It might have been that with his increased metabolism, he had not spoken the words as slowly as he’d hoped, enunciated them with the proper intonation. Each time one took endowments of metabolism, one had to learn the arts of speaking and hearing all over again.

Or perhaps it was the endowments of glamour, he told himself. I’ve lost glamour since Castle Sylvarresta. He’d felt it when the Duchess of Longmot had died, taking her endowments of glamour with her.

“Very well!” Raj Ahten shouted. “We shall do this the hard way!” If Orden had been seeking for some goad to spark Raj Ahten’s anger, he’d found it.

Raj Ahten struggled for control, found himself seething. He knew it would be hard for those men in the castle. It would have been quicker for all concerned if they had surrendered. Raj Ahten had taken a hundred castles, many as stout as this, until it was a practiced art.

I’ll make an example of haughty King Orden, he vowed.

He stood before his battle lines, raised his warhammer high, then dropped it with a cutting motion.

The first volley of stones lofted from his catapults. Some smaller stones disappeared over the walls, while heavier loads slammed lower on the battlements. Two of Orden’s cutthroats dropped under the weight of the stones.

Orden countered with artillery from the city walls—six catapults, and four ballistas. The catapults hurled small iron shot that fell like a deadly hail—five yards short of his men. Orden would have done better with some lighter shot.

The ballistas were another matter. In all the South, Raj Ahten had never seen a ballista made with Heredon’s spring steel. In cities like Bannisferre and Ironton, artificers—earth wizards who had mastered secret arts of metallurgy and artifice—had labored long to make such steel. Raj Ahten was unprepared when bolts flashed from the walls in a dark blur, striking through the ranks of his men.

One ballista bolt, like a huge arrow cast of iron, flashed toward him. He leaned away from it, only to hear the bolt plummet into someone behind with a sickly thud.

He turned to see a flameweaver sit roughly to the ground, a hole the size of a grapefruit through his navel.

The young man’s saffron robes suddenly burst into white flame, as his power raged out of control.

“Retreat!” Raj Ahten called for his men to take cover. They needed little urging.

Raj Ahten raced over the hill as the flameweaver erupted—the massive form of the elemental that had coiled like a worm at the center of his soul suddenly escaping.

A lean, bald man took form, a hundred feet tall, sitting on the ground. Flames licked at his skull and swirled at his fingertips. He gazed at Longmot with a troubled expression.