I had no way of knowing if all the Xerith were expunged from the palace without searching the grounds myself, but I thought the king and his retainers would be safe enough for now. It was time to deal with the source of the treason against King Korban.

  “Have you thought of a strategy for dealing with the temple, or will we just charge in and see what happens?” I asked Dortham.

  “We have a strategy, of course,” Dortham said. “You have two portals in this throne room, so we thought we’d use them both.”

  Grath stepped up. “Everyone except Bran and I will go through a portal opened near the front door and to the left side, away from that stairway going down on the right side. You can protect your group from the archers and the spellcasters they’re sure to have near the altar, right?”

  “Yeah, I can manage that,” I said. “The protective spell against magic is stationary, unlike the mobile one provided by Vengeance. We’ll have to stay put until the spellcasters are dead.”

  “We thought so. That’s where Bran and I come in,” Grath said. “You’ll make a second portal behind a pillar on the other side of the temple close to the false priests. Bran and I will enter there and take out the priests before they know what hit them, then retreat a bit to the wall on the left and fight our way back to your group.”

  “How are you going to kill the priests fast enough that they don’t swarm you?” I asked. “Xerith are the hardest targets in Aldon.”

  “Wait and see,” Grath said with confidence. “Besides, I think you know what I’ll do if things turn ugly.”

  “Oh? What?” Mira asked.

  Grath’s only answer was silence.

  “All right, then. Everyone ready?” I asked.

  “Not so fast, Mr. Weaver. Aren’t you forgetting something?” Elle asked.

  “Am I?”

  Elle raised her arms beckoningly and lifted her gaze to the ceiling. Perceiving she was about to pray, we all bowed our heads.

  “Lord God, we’re about to do something really dangerous, and we’re all a bit scared. We need Your blessing and protection in the battle ahead. I pray that what we do this day will advance Your worship in Aldon for Your glory. Please be with us and keep us safe,” Elle prayed.

  A visible, soft golden glow spread around everyone present, and to me it felt warm and safe, like a blanket in a chilly Terran home. Bran raised one fist in the air.

  “God, please grant us strength of arm in the battle, that we may not fail, and please help us to strike true,” Bran prayed. The golden glow intensified, and I, for one, felt lighter on my feet.

  “Now we’re ready,” Elle said.

  Everyone checked their arms one last time, then moved to the two portals.

  “It’s important to say that when I get into the temple, I have to close the portals behind us so this keep doesn’t get invaded. I’ll be your way out, so stay close to me.” I said.

  “Remember why we do this. For the king! For Mithram!” Dortham yelled out.

  “For the king! For Mithram!” everyone shouted.

  I reflected later that it must have looked pretty silly for an old man with a baking sheet and an upraised wooden spoon to be shouting a war cry like that, but no one laughed outright. I climbed the dais to the throne and sat down. I focused on the temple, and the long, rectangular building came into focus. Inside, I looked one more time at the disposition of the mercenaries, who were in a large mass on the left side of the building if looking at them from the entrance. The two rows of columns were around thirty feet apart from every wall or other column, and they made a double row of columns that held up the ceiling. They also partially blocked the line of sight from the altar in the back center to the front left part of the building where I intended to open a portal. The spellcasters should not be able to hit us with their best shot right away. I glanced at my friends and family. They were all ready and looked to me steadily. I opened the portal to the front of the temple on the left side, and everyone standing before it hurried through. While they did that, I heard the shouts raised by the mercenaries on the left, and I opened another portal behind those mercenaries next to a column at the back of the room for Bran and Grath to get through. Once they stepped through behind that pillar, I closed their portal, then sprinted through the portal everyone else went through, closing it as I stepped into the temple.

  I immediately brought into being a shielding spell effective against projectiles that was big enough to cover everyone from the arrows that were even now being fired at us from the mercenaries. My group was arrayed in a shield wall with our rectangular shields held up in front of us, swords at the ready. The shield I created made the arrows bounce off in all directions harmlessly. I focused my will and conjured a small ball of flame in front of me that I hurled over our ranks and into the midst of the mercenaries. It exploded with a loud roar of intense flame, blasting the core of their force to flaming ruin.

  The mercenaries, who wore a hodge-podge of chainmail armor and wielded all sorts of different weapons, shouted in surprise and dismay. The ones in front immediately shouted a war cry and began to charge at us in the front of the temple. The ones in back, seeing that their arrows were doing no good at all, dropped their bows, drew weapons, and charged as well. The dozen priests at the rear of the temple by the altar shouted directions to the thirty or so temple guards, who all wore matching chainmail and had loaded crossbows in their hands. They must have anticipated having the first shot at a few invaders do some damage, and I wasn’t really sorry to disappoint them. As a group, they all shifted away from the altar to the left side of the temple to get into our line of sight and set up a firing line against us. I hurled another blast of fire at them as they converged, and many of their number were instantly killed. The priests stayed close to the altar and began to chant together. Just before the first warriors hit our lines, I conjured a shield against hostile magic.

