They had gone only a short distance when Arcannen abruptly stopped. He hesitated a moment, apparently listening. Reyn listened with him, but heard nothing.
Arcannen glanced back at him, gesturing to his head and then his mouth. He was ready for the images the wishsong would provide. He gestured a second time. The intruders were just ahead. He waited to be sure Reyn understood, held up a warding palm to tell him to remain where he was, and disappeared into the roiling mist.
Reyn watched him go, suddenly chilled to the bone. He was alone now; the sorcerer was no longer there to protect him. All he could do was obey the other’s instructions. He formed an image in his mind of several men, a clutch of armed attackers, holding them carefully in place, waiting to see what would happen. As he had with the creature he created to frighten Arcannen earlier, he gave his creations more than visual characteristics; he made it possible for them to be smelled, tasted, heard. He gave the beasts tracking them a reason to think they were real beyond what their eyes would suggest. He found it easier today—more familiar, less challenging. He knew he was getting more proficient at using his magic. He built his protectors piece by piece and held them at the ready like guards at the gates of a city.
Then he waited.
And waited some more.
The images in his mind did not waver. Time slowed, then stopped.
Abruptly a nightmarish creature surged into view, a thing so impossible that the boy almost fled. The four-legged beast was as big as a koden, all bristling hair and jagged teeth and claws, angry piggish eyes fixing on him, head lowered close to the ground as if it were too heavy for the creature to hold erect. A man appeared behind it, the beast connected to him by a chain gripped in his massive hands. The man was as huge and terrible as the beast, a mountain of muscle and bone, his features scarred and ridged and twisted.
They saw each other in the same instant, and Reyn only just managed to release his images and send them careening toward these monsters to intercept them. The images responded as he had hoped they would, moving swiftly and purposefully ahead, attackers that clearly threatened. The man slowed at once, but the beast roared in challenge and jerked hard at the chain. Reyn conjured and dispatched another three attackers, all of them spinning out into the mists like the ghosts they were. But it was hard to tell they weren’t real with the haze swirling around them, and the beast seemed confused and angry.
The boy cast about in desperation. Where was Arcannen? He had created a distraction. Where was the sorcerer?
Abruptly, the big man released the chain, and the beast surged forward to attack the images. As they disintegrated under the force of its attack, it grew even more crazed, whipping this way and that in a futile effort to get its jaws around them as they surged past. It could see, smell and taste them; why couldn’t it touch them? Reyn sent two more, but he could feel his grip on things loosening. All he was doing was delaying the inevitable if Arcannen didn’t appear.
Then two further beasts surged out of the mist—things that looked to be a crossbreed of several species, not so big and imposing as the first, but dangerous nevertheless. They attacked the images, as well, caught up in the maddened behavior of the larger creature, and quickly the trio became mired in a frenzy of snapping and tearing at empty air and phantoms.
A shadowy figure emerged from off to his left, less imposing than the giant and the dog, but clearly a threat. Reyn dropped to one knee, trying to think what to do. The man was coming for him, running now, knives in both hands.
In desperation, he invoked a fresh image, shadowy and faint like the others but still real in appearance, and sent it charging toward the three beasts. The animals were on it at once, but their efforts to bring it down failed as Reyn caused it to veer sharply away before they reached it. Fleeing, with the animals in pursuit, the image folded itself about the man with the knives, and the two merged and became one. The man slowed, confused, aware that something had happened, brushing at his face so that if felt as if he had walked into a spiderweb. The merging was done so swiftly it would not have appeared real to humans; it would have seemed the trick it was. But to the beasts it was very real. Reacting instinctively and without hesitation, all three charged the image that had become the man and tore into it.
At the last moment, the man turned, realizing something was wrong, hands lifting his knives defensively. Too late. The largest beast was on him so fast he had no time to react. He was brought down instantly, screaming as the terrible jaws closed about his face and ripped it off. Arms and legs thrashed futilely, blood spraying everywhere. Tossing aside what it had savaged, the beast began tearing at what remained, joined by its companions. In mere seconds the man was reduced to a lifeless husk.
Kneeling in the mist-slickened rubble, Reyn cringed in dismay. He hadn’t meant for this to happen. He had only been trying to divert the attack. He had just reacted. Arcannen had said he would be there to help him, to prevent him from killing anyone. But the sorcerer had failed him.
Now the first man was coming for him, a huge battle-ax raised overhead. He was like a juggernaut bearing down on the boy—massive and unstoppable. Reyn scrambled to his feet to face the giant, trying to conjure an image to deflect the attack. But panic enveloped him, freezing him in place, stripping away all control, all reason. There was no image that would save him from this.
Where was Arcannen now?
He began backing away, trying to escape, knowing immediately that he wouldn’t, that he was too slow. He cried out for Arcannen, knowing that this, too, was futile, that he couldn’t hear him and wouldn’t come …
Behind him the door to the passageway leading into Arcannen’s lair opened, and Lariana appeared, a vision that seemed born of another conjuring. She advanced through the opening and braced herself, arms extended, her small flash rip pointing.
“Get down, Reyn,” she called out to him.
He threw himself aside, the giant almost on top of him. Lariana’s weapon made a snapping noise—quick and piercing—and he caught a glimpse of strange fiery rope passing above him at tremendous speed. He heard the sound of an impact on flesh, and heard the giant grunt. When he looked, the huge man was down on his knees, his entire chest opened up as the flaming rope twisted around inside him like a live creature.
The giant’s eyes were glazed and staring as he pitched forward and lay still.
Reyn staggered up, and Lariana raced toward him. She flew into his arms and held him against her, and in that moment of gratitude and relief he knew with a certainty as sharp as a blade’s edge that he would never let her go.
TWENTY-ONE
USURIENT WATCHED IT ALL HAPPEN FROM NOT TWENTY FEET away, crouched within the convenient pile of rubble behind which he had dropped during the first few seconds of the encounter. He had not once given any thought to going to the aid of Mallich or The Hammer; his common sense told him that they were likely not going to come out on the winning end.
He shuddered now, remembering what had just witnessed. The crince, freed from its chain, going after what appeared to be a ghost image that had attached itself to Mallich and led to his demise. He could still see the crince ripping its master to pieces, tearing at him until nothing recognizable was left. And then the oketar joining in on the frenzied feast, all of them become maddened and uncontrollable in a matter of seconds.
He glanced down at his hands. They were still shaking. He hadn’t been able to stop them from doing so. That boy. What sort of magic did he possess? How had he managed to turn those savage animals against Mallich? How had he managed it so easily?