“By the stars,” Halcot hissed. “And they are ordinary folks, not wizards? I underestimated the Scholardom.”
“As did we all,” Olen said.
Morag, only an arm’s reach from Tildi, had his teeth gritted. He had had to switch his sword to his left hand. The right was swollen and red. A flurry of green robes, and Serafina alighted behind him.
“Do not jump, my friend,” she said. “I will heal you.”
The craggy-faced sergeant gave a curt nod. Serafina reached around to touch his right hand and murmured to herself. Tildi could not see more, but the guard’s back straightened and his blows doubled in speed. The wizardess moved on to other victims. Some were reduced to weeping on the deck with the pain. Tildi’s heart went out to them. She feared for them more than she did for her own well-being.
“Can we not protect them all, Master Olen?”
“At the moment, Tildi, you and what you hold are more important than anyone out there. Anyone. They knew their lives might be the price of this journey.” His face was grave. Tildi felt unworthy and wished she could give up her place to the man on his knees not five feet from her.
“There is my son!” Soliandur exclaimed. Tildi glanced to her right. The troubadour prince fought bareheaded in the midst of a group of Scholardom warriors. The small figure of Lady Inbecca was at his left hand. Grim-faced, she dragged her sword overhead and brought it down hard. A loud shriek told those inside the wards that she had made a kill. Several leaped up at her, but Magpie drove himself between them and her. Together they cudgeled and elbowed the beasts away from their faces. “Let me out of here, Master Wizard!”
“My lord, I cannot keep opening and closing the wards! They are our best defense.”
The dark eyes in their shadowed sockets flared as if the embers within them had been blown upon. “I have not come this far to see him or his dear lady die of poison. Either let me out or bring him in here.”
“We must solve this problem in its entirety, my lord,” Olen said, not moving to open the wards. At that moment, hundreds of the silver creatures smacked audibly into the protective spell. It let out a loud crackle, like the stem of a glass snapping. Tildi saw lines of the rune that formed it weakening. To her horror, the deck beneath them was changing, too, with none of them to keep an eye on rebuilding it. The fine, stout boards were thinning and turning black, as though they were charring. She cudgeled her terrified brain for the way the Corona’s rune had been before and reached out toward the floor.
“Tildi, no,” Olen snapped. “Only my spells must go through this ward, else it weaken. It is already fading against the onslaught.”
Tildi stopped, but not because of his admonition. She jumped up at the glimpse of movement beneath her feet. Was the deck falling apart already?
“Master!” she screamed.
Olen looked down. The kings followed his eyes and swore. Below them writhed dozens of the silver-skinned creatures. They had come up through the floor and twisted this way and that like maggots found under a rock.
A louder scream came from above, echoed by hoarse shouts from the fighters around them. Tildi was rocked off her feet by a heavy blow. A shadow had suddenly blocked the skies. She tried to stand up, but a second strike upset the three men, who were cast down with her. The thraiks had returned, and were trying to pound their way through the wards from above.
Teryn and Loisan barked orders, and the guardian force divided to deal with the second menace. The largest swordsmen pressed in to slash at the feet and wings of the thraiks. Bowmen leaped away to find high points to aim without endangering their fellows. Werewolves, with crazed yellow eyes, jumped high, seeking to drag the winged monsters down. Tildi could see nothing but frenzied movement all around her. The screaming seemed to rend her nerves. The eel-things stared at her. Their wide, glinting, avid eyes terrified Tildi. Her heart tried to pound its way out of her chest.
“We’re holed!” came a cry. Some of the werewolves pulled themselves away from the melee and disappeared from Tildi’s sight. Her conscience battered at her.
“Master, I should be able to fix the ship!”
“No, Tildi. We will solve this dilemma before we sink, or it will no longer matter. Let Haroun cope.”
A pair of dark eyes suddenly claimed her attention from the side of the bubble. Serafina had forced her way over.
“Master Olen!” she cried. “How can the thraiks be attacking her, master? The warding is the same we have been using for months. How can they see her?”
