There wasn’t much fighting in the end.
Potentilla had spotted the panthers inside
the city walls. That had been a shock but she recovered quickly enough. She
notched an arrow in her bow and fired straight at one that was wandering in her
general direction. The shot bounced off the Outer Void creature’s head, but it
showed no sign of noticing either the arrow or the elf.
Akenopteryx flew to
her side. She cocked her head at the panther. She spoke as simply as she could
in Archaic Elven.
‘I have seen five isomorphic
creatures; thou followest me now?’
The elf got at least the
gist of this and so she clambered down from her look-out tree. The panther was
just below them but it seemed to be completely uninterested in them, tilting
its strange face from side to side, as if trying to sense something in the air.
Potentilla took a few additional steps towards it. It still seemed unconcerned
by her presence. She drew her sword out and poked it, as if she were coaxing
the embers in a fire. Its surface was as hard as diamond but it failed to react
in any way. Under the grey-black outer membrane there seemed to be a trapped
sky, full of blue clouds. The lieutenant backed away from the panther, her
instincts for once telling her that this was a being that she shouldn’t stand
and fight. She remembered with a shudder what had happened to Al-Ham, who had
died fighting a winged creature apparently of a similar kind to this one.
Hapalonyx fluttered
down on to a branch close to Akenopteryx. ‘Come and see this’ she whispered.
The two other parrots
and the elf left the panther wandering and followed Hapalonyx back to where she
had been patrolling. They didn’t have far to go. About two hundred yards along
the wall they found another group of panthers; this time they were pacing
around something. It was the body of a woman, dressed in brown. It was clear
that she had fallen from the wall – when they looked up they could see a small
tree that was half ripped from its growing place on top of the battlements. Akenopteryx examined her carefully, getting as
close as she could without being in the direct path of the panthers.
‘She must have died
falling from the wall’ she said
Hapalonyx nodded her
agreement. Potentilla shook her head. The lack of a shared language hadn’t been
a problem up to now, but this was the first time that Viola had not been
present to translate.
‘Go findest the others’ Akenopteryx said very slowly in the only
language that she knew. Potentilla looked blank. The parrot flapped her wings
and shooed the lieutenant off in the direction of the White Temple. She hesitated
for a second and then ran off. The two remaining parrots found a spot high on
the wall and waited, watching the movements of the panthers with two pairs of
bright eyes.
The other party members had advanced
with considerable trepidation down the streets that led back to the gate. Viola
had heard Potentilla coming from several streets away, but she had no idea who
it was, so they had hidden behind a silo. They were delighted to see her.
‘Report, lieutenant’
hissed Viola
Potentilla explained,
in vivid, if cursory, detail, what had happened. When he heard of the fate of the
dead woman, Dom let out a cry.
‘That’s my fault!’ he
said, ‘I killed her’
Potentilla wrinkled
up her nose. Her voice was hushed with awe.
‘You really are an
amazing mage, Dom. How did you zap her from so far away?’
Dom made a lemon
juice face and shook his head wearily, but Potentilla had already turned away back
towards the wall.
‘I didn’t’ he
explained, ‘I think that the teleport pebble must have ended up stuck in a
tree, and she must have fallen from the wall when she teleported to it’
Viola frowned. ‘Why
didn’t you mention that to me before, about the pebble?’
Dom shrugged, he
could think of no valid defence. Viola glared at him. This didn’t worry him
much; his main concern was that he had killed someone – not directly and not
intentionally, but for the first time he had caused someone to lose their life.
Hardacre sensed something in Dom’s
discomfort and answered for him.
‘It’s too late to do
anything about it now,’ he said calmly ‘and it seems like our mage’s mistake
may have been to our advantage. Let’s go and see’
They proceeded with
care, skirting round buildings and sending Psithuros forward to check that the
way was clear. They had been reassured by Potentilla’s account of events near
the gate but none of them were keen to see the panthers again.
Akenopteryx meet them
about halfway from the temple. She landed on Viola’s shoulder and explained,
with an exemplary attention to detail (that put Potentilla’s earlier report to
shame), exactly what had happened.
Twenty paces further
on they saw their first panther. It was walking away from them, or more
accurately gliding from them, it had legs but it didn’t seem to use them. Fortunately, it was taking no notice of them
at all. Hardacre sighed, very softly
‘I have seen creatures
of this kind before’ he said, ‘they are made from part of the Outer Void captured
and sealed in by necromancy. They are deadly foes, but they require someone to
control them. As they are now they are no more dangerous than an un-toppled
boulder’
‘Are they like the
rays that attacked Ortia?’ asked Viola. She had heard detailed accounts of
them, but she had never seen one herself.
‘Yes – Kratos seems
to like to fashion them into approximate zoological forms. In Huatlacan they
were like giant insects. These seem more sophisticated but less powerful’
‘Can they be
defeated?’ asked Kath. She had been staring at the panther, mesmerised by the
shadow puppetry of blue light under its rippling skin.
Hardacre permitted
himself a small smile. He put a hand into his top cloak pocket and pulled out a
small envelope. Dom’s eyes widened.
‘Are those sunflower
seeds?’ he asked
Hardacre nearly
dropped the envelope, but his exquisite powers of recovery meant that no-one
else noticed. He couldn’t, however, quite squeeze all of the surprise out of
his voice.
‘How did you know
that, Master Shavosky? Is your magecraft more advanced than you have admitted?’
