Crypt of the Moaning Diamond

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The belt's magic was strained, but not broken. Rather than shooting toward the sky, they dropped, jerked level, and then started to gently descend to the ground.

Sanval hung straight down from his collar, where Ivy held him in a tight grip, his body rigid, his arms and legs pointing hopefully toward the earth, his face a frozen blank. He made a slight choking sound, and Ivy tried to shift her grip so she would not strangle him before they hit the ground.

Zuzzara had let out a single huge bellow when they leaped off the wall. Ivy looked down at the half-orc, dangling from her white-knuckled grip on Ivy's heavy weapons belt. Beads of perspiration popped out on the half-orc's forehead. Zuzzara was as pale as Ivy had ever seen her. Suspended with Zuzzara's arm around her waist, Gunderal looked like some pretty bird, her body perpendicular to the ground, her arms stretched out like wings, her hair and skirts fluttering around her. She seemed to be shaking with soft laughter.

Ivy looked past them to the two hanging on her legs. Mumchance was staring at the ground, or was that his good eye that he had squeezed closed? Wiggles was a lump in his pocket, not even an ear sticking up over the edge. Kid clung to her other leg, and it did not surprise Ivy to see him look up at her, wink, then grin at the floating Gunderal.

They sank slowly, spiraling down in an odd zigzag pattern, and then they all hit the ground in a tumble of legs and arms.

"Oooh," Gunderal moaned, flattened beneath her big sister.

"Sorry," Zuzzara said, rolling off her onto all fours. She pushed herself upright and pulled her little sister into a standing position.

"It's all right," said Gunderal. She smoothed down the front of her skirt and ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her face. Her blue-black curls fluffed obediently into perfect ringlets, with highlighted streaks of blue and aquamarine framing her pearly features. "Good fighting up there, big sister."

Zuzzara shrugged. "It's what I do best!" Imitating Gunderal, she straightened her waistcoat and shook her head so that her many braids swung out, the iron beads clattered, and the braids fell neatly into place. She smiled weakly and wiped the perspiration from her face with her hand. "Give me a hundred hobgoblins every day, as long as I never have to fly."

"No, it was wonderful," Gunderal said with a little laugh. "I must get a new spellbook-one with flying spells in it."

"How could you like that? You are water genasi, not air genasi!" said a surprised Zuzzara.

"Oh, you remember daddy. He always leaped before he looked. I must have inherited a love of flying from him," replied the little sister.

"Shut up and grab me!" Ivy shouted, as everyone released his or her hold. What was the stupid spell to make the belt stop, she wondered, as she once more began to drift skyward.

"Twist twice to the right and then open it, my dear," Kid called, grabbing at her leg as she started to float up. A heavy, solid, most welcome weight of steady Procampur hands fell on her shoulders, pushing her back down until her feet touched ground. Ivy glanced around quickly while her fingers worked at the belt buckle.

Mumchance had been right about their location. They had landed at the southwest juncture of Tsurlagol's walls-the very point that the Siegebreakers had originally identified as a weak spot. Above them Fottergrim was screaming at a bunch of barbarian archers, driving them into place along the shattered edge of the wall. Across a field were Procampur's forces, obviously readying themselves for a charge against the same wall.

"I know it hasn't been two days," grumbled Ivy as she twisted the clasp of the belt. "Twice to the right, then open. Twice to the right, then open. Ah, blast. If I wanted to be a bird, I would have grown wings."

Only Sanval's strong grip on her shoulder and Kid's firm clasp on her thigh were keeping her on the ground. The stupid belt was tugging her toward the sky again. She fumbled the buckle and wondered exactly how high she would go without a ceiling to stop her, if their grip slipped.

"Breathe," whispered Sanval in her ear. "You have won. You have saved us all. Do not panic now."

She rather suspected he used the same murmuring voice to calm his horses, but it worked. Her heart rate slowed, her own hands stopped fumbling at the clasp. She grasped the belt buckle ornament firmly, her fingers tightening on the little silver wings of the serpent, and the ancient metal crumbled under her hand. The narrow red belt slipped from around her waist and shot up into the clouds with a little whistling noise, rather like a child's jeer at adult authority.

The barbarian archers on the wall saw it, their heads turning and tilting back in unison to track the red whip of belt. They all knelt to a firing position, one knee down, and lifted their crossbows. Their arms snapped back to grab bolts from the quivers strapped between their shoulder blades, and with the speed of a blink, they filled the sky with bolts. Perhaps they thought the belt was some wily mercenary trick, meant to magically bring down the wall. The archers followed the belt's path with flying bolts until it rose beyond their reach and disappeared into the sky.

