The City of Ravens

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jack passed the night comfortably stationed in the parlor of Woodenhall, ostensibly watching for any return of the doppelganger or shadow that had attacked Illyth earlier. But well before dawn he rose and slipped away, anxious to get back to the city in time to meet Anders and Tharzon. He left word with the staff that Illyth was to be guarded carefully and made his preparations for an expedition into Sarbreen's depths. He should have been trembling with anticipation, given the situation; if all went well, he might take possession of a prize so valuable that Elana's commission and the Game of Masks would pale in comparison. But Jack still couldn't help but feel that Zandria had excruciatingly poor timing. He had too many other things to think about, so, with a mind full of dark suspicions and an uneasy heart, he met Anders and Tharzon near the house rented out by the Company of the Red Falcon and followed Zandria into Sarbreen.

The Guilder's Tomb proved to be a surprisingly accessible place. From the sewers beneath Tentowers, an old vertical shaft led to a deep drain tunnel far beneath the city. Deeper tunnels and complexes intersected the shaft at various intervals, like floors of a building connected indirectly by a laundry chute or dumbwaiter. About sixty feet below the city sewers, a long, vaulted passage slanted across the vertical drop, leading to a broad chamber guarded by fierce-looking stone statues of grim dwarves. Zandria's company splashed through the sewers for a time, then rappelled down to the intersecting passage and marched only a hundred yards to reach the place. Jack, Anders, and Tharzon followed at a discreet distance.

Dwarves were hewers of rock and carvers of stone; Sarbreen, their ancient city, was bored through the rocky prominence of Raven's Bluff, in some cases hundreds of feet below the surface. The place was a maze in three dimensions, an endless labyrinth of shafts and passages, halls and chambers. In over a century and a half of human habitation on the hillside above, no one had ever mapped more than a tiny portion of Sarbreen's lost halls, but no part of Sarbreen was more than an hour's walk from the city above-if one knew the way.

If one didn't, the dwarven ruin might as well have been a wilderness the size of a kingdom. Most expeditions returned empty-handed after wandering aimlessly for hours or days through the same chambers. A few encountered old dwarven traps, hidden pits, and deadly blades that scythed out of dark alcoves, and some ran into dangerous and deadly monsters-undead things that hungered for the blood of the living, ferocious scavengers that fed from the city's effluvia drifting down from above, and horrifying aberrations that crept up into Sarbreen's halls from even more mysterious and remote depths far below the light. Jack had abandoned dungeoneering as a pastime after one such encounter. Hours of tedium punctuated by rare moments of utter terror hardly seemed like a heroic pursuit to him. Besides, the few expeditions that were successful brought their loot back to the surface, where rogues like Jack could easily help themselves to someone else's good fortune.

Following the brilliant magical lights of Zandria's company, Jack and his companions carefully tailed the band to the broad chamber at the end of the passageway. They carried no lights of their own; Tharzon's dwarven eyes were more than capable of piercing the darkness, and Jack worked a spell he knew that sharpened his own sight. Anders they led carefully along until they were close enough to see by the distant light of Zandria's expedition. The three rogues found a spot to wait about a hundred feet down the hall and settled in to watch.

"What do we do next?" whispered Tharzon.

Jack replied, "Let's see if Sarbreen's legendary perils do that work for us. Zandria is not a mage to be trifled with. She has at least two capable swordsmen with her-I met them when I visited their stronghold in the city. See, there they are." In the yellow light flooding the end of the hall, Zandria's companions spread out to search the chamber, while the Red Wizard consulted papers and notes before a gleaming slab of stone in the center of the far wall.

"Those other two in armor are probably priests," Tharzon added. He pointed to a short, stocky man and a young, athletic woman with a shaved head. "See the emblems of Tyr, there, and Tempus? Best to figure that they are both trained warriors, too, as well as potential spellcasters." The dwarf shifted slightly to change his view. "There's another fellow in dark clothes, probably a lockpick or burglar."

"That makes six to our three," Anders observed. "We should have brought a couple more stout lads to even the odds. Jankizen from Shadystreets would be useful."

