Every hair on Anatoly’s body stood on end as the laws of nature were violated in such extreme fashion that the ground itself seemed to cry out in distress.
Nineteen men and every loose stone and pebble within the unnatural grey circle fell up into the air as if gravity itself had been reversed. Thirty, forty, fifty feet they plummeted upward and then the spell’s effects faded. The men reached their apex at about sixty feet before the natural order was restored and gravity claimed them once again. They screamed as one and then were silenced as one when their bodies crashed to the ground, bouncing once and then coming to rest, still and dead.
The leader backed away from the outcropping, shield raised, until he rounded the corner. The creature overhead roared once and fled as well.
“Huh,” Anatoly said. “Not bad.”
Magda smiled while some of the rage necessary for casting such a powerful spell still danced in her eyes.
They traveled the rest of the day, leaving the sure footing of mountain stone and setting out onto the glacier in the early afternoon. By evening they came to the chasm, right where Alexander said it should be.
Anatoly looked down the chasm and whistled. “That’s going to take some doing.”
“I can get us to the bottom safely,” Magda said, “but if this isn’t the right place, we’ll be stuck.”
As if on cue, Alexander appeared before them, smiling.
“I’ve been watching your progress,” he said. “At the bottom of the chasm is a fissure that leads through the ice to a natural cave. Ixabrax is there.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Anatoly asked.
Alexander shrugged. “It’s the only way. I’ve looked around Whitehall and it’s a fortress in every sense of the word. Zuhl’s guards are alert and suspicious of everything, calling for reinforcements at the first sign of anything out of the ordinary. I appeared in front of one just to see what would happen. Within a minute, there were twenty men sealing off the area, and three minutes after that one of his blue-skinned guys showed up. He cast spells for half an hour looking for me.”
“What are those things anyway?” Anatoly asked.
“I did some more looking around to answer just that question,” Alexander said. “The men address them as Priest or Priestess and they seem to have some of the characteristics of dragons. I can only guess that they’re Zuhl’s creations.”
“The soldier with the dragon-scale shield called the one they were with Priestess,” Anatoly said, “and she had magic.”
“Perhaps Zuhl has devised a way to use his dragons to circumvent the need for the mana fast,” Magda said.
“How do you mean?” Anatoly asked.
“Dragons are creatures of magic,” Magda said. “Perhaps Zuhl is using their magic to imbue his minions with access to the firmament. Even if the magic they wield is limited and obviously produces side effects, it does give him an advantage in terms of numbers. He could have hundreds of these priests, maybe more.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Anatoly said.
“Me neither,” Alexander said, “but there’s nothing we can do about it right now.”
“It would be nice to know what we’re up against,” Anatoly said.
“I’ll do some more looking around,” Alexander said. “For now, I’ll go let Ixabrax know you’re coming so he won’t be startled by your arrival.”
“Good,” Anatoly said, “wouldn’t want to startle a wounded dragon that hasn’t eaten for days.”
“He wants to free his family more than he wants to eat you,” Alexander said.
“Just the same, I wish I’d brought him a mountain goat or something,” Anatoly said.
“Perhaps we could offer him a number of Zuhl’s soldiers,” Magda said.
Anatoly chuckled. “That’s kind of gruesome, but I like it. So how are we going to get down there?”
“Take my hand,” Magda said.
Anatoly frowned but did as he was told. She began casting her spell. A few moments later she looked at him and smiled mischievously.
“Now we jump,” she said. “Just don’t let go of my hand.”
He looked from her to Alexander and back to her again. “You know I don’t like heights and I like falling from high places even less.”
“It’ll be fine,” Magda said. “My spell will slow our descent.”
He took a deep breath and nodded to her.
“You don’t have to break my hand, just hold onto it,” she said, stepping from the edge of the chasm.
They fell quickly, but not as quickly as they would have left entirely to gravity’s influence. At a hundred feet they began to slow until