"Good riddance," panted Ivy, who could feel a whole new set of bruises around her waist where the pull of the belt had crushed her chain mail against her. The cavalry across the field was obviously getting into formation. Banners were raised, snapping in the wind. She could hear the faint echoes of the big war drums being pounded, so the various leaders of the horse-mounted troops would know their position. "What is Enguerrand trying to do? He can't be charging the gate on this side. That won't work. I told him that wouldn't work."

She glared at Sanval, as though expecting an explanation. He stared at the Procampur cavalry through narrowed eyes. "I do not think that he has an extra plan in his back pocket," worried Sanval.

"Look," Kid whispered, and Ivy felt his hand brush her elbow. Turning to see where Kid pointed, she saw the giant Nalfeshnee do a crash landing, its wings beating. It rolled in a furry tumble with the two bugbears.

"Any moment now, my dear," Kid added.

While they watched, the giant demon disappeared. There was no puff of smoke, no shooting sparks, just all at once gone.

"What happened?" Ivy asked.

"Very short term spell, my dear," Kid said. "Another few moments and he would have changed while still in the air."

"Let me guess. Another artifact that he stole from Toram."

"Oh yes," said Kid. "I rather hoped that he would crash."

"But we all would have missed him so much. He kept our day so exciting," Ivy said, looking at the magelord running around the field, gathering up his fallen belongings. "All right, come on. We'd better see what he's up to."

Back in his human form-a tall bony creature with dirty yellow hair sticking to his neck, his robes torn and pulled askew-the magelord strode toward the wall, then stood a short distance away from it. He hunched his shoulders, and Ivy could see him raise his arms, hands together. The high-pitched crying began again.

"Thought we'd heard the last of that," Zuzzara complained.

"You wish," her sister said.

The Moaning Diamond cradled in Archlis's hands increased its eerie noise. It attracted the attention of Fottergrim's archers on the wall above them. A multitude of faces turned from scanning the skies after the belt's surprising flight to searching the ground below. They lowered their bows and held their hands above their eyes to shade them as they looked down and tried to locate the source of the sound.

A cry of "Archlis! Archlis!" went up. It was not a happy sound, more like the scream of a cage full of enraged tigers. A bloody and bruised Fottergrim could clearly be seen peering down.

"Traitor," screamed Fottergrim, waving the Ankh in impotent fury at Archlis. The orc commander obviously did not know how to use it, or there would have been nothing but black ash in front of the walls of Tsurlagol. "Kill the traitor!"

Archlis appeared to have completely forgotten the Siegebreakers. A tall disheveled figure, the narrow features of his face hard with concentration, his blue eyes blazing, his whole attention was focused now on Fottergrim. He raised the Moaning Diamond in his hand as though it were an offering to a god and began screaming out the activation spell.

Ivy commanded her group: "Run!"

They all stared at her for a moment, then she saw understanding widen their eyes as they remembered the disappearing wall in the tunnel-no warning, no fading, just gone.

Ivy grabbed Sanval's hand and pulled him after her. Mumchance dropped Wiggles out of his pocket. "Run, run!" he cried, stretching his own short legs as he followed her. Cracks opened up in the ground, but the little dog swerved and swerved again, each time avoiding places where the ground was collapsing.

Ivy cursed when she saw Kid dart away toward Archlis, but she could not turn back to grab him. If she stopped, all of the Siegebreakers would stop. She opened her mouth to shout his name, then thought better of it. Either he knew what he was doing, or he didn't, but she had to trust that he did not want to be noticed by Archlis, and screaming at him wouldn't help.

Sanval started to go after Kid. She tightened her grip on his hand and tugged. He could have twisted loose but didn't. "You know what you're doing," Sanval said.

"He's the fastest," she yelled and kept running. "He can catch up." Sanval continued at her side, his long strides matching hers.

Archlis shook the Moaning Diamond at Fottergrim. His shouts were even louder than the weird cries of the gem. At the base of the wall, great fissures appeared in the stone. They widened as they spread upward, like some vine twisting up a tree trunk. Rock and dirt and fill and small pebbles popped out of the wall at increasing speed.

