The Dreaming Hunt (78 page)

“We have to move!” she shouted frantically to her friends.

A wind elemental turned to face her, and she stumbled back, terrified. She didn't even have a weapon to protect herself! Panicked, she summoned magic to her hands and brandished it as if she could actually do anything with it.

The elemental recoiled momentarily. And in that instant's respite, something fast moving flashed past her, jumped high, and clobbered the being on the side of the head. The creature staggered, and something heavy and fast moving slammed into it from the other side. The wind elemental turned to face Rynn and Will. If her friends didn't get past this beast and fast, they were going to get left behind and overrun.

Rynn wasn't moving correctly. There was a hitch in his stride as if something was wrong with his left leg. Dodging around the elemental, she managed to throw a bolt of healing at him, hitting him in the chest.

“Duck, Raina!” Rosana shouted from behind Will.

She hadn't even seen the gypsy behind Will, so close to his back was the girl sticking. Raina dropped into a crouch as something hot passed far too close to her head and crashed into the wind elemental's back, making it howl. Will threw an awaken spell at whatever was behind her, and a horrible odor of burning flesh arose. An
awakening
spell did all that damage?

“To me!” an inhuman voice roared in a rush of magically enhanced sound from the tabletop stone. As one, every elemental in the outer circle disengaged from whomever they fought around the edges of the space and surged inward.

Straight at her and her friends.

The entire battle was collapsing in on them.

“Run!” Rynn yelled. He leaped over the remains of the elemental he'd just dropped and raced toward her. She turned and joined him in fleeing for her life as Will and Rosana came up beside her. They approached the central stone where the fight raged and Goldeneye and his men attempted to break through the ring of guards around the claviger.

But they were out of time. The collapsing horde of elementals was almost on them. Yet again, Goldeneye's beleaguered forces were forced to fall back into a tight knot, fighting like mad not to be summarily overrun.

They were losing. At some point, healing was no longer the question, but exhaustion. Slowly but surely, Goldeneye's forces were buckling under the brunt of the sheer number of attackers they faced. That, and several of the big ones guarding the claviger had peeled away from the mage and now attacked Goldeneye and his men, as well. Horror unfolded in Raina's gut. There was nothing she could do to help the warriors, whose arms were flagging in strength and steps were slowing.

In the distance, she heard more shouting, but she was too involved, casting healing as fast as she could summon and shape it, to look up. Frantically, she reached for more healing, feeling her own reserves running low. If she died, a whole lot of people out here were going to die with her.

The entire force of elementals shifted as something large plowed into it from behind. Stars willing, that was Goldeneye's mate and whatever reinforcements she'd rounded up. The intensity of the fighting around them abated a tiny bit as some of the elementals peeled away to face whatever new threat had stepped onto the field.

She craned to see over her companions and spied a new force of Dominion warriors furiously attacking the elementals.
Thank the Lady
.

“Help has arrived!” she shouted. “We're almost there!” It wasn't exactly accurate, but the warriors around her needed some glimmer of hope to cling to as their portion of the fight became desperate. A second big elemental moved away from their beleaguered group and toward the claviger. Will hit the only remaining big elemental with some sort of damaging magic. The creature staggered, and Goldeneye and two of his lieutenants leaped on it, slashing ferociously at it. The violence of their combined attack was breathtaking.

The elemental went down. And then the fight began to turn a little. Buoyed by their small victory, the Dominion group moved in a phalanx toward the center stone. Only two of the big elementals, one wind and one fire, were left. They shoved aside the smaller elementals still emerging from the gate to attack Goldeneye's force directly.

Most of the smaller elemental beings moved away to attack Vedara and her forces, who were now circled up in the same way Goldeneye had been a minute before. At least they were relatively fresh and able to put up a stiff fight against these invading elementals.

Goldeneye's forces found their second wind and attacked fiercely, giving the pair of large elementals and a host of the smaller ones all they could handle. Still. The fighters she stood behind could not keep going like this much longer.

