Jedit

Groggy, the pirate queen gazed at Johan, Tyrant of Tirras, not seeming to recognize the red-black face framed by horns. Of more concern was the vampire Shauku reforming from fog. Close by lay Whistledove Kithkin, like a child overcome by sleep, except her eyes bore the thousand-league stare only the dead achieve.

"Dead." Adira struggled to think. "We'll all be dead. Unless… What?"

"Let me out!" bellowed Johan through a glass wall.

"Never!" Groggy as a hammered ox, Adira levered against Johan's crystalline prison to rise. Her left hand dripped blood from the vampire's punctures. "Nay tyrant! You're bad as-"

Blood, of course, is made of water.

Adira lurched as, in a wink, the seams of Johan's prison opened. Amber plates like glass clattered on stone. Free, Johan surged to his feet. For a second or two, again dumped on her rump, Adira goggled at the looming monarch. With his purple robes and red-black tattoos and double devils' horns, he looked like a master of men. Yet the illusion shattered as Johan lifted his skirts and scampered away on bare feet.

"Like a rat." The pirate queen didn't even rage, only lay in dust and blood, infinitely tired. She'd made so many mistakes, caused so many deaths. Virgil. Peregrine. Whistledove, valiant as a wildcat. Simone, her boon companion and faithful lieutenant, always jolly and never complaining. Adira missed her friends as if her heart had been cut out. All gone for nothing.

No. Dimly Adira corrected herself. Her comrades gave their lives to stop the depredations of Johan and Shauku. To give up the fight was to sully their sacrifices. Shaking her aching head, the woman called Strongheart groped for her fallen sword.

"Very well. I'll not die. I'll kill this bloodsucker myself, if only to get Johan's throat between my fingers to strangle him slowly."

The Circle of Seven and the woodsfolk likewise struggled to their feet. Bruised and shaken, some watched the misty form of Shauku regain shape. Others staggered to aid their leader, who crawled aimless as a baby. The unkillable Jedit Ojanen reached her side first, as always.

"Dira," rumbled the tiger. "Let me help."

"Don't call me Dira, damn you," gasped the pirate chief. Awkwardly she rose. "Only Simone could call me that! And Hazezon, damn his white whiskers. And most especially I damn Johan."

Even addled, Adira blinked. Johan had never run away before. Always he stole opportunities from the crisis at hand. What secret knowledge sent him pelting helter-skelter for the upper air?

"Haahhh!" A cobras hiss startled everyone. Like a ghost from the mist, or smoke issuing from a fissure in the ground, Shauku rematerialized. The vampire gri

Indeed, pirates and pinefolk again felt their limbs stiffen, and this time Adira knew they wouldn't escape. Nothing could save them.

In one long stride, Jedit Ojanen slung a balled paw far behind his shoulder, wound up with all his massive weight, and punched the vampire square in the brisket. Shauku was plucked off her feet as if hurled from a catapult. She struck a stone wall thirty feet away with a bone-breaking crunch, then flopped on her shriveled face out of sight amid boulders.

Adira grunted. "How did you do that? That curse petrifies people in their tracks!"

"This time she commanded humans, not mortals." Jedit gri

"The legio

With the vampire temporarily out of the way, Adira had bigger worries. Not far off, the green-flushed cosmic horror peered upward with bulging eyes. Even the hideous tongues and tentacles were turned upward as if awaiting deliverance from the sky. And Johan, Adira recalled dimly, had quit this chamber ru

"Never mind the legio

"Run how?" asked someone. "Adira, wait!"

Adira Strongheart pushed past her crew and Magfire's to stand not twenty feet from the nearest legio

Pointing with her sword, she called, "Hear me! The cosmic horror wakes and works celestial magic! The mage we fought read the beast's dreams and now flees as if his skirts were afire! I don't know what portends, but best we all flee without further foolishness!"

Legio

"Who'd believe that?" marveled Magfire.

Adira jolted her with a smart shove. "Run! All of you! Just run!"

Her crew and some foresters called questions. The pirate only shouted to keep ru

"Keep up!" called Adira. She scooped the wounded Heath under the armpit to hurry him along. "All of you! Don't dally! Whatever set Johan ru

Racing into a dark tu

Panting, Wilemina asked, "Whatever can that be?"

"At a guess," gasped Adira Strongheart, "it's the entire mountain crashing down on our heads! Run!"

Chapter 19

The race up twisting tu

Jasmine Boreal's groundquake had splintered stone in a thousand places. Gaps as wide as three feet threatened to engulf the heroes every dozen yards. Thrice they had to skirt or scramble over fallen rocks that blocked the passageway. Murdoch and Magfire had rescued some torches, but dust boiled thick. Jedit's cat eyes led the way, but everyone's eyes and noses streamed. Coughing tore at throats.

Booms and crashes sounded hither and yon, some percussions so hard they shook the ground. That the mountain might collapse and entomb them spurred the adventurers on.

After what seemed hours, Jedit called that roots snaked underfoot. Coughing, wheezing, half-blind from smoke and dust, holding each others' shirt tails, the heroes blundered past fallen rock -and miraculously found themselves outside in an overcast noon.

Finally clear of the cursed castle and caverns, people lagged, sobbing for air. Adira let no one rest. Slapping, cursing, batting, she bullied them like balky sheep away from the ruins, into the forest, and up the valley's gentle slope until their feet slipped on pine needles. Exhausted, some dropped weapons or tackle, but Adira urged them on.

"Must we… run… clear to Buzzard's Bay?" rasped Murdoch. His breath frosted in crisp autumn air.

"We're… free of the haunts!" gasped Wilemina. "May we… Oh, my!"

A keening whistle rose to a harsh scream that drowned out words. Everyone cast their eyes to the sky. A black jot marred the overcast like a hole punched in cloud cover. But in seconds the jot loomed big as a moon, then bigger.

When the meteor struck the ground, the roaring impact flicked the onlookers off their feet. As they stiffly clambered upright, they spotted a new hole in the valley floor. Fifty feet across, the crater showed black loam and yellow sand pitched out in windrows like wheat. Heath pointed to other fresh holes scattered about, a half dozen or more.