The Spectral Blaze

Maybe she could force it to explain, but probably not by mystically shackling its will. That wasn’t her kind of wizardry. She’d likely have to beat the answer out of it.

She warned the wind that when she turned, the devil was likely to hurl some of its spines at her. It should be prepared to shield her with a vigorous gust. Her staff urged her to blast the spinagon with fire, and she told it to stop its nudging and do as she commanded. Then she spun in the air, raised the weapon over her head, and spoke the first word of an incantation.

The spined devil lashed one arm at her, just as though it could strike her a backhanded blow from far away. And in a sense, it could, for a flare of crimson force exploded from the ring she belatedly noticed on its forefinger. The blaze spiked pain through her head and collapsed her thoughts into confusion. Perhaps it hurt and addled the wind that was carrying her too, because it dropped her and she plummeted toward the ground.

She wrenched her mind back into focus and cried a word of command that was exactly that. The wind scooped her up just a few feet shy of the top branches of an elm tree.

Visible, the spinagon snarled, snatched quills from its shoulder, and threw them. They hurtled at Jhesrhi like arrows and, despite the rain, burst into flame in midflight.

She sensed that the wind was still recovering from the first attack. It couldn’t hold her aloft and shield her from the missiles too. She gasped a word of warding and lifted one wing of her cloak in front of her.

For an instant the wool became as strong as mail. Two quills punched all the way through anyway. One pierced her sleeve too and pricked her arm. A wave of dizziness assailed her.

No, curse it! Surely only a tiny drop of the devil’s poison had entered her blood, and she refused to let it stop her. She snarled a word intended to produce a surge of vigor, and it steadied her to a degree, enough to take in the fact that her cape was on fire.

She snapped the garment to shake the spines out of it. Then she grasped the flames with her will. From her staff’s perspective, controlling fire wasn’t as good as making it. But it was something, and the pseudo-mind inside the weapon crowed in satisfaction.

Guided by instinct as much as arcane knowledge, she drew the fire out of the cloth, into herself, and streamed it on into the staff to add to the rod’s store of power. As it passed through her, it painlessly burned away the rest of her vertigo and weakness, a benefit she hadn’t anticipated.

She peered around, using both her own eyes and the wind’s tactile way of seeing. She found the spinagon hovering not far from where it had been a moment before. When it recognized that its first barrage of spines hadn’t incapacitated her, it hurled a second.

But like her, the wind had recovered from that initial assault. Without even needing to be prompted, it howled and sent the quills tumbling off course.

The devil wheeled and fled in the direction of the heart of the city. Jhesrhi gave chase.

As she did, she asked another favor of the winds. Bellowing, they whirled themselves into a spi

The spined devil was caught in it too. The whirlpool of air sucked the nether creature down, or perhaps, tumbled and buffeted, the thing simply found it impossible to fly. Either way, it slammed down on the ground, and Jhesrhi allowed the vortex to disperse.

The spinagon glared up at her. It occurred to her that a winged predator probably wasn’t used to crouching on the ground while an enemy hovered overhead.

“You see how it is,” she called, raising her voice to make herself heard over the hiss and rattle of the rain. “I can kill you if you force the issue. But I don’t especially want to. Tell me why you’re here.”

The spined devil snarled.

“Someone sent you after me, didn’t they?” Jhesrhi persisted. “Why? What were you supposed to do?”

“All right,” growled the spinagon. Its guttural voice sparked a disorienting sort of synesthesia. Jhesrhi heard the words, but they also filled her nose with a smell like hot metal. “I’ll tell. For all the good-”

The creature exploded into motion. It lashed its wings and threw double handfuls of quills.

Fortunately Jhesrhi and the wind were ready. A blast of air tumbled the spines backward and smashed the devil back down onto the ground. Jhesrhi spoke to the earth and water that had blended to form mud, and the muck became even softer and sucked the spinagon down. The nether creature floundered, struggling to drag itself clear.

It likely could, too, but not for a few moments. Jhesrhi judged that she had time enough for a longer incantation.

Though her skill at binding devils and demons was rudimentary at best, she was somewhat more proficient at countermagic. She might be able to dissolve the constraints that the spinagon’s summoner had imposed, the compulsions that forbade it to answer her questions. And if she restored its free will, the fiend might see that it was in its best interests to do so.

She chanted percussive words full of hard consonants, and gripping her staff in both hands, swung it like a mallet she was using to break down a wall. The raindrops pouring down on the spinagon glowed white and steamed and sizzled on its hide.

That seemed promising, but it was still no guarantee that she’d overcome the other spellcaster’s power. She supposed she’d know in a moment. “Now will you talk to me?” she asked.

Still wallowing in mud, the creature was appeared to be trying. Its mouth moved but no sound came out, or at least, none she could hear through the clatter of the rain. Then it shrieked and snatched out two more handfuls of its quills.

Jhesrhi prepared to defend. But the spinagon stabbed the spines deep into its own torso and pitched forward onto its face.

Well, that settles that, she thought. Scowling in a

Not knowing made returning to the War College an even less appealing prospect than it would have been otherwise. But that was where Aoth’s strategy dictated Jhesrhi should be. So she murmured to the mud, and it churned, sucked down the spinagon’s body, and buried it completely. Then she flew back toward the fortress.

Like many mages, Oraxes had trained himself to be cognizant of his own internal states, and as a result, he often recognized a dream for what it was. Such was the case currently, and he was enjoying it. When he’d lived through the “raid” in reality, he’d been dry mouthed with anxiety that the ruse wouldn’t work. No longer. He could bask in his own cleverness as the pantomime unfolded.

He’d masked himself in Aoth’s appearance and made a common griffon look like Jet. Occasionally he even made it talk. Maintaining the illusions was tricky, but as he and his companions flew through the night toward the proper hillside in the Sky Riders, he knew that Meralaine had an even more difficult task. She had to make it look as if she were attacking to some effect while simultaneously controlling her puppets on the ground, the zombies and skeletons masquerading as a coven of traitorous necromancers and their undead minions.

She managed it, though. Swooping on the back of her griffon, stabbing with her wand, she actually threw the first attack, and jagged shards of something blacker even than the night rained down on the figures below.

The sellsword archers started loosing an instant later. As befitted supposed wizards, the zombies struck back with flares of power from the miscellany of arcane weapons and talismans Oraxes had found among Aoth’s belongings. And as instructed, the dead aimed the blasts at the drakkensteeds and the wyrmkeepers astride them. If anyone was going to get hurt, let it be them.