In the middle of the confusion stood Rkard, gaping at the dying company with wide, frightened eyes and showing no sign of physical distress. In his hands he clutched the sword tip that Rikus had given him earlier-which Sadira assumed to be the source of his good fortune. Apparently, the shard afforded him the same protection that the Scourge bestowed on Rikus. As long as he held the enchanted steel, the sorcerer-queen could not harm the young mul with any sort of attack, whether physical, mental, or magical.
Thirty paces beyond the boy stood Abalach-Re. The Raamin queen was an ivory-skinned beauty, with peaked eyebrows and huge, round eyes as baleful as they were dark. Her narrow nose ended in a sharp point. She had full lips as red as rubies, a slender chin, and a neck so long and thin it was almost serpentine. The queen’s only weapon was a small scepter, which had an eerie green light glimmering deep within its obsidian pommel.
Abalach raised a slender finger and beckoned to Rkard. The claw at the end of the digit was as long as a dagger. “Come here, child,” she said, a forked tongue licking over her red lips. “I only want the banshees. I won’t hurt you.”
Rkard shifted his grip on the broken blade. “Liar.” Abalach’s eyes flared, and she stepped toward the boy. “Then I’ll come to you,” the queen said. “The banshees will arrive soon enough-when I start breaking your little bones.”
Sadira could not tell whether the threat was a bluff or if Abalach did not realize the nature of the shard in Rkard’s hands, but the sorceress did not want to put the matter to a test. She directed her palm at the pommel of the queen’s scepter, which she knew served as a sort of mystic lens. Through it, Abalach could pull the life force from men and animals, using it to power her mightiest spells.
Sadira forced a stream of the sun’s energy from her hand. The beam was almost invisible as it left her palm, a pink ripple in the hot desert air. With her attention fixed on Rkard, Abalach-Re did not notice the faint shimmer as she drew it, along with the life energy she was taking from Sadira, into her scepter’s pommel.
The beam sank into the obsidian ball with a loud hiss. A crimson light flared in the heart of the dark orb, and Sadira felt the outflow of her life force cease. The pommel burst into shards with a brilliant flash of scarlet, spraying jagged pieces of obsidian in all directions. A ball of scintillating lights hovered briefly at the end of the scepter, then sank into the salt-crusted soil like water.
Abalach-Re threw her useless scepter aside. She scowled at Sadira, then said, “That will not save the child-or you!”
The yalmus of the Bronze Company and two dozen warriors, all that remained conscious, pushed themselves to their feet. Looking pale and nauseated, they stepped forward and attacked. Their steel axes bounced off Abalach’s ivory flesh without opening a single gash.
The queen began to slap them aside, her claws ripping through their breastplates as though they were flesh. The yalmus landed at Rkard’s feet, his armor torn open to reveal a gory mess beneath. The young mul backed away, his eyes wide with horror as he watched Abalach savaging the rest of the company. Sadira started forward to protect him.
As soon as Rkard stepped away from the Bronze Company, two lumps of gnarled bone appeared at the boy’s sides. They did not arrive so much as wink into existence, emerging from empty air in the flicker of an eye. The figures were as large as giants and so twisted they could not even be called skeletons. One even lacked a head, though both had long gray beards dangling from where their chins should have been.
Abalach broke the last dwarf’s neck, then smirked up at the two apparitions. “Jo’orsh, Sa’ram!” she said. “Come.”
Sadira stepped between the banshees and the Raamin queen. “What do you want with them?”
It was one of the banshees who answered. “The Lens. Our magic hides it from the Dragon and his minions.”
“Only until Borys’s spirit lords finish with you,” said Abalach. The queen cast a spiteful glare at Sadira, then lashed out, her daggerlike claws arcing at the sorceress’s throat.
Sadira twisted away and ducked. The talons raked across her shoulder, tearing away wisps of black shadow. The sorceress struck back, her hands cupped together and glowing scarlet with the power of the sun. The fists caught Abalach square in the jaw. The queen’s head snapped back, and her feet came off the ground. She landed half a dozen paces away, among the dwarves she had killed earlier, and immediately started to rise.
Realizing there was no time to cast a spell, Sadira moved to attack again. Abalach locked gazes with her, and the image of a lirr appeared in the queen’s dark eyes. It resembled a large lizard with tough, diamond-shaped scales and a tail covered with thorny spines. Sadira realized instantly that the thing was a mental construct, that Abalach was attacking with the Way.
The lirr flared its magnificent neck fan and opened its pink gullet, then flashed across the space separating the two women. It tore into Sadira’s mind with such force that the sorceress cried out in pain and actually tumbled over backward, slamming the back of her skull into the salt plain.
The saurian appeared on the shadowy plain of Sadira’s intellect, then began to rip great gobs of spongy black matter from the ground. The sorceress’s head exploded into pain, and she could hardly believe that it was only her thoughts that the beast was gulping down. She had never felt a mental attack this powerful.
Nevertheless, remembering what her husband Agis had taught her, Sadira focused her thoughts on fighting the terrible beast. She opened a pathway to her spiritual nexus, imagining a dark cord running down to deep within her abdomen. She concentrated on the black matter of her mind and visualized it hardening into granite. A searing wave of energy rose from deep within her body. The shadowy material hardened into rock, catching the creature in the process of ripping away another large hunk of ground and encasing its claws in solid stone.
A mad cackle erupted from the beast’s throat. “How many wenches like you have I killed?” it chortled, speaking in Abalach’s voice. “A thousand years of battle, and you dare to think you can stop me!”
With that, the lirr rose to its hind legs, its trapped claws ripping away two great chunks of Sadira’s mind. White flashes of pain erupted all through the sorceress’s head. The beast dropped back down, smashing the rock encasing its talons, and began to tear away great chunks of black stone. Sadira heard someone screaming and realized it was she. She summoned more spiritual energy, hoping to counterattack, but the only thing that rose in response was a wave of bile.
The sorceress continued to fight, trying to create a wyvern or a baazrag to counter Abalach’s construct. She simply did not have the power. The lirr continued to rip through her mind until, at last, rays of white radiance began to flood her head, and she knew she would fall unconscious.
Then, from somewhere, she heard Rkard yell in anger as he attacked Abalach. The lirr screeched then went limp and faded away as rapidly as it had come. Sadira found herself alone inside her wounded mind, lost in a white fog of pain.
“Help!” the young mul called.
Though she did not remember closing them, Sadira opened her eyes. She found Abalach-Re five paces away, thrashing wildly and trying to shake young Rkard from her back. Sa’ram stood at her side. With the rigid shards of bone that served him as arms, the banshee was ineffectually trying to pluck the young mul off the Raamin queen.
Sadira pulled a tiny bead of silver from her pocket and yelled, “Rkard, let go!”
At the sound of her voice, Abalach spun around. Rkard opened his hand and sailed away, crashing down on an unconscious dwarf. He left the Scourge’s broken tip planted in the queen’s back.