Eir winced. "Dragging these things is like fingernails on slate."

"Or horns on the ceiling," Rytlock said.

The cha.s.sis shrieked all the way to the granite workbench where they laid it down.

"That should give him enough sc.r.a.p for building," Rytlock said.

Eir swung her arms and cracked her back. "What do you think Snaff's design is worth? Fifty destroyers? A hundred?"

"You're fighting the battle already, aren't you?"

Eir smiled, brus.h.i.+ng red hair back from her eyes. "Every day, I fight it over and over until one day I find that I've won. That day, I know the strategy I'll use."

"And this fight, coming up," Rytlock said, "on a lake of fire beneath the ground against an army of magma creatures-against the dragon champion of Primordus?"

"What about it?"

"You think we can win?"

"Ask me tomorrow."

A month of tomorrows had pa.s.sed, and summer blazed over the Tarnished Coast. Caithe emerged from a thick forest of bamboo. She turned silvery eyes up toward a break in the forest canopy. A thin curtain of smoke rose there. She whistled and rushed ahead toward the nearby rift.

Behind her, a huge figure shoved through the bamboo and stepped out-Big Snaff, rebuilt and better than ever. He had a water cannon mounted above his left hand and rock drills inserted into his right. His chest was an armored c.o.c.kpit in which Snaff hung on a harness, sending signals through a powerstone laurel. Big Snaff stepped forward, letting the bamboo snap back.

Luckily, little Zojja was too short to be hit in the face by it. Though Snaff had begun work on a new Big Zojja, she was far from complete. Instead, Zojja was controlling a group of golems that Snaff affectionately called the Wheels of Doom.

Fronds parted to allow seven great wheels of silver to roll placidly after Zojja, across the jungle floor.

"A good fire would clear this place," Rytlock snarled, stepping through the trammeled gap.

"Your solution for everything," Logan said as he followed.

Rytlock raised an eyebrow. "Haven't burned you you down yet." down yet."

Behind the bickering pair came Eir, her face red from the sweltering march. "We'll be there shortly," she said as she flung sweat away from her brow.

Garm appeared at her side, looking equally withered by the heat. He was fitted out like a warhorse in fireproof metal bardings.

Eir fondly set her hand on his helmet. "I wish it'd be cooler below ground, but that's where the magma is."

Garm panted miserably.

Ahead, Caithe whistled.

"Sounds like she's found it," Eir said to Garm. "Let's catch up."

In a clearing ahead, Caithe gestured toward a black rift that rankled across the jungle floor. Big Snaff stepped aside as Zojja brought the Wheels of Doom through. The seven silvery wheels rolled one by one through the group and headed for the rift. The first of the great disks dropped into the crack, wedging half-buried. A second and third wheel rolled onto the rift and fell in behind the first. Soon, all seven of the special golems were bedded in a line down the crevice. Their metal frames began to hum, energy building within.

"You'll want to get back, Caithe!" Zojja shouted, her eyes half-lidded and fluttering.

Caithe looked up, blinked in realization, then bolted away from the disks.

A moment later, the wheels ignited with white blasts and red flames and a sound that drove the air from their lungs. The explosions tore the rift open. The ground came to pieces in blossoming fire and billowing ash. It slumped down. The floor of the jungle poured into the gap and became a great ramp of debris that descended into the cavern.

"Nice!" Rytlock said.

"If my calculations are correct, this ramp should lead to the volcanic island," Snaff said. "It also should have crushed about a hundred destroyers."

Eir smiled. "Time to crush more."

"Charge!" Snaff proclaimed, and his golem bolted into the roiling dust cloud.

The others followed close behind, running into that infernal realm.

They rushed down the ramp, leaving the green of the jungle floor and pa.s.sing into the gray cloud. A thousand strides on, the dust cleared, and the crimson heat of the magma chamber flooded over them.

Now they could see: The ramp led across a bloodred sea of lava and ended on a volcanic island at its center. The ropy black stone was teeming with destroyers-their insectoid figures steaming as they cooled. Every moment, more of the monsters clambered up out of the magma pool.

"Be careful where you step," Logan advised as the group ran toward the island.

"And if you drop something," Rytlock added, "just let it go."

Eir laughed grimly. "The problem is, the lava isn't just in the flows. Some of it's walking around."

Ahead, destroyers were pouring onto the ramp. Black-backed creatures climbed up from the boiling sea, and red-backed creatures scuttled down from the volcano.

