Their first real test came when a copse of wood demons approached, carrying huge clubs. While not the massive trees the rocks were carrying, the weapons were larger than men, and the simple wood did what alagai talons could not, smashing into the shields of his warriors and scattering them in wide swathes.
Jardir concentrated before the demons could take advantage of the breaches, extending the power of his crown out beyond his warriors and stopping the demons short. He raised his spear and drew heat wards in the air, incinerating the wood demons, and then charged forward, his magic throwing the lesser alagai aside until he came up to the nearest rock. He pulled the protective field in tight, letting him get close enough to leap ten feet into the air and thrust the Spear of Kaji into the demon’s chest. Magic refilled the spear’s well as it pulsed up his arm, suffusing him with energy.
He kicked off from the falling demon, landing in a clear spot twenty feet away. Demons leapt at him from all sides, but their attacks skittered off his warding field, even as he attacked with impunity. Several demons fell to thrusts of his spear, but as many were destroyed by wards he drew in the air. Flame demons shattered as he froze the firespit in their bellies, and wood demons ran about frantically, immolated in flame. Impact wards threw field demons aside by the half dozen.
Still they closed in, their numbers undiminished. Every demon on the field was focused on him now. He extended the crown’s power again, driving them back until he could rejoin his men, but that only made him a clearer target as a rock demon threw a heavy boulder his way.
Jardir leapt aside, but was struck even as he landed by another stone dropped from above. He rolled with the impact, keeping hold of his spear and drawing on its magic to heal himself. He was given no respite, as rocks the size of melons began to fall like rain around him.
But as fast as the stones fell, Jardir was faster, dodging them like lazily drifting bubbles of soap. Even as he dodged the barrage from above, the rock and wood demons on the ground continued to hurl whatever they could grasp in their talons at him: rocks, trees, even a few of his own men. Wind demons bounced off his warding field, falling from the sky where his men quickly dispatched them before they could recover and take off again. One wind demon pulled up short just outside the limit of his protection and roared at him, a bolt of lightning leaping from its long toothed beak.
With a thunderous boom, the energy pierced the warding, going right for him, but Jardir could see the power for what it was, and did not fear. He raised his spear crosswise, absorbing the energy. The weapon tingled and burned with the power, but he threw it right back at the creature, blasting it from the sky.
He felt suffused with power, unstoppable, and yet he saw he was being slowly cut off from his men and surrounded. Rock demons were hurling more and larger missiles at him, and sooner or later one would connect.
I have made a target of myself, he realized.
With that thought, he pulled his protective field in close, throwing up his hood and wrapping himself in Leesha’s Cloak of Unsight as he quickstepped several yards to the side. To his warriors nothing had changed, but he could see confusion in the auras of the alagai. To their senses, he had simply vanished.
Calmly, he walked back to the re-formed lines of the Sharum as the warriors took advantage of the demons’ confusion, striking hard as the alagai vainly searched for sign of him.
‘Uncle!’ a voice cried, and he saw Ashia running towards him. His niece was wrapped in her Sharum blacks, but in the darkness he recognized her aura more clearly than he ever might her face. A field demon leapt at her, but she turned to catch it on her shield, throwing it aside without slowing. A flame demon stopped in her path and hawked firespit, but she sidestepped smoothly as the creature closed its eyes to spew, skewering it.
Next, a pair of wood demons barred her path. Charged now with demon magic, Ashia only increased the speed of her advance, using the edge of her shield to stab at the joints of their long, spindly limbs, keeping them off balance and unable to attack. To an untrained eye, every move was as if practised by rote, but Jardir could see that she was in fact probing, applying dama’ting sharusahk as she searched for pressure points. At last she found one in a demon’s thigh, collapsing the limb with a relatively gentle blow. Only then did she plunge her spear in for the kill.
She spun to meet the next attack from the other wood demon, slapping it aside with a casual thrust of her shield’s edge into its spindly armpit as it lashed its talons at her. The demon stumbled back, and she advanced calmly. Her aura confirmed what he already knew: that she was utterly confident in her ability to kill it at will, and was using the opportunity to learn her enemy better.
No two demons were precisely alike. Each was shaped by its preferred hunting terrain, and Everam’s Ala was vast and varied. It took her two blows to find the same pressure point on the next wood demon, but after a moment she collapsed its leg. She filed the information away, finishing the demon quickly and closing the space between herself and Jardir in two great bounds.
Jardir frowned. His pride in his beloved sister Imisandre’s daughter was overwhelming. He had commanded she be twice the warrior of her male zahven, but she had surpassed them by far, and her own father, as well. Watching the graceful and precise movements of her art, so confident and in control, was like reading a poem.
But for all his pride, her defiance of his will in coming out into the night was unacceptable. No doubt Inevera had a hand in it, but he could not allow even the Damajah to flaunt his decrees so openly. Poor Ashia would be caught in the middle when he was forced to make an example of her.
He grabbed her arm hard when she reached his side, extending his crown’s protection just enough to envelop, but hopefully not enough to alert the alagai princes who even now sought him through the eyes of their drones. ‘Are you begging to have your new blacks stripped from you, girl, to defy my command?’
‘Forgive me, Uncle,’ Ashia said, falling to one knee and baring her neck. ‘The Damajah bade me to inform you that the alagai are burning great wards into the crops outside the city, creating a net.’
Jardir felt a chill run down his spine as he looked up, seeing the magic gathering off in the distance and sensing its purpose. The demons were constructing wards to repel men. If they succeeded in creating a circle around Everam’s Bounty, they could kill every man, woman, and child within. The Skull Throne was no protection against this.
‘Did she tell you anything else?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Ashia said. ‘But when my honoured husband told her the only way to stop them would be to burn our harvest, the Damajah suggested there might be alternatives.’
Jardir nodded. How could he forget the words he had pondered day and night since Inevera’s foretelling?
— The Deliverer must go into the night alone to hunt the centre of the web, or all will be lost when the Alagai Ka comes-
He looked back at his niece. She had as much as told him that his wife and son also defied his will, but that seemed an insignificant thing now. ‘Tell the Damajah I understand, and will follow the path Everam has set before me.’ Ashia bowed and turned to go, but he caught her arm once more. ‘I am proud of you, niece.’