The sorceress started to step through the gates, then thought better of it and stopped. Borys’s servants had not become wraiths by easily forsaking the tasks he assigned to them. If the survivors had not yet assaulted her, it was because they were lying in ambush inside the bastion itself.
Using the life force she had drained from the leader’s gem, Sadira cast her spell. The purple sheen faded from her skin, and a caustic-smelling mist began to rise from the lump of clay in her hand. She waited until the green fumes condensed into a hissing stream of vapor, then she stepped through the gate.
The first thing she noticed was the quiet. She could not hear Magnus’s song, the hiss of the vapor rising from her palm, or even the sound of her feet shuffling over the limestone cobbles. Then she glimpsed a wraith pulling himself out of the shimmering pool beside the path. The water dripped from his armor without making a sound, and the sorceress realized that a magic pall of silence had been cast over the area-no doubt to keep her from voicing the incantation of her own spells.
Congratulating herself for avoiding the trap, she held her hand out toward her ambusher and blew a stream of green vapor into his face. The wraith’s visor dissolved instantly, and she saw him open his mouth to curse before his head was swallowed in the green fog. Without waiting for the magic acid to finish its work, Sadira spun, fully certain that the last of Borys’s knights was behind her.
The sorceress found a pair of mailed fists reaching for her neck. The wraith at the other end of the arms wore the armor of a broad-shouldered female, with yellow rays of light pouring through the eye-slits of her visor. Sadira twisted to the side, thrusting the hand with the magic acid toward her attacker’s face. At the same time, the sorceress protected her vulnerable throat with her shoulder.
The tactic succeeded only partially. Sadira planted her hand squarely in her foe’s visor, which instantly began to dissolve beneath a billowing cloud of green vapor. The wraith switched her attacks at the last minute, however, smashing one mailed fist down on Sadira’s collarbone and bringing the other around in a vicious uppercut to the ribs. The blows landed with such force that the sorceress felt bones crack in both places.
Sadira’s body erupted into such agony that she barely noticed when her magic acid dissolved the gem inside her first ambusher’s head. She felt the path buck beneath her feet and saw streaks of ruby-colored light flashing past in the silence, then she dropped to the cobblestones gasping for breath. The wraith reached down to pick her up, attempting to carry out Borys’s orders even as the sorceress’s green fog ate away the repository of her life force.
One mailed hand clasped onto Sadira’s wounded shoulder, and the other reached for her throat. Then a silent yellow flash flared from inside the acid cloud. The wraith dissolved. A tremendous shock wave crashed down on the sorceress, spraying her with droplets of acid vapor and driving her tormented body into the unyielding cobblestones.
The sorceress did not care. Pain would not stop her from escaping the Gray. She forced herself to her hands and knees and turned toward the minaret. Sadira slowly crawled forward, the syllables of Magnus’s wind-ballad pouring forth from her silent lips.
SIX
THE DARK CANYON
As the crimson sun slipped behind the purple crags of the Ringing Mountains, long streaks of shadow stretched across the valley outside Pauper’s Hope. The sheen slowly faded from the glassy plain that Sadira’s magic had created earlier. The smooth field of rock slowly reverted to its true nature, filling the air with a soft murmur as orange stone crumbled into orange dirt.
To half the titans who had attacked Pauper’s Hope that morning, the change no longer mattered. The one that Rikus had wounded, Tay, lay motionless and blank-eyed at the edge of the field. Three more, including Tay’s comrade Yab, had succumbed to the searing heat of the Athasian day. They were slumped over at the waist, the tips of their thirst-swollen tongues protruding from their blue lips.
That left only four living giants to rejoice in the disintegration of their magical prison. Bellowing in gleeful, thirst-parched voices, they began to dig their hips and legs free. They hurled each handful of rock-filled dirt to the ground just out of arm’s reach, where a company of dwarven warriors had surrounded each of them only moments before.
Despite the steel breastplates and helmets protecting the warriors, the giants’ barrage savaged through their disciplined companies, opening great holes in their neat ranks and sending armored figures rolling away like tumbleweeds. The dwarves countered with a volley of crossbow fire. Their iron-tipped bolts were about as effective against the thick hide of the titans as cactus needles would have been against mul gladiators.
“Call Neeva back,” Rikus said. “Their crossbows are useless.”
Caelum shook his head. “They’ve just begun,” he said. “She’ll never retreat so soon.”
“If she waits much longer, she won’t have a chance,” said Magnus, his ears twitching with tension. “I’m afraid we arrived too late. The wraiths may have failed to kill Sadira, but the delay they have caused might prove fatal to us all.”
The trio stood about a hundred paces from the battle, facing the butte over which Rikus and the windsinger had climbed when they first heard the giants. Caelum and Magnus were waiting in reserve, ready to cover the retreat as soon as the battle turned against the dwarves. Unlike Sadira’s sorcery, their clerical magic was primarily defensive in nature and not of much use in destroying titans.
Rikus had been forced to stay with the clerics, because-up until a few minutes ago-the ill effects of the scorpion sting had left his vision too blurry to fight. Thanks to his hardy mul constitution and Caelum’s magic, however, Rikus was recovering rapidly-even if he still had a queasy stomach and sporadic bouts of dizziness. In spite of his condition, the mul would rather have been with Neeva, standing near the dwarven companies and directing the attack from close range. Unfortunately, she had ordered him to stay behind, saying he would only be a liability, and the mul had been in no position to protest. Neeva had organized the assault, and it was under her full command.
As Magnus had explained to Rikus, Neeva had reacted quickly after the wraith attack on the Cloud Road. Perceiving that the original plan for dealing with the giants was in jeopardy, she had sent a half-elven runner to fetch the Kledan militia from Agis’s estate. Then, while the windsinger helped Sadira fight off the wraiths, she and Caelum had discussed their options. When it became clear the sorceress would survive but might not regain consciousness before dusk, Neeva had carried Rkard across the rope that spanned the gap. Caelum and Magnus had followed close behind, with Sadira and Rikus tied to their backs in the case the pair awakened in time to help confront the giants. The Tyrian legion would follow as soon as possible, but it seemed unlikely that they could get two thousand warriors safely across the breach in time to stop what was about to happen.
The largest giant, the one-eyed fellow Rikus had heard called “Patch” by the others, braced his enormous hands at his sides. He pushed down, and a gentle tremor rolled through the field. The orange dirt bulged slightly upward around his hips. The dwarves peppered him with crossbow bolts, but he only twisted from side to side, trying to loosen the ground and free himself.