Nevertheless Terisa was sure they weren’t laughing.
Even from several hundred yards away, she could sense the heat of the glowing liquid rock which seethed and bubbled in long pools outside the walls. There were half a dozen of them, all set in higher ground which sloped down toward the city, all shaped as if they were flowing slowly, inexorably toward the walls. Eremis had said, Pits of fire appear in the ground of Termigan – almost within the fortifications of Sternwall. He must have had a hard time restraining his mirth. Fed by translation, the pits melted the earth between them and the city. She didn’t know how long this had been going on, but she guessed that it wouldn’t continue much longer. Already, the granite wall had begun to slump like heated wax at four different points; wide sections of the city’s outward face reflected the magma redly, as if they were slick with sweat. The people of Sternwall were eventually going to be burned out of their homes. Orange-red glared into the sky like a presage of sunset.
Geraden scowled at the sight bitterly. “Glass and splinters!” he murmured. “Oh, Eremis. No wonder the Termigan doesn’t trust Imagers.”
“I don’t understand.” Terisa had to swallow hard to make her throat work. “Why? I mean, why do it this way? Why not put this – this lava? – why not translate this lava right into the city and be done with it?”
“It’s more fun this way,” grated Geraden. Then he shook his head. “No, that’s not it. Sternwall itself probably isn’t in the Image. The mirror they’re using probably shows a place up the hill somewhere. This is as far as they can adjust the focus.”
Guards paced the wall without getting too close to the heat. Terisa saw two men stop, point toward her and Geraden; one of them left the wall. She supposed that under the circumstances Sternwall didn’t get many visitors. Trying to force down the taste of bile, she nudged her horse into motion.
Grimly, she and Geraden rode past the pits toward the gate on the far side of the city.
Near the lava, she could hear it seething, a deep, almost inaudible rumble that seemed to echo in the marrow of her bones: the sound of the earth being eaten away.
As quiet as that noise was, however, it seemed to deafen her. She hardly heard the lonely cry of a bugle rising from the walls of the city. She hardly heard Geraden say, “Looks like the Termigan is sending men out to meet us. Maybe he doesn’t want to risk letting us in until he knows who we are.”
She should have been ready. She was near an Image: she should have understood that she and Geraden were in danger of being spotted. Unfortunately, she wasn’t thinking that clearly. She was too full of Sternwall’s plight to think clearly.
She was taken completely by surprise when a touch of cold as thin as a feather and as sharp as steel slid straight through the center of her abdomen.
Yet the surprise itself may have been what saved her. She had no time to be frightened, paralyzed. Instead, she yelped a warning and flung herself to the side, out of the saddle, out of the way.
The fangs missed her. They came so close, however, that they snagged her shirt at the shoulder, nearly tore it off her body.
She hit the ground awkwardly, wrenched her knee, fell flat on her face. Desperately, she scrabbled her legs under her and pitched to her feet—
—just in time to see a gnarled black spot the size of a puppy get up on its limbs and come scrambling toward her. Its savage jaws took up more than half its body: they stretched for her, ravening.
At her yell, Geraden had wheeled his mount. Bounding from an invisible perch on the other side of a translation, a black, round shape flipped past him. With all four limbs, it caught the appaloosa by the head.
Its jaws ripped the horse’s skull apart. Fountaining blood, the appaloosa went down as if it had crashed into a wall. Geraden landed hard: he was momentarily stunned. Before he could recover, his mount’s convulsions rolled the horse over onto his legs.
Munching brains and bone, the black creature began to eat its way through the horse toward him.
Another fierce shape appeared out of nowhere – and another – struck the ground – rolled to a stop—
One of them went for Geraden. The other rushed at Terisa.
She had no choice, no time: when the nearest creature sprang at her, she ducked, flinched aside. Geraden had given her a knife – for cooking, he had said, teasing her because he did all the cooking – and she groped for it while she dodged; she jerked it from its sheath, hacked blindly at her assailant.
Her blow caught nothing but air. Off balance, barely able to support her weight with her twisted knee, she stumbled directly into the path of the second attacking shape.
Its fangs were curved and jagged, made for rending. In a mirror, she had seen a creature like this tear a man’s heart out. It was going to rip her to tatters. And there was another one turning to jump her from behind.
Geraden had a few more seconds to live than she did. The red meat of his horse had distracted both of his attackers: they were feeding voraciously. He was safe until they reached his trapped legs.
Wildly, he struggled to open his mount’s saddlebags.
The blade he had given Terisa was little more than a filleting knife; a hunter might have used it to skin a rabbit. It was the only thing she had to fight with, however; she didn’t question it. Since she was off balance anyway, she thrust her weight in the direction she was falling, so that her arm and the knife came around in a wide, sweeping slash.
Somehow, this blow found the creature before the creature reached her face. The black shape tumbled to the side, spattering green blood everywhere.
She tried to catch herself, but her knee gave out. She toppled with a cry just as the second attacker leaped at her back.
Geraden’s assailants were working on the appaloosa’s shoulders.
From the nearest saddlebag, he pulled out a sackful of corn meal and flung it.
The sack burst open on the first creature’s teeth.
With a sound like thick fabric being shredded, the shape sneezed.
Like its jaws and its appetite, its sneeze was too big for its body. The blast knocked it backward, off the dead horse; tucking its legs around itself, it rolled away.
Another sneeze: another roll.
Geraden searched frantically for something else to throw.
Terisa was down. She couldn’t get back up. Her legs shoved at the ground as if her back were broken, but she couldn’t bring them under her.
One of the black shapes moved toward her.
As if sensing her helplessness, it stopped hurrying: its steps were almost dainty as it approached. Its huge jaws opened delicately. Each one of its teeth was sharp for her flesh.
Then the quarrel from a crossbow struck the creature so hard that it skipped off the ground and sailed through the air as though it had been kicked by a giant. A few drops of its green blood splashed into her hair as it flew past.
Like a spike driven by a sledgehammer, another quarrel nailed the feeding beast to the appaloosa’s carcass. Without a sound, the creature gaped and died, gushing rank fluids around its fangs.
One of the Termigan’s men pounded the last black shape into a pulp under the shod hooves of his mount.
A moment later, the three men halted in front of Terisa and Geraden. They peered down from their high seats. Snarling, one of them demanded, “What in the name of goatshit and fornication are those things?”
Geraden didn’t seem to notice that he had been rescued. He continued thrashing through the, saddlebag, hunting uselessly for a weapon. “That bastard,” he panted between his teeth. “That bastard. If I had a mirror—” His whole face was wet with sweat or tears. “If I just had a mirror—”