Only too late did Zedd realize that the discharge of deadly power had lanced through the man without effect. The hall filled with shards of stone whistling about, ricocheting from walls and ceiling, skipping along the floor.
The man landed on Zedd, driving the wind from him. Desperately yelling for help, the man wrestled Zedd on the slippery floor. Zedd concocted a weak and fumbling defense, to give the man a false sense of confidence, until he was able to suddenly land a knee sharply at the point of his attacker's sternum. The man cried out in surprise as much as in pain as he flipped backward off Zedd, gasping to get his wind back.
Having sucked so much heat from the air had left it as frigid as a winter night. Clouds of their breath filled the cold air as both men panted with the effort of the struggle. The man again cried out for help, hoping to bring comrades to his aid.
Zedd would assume that anyone would fear to attack a wizard by muscle alone. This man, though, had no need to fear magic. Even if he hadn't known that before, certainly the evidence was now all too clear. Yet, despite the man being at least twice the size of his opponent, less than a third his age, and having immunity from the conjuring being thrown at him, Zedd thought that he fought rather… squeamishly.
However timid the man was, he was determined. He scrambled to attack again. If he broke Zedd's neck, it wouldn't matter that he did so timidly.
As the man regained his feet and lunged, Zedd drew back his arms, elbows cocked, fingers spread, and cast more of the lightning, but this time he knew better than to waste his effort trying to cut down a man not touched by magic. Instead, Zedd sought to rake the floor with the conjured bolts of power. It slammed into the stone with unrestrained violence, ripping and splintering whole sections, throwing sharp jagged shards streaking through the air.
A fist-sized block of stone hurtling at tremendous speed crashed into the man's shoulder. Above the boom of thunderous power, Zedd heard bones snap. The impact spun the man around and knocked him back against the wall.
Since Zedd now knew that this intruder could not directly be harmed by magic, he instead filled the hall with a deafening storm of magic designed not to assail the man directly but to tear the place apart into a cloud of deadly flying fragments.
The man, as he recoiled from striking the wall, again threw himself at Zedd. He was met by a shower of deadly shards whistling through the air toward him. Blood splattered across the wall beyond as the man was ripped to shreds. In a blink, he was killed and dropped heavily to the floor.
From beyond the smoke and dust filling the hall, two more men suddenly flew at Zedd. His gifted sense told him that, like the first man, these men were not there, either.
Zedd threw yet more lightning to rip up the floor and unleash flying stone at the men, but they were already through the flares of power, diving onto him. He crashed to his back, the men atop him. They seized his arms.
Zedd struggled frantically to let loose a blast to bring down the ceiling. He began to whirl the air above the men to tear the hall to pieces, and them with it.
A beefy hand with a filthy white rag clamped down over Zedd's face. He gasped, only to inhale a powerful smell that made his throat want to clench shut, but too late.
With the cloth and the big hand covering his whole face, Zedd couldn't see. The world spun sickeningly.
Soft, silent blackness pressed in around him as he fought to resist it, until he lost consciousness.
Zedd woke, his head spinning, his stomach heaving with rippling waves of nausea. He didn't think that in his entire life he had ever felt so sick.
He hadn't known it was possible to feel so intense an urge to vomit, without actually throwing up. He couldn't lift his head. If he could just die right then, it would be a welcome release from such dizzying agony.
He started to put his hands over the light hurting his eyes, but found his wrists were tied behind his back.
"I think he's waking," a man said in a subservient voice.
Despite his nausea, Zedd instinctively tried to use his gift to sense how many people were around him. For some reason, his gift that ordinarily flowed as easily as thought, as simply as using his eyes to see, his ears to hear, felt thick and slow, as if mired in molasses. He reasoned that it was probably the result of whatever vile substance it was they had soaked the rag in to cause him to pass out when held over his face. Still, he managed to sense that there was only one person around him.
Powerful hands seized his robes and yanked him to his feet. Zedd gave himself permission to vomit. Against all expectation, it didn't happen. The dark night swam before his blurred vision. He could make out trees against the sky, stars, and the looming black shape of the Keep.