Ivy yelled, "The ground is breaking up!" Everyone picked up their feet and ran faster. Only Kid ignored her, running toward Archlis. Kid reached around the magelord's waist and plucked the purse from his belt. Kid's small horns gleamed in the sunlight where they poked up through his dark hair. Then Kid aimed a deliberate and very hard kick at the magelord's knee. As his sharp little hoof connected, Archlis howled and stumbled forward.

"I can't believe this," Ivy muttered. She was still running as fast as possible away from the wall, but she watched Kid's brazen thievery over her shoulder. Sanval also twisted around to look and nearly tripped over a stone in the field. She caught him and steadied him.

"I think Kid wants to be a hero," Sanval explained as she pulled him upright.

"But now? When the world is falling on us?" Ivy panted.

"Keep moving!" Mumchance shouted over the rumbling of the earth beneath their feet. "Come on, Kid. Run, you little goat, run!"

Kid sprinted toward them.

"Told you," said Ivy. "He's fast."

Dust was spilling out of cracks in the wall, running down the stone in threads of gray like streams before a flood. The ground before Archlis was also starting to crack and cave in. The magelord had fallen to his knees, but he was still howling out his spell and waving the Moaning Diamond over his head.

Kid raced back toward the Siegebreakers, leaping lightly on his small hooves over the widening fissures in the ground, zipping around holes, holding the magelord's purse over his head and waving it.

As he neared them, he dug into the purse, pulled out a thick object, and held it overhead, laughing and waving his arms. When he reached Ivy's side, Kid waved the object at. It was Toram's spellbook.

"Don't stop," shouted the dwarf again. "Keep moving!"

Kid raced along at Ivy's side, his upturned face one wide grin.

"A book? You went back for a book?" Zuzzara thundered. The half-orc reached out, grabbed her sister's wrist, and rushed away. Gunderal's feet barely touched the ground. Her hair whipped around her head and across her face, enamel pins dropping like rain behind her.

"Let me go," she shrieked, "I want to see what Archlis is doing."

Zuzzara shouted, "He's bringing down that wall. Want to watch while it falls on you?"

The group was almost halfway across the field when Mumchance called a halt.

They stopped, bumping into each other, then turned around. The two bugbears were racing away in the opposite direction, Norimgic obviously limping from the recent landing in the field. The sun glittered on Sanval's former breastplate as Osteroric followed his brother away from the magelord.

"Look at that!" exclaimed Mumchance.

The wall was twisting now, and the goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, and barbarian archers were falling forward-a rain of timbers and screaming soldiers. A deep note sounded, the voice of stone twisted out of the earth, smothering even the ululations of the Moaning Diamond.

The ground completely crumbled beneath Archlis as the wall tilted out and rained stones and a shrieking Fottergrim down upon the screaming magelord. Archlis tried to roll out of the way, throwing one arm over his head. His other hand, extended and clinging to the Moaning Diamond, held the gem up as though he thought it would protect him.

Archlis dropped down through the widening hole in the ground, down to the twisting tunnels and the flooded levels of the ancient city. His robes whipping around him, and the last they saw of him was his sleeves fluttering above his upraised hands, and a quick flash of light. They heard a shrill scream that could have been Archlis or could have been the Moaning Diamond returning to its underground crypt.

A great roar shook the watchers as the ground in front of the wall caved in. The entire fortifications collapsed on the magelord. An enormous cloud of dust belched out of the fissure, a spiral of smoke twisted up to the sky, and then silence. Then there was another distinct popping sound, and a huge jet of water plumed into the sky and fell back to earth.

For a moment the Siegebreakers stood speechless, staring in shock. The water cascaded in high arches, like jets in a splendid castle fountain, then ran in spreading circles and grew from a pond into a lake.

"Not quite how I'd planned to bring that wall down," Ivy muttered.

"Shh," said Sanval, holding a finger to his lips. "I would not tell anyone that. It might make it harder to collect your fee." Then he smiled at her.

"Good plan," said Ivy with an answering smile.

"Told you that we would get a small lake on that side," said Mumchance with satisfaction. Gunderal smiled and nodded. Then she turned to look at her sister, lifting one delicate eyebrow in inquiry.

With a belly-deep orc laugh, Zuzzara shouted, "You're the best magic show in town, little sister!"

A shout sounded from the line of Procampur's army on the wooded hillside. Now the rumble of hooves shook the ground as Enguerrand's cavalry swept past them. More men went running after them, lines of mercenaries yelling as they swept over the rubble of the western wall and plunged into Tsurlagol.

