Castle Perilous by John Dechancie Page A

well.
    â€œYes,” she said as thunder rolled to their ears, dark clouds piling over the castle. “Yes!” she screamed over its roar.
    A finger of cloud passed across the sun, plunging the countryside into shadow and revealing an eerie blue glow emanating from the castle itself. Webs of lightning shot from tower to tower and bright blue prominences arose from the keep. A storm wind lashed the citadel, but no rain fell. Dust devils whirled about, sucking up the debris of past battles.
    The flying caldrons broke formation and descended, revealing themselves to be of immense size. They swooped, then reformed into a line, each caldron poised above a belfry. The hands that bore them were the hands of malign gods — huge, sinewy, and punishing.
    A bolt of lightning hit the tower on which Melydia and Vorn stood.
    The prince was thrown down. Struggling against the ever-rising wind, he got up and staggered to Melydia, who seemed unaffected. She was still screaming, unintelligible now over the crack of thunder and the howling wind.
    â€œWe must go,” he shouted into her ear, then tried to move her toward the hatch.
    She was like a pillar of iron. He tried to shake her, but her body recoiled like a spring, her knuckles white against the stone, face uplifted toward the fearful apparition above the castle wall, the line of caldrons that now began to tip. From within the caldrons came a bright red-orange glow.
    Vorn looked over the rampart. Men were bolting from the bottoms of the towers, fleeing in panic. He let Melydia go and hopped up on the wall.
    â€œYou!” he screamed. “Man your stations!” His voice was lost in the din.
    â€œBack! Get back, I say! Return to your — ” He broke off. It was useless. Too much to expect mortal men to face doom at the literal hands of the supernatural. Vorn looked aghast at the slowly tipping caldrons. Too much to expect even the bravest man to face that. For the first time in his life Vorn knew that he, too, was afraid. Yet he stood there.
    Liquid fire poured from the crucibles, splashing down on the belfries in flaming cataracts. At once the belfries and the men in them were engulfed. Like animated torches, soldiers streamed from the belfries into the ward, some jumping to their deaths. Those who didn’t fell to the ground and rolled, or ran in panicky circles slapping at themselves in a frantic attempt to put out the flames.
    Vorn’s heart sank. He had never tasted defeat, and now it sat on his tongue like a lump of brass, hard, cold, and bitter.
    There was chaos in the ward. Weapons lay strewn about. Soldiers ran and scattered like coals from an overturned brazier. The belfries stood unmoving, mountains of flame, funeral pyres all.
    Vorn could look no longer. He stepped down from the wall and walked to the opposite side of the turret. He drew his royal-blue cloak about him and gazed emptily out at lands of the Pale, lands he would curse till he drew his dying breath. He closed his eyes, his chin dropping to his chest.
    Presently he felt a hand at his shoulder. He turned.
    â€œYou must see,” Melydia said.
    He stared at her, his face ashen. He had no words to speak to this woman whom he thought he had known. Now it was as if she were a stranger. Her face was transformed.
    â€œYou must come,” she said, smiling as if inviting him to inspect the preparations for a grand ball. “Look what we have done.”
    He stared at her for a while longer, striving to find in that delicately beautiful face some clue, some explanation to her mystery.
    He found none.
    She took his hand and led him across.
    The men had stopped running amuck. They stood about, talking, exclaiming, gesturing at one another.
    They were all still in flames.
    Vorn shook his head, uncomprehending.
    â€œThey burn but they are not consumed,” Melydia told him. “Neither are the belfries. Look.”
    It was true. The belfries’ structural members were still