Now, seeking power once again, Raj Ahten’s flameweavers began grasping ropes of fire from the skies. Green walls of flame shone like emerald around the great bonfire, bedazzling, their intricate runes gleaming. The blackening trees within the wall were a bizarre sight, like twisted fingers and arms in an enormous heap of burning body parts. Or like scraps of iron in the forge. Everything became luminous in the heart of the inferno—flameweavers, fiery salamanders, dancing among the logs at the fire’s center.

As the flameweavers stole fire from heaven, darkness deepened, making the battlefield a garish, flickering, half-glimpsed sight. The hail fell heavier for a few seconds then, and the air froze in a cloudy fog before his face as Cedrick Tempest breathed.

In that flickering darkness, Tempest glimpsed giants gathering their ladders, men on the battlefield drawing weapons.

“Bowmen at the ready!” Tempest shouted. He watched the track to the north, hoping Orden would appear.

Yet he now feared it would not happen, feared that Orden still lived, and that the serpent ring had not broken. Perhaps Orden had never met up with Raj Ahten, and was even now racing off on some fruitless hunt. Or perhaps Orden was incapacitated.

Tempest’s heart pounded. He needed a protector. There was only one thing to do—call upon the knights in the ring to form a new head. But no, he realized, that would not do. The Dedicates in the castle were widely dispersed. He did not have time to find them, speak to them all.

He needed to break the serpent ring, slay a Dedicate so that the serpent would form a head.

Across the hill, Raj Ahten made a pulling gesture with his hand, as if to yank clouds from the sky. Hundreds of mastiffs began racing for the castle in a black wave, their red masks and iron collars making the mastiffs a horrendous sight, their commander barking in short yaps.

Now the frowth giants hoisted the great siege ladders, two giants to a ladder, and loped for the castle at a seemingly slow pace, yet covering four yards to the stride. Black behemoths struggling in the night.

Tempest did not have time to explain to another what needed to be done. He turned from his post above the gate, and ran for the stairs.

“Captain?” one of his men cried, as if worried that Tempest had become a craven coward in that moment.

Tempest had no time to explain. A shout rose across the battlefield as three thousand of Raj Ahten’s archers raced forward, hurrying to give cover fire against the castle walls.