The elder wizard’s eyebrows rose, and his eyes widened.
“They cannot,” Olen said. “They never could. The silver creatures are guiding them! I understand! Fool that I am, I understand at last! Thank you, my dear.”
Magpie plunged his blade down and came up with one of the ribbonlike creatures impaled upon it. Its moonlike eyes fixed on him, and the small, sharp jaws snapped, though it hadn’t a chance to reach him with its teeth. He grinned ferally and brandished it at his father before flinging it away. The king of Orontae regarded him warmly, but turned to glare at Olen.
“What is it, Master Olen? I have never seen its like.”
“I do not know, my lord!” Olen said. “Tildi, show me these creatures.”
Tildi, glad for anything to focus upon, opened the book and mentally pleaded with it to show her the right page. As ever, it obliged, spinning in air, until she saw the rune for the ship. She spread out her hands, and it seemed to enlarge between them. She could pick out each of the people on board. At the center was the book, with the thraiks and the strange beasts surrounding it, only a dozen of the former but hundreds or thousands of the latter, and more crowding in all the time. Though she and Olen and the kings were closest to it, they were of less importance to whatever intelligence drove the book. She held out the book to Master Olen, and pointed to the shining image. The wizard crouched beside her, careful not to touch the parchment.
“Why can you not drive them away, the way you did the Madcloud?” Tildi asked.
“I cannot,” Olen said. “The Madcloud was but one entity. To surround it as we did was much less difficult. I am being thwarted. There is an intelligence driving them—their creator!”
“Can you see him?” Tildi asked, scanning the page as if she would find a pair of malicious eyes glaring back at her.
“No, I can’t, curse it. He blocks me again and again. I must find the vulnerability within the beasts, somehow . . .” Olen studied the rune. “This image I have never seen before. So well crafted. I regret this mightily, Tildi, but I have no choice. Achochta!”
The image on the book changed slightly. Instead of a host of eelcreatures, she saw one large one. Tildi realized Olen had asked to see the single sigil that represented the species, the master rune.
She felt a rush of air around her.
“Master, the wards are gone!”
“Our enemy makes his own move,” Olen exclaimed.
The silver creatures, as though summoned, surged upward, twining around their legs. Tildi lifted up a yard from the deck, but they clung to her, straining toward the book, wriggling out along both her arms. She screamed. The kings seized the creatures and threw them to the deck, following with blows of their swords. More and more tried to jump toward her. They screamed, and the thraiks answered. Two of the winged devils ceased their circling, and dove toward them.
Olen looked up. “There’s no time to waste!” He seized the knife from his belt and pricked his finger. A drop of blood appeared upon it. He drew that finger in a spiral across the head of the beast. The tip of his finger burned black from contact with the white parchment, but the eel-creatures began to jackknife and writhe on the deck. They shrieked angrily.
The thraiks stopped in midstoop and retreated high into the sky, keening their confusion. Olen, his hand shaking with pain, began to redraw the wards. He stopped, wiped them from the air, and began to start over.
“What did you do, Master Olen?” Soliandur asked.
; “These creatures guide the thraiks, my lords!” Olen said. “I have struck them blind.”
“That will hurt you like a stab wound, master,” Halcot said, eyeing the burned finger with sympathy. He turned to shout. “Healer! Come here, swiftly!”
Serafina heard him, and began to pick her way across the slippery and blood-soaked deck. With the creatures at least partially disarmed, the guards were taking out their anger and frustration, spitting as many of them as they could. The silver animals shrieked and struck out—blindly. Tildi shuddered at the slaughter.
The lack of wards had its own effect, though. The thraiks were no longer blind to the rune themselves. The lord thraik turned his mud-colored gaze upon Tildi. He cried out an order, and all twelve gathered like archers pulling back their strings. They closed their wings and descended toward her, their eyes glittering with the rune of the book she held in her lap.
