“There,” Anton said and led her to the flimsiest of all. It looked as if the builder, though initially intending to erect a proper cottage, had grown slothful partway through the process. The facade and one other wall were made of wood, but the remaining two and the roof were simply flapping canvas stretched over a frame, thus creating a structure half house and half tent.
Anton tried the door and found it fastened. He whispered his spell of openingTu’ala’keth found it marginally encouraging that he hadn’t squandered all his magic resisting the effects of dissipationand on the other side of the panel, a bar squeaked as it slid in its brackets. That noise sounded jarringly loud as well, but she knew it was just because of her nerves.
She and Anton scrambled into the houseall one sparsely furnished room, with rushes strewn on the dirt floorand he shot the bar behind them. A human mother and two small, snaggletoothed boys of mixed blood sat up from their pallets to goggle at the intruders. Perhaps the children’s ore father was away at sea.
Anton pointed his cutlass at the family. “Stay where you are, and don’t make a sound,” he said.
White-faced, the woman gave a nod.
The windows facing the street were made of canvas as well, so as to admit a little light. Anton cut a peephole in one then knelt behind it. Tu’ala’keth crouched beside him.
“You must realize,” she whispered, “this structure is no refuge. Chadrezzan can blast it apart with a flick of his fingers.”
“I know,” he said, “but first he and Kassur have to find us, and that’s the point. With luck, they’ll need to get close, and we’ll have a better chance than we would with them lobbing flame and lightning from a hundred paces away.”
“I understand.”
“Then hush and use your ears. We may well hear them coming before we’re able to see them.”
He was right. After a few moments, something hissed out on the street. At first she couldn’t see it, but then Anton tore the peephole larger, expanding their field of vision.
It was fire making the sibilant sound. Shrouded in yellow flame, turning his head from side to side, Chadrezzan stalked along with a look of intense concentration on his face. Kassur followed behind, spear at the ready. He too had cast some sort of defensive enchantment, revealing itself as an outline of scarlet phosphorescence around his body.
“They are not peering into doors or windows,” whispered Tu’ala’keth. “They must be seeking us with magic. My guess is Chadrezzan has given himself the ability to read minds. He is sifting through all the thoughts in the area, trying to pick out ours, while
Kassur labors to sense the enchantments in your cutlass and my silverweave.”
“That’s how it looks to me, too. Here’s what we’ll do: I’m going to go out the back and circle around. Give me a few seconds then start thinking, Umberlee, help me, over and over again. If Chadrezzan is listening to thoughts, that should point him at you. You should cast spells, too, to snag Kassur’s attentiondefensive magic, if you’ve got some prepared. The Grandmaster knows, you’re likely to need it.”
“I am to distract the Talassans while you take them from behind.”
“Right. As soon as I do, you hit them, too.” He turned toward the rear of the home.
“Wait.” She murmured a prayer and wrote a glyph on his brow with her fingertip. It glowed blue for a moment then faded. “A ward against flame… I’ve had them ready for the casting ever since we first quarreled with the Talassans.”
“Thanks.” He scuttled to the rear of the cottage, slashed through the canvas wall, and disappeared.
She counted to ten then started doing as he’d instructed her, invoking the goddess and shielding herself in a structure of interlocking enchantments like the components of a suit of plate. Before long, it had the desired effect. Kassur whirled in her direction and pointed with his spear.
“Yes, storm priest,” she called, “we see you, too, and we are ready for you. Flee before I call the wrath of Umberlee down on your heads.”
Kassur laughed. “Such threats might be more intimidating if you weren’t cowering behind a wall. As if that could save you.” Declaiming rhymes in some grating, infernal language, he raised his lance over his head, and the weapon flashed bright as lightning. Chadrezzan planted the butt of his iron staff on the ground, and the soil writhed at its touch. Power pulsed from the two humans, blurring Tu’ala’keth’s vision and cramping her guts. Gripping her drowned man’s hand, she commenced her own spell.
Then a shaft of force, visible as rippling distortion in the air, shot from the shadows behind the Talassans. It slammed into the center of Chadrezzan’s back and knocked him stumbling forward, spoilingTu’ala’keth hopedhis silent conjuration. Anton instantly charged out into the open to continue the work his spell had begun.
Kassur surely realized what was happening, but didn’t permit it to distract him from continuing his own conjuring. He and Tu’ala’keth finished simultaneously.
Glare and heat blazed at her. The stained, torn cloth in the window frame burned to ash in an instant, but that was the second she needed to save her sensitive deepwater vision. She frantically twisted away from the flash, and though the magic seared and blistered her skin, afterward, she could still see. She pulled her goggles back onstupid not to have replaced them beforeand peered out the opening.
The flying trident of luminous force she’d conjured jabbed at Kassur. He had two bloody grazes on his arm where it had gored him already. He parried with the lance and shouted words of power at it, trying to dispel it.
Meanwhile, Anton rushed Chadrezzan. But the wizard didn’t rely solely on his burning aura to protect him. Instead, he sneered and soared up into the air. Tu’ala’keth had wondered how the Talassans had arrived on the scene so quickly, and now she knew at least a part of the answer. Chadrezzan had empowered himself with the ability to fly.
She chanted a counterspell to strip the enchantment away, but before she could reach the end, a wave of sickening terror assailed her. She faltered in her recitation, and the botched magic wasted itself in a feeble flickering.
Kassur had exerted his power to chastise the denizens of the sea. Shuddering, Tu’ala’keth silently cried out to Umberlee, praying for the strength to shake off the crippling fear. A measure of the deity’s own inexhaustible wrath surged into her and washed the dread away.
In her fury, she yearned to kill Kassur up close, with her hands. Unfortunately, on Dragon Isle, her stone trident was too conspicuous a weapon to carry if she hoped to walk abroad incognito, so she’d left it behind in Vurgrom’s mansion. But her magic could arm her. She whispered a prayer, the air seethed green, and sharp, bony spines extruded themselves from her skin. It hurt for a moment, but the pain didn’t balk her. It only served to heighten her rage.
She strode to the door, unbarred it, threw it open, and found herself facing Kassur, now rid of the harassment of the disembodied trident. Judging from the way he held his spear, he’d planned to use it to force his way in. He gaped at Tu’ala’keth in surprise, no doubt because he’d expected to find her still crippled with fear.
She shouted a shalarin battle cry and sprang at him.
Her first blow ripped open his face to the bone, snatched away the patch that was a part of his regalia, and revealed what appeared to be a normal, functional eye underneath. She drove in again, trying to grapple, so dozens of the spines jutting from her body could pierce him all at once.
He scrambled back and swung the spear into line to threaten her. She struck at it and knocked it away from her heart, but the point still slid into her biceps. The lance flashed and sizzled, and her body shook. The odor of her burning flesh mingled with the smell of ozone.
The spear went dark, its power expended until the next thrust. Kassur yanked it back out of her arm. Her knees buckled, dumping her on the ground. Blooding streaming from his shredded profile, the storm priest lifted his weapon for a killing stroke.