“Maybe,” Dorna said again, sounding even less convinced.
“Maybe if you get down in the grass, and shoot it from there?”
“Maybe,” Dorna said again. “I don’t know how far it can lower its aim.”
“It didn’t kill us when we were on the ground over there,” Kel said, pointing back toward the rise where he had left Ezak.
Dorna did not answer that. Instead she turned to look at Kel. “Since when are you clever enough to be making these plans?”
Kel blinked, and turned to stare at her. “I’m not clever,” he said.
“You seem pretty clever to me, right now,” she replied.
He shook his head. “No, I’m just making stuff up. You need to tell me which parts aren’t stupid.”
“So far as I can tell, none of it is stupid,” she said. “It may not work, but it’s not stupid.”
Kel found that confusing-if it wouldn’t work, how could it not be stupid? He said nothing.
“I thought Ezak was supposed to be the smart one,” Dorna added.
“He is,” Kel said. “He’s older than me. He’s always been smarter. He’s always kept me safe and told me what to do.”
“Why isn’t he here now?”
That question baffled Kel. “He…he doesn’t want to be,” he said at last. “He’s wounded.”
“He’s scared, if you ask me.”
“Ezak isn’t afraid of anything!” Kel protested.
“Yes, he is,” Dorna said.
Kel decided he didn’t want to talk about Ezak any more. He walked casually along what he judged to be the edge of the area where the Northern device would threaten them, looping back toward Dorna. He tried to think like Ezak, to say what Ezak would say if this were one of his schemes they were carrying out.
The horn-piece did not move; it remained pointed at the spot where he had approached too closely. Apparently it considered them both harmless for the moment.
“Look at the talisman,” Kel said, as he approached Dorna, “and have your hands ready.”
Dorna did as he said, and as he walked behind her he shoved the weapon into her waiting hand.
The Northern device did not move. Kel walked past Dorna, circling further around the talisman. He eyed it as he moved, wondering whether it might be able to throw magic out both ends of the horn at once. They weren’t the same shape, but both did appear to have openings.
“Tell me when you’re ready,” he called to Dorna. He glanced over.
She had knelt down, keeping the weapon out of sight behind her back. Now, as he watched, she lowered herself down on all fours, then flat on her belly, the weapon hidden in the folds of her skirt-her green skirt, which the talisman had not mistaken for an Ethsharitic uniform after all. Kel was embarrassed at the memory of his foolish notion. He wondered why Ezak hadn’t told him it was a stupid idea. Maybe Ezak had just wanted to see Dorna with her dress off.
She rolled over on her side for a moment, adjusting the weapon’s position-or at least, that’s what Kel thought she was doing. He couldn’t actually see much through the tall grass.
“Ready,” she called.
Kel nodded, and took a deep breath, and stepped toward the Northern talisman. “Hai!” he called. “I think I’ll just come kick you, you know that? Here I come!” He started to run.
That strange deep voice spoke its warning, and the gleaming horn-piece pivoted toward him. He flung himself at the ground, wrapping his arms over his head-flung himself forward, closer to the Northern talisman, so that it would not turn its attention back to Dorna. He expected at any instant to see that deadly red flash.
Instead he saw a blue flash, and then the whole World seemed to vanish in a blinding white light. An overwhelming, painfully loud roar of thunder left his ears ringing, and the earth seemed to shake beneath him as he landed upon it. He wondered whether this was what dying was like as everything went dark and silent.
But he could still feel the crisp grass beneath his outthrust arms and hands, and he could smell something burning, and he realized his eyes were closed. He opened them, and lifted his head.
The top half of the Northern device was gone, and the stump of the gray cylinder was a smoking ruin, where the torn metal edges were glowing red-hot.
He still couldn’t hear anything, though-but his ears were still ringing, and he realized that the explosion had deafened him temporarily. He sat up and looked around.
Dorna was sitting in the grass forty feet away, on the other side of the destroyed Northern talisman; her hair had been blown back from her face, which was streaked with smoke. She was staring in comic astonishment at the sorcerous weapon in her hand.
“Are you all right?” he called, but he could barely hear his own words.
Dorna looked up at him, then back at the weapon. Then she started shaking; her mouth came open, and her eyes closed, and at first Kel thought she was hurt, or at least frightened.
Then he realized she was laughing.
CHAPTER NINE
It took another several seconds before Kel’s hearing finally came back, and before he and Dorna were able to confirm that they were both unhurt.
“That was loud,” Kel said, looking around at the scattered shards of metal. At least a dozen patches of grass were scorched where hot fragments had landed, though none seemed to be actually burning; that was presumably the source of the smell he had noticed immediately after the explosion.
“They probably heard it in Sardiron,” Dorna agreed.
“Did you know it would be that loud?”
She shook her head, then raised the hand holding her weapon. “I never used this thing before. I’m not sure whether most of that was from my magic, or from the Northern talisman.” She got to her feet and tucked the weapon in her belt.
Kel started to get up, too, but stopped when he heard Dorna’s sharp intake of breath. “What is it?” he said, looking up. “Isn’t it…”
“The fil drepessis,” Dorna replied. “It’s trying to fix it.”
“What?” Kel straightened up and looked.
Sure enough, the fil drepessis was moving again, and was using its dozen clawed legs to collect the scattered bits of the Northern device. It was moving with astonishing speed.
“We need to stop it,” Dorna said.
Kel looked at her expectantly.
“I’m not sure I know how,” she said. “I mean, I know some things about it, but I don’t know what Ezak did to it. He might have changed something.” She looked back toward where they had taken shelter earlier, and shouted, “Ezak! Come here!”
There was no response. A horrible thought struck Kel.
“Ezak!”
There was still no answer. “Maybe he’s asleep,” Kel suggested.
“After that?” Dorna said, pointing at the smoldering wreckage. “More likely he’s still deaf.”
“Maybe,” Kel said unhappily. He was not about to say so, but he thought it was far more likely that Ezak wasn’t there at all. He had probably run off with that bag of talismans the moment Kel was out of sight over the ridge.
Dorna frowned, and Kel thought she was considering going to fetch Ezak to help them. “He doesn’t know what he did,” Kel said. “He was just slapping it wildly.”
“You’re probably right,” Dorna admitted, turning her attention back to the fil drepessis and the ruined Northern device. “So how do we make it stop fixing that thing?”
Kel looked. It was still gathering fragments, and he remembered what Dorna had told them about talismans being made of exactly the right metals and crystals. It could repair things, it couldn’t make them.
So it needed all the pieces.
It was easier to act than to explain; he dashed forward and snatched up a shiny chunk of gray metal, the biggest one he saw, not counting the base of the cylinder. He almost dropped it again; it was hot. Instead he juggled it from hand to hand until he was able to wrap it in the hem of his tunic, which served to insulate it enough that he could hang onto it, though he could smell cloth scorching. This was his best tunic-really, his only intact tunic-and he knew this was going to ruin it, but he didn’t see any other choice. Once he had the piece secured, he turned around and ran.