Osa took the sorceress by the hand and, with a considerable exertion of strength, prevented her from dancing straight toward the music. Instead, she guided Sadira back through the dark furrows between the dunes.
As they came within sight of camp, Sadira saw that the halflings were also dancing toward the music. The short warriors were whirling through the air in a frantic swarm, hurtling spears or firing arrows toward the campsite. On the other side of the ancient walls stood the caravan drivers, swaying to the melody and shooting arrows into the savage horde that the ryl pipes had drawn out of the desert.
“We go around,” Osa said, pointing to where the inixes and Sadira’s kank were still tethered. As the sorceress had told Milo earlier, the halflings had indeed approached from downwind. The area on the other side of camp was completely free of enemy warriors.
Osa skirted the open sands and crossed the cobblestone road north of the tower, still dragging Sadira’s squirming form by the hand. Although the sorceress appreciated the wisdom of drawing the little warriors into the open, she also saw that the results of the effort were far from certain. With their double-curved bows and the protection of the stone wall, the drivers had a distinct advantage over their charging foes. On the other hand, two dozen of their number already lay in the bottom of the sandy pit, and the rain of halfling shafts was taking a steady toll on those who remained standing. If many more of the caravan’s archers fell, there would not be enough of them to keep the halflings from pouring over the wall.
Osa stopped near the inixes, a couple of dozen yards from the tower. “Safe. No one mistake you for halfling,” she said. “I go back for Milo,”
Sadira’s feet shuffled forward. Despite the situation, she found herself actually enjoying the compulsions of the music. She guessed that the ryl pipes relied on some manifestation of the Way. Although magic could be used to influence a target’s thoughts, it seldom exerted such control over the raw emotions of so many. It was unfortunate that the ryl players could not use their powers to achieve a more physical effect on the halflings.
That was where she could help, the half-elf decided. As Sadira danced forward, she raised her cane into the air and spoke the word to activate it. Again, she felt it drawing its energy, from deep within her body, and a purple light came to life within the pommel. When the sorceress reached the campsite, she would use Nok’s own magic to chase off the warriors he had sent.
Before Sadira had taken two more steps, a complete silence suddenly descended over the area. Her body abruptly stopped dancing. She stumbled over her own feet and fell sprawling to the ground.
The sorceress started to rise, but stopped when a halfling’s words shattered the silence. “Lay down your weapons,” he ordered. Though it had been almost two years since she had heard the voice, Sadira immediately recognized it as that of Nok himself. “You will not save yourselves by fighting.”
Realizing that there was only one way to rescue the caravan drivers, Sadira sprinted to her kant and undid its rope. She climbed onto its back and turned her mount away from camp, then lifted her cane above her head and cried, “Skyfire!” Three bolts of crimson flame shot from the tip of the rod, filling the sky with ruby light and casting a scarlet haze over the yellow moons.
Confident that Nok would correctly identify the source of the magical display, Sadira whipped her cane across the kank’s antennae and launched the beast into a furious gallop.
FOUR
THE ANCIENT BRIDGE
Had her throat not been so parched, Sadira would have screamed for joy. A short distance ahead, the red sands ended abruptly, dropping into a dark chasm stretching in both directions as far as she could see. On the other side of the gorge, the road climbed a scarp of brush-flecked ground, then faded out of sight against the olive hues of the morning horizon.
Between the dunes and the scarp hung a magnificent bridge, nearly a hundred yards long. Built from huge blocks of stone in seven different colors, the structure spanned the chasm in a great arch that resembled nothing quite so much as a man-made rainbow. Its roadway was paved with yellow cobblestones, save for a single black stripe where the edifice’s massive keystones had been laid. To Sadira, the ancient trestle was as much an omen of good fortune as any harbinger of rain.
“Carry me to the other side, that’s all I ask,” the sorceress said, speaking to her kank in a croaking voice that even she barely understood.
Sadira tapped the creature’s antennae with her cane, urging it to greater speed, but the kank could not obey. Last night, the beast had begun their flight with a powerful, six-legged gallop that had set the sorceress’s hair to waving in the wind. As she had hoped, Nok had followed immediately, leaving the caravan to mourn the death of its captain. At first, Sadira had been confident of escaping, for halflings were no match for a kank’s speed. Yet, as the night wore on, the chief and his warriors had kept a steady pace, and she had never left them behind for long. By dawn, the gait of her exhausted mount had diminished to a jittery scramble that even she could have matched for a short distance. The halflings, showing no signs of tiring, had been slowly catching up to her ever since.
Sadira twisted around to look back. The effort sent waves of agony shooting through her hips, for the jarring ride had been almost as hard on the sorceress as it had on the kank. From the knees to the collarbone, her muscles burned with exhaustion. Her stomach had been aching for hours, and now it was seized by painful cramps that threatened to double her over at any moment. Even her head hurt, throbbing with a terrible ache caused by a dozen hours of mortal fear.
Behind her, Sadira saw that the halflings were moving up for the kill, pumping their knees hard in an effort to catch her before she reached the bridge. They were close enough that she could see they had pushed themselves beyond the point at which normal men would have collapsed. The warriors’ faces were drained and gaunt, with their mouths hanging open and their sunken cheeks working like bellows. Their hair, usually bushy and wild, lay plastered against their skulls, dripping precious body water in the form of cloud-colored sweat.
Far behind the warriors came a single speck, moving at what appeared a relaxed pace. Though the figure was too distant to see in detail, Sadira did not doubt it to be Nok. Even from this far away, the mere sight of him filled her with terror. The one who had created her cane and the Heartwood Spear was no person to offend.
Still, the sorceress did not regret keeping her cane. She had decided long ago to do whatever was necessary to keep Tyr free. So, after Kalak’s death, Sadira had kept the cane. With it, she could defend her beloved home from many terrible threats, and the sorceress had been willing to risk her life for that privilege. Even now, with Nok closing in, she had no intention of returning the cane-at least not while she lived.
A halfling warrior hurled his bone javelin at Sadira. It fell short, but by less than a yard. The next one, she guessed, would clatter off the carapace covering her kank’s abdomen … There was little use picturing where the one after that might strike.
“What keeps them going?” Sadira muttered.
Even as she asked, she knew the answer to be Nok’s magic. Otherwise, no halfling could have kept pace with a kank. Only elves could do such a thing.
The sorceress faced forward again and whipped her cane across her mount’s antennae. If anything, the kank went slower.
The bridge still lay too far ahead. Sadira was just beginning to see the lichens growing on its massive stone blocks. By the time her kank actually set foot on it, she would be lying in the sand with a dozen barbed spear tips in her body.
“Time for some magic of my own.”