As her magical prison halted, the woman made another attempt to touch the scarlet flames. Naldeth narrowed his eyes and the fire surged higher and brighter. At the same
time, the circle shrank and the woman cowered within its reduced confines. As soon as the busy savages had ripped an adequate gap in the thorny barrier, Naldeth set the fiery circle moving once more. Now the woman began struggling, shouting what could only be threats and forcing her hands against the flames, which burned white where she touched them.
'Just run, you stupid bitch, and good luck to you,' Naldeth muttered, frustrated, as he drove the circle of fire out onto the slope dotted with thistly plants and thorny spikes. He snapped his fingers and the fire extinguished itself.
'If she's stupid enough to try fighting you, at least make sure she dies a quick and painless death,' Velindre choked out with reluctance.
The woman stood, panting, blistered hands hanging by her sides. Sweat soaked her hide wrap, leaving it clinging to her body. The wax in her hair had melted and her feathers were all hanging askew. Trickles of red ochre ran down one side of her face and dripped on her bared shoulder. She stared back at Naldeth, utterly confused.
All around, wild warriors raised whoops and cheers that chilled Kheda's blood. Snatching up clubs and spears, they ran towards the gap in the thorny barrier. The boldest favoured Naldeth with enthusiastic, appreciative grins, the rest doing their best to at least bob a bow as they ran. The feather-crowned woman took to her heels, fleeing for her life.
'They're going to hunt her?' Appalled, Naldeth raised his hand.
'There's nothing you can do.' Kheda grabbed the wizard's wrist and forced his arm back down again. 'You wanted her gone. Let her take her chances.'
'Because that's her destiny?' spat Naldeth. 'You saw it in the stars?'
'Because there's nothing you can do to save her.' Kheda ruthlessly set aside his pity for the young wizard and the doomed wild woman alike. 'Not without putting the rest of us in danger.'
'She's heading for the hills.' Risala watched the woman skirting the thorny stockade.
'They'll catch her.' Velindre pointed to a group of wild men using their spears to rip a new hole in the barrier to take the most direct path after their fleeing quarry.
The feather-crowned woman was running as fast she could now, not looking back, heading for one of the thistle-choked gullies cutting into the slope on the landward side of this stretch of higher ground. Kheda watched, a sick feeling gathering in his stomach.
Movement caught his eye. A deep shadow in another of the rock-strewn gullies shifted. Murky shapes melted, the lines of the random tumble of broken stone blurring and redrawing themselves into an ominously familiar shape. Darkness took on form and substance and the sun glittered on a deadly sheen of spines and scales. The earth dragon coalesced out of gloom and dust into implacable black solidity.
The woman saw it and veered away, her terror-filled screams tearing the dry air. The wild men who'd been so keen to pursue her fell over each other in their haste to retreat, running headlong back to the spurious safety of the thorny palisade. Ignoring them, the dragon loped after the fleeing woman. It ran low to the ground like a lizard, feet set wide, with its broad, blunt head thrust forward and thick tail lashing behind.
She was running away down the long, shallow slope now, her arms flailing wildly as she tried to keep her balance. The dragon sprang forward with a flash of silver beneath its folded wings. It didn't quite reach her, but as its forefeet landed the earth shivered like a living
thing. An impossible ripple reared up through the solid ground to fling the woman off her feet. The dragon took a quick step as she tried to get up and skewered her with a swift downward thrust of its metallic grey talons. Ducking its head, it bit, cutting short her scream of agony.
'Kheda, look.' Swallowing her revulsion, Risala pointed.
The woman's would-be hunters were tearing at their matted heads as they ran back, some even hacking at their mud-caked locks with stone knives pulled from their loincloths. They tossed unidentifiable lumps back over their shoulders as they fled.
'What are they doing?' As Kheda spoke he realised every man, woman and child still within the thorn barrier was drawing closer and closer to Naldeth.
Because the only thing that can protect you from a dragon is a wizard. So you indulge his whims and his brutality and his women's arrogance. Until someone strong enough to defeat him turns up out of the blue ocean.
The first of the men flung themselves through the gap in the spiny circle. Sweat was running down faces and bare chests, mingled here and there with blood. Hands and faces were bleeding freely where the razor-edged stone daggers had slipped.
'It's gems,' Velindre said suddenly. 'That's what they had hidden in their hair, stuck in all the mud and wax.'
Kheda saw she was right. Several of the erstwhile hunters still clutched rough stones that sparkled with the promise of an unpolished gem beneath the muck.
To throw to a dragon in hopes that the beast might just slow down to lick up a jewel and give them a chance of getting away. Which is pretty much what we did in Chazen, leaving caskets of jewels on the beaches to draw that fire dragon away from the inhabited islands.
'What do we do now?' Naldeth asked slowly.
The menacing black beast turned in a leisurely circle, deadly tail-spike dragging to carve a sweeping trough in the dust. Lifting its head, it looked towards the spread of flimsy huts within the pitiful thorny barricade. Eyes of burning amber unblinking, it advanced towards them. Every few paces it halted, sniffing in the dust before licking something up with its forked ebony tongue.
Accepting the savages' offerings. But I don't think that's going to persuade it to leave us alone.
'Can you call up another dragon to lure it away?' Risala didn't look at Velindre, all her attention fixed on the advancing dragon.
'I don't think this beast will fall for a trick like that,' the magewoman began.
'Then what are you going to do?' Kheda gripped his sword impotently. 'Naldeth?'
'I think—' The young wizard broke off with a choking sound.
The dragon stopped and reared back on its haunches, spreading its wings just a little. The smaller scales in the folds of its belly skin were the exact shade of the steel of Kheda's sword. It opened its mouth and growled low. Kheda didn't so much hear the sound as feel it vibrating through the ground beneath his feet, up through the leather soles of his sandals. It shook his bones, reverberating ominously inside the hollow drum of his chest. He rapidly felt light-headed and increasingly nauseous.
'Naldeth!' snapped Velindre. 'Fight it!'
With painful effort, Kheda forced his head around to look at the young mage.
Naldeth's soft brown eyes glittered like white crystal, all their colour drained away. His tanned skin shone with the implacable translucence of chalcedony, while his dirty white cotton clothes had taken on the rigidity of flow-stone. Only the metal of his false leg was moving. The
painstakingly fashioned steel flowed like quicksilver, rivets and folded seams melting away. The ungainly facsimile reshaped itself into a flawless limb, albeit one of living metal. The powerful muscles of a thigh formed above a sturdy knee where bone and tendons shone with amber magic beneath the silver flesh. Shin and calf emerged regular and straight and the liquid steel shaped itself around golden bones to make a strong high-arched foot, each separate toe tipped with a neatly trimmed nail that shone like quartz.
We 're dead. We 're all dead, except perhaps Naldeth, and he soon will be. Or he'11 wish he was, if he suffers Dev 's fate.