It exploded in a cloud of bright blue smoke; when the smoke cleared instants later, the three wizards were gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
As Koros reached the top of the first low ridge, Garth turned for a final look at Skelleth. The town's silhouette was subtly changed from the last time he had seen it from this spot, when he had ridden down from Ordunin with his little trading party; a few of the old rooftops were gone, lost to the fires he had spread, and not rebuilt. None of the new structures were high enough to be seen from this distance.
The snow, too, changed the outline, blurring the lines and bleaching the surfaces to an even white that made the shadows stand out more sharply.
When last he had ridden the Wasteland Road, he had been accompanied by Larth, Galt, and Tand; now Galt was an outlaw and Tand had not yet returned from the Yprian Coast. He wondered what had become of his double-cousin Larth; he had not been among the sixty volunteers. He was probably living safe at home, going about his business as always, never questioning the wisdom of the City Council.
Garth turned his gaze forward once again, then cast a quick glimpse over his left shoulder. The sword's gem was glowing more brightly than usual, he thought. He wondered why. Was it pleased to be leaving Skelleth?
There was little he could do about its glow; there was no guarantee that turning back toward Skelleth would make any difference, and he was determined to speak with the Wise Women of Ordunin.
He looked at the road before him-or rather, at the ground ahead of him. He could not be sure that Koros was actually following the Wasteland Road; the snow made it impossible to see where the road lay. He was heading in the right direction and knew the landmarks; he was not concerned about becoming lost.
There was a dip, and then a second low ridge ahead; after that, the road veered to the right somewhat, to follow the lay of the land and avoid the steeper slopes. The snow was smooth and unbroken; no one had passed this way of late.
There was a curious bluish mist hanging in the air above the second ridge; as he watched it seemed to thicken.
It was definitely unnatural, he decided as Koros reached the bottom of the slope. It was a small cloud now, and an utterly impossible shade of blue.
Then, abruptly, the haze was gone, and three men stood atop the ridge looking down at him.
He leaned forward and spoke a quiet word in the warbeast's ear; the beast stopped dead.
He studied the three men. One was tall and thin, with light brown hair, and carried a strange curved sword; he wore a thin, gray cloak that flapped open in the breeze, revealing richly embroidered garments underneath. The second was of average size for a human, with thick black hair and beard, and wrapped in a heavy black cloak; he carried a staff of carved wood trimmed with bright metal. The last was large, with a dark complexion and very short, very black hair-and no beard, which struck Garth as odd indeed. He had never seen an adult male human without any beard at all. This last man wore no cloak, but a tunic of black leather trimmed with silver and breeches also of black leather; he carried a cross-hilted broadsword.
The third man fascinated Garth; aside from his beardlessness, this was the second human he had seen with skin as dark as an overman's, or nearly so. The first had been the wizard Shang, in the city of Mormoreth, who had been even darker than this newcomer or than Garth himself.
Judging by the manner of their appearance, at least one of these three was evidently a magician of some sort; Garth wondered whether wizards had some special predilection toward dark skin. Or perhaps there was a land somewhere inhabited by dark-skinned humans, whence many wizards came.
The three men were looking about them, as if unsure where they were and why they were there; Garth watched without moving.
Then the tallest of the three, the one with the curved sword, pointed at him. Garth could not hear his words over the intervening distance, but there was no doubt he was calling his comrades' attention to the overman and warbeast.
Garth had no reason to believe the strangers to be hostile, but he found his right hand reaching up toward the hilt of the Sword of Bheleu. He stopped it and considered.
The sword obviously wanted to be drawn, as he had made no conscious decision to move his hand toward it and would have preferred to use his more ordinary blade. The thing had demonstrated in the past that it wanted to protect him and keep him alive for its own reasons-but it had also demonstrated an incredible bloodlust and eagerness to kill anyone within reach.
These strangers were obviously here by magic; the only explanation for that blue smoke was magic, even if it had been nothing but a means of covering their appearance over the top of the rise, and Garth thought it more likely that the smoke itself had somehow materialized them from thin air. The three men might be wielding the magic themselves, or might be innocent victims-but would innocent victims be carrying drawn swords? And that staff that the center one carried looked very, much like a magical device of some sort.
The only defenses Garth had against magic were the feeble natural resistance of magically created species such as overmen and warbeasts to other magicks, and the much more powerful magic of the Sword of Bheleu.
He decided that his own survival was more important than any danger these three strangers might face from the sword. After all, they were in the Northern Waste, which was overman territory; the accepted border ran along the top of the first ridge. As invading enemies, their deaths would be acceptable. Garth drew the great sword.
He hoped that there would be no deaths.
The man with the staff was moving; he drew a circle in the snow around himself and his companions with the metal-shod tip as Garth watched, and then held the staff horizontally before him, gripped in both hands.
This looked more and more like magic at work, Garth thought; he lifted his own magical weapon in both hands.
The black-bearded man was speaking now, calling out words that reached Garth despite the fifty yards and wind between.
"Yahai Eknissa eknissaye!"
Garth knew that Eknissa was the goddess of fire, and assumed that what he heard was an invocation of some sort; he did not recognize the other two words. He had little time to worry about them before being distracted by their result.
A wall of flame had sprung up from the circle the staff had drawn in the snow, and was spreading outward with incredible speed. It roared up from the snow, melting it instantly as it marched, and reached a height of ten feet or more. Even before it came within twenty yards, Garth could feel its heat.
He raised the sword and summoned a storm to blow out the flames or drive them back toward their creator. He had had considerable practice in summoning storms in his attempts to burn out the sword's power.
The wind rose to a howling gale immediately, and clouds gathered overhead; the flames grew taller, and their advance slowed-but only slightly. Garth watched in dismay as they continued to approach.
The clouds were not yet thick enough to summon lightning, so he could not blast the wizard's staff-and there was no guarantee that that would stop the wall of fire; the death of the basilisk had not reversed the petrifaction of its victims.
The flames were within a dozen feet when he finally allowed the sword to act on its own. It had been tugging at him, but he had resisted it; he did not trust the thing. Now, with the heat beating against him as if he stood opposite the bellows in a blacksmith's forge, he let it have its way.
It twisted in his grip and pointed directly at the advancing barrier. The snow erupted into a second sheet of flame.