Someone had to do something to turn the fight.

She dodged and weaved behind them, trying to catch a glimpse of the claviger. In an opening between the elementals, she spotted him weaving another spell with his hands. This time, he was hunched over the table and his key. If only she could pull him away from the key. Get it out of the lock, somehow …

“Alchizzadon!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Raina of Tyrel has taken the field of battle!”

The mage lurched upright and turned to stare at her. He said something she couldn't hear. And then both of the large elementals protecting him turned and headed straight for her. They cut through the warriors around her as if they were made of soft butter.

Her friends fell back to the left, and Goldeneye and his men fell back to the right. As for her, she turned and ran. It was, of course, an unwinnable race. She was human and fatigued. And they were made of pure elemental energy.

“I'm drawing them off!” she shouted. “Get the mage!”

As plans went, it wasn't great—use herself as bait to lure away the big bads so her friends could deal with the mage while he was alone and unprotected. Worse, it deprived her friends of her massive pool of healing.

She paused in her flight, grabbed Rosana's arm, and blasted her friend with all the magical energy she could hastily summon. She hoped she'd done that right. Lenora had shown her how to transfer a little piece of her magical energy to another healer just before they'd left Dupree. Raina had never tried it herself, however. Only a fraction of the magic she'd summoned would likely make its way into Rosana's spirit. But it was worth a try.

The pause had been costly, though. The elementals were almost on her now, and she shouted one last time, “Stop the mage!” Then she ran for all she was worth. Justin, who'd chased her through the woods as a child, and Cicero, who'd run her all over the colony, would be proud of her. She made it almost halfway to the outer ring of stones before she felt a hot wind on her neck.

The elementals were on her. She had nothing with which to defend herself and wouldn't have known how to, anyway. She was shocked when the creatures did not kill her on the spot. Instead, they grabbed her by both arms and commenced dragging her toward the mage waiting for her by the gate.

No.
No, no, no
. They were taking her to a Mage of Alchizzadon, and he was going to throw her through that gate to who knew where, and he and his kind would do who knew what to her! She dug in her heels and fought against the elementals with all her might. It hardly slowed them down. But every second she could buy for her friends and delay her own fate was worth it. Step by step, the elementals forced her toward that mage and the shimmering expanse of nothingness behind him.

 

CHAPTER

36

Eben ran through the city, following a wind elemental who'd slipped past the fighting and was now racing intently toward some goal. Dominion changelings streamed past him, going the other direction, running toward the battle. Even if he could have stopped one, explained that he was following an elemental and why, the wind elemental ahead of him would have been long gone, lost in the endless, winding rows of huts and tents.

The wind elemental slowed for a moment and lifted its head, almost as if it sniffed the air, testing it for the scent of something. The creature turned and dashed off to its left. Eben followed grimly. It paused to sniff again, and this time it smiled. Eben had closed to within a dozen yards of it when the creature, without warning, ducked into a narrow alley and fetched up next to a wooden wall.

It looked like the back of a permanent building. Without any ceremony, the wind elemental blasted the wall with some sort of damage that sent splinters of demolished wood flying in every direction. Eben skidded to a stop, throwing up his arm and ducking the worst of the debris.

The elemental stepped through the hole, and Eben followed quickly. It was some sort of storehouse. Maybe a treasure trove. But if there was any system of organization in here, it eluded him. All manner of things were stacked in all manner of piles, bundles, and jumbled messes. But his quarry appeared to know what it was looking for. The elemental headed straight for the far side of the space, snatched a leather sack out of a pile, and then whirled around. He fetched up short, seeming startled to find Eben right behind him.

“Whatchya got there?” Eben asked the elemental.

The creature scowled and didn't bother to answer. It merely lifted its hand and sent a blast of wind magic at him. Just as fast, he activated his stoneskin. The wind spell buffeted him but slid past him. The elemental darted to one side, but Eben was faster, dropping his stoneskin and reaching out to snag the elemental around its nominal waist.