“They shall not have you so easily,” Olen said, his face sweating with the strain. “Voshte!” He brought his hands together in a thunderclap over his head. The winds stopped as if Tildi had shut a door. The thraiks wheeled above them, shrieking with fury.
Knemet shrieked out his own fury.
He had been watching for his moment. He shouted his orders.
The kotyrs were undeterred that the crew threw them into the river. They could swim as well as any of their fish forebears. They could also burrow, using the means of other ancestors. At his command, they had twisted their way through a timber in the hull that had thinned and darkened like the rest of the ship and flowed upward, twining along beams and up ladders. Passage by so many prized the board into splinters. Water flooded in behind them, but what of that? They wouldn’t drown. They made for the Compendium. Its rune glowed through the solid but less real deck. The kotyrs followed the beacon, as many of them getting as close to it as they could. The thraiks hovered high, ready.
A bark of command from the lord thraik set the winged beasts into motion. Down, down they plummeted. Every face on the ship was upturned with terror. They still could not believe their doom was upon them.
Suddenly his vision went black. Knemet clawed at his eyes. The pain was enough to bring him back to his stone chamber. His own eyesight had not been destroyed, but that of the kotyrs had been!
“Who will interfere with my creation? Who dares?” Knemet summoned the rune that he had used to create the kotyrs and examined it. A line was there that had not been before. His perfect design! He tried to change the rune back, but he could not remove that line. He tried again and again. Either the wizard with whom he dueled at this great distance was fast and prescient, or he had changed the rune in the Compendium itself. No! They had not only been struck blind, but all the parts of the mind and eyes that controlled sight had been destroyed. It had been made real, too real to undo easily.
He was losing time. He could still hear through the kotyrs’ ears the wailing of the thraiks, who shouted that they had lost their prey. With the kotyrs struck blind, he could no longer guide the thraiks by sight.
“You know the rune; go to it!” Knemet shouted at them.
The lord thraik bellowed out a protest. They could not see the rune any longer.
He cursed. That other wizard was his enemy for now and for all time remaining. “You know the smell of the book. You were close enough to take it! I should not have to guide you! Go to where it was! The wizardesses have it! Take it and return! Return to me.”
Chapter Twenty-six
he walls of the protective spell seemed different: thinner and more brittle, and almost blue in hue. Olen knelt beside Tildi, his hands trembling as if with a fever. He noticed her look of concern, and his mustache lifted at the left corner in a wry smile.
“Our opponent has made intelligent strikes, Tildi. He is trying to frustrate me even as I frustrate him. Look how cleverly he waited until his silver snakes were ready before he brought down the wardings. Magic is not without its price. I am weary, but I will not stop until we are out of danger. Neither will Serafina.”
“Let me help, master,” Tildi said.
“You must not,” Olen said firmly. “All your strength must be intact in case he beats through our defenses. You must be ready to defend the book against all his tricks.” He grimaced and closed his eyes for a moment. “He has found me.” Tildi saw tendrils surround Olen’s rune. They changed rapidly, and Tildi tried to guess what was happening. “Guard yourself,” he ordered.
Outside the small shell, the complement of both ships dispatched or kicked aside the now helpless eel-creatures. The huge, round eyes gaped, fixed on nothing. That looked almost more terrifying to Tildi than when they were focused upon her.
The thraiks had been called into play now, seeing or unseeing. Tearing the air with their cries, they descended, their green-black wings blocking the light. Red blood splashed off the spell’s dome as their claws found purchase in the flesh of victims. A man in Halcot’s livery fell against Tildi’s shelter, half his throat torn away. Tildi screamed. Olen extended the protection over the man and stretched both hands over his body. Sadly, the wizard shook his head. The man’s eyes were already dulling in death. Tildi wept for him, knowing his rune in the book was changing.
Tildi saw a shadow she knew rear above them and crack a whip. The lash stung one of the thraiks in the leg and brought forth a wail.
“That is for you and your foul master!” Rin shrilled. The whip sang again.
