Raj Ahten watched. Such an elemental could wreak havoc, blast the stone walls to oblivion, burn the gate, fry the inhabitants of the castle like maggots on a griddle. Just as the elemental had done at Castle Sylvarresta.

Yet Raj Ahten felt disappointed. For years he’d nurtured these flameweavers. Now two had already been slaughtered in this campaign. It was a damnable waste of resources.

There was nothing to do for it but wait, watch the elemental do its work, then clean up after.

The elemental became a raging inferno that set the grass at his feet burning. The air roared like a furnace, and heat smote Raj Ahten, searing his lungs with each breath.

The hot-air balloon still hovered five hundred feet over the battlefield. Raj Ahten’s men pulled it away before the elemental’s heat made its silk burst into a ball of fire.

The elemental pointed itself toward the city, began striding across the battlefield.

Men on the walls of Longmot fired bows in terror. The tiny arrows flew toward the monster like stars that burst into flame in the night sky before they were consumed. The arrows could not defeat the elemental, only feed it.

The elemental reached for the nearest wood, its fingers extending in a twisting green flame that caressed the drawbridge of Longmot. The sounds of crackling wood and splintering beams filled the air. The soldiers atop the walls rushed to escape as a fiery blast slammed against the castle.

A cheer now rose from the throats of Raj Ahten’s men, though Raj Ahten only smiled grimly.

Suddenly, water began gushing from the walls over the arch, flowing in runnels from the mouths of the gargoyles above the gate, wept from the castle’s stone everywhere in great waves, so that the gray walls glistened.

Everywhere, water was rushing up the stone battlements from the moat, forming a wall. The great elemental turned to steam at its touch, began to shrink and dissipate.

Raj Ahten seethed, wondering.

One of his flameweavers shouted, “A water wizard’s ward!” It seemed the castle had some unanticipated magical protection. Yet there were no water wizards here in Heredon that Raj Ahten had ever heard of.

Raj Ahten wondered. Such wards could not last out a year and required a magical emblem to be placed on the castle gate. He’d seen no such emblem or rune four days past.

Then he looked above the gate: Orden stood on the arch, holding his golden shield against the castle wall. The ward had been built into his shield, and by laying the shield against the castle wall, the entire castle, by extension, became shielded.

Raj Ahten’s face twisted in rage as he watched his elemental shrivel amid the water’s onslaught. It cringed and huddled like a lonely child, then became a common fire burning in the grass. In half a moment, even that was smothered.

Raj Ahten felt impotent, maddened.