"Jankizen can't add two and two twice and come up with the same result," Jack snorted. "Besides, more help means more shares." He peered down the hallway at the small pool of light.

Zandria and her allies were busy readying for a fight, checking weapons and arranging potions and scrolls so that they could be easily found in a hurry.

"They're getting ready to open the tomb. Wait here, lads. I'll creep a little closer to see what unfolds.''

"Don't get caught," Tharzon muttered.

Jack winked at the dwarf and wove his spell of invisibility, vanishing from sight. He stepped out from behind the broken columns they'd chosen for cover and advanced toward Zandria's company, picking his steps carefully. Invisibility did not make him inaudible as well, and the crunch of a thoughtless footstep on rubble or a carelessly kicked stone would alert Zandria. Mages had spells to reveal things invisible, and Jack had no wish to put the Company of the Red Falcon on its guard.

At the moment, the adventurers stood in a loose half circle surrounding Zandria as she faced the wall opposite the entrance-except for the swordsman Brunn and the Tyrian priest, who deliberately watched the hallway outside for the approach of any enemy from that quarter. Jack nodded in appreciation; these were professionals, as he'd suspected. He stopped about ten feet short of the two sentries and studied the scene.

Now choked in rubble and ruin, the chamber had once been grand indeed. Two twenty-foot pillars had been carved into the likeness of grim dwarven sentries, guarding the entrance to the room. The chamber itself was a high rotunda, its walls lined with tall columns. A great carving in relief circled the entire chamber, a pastoral scene of grain fields and vineyards. In the center, directly opposite the entrance, stood a smooth glossy stone with a smaller, more intricate carving.

"Zandria's inscription," Jack whispered to himself. "Excellent!"

The red-haired mage stood with her back to him, facing the wall. She carried a long staff of dark, rune-engraved wood and wore a short sword of strange black metal at her side. Holding the staff in the crook of her elbow, she studied a parchment scroll.

"Now, ten paces south from here," she said. "South is toward the entrance, correct?"

"Aye," said the priest of Tyr, speaking over his shoulder. "The hall outside runs straight north and south."

Zandria turned and began pacing straight toward Jack, her expression fixed in concentration. She counted ten paces and then halted, very near the entrance to the chamber. She referred to her notes again.

"Now, I speak the words kharaz-urzu."

As soon as the dwarven words left her lips, a bright silver light softly grew in the chamber. High above, shining orbs hidden among stone carved to resemble the boughs of trees began to glow magically, overpowering the adventurers' own spells of light. The swordsmen shifted nervously, vigilant for any sign of impending attack, but instead of heralding the arrival of some ancient guardian, the light simply cast a glimmering field of slanting silver beams throughout the room as each ray bounced and rebounded from hidden, polished surfaces.

"What's happening?" called out the priestess of Tempus. She whirled from side to side, her battle-axe poised to strike. "Zandria?"

"Hold a moment. Nothing threatens us," the wizardess replied.

She turned slowly, studying the patterns formed by the argent beams. Six rays gleamed in the chamber from six silver apples hidden in the stony leaves at the apex of the room; each reflected four times from smooth, glossy spaces cunningly hidden in the carving that surrounded the room, creating a cage of light that spiraled down to meet at one common point in the center of the chamber-a large seven-sided stone that stood perhaps an inch higher than the rest of the floor.

"The seven stone," Zandria breathed. "Brunn! Kale! Crowbars, quickly! Raise the stone in the center!"

The swordsman, Brunn, abandoned his post at the entrance to the rotunda and shrugged off his pack. The slender half-elf in gray joined him. Both men rummaged through their backpacks and came up with short iron crowbars. Then, silhouetted by the silver light, they worked the tools under one edge of the stone and slowly levered it up. The stone was about six or seven inches thick, and almost four feet in diameter.

"There's a staircase hidden under here!" called the half-elf.

"The Guilder's Tomb," Zandria whispered. She glanced around. "Thieron and Durevin, stay up here and guard our exit. Kale, you take the lead. Be wary of traps; Sarbreen's full of them. Brunn, you follow Kale, and I will follow you. Maressa, you bring up the rear. Any questions?"

