Cracks widened, and great drifts of dislodged stone tumbled down the walls to burst and shatter against the floor. More than once, the Purple Silks groaned-almost as if the festhall was a weary wounded Waterdhavian, knowing death was near-and that the slow slide into darkness had very much begun.

Folk were fleeing once more into the tunnels, following shouts that promised a way out had been found.

On their backs under a fading, flickering golden dome, Tarthus and Amaundra Lorgra of the Watchful Order trembled and sweated, exhausted beyond their endurance, but somehow holding on…

For now. Every breath a victory, every victory harder than the last. For now.

"Come on, then," Beldar Roaringhorn murmured, watching a crack crawling slowly up the wall, to where it could send stabbing fingers across the ceiling.

Golskyn and his son Mrelder were very near; the voice in his head was like the roaring of vast, inexorable surf. Skull pounding, Beldar went to his knees and groaned, long, low, and loud.

There was a great pile of tasseled cushions over yonder, behind the His feeble thoughts were shattered by the crash of the door being hurled wide. Smoke curled from it-gods, they'd used a spell to open an unlocked door!

Lord Unity of the Amalgamation swaggered into the room, the shimmerings of a protective spell singing around him. Beldar bent the power of his gaze on the man, but Golskyn merely sneered.

"He's in here, right enough, son," he announced. "I don't think your spells will even be needed. There's not much left of him."

Beldar staggered to his feet, used his sword to spear a cushion, and hurled it in Golskyn's face.

The protective spell flared, and the priest threw back his head and laughed.

He was still laughing when Beldar flung himself against a mirror. He twisted it as it toppled, riding it as its edge crashed through Golskyn's shield and into the arm of the man beyond. The mirror shattered as it bit down, glass shards sinking deep.

Golskyn screamed, and Mrelder came through the door fast, fingers a-crawl with magic.

Beldar ruined that spell with the same cushion, booted up from the floor into Mrelder's face, and followed it with the mightiest slash he'd ever swung.

Mrelder ducked away, but not quite far enough.

As warsteel bit into his shoulder, the sorcerer shrieked, and the voice in Beldar's head was silenced as if chopped off by a-sword.

Something slapped around Beldar's ankle and jerked. He crashed onto his rump and bounced. A thigh-thick tentacle had downed him; its wart-covered length curved back under the priest's robes.

Laughing, Golskyn tore off his eyepatch. A fiery beam leaped forth.

Beldar drove his blade into the tentacle and thrust it up in time to intercept the beam of light. There was a sickening hiss and a foul stench, and the tentacle writhed away as the priest cried out.

Beldar sprang from the floor and hurled himself at Mrelder.

The sorcerer jumped back, stumbled, and fell heavily. Beldar slammed into the floor beside him, sword reaching out to stab and hack, but Mrelder had rolled out of reach, heading for the door.

Fire seared Beldar from behind.

Roaring, Beldar spun around and glared back at Golskyn. What his eye sent forth could not be seen, but the priest's eye-fire wrestled something unseen in the air between them… and was slowly forced back, quivering and spitting sparks.

Keeping his gaze on Golskyn, Beldar retreated toward the window. One of the tall swivel-mirrors was in his way.

In his way…

Beldar ducked behind it, caught hold of it, and thrust it at Golskyn. Fire splashed off the mirror and rebounded, and the priest gasped and then snarled in pain and fury.

Beldar ducked away as the glass shattered, sparkling shards flying everywhere, and the fire-beam lanced forth again. It took but a moment to pluck up the mirror up by its wooden stand and thrust its jagged remnants into the priest's face.

Golskyn screamed in earnest in this time, a howl of agony that broke off into frantic flight when Beldar slashed with the mirror, again and again, glass tinkling down until he was holding a bare frame. By then, the room was empty of haughty priests and sorcerous sons alike.

Beldar snatched up his sword and some cushions and got himself over to the wall just beside the door. In another breath Mrelder would think of some clever spell. They needed him alive, unless they were abandoning use of the Walking Statues, so it would be something disabling, not deadly.

An icy cloud hissed past Beldar. He shrank down as most of the room vanished under a frigid coating of glittering ice.

Flattened against the wall, cushion in one hand and sword in the other, Beldar waited as silently as he could manage. He tried to breathe gently, slowly… so quietly.

"It'll take too long, Father," Mrelder said suddenly, from just outside the door. "If I'm still feeling around for the lordling's mind when some nobles get up here with their swords and their anger-with you like that…"

Cautiously the sorcerer peered into the room, and Beldar swung the cushion as hard and fast as he could.

It caught Mrelder in the face, trailing feathers, and burst into flames as the sorcerer got it with some lightning-swift cantrip or other, but by then Beldar had swung his blade, slicing through fire and feathers into flesh.

Mrelder sobbed, and Beldar's blade came back wet with bright blood. He hacked again, hard, but this time his seeking steel bit only air, and he heard the moaning sorcerer stumbling away.

"Couldn't you even-" Golskyn began angrily, and Mrelder hissed something furious and pain-wracked… then two pairs of stumbling footfalls receded hastily down the gallery.

Beldar Roaringhorn ran to the window with bloody sword in hand, his mind free of shouting voices, and glared at the stone legs.

Step away, he thought angrily. Step AWAY.

And with the sound of ponderous thunder, the wall of stone outside the window moved.

Beldar thought hard, seeking to thrust himself into that heaviness, the great stone weight he could now dimly perceive in his mind.

As a great foot came down and Beldar's room rocked, plaster falling in tumbling plumes, he became aware of movement. He was moving, or rather, the statue was moving and he was a part of it.

Buildings all around him, at knee and thigh level, bright lights in the night…

He was the Walking Statue. Great power, slow but unstoppable, surging cold and dark and heavy, surging…

Beldar beheld a garden wall across the shattered street from the Purple Silks. Strike that down!

A fist swung, and stones melted before it, spraying down across the street to shatter against the festhall walls. Blocks crumbled and fell, opening rents that gave Beldar a glimpse of the sagging feasting hall galleries inside as stone fell into dust and rubble, and tumbled into the festhall.

From his great height, Beldar looked down. There were holes in the street, great pits of collapsed cobbles, and behind him, pits that laid bare the sewer-tunnels where frightened men and women were scurrying, some looking up at him in pale-faced horror as they ran.

Around that terrified human flood, smaller folk were at work: dwarves, hammering and hefting in expert haste to shore up the walls and crumbling ceilings of the damaged tunnels. Beldar plucked up a great handful of stones from the rubble he'd caused, turned with infinite care, bent, and tilted his great hand into a chute, lowering it to just beside a dwarf.

That bearded stalwart squinted up at him for a moment-it must have been like gazing up at a mountain-and then leaped onto the great hand and tugged at the nearest stone, passing it down to others below. Beldar kept the Statue motionless as the dwarf worked, thrusting and tugging. A great iron bar was tossed up, and a second dwarf joined the first, huffing and shoving, tipping the stones one by one to the swarming dwarves below.