"KEEPS getting worse." Snow spat a mouthful of smoke-flavored grit as he shifted behind the cracked block of stone he used as a vantage point. Brisk winds lifted sand from the surrounding drylands, mixing it with smoke from the burning city of Caero. Instead of clear desert air, Snow confronted a featureless haze that barely let him see halfway down the hill.

All he could make out was a shifting curtain of dull red some miles off -- the conflagration devouring the city.

"Times like this, I could wish for one of those farseeing Magestone trinkets the Imperials use," Snow groused. "Or maybe you could invent something to take care of the job, Sigwold."

A laugh emerged from the quarry mouth behind him, then so did Sigwold Tinker. He was slender for a Dwarf, which meant that his barrel chest was about as burly as Snow's, though he barely came up to the human's breastbone.

"I've been busy with more destructive things." Sigwold cast a dismissive glance to the crossbow he carried. "If you're going to wish, why not ask for a hundred-hand escort armed with black powder weapons guarding the barrels in the cave inside?" He paused, taking in the lurid light show on the plains below. "Or that all the Imperial pigs vanish from the face of the Land?"

"Won't happen," Snow replied. "I've wished that very thing four solid years now." He ran a finger along the ornamented head of the broadaxe he carried. Dwarven work, of a skill and forging that human craftsmen could never match. And that was just a simple weapon. Sigwold's bow was a mechanism of marvelous complexity and strength. Yet the Dwarf considered it a bare toy compared to the arms he'd been working on.

Yes, Sigwold might be considered slim by Dwarven standards, but he had deft hands and an equally adroit brain. He'd won acclaim among his fellow Dwarf smiths and fabricators for his inventions. His contributions had helped them create a whole new order of intricate but powerful nonmagical implements of war. Weapons to make the Atlantean Empire pay for a host of crimes.

Snow looked off toward the shrouded destruction in the distance. "Many human folk outside the boundaries looked on the Empire as the great equalizer. They thought the Imperials' Magestone Technomancy would help us against the more magically gifted races."

So his father had believed, and that belief had been the death of him.

"A nice thought," Sigwold growled. "So long as you don't live near any Magestone."

Snow felt the muscles in his shoulders tighten. Wide shoulders -- miner's shoulders. But then, he'd spent his last growth spurt working fourteen-hour shifts in a Magestone mine. Imperial diviners had discovered a major seam of the crystal that powered the magic of the Atlantis Guild in the fields where Snow's people made their living. As it turned out, his home village, Linzfarne, had stood at the confluence of several ley lines. And where the magical currents conjoined, Magestone was often to be found. Very soon after, the Atlantean army had descended on Linzfarne.

"We did, you know," Snow said, half to Sigwold and half to himself. "We lived near Magestone."

"You never mentioned that before," Sigwold said.

Snow looked at the Dwarf. They had nothing to do but wait, so he continued, dulling the anxiety with conversation. "All our fields disappeared into that great hole in the ground." He turned his gaze back to the distant haze, unwilling to betray too much feeling. "It ate my family, and all the farm-folk in the area. People sickened from the raw Magestone they had to dig up. But my father clung to his crazy ideas."

He smashed a fist into the rock in front of him -- like trying to get an idea out of his father's thick skull. "And Pa clung to Linzfarne, even after it turned from a human steading into a spot where only Dwarves could live."

Snow glanced at his companion and cleared his throat. "No offense meant."

"None taken," Sigwold replied grimly. "The wild Magestone doesn't kill us; it's nothing but the truth. That's why my folk are valuable to the Empire." He spat. "Of course, whatever the wild Magestone gives off kills every other living thing and turns animals into monsters. And if they don't get us, there's always the overwork and the slave-drivers to take care of it."

His clever hands clenched around the crossbow. "My great-grandsire was taken by the Imperial offal, so slavery is all my family has known." The Dwarf stepped over to his fellow guard. "I don't know which is worse, young Snow -- to be hunted and used like a thing, or to have your hopes and spirit killed before your body. But now we have the tools to change things."

Snow grinned. A typical Dwarvish response, to think in terms of tools. But his smile dimmed as he was reminded of the mind behind the tools. "Where is Sarah?" he said, putting into words the thought that had been nagging them both. "I knew she shouldn't have gone into the city."

"As if you or anyone else could stop her," Sigwold snorted. Snow couldn't argue that. But he could worry. The problem is, without Sarah Ythlim's leadership, the Rebellion might die with a whimper before it's even born. He sighed. Where is the woman?

The roughcast adobe wall scraped against Rikka's side as she crept to the corner. The buildings of Caero were made of nonflammable mud-brick. But the structural elements were made of river reeds, twisted together, dried, and tarred. A touch of flame, and they blazed up like torches, as Rikka and her companion had already discovered.

Plentiful flame was all too available, thanks to the Empire's Incendiary Golems.