"It's dangerous to split up," said the priest of Tyr. "What if you have need of Durevin and me when you get to the other end of the passageway below?"

"We'll call for you to join us if it looks like we might lose contact, Thieron," Zandria said. "All right, then, let's get to it."

The scout-Kale-nodded once and dropped quickly into the stairwell, alert and cautious. Brunn, the big swordsman, came after the thief, jingling in a mail shirt that hung to his knees. Zandria followed and then the priestess of Tempus. Jack debated returning to where his friends hid and then decided that the opportunity was simply too good. He glided forward between the Tyr priest and the other swordsman, who stood watching warily in all directions, and followed Maressa down into the staircase.

The stairwell opened out into a long, low hall, leading into darkness. They advanced a long way, passing entirely beneath the rotunda by Jack's reckoning, and then began to climb back up another flight of stairs.

"We're right behind that damned memorial stone," observed Kale from the front of the party. "All this time wasted solving the riddle, when we could have tunneled or blasted our way through with magic!''

"I am not certain that would have been the case, Kale," said Zandria. "The master stonewrights of Sarbreen had secret ways of strengthening stone, reinforcing against magical attack. It wouldn't surprise me if they had guarded the vaults behind the rotunda with these techniques."

"Door ahead," the thief said by way of reply. A great valve of shining silver stood at the top of the stairs at the end of the secret passage, only six feet in height but almost as wide. The likeness of a dignified elder dwarf was embossed in the center of the portal.

"Cedrizarun himself, I believe," Zandria said. "Search for a means to open it, Kale, but be careful. There may be a trap."

The lockpick nodded and moved closer to inspect the door. The rest of the group fell silent as they allowed Kale to do his work. "Ah," said the thief. "Avoid the handle, here. It triggers some kind of mechanism-a pit trap beneath this staircase, I believe. Instead, all we need to do is simply slide the door aside. It's on a very well concealed track."

"You mean it doesn't open? You just shove it aside like a decorative screen?" Brunn laughed. "Not very secure, is it?"

"That's not all. Some magical force prevents the door from moving. I suspect that we need a password of some kind, as we did above."

Zandria nodded. "Kharaz-urzu!" she stated. Nothing happened. The others waited, shifting nervously, but no silver light appeared, and the door remained immovable. "Damn, I'd hoped it was the same word. Very well, then. Stand back, I'll work a spell of opening."

The other retreated back down the stairs a few steps as Zandria raised her staff and struck once on the silver barrier, muttering old magical words. The silver surface glimmered and then began to roll aside. As it opened, an arc of darkness appeared at one corner and then twisted up and around, replacing the silver wall-the door was wheel-shaped, rolling aside in its seamless stone groove. Zandria waited for the door to move aside and then thrust her staff into the space revealed, conjuring a brilliant burst of magical light to illuminate the space beyond.

Gold glittered and sparkled in the darkness. Jack blinked in amazement; the vault was full! Dwarven arms and weapons gleamed in the light, tall banners from a dozen battles lined the walls, and everywhere he looked great painted vessels and gilt coffers bulged with gold and jewels. A single share of this loot might be worth thousands upon thousands of gold crowns!

"Oh, my," said Kale. The lockpick took one tentative step toward the waiting riches and licked his lips. "Oh, my."

Zandria barred his way with her staff. "We will examine the treasure carefully and completely before we begin to remove it from the vault. Remember, the first thing we want is the Orb. Anything after that is merely a pleasant bonus, and for Azuth's sake, exercise caution! Who knows what traps the Sarbreen dwarves might have planted within the vault itself?"

The Orb? Jack thought to himself. What in Faerun is Zandria looking for that all this wealth barely impresses her? He carefully trailed the adventurers into the vault, noting with some appreciation that Brunn and Maressa were engaged in wedging an iron spike under the rim of the door-wheel so that the heavy silver circle would not roll back into place and trap them all inside. The vault was arranged in a simple cross shape, with a small round room at the intersection of three short arms; the entrance was at the base of a somewhat longer arm. In the center of the round room stood a great stone sarcophagus.

