He looked around for a suitable sentry post and decided a little elevation might help him spot a potential threat before it noticed him. He ran to a twisted tree that resembled a white elm, jumped, clutched for handholds, and tried to haul himself upward. Bark tore and crumbled beneath his fingers, and he almost fell, but not quite. He balanced in the lowest fork and laid one of his few remaining arrows on his bow.
Jhesrhi prowled around below him. He suspected she was looking for a bare, level piece of ground. When she found it, she started chanting under her breath and drawing lines in the dirt with the metal cap on the butt of her staff. Like the rings that encircled the wood at intervals, the ferrule was mostly golden now, with only a couple of flecks and streaks of red.
The soil shifted a little even after her staff moved on. It looked like it was trying to fill in the ruts she’d just inscribed. She recited her words of power a trifle louder and the subtle crawling stopped.
It only took a relatively short time to complete the pentagram, which was noticeably less elaborate than others Gaedynn had watched Jhesrhi draw. He wondered if that was because she didn’t know what she was doing. Since she was uncertain what figure was truly appropriate, she’d settled for a basic emblem of power and protection.
She stood in the center of the star and circle, took a deep breath, then started a new incantation. She spoke in a language Gaedynn didn’t know, so he had no idea what she was saying. But some of the words created a sort of itch inside his head.
She spoke for a long while before reaching the end. He sensed she was waiting. When nothing happened, she took a breath, shifted her stance, and-speaking a little louder-started over again. She punctuated certain phrases by lifting her staff over her head, then jamming the ferrule back into the dirt.
After several repetitions, each performed in a somewhat different fashion, Gaedynn noticed that the air felt thick and it seemed an effort just to draw a breath. But it wasn’t only the air that was different. He had a sense that the whole world, or at least the part of it within view, was heavy and sore like a boil that needed to burst.
She’s doing it, he thought, and waited eagerly for her to call him to her side. He was still waiting when a gray-black bat hurtled down from the sky.
Its head and body were the size of a dwarf’s, although its leathery wings made it look bigger than a man. As it streaked at Jhesrhi, its long tail stopped whipping and curled into stiffness. The animal was readying a blow like the strike of a whip.
The bat’s dark coloration made it hard to see in the shadowy world. Despite his vigilance, Gaedynn hadn’t spotted it until it had nearly closed the distance to its target. He only had time for a single shot.
He drew and released. The arrow plunged into the bat’s torso. Spasmodic, it veered, tumbled, and slammed to the ground several strides to the right of the pentagram. Where it flopped and flopped, but appeared capable of nothing more.
Gaedynn looked back at the sky and spotted another bat. It was diving at Jhesrhi too, and he dealt with it as he had the first, only better. The shot was a clean kill, and the beast plummeted like a stone.
He looked for a third bat. He didn’t find one, but abruptly heard a fierce baying that clawed at his nerves. He took a breath and willed fear away, and then the big black hounds surged over a rise.
Like the shadar-kai the previous night, they flickered ahead through space as they charged, gaining ground faster than should have been possible. It made them difficult to aim at too. Gaedynn invested a precious moment studying the unnatural motion so he could guess where they’d reappear.
He dropped one and then another. It wasn’t good enough. There were still too many and they were still advancing too fast. Jhesrhi needed to turn her magic on them.
But she just kept chanting. Either she was in a trance, like the wizards mired in their own ritual back in Luthcheq, or she didn’t dare interrupt the spell for fear of what the forces she’d raised would do if she relinquished control.
Damn you, woman, he thought. He sprang down out of the elm and shouted, “Over here, you filthy beasts! I’m the one killing you! Attack me!” He loosed at another hound. The shaft punched deep into its neck.
His ploy worked, if one wanted to think of it that way. The hounds turned and charged him.
He shot two more, and then had to drop his bow and snatch out his scimitar. The remaining four or five-everything was happening too fast for an accurate count-encircled him. They lunged and snapped, snarling, gray foam flying from their jaws.
He turned, slashed, and dodged-and somehow kept himself from being bitten and dragged down for the first couple of heartbeats. He even split the skull of one of the beasts.
It gave him a surge of satisfaction but not of hope. Khouryn could probably have cut his way clear of the nightmare, but he was the best hand-to-hand combatant Gaedynn had ever seen. He himself was merely good, and he suspected that wasn’t going to be enough.
He hoped he was buying Jhesrhi enough time to get home.
Then something whistled. And, mad with rage as they’d appeared, the hounds drew away from him. Panting, he turned in the direction of the sound.
A little way up the slope, a shadar-kai sat on a black horse. By the light of day-or what passed for it there-Gaedynn saw that the rider’s raised facial scars formed geometric patterns and must have been cut deliberately. He held a lance and wore a chain coiled on his hip.
Gray-skinned, black-haired, and clad in dark garments like the horseman-but hunched, stunted, and coarse-featured-small figures stood to the sides of his steed. One held the wooden syrinx that had evidently called back the hounds.
Gaedynn realized the shadar-kai was a hunter. And the halfling-sized creatures were servants charged with the management of his coursing beasts.
The rider lowered his lance and spurred his horse. Either he was worried that his intended prey would hurt more of his animals, or he’d decided it would be more fun to kill Gaedynn with his own hands. Either way, he must have been confident of his prowess.
The black horse accelerated to a gallop. Gaedynn forced himself to stand still while the shadar-kai and the point of his lance raced closer. Dodge too soon, and his foe would compensate.
The dark horse and rider vanished and reappeared immediately, just an arm’s length short of striking distance.
Gaedynn hurled himself to the side. He avoided the lance, but not quite the horse. The animal’s shoulder clipped him with bruising force and knocked him staggering. As he fought to regain his balance, something brushed his head, and he realized the shadar-kai was trying to catch him by the hair. He managed to twist away from that too, and the steed and rider pounded past.
As he regained his footing, Gaedynn felt angry with himself for not guessing that the horse might be able to shift through space like half the other creatures in the vile place. But that particular anger could only hinder him, so he took a breath and tried to exhale it away. I know now, he told himself. That’s what’s important.
Even so, the same trick nearly served to surprise him again. As the shadar-kai wheeled his mount, a subtle flicker lined it up with Gaedynn an instant sooner than mere conventional movement would have allowed. It started forward, disappeared, and reappeared.
Right where Gaedynn had estimated it would. He stepped diagonally, past the head of the lance and to the side of the horse, and sliced its foreleg just above the knee.
The beast pitched forward onto the ground, and the shadar-kai tumbled out of the saddle. He landed on the wrong side of his thrashing horse, and Gaedynn moved to scramble around it.
From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed something small rushing in on his flank. He wrenched himself around and parried a low thrust from a jagged-edged dagger that would have crippled him as he’d crippled the horse. His assailant was one of the stunted servants-who could apparently blink through space too, or maybe he was just sneaky. Gaedynn slashed his neck and his body dissolved in a puff of cold, black vapor.