'Where are they?' Risala looked around.
A faint shout from the far bank startled them both. The words weren't in the Tormalin tongue or any Aldabreshin dialect. It came again.
'Can you see anyone over there?' Kheda hid his sword behind his back, trying not to be too obvious about it.
Will we be recognised as strangers at such a distance?
The distant bank was a sea of swaying grass, scored here and there with the narrow paths worn by lizards or whatever else lived in this strange place. The plain extended a good deal further on that side of the river before the swell of the land rose up to meet the fat spiny plants and twisted trees.
'Have they gone to hide somewhere else?' Risala bit off the words, frustrated. 'Do you suppose she's scrying for us?'
'I don't know.' Movement on the far side of the river caught Kheda's eye. Away in the distance, a wide bluff jutted out from the valley side into the grassy plain. Another gang of savages were picking their way cautiously down a bare earthen slope facing the river that was somehow resisting the encroaching woodland. All the spearmen carried burning torches and, despite the bright sun, Kheda saw the unmistakable unnatural scarlet of magefire.
'There.' Risala choked on her relief.
'Where?' Kheda looked upstream but couldn't see a thing.
'Just wait a moment.' Risala stared intently at nothingness.
Kheda saw a shallow furrow carved in the silty water fade and disappear. In the next instant, the Zaise blinked
into view, Naldeth beckoning frantically from the stern platform. Wild shouts rang out across the grasses from the distant bluff, startled outrage plainly audible. The ship drifted closer and vanished again.
'So much for their magic not attracting any notice,' Kheda commented bitterly as he began pushing through the rustling grasses, heading as quickly as possible for the invisible ship.
'Are we going to be safer ashore or aboard?' Risala wondered with equal terseness.
'I really don't know.' Kheda stumbled as a chunk of the undercut bank fell away beneath his feet to land in the water with a resounding splash.
Risala caught his hand and pulled him back. 'I suppose we'll find out.'
As they approached the last point where they had seen the ship, Kheda tried to make out where these newly arrived wild men and their mage might be. It proved impossible to see where the savages had gone once they'd reached the bottom of the barren slope and disappeared into the grasses.
Does that wild wizard have a dragon to call on? The mages who came to the Archipelago came to woo that fire dragon. What do we do if some dragon appears here? I've seen one sink a trireme, never mind a ship the size of theZaise. Dev saved me from drowning. We should have made a pact — that Velindre would save Risala, and I'll take my chances with Naldeth.
The Zaise flickered into sight once again, looking strangely flat like a reflection in polished metal.
'Come on!' Naldeth's agonised whisper sounded loud in Kheda's ears, as if the mage were standing next to him.
The wild men on the far side of the river were shouting, definitely getting closer. Kheda saw scarlet flames advancing
through the distant grasses, along with the fire-hardened points of brutal wooden spears.
The ship disappeared just as Kheda dropped down from the dry bank onto the treacherous mud. Risala landed beside him with a squelch and slid a few paces. He grabbed her hand.
'Run.' Velindre's calm voice floated between them.
'Where to?' demanded Kheda.
'Just do it,' the magewoman insisted, unseen.
With Risala's fingers interlaced with his own, Kheda tried to run across the slippery mud. Inside a few paces, his feet had left the moist slickness, sinking instead into a spongy nothingness that sloped rapidly uphill. It was worse than running in soft sand; his aching calves and thighs protested. He ignored the discomfort and hurried on, trying not to look down. He didn't even want to contemplate the apparent emptiness ahead reaching all the way to the far river bank.
Something caught him across the shins with an agonising crack and he tumbled headlong onto the deck of the now wholly visible Zaise. Risala landed on top of him and rolled away, cursing under her breath.
'We have to get out of here.' Naldeth stood on the main deck, a flicker of scarlet light tangled around his outstretched hands.
'I'd say so,' Kheda hissed. Biting his lip, he rubbed his bruised legs.
'Can they see us?' Risala was still crouching on her hands and knees.
'I hope not.' Velindre was standing up on the stern platform, shaking the remnants of a cerulean flame from one hand. She raised the other to the stern mast where the half-sail obediently bellied with a sapphire-laced wind.
'Can you see them?' Kheda got slowly to his feet and headed for the ladder at the stern.
'Stand still,' Naldeth warned. 'Don't disturb the spells.'
All the youthful wizard's attention was focused on the magelight between his hands. He stretched his hands a little wider apart and Kheda saw fine threads of magic catching the light, floating outwards in all directions. The warlord stood motionless where he was.
Slowly easing herself to a sitting position, Risala looked dubiously around. 'Can they hear us?' she whispered. 'If they can't see us?'
Naldeth spared her a brief glance. 'Not if we keep our voices down.'
Velindre's hazel eyes were fixed on the half-furled sail, her other hand guiding the steering oars several paces behind her.
Fighting a pointless urge to sink below the Zaise's deck rails to hide, Kheda watched the wild men reach the thinner grasses fringing the far bank. Savages naked but for loincloths carried the mage-lit torches and their long vicious spears. The wild wizards followed, striding unhindered through the inhospitable grasses which parted before them, sending ripples running away like water.
'Two wild wizards,' Kheda said softly. 'And they are wild women.'
Both wore wraps of soft leather tied just above their breasts and reaching to mid-thigh. Their long, coarse curls were knotted around dense clusters of vivid red and purple feathers and both carried themselves with an ominous assurance.
'Do you suppose they answer to him?' breathed Risala.
A third savage mage strode forward to stand on the undercut lip of the bank, between the feather-crowned women. Where the wild spearmen wore the usual brief clouts of stained hide, this man wore a belt of plaited cords with a panel of wooden beadwork hanging at his groin. All around the rest of the belt scraps of lizard hide were
tied, interspersed with what looked horribly like hanks of black, tangled hair. He wore a band of pale-grey feathers tied just below one knee and another around one wrist. Shrugging back a heavy cloak of long blue-green feathers that could only have come from the monstrous birds that had attacked the cave dwellers, he turned to the two women, gesturing upstream and down.
'So that's a wild wizard.' Naldeth stole a quick glance before returning all his attention to his spell-casting.
'Can he see us?' Kheda couldn't see any clue on the savage mage's face. He couldn't actually see his face, he realised with a shudder. The man wore a bleached white skull as a mask, stark against his profusion of dark, matted locks. The empty eye sockets of the skull stared after the invisible ship, framed by the downward curve of the ridged horns once flourished by whatever beast had given up its life for the wild mage's adornment.
'Probably not.' Naldeth didn't sound as certain as Velindre had done, as the Zaise slipped silently away downstream.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Wild wizards, like the ones who burned the fleeing people of Chazen alive. Like the ones who twisted harmless animals into monsters to slaughter my swordsmen.