Duke Morkney's thoughts slipped into the spirit world now, reached out for those buried corpses and called them forth. The Ministry's very walls and floor shuddered. Blocks angled out and hands, some ragged with rotting skin, others no more than skeletal remains, poked out.

"What have we started?" Luthien asked when he and Oliver got out of the immediate battle and found a moment to catch their breaths.

"I do not know!" the halfling frankly admitted. Then both fell back in horror as a gruesome head, flesh withered and stretched thin, eyeb.a.l.l.s lost in empty sockets, poked up from a crack in the floor to regard them.

Luthien's sword split the animated skull down the middle.

"There is only one way!" Oliver shouted, looking toward the apse. "These are Morkney's creatures!"

Luthien took off ahead of the halfling. Two cyclopians intercepted. The young Bedwyr's sword thrust forward, then whipped up high and to the side, taking one of the brutes' swords with it. Luthien followed straight ahead, his fist slamming the cyclopian in the face and knocking it over backward.

Down Luthien dropped, purely on instinct, barely ducking the wicked cut of the second brute's blade. He turned and slashed, disemboweling the surprised cyclopian.

Oliver came by him in a headlong roll, somehow launching his main gauche as he tumbled, the dagger spinning end over end and nailing the next intercepting Praetorian Guard right in the belly. The brute lurched and howled, a cry that became a gurgle as Oliver's rapier dove through its windpipe.

Luthien barreled past Oliver, throwing the dying guard aside. Another cyclopian was in line, its heavy sword defensively raised before it.

Luthien was too quick for the brute. He slashed across, deflecting the cyclopian's sword to his left, then continued the spin, turning a complete circuit and lifting his foot to slam the brute in the ribs, under its high-flying arm. The cyclopian fell hard to the side. It was stunned, but not badly wounded. It did not come back at Luthien and Oliver, though. Rather, it scrambled away to find someone easier to fight.

The friends were at the altar, at the edge of the apse, with no enemies between them and Duke Morkney, who was now standing before his comfortable chair.

Oliver went under the altar, Luthien around to the left. The duke snapped his arm out toward them suddenly, throwing a handful of small pellets.

The beads. .h.i.t the floor all around the altar and exploded, engulfing the friends in a shower of sparks and a cloud of thick smoke. Oliver cried out as the sparks stung him and clung to his clothes, but he kept the presence of mind to dart under Luthien's protective cape. Choking and coughing, the two pushed their way through-only to find that Duke Morkney was gone.

Oliver, always alert, caught a slight motion and pointed to a tapestry along the curving wall of the apse. Luthien was there in a few quick strides and he tore the tapestry aside. He found a wooden door, and beyond it, a narrow stone stairway rising inside the wall of the Ministry's tallest tower.

Siobhan and the eight Cutters in the cathedral split ranks, each going to a different area to try and calm the frenzied mob, to try and bring some semblance of order to the rioting citizens. One of the Cutters tossed the half-elf his bow and quiver, then drew out his sword and rushed two cyclopians. Only one was there to meet the charge, though, as Siobhan quickly put the bow to good use.

The cyclopians were not faring well, but their undead and gargoyle allies struck terror into the hearts of all who stood before them.

One woman, using her walking stick as a club, knocked the head off a skeleton, and her eyes widened in shock as the disgusting thing kept coming at her. She would have surely been killed, but the dwarven prisoner, free of his shackles, slammed into the headless thing and brought it down to the floor under him, thrashing about and scattering the bones.

Siobhan looked all about and saw a woman and her three children trying to duck low under a pew as a gargoyle hovered above them, slashing with its claws. The half-elf put an arrow into the gargoyle, then another, and as the monster turned toward her, a group of men leaped up from the pews and grabbed it, pulling it down under their weight.

Siobhan realized that any way she ran would be as good as another; the fighting was throughout the nave. She headed for the apse, thinking to find Luthien and Oliver and hoping for a shot at Duke Morkney. She emerged from the throng just as the tapestry swung back behind her departing lover and his halfling sidekick.

The stair was narrow and curving, circling the tower as it climbed, and Luthien and Oliver were afforded a view only a few feet in front of them as they ran upward in pursuit of the duke. They pa.s.sed a couple of small windows with thick stone sills sporting small statues, and Luthien prudently kept his sword in line with these, expecting them to writhe to life and take up the fight.