Zandria and Kale split up, wandering through the vault without disturbing anything large, although Kale quietly pocketed a few interesting baubles when Zandria was not looking. Jack smiled and indulged his own larcenous impulses when neither the mage nor the lockpick was looking his way, filling his pockets as quickly as he could. He filched a fine-looking dagger of strange dark steel, a ring evidently carved from a single piece of onyx, and a dusty bottle that might or might not have sloshed with some small amount of Cedrizarun's legendary brandy.

"Ontrodes will bless me until his dying day." Jack smiled. Now for the real trick, he wondered: How do we separate this much wealth from the Company of the Red Falcon without a fight?

There was a vertical lift of over sixty feet on the way back to the surface, he recalled. Jack could post himself in the middle of the shaft, armed with a knife, then, when Zandria's companions hoisted up bags of loot, Jack could cut the line and drop the loot to the bottom of the shaft, where Anders and Tharzon waited to make off with the booty.

"That would fetch us only a fraction of the take," he muttered. "One or two bags at the most before they became suspicious."

Maybe he could substitute bags full of rocks for the gold, quietly switching the treasure one sack at a time as they hauled it past him, but he'd have to count on no one opening a sack at the top until all the sacks were up, and Jack couldn't imagine how he could encourage Zandria's friends to leave the sacks alone that long. Unless… unless there was someone up there when the sacks arrived, a passer-by who innocently engaged Zandria and her allies in conversation. Of course the Red Falcons wouldn't inspect their sacks if Tharzon and Anders happened by, engaged in a routine exploration of Sarbreen's upper levels. Zandria might order the two killed in order to protect their secrecy, but Jack doubted that she was made of such ruthless stuff. She'd probably chase them off after a few minutes. In the meantime, Jack would keep hauling up loot as if there were nothing wrong up above. He grinned widely. There was a plan worth putting into action!

"Come here!" Zandria stood by the sarcophagus, gazing at the stone carving on the lid. The top of the sarcophagus was worked into a likeness of Cedizarun, reposed on his back, a noble bottle clasped to his breast. "Brunn, Maressa-the sarcophagus holds a secret compartment!"

Jack looked over at the adventurers, now clustered around the dwarven tomb. Zandria carefully removed the stone bottle from the statue's grasp, a perfect piece of stonework that no doubt had taken years to carve. The stone grated coldly as the mage carefully pulled the stone bottle apart into two pieces. Inside, a brilliant white orb of pearly luminescence glimmered.

"The Orb of Khundrukar! Hidden in Cedrizarun's grasp, literally!"

"Is it magical?" asked Brunn.

"Very much so," Zandria replied, "although I am unsure of its properties." She took the Orb, wrapped it in a soft silk cloth, and tucked it into a pouch at her waist. "Help yourselves to the rest of the hoard, then. I have my prize."

Jack took that as his cue to slip out the door. It would take them some time to sort through all that treasure, enough time for he, Anders, and Tharzon to set up a careful pilferage of the treasure as the Red Falcons transported it back to the surface. Of course, he would have loved to get his hands on the Orb, but he'd settle for a king's ransom in gold and jewels. He was just setting up the operation in his mind when he heard shouts of alarm and the clash of arms from the other end of the passageway.

"Anders must have decided to rush the sentries," he realized. Quickly he dashed ahead to take the priest and the warrior from the rear, hoping to silence the fight before it spoiled his plans. Jack reached the staircase leading up into the outer rotunda and started to climb up, when suddenly Anders and Tharzon appeared at the head of the stair, leaping down in utter flight.

"Seal the door! Seal the door!" Tharzon bellowed.

An instant later, the priest Thieron followed the Northman and the dwarf. "Who in Tyr's seven hells are you?" he bellowed after them. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Out of the way, you idiot!" Anders yelled. He reached up and started to haul at the great stone slab that covered the hidden stairway.

The priest gaped in indecision, and then something outside made a kind of long, wheezing grunt and slithered close. Jack couldn't see it, not with Tharzon and Anders and the priest tangled up at the head of the stairway, but Thieron could.

"Tyr's hammer! A dragon of the deep! Durevin, flee!"

