'Do we head back towards the coast?' Risala looked towards the cliffs that were now a black rampart across the golden horizon.
A.s Kheda pondered their options, a scream tore through the silence, raw with anguish. Gooseflesh prickled down the back of the warlord's neck. 'Wait here while I scout ahead,' he ordered.
'With something creeping along behind us?' Naldeth shook his head. 'Not when you're the one with the sword and the skills to use it.'
The scream came again. Louder sobbing followed, ripe with panic.
'You might need more than a sword to deal with whatever or whoever's inflicting those agonies.' As Velindre ilosed her hand on her magic, a pale glow within her lingers showed she had not wholly quenched it.
Risala looked at Kheda, her eyes dark as the fading light muted everything to colourless shades of grey. 'I don't think we should split up.'
'Then stay close and stay quiet.' He began picking a eareful path in the direction of the screaming.
Better to know what the danger might be and avoid it than leave such uncertainty at our backs.
He halted when he reached an unexpectedly wide sandy track. There was no doubting that this path had been trodden by countless men over many years. Kheda crouched low in the meagre shadow of a cluster of spiky plants and Risala and the two wizards followed suit. Beyond the open swathe of ground that had been cleared of even the smallest thistly plant, a crude barrier had been woven from thorny stems pulled down and lashed together with cords of twisted grass. The yellow-green fleshy plants grew thickly inside the fence.
Another shriek ripped the silence apart. A hubbub of pleading sounded shockingly close before it was cut short by a commanding shout.
No animal is inflicting these agonies, then, or at least, not a four-legged one. Isn 't that all we need to know?
Kheda glanced at Velindre. 'Is that sky dragon anywhere close?'
She shook her head, mute.
Naldeth was peering back into the gloom behind them. 'Whatever's following us has no magic, I'm sure of that much.'
'We know what brutalities these savages are capable of.' Kheda looked at Risala. 'We don't need to see it again and we might still get to the river before we lose all the light if we keep moving.'
'But there's someone with magic out there.' Velindre pointed in the direction of the frantic weeping that was still tearing at their ears.
'That skull-faced mage or his women?' Kheda looked along the cleared path and tried to judge if it curved away from the sounds of torment.
That sky dragon wasn 't the only one humiliated. Many a man would look to share such mortification around to take the sting out of it.
'Let's get well away before he feels a wizard's presence out here and comes looking for a fight.' Risala stood up in the same movement as Kheda.
Naldeth rose more slowly, gripping his hacking blade with both hands. The last rays of the sinking sun burnished his steel leg. 'So we let whoever is screaming just go on screaming until they die of it?'
'Give me one good reason why we should risk the same fate,' Kheda said curtly.
'A wizard is doing that.' Naldeth looked at Velindre. 'We came here to stop their abuses of magic'
'A wizard with all the aura of a dragon to draw on,' she pointed out, not unsympathetic. 'How do we fight that?'
'It's not our concern,' Risala said roughly. 'They're savages. And your magic wasn't working as you wished earlier. Do you want to confront some wild mage and find yourself powerless?'
Naldeth stared at her, outraged yet unable to find the words to answer her.
'We came here to learn what this place means for Aldabreshi and mages alike.' Kheda forestalled him, voice low and forceful. 'Which means we must pick any fights carefully, when we've worked out as much of this puzzle as possible.'
Somewhere across the tangled barrier of spiny stems, ragged cheers were now drowning out the fading lamentation. Naldeth looked at Kheda, his mild face hard. 'I'm not sailing away until I know exactly what uses magic is being put to here.'
'We'll discuss it when we're back on the Zaise? Kheda stepped out onto the open path and set a rapid pace towards the river. Disconcertingly, the land sloped upwards and the curious forest of upthrust stems and thistly plants fell back to leave a dry plateau dotted with the strangest trees Kheda had ever seen. Their squat brown trunks were three or four times the height of a man yet ten men would be hard pressed to link hands around the largest of them. Each was crowned with an incongruously small tangle of knotted branches twisted into fantastical shapes and topped with tousled twigs.
'Watch your step.' Kheda noticed hummocks dotting the bare sand that were too regular to be the work of wind or rain. 'Something's been digging here.'
He slowed to move cautiously from the cover of one massive trunk to the next, doing his best to look in all
directions as tension pricked between his shoulder blades.
We 're far too exposed.
'There's the river plain.' Risala pointed to a pallor beyond the edge of the open plateau and they heard the soft, welcome rustle of grasses.
Kheda realised they were on the bluff of high ground that reached out into the valley. The barren slope that the skull-faced mage had descended must be somewhere ahead.
A scream ripped through the dusk behind them, closer than the sounds of torment they had been trying to leave behind. Running footsteps slapped the hard-baked earth.
Kheda pressed his back against the swollen tree and cursed the thing for having no branches low enough that they might at least try to climb and hide out of sight. The Greater Moon was rising, now at its full and casting cold, unwelcome light on the events unfolding below. He slid down to crouch in the barrel-like tree's shadow.
Risala and I might escape notice but the wizards' pale skins and Velindre's yellow hair will show up like candles in the night.
He looked around to urge the mages to hide behind the tree. They weren't there.
Risala looked at him, white rimming her eyes. 'They just disappeared.'
The running feet reached the open expanse of the trees. Kheda crouched still lower, Risala on hands and knees beside him.
The fugitive was a girl on the brink of womanhood, long-legged and slender, wearing a scanty hide wrap. She dodged between the barrel trees, jumping over the treacherous hummocks. Threatening shouts pursued her. Men appeared and one flung a wooden spear. Narrowly missing the girl, it went skidding across the unyielding earth, Coming perilously close to Kheda and Risala.
The girl fell headlong as if she had been poleaxed, not even putting out a hand to save herself. But she wasn't insensible. Kheda could see her struggling against invisible bonds.
Struck down by magic.
Whatever bound her was tightening. Her struggles grew more frantic and at the same time weaker. He could see her mouth opening, the cords of her throat taut as she screamed. No sound escaped whatever foul wizardry entangled her.
Her pursuers came clpser and no such spell muted their jeering. Some carried stone-studded clubs and Kheda braced himself to see the unfortunate girl's brains dashed out. He felt Risala pressing close to his side.
To Kheda's surprise, the pursuers didn't touch the girl. After venting their scorn iwith unintelligible insults, they withdrew. The wizard With the cloak of blue feathers walked slowly through the mob of them, his women in faithful attendance two paces behind. The skull that formed the mage's mask shone red in the light of the handfuls of flame that his feather-crowned women held aloft, making black pits of the empty eye sockets. Turning, the wild mage said something, and Kheda saw that more people were being brought to witness whatever was planned for the girl.
Bold and arrogant, the wild warriors of the wizard's retinue forced the reluctant onlookers forward with clubs and their spears of fire-hardened wood. They sneered as their shoves provoked whimpers of distress from the hapless savages clad in scraps of animal hide. Women cowered, bare shoulders hunched, some seeking to protect their children in a vain embrace. One man pressed his hands to his face, trying to stifle his weeping. Tears spilled through his fingers, shining like blood in the unnatural red light of the magefire.