The Lone Warrior (50 page)

Yachi’s voice screamed an order and from the cliff tops arched a shower of arrows. When Cenda raised both hands, every arrow burst into flame.

Ah, so Walker had been right. The djinns
did
die. Mehcredi bared her teeth in a grin of savage delight. The high, wavering shrieks hurt her ears, but it was infinitely satisfying to watch the creatures explode in glittering shards that twisted slowly in the wind and fluttered to the valley floor.

The volleys of arrows forced the djinns out of the air, down between the walls of stone. As they swooped and flew, Cenda threw her head back, opened her mouth and screamed. Fire burst out of her throat, then from her whole body. She looked horribly like a figure on a pyre, yet her flesh was not consumed. A huge fireball blossomed above her head, floating in the cradle of the wind.

Gray stood so close he must be singed, but he only stared at the fire witch, his handsome face contorted with anxiety. Beside him, his shadow danced, never still. Gods, so it was true about the shadow!

But there was no time to think of that. Erik’s mouth moved, his hands weaving shapes in the air. The fireball flattened out, expanding across the width of the ravine. With a roar like a thousand angry tygres, it dropped and sped forward, a moving wall of flame. Mehcredi shot to her feet.

The djinns writhed and died, screaming and stinking. At Mehcredi’s elbow, Prue hopped from one foot to the other, waving her fists. Rose stood quietly, her hands gripped together at her waist, her eyes dark pits in the pale oval of her face.

Abruptly, Walker dropped to his knees as if he’d been shot by a djinn stone. His head dropped, his hair falling forward to obscure his face. Mehcredi started forward, then stopped when he reached out to place the palms of both hands flat on the ground.

The rock beneath her feet trembled, very slightly.

Walker looked up, his gaze focused on the southern end of the gorge. Mehcredi saw his lips move. A huge boulder on the cliff edge began to rock on its base. With a kind of ponderous grace, it teetered toward open space, then turned end over end, spinning out into the open air. It landed with an echoing crash that shivered in the bones.

Djinns sprayed in all directions and were forced down by another volley of burning arrows.

The first boulder was followed by another, and another, until the valley reverberated with thunderous impacts and the hungry roar of flame. The air swirled with fire and fragmenting djinns and vicious eddies of wind and dust and chips of rock. Mehcredi bent double, coughing. The Brother had risen, bloodred and sullen, casting a hellish glow over the scene. Holy Sister, it was the end of the world.

But she was wrong. With a long grating rumble, the cliff at the southern entrance to the pass split from bottom to top, a dark fissure opening like a crooked wound. So slowly they could have been mired in treacle, tons of rock peeled away, falling hundreds of feet in sandy arabesques. When the dust settled, the opening had disappeared beneath a wall of rubble. The pass was blocked, the djinns trapped inside, the air above them filled with flaming arrows.

Deiter’s trap!

But there was no end to the godsbedamned creatures. Even trapped in the narrow defile, at the mercy of Cenda’s fire and Erik’s wind, the remnants of them continued to press mindlessly north toward Guardpass, the only barrier a group of untried defenders. On a guard’s barked order, the ranks of burning staffs moved, the outer ranks thrusting outward, the inner upward. Seen from the vantage point of the cave, the patterns they made were eerily beautiful, like a shoal of phosphorescent fish moving through a dusky sea.

It was extraordinarily effective—until the first formation shuddered and broke. Immediately, it was overwhelmed, submerged under a blanket of boiling air and another kind of screaming began—highpitched, agonized and all too human.

After that, there was little time to watch, less time to think.

By unspoken agreement, the village healer laid hands on the wounded as they were carried in, using her experience to assess their chances. Cold-blooded, but necessary.

Mehcredi lost count of the number of mouths she pried open to pour in a concentrated sleeping potion. Without a moment’s hesitation, she used her knee to keep them still or shoved a smooth stick between snapping teeth. Her fingers slippery with blood, she tied endless tourniquets, knowing it was hopeless, but driven to try.

To save her sanity, she closed her ears to the sounds from the back of the cave where the healer amputated at top-speed with the desperate, brutal efficiency of a battlefield surgeon, assisted by the two biggest and strongest of the queen’s guards.

