War of Power (The Trouble with Magic Book 3) (46 page)

His muzzle dripping egg yolk, Jaknu crooned a greeting as Miqhal appeared in the cavern which served as the Grelfon’s stable. Bowman Buller climbed out of the sand-wallow, folding the sack which had held the eggs as he moved to stand beside the Jadhra chieftain.

He kept his voice low. “Is it time?”

Miqhal could not disguise the pain which filled his dark eyes. “It is. Everything is in place, the meeting cavern is cleared and the people are already moving. Shaqim and Asalim are leading but I must join them shortly.”

“You still haven’t found a way to take Jaknu?”

Miqhal shook his head. “I could take him easily, but he would not survive on Dahrian. There would be nothing I could do to prevent him being taken from me and possibly destroyed. When we are gone you must give him his freedom.”

Buller stared aghast. “What about the bonding? Surely he’ll die!”

“I don’t think he will. After all, I will not be dead, just far away.”

Before Buller could say anything more, Jaknu lumbered forward and nudged Miqhal’s shoulder with his eggy muzzle. The Jadhra chieftain placed his hand on the Grelfon’s forehead, and the two shared a brief silence.

His expression grim, Miqhal turned to the bowman. “Jaknu has detected Grelfons flying. It was too much to hope we would remain undiscovered. I fear we shall soon be under attack.”

Buller’s immediate response was to dash across the cavern and snatch Jaknu’s harness from its peg in the wall. He called across the cavern as he ran back, straightening reins and stirrups. “You go. I will fly Jaknu.”

Miqhal almost screamed at him. “You cannot! You’ve never flown and you are not bonded.”

The bowman’s hands flew as he deftly fitted the harness on a now very agitated grelfon. “As much as we’ll ever be I reckon. We’ll manage. Now go, and the gods go with you.”

In a single fluid move he leapt onto Jaknu’s outstretched foreleg and slid into the deep cleft between his shoulders. He looked down to see Miqhal with the palm of his hand once again pressed flat against the Grelfon’s broad forehead. As Buller settled reins and stirrups, Miqhal gave the great beast an assertive nod, stepped back a pace and vanished. The bowman urged Jaknu forward, and the pair headed up the tunnel to the flight platform halfway up the side of the mountain. It was only then that Buller realised he had forgotten his crossbow. His only weapons were the short-sword at his waist and a throwing knife in his boot.

On the rocky platform high above the desert floor Jaknu flexed his wings as Buller searched the sky. Seeing nothing but moon and stars, although the Grelfon’s agitated grumbling told him there was definitely something, he looked down. Holding the restive beast in check, the bowman almost overbalanced as he leaned forward in an attempt to get a clear view of the scene far below. Stark shadows and cold white moonlight revealed a lone pale-robed figure surrounded by a large pack of what Buller could only imagine were wolves. Before he could make a decision, Jaknu leapt out into the air. Wings outspread he drifted down, his broad feet crushing flakes of shale to crumbs as he landed no more than twenty yards from the figure. Jaknu crooned and Buller released a huge sigh of relief as Karryl hurried across the moonlit sand towards them.

He raised a hand in greeting. “Bowman Buller! Good to see you and Jaknu again. Unfortunately we have no time for news or pleasantries. Ghian and a squad of Grelfi are on their way here.”

The bowman was given no chance to reply. Uttering a deep-throated yodel of challenge, Jaknu pumped his massive wings, sending clouds of sand flying in all directions as he powered into the air. In near vertical flight he climbed higher and higher until all Karryl could see were a few brief glints of moonlight on Jaknu’s beating wings. The moon was beginning to dip behind the mountains, its cold light casting long ominous shadows the colour of old blood across the plain at their feet. Very soon the only illumination would be starlight and Karryl needed to see what was happening. In a situation such as this, dark-sight would hardly be good enough. Jaknu’s challenge sounded again, resonating like a tenor bell through the mountain peaks. This time it was answered, a distant chorus of defiant screams and yodels carrying through the air on a rising off-shore breeze. Karryl knew he had to act quickly. He recalled an old Rhamnic spell demonstrated to him by one of the many practitioners of free magic he had met on his travels with Symon, what seemed like a lifetime ago. It would take a couple of minutes to reach completion, but Karryl was certain that if he could achieve the same spectacular success he had witnessed at the time, then it would be worth it.

Caught in his peripheral vision, a movement made him turn to his right. Ears laid flat, tails low, a dozen wolves were moving forward at a steady slinking trot. Karryl looked left, to see a dozen more in similar hunting mode spreading out and circling wide. He glanced behind him. In the deep shadows the remainder of the wolves were barely visible, standing motionless as the clarion of the grelfon challenges grew louder. Putting his concern for them and the approaching threat from his mind, the Mage-Prime turned away and concentrated on laying the foundations of the Rhamnic spell. Precise and unhurried he formed a close weave, tied it off and built it onto the foundations, before wrapping the whole construct in a web of power. With the sound of approaching Grelfi loud in his ears and the windborne stink of their beasts invading his nostrils, Karryl released the spell. Contrary to what he had been expecting, the effect was close to instant. A long broad arch of white light bloomed high and wide, curving over the open plain in front of him. Spreading outward and downward it flooded the whole arena of pending conflict with a magical light as bright as day. For a few stunned moments all the noise of challenge ceased, only the rhythmic pulse of heavy wing-beats filling the air. Far above the ground, at the highest extremity of the light, Jaknu once more loudly offered his challenge.