From outside Jack heard hissing and the soft scrape of scales on stone. Suddenly a great roar sounded, and a man screamed high and horribly. A sword dropped down the staircase, ringing as it clattered from step to step to land at Jack's feet. Half the length of the blade was gone, leaving a charred, corroded fragment that smoked and sizzled. He looked up again, just in time to see Anders, Tharzon, and Thieron the priest come down the stairs in a bouncing, swearing knot of limbs and weapons. He tried to scramble out of the way but was caught and knocked flat by Tharzon as the dwarf rolled down the steps. A hard-driven elbow knocked the wind out of him, and the collision spoiled his spell of invisibility. Jack saw stars.

When his vision cleared, he found himself looking up the now-empty staircase at a great crocodile-like snout and gleaming yellow fangs. The dragon was a small one, as these things go, probably not much bigger than four or five draft horses lined up nose to tail, but its head was as big as a sixty-gallon tun and its eyes gleamed with intelligence and malice.

"More rats in the hidey-hole," the creature hissed. "Don't worry. I'll be down in just a moment."

Jack scrambled backward on his hams about ten feet, staggered to his feet, and ran for his life. He risked one quick look over his shoulder and saw the monster gliding down the staircase. It was very snakelike in build, with no limbs to interfere with its passage and a pair of great black gleaming wings that folded back along its length. He picked up the pace and passed Tharzon and then the priest Thieron, joining Anders as he raced up the stair at the other end of the passageway that led up to the vault.

The three thieves and the Red Falcon piled into the treasure room in an explosion of armor and oaths. Brunn and Maressa drew weapons and leaped forward to defend their find against the invasion of strangers, but Anders and Tharzon ignored them, instantly turning to the wheellike door and kicking out the spike in order to roll it closed. The great valve boomed shut just as the slithering dragon-snake appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

"Come out, come out!" the creature laughed. "I think you have locked yourselves in, little mice. I shall be most cross if I have to come in after you!"

Jack, Anders, and Tharzon turned away from the door only to find the Red Falcons lined up against them. Zandria stepped forward, her face livid.

"What in the hell is going on here?" she demanded.

Jack started to answer, but Thieron spoke first. "Durevin and I were standing watch, when all of the sudden the dwarf and the big one came running up the outer passage, screaming 'Dragon! dragon!' At first I thought it some kind of ruse or ambush, but they ran right by us into the hidden staircase. When I looked up again, I saw what they were running from-a deep dragon, as fast as a racehorse and as big as a coach." The priest's voice faltered. "Durevin tried to check its advance. He had time for two, maybe three swings, and then the creature dissolved him with its breath. He's dead."

The door boomed with a great hollow sound. "That would be the creature just outside the door?" Zandria asked.

"Yes," said Thieron. "I am sorry, Zandria. We didn't have time to do anything but flee."

The mage absorbed the information with an expression of irritation, as if the priest had told her that a dress she liked had been ruined in the wash. "Understood. Everyone, get ready for a fight. The dragon's breath may be powerful enough to eat through the door." Then she turned to Jack and said in a cold voice, "Now what are you doing here? And who are these two?"

"Why, we were engaged in a routine exploration of the upper halls of Sarbreen," said Jack, "when we had the great misfortune of encountering the monster who now batters at our door. Deeming discretion the better part of valor, we chose to search for a more advantageous position to stand our ground. Unfortunately, we fled into the very dead end where your two companions stood guard. We advised them of the situation and took the liberty of using the passage you've found."

" 'Advised us of the situation'?" said Thieron. "You ran past screaming 'dragon'! Or those two did, anyway. I didn't see you until we came down the stair."

"Well, you were advised that there was a dragon in the vicinity, and that we had elected to execute a minor tactical withdrawal," Jack replied. He looked around at the great golden hoard that surrounded them, as if noticing it for the first time. "Dear me! Zandria, by any chance are we standing in the Guilder's Vault?"

"Why yes, Jack, so we are," the mage replied. "I don't doubt that you followed us here quite intentionally."

