Return of the Sorceress by Tim Waggoner Page A

realizing that something was horribly wrong, they turned and began to run in the opposite direction.
    Sindri looked forward and saw his friends doing their best to remain on their feet. Two of the four hounds lay wounded or dead upon the ground, while the remaining two were bounding away, their instinct for survival overriding their training.
    Sindri wished he knew a spell to stop a cave-in, but he didn’t. Maybe he could try to levitate his friends so that when the groundcollapsed beneath them, they wouldn’t fall. Of course, he’d never attempted to levitate so many objects at once—and never when the earth was falling out from under his feet—but maybe he could do it using his newfound power. Provided he could maintain his concentration this time.
    So as he ran, he focused his thoughts on summoning the strange new magic that dwelled within him. Once again he felt the cool sensation of the multicolored mist coalescing around his fingers. Good. Now all he needed to do was picture—
    A loud roaring filled his ears, and he felt the world fall away beneath him. As Sindri tumbled down into darkness, his last thought was for his friends. He wished there was some way he could protect them. And as he fell, tendrils of mist snaked from his fingers.

 
        M y lord!”
    The voice was muffled, distant, as if the speaker had a mouth full of cotton.
    “Be silent,” Maddoc mumbled, squeezing his eyes shut even tighter. “Or I’ll turn you into … I don’t know what. Something nasty.” He put his pillow over his head and tried to return to sleep. He was so weary. But then he always was these days. Not for the first time he wondered if power truly was worth the price that it demanded from those who sought it, and as always, he decided that it was.
    “I apologize for disturbing you, but you must wake up!”
    Maddoc recognized the voice then. It was Oddvar. The normally calm, composed dwarf sounded almost panic-stricken.
    Maddoc pushed the pillow off his head and sat up. He scooted to the edge of the bed, threw aside the bed curtains, and saw the dim outline of Oddvar in the gloom of his bedchamber. The Theiwar never used a candle or a lantern if he could avoid it.
    “What is it?” Maddoc demanded. “Is something wrong with Nearra?” Excitement surged through him. “Has Asvoria fully emerged at last?”
    “No, my lord. The girl remains locked in the chamber where I took her. Drefan, Fyren, and Gifre are standing guard outside her door.”
    “Wait a moment.” Maddoc glanced around the room. “Where’s Kaz’un? He’s normally the only being I will permit in my bed chamber.”
    “He and I had a bit of a disagreement. And I—” A vicious grin spread across Oddvar’s face. “Well, you could say I sent him home.”
    “What have you done with him, you bloodthirsty fool?” The wizard lunged for Oddvar’s throat, but Oddvar threw up his hands.
    “Stop! Don’t you want to know what has happened? The ground outside the keep walls has collapsed!”
    Maddoc sat back down on the bed. “What? Has one of the tunnels given way?”
    “More than one from the extent of the destruction, I’d say.”
    Theiwar lived underground, and the dark dwarves understood the ways of stone and the movements of rock and soil as no other race did. If Oddvar said several tunnels had collapsed, Maddoc believed him.
    “This seeming disaster might end up working for our benefit. Once we’ve cleared away the debris, we might be able to gain access to sections of the cave system that we’ve never been able to explore.”
    “There’s more,” Oddvar said. “Just before the cave-in the hounds went berserk and ran toward that area as if they had caught the scent of trespassers.”
    Maddoc frowned. “Did you see these intruders?”
    “No,” Oddvar admitted. “But two of the four hounds are missing, presumably lost during the cave-in. But while the remaining two survived, they suffered serious wounds. Wounds caused by edged