Suddenly, Burke and Varina were on either side of Myrmeen, running for the fallen men. Varina snatched Djimon's hair, slid her drawn sword beneath his throat, and executed him without a word. His blood splattered on the closest of the downed archers, who screamed in his own language for mercy. Burke had already driven his sword into the other archer's chest and was about to finish off the pleading man when a sound made him hesitate. He heard the scrape of a sword leaving its scabbard and registered that Krystin was removing the sword from the scabbard at the side of the still-twitching body of Djimon and was preparing to haul it over her head and decapitate the last man.
Myrmeen grabbed her arms, restraining her, and Varina slashed the last archer's throat.
"You should have let me do it," Krystin said, her chest heaving, her mouth caked with dried blood.
Myrmeen considered her daughter's murderous rage a frightening sight and not one that she had been prepared to witness. She turned to Burke. "The others?"
"Lucius, Reisz, and Ord are dealing with them. We should see if they are-"
"We're fine," came a reply from behind the Harpers. Burke turned to see Ord standing before the older men, his tunic splattered with blood. "They're all dead, except the two who hurt themselves on the way down, the ones who were supposed to distract us."
"See to them," Burke said.
Krystin sat back, staring at the bloody remains of her former captors, then glanced to the west and said, "The scum these bastards were going to sell me to are on their way. I can see their caravan."
Cardoc wiped the sweat from his brow. "I can shield us again. We can ride past them and they will never know it."
Burke listened to the screams of the last two raiders, whom Ord and Reisz were busy putting to death, then said, "I feel as if I can barely breathe in this heat. Mage, are you certain your strength is enough-"
"We will find out," Cardoc said in a cold, efficient manner. Burke nodded and gave the order for the Harpers to retrieve their mounts and prepare to ride. In moments, Myrmeen and Krystin were alone, regarding each other warily.
"We've got the same eyes," Krystin said slowly, only now registering the similarities between herself and the woman twenty years her senior.
"Yes," Myrmeen said guardedly. "I noticed that, too."
It had not been the reunion Myrmeen had anticipated.
Seven
The caravan had come and gone, its occupants pausing only long enough to verify Djimon's corpse. The buyer who had been promised the blue-eyed fourteen-year-old had been livid and had kicked Djimon's body several times before returning with his escorts to the caravan. They rode off with haste to avoid the gathering storm.
The first drops of heavy rain struck the corpses, which had been left in the open to rot. Only two of the bodies had not begun to show signs of death. The rain pelted their still faces. Suddenly, the eyes of the first man flashed open. "Are they gone?"
"I no longer care. My back is starting to ache." Both men rose from the sand. The first was a tall man with dark skin. Crow's feet bunched around his eyes and a heavy beard covered much of his face. His companion was short and lean, clean-shaven, and possessed a dour expression. They both had been run through with swords, the bearded man's heart cleaved in two, the shorter man gutted, a second blow having fractured his skull. Each man opened his tunic and placed his open palm over his wounds, waiting patiently as the flesh stitched together. The internal injuries would heal with time. The men allowed the falling rain to wash away the blood.
Closing their tunics, the two members of the Night Parade surveyed the human corpses strewn about the pillar's base. "Mortals are so fragile," the short man said. "The smallest injury, and they surrender to death."
"We can die, too, you know."
"Yes, but not so easily. The Draw favored us."
The bearded man looked away from the Hammer, toward the distant road. "Did you see which way they went?"
"The mage cloaked them. I couldn't tell. Back to Calimport, I would wager. The woman still has to pay Pieraccinni."
"Of course." The bearded man was silent for a time as he threw his head back and allowed the rain to caress his face. Five hundred feet above, lightning struck the flat of the hammer and thunder shook loose a hail of small rocks from the pillar's surface. The short man jumped out of the way of the falling stones. His companion stood, arms stretched wide, unmindful of the danger. The rocks seemed to avoid him.
"Is the girl really her daughter?" the short man asked.
"I don't know. Does it matter? She will believe it, and because of that, she will leave and trouble us no more."
"Just curious."
The bearded man grinned. "I have curiosities, too." With that, he leapt to the side of the pillar and began to climb, his hands digging into the solid rock as if it were soft clay.
"Come down here," his companion shouted when the bearded man was already one hundred feet up the side of the pillar. His commands were ignored. "We're supposed to follow them!"
"We will," the bearded man called. "They'll make camp. They won't travel in this. We'll catch up easily." Within a minute, the bearded man had scaled the pillar and disappeared over the rim.
"You're such a child, Zandler," the short man said as he sat down hard on a rock and placed his head in his hands, waiting for his partner to finish indulging his infantile impulses. It was true that Zandler had the more spectacular ability, but he had powers of his own. Gesturing at the sand, the short man with smoldering gray eyes watched as several sand creatures burrowed out of their holes, a host of scorpions rushing to the lead. Within seconds a small army of arachnids had gathered at his feet. He remembered the last man he had tormented then killed, an older man with a paranoid fear of cockroaches. The gray-eyed man had played with his victim's dreams for weeks before making his nightmares come true.
He heard a shuffling in the sand behind him. "Zandler?"
"No," an unfamiliar voice said with a malice that could not be mistaken for anything but murderous intent. Before the gray-eyed man had a chance to order the sand creatures to attack his unseen enemy, he convulsed in searing agony. Looking down, he saw a hand erupt from his chest. The gloved hand burned with a bluish white energy laced with crackling strands of green fire. He had seen those cold flames once before.
"The apparatus!" he shouted as he fell forward and died. His corpse struck the sand, scattering the arachnids he had summoned.
The dark man with the weapon turned it a few times, examining it for damage. The dead man was wrong. It was not the apparatus, but it had been charged from the energies of that object. The design was extraordinarily simple; in truth, it was little more than a steel glove. When it was activated, however, claws made of mystical fires stolen from the apparatus would leap from the moldings above each knuckle. The blue-white talons mimicked the actions of his true fingers and allowed him to take the lives of those creatures who laughed at human conceits such as mortality. As always, the weapon had performed admirably.
"You're going to miss everything," a voice called from above. The dark man looked up in the direction of the voice and smiled.
On the flat, the bearded man stood, hands held out to the sky, the worsening storm raging directly above his head.
"Come to me," he shouted, "Come on, come on, come-"
Suddenly two streaks of lightning burst from the clouds, tearing jagged paths across the darkened sky, streaking down toward the bearded man. He screamed with delight as lightning struck each of his hands and his entire body quaked with the impact.