Breaking away from the rest of the flight, Ghian threw his beast round in a wide sweeping turn and urged her upwards. Sluggish and heavy in the air, the queen grelfon struggled as her distended stomach continued to digest the wolves and priests on which Ghian had carelessly allowed her to gorge only a short while before. Jaknu seized the advantage. Forelimbs outstretched he tumbled out of the sky towards the queen. Like a rider astride a high-spirited stallion, Buller brandished his short-sword above his head, yelling at the top of his lungs as Jaknu careered downwards. The two grelfons met in mid air. With a flip and a twist Jaknu turned his body tail down and vertical, raking extended talons like curved knives down the queen’s stomach and wings. Unable to control his critically injured and hysterical beast, Ghian abandoned her, transferring himself to a point on the desert plain about a quarter mile from where Karryl stood watching. With their Grelfine Lord now on the ground, the Grelfi fought to keep control of their fractious battle-hungry mounts as they circled downwards to land in a noisy and disorganised mob among the nearby dunes.

One wing hanging broken and useless, the other a tattered sail of flapping shreds, the queen grelfon plummeted down, sickly yellow ichor and greenish black blood spurting from gaping wounds in her belly and neck, spraying a foul and foetid rain on those below. With no time to take any kind of evasive action, the Grelfi stared in open-mouthed horror as the dead queen crashed belly up into the middle of the squad. Deprived of the deep personal bond which every Grelfi formed with his beast, Ghian screamed with anguish and hatred.

His pain and regret were short-lived. Oblivious to the cries of crushed and dying Grelfi and their beasts, his voice rose above them as he made wild and frantic gestures in the direction of the mountain stronghold. “Get up! Fly up there! Find the Jadhra dogs! Kill them all!”

His face a mask of unbridled fury he spun on his heel and unleashed a bolt of power to send it hurtling towards Karryl. Calm and tightly focussed, the Mage-Prime instantly moved himself to the mountain ledge, a ball of bitterness rising in his craw at the sight of piles of smoking ash; all that remained of three of the wolves which had accompanied him. Of the others there was no sign. He knew it wouldn’t be long before Ghian would find him and without any subtlety or finesse would sling more bolts of power in his direction. His decision made, Karryl moved to a cluster of large boulders to the rear of the remaining Grelfi. It had been a carefully considered move. Even for a Mage-Prime, more than three instantaneous translocations in one day could be extremely dangerous. An image slipped into his mind, a bird’s eye view much more detailed and informative than the view he had here on the ground. Slowly the image rotated as Jaknu circled a few thousand feet above him. The uninjured Grelfi were struggling to regain control of their bad-tempered and grumbling beasts, but one rider already had his mount in the air when Ghian stormed in amongst them. As he had before, he made furious gestures in the direction of the mountain ledge.

His voice was a snarl riding on waves of anger and frustration. “Up there is the entrance. Fly in, kill the Jadhra, find the objects of power and bring them to me. Go!”

With no more than a passing glance at the carnage spread across the sand, he turned and began striding back towards the mountain, his black robes whipped against his body by his haste and the still strengthening wind. Behind him the Grelfi one by one goaded their reluctant beasts into the air. Above him the arch of white light turned a sickly yellow, flickered and went out.

Karryl blinked and grimaced into the sudden darkness, annoyed with himself for having chosen not only a determinate spell but such a short lived one. The moon had set behind the mountains and the image being sent by Jaknu was now reduced to a few vague shapes flittering across a field of black. Karryl closed his mind to the image and shifted to dark-sight. To his right, pale lilac and bright white forms darted across the sand, slipped into formation and stopped. Seconds later the air was split by an eerie whistling, the nerve-jarring thrum of a dozen bowstrings vibrating in the darkness. Well-aimed arrows found their marks, wounded Grelfi screaming and grelfons bellowing and thrashing impotent wings as they were brought crashing to the desert floor. The Mage-Prime knew now who some of the wolves really were. He also knew he had to end this once and for all.

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than a hissing bolt of power lit up the scene for yards around. Blasting into the ground in front of him, it missed his feet by inches, splattering his robes with molten globules of superheated sand. One hand raised in readiness for a second strike, Ghian strode towards him. A mere hundred yards separated them, and Karryl cursed himself for his careless lapse. Distracted by the appearance of the wolves turned Grrybhñnös huntsmen, he hadn’t seen Ghian turn away from the mountain, or acknowledged the tingling of his skin which told him that the Grelfine lord had translocated to a point dangerously close to his own location.

Fast and focussed, he cast a stronger version of the suspension spell which Symon had used so effectively, what seemed a life-time ago, at the Apprentices’ party. His mouth twisted in a contemptuous sneer, Ghian brushed the spell away five seconds later as if it were no more than dust on his robe. Arms raised, he scribed a scintillating circle of crackling power around himself and charged towards Karryl. From a thousand feet above, Jaknu screamed and threw himself into a headlong dive.