Using his new mace, he took a short swing at the creature, clocking it in the head several times in fast succession. It wasn't pretty, and it surely wasn't an elegant use of the weapon, but it did the trick. The elemental dropped the bag and turned into a rushing vortex of air in his arms, slipping free of his grasp and racing toward the hole in the wall. Eben scooped up the leather sack and gave chase, but the creature had a head start on him, and the bag was heavy and awkward, banging against his thigh as he ran.

He gave up the chase and stopped, huffing hard. The elemental was headed back toward the Ringstones, anyway. It would never reach the standing stones alive. A huge crowd of Dominion warriors was streaming up in that direction even as he looked on. What had that creature been sent to fetch that it was willing to sacrifice its life for?

He opened the bag to have a look.

*   *   *

Panic surged through Raina. She could
not
let the Mages of Alchizzadon get their hands on her again! Frantically, she summoned magic and incanted a spirit form. She felt her body shift into a formless, non-corporeal state. She drifted backward, away from her would-be captors.

The wind elemental made a grab for her, but its arms passed harmlessly through her. It growled in frustration. Then, as she stared, the creature changed. Its gray, storm-cloud form melted away, and in its place, a white, misty being stood.

But not just any white, misty being. She'd seen creatures just like it before. That was a
phantasm
. A limb-like extension formed out of the mist, its end glowing magically. The arm threw magic at her, and she ducked frantically.

“Phantasms!” she shouted. “They're not elementals. They're
phantasms
!”

The second, fiery elemental made a grab for her and also could not affect her spirit form. If she could just keep them distracted from their master for a few more seconds, it might give someone an opening to attack the mage. But it was going to have to be soon.

*   *   *

Will had a head start on Rynn as they both rushed the mage. But the rune-covered wretch straightened,
smiling,
and threw a whirlwind spell that anticipated Rynn's dodge and clocked him squarely in the chest. Will watched in dismay as the paxan was picked up off the ground and hurled toward the glimmering portal.

Frantic, Will put on a burst of speed, veering away from the mage toward the portal. He had to do something to stop Rynn from being thrown through, likely never to return.

Will spied a silk rope lying on the ground across the front of the portal, stretching from stone to stone, no doubt left by some hapless Dominion caster who'd tried and failed to close the portal. Somewhere, out of the depths of his being, a spell came to Will. He didn't stop and think. He just gathered the magic and cast a wall of force into the rope.

A wall of magical energy sprang into existence just as Rynn reached it. The paxan slammed into it and was thrown backward, away from the portal. He landed in a heap on the ground, gasping for breath.

A crackling sound came from Will's wall, and he stared as the massive energy of the portal broke down his magic. The wall slowly but surely dissipated.

From that unknown place deep within him from whence the wall spell had come, a veritable flood of knowledge, known but forgotten, planted in his brain and lying fallow all this time, poured into his conscious mind. So much knowledge slammed into him that he could not stop to register all of it. He gave himself over to it, trusting that his mind would know what to do with it.

He whirled and assessed the situation grimly, seeing the battle in an entirely new light. The mage was a problem. He had range, accuracy, more magical power than Will, and likely more dangerous spells. It came to him in a flash:
Control the battlefield. Manipulate the environment to his advantage
.

He leaped behind one of the nullstones and called Rynn and Rosana to join him. The gypsy got there first.

He told her tersely, “Cut all your rope into ten-foot lengths and give them to me. Here's my rope, as well. Quickly.” He detached a wrapped bundle of rope from his belt.

Frantically, she measured and sawed. “Why?” she asked.

“I have a plan.”

Rynn skidded behind the stone, breathing hard. The paxan downed a healing potion of some kind from his pack and looked slightly less battered. Will outlined his plan in as few words as he could while they all chopped at rope. Rynn's only response was a broad grin and, “Let's do it.”