The Fallen Fortress - By R. A. Salvatore Page 0,107

against Cadderly's mother, had used this very same spell to kill Cadderly's mother!

"Oh, my dear Deneir," the lost young priest heard himself whimper. The song thrummed in his head of its own accord; Cadderly did not compel it to play and hardly heard the harmony of its sweet notes. He thought he heard Headmaster Averts voice at that moment, but the notion was lost when he saw the magical sword arcing his way, slicing for his unprotected neck, too close for him to dodge.

The sword struck him and then dissolved with a sharp sizzle.

"Damn you!" the wizard, his father, cried.

Cadderly saw nothing but his mother's face, felt nothing but a primal rage focused on this murderer, this imposter. He heard a sound escaping his lips, a burst of anger and magical energy too great for him to contain. It came forth as the most discordant note of the Deneirian song Cadderly had ever heard, a purely destructive twist of the precious notes,

TTie very ground heaved before him, and he continued to scream. Like an ocean wave, the red soil rolled toward Aballister, a crack widening in its mighty wake.

"What are you doing?" the wizard protested, and so weak and minuscule did his voice sound beneath the roar of Cadderly's primal scream!

Aballister lurched into the air, thrown by the wave. He flailed his arms as he descended, flapping futilely, and fell into the torn crack. The wave diminished as it rolled on, the ground becoming quiet once more.

"I am your father!" came Aballister's pleading, pained cry from somewhere not too far below the rim of the crack.

Another cry erupted from Cadderly's aching lungs, and he threw his hands up before him and clapped them together.

And following his lead, the crack in the ground, too, snapped shut Aballister's cries were no more.

War's End

An exhausted Cadderly stepped through the door Aballister had conveniently created, stepped through the wall, which was no longer covered with a swirling mist, and into the room where he had left Danica. A dozen enemy soldiers were there, milling about and grumbling to each other, but, oh, how they scrambled when the young priest suddenly appeared in their midst! They screamed and punched each other, fighting to get away from the dangerous man. In but a few moments, only she remained in the room, and these kept their wits enough to draw their weapons and face the young priest squarely.

"Go to Dorigen!" one of them barked at another, and the man ran off.

"Stay back, I warn you!" another man growled at Cadderly, prodding forward threateningly with his spear.

Cadderly's head throbbed; he wanted no fight with this crew, or with anyone for that matter, but he could hardly ignore his precarious situation. He accessed the song of Deneir, though the effort pained him, and the next time the man prodded ahead, he found that he was holding not a spear, but a writhing, obviously unhappy serpent The man shrieked and dropped the thing to the floor, scrambling back away from it, though it made no move to attack.

"We have your friends!* another man, the soldier who had ordered a companion to go for Dorigen, cried. "If you kill us, they, too, will be killed!"

Cadderly didn't even hear the second sentence. The proclamation that his friends were prisoners, and not dead, sent his hopes soaring. He rested back against the wall and tried hard not to think of the fact that he had just destroyed his own father.

Danica raced into the room a moment later, slammed hard into Cadderly, and threw her arms around him, crushing him in a hug.

"Aballister is dead," the young priest said to Dorigen over Danica's shoulder.

Dorigen gave him an inquisitive look, and Danica, too, backed away to arm's length and stared hard at her love.

"I know," Cadderly said quietly.

"He was your father?" Danica asked, her expression as pained as that of Cadderly.

Cadderly nodded, and his lips went thin as he tried to firm up his jaw.

"Ivan needs you," Danica said to him. She regarded the young priest carefully, then shook her head doubtfully, seeing his obvious exhaustion.

Dorigen led Cadderly and Danica back to the room they had set up for the care of the wounded. Cadderly's four friends were there - though Vander hardly seemed wounded anymore - along with a handful of Castle Trinity's human soldiers. The ores and other goblinoid creatures had followed their own custom of slaughtering their seriously wounded companions.

Pikel and Shayleigh were both sitting up, though neither looked very steady. Their