"Really? Why, I should hope that you were here on some other business altogether, dear Zandria. If you came to the vault without me, well, that would seem to imply that you had decided not to live up to our agreed-upon bargain of two-elevenths of the treasure." Jack allowed himself a smug smile. "Now who was going to steal from whom, I wonder?"

"Choose your words carefully," grated Brunn. He stepped forward. "There are five of us and only three of you, and we're better armed."

Anders met the swordsman's gaze levelly. "I guess we'll find out about that, now, won't we?"

"Silence!" Zandria's voice cracked like a whip. "We all share a much bigger problem. There is a dragon at the door, in case you've forgotten."

"Oh, don't mind me," hissed the dragon, its voice distant and muted through the door. "I am enjoying this tremendously. It's quite uncommon for my prospective meals to argue with each other in this fashion. I'd like to see how it turns out. Do continue."

"If there is anyone on the face of this world that I would rather not be caught in this predicament with," Zandria said, "I think it might be you, Jack Ravenwild. But I cannot change that now, so I suggest that we consider how we might cooperate to get out of this."

"Very well." Jack looked around. "First things first. There are eight of us now here. I suggest eight equal shares, should we survive, and Zandria, you and I as the leaders of our respective parties shall dice for the Orb of Kundugar."

"That's the Orb of Khundrukar, you idiot, and that is completely unacceptable," snapped Zandria.

"On what grounds do you reject my proposal?" Jack said with hurt in his voice. "It's actually quite fair. In fact-"

He was interrupted by a sudden blast outside, muted by the thick door and the dense stone. A faint whiff of something sulfurous tainted the air; the great silver door began to blacken and sizzle ominously.

Zandria snarled in anger, "Damn, I don't think that door will hold. Jack, you and your accomplices have two choices. You can stand and fight alongside us, or you can stand and die like sheep. There's no exit from this chamber, so you're out of places to run."

A small hole appeared in the door; a great black dragon snout rammed into it, buckling the portal and breaking free great, slagged slabs of the door. The dragon drew in its breath, preparing to fill the small room with its horrible corrosive vapors again.

"Wait!" called Jack. "Don't do that. This chamber is filled with treasure."

The dragon paused. It wriggled and shifted, so that it could peek through the holes widening in the melting door. "Why, so it is! And I might have ruined it all. Thank you for bringing that to my attention."

"Don't mention it," Jack muttered. "Umm, would you consider a modest bribe to leave us alone? Say, half the treasure in the room?"

Zandria and her companions muttered angrily, but they held their tongues. The dragon was silent for a few moments, evidently considering the offer. "If you strip and leave your weapons and gear in this chamber, I'll allow you to leave," it said. "All of the treasure, of course, would have to stay."

The humans and the dwarf exchanged glances. "I don't believe it for a moment," said Tharzon. "Dragons are notorious liars."

"Why, I would offer my sacred bond to any who threw themselves at my mercy!" the dragon replied. "I value my word very highly."

"We decline," said Zandria. She studied the chamber quickly; the door was at the bottom end of the southern arm. She gestured sharply and sent the surviving Falcons back to the west arm, then hissed at Jack. "You three to the east."

Jack, Anders, and Tharzon retreated to the east arm of the cross-shaped room. Jack wasn't a great tactician, but he appreciated the arrangement at once. The dragon wouldn't have anyone standing right in front of it when it forced the door. It would have to enter the room bodily and then turn to attack the Falcons on its left or the rogues on its right. One band or the other would have the opportunity to attack the creature from behind.

The dragon snarled in rage and threw itself against the ruined door. The ancient dwarf-made valve held for a moment and then failed utterly as the very stones it was anchored in were jarred from their place. Metal shrieked and groaned, stone cracked like thunderbolts, and then the creature was inside the room, a great dark serpent lunging forward with incredible speed and power. Its wings battered the walls, knocking treasure in every direction. It glanced once into the east alcove, its carious yellow eye gleaming, and then it hurled itself toward the west and the Red Falcons.

"Die, monster!" shrieked Zandria.