Eir shouted to Snaff. "Clear the way to the caldera! Let's see what steel and muscle can do against slag and stone!"

Big Snaff bounded down the ramp, unfolding the fingers of its left hand, which now were wide nozzles. Powerful jets of water erupted from them and struck the magma monsters, exploding into steam. The spray also hardened the beasts in midstep. They tumbled over, cracking, as more destroyers climbed over their backs. They, too, fell. Three rows, four rows, five-the destroyers formed a steaming henge before Big Snaff.

He arrived at a gallop, his metal feet coming down on destroyer backs and crus.h.i.+ng them to the ground. He pounded the creatures flat and ran onward. His water cannons paved the way in destroyers, and his feet tamped down the road for the rest of the warriors.

Ahead, the ramp ended, and the slope of the volcano began. It swarmed with black-sh.e.l.led destroyers.

Even as his left arm poured water on his foes, his right arm whirred with diamond-tipped drills. Big Snaff swung his grinding fist through a phalanx of magma monsters. It shattered their rocky hides and hurled apart their glowing guts. He rammed the drill down on lava heads, sending the bodies slumping.

Snaff gazed around at the carnage. His golem was delivering on his promise and more-perhaps a hundred destroyers were down, and the corridor to the island was open.

He was doing his job. Now it was up to the others to do theirs.

With twin axes, Eir smashed back destroyers. Blue powerstones embedded in the axe heads froze the monsters with one blow. A follow-up stroke shattered them like ice.

Garm meanwhile crashed into more of the magma monsters. The powerstones on his battle armor flashed blue as well, and he toppled the creatures like statues.

Rytlock wore powerstone gauntlets that ripped through the beasts, and Logan's hammer and Caithe's stiletto had likewise been enchanted.

Zojja, who had cast all these spells, brought up the rear, water spraying from her fingertips to hiss across any destroyers that rose behind them.

At the front, Rytlock roared, "Are we in range? Do you see it yet?"

"There!" shouted Caithe, pointing to the rim of the volcano high above.

The others looked to see a ma.s.sive figure climb from the caldera and stand silhouetted against the vault of stone. The huge destroyer, covered in rocklike hide and steaming from magma joints, was amorphous and horrible, its body only just solidified from the lava sea where it lived. It seemed a gigantic mantis of stone.

Eir glanced at the molten lake all around them, at the shapeless figures swimming through it, heading for sh.o.r.e.

This was their general. This was a dragon champion, right arm to ancient Primordus.

And it was watching them.

"I'm going after the Destroyer of Life," Eir announced. "Guard me!"

Rytlock and Logan surged up before her, smas.h.i.+ng destroyers.

Eir stepped back and slung her axes at her waist and lifted her bow. She pulled from her quiver an arrow with a blue powerstone head. Cold light gleamed from it, and frost drifted down in a glittering cascade. Eir nocked the shaft, aimed for the ma.s.sive figure, and released.

The arrow soared like a comet, trailing ice crystals. It arced across the ceiling of the magma chamber and plunged to strike the Destroyer of Life in the chest.

The powerstone exploded, hurling a storm of ice off the ma.s.sive figure. It did not fall, though, did not even flinch. In moments, the flurry ceased, and the blue stone went dark.

The Destroyer of Life batted the shaft away.

Gritting her teeth, Eir nocked three more blue-headed arrows and shot them into the superheated sky. They shrieked as they went and smashed side by side into the huge figure. More explosions, more spewing ice, but the Destroyer of Life yet again knocked the shafts away.

"Now what?" Rytlock roared, head-b.u.t.ting a destroyer.

Eir stepped back, gazing in dread at the dragon champion. Despite the searing heat, her face went white. "I don't know."

THE DESTROYER OF LIFE.

At the edge of the caldera towered the Destroyer of Life-a ma.s.sive primordial mantis of stone. Fire blazed from its eyes and joints and roared through its thorax. At its feet lay four burned-out arrows, and at its back boiled a white-hot caldera-the source of its power. The Destroyer of Life gazed down at the lake of fire, where more of its minions emerged, oozing rock. They were infinite, his destroyers. No puny band could stand against the tide of them.

The Destroyer of Life pulled a magma bow from its back and fitted a white-hot shaft to it. The arrow burned with primordial fire. Once woken, it could never be quenched. The champion of Primordus drew back on the metal string, sited the red-haired woman below, and released.

