Wordlessly, Kheda handed her the brass flask and watched the skull-faced mage take another few paces away from his warriors. The wild wizard wasn't looking up into the sky any longer. He pointed an unerring hand towards the cave mouth and shouted, shrill with rage. The dry
ground exploded with a shower of dust and stones as a spear of lightning landed no more than an oar's length away.
Naldeth walked stiffly forward out of the shadow of the rocks, rubbing his palms against the sides of his tunic. Without any preamble, he threw a handful of burning scarlet towards the wild wizard, and then another and another. The skull wearer waved his hands, each gesture summoning up a gust of blue-white vapour to snuff out the bright fire. Naldeth kindled a crimson blaze on the empty ground between them. Gouts of sorcerous flame broke off to twist through the air towards the wild wizard. The savage dismissed them with a disdainful sweep of one hand and clenched his other fist high above his head. Smashing it down, he summoned a lightning bolt to blow the crimson source of the flames into oblivion.
Kheda flinched as a new wall of fire sprang up and swept towards the trees, hiding the mage and all his retinue. Then a cold realisation pierced the warlord.
The only wizard ever to battle the wild mages was Dev, and Dev's dead. Does Naldeth know all the rules of this warfare? Only wizards kill wizards and wizards only kill wizards. If he kills any of those spearmen, surely the rest of those wild men will attack, and Velindre's still helpless.
The wall of fire swept through the trees to dissolve in the barren space beyond. Not a leaf was scorched as far as Kheda could tell but the wild men were patently disconcerted. Milling around, they slapped at their heads and loincloths until they realised they weren't ablaze.
'Wizards only kill wizards,' Naldeth murmured, 'but Dev didn't say anything about giving the rest a good fright.'
The wild mage strode forward, waving his arms, his long matted locks bristling monstrously around the animal skull. Every feather in his dark-blue cloak stood out
straight, rimed with a white light that hovered on the very edge of seeing. Every breeze fled and the still air tasted of thunder. The skull wearer shouted and blue flashes of magic began shattering the rocky outcrop that sheltered the painted cave.
Kheda ducked away from the razor-sharp splinters of stone ripping through the air, shielding Risala with his body. The old woman dropped to lie huddled in the cave entrance, wrapping her skinny arms around her grey head and drawing up her legs like a frightened child.
Velindre dragged her head up to regard the wild mage with weary disfavour. 'Is that the best he can do?'
'Let's see.' Naldeth wiped an open hand across the still air and a defiant breeze sprang up. It scooped dust from the ground which glowed even in the bright daylight. A flick of Naldeth's hand dismissed the smouldering golden cloud and it drifted away towards the trees.
The wild mage threw darts of sapphire fire at this new threat, tearing holes in the shimmering fabric. It made no difference. The tattered magic flowed together again. It parted briefly to flow around him where he stood alone and drifted irresistibly towards the savage spearmen now huddling in the questionable shelter of the twisted trees.
The glowing haze surrounded them and the wild warriors began wailing, rubbing frantically at their faces, heedless of weapons fallen to the ground.
Kheda saw white-hot flashes in the shadows. 'What are you doing?'
'Blinding them,' Naldeth replied calmly. 'Just for a little while. Undermining their faith in their wizard.'
'Just kill him.' Velindre still looked quite dreadfully pale, with smudges like bruises under her eyes. Then she doubled over, racked with coughing.
Kheda opened his mouth to ask what was wrong just as a similar paroxysm seized him. Risala gasped and began
coughing too, as did the old woman still lying curled up in the cave. Cough after cough tore at Kheda's lungs until his throat felt raw and his chest burned. Through tear-filled eyes he saw Naldeth send a burning shaft of red gold straight at the wild mage who dodged it with contemptuous ease.
A crack of thunder sounded in the empty sky and Kheda gasped as the coughing fit fled. A fresh salt-scented breeze offered the illusion of relief but in the next instant, the air was as still and heavy as if the worst storms of the rainy season were about to break over them.
Kheda tried to draw a breath but found he couldn't. It was as if bonds had been wrapped tight around his chest. He strained until his ribs ached with the effort and the blood roared in his ears. Velindre slumped over, hugging herself. Risala sank to her knees, panting like a trapped animal. Her eyes widened with terror as she clutched at her throat and Kheda reached for her. Even that slight effort made his arm ache as if he were lifting an iron bar. The old woman lay still as death. Dimly, as his vision blurred, Kheda heard Naldeth talking to himself again, his tone still quite conversational.
'He has some impressive mastery of the air. Still, as Dev told Velindre, these people have no idea of blending elements.'
The fragments of rock that the wild wizard's magic had broken from the outcrop sprang into the air. They instantly glowed as red as if they'd fallen from a furnace. Naldeth sent the incandescent shards shooting towards the skull-faced mage with a flourish of his hand. The constriction crushing Kheda's chest vanished as the wild wizard summoned up a white whirlwind that swept up the stone fragments and quenched their fire.
Naldeth chuckled and the stones began to glow again within the spiral cloud. He raised a hand, palm out
towards the wild wizard. The whirlwind writhed this way and that. Naldeth leaned forward and the cloud sank lower. It touched the ground and began sucking up dust and stones. The vapour darkened from pristine whiteness to a dirty, menacing grey. Clinging to the earth, it grew squatter and darker, the incandescent stones pinpricks of scarlet within it.
The wild wizard screamed with rage and thrust both hands up at the sky, calling down a blistering bolt of lightning to shatter the treacherous whirlwind. The spiral cloud exploded into dust and debris that was tossed this way and that by the tortured breeze. But the burning stones didn't fall to the ground. Released from the whirlwind, they flew straight at the skull-faced mage, sure as slingshot.
He flinched and ducked, half turning away. Where the Stones struck his cloak, the feathers flared into lurid crimson flames. Where they landed on naked skin, they instantly burned deep holes, black as the sockets of his skull mask. One smouldering stone hit the skull between its empty eyes and the bone split to leave the two halves of the mask hanging askew. Burning gashes were spreading across his muscular thighs and down his corded arms, rimmed with scarlet sorcery. Another strike wholly obliterated one of the horns and then the whole skull fell away in ruins.
Thus revealed, the wild mage looked little different from any other savage. The man screamed and fell to his knees, hands pressed vainly to his belly. His fingers began burning as they sank into the scorched void opening ever wider to reveal his entrails. He looked at Naldeth, screaming, pleading, his face contorted with agony. His whole midriff was ablaze now, the flames licking up his forearms to blacken the skin and melt the flesh beneath.
A death like Dev's. But without the ecstasy.
Kheda turned away, nauseated. Then he saw Velindre sprawled on the ground and all thoughts of Dev's fate fled. Convulsions gripped the magewoman, her eyes rolling back in her head, blind and white, as her mouth frothed with spittle. Blood stained the back of her dirty cotton tunic.