She worked a spell of lightning, blasting at the dragon with a brilliant blue bolt of energy. Thieron began chanting a priestly spell to summon strength and fortitude against the creature, while Brunn and Maressa leaped forward, blade and battle-axe flashing. The dragon drove them back with huge snaps of its fanged maw.

"Come on, Tharzon!" shouted Anders.

He leaped forward with his greatsword in hand, the dwarf only a step behind, war-axe high. The two struck at the gleaming dark flank of the dragon, barely marking the creature's scaly armor, and then the dragon twisted with a powerful motion and slammed its long, whiplike tail through the alcove, sending both Northman and dwarf flying as it pulverized them. Jack leaped over the lashing tail and conjured a ball of magical force, hurling it at the dragon's back. The detonation brought a roar of pain from the monster. It twitched its tail and upended Jack, too.

"This isn't going all too well," he mumbled as he picked himself up from the stone floor.

He looked up just in time to see both Anders and Tharzon knocked off their feet again by the dragon's tail, while across the room Zandria-now levitating in the air and blasting at the dragon with darts of brilliant magic-was suddenly swatted across the room by a wing the size of a small sail. She hit the stone wall hard and fell stunned to the ground on the east side of the chamber.

The dragon's lashing tail suddenly twisted away from the alcove, replaced by one dark wing. The half-elf Kale was dragged into view, caught in the coils of the deep dragon's body like a small animal trapped by a constrictor snake. The thief screamed shrilly, feebly stabbing at the dragon with a small dagger, and then something cracked loudly enough to be heard over the dragon's bellows and the shrill ringing swords. Blood started from Kale's mouth, and he dropped his dagger, his head vanishing beneath the dragon's coils.

Jack looked around. The door was dicey, but he had other ways to leave. He picked himself up from the floor and then darted forward to set one hand on Tharzon and the other on Anders.

"Come on, lads! Let's quit while we're ahead!"

"But the dragon-" Anders began.

"Is not our fight," Jack finished.

He summoned the energy for his travel spell, shaping the chaotic spiral with care; this spell taxed him, and he'd never tried to carry two companions at once. The dragon whirled about, sensing that something was happening, but before it could strike again, the room faded into mist and darkness-

— and they were somewhere else, falling to the cold stone floor in silver light. Jack landed heavily and lost his breath. Anders and Tharzon fell to the ground right beside him, their weapons ringing on the stone. His head swam with dizziness, but Jack staggered to his feet. As he thought, they were in the outer rotunda. The silver light still caged the room, but against one wall a great smear of smoking, bubbling stone showed where Durevin had met his end in the dragon's vile corrosion.

Tharzon sat up slowly. "What happened? Where are we?"

"I used a spell of transport," Jack answered. "The range is short, no more than a hundred yards or so. I thought we'd get around the dragon by returning to the nearest safe place I could reach."

"You dragged us out of the fight and abandoned Zandria to that monster?" Anders asked. "The Guilder's Vault was ours! All we had to do was beat the dragon, and we would have walked out of there with a king's ransom!"

Jack pointed at the open stairway leading down to the long corridor. Sounds of battle echoed up from the opening. "The fight's still going on, Anders, not more than thirty or forty yards down that hallway. Please, feel free to rejoin the fray. I doubt that the dragon's going anywhere."

Anders stalked in a circle, frustrated. "But all that gold!"

"All that gold does not serve a dead man at all," Tharzon remarked. "Did you line your pockets at all while we were in there, Anders?"

The Northman nodded. "I scooped up a handful of trinkets before the dragon broke down the door."

"As did I, and as did Jack," Tharzon said. "Come on, friend Anders. You aren't leaving empty handed, and it was only a morning's work."

Jack caught the Northman's arm and pulled him toward the entrance to the rotunda. "We would be well-advised to absent ourselves from the scene. Zandria and her friends will defeat the dragon, in which case it may come this way again, or they will be defeated, in which case it may come this way again. Either way, I mean to be in the Cracked Tankard enjoying an ale by the time that comes to pass." He laughed and patted his pockets. "In fact, I will even buy the first round. Now let me tell you about the plan of genius I hatched to pilfer the treasure from the Red Falcons before that oversized snake ruined it all."