There were heads bobbing amid the rolling clouds of dust below-helmed heads, advancing purposefully up the broad steps.

"Aldimar Uskevren!" a man shouted. "Miscreant and pirate! Yield to us!"

Aldimar flung up one hand in an imperious gesture commanding silence from his sons, and planted himself at the head of the stairs, thrusting his knife back in its sheath and shaking a second wand out of his sleeve.

Like the one ready in his other hand, it was a weapon neither of his sons had ever seen before, or known their father could use.

A lance of black magical fire leaped up the stairs. Where it struck, crackling, Nelember's head vanished from his shoulders. As the spasming body danced and reeled, another shout rolled up the stairs from below. It was a voice all three Uskevren knew.

"Aldimar," Rildinel Soargyl roared, his voice as deep as the snorts of the bull he resembled, "you are a dead man! Too craven to yield or stand forth and fight. I swear, we'll pull this place down until we find you or its falling crushes you. Where by all the coins Waukeen has ever forgotten are you?"

"Here, Rildinel," Aldimar called, in the mocking tones of a young lass teasing someone who searches for her. "Here."

As his old friend Nelember crashed to the floor beside him, both of the wands in Aldimar's hands burst into life, flooding the stairs with a sheet of white flame.

The men-at-arms rushing up the steps shrieked as they died, hurled off their feet and away by the power that seared them and melted their swords and armor alike. Below and behind the soldiers the three Uskevren saw a dark-robed figure reel and stagger amid the fading, darkening wandfire. An instant later, what was left of the forehall erupted upward through the solar, seeking the star-strewn sky. The explosion flung them all backward and smote their ears into ringing cacophony. It seemed that a mage had been unprepared for Aldimar's magic.