The sweet, fetid smell of blood combined with the djinns’ stench to produce a charnel house stink that filled her nose, invaded her head. As the healer labored, bloody to the elbows, she cursed in a constant, vicious undertone audible even over the curses and screams that rose and swirled around the rocky ceiling. The same chilling sounds drifted up from the gorge, muted slightly by the thickness of rock.

There would be the butcher’s work of mercy to do soon. Mehcredi shuddered.

Time passed in a delirium of horror.

“
Null witch!
”

Deiter’s yell echoed around the stone walls like a thunderclap, thrumming with Magick.

Oh Sister,
Erik!
Prue leaped to her feet, abandoning an elderly man who clutched at his forearm, whining between his teeth. Without a backward look, she ran headlong out of the cave.

In the sudden silence, Mehcredi blinked, rubbing her palms down her trews.

Oh gods, Walker!

The roll of bandages slipped from her fingers and rolled merrily across the ground, but Mehcredi had darted after Prue. No more than five steps from the cave, she stopped as if she’d run into a wall.

On the opposite side of the gorge, stood a man with meaty shoulders and a darkly shadowed jaw. Djinns whirled about his head, detectable as individual whirlwinds thickening the air. Something about them stretched Mehcredi’s brain until it hurt, as if they were too alien, too
other
, to be real.

Slowly, trembling, she came forward. Walker was there, still safe, and that was all that mattered.

As Prue hurled herself into Erik’s arms, the stranger’s eyes narrowed. “Well, well. If it isn’t Prue McGuire,” he said conversationally. The wind had dropped and his voice carried perfectly in the night air, with the same Magickal reverberation as Deiter’s. “I should have known.” His teeth gleamed, large and white.

Deiter glared across the narrow space. “Prue?”

She shrugged. “Never seen him before.”

“I have.” Walker lurched to his feet. His face was gray with exhaustion, his lips bloodless, but when Mehcredi grabbed his arm, he set her aside. “Nerajyb Nyzarl.” His tone was chillingly devoid of expression.

The man’s smile widened. He bowed. “Nerajyb Nyzarl Necros now.”

Walker’s lips pulled back from his teeth. “I am Welderyn’d’haraleen’t’Lenquisquilirian,” he said, and waited.

This close, Mehcredi could see his fists clench, the savage bone-deep shudders. He’d done as Deiter had asked, made boulders dance to the tune of his Magick, but Sister in the sky, what had it cost him?

Nyzarl only shrugged and addressed himself to Deiter. “A bargain,” he said. “One wizard to another.”

Before Deiter could answer, Walker snarled, “Where’s your demon, diabloman? Or do you have new pets now?”

“Ah,” said Nyzarl, on a note of discovery. “You have a history with demons. By all means”—he waved a negligent hand—“meet mine.” A string of guttural syllables left his mouth, spoken very fast and under his breath. At his side, the air
congealed
. Swiftly, it turned green. Clawed hands appeared, grasping the sides of the cloud and ripping it apart like rotted silk.

Peripherally, Mehcredi was aware of sounds—Cenda’s gasp, Gray’s curse, Erik’s rumble as he drew Prue closer, the growl in the back of Walker’s throat—but all her attention was focused on the nightmare that stepped out of the green fog.

This
was a demon? This . . . twisted, grinning offense against nature? And Walker had killed
fourteen
of them? Merciful Sister!

Nyzarl trained a calm dark gaze on Deiter’s face. “Give me the fire witch and I will take my djinn and my demon and retire to the ice. I swear it.”

Cenda recoiled into Gray’s embrace. “Purist!” As one, Gray and Shad turned their heads to glare at the old man. Gray’s hand dropped to the hilt of his blade.

Ignoring them, Deiter gave an inelegant snort. “Then we are at an impasse. How many djinns are left? Half? Maybe less? Grievous losses.”

The demon hissed, the holes that served it for nostrils flaring. A thin forked tongue flickered.

“Xotclic scents your wounded, Deiter. How many of
you
are left? Half? Or less? You can cut your losses, starting now. One small sacrifice. Give me the fire witch.”

“Filth.” Prue straightened her spine with an almost audible snap. “Take me instead.” She scowled at Nyzarl, her aquamarine eyes gemhard with fury. “Erik, pick me up and float me closer.”

Erik looked frankly appalled. “No,” he said. “Are you insane?”

Prue stamped a foot. “Look at him.
Look!
”

Nyzarl had backed up a step, glaring at Prue with unconcealed hatred. Despite the cold night air, sweat popped on his brow, rolled down his cheek.