Eir and her comrades watched as the white-hot shaft curved downward, smoking through the air, and came straight for them. They leaped aside. The arrow drilled into the volcanic rock nearby, and flame awoke within the hole.

"He's going to be a challenge," Caithe noted.

Above, the Destroyer of Life lifted his arms and roared. His minions answered, the shout sounding like a volcanic eruption.

"Hold them back!" Eir commanded. She fitted and loosed three more shafts.

They struck the Destroyer of Life and spewed frost but did nothing more.

"They don't work!" Rytlock growled, climbing up a smoldering mound of destroyer parts. "Try something else!"

"Buy me time!"

Logan's powerstone-enhanced war hammer pounded the head of a destroyer. The creature's outer skin solidified. Another blow ripped the skin loose. The magma monster stood there s.h.i.+vering as if it had been flayed. A new sh.e.l.l of rock began hardening on its amorphous form. "Oh, no, you don't." Logan struck again. The sh.e.l.l cracked, and magma gushed out across the ground.

Rytlock meanwhile plunged steel gauntlets into the chest of another rock creature and tore the thing in half. "I love these gloves!" he exulted. Just then, a second destroyer bashed into him, flinging him to the ground. It rushed him, but Rytlock lifted his foot, planted it on the steaming torso of the thing, and flipped it overhead to break on the lava field. Rytlock struggled to his feet as a third destroyer charged him. It would have tackled him and set him on fire except that Caithe plunged a powerstone-stiletto into its neck. It froze up like a statue and broke into a thousand pieces.

"Thanks," Rytlock said.

A destroyer charged Eir, grabbing her arm and burning it brutally. She cried out, kicking the monster back. As it staggered, she dropped her bow and grabbed an axe and buried it in the destroyer's lava-gus.h.i.+ng head.

Still, she swooned back, her arm blackened where it had touched her.

More destroyers surged up, but a great deluge poured down upon them all-a sudden rain that healed Eir's burns and Rytlock's bruises and every wound they had suffered so far. The rain also solidified the rock monsters around them, letting axes and hammers do their work.

When the work was done, the comrades turned within a circle of smoldering stones to see Zojja, drenched but grinning. "A healing rain, don't you think?"

"Thanks," Eir said, turning with an axe in each hand. She brought them down in a brutal rhythm, slaying destroyers two at a time. But the tide of magma monsters was unending, and the Destroyer of Life still commanded the caldera, still sent red-hot shafts down into the battle.

One iron arrow struck Big Snaff's left hip, melting the joint. The golem teetered sideways and crashed to the ground.

"d.a.m.n it!" shouted Eir.

Rock monsters hurled themselves onto him. They would have torn him apart if Zojja hadn't laved the fallen golem with conjured water.

The Destroyer of Life next turned its bow back on Eir, loosing a shaft that moaned as it fell.

She heard it just before it struck and ducked down, seeing the iron arrow impale Big Snaff's foot. Somehow, the metal caught fire.

"Primordial flame!" Eir realized. "The core of the Destroyer's power." She turned toward Rytlock. "Give me a gauntlet!"

Rytlock ripped the powerstone-enhanced weapon from the chest of a destroyer, shucked the glove from his hand, and flung it to Eir.

She grasped it and shoved her hand within. Then she reached down and s.n.a.t.c.hed the white-hot arrow from Big Snaff's foot. The primordial arrow screamed in the clutch of that frigid gauntlet.

Eir spun about, nocking the blazing-hot arrow on her bow and drawing back. The bow burst into flame. She sighted on the Destroyer of Life and released.

The scarlet shaft soared up beneath the vault of the magma chamber.

Crying out, Eir dropped her bow, which flamed for a moment before it was wholly consumed. It fell to ash.

The primordial arrow was falling now toward the dragon champion.

"Come on!" Eir said through gritted teeth. "A little little luck . . ." luck . . ."

The shaft descended to smash into the Destroyer of Life's face. Primordial fire pierced through to primordial fire. A holocaust erupted from every joint of the beast. The flames roared, going red-hot and white-hot and blue. Then came a deafening crack. crack. The rocky figure of the Destroyer of Life blasted apart. Hunks of basalt cascaded all around, trailing fire. The conflagration chased the pieces down from the air, plunging them into the red-hot lake below. The rocky figure of the Destroyer of Life blasted apart. Hunks of basalt cascaded all around, trailing fire. The conflagration chased the pieces down from the air, plunging them into the red-hot lake below.

"Ha ha!" Logan shouted.