Sihar’s hoarse shout was the only warning.

  Gunther saw the shadow blot out the patch of grey sky. She threw herself sideways, not at Sihar, but towards a slumped pile of shattered masonry. Green fire, viscous and spitting, poured through the broken roof in a torrent. It wasn’t a breath, not this time; it was a geyser of pure, incandescent hate.

  The heat was a physical blow. Gunther’s leathers smoked. The air in her lungs scorched. She landed behind the rubble heap, the stone glowing cherry-red where the dragonfire washed over it. The scent of burnt hair and ozone filled the chamber.

  The deluge ceased. Through the ringing in her ears, Gunther heard the heavy, labored beat of wings. The green was circling, buying time for its ruined throat to heal, for its brothers to arrive. It didn’t need to land. It could pick them apart from the air.

  “Gunther!” Sihar croaked. She was pressed against the far wall, her face blistered, one arm clutching her side where a spear of melted chainmail had fused to her skin. “The exit’s buried. We’re in a bowl. It’ll pour fire in here until we’re grease stains.”

  Gunther scanned the chamber, her mind racing, discarding options as fast as they formed. The central pillar was dust. The roof was a ragged hole maybe thirty feet across. The walls were sheer, ancient magister-work, still holding despite the pillar’s destruction. A bowl. A killing jar.

  Another shadow passed overhead. Gunther flinched, but no fire came. A taunt. The dragon was playing.

  Her hand went to her belt, to the three remaining frost-globes. Useless. She couldn’t throw one high enough, fast enough. Even if she hit it, the dragon’s scales would shrug off the cold. She needed force. Directed, upward force.

  Her eyes locked on the scattered debris from the pillar chunks of granite the size of barrels, a rain of smaller rubble. And the floor, cracked in a starburst pattern from the explosion.

  “Sihar!” Gunther barked, her voice raw. “The big blocks! The wedge-shaped one, and the one near your feet! Can you move them?”

  Sihar stared at her as if she’d gone mad. “Move them where?”

  “To the cracks! In the floor! Now!”

  Sihar grunted, pain etching her face, and braced her good shoulder against the nearest large block. She heaved. Stone ground on stone. Gunther scrambled from her cover, ignoring the swoop of shadow above. She put her back into a smaller, wedge-shaped fragment, driving it towards a deep fissure in the chamber floor.

  “What’s the plan?” Sihar gasped, shoving her block into another crack.

  “We’re making a catapult,” Gunther said, pulling a length of sinew cord from a pouch. “A one-shot, stone-throwing, dragon-killing catapult.”

  “With rubble?”

  “With the only arm we’ve got left.” Gunther pointed to the far wall, where a single, massive timber part of the old ceiling support lay half-buried. One end was splintered. The other was thick, solid. A lever. A throwing arm.

  She sprinted to it, the dragon’s shadow circling tighter above the hole. She could feel its malevolent gaze. It was coiling for another strike. Gunther looped her sinew cord around the solid end of the timber, then ran back to the debris pile. She snatched up a head-sized chunk of granite, rough and jagged.

  Sihar understood. “The fulcrum.”

  “The pivot point,” Gunther corrected, rolling her chosen stone to the center of the chamber, directly under the sky-hole. She positioned it carefully. “Help me with the arm!”

  They dragged the heavy timber, Gunther pulling the cord, Sihar lifting with a roar of effort. They maneuvered the splintered end over the pivot stone. The solid end, now hanging over a deep pile of smaller rubble, was the bucket. The throwing cup.

  “Load it!” Gunther yelled.

  Sihar didn’t hesitate. She began heaving the largest blocks of pillar debris she could lift into the cradle formed by the timber’s solid end. Gunther joined her, muscles screaming. They packed it with stone until the timber groaned, bent under the weight. The pivot stone creaked.

  A shriek of fury tore from the sky. The green had seen enough. It understood. Gunther looked up. The dragon filled the hole, its great head angling down, its jaws unhinging. Green light built in its maw, deep in its healing throat.

  “Now!” Gunther screamed.

  She and Sihar grabbed the splintered, shorter end of the timber the lever. They threw their full weight onto it, hauling down.

  The timber pivoted on the granite stone. For a heart-stopping second, nothing happened. The weight was too great. The pivot stone shifted, threatening to crush.

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  Then, with a scream of shearing wood, the long end snapped upward.

  It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t a clean arc. The cradle of stones erupted skyward in a ragged, spreading volley. Not a single projectile, but a shotgun blast of granite.

  The dragon was committed to its dive. It couldn’t twist away in time.

  A jagged block the size of a keg caught it square on the shoulder a sickening crunch of scale and bone. Another smashed into its already-wounded throat. Smaller stones peppered its wings, its face, its eyes.

  It shrieked again, but this was a sound of shock and pain. The green fire in its throat guttered and died, choked by impact and shattered bone. The beast veered wildly, one wing beating awkwardly, the other clawing at the air. It careened past the edge of the hole, its tail lashing and taking a last chunk of masonry with it.

  They had hurt it. Badly.

  But they hadn’t killed it.

  Gunther watched it spiral away, losing altitude, heading for the outer bailey of the keep. It would crash. It might even die. But its roars had been answered. From the north, over the mountains, two more shapes appeared, dark against the clouds. Growing larger. Fast.

  “Out,” Gunther panted, sweat and soot stinging her eyes. “Now. While it’s down.”

  “The roof’s still thirty feet up!” Sihar protested, staring at the sheer sides of their prison.

