"The diabolist and the sorcerer are invisible," Isiem told him. "Thirty, forty yards west of the camp. They know we're coming."
"Can you kill them?" Red Chest asked.
"Maybe. I can't be sure. Uskonos has guards."
"Fierce Spear. Black Toes. Go with the human. Kill these wizards and their guards." Red Chest lowered his bone-crested mask. The other itaraak slid their masks on as well. As one, they readied their spears.
Isiem blinked, startled by the warleader's trust, but he nodded jerkily and aimed himself downward. As he plunged through the wet veil of the clouds, the two warriors following close on his heels, he heard Red Chest roar behind him.
"Warriors!" the itaraak shouted, pitching his voice loudly enough to reach the Hellknights below. His warriors howled and battered the hafts of their spears together as they dove, adding to the clamor. "To me!"
Wizards, Isiem thought dizzily as he dove, the air rushing past his ears, to me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tokarai Springs
His guess was on the mark. As Isiem plunged toward the ground, he saw a shimmer like a heat wave in the air, and a quick ghostly glimpse of a corpulent face turned upward toward Red Chest and his charging strix. Uskonos Greentongue was on the attack, and his invisibility was failing.
Red Chest and his strix had broken their sky cover. Shouting challenges and insults, the itaraak hurled a storm of spears down at the Chelish camp, but the soldiers were ready to meet them. The signifers wove spells of unnatural darkness and blinding mists to cloud the sky, while the soldiers raised their shields overhead as the strix rushed over their camp. Flint-tipped spears clanged against steel, creating an ear-shattering clamor. One soldier, a red-haired woman who seemed scarcely more than a girl in her leather and heavy chain, was skewered through the calf. She fell, dropping her shield, and two more spears finished her off. None of the others was hurt.
Isiem couldn't see the sorcerer's bodyguards or Velenne—if, indeed, they were with Uskonos— but it didn't matter. He willed himself to fall faster, hoping to catch his target before the tattooed sorcerer realized he was coming.
Fifty feet above the man, Isiem could hear his chant. He recognized the spell at once; he'd prepared it himself.
Which meant he could stop it.
Even as he continued his dive, the Nidalese wizard began reciting the incantation in garbled form, switching its verses and spitting the words out backward. He took a pinch of bat guano and sulfur from his pocket. The wind swept most of his materials away, but he kept enough between his fingers to crush the guano into the sulfur, reducing them to powder rather than the tiny lump that would ordinarily beome the fireball's heart.
The instant that he saw Uskonos release his nascent spell—a blue-edged bubble of flame darting over the broken rocks—Isiem dropped his own pinch of dust atop it, trapping the sorcerer's fireball as neatly as a fisherman netting a trout. The fiery globe sputtered out, its magics torn apart by the distorting effects of Isiem's counterspell, and Isiem felt the backlash of energy wash over him as both casters popped suddenly back into full visibility.
The tattooed sorcerer looked up, snarling at Isiem...and the strix accompanying Isiem hurled their skirmishing spears directly at him.
Neither struck home. Instead, each spear jerked as it thudded into apparently solid air; bright red blood sprayed the rocks underfoot, steaming in the weak morning sun. Uskonos retreated between the hovering spears, his eyes wide and face pale under the glimmering tattoos as the spears jerked about and faded from view.
The bodyguards. Although both remained invisible, the strix's disappearing spears and their own hot blood marked their positions. Fierce Spear and Black Toes touched down, trying to rush past them to get at the sorcerer, while Isiem, struggling to maintain the advantage of the air, pulled up sharply from his dive. His toes knocked heart-shaped yellow leaves from the topmost branches of a tree.
Volleys of glowing motes and crackling acid shot up into the air, streaking through their clouds of blinding fog, as the Hellknight signifers answered the strix's challenge. Others sent pillars of wind gusting upward, knocking the strix formation awry.
Paralictor Cerallius had rallied some of the Chelish soldiers along with his signifers and, while exchanging erratic shots with Red Chest and his strix, was rushing to the sorcerer's aid. The swirl of combat would soon engulf them ...but Black Toes and Fierce Spear stayed on the ground, unwilling to give up their quarry and unable to fly away without opening themselves to blows from Uskonos's bodyguards.