The wind rose. Erik swung Prue up into his arms and drifted a few cautious feet into the gorge.

Nyzarl took another pace backward. The demon’s chest plates clattered and its tail lashed, the spikes gouging deep furrows in the rocky ground. The djinns dipped and whirled.

“I don’t believe in Magick,” snapped Prue. “And Magick doesn’t believe in me.” She patted Erik’s forearm. “Closer, love. I don’t see how he did it, but . . .”

Slowly, a smile broke over her vivid little face, a smile so full of implacable purpose that a shiver like a drop of freezing water ran down Mehcredi’s spine.

“How are the headaches?” Prue asked politely. “Bad, I hope.”

“
Abomination
. Mongrel bitch.” Nyzarl’s face was very nearly the same color as the demon’s cloud. He waved the creature forward. “Xotclic!”

Casually, the demon shambled out into midair, three djinns circling above its head like some outré guard of honor.

“No.” Mehcredi gaped in horror.

Long tongues of flame snaked out from Cenda’s outthrust fingertips. The djinns exploded with shrieks that pierced the bones of the skull. The demon’s horny lipless mouth opened in a snarl, its taloned fingers reaching out to snatch Prue from Erik’s arms.

Erik breathed so deeply, his chest expanded to an alarming degree. When he exhaled, the demon tumbled backward in the air, its chest plates clattering. The armored spikes of the tail whipped by so close to Prue’s face, she barely had time to jerk her head aside.

Walker swore in Shar. The ground under Nyzarl’s feet rippled and a vine sprang out of bare rock to curl around his ankle. Fighting to maintain his balance, the diabloman stretched out his arm, crooking the fingers of one hand, as if he squeezed something in his fist. It looked theatrical, Mehcredi thought, like a bad parody of a wicked wizard.

Nothing happened for a moment, then Deiter groaned, clutching his chest. He staggered back, his breath coming in pained gasps. But as Mehcredi and Rose rushed to support him, he forced a wine-stained grin, his skin tight against the bones of his skull.

“Fuck you,” he whispered, the rest lost in muttered incantations. His gaze locked onto Nyzarl’s and refused to release him. Slowly, two hectic spots of color returned to the old man’s face.

Open-mouthed, Mehcredi watched Nyzarl dancing about, trying to keep his feet as the ground pitched and vines writhed about his legs like snakes. Cenda picked djinns out of the sky and Erik played a grim game of aerial cat and mouse with the demon.

“You lose again,
Necromancer
,” called Deiter with relish, though he was breathing hard. “Impasse.”

“No, no, we can finish it,” cried Prue. She reached out with grasping fingers. “Let me have him.”

“Aargh!” A rock rolled right under Nyzarl’s foot and he stumbled. “Xotclic!”

“Ss.”

The demon shot out a chitinous arm and scooped up the diabloman’s substantial form as easily as a child. Nyzarl spat, his spittle a glowing green glob that sizzled. “Shaitan curse you! All of you!”

“Hah!” Prue McGuire glared.

Nyzarl, the demon and the green mist winked out of sight. The remaining djinns rose in a tight cloud until they were no more than moving disturbances in the sky.

Mehcredi didn’t hesitate. Stepping up to Walker, she wrapped her arms around him, buried her face in the curve of his neck and hugged as if she could meld their bodies together. The swordmaster froze, then he clamped her to him, his breath gusting rough and warm against her hair.

“Holy Sister, I see it,” said Prue’s voice, still hoarse with tension, “but I don’t believe it.”

Mehcredi looked over Walker’s shoulder to see her staring.

“Give them time,” Rose said equably.

But the damage was done. His color high, Walker released her. Without missing a beat, he turned to Deiter. “They’re heading west.”

“Lord’s balls, I need a drink.” One hand massaging his chest, Deiter tottered over to the camp table. “Where’s that bloody map?”

With a shaking finger, he traced the route. Mehcredi frowned. If that dot represented Guardpass, and those flowing lines the mountain barrier, then the gap in the range where Deiter was tapping must lead to . . .

Her mouth went dry.

She pushed in next to the old wizard. “Is that—” Ignoring his outraged bellow, she snatched the cup from his fingers and took a healthy gulp. “Is that L-Lonefell?”