Free Conspiracy by J. Robert King

regime.”
    “Still,” Jacob said, patting the dust from his clothes, “they saved us from the fiends.”
    Miltiades nodded grimly. “You need healing, Kern.”
    The golden warrior looked at his shoulder. “I suppose I do.”
    Miltiades drew a deep breath, closed his eyes, placed his hands on the wound, and offered a silent prayer to Tyr. Even as the holy power moved through him, stitching together sinews and muscles and mending cracked bones, Kern glanced at Jacob.
    “I was sure at one point I saw you stuck on the end of a trident,” the golden paladin said.
    Jacob blinked back at him and shook his head. “Not me.” He gestured at his clothes, dusty but bloodless. “Maybe it was Trandon.”
    As Miltiades lifted his hands from the healed shoulder of his comrade, Kern said, “Was it you, then, Trandon?” They turned to see the tall warrior gazing down at his chest.
    Trandon’s voice was hesitant, filled with awe. “No blood, here, but something else.” The pendant glowed brilliantly. “Eidola is here. She is nearby.”
    Kern’s eyes grew wide. “My antimagic must have worn off!”
    “Or perhaps the warding magic around Eidola was compromised when the fiends attacked,” Trandon offered.
    “Conjuring that army must have taken its toll,” Miltiades said. “The mage-king must have diverted power from cloaking his captive.”
    “Are you saying—?” Kern began.
    “The only way to find out is to head for the palace, and watch the pendant,” Miltiades said.
    Trandon was already rushing up the road toward the abode of the mage-king.
    Though the four paladins ran for the palace, they could not outrun the descending night. Deep darkness had fallen by the time they reached the stair bridge in front of the palace. They paused, panting, and gazed out over the city.
    The distant thunder of battle filled the air. From this high vantage, the warriors could make out the line of defenders, holding fast in most places. Fire and smoke rose in a thick curtain around the city.
    “There,” Miltiades said, pointing to a spot a mere quarter mile distant. “They’ve broken through.” The others then saw it, a company of fiends charging past a quickly closing breech. “They’ll be here in mere moments.”
    “But the pendant is nearly blinding, now,” Kern said, holding hands up before his face. “She must be here, in the palace. We must proceed.”
    Miltiades’s face was a mask of soot and scars. “I would, but for those fiends. They are after one thing— the bloodforge. For the good of all Toril, we cannot let them have it.” He unslung his warhammer and marched grimly up the steps of the stair bridge. “The only way for land-bound creatures to cross the moat is to climb here.” He reached a small landing just ahead of the palace facade. “We hold them here, as long as we can. The fiends will pay a dear toll in blood to pass.”
    Kern marched up beside him, hammer flashing. “I will take the vanguard and draw them in, slaying with my antimagic.”
    Trandon said, “I will be at your one hand, and Jacob at your other. No claw will touch you.”
    Even as they arrayed themselves and kicked footholds, the fiends converged on the stairway and charged upward.
    In moments, the villainous horde crashed against them. Kern and Miltiades flung them back with killing blows, alternating like a pair of men driving stakes into the ground. Jacob hacked and hewed. Trandon hurled attackers into the moat. Shorn claws and cracked skulls tumbled bloodily down to stick on the spikes below. The defenders held.
    The fiends bunched up along the stairs and began slaying each other to get by. Those that could fly took to the air, but other defenders in the palace beyond sent whispering shafts into them. They dropped among the other dead in the moat.
    In the air or on the stair, the fight was furious. Some fiends were unmade by the convulsing limbs and acidic blood of their slain comrades. Others merely crowded themselves from the