The Fate of the Dwarves - By Markus Heitz Page 0,192

burning flesh and the dwarf cried out in a voice more bloodcurdling than anything Goda had heard before in her whole life. But, determined to absorb the magic energy, he still did not lower his arm.

Yet again she felt a diamond splinter turn to useless powder between her fingers. The powerful beam failed. “I’m not letting you leave Evildam alive,” she threatened, reaching into her bag. But she found nothing—except a hole. “No!” When I fell on the stairs!

The enemy magus groaned; smoke issued from the joints of his gauntlet, but he had survived the magic blast. His powers of resistance were incredible!

Goda now had nothing to fall back on but her own innate magic. “I shall defeat you!” she growled, lifting her arms. “We don’t need a false Tungdil and we don’t need a Lot-Ionan to be rid…”

The dwarf laid his smoldering hand on Sanda’s breast, and fixed Goda with hate-filled eyes. He touched one of the runes on his breastplate with his left hand and a transparent dark-yellow sphere enveloped the two of them. Another blink of an eye later and they had disappeared, together with the magic ball!

“Vraccas, no!” Goda whispered in horror and ran to where the magus had just been standing. Her daughter’s blood, her ax, shreds of her tattered undergarments and some charred pieces of material—nothing else. “How did he do that?” She ran back into the passage, back to the main corridor, back to the shaft—nothing!

Footsteps rang out and a unit of dwarf-warriors charged up the steps. “My lady, what has happened?”

“Find my daughter,” she told them, stammering with anxiety; then she remembered what Sanda had said. “No! Go down to the basement and find my son, Bandaál, at the bottom of the shaft! Quick!” she screamed, distraught, and raced up the staircase. She tried the place where she had slipped on the steps, and picked up one of the lost splinters; she had no time to look for the others. If need be she would get some soldiers to do a thorough search later on.

Holding the diamond fragment she raced downstairs to where the soldiers were trawling through the debris of the cabin at the bottom of the shaft. The cage walls had mostly fused with the metal chains when they had melted; on top of the ruined cage were piles of huge sections of collapsed masonry.

“Let me through!” Her voice broke with emotion. In a frenzy of desperate anxiety for her son she labored at the wreckage, burning her hands on hot metal, but not stopping for a second, until she glimpsed a bloodied hand. “Bandaál!” She pulled at the blackened debris which had, by some miracle, buried but not smothered him in molten metal.

More of the dwarves and ubariu sprang to assist her, bringing crowbars, poles and rope.

Together they managed to hack out a niche in the mix of metal and stone. Goda peered in, candle in hand.

“He is still alive!” she sobbed in utter relief. “I can see that he’s breathing!”

A loud crash came from above their heads; dust and small stones rained down. The damaged lift shaft was threatening to collapse.

“We must get out, my lady!” A ubari’s hand shook her shoulder.

But she snapped back at him not to touch her. “We must free my son first.”

“Look out, below!” called a voice. “The supports are about to give way!”

Goda looked at the diamond splinter. I have no choice. He is nearly a magus. And he is my son. She closed her eyes and chanted a spell.

As if moved by spirit hands the great lumps of broken stone levitated, revealing Bandaál’s body. Three of the dwarves pulled the badly injured famulus out of the shaft and took him to safety on a stretcher. Goda withdrew as well, before letting the spell drop.

A grinding grumbling sound above them preceded a rockfall that could not be stopped by the debris floating in the air. It all crashed down, some of the rocks rolling out of the shaft right to the feet of the dwarves.

Grayish clouds of dust shot along the corridors as the shaft walls collapsed. The soldiers and maga were covered from head to foot in a thick layer of dirty white particles.

Goda opened her hand and let the remains of the crumbled diamond drift down onto the rest of the dust. It made no difference now. Then she set off after the stretcher, not knowing which child to worry about first: Bandaál or Sanda?

Girdlegard,

The Former Queendom of Rân Ribastur,

Northwest,

Spring,