It would take several passes to be certain of most of the lightning-sticks, for the box was useless past a certain range. And even Urtho was not sure how many passes it would take to neutralize the bulk of them. It depended on how closely the troops had been packed together, and whether Ma’ar’s mages had put shielding on the sticks themselves, or those who carried them.
It would likely be on the stick. Ma’ar would not care if the man survived, so long as the stick did.
The box would work through a shield, Urtho was confident of that. He’d warned her not to use any spells if she had them, saying the box was simply a thing that negated the controlling force on magic. It would negate the shield as well as the stick’s power pent within. The trick was, he couldn’t anticipate the effect of two spells being negated at the same time. He had used the only example of the stick that they had in making certain the box worked at a reasonable distance. Zhaneel had seen the effect of that—not much. A little light, and that was all.
But there were easily twenty types of shields, Urtho had said, and the troops could possibly be protected by a barrier-shield, a force deflector, a pain-bringer, or a concussion field—the complex interaction of three spells could not be anticipated without knowing what kind of shield Ma’ar would use.
Whatever it is, I do not think it will affect us. Unless it unleashes winds. That could happen. I must anticipate that. Or great light that might blind us; I must think of that as well.
They neared the target; Zhaneel signaled her flight and took herself high up above the clouds, so high that the other gryphons of her wing were scarcely more than ranks of dots below her, even to her keen eyes. Wisps of clouds passed between her and them. The sun overhead scorched her outstretched wings and back, but the wind bit bitterly against her nares, her underbelly, and her foreclaws.
The precious box protected her chest from the wind, but the icy currents chilled her throat and her breath only warmed when it reached her lungs. Was she high enough? The air was very thin up here, and her lungs and wings burned with the effort of staying aloft.
Soon enough, though, she would be a spear from the heavens. They neared their objective, Laisfaar at the Pass of Stelvi. Zhaneel had never seen the town when it had been in Urtho’s hands, but she had been told that the invaders had wrought terrible changes there.
They bring terrible change wherever they go; why should here be any different?
There had been gryphons here. Well, she knew well enough what Ma’ar’s forces did to gryphons. They had assuredly done such terrible things to her own parents. . . .
Reason enough to hate the creatures below. Reason enough to wish that what she carried might do terrible things to them.
It was time; she swept her wings back slowly.
There! There was the Pass, and below it, Ma’ar’s troops, a moving blotch upon the land below her fellows of the wing. Black makaar labored up from their perches on the heights, a swarm of evil. They rose like biting flies to attack the oncoming forces, to pull the gryphons to the ground where the men there could capture them in cruel wire nets, and stab them with terrible, biting spears.
The men below. Who have the lightning-sticks.
She folded her wings, and dropped like a stone from heaven, foreclaws clutched around the precious weapon the Mage of Silence had entrusted to her.
Faster, faster; the wind of her dive pressed against her as the earth rose up in her eyes, and it seemed as if the earth was trying to pull her down and swallow her. She narrowed her eyes and kept her wings pulled in tightly against her body, guiding herself with a tiny flick of a primary, a movement of the tail, even a single claw outstretched for a fraction of a heartbeat. The other gryphons could not spare an eye for her; she must watch out for them. She must avoid them as she lanced through the center of their formation; this would take timing of the most delicate kind, and the control of the best.
But not for nothing had she danced her dance of speed and skill against the imaginary enemies of her obstacle course. Even as the makaar closed with the leaders, she shot arrow-swift straight past makaar and gryphon alike, unstoppable.
The ground rushed at her.
Now!
Zhaneel arched her neck and fanned her wings open, feeling them vibrate as if the mountains themselves pushed her toward the ground as she strained. By treetop height she had changed her angle just enough to pull out of the dive, but she was still streaking almost as rapidly as her initial stooping dive. And her foreclaws tightened, opening the shutter on Urtho’s magic box, as she skimmed over the heads of the fighters—who were nothing but so many uptilted heads, and round, open mouths to her, passing below in a blur.
Her course took her straight for the cliff, and she headed for it unswervingly. These fighters did not seem to have the magic sticks, but the ones between this lot and the cliff could—
An explosion of—not light, but actual fire!—flashed up at her from below, startling her, causing her to veer and slow a trifle. What was that? Did Ma’ar have some new weapon to use against her?
Taking no chances, she aborted the run, closing the shutter and shooting skyward again, opening her wings as she pumped furiously, laboring back up above the clouds to her position of superiority.
Only then did she look down, to focus on the place where the fire had come from.
The ground there was littered with blackened bodies, most of them still afire, and they did not move—while the troops around that area tried to flee.
Slowly, the answer came to her. Ma’ar shielded these new weapons of his, just as we thought he might. And Urtho said he could not tell what canceling two such spells would do . . . perhaps the shield holds just enough that it contains the force of the lightning-stick and turns it into a fireball.
Savage joy filled her heart as she realized the havoc she could wreak among her enemies, and she folded her wings again.
This time they saw her coming; pointing, running, they tried to evade her. She knew what was in their minds. They thought that it was the box she carried that was the source of the attack on them, and not the properties of one of the weapons they themselves carried. Zhaneel quickly learned the range of the “light” as she purposefully pursued the fleeing men, rising into the sky only to descend again, leaving fire, death, and terror in her wake.
Her heart pounded with lust and excitement; the blood sang in her veins. Makaar tried to stop her, but she was too swift for them. Either they fell by the wayside, or they got too close to her, and she sent them tumbling injured out of the sky, slashed by one of her wicked hindfeet, to be finished off by one of the other gryphons. When they tried to set an ambush for her, the others broke it up. When makaar tried to get above her, the cold and thin air drove them back down, gasping for breath.
Again and again, she made her runs, as flashes of orange and blossoming flames traced her path on the ground, and her fellow gryphons pursued the makaar pursuing her. But finally, there were no more of those explosions, and the makaar turned tail and ran, their numbers depleted to less than half of those that had risen to fight off the gryphons.