  “Not anymore.” Gunther pointed. The dragon’s tail-swipe had torn down a section of the remaining roof edge. A cascade of smaller stones and dust had followed, piling into a steep, unstable, but climbable slope against one wall. It led right up to the broken rim.

  They ran for it. Gunther went first, scrambling on hands and feet, dislodging stones that clattered down behind her. Her fingers found purchase in cracks between the ancient blocks. Her boots skidded on loose scree. Below, Sihar followed, heavier, slower, her injured side a glaring weakness.

  Gunther hauled herself over the jagged lip of the roof and onto the relatively flat expanse of the dungeon level’s ceiling. She was in the open air, on the highest intact section of Stonekeep. The wind, cold and sharp, hit her like a bucket of water. It smelled of smoke, ozone, and dragon.

  She turned and reached down, gripping Sihar’s massive forearm. She pulled, bracing her feet, as Sihar scrambled the last few feet. They collapsed together on the sun-warmed stone, gasping.

  The view was a panorama of desolation. Below them lay the inner ward, a cratered field of blackened grass and smoldering timber where the meteor had struck. The keep’s main towers were shattered teeth against the sky. To the west, the outer curtain wall was a breached, smoky ruin. And in the outer bailey, a hundred yards away, the green dragon lay in a broken heap, one wing bent backwards, its side rising and falling in shallow, ragged heaves. It was still alive.

  But Gunther’s eyes were locked on the north. The two answering shapes had resolved into dragons. One was a deep, iridescent blue, its wings cutting the cloud with a sound like tearing silk. The other was smaller, sleeker, a coppery brown that gleamed in the fitful sun. They were closing the distance with terrifying speed.

  “No time to enjoy the scenery,” Sihar groaned, pushing herself up. “Where’s this shelter?”

  Gunther forced her mind to work. The wizards’ sanctum. Jacob’s last act had been to seal it, to protect its contents. It had to be nearby, on this level. She oriented herself, remembering the layout from the musty scrolls in Greymoor. The central guard chamber was… there. Which meant the archivists’ wing, and the sealed sanctum door, should be…

  “There,” she said, pointing to a low, arched doorway on the far side of the roof platform. The door was iron-bound oak, scorched but intact. “That’s the archive anteroom. The sanctum is through it.”

  A roar, weaker but full of venom, echoed from the bailey. The green dragon had seen them. It lifted its head, a rivulet of acidic drool dripping from its jaw. It wouldn’t fly again, but it could still spit.

  “Run!” Gunther shouted.

  They sprinted across the open roof. The wind whipped at them. Gunther felt horribly exposed, a target on a table.

  From below, a gurgling hiss. Gunther didn’t look back. She felt the heat on the back of her neck, heard the sizzle of acid eating stone where a glob of green venom struck the roof to her left, missing by feet.

  She reached the arched doorway first. The iron handle was cold. She yanked. It held fast. Locked. Or sealed.

  Sihar arrived, breathing in ragged gasps. “Move!” She shouldered Gunther aside, raised a boot, and kicked. The door shuddered. She kicked again, a bone-jarring impact. Wood splintered around the lock. A third kick, and the door burst inward with a scream of tortured iron.

  They plunged into darkness and cool, still air. Gunther turned immediately, putting her shoulder to the shattered door and heaving it mostly closed. It wouldn’t latch, but it blocked the opening.

  Through the crack, she saw the sky. The blue and copper dragons were over the keep now, their vast shadows sliding across the ruins. They were circling, scanning. Then the blue dragon peeled away, descending towards its wounded green brother in the bailey. The copper one continued its slow, predatory circle, its gaze sweeping the rooftops.

  Gunther stepped back into the gloom. They were in a small, square antechamber. Empty stone shelves lined the walls, thick with dust. Opposite the broken outer door was another doorway, this one sealed not with wood, but with a seamless, shimmering field of silver energy. It hummed softly, casting a cold, pearlescent light on the floor. The air smelled of old parchment and static.

  The wizard’s seal.

  Gunther approached it. The energy was opaque, a wall of liquid mercury. She reached out a hand. A foot from the surface, the hairs on her arm stood on end. A sharp, warning tingle shot up her fingers.

  “Jacob’s work,” Sihar murmured, eyeing the seal with a mix of awe and frustration. “How do we get past it? You have a spell for this?”

  “I have a theory,” Gunther said, her voice low. She fumbled in her pouch, past the frost-globes, past the spare sinew. Her fingers closed on a small, cool disc of metal. She pulled it out.

  It was Jacob’s medallion. The one she’d taken from the looter’s body in the pass. The one with the etched sigil of the closed eye. The same sigil that was carved above this very doorway.

  She held it up. The silver light from the seal glinted off its surface. The hum in the air intensified, rising in pitch.

  Gunther took a breath, and pressed the medallion flat against the center of the shimmering energy field.

  For a second, nothing. Then, the silver light flared, blindingly bright. The medallion grew hot in her hand. The seamless field rippled, like a pond struck by a stone. Then, with a sound like a sigh, it dissolved. Not in a burst, but melting away from the point of contact, flowing back into the frame of the door until it was gone.

  Beyond lay darkness, thick and absolute.

  A new sound penetrated the antechamber. Not the wind. Not the distant dragons. A deep, rhythmic thump, followed by a skittering, scratching noise, like countless claws on stone. It was coming from the corridor outside the broken door. And it was getting closer.