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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 grinned down at them in savage triumph, dark fire in his eyes-and the Dwaer in his hands. He hung now at the heart of the cage, its glowing bars falling away from him like so many severed strands of spiderweb.

"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