“I hear.” She began playing the stunner along the undersurface of the sphere, an undersurface clearly marked by the stony bodies of the elementals. Dan made a little sound, a combination gasp and involuntary chuckle as the hivers fell away from the shield, pattering to the floor with tiny clatters like wind driven seeds against windowpanes.
More elementals came out of the earth and crawled onto the shield, closing the last interstices so he could not longer see the slugs. The sled groaned and shivered and sank lower until it was only six inches off the stone, in minutes it was going to touch the floor, it was bound to land in one of the pentacles or sink into a trap. The elementals stopped pounding on the shield, they were weakened by Jaril’s raids, but that didn’t help, it was the weight of them that did the damage. Water, he thought, water, somehow I’ve got to get water in here, some… how… The slugs pulled harder at him, they were going to swallow him if he didn’t do something. Where where did Maksim get them, I seem to remember… Magic Man, where where… ah! He spoke the NAME, he spoke the WORD, the pressure diminished so suddenly, so sharply, he almost fell on his face, his skin felt too thin as if he were about to explode, his grip on the shieldweave wavered. His hands snapped into fists as he caught hold of the shield and tightened it again. He forced himself to sit up, pressed a fist against his thigh and straightened the fingers one by one, working them carefully until he had some control over them. Bending over the sensor panel, he started the sled forward, got a little momentum and was able to break away from the elementals still boiling up through the floor, though the ones already clinging to the shield sphere stayed with him and he couldn’t gain height. He didn’t have to worry about airtraps any more, the bodies of the elementals protected him from those. He felt the sled jolt and knew that Maksim was hammering at him. The jolting grew harder, came faster without any pattern to it. Amortis was slamming at them too, her blows amplifying or interfering with Maksim’s, she wasn’t concerned with that, she screamed her hate and fury as she put all her strength into those clouts. The sled rocked precariously, tilted far to one side, bucked and twisted, throwing Danny Blue and Brann against the legs, threatening to whip them through the shield into the arms of the elementals. This wasn’t something he planned for, the sled was reasonably stable but even its prototype wasn’t built for this kind of strain; the table groaned and whined, rocked wildly, one moment a corner scraped against the stone; luck and luck alone kept them from trap or pentacle. He fought the sled level again, managed to squeeze more forward speed from the field, hoping as they got closer to Maksim that Amortis would have to take more care, giving him a chance to think a little. Somehow he had to strip away the elementals so he could see Maksim, as long as he was blind all he could do was hold his defenses tight.
Maksim watched the mound of oozing stone forms surge, tilt, shudder, heard the sled scrape the floor, ground his teeth when he was sure it had touched down in one of the few clean spaces. It labored on, creeping toward him; so far nothing had worked to stop it. He glared up at Amortis, shouted at her to stop wasting fire, she was only feeding the changers, to concentrate on slamming the sled about. A mistake, that fire, it meant the changers didn’t have to draw from the source. He’d misread the events in Amortis’ first attack, he saw that now, and he’d made other mistakes in play; shouldn’t have hit them so hard from so many directions, he wasted the demons that way (though he hadn’t expected all that much from them since Ahzurdan knew them as well as he did, except the hivers, too bad about them, that cursed weapon Akamarino brought with him, the mist demon was still in the game, Ahzurdan knew its form and home, but Danny Blue would have to see it before he could do anything about it). Wasted his best trap too, there was no one clear danger, he should have made Amortis the clear danger, then the changers might have attacked her, they were too busy defending the sled to be tempted that way. The mist demon finally reached the sled and began oozing among the elementals, the overflow from the fire was bothering it, he could feel it whining, he snarled at Amortis again, subsided as the flood of fire choked off and the sled tottered as she put muscle into her immaterial arm and her immaterial fist slammed into it.
He pulled more elementals from the stone and threw them atop the pile. The sled groaned and dropped an inch lower, but still kept coming. He wondered briefly whether Danny Blue meant to slam into the stairs of the dais, or didn’t know he was getting close to them; the elementals flowed so thickly about him, there seemed no way he could see where he was going. Unless the changers were piloting him. They went through the rind of elementals and that peculiar shield as if neither existed. That shield, it was like nothing he’d seen before; he assumed it was an amalgam of the knowledge held by Ahzurdan and Akamarino. It was certainly effective. Fascinating, what the Chained God had done with those two men. He moved his staff, sent a ram of hardened air at the sled; it swung and shuddered, then came on even faster. He scowled, deflected a splash of earthfire slung at him by one of the changers as it drained strength from the elementals and pried bits of the elastic stone from the shield sphere, thumped the sled once more. He didn’t want to give up the trap woven round Amortis, but if that thing got too close he might have to; he began shifting his intent, began gathering himself for one last grand effort.
The sled swerved sharply, picked up yet more speed and began running at the wall on Maxim’s right, rocking, sliding, tottering under the increasing force and speed of the whacks from Amortis’ immaterial fists. It must be hellish inside there.
The sled swerved again, scooted behind the chair and stopped. The changers sucked great gulps of energy from the earth elementals and washed it across the back of the thronechair. The obsidian chairback exploded in a spray of molten stone; part of the energy in that eruption came from his own power which he’d stored in the chair, part from the stone life in the elementals, stone against stone, stone melting stone. Maksim jumped to his feet, did a hasty dance with his staff to shunt the melted obsidian away from him, cursed, then laughed, appreciating the irony in this interweaving of chance and intention. He leaped onto the chairseat, drew what remained of the stored power into
Hampered by the narrow space and nervous about getting too close to Maksim, Amortis struck at them, hit the sled hard enough to slam it into the backwall, hit it again when it rebounded. And again.
The elementals kept trying to crush the shield, push
The changers went wheeling and whipping through the elementals, they scooped huge gouts of earthfire out of them and flung it at Maksim, flung it with such power it seemed to reach him almost before it left their hands. He deflected it, but he was linked too closely to the elementals to escape their pain, their fury, the heat got at him, the fire raised blisters on his face and arms.
The exchange went on and on, neither side seriously affecting the other. Maksim kept waiting for the mist to act, but nothing seemed to be happening on the sled. It slammed against the wall, bounced against the back of the dais, it groaned and whined, it came close to capsizing, but the shield never faltered. He cast up a deflector of his own to carry the changers’ attack away from him and away from the chair so its stone wouldn’t melt from under him, he slapped his right foot on the stone, slapped his left foot on the stone, yelled a wordless defiance that filled the chamber, set himself firm as stone, set himself for a last throw, unknotting the trap-web about Amortis, dragging it back into himself, dragging an unwilling Amortis down from the dome, holding her shivering on the dais beside him, her mass compacted until she was a mere ten feet tall, a vaguely bi