David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

Two more People appeared at the top of the pile. The wounded one raised his sword to cut at Tenoctris, seated at his feet.

Sharina swung, judging the stroke as she'd have split kindling. The Pewle knife sheared through the invader's wrist. Hand and sword flew sideways. Lires finished the job by decapitating the creature with an angry curse.

Tenoctris hadn't flinched as the sword rose to strike her; Sharina wasn't sure she'd even noticed. She continued chanting, her eyes on the vellum codex on the floor beside her. A strip of lead held the pages open. The ring in Tenoctris' left hand snapped sparks of wizardlight toward the portal as she gestured with the split of bamboo.

Two People started through the portal. Ascor and two of his men were down, and another of the Blood Eagles wavered. He hadn't dropped his sword, but it hung at arm's length, pointing to the floor.

The portal flashed vividly azure like a sun-struck tile. The invaders in it vanished, flung backward by the same forces that'd been bringing them from Hani's island to Valles.

The portal were still shimmering wizardlight instead of the wall of polished granite it'd been before Hani started his incantation. The light sizzled, and the ring continued to spit blue sparks toward it.

"Sharina," Tenoctris said. Her voice was hoarse but there was an unfamiliar febrile brightness in her eyes. Normally a major spell left the old wizard drained almost to the point of being comatose.

"Yes, Tenoctris?" Sharina said, squatting to put their heads on a level. She hoped she was hiding the concern she felt.

Lires turned and looked at them. Toward them, rather, because his eyes were staring a thousand miles away. His helmet had taken several hard blows, and the shield he'd snatched to replace his own was hacked and battered into scrap.

"I said Hani's portal wouldn't take me anyplace I wanted to go, dear," Tenoctris said, forcing the human syllables through lips that'd twisted around words of power. "I was wrong. It'll send a person to Volita. I don't know why Hani created that passage, but I doubt it was something we'd approve of. I think your brother's in danger."

"What can we do?" Sharina said. "What?"

"I think the portal still focuses enough power to take us through," Tenoctris said, nodding toward but not looking at the quivering blue field. "If you'll carry me, I'll try-"

"Yes," said Sharina, wiping the Pewle knife clean on the tunic of the invader she'd dismembered with it. She sheathed the blade, then put her arms around the wizard's back and thighs. It was like lifting a bird, frail and much lighter than she unconsciously expected.

"Lires!" she said, speaking loudly to cut through the soldier's black reverie. "Pull some of these bodies out of our way!"

Lires dropped the ruined shield but he didn't let go of his sword. He gripped the topmost invader by an ankle and jerked him off the pile. He did the same with two more People, using a wrist and a throat for handles.

The other Blood Eagles were either wounded or helping their wounded fellows. They looked at what was happening, but they didn't have energy enough to speak.

Sharina mounted the bottom layer of twitching corpses. Behind her she heard human cheers and the brassy triumph of a dozen horns and trumpets: Lord Waldron's forces had broken the line of People and fought their way into the city, coming to the rescue of the survivors of Captain Rowning's troop.

"Ereschigal aktiophi berbiti…," Tenoctris said in a husky whisper. A fat spark spat from Hani's ring..The wall of blue fire went blank.

Sharina had no thought but that she would do what she could, for Garric and for the Isles. She stepped into the emptiness as Tenoctris in her arms spoke the remaining syllables of the spell.

Mab stood facing Cashel in the center of Ronn's great rooftop plaza. Around them, none quite close enough for Cashel to touch with his staff, stood the assembled citizens. They filled the open area, all but the immediate circle.

Mab spread her hands, palms down. All sounds stilled, not naturally but with the suddenness of a vault door closing between Cashel and the crowd. For a moment Mab's fingernails blazed, spots of color brighter than the noon sun; then they went black and the wizard's body became a figure of wizardlight, flaring red and blue alternately in a rapidly increasing cycle.

She raised her hands, her mouth working. Cashel couldn't hear the syllables Mab spoke, but the scene beyond the two of them pulsed in his vision as she spoke.

The world flip-flopped. Cashel still faced Mab, but instead of being on the sun-drenched roof of Ronn they were in a city amid the ruins of buildings thrown down by earth-shocks. The sky above was black and the air choking with sulfur. A few double-paces away hunched men in armor, facing the distorted monsters who climbed and crawled from an acres-broad crater.

A wind, cold as the Ice Capes, howled across the land. Humans were screaming also.

Mab turned to face the crater and the thin line of soldiers standing against the creatures it spawned, then stepped into what'd been an arched entranceway. To either side was a square column base; the rest of the building had collapsed. Fluted columns lay on top of roof tiles, marble sheathing, and the brick core of the walls. Dust still rose from the wreckage.

"Very well," she said crisply. "Cashel, protect me as you did before. It may be harder this time."

"All right," said Cashel. He moved in front of Mab, planted his feet, and began to spin the quarterstaff sunwise.

Cashel didn't mind things being hard. This was one of those times when a man needed to stand up for what was right, no matter what it cost.

Mab raised her hands, gesturing in a pattern that thrilled Cashel when he glanced over his shoulder. He didn't understand what the wizard was doing, but he could see and feel the art of it. It was so pretty to watch that he had to remind himself that his business was looking out for Mab, not gawping like he had the first time he saw a city.

He guessed this was Erdin; he'd been here a year ago. Duzi! but it was in a bad way, though.

A whole herd of creatures bubbled from the crater and came on down the street toward the waiting soldiers. They were white like the Made Men and their weapons were pretty much the ones the Made Men carried, but none ofthese things could pass for human. Some were even legless, with flipper hands sticking out below their snarling faces. They used the whole length of their slimy bodies to swing their weapons.

Bolts of red and blue ripped from between Mab's weaving hands to strike the overcast. They slashed it like swords through dirty burlap.

Thunder slammed twice. Bright, clean sunlight flooded from the uncovered sky. Where it fell across the white creatures, they writhed like slugs on a griddle.

The monsters must be making the high keening Cashel heard. The human defenders who'd been falling back now steadied and hacked their squirming opponents to death.

The black sky closed again over the sunlight. More of the white monsters lifted from the crater, moving toward the line of soldiers. Two humans had gone down in the attack just finished. Soldiers lay on the pavement in ones and twos, all the way back to the edge of the pit.

The barrier was growing thinner. Cashel could see companies of monsters setting off in all directions, not just toward the men directly in front of him. A few human reinforcements were moving up the road from the harbor, but only a very few.

The man on the far end of the line knelt, bowing his head. The smaller figure beside him, a slim spearman who wasn't wearing armor, lifted the first man's helmet to let the cold breeze cool his scalp.

Mab's hands moved together with the whirling precision of hawks mating in mid air. Wizardlight blasted from between them, throwing back the darkness to either side the way skin gapes away from a deep cut. The sun blazed down. Creatures of the false darkness shrivelled.