Страница 116 из 124
“No.”
“Lady Miralissa, Tresh Egrassa?”
“We’ll try.”
Miralissa and Egrassa started drawing something on the soaking wet ground—a cross between an octopus and a star with a hundred light beam tenctacles. The elfess whispered words rapidly. The lines of the form on the ground began pulsating with yellow flame.
I was really hoping that their shamanism would help us. Ell stood in front of the two working the magic, almost on the very edge of the precipice, holding his bow at the ready, although I didn’t think arrows would be effective against magic. The others, including me, crowded together behind the elves and observed the approaching danger.
It was making straight for us at full speed. Somewhere inside that seething cloud, at its very center, a purple flame was being kindled, and the cloud was moving against the wind with only one goal in mind—to overtake us.
Miralissa stopped whispering and began singing in orcish. Every word seemed to hang in the air like a tiny, jingling bell, vibrating and humming, its sound reflected in the yellow shape drawn on the ground.
“What are those repulsive beasts?” Loudmouth gasped.
He was as white as chalk, and I’m sure that right then my face didn’t look much better, either.
A winged creature dived down out of the cloud. Then another, and another.
And then there were ten of the long creatures with broad wings circling in a predatory dance, disappearing into the purple glow and then reemerging from it. Their flight was smooth and spellbinding, but just then I didn’t particularly feel like admiring the creatures’ fluent grace.
“What is that, may an ice worm freeze my giblets?” Honeycomb whispered, clutching his useless ogre hammer desperately in both hands.
“I don’t know!” said Tomcat, staring fixedly at the creatures.
They were small and rapacious, absolutely unlike anything else. Their oily skin had a purple shimmer to it. And that was what I disliked the most.
“S’alai’yaga kh’tar agr t’khkkha
Something yellow spurted out of the drawing on the ground and went shooting off toward the magic cloud with the speed of one of the gnomes’ ca
Whatever it was, along the way it grew until it reached the size of a small house.
The yellow met the purple and burst straight into the body of the cloud, which shuddered as if it were a living being, and recoiled. There was a blinding flash inside it.
And that was all.
The cloud had eaten the elves’ creation.
The magical purple glow with those creatures dancing in a circle stopped right above our heads. Then the circle broke up and the creatures attacked.
Six of the ten flyers soared past high above our heads and four dived headlong at us, moving so rapidly that we barely managed to react in time.
A bowstring twanged as Ell fired at the first creature. He hit the mark, but the arrow passed straight through the flyer and disappeared, without causing our enemy any harm.
The elf just barely managed to jump out of the way of his attacker, saved only by his natural agility. The monster rushed past him, skimming the top of the grass with its belly and shrieking in disappointment, then began gaining height again and joined the other six circling above the cloud.
“Look out!”
Deler fell to the ground and pulled down Hallas, who was brandishing his mattock belligerently, by the legs. The gnome gave a howl of protest as he fell facedown in a puddle and the second creature zipped past just above his head and then followed its predecessor back up into the sky.
The two other creatures attacked in unison, flying down simultaneously and coming straight at us, choosing their victims on the way. Everybody went dashing in all directions like quail facing an attack by a hawk, but the creatures had picked out their targets. The first was Tomcat, who froze at the very edge of the steep slope, and the second was me.
Click!
In the hourglass of the gods, time slowed almost to a complete standstill. I saw the purple creature fly-ing slow-ly toward me. Now I was able to get a look at its face. And it was a genuine human face, the face of a man who was not yet old, frozen so that it looked like a death mask.
Miralissa shouted something to us, but I couldn’t hear, my gaze was riveted to approaching death. Somehow I knew that after an encounter with this thing, I would not see Sagra, there would be neither light nor darkness, but total, all-consuming nothingness, from which there would be no return.
Tomcat waved his hand slowly and a solitary blue spark flew out of his fingers. A desperate attempt to use something from the arsenal of weapons that the magician who never finished his training had been saving for a day like this. The spark touched the creature’s face, tearing open the skin and the flesh to reveal the skull, but the creature felt no pain, it probably didn’t even know what pain was, and it went crashing into its victim with a howl of triumph. In an instant it passed straight through the Wild Heart’s body like a small cloud of purple mist and then soared back up to the big cloud, while Tomcat, his face completely drained of blood, began slowly tumbling over onto his side.
“Gaaaarret!” The jester’s shout reached me through the dense jelly of time, and I looked back at the second creature.
“This is the end!” The absurd thought flashed through my head.
I realized I’d hesitated for too long. The creature was approaching very rapidly, and I still hadn’t jumped aside to get out of its way.
“I’ll help,” a painfully familiar voice whispered inside my head.
And then the agony came. Hellish, unbelievable pain. My insides were seared with fire, something boiled and seethed up inside me . . . then it broke out and smashed silently into the creature, tossing me aside at the same time.
A piercing shriek.
The winged creature disintegrated like fog in the face of a hurricane.
The ground came rushing up to meet me.
Click! And time started speeding up again.
The impact of my landing knocked almost all the air out of my lungs. I was left cross-eyed from pain and wheezing hoarsely as I strained to restore my breathing. On both sides hands grabbed me by the elbows, lifted me up, and tried to set me on my feet, but my legs were too soft, as if I’d drunk too much young wine. Honeycomb swore as he and Loudmouth began dragging me away from the edge of the ravine.