Isiem tried to buy them time. When the soldiers were almost within spear's reach of the two strix on the ground, he spread his fingers outward and snapped off a quick spell.
Fire burst from his fingertips in a hissing fan, striking at the Chelaxians. The nearest pair, a man and woman each clad in chainmail and fiend-faced helms, were caught squarely by the flames. Hair and flesh burned; steel links glowed gold. Their visors flared crimson, as though the infernal visages of their helms were breathing hellfire around their faces.
The man screamed, dropping to the ground and clawing at the suddenly red-glowing oven of his helm. The woman, intent on the strix, had been looking away from Isiem when the fan of fire struck. Flames caught her shoulder and torso, curling down her left arm and licking at her steel-rimmed shield. She grunted and staggered through the pain, continuing on her course.
The other soldiers were barely singed. Maralictor Adarai, a tall man who cut an imposing figure in heavy black-enameled plate, kept prudently back from the fore; it seemed he was aware of their plan. Isiem spiraled upward, trying not to collide with Red Chest's strix, who were diving down to attack.
Driven from the sky by the signifers' enchanted winds and blinding obstacles, the itaraak were taking to the ground. They split their forces, sending some to approach on foot while others skirted around the fog banks and fought past the buffeting winds to continue their aerial assault.
The Chelaxians set their shields to defend against the ground forces. The airborne strix cast spears down in a stony rain, hammering the soldiers and the signifers alike. This time, with the enemy's defenses turned away, their weapons struck true. Several soldiers collapsed under the hail of spears and did not rise again. One of the signifers fell as well. A hurled spear caught the paralictor under his right pauldron, drawing blood; another struck and vanished into one of the still-unseen mutes.
The ground party of itaraak landed alongside Fierce Spear and Black Toes, turning to prevent the Chelaxians from rescuing their beleaguered sorcerer. Swiftly they unstrapped the heavier thrusting spears from their backs and readied to meet the surviving soldiers and Cerallius's signifers.
Out of bravado or simple mistake, a young warrior named Blue Feather, who had just earned her mask, was first to step into the paralictor's path. The Hellknight carried a slim, silvery longsword etched with leaping flames all along its blade, and as he swung the blade at Blue Feather, those flames burst into life. White and bright as the noontide sun, they enveloped the sword and blanched Blue Feather's painted mask. She raised her spear courageously, trying to block the swing.
She never had a chance. At the same instant that he struck at her, Paralictor Cerallius released a spell with his other hand. Electricity arced across the young strix, convulsing her muscles and sparking along the bits of metal and bone in her armor. Blue Feather's hands clenched helplessly on the spear's haft. Stunned by the magic, she froze for a single fatal instant, and the paralictor's sword sliced into her throat so deeply that it nearly severed her head. Blood fountained over his snarling devil's mask, sizzling in the burning aura of his blade. The strix around him fell back, visibly shaken by the savagery of the paralictor's attack.
"Rally, my itaraak!" the rokoa called. Isiem had not seen her approach. Neither, it seemed, had anyone else. Perhaps she had been invisible. But now she showed herself openly, walking—not flying—toward the fray from the south. She leaned heavily on a gnarled staff strung with oblon
g beads and the small painted skulls of birds. Her ragged, graying feathers and blind white eyes gave her a look of helpless decrepitude that, in the face of so much bloody chaos, was itself frightening. For such a venerable lady to walk into such danger seemed madness, even with five itaraak to escort her.
But walk into it she did, and even Red Chest seemed to draw courage from her presence. "Itarii!" he shouted, burying his spear in a soldier's throat. The cries of the warriors, and the screams of the dying, followed Isiem as he flew steeply back up. The sun blinded him briefly during the ascent, but he heard Uskonos begin to shape a second fireball, followed by the rokoa countering his unfinished spell with an imperious croak and a rattle of her staff.
Isiem spun through the clouds and began a slower, more controlled glide back toward the fight. Paralictor Cerallius was surrounded by strix, but he faced them unafraid. Bellowing a war cry, he swung at them with a scything horizontal sweep, cleaving through their ranks as though the itaraak were so many stalks of wheat to be harvested. Fire flew from his other hand, fanning across the strix. His enemies fell broken and burning, at least two of them dead before they touched the ground. None could reach the signifers behind him.