About seventy steps up, Luthien pulled up short and turned to regard Oliver, who was distracted as he continued to coil the line of his magical grapnel. Luthien bade him to hold a moment and listen carefully.

They heard chanting not so far ahead on the winding stair.

Luthien dove flat to the stone and tried to pull Oliver down behind him. Before the startled halfling could react, there came a rapid series of explosions rocketing down the stairs, a bolt of lightning ricocheting off the stone. It sizzled past-Luthien felt its tingling sting along his backbone-and then it was gone. Luthien looked up, expecting to find Oliver's blackened body.

The halfling was still standing, trying to straighten his dishevelled hat and fix the broken orange feather.

"You know," he said nonchalantly, "sometimes is not so bad to be short."

Luthien jumped up and on they ran, the young Bedwyr leaping two stairs at a time, trying to get at the duke before he could cause more mischief.

Luthien could not ignore the deep gouges in the stone wall at every point where the bolt had struck, and he wondered then what in the world he was doing. How had it come to this? How was it that he, the son of the eorl of Bedwydrin, was now chasing a wizard-duke up the tallest spire of Eriador's greatest building?

He shook his head and charged on, without a clue.

Around the endless spiral, the young Bedwyr's eyes widened in surprise and terror, and he ducked, crying out as a heavy ax chipped the stone above his head. Two cyclopians blocked the stairs, one behind the other.

Luthien pressed quickly with his sword, but the cyclopian had a large shield and the advantage of the higher ground, and the young Bedwyr had little to hit at. More dangerous was the cyclopian's ax, chopping down whenever Luthien got too near, forcing him back on his heels, driving him back down the stairs.

"Fight through!" Oliver cried behind him. "We must get to the wizard-type before he can prepare another surprise!"

Easier said than done, Luthien knew, for he could not offer any solid attacks against his burly and well-protected foe. On even ground, he and Oliver would already have dispatched the two cyclopians, but in the stair, it seemed utterly hopeless to Luthien.

He was even considering turning back, joining the ruckus in the nave, where he and Oliver could at least do some good.

An arrow skipped off the wall above Luthien's head, angled upward. The cyclopian, shield down low to block the continuing sword blows, caught it full in the chest and staggered backward.

Up came the brute's shield reflexively; Luthien didn't miss the opportunity to thrust his sword into the cyclopian's knee. The brute fell back on the stairs, helpless, and the second cyclopian promptly took flight.

Oliver's flying dagger got the other monster in the back, two steps up.

Luthien had finished off the first cyclopian and the second turned with a howl-just in time to catch a second rebounding arrow.

Luthien and Oliver figured it out as Siobhan came around the bend behind them.

"Run on!" Oliver bade Luthien, knowing that the lovesick young man would likely stop and make sweet eyes at their rescuer for eternity. To Luthien's credit, he was already in motion, bounding past the fallen brutes and up the winding stair. "We must get to the wizard-type ..."

"Before he can prepare another surprise!" Luthien finished for him.

They put two hundred steps behind them, and Luthien's legs ached and felt as though they would buckle beneath him. He paused for a moment and turned to regard his halfling friend.

"If we wait, the wizard-type will have a big boom waiting for us, I am sure," Oliver said, brushing the thick wig hair back from his face.

Luthien tilted his head back and took a deep breath, then ran on.

They put another hundred steps behind them and then saw the unmistakable glow of daylight. They came to a landing, then up five more stairs to the very roof of the tower, a circular s.p.a.ce perhaps twenty-five feet in diameter that was enclosed by a low battlement.

Across from them stood Duke Morkney, laughing wildly, his voice changing, growing deeper, more guttural and more ominous. Luthien leaped to the platform, but skidded to a quick stop and looked on in horror as the duke's body lurched violently, began twisting and bulging.

And growing.