  Suddenly Bran and Grath charged out from behind their pillar in the back of the temple at the oblivious priests. Grath brandished his mace as he ran, and separate flanges of his mace seemed to duplicate themselves and break off from the head of the mace. They orbited around Grath in a blur of motion, but both Bran and Grath were inside the orbit of the flanges. When they hit the priests, the flanges of that mace did terrible damage, raking through their ranks and ripping through their bodies. The priests who survived that initial onslaught had no chance against either Grath or Bran with Vengeance blazing in his strong right hand.

  The mercenaries were fixated on my position and didn’t see what was happening to their priestly employers. They hit us as I took a place in the line next to Elle, who was in the center of our line. I raised my right hand and hit the first twenty mercenaries with a blast of concussive force that was strong enough to break bones. They were thrown in all directions, hitting the walls, columns, and their comrades. The mercenaries that reached us were much less organized than they otherwise would have been, but their charge still pushed us back towards the back wall a bit. We deliberately backed into the corner in very good order, and I raised new shields against arrows and magical attacks when we were in position. There was no escape from that corner of the building, but they couldn’t surround us, either.

  Because of the strength Bran had prayed for, the mercenaries couldn’t overcome us. The shield wall held, and their numbers steadily declined. They fought hard, but their blows did very little damage as they struck at us. In fact, those who struck at Elle actually struck themselves because of the Reflector’s power. On the other hand, our swords could cut right through their chainmail and shields with our enhanced strength. It was bloody work.

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  Darek, who was on the right-hand side of our line, called out a warning as a group of temple guards came running in from the front entrance to press us harder on our right flank. We were ready for that. The melee continued as our group took advantage of the stone wall to our left and behind us. There were only six of us in our group facing dozens of mercenaries and guards, but with our superior armor and the prayers of Elle, we actually had a very great advantage. Light pulsed from Elle during the melee, healing our bruises. The mercenaries thought that Elle was the source of the strength we had, and they saw me as an old man with a wooden spoon protecting himself with a baking pan. Naturally, Elle and I were the targets of many attacks. In the heat of battle, our foes didn’t understand what was happening as I swatted men aside or smashed them to the ground with the concussive force I was channeling through my mace.

  I looked beyond the last thirty or so mercenaries to see Grath and Bran wreaking bloody carnage on the temple guards, who had given up on pretense and all of whom were sporting some sort of mutated body part to strike with. They writhed and flailed at their two opponents with unnatural speed and strength, but they couldn’t take down either warrior. Grath saw something to his left, in the direction of the stairway and through the spinning flanges, and he called on Bran to retreat towards where we were fighting the last of the mercenaries.

  Not wanting Bran and Grath to get cut off, I summoned a brutal arc of concussive force, which blasted two dozen mercenaries in all directions away from us. I could clearly see between the columns now as the Xerith from the stairway were charging across the temple sanctuary towards us. They were very fast, and they seemed to charge from a shadowy area that must have been cloaked in magical darkness. I focused my will and hurled a ball of fire straight at them but slightly towards Bran and Grath’s side. The fire exploded violently, consuming many of the shapeshifters. I could see several of the Xerith pause and gesture strangely, so I immediately strengthened my shield against magic around us. From four different places in the quickly advancing mob, arrows made of fire streaked at us and hit the magical shield, sometimes going through a mercenary’s back first, before fizzling out in sparks. There was also a manifestation of almost physical shadow that looked like a ram’s head that hit my shield and winked out before it could harm Elric.

  We braced ourselves as the wave of dark shapes hit our shields with shrieks and great strength. If it were not for Elle’s prayers, they would have broken our line and given us a very swift death, but we fought on.

  In the profane temple, light and dark fought with all their strength.

  I channeled flame into my mace, crushing and burning a shapeshifter with every swing. It was a scene out of a nightmare as talons, jaws, tentacles, and bony spikes were flung at us from every angle accompanied by inhuman roars and shrieks. I couldn’t even see Bran and Grath anymore as we were pressed back into the corner of the building. I hit them with a blast of concussive force to give us a little more room to fight, hurling corpses and unidentifiable creatures in all directions. It was a bloody frenzy on all sides of me.

  They must have either recognized me as the greatest threat or they thought the old man I was still disguised as was a weak link, and they tried to break our line. A pair of Xerith suddenly grabbed me with two or three tentacles at the same time and unexpectedly yanked me upward and forward. The press of the fighting forced our ranks closed again, but I was in the midst of the enemy force being bludgeoned, slashed, and battered from all directions. I panicked as the blows rained down on me from every conceivable angle. My plate armor protected me from the bladed attacks, but my limbs were being pulled apar, and I couldn’t break free, despite my strength.