He's too strong. None of the itaraak could hope to match the paralictor's vicious blend of spells and steel. Isiem pointed at the man's back, uttering a short incantation. A ray of shadow sprang from his hand, striking Cerallius between the shoulders. The magic spread over and through his armor like smoke, leaving the Hellknight wracked by an unnatural, shivering chill. He stumbled, lowering his longsword fractionally as it suddenly became heavier in his hand.
Red Chest did not miss the chance: he stabbed at the paralictor, twisting his spear as it screeched along the Hellknight's breastplate. The flint tip shattered against the metal, but enough remained to punch into a weak point between the buckles on the paralictor's left side. Cursing, Cerallius jerked away.
Isiem lost sight of the melee as he flew past and the remaining aerial strix swept by underneath him, obscuring his view, but he did not think Red Chest had dealt a mortal blow. He'd struck with his weight on the wrong foot, and the angle had looked too glancing.
And, indeed, when he circled back, the paralictor was still standing in a ring of broken foes. Slower, weaker, but fighting gamely on. Blistered, blackened blood spattered the rocks around his feet. The Chelish soldiers were fighting in disciplined pairs and trios, forcing the strix into reach of the paralictor's deadly swings, while the signifers harried them with frost and fire. The itaraak on the ground were losing numbers steadily.
A short distance away, the sorcerer Uskonos flickered in and out of reality, evading the jabs of the strix around him. They punched their spears into the air where he'd been a second earlier, but they seldom hit the man. His mute bodyguards were down and dead, as was Fierce Spear. Black Toes lay beside his fallen comrade, gasping bloody bubbles that grew weaker by the second.
Out of nowhere, a flurry of incandescent red motes slammed into the dying strix. Black Toes jerked spasmodically and went still. Moments later, Velenne materialized, shaking off the last of her invisibility and tucking a silver-capped wand back into her sleeve. She had taken up a position thirty feet away with her back to a high rock formation, offering some protection from the aerial strix's fly-by attacks and preventing anyone from coming at her from behind.
"Good of you to join us," Uskonos said caustically, dodging another spear.
"You seemed to be doing well enough on your own." The diabolist raised her hands, jeweled rings twinkling in the gray morning light, and gauged the progress of the oncoming strix. A few of the itaraak had broken away from their fruitless harrying of the sorcerer and were advancing toward her. Maralictor Adarai moved to intercept them, but she cautioned him aside with a small shake of her head.
Uskonos didn't seem to notice. "Well enough for you to waste time finishing off a bird that was already dead?"
"I like to be sure of my enemies." There was a smile in Velenne's voice; Isiem heard it clearly, even if he could not see her face. She whispered a short chant, gesturing toward the itaraak. They cried out in terror as she released her spell. Tripping over the rocks in their haste, the strix fled from the diabolist's phantoms. Some even hurled their spears aside in fear.
Blinded by fright, they ran straight into the maralictor's soldiers. Adarai and his men made swift work of them, chopping through feathers and flesh with grim efficiency. Isiem, no stranger to bloodshed, had to turn his eyes away.
He refocused on the paralictor. From fifty feet overhead, Isiem cast the same spell that Velenne had used to kill Black Toes. Spectral missiles, opaque as agates, erupted from his fingertips and slammed into Cerallius.
It wasn't enough. Bleeding from innumerable wounds and favoring his right leg heavily, the Hellknight nevertheless stood victorious over a field of fallen strix. Red Chest's headless body lay at his feet, surrounded by the spear-slain bodies of three Chelish soldiers. More than half the crimson-clad signifers were down, but the only itaraak still living were those in the air—and the rokoa, who was retreating with the last of her guard. As soon as she had enough room to manuever, she too sought the safety of the sky.
Isiem wanted to curse them. Fools. Stupid, prideful fools! If Red Chest had believed him—if the itaraak had focused on Uskonos and the paralictor alone, instead of stupidly trying to engage the entire Chelish force at once—they might have won. Instead they had lost their leader and half their number, and were retreating from the battle in disarray, even though victory might yet lie within their grasp.