Dom laughed, with a
hint of nerves. It was time to reveal something that he now wished he’d told
them earlier.
‘It’s not my
magecraft,’ he said, ‘I guessed because Princess Lily told me all about it’
Hardacre smiled. This
now made perfect sense.
‘We told her not to
reveal what had happened to anyone’
Viola intervened, ‘well, I think then that
it’s fortunate that Dominic is not just anyone, don’t you think Laurence? And
perhaps now you could tell us exactly what is in that packet ’
Hardacre moved on
from his mild irritation with Princess Lily; her actions hardly surprised him.
He opened up his envelope and showed them a seed. Viola took it and studied it
very closely.
‘And, exactly what
use is that, Laurence?’
Hardacre nodded
towards the panther. It had turned round and was moving towards them, but it
was hard to tell if it had now become a threat. He took back the seed, tossed
it into the air and started his incantations.
‘Gylch’- a bulb covered the seed as if in a filmy bubble. It sat up in the air briefly, held up by spell
energy. The end of the bulb narrowed to an excruciatingly thin point.
‘Brifio’ – the seed inside the bulb started to sprout.
‘Eheda’ – he pointed towards the panther and the bulb shot outwards,
leaving a white streak behind it.
The bulb hit the
panther on the front of its head. It was some way away so they couldn’t make
out exactly what happened next, but then they saw an explosion of white, green
and yellow. The panther lay still as the sunflower grew, in an instant, out of
the top of its head, then the creature unravelled, like an orange peeled at
breakneck speed. Little gusts of blue clouds sizzled briefly in the warm air
and then faded away. Yellow petals littered the ground.
Dom put his hands
together, as if to clap his appreciation. He stopped himself, however, abruptly
when he saw the look of mild admonishment on Hardacre’s face. Clearly applause
wasn’t something that he craved.
‘Well, I’m pleased to
see that that still works’ muttered
Hardacre.
‘We all are’
whispered Kath
‘Kathleen’s spell
must be harder to counter than we had feared’ he continued, mostly to himself.
Viola hurried over to
where the panther had been destroyed. She knelt on the ground and picked up
some of the petals. She smiled up at
Hardacre.
‘That evens things up
quite a bit’ she said. Hardacre looked unconvinced.
‘Let’s hope so’ said
Kath. They moved on towards the wall.
It was easy to find he dead woman by the
wall: she was surrounded by the milling shapes of false panthers. Dom had to
force himself to forget, for the time being, the chain of events that had led
to her death. He concentrated, instead,
on studying her appearance closely. There wasn’t much about her that seemed
remarkable, except that she clutched something in her left hand. Unfortunately
they would be unable to find out what it was until the panthers had been dispelled.
It took some time but Hardacre was able to
destroy the remaining panthers easily using the sunflower seeds. It was a very
tiring process, however, and Hardacre was staggering on his feet at the end of
it. They now felt their lack of time acutely; the rest of their enemies must be
close on their tail.
Potentilla prised
open the dead woman’s hand. Gripped inside it was a black onyx stone, just
smaller than the size of her fist. She
had nothing else on her – no backpack, no weapons, no orders. This looked like
it might have been planned as a possible suicide mission.
Viola took the stone from her lieutenant with
great care. She looked at it briefly and
then passed it on to Hardacre. He and Dom huddled over it for a few minutes
murmuring incantations. Viola allowed this to continue for as long as she could
bear.
‘So, what is it?’ she
asked
Hardacre allowed Dom
to speak for them both.
‘A summoning stone’
he said, pointing to a red circular patch in the middle of the stone. ‘Press
this and you summon a panther’
Hardacre nodded
gravely and continued Dom’s report.
‘We assume that the
panthers are formed elsewhere and then summoned by this stone. It is,
nonetheless, a very powerful item’
Kath would have loved
to have inspected it, but it radiated danger very clearly. ‘We should destroy
it’ she said.
‘Yes, we should’ agreed
Viola. She gestured to Potentilla, ‘lieutenant…’ who drew her sword in an
instant.
‘No, ‘ whispered
Hardacre, ‘that’s too dangerous. If you disrupt it the stone may release a lot
of destructive energy’
Potentilla sheathed
her sword with a little sigh. Viola frowned at her two magical experts.
‘Can either of you
destroy it?’
They both shook their
heads. Their growing aura of authority was temporarily punctured. Viola took
the stone back.
‘Can they track us
with it?’
‘Quite possibly, madam’
‘We can’t leave it
here where they will find it again, so…’
Kath was looking up
at the wall, at where the fatal tree had been partially pulled out from the
wall-top walkway. She waved up at the
tree.
‘Tillie – can you get
up there?’
Potentilla nodded
without even looking up.
‘Well, then’ said
Kath, ‘why don’t we find the teleport pebble and take it with the body out of
the city and dump it in the woods somewhere. We can bury the summoning stone
somewhere out there too…’
Hardacre’s thin lips
twitched into a smile.
‘A good idea’ he
said, ‘if executed rapidly. When they discover the body and the pebble they
will assume that she, and perhaps even her panthers, was defeated outside the
city. That should slow them down considerably…’
Viola thought about
this for a second and then ordered Potentilla up on to the wall to find the
pebble. The others started to move the body.
Hardacre rested against the side of a building – he had very little
energy left.
‘And then’ he murmured,
‘we must find your naga, Major. It may be our last chance’
No comments:
Post a Comment