Morkney's skin became darker and hardened to layered scales along his arms and neck. His head bulged weirdly, growing great fangs and a forked and flicking tongue. Soon Morkney's face resembled that of a giant snake, and great curving horns grew out from the top of his head. His red robes seemed a short skirt by then, for he was twice his original height, and his chest, so skinny and weak before, was now ma.s.sive, stretching his previously voluminous robes to their limits. Long and powerful arms reached out of those sleeves, clawed fingers raking the air as the duke continued his obviously agonizing transformation.

Drool dripped off the front of the serpentine face, sizzling like acid as it hit the stone between the monster's three-clawed feet where Morkney's boots lay in tatters. With a shrug, the beast brushed free of the red robe, great leathery wings unfolding behind it, its black flesh and scales smoking with the heat of the Abyss.

"Morkney," Luthien whispered.

"I do not think so," Oliver replied. "Perhaps we should go back down."

Chapter 24.

THE DEMON.

"I am Morkney no more," the beast proclaimed. "Gaze upon the might of Praehotec and be afraid!"

"Praehotec?" Luthien whispered, and he was indeed afraid.

"A demon," Oliver explained, gasping for breath-from more than the long run up the stairs, Luthien knew. "The clever wizard-type has lent his material body to a demon."

"It is no worse than the dragon," Luthien whispered, trying to calm Oliver and himself.

"We did not beat the dragon," Oliver promptly reminded him.

The demon looked around, its breath steaming in the chill October air. "Ah," it sighed. "So good to be in the world again! I will feast well upon you, and you, and upon a hundred others before Morkney finds the will to release me to the Abyss!"

Luthien didn't doubt the claim, not for a minute. He had seen giants as large as Praehotec, but nothing, not even Balthazar, had radiated an aura as powerful and as unspeakably evil. How many people had this demon eaten? Luthien wondered, and he shuddered, not wanting to know the answer.

He heard movement on the steps behind him and glanced back just in time to see Siobhan come up onto the lower landing, bow in hand.

Luthien took a deep breath and steadied himself. In his love-stricken heart, it seemed as if the stakes had just been raised.

"Come with me, Oliver," he said through gritted teeth, and he clutched his sword tightly, meaning to charge into the face of doom.

Before the halfling could even turn his unbelieving stare on his taller friend, Praehotec reached out a clawed hand and clenched its ma.s.sive fist.

A tremendous wind came up suddenly from over the battlement to their left, a.s.saulting the companions. At the same moment, Siobhan let fly her arrow, but the gust caught the flimsy bolt and tossed it harmlessly aside.

Luthien squinted and raised an arm defensively against the stinging wind, his cape and clothes whipping out to the right, buffeting Oliver. The halfling's hat pulled free of his head; up it spiraled.

Instinctively, Oliver leaped up and caught it, dropping his rapier in the process, but then he was flying, too, bouncing head over heels in a soaring roll. As he came back upright, he went high into the air, right over the battlement. Stunned Oliver was fully a dozen feet out from the ledge when Praehotec's snakelike face turned up into a leering grin and the demon released the wind.

Oliver let out a single shriek and dropped from sight.

Crying out for his lost friend, Luthien charged straight in, sword slashing viciously. Siobhan's arrows came in a seemingly continuous line over his head, scoring hit after hit on the beast, though whether or not they even stung the great Praehotec, Luthien could not tell.

He scored a slight nick with his sword, but the blade was powerfully batted away. Luthien dropped to one knee, ducking a slashing claw, then came right back to his feet and hopped backward, sucking in his belly to avoid the demon's swiping arm.

An arrow nicked Praehotec's neck and the demon hissed.

In came Luthien with a straightforward thrust that cut the fleshy insides of the demon's huge thigh. The young Bedwyr whipped his head safely to the side as the fanged serpent head rocketed past, but a swiping claw caught him on the shoulder before he could regain his balance, gouging him and heaving him aside.

He kept the presence of mind to slash once more with his blade as he fell away, scoring a hit on Praehotec's knuckle.

Luthien knew that last cut had hurt the demon, but he almost regretted that fact as Praehotec turned on him, reptilian eyes flaring with simmering fires of rage.

He saw something else, then, a flicker in the demon's fiery eyes and a slight trembling on the side of the beast's serpentine maw.

An arrow razored into the demon's neck.

That flicker and trembling came again, and Luthien got the feeling that Praehotec was not so secure in this material body.