But the strix weren't retreating. They wheeled sharply and came around again, brave and foolish and utterly determined. The rokoa rallied them again, calling on her masked warriors to defend Windspire and save their kin.
And they responded, at first haltingly but then with proud conviction. Unerringly they plunged through the signifers' shrouds of fog and shadow. This time, the strix all landed among the Hellknight arcanists, pulling out their heavy spears as they skidded to a noisy stop on the rocks. A blinding cloud of dust and grit plumed up around them, blown to greater heights by the bellows of their wings. Only the rokoa stayed aloft.
Uskonos hooked his thumbs together and fanned his fingers, preparing to unleash his own fan of flames upon the strix. Just as the first sparks began to gather, sparkling hazily through the obscuring dust, the rokoa croaked her counterspell again, and the fire died in infancy.
The sorcerer shrieked in high-pitched frustration. Veins pulsed in his neck and forehead; his flesh was abnormally ruddy, almost livid, under his lattice of tattoos. "Help me!" he cried at Velenne. "Kill them!"
She nodded, beginning a new spell. Isiem lost sight of her in the dust cloud, but he heard the infernal words roll from her tongue and felt the world shudder around him as she tore a small rift in its fabric. A summons. She's calling devils to her side.
Three fiends boiled up from the cloud of dust, shrieking and beating their double pairs of scabrous wings. This type Isiem recognized. Gaav. Their heads were yellowed, monstrous skulls fringed by broken horns, their bodies scaled and muscular. An odor of pestilence hung thick around them. There was no particular cunning in the empty sockets of their eyes, no sense in the constant chittering that hissed from their hollow tongueless mouths. They existed to serve, not to think.
As the gaav circled defensively around the diabolist, the injured paralictor made one last rush against the strix. Flicking his longsword out in low, swift arcs, Cerallius forced them back to the very edge of the dust cloud, then retreated behind the ranks of his signifers.
The strix couldn't reach him from there, but the Chelaxians were massed closely enough for Isiem to catch them all in a single spell. He regretted using his fireball to negate Uskonos's; it was the better strategy, he was sure, but the clustered signifers made a tempting target.
Still, he didn't have to pass it up entirely. Plucking a pouch of ground mica from a pocket, Isiem murmured a few short phrases and then s
cattered the sparkling powder in the Hellknights' direction. As the dust drifted down, his magic seized it, enhancing it to a cloud of shimmering motes that coated the red-cloaked arcanists in a curtain of blinding gold.
Now the advantage was on the strix's side, and the itaraak were as ruthless in exploiting it as the Chelaxians had been in crushing their fear-spelled comrades earlier. As their spears darted through the dust, punching past lowered shields and spell-woven armor, Uskonos turned his gaze back to the flying rokoa.
"Had enough of you," he mumbled thickly, knotting his right hand into a fist. Crackling, incandescent energy engulfed his arm from the elbow downward, forming into a spectral echo of that fist. Uskonos punched upward and the spectral fist flew off, streaking at the rokoa like a burning bowshot. The impact of it cracked a wing and an arm, and the elderly strix came pinwheeling out of the sky.
Flapping her good wing frantically, she managed to soften her landing rather than crashing full force against the ground, but she still hit hard enough to make Isiem wince—and, worse, fell within easy reach of the melee around the signifers.
"Finish her!" Uskonos shouted at Velenne, his entire body quivering. "Do something!" His hands trembled violently; sweat dripped down his cheeks and hung from the scraggly strands of his beard like a fringe of glass beads. Whether because of rage or terror or withdrawal from his toad toxins, the sorcerer seemed to be losing control of his faculties.
Isiem couldn't hear the diabolist's response. He was too busy plunging toward the fray himself.
He had to save the rokoa. Without her, the strix's resolve would crumble. Even with her, it might; the itaraak would sacrifice their offense to save her, and then the Chelaxians would crush them. All their losses would have been for naught.
But if he could protect her, the others could fight on.
The rokoa had fallen dangerously near the paralictor. Isiem landed and hurried toward her, afraid that she might try to crawl away on her own and thereby draw the man's attention. He crouched and reached for her cautiously, trying to stay out of the fray ...but his caution was wasted, for a longsword beat an arm's reach every time.
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