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The Dwaer flashed in Embra's hand. "Close together! Hurry!"

The Lady Talasorn looked a silent question at the taller sorceress, who replied, "I'm shielding us, just as my father did himself. I'll try to link to his barrier. If I manage it, I can bring it forward to enclose us, leaving us protected by his Stone, and free ours to smite again."

The air glowed around them, a faint, pearly radiance that visibly threw back a gout of the sarath's green glow. Both monsters clawed at the air as if it was thickening around them.

Suddenly the sarath climbed the air in front of the overdukes, whirling up on its side to drift along in front of them, underbelly raised to gnaw hungrily at nothing with its dozens of lampreylike mouths.

"Well," Craer offered, studying those questing jaws narrowly, "this certainly beats getting drenched in beast-blood and wondering if you're unwittingly hacking up all the tasty bits. I-"

There was a sudden flash and roar from behind them, and the room rocked. The Four found themselves whirling through the air, away over the sarath and the rubble of the shattered door, the air around them gleaming like a great shell of armor.

Amid frantic Serpent-shouts, a strange, bubbling cry arose from behind them, liquid and slobbering and agonized. The overdukes crashed into the far wall of the chamber, drifting to slow stops against creaking, dust-spewing stone as their shared shielding-spell smote the wall and stuck there, held by a great thrusting force. With one accord, they struggled to turn around and see what was happening behind them. "Has the Griffon-?" Craer gasped, his words echoing with a strange, soft distortion.

The monsters were both torn, splattered heaps against the chamber walls, broken-bodied priests strewn among them. Beyond, in the leaping heart of Dwaer-fire…

Blackgult lay sprawled and bare, just as before-but awake now, staring fixedly at nothing above him, and screaming. His raw cry went on and on, neither rising nor falling, and its mindless anguish made all of the Four wince or shudder.

If the Golden Griffon's mind was still his own, he would surely have been staring at the slender young woman who floated just above him, barefoot and clad in a clinging black gown. Her hand was on Blackgult's Dwaer, and her eyes were on the Four.

Great flashing dark eyes, gloating openly as she smiled. She was beautiful, long raven-dark hair swirling around her as if with a life of its own as she sneered at Embra's attempts to wrestle the shielding into some sort of lance, to stab at her. The Lady of Jewels struggled against the force pinning the overdukes against the wall, snarling… and as she slowly forced the nickering shield forward, Hawkril and Craer raised their weapons and advanced with it. Three strides, four…

The Stone flashed in the hands of the stranger-and abruptly she was gone, the force that pinned the Four vanishing with her. Blackgult's screams ended in midbellow as the overdukes tumbled to the floor.

"Graul it, doesn't Darsar have enough mysterious and beautiful sorceresses?" Hawkril growled.

Craer grinned. "Ah, Hawk, there're never enough, you know! Why, I-"

Tshamarra caught hold of his arm with one hand and dealt him a stinging slap across the face with the other.

Then they were driven abruptly apart by the passage of a whirlwind between them: Embra, running hard toward Blackgult with their Dwaer glowing fitfully in her hands. "Father? Father?

Boazshyn of Ool was fast. He managed to conjure the clawed and fanged beginnings of a spell before the Dwaer swept him away-but he Died as surely as had tall and patrician Lord of the Serpent Yedren, who'd spread empty hands and said flatly, "I cannot fight you, mage, and I will not. But neither will I bow or plead to a wizard, particularly one of Silvertree's Dark Three."

Ingryl Ambelter grinned as the oily smoke that had been Boazshyn drifted away, and regarded his own tingling fingers. This was succeeding beyond his wildest hopes-if