The thraik struck back with its terrifying claws. Rin avoided their grasp, but a werewolf beside her was not so lucky. The flying monster grabbed the brown-furred female and lifted it to its jaws to bite her head off. The female fought back, tearing at the beast with her own teeth. A score of her relations leaped up, dragging the thraik down. They clawed and bit it until it let go its prey. Bleeding from countless small wounds, it thrust them away and reached for another victim, Romini, one of the Scholardom, and hastily lifted him too high for any of the others to reach. Many rushed to follow its path, shouting encouragement to the knight, but the thraik toyed with them, making them chase it up and back over the length of the ship. Tildi could see the malicious gleam in its eyes. Suddenly it dropped him onto the heads of the crowd. He landed on the stairs and sat up, clutching his ribs. Three of the knights hurried to aid him. The rest of the thraiks wreaked similar mischief, wounding where they could and causing confusion.
Two of the thraiks hung in the air high above the fight, too high for arrows to strike.
“What are they waiting for?” Tildi asked wildly.
“Never fear,” Olen said. “They cannot touch you. They cannot see you.”
Serafina had also noticed the two thraiks. “Idir!” she cried, pointing at the nearer thraik.
Its wings stopped hovering, and it fell like a stone into the river. The wizardess pointed at the lord thraik. “Idir!”
Halcot’s scarlet face almost matched his tunic. “Master Wizard, destroy them all!”
Olen looked perturbed, as if the king had roused him from deep thought. “What would you have me do, highness? A windstorm? A clap of thunder? We are as vulnerable to such a working as they would be while they are among us. The ship is already damaged. It could sink if I drew down a force of nature like that. Mistress Serafina is doing an admirable job of picking them off one at a time.”
“I want them all gone!”
“As soon as opportunity arises, my lord. I do not want to further endanger the lives of those who trust us.”
Suddenly the thraik seemed to lose patience with the game. It flicked its wings and arched high into the air, turning over and over. It let out a lazy, derisive squawk. As many of the others that could still fly suddenly disengaged from the fray. They spread out across the heavens, then flew outward. The defenders backed to protect Tildi. They did not know which way to look.
“Ah, at last,” Olen said. He stood up and moved outside the guardian spell. “Brace yourself, Tildi.” He stretched out his arms and pointed the head of his staff straight up
ward.
As swift as the wind itself, the thraiks closed in on the ship, claws and teeth bared.
“Archers, loose!” cried Sharhava.
Arrows flew outward like the spokes of a giant wheel. It was too easy for the thraiks to avoid them. The defenders crouched against the coming attack.
“Ah,” Olen said. “At last. Fornlau cnetech voshad!”
He brought his staff down upon the deck. The wood splintered underneath its foot, but Tildi felt something like a tide rush outward from that small, round point. In seconds, the ship was surrounded by an enormous rose-tinted bubble.
The thraiks could not stop in time. They crashed into the surface. It flung them outward again. At least one seemed to have been knocked insensible by the impact. It hung limply on the air for a moment, its dark, translucent wings billowing upward, then dropped into the water. The werewolf crew howled and laughed. The human defenders shouted for victory.
The lord thraik recovered its wits before the rest. It let out a terrible scream.
The eel-creatures that remained alive responded, their voices piercing Tildi’s delicate hearing like knives.
The lord thraik screamed again. Its followers flew inward toward the bubble. Pools of black rent the sky as they vanished into them. The darkness fled, leaving only pink-tinted sunshine around them.
“Well, thank the Father,” Halcot began.
His gratitude was premature. Blackness blossomed within the confines of the spell itself. The thraiks struck them all like a tornado coming from all directions. The defenders were thrown in all directions, cannoning into one another. Olen shouted and threw a hand, not at the thraiks, but at King Halcot. The defenders struggled to regain their footing and strike at the assailants. The thraiks were no longer there to strike. They had lifted into the air, two victims in their grasp. One held Rin around the striped barrel of her body. The other clutched Lakanta to him like a child’s doll.
A Forthcoming Wizard Page 42