But his enemies were close enough now. His sense of the unseen was less acute, less keen, than Bahzell’s had become, but it was keen enough to scream belated warning as Bahzell and Walsharno charged suicidally towards his unbreachable wall of power.
Impossible, his brain repeated again. Impossible!
Not one champion, but two—two so deeply linked and fused that they were one!
Bahzell’s fist stabbed forward, thrusting at the barrier before him, and lightning crackled. A solid, forked cable of power erupted, reaching out before him and Walsharno like a lance of flame. It struck Jerghar’s wall and mushroomed out in a coruscating tornado of clashing energies. There was heat, this time, and the green, damp grass of spring flashed into fire, red tongues of flame and white spires of smoke rising in a billowing curtain.
There was an instant of titanic conflict, of powers far beyond the fringes of the mortal world locked in combat. And then a final, cataclysmic concussion jarred the universe as Bahzell’s lightning bolt crashed through Jerghar’s last line of defense.
Jerghar screamed in anguish as the fringes of that explosion ripped over him and flung him from his feet as if he were toy. He skidded across the ground, bouncing through the tough grass of the Wind Plain like a stone thrown from the hand of spiteful child, and fire enveloped him. The blue fire of Tomanak, consuming, consuming …
He shrieked again and again, tearing at his own undead flash as the agony of Tomanak’s touch gnawed inward. But there was no escape, no evading that torture. It ate inward, slowly—so slowly! —destroying him one agonizing fraction of an inch at a time.
Hooves the size of dinner platters came slowly, remorselessly across the grass to him, and he stared up through the agony of his merciless blue shroud as Walsharno, son of Mathygan and Yorthandro, stopped before him, towering into the night against a backdrop of lurid flame and choking smoke.
“Please!” he managed through his agony. “Please!“
“We’ll have those coursers free of you and your bitch goddess, first,” a deep, rumbling voice, colder than Vonderland ice told him.
“Yes—yes!“ he shrieked, and released his hold. The coursers’ souls exploded out of his opened grasp, fleeing the taint of Krahana, and the eyes of the courser standing above him flashed with the blue glory of Tomanak.
“Please,” Jerghar whimpered, twisting in the dirt, gripped by an agony greater than he had ever imagined. “Oh, please!”
“You’d best be giving me a reason,” that infinitely icy voice told him, and he sobbed.
“Your friend,” he gasped out. “That bitch champion!” He locked his teeth against another scream and shook his head fiercely.
“What of her?” Bahzell grated.
“Promise,” Jerghar got out somehow. “Promise … you’ll kill me. Promise!“
“Aye, you’ve my word,” Bahzell rumbled.
“South,” Jerghar sobbed. “A trap—not just Kalatha. They arranged it. Don’t know more—I swear!”
“You’ve set a trap for Kerry?” Bahzell’s voice sharpened.
“Not me—others,” Jerghar gasped. “Don’t know all of them. They want you and her … and Tellian. But that’s all I know! I swear, I swear!”
Bahzell glared down at him, his face etched with hatred, and Jerghar sobbed.
“You promised,” he whimpered. “Promised!“
For one more endless, seething moment of agony, nothing happened. And then—
“Aye, I did,” Bahzell agreed harshly. “Sword Brother?”
In his torment, Jerghar didn’t understand. But then he did, and a terrible gratitude transfigured his face as Walsharno raised one massive, blue-flickering hoof. His eyes clung to it with desperate hunger as it reached its apogee directly above his head.
Then it fell.
Chapter Forty-Two
Kaeritha left Kalatha seven days after her return from Thalar.
She hadn’t intended to stay that long, but her conversation with Leeana had suggested there might be more that needed looking into at Kalatha than she’d thought. Conducting her own discreet investigations took more time than she’d allowed for. But that was all right … it also took her longer than she’d expected to secure another opportunity to examine the original charter and land grant.
Sharral was as helpful and efficient as ever, but it turned out to be extraordinarily difficult for her to nail Lanitha down and arrange the visit to the town’s archives this time around, which seemed just a bit … odd. Although Lanitha was relatively new to her position as librarian and archivist, and more than a bit young for responsibilities of such magnitude, she’d also struck Kaeritha as attentive and determined to discharge those responsibilities to the very best of her ability. And her assistance during Kaeritha’s first visit to Kalatha had made it obvious that ability was quite high.
This time, though, Lanitha, although she made it obvious she was trying her very best, found it difficult to schedule an opportunity for Kaeritha to consult the required documents. Given their importance to the town of Kalatha itself, and to all war maids in general, Kaeritha wasn’t surprised that the young woman responsible for their security and proper care wanted to be present whenever they were consulted. If their positions had been reversed, Kaeritha would have felt exactly the same way. Not only that, but Lanitha had been a great help to her and Yalith when she first examined them. Still, she could have wished for it to take less than three days for Lanitha to clear her schedule sufficiently to allow her to offer Kaeritha the degree of personal assistance the champion of any god, and especially of the God of War and Justice, deserved. And then, on the fourth day, when Kaeritha arrived at the archives, she was surprised (although probably less so than she should have been) to discover that Lanitha had been called away by an unanticipated personal emergency. She’d left her profound apologies and promised she would be available the next day—or the day after that, at the very latest—without fail, but it had been simply impossible for her to keep her scheduled appointment.
Despite the undeniable frustration she’d felt at the delays, Kaeritha had put the time she found on her hands to efficient use. Most casual observers might have been excused for not noticing that, but Kaeritha had been a champion of Tomanak for quite a few years. And one thing champions of Tomanak learned—well, most of His champions, at any rate, Kaeritha had corrected herself with a smile—was how to conduct an unobtrusive investigation. It helped that most people expected a champion’s methods to be flashy and dramatic. As, indeed, some of the tools in Kaeritha’s arsenal were, she cheerfully admitted. But there were times when it was far better to be discreet, and this seemed to be one of them. Which was why none of the war maids of Kalatha noticed that the visiting champion of Tomanak sharing their meals, working out with them in the exercise salle, or training in weapons craft with them, managed to pick up an amazing amount of information.
Some of it was entirely open and aboveboard, and no less valuable because it was. Kaeritha’s own two-sword technique was one she had evolved almost entirely on her own. The fact that she’d been born ambidextrous helped explain why it had occurred to her, but there’d been few weapons masters (or mistresses) in the Empire of the Axe who taught a combat technique which used a primary weapon in each hand. Many of them taught sword and dagger, or sword and dirk, and even more of them taught techniques for fighting with one’s off hand, since it was always possible for one’s normal weapon hand or arm to be wounded. But all of that was quite different from fighting with matched short swords in both hands simultaneously.