Dai Shan spun back around to find that the stalker was indeed behind him. Its black shape was a writhing, lashing confusion in the gloom. It could have been a huge, misshapen beetle standing on its hind legs, or perhaps a giant centipede rearing up like a serpent.
Whatever its true form, if it even possessed one, it snatched with several jointed limbs simultaneously. One hooked Vandar’s neck and jerked him flailing backward.
Meanwhile, Dai Shan dodged one such attack, brushed aside another, and stopped a third by catching the skinny limb in his hands. As he started to snap it in two, the contact seared him like the touch of cold metal, and when he completed the action, the sections of broken leg stuck to his fingers. He lashed his arms and flung them loose but lost skin in the process.
More limbs reached for him. He blocked or evaded them as well, but they kept him on the defensive and held him away from the creature’s body. He rattled off words of command that would have cowed any shadow entity he’d raised up himself but had no effect on the murky thing before him.
Something on the floor made a strangled grunt of effort. He looked down and saw that the stalker had pulled Vandar off his feet, hooked him with several of its limbs, and was dragging him forward. His face a mask of fury, the Rashemi struggled to break free but, even berserk, couldn’t manage it.
Dai Shan stamped on the shadow’s limbs, breaking them. The effort made it more difficult to defend against attacks directed at himself, and after another moment, one such snagged his thigh, and the curved claw at the end of the stalker’s arm caught in his flesh. Dai Shan reached to yank it out, and a different thin, articulated limb hooked his wrist.
At the same instant, Vandar bellowed and surged up off the floor. With all the momentum of its brawny, lunging wielder behind it, the red spear plunged through the whipping, snatching, raking limbs to pierce the murky form from which they emanated.
The stalker floundered backward, for an instant, dragging Dai Shan with it. Then, however, it let him go, even the claw caught in the meat of his thigh somehow slipping free.
Or maybe it melted away because the creature was no longer in front of its human foes. Perhaps Vandar’s spear thrust had destroyed it utterly, or perhaps it had vanished to safety in the same way it had leaped in to attack.
Once he was satisfied that the shadow beast was really gone, Vandar panted and leaned on his spear. For a few moments at least, he’d be weak and sick now that the battle fury had run its course.
The Rashemi’s manifest vulnerability made Dai Shan reconsider disposing of him. But nothing fundamental had changed, so the Shou retrieved the fallen torch instead and offered it to his companion.
Vandar grunted. “What was that thing?”
“Some manner of shadow, but unfortunately, one unresponsive to my particular art. The entities I command are animate darkness first and foremost. Our attacker had too much of death-or undeath-in its essence.”
The berserker mulled that over in what was no doubt a futile attempt to understand. Then he said, “You saved my life.”
“If I’m not mistaken, we saved each other’s, and why would we not? In our present circumstances, survival is our first concern.”
“No,” Vandar said, scowling. “Finding Cera and Jhesrhi is our first concern. That, and killing Mario Bez. Help me do those things, and I’ll let you survive.”
Dai Shan had heard offers of truce couched in more amiable terms. But he took it as a positive sign that as they resumed their trek, Vandar no longer held the red spear poised for a thrust at his spine.
3
A thunderstorm was blowing in from the west, and the first flickers of lightning, rumbles of thunder, and cold drops of rain were making the novices uneasy. Each of the little girls was supposed to be trying to commune with the spirit residing in a tree of her choice, but their focus was manifestly wavering as first one and then another glanced around at the shelter the row of lean-tos would afford. Finally, plump, apple-cheeked little Hulmith, who was always the most willful, started in that direction.
“Stop,” Yhelbruna said.
Hulmith froze. Willful she might be, but all the girls were at least a little in awe of their new teacher, the hundred-year-old hathran who figured in so many tales and rumors.
“Why are you giving up on the exercise?” Yhelbruna asked. “Are you afraid of getting wet?”
Hulmith hesitated. “I don’t want to get hit by lightning.”
A couple of the other girls nodded.
“You won’t,” Yhelbruna said, “not here.” She waved her hand in a gesture meant to encompass not just the clearing but the Urlingwood in its entirety. “This is the most sacred earth in all Rashemen. It protects us as we protect it. And to be worthy protectors, you must learn to rejoice in Nature in all its aspects. Everyone, come out from under the branches and lift your faces to the sky. Welcome the storm just as you offered your friendship to the souls of the trees.”
The girls obeyed. Some, however, did so with a trudging reluctance that irked Yhelbruna. She reminded herself that so long as she was young in body, she didn’t want to turn into a grumpy, impatient old crone in spirit, even though she occasionally found the pretense useful.
“Cheer up,” she coaxed, removing her brown leather mask. “This isn’t a punishment. If you give yourself over to it, it will lift up your hearts.”
Certainly, it had always lifted up hers. All her life, she’d loved the cleansing tumult of a storm, and as the lightning flared and the hammering rain stung her upturned face, she felt the old familiar exultation. It gratified her to peek around and see the same joy flowering in the faces of her charges.
Then the clearing blazed white and thunder boomed at the exact same instant. Dazzled, blinking, Yhelbruna saw Hulmith collapse in a steaming heap.
For an instant, she simply gaped at the sheer impossibility of what had just happened while the other girls goggled in horror. Then she started toward Hulmith and her students fled screaming toward the lean-tos.
As if the frantic scrambling had provoked the storm to further malice, more thunderbolts flared down from the clouds. Blasted, more girls burned and fell.
Yhelbruna raised her staff high and cried out to the spirits of the earth, trees, and air. Like much of a hathran’s magic, the spell blended prayer and subtle coercion into a spell capable of calming any entity a witch was likely to encounter within the borders of the holy forest.
But this time, it didn’t work. Raging and hateful, the fey to whom she spoke spurned her flattery and defied her commands with a vehemence that made her head throb. A numbing tingle surged up her legs.
With a gasp, she sat up in her bed. Twisted and tangled, her blankets lay on the floor, and she was cold. But cold was better than lightning-struck, or standing over the bodies of lightning-struck children, and she sighed and slumped to realize the ordeal had only been a nightmare.
Then something boomed, and the heart jolting in her chest, she jumped.
Scowling, she pulled on her mask, rose, moved to the window, and opened the shutters. Wings extended, red and yellow flags flapping, the Storm of Vengeancewas flying in from the north. After another moment, one of the enchanted ballistae on its deck hurled a thunderbolt flashing and banging across the blue morning sky.
Mario Bez and his sellswords hadn’t raised such a commotion on the previous occasions when they’d flown into Immilmar. It was a display they’d likely reserved to proclaim themselves victorious.
Yhelbruna felt a twinge of regret. Although her office required impartiality, in her secret heart, she’d hoped Vandar would beat out Bez and his other rivals in the competition for the wild griffons.