Dairine looked at Roshaun. Roshaun nodded. “How many?” she said to Kit.
Kit glanced down at the manual. “Nine,” he said, “no, ten that I can see.”
“Someone’s started paying attention,” Dairine said, frowning. She reached into the air beside her and came out with what Kit could only think of as a lightning bolt, writhing and jumping in her hand and looking positively eager to be flung at something. “What do you think?”
Roshaun looked over at her, then at Kit. “Once we have stopped this incursion,” he said, “I can make sure that no more are able to use that route.”
Underfoot, that rumbling got louder. “Okay,” Kit said. “Try not to mess up the mochteroofs!”
“Leave that with me,” Filif said.
And then everything started happening at once.
The crack burst open, scattering shattered stone and rock dust in all directions, and Yaldiv warriors started clambering up out of it. The first two vanished in a burst of fire from Ronan’s spear, but within a second two more had come up. Dairine came up behind Ronan and threw the blinding bolt she was holding. The second pair of Yaldiv vanished. Then came three more, only one from the spot where the first two had appeared, for the crack kept on stretching and widening across the cavern, making room for more and more of the Yaldiv to enter. A secondary crack split away from the main, still-forming crevasse, toward the mochteroofs, and first one, then a second mochteroof started to pitch down into it. But Filif was already reaching out fronds to them, and in a glow of dark green light, all the mochteroofs together floated up and away from the widening crevasse in the floor. Kit leveled his own weapon and took out one of the next pair of Yaldiv warriors; Ronan destroyed its companion. Only a few more, Kit thought. Only a few—
But it wasn’t only a few. Easily another five or six came clambering up along the length of the crevasse. They were waiting out of range, Kit thought, and glanced around the cavern in the beginnings of a panic. Now what? How are we going to get all this stuff out of here, and Memeki—
And that was another problem, for the next few Yaldiv to come up from under immediately charged at Memeki with claws open. Ponch leaped out from beside her, snarling. Oh no! Kit thought, and dashed over toward the two of them with his personal force shield turned up higher than he’d ever had it before, saying the words necessary to fling it well out to either side of him, far enough to cover Ponch and Memeki until he could get to them. He could feel the power flowing out of him and into the shield in tremendous amounts. But as he got close enough to Ponch and the terrified Memeki to seal the shield completely around them, and the Yaldiv warriors began throwing themselves up against the shield, Kit started to wonder whether, even with the augmented energy, he and the others were going to be able to hold their own. The Yaldiv have been augmented too, Kit thought. That’s how they were able to tunnel up through the stone— He concentrated on keeping the warriors away from the crouching handmaiden. “Ronan!” Kit yelled.
Blast after blast from the Spear of Light picked off Yaldiv after Yaldiv, but there always seemed to be more. Any time Ronan flagged, Dairine was there with her pocket thunderbolt. But the Yaldiv kept coming, and more and more of them were piling themselves against Kit’s shield, scrabbling at it like mad things, apparently willing to sacrifice themselves for the chance that one of their number might be able to get through. The Great One’s decided it doesn’t have to do anything but use these things to wear us down, Kit thought. But something’s made it wake up all of a sudden. What? We have to find out.
“Roshaun?” Kit shouted, watching Dairine blast several more Yaldiv to nothing. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Might be smart not to wait!”
“I hear you,” Roshaun said. He was standing there, as often, with a little light in his hand, his implementation of the manual. Now he gazed into it and began to speak, and it began to glow more brightly. “This is an argasth-type implementation,” he said in the Speech, “requiring a median-level transposition of—”
Down at the far end of the crevasse, something went BANG!, the abnormally loud sound of a worldgating in an enclosed space where the air was more than usually well sealed in. Then came another loud report, and another, the sound of some kind of energy weapon. Kit’s heart froze as a Yaldiv fell over, and behind it, through the dust and smoke kicked up by the fighting, he could faintly see a human shape glance around her and swing the long, lean shape of a wizardly accelerator up to her shoulder. Kit swallowed hard. Of all the times Nita could have turned up, this was both the best and the worst. She started firing.
“Roshaun?” Kit shouted.
A moment more! the silent answer came back as Roshaun kept reciting the spell. “—from the heliospasm into the following coordinate sets—”
More weapons fire spat from the far end of the crevasse, some kind of plasma blast, every blast perfectly targeted and every one knocking another Yaldiv down. Kit stared over that way, distracted as he wondered whether Nita somehow had two weapons going at once. No, of course, it’s Sker’ret—and then the claws scrabbling at his shield suddenly seemed significantly closer, as the shield bowed in toward Kit a little. He gulped, and concentrated on pouring more power into it, while more Yaldiv warriors than ever came boiling up out of the crevasse, flinging themselves at Kit’s shield. Kit did everything he could to ignore what was going on outside the shield now, a task made easier by the fact that there was nothing to see but the bodies and claws and tearing mandibles of Yaldiv warriors. “Roshaun?!”
There was no answer—and then, between one breath and the next, it was as if a star had fallen into the crevasse. The blinding light struck like fiery arrows through every space around Kit that was not filled with Yaldiv. Their rattling, scratchy roaring was now replaced by a high keening whine as they dropped away from the shield, knocked or blasted off it and down into the light. In the depths of the crevasse, Kit could hear the rumbling and rattling of shattering stone suddenly dwindle to nothing, swallowed up by a sluggish, heavy boiling sound as a blast of heat blew up from below. Kit said the few words in the Speech to retune the shield for heat as well as physical impact, and put a hand out to the shaking Memeki.
Ponch got under that hand as well, nuzzling it. Did we win?
“Let you know in a minute,” Kit said. There were no more Yaldiv cries. Slowly, in the silence, the hot light vanished, replaced by a low golden-red glow that, in turn, faded to a sullen red, cooling along with the newly melted stone that now filled the former crevasse.
Kit turned his back on the magma. Its heat was still intense, but not so much so that the shield was needed anymore, so he dissolved it.
“Neets!” Dairine went tearing across the cavern. Beside Kit, Memeki lifted herself up a little to watch her go. Ponch leaped up and shook himself, headed after Dairine.
Across the cavern, Dairine tackled Nita in a hug that nearly knocked her over. Nita, grinning, hugged her back while struggling for balance. “Neets!” Kit shouted as he went after Ponch, doing his best to not look like he was ready to break into a run. “Finally! Where were you?” He paused. “Where’s Sker’ret? Who’s—”
That other figure, who had transited in with Nita and had been facing the other way, now turned around, waving a hand in front of her face to fan away some of the rock dust still floating in the air.