When she opened her eyes, she saw the men laying around the hole. The one who’d been standing atop the pit-saw rig was on the ground, and he was on fire. The bright light had been spheres of molten rock, burning orange and melting everything they touchedincluding human skin and bone.
She slithered faster toward the pit, and was still three nagalengths from it, when she saw the thing emerge from a thicker clump of trees. Her kind had always railed against the common mistake of calling the things “naga-like,” or even considering them a species of the naja’ssynsa. What had killed the men with the conjured lava was no naga, but a banelar. Its spike-lined, heavily scaled body wasn’t unlike a naga’s. Its rigid purple back shone in the sun, and its yellow-green underbelly glistened with slime. Around its frowning, paper-thin lips writhed a dozen long, stringy tentacles. Two of the tentacles bore gold rings, and it wore a wide ribbon around its neck held closed with a shiny black brooch. Its pale green eyes squinted against the sunshine, and its heavy brows furrowed with a look that promised more violence.
Svayyah whispered a short incantationa cantrip, reallyand followed it with a whispered, “Devorast, if that’s you, I’m here. It’s a banelar.”
The spell carried her voice from her lips to his ear without really crossing the intervening space.
The creature jumped. Svayyah had never heard of a banelar being able to jump that far, and there was something about it that just didn’t look right. She’d cast similar spells herself, but couldn’t know if it was a spell the thing had cast, or if it was an effect of one of the rings. The creature landed atop the pit-saw rig, sending up a cloud of sawdust. The logs creaked and popped under its weight. It slithered into a more comfortable position and looked down into the hole.
“Devorast,” it hissed. “You are Devorast?”
Even before the thing had finished speaking, Svayyah had twisted her tongue through another, slightly more complex casting. She disappeared in mid-slither and instantly popped back into reality, but at the very edge of the hole. Not even bothering to see if it was indeed Devorast in the saw pit, she cast another spell as quickly as she could.
The banelar, startled by her sudden appearance, whirled on her and half-hissed, half-growled, then started muttering an incantation of its own.
Svayyah finished first.
She drew from the Weave a blast of airlike the sudden rapids in a narrow stretch of riverthat smashed into the banelar and sent it sprawling off the pit-saw rig. It landed in a tangle with a still-smoldering corpse but was rolled off by the wind before it was burned. Its incantation was ruined by the sudden gust and the bruising impact. It rolled along the ground with an angry hiss.
Svayyah blinked again and she was inside the pit. She found herself in closer proximity to Ivar Devorast than she’d ever been. He was startled to see her appear out of the thin air, but just as quickly relieved. Inspired by the banelar itself, she gasped out a spell before he could speak, and he looked at her with a curious expression. She let her fine dry scales brush up against his hot, sweat-dampened skin, transferring the power of the spell to him.
“Jump,” she told him.
He only had to think about it for less than one of his slow heartbeats, then a knowing smile crossed his lips. He bent his knees deep and launched himself into the air. Her spell enhanced the movement and sent him shooting into the blue sky like a bolt from a crossbow. While he was still in the air Svayyah blinked out of the pit and back up to the ground at the edge of the side closer to where the banelar had rolled off.
Something hit herhardthe moment she materialized. She felt her snake’s body come off the ground, and all she could do was tense, try to inhale with the wind knocked out of her worse than she’d ever experienced, and watch the pit pass beneath her. She hit the ground on the other side and as she rolled to an undignified stop among the tree stumps and one of the corpses of the woodsmen, she saw Devorast hit the ground and fare no better than she. Though she had been hit by something she could have sworn was a spectral ram, Devorast had simply failed to properly compensate for his increased ability to jump.
As Svayyah found her breath again and forced herself upright, gasping in huge lungfuls of the dry air, she watched Devorast jump againand land on his feet. He pulled a woodsman’s axe from a tree stump, and jumped again. His jump sufficed as a charge, taking him straight at the banelar.
“Your naga can’t save you, human,” the banelar shrieked.
Svayyah winced at the words, “your naga,” and searched her mind for a spell.
Devorast took an aggressive swing with the axe, sending the banelar jumping several paces backward to avoid the axe head. Whatever magic allowed it to jump like that was obviously still in effect.
Svayyah tried to cast another spell, but coughed instead. She panted, but couldn’t quite find her regular breathing rhythm.
The banelar had no such difficulties, and rattled off what sounded like a prayer. Devorast drew back his axe. The banelar’s incantation came to an end, and so did Devorast’s ability to move.
Svayyah spit venom to the hard, unforgiving ground and realized that Devorast was firmly held in place. Svayyah had sacrificed enough for Ivar Devorast and his canal that she simply couldn’t watch Devorast fall to the poisoned fangs of a banelar.
“Away with you, dista’ssara,” Svayyah shouted at the banelar. “This human is mine. You can owe me for the other three.”
She cast a spell at the same time that sent bolts of solidified Weave energy hurtling unerringly at the banelar. The thing didn’t even look up. The missiles raced through the intervening space, turning a little at the precise moment Svayyah assumed they’d bite into the banelar’s greenish underbellybut veered into the brooch and disappeared into the black design. The banelar stood, brushed itself off, and hissed so loud it started a dull pain throbbing in Svayyah’s ears in time with her racing heart.
The banelar, having defeated her missiles without actually having to do anything, leaped at her. The spell effect was still active, and the banelar cartwheeled over first one then a second of the dead bodies. It brushed so close to Devorast that the fine hair right around his forehead rustled in the breeze. Devorast followed the thing’s progress with his eyes, but otherwise stood stock still.
Svayyah blinked and disappeared again so that the banelar landed in what would have been the perfect offensive trap. Then she blinked again right away to move herself once more between the pit and the banelar.
The banelar stumbled to a stop, and Svayyah disappeared again only to find that the banelar matched her spell-for-spell. She appeared just a little closer to the banelar. The creature uttered a word Svayyah recognizedDraconic for “horns”and a ram’s head made of blue-white mist charged through the air at her. Ready for it, her spell still active, Svayyah blinked out of its way and appeared a dozen feet off to one side to watch it rush past her, harmless, then disappear into the thin air.
Svayyah glanced at Devorast, who stood frozen in place still, and said to the banelar, “Are we supposed to be impressed with that? Holding that ape? You’re out of your depth, banelar. We will not be so easily stymied.”
The creature sneered at her and said, “I was paid to kill the monkey, but you I’ll take for the meat.”
Then it started casting another spell, and so did Svayyah. Though the banelar’s spell had no visible effect, the naga conjured a trident shaped from shadowstuff in the air. The spectral weapon danced before her, and she smiled at the look of fear that flashed across the dista’ssara’s eyes.
She blinked closer to the thing, whirled the trident around her in a full circle, anticipated the banelar’s dodge, then stabbed in low and angled upward.