Ivy shaded her eyes from the midday sun and looked toward Enguerrand's troops. She could see rubble and cavalry and foot soldiers, and in the swirl of dust she glimpsed goblins and the surviving barbarian archers disappearing between the ruins beyond the wall. They were running low, obviously hoping to hide before Enguerrand found them. As quickly as they had appeared, they were gone, and if she knew anything at all, she knew Enguerrand would never find them. But it was not her problem. Somebody had to lose. But today, it was not her.

The Siegebreakers looked at each other, very pleased. They had accomplished their mission.

"Just let the Thultyrl try to wiggle out of paying," said Ivy. Something like a contented purr underlaid her hoarse voice.

As the army of Procampur thundered past them to drive Fottergrim's troops out of Tsurlagol, Sanval looked after them longingly.

"You don't have a horse. And you're missing most of your armor," Ivy chided him, but she did it very gently. He appeared so very forlorn standing there in a torn, smoke-smudged shirt, rust-smeared breeches, and indescribably dirty boots, watching someone else ride off to glorious battle. Even his hair was standing up in every which way, dust and rust streaking his dark curls. Of course, Ivy thought he looked wonderful. After all, he was breathing, and he wasn't bleeding. And that was worth paying a temple a visit and giving thanks to any gods who wanted to listen. However, right now she needed to convince Sanval that this was a very good day for them all. "Look, you are with us," she said. "And when the dust clears, we are going to be the biggest heroes around here. After all, we tumbled the walls of Tsurlagol."

"Actually, it was Archlis who-" started Zuzzara.

"He didn't have a contract with the Thultyrl. And he was on the losing side," Ivy reminded her.

"And we are the winners," said Zuzzara. Gunderal giggled at her sister and patted her lovingly on the back.

"Oh yes," said Ivy, looking around and realizing that despite all the odds against it, they were all there, even Wiggles. "It has been a good day…"

Mumchance chimed in, "We were not standing under that wall…"

"When it fell down!" finished the others with a happy shout.

Then Ivy remembered a promise that she had made to herself, down in the dark. "And now I am going to find the handsomest healer that I can."

"But we must report to the Thultyrl," said Sanval. "And there are certain prayers and sacrifices that I should make at my family shrine. To give thanks to the gods." He gave a deep, gut-wrenching sigh. "And then I am going to have to go back to my tent and explain to Godolfin about my boots." He brightened up a little. "And get a clean shirt, and a bath."

"Good ideas," said Ivy. "And I have a couple more ideas that I may want to discuss with you later. Tell me. The gods attached to Procampur-are they fussy about attendance to proper times of worship and all that? Or are they just pleased to see you whenever you happen to stop by?"

"We have many gods and goddesses beneath the black-roof tiles," said Sanval, looking a little puzzled. "Some for a household, some for an occupation, some for the protection of a district. There are appropriate and inappropriate days to enter the temples, if that is what you are asking."

"And every black-roof Procampur temple probably has long lists of rules and regulations about what else is appropriate and inappropriate," guessed Ivy.

"Certainly. There is a proper order to such things, after all."

"Hmm. I may need to find some place a little less organized. Maybe over there," she said, glancing back over her shoulder at the fighters swarming over the broken wall of Tsurlagol.

The side with the shiniest armor looked like they were cutting through the remnants of Fottergrim's orcs with the ease of a hot knife through sealing wax.

"I don't understand," Sanval said.

"Wait until we meet with the Thultyrl. I don't suppose he'll have much interest in over there."

"Over there where?"

Ivy shrugged and pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. "There. What's left of Tsurlagol and what's left underneath. Might even find you better armor."

Sanval stared down at himself, noting sadly the bits of badly dented leg guards that were all that was left of his once-fine equipment. "Almost any armor would be better than this."

"Uh-huh. Digging rights, I'm thinking," Ivy said.

Sanval still looked confused, but asked no more questions.

The Thultyrl was going to be pleased, generous even. Ivy knew it. And his steward, that officious Beriall, would never notice one more little expense tucked into their bill. After all, she had so very many expenses to put down.

"Going to go find the best-looking healer in the camp," repeated Ivy, striding across the fields to the tents of Procampur. Every bone and muscle in her body ached. She had bruises on top of bruises. She did not care. She walked as if the world did not own her-better than that, she strode as if the world owed her one very large payment for a job well done.