were awakening, and that ferocious giant had not been badly wounded.
Trepidation welled up within Cadderly, dark fears for what he must do to complete this battle. He searched his spells, listened carefully to the song, seeking something that would allow him and Danica to get through without further bloodshed. But what of his friends? he wondered. If they came out behind him, and the spell was no more, they would face a formidable force.
Again the raging priest atop the pile chanted; a soldier to the side of him hurled a dagger Cadderly's way, but it was as if he were throwing up the side of a cliff, and the knife dropped back to the jumble, sticking into the back of a dead goblin. The giant climbed through next, a look of sheer hatred on its huge face.
Cadderly looked to Danica, to the gemstone, a hunk of amber, that she held. Of all the trials the young priest would ever face, none would be so agonizing as this trial of conscience. He could not fail now, though, could not allow his own weakness to threaten his mission, to threaten all the goodly peoples of the region. He waved his hand over the gemstone, uttered a few words, and it began to glow again, teeming with magical energy.
"Toss it," he instructed.
"At them?"
Cadderly thought about it and shrugged as though it did not matter. To the side," he said, pointing to the doorjamb where the priest had been hanging.
Danica still seemed not to understand, but she tossed the enchanted stone. It followed a normal, expected course for a few feet, then crossed into the area warped by Cadderly's spell and fell in an arcing, unerring curve to strike at the pile.
With a blinding flash, all the jumble was aflame. Men cried out for a moment, then fell silent The giant thrashed wildly, but had nowhere to run, could find nothing to roll in that was not also burning. It went on for what seemed a long and agonizing time, but was in reality merely minutes, then the only sound was the crackle of hungry flames.
*****
Pikel plowed through another angled doorway and fell fifteen feet to hit the corridor floor with a resounding "Oof!"