  My panic became my power. Somehow, I conjured magical fire that engulfed and erupted from me in a small radius and at the same time I protected myself from the heat, which surrounded me in a white-hot aura of superheated death. The tentacles and clawed arms that grabbed at me were burned away as I lay within the inferno on the cracking flagstones. Gaining my feet, I leapt further away from my family, then flailed all around me with my mace and with tongues of the flames that I summoned from my fiery aura. Whenever those white-hot flames struck, my enemies were reduced to ash in seconds. I fought with all the strength I had with great, sweeping strikes and spears of flame suddenly lancing out to incinerate the Xerith. After what seemed like days of frenzied struggle, there was nothing left moving in my sight except for my family.

  We all panted for breath. I ended the fiery aura around me when I saw the spell of darkness end with the last of the Xerith crumbling to ash at my feet. Bran and Grath joined us, both of whom were limping a little and gasping for breath. They were both covered in dark blood, as were we all. I could see that we were all bleeding from wounds inside rents in our armor or from damaged chainmail in the gaps between plates.

  “Ha! Now that’s the kind of thing Mordon used to do!” Grath said to me. He was grinning ear to ear, obviously enjoying himself immensely.

  The illusion covering me had dissipated at some point. I hadn’t even noticed in the heat of combat, but my armor looked like it had been used for target practice for an entire fist of talons. I staggered a little bit as I started to feel the pain of my wounds. Elle prayed for healing again, summoning a wave of healing energy that washed over us, closing wounds and easing strained muscles. We all felt better after that. Grath started laughing like he’d just had the time of his life. He clapped Bran on the shoulder, who grinned under his visor.

  “That was great!” Grath said loudly. His enthusiasm dispelled the seriousness of the situation somehow, and I was actually heartened a bit. “I can’t remember the last time I had that much fun!”

  “Thanks, Elle,” I said as I tested my limbs.

  “I don’t feel any more in the immediate area,” Bran said.

  I looked around more closely now that I felt better. I couldn’t see any more of the dark living cores of any shapeshifter in this whole room, and nothing moved or breathed except for us. We were safe for now.

  “I think that’s all of them. Let me fix everyone’s armor up so mom doesn’t have a fit,” I said.

  There was a chorus of agreement at that. I spent several minutes using my mending spell to repair the rents and dents in everyone’s armor, except for Grath’s, which didn’t need any mending. Mira used her cleaning spell on each person after I was done. Now that we all felt and looked better, I thought about what to do from here.

  “Who wants to take a look downstairs and who wants to go back immediately?” I asked.

  “I’d like to see what’s down there,” Mira said. “There might be something shiny.”

  “We might learn something about their strategy or organization if we search the place,” Dortham said. “But we have to be quick about it. Half the city heard that battle.”

  Everyone else echoed those sentiments, so we carefully crossed the battlefield inside the temple, stepping over the corpses of men and shapeshifters alike, and went down the darkened stairs. Without thinking, I conjured a light above my head that moved with me.

  “I didn’t know I could do that,” I said.

  “I didn’t know you could burst into flame, either,” Bran said. “You’re full of surprises these days.”

  “Except for some manifestations of instinct, I think I’ve been imitating magic use that I’ve experienced before, like this light spell. There was a Xerith I fought recently who used something similar.”

  “Be careful down here. There may be more of them hiding,” Mira said.

  “I think we’re all right,” Bran said. “I can’t feel any presence of evil down here.”

  “Good. They probably wouldn’t have allowed human mercenaries down here,” Mira reasoned. “This place will be swarming with the king’s men soon, though. Let’s hurry.”

  We searched the basement level of the temple quickly. What we found were barracks for up to a hundred men, a large hall where men ate and trained, and some storage areas. There were a few rooms set aside for the priests, though. In the biggest of these we found a desk with a bunch of letters. They were communications with temples in other cities, especially from the main temple in Aerie, and they had some pretty incriminating information in them.

  “Let’s leave these for the king’s men to find,” Dortham said.

  “On the other hand, we could take this with us,” Mira said as she pointed to a large, iron bound chest. She had picked the lock on the chest while we looked at the letters, and it was full of gold and silver coins.

  “I think we’re entitled to some compensation for our troubles,” Elric said happily.

  “Here, here,” we all agreed.

  The chest was big enough that it would take four men to lift it, considering all the coins it contained. I closed the lid and lifted it up by myself even though the prayer of strength had faded.

  “Are we ready to go?” I asked. The astonished expressions of the others were pretty amusing, and I have to admit, and I liked showing off at that moment. I smiled pleasantly, but Mira was avoiding my gaze. Right then, I just wanted to be out of these dismal surroundings. “Hold on to me.”

  The others gathered around and put a hand on my pauldrons or arms, and then I teleported everyone to the living room of the Smith house. Nora was there dusting an end table when we suddenly appeared, and she jumped and gasped in surprise. She recovered very quickly, though.

  “Oh, thank God! I was so worried!” she exclaimed as she threw her arms around Dortham.

  “Everyone’s all right, dear,” Dortham said as he held her.

  Samirah and Bethan came quickly down the stairs with my nephews to welcome everyone back. It was like a little bubble of happiness in the midst of the rainy day outside, and we all savored the feeling of victory.