“Dammit, Loiosh. I wish they wouldn’t just stand there, waiting. I wish they’d do something.”
“Sure, Boss. What would you like them to do?”
“Well, jumping in the Sea would be nice.”
“Heh.”
“Or they could even surrender to us. That would be fine.”
I probably shouldn’t have said anything, because it was right about then that they went into action. Well, okay, it probably had more to do with the Necromancer, and even more with the fact that we were barely twenty feet away from them, but it seemed that way.
The way things had developed, there’s no way I should have been caught by surprise, but I guess that’s one of the problems with surrendering the initiative—they moved very fast, and for a second I froze—Spellbreaker flopped there, swinging back and forth a little. From their position, facing out in all four directions, they moved suddenly, and as if they’d trained for the maneuver for years. They seemed to grow larger, and one of them reached out for us, as if to grab and crush us, though more likely he was going to—
“Vlad!” said Sethra sharply, and I started Spellbreaker swinging again.
“Left!” said Loiosh, and I moved to the left, though I’m not sure what I was avoiding. I bumped into Teldra and we both stumbled. Teldra kept her balance, but I ended up on one knee, automatically raising my hand so I could keep Spellbreaker spinning. Spellbreaker obligingly shortened itself—I felt it vibrating in my hand, looked at it, and saw the links become larger. When I looked back up, my view was blocked by Morrolan and I don’t know what happened, but Sethra was holding Iceflame up above her head, and there was lightning and flashing and all that sort of stuff going on somewhere in front of me—it was really shaping up into one of those big sorcerous battles they always talk about. What was I doing here?
I wasn’t even aware of how loud things had gotten until I saw Aliera shouting but realized I couldn’t hear her—not that it mattered, she was probably yelling some sort of Dragon war cry or something. She was also moving Pathfinder around in some sort of pattern—I wanted Pathfinder to be emitting flashes, sparks, lights, but whatever Aliera was doing with it didn’t show.
Blackwand, on the other hand, was doing everything I could have wished—he would point it, and it would flash, and he’d point it somewhere else, and it would shoot out something black and scary-looking.
Verra was writhing and gyrating, as if possessed by something that made her arms flail and her body twist from side to side.
The Necromancer stood very still, her arms at her sides.
The noise, I eventually realized, was a sort of constant, rolling thunder; it seemed to come from everywhere. I concentrated on keeping Spellbreaker moving and tried to stay aware of what was going on, and watch for anything that might come at me, though it was hard, because Morrolan was in front of me blocking my view—and he may, of course, have been blocking more than my view.
Then Morrolan stumbled and went down in front of me, and I realized that one of the Jenoine was close. Very close. Too close. Way too bloody close—like maybe ten feet away. I wanted to look at Morrolan, to see if he was bleeding, or showed any apparent signs of injury—but I couldn’t take my eyes off the Jenoine.
Well, okay. Score one for their team.
As far as I could tell, the Jenoine wasn’t looking at me; it was concentrating on Verra. Frankly, I’d be more concerned with a God than with a one-armed Easterner too. Aliera knelt down next to Morrolan, Sethra turned away, I guess concentrating on one of the others, and there was a tremendous flash of light from directly overhead that left me seeing spots just as I was wondering if I should get involved somehow. I kept seeing flashes out of the corners of my eyes and couldn’t tell what was from the Sea and what was caused by our friends and what was caused by our enemies. The air had that queer tang it gets after a heavy thunderstorm.
“What was that, Loiosh?”
“Something from that guy overhead, I think, Boss.”
“Good. Did it accomplish anything?”
“I don’t know. But one of them is down.”
I saw it, then—one of the Jenoine was down indeed, and wouldn’t be getting up again, and there was no mystery about what had taken it out: the dragon was holding it down with two paws and tearing chunks out of the thing with its teeth, and scattering it in all directions, as if to tell us that good, old fashioned gore did, indeed, belong in a battle of gods, demigods, and wizardry.
Well, okay. Score one for our team.
Aliera turned her back on Morrolan and took two steps, which brought her next to the Demon Goddess her mother. The two of them stood facing one of them—perhaps the one that had laid out Morrolan. I watched, motionless.
The three of them began moving in a circle, and as far as I could tell, not doing anything else. I glanced around, trying in get an idea of what else was going on. Another of the Jenoine stood on what I have to call the shore for lack of a better term, staring out over it with its hands extended—probably, I suppose, doing whatever it was they came here to do in the first place
I supposed I should do something to stop it. Heh.
Another continued to be dismembered and gutted by the dragon, who wanted to make a thorough job of it, and the remaining one stood with its back to the one on the shore, making sweeping gestures with its arms while the gods stood around it, trying to close but unable to—Barlen, in particular, was scraping his huge reptilian feet in the dirt as if scrabbling for a purchase. It is not every day that one gets to see the gods stymied; I might have even enjoyed it if I weren’t part of the whole thing.
Judging from the sparks and flashes that occurred in front of the Jenoine, the gods were throwing all sorts of things at it that didn’t get through, and there was that god overhead, dominating everything, making flashes of light that made the daylight seem brighter than bright. It was all very magical and stuff.
I tried to watch everything at once. I was conscious, once more, of how relaxed I was now that the time for action was at hand. My fear was somewhere behind me—I recognized it, but it was as if it were someone else’s fear. I don’t know, maybe that’s how heroes feel. If I ever meet a hero, I’ll ask.
Teldra knelt down next to Morrolan and bent over him. The Jenoine facing Aliera and the Demon Goddess moved toward Verra, and she moved toward it, and there was a flurry of activity, and Aliera gave a yell or a scream that I saw more than heard. Sethra turned toward Morrolan and Teldra, as if noticing them for the first time, and yelled something to me that I couldn’t hear over the other sounds, which had done nothing except gotten louder—the roaring was almost painful.
Then Sethra pointed Iceflame at the Jenoine that was tussling with Verra and moved into the maelstrom. Aliera took a step in that direction, fell, stood up, took another step, fell again, stood up again, and fell once more. The Jenoine stood over Aliera, both of its hands raised in fists over its head, looking like it wanted to pummel Aliera physically, which couldn’t possibly have done her any good. The dragon, which had finished its meal and was now trying to get at the Jenoine who was holding off the Lords of Judgment, turned toward us, then, its mouth open, showing teeth the size of Blackwand, and began to move in our direction.
Then, just as if things weren’t weird enough, Morrolan’s right arm, still holding Blackwand, raised itself until it was pointed at the Jenoine—apparently without any direction from Morrolan himself, who gave every appearance of lying senseless on the ground, Teldra still kneeling next to him, bent over him. It was downright disconcerting.