Compressed into a fraction of a second, a memory asserted itself. A bizarrely clad Ingali shaman hovered two feet above his head; translocation in its most basic and primitive form. As abruptly as it had arrived, the vivid memory winked out but Karryl had caught it, held it, and was already three feet above the sand and steadily rising. Surrounded by whirling bands of corruscating power and careering blindly forward, Ghian’s frenetically hurled bolts sped through empty air. The tiny outcrop of rock where Karryl had so recently sheltered, burst into thousands of splintered fragments, spitting red hot glowing shards in all directions. Above and to the rear of the enraged Vedran lord, Karryl hovered out of harm’s way in a respite that would be all too brief. Totally focussed he maintained his shielding and renewed his dark-sight spell, certain that Ghian had done the same. The result was unexpected and gave Karryl some very anxious moments as he found himself drifting steadily groundwards. It took less than a second for him to realise that the Talmion dark-sight spell had somehow combined with the shielding and negated the Rhamnic levitation spell. As his feet touched the surface of the desert plain, a brief rippling of the sand for about a yard all around him told him that the shielding had remained stable. For now, it was stalemate. Now he had to out-think his opponent, who had checked his furious charge and was moving towards him, one slow step at a time. While their protective shields were maintained, Mage-Prime and Vedran Lord were evenly matched, each watching for the first opportunity to seize an advantage.

Moving backwards, Karryl mirrored Ghian’s steps, all the while completely focussed and aware that with Grelfi still aloft somewhere, he was under constant threat on at least two fronts. Something moved under Karryl’s foot and he felt the low heel of his boot sink a little way into the sand, pitching him slightly off balance. He steadied himself, took another pace backwards and glanced down. The imprint left by his heel was spreading, forming a small bowl-shaped depression in the inconstant surface. A dozen possibilities raced through his brain as he watched rivulets of sand, a swift silver stream in his dark-sight, begin disappearing over the rim of a slowly but steadily expanding sink. As if he had been collecting his thoughts, Karryl shook his head and raised his eyes to look directly at the still approaching Ghian. At the same time he made a long dancing side-step, extended the perimeter of his shielding by a couple of feet, and enhanced his hearing. Sensing an opportunity, Ghian dispelled his shield and unleashed three tremendous surging bolts of power in rapid succession. They sizzled and spat against the lower edge of Karryl’s shield, their intensity immediately diminished by the shield’s power.

His eardrums brutally assaulted by the infernal noise, Karryl clapped his hands over his ears and gasped with pain. Now only twelve feet away, a maniacal screech poured from Ghian’s open mouth as he raised his hands to deliver the final deadly strike. He took another swift pace forward, only to crash to an abrupt halt as he thrust into crackling contact with Karryl’s extended shield. Angered and humiliated by the spectacular failure of his attempt, Ghian pounded on the shield with his fists, sending rippling ribbons of vivid blue light coursing over and around it. The shield gave way. Suddenly and precariously overbalanced, he fell straight through, his fury instantly transformed to shock and horror. Destabilised and restructured by some inexplicable chemistry, the collapsed shield manifested itself as a thousand tiny, razor-sharp glassy shards, raining down on the cowering Vedran Lord, embedding themselves in his hands, clothes, face and eyes.

Exacerbated by the intense pain in his ears, Karryl’s wild magic surged to the surface. Making no attempt to control it he drew on that part of his being which allowed him instead to keep control of himself. His grimace almost a maniacal as Ghian’s, he tracked each stream of raw energy as it coursed through every bone and organ of his body. Crouched in the debris of his own disaster, Ghian clawed at the agitated air, his lacerated eyes transforming his face into a blood-streaked mask of abject terror. Sobbing and gibbering he began to lurch towards the sound of Karryl caught up in the violent throes of wild magic. Uncontrolled and unbidden, it had formed an ever expanding and furiously spinning vortex, unerringly taking the path of least resistance as it sought to disperse itself in the only solid thing within its reach; the desert floor. From opposite sides of the sink-hole deep cracks appeared, snaking across the sand for half a mile in each direction, the explosive and agonised protests of fractured rock rising high into the charged air. Beneath Ghian’s shredded and bleeding hands the sink-hole yawned wide to receive the wild magic’s full force. Swarms of super-heated grains danced and spat in incandescent chaos as Ghian, his face transmuted to a gory quagmire of pain, clawed impotently in his blindness at the hissing slithering sand. With a protracted and volcanic roar the sink-hole’s rim collapsed, carrying the demonically screaming Vedran lord downward on an unstoppable torrent of blood-spattered sand.

Arms wind-milling, Karryl teetered as he struggled to retain his balance on the unstable and shifting surface beneath his feet. His head still ringing with the after-effects of the wild magic, he fought desperately to concentrate on a holding spell strong enough to halt his inexorable slide towards the seemingly inevitable. With his feet barely inches away from the sink-hole’s rim, the torrent of sand slowed to a crawl. Something struck him on his back, his feet left the ground and he found himself staring down into a dark and unfathomable abyss.