The reins in Rikka's hands tightened as the horses she led halted, trembling. In spite of the damp wrappings around their eyes and noses, the animals detected smoke. Making quiet, soothing noises Rikka gentled the horses and brought them closer to the end of the wall. Then she peered around it.

A squad of Imperials patrolled the main thoroughfare a block away. They carried the short spears and crossbows the Atlanteans used in close city fighting. In the midst of the armored soldiers strode a robed figure, firelight gleaming off the Magestone jewel set in his brow. An apprentice wizard, controlling a Golem for the troops -- or, perhaps, searching for Rebels . . .

Rikka's lips reflexively skinned back from her gritted teeth. Her right hand went to the hilt of a throwing knife.

But the light touch of a hand on Rikka's shoulder stopped her. The loss of a low-level initiate would scarcely hurt the Atlantis Guild. Rikka had a weightier responsibility -- getting Sarah Ythlim out of the city.

A difficult enough task if Sarah were healthy and whole.

Instead, she sat half-crouched in her saddle, favoring her right side. That was what had taken the brunt of the force as a warehouse wall had suddenly collapsed in a rush of flaming debris.

Rikka had managed to free Sarah from under tumbled brick before the burning reed-bundles had roasted her. But Sarah had been hurt, slowed. They'd had to get horses. Now they dodged to evade the net that the Imperials were trying to draw around this part of the city.

The larger streets ran thick with Imperial patrols. Still worse were the flame-wielding Golems. As Rikka watched, the Imperial mage summoned one of the Magestone-powered machines. The mage's shaven head barely reached the hulking shoulders of the construct. Indeed, the Golem's own head was lost in the upper-body superstructure, where fuel tanks were built in for the flamecasters in the machine's hands. Metal feet thudded against the hard earth of the street as the Golem moved to face its master. Its bronze body was stained and streaked with soot. It stopped mere feet from the mage, who mouthed something and gestured.

The Golem immediately moved off in the indicated direction, its deliberate gait eating distance quickly, until it disappeared.

Rikka hoped it was a sign. The Golem was moving into the wind, away from the walls of fire. Perhaps the Imperials had finally become aware that their flamecasting was threatening the entire city. If the searchers also had to fight the flames, the Rebels' chances of escape increased.

With renewed energy, Rikka went back to picking a route through the helter-skelter back alleys. She couldn't check her course by the stars -- smoke clouds obscured the skies. She could only trust that the wind hadn't shifted as she guided herself and Sarah away from flames and prowling soldiers.

Wherever she could, Rikka refreshed the water on the sacking that enshrouded the faces of their restless horses. After what seemed like an eternity of tramping, the smoke grew thinner -- the houses farther apart.

They had escaped Caero, and just in time. Sarah's lopsided riding stance had grown more dramatic, and she clung to her saddle with a death-grip. Rikka swung onto her own horse and brought it close, offering what support she could.

Progress was slow, and Rikka didn't like the sound of Sarah's short, gasping breaths. They had to cast about to find their group's rendezvous point, an abandoned quarry south of the city. The only consolation for Rikka was that they'd be as hard to spot as the shelter they were looking for. Between the trail dust that coated their traveling leathers and the haze in the air, they were practically invisible.

Snow's eyes stung -- whether from smoke, wind-borne grit, or simple fatigue, he could not say. None of the group that had gone into the city had returned. They'd had no word about Sarah.

As he maintained his watch, Snow spun fruitless plans. Maybe one of them should go into the city in search of some news.

Brilliant plan, his brain mocked with Sigwold's voice. The way things are down there, the first thing the Imperials will do with likely lads -- or Dwarves -- is bundle them off to the mines.

Even so, Snow began to think the risk preferable to standing and waiting in this nerve-tearing ignorance.

He was about to voice his plan to Sigwold when Rikka suddenly appeared out of the murk downhill. She barely paid attention to where she rode, twisting back to look across her horse's rump.

Then a second horse appeared, the rider precariously canted in the saddle.

Sarah!

"Sigwold!" Snow cried, bolting from behind his boulder to charge down the slope. Halfway down, he braked himself to avoid spooking the horses. From the way Sarah swayed in her saddle, that could be a worse disaster than what they were facing now.

Reaching them, he took the reins from Rikka, then reached up to support Sarah.

Her face was pale, drawn with pain. "I'm afraid the Imperials interrupted our business," she said.

"They nearly surrounded us -- we had to scatter." Rikka pointed to Sarah's side. "A burning building collapsed--"

Snow interrupted the flow of information. "Can you get down?" he asked Sarah.

She gave him a dirty look, but when Sarah tried to dismount, she nearly collapsed with pain. Snow caught her around the hips and gently shifted her from the saddle. Then he began carrying her up to the quarry opening. She braced herself against his shoulder, her upper body curled in pain.

