The sight of small fires burning below brought the wizard’s mind back to the task at hand. He soared to the west side of the clearing and began to chant the words of his wall of fire spell.
From her vantage point high in the air, Alias saw the shimmering violet wall of flames to the west of the vale and whistled in awe. “It’s nearly three hundred feet long,” she breathed.
Hovering beside her, Akabar concentrated on rolling the flaming sphere beneath him into another hut before he stole a glance westward at Grypht’s handiwork. “We’re fortunate to have so powerful an ally,” he said, then concentrated on moving the flaming sphere once more.
Beneath Akabar and Alias, the saurial workers had begun to smell the smoke and emerge from their huts. Just as Grypht had predicted, not even the Darkbringer could control the instinct of the saurials to flee from fire. Although the small flying saurials might have fled in any direction they wanted, they followed the rest and flew east toward the mage and swordswoman.
“Fliers,” Alias warned. “Ten of them, at least.”
Akabar looked up and pulled out Grypht’s wand of frost. He flew across the path of the fliers twice, luring them into following him. Alias remained, hovering near the ground until she saw no more fliers passing by. Then she followed them, keeping out of range of Akabar’s wand.
The mage flew low over a patch of brush. It was important that the fliers didn’t fall too great a distance when they fell into their torpor. The wand’s cold might kill their possessing vines and leave them unharmed, but they couldn’t survive a crash to the earth from any great height. With a sudden twist, Akabar faced the fliers coming at him and hovered in place.
The lead flier was only five yards from Akabar when the mage pointed the wand of frost at it, and only three when he gave the whistle that approximated the saurial word to trigger the wand. Motes of white crystalline ice blasted out of the tip of the wand in a cone sixty feet long. The flying saurial in the lead was immediately covered in a rime of frost and dropped to the ground. Another eight, also whitened by the wand’s magical cold, fell after him.
Two fliers had been beyond the reach of the wand’s cone, however. Now they dived down upon Akabar with their sharp beaks open.
Akabar headed for a higher altitude to evade the attackers, but one managed to tear through his robe and leave a gash in his side. The mage cried out and clutched at his side.
Alias flew to the side of the injured mage. As the two remaining fliers turned and swooped down on them, Alias drew her sword. One creature called out in saurial, “Look out! She has a weapon!” and pulled up, but the other couldn’t stop its dive in time. Alias’s blade tore through the saurial’s wing, and the creature spun helplessly to the earth. Alias chased the remaining flying saurial as Akabar flew down toward the injured one.
Grypht had told Alias that the flying saurials could fly with the grace and speed of eagles. Alias might never have caught up with this one in ordinary circumstances, but the creature was exhausted from its day’s labor and had lost much of its maneuverability because of Moander’s possessive vines. Since Alias’s flight was magical, the swordswoman was not in the least winded by her chase. She swooped down on the last winged saurial, grabbing it by the vines that grew from its back and wrapped about its waist.
The creature struggled frantically, and its vines began wrapping around Alias’s arm. The swordswoman soared earthward and landed beside Akabar. Quickly the mage sliced the vines off near the saurial’s back. The little saurial began to slash at Akabar’s arms with its beak, but the mage grabbed it by its throat and held it fast while Alias tied its wings behind its back with a length of rope. Then they laid the trussed flier alongside the injured one by the side of the trail leading west out of the vale. Finally they stood and waited for the saurials who were coming up the trail on foot. It had been Akabar’s idea to drive the saurials eastward, so they would have to climb uphill, slowing them down so it would be easier to cast magic on them.
Alias could hear the approaching saurials shouting, and she could smell the violet scent of their fear rising up the vale with the smoke of the fires. “Are you all right?” she asked the mage beside her. He was bleeding from the gashes in his side and his arm.
Akabar nodded and held out Grypht’s wand. “It’ll hurt more later, when I have time to think about it,” he said.
The approaching saurials were somewhat larger than the fliers, and Akabar didn’t wait till the last minute to fire the wand at them. When they were twenty feet away, he whistled the wand’s command word. The lead creatures were struck by the blast of freezing ice, but they kept coming for several seconds before they were stopped by the cold. At least twenty fell to the ground, but others behind them kept coming.
Akabar flew over the fallen saurials and fired off another blast from the wand. Many more saurials dropped. A few, too large to be affected quickly by the cold or with some resistance to magic, ran on up the hill. Alias took to the air to get out of their path.
“I could get to enjoy this flying thing,” the swordswoman said, turning a somersault in the air. She sheathed her sword and landed back on the ground, then began dragging saurials off the path so they wouldn’t be crushed by any that followed.
Akabar was intent on the remaining saurials charging up the hill. He already had his wand pointed at them. The Turmish mage whistled out the command word, but as the wand fired its icy cone, it crumbled in Akabar’s hand, its power spent.
Suddenly, from the air above her, Alias heard chanting. She looked up to see two saurials of Dragonbait’s type looking down on Akabar. Spell-casters, she realized, with fly spells like our own! The Turmish mage couldn’t hear them, so he was oblivious to their presence.
“Akabar! Above you!” the swordswoman called out in warning, but Akabar still didn’t move. He was frozen in the same position he’d been in when he pointed the wand. The saurial mages held him fast with their magic.
Alias drew her sword and flew up into their midst, shouting a battle cry in saurial and blasting the scent of her anger in their direction. The mages quickly flew off in separate directions. Alias turned back to Akabar, only to discover that a third flying saurial had snatched up the paralyzed mage in a net and was now flying back toward the camp with him.
Alias flew after Akabar’s captor. Slowed by his burden, the saurial couldn’t keep ahead of the furious swordswoman, but Alias had forgotten about the other two mages. She heard a chanting just above her, and suddenly she felt as though she were flying through jelly. Her flight had been slowed with magic. Akabar’s captor burst ahead of her. The other saurial mages swooped down on her with another net, and she couldn’t dodge out of the way in time. They closed her up in the net and wrenched her sword from her hand. Then they flew after Akabar’s captor, toward the looming pile that would become Moander’s new body.
Olive tossed the stub of her spent torch into the burning brush. “I sure hope I don’t run into any treants or druids tonight,” she muttered. She looked eastward at Grypht’s wall of fire. Olive had never seen a blaze so big.
It was getting terribly hot in the vale, and the halfling noticed steam rising from the pile that was to become Moander’s body. She knew the fire’s main purpose was to herd the saurials toward Akabar’s and Grypht’s cones of cold, but she couldn’t help wishing they’d get extra lucky and manage to burn the wet pile of hacked forest as well, despite the magic that protected it from fire. She would never be comfortable until she was sure Moander’s waiting body was gone for good.