Luthien fell back from the ledge as the gargoyle statue writhed to life.
He whipped his bow across, breaking it on the creature's hard head, and started to call out for Oliver. But he soon realized that the halfling, now with his great hat upon his head, was already hard-pressed as the sinister stat-ues all along the triforium animated to the call of their wiz-ard master.
"Why do I always seem to find myself fighting along a ledge?" the halfling whined, ducking a clawed hand and jab-bing ahead--only to sigh as his slender rapier bowed alarmingly, barely penetrating the gargoyle's hard skin.
All gathered in the cathedral had, by this time, learned of the tumult along the arched passageway. Cyclopians shouted out commands; the duke's man at the lectern called for the "death of the outlaws!" and then made the profound mistake of altering his cry to, "Death to the Crimson Shadow!"
"The Crimson Shadow!" more than one curious com-moner shouted from the pews, pointing anxiously Luthien's way. The timing was perfect for the young Bedwyr, for at that moment, he landed a clean strike on the gargoyle, his sword slashing down across the creature's neck and biting deep into the hard wing. Luthien bulled ahead and the gar-goyle fell from the ledge, flapping its wings frantically, though with the wound, it could not sustain itself in the air and spiraled down to the floor.
"The Crimson Shadow!" more people called out, and oth-ers screamed in terror as they came to recognize the living gargoyle.
Chased by two of the winged monsters, Oliver skittered behind Luthien to the edge of the corner where the triforium turned into the south transept. Frantically the halfling fum-bled out his grapnel and rope, but he did not miss the signifi-cance of the growing tumult below.
Luthien's sword sparked as it cut a ringing line across one gargoyle's face. The young Bedwyr fought fiercely, trying to hold the powerful creatures at bay. He knew that he and Oliver were in trouble, though, for more monsters were com-ing along the arched passageway from the other way, and still others had taken wing and were slowly drifting across the open area of the transept.
Cyclopians were fast organizing down below, trying to corral the increasingly agitated crowd--many people, gather-ing their children in their arms, had run screaming for the western doors. One cyclopian reached for Siobhan and promptly got kicked in the groin. The other brute flanking her had even less luck, taking an arrow in the ribs (shot from somewhere back in the pews) as it tried to grab a hold of the fiery half- elf.
And still other people stood staring blankly, pointing to the triforium and calling out for the mysterious thief in the crimson cape.
Oliver, rope and grapnel free by then, did not miss the sig-nificance of it all.
"Yes!" he cried as loudly as he could. "The Crimson Shadow has come! Your hour of freedom is upon you, good people of Montfort."
"For Eriador!" Luthien cried, quickly catching on to the halfling's plan.
"For Bruce MacDonald!" In lower, more des-perate tones, he quickly added, "Hurry, Oliver!" as the gargoyles pressed ahead.
"Brave people of Montfort, to arms!" shouted the halfling, and he sent his grapnel spinning above his head and launched it to the base of the vaulting above and out a bit from the triforium. "Freedom is upon you. To arms! Now is the moment for heroes. Brave people of Montfort, to arms!" Luthien groaned as a heavy gargoyle arm clubbed him across the shoulders.
He went with the weight of the blow, spinning into a stumbling step and falling over Oliver. Scooping the halfling in one arm, the young Bedwyr wrapped himself about the rope and leaped out.
The spectacle of Luthien and Oliver, crimson and purple capes flying behind them, swinging from the triforium, slid-ing down the rope inexorably toward the altar and the tyrant duke, replaced panic with courage, gave heart to the enslaved people of Montfort. Fittingly, a merchant with a large bag of coins, his taxes for the day, struck the first blow, smacking that same bag across the face of the nearest Praetorian Guard and laying the cyclopian out. The mob fell over the brute, one man taking its weapon.
Near to the side, another cyclopian was pulled down under a thrashing horde.
And from the back, Siobhan's allies, the Cutters, drew out their concealed weapons and bows and drove hard into a line of charging cyclopians.
Siobhan's accuser rushed around the podium, dagger in hand, apparently meaning to strike the half-elf down. He changed his mind and his direction, though, as the dwarven prisoner barreled forward to the half- elf's side. Down the north transept went the man, screaming for Praetorian Guards.
Siobhan and the dwarf glanced all about, saw their jailor go down near one of the front pews, and rushed for the spot, seeking the keys to their shackles.
Oliver and Luthien got more than halfway to the floor, and to the apse, before they were intercepted by a gargoyle. Luthien let go his hold on Oliver and freed up his sword hand, hacking wildly as the rope spun in a tight circle.
Oliver understood their dilemma, understood that more gargoyles were coming in at them. By the halfling's estima-tion, even worse was the fact that they were hanging in the air, open targets for the angry wizard- duke. The halfling looked to the floor and sighed, then gave three sharp tugs on the rope.
The gargoyle latched on to Luthien, and all three dropped the fifteen feet to the floor. On the way down, the halfling kept the presence of mind to scramble above the gargoyle, even to put the tip of his main gauche against the engaged creature's scalp, and when they hit, the force of the landing drove the weapon right through the animated monster's head.
Luthien was up first, whipping his sword back and forth to keep the nearest cyclopians at bay. Intent on him, the brutes didn't react to an approaching group of men, but the gar-goyles flying down found good pickings. One man was lifted into the air, his head wrapped in gargoyle arms, his hands of little use against the hard-skinned monster.
All the nave was wild with the riot, all the people fighting with whatever weapons they could find, and many calling out, "The Crimson Shadow!" over and over.
Duke Morkney clenched his bony fists in rage when the troublesome Oliver and Luthien dropped into the throng, and he stopped the chanting that would have sent a bolt of energy out at the duo. When he looked around, Morkney realized that focusing on the two might not be so wise; the people in the cathedral far outnumbered his cyclopians, and to the duke's surprise, quite a few of them had apparently brought in weapons.
Morkney's gargoyles were formidable, but they were not many, and they were slow to kill.
Another arrow whistled the duke's way, but it, too, hit his magical barrier, multiplying and diminishing in substance, until the images were no more than mere shadows of the original.
Morkney was outraged at the riot, but he was not worried. He had known that this scenario would come to pass sooner or later, and he had prepared well for it. The Ministry had stood for hundreds of years, and over that time, hundreds, mostly those who had helped construct the place or had do-nated great sums to the church, had been interred under its stone floor and within its thick walls.
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, eyeballs 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 in-tercepted. 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 back-ward.
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 launch-ing 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 wind-pipe.
Luthien barreled past Oliver, throwing the dying guard aside. Another cyclopian was in line, its heavy sword defen-sively raised before it.
Luthien was too quick for the brute. He slashed across, de-flecting 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 hit 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 hov-ered 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 passed 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 di-shevelled 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 Eri-ador'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 dis-patched 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, an-gled upward. The cyclopian, shield down low to block the continuing sword blows, caught it full in the chest and stag-gered 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 sec-ond 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 rebound-ing 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 circu-lar space perhaps twenty-five feet in diameter that was en-closed 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 origi-nal height, and his chest, so skinny and weak before, was now massive, 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."