Sigwold had taken the lookout post behind the boulder, his crossbow at the ready in case there was pursuit.

"None follow," Rikka called up to him. "But Sarah was hurt as we got away." She looked around. "The others?"

"There are no others," Sigwold said shortly. He all but glared at Snow. "Get her into the cave in the back and start stirring up a fire."

Then to Rikka, "Leave those horses and start searching the supplies. See what simples we've brought along with us."

The Dwarf's clever hands were as adept at medicine as they were with this strange new art of technology. By the time Snow and Rikka had finished their tasks and bedded down the horses, Sigwold had Sarah resting comfortably enough in the cavelike recess in the rear of the quarry.

"The burns are worrisome, but not crippling," he reported. "A little salve took care of them."

His bearded face assumed a grimmer aspect. "Several ribs were broken, however. Our Sarah is lucky she didn't pop a lung."

Sarah responded with a dismissive gesture. "Well, you've greased me and bound me up. If the others haven't rejoined us by daybreak, we'll head off for Atlantis on our own. If needs must, we can recruit along the way--"

"Not so, Lady." Sigwold's contradicting words rode over Sarah's.

Her eyebrows drew together, her face assuming the haughty anger of an aristocrat rebuffed. It was an expression Snow rarely saw on Sarah Ythlim's face -- a reminder that her father had been a Trading Ambassador, one of the merchant-princes of Khamsin.

"I will bring our cargo to Atlantis!" Sarah's tone brooked no denial.

"Then you will be coughing blood before you go four leagues -- and be dead long before we reach the Floating City," Sigwold retorted bluntly.

"With a gentle-gaited horse--," Rikka suggested.

Sigwold shook his head but softened his tone. "Sarah, this isn't a case of will defeating pain. It's a question of how long it will take your body to overcome a serious injury."

"I needn't ride," Sarah insisted.

"What are we to do, then?" Sigwold demanded. "Pack you into one of our crates? It would become your coffin soon enough, Sarah -- sure as Necromancers love bones."

He spread his Tinker's hands before her. "You know I'm quick enough to repair broken things," he said. "But bones need time and quiet to knit back together. Give over, Sarah."

"Give over all our work and planning? I think not." Sarah began to draw herself up, then gasped, clutching at her side. "Death and spoliation!" she swore. "We can't miss this opportunity."

"Then we won't." Snow knelt beside her. "I pledge that I will be in the proper place at the needed time. You must pledge to wait . . . and heal."

"Karrudan's death is mine by right," Sarah said. "If you think I'll tamely stand aside--"

"I know you will realize what must be done," Snow replied, marshaling his arguments. "You speak of striking down Karrudan when you can't even sit up straight. I'm ready -- and I have the best record at using the new weapons."

"In practice," Sarah argued.

"And have you been out aiming in earnest against human enemies?" Snow asked. "As for eagerness to strike the blow, I know that Karrudan connived the wreckage of all you'd built in Prieska, and the death of your father. But we all have scores to settle. Karrudan's Imperials killed my father, too. They stole the freedom and heritage of Sigwold's family. Rikka, too, knew only slavery . . . and she lost her mother in the mines."

His face had grown grim recounting the Empire's crimes. Now a bitter smile crooked his lips. "Better, perhaps, that a low fellow like myself take this mission to the enemy. Your face -- and your quest for vengeance -- are too well-known to the Imperials."

"The lad talks sense," Sigwold rumbled.

Rikka suddenly spoke up. "There's another thing. While Sigwold saw to the building of the weapons, you recruited the folk to fight the Imperials. But unlike the Empire, you insisted on many leaders in many places."

Sarah nodded. "So we won't replace one monster with another, plundering the Land and its folk to build new weapons."

Rikka looked down. "Better, then, that Karrudan fall for many folk's justice than for one person's vengeance."

Sarah Ythlim looked for a long moment at the young Rebel. "You make a point," the leader finally said.

She looked at Snow. "Very well, then, you and Sigwold will journey on. Take the best of the packhorses with as many barrels of black powder as you can handle. Rikka and I will stay with the rest, waiting to see if any of the others find their way here."

Sighing, she shook her head. "By tomorrow I should be healed enough to travel. The rest of the munitions will follow you."

Sarah whispered to Rikka, who headed deeper into the cave. "So, it falls to you, Snow. You'll need a token to show our people in Atlantis and Down Town."

She removed a ring from her right hand, demonstrating how the bezel moved on a hinge to reveal the seal of Khamsin. "This will let them know you come on my business."

Rikka reappeared with a cow's horn from their cargo, using her knife to pick out the wax that sealed the end. Sarah reached into the container, removing a pinch of black powder. She placed it within the hollow bezel, closed it, and dropped the ring into Snow's callused, scarred hand.

"Another token," Sarah said. "A sign of what business we're about!"

Copyright © 2003 by WizKids, LLC.