“Just a small experiment.” Vangerdahast gave her one of those innocent smiles that had been making Tanalasta nervous since she grew old enough to speak, then he picked up a dove’s feather. “Without knowing exactly what a ghazneth is, it’s hard to guess what it despises, but I bet this will work. I haven’t met a demon yet who likes feather of the dove.”
“You’re going to banish it?”
“If you’re right about this mind-speak business, yes.” Vangerdahast picked up a rock, then began to trace a pentagram on top of the boulder. “I’ll send it straight back to the hell it came from-wherever that is.”
“And if you don’t?”
Vangerdahast waved a gnarled finger toward ridge, gesturing at the spirelike stone he had pointed out earlier. “That’s what escape plans are for. Are you going to help me or not?”
Tanalasta nodded. “I just hope you’re doing this for more than your pride.” After lecturing the wizard earlier about their duty, she could hardly decline to aid him now. “What do you want me to do?”
Vangerdahast outlined her part in his plan, then turned to continue his preparations while she untethered the horses. By the time she returned with the beasts, the wizard had completed his protective pattern and was ready to proceed. He climbed onto the boulder and stepped into the center of the star, the strange assortment of spell components grasped securely in one hand.
“You can watch from the ridge,” he said. “If this works, you’ll see a portal open and suck the ghazneth back to its home hell.”
“And if the ghazneth doesn’t go?” Tanalasta asked.
“Then I’ll join you on the ridge-and don’t waste any time getting us out of there.” He nodded to her, then turned to face the three stones he piled on the edge of the gully. “I’m ready”
Tanalasta turned toward the ridge and pictured Alusair’s ash-blonde hair and dark-eyed visage in her mind, then touched the throat clasp of her weathercloak. The metal tingled under her fingers, and her sister’s head suddenly cocked to one side.
Vangey is with me on Stonebolt Trail, at the edge of the Storm Horns. Phantom after us. Need to find you.
Tanalasta? Alusair’s weathered face betrayed her irritation. Orc’s Pool-Vangey knows it. And no more magic, or you’ll never make it!
Alusair’s visage faded with that. Tanalasta shook her head clear, then glanced back at Vangerdahast. “You know some place called Orc’s Pool?”
“I’ve been there many times.” The wizard continued to study the sky above the stones he had piled on the gully edge. “Now off with you.”
Tanalasta did not reach for the escape pocket. “She said no more magic.”
“What?” Vangerdahast glanced down aghast. “How does she expect us to find Orc’s Pool?”
Tanalasta had a sinking feeling. “I was more concerned about our plan. She said no more magic or we’d never make it.”
It was difficult to say whether Vangerdahast’s expression was more puzzled or irritated, but it was definitely not alarmed. “It’s too late to change plans now.” He glanced back toward the outcropping, then made a shooing motion. “Off with you. Here it comes already.”
Tanalasta’s gaze rose involuntarily, and she glimpsed a dark figure streaking over the mountain’s shoulder. She spun in her saddle, looking toward the spire on the next ridge and thrusting her hand into the weathercloak’s escape pocket. Her arm went numb, then there was a sharp crack, and a door-sized rectangle of blackness hissed into existence in front of her.
Cadimus whinnied in alarm and tried to shy back, threatening to pull his reins free of the princess’s grasp.
“Not now, you coward!” Tanalasta jerked the stallion forward and urged her own mount through the doorway.
The world went black, and the princess experienced a strange, timeless sense of falling she thought would last forever. She grew queasy and weak, and a sudden chill bit at her fingers and nose. Her ears filled with a hushed roaring, at once overpowering as a waterfall and as soft as a whisper, and her stomach reverberated as though to the roll of a thousand drums. Then, in less than the instant it had taken her to blink, she was back in the light, her head spinning and the wind whistling around her ears.
Cadimus nickered behind her, sounding as confused as he was alarmed, and Tanalasta recalled with a rush where she was and what she was doing. She kicked her own mount’s flanks urgently, and the poor horse stumbled forward blindly, as dazed and reeling as her rider. The princess let the mare continue on until she felt the ground sloping away beneath them, then dismounted and tethered both glassy-eyed horses to a scraggly hackberry bush.
By the time Tanalasta returned to the ridge, her head had stopped spinning. She lay down beneath the tall spire of granite and peered over the crest. Across the way, the ghazneth was already swooping down the gully toward Vangerdahast.
As the phantom neared him, it suddenly veered and pulled up. For one awful instant, she thought it was coming for her, then it wheeled on a huge black wing and extended its talons to attack the wizard from behind. Vangerdahast whirled, wand in. hand, but the ghazneth was already on him. Tanalasta knew the wizard’s spell would never go off before the creature’s talons tore him gullet to groin. She was on her feet before she knew what she was doing, one hand disappearing into her weathercloak’s escape pocket and the other reaching for her peacemaker’s rod.
Fortunately for both the princess and the royal magician, Tanalasta remained where she was. Like the message-sending throat clasp, her weathercloak’s escape pocket could only be used once a day. She dropped back to the ground, then watched in amazement as the ghazneth ricocheted away from the wizard’s protective star and slammed into the mountainside.
Vangerdahast’s shoulders slumped with relief, then his voice began to echo off the rocky slopes as he bellowed his incantation and tossed his strange assortment of knickknacks into the air. The ghazneth circled the boulder where he stood, hurling itself at him time and again, only to bounce away and crash into the mountain with stone-splitting force. A shimmering spiral of light appeared in the air behind the creature and began to shadow its movements like some strange tail it did not know it had.
When the ghazneth finally grew tired of slamming into the mountainside, it alighted in the gully next to Vangerdahast. It seemed to say something, then squatted down and wrapped its arms around the boulder. The stone began to tremble, and Tanalasta could tell by the sudden tension in the wizard’s shoulders that he had not anticipated the possibility of having his perch ripped out of the very ground.
Vangerdahast’s echoing voice rumbled off the mountains more urgently, and he stooped down to fling his knickknacks directly onto the shoulders of his attacker. The tornado at the ghazneth’s back grew larger and faster, sucking the thing’s leathery wings backward toward the whirlpool’s spiraling depths. The creature glanced nervously over its shoulder, then a small eye appeared in the heart of the tornado. From Vangerdahast’s description, Tanalasta expected to see some sort of flaming hell or blood-drenched wasteland, but the small circle resembled nothing quite so much as the Stonelands themselves.
The ghazneth let out a great roar and gave a tremendous twist. A sharp crack reverberated off the mountainside, then the boulder rose out of the ground and Vangerdahast’s legs went out from under him.
Tanalasta was on her feet again, yelling for the wizard to use his escape pocket, though she knew he would never hear her over the rumble of the cracking stone. As Vangerdahast tumbled from the boulder, he reached out with the dove’s feather and struck the creature on the head.
A terrible shriek reverberated across the slope. The ghazneth vanished into the whirlpool, dragging Vangerdahast’s boulder along with it. The wizard landed facedown in the gully and lay there trembling, then the spell whooshed in on itself and there was silence.