The fulminating shock Crest had received from his brief contact with the ebon surface of Nemesis appeared to dull the thief's anger.
"I'm… sorry, Questor Xylox," he said in a quiet voice. "What I did was inexcusable. I haven't forgotten my oath, and I stand by it now. I am still your man, and I'll see if I can't persuade that oversized sack of pink meat to cool things a little, even in this heat."
"I accept your apology," was Xylox's curt response. "Now, we are falling behind. Let us move on."
Grimm felt a grudging respect for Xylox's ability to remain as cold and unbending as ever, despite his flushed, burnt and sweaty face. The young sorcerer's own, once-splendid silk robes were in tatters, stained and stiff with salt, but the senior mage's simple black habit seemed little the worse for wear.
Grimm knew his hair and beard were untidy and streaked with white salt-stains, whereas Xylox's white mane and facial hair looked little different. He did not find it difficult to feel admiration for the way in which Xylox now held the group together, despite the growing friction, and the junior mage decided to offer his fellow Questor his support.
"Questor Xylox," he said. "I know we have not always seen eye-to-eye on many occasions. I also know you often find fault with my comportment."
"Granted," the older mage replied, without so much as looking at Grimm or slowing his steady march through the sand. He seemed determined not to make things easy for his junior, and the young thaumaturge drew a deep breath through the white silk mask over his nose and mouth.
"Nonetheless, I just wanted to say how much I have admired your handling of the team in these difficult times," he said. "I swear to support you in this Quest, no matter what happens."
"How gratifying that is," was the cool response. "One never knows when an understudy may come in useful."
That did it. Grimm had offered sincere feelings of respect, and they had been thrown straight back into his face by the cold, snide Questor.
"Oh, well, let's just forget the whole bloody thing, shall we?"
"Not 'let's'; 'Let us'," Xylox corrected.
"You are impossible, Questor Xylox, do you know that?" Grimm said. "You never miss an opportunity to belittle me, to insult me in either a covert or overt manner, or to otherwise denigrate me. I might remind you that, in Armitage's test facility, I had you beaten. You only survived because you had the trick of storing extra energy in your staff, and I did not."
"Nonsense," the senior mage replied, but at least Grimm's last remark stopped him in his tracks. "I was merely deciding the best course of action to take against your mediocre tricks."
"Mediocre!" the young mage exploded. "I had you beaten, Xylox the Mighty, fair and square, and only a liar would deny it!"
"Are you daring to call me a liar?" Xylox snapped, his brows lowering.
"If the cap fits, wear it, Brother Mage," Grimm sneered.
The other members of the group halted. Even the ever-eager Foster had stopped walking. For the first time, it seemed as if two members of the party were about to come to blows, and, this time, neither Tordun nor Crest was involved. Those two worthies both wore cool smiles on their faces after Xylox's earlier, censorious words.
Drex stood with her small right fist pushed into her mouth, in evident trepidation over what might happen.
Grimm felt as if his blood had started to boil, and the early morning desert heat was not the only reason. He felt seized by a desire to trounce the pompous, overbearing prig standing before him into the ground. He raised his staff, Redeemer, into the air, watching Xylox respond in kind.
"Do you recant your ridiculous claims of supremacy?" Xylox demanded.
"I do not," was Grimm's hot reply. "Indeed, I stand by them. I am a stronger mage than you will ever be, Questor Xylox, and I defy you."
"You are nothing but a preening popinjay," the older man sneered. "You're all presence and no power."
Xylox is not quite so cool and collected now, Grimm thought, suppressing a smile.
"Not 'you're'; 'you are'," he said with immense pleasure.
Xylox seemed about to bring his staff down on Grimm's head, when Foster emitted a great cry. "It's a plane! It's a bloody plane!" The pilot was bouncing up and down, as if to emphasise the seriousness of his words, and he was stabbing his right index finger towards the sky.
"What do you mean by a 'plane', Technologist?" Xylox queried, pausing in his apparent personal quest to crush his colleague's head, and Grimm stayed his own assault.
The young mage looked up to where Foster's finger was pointing. At first, he thought the thing in the sky must be just another wheeling vulture, but he saw that its wings were stiff, and he heard a clattering, moaning sound growing louder by the moment.
"An aircraft; a flying machine!" the pilot yelled. "We've got to attract their attention, somehow." He threw down the pack from his back, muttering "Perhaps there's a flare gun in here."
As Foster rummaged through the canvas bag, his frustrated expression implied that he had not found what he sought.
"What about magic?" the young mage asked.
"You cannot have any more power left within you than I do," Xylox snorted.
"That is not quite true," his junior replied. "I may not have enough energy to blast a door to fragments, but I am confident I still possess enough to produce a few fireworks."
"Please do try, Questor Grimm!" Foster urged. "That plane has to have come from the General's compound."
Grimm shut his eyes and drew the few, slender tendrils of power remaining within him into a tight, golden knot. He did not require a vast release of energy, but it must be an accurate one.
The machine appeared to proceed across the sky at a lazy pace, but Grimm guessed it might be very high up; it could be moving at a rate of two hundred miles per hour, or even more.
He would have to estimate the height and speed of the vehicle to a nicety, and he knew he lacked the ability. Keeping his spell cocked, he turned to the pilot.
"Foster, how high and how fast would you say that the machine is flying?" He had forgotten his enmity with Xylox in the excitement of the prospect of their potential deliverance from this mundane hell. "You know these machines better than I."
Foster cocked his head to one side, squinting in the bright rays of morning sun.
"I'd say two hundred to two hundred fifty miles per hour, maybe twenty thousand feet, Questor."
"Close enough," Grimm said. "Ch'teeerye sk'k'kaa!"
From his upraised right hand flew a small sphere of green light. It lofted into the sky at a tremendous pace, but it remained visible. A part of Grimm travelled with it, seeing through it, as if the ball of luminescence were some third eye, guiding it, correcting its course as if flew towards the clattering vehicle.
****
"What the hell's that?" Flying Officer Strume cried, extending his arm. His pilot, Flight Lieutenant Moore, knew the red-haired young man could be a little excitable at times, but he was a good observer, and he looked to where the younger officer was pointing.
Moore saw a small, green ball outside the cockpit window. It seemed to be following them, hovering inches from the glass. He could have sworn he saw a human eye embedded within the luminescent globe, and that it was looking straight at him.
"I see it, but I don't believe it!" Moore replied, shaking his head, just as the green light disappeared from view.
"Could it've been a flare?" Strume asked, his voice crackling in the intercom.
"If it is," the pilot said, "It's like no flare I've ever seen. Perhaps I'd better take her down for a look-see, anyway."
Selecting ten degrees of flap and throttling back, Moore brought the plane around in a lazy, descending arc until it was no more than a hundred feet or so off the deck.
"Keep your eyes peeled," he advised Strume.