The demon straightened, towering above Luthien, as if to mock his suspicions. It shifted its furious gaze, and from its eyes came two lines of crackling red energy, joining together inches in front of the demon's face and sizzling across the tower's top to slam into Siobhan, throwing her back down the stairs.

Luthien's heart seemed to stop.

Hanging from the tower's side, Oliver plopped his hat on his head once more. The thing was on fairly straight, but the wig underneath it had turned fully about, and the long black tresses hung in front of his face, obscuring his vision. His legs and one hip ached from his swinging slam into the stone, and his arms ached, too, as he clung desperately to the rope of his magical grapnel.

The horrified halfling knew that he could not simply hang there forever, so he finally found the courage to look up, shaking the hair out of his face. His grapnel-that beautiful, magical grapnel!-had caught a secure hold on the curving stone, but it was not close enough to the tower's rim for the halfling to climb over it, and Oliver didn't have nearly enough rope to get down the side to the street below.

He spotted the depression of a window a bit above him and to his left.

"You are so very brave," he whispered to himself, and he brought his legs up under him and stood out from the wall. Slowly, he walked himself to the right, then, when he figured that he had the rope stretched far enough, he half ran, half flew back to the left, like a pendulum. Diving at the end of his swing, he just managed to hook the fingers of one hand over the lip of the window, and with some effort, he wriggled himself onto the ledge.

Oliver grumbled as he considered the barrier before him. He could break through the stained gla.s.s, but the window opening was crossed by curving metal that would certainly bar his entrance to the tower.

The grumbling halfling glanced all about, noticed that a crowd was gathering down below, many pointing up his way and calling out to their compatriots. In the distance, Oliver could see a force of Praetorian Guards making their way along the avenues, coming to quell the rioting in the cathedral, no doubt.

The halfling shook his head and straightened his hat, then gave three quick tugs to release the grapnel. He might be able to set the magical thing below him and get down the tower in time to escape, he realized, but to his own amazement, the halfling found himself swinging the item up instead, higher on the wall and near to another window.

Bound by friendship, Oliver was soon climbing, to the continuing shouts of the crowd below.

"Sometimes I do not think that having a friend is a good thing," the halfling muttered, but on he went, determinedly.

Inside the cathedral, the riot had turned into a rout. Many cyclopians were dead and the remaining brutes were scattered and under cover, but the crowd could not stand against Morkney's horrifying undead brigade and the wicked gargoyles. The Cutters worked to herd the frantic people now, to put them together that they might bull their way to an entrance.

All that mattered to the rioters at this point was escape.

The cyclopians seemed to understand, the gargoyles, too, and whichever way the mob went, barriers were thrown up in their path.

And the horrid undead monsters dogged their every step, pulling down those who were not fast enough to dodge the clawing, bony hands.

A primal scream of outrage accompanied Luthien's bold charge. The young Bedwyr wanted only to strike down this foul beast, caring not at all for his own safety. Two clawed hands reached out to grasp him as he came in, but he worked his sword magnificently, slapping one and then the other, drawing oozing gashes on both.

Luthien ducked his shoulder and bore in, slashing, even kicking, at the huge monster.

The demon apparently understood the danger of this one's fury, for Praehotec's leathery wings began to flap, lifting the creature from the tower.

"No!" Luthien protested. He wasn't even thinking of the dangers of letting Praehotec out of his sword's range; he was simply enraged at the thought that the murderous monster might escape. He jumped up at the beast, sword leading, accepting the inevitable clawing hit on his back as he came in close.

He felt no pain and didn't even know that he was bleeding. All that Luthien knew was anger, pure red anger, and all of his strength and concentration followed his sword thrust, plunging the weapon deep into Praehotec's belly. Smoking greenish goo poured from the wound, covering Luthien's arm, and the stubborn young Bedwyr roared and whipped the sword back and forth, trying to disembowel the beast. He looked Praehotec in the eye as he cut and saw again that slight wavering, an indication that the demon was not so secure in the wizard's material form.

Praehotec's powerful arm slammed down on his shoulder, and suddenly, Luthien was kneeling on the stone once more, dazed. Up lifted the demon, wings wide over Luthien like an eagle crowning its helpless prey.