The masked witches

Folk who weren t berserkers imagined that once a warrior had evoked the rage, he couldn t really think at all. But that wasn t altogether true, at least if the berserker in question had mastered the art as well as Vandar had. He discerned that, although he and his brothers were overcoming the foes in front of them, it was taking too long. More and more undead spellcasters were emerging from the interior of the fortress to attack from the wall-walks, and it was difficult for the embattled men on the ground to do much about it.

The attackers needed their own spellcasters to counter the threat. Where in the name of the Golden Horn were they?

TEN

As it thumped back down to the ground, the ice troll grabbed Jhesrhi s other arm, immobilizing it as well. She cried out in dread and revulsion. The creature opened its reeking mouth wide and lifted her toward its glistening, crooked fangs.

With a thought, she brought the fire that was a part of her leaping forth to cloak her body. The troll howled and flung her away.

Foes were still pressing close on either side. Keenly aware of the danger they represented, full of sheer loathing at their proximity, at the possibility that they too might touch her, she told the wind that still hovered close to her to whisk her back up into the air.

It tried. Her feet left the ground. But a mesh of thick gluey strands like a giant spider web appeared on top of her to stick her to the earth. The wind strained but couldn t break the adhesion.

Sneering, she called forth her flame once more, for as every apprentice knew, that was the counter to such a trap. But the mesh didn t burn.

But at least fire could protect her from the ring of foes that were about to strike at her from every side. Crying a word of power, and straining to shift her entangled staff sufficiently to write a rune on the air, she hurled flame in all directions.

The blast threw some of her assailants off their feet and sent others reeling backward, burning and screaming. But one remained: a scaly, reddish, long-eared thing that only looked a little singed. Leering, it reached to claw her through the mesh.

Suddenly the beast staggered and fell to one knee as Vandar drove his sword into its back. He hacked repeatedly at its neck, and with the third cut, the lump of a head with its wide fanged mouth and round yellow eyes fell off.

Vandar sawed at the mesh, and the red sword parted the sticky cables easily. Jhesrhi rattled off a counterspell and finished what the blade had begun. The net vanished.

Flinging drops of blood and pale ichor off his weapon, Vandar slashed it through the air to indicate the battlements. Kill! he snarled. Maybe, with his rage possessing him, that was as much speech as he could manage.

In any case, it was enough. She understood what he wanted to convey. Despite the attackers best efforts, there were too many undead up there. Masked, cloaked durthans were summoning translucent telthor wolves and bears. Nar demonbinders were drawing fiends from talismanic disks of iron, brass, and silver. There were even a couple of Raumvirans or what she suspected to be Raumvirans with magic leaping and sparking between their fingers. Insectlike mechanical creatures crouched on their shoulders and at their feet.

Vandar was right: Such creatures couldn t be allowed to work their magic without interference. Hoping that she was casting at the same magus who d dropped the mesh on top of her, Jhesrhi hurled flame at the battlements. Meanwhile, Vandar and two of his brothers surrounded her to shield her from enemies on the ground.

The vrock dived, then beat its charcoal-colored wings that glinted an odd magenta color when they caught Amaunator s light exactly right. Climbing once more, it wheeled toward Cera, Aoth, and Jet.

Beneath it, flame leaped forth seemingly from nowhere to shroud Jhesrhi s willowy body from head to toe. The ice troll that had been about to bite her roared and flung her away instead.

Cera was glad to see that, because she and her companions wouldn t be able to immediately help the elementalist. The vulture demon meant to intercept them, and they were going to have to deal with it first.

Cera asked the Keeper for strength and swung her weapon in an arc to point at the vrock. A flying, glowing mace appeared and bashed at the creature s head. Aoth pointed his spear and rattled off words of power, and a shrill whine covered the roar of battle for a heartbeat or so. Even though the noise was prodigiously loud, it somehow didn t hurt Cera s ears, but it slammed the vulture demon lower and made it flail like someone had stuck a sword in it.

Jet instantly furled his wings and dived. Astride his back, Cera couldn t see everything that happened next, but she felt the thump as the griffon s eagle talons stabbed into the demon, then felt the muscles in his hindquarters working as the leonine hind feet raked and raked and raked.

As the griffon clung to the tanar ri in his attack, they plummeted together. Though Cera trusted him, she gasped when it looked like they were going to crash down among the frenzied combatants below. But with a sudden heaving motion, Jet flung the vrock off his talons, extended his wings with a snap, and leveled off. Cera slumped and closed her eyes in relief just for an instant. When she opened them again, the air was gray with some sort of dust.

In another heartbeat, the wind Jhesrhi had conjured before the berserkers and stag warriors advanced on the fortress, a wind that was still howling and gusting, blew the stuff away. But even as it did so, Cera was jolted by terror. What was she doing there, high above the ground on the back of a fearsome beast? If Jet smashed to earth, she would be killed, and that had nearly happened just moments before. She let go of her mace, and only the leather thong that looped it to her wrist kept her from losing it not that she would have cared if she had. All that mattered was freeing up her hand to unbuckle the straps that kept her from jumping to safety.

Hurrying made her hands clumsy, and she fumbled with the harness. In front of her, Aoth thumped his chest and made his mail clink. Despite her panic, Cera realized he was invoking the magic of one of his tattoos.

Then he reached behind him and gripped Cera s thigh.

We re poisoned! he shouted. Purge yourself, and Jet, too!

His words didn t take away her fear, but they pushed it down enough so that she was able to think and to remember the dust. The vulture demon must have somehow released it into the air even as Jet was ripping it apart.

She calmed and centered herself as best she could, then drew down the light and warmth of the Yellow Sun. It filled her and quelled her fear, and then, with a touch, she passed the blessing on to Jet.

The griffon stopped veering madly back as forth as though trying to dodge a peril that only he could see. Instead, he screeched a challenge and lashed his wings as he tried to rise above the half a dozen entirely real imps that, Cera observed, had come flying at him and his riders while they were all distracted.

Blue and green shimmers rippled along the head of Aoth s spear. He snarled a word of power, jabbed the weapon through the air, and darts of light leaped from it to pierce two of the imps. Screaming shrilly, they dropped.

Another imp flew at Cera, its fanged mouth open wide, and its prehensile tail cocked to stab with the sting at the tip. She would have had to strike across her body to bash it with her mace, so she swatted it with her buckler instead. The gilded steel clanked, and the little devil tumbled away.

Meanwhile, Jet snapped another in two with his beak.

The remaining imps vanished, and Cera instinctively winced to imagine them flitting at her like angry wasps when she couldn t see them to protect herself. But Aoth could see them, and since he could, Jet could, too. With his spear crackling with destructive power, the war mage thrust to the right, and the two pieces of a dead imp appeared in midfall. The griffon caught another in his clashing beak, gnashed it up, and spat it out.