Nicci lunged back to her feet and saw that the blaze ignited by her wizard’s fire crackled in the underbrush, catching deadfall branches and the carpet of dry leaves. The fire would spread, and if it reached the dry grassy hills, the inferno would be unstoppable.
But before they could fight the fire, they had to halt the attacking monster.
Since her magic could not harm the bear directly, Nicci used her gift to wrench one of the stunted, burning oaks from the ground and threw the uprooted projectile at the bear. In a crash of sparks and smoke, the tree struck the monster, spraying fire onto its fur. Bannon and Nathan scattered out of the way as the monster tore the burning tree apart and came at them again.
Nicci set aside her gift and instead drew the two daggers she kept at her sides. In order to inflict harm with the short blades, she would have to be well within the monster’s embrace. She did not intend to be crushed in a furious hug, her ribs snapped like twigs, but she watched for opportunity.
Nathan hacked with his sword again, but the monster caught him with a backhanded blow. The old wizard flew twenty feet and his limp body crashed into a thicket of scrub oaks, where he lay stunned.
A tawny shape flashed past, and Mrra sprang upon the monster. Though the panther was much smaller than the enormous bear, Mrra was a killing machine, trained in some distant combat arena.
Nicci bounded into the fray, both knives held in front of her. As she stabbed, one blade clattered against the implanted armor, but her other knife cut into the tough fur. Striking like a viper, she jabbed and jabbed again, before springing away.
Mrra attacked with claws and scimitar fangs, tearing at the sword gash Bannon had made in the thing’s belly. The panther ripped the wound wider until entrails spilled out. As it roared, the monster sprayed ribbons of saliva. Its intact paw raked a line of scratches down Mrra’s hide, but the big cat didn’t stop.
Bannon stabbed his plain sword into the creature’s belly, driving the blade deep, all the way to the spine. Using both bloody paws, the bear clawed at the blade, then swatted at Bannon. As the young man reeled out of the way, his sword slid out of the wound, now slick with gore.
As Mrra continued to maul, Nicci worked her way close enough to the monster’s head that she could smell its fetid breath. She plunged one knife into its left eye, drove the point through the socket, cracking the thick bone, and into its brain. Pounding the pommel with the flat of her hand, she hammered the knife deeper and deeper.
Even that didn’t kill the bear, but Nicci used her other dagger to slash its throat, cutting through insulating fat and sawing through the tendons until she found its jugular. The razor-honed edge severed the vein, and spouting blood drenched her.
Mrra pulled away, dragging long cords of intestines out of the creature’s torn belly as if the big cat had found a new toy.
Bannon’s eyes flashed with the frenzy of the fight, a battle trance that sometimes caught him. With a wordless yell, he raised his sword high and plunged it point-first into the bear’s chest, cracking its breastbone and piercing its heart.
The tortured creature shuddered, gurgled, and finally died.
Bannon’s shoulders heaved up and down as he hunched over the beast, clutching the leather-wrapped hilt. When he looked down at the bloody mess, he began weeping, not just from relief and terror, but out of real sympathy for the poor creature. “I would have preferred a cleaner kill.”
A stunned Nathan extricated himself from the thicket, clawing leaves and branches from his hair and clothes. He held a hand to his throbbing head. “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help. I was sidelined like an injured player in Ja’La.”
Even as the dead bear still twitched, the crackling flames of the growing fire caught Nicci’s attention. The scrub oaks burned quickly, and the mounded dry leaves on the forest floor provided a wealth of fuel. The flames rushed through the spindly branches. The blaze had already swept past the five statue warriors, blackening their petrified features.
Nicci drew several breaths, calming herself to focus on her Han. A forest fire was something she could fight, a problem her gift could solve. She called up the wind again and swirled a curtain of air around the rising flames, encircling the fire. A cyclone of dry leaves blew all around them.
Holding up her hands in a circular motion, she made the wind spin faster and faster, sucking the air away from the flames. She channeled it, choked it, drove the fire into a whirlwind pillar, which she tightened into a thinner spout, shooting a jet of flame high into the sky.
Bannon and Nathan ducked against the rising storm, letting the sorceress work her magic. Mrra flattened her ears against her head. Around them, branches crashed and whipped, twigs flew in all directions.
At last, the remnants of the fire flickered out, leaving only curls of smoke that dissipated as Nicci let the magic die away. The storm faded, and the oak branches stirred, as if in a sigh of relief. Charred leaves drifted to the ground.
Using his fingers to brush the tangles from his white hair, Nathan smiled at Nicci’s work, accepting it with little more than a shrug. “Thank you, Sorceress. That could have turned into a bad situation. If I had my gift back, I’d have done it myself.”
“You’ll be restored soon, Nathan. We will find the city.” Bannon remained doggedly optimistic. His hazel eyes sparkled as he looked over at Nicci. “Still, that was very impressive.”
Nicci was not profligate with her compliments, but she was honest. “Your sword work was also very useful.” In fact, she was embarrassed by her own failure to fight with her gift, annoyed to feel helpless. She could relate to Nathan’s plight. “Seeing those branded symbols, I should have guessed earlier that my magic wouldn’t work on the monster.”
Coppery blood and a rank, gamy stink hung around the dead carcass in front of them, overpowering even the smell of smoke. Mrra prowled through the underbrush, keeping her distance from the creature as she guarded against any other attack.
Unabashedly curious, Nathan knelt beside the dead bear, rapped his knuckles on the strange armor shells grafted to its hide. “Dear spirits, what would have created such an appalling creature? And why?” He looked up, blinking. “If a wizard had a gift powerful enough to manipulate flesh, why would anyone use it for such an awful purpose?”
Still staring at the fallen beast, Bannon wiped the tracks of tears from his face, smearing some of the blood on his skin. “Back on Chiriya Island, I knew boys who liked to pull the wings off of flies and roast beetles by dangling them into a flame. Sometimes, they did terrible things to poor cats and puppies.” He shook his head. “There is no answer for why people do terrible things.”
Nathan stood, brushed leaves from his black trousers, adjusted his brown cape. He regarded Nicci, whose face, hair, and black dress were plastered with gore. “You look a mess, Sorceress.”
“I’m sure I do,” she said, arching an eyebrow at him. Turning slowly around, Nicci surveyed the blackened trees, the smoldering trunks, the last smear of smoke that wafted into the air. “The fire would have been visible for miles, and our fight with the creature would have drawn much attention. So much for our attempts at stealth. We seem to have announced our arrival.”
Bannon and Nathan looked around warily.
Farther off through the forest of low oaks and the scattered taller trees, they heard branches breaking, a murmur of voices. Mrra crouched, growling, her ears pressed back. She sniffed the air as if she smelled death. As the voices came nearer, the sand panther bolted away, disappearing into the underbrush.
Bannon stared after the cat. “Mrra didn’t flinch when that monster attacked us. What would scare her now?”