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Hawkril waved at Embra. "Do it."
"Wake her, too?"
Hawkril eyed the cage as it contracted yet again, set his jaw, and nodded. "Aye. Do that too."
The Lady Talasorn drew the bell-cut sleeves of her jerkin back to her elbows, struck a dramatic pose designed to keep them there, and carefully cast a spell. The cage nickered, the Dwaer flashed with momentary bright fire, and something almost visible sped from it to Tshamarra's fingertips. There it winked silently in a brief, half-seen explosion of phantom sparks, and was gone.
And Tshamarra reeled, winced in pain, and sank to her knees, holding her head.
"Tash?" Craer's hands were cradling her shoulders with falcon-swift speed. She shuddered, groaned, and then sagged into his arms. The procurer shot a look of alarm up at Hawkril, who shrugged helplessly and bent over the stricken sorceress.
"Lady?" he rumbled.
Tshamarra clenched her teeth in a spasm of agony, and then direw back her head, opened her eyes again, and gasped, "Full Dwaer-thrust… my own magic, back at me… Woa-ho, that hurt!"
And then the cage sang. A high, splendid chord of bell-like tones echoed back from the cracked and scorched walls, making all three overdukes look up.
Ezendor Blackgult gri
"Griffon?"
"Blackgult?"
He answered their anxious hails with a wordless snarl of triumph and waved the Dwaer as if it was a ball he intended to hurl. Echoing its movements, the cage swirled around him. Then its glowing bars of magic streamed at the slumbrous form of the Lady Silvertree like the boldly reaching tentacles of the great glistening sea-beasts who were wont to snatch and drag sailors and their ships down beneath the waves.
The bright strands fell around Embra in a tangle, a net of entwined and fused force that shocked her awake. She was still gasping and shaking her head to clear it when the Dwaer flashed again-and was gone, Blackgult with it!
Embra screamed, and reached vainly for the empty air where it had been, shaking her head now in denial.
Tshamarra peered up at her, face still twisted in pain. "Em? How can I free you from that? I… I don't know if I can work magic, just now…"
The Lady of Jewels bent her head, drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and then said slowly, "No. Save yourself the pain. I can… Hawk, are you there?"
"Lady," the armaragor growled, shoving forward against the collapsed cage of glowing magic until its power brought him to a halt, flaring warningly, "I am. How can I help?"
"Use a rope or something, and drag me down through all this, until I can touch the floor-or a wall. Then keep back. Whatever you do, don't try to charge through what's left of my cage to reach me."
The armaragor frowned for a moment, and then spun around and charged across the room, slipping and sliding over rubble, to snatch up fallen tapestries. Some of them still sported great gilded and tasseled pullcords, and he sliced these from them with grunts of satisfaction, tossing them back over his shoulder to where Craer could scurry and catch each one up, knotting them together with swift skill.
The two men returned in a surprisingly short time with the heavy rope in their hands, and tossed it up into the cage… where, despite Craer's shrewd throw, it tangled in dozens of glowing strands of force-strands that hung motionless, no matter how hard the two men tugged. Tshamarra staggered to her feet as she watched them struggle, bewilderment on her face.
"A stone," Embra called. "Knot it around a stone, and throw it over me, so it falls onto me."
"But Em-"
"After what I've been through this night, and the burning these strands are dealing me now," the Lady Silvertree said patiently, "getting hit in the face with a rock will seem like a child's caress. Truly. Now tie the grauling thing around a stone!
In sudden haste the procurer and the armaragor complied, and then Craer swallowed, swung the rope a few times-and threw, hard and high.
The stone struck a strand of glowing magic, tumbled, struck another strand and bounded sideways, ricocheted over a third-and hit Embra on the shoulder hard enough to make her gasp and shudder, but not hard enough to stop her from wrapping both hands around the rope and clinging to it. Her fellow overdukes waited until she mastered her pain enough to straighten up out of her trembling crouch, wrap the rope around herself several times, and then tuck the stone under her arm and give them a weary nod.
Then they pulled, slowly and steadily, while Embra wriggled and contorted and reached, slipping between strands and under strands and through gaps in the tangle. Once they had to let the line slack so she could climb back up two strands that met in a trench no one could have passed, but she made her wincing, struggling way through the bars of her own cage until at last she touched the floor.
There she drew in a deep breath, looked up, and cried, "Let go, and get you back!"
The three overdukes scrambled hastily to the door-and behind them, the strands of magic writhed and flared into flames, in a humming inferno that became too bright to look at in half a breath.
Heat blistered the three as they huddled against the door, and Craer murmured, "So, Hawk, how does it feel to sleep with enough fury to do that?"
The armaragor gave his old friend a look. "Probably the same as you feel, abed with as much bright magic."
The Lady Talasorn managed a smile. "My, you've the tongue of a courting bard in you, Hawk!"
"Oh? I'll make him take it back out right quickly, when I find it," was the growled reply-and Tash had to look twice before she was sure that he was joking, and dared to laugh.
The fire fied away as swiftly as it had flared. Craer spun around and grabbed Hawkril to stop him charging to Embra-but failed. As the armaragor's determined progress towed him across still-hot, creaking flagstones, he called, "So what was all that, Lady Em?"
All traces of the cage were gone. Embra Silvertree stood tall, all signs of pain fallen away. She held out her arms for Hawkril, but gave Craer a look of distaste. " 'Lady Em'? Procurer, how much longer d'you want to live?"
"Sorry," Craer replied. His voice was contrite without a trace of mockery, startling all of his companions into looking at him. "What did you do just now-the fire, and all?"
Embra smiled at him from the depths of Hawkril's embrace. "When I can touch any stone of the palace, I can call on the Living Castle enchantments. I used them to drink the magic of the cage." Her smile faded. "So now we must rob a few rooms of enchanted things to power the spells Tash and I will need-to fight without a Dwaer, and bring us back home if need be. Oh, and I must get boots and a sash, at least, for this nightrobe. Then the castle enchantments will serve again to source the best seeking spell we can manage-and we must hope by the Three that my father's crazed enough to keep his Dwaer in use, and our magic finds him. We fling ourselves to him, and…"
"Risk our necks again," Craer concluded mockingly. "My, what a change!"
In a dark, deep stone chamber, fingers longer and more sinuous than a human's slid around the edges of a stone block, and tugged.
The stone grated out, and the owner of those wormlike fingers reached into the revealed cavity behind it and drew forth a small sack. The sinuous fingers grasped four objects through the rough canvas, carefully holding them apart from each other, as if they were as fragile as eggs.
The sack was set down with great care, and the fingers lengthened and curved like snakes into its open end.