“What do we do?” Stedd whispered.
“Keep making our way out,” Umara replied. “We’re still invisible, and there can’t be that many guards. This is a temple, not a fortress.”
She gave his hand a gentle tug. “Come on.”
They made it a few more steps. Then golden light shined through the dimness, and silvery figures shimmered into being in the lofty open space in the middle of the temple. They looked like women forged of metal. Feathery wings beat slowly to suspend them in midair, and long, straight swords gleamed in either hand.
Like many Red Wizards, Umara knew more about devils, demons, and elementals than she did about the denizens of the so-called higher planes. But she took the silver creatures to be angels, archons, or something comparable. Someone, most likely the First Sunlord himself, was doing his utmost to make sure Stedd didn’t escape; he’d summoned supernatural help to prevent it.
It was possible, though, that the temple’s celestial allies were no more able to see the invisible than were its mortal protectors. Umara crept onward, and to her relief, Stedd moved with her. Despite the fearsome spectacle that had just materialized, he hadn’t frozen.
The entities peered this way and that. Then one with a golden circlet on her brow abruptly looked straight at Umara and Stedd. She pointed with the sword in her right hand and extended the one in her left behind her back.
A beam of argent light leaped from the blade aimed at the mortals. A hot prickling danced over Umara’s skin as the ray caught her, and from the corner of her eye, she saw Stedd pop back into view. No doubt the winged outsider’s magic had just put an end to her own invisibility as well.
Wings beating more rapidly now, all the flying women oriented on her and the boy. Rattling off hissing, crackling words of power, Umara hurled fire at the entity crowned with gold. The blast rocked the spirit and charred patches of her silvery body black. But afterward, she flew at the fugitives, and her sisters followed.
Anton and the Fire Knives had been about to ascend a staircase when the winged women appeared. Now they stood motionless. The creatures had spotted them immediately but seemingly dismissed them as of no importance, and they were reluctant to do anything that might prompt the entities to reconsider that initial judgment.
But they couldn’t stay put much longer. Voices were calling, and footsteps were scuffing and thumping. The temple’s human guardians would arrive soon, and now that they were on alert, they were unlikely to take Anton and his companions for anything other than the trespassers they were.
He was still trying to decide what to do when a silver spirit cast light from one of her swords. The beam cut across a bit of the gallery above, and suddenly, Stedd and a tall, slender woman in a brown hooded cloak were standing there. Presumably, they had been all along, and countermagic had just ripped a charm of invisibility away.
The sight of Stedd resolved Anton’s uncertainty. He drew his blades and charged up the stairs, and after a moment of hesitation, Dalabrac and the other two Fire Knives pounded after him.
A booming burst of flame engulfed one of the winged beings. Apparently, the stranger in brown was a mage, and Anton was glad of it; his chances were at least a little better than they’d seemed a moment before.
When he reached the top of the stairs, there were five brown-cloaked women, the original, presumably, and four illusory duplicates that mirrored her movements perfectly to flummox the silver creatures. It worked, too. She pierced one of the flying spirits with ragged shafts of shadow, and when the being sought to retaliate, her sword simply popped one of the phantoms like a bubble.
But while the mage’s two winged assailants kept her occupied, another swooped across the balcony at Stedd. The boy turned tail and dodged as he ran, but his pursuer compensated.
Anton sprinted, leaped, cut, and caught the silver creature’s wing. He half expected the stroke to ring like metal striking metal, but it didn’t. Rather, the saber scraped on bone. The celestial being slammed down on the gallery floor and started to scramble to her feet, but he slashed the side of her neck before she could. The blood that sprayed from the wound was clear as spring water.
Anton pivoted. The mage in brown, Dalabrac, and the other Fire Knives were busy fighting silver spirits and seemingly holding their own. But more foes were winging their way toward the gallery. The gods only knew how many the high priest had summoned altogether.
Anton turned to Stedd. “Get back against the wall!”
Stedd balked. In the excitement of combat, Anton had forgotten that the boy no longer had any reason to trust him.
“Do it!” the pirate urged. “It’s the only way we can protect you. The creatures won’t be able to use their wings or get around behind you.”
Stedd stared back for another heartbeat. Then, evidently seeing something in Anton’s face that persuaded him, he gave a jerky nod and scurried to put himself where his former traveling companion wanted him.
Anton spun back around, and a silver woman lit in front of him. Her eyes blank and her sharp features expressionless, she advanced with her swords spinning.
He cut to the chest, but the saber glanced off. She was wearing armor, but of the same color as her flesh and feathers, which made it difficult to see. One of the twin swords whirled at this head, and he parried with the cutlass. The straight blade caught on his guard, and he tried to twist it out of her grip, but she spun it free before he could.
For the next few breaths, they traded sword strokes, neither scoring, and then Anton went on the defensive. It was scarcely his preferred style of fighting, especially when enemy reinforcements were surely on the way, but the winged spirit was too formidable. He needed to study her and find a weakness to exploit.
Possibly mistaking his attitude for fear or flagging strength, she pressed him hard, and his tactics nearly cost him a split skull and a maimed leg. After that, however, he recognized what he was looking for.
The creature’s swordplay was deft and forceful, but it had a symmetry and regularity to it that reminded him of banks of oars sweeping in unison or chanting mariners hoisting a sail. When his opponent attacked with one weapon, she invariably followed up with a cut from the other at the same tempo, provided that circumstances allowed.
Now that Anton saw the pattern, he was happy to allow it. He parried a clanging stroke with the saber but didn’t riposte. The silver woman started to swing her other sword, he sprang in, and her cut fell harmlessly behind him.
He thrust the cutlass up under her jaw, where her armor didn’t cover her. Her features still as immobile as those of the statues adorning the temple, she collapsed.
Anton looked around to see what else was happening. One of Dalabrac’s Fire Knives-a black-bearded man with chipped yellow teeth-recoiled from a sword stroke and bumped into the railing at the edge of the gallery. His adversary cut with the weapon in her other hand, and the gang member’s head tumbled into space. Meanwhile, his cheeks bulging, the halfling blew a plume of dark vapor from a pipe, and, brushed by the discharge, a silver spirit fell to her knees and pawed at her face.
Suddenly, Anton glimpsed movement at the periphery of his vision. He whirled to find a celestial foe plunging into the distance, one of her blades already cutting at his head. He raised his saber in a frantic attempt to parry.
Then the spirit lurched off balance, and it was plain her flailing stroke would miss. Thus, Anton didn’t need to parry. He simply sliced her, once and then again.
As the creature fell, Anton spotted the wizard in brown-who’d run through her supply of phantom decoys-standing with hands outstretched at the conclusion of some cabalistic gesture. Evidently, he had her to thank for tripping his attacker, and he gave her a